Under a Veil of Gods

by R. Anthony Giamusso

  Indrid didn’t appreciate that Alexandal called him a boy; he was a man and the choice was his: Give in to the steward’s request and stay at Ikarus as the new army general, or defy him and leave for a new life as the count of Grale and become the lord of the Graleon island.

  Since he was little, Indrid had always wanted to become a leader. But that zeal for leadership grew with age. When he lived on Grale, he was convinced that his friends had only talked to him because he was royalty. Being acquainted with a count’s son had its benefits. Even parents would urge their children to befriend powerful people. And that was what Indrid felt he had been used for. Until he’d come to Ikarus and met Anna and Rayne, never before did he feel true friendship.

  Now, he strove to become something more; a king, perhaps, or…the king. But that was an impossible dream. Only a Volpi could rule. He was not of ‘sacred’ blood. And it angered Indrid at the thought that there will always be someone above him.

  His stepsister, Anna, entered his mind, then Rayne, then Montague and Greta. Anna was right, we are a family, Indrid thought. He couldn’t leave them behind to be stifled by a lunatic who once acted like a father-figure to them. But Rayne, the steward’s real son, had never seen the good side of Alexandal.

  “No. Lord Alexandal is right,” Indrid said. “I must stay. We are at war.”

  Rayne Volpi lay alone under his bed and traced the creases of his hand, wondering why the color of his skin was different from everyone else. He was not white like the Merns and mainlanders, nor the ebony shade of Graleon skin, nor red like the tribes of the Great Flats; he was pale gray. Was there something special about a ‘normal’ person, with ‘normal-looking’ skin, that makes them better? He thought. Better as in smarter or more suitable to accomplish more for the community? Or in Rayne’s case: less dangerous. He thought about the koi swimming around at The Ponds. Fish and birds flaunted hundreds of different colors and lived in perfect harmony while humans always found the unordinary to be sinful.

  At the tip of his finger, a mark was left behind from the pin Montague had used to draw his blood. Thanks to him, Rayne was familiar with the stories and histories of witchcraft. He knew that blood was the most important ingredient for a spell. But why would Montague need my blood? The secluded king wondered. He isn’t a mage, is he? Am I a mage?

  And Anna; what could she possibly think of him after what he had done? He had feelings for her. But he was only eight and she was twice his age. She was so beautiful to him. Indrid was lucky. By the way Indrid openly expressed his interest in her, Rayne was surprised they weren’t together already. His stepbrother told him that he planned to win Anna’s heart before he left for Grale then marry her on her eighteenth birthday. Then, both of his stepsiblings would surely be gone. The king felt ill.

  His room was cold, as if the windows had been propped open, but Rayne knew that before he’d gotten comfortable on the floor under his bed, he made sure they were closed.

  The draft came in through the creaking door with heavy footsteps following. The visitors didn’t say anything upon entering. Although the bed was still made and the room appeared unoccupied, they walked in with intention. It must be someone who knows where I hide, he thought. But by the way they stomped into the room, Rayne knew they were not visitors, but intruders, and he felt hostility in their steps.

  There was no time to run. Large, muddy boots stepped to the edge of the mattress, right in front of the king’s face. It was obvious that they knew he was under the bed. Suddenly, a hand clutched his foot and pulled him out from his safe place. Masked men sat him up forcefully and wrapped a sack around his head so hard that the fabric squashed his nose as it pressed against his face. The king reached out for something to grab, but his groping arms were caught by rough hands. One abductor tied Rayne’s wrists behind his back while the other secured his mouth with a cloth. They knew their way through the castle all too well, Rayne thought.

  Outside, the king was hurled onto a wagon, and they left in a hurry.

  Rayne’s heart beat faster by the second. “Let me go! What are you doing? Where are you taking me?” He was shivering. The young king begged for answers and after no response, he ordered them to respond, but they still said nothing.

  The road to nowhere felt bumpy. The trip was short and Rayne recognized the path they had taken. It was on the way to The Ponds. But Rayne knew they were still on top of the Ikarus plateau. He had traveled this way before with Anna.

  Flashes of his stepsister, Monte, Greta, and Indrid raced before him. He wondered if he would ever see them again. Rayne feared for his life. The majority of the world would never know the kind of person that he was. Neither would his father. He might never become king. Even if he survived this abduction, he doubted that he’d ever be in a position to make a political decision in his life after what he’d done to Fervan. After the incident, Rayne recognized how his emotions controlled him. And he didn’t trust himself. Perhaps, he thought, for the benefit of mankind, it was better that he distanced himself from the throne.

  When they finally stopped, the king was pushed off the wagon and down into the mud. The sack that covered his head was stripped off.

  Grim faces were revealed as both abductors removed their masks. The speaker of the Ikarus council, Elmer Mongs, looked enraged. His cataract eye was unmistakable. He grabbed the young king by the neck. “You’ve been a curse to this kingdom since the day you were born! You stole the sun. The clouds that you, Rayne Volpi, have brought with you from the depths of darkness are destroying our lands. The delicacies and luxuries we once shared are slowly vanishing from our lives. But most of all, you hurt my son. My son! That was all I needed to make the decision to do what will benefit everybody.”

  Rayne recognized the other man. He was a fisherman named Lief, a simple-minded womanizer who lived on the docks near Cadbin’s Alehouse. His nose was long and pointy like the dorsal fin of a fish. He hammered a wooden post into a pile of stone.

  Speaker Mongs propped up a log to sit on and looked on. He took a knife from Lief’s bag and began to peel a potato with it. “Make sure it’s stable and secure, then tie him tight! Use one of your special knots.”

  Lief handled Rayne like a rag doll.

  Rayne tried to awaken the recessive power that he had uncontrollably unleashed on Fervan—a power he never knew that he had. He assumed it was a manifestation of his emotion. So he gripped the fisherman’s wrist and thought about inflicting the same burn into him. But Lief just pulled his arm away.

  Back in the street Rayne had been angry when Fervan insulted him. Now, he was scared. And his power couldn’t manifest. Nothing happened.

  Lief threw him against the post and pulled his arms behind it, tying his hands together with rope. He tightened the knot so hard, Rayne’s hands went numb.

  After the vegetable was skinned, Speaker Mongs sliced the spud into bite-sized pieces, and watched the boy being readied for death as he chewed on one portion at a time. “Loosen his gag. I want to hear his last words,” the speaker said.

  Rayne tried to scream, but nothing came out. Terror overwhelmed him. “Please. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I would never…” His voice was hoarse.

  “Didn’t mean to?” The speaker laughed. “Well you did! Now my only son is tainted. You burned a print of your hand into his arm, now I can only wonder what kind of devilry you’re infested with,” the speaker said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

  “Time to go back to the shadow land,” Lief said to the king.

  Thunder roared and a downpour began.

  “My king?” the speaker snarled. “No. I don’t think so,” His face turned from the enjoyment of Rayne’s torment to plain serious. “I wish I could tie you to the top of the temple so everyone else could watch you burn. I think they would like that. They would feel satisfied and eased that you were gone.” He pointed to Lief to begin. “You’re a curse, no longer!”

  The fisherman circled the helpless boy, shaking a contai
ner of oil on and all around him.

  “Make sure you get his blood,” the speaker said.

  When Lief approached him with a knife and glass vile, Rayne shrieked. A burst of high frequency sound split the air. It was so piercing that his scream made both Speaker Mongs’s and the fisherman’s ears bleed.

  The speaker dropped his torch as he blocked his ears, igniting the oiled path leading to the boy king. Lief jumped away just in time for the coursing flaming to miss his pants.

  Rayne hurled his face away from the rising fire, the heat scorching every crevice of his body, engulfing him. He shook side to side, hoping for someone to stop the pain. The first face that he imagined was Montague’s. “Monte!” he yelled.

  WITHIN SECONDS, only silence remained. The fire eventually surrendered to the angry sky’s pouring rain. Smoke rose into the east wind. Within the heavy fog, the burned-black pole remained lodged upright in the rocks. But there was no sign of a body.

  “No,” Lief said. He stepped closer to the post, “No, No, No. This can’t be possible. I…I tied him tight. I saw him burning. He couldn’t have loosened that knot!” The fisherman was frantic. When Lief was a boy, his father would take bets at the docks for coin, challenging any man to undo a ‘fisherman’s knot’. To this day, no one had ever done so. Not even Lief, a master of nets and knots. “I didn’t get his blood!”

  “Give me your knife,” Speaker Mongs said.

  Lief was confused, but gave it to him nonetheless.

  “Give me your hand,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Elmer grabbed Lief’s hand and pulled it towards him against the fisherman’s will.

  “Are you crazy?” said Lief.

  “Do you want to go back to Lord Alexandal without a sample of Rayne’s blood? He said that was most important.”

  Lief was silent.

  “Do you?” the speaker pushed.

  “No,” Lief said.

  “Of course not—not if you value your life.”

  “But where is the boy?” Lief asked.

  Lief could see that the speaker was as dumbfounded as him, only Elmer didn’t admit it. He sliced Lief’s arm and held a vile under his dripping blood.

  “Now we have something to bring back. Gather your bags,” Speaker Mongs said blank-faced. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Lief repeated. He was clearly at odds with the speaker’s assumption. “How do you know he’s dead? Where is his body? He’s just…gone.”

  “When our sister mage failed to collect the baby prince’s blood before she was supposed to kill him, what happened to her?”

  Lief didn’t know. He didn’t respond.

  “She was ordered to take her own life,” said Elmer. “Failure is unacceptable.”

  “Alexandal will understand,” Lief said. He wanted to believe that.

  “Alexandal is under a spell. Luckily, El Krea was able to enslave his mind. And he is our commander, not our lord master. The lord master rewards failure with death. Are you ready to die, Lief?”

  The fisherman shook his head.

  “If we return, failing a second time, what do you think our master will do with us?”

  Lief couldn’t answer.

  “Now,” Elmer said, grabbing Lief by the neck, “The king is dead. Do you understand me? When Lord Alexandal asks, you tell him that he is dead. Yes?”

  Lief wasn’t used to being bullied. He was always the bully. But now, Elmer, a high priest of The Temple, held the power. Lief couldn’t fight his way out of this.

  The fisherman was reluctant to say, “Yes.”

  “Say it,” Elmer pushed.

  “The king is dead.”

  For the first time in what felt like ages, Anna Lott sat in the Ikarus gardens with her looking glass and watched a chandelier of stars twinkling in the blue-black sunset.

  The day after the king had disappeared, the clouds vanished and the sun began to shine upon the land once again. The evening of the council meeting when Rayne was sentenced to high seclusion was the last time anyone had seen him.

  Anna had come to the gardens every day, hoping to hear the ringing of the Ikarus bells that Indrid had ordered his men to set at each gate of the kingdom, knowing that it was urgent news about Rayne’s whereabouts. Everyone was instructed to ring them if they had any information.

  For twenty days she’d been waiting for a bell to toll. But she held onto a painful suspicion. When an astronomical amount of gold had been promised by Alexandal as compensation for whoever found the king, Anna grew curious about the lord that was supposed to look after her. It seemed impractical to those who were paying attention. Montague had told her that the amount was more than the combined gold in all three kingdoms. It appeared the reward was never expected to be paid. Did someone know something about Rayne’s whereabouts? she wondered. The search for the last living Volpi lacked heart. Most parties had only been doing it for the reward, and some hoped the ‘cursed boy’ would be dead if they did find him.

  Just as she started packing her bags before meeting her relatives for supper, it finally happened. The southern bell rang.

  Leaving her tripod behind, Anna ran three blocks to the crowded courtyard where she saw Indrid standing on the castle balcony next to Lord Alexandal and a few members of the council.

  She couldn’t help it, but Anna feared the worst. Indrid would have told her before an announcement if Rayne had been found, she thought. She’d checked all of her and Rayne’s favorite places where they would spend time together. He wasn’t in the fields of their favorite farm or at any of the turrets on the castle wall. She’d even waited for him at The Ponds for hours, hoping he would show up—but he never did.

  Indrid wore the bad news on his face.

  Alexandal began, “Today is a bitter sweet day. As we welcome an old friend back in our sky to shine the light on land that had been deprived of our sun’s glorious rays, we come to realize a horrible truth. After three tiresome weeks, the search campaign for our would-be future king, Rayne Volpi, has ended in failure. My wife’s son is gone, and the Volpi name and bloodline is gone with him,” Alexandal said, absent of emotion. He didn’t even look at the crowd.

  Twenty days, she said to herself, correcting him. And it was disturbing to hear Alexandal, her foster father, say ‘my wife’s son’, completely ignoring his own relationship to Rayne.

  Indrid found her in the crowd. Anna knew that he saw the heartbreak and anger in her expression.

  “If the boy ventured south beyond the ruins of Illyrium then it is safe to assume that he is dead. Our enemy has claimed that territory.” Alexandal said then paused.

  The idea caused a disturbing silence. People stood in shock. Life in company with a Volpi was like a blanket for the people’s faith, providing a comfort incomparable to all. It was as if a piece of God was walking among them on Naan, watching over them and protecting them. Everyone alive today had enjoyed that divine security since the day they were born. They knew nothing else until now. If Rayne was truly gone, Anna thought, then for the first time in history, civilization will live in a world without the blood of their creator.

  The Steward continued, “Although it may be hard to hear, if Rayne is gone, the Volpi bloodline is now extinct. Only time will tell. But the crown now hangs on an empty throne. I have served this kingdom for all of my life. And in Rayne Volpi’s absence, I, Alexandal Duncan, claim right to the throne and dub the house of ‘Duncan’ the leader of Men.”

  Elmer Mongs clapped high above his head. Other members of the council mirrored his applause.

  In the crowd, Anna saw both stunned faces and wicked smirks. Everyone looked around to see others’ reactions. It was obvious that the kingdom’s opinion about Rayne was divided. Those who deeply worshipped the Volpi bloodline fell to their knees, crying. They had been filling the temple since the king’s disappearance, praying to Gabriel to protect Rayne and bring him back safely, despite his physical differences.

  Then, hiding within the crowd, Montagu
e caught Anna’s eye. He blended in with his droopy robe, watching Alexandal speak. The despondent look on his face made Anna feel even more upset.

  “By rule of the council I accept the responsibility to protect and defend the throne from foreign and domestic enemies. So help me Gabriel. I will lead Ikarus into the future as your new king!” announced Alexandal.

  Next to Anna, an old woman sobbed like she was a child who’d lost her parents. She held on to her necklace tight, trembling in disbelief, and blathered over and over again, “Our lord’s blood is gone. Gabriel has forsaken us. Our lord’s blood is gone. Gabriel has forsaken us…”

  Anna held back her tears and seized the woman by her shoulders. “No! God did not abandon us! Rayne is not dead.”

  But Anna’s words were less than encouraging. She wasn’t even sure if she believed what she’d said. The woman dropped to her knees. And Anna wanted to do the same.

  Anna saw Montague turn and walk away through the broken crowd and out of sight. He was walking unusually fast. He knows something, she thought. What happened in that council room? Montague hadn’t told her anything. All he’d said in response to her questions about the outcome of Rayne’s trial was, ‘it has been settled.’ She followed him all the way back to the Ikarus library. Before Montague pushed his key into the lock on his door, he collapsed to the ground and vomited.

  “Monte!” Anna cried. She knelt down by his side.

  “I knew someone was following me,” he said, catching his breath.

  “Please tell me you know something. Tell me that Rayne is alive and safe. Tell me you know where he is. Please.” Anna begged him to tell her this. But if it wasn’t true, she didn’t want to know.

  “I can’t,” said Montague.

  For the first time Anna saw Montague shed a tear.

  On the way home from her evening classes, Anna Lott sampled numerous sweet and salty spices throughout the inner village markets and bought some of her favorites. She just finished teaching a lesson on the constellations to her nine-year-old students.