After just a three minute walk up the road they entered a large stone building. The entry foyer was filled with people packed closely together, and the guards pressed their way through to a large pair of doors, that they pressed open and ushered Marco through.
Beyond the doors was a large room, with a tall bench across one end, where seven women sat. Windows high up the wall allowed the gray light of the day outside to gloomily illuminate the room, where benches were crowded with observers, who looked at three tables that faced the seven women on the bench.
Folence sat alone at one table on the left. Three women sat together at the table in the center, and Marco was escorted to sit alone at the table on the right.
“Let the trial of Folence and the boy begin,” the center woman at the bench spoke almost as soon as Mark seated himself, with two guards standing directly behind him.
“Trial?” Marco questioned.
“Silence on the floor,” the same imposing woman spoke. “We will follow the procedures of the court to determine the due punishment of those who are guilty of malfeasance,” she looked at Folence, “and treachery,” all the members of the bench stared at Marco.
One of the women at the center table stood up. “Your honor, the charges of malfeasance against the Lady Folence do deserve explanation and adjudication, which may take some time. The charges against the boy are self-evident to all, and only his sentence needs to be confirmed, so I ask that we dispense with that first, and then handle the other matters.”
“I am guilty of nothing!” Marco shouted in angry astonishment. “Folence! What have you done?” he rose momentarily as he shouted, before the guards clamped their hands upon his shoulders and forced him back into his seat.
“It is not your fault, Marco,” Folence stood. “These ladies are fearful and angry, and have lived too long in their isolation on the island.”
“Silence!” another woman at the bench roared. “You are impudent!”
“You are impudent to usurp my authority,” Folence shot back.
“You are under trial here, and your punishment will be decided by those you are insulting, let me remind you,” the center judge spoke.
“This is no trial! You have your minds made up without knowing the facts!” Marco rose again.
“Guards! Give him a taste of what is to come!” the judge at the end of the bench shouted.
One of the guards struck Marco in the side of the head with the hilt of her sword, drawing blood and knocking him onto the table’s surface, as the crowd roared in approval.
He knew that he was already sentenced to death, and he knew that he deserved no punishment from the women in the room. His anger flared; he wished he had his sword, and he was determined to use the sorcery of his hand to change the outcome of the proceedings in the room, for both himself and Folence.
He raised his hand and called upon it to burst out in brilliant, blinding light, and as it did, he pushed his chair back violently, into the legs of the guards, then he jumped over the table into the center of the room. As he did, he heard the sound of crashing glass, and he raised his hand, knowing without expecting, that his sword had flown from his room to serve him in his need.
He caught the sword as the women in the room screamed and shouted, some blinded, some panicked, all of them angry.
“I’m not going to suffer this bigotry without a fight! How much blood shall we spill here?” he screamed.
And then there was a clap of thunder so profoundly deep that the building shook, and the light from outside darkened, while Marco’s hand was completely extinguished, even though he had given no thought or command to make any such change.
A spot between where Marco stood and where Folence sat began to glow, a column of air that gave off a golden yellow luminescence, which instantly solidified into a woman’s figure, the golden-haired beauty of the spirit of the island, Ophiuchus.
Chapter 10 – The Journey Begins
Marco instantly fell to his knees and bowed to the power that had entered the room, as the women gaped in astonishment.
“Is there not a single mature person on this island?” the spirit’s voice was stern as it echoed not only within the room, but also within the minds and souls of those who were present.
“What are you women trying to do?” the spirit’s voice was softer, yet still so piercingly clear that it penetrated Marco’s skull, as the words seemed to drill directly into his consciousness, bypassing his ears in the process.
“We want justice,” the central judge at the bench answered hesitantly.
“No you don’t!” the spirit shrieked, making the women cower. “You want revenge!
“Revenge and justice are two different things, and while you may want justice, you don’t always get what you want, and when you want revenge, you had better be prepared to find that others seek revenge against you,” the figure spoke sternly.
“Lady Folence,” the spirit spoke into the silence of the room.
“Stand up, Lady Folence,” she said once she had the defendant’s attention.
“I speak now to confirm that you are the leader of the order, and your commands are to be obeyed as if they were my own, until the Lady Iasco returns,” Ophiuchus spoke.
“She’s dead!” someone in the crowd exclaimed.
“Only for the time being,” the spirit answered immediately in a deeper voice.
“My champion and I are going on a journey to restore her to life,” the spirit’s comment drew shrieks and murmurs of astonishment. “Unless you ladies decide that your petty thirst for revenge is more important than my command. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lady,” some voices answered sullenly, some answered fervently, but all answered in the affirmative.
“Now, tell me, who brought charges against Folence to precipitate this trial?” the spirit asked severely.
There was no answer.
“I know who it was, of course. I had hoped for some better sign of courage and honesty from one who wants to be a leader in my cult,” Ophiuchus said sternly. She turned to face the bench.
“Benville, arise,” she spoke, and a woman sitting at the bench immediately stood.
“You are dismissed from the leadership of the cult. You will serve penance for your harmful intentions before you will again have an opportunity to try to influence the leadership of our order. You are immediately ordered to travel to Carthhag, and serve as a goat herder there for one year, to humbly serve the needs of the temple in that city. You may either accept, or accept expulsion from the order.
“Which is your choice?” the spirit asked.
“I will serve in Carthhag,” the judged said penitently.
“Folence, you may go retake charge of your flock. This assembly is dismissed. A ship and crew shall be prepared to depart immediately, as Marco and I prepare to go to Andikara,” Ophiuchus commanded, and then watched and waited as the women in the room raced away from the wraith of their guiding spirit.
Marco had remained on his knees throughout the entire drama, and he remained there now, staring up at the spirit in astonishment.
“Close your mouth, Marco dear,” the lovely spirit told him when the two of them were alone in the room. “And stand up.
“We are going to go to the crypt and disinter Iasco’s body. Then we will take it to the harbor with us, and we will use the ship Folence will have waiting for us to take us towards the entrance to the underworld,” she explained as Marco rose from his knees.
“We’re going to Station Island?” Marco assumed.
“No, my young friend, that is too far away,” Ophiuchus answered. “We’re going to a different portal.”
“Persephone’s Gate?” Marco asked. The spirit started to walk out of the courtroom, and Marco dutifully followed.
“Very good guess,” she told him as they left the building. They turned to the right and began walking along the street, as others scurried to move away from them as rapidly as possible.
“But I tho
ught the gate only opened twice a year, and it’s months away until it opens again,” Marco tried to be deferential as he probed the topic.
“That is the rule,” Ophiuchus agreed. “I plan to offer a bargain to change the rule, if I have to. Don’t you worry, this part is my issue to take care of. Your part is to concoct the ingredients that we will give to Iasco in the underworld to reunite her soul and her body and bring her back to life.”
Marco stopped walking, as the extraordinary expectations struck him.
“Come along, Marco,” Ophiuchus spoke to him as she kept walking, not even turning to see him. “You know the formula; I made sure of that a long time ago.”
Marco started walking, his mind only fractionally aware of what she had said, as he tried to let his mind wander through the index of alchemical formulae that were so indelibly stored there. He evaluated the potential of each to restore life to the dead, as he thought about the Echidna’s scale he had been sent to acquire and the gorgon’s blood he had picked up while at his castle.
His heart started to race, as he realized that there was a single, ancient technique that could work, if he were to modify it and add a singular substance.
“What is ‘the scarlet from gold’?” Marco asked six steps later.
“Ah, my innocent companion, I cannot reveal that to you yet,” the spirit told him. “Come along now, keep up.”
“What did you mean?” Marco asked, as he suddenly realized what she had said earlier. “How did you make sure I knew the formula?”
She turned to look at him, and suddenly she was an old woman, one wizened with age, but with powerful eyes that stared intently at him. “I gave you a coin in the Lion City, a year ago today, and when you swallowed that coin, you gained the love of and power to understand alchemy.”
“That was you?” Marco blurted out. “This is you?” he tried to correct himself as he remembered the seemingly chance encounter.
“Every way you see me is me,” she answered as they turned a corner. “I am the old woman and the young girl. I am the hills of the island and the waters and the caverns within.
“And if you’re not obedient, I’ll travel in this guise for our journey,” the spirit told him. She stopped walking forward and turned towards the building beside them; she stepped over to a large bronze door, and though it looked extremely heavy, she opened it easily. “Iasco’s crypt is in here,” she said as she entered the dim interior.
“You’ll need a crowbar to open it, and a hand wagon to carry her down to the harbor,” Ophiuchus told Marco. “Go find them.”
Marco looked at her helplessly for a moment, then saw an open doorway, one that was plain and unmarked, like a staff entry. He went through the door and found all the instruments and equipment of the workers at the burial site, and he appropriated the wagon and crowbar and two extra heavy clothes, in case he needed them to wrap the body. The hand wagon was long and narrow, and Marco belatedly realized it was the type of wagon that would be needed to carry dead bodies; he momentarily recoiled as he grabbed its handle and started to move it.
It suddenly struck him that he was going to steal a body from a grave, and he felt a wave of revulsion at the thought. Yet he clearly had no choice, it seemed.
“Why does Iasco have to come back to life?” Marco asked the spirit as he returned with his equipment. He stood and looked at the walls of the mausoleum they were in. There were numerous plaques on the walls, and small niches in some places to hold singular people, and there was a strange, sibilant whispering sound, so low as to be virtually inaudible; he dismissed the sound as his attention was drawn by the details he saw around him. Marco realized he was standing atop an inscribed marble cover in the floor, and that there were numerous other markers in the floor around them.
And straight ahead, he saw a tomb that rose from the floor, a rectangular erection of granite. He walked closer to the tomb, and saw Iasco’s name chiseled into the front panel in large block letters. He closed his eyes as the reality of her death struck him hard, and he felt tears well up in his eyes. The memory of her that stood out in his mind was the battle she had waged on his behalf while in the palace at Barcelon. She had stood and exercised her own powers to protect him from the evil energy of the sorcerer, as punishment in the form of possessed ravens that had bombarded him.
She had been a magnificent pillar of strength when he needed it then, and she had been the means of his extraordinary healing afterwards.
Now, her dead body lay interred because some evil forces, forces who he did not know, had assaulted and murdered her, for reasons he also did not know. It was unfair; it was injustice, and he suddenly felt the urge to prove that he could do the impossible, he could bring her back to life. And then, when that was accomplished, he would go in search of revenge against her murderers, he told himself as he gently pressed his palm against the stone.
“Don’t make love to it; open it,” Ophiuchus barked at him. He turned and looked at her, and saw that she had returned to the gorgeous blond appearance he had first seen at Compostela.
“Why do you do that, change your appearance?” he asked, as he lifted the crowbar and started to walk around the tomb, looking for the best place to find leverage for opening it.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” the spirit answered. “Human appearance is irrelevant to me; I am the island first and foremost.
“Why are you doing that?” she asked as she observed Marco straining so hard that he turned red in the face, as he jammed the crowbar into a slot beneath the lid and strained mightily and fruitlessly to budge the stone.
“I have to lift the lid to take her body!” Marco grunted in exasperation.
“Why do it that way?” the spirit asked.
“Have you got an easier way?” he asked as he contorted his body fruitlessly in an effort to increase his leverage.
“You have the power in your hand to do it so much more simply,” Ophiuchus commented lightly.
Marco stopped straining as he turned to stare at her. He wanted to curse, but dared not do so, not in his present location, not with the present company. He laid the crowbar down on the floor, then placed the golden, enchanted hand on the top of the tomb, and closed his eyes, as he focused his attention on the stone, and the concept of making the lid move through the air. His hand did have the power to do it; he hadn’t thought about the power of his hand since the reincorporation of his old memories with his new, but now was the time to put together what he knew, most appropriately so since the power had been Iasco’s to begin with.
He felt a sense like vibration in his hand, and he opened his eyes to watch; his hand was not glowing – it was merely its usual golden self in appearance, showing no signs of exerting its power. But the flat stone lid was trembling, and then it lifted a half inch above the tomb, and hovered there. Marco willed it to rise further, and it rose another inch, the hundreds of pounds of solid stone floating in the air, as Marco pressed against it physically with his hand, and made it move to the side. He cleared it from above the tomb, then silently commanded it to lower to the ground, which it gently did.
“Look inside, Marco, and lift Iasco out,” Ophiuchus told him, as she came up next to him.
Marco leaned over the edge of the tomb and looked down, butterflies in his stomach in anticipation of what he might see. Inside there was a bier that rose three feet above the bottom of the tomb, and atop that lay the shrouded figure of Iasco, no flesh visible within the clean white linen wrapping.
“Use the power to lift her,” the spirit barely breathed the command in Marco’s ear. He lowered his hand into the interior of the tomb, hesitated for a moment, then lightly touch the edge of the material. He stared intently at the shrouded shape, and willed his hand to make it float upward into the air. He watched the body rise; as it slowly cleared the top of the walls of the tomb, he moved it beyond the container, towards the wagon, and then took two steps to reach the small vehicle. He lowered his hand carefully, so that Iasco gently settled on t
he surface of the wagon.
“Take a look at her, Marco,” Ophiuchus urged him as he removed his hand.
“I’d rather not; I don’t want to,” Marco whispered back, feeling real emotion.
“You must. You must see her, see who you are going to do this for, and see what was done to her,” the spirit commanded. “Do it.” She laid her hand atop his, and guided it back down to touch the linen shroud again, and he felt his energy activate, to carry out her desire, not his.
The linen wrapping fluttered gently, as though wafted by a breeze, then it unwrapped itself from the body of the former head of Ophiuchus’s cult. In a matter of moments the linen lay on either side of the dead woman, and Marco looked down at her, against his will.
There were no clothes on the body, the tiny body. Iasco had been a small woman, and in death her body had shrunk even more. Her flesh was wizened with the effect of death, yet her features were clear, particularly the exotic striping of her skin, the feline-seeming appearance that had enhanced her ability to project power and extraordinary abilities.
Marco’s eyes were drawn though to the wounds, the clearly visible stab wounds on her chest and stomach, evidence of the violence she had suffered in the assault that was staged against her.
“They hurt her, badly,” the spirit said softly. “This little woman was cut down on the street, suffering pain and violence and anger at the betrayal that came upon her. She must be revived, not simply because we need her, but because she must deliver payment to the ones who caused this to happen. It is up to you Marco, to make it possible.”
Marco turned his head away, and he willed the linen to rewrap itself. She had been brutally murdered, right in the very streets of the town where she was supposed to be safe as the leader and ruler.
Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) Page 10