The duke smiled as if knowing his thoughts.
“Now come boy, we must begin to prepare you, and we don’t have long,” he said.
“Prepare me for what?” Seth asked, knowing all too well.
“The trials son, the trials.”
Chapter Twenty.
They had ridden slowly for hours behind their hired killers. Renfra had never seen a less motivated group of men in his life. They walked so slowly that they were passed on the road by trading caravans and farmers driving fat cattle set for sale at the markets. He knew they wouldn’t work out. If only the idiot boy king realized how long it took to find the right people then he would understand he couldn’t rely on these men.
Renfra sat in a small tent, on the floor stood a piece of black leather etched with symbols, he sat cross-legged within. The twenty or so men who rode with him all wore the red and were loyal. He was happy with them at least, the ranks of the order had never been so plentiful. The blessing of the king had its benefits. It was easy to find them now. The husband whose wife had run away from his beatings to the protection of the sisters of the divine child. The wife who lost her child to hunger after giving her last gold to a wandering priest of some made up god or another and, of course, the boys who’s fathers had been destroyed by dark magic.
He remembered that night in the study well. Thellas senior, a weak man, had argued against him that night. Told him that his order was no longer welcome in the Keep, at first, he’d needed their knowledge and skills, they were nothing if not good at organizing a kingdom, rules, codes of morality and most importantly knowing the kinds of secrets to keep the other nobles in line, but once he was done with them he drew away from the order. He knew of the Dark Guild, the Gatherers and ignored their crimes. Renfra had come back that night when the king was alone.
A clay mug of drugged tea in his hand he offered it to the king and told him they would leave. He’d grown close to the boy king and saw the fear in him he could use if pushed in the right way. The king toasted his journey and drank the brew down, within a moment he slept lightly. Renfra said the words and created the circle. He knew the lore as they had collected and burned much more knowledge than that, but not before he’d read it all. When he saw those black beasts he knew they were his lord’s own creatures. Who else could create such beings of pure rage and hate? It was the same way he created people now. Take the weak, broken, abused and hurt, give them more pain and suffering than they can withstand and point them in the right direction.
The black dogs bounded from the rift and ripped the sleeping king apart. He woke from his light slumber and screamed and screamed as his life was torn away by dark beasts with sharp teeth. Of course Renfra was the first to be there and comfort the young king, that had been the plan all along.
Now the young king was proving to be as stupid and stubborn as his father. He was a much darker creature but he was a still a fool and that was worse.
As Renfra sat on the black leather that was cut with the symbols of his lord, he open his mind and let it in. The feeling of fear crawled through him and he shuddered. His lord was with him, the imprisoned one.
“Tell me your bidding,” Renfra said.
In his minds he saw the visions, the desert people trying to escape, the sisters disappeared and the gamblers actually rising against them. He felt the strength of his lord in him and he stood up straight and filled with strength. His years weighted less on him, his lord needed him to be strong for this and thus he was.
***
Minsetta was an interesting lady, she talked almost non-stop now they had miles and days to go before they got to the temple, also, she didn’t seem to need sleep which kept her riding well after Josette would have called it in for the night. They trotted slowly down the road in the moonlight and she listened as Minsetta spoke and spoke on.
“When was the last time you were with a man?” she asked, it snapped Josette’s attention back, she was letting her mind wander.
She thought about it.
“I kissed a boy once when I was about eleven and felt his cock inside his pant touch my leg,” she said.
Minsetta laughed. “But you were a pleasure slave right?” she said.
“Sex is between two people who want it, and that is the only time, oh and Seth kissing me that was nice,” she said.
“Where did he kiss you?” Minsetta asked.
“At the Keep after we won the battle,” she said quickly.
Minsetta laughed again. “I meant where on your body, but I guess that answers the question.”
Josette flushed as red as her hair. That act wasn’t a big part of her life, none of the men paying for her body cared much about her pleasure. Some of the girls in the various places she worked took enjoyment from the job, they loved sex and the power it gave them over men, but she never saw it as power. What power was there in someone wanting to fuck you. Most men she knew would have sex with anything with a heartbeat.
Minsetta stopped laughing. “So they’ve robbed you of taking pleasure now, made it something that was done to you.”
“Oh no. I quite enjoy killing people, probably a fair bit more than I should,” she said back, admitting it to herself. She did like killing people, especially men who were bigger and stronger than her and looked like they enjoyed hurting women. The feeling of the warm blood running down her hands, as her dagger slipped into their unwilling bodies.
Minsetta smiled sadly at her. “Well now’s your chance. I can hear some people coming up from the road behind us and given we are two women alone I’d say it’ll end badly.”
Minsetta stopped her horse and slowly dismounted, she went to the side of her and drew out her long thin sword. Josette did the same but drew her bow.
“How many?” she asked.
“Four, I think,” Minsetta said.
Josette laughed and put her bow away and pulled out her dagger, give them a chance she thought.
A horse came racing around the roadway and seeing them standing in the middle of the road, reared violently and threw its rider. It was a young boy in the attire of a king’s courier. He fell from his horse hard and landed with his arms out in front of him. Josette heard the painful crack and his cry of surprise and sudden pain. She ran to him and saw his arm was clearly broken, the bone pushing through his broken skin, the boy cried in pain, tears running down his young face, he looked like Micker’s younger brother, some farmer boy caught up in a war.
“Sorry,” she said.
From the darkness behind them the others came, his guards. They were dressed in the uniforms of the king and were clearly protecting this boy as he traveled with some message, strapped to his horse were the leather satchels of his trade, embossed with the king’s logo, so people would get out of the way.
The men pulled to a hard stop and looked at them, one drew a bow from his back and drawing the string pointed at arrow at her, knelt over the boy.
“What the fuck is all this? The leader said.
He was a tall skinny man with a mustache. He stepped off his horse and coming to the boy, pulled him roughly to his feet.
Minsetta stepped forward and Josette saw how the man took in the way she looked and lowered their weapons.
“We’re terribly sorry, we heard the hoof beats and tried to get out of the way, seems we weren’t fast enough,” she said.
The man looked at the boy. “Can you ride?” He looked barely able to stand and wavered on his feet from the pain and shock. The boy nodded weakly.
“Just get out of the way, we have an important message from the king,” he said.
Josette looked back at Minsetta who just nodded at her. Slipping her blade from behind her back she grabbed the lead man and thrust it into him hard. The sharp knife slide in through the soft fabric of his uniform and he grunted in pain, that was why people should wear armor she thought. The man dropped to the dusty road, blood blossoming on his shirt on a growing circle, red on red.
She stepped over him and grabbing
the bowman from the saddle pulled him down by his uniform, as he fell sideways from his horse she cut his throat with a quick flick of her blade, his blood spraying out in an arc. The other tried to ride past, but Minsetta tossed her sword like a lance. It flew hard and pierced his back and through his heart. The horse stopped as he sagged in the saddle hunched over.
Josette stood breathing deeply, looking at the boy who was shocked and terrified. She looked at him, pointed to the side of the road. “Run, idiot!”
The boy needed no second invitation and took off towards the sparse tree line, holding his damaged arm. Minsetta walked past her, stepping over the bodies and reached into the boy’s saddle bag. She drew out two white paper scrolls with red wax, still intact.
“You read, right?” she said tossing one to Josette.
Josette read hers but it was a dull thing, about tax collection and the state of the treasury.
“Mine’s boring, yours?” she said.
“Seems our king has a big force waiting for the Reds right near Twin Plains, they intend to kill them once they set foot in the area,” she said.
“Really who can you trust these days?” Josette said.
Josette looked at the men she had killed and truly she had felt excitement, she was glad for the excuse to kill someone, to prove herself again and take some vengeance. It wasn’t good. With Dagosh and Elizebetha gone she could go as far as she wanted down this dark path and no one would stop her, she had to try herself, if she wanted to.
Minsetta reached down to the lead man on the ground and kneeling next to him exposed his neck. With fine fingers she pulled his head back, ready to drink.
Josette spoke. “Don’t do that, you can have some of mine, it’s better, right?”
Minsetta stood back up, she walked to her and leaning in close she pressed her lips against her neck. Josette felt a shiver run through her. She grimaced against the pain as the teeth sunk into her blood and her blood flowed into Minsetta’s mouth. Only a little and she was done. She cut her own fingers and smeared some dark blood on the wound, it knit together in moments.
Josette looked at the woman, she was attractive and women had always been more welcome lovers for her than men. She’d been with a few at the pleasure house when some old man wanted a thrill but was thankful past the point of doing anything but watch.
She remembered something as she looked at her. “Once you said you’d want to ask me something and I was to think about it before I said no,” Josette said.
Minsetta laughed. “Oh that, we can forget that now”
“What was it? You’ve changed your mind?” She asked.
“I was going to ask you to be my apprentice, but now I know you think I would settle for partners.”
Josette liked it that this woman thought of her as an equal. She reached out and gripped her hand in a warrior clasp. “Sounds like fun.”
Chapter Twenty One.
Seraphina thought she had changed. Those cold weeks, months and then years in that lonely prison that was the land of the dead. She’d thought on the bloody path that had brought her to the moment when Seth had opened the rift and pushed her in. She was angry at him, furious beyond belief, but what choice did he have, she’d proven she wasn’t fit for the world, so she was taken out of it. Yet now she was face to face with what she’d done. Not some vague memory of years past and some sense of regret she held like a shield but the actual feeling of fear she’d inspired, the feeling of the blood dripping down her hands and the glee with which she’d collected people's life talents like shiny new toys.
Finally, it had ended. After what seemed many days and days of reliving the lives of those she’d killed she woke up in her own body. She was actually relieved to be back in her own form, with her ratty matted hair and slightly too skinny frame. She felt the cold on her bare arms and looked around her. She was in a cell. She’d opened her eyes and she was in the corridor. There were no guards, no instruction just rows and rows of occupied cells.
She ignored the screaming inmates and broken people that sat in those cages and walked past the metals bars of their small cells. She walked on and on until her feet were sore and legs tired. There were hundreds and hundreds of them on either side, it stretched on for miles. At the very end she found a cell that was open and empty, she simply walked into it and shut the door. This was where she was meant to be. She belonged here, this would be her home now.
Seraphina started crying softly to herself and was broken from her thoughts by soft male laughter. A young man was in the cage across from her, his arms resting casually through the bars. He looked at her sitting on the floor and clutched, like someone watching an amusing play. He was attractive with dark black hair, long as hers and dark eyes that locked onto her.
She felt embarrassed and stood. Walking to the bars she stared back at him.
“It’s not nice to laugh at other people’s pain,” she said, in a voice like her as a spoilt child.
He laughed again but this time, it was a roaring laugh. He walked away from the bars and howled. When he came back he wiped a single tear of mirth from his eye.
“From you, that is gold, pure gold, enjoyment from anothers suffering? How much enjoyment have you gained from your little powers?” he said.
She knew he was right. She walked away from the bars and sat on the simple wooden cot that sat in the room, head in her hand, she felt a wave of sadness again.
“Oh don’t cry I’ll be nice, it’s been so long since I’ve had company, my manners are lacking. I apologize Lady Seraphina,” he said with a bow.
She stood again and walked to her bars.
“How do you know my name?” she asked.
He laughed again. “Knowledge, it’s my gift and my curse. I know a lot of things and it’s never done me any good, the more you know, the more dangerous you are, the more they fear you, the more people fear you and the more they hate you,” he said.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Prisoner that’s my name and now it’s yours as well,” he said, then he smiled at her. “Want to learn something?”
She looked at him. “So long as it’s not about me. I know all I need to about me,” she said.
“Oh no, it’s about prisons and cages. It might help you. See cages are metal and they make these strong locks.” He tapped the lock. “Can’t break that, can’t pick it, even if I had something to pick it with, but look! He pointed at the hinges of the cage. They were a simple metal prong stuck between three loops.
“A man with a lot of time on his hands could get that loose, he could steal grease from the meat of his meal and apply it, he could hit it with his hand for days and days.” He held up his hand showing a scar that had healed again and again. “And finally, it would be ready to pull.” With a nod, he simply pulled the large prong out, first from the top, then the bottom, with a shove, the cage door fell loudly to the ground.
The man walked out from his cell and turning around slowly laughed. to himself. He bowed to her with all the pride of an actor on a stage.
“Didn’t you put yourself in?” she asked.
“I did but as you will find out, after a few hundred years you’ll regret your decision,” he said.
“A few hundred years?” she cried.
“Oh yes, time moves very strangely here. Many years alone with your torment and only moments back home. Now do you want me to free you? I’m going to leave this place and try escape properly, some company would be nice.”
“But I belong here” she said.
“Why?” he asked simply.
“Because I killed all those people. I wanted what they had and I killed them for it. I’m a monster,” she said.
“What I’ve learned is people are weak, so often they follow in the footsteps of their fathers, or in your case uncles. You think you would have been a killer if you were born to a family of dairy farmers. Do you think deep, deep in your very chest beats an evil heart, that you’re rotten and it would have been this way no
matter what, that you would have been this way no matter what lesson you’d be taught by real loving parents?”
He was right, she didn’t feel that way, what choice had they ever given her. Her uncle had taught her from her first memory that she was better than other people. They were as cattle to people like her and their deaths were nothing if they could give her something. If anything, they should be happy to have helped her live a full life.
“I never had a choice,” she said softly.
“No you didn’t and let’s not lie to ourselves, it felt good, we enjoyed it but we just did what they taught us. Is it our fault we were good students and learned our lessons well?”
He walked to the bars of her cage and placed his hands on them.
“Tell me your fears,” he said.
She felt it come rushing out of her. “I’m afraid I’m truly wicked. I deserve to be here but I’m so scared of what will happen to me, that I’ll never see the sun again, that I’ll never know love that I’ll just be lost as a terrible memory of someone who I once was. I’m scared they’ll never give me a chance to prove I could be better,” she said.
She saw a wave of power rush through him and snapping his hand back hard on the bars, he ripped them free. The cage door buckled and he threw it easily to the floor. She was stunned at the power in his body.
“You could have escaped any time you wanted?” she asked.
“Once that may have been true, but sadly now I need you, your real human fear, not that of these dead husks, but soon you will soon see little dove, the true escape is from the cage in your mind, there is no right and wrong, there is no good and evil, there is only the fearful and the strong”
***
“You’ve spent too much time with that toothpick in your hand and not fighting with a real weapon,” yelled the duke of Bloodcrest, or Snake Tongue as he was known in the Keep. It was far from an insult and showed that he spoke more than one tongue and was knowledgeable or good with words.
Seth dodged the attack of the guard who swung a huge sword in an overhead swing. Snake Tongue stood on the sidelines yelling at him as he fought.
Take My Heart...: Dark Ages - Fantasy (Dark Gods & Tainted Souls Book 3) Page 9