by Unknown
“The wolf, I took it to Jaouen and Salam. When I left them, he was still breathing, but he’s lost a lot of blood…”
Kalaan nodded understanding the message Lil’ Louis was trying to pass — that the husky was dying. His eyes met Virginie’s; the young woman was silent, her face tense with anguish and he took her in his arms.
“Return to the castle with Lil’ Louis. He can then go find Clovis, and tell him everything that’s happened.”
“The butler?” the chief mate asked in surprise.
“‘Tis an excellent ally,” explained Kalaan. “As for you, my sweet, you must warn my mother and sister and then lock yourself in a room upstairs, preferably your own room so I will know where to find you. Do not come down unless I call you. Is that clear?”
Virginie nodded her head.
“And the duchess?” she asked, trying to steady her voice to show Kalaan he could count on her.
The count gave her a smile dripping with irony.“You do nothing about her; just leave her be.”
He kissed Virginie rapidly on the lips, then pulled away and headed straight for the door. Just before leaving he gave Lil’ Louis some last instructions.
“I want all the men armed and ready to act. In the fortress, the village and the lighthouse. Darius Borgas is dangerous! Let him return to the castle for supper and when he arrives in the sitting room I will be there to close the trap.
Lil’ Louis’ eyes lit up at the thought of vengeance as he squared his shoulders and stuck out his impressive belly. “Let the battle begin!” he proclaimed with a predatory grin.
Kalaan nodded and strode off into the night without even one last look at Virginie. He was no longer the man who had held her against him earlier. He was now a cold-hearted warrior ready for combat. She shuddered and Lil’ Louis put a protective arm around her, and spoke quietly. It was his turn to be reassuring.
“Everything will be fine, Mam’selle. The cap’n knows wot he’s doing. Let’s return to the castle and then Oy’ll go alert the men. We have our work cut out for us.”
A short time later, on the south side of the isle, in the pitch-black darkness of the night, Kalaan arrived at Jaouen’s cottage and entered without knocking. Standing at the door he saw the druid on his knees next to the husky lying on an old cloth, near the fireplace. Jaouen was stroking the dog’s side, murmuring calming words. Kalaan was so preoccupied by the animal’s condition that he didn’t immediately notice Salam standing in a dark corner of the room.
“How is he?” he asked, approaching them. The husky yipped and weakly wagged his tail in happiness at seeing his master, which greatly reassured and comforted Kalaan.
“See for yourself,” the old druid replied in a soft voice.
Kalaan’s eyes widened in astonishment. There was no visible wound, nor was there any blood on the animal’s white and gray coat!
“I thought he’d been fatally wounded by Darius’ blade,” he gasped, thunderstruck. He knelt down too, to run his fingers through the thick fur, searching for a wound.
“He was,” Jaouen calmly confirmed in a voice with mysterious overtones. “Your precious Skedaddle is still very weak from all the blood he lost. Fortunately, Lil’ Louis brought him to us before it was too late. A few minutes more and Dorian couldn’t have helped him.”
“Dorian?” Kalaan asked, confused. It was one surprise after another.
He raised his eyebrows while his amber-green eyes expressed his complete bewilderment. Who was the old druid talking about? Kalaan knew no one by the name of Dorian.
At that moment he felt a strong presence behind him. In one graceful movement he stood up, hand on the hilt of his sword, and swiftly turned around, only to freeze on the spot. Kalaan was looking into Salam’s warm and brotherly eyes, only the man before him was no longer really his Tuareg friend.
“Leave your sword in its scabbard, my brother. You’ll have no use for it against me.”
It was indeed Salam’s voice as well as his way of speaking. Nevertheless, the man Kalaan had always known as Salam, the Tuareg had little to do with the man he was now facing. The two men had similar builds, but he was slightly taller than the count and was no longer wearing the traditional blue cloth of a Tuareg. He had apparently borrowed some clothes, for he was dressed in trousers with a three-quarter jacket, a white jabot collared shirt and beige boots.
His face framed by dark shoulder length hair with red highlights had the same harmoniously virile features as before and Kalaan remembered thinking at one time that his friend looked more European than Middle Eastern. Salam, or Dorian, as he was calling himself now, was obviously not a Berber.
“Would someone please explain what is happening?” he asked, growling between his clenched teeth and narrowing his eyes, “Have you been the victim of a curse as well?”
“If that was ever the case, it would not have been a divine intervention,” Dorian replied serenely, while keeping an eye on his friend’s hand, still on the hilt of his sword, his knuckles white from gripping. He went on to clarify slightly. “I was simply a victim of time and oblivion, due to my young age.”
“Kalaan! Remove your hand from that sword!” Jaouen interjected, clicking his tongue and Skedaddle yipped as if in agreement. “Serve us some chouchenn, why don’t you, and let Dorian tell you his story.”
Kalaan grumbled and glared at Jaouen. He felt somewhat betrayed by Salam – Dorian’s lack of trust in him. If they had truly been friends, he should have told him sooner!
“But he couldn’t, as he didn’t remember at all.” The druid’s lilting response to his unspoken question made Kalaan jump.
“How on earth do you do that?” he questioned angrily, as he walked back to stand over Jaouen glaring at him.
“’Tis a gift I was born with,” he replied with a smile. “Or sometimes an affliction,” he added later. “It depends on who is thinking nearby.”
“Can you do that with everyone?” Kalaan inquired, his interest piqued.
“Ya! And recently I’ve been able to converse only using my mind.” The druid bragged, his eyes sparkling with mischief.
“With whom?”
Jaouen glanced over at Dorian, and both men laughed and pulled faces at each other, then smiled again and Dorian shrugged his shoulders with resignation. They looked and acted like two people having a real discussion, except that no words were pronounced. Kalaan seized a flagon he knew contained chouchenn, popped off the wax stopper and took two generous swigs.
“Easy! You will need a clear head to fight the evil tonight,” the druid thundered. He sat up straight and tore the flagon from Kalaan’s hands and took a few sips of the beverage. Looking at Kalaan with mischief in his eyes, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and spoke again.
“Hmm, ‘tis true, it feels good, especially after all the excitement we’ve had.”
“I want to know everything,” Kalaan demanded, still querulous.
Dorian calmly nodded and gestured toward the stools near the fireplace and the sleeping husky. Those blasted seats again! Kalaan groused to himself; but he shuffled over and took a seat on one of them.
“I’ve already told you,” Jaouen said teasingly. “You will break before they do.”
“Stop reading my mind!” Kalaan, who was not in a good mood, berated the old man. Seeing the druid and Dorian exchange conniving smiles did little to help his frame of mind. “And stop communicating by telepathy!”
“Dorian and I will tell you everything, after which you would do well to return to the castle, both of you.”
Kalaan scrutinized the man who had been his friend, his desert brother and still couldn’t accept that the man in front of him was Salam. It felt like he was a complete stranger.
“Do you recall the evening you came to find me, Dorian and you?” Jaouen asked. He lit his pipe and disappeared behind a dense pungent cloud of smoke.
The old druid coughed loudly as did Kalaan and Dorian, and tried to disperse the thick smoke screen with his hands.
“If you wish to kill us with your herbs, you could at least wait until Sal... Dorian tells me his story!”
Jaouen paid no heed to Kalaan’s ranting and lit his pipe again, inhaling and exhaling deeply several times. The smoke from the new blend was more pleasant and less overwhelming.
“’Tis to treat my asthma,” he explained. “Back to the evening in question — when you drank both our portions of the potion for old memories, and you, Kalaan, were reliving your nightmare with the curse of the ancient Egyptian deities, Dorian was also visiting his distant past. It was difficult for me to follow the two of you, but I managed. And what a surprise, it was!”
A silence fell on the room as Jaouen returned to smoking his pipe. After a few moments Kalaan glanced at Dorian who in turn looked at the druid, who jumped suddenly holding his head.
“Dorian! Do not ever howl like that again!” he shouted, looking at him darkly.
Kalaan grinned, finally recognizing something of Salam in Dorian, his sense of humor. He also felt grateful he didn’t have the gift of telepathy, for this way he was spared his friend’s howling.
“I will continue,” Dorian said in his guttural voice still heavy with an accent.
“My true parents were most certainly killed by Barbary pirates after their ship taking us to Alexandria was accosted. I can now remember hearing screams and seeing flames ravage the ship. I was carried off as a hostage. My parents’ faces are still blurry in my mind but their cries of terror are engraved there permanently. I was two years old and survived to be sold on the slave market. The pirates probably acted on their own account and not for any sultans. Otherwise they would have demanded a ransom. With my family and the ship gone and no means to identify me, no one knew who I was. I was purchased by a man who became a father figure to me. He was the chief of a clan of Berber nomads and he raised me as the son he never had. Very early on, he noticed my … my difference, and afraid to lose me, he forbade me from playing with what he called my ‘gifts from Allah.’ As I grew up, I started to forget everything and became a ‘blue man,’ but not completely. For some unknown reason, I refused to convert to Islam and pray to the God of the clan that had taken me in.”
Kalaan broke in, “I thought… I mean, I presumed you’d stopped practicing after your loved ones were massacred.”
“I let you believe that. I knew I was a sort of misfit among the Tuareg people; always having to hide my face behind a cheich and a takakat. But I’d forgotten why I was doing it, forgotten, that is until Jaouen brought forth all those dark memories.”
Kalaan frowned. Dorian had fallen silent again, and was staring into space; but for the young count the story could not possibly end there. Something enormous was missing and Kalaan wanted to know what it was.
“Did the memories reveal your name to you?” he asked.
“No, that came from Jaouen’s visions… but not only,” Dorian replied, before nodding at the druid and falling silent again.
Apparently they’d had another silent exchange, and Kalaan’s face clouded over again. What were they hiding from him?
“Nothing,” Jaouen said. “We’re waiting for the right moment to reveal everything to you, because your destiny and Dorian’s are linked. They always have been, even well before you were born. His parents were not ordinary people, at least not to me, the world of druids and the Sidhes. We, the guardians of knowledge, call them the children of the gods. They are the descendants of men born from the love between humans and deities.”
“Are you serious?” Kalaan gasped in dismay.
He wondered if his friends hadn’t fallen on their heads or had too much to drink before his arrival, unless it was the plants Jaouen smoked. Honestly! Demi-gods?
“Remember the legend of the broken circle.”
“Exactly! ‘Tis but a legend!” Kalaan exclaimed.
“And what about your curse? Is that too a fantasy?”
Kalaan was stunned. Despite everything he’d seen and what he was experiencing personally, he still could not believe it, that is until Dorian slowly turned towards him and his eyes came alive with a sparkling glimmer. The buccaneer jumped back sending his stool rolling across the room. Seconds later Dorian was staring at him with his own dark eyes.
“Wh… what did you just do?”
“I revealed a small part of what I am, and still I have not yet mastered all of my powers, what my Tuareg father called my gifts from Allah. I can call on the elements, read thoughts, see people’s auras, and most recently heal,” Dorian ended his list gesturing towards the husky.
“Kalaan,” Jaouen called to him quietly, “Dorian belongs to a very powerful clan of children of the gods from the northern Highlands. I know this thanks to his memories, but also to a locket he has among his possessions. It holds the portraits of his parents and their names are written on it in Scottish Gaelic. This clan lives in seclusion, and its land is protected from the rest of the world by the magic of ancient runes. When the moment comes, Dorian will go to them and take his rightful place as a son of Saint-Clare. The day he returns to his people I will follow him. I have been waiting for some sign from the gods for a very long time. As I told you, your paths and mine were predestined to join.”
Dorian stood up abruptly on the lookout and moved his head as if listening to a strange sound.
“We must go to the castle, right now!” he urged. As he spoke he moved his wrist to activate the mechanism that held his telak on his forearm.
The blade, hidden beneath his sleeve, slid out quickly with a low whistling sound, and returned to its sheath just as quickly after a second movement of Dorian’s wrist. The husky woke up and whined, trying to get back up on its feet.
“You stay here, boy,” Kalaan murmured as leaned down to pet the dog. “You’ve done quite enough already today and have earned your rest.”
Dorian and Kalaan looked at each other for a minute and then gave each other a friendly smile as they used to do before heading towards the door.
“Take care!” Jaouen called out to them as they left, but he wasn’t certain they’d heard him because the two men had already dashed out into the night. “There is still too much doubt hanging over your futures,” he said to himself and with a worried expression he pushed shut the door to his cottage.
Chapter 20
To catch a rat
“Look at that, Sal...uh… Dorian!” Kalaan and Dorian were dashing into the park behind the castle. “All the rooms are brightly lit. It looks like a giant Christmas tree! Hell and Damnation! They must have used our entire stock of candles and lamp oil!”
Dorian quietly chuckled, amused that his friend would be annoyed about wax and oil in that situation. They were about to unmask a dangerous criminal and perhaps even do battle; and yet his lordship felt the need to rail against trivialities. It was very typical of Kalaan, but it was also a part of his character that Dorian appreciated.
“It is a known fact, my brother, that light pushes away the shadows, which is where evil can hide.” He explained in his usual professorial tone.
The ironic smile Kalaan flashed him in response warmed Dorian’s heart, for it told him their complicity wasn’t affected by the recent revelations.
“That won’t stop Darius Borgas,” Kalaan gloomily retorted.“Let’s enter through the servants’ quarters where Clovis can inform us concerning his arrival.
“Not necessary, I can sense his foul aura from right here. Darius is inside.”
Kalaan muttered something under his breath and then swore out loud.“We’ll find him more easily then. When you were Salam...” he asked hesitantly,” Did you have these, these gifts already?”
The two men were standing face to face solemnly eyeing each other in the lamplight from the kitchen windows.
“I am still Salam, but I am also Dorian; it i
s similar to you and Catherine who are really only one person; but to reply to your question, no. My powers were simply obscured by the fact that I didn’t know who I really was. They started to return once I arrived here on the island, thanks to the druid. Jaouen says that magic can lie dormant when it isn’t used, even if it’s in our blood. Or it can completely disappear if a child of the gods turns his back on the deities. I never turned away; I only lost my memories.”
Kalaan stared at him a good while and placed his hand on Dorian’s shoulder in a gesture of friendship. A minute later he smiled wryly and said, “Let us go catch a rat, my brother!”
“With pleasure,” replied Dorian, ready to confront danger.
He and Kalaan were warriors at heart, and it was more than high time to take action. They entered the kitchen like felines on the prowl for game, signaling the servants, who were awed by their powerful charisma, to remain quiet.
Clovis had done an excellent job preparing the household. All the male servants were armed and ready to intervene on the Lord of Croz’ signal. As for the extreme use of lighting, Kalaan quickly understood the reason for it. Every nook and cranny along the hall leading from the servants’ quarters to the entrance hall and sitting room as well as the area under the stairs were more obscured, making it easier for the posted guards to remain hidden from view, Clovis turned out to be in fact an excellent strategist.
Five men were posted along the hallway, sailors and accomplished soldiers from Ar sorserez. As their captain passed by they nodded, hiding their astonishment at the sight of Dorian, who after Kalaan’s hand gesture immediately returned to the shadows and disappeared from their sight.
The two friends arrived at the double doors to the dining room without a sound and exchanged looks of surprise when they heard the Duchess Delatour’s inimitable and deeply irritating laugh.
“I thought she was dying,” Kalaan whispered.
“Weeds never die,” Dorian whispered back.