by Ty Johnston
This too was infuriating, but Bayne could not find it within himself to kill.
At least not for the moment.
He turned his head slightly and stared off away from the mountain, his gaze flowing over white clouds and lingering upon the gray outline of lesser hills in the distance.
"To whom did you make your promise?" It was all the warrior could think to say to his former companion.
"Pedrague," Lerebus answered instantly.
Bayne turned his look back upon the northerner. "So you are his guardian?"
"No," Lerebus said with another laugh. "I doubt the priest would want my protection, nor does he likely need it."
"You are a conundrum," Bayne said. "First you tell the Trodans of my return, then you warn that church of my actions in the village. From there you must have traveled directly to Pedrague. For what? Also to warn him?"
"Something like that," Lerebus said, "though not exactly. My meeting with Tallerus was mere happenstance, though you speak truth that I did indeed ride like the wind to the church to warn them of your approach. Pedrague has since informed me that my warning did little good, that the priest in charge did not take you seriously and has paid the price for it."
Here Bayne allowed a snake of a smile.
"As for Pedrague," Lerebus went on, "I did seek him out to tell him of your presence, and to let him know you were hunting for him, but there was a more important reason to approach the priest."
"Which was?"
"I needed an ally," Lerebus aid.
"An ally? For what?" Here it was Bayne who chuckled. "Would you seriously contemplate battle against me? If that be the case, I have given you too much credit for not being a fool."
"I do not seek to face you in combat," Lerebus said, "though if I were to do so, my belief is Pedrague would be a worthy companion to have at my side."
"I cannot argue otherwise," Bayne said, feeling no need to inform his old comrade that Pedrague was the only mortal who had ever faced him in single combat and practically won.
"No, as I said," Lerebus continued, "I am seeking your resting place."
"Words that mean nonsense," Bayne said. "I am alive. I am hearty, healthy. Even if I were to be slain somehow, or some terrible mishap should befall me, how could you seek my grave before I have perished?"
The smile Lerebus gave in response was a sad one. Otherwise he was silent upon the matter.
"Unless you are a sorcerer," Bayne said, "one who can see into times to come, to augur what fate would befall me."
"I am no mage," Lerebus said.
"Then you are in league with one," Bayne said, "or you are a god yourself, which I would doubt."
"You were correct on the first account," Lerebus said.
"So, you deal with a wizard. To what end? Even if I were to be killed, why would you need to seek my grave?"
The tallow-haired northerner shook his head. "I have not said I was seeking your grave, nor did I say that you were to be slain."
"You said you were seeking my resting place."
"True enough."
"What then?" Bayne laughed heartily. "Do you desire to know where I lay my head when I nap?"
Lerebus did not return the laughter. "Something like that."
"Then you are not here to combat me?" Bayne asked.
"No."
"And you claim not to be Pedrague's protector."
"Correct."
"Then why are you standing guardian outside the cave where I am sure he is located?"
Lerebus sighed. "I wished to see you once more."
Bayne was struck as if by a blow. Was this friendship being offered?
Lerebus pointed with a thumb toward the mouth of the cave behind him. "It is true Pedrague lies within. He opened my eyes to many things, and I have informed him of events as well. I will do no more than to step out of your way, Bayne, and then you will enter and you will confer with the priest. After that, I will see you no more. For the man who saved me from dying in the arena, or worse, dying of starvation and thirst while shackled to a cart in the middle of nowhere ... to that man, I felt I should see him one last time."
Bayne straightened his square, scarred shoulders. "You have seen me. Now step aside since you wish no fight this day."
Lerebus nodded again and took two long, solid strides to his left, away from the dark maw in the side of the mountain.
Bayne stood still for a moment, staring at the man who had once ridden beside him, then he strode forward.
At the edge of the darkness beyond, Bayne paused and turned to Lerebus. "When I return, I expect answers. Regardless of to whom you have made these promises, I will consider them null. No more mysteries. You will answer, or there will be a clash of arms this day."
"Very well," Lerebus said. "If you should return, I will give you whatever answers I hold."
Bayne's eyes locked onto those of the other warrior for a long moment, then he snapped away and marched into the darkness.
The cave opened for Bayne as if it were the elongated throat of some gigantic long-dead beast. As he walked between the gray walls he felt as if swallowed by a dragon or some other monstrous creature of lore. Behind him the sun's illumination invaded the entrance to the cave, but only for a short while before dying away to the black of a crypt. Bayne walked in complete darkness only a short while, however, as soon enough the dancing glow of flames littered the walls ahead.
The warrior felt out of place, as if experiencing a new wonder for the first time. Though he had been here before, the cave felt different. The walls seemed more rounded than he remembered, and the lights ahead were something new. He had come to believe much of what he had witnessed upon and within the mountain had been illusion, conjured up by some powerful mage or god, and he had to wonder if the same was happening again. Or was this the reality, with all that came before on the mountain having been illusion?
Questions to ponder. But not now.
Bayne stepped forward, through the flicking light and into the brighter glow of a broad, round chamber. The room stretched out before him and to both sides, the ceiling remaining low, barely above his head. The light sources were many, mostly rows upon rows of tallow candles set atop tall iron stands, though in the center of the room was a great, roaring fire built tall with piles upon piles of stacked logs as long as a man and as thick as a horse's chest.
This room was definitely unknown to Bayne, yet there had been no side passages. Whether this chamber was real or not, he had traveled this path before and never encountered it.
More important to him, though, was the dark outline of a shadowy figure seated before the giant blaze. It appeared to be a cloaked man kneeling low, his hood thrown over his head as he faced the fire.
"You have come," a weak, croaking voice spoke.
Bayne halted his forward momentum. "Are you Pedrague?"
The figure's hood shifted as if looking to one side. "And you are Bayne kul Kanon."
"I am."
The cloaked man stood then before the flames, the light shedding his shadow across the rocky floor until it touched the warrior's boots. Slowly the figure lifted its slender, bony hands and brushed back the hood of its garb, revealing a head of thin gray hair with a balding circle in the middle.
Pedrague turned and faced Bayne.
The warrior stared at the change that had come over his once companion. The priest was old now, his face slightly sunken, his flesh still pink but lined. Pedrague stooped slightly, as if the weight of the world were upon his shoulders. In his eyes was a dullness of many years of pain, spiritual more than physical. This was the face of a man who did not enjoy many of his memories, though he was bold enough not to look away.
"You see I am different," Pedrague said, "but you, too, have changed since our last meeting."
"My scars."
The priest nodded. "You have suffered much."
Bayne scoffed. "Don't belittle me by trying to appeal to any sense of sorrow you believe I might have. I am a monste
r, as you have been informed."
"Lerebus."
"I spoke with him outside," Bayne said, nodding toward the exit. "I admit he is something of a mystery, but it would seem he means me little good will. Since my last parting with him, he has spent more than a little time warning others of my approach."
"Perhaps it is not that he wishes you ill," Pedrague said, "but that he wishes no harm to come to the innocent."
The warrior sneered. "There is no such thing as a man who is innocent."
The old man's eyes narrowed as if he were looking into Bayne's soul, seeking something. "The Bayne kul Kanon I knew would not have said such. He was a rough and tumble character with his own high sense of justice, but he seemed to believe there was good to be found in others, at least some others."
"My scars are not only on the outside," Bayne said.
Pedrague nodded. "It would seem."
The warrior threw out his hands at arms' length, questioning. "So what do we do now, arch bishop? Will it be combat, as of old? Or will you try to convert me to worship of your god? And keep in mind I have met your god. I found him ... lacking."
Here the priest's visage grew tight, almost angry. "Then you learned little from the gathering all those years ago."
"I learned I was a pawn," Bayne said, "but I am a pawn no longer. Now I am myself a god, and I make my own rules as I see fit. Let men beware."
The emotion drained from Pedrague's face and he appeared pained once more. His eyes drooped and he glanced to the ground. His words were a whisper. "I have failed you."
"You?" Bayne asked. "How have you failed me?"
Pedrague looked up, his gaze tired and weak. "Ashal told us about you, then, if you remember. You were a balancing force in the world. Yours was not to hold a place of righteousness, nor was it to hold a place of the diabolical. You remained in the middle, keeping the scales from tipping one way or the other."
"Foolish words," Bayne said. "It would seem I have chosen sides, and it is not that of your god."
"True enough, perhaps," Pedrague said, "but at the time of which I speak, Verkanus held the side of the scale focused upon darkness. Can you truthfully tell me you would now side with him?"
"Verkanus was a power-hungry fool," Bayne said, "so no, I would have nothing to do with him. That does not mean I would give myself over to your Ashal."
"I do not remember my god asking you to."
"He did not need to," Bayne said. "It was obvious I was a tool, stuck in the middle and being used by both sides."
"If that was all you learned, then you learned nothing."
"Much has happened since that time," Bayne said. "My eyes were opened by another ... reality."
"Another world?" Pedrague asked. "Intriguing. I had always wondered what had happened to you upon entering this tunnel system."
Bayne paused the conversation then, staring hard in the priest's eyes. For long moments a tense silence passed between the two, then, "How long did you wait for me?" the warrior asked.
"Three weeks," Pedrague replied.
"And you come back here every year?" Bayne said. "To what end? Did you believe I would return?"
"For the first few years, I had held some hope of that," Pedrague said, "but eventually I began to use the time in my work for Ashal, as an annual respite from my duties as high priest of the church."
"What type of work?"
"I have been writing," Pedrague said. "Since before you and I first met, I have been working on a series of scrolls concerning Ashal when he was still among men. Eventually I hope to gather all my writings into a codex."
"What good will this book of yours be?" Bayne asked. "It seems a silly matter."
"It will let future generations know of the holiness of Ashal," the priest said. "It will make them aware that there is goodness in this world, and in the next. It will give them hope."
The warrior chuckled, deep and dark. "There is no hope. And there is no next world. There is life, there is death. Beyond is only darkness."
"Says an immortal."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You have never had to face real life, nor real death," Pedrague said. "You have no idea what it is like to be a mortal man, to have a mortal man's concerns, worries, fears. You say you now set your own rules, but you are not even a fit candidate to do so!"
Those final words had been heated, with true anger showing. The arch bishop nearly seethed with each word spoken. It was enough to raise Bayne's curiosity. He had never known his old friend to show such vehemence.
Then Bayne laughed, a good, hardy laugh.
"What do you find funny?" Pedrague asked.
"You," Bayne said once his laughter had subsided. "You treat me as if I have no right to judge, but I have every right. The strength in my arms gives me that right. The edge of my sword gives me that right. As does my own will. Men have shown themselves weak at every opportunity, and I see no reason I should give myself over to their judgment. Not even to you."
"It is not men who will judge," Pedrague said. "It is Ashal who will be the final judge in the last days."
"Then he and I are on equal footing," Bayne said. "I am a god. He is a god. We can do battle."
Here Pedrague gave a slight smile. "I am afraid Ashal has no contact with the mortal world."
"He has fled?"
"That was not my understanding," the priest said. "It is a wide world out there. My guess would be he is elsewhere tending to whatever believers are in other places."
Bayne's eyes narrowed. "How would you know this? Does your god continue to speak with you?"
"No, not since you and I spoke with him upon the mountain," Pedrague said, "but that was years after he had left behind his mortal form. When he walked among men, he told me much, much of things that are yet to come."
"You know the future, then?" Bayne asked.
The priest shook his head. "Bits and pieces of a distant, vague time to come. Ashal did not give specifics, but there will be a terrible age."
The warrior grinned once more. "This is to my liking. An age of war."
"It will be that," Pedrague said, "and much more. Much worse."
"Bah!" Bayne exclaimed. "Nothing can be worse than what I have experienced. I have seen what men can do, what they truly are. They are puny little things with tiny ideas and petty goals."
"So, you have suffered?"
Now it was Bayne who seethed. The memory of his torture at the hands of Marnok's worshipers boiled through him as if the burning lash were once again tearing into his flesh. With that memory came others, of slights and abuses and misunderstandings and stupidity. Men deserved their deaths. They deserved pain and torture and anguish.
The warrior spun away, leaving his back to his former friend and the spiraling flames that never seemed to eat away at the logs providing fuel.
"I know much of what occurred with you before you left me on the mountainside," Pedrague said, "and I have been informed of much that has happened since your return, but there is a span of twenty years of which I am ill informed. Tell me, Bayne. Show me. Show me what troubles were heaped upon you. Show me what happened to you in this other world."
Clenched fists raised as if to deal out a thrashing, Bayne spun once more, facing the priest. The warrior's chest heaved beneath teeth gritted so hard spittle flew and some little blood drained from his gums.
Pedrague backed a step, almost within the fire, upon seeing the anger and hatred before him.
“Do you belittle my pain?” Bayne nearly shouted. “Do you dare mock it?”
“No,” Pedrague answered back. “I merely put it in perspective to the pain of the world.”
“You?” Bayne said. “What know you of pain?”
“I know far more than you might expect,” Pedrague said. “Decades as a priest tending to those harmed by the world around them, I have seen much. I have tried to nurture those whom I can, and have lost many along the way, but I have not given up. You, Bayne, you have more than given up.
You have turned the tide, turned to the ways of evil itself. It was Verkanus who once mocked you, who told you you should seize the power that is rightfully yours. And then you destroyed him for it. Now he would be proud of you.”
Bayne seethed. If any other mortal had spoken thus to him, he would have gutted them. As Pedrague was once a friend, and an able one at that, he instead again closed his hands into fists that shook, the nails of his fingers digging bleeding moons into the palms.
“Mortals are buffoons.” The words were uttered with venom from the war god's lips. “Every step they take, everything they do, is a fool's errand. They are treacherous, lecherous, murderous, beyond the pale. None of them deserves life.”
“Is that all you have learned, Bayne?” Pedrague asked. “If so, it is a sad journey which you undertook, a journey that brings you here before me now, to what end I do not understand.”
“I am here because we were once companions, perhaps even friends,” Bayne said. “I believed I at least owed you a reckoning of my whereabouts during my time away, and of my recent actions.”
“No man owes such,” Pedrague said, “but if there is a sense of honor within you that feels you must tell me of your pain, then proceed.”
This Bayne did. He told Pedrague of his entering into this very cave, how it had appeared much different to him then and there had been no large chamber such as the one in which they now stood. Bayne told of falling, though he did not mention the lava toward which he fell, and of waking in another field in another world. He told of the rude boy, and the rude boy's father who had suffered some little physical abuse at Bayne's hands. He told of meeting bandits in the woods of that strange world, of slaying the bandits in self defense and then being arrested for it. He told of the strange court where people dressed in robes and wore masks while yelling at him through a glass window. And finally Bayne told of meeting that world's king-god, Marnok, the creator of Bayne himself. The warrior explained discovering his own origin, and of the offer of kingship offered by Marnok. Bayne told of his refusal and his punishment for that refusal, a thousand lashes from a burning whip that dripped acid.