by Walter Rhein
Father Ivory simply stood, his head cocked sideways, and looked down upon the young man.
So strong.
So young.
So beaten.
Ivory hadn’t started out craving such a scenario; that desire had grown over time. He had begun to see the use. A man like this was willing to listen. He was a clean slate, ready to be retrained, reborn.
He looked at Father Ivory with the eyes of a child.
How many new children had the great priest spawned in the preceding months?
How many new offspring to carry on his legacy?
“Shhh,” he whispered again.
His fingers traced the curve of the boy’s face, his cheeks, his lips.
After a moment, Father Ivory stopped, turned, and walked away.
He stood in the far corner of the room reflectively for a few minutes before finally speaking.
“You may go,” he said softly.
The boy grunted, hardly believing, but he wasn’t about to question his good fortune. His arms were still bound behind him, but he struggled to his feet with some effort and made his way, haltingly, toward the door.
“Remember,” Ivory called out after him, “I have absolved you. Every breath you draw from here to your dying day is a gift of my mercy.”
The man nodded enthusiastically. He nodded and tapped at the door with his booted shoe.
Hearing the commotion, a Nightshade swung open the portal, took one look at the prisoner and ran him through.
Father Ivory watched it all nonchalantly.
The body slid from the blade without a sound and crumpled to a heap on the stone floor.
Blood pooled in the flickering light.
“M’lord,” the sentry asked worriedly, shaking his crimson-stained weapon with nervous energy, “are you alright?”
“It’s strange how Lightbringer works, is it not?” Father Ivory replied. “I tried to release this one, but apparently that was not his fate.”
The Nightshade looked down at the corpse in confusion.
“I—I’m sorry m’lord,” he stuttered, but Father Ivory merely held up his hand.
“Tsk, tsk, what’s done is done. Don’t you see? It is all part of the mission.” He turned back toward the wall and waved his hand casually. “Remove him.”
Behind him, he heard the sound of a body being dragged away, and then the noise of a door closing.
He took a long breath.
He felt good.
Until this last crusade, he had never known his true power.
Sometimes, he thought, it took adversity for one’s inner colors to be revealed. And although he had always suspected, he had never really known what a difference there was between the peasants and himself. The fact was that they were little more than animals, desperately in need of a guiding hand.
His hand.
It had never been so clear before now.
He almost regretted that this was the last village in the region. The journey had ended. His great pilgrimage of the spirit.
But no matter, he sensed that he had learned all there was to know. And when he returned to Miscony, he would be able to implement his new knowledge.
There would be changes.
Until now, he had been far too lax.
He coughed into his hand, sat, and poured himself another glass of wine. He then lifted his quill and set the sharpened end to a piece of parchment.
“My dear Earl of Miscony,” he wrote. “The revolution is at an end forever. None remain who dare speak against you. Indeed, there remain few with tongues at all …”
Chapter 28
Blind in the Snow
The blizzard had caught the four travelers on the outskirts of a small settlement. Malik spotted lights through the trees, and then, almost in answer, the storm swallowed them up. Blistering winds swooped down from the mountain peaks behind them and embedded particles of snow and ice into their clothes and skin, nearly knocking them off their feet with biting force.
They stumbled on, at first attempting to maintain a guise of secrecy, but quickly abandoning this ambition as the blizzard grew in its fury.
In the end, they sought only shelter.
In the end, they sought only survival.
Running out of the wilderness, they came to a small, lighted hut and pounded violently on the door.
There was a pause.
Then the door swung open.
Malik and the others crashed inside in a heap of wind and snow without even getting a look at who had opened the door for them. They fought briefly to shut the portal and then collapsed onto the floor.
Blind and panting, there was no sound other than labored breathing for a few minutes.
Finally, Malik cracked open his eyes.
Before him stood an elderly man holding a candle in his left hand.
His right wrist terminated in a bloody bandage.
“Have you come for the other?” the old man said, a quiver in his voice.
“What?” Malik responded.
The old man nodded at Malik’s sword.
“Does that priest want to see me again? Is he demanding the last shred of life that I have left? Is he?” The old man’s voice became shrill as he spoke. Malik lifted his hands to calm him.
“We mean you no harm!”
“Ha! You’re Nightshades and you have come to kill me!”
He raised his hand to strike.
“No!” Malik shouted with such force that the elderly man paused.
The old man blinked as if coming out of a spell.
“No,” Malik said again reassuringly, “we aren’t Nightshades. We’re the last survivors of Elmshearst. We’ve come to stop Ivory.”
The old man stood stunned for a moment as the words sunk in, the candle hanging limply from his fingers.
Suddenly he collapsed, landing hard on his knees. The candle clattered on the floor and the old man covered his face with his remaining hand.
“Can it be?” he sobbed. “Can it…” his voice trailed off into unintelligible sobs.
“God,” whispered Gerard watching it all, “what’s happened here?”
Malik could only look up and shake his head sorrowfully.
“The mark of nobility,” he said, spitting out the last word.
The blizzard swallowed Noah like a snarling animal. The young lad cursed and pulled his blanket from his traveler’s pack, wrapping the coarse wool around his shoulders.
He looked up and down the trail he had been following with despair, noting that it quickly filled up with snow.
He cursed again, and stumbled on as fast as he could, following the eroding track in ever-decreasing visibility.
The idea of tagging along with the others didn’t seem like such a good one.
Two days earlier, when Malik had ordered him to stay behind, Noah nodded obediently. Malik and his companions had gone off in the late afternoon, and Noah bided his time, waiting for Jasmine to go to sleep. As soon as her breathing became regular, he snatched up his things and followed the tracks of the warriors, leaving a hastily scribbled message for his twin sister.
As he walked through the night, he felt guilty about leaving his sister behind. Nevertheless, he took solace in the knowledge that their father trained them to survive in the wilderness, and he knew there were no dangers near their mountain hideaway.
Noah knew he had become proficient with the sword, and he didn’t feel it was fair that Alec and Michael, who were only a few years older than he, should be included on the raid while he was not.
Now, with the snow and wind hammering him like a fist, the warmth of the thermal cave seemed all too enticing.
The wind gusted, causing Noah to lose his balance. He stumbled for a moment, and then fell to his knees. The ice on his bare hands was like fire, and he gasped as he struggled to his feet. When he resumed his walk he realized he had gotten turned around. He spun, holding the blanket close to his face to provide shelter from the wind.
He saw nothi
ng but the flakes being propelled through the air as if they had been loosed by a thousand archers.
For a moment, Noah’s heart welled up in despair.
Was it to end like this?
Frozen on a lonely mountain?
So much for the grand adventure.
Briefly, his shoulders sagged, and his strength ebbed away. But no sooner had the despair settled into him, than he shook his head and snarled it off.
“No!” he said out loud, and just to reassure himself he screamed it again even louder.
“No! I won’t die like this!”
Once more, he spun in place, but this time with purpose. He took a few steps, testing his heading experimentally. With every passing moment the snow continued to rise and the visibility grew worse, but neither of these factors did anything to change the slope of the mountain.
They had crested the divide some time ago and were quite close to the nearest settlement. Noah only had to go downhill.
He simply let gravity guide him, stumbling along blindly.
He lost track of time as he walked. The wind and the biting cold snow were his only companions. Sometimes he stumbled and fell. Other times he walked into bushes or trees, but always he continued onward, downward, toward what he hoped was a village with shelter and help.
Icicles began to form on his eyelashes, and the hand he used to hold his blanket around his neck went numb. He was in such a sorry state that he hardly noticed the light in the distance until he had nearly crashed into it.
For a moment, he stopped and stared.
Was he imagining it?
Could there be danger?
He quickly abandoned these thoughts.
He was nearly finished anyway, he’d just have to hope he would encounter help.
He stumbled forward and pounded on the oak door that loomed before him.
He waited only a moment before a flash of light and warmth signaled the opening of the portal.
Noah stumbled through and collapsed into a barrel-chested man dressed in black leather.
The warmth of the room was like a sedative, and Noah found himself drifting into unconsciousness. He hadn’t realized how close to collapse he had been, but now that he was out of imminent danger, his body shut down.
But before blissful sleep took him, he heard words that bypassed his conscious mind and went straight to tormenting his dreams.
“Well, well, it looks like one of Pinehill’s sons has returned from his hiding place in the woods.” The voice was cold and mocking. “Good, Father Ivory is always pleased for the opportunity to save another soul.”
Chapter 29
Dungeon
Denz sat miserably in the darkness and watched as a couple of rats groomed themselves in the far corner of his cell. He had given up trying to shift his body into a comfortable position long ago. The rocks of the dungeon were hard, and the thin covering of straw that lined the floor was moldy and damp.
For the thousandth time, he wondered how it had come to this.
He, Denz, the weapons-master of Castle Miscony, loyal servant to the earl, was forced to wallow in squalor.
Weapons-master no more. Now he was simply Denz, common prisoner.
He slapped his shoulders futilely in an attempt to drive out the cold.
How many prisoners had he sent to these very quarters? How many innocents had rotted away in this cursed darkness?
No more.
Denz coughed into his hand and sniffed loudly. As if he wasn’t miserable enough, it seemed as if the fever was about to have him.
He shook his head in disgust and rubbed his face with his hands.
Ironically, the thing that bothered him the most were the same fears he had been carrying since before his imprisonment. Father Ivory had been descending into megalomania for years and Denz feared for the peasants. He had no idea what the tall priest was capable of, but he knew for certain that he had never seen a hint of mercy in the so-called holy man’s eyes.
A firestorm was coming. Father Ivory and the earl were making it a certainty.
The peasants, too, concerned Denz. As a rule, they were timid and weak. The earl saw to that. When the harvests were good, he taxed them to the point of collapse. When the harvests were bad, he sent out his troops to have the simple folk beaten.
“It keeps them obedient,” he was fond of saying. “It’s for their own good!”
Denz snorted in disgust, despite himself.
Although Denz was a member of the court, he was not highborn. Unlike the others, he had earned his position by deed rather than birth. His appointment to Miscony had come after ten years of faithful service in the Southern armies, so his perspective on reality was slightly different than the lords who commanded him.
When he was surrounded by polite company, he labeled their decision-making as eccentric.
When he was alone, he called them fools.
Thieves…
Murderers…
Arrogant piece of garbage bastards…
His thoughts trailed off. They were helping no one.
A noise startled him and he glanced about.
He was still in darkness, but he was an experienced enough campaigner to know when he was not alone in the room.
“Who’s there?” he whispered.
“Shhh,” came the response.
Denz went quiet and he listened as a hunched form shuffled over to his cage. The ex-weapons-master squinted in the dark but the figure that approached was hiding his features behind a dark hood. The figure pressed a package between the bars. Denz took it haltingly. It was a heavy object, wrapped in burlap and about three feet long.
“A sword?” he asked.
“Shhh,” the visitor said again. “Yes a sword, there’s also a small bag with a few coppers.”
Denz bowed his head closer to hear the almost inaudible words.
“We have known you to be a good and fair commander,” the voice said. “It pains us to see you rotting here.”
A shiver of excitement ran through Denz. He was touched by the show of loyalty, but he felt it was his duty as a commander to voice the risks.
“This is high treason,” he whispered. “If you’re caught, you will be hanged.”
“That risk seems less certain with you free,” replied the voice. The speaker passed a black leather jerkin through the bars as well.
“Take this, get out, save yourself. Miscony is going to burn!”
The hunched figure unlocked the cell with a deft flick of his wrist. He shuffled away, pausing only at the door for a final word.
“Save whoever you can,” he hissed, “and if you should return to Miscony Castle, look for aid at the southeast servant’s door.”
With that, he was gone.
Denz’s astonishment lasted only a second.
Then he was out of the cage and on his way.
Chapter 30
Spiritual Cleansing
“We have to attack now!” Gerard insisted.
After a bit of coaxing, they had finally gotten the old man who had provided them shelter to calm down, and now he was sitting among the four companions, listening with a distinct twinkle in his eye.
“The storm is our cover, this is the best chance we’re going to get.”
“You say the Nightshades are in town?” Malik interrupted, directing his query to the old man.
“Yes, they’ve taken up residence in a small cottage just north of here,” the man replied.
Malik sat back and thought.
“What do you propose?” he asked Gerard. “We can’t charge them straight out. Even if we did manage to kill four or five with the advantage of surprise, we’d still end up facing more than ten. I was hoping to recruit some archers.”
“Flame arrows would give us the advantage we need,” the stout soldier replied.
Malik’s eyes narrowed. He turned to the old man.
“Do you have oil for cooking and heat?”
The old man smiled. “I do indeed. When you get
to be my age, you learn to store up on such things. I’ve got several barrels in the back.”
Malik smiled.
“Can you lead us through this snowstorm?”
“Sonny,” the old man replied, “I was born here. It’d take more than a bit of precipitation to spin me around.”
At this Malik chuckled.
“We’ll need to prepare the tips,” Malik said. “We’ll have to wrap them in cotton and soak them for a while. But the fire won’t take unless it hits something it likes.” He turned again to the old man. “Can you get close enough to douse Father Ivory’s headquarters with whatever is left of your oil after we make our preparations?”
The old man’s voice was true and confident.
“I can.”
“It’ll be risky,” Malik warned, he glanced down at the old fellow’s severed arm. “Are you sure you haven’t given enough to this fight already?”
The old man smiled. “If it comes to it, I’d gladly trade a few years to watch that Father Ivory swing. Oh, yes, that’s a sight I’d pay dearly for.”
“You just might,” Malik intoned, “you just might.” He smiled and patted the old warrior heartily on the back.
Noah groaned.
The back of his head hurt. Everything hurt, actually, with the dull ache of frozen muscles coming back to life.
All he remembered was the cold, snapping at him like a pack of wolves, sapping his strength.
He tried to lift his hand to his face. He wanted to rub his eyes, to reassure himself that it was all a dream.
But his hands wouldn’t move.
He looked down in groggy confusion.
He was tied to a chair. Adrenaline flooded his system. He swiveled his head around and saw that he was sitting in a small room with wooden walls. The floors were dusty planks with a dark stain in the middle.
A black stain.
Noah shivered, guessing what had made the stain.
He leaned back as the adrenaline faded away and his weariness returned. He was still too tired and befuddled to be truly scared, but an inner part of him was screaming.
Where was he?
There had been voices before he lost consciousness. Who were they?