by Tim Paulson
“Including the communication device from before?”
“Indeed, yes,” said the wizard.
“Will she be able to save my son?” Henri asked.
“Perhaps.”
“When do we go?”
“Put on the pack,” Vex said.
Henri did, the damned thing was heavy as hell too. Was everything these people used made of stone? When he was done he picked the lance back up, again careful not to point it at his own head.
“Here take this as well,” Vex said, handing him a filigreed necklace with copper trim and a clear yellow stone at its center.
“What is it?”
“Your disguise,” the wizard said as he pulled out another similar necklace, this one had a teal stone at its center. The wizard unclasped it and placed it around his own neck.
Nothing happened until the ghoul touched the jewel in the middle. Then the black robe and hat and his gray skin and sharp teeth melted away and Vex became the same old woman Henri had seen days ago haunting his village, watching Adem.
It made him wonder what the wizard had been doing back then. Had he been waiting around for something to happen? Had he caused it to happen? The thought was chilling but he tried not to hold on to it, because if he truly believed the wizard had caused Adem's affliction, he would be forced to strangle him.
He reached up to pull down the veil goggles, wondering if they would allow him to see through the disguise.
Vex waved his hand dismissively. “Don't bother, those crude lenses can't pierce these. It's not merely an illusion.”
Henri pulled the goggles down anyway. Vex was right of course. Nothing looked odd about him, uh, her. Just an old woman, tinted greenish yellow. He eyed the necklace in his own hand warily.
“We don't have all day!” Vex the old woman said. The voice was higher pitched now, but still menacing.
Henri glared at the old woman and placed the chain about his neck, hesitating for a moment before finally touching the yellow gem at its center.
It didn't feel like anything had happened, until his neck started hurting. Then his back began to ache, and his knees throb.
“What's happened?” he rasped.
His voice! He sounded like an old man.
He looked down at his hands, at his veiny, spotted, saggy, light skinned hands. Henri didn't just look like an old man. He was one!
“You even changed my skin... I look like a faustlander.”
“Don't be so alarmed, the spell will reverse completely when you remove the amulet or touch the stone... or if it runs out of power.”
“I'll be myself again?” said the old man voice. Ugh, his throat was full of so much thick mucous. Where did it all come from?
“Yes.”
Henri sighed, clearing his throat as he did. “Let's go.”
The old woman nodded and began moving her hand, making the motions of sorcery. Henri might have pulled down his goggles and watched but his neck smarted too much to even think about looking to the side.
If this was how it felt to be old, he'd better get on with selecting a cliff to throw himself from. Once Adem was cured and married off to a loving girl of course.
There was a blinding flash and they were surrounded by hundreds of yelling chanting people. The crowd was so large and angry it reminded Henri of an ant hill someone had stomped upon and not just once, several times in succession.
The people in the crowd were chanting slogans and holding up signs made of wood and print. Some bore pithy statements such as “Reforms or Death” with a small picture of a bleeding crown to make it clear whose death was being called for.
There were men and women of all ages among the chanting multitudes, though judging by the many younger people wearing technical attire the Veil Institute was particularly well represented. That didn't mean there weren't all kinds of others though. He saw bakers, a cooper or some other kind of wood carver and one man with the dour face and tall pointed hat of an undertaker. Women too walked and shouted in the crowd. He saw female bakers, lawyers, accountants and a group of seamstresses, fists raised above their heads, some carrying signs or banners, all incensed and marching with purpose.
The only thing missing form the throngs of marchers were dierlijt of any kind. Henri couldn't see even one Leothan or Weaselman anywhere. It made him wonder if those kinds of citizens weren't welcome among the marchers. This was especially jarring given they kept chanting about freedom and rights.
Also odd, no one seemed to have noticed his arrival even though it had occurred in the open, in the center of a street, in the middle a sunny fall morning. The throngs simply parted around them like a school of river fish around a boulder.
The amount of people in the street was surprising. Henri had lived near here years ago and walked the avenue many times, never had there been this many people out for any reason. Not even parades saw crowds like these. So many from all walks of life and brazen enough to denounce their king and call for his replacement or death? This was new.
So busy was old man Henri with his wonderment about the crowd that he forgot what he was supposed to be doing until he heard a high pitched squeal like a new born child. It had come from below him but when he looked down, he saw something startling.
Vex, the powerful wizard wearing his old woman disguise lay crumpled on the ground in fetal position, gnarled hands obscuring his wizened female face.
Despite the eruption of screaming pain in his back and his knees Henri bent over and wrenched the prostrate wizard up and on to his shoulder. Vex was heavier than Henri had expected but he didn't know if it was due to some grotesque property of the creature's ghoul body or the effects of the necklace.
Though Henri saw spindly arms when he looked at himself, he knew he really had the strength to lift Vex and carry him and so he did, ignoring the screaming pain in his back. It as all an illusion, he told himself.
“Na... na... Ba... adaru,” Vex said.
Henri carried him, threading through the crowd to the side of a hatter shop. He let the old woman down gingerly next to a garbage bin full of broken oddly shaped hats and lengths of fabric. It was darker and quieter here but the noise of the crowd still poured from the mouth of the alley like a flood.
“What... happened?” The old woman said with a groan, eyes squinted shut like a new born kitten.
“You brought us here. There's a march going on,” Henri said.
Vex put a gnarled hand up to his.. or her.. face, shielding from the sun. Henri was feeling confused about how to think of Vex, as a man or a woman.
“There was a church here, a field. It was empty.”
“It's not now,” Henri said.
“I see that.”
“Are you well?”
Vex hesitated a moment before responding, hands shaking visibly.
“Yes, yes.”
“This is part of Valendam, an older part. When were you last here?”
“It's been a while. I just... thought we should be farther away than... than I've tried before. I wanted to be near the cairn,” Vex said, panting.
“How long is a while?”
“Not long... “ Vex said, the old woman's fingers moved rhythmically, counting. “Perhaps... a hundred and fifty years?”
“That's all huh? Entirely reasonable to expect it all to be exactly the same then,” Henri said.
Vex pointed a single wizened finger at Henri, poking him in the chest. “You'd be surprised how little can change in hundreds of years, even thousands.”
Henri scanned around, out at the crowd of marchers moving past their alley, then back at the old woman who was still wide-eyed and breathing quickly. “This time it changed.”
“Yes.”
“So where are we going?”
The old woman nodded. “Right...” A pause. “We're... there was... I buried it.”
“A hundred and fifty years ago you buried something here?”
“Three of them... Falaxilum, transportation stones. I buried the
m below the graveyard. They serve as an anchor for travelers. When you transport yourself you can only go so far and to places known to you but the Falaxilum are like a lens, focusing the power, directing it to an anchor. When I buried them, I shut them down.”
“Like raising a drawbridge.”
“Yes... but they must be activated again,” Vex the old woman said, covering her eyes again as the crowd noise rose with another loud crescendo of chanting.
“And you said the church you buried them under was in the square out there?” Henri asked, gesturing toward the exit of their alley.
Just a glance in that direction made Vex convulse with disquiet. “Yes,” the old woman said.
Henri frowned. “What's wrong with you?”
“I... don't do well in crowds. Too many people makes me ill, always has.”
“Ah...” Scary black wizard, not so invulnerable after all. “Let me go take a look then.” Henri paused. “There's no way you can use your... sorcery or whatever it is to sense them somehow?”
“When they aren't oriented correctly, they're just stones.”
Henri nodded. “Figures. Alright, you stay here and... I don't know, try to breathe slowly.”
The old woman nodded. “I miss my hat.”
“Here take this,” Henri said, grabbing an old crushed lady's hat from the hatter's garbage.
“Thank you.”
Out into the sun and the crowd went old man Henri toting the big backpack and the short spear, which it turned out made a pretty good cane. Those marching, combined with the many onlookers watching them pass, were taking up nearly every available space along the cobbled streets and sidewalks. There was no choice but to push his way through.
The march had almost a carnival atmosphere, children perched upon the shoulders of their parents waved to the marchers who waved back. It was as if everyone knew something momentous was happening and had come out to experience it together.
Henri had never seen such a thing. Nothing like this would be tolerated by the kings of Arden or Scarosia and certainly not by the Holy Ganex Emperor who would bathe the streets in blood rather than suffer the slightest affront to his absolute power, let alone a marching mob. With freedom it seemed, came the freedom to complain.
Though the morning air was cool in Valendam, as expected given the coming winter season, the sun still warmed Henri's wrinkled skin nicely. Birds could be seen circling in the blue skies above the throngs, both the striped gulls that flew in with the ships and nested by the docks as well as the common spotted brown cliff doves that most in the city called piggers. This was due to the snorting noise they made as they chased a crust of bread.
With the sights and the sounds of the city came memories. Two year old Adem toddling after piggers in the park while holding out his hands and wiggling his fingers. it was as if he expected the birds to leap directly into his grasp. “Peegs” Adem had chanted at them in his little voice. And of course his wife, Anne, with her warm smile and sharp blue eyes, watching their boy so closely, so lovingly, as if the world would end if she ever lost sight of him.
I'll save our son Anne, I promise.
Finally he made it through the wall of pressed bodies, emerging in the center of the square. Here a set of monuments in a small park broke up the crowd's movements enough for him to pause and catch his breath. Thank goodness.
Oak trees were spaced evenly around the park in a rough diamond shape. Though their leaves were uniformly brown few had yet fallen and the oaks cast great globes of shadow across the park. Were it not for one conspicuously shining edge of polished stone Henri might have concluded the park was empty and turned around. Instead he pressed on to the center where he found the monument. It commemorated Ron Chatman's discovery of the Chatman stones.
Henri reared back and laughed.
* * *
The rays of the sun streamed through the verdant trees of the garden, warming her hair and skin. Giselle smiled joyfully as she listened to the sounds of the birds chirping above and children laughing in the distance. It felt very much like her favorite time of year, that time when spring was just finishing, when all the flowers had reached their peak and the leaves of the trees had filled out to the deep lush colors of summer. The breeze too was warm and fragrant like apple pie with cinnamon and belsaram nestled within a golden buttered crust.
The only thing that could make her moments in the garden better would be the presence of her husband. She knew he was nearby though, somewhere, waiting for her. Did she hear his voice?
“Aaron?” she called, expecting a response, feeling his closeness, but hearing nothing.
Giselle stood, feeling a change in the garden.
Leaves rustled as a sharp wind blew bringing with it the rotten smell of decay and death. She tried to hold her sleeve to her nose to block it but found her lovely green gown had been torn to shreds, soiled with dirt and blood.
She became alarmed and tried to run but the garden was changed and she couldn't find her way out. Each turn provided a new and unfamiliar path. It was as if the trees and shrubs themselves were working purposely to thwart her escape.
There was a scream.
Giselle turned and to her horror beheld Aaron again picked up bodily by the living tree creature. Except this time, in addition to the look of terror that froze his face, he spoke.
“You did this to me!” he said.
“No!” she said. “Don't go! I'm sorry!”
But he was gone and she was alone.
The trees were bare of leaves in the garden now. No longer did the children laugh, instead they begged and cried and when she reluctantly turned, face in her hands, tears streaming down her fingers, she knew what she would see.
“I found you!” said a sing song voice.
Giselle hid her eyes, she didn't want to see him. She didn't want to know what he looked like. But her hands parted anyway, forcing her to look at his wide grin and wild eyes.
“Guess who I brought to see you!?” sang Benny sweetly. “Why it's your dear old daddy!” He then raised one of his hands. Those nimble singer's fingers held her father's severed head by the hair. Father looked like he'd been killed in a moment of utter agony. His expression, fraught with unending torment, tore at her soul.
She fell to her knees.
“I can't, just kill me and get it over with!” she said.
“No! You can't die yet! You have to watch aaaaaall these little ones die first! I'm going to cut them to ribbons, red red ribbons! Then you and I will have our fun!” Benny sang and then he laughed uproariously. All the children were there, crying for her to help them but she could do nothing, nothing.
Giselle gasped awake.
She was in a dark room. The Benny dream had been so real, so terrifying.
Benny!
Wait, hadn't she been shot? She felt her chest for the pistol wound. There was nothing. She was fine. Her riding clothes were soiled and shredded just like her dream, but there was no wound, no pain.
Had all of that been a dream? If that was so... where was this? Could she be dead? A thrill of fear ran through her. She'd been shot. Her blood had been running out, she'd felt her life ebbing away. She'd felt the end coming. Then mother had come, hadn't she?
It was all so confusing.
In church they taught that for those good of heart and pure of soul, true servants of the Tian faith, death meant arrival in paradise. It was supposed to be a land of light and warmth where both faces of God would welcome you along with all your friends and family.
That ruled out this place. It was dark here and moist, though not exactly cool, or for that matter very warm. And what was under her? She sat up on what had felt like a bed. It was shaped like a bed, only instead of being soft and dry like a real mattress ought to be, this surface was bumpy and squishy to the touch with a wetness that made her skin crawl.
It gave her the impression that she'd been sleeping upon some enormous creature's tongue. A wave of disgust rose within her and despite the da
rk, she slid over and dropped to the floor.
It was her bare feet that slapped to the smooth hard floor, her leather boots were gone. At least the floor wasn't squishy.
Of course there was another possibility. Though obviously she was not burning in the fires of torment, she could possibly be in a middle place, waiting to go somewhere else.
Though never described very well or very often in church, Giselle did seem to remember some mention of a place of trials where one could toil after death and perhaps earn one's way into heaven.
It was surely possible, she wasn't exactly perfect after all. She hadn't prayed every night like she was supposed to, and there was that time Celia had paid one of the young male guards to undress for them. That wasn't exactly prohibited as nothing had happened. The young man hadn't touched either of them, but Giselle had oh so wanted him to and had returned to her quarters thereafter to spend much time alone, furiously busy.
Well if it was to be the middle place then... so be it. She would find Aaron either here or in heaven. They would be together again, she knew it, because she truly deeply loved him with all her heart and soul and nothing would keep her from him, not even death.
Up ahead there was a faint outline of light that appeared to circumscribe a doorway. The door was open or absent and the light was coming from beyond, perhaps a hallway.
Giselle wanted to step forward, to commit to her search for Aaron. She knew that he too would be looking for her. He was pure of heart and noble of spirit, he might already be in heaven waiting for her.
All she had to do was... move. Her feet would not obey however. They sat there, as if sewn to the floor, feeling the cool of the smooth stone, if indeed that's what it was. She could feel no joins or cracks that might mark the floor she stood on as real and familiar.
There was a noise far off, like a clatter of wooden spoons and brushes playing upon the floor. A chill ran up and down her spine. Giselle willed her feet to move, begged them, but they refused her orders.
The sound was growing louder. Panic began to creep over her. Her breath began to catch in her throat as her stomach turned to stone and her hands shook.
Giselle tried desperately to master herself. Whatever the noise was, if she was already dead, how could it possibly hurt her? For some reason, this thought wasn't terribly comforting.