The Silver Claw

by Erik Williamson

  The captain paused, chewing his lip, before returning his attention to the cell. “The kid stays.” He turned back to Brie. “Five minutes. Don’t try my patience.” He puffed out his chest then stalked towards the cell, pointing a meaty finger. “I make the decisions here, not you.”

  “My fault, Urwen,” Brie told Renn’s father. She tapped her chest with one hand, keeping the other around Renn. “I let him get too close. Renn did nothing wrong.”

  “Just making sure you’re both okay. Not blaming anyone. What kind of monster do you think I am? Jes been telling you crazy stories?” He stooped down on one knee. “You okay?”

  Renn wiped his eyes. “That man hates me.”

  “He’s a bad man, son. He probably hates everybody. Your mom’s going to tear me apart for bringing you here.” Urwen smiled at Brie as he stood up. “I’ll say it’s your fault. Brie made him do it.”

  “What happened to no blame, funny man?” Brie shrugged her shoulders, looking about the now-quiet room. “I’ll take him back to Jes.”

  “Nah, it’s fine. I doubt the captain will mind seeing any militia leave. Let’s go, Renn.”

  “But, my report. . .” Renn, confused, looked to Brie. “You told me to report. You don’t want to hear?”

  “You sent my son to spy on this guy?” Urwen shot Brie a disbelieving—not to mention blaming—look.

  “Well, I, no. I—” Brie stammered, then mouthed to Urwen. “I didn’t think he’d take me seriously.”

  “He takes everything seriously, Brie. You know that.”

  “Okay, honey, let’s have that report.” Brie bent down again, throwing her hair behind her head. She tried to look as interested as possible.

  Renn wiped tears from his eyes and snot from his nose, put on a professional air.

  “Said his name’s Kelebis. And. . . something ‘bout a mountain queen and a lake, and another man. And a lady. Don’t remember their names, but they’re bad too. Or was the lady the queen?” Renn scratched his head, his four-year-old logic exhausted. “Dunno, but he did something real bad. I think he killed someone, Brie.”

  Urwen and Brie exchanged alarmed looks as Renn prattled on. Brie glanced back at the cell, caught the man’s beady eyes staring at her. A shudder rippled through her body. She locked eyes with him and faltered.

  “Hey, Brie, you there?”

  Brie turned back to Urwen, at a loss for what they had been talking about. She stood clumsily, raking her hand through her hair.

  “You okay?” Urwen’s worried expression told her she certainly did not look okay.

  “Yeah, but. . .” Brie tried to get her bearings.

  “You want Jes to come sit with you?”

  “No. Thanks. But I need to. . . stay.”

  Urwen rarely understood Brie when she travelled off on some unknown intuitive road. But she had proven herself a devoted friend to his family. He had long since learned to defer to Jes when she locked in on an idea. Brie was certainly worthy of that same respect.

  “Okay, son,” Urwen said, directing him to the door. “Good reporting but let’s go home. Mom will get some hot chocolate, ok?”

  Renn gave a weak smile, turned to Brie before heading to the door. “He’s hungry. Like they’re not feeding him or something. Maybe that’s why he steals bread? Maybe you could feed him? Even a bad man shouldn’t be treated bad.” He shot her an innocent smile and turned to Urwen. “Really? Hot chocolate, Dad?”

  Brie glanced furtively at the cell, relieved the man’s eyes were now off her. Soldiers and militia milled about, content in the belief they had nothing but a derelict petty thief on their hands. Brie could still feel her heart pounding yet couldn’t make sense of the shock that had passed over her. This man was no petty thief. Of that she was sure. No, something was wrong here.

  Something was very, very wrong.

  VII - The Old Order Monastery

  Father Taeron leaned against the dank stone wall that ran alongside the high-ceilinged great hall of the monastery. The middle-aged monk mumbled—yet again—a prayer to calm the anxiety wreaking havoc on his stomach. He often wondered what went on in these late-night council meetings. He’d always imagined the high business of the monastery to be a sacred work, a place where mysterious covenants were struck between the people and their god.

  “Father?” A stern nun emerged, bright torchlight spilling into the hall. “You are summoned.”

  Taeron rolled his shoulders, breathed out a great exhale. Eleven years after joining the Abbey. . . two years since achieving the title of Father. . . he was getting a peek into the mystery. Yet the summons, from the very first, had felt ominous. The night felt far from sacred. Taeron wasn’t sure he wanted to see behind the curtain.

  But his testimony was vital. Taeron himself had welcomed the Khuulie fisherman into the monastery in the dead of night, in the pouring rain. With his superiors on retreat, he had made the decision to extend sanctuary to the strange man and child at the door. The Abbey subaltern had fought him on that decision; made quite the scene in front of the doormonk and Taeron’s wide-eyed initiates. The man’s countenance was wild and unstable, the subaltern argued, the girl’s eyes haunted by trauma. But what was their purpose in the world, Taeron countered, if not to welcome and help people such as these? Besides, Father Taeron’s name had arisen when the council had drawn lots for acting superior in their absence. It was his decision to make, and his alone.

  He had also allowed the feisty little Bandu, ‘Goldie,’ to stay at Ben’s side day and night. Against Abbey policy, yes, but if she even suspected she may be taken from Ben for so much as a checkup or bath, her emotive grey eyes turned ice cold, seemingly daring anybody to cross her. Try to actually remove her and she erupted into disconsolate sobs and howls, then resorted to biting. The nuns from the convent found handling the grubby Bandu child distasteful. Many of the monks warded off her golden hair as though she were a bog demon.

  But Taeron? The more he observed, the more warmly he felt towards the haggard Khuulie selflessly caring for this little one so thoroughly other to him. After nearly two weeks of observing the dynamic between the two, Taeron consented to Ben’s request for an adoption—on the condition Ben, who’d been rather evasive, give him the whole truth of their circumstances.

  Despite his reluctance to tell it, once Ben began, the events of his and Goldie’s meeting gushed forth like a confession. Ben pleaded with the monk to explain what he’d witnessed, to help ease his mind. But Taeron could not.

  Northern culture was mostly legend and rumor now, even at a monastery north of the Vale boundaries. With child sacrifice involved, he could only assume the grasp of the Lone Mountain was creeping their way again. He’d counseled Ben to tell others he happened upon the child unconscious in the wilderness. Saved her life. All true enough; no reason to dredge up the particulars. But what a tangled mess of variables with which to approach an adoption. Murder. Abuse. Ritual sacrifice. An old widower and a traumatized toddler. A Bandu girl raised in a country hateful of her kind.

  Inside the circular great room, with a painted ceiling five floors high, Father Taeron felt properly humbled. He did his best to present Ben’s case logically and fairly. Stuck to his word that he’d reveal nothing beyond their agreed-upon sanitized tale.

  It went over about as poorly as Taeron could’ve possibly imagined. And the debate of what to do with ‘the Bandu female’ had gone circular. Never once was she ‘Goldie’ or even ‘the little girl.’ Taeron found the lack of humanity disturbing.

  The meeting dragged on. The candles of the great room melted into dim, unpleasant stubs. When he glanced around the oaken table at the faces around him, Taeron guessed those assembled were doing likewise. Many, he surmised, simply wanted to steal a little shut eye prior to midnight Vespers. His obstinance was depriving them of their naps.

  "You’ve allowed emotion to cloud your judgment,” the Abbey’s chief elder admonished. “Most regrettable."

  “You say that like it’s a bad t
hing.” Taeron massaged his temples. “Being emotionally moved. Trusting your instincts."

  “You are here to testify to the facts, Father.” The council secretary slapped his gavel. “Not opine or lecture.”

  “Come, my friends, what do your hearts say?” Taeron pleaded.

  “I'll know what my heart says after we vote,” an elder muttered as he settled back into his chair with a harrumph. “You are dismissed.”

  The sudden call for an end to his presence shocked Taeron. No conclusion had been reached. Without him, Ben’s request would have no champion. Taeron stood numbly before the ring of his elders.

  “Father Taeron. You are dismissed. Leave. Now.”

  Taeron nodded slowly. Then, heart hurting, he bowed and exited.

  He paused in the dark, unlit hallway once he was out of sight of the great hall’s door. Rather than return to the Abbey as an obedient monk should, Taeron tip-toed around a corner, through a jammed window, and then melted into the shadows of one of the great room’s antechambers, cluttered with bent votive stands, outdated tomes of canon law, and broken benches. Judging by the voices echoing into his musty hiding place, Taeron concluded the rubbish in the room wasn’t the only thing in the monastery bent, outdated, and broken.

  The lanky monk rubbed his high forehead, glistening with sweat. Questioning his vocation would have to wait. He pressed an ear to a stain-glassed window, straining to hear.

  “Secondary considerations,” the Abbey’s subaltern was saying. “What’s the wheat-headed child doing this far south is the real question. With a wandering Khuulie, no less. In our domain?”

  “A Bandu’s not been spotted in these parts in, oh, I’d say two-three decades,” the chief elder said.

  “And we’ve been told—” another elder began shrilly.

  “Nay,” the chief elder intervened. “Warned!”

  “Indeed, warned. We’ve been warned what to do if wheat-heads show at our door.”

  “By an immoral people,” an elderly nun interjected, much to Taeron’s relief. “A people we needn’t put ourselves beholden to.”

  “But who nonetheless could make our lives easier,” the subaltern said. “Or, if we defy them, rather uncomfortable.”

  “It’s been two years nigh since the last visit by Lone Mountain Wolf Riders,” an elder said. “They could appear again, any time.”

  Taeron barely restrained a gasp. Wolf Riders, at the monastery?

  “Yes, but to be beholden to them!” the elderly nun exclaimed. “To acquiesce!”

  “We all know your feelings on the matter,” the subaltern responded sourly. “We are still sovereign over our business, no? What is rightfully ours, remains ours.”

  “If surrendering a filthy wheat-headed child to the next Wolf Rider scouts buys us another few years. . .” someone, Taeron was beginning to feel too ill to identify who, was saying. “Small price to pay.”

  “The Mountain is stirring; it’s a reality we must face.” The chief elder, maybe?

  “All in favor?”

  Taeron, nauseous and disillusioned, slipped out before the final vote was tallied.

  VIII - Drennich

  Brie stared unseeing through the glimmering embers of the fireplace. She was as still and rigid as the small stone hut she sat in. Megg, a shawl thrown over her shoulders on the cold night, lowered herself into the cushions of her easy chair. She’d spent many a night—many a night with Brie, for that matter—in front of this fireplace. How many more cold nights did she have left in her old body, she wondered?

  “You in there?” Megg handed a hot cup of tea to her apprentice.

  Brie merely ran her fingers through her dark hair, still dense with perspiration. Megg prodded her until Brie finally accepted the mug. She held it loosely, her troubled expression revealing nothing of what was still coursing through her system.

  “You know you’re always welcome here. I’m delighted you’ve accepted that invitation so freely. But, ah, Brie? It’s two in the morning. A bit unusual, no?”

  Brie nodded. Megg waited. But Brie didn’t want to, or didn’t know how to, address what had shaken her so thoroughly.

  “What happened at the courthouse tonight?” Megg finally asked directly.

  Brie kept staring, then ran her hands over her face. “I saw murder in that man’s eyes,” she whispered. “I heard it in his voice. I can’t explain, Megg, but I saw it. And I can’t unsee it.”

  “Aaahh... Let’s take a step back, shall we?”

  After Urwen and Renn left, Brie melted unobtrusively into a corner and observed; the bored soldiers, their tightly wound captain, the slouching town militia. But mostly the prisoner, hunched and docile behind bars. Eventually, she worked up her courage and brought him some food—just a small loaf of bread and a pear. As she approached the cell, nobody acknowledged her. It was as though she were invisible. The convict considered her with distrust but accepted the meal.

  “Is your name Kelebis?” Brie finally ventured after several unfruitful attempts at small talk. He clearly wasn’t interested in discussing the weather, or harvest, or goat markets.

  If he answered, his reply was lost on Brie.

  His eyes turned to fire. The walls of the courthouse closed around her. She heard screaming. Whether it was a young woman, or a child, or both, Brie couldn’t tell. It consumed her. She was being buried alive in the courthouse walls. Nailed inside a coffin. Submerged under icy water.

  She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t break free of the man’s tiny pupils as they grew to fill every recess of her mind. Every place they touched reverberated with death. The scream—echoing in so many layers of a terrified girl’s voice—pulled Brie deeper and deeper down. She was drowning. She was being buried alive.

  Then. . . she was back in the courthouse.

  Slowly, Kelebis’s face came into focus. He was leering at her, making what sounded like a lewd comment. Brie mumbled something about hoping he enjoyed the food, and then staggered away on unsteady footing, looking with wild eyes to the others in the room for support.

  “Everyone else continued on with their routine. But nobody. . . I think Devlin asked me what was wrong as I tried to find the door, but. . .” She stopped abruptly, staring through the fire. “No one else saw or heard a thing.”

  “Nobody else noted anything about this man? A common thief—a foreigner maybe—but otherwise unremarkable?”

  “Jes’s son, Rennwinn, did, but otherwise. . .” Brie shrugged. “Renn didn’t like that the soldiers weren’t feeding him. Thought I should offer him food.”

  “Keen empathy for a child,” Megg said quietly, then shifted in her chair. “Brie, I’ve wondered this about you. You’ve heard of a sixth sense. . . the third eye. . .?”

  “Seeing into the future, you mean? Seeing things that aren’t there?” Brie shook her head, eyeing the drooping ceiling. “That kind of stuff doesn’t happen.”

  Megg cradled her mug of tea, assessing Brie with her insightful old eyes.

  “Fairy tales, Megg!” Brie grunted. “Nothing more.”

  “Really? Having a mind that can reach out—or be reached out to—sense and know what others can’t? Maybe, just maybe, a little sprinkling of foresight? Truly gifted individuals come along so rarely. Nonetheless, we’ve no cause to dismiss these abilities as mere fairy tales.”

  “You’re wrong. And you’re scaring me.”

  “You have a rare gift with people, Briesana. Knowing what to say. How to say it. Seeing people for who they truly are. You can sense all that, who’s to say you can’t see more?” Megg smiled, trying to look reassuring. “This isn’t a bad thing, dear. It’s a gift.”

  “Gift?” Brie responded in a crisp whisper. “That was horrible. I never want anything like that, ever again.”

  “Knowing something that, say, could right a wrong? Save a life? That’s not a gift?”

  Brie sipped her tea, and then mumbled, “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that, dear.”

  “W
hat do I do with what just happened, though?” She was on the verge of tears. Again. As she had been for hours. “That captain won’t listen to me. Tomorrow they’ll be gone.”

  “I can’t rightly say. But I believe this: don’t forget the name or the face or what you felt.”

  “I doubt I’ll ever be able to.”

  “Maybe it’ll never truly leave you.” Megg poked at the fire. “But you shouldn’t want it to. Someday, for someone, it’ll all work for the good.”

  “If you say so.” Brie shrugged, resigned.

  “That’s my Brie. This is a gift, dear. Try to understand it. . . or not. Where understanding fits. . . who knows. But don’t fear it.” Megg patted her shoulder. “Now, it’s too late for these old bones to be sitting by the fire on a cold autumn night.”

  Brie—still badly shaken—thanked her mentor, and walked out into the crisp, star-lit darkness, unable to suppress the irrational fear of being alone in the dark.

  And wholly unsure of how much her life might have taken a wild turn that night.

  IX - The Old Order Monastery

  “Ben?” Father Taeron hunched over Ben’s bed in the room he’d been assigned. Taeron turned his head, thinking he’d heard a noise in the hall. Nothing. Good. But all the more reason to hurry this along. He shook Ben by the shoulders, at long-last rousing him from sleep.

  “Buh!” Goldie grunted from her crib.

  “Father, hello.” Ben rubbed his eyes, groggy. Then he sat up, gripping the monk’s hand. “Oh! You discussed my request?”

  Taeron looked into Ben’s eyes—full of hope and sincerity—and bypassed the question. “I must leave upon a mission of mercy, immediately. To the Vale, as chance would have it.”

  “The Vale?”

  “Why don’t you join me? I leave tonight. Your little Goldie’s quite the handful. Having an extra set of hands until you’re halfway home would be a boon, no?”

  “I’d welcome your company.” Ben stood, rubbing his wrists and wincing. “Are we released to leave? Is the adoption sanctioned?”