by Aaron Bunce
“Who are you?” Julian repeated.
“We are her eyes, her voice, and her hands. We are the last of her handmaidens,” the woman on the left, offered. “We take this form, hoping that you find it both pleasing, and reassuring. We have so little time.”
“Her?” he asked, his confusion mounting, but the woman to his right spoke up.
“She bound your soul to the faithful one, the most devout and blessed, Tanea. The one, who is to become her high priestess – the one that will liberate our Lady and elevate her back to her rightful place in the all-encompassing night, the plane of celestials.”
A shiver moved up Julian’s spine, and he felt an inexplicable urge to back away. “The binding,” he mumbled.
“Yes.” The handmaiden in the middle nodded. “For generations, our lady has bound her faithful together…one strong of conviction, and the other, determination. But those voices have always gone silent. Her church has become corrupted. Those who claim to serve her sacrifice the very vessels she has chosen to restore her. Therefore, it is her church no longer.”
“Restore her? The church serves her, heals the people, using the gifts she bestows on her clerics and priests. She is a goddess…I don’t understand. What does she need with us?”
“The healing gifts are echoes of her voice, but that is all. She is bound and weak, a shadow of her former majesty,” the handmaiden on the left said.
Julian turned and paced, a bubble of anxiety rising inside him as innumerable questions flooded his mind, but stopped as the handmaiden’s words sunk in.
“Sacrifice?”
All three handmaidens nodded together, their eyes unblinking.
“But…how…why,” Julian stammered, trying and failing to wrap his mind around it all.
The handmaids stepped forward, circling him, before joining hands, trapping him between them.
“The sand in the hourglass flows. Our time is almost at an end here,” the three women said, eerily in unison. “Mani’s binding saved your life when you fell into shadow, and keeps the darkness from claiming you absolutely. But she cannot cleanse the stain from your body. The goddess’s strength is failing, and if she is not unbound the darkness will consume you and the rest of this world. Safeguard Mani’s priestess at all cost.”
“Wait…”
The three women unhooked their arms and placed their hands on him instead, their voices echoing distantly in his mind. The city crumbles around her. Take this token and go with haste, before her strength fails, and we are all lost. Break the coming night!
Julian drew a breath to press for answers, but a tremendous white light flared all around him, forcing him to close his eyes. When he opened them again, the women were gone.
“Come back!” Julian called out, his voice filling the cavern. He stepped forward, no one answering save the crackle of the fire. The glow glinted off something shiny on his chest, and Julian looked down.
His throat tightened, his breath whistling as he inhaled suddenly. His dirty, tattered shirt and trousers were gone, replaced by a thick arming jacket and padded pants made from luxurious black fabric. Elegant vambraces covered his forearms, giving way to thick, fur-lined gloves. A rigid, yet lightweight plackart and breastplate covered his abdomen and chest, the strange colored metal lined with pure, white fur. Runes were engraved into the shiny surface. He moved closer to the fire, but didn’t recognize any of them. Flexible, jointed cuisse covered his thighs, while fur-lined greaves protected a pair of strong, gray leather boots. The armor, although it appeared freshly smithed at first, looked ancient.
A weight pressed in on his mind, and for a tense moment, Julian expected to feel Pera’s dark presence slide into his thoughts once again. But it was not the Nym. A choker sat tight around his throat, eliciting an involuntary stab of panic. It had not been there a heartbeat earlier. Would his body reject him? Would someone else steal his control, turning him into a puppet once again? He ran his fingers over it for an anxious moment, exploring the metal and prying his fingers between it and his flesh, ready and willing to rip it free.
Rest easy. Your will is your own. Mani’s gift will hold the darkness within you at bay…for a time. The handmaiden’s voices echoed from the dark corners of the cave, seemingly coming from everywhere at once.
Julian dropped his hand from the choker, shifting and stretching his neck to prize a little freedom from the constricting metal. He wasn’t sure he would get comfortable with it, not after Spider’s wretched collar, but if it kept Pera’s dark presence at bay, he could learn to live with it.
Something on his hip vibrated, ringing in the cave’s silence. He dropped his hand to the sword at his hip. The blade broke free of its scabbard smoothly, the ring of precision steel a welcome song in his ears. He held it up to the fire, relishing the sight. The blade was longer than his hand and a half, and although it was slightly wider than the swords he was used to, it easily weighed half as much. The cross guard was wide, curving well past his hand and looked strangely like stone. The pommel was flat and round, like a full moon, the silver metal so highly polished he could easily see his own reflection. Runes were etched into the blade, just above the cross guard. He flipped the blade over, finding the same unintelligible makings on the other side. Yet when he turned the sword back over, the markings had changed.
“Nightbreaker,” Julian whispered, reading the runes now etched into the shiny metal.
To cut a path through the approaching darkness, the handmaiden’s eerie voices echoed distantly.
He swept the sword sideways, and then vertically, the blade singing through the air effortlessly. The grip felt sure in his hand, like a smith had tailored it specifically to his hand. The blade resonated power, his arms tingling with its violent potential.
“I will be her Nightbreaker,” Julian said, sliding the sword home. He turned with confident purpose towards the cave entrance. His stomach rumbled ruefully however, as he passed the cook fire. Craymore was crumbling and Tanea desperately needed him. Another violent shiver shook his stomach. He would neither be fast nor strong if he was starving, so he filled a bowl with the pot’s bubbling contents and forced himself to sit and eat.
The stew, for surely that was what it was, didn’t just satiate his horrible, gnawing hunger, but it warmed him, purging the hollow ache he’d endured for so long. By the time his wooden spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl, he felt better than he had in a long time.
He moved to set the bowl down, and a lock of hair drifted down past his face and settled on the bowl. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair, remembering the reflection that greeted him in the pommel of the sword. Not the scarred, weathered face or the haunting glow to his left eye, but the wispy, ruined strands covering his scalp.
Without another thought, Julian picked up the sharp knife from the table and started to cut. He cut the hair until it wasn’t long enough to pull straight, and then dragged the blade close, shaving the tatters off at the scalp. Julian finished and stood, dropping the knife before pulling the sword and inspecting his work. The man in the reflection was now truly a stranger. He’d always cherished his hair. It was thick and long, always well kept. A favorite of the ladies. But even that was gone now, cut away like a festering limb.
Julian moved towards the cave entrance, his hand resting comfortably on the beautiful sword’s pommel. He turned, considering the cave. He wasn’t Julian…not anymore. The last of him lay in a small pile in the middle of the floor, where just an instant before a fire crackled and popped.
The cave was now cold, dark, and very empty.
Chapter Nine
A Shrinking World
Roman woke before Dennah. The fire had died down, taking most, if not all of their windbreak’s warmth with it. He was cold, stiff, and hungry. Nothing new, but getting tiresome.
Dennah groaned, but finally rolled over and got up. She pulled a bag from her saddle and tossed him a small, neatly-tied canvas sack. He tore it open and found smoked sausages and crusty
bread.
A soldier’s meal, Roman thought, remembering his father’s words when he packed similar bags for hunting trips. The cured meat and crusted bread would keep for weeks in the dry bags, the perfect food for men who didn’t have ready access to supplies while encamped or on the march.
He dug further into the bag and pulled out a small bladder. He uncorked it, taking note of what smelled like sweet liquor. He took a sip and his belly instantly warmed.
“Is this brandy? How did you get the coin for brandy?” he asked, taking a large bite of sausage and chewing loudly.
Dennah rubbed her arms, shivering in the cold, before tearing open another of the small bags. “Sayer,” she said, a small crooked smile playing at her lips.
Roman unintentionally mouthed the name, but when Dennah didn’t continue, he let it drop. A strange sensation twisted his guts as he watched his friend take a sip of the belly-warming drink. It wasn’t Tusk, although the dog’s spirit was there, pressing ever so gently to be released, but a pang of jealousy. Roman instantly felt guilty and struggled to force the emotions away.
His food gone, Roman gathered up his supplies and gave each of the horses an apple and some oats he found in the mercenary’s bags. Tusk urged him again, not unlike when he would stick his cold nose in Roman’s face when he was sleeping.
It was a gentle tug of the cold spot in his gut, followed by a wave of urges, needs, and desires. And yet, unlike before, Tusk wasn’t simply a dog. His spirit had grown and expanded beyond the limitations of its previous flesh. Roman felt Tusk’s need to run, smell, and bark. He wanted to be a dog again, if just for those times Roman could let him out.
Alright boy, I need your eyes and nose, Roman thought as he let the dog’s spirt loose. The cold pressure inside him leached out through his skin as a dark mist, before coalescing between two snow-burdened trees.
Tusk stalked out a moment later, the muddy brown color in his fur melting away, until he was almost indistinguishable from the snow. Roman walked back into the windbreak, Tusk’s wolf-like form at his side. Dennah looked up from the bag she was packing, first at Tusk, and then to Roman.
“Ready to go? If we stay beneath the ridge this morning, I think we can avoid the deepest of the snow. It should make it an easier hike, not to mention, we can hide our tracks from the road,” Roman said.
Dennah nodded, cinching the bag down and standing. She slung the strap over her shoulder, the small bladder of brandy still in hand. Roman instantly wondered who Sayer was, and struggled to steer clear of the jealousy that plagued him moments ago.
A strange shiver shot up his spine, and in response Tusk growled. Dennah cried out as the large, white dog lurched forward, his jaws snapping together loudly. She stumbled backwards, her hands held up in a sign of surrender.
Tusk growled again and reared back, the small leather bladder clamped in his teeth. He shook his head violently, before pinning it to the ground and tearing it apart.
Dennah’s fists balled up. “Tusk! What are you doing? No!”
The dog licked splattered brandy from his lips as he looked up to Dennah, and then Roman. He settled back on his haunches in the snow and woofed vocally, an unusually satisfied look softening his canine features.
Dennah looked up, a shocked, questioning look on her face.
Roman shrugged defensively and offered, “Maybe he thought it was poison? They tried it with me!” But he knew better, and hoped his face didn’t give him away.
He was still trying to understand his relationship with the dog, but was starting to believe their connection went deeper than simple flashes of emotion or need. Tusk picked up on Roman’s jealousy; that much was clear. But had he acted on it, too?
Dennah nudged the ruined leather with the toe of her boot, hefted her bag up onto her shoulder, and pushed out of their windbreak, giving Tusk a wide berth. Roman looked down. The dog tilted his head back to meet his gaze, his tongue hanging lazily out of the side of his mouth. He didn’t bark, or growl.
“What was that?” Roman mouthed, directing his anger inward, at himself.
Tusk made a noise that sounded strangely like a laugh, licked his lips, and bounded out of the windbreak and into the surrounding woods. Roman scratched his head and adjusted his quiver.
Soldiers want me dead. Everyone in Bardstown thinks I’m a murderer, so I can’t go home, and I’ve got a dead dog in my head, he thought, a laugh breaking loose before he could stop it.
“Ha! It could be worse. You could be the last living relation of a tainted bloodline and a mad king. Whose whole life has been a lie! There’s something to be glad of, because where would you go from there?” Roman said sarcastically and shook his head, before taking a sip of brandy.
He tucked the leather flask back into his jerkin and started tearing down their shelter. Roman continued to laugh quietly and heard Dennah’s boots crunch in the snow behind him. He surely looked the part now. Laughing at nothing and kicking at the snow. At least he wasn’t setting his spirit dog on her at the moment. It was a wonder she hadn’t run away screaming already.
When he was done with his tantrum, he hefted a large, prickly pine branch, and swept the area clear, taking care to cover the remnants of their small fire. The wind whistled around him, and by the time he stepped away, almost every trace of their overnight stay had been swept away.
Roman tried to hide his surprise when he noticed Dennah sitting atop Freckles, silently waiting for him. He looped the reins in his right hand and swung up onto the large horse’s back, quietly cursing the cold saddle.
“Forward,” Dennah said, spurring her smaller horse up next to him.
“Huh?”
“That’s where the last living relation of a murderous, dethroned ruler goes. Forward. What’s happened up to this point only matters if we let it. Be who we want to be, not who they fear we are,” she said, brushing some snow off Freckle’s head.
“You heard that?”
She nodded, “I think half of Karnell heard it. Feel better?”
Roman shifted in the saddle, trying and failing to get comfortable on the stiff leather. He missed General, the large black horse wasn’t always a comfortable ride, but his movements were familiar.
“I…” he started to say, but paused as a wave of Tusk’s emotions flooded into him. The dog was bounding through the deep snow, leaping across small valleys. He stopped abruptly, an unusual odor tainting the wind. Roman could smell the odor as keenly as if he drew it in his nose. It had a taste too. Sour, burnt…unnatural.
“You?” Dennah asked, but Roman cut her off.
“We need to move, now!”
He urged the large horse forward, its startled snorts filling the air around him with cloudy breath. Freckles whinnied and leapt forward, pounding the snow with her hooves.
What is it, boy? Roman thought. Tusk was running again, and then stopped, burrowing into the snow to watch as a dark shape moved between the trees. But the dog didn’t know what it was. Only that it smelled wrong, and was following them.
“Something is following us.”
“Men from the fort? More hired swords…wait, something?” Dennah asked as Freckles and the large horse lugged up over a small hill, and descended the other side.
The trees thinned out ahead, the rocky ridge of the Deer Run rising up to their right. The stone jutted out of the ground, rising over twice his height on horseback. The rocky ridge of Deer Run arced east ward, curving and tapering like an ocean wave forever frozen in time. Roman reined the large hose in and directed it directly under the canopy of rock, taking a small bit of relief from the deep snow and the ever-swirling southeasterly wind.
They would follow the ridge south to north, before eventually curving east again, where it would grow into the stone bluff rimming Bardstown’s northern approach.
“It’s not men. Tusk doesn’t know what it is, only that it doesn’t smell right,” Roman said as Freckles trod up next to him. They could talk more easily now that they weren’t fighting
the buffeting wind. He spurred the horse into a faster gait.
Dennah followed, staying barely an arm’s length off his horse’s left flank. She turned in the saddle, searching the dark, skeletal trees behind them. Her right hand slid to the pommel of her sword.
“How far are we from the town now?”
Roman looked around. The forest all looked the same – snow, trees, and shadows. He was relatively sure where he was, but still had to guess as to the distance.
“We push the horses hard, and we’ll pass the Trodden Traveler in a few hours. We follow the Deer Run’s curve northeast, and we’ll be looking down over Bardstown by late afternoon.”
Another day spent in this cold, with no relief in sight. We’ll be lucky if we don’t freeze out here, he thought, feeling anything but confident in his own words.
Dennah nodded, her shoulders bobbing slightly. He couldn’t tell if she was shivering, or if the movement was just from the horse. Roman spurred the horse on a little faster, fear driving him faster than he would otherwise go. They rode on for a time, letting the animals slow as they tired, but refused to stop.
Roman went over potential conversations in his head, preparing for the moment when he encountered someone from town. Hello, remember me? Yeah, I didn’t do any of those horrible things they said I did. Wait, I take that back. Yes I did burn down the barn, but I was only possessed by the embodiment of rage and fire. That same evil spirit that tore a hole in Frenin’s house and killed Banus and his mates. But it’s okay. He was a bad person.
In truth, the only people he was truly excited to see were Lucilla and Noble. He wanted to take tusk into their shop, pull up a stool, and listen to their engrossing conversations. He missed the smell of the place, the stringers of sausages hanging over bins of dried garlic and bottled herbs.
