This first edition published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Chichester Publishing: Gothic
Copyright © Alexander Wallis 2015
Enquiries to: [email protected]
Alexander Wallis has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9929899-4-1
ISBN-10: 0992989949
For all the young people it has been my privilege to work with.
Fare well on your journeys.
CONTENTS
Act One – The Traitor
Chapter 1: The Traitor
Chapter 2: The Murmurers
Chapter 3: The Cage
Chapter 4: Confession
Chapter 5: The Meat Pit
Chapter 6: The Bloody Crossroads
Chapter 7: The Geld Knight’s Tax
Chapter 8: Ceresoph Unearthed
Chapter 9: The Dispute
Chapter 10: Voices from the Dust
Act Two – The Way Knight
Chapter 11: The Way Knight
Chapter 12: A Visitor
Chapter 13: The Fate of Jhonan Vornir
Chapter 14: The Dispossessed
Chapter 15: Masks of the Seidhr
Chapter 16: The Sons of Grobian
Chapter 17: The Corpse Returns
Chapter 18: Scars upon Scars
Chapter 19: Wanderers on the Vale
Chapter 20: The Silence
Chapter 21: The Slaughter Gardens
Chapter 22: The Hurting Post
Chapter 23: The Duke’s Hospitality
Chapter 24: The Enforcers
Chapter 25: A Single Silver Piece
Musical Interlude
Act Three – The Great Mother
Chapter 26: Reunion
Chapter 27: Glass
Chapter 28: Skin
Chapter 29: Stone
Chapter 30: The Screaming Stars
Appendices
Cast of Characters
Questions for Reading Groups and Students
Acknowledgements
Credits
ACT ONE
THE TRAITOR
The Traitor
Now she knew with absolute certainty. She was the Goddess of War. She was the avenger, chaos and death. She was Cere-Thalatte and the falling stars were a measure of her anger.
As the heavenly fire descended, she raised her sword, light flashing on the bloody tip. Shadows took life and prowled the battleground, delineating the abundant dead. The Goddess had repaid greed with slaughter; a thousand lives shed for one.
As the screaming stars rained down, her laughter became a haunting song.
I am the crown of eternal stars,
I am the armour forged from scars,
I am the truth whose seed is doubt,
I am the flaming sword that will never burn out!
The song was carried to its conclusion by the theatrical players as the battleground became a stage and the stage little more than a hill upon which they had practised their craft. Falling stars became wooden torches. Bodies rose happily from the dead. Masks of virtue and vice were cast aside to reveal the cheery grins of actors. Having concluded their performance, the players bowed to the gathered villagers of Jaromir.
Daimonia Vornir led the applause with all her heart. She had been so completely absorbed in the drama that she came back to herself with a jolt. She was no longer the heroine of the mythological saga but merely a wide-eyed girl cheering into the wind.
‘Goddess, give me your certainty,’ Daimonia prayed, ‘for I am beset with questions and doubt.’ She blinked a swell of tears, her heart tired from the demands of the drama.
Others were unmoved by the play. Daimonia’s older brother, Niklos Vornir, sat with arms folded tightly across his surcoat, forbidding his hands to clap.
‘What was it all for?’ Niklos complained, making a sneer of his pretty face. He had noble but narrow features like their grandfather Jhonan. ‘Why did they fight and struggle and love if it all came to nothing?’
‘Are flowers less beautiful because they die?’ Daimonia laughed. She had dark hair and large insistent eyes like their mother. It was a face that was strong and earnest, but something about the cusp of her lips suggested an unanswered question.
Niklos had already lost interest. He noticed some of the village wives watching him fondly and pride reddened his cheeks. In Jaromir children were raised by the whole community, each adult considering themselves shareholders in the upbringing of healthy useful children. Niklos was now a Knight of the Accord, a prestigious honour even for a child of knights. Visiting his childhood home as a noble was an act of respect and gratitude.
‘Tonight I’ll sleep in my old room in Vornir Manor,’ Niklos told his sister. ‘And we’ll again share secrets by the fire.’
Daimonia allowed herself a childish excitement at the proposition. She clung to Niklos’ arm, surprising him with her intensity. His return was a light banishing all her lonely and disturbing thoughts. He was the sum of all her best memories, his presence like many days poured into one.
Niklos acted like a man seized by the militants. He struggled with his posture as Daimonia swung on his arm, battling to maintain his knightly bearing. ‘Please, Dai.’ His little nose turned in disapproval. ‘We are not children anymore.’
A handsome actor, who had played an implausibly conceited villain, jaunted among the crowd with a large floppy hat for donations. A swell of villagers gave appreciatively inasmuch as they were able. Approaching the Vornir siblings, the actor gave a little bow.
‘How did you find our performance?’ he asked them.
Daimonia noticed that among the jangling coins were donations of flowers and a potato. ‘It pleased me very much,’ she answered, squeezing her brother’s arm. ‘But wasn’t it torture to play such a vile character?’
‘I expect he enjoyed it,’ Niklos mused. With a heartsick expression he tossed a silver denarius into the actor’s hat.
‘I don’t choose my roles,’ the actor admitted. ‘But in the space between script and performance I may improvise just a little.’
Vornir Manor sat on a hill above the village, a stone haunt wrapped in vines and shadow. It had once been a watchtower from which a signal fire could alert the garrison of invasion. Now only ravens dutifully surveyed the coastal hills and forests. The dilapidated turrets remained a crumbling reminder of wars long past before the watchtower became the home of Jaromir’s most feared citizen.
Jhonan Vornir was asleep when his grandchildren entered the draughty long-hall, his deep breaths whistling through broken teeth. The old man was slouched in his gnarled chair, his unkempt beard filthy with drunken vomit. Even in sleep Jhonan’s silver-ringed hands were clenched around a mead horn and his prized Visoth war dagger. Several of his fingers were little more than stumps.
‘I could kill him right now,’ Niklos observed drily. ‘Slit his throat while he sleeps.’
Daimonia raised her eyebrows at her brother’s ridiculous posture. Niklos’ chest and arms were puffed out like a threatened animal, his fingers twitching anxiously around the hilt of his sword. His teeth were bared like a wolf, but his innocent eyes were wide with fright.
‘Then do it,’ she
challenged, her lip turning in mockery.
‘I could.’
‘Is this why you have come home? To kill an old man in his sleep?’
‘No.’ Niklos relaxed his shoulders and arms. ‘I will be the better man.’ He looked down his delicate nose if he were showing a great mercy.
Daimonia laughed scornfully. ‘Have there ever been two people less willing to forgive each other?’
‘You and mother?’ Niklos suggested quickly. His cheeks immediately reddened with the ugliness of the remark.
Daimonia smiled, but her eyes were like prickly nettles. They had hurt each other before as only loved ones can: spoke cruelties instead of kindnesses and practised every snub and insult a brother and sister might share.
The fire crackled and popped, the familiar sound filling the silence between them. ‘Come, brother,’ she finally replied. ‘Let us pretend we are children again.’
They sat together speaking softly, as was their habit when near the sleeping killer. They told each other lies about their mother and how she would soon return to love them as she had never done. It was a well-rehearsed exchange and comforting for all its deceit. Together again their faces glowed with youthful beauty, but the firelight revealed troubled wrinkles on Niklos’ brow.
‘You seem sad,’ Daimonia observed. ‘You have said nothing of your new life at Leechfinger or the honours and graces bestowed upon you as a Knight of the Accord.’
Niklos managed a lifeless smile. ‘All arrogance,’ he replied curtly.
‘If you were the Prince of Dalibor, you would find a reason to be glum about it.’ Daimonia laughed quietly. Her eyes went to their grandfather for a moment. Jhonan was still unconscious with drink, his bitter temper submerged in dreams of old wars. She prayed he would remain asleep until Niklos had left in the morning.
‘I don’t believe,’ Niklos confided suddenly. His face was abashed and urgent. He was leaning close to her, as if for a kiss. ‘I don’t believe anymore.’
‘Don’t believe in what?’
‘In the Accord,’ Niklos confessed. His fingers went nervously to his cheek.
‘What are you saying?’ Daimonia was confused. The Accord was the foundation of society, the principles all citizens lived by. The Vornir family had fought for the Accord’s establishment and defended it still.
‘The Accord is a lie!’ Niklos spat his treasonous words into the fire. ‘It was designed to exploit men while using the language of serving them.’
Daimonia felt her hands tremble. Her beloved brother could be executed for such declarations. She stood and moved away, sensing a betrayal she could not yet fully fathom. She could hear the chorus of the old hymn in her mind; they had sung it a thousand times.
Whether given me by the Accord
The farmer’s plough or soldier’s sword,
Ever may my soul resign
Never questioning the great design.
‘You speak against everything we have been taught,’ Daimonia whispered. Even in her emerging anger, she was still mindful of how much worse this would be if Jhonan awakened. ‘Do you think our mother fights for a lie?’
‘Becoming a knight has allowed me to witness how the baron and his cronies really live.’ Niklos made an ugly face. ‘How they despise the poor and use the Accord to serve themselves and make orphans and widows of the rest! And as for the fate of those orphans…’ Niklos’ voice failed. His agitated fingers danced as if ready to pluck out his own eyes. ‘I have such terrible suspicions that I cannot give them voice.’
‘Where has all this come from, Niklos? These words are not your own thoughts. Who has confused you with all this doubt?’
‘There are others, like-minded, who have helped me–’
‘Fool,’ she accused, rising with a dreadful expression of condemnation. ‘Fool misguided by fools!’
‘But that’s just it, Dai. Don’t you see? It is you who are fooled.’
Daimonia wished she were stronger, but her emotions swelled like vast tides, engulfing rationality. It was unthinkable that Niklos should be so frivolous with his life.
Without words for her feelings, she took flight from the manor and set out into the undiscovered night.
A drowsy mist had idled in from the coast, cooling the evening. The wispy air was illuminated by a brilliance of stars blooming in vast constellations. Daimonia knew that each star was a soul nestled in the cloak of the Goddess. One day she would join them or would witness their fall and the return of all things to chaos.
Brandishing a look of scorching intensity, Daimonia swept through the village, her hands cradled protectively around her heart. The girl wandered amid Jaromir’s sleepy cottages, her fears mixed with stories of camaraderie and magic. Tonight the familiar met with an uncanny sense of unrealised potential. Some elusive treasure might be found or lost forever.
The actors had set tents atop the hill, a court of wind-rippled fabrics in lively theatrical colours. Daimonia climbed towards them, her long skirt clenched in her fists and her hair floating in the rising gale. In the impulsive fervour of the moment, she wanted to join the performers and play a role in their grand story. If her brother was to die a traitor’s death, then Daimonia would prefer to live another life, to be someone else.
Daimonia reached the summit, her face wet with tears she could not recall crying. She felt not sad but empty and as dry as an unfilled cup.
The flapping fabrics revealed a single welcoming light. Within a womb-warm tent knelt a magnificent woman tying her hair elegantly into a plait. She was tall and powerful, perfect in form and beauty. Her gestures were full of grace and strength and Daimonia knew at once that this was the wonderful actress who had portrayed both the heroine and Goddess.
Daimonia watched with a kind of love. With all her heart she wanted to be this woman and everything she seemed to embody. In those sacred moments Daimonia imagined the powerful woman to be a self-created being – a player of roles, the ruler of her own thoughts and emotions, the creator of her own identity.
‘Who’s there?’ a voice called out. The woman had seen her and was emerging from the tent, wrapped in a sovereign’s cloak of silver and red. She seemed even taller now and her majestic brow lowered to focus upon Daimonia’s blushing face.
‘Dai Vornir.’ Daimonia curtsied, remembering her manners. ‘I’ve come to join the acting company.’
The woman laughed, fists on hips like a warrior. Her cheekbones were the most chiselled Daimonia had ever seen and gave mirth to all her expressions. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘I want to be part of your great story.’
The actress grinned as if colluding with an unspoken secret. Daimonia wondered what her history was, this glorious woman who could have become anybody.
‘Why not let your life be the greatest story?’ the actress suggested benignly. She lifted Daimonia’s chin gently and then placed a single tender kiss on the girl’s forehead.
Daimonia swelled inside at the generous affection. So perfect was the kindness that all troubles were scorched from her heart. A sigh loosed from her lips as she relished the lingering touch and affirmation, as if she were a baby floating amid the stars.
Then the wonderful moment was ruined, destroyed by the ominous noise of thundering hooves. Daimonia knew before looking that Niklos was the furious rider tearing through the village below, riding as if his resolve could rend the world in two. Niklos the traitor riding away forever.
An unkindness of manor ravens chased the boy’s rippling cloak. The bloodthirsty warbirds were an omen of acrimony and violence. When travelling as three, as they flew tonight, it was a sign the War Goddess might awaken.
Boy, horse and birds were swallowed into the darkness. A winking star marked their passing as silence made an empty pit of the night.
Daimonia was alone, tottering precariously on the cusp of the hill. She stood imagining the whole world dead: homes empty, towns abandoned and the vast forests soundless. Black clouds dimmed the hilltop as she fl
ed the scene.
She returned to Vornir Manor, trembling and cold, feeling afraid of the dark and of her creaky old room. The Eye of Ceresoph shone through the unshuttered window, illuminating the matriarchal image of her mother’s face carved in immutable stone atop the bookshelf. She ran to the bust, running her fingers across Captain Catherine Vornir’s imperious expression. Intimate with the stone, she traced the features reverently. Somewhere many miles away, was mother thinking of her too?
‘Great mother,’ Daimonia prayed, ‘remember my foolish brother who has lost his way and protect us all from the deceptions of the wicked.’
The Murmurers
In the dripping dark, Daimonia sank from one dream to another, a midnight storm stirring her fears into nightmares. At the peak of each terror she woke like a drowning sailor, only to be dragged back under again.
Daimonia saw herself fight through a dense and sinuous forest. Beneath arched boughs she crawled and clambered, struggling amid thistles and thorns. Her knees and palms bled sorely as she wrestled with the strangulating terrain, desperation forcing her onwards. The forest was alive with atrocity, excruciating cries and glimpses of violence. She saw dismembered bodies nailed to a tree and witnessed a figure lashed furiously amid a mocking crowd. Each scene was a thorn spurring her towards some terrible vindication. Finally she found the deepest pit of the woods, wherein lay a smouldering sword half buried in the earth. Pleading voices begged Daimonia to seize the hissing blade and set loose, but when she drew it, the forest was flooded with rivers of blood.
A shock of lightning caught the girl clutching her blanket with panicked eyes. The grumbling thunder that followed was bellicose like an old man’s ire. Daimonia’s bedroom had been invaded by unfamiliar shadows and she closed her eyes rather than face them.
As the dreams swept her back down, Daimonia became aware of something lurking beyond. A low murmur permeated each nightmare, the drone of things conspiring in the dark. Their plotting voices disturbed her, not with their malevolent tones, but through their indifference to the girl’s existence. She had slipped behind the backdrop of life, to eavesdrop on the dead.
The Way Knight: A Tale of Revenge and Revolution Page 1
