Less than two hours had passed before the next excruciating spasms tore through his body. This was no ordinary pain, this pain was ice cold and made him convulse as wave after wave shot through his spine and into his skull. Rolling out of bed Cloak fought to get to his feet. Half standing, half stooping in pain, his strength and balance left him. Unable to bear his own weight Cloak’s legs buckled, dropping him to the floor just as the next convulsion struck. This time, the pain was worse.
Scared to move lest the pain worsen, Cloak waited patiently until his legs felt as if they could bear his weight once more, then rising slowly felt his way towards the steep stairway that led down to the top floor landing. As he descended the top step and searched for the next, a skull splitting pain clove his head, his knees immediately giving way beneath him as he clutched his head. His tumbling fall ended in a crunching impact, the slick on the floorboards around his head confirming that he was bleeding badly. As he turned his head, the sound of bone grating on bone left him feeling sickly, the rear of his skull was split and his skull felt as if it rested on hot cracked rocks and broken glass. Cautiously raising an arm Cloak reached back to touch his neck, his fingers recoiling as they touched the bloody shards of bone that stuck out from the base of his skull. The single touch drew a deafening scream from his throat, a scream of pain and terror, a feral scream that penetrated the very earth and proclaimed his presence.
Unconscious, Cloak did not hear the noise of footsteps on the stairs below, the cries of anguish, the healing prayers or the heartfelt god praise. Nor did he see the smiles.
---
Cloak did not hear the terrified screams of his little sisters, the initial panic in his guardian mother’s eyes or the broad smile on his guardian father’s face. When he awoke, he found himself abed, face down and drowsy. The clawing taste of poppy syrup lingered on his tongue and the back of his head and neck ached abominably. Cloak slowly rolled onto his side careful not to twist or jar his aching neck. Opposite him, close to the window sat Dolly Chair, his mother guardian sitting awkwardly in a small wicker chair, her face ashen and drawn.
‘Don’t move boy, you don’t want to risk tearing your wounds open. Are you in pain?’
Cloak’s nod was no more than a long blink. Dolly rose, one reassuring hand laid on his shoulder as she offered up the spoon.
‘That’s enough poppy for now, it will dull the ache and make you sleep but it won’t help you heal.’
Wounds, thought Cloak, feels more like my necks been hit several times by an axe and my throat compressed by a club blow. When she returned, his guardian father emerged with her from the stair head, the faces of Jewel and Plenty peeking between the rails, their little fists gripping the wooden rods tightly, their faces white and frightened. Trying hard not to show his pain or his fear, Cloak managed to force a week smile. No smiles were returned, his father guardian averted his gaze, his eyes welling with tears as he approached and knelt at his bedside.
‘How do you feel Cloak?……..apart from the pain that is.’
Cloak scanned the faces of his family in an attempt to read their thoughts; two scared children, a fearless father near wordless and clearly worried and a strangely compassionate mother. Fear cut him like a knife as wild thoughts about his injury flashed across his mind. Disfiguring scars, a deformation, a broken neck, paralysis, a curtailed life, an imminent death?
‘Cloak, do you hear me boy? Do you have any idea what has happened to you?’
‘No sir,’ croaked Cloak, ‘am I to die?’ Cloak watched their eyes move around the room, busy on the floor, the wall, their hands but never resting on him. Something was seriously wrong.
‘No Cloak, you have wounds on the back quarter of your head.’
‘You slept for two days,’ blurted Plenty. ‘Your head was split open to the bone.’
Her intrusion into the conversation won her a stinging look and a sharp shush. Cloak flicked his eyes from father to mother and back again but neither spoke, the uncomfortable silence filling the room finally broken by Cloak himself.
‘Where are the physicians and the clerics, did they leave while I slept?’
‘No,’ replied his mother guardian brusquely, ‘their services are not needed, this is a family matter. Trust your guardian mother, I’ll make sure you heal well and you’ll soon be back on your feet.’
Cloak’s anxiety grew as did his list of unanswered questions. As his mind raced, his guardian father nodded to his mother, a prompt for her to continue.
‘Cloak, your physical healing will happen naturally, eased by prayer and sleep. The issue we have is not about the healing itself, it’s making sure you heal safely………’
The Sword interjected ‘...........What your guardian mother means is safely away from Delta Crossing.
‘Indeed, that is why tomorrow, near dusk we will leave the town. Your guardian father will escort us as far as the turn in the High Cliff Road then we will go on alone.’
The restlessness of his guardians left Cloak feeling uneasy, his mother guardian had never spoken to him so openly before and he sensed she and the Sword were hiding the truth from him. Before he could ask any questions, his mother guardian spoke again.
‘Widow Slate has agreed to lend me her horse to pull the litter and we’ll carry supplies and my herbs in The Swords old panniers so we will be well catered for on our journey.’ Dolly turned to leave, the Sword moving away in unison, the twins running ahead down the stairs.
‘No, please wait, I’m not a cold corpse, I deserve to know, please, tell me?’
‘The twins are gone Dolly, tell the boy. He’ll know soon enough that………….’
The Sword stopped mid sentence, his wife turning to face him, raising her palm to silence her husband. Cloak could not read the looks that passed between husband and wife but when they turned to face the bed he saw fear as well as tears well in their eyes. In that instant, all his questions fled him. This was the first time he had ever seen his mother guardian cry or The Sword quail, the sorrow and fear in their eyes causing his own tears to well.
‘Cloak, this is a proud time for us both but also a testing time. You are cresting. It is a time of great change for you and for us. This is the beginning of your growth into manhood and the end of our parenting.’
Fighting sleep, Cloak slowly lifted his free arm and reached awkwardly round to the back of his head. His shoulder was stiff, bruised from the fall and the wadding placed to support the base of his skull and neck left him fumbling. He had just managed to stretch his fingertips below his dressing when his hand was eased firmly away by his father guardian. Too weak to resist the pull of the poppy, Cloak did not resist as he drifted into a half waking half dozing sleep.
When he next woke, the throbbing in his neck and shoulder told him the poppy syrup ministered to him the previous night had worn off. Despite the distraction of the pain, Cloak’s mind quickly focussed. He had crested. He knew it was true but despite his mother guardians emotional announcement he remained very confused. Cresting was a time of celebration, a time of gifting and sugar treats, a time for all to be over the sun with happiness but the reaction of his family left him confused. He racked his mind, progressively eliminating the sects whose crests extended to the back of the head or who did not grow forward crest spikes. He knew that it was neither of the lower sects, nor that of a harvester or of the faithful, and he could not eliminate the possibility that his crest was only part of a warrior’s crest that had just not completely formed. He had heard tales of children cresting almost spontaneously, waking up in the morning to find a fully formed crest but had dismissed such ‘facts’ as faerie stories. It was not unknown for cresting children to find spots of blood on their pillow as their new crest or spines broke through but it was a gradual process, normal and almost always near painless. At worst, the rapid growth of a crest could lead to crest sores, especially around their spikes where the flesh was torn by the rapid sprouting of spines.
As he lay staring up at the r
afters Cloak wished he had paid more attention at school to his History of Crests and Ridges. He could recognise on sight the common and clan crests of the folk as well as those of the high crests who bided in the town but none clearly match the little he knew of his own budding spines. Dolly returned, the administering of another seductive dose of poppy pulling him down deeper into his blankets. As the pull of the syrup grew Cloak closed his eyes and let go, the lad soon drifting painlessly into a dreamless black sleep.
EIGHT: The Wish Walker
Needle Cliff, Wish Walker to King Soar Hot Hawk woke screaming from yet another nightmare sleep, his wide mouthed cry splitting his frozen lips. Heart pounding, the old man lay still on his pallet, his back pressed to the wall of his cell in a vain attempt to steal whatever heat he could draw from the majic that coursed through the stone at his back. With his knees drawn up tightly to his chest, only his bare feet, blue black with cold were visible below the coarse piece of fouled sacking that passed for a blanket. Lying perfectly still, just enough of the blanket remained to hood Needle’s crest and cover most of his face. Despite the numbness in his fingers, he gripped hard at the blanket’s seam and warmed his finger ends with his breath. Wisps of vapour escaped his cowl and condensed on the outer blanket edge leaving the border coated in hoare frost. Needle knew instinctively that the cold was un-natural, the air in the tiny windowless cell rank with the smell of the black-green majic that emanated from the lacy wards carved into the wall, floor and ceiling.
The cold was lime tart with bitter majic, its presence causing Needle’s crest to crackle, cutting his thoughts to shreds and fuddling his mind. The persistent cold nipped his skin and made him shiver uncontrollably but this discomfort was naught compared to the pain caused by the severing of his bond to the King and the purging of the woven spell carved into his spine.
Where the cell was and how he had been confined were still a blur, fragments of memories, scents of blood and fire. The first few days after the split from his lord were traumatic as the black green majic sought to purge his bond to the king. For the whole of the next week Needle floated in and out of hellish sleep and lived through periods of excruciating consciousness. The wild spasms that ran the length of his spine had almost ceased, the bitter icicles succeeding in burning out the bonding charm carved on his backbone.
The tiny circular cell was heavily warded, he had expected nothing less. The fine pattern of cuts in the smooth inky black stone were barely visible, wards designed to prevent him drawing majic, shield his presence from others and break his bond..........they did their job well. The precision of the cuts, the geometry and the relative dimensional positioning made the wards near impossible to counter, this was no journeyman mage’s work, no, this was high master level, inner court perhaps even someone from the royal circle.
Needle tried to concentrate, the old wish walker piecing together what little of his memory remained; how did he get here, where was here and how long had he been here? Such knowledge was vital if he was to escape the cell, open a rift in the air and journey at the speed of thought..........away...........anywhere. Needle fought the binding majic but to no avail, the harder he pushed the more his mind wandered and his memories receded. When he pulled on a thread he created a hole, when he grasped a fragment a fuddlement came over him and when he tried to wish walk, he found his ability had been nullified, his mind confined.
Needle wiped his nose on the frayed edge of his blanket and slowly rolled over to face the curved wall of his tiny cell. The events of the last half moon had transformed him, turned him from a respected bondsman of the king into a slave naked and snottering hostage. Robbed him of his life of comfort and plenty and replaced it with one of icy spasms and brain splitting pain. He had vainly hoped that the wards protecting the cell would fail, they would not, they were a skilled weave, a carefully woven combination that not only hid the cell and his presence but prevented him using majic to escape.
The spasms caused by the removal of the bond carved into the bones of his spine had been excruciating, his body twisting in pain for hours on end. But, it was naught compared to the grief he felt at the loss of the link. He was an old man and had been bonded to the sovereign from the age of twenty three...........that was some three score years ago, time enough for him to learn the king’s secrets; the lies and the truths, the secrets of state and the bedchamber, the assassinations and the subterfuge. Needle did not ponder why he had been captured, he knew............it was not because of the information he held in his head, no, whilst this information was worth much gold, his talent as a wish walker was worth more.............a king’s ransom.
On day twelve, Needle awoke from another painful dream sleep. The sores on his wasted body ached worse day by day, his back and shoulders numb, stiff and dead, more like frozen meat than living human flesh. Just as he had for several days, Needle sat calmly and stared into the centre of the tiny cell, forcing his mind to work, his thoughts to coalesce, the images of places to gel in his mind, sparking a wish, igniting a walk. Today as yesterday and the day before, he started slowly, calling on the mental disciplines he had perfected over the decades, gently pushing aside the random fuddled thoughts that fluttered through his mind, pressing them aside in an attempt to gain the necessary clarity of mind. As the old man fought to bring order to the tide of mental minutia, a tiny speck of lime green majic flickered in front of him, the floating ball rotating slowly as it blossomed. Distracted, the old wish walker watched as the tiny fragment of majic slowly grew in size, progressively brightening until it emitted sufficient light to illuminate the tiny cell. No larger than a pea, the small green ball sat stationary, the sphere pulsing, growing, the surface rippling and in doing so revealing itself to be more liquid than solid. As the speed of the pulse increased the ball expanded, growing quickly until it had swollen to the size of a man’s fist. Painful though the verdant light was on his eyes, he held his gaze firm, one question on his mind. Who wrought the majic within the bright green light? Friend or foe?
As the seconds passed, Needle felt the last stitch of bonding unpick and the link to his King fall away. With the withering of the last thread, the rush of emotion that followed both surprised and shamed him. Despite the fogging of his mind, Needle’s thoughts had often dwelt on the pending loss. He had tried as best he could to prepare himself mentally, bracing himself, anticipating the loss, the grief, anguish, and loneliness. But none came. In place of remorse, all Needle felt was a wave of raw elation, a feeling of release and gratitude.
As his unbidden and unexpected emotions waned so too did the chill in the room, the cold quickly dissipating, replaced by a dry warmth that caressed his skin and kindled his blood. Discarding his blanket, Needle lay back on his hard pallet and slept.
---
‘Wake up old man’. A familiar voice, warm, persuasive, a voice from his past. ‘Needle...........Needle Cliff, king’s man, shed your slumber and come break your fast.’ A gentle press on his shoulder. ‘Your ordeal is over old man. Wake from your dreams, face the day.’
Needle slowly pushed the last remnants of sleep from his mind, brought his thoughts to the light and drew a deep breath before opening his eyes. Whilst the moss green light that bathed the tiny cell was soft on his eyes, Needle flinched at the sight of the bright threads of majic that infused the wards cut into the stone walls, there careful weave still intact and as such, a barrier to travel. Smoke Silverfly stood over him, the King’s own invisible man, a member of the inner court, a man tasked to seek out the King’s quarry, a man with no shadow, a messenger, a scout and a tracker, a man who few encountered and lived. The King’s own assassin, wore the garb of his trade, a long smoke grey cloak over tight fitting black leathers, dulled and worn, the cloak more death shroud than weather cape. His soft hide boots were made for silent stalking and appeared to melt into the shadows on the floor, he was a man few saw or heard and he was the best in the land. Needle knew his tools of trade would be well hidden but very close to hand, he knew thi
s well and wished upon wish that he did not. To his great regret, Needle had sojourned with this man many a time, seen his talents first hand, the unforgiving blade, the cut of the wire, the scentless potion, the slip, trip and fall and the smell the blood.
‘Come on old prick, rub the rheum from your eyes and sit yourself up. The king’s bond is gone as has the black ice majic that chilled your bones. You’ll heat through soon, the spring sun warmth of the green majic will hold the walking wards a while longer, a new life dawns for you and with luck you’ll walk from this cell before the end of this moon cycle.’ The voice was warm, charming and persuasive.
‘Go eat shit Smoke and drop the charming lilt. You’re a dead man. You of all people should know well that our lord will not rest until he secures my return. They will find you. The taint from kidnap gold will leave an indelible stink on your hands. I hope the weight you ask is worth a life in exile, a life in hiding afraid of every spy’s clype.’
Smoke smirked and clutched at his heart in mock shock. ‘You cut me to the bone old man. You cut me first because you presume you’re a victim of abduction and twice because you presume me to be your kidnapper. I’m hurt, how could you think such a thing given all the time we spent together, all the journeys, the hunts we undertook to places near and far, all to assist our king.’
Needle slowly pushed himself up from his pallet and into a seating position, the old wish walker trying hard to lock eyes with the king’s assassin, to no avail, his gaze averted by the force of Smoke’s peculiar talent. Few who looked upon this man’s crown lived and of those who did, none could not describe his features. He was a high talent, one of a select few and like himself, trusted by the King.
CLOAK - Lost Son of the Crested Folk Page 11
