“Rayne Volpi!” Montague yelled. ‘Rayne’ had been Olivia’s uncle’s name, a great general of Illyrium.
Gretchen was crying next to Indrid and Anna while the guards cautiously cheered. She assigned a handmaid to stay with the children and raced over to Montague, taking the baby from his shaking grip and back inside the bivouac.
Montague couldn’t decipher the thoughts that were racing through his mind at the moment. He couldn’t even feel his emotions. How will the rest of the people of Ikarus react when they find out that their queen is dead? What will they do? And how will they feel about a future gray-skinned king? Montague kept his speculations to himself. He knew from this moment on, things were going to get very difficult for him. It seemed as though his true test was yet to come. Not only did he have to worry about preparing for the Nekrums’ next move, he had to play politics in defense of the strange and helpless child.
Montague confronted one of the guards. “What happened?” His voice stammered.
“My lord…I…I don’t know what happened.” The guard stood at attention and kept glancing over at his companion. “We both heard something strange last night. We went to see what it was, but we don’t remember what happened after that. We woke up, but we never went to sleep.”
“What do you mean you never went to sleep?” Montague asked.
“I mean, we don’t remember going to sleep. Please, my lord, we beg for your forgiveness.” They were looking downward, still embarrassed by Alexandal’s scorning.
Montague found Alexandal sitting on a rock under the large redwood, cleaning a bottle of wine. “I know who did this,” Montague said, kneeling next to him. “It was them. The symbols on Olivia’s belly were of ancient language and the only ones who religiously study it are Demitri and his people.”
“Why?” Alexandal asked. His eyes were glazed. “Why would they do all of this? Why not just kill us?”
Montague refused to say what he really thought. Now was not the time. But he knew that the Nekrums needed a live Volpi to extract the blood; that was what the mage was after. At least he thought so. “We are on unclaimed territory; we’d better make our way back before we are ambushed again.” Montague avoided the question because he didn’t know the answer. He blamed himself for what had happened and felt ashamed that he’d failed to protect Olivia, the young girl he’d cared for like the daughter he never had.
The small army wrapped the queen’s body in blankets and carried her in a large trunk sprinkled with flower petals that stored the royal clothes and supplies.
Alexandal walked with the reins of his steed in one hand and a half-full bottle of wine in the other. He spoke loudly and clumsily, telling stories about the plans he and Olivia had for the future. He was like a dog that had lost its home.
While Alexandal went on, Montague heard a crackling in the trees to his left. A mysterious woman peeked in and out of the brush, stamping through leaves and twigs.
“My lord! There! That is the woman we saw!” one of the guards shouted and pointed at the dark shape dancing between the elm trunks. “I remember her. I remember seeing her there through the mist!”
Indrid and Anna looked horrified. Montague was sure they had seen the same woman in the bivouac.
“What a fine day to celebrate,” the gangly woman said, smiling up at the clouded sky. She held her arms out, catching drops of the cold drizzle.
The guards wasted no time and restrained her even before Lord Alexandal gave the command. Alexandal marched heavy-footed following his men. He squeezed the woman’s throat. His voice shook and his exposed teeth flaunted hatred. “What have you done to her? Why?” he thundered, shaking her like a rag. But the woman was not intimidated. She smiled almost as if she enjoyed being handled in this manner.
It became clear to Montague that the woman was prepared to die or to be taken prisoner.
The hag looked deeply into Lord Alexandal’s eyes and said with a two toned demonic voice, “What has been set in motion cannot be stopped. Soon we will take back the land you have so selfishly claimed and kept from us. It is the beginning of the fall of Ikarus, and I am proud to have been the one to initiate the process.” After she recited her warning, the macabre undertone in her voice disappeared as she laughed with a high pitched squeal, shaking her head.
“What process?” Alexandal demanded, clinching his hands tighter around her neck.
Failing to catch a breath, the woman exhaled, spitting in Alexandal’s face. He let go, slapped her then wiped the drool from his eyes.
“It shall commence through an act of rage. I, El Krea, will be the one to sacrifice my body for the victory of my people,” she growled.
“What shall commence?” Alexandal stumbled.
The mage jumped towards Alexandal, landing inches from his mouth, sniffing. “I can get drunk off of your breath,” she said, smiling and laughing hard.
Alexandal took a blade from the hands of one of his guards.
“Wait, my lord!” Montague cried, staring the mage down. Her willingness to die was obvious. Montague had read about certain curses that could only be executed by a mage through the sacrifice of her own body. Death and Possession were two that came to mind. He stepped in close to Alexandal. “It’s a trick. She wants you to kill her. Deadly spells require sacrifice. You’d be giving them what they want. And you could be killed yourself.”
The woman looked at Gretchen, who was holding the baby king, and glared a menacing smile before she exploded into another fit of laughter.
At that, Alexandal didn’t stop to consider Montague’s warnings. After swallowing three bottles of wine, he was polluted, and the woman’s screeching laughter was too provoking to stand down. Without hesitating, Alexandal thrust his blade straight through the woman’s heart. As soon as the dagger punctured her ribcage, Montague noticed Alexandal’s expression slowly change from pain to relief. His face became flushed and his eyes bloodshot. Darkened veins bulged from his neck.
Montague knew this was a sign of possession, of witchcraft.
When the woman’s body fell to the ground, Alexandal remained silent and stoic, prattling between breaths.
“My lord,” Montague asked, hoping for a reaction. But there was none.
Then, Alexandal’s eyes narrowed as if in deep concentration. It seemed to Montague that the high lord of Ikarus was listening to someone talking in his head—but whom?
Since the day the new king was born it hadn’t stopped raining. The world of Naan was entering its eighth summer without a day of clear sky. The weather was cooler than usual and not much grew. Occasionally, there were weeks when the normal deluge lessened to a light drizzle, but clouds shadowed the land. The relentless rain made the soil so muddy that tree roots had lost the ability to hold the ground and were easily toppled by tired winds. It was even harder to travel. Both the lives of horses and men had been taken by mudslides at the bottom of the plateau. Not even the mages dared to make drastic moves against the civilized world.
In less than a decade alone there had been more deaths caused by an attack or natural disaster than human civilization had experienced in the past hundred. First, a great sickness had plagued the land, then, water had destroyed Illyrium, Grale and Mern had been burned to the ground, Ikarus had suffered a great drought, Queen Olivia Volpi had died during childbirth, and now the clouds deprived land and crop of light.
Soaking wet, Montague La-Rose entered the Ikarus council room in the middle of deliberation. An angry conversation between Temple representatives and the Ikarus commanding officer grew louder by the second. This was the first time a meeting had begun without the speaker.
“It’s been eight years!” the Ikarus general shouted.
“This topic has been exhausted, General,” said Elmer Mongs, a high priest of The Temple.
“All we have done in response to the queen’s attack was hanging a dozen members of a small mage clan. None of them were even connected to the incident. I understand that the evidence suggested that t
he woman responsible for the attack on the queen led that very clan, but there are hundreds of clans aligned with the same plot to ruin us. People are still demanding a response, my lord,” the Ikarus general said. He’d replaced Alexandal when the late queen’s betrothed was promoted to steward.
Riots erupted throughout the kingdom when the people found out that their beloved sacred leader of Men had been attacked by an exile. The unrest had lasted days before settling. Alexandal had promised retaliation, but the kingdom saw none.
Mongs responded. “We still don’t know where the mages have been gathering. There are free-folks living in the Great Flats. And mages are living among them, in disguise. The truth is that we don’t know who the enemy is. This subject has been discussed again and again. We don’t want to kill innocent people, do we?”
“So we do nothing?” the general’s voice rang with defeat as if he anticipated the answer.
“Not until we find the enemy’s headquarters,” said Mongs. “And it’s up to the Ikarus army to do that, General.”
High tension filled the room after blame had been passed back and forth; neither the Ikarus army, nor the representatives of The Temple were willing to admit they’d failed. But there was another sensitive subject Montague had to bring up. “We’ve received another letter from Grale. This is the fourth in regards to their count, my lord. They are expecting his return.”
When Montague spoke, all voices ceased. Everyone stared at him as if he had disturbed the meeting.
Alexandal twitched then finally addressed the concern. “Indrid is a soldier in our army, the new capital’s army. We will contact them when his services are no longer needed.”
“We must at least reply,” said Montague.
“Mr. Speaker, you’ve been sitting there for the last few minutes listening to this conversation. Have you looked at the document under your hand?” asked Alexandal.
Montague didn’t even notice that he was the only member in the room with a paper on the table in front of his seat. When he turned the document over, it read: Formal Resignation from the Ikarus council.
“I don’t understand. I was the queen’s chosen voice. I’ve been on this council for nearly a decade, serving the people of the kingdom that I love. What’s the reason for this?” Montague, asked.
“It’s been too long,” said Alexandal. “We need to make changes to the length of political positions. Now please, Mr. La-Rose. If you don’t mind, the council has matters to discuss.”
Montague swallowed his objection. An argument would only make the situation worse, he thought. Just like that, he was forced out of civil affairs, without a reason. What are they plotting?
Lord Alexandal had become a changed man. After Olivia’s death, the steward had insisted that Gretchen foster the children, Indrid and Anna, and resigned all responsibility he had sworn to them when Olivia was alive. With Montague’s help, the head maid of the royal castle had been accountable for their upbringing.
In the years before the queen’s passing, Alexandal had always been motivated to optimize his leadership as army general by strengthening the bonds between himself and his soldiers, himself and the people of Ikarus, embracing everyone’s ideas. Montague had thought of him as one of the strongest and most caring generals in history, and that was what the queen had loved about him. But ever since she had passed and Alexandal became the steward of Ikarus, he barely left his room. When he did, he would leave the kingdom for weeks at a time. Montague had heard the thundering screams that echoed from the steward’s room at night. The ash print left on Alexandal’s forehead after the new king had been born at Angel Falls was no simple blot of dirt. Montague was certain of that. It had been an attempt by the mage to connect Alexandal’s mind with the Nekrum’s host. And she’d succeeded. Montague had no doubt that Alexandal was under Demitri’s influence. But, without the support of the Ikarus army, there was nothing he could do, publically.
As guards walked Montague out of the room, he leaned in to the council messenger. “Tell Gretchen to meet me at my chambers at once. And tell her to bring the supplies I asked for.”
FROM THE top floor of the Ikarus library Montague La-Rose stared through the balcony windows watching the drops descend. He wondered why each was in such a hurry to splatter. Maybe, they were ready to reunite. Such a short life, he thought, birthing in the clouds then falling to the ground within seconds. It was just like Montague’s short-lived position as speaker of the Ikarus council.
Life for Montague would return closer to the way things were before; non-political, besides the facts that he didn’t have to pay taxes and his home was larger than his farmhouse, and that food was provided and cooked for him. But he missed his farm: the land, the animals, the smells, the sights, the sounds. He’d had no need to barter for food. As a farmer, he’d grown fields of wheat and gardens of vegetables and fruits. Montague had domesticated chickens and fished for his protein. He’d kept goats and cows to make cheese from their milk. There was never any slaughtering of cattle on his land.
The ex-farmer of the free land and former speaker of the capital would now become an educator of the people of Ikarus, he thought. At his quarters in the library basement, where Gretchen taught reading, writing, and music, Montague could hold classes for both children and adults: geography, botany, and medicine. He was forbidden to discuss his beliefs about the planet’s ancient past. No one in Ikarus besides Gretchen knew Montague’s true beliefs. The Temple would crucify him if they knew. Only priests were allowed to preach the words from The Book of Volpi, the manipulated version of creation, to the public at the Ikarus temple. Montague refused to teach what he believed was a lie.
On the streets below, Montague could see the head maid of the Volpi family approaching the library. Moonlight flickered off of her wet bonnet.
Downstairs, Montague met her at his chamber door.
“Just in time,” Gretchen said, walking in from the night drizzle. “Don’t want to get caught out past curfew.” She rolled her eyes.
“Ah. No, you don’t,” Montague said. He played along with Gretchen’s sarcasm. The steward of Ikarus, Lord Alexandal Duncan’s curfew was just one of many new restrictions he had placed on their kingdom along with a dozen new trade taxes that upset both the islands of Grale and Mern.
Gretchen untied a bag and emptied it across a table near Montague’s fireplace, “Twenty custard shells and three pounds of charcoal. Do you really think you can help Alexandal?”
“After eight years of seemingly hopeless research, it’s the last idea I’ve got,” said Montague. “It came from Demitri’s thesis on metal toxicity. In order to cleanse Alexandal of the host’s influence, I need custard shells to detox the copper. The mineral can penetrate the blood-brain barrier.”
“So that means maybe?”
“Probably not,” Montague sighed. “I’ve tried something similar before. The hold over Alexandal is more powerful than just the copper in his blood. There are too many factors to depend on success. But it’s worth a try.”
“You never give up, do you?”
“I can’t,” Montague said.
Over the changing seasons, Montague had buried himself in thousands of pages of sacred text to try and predict the enemy’s plans. He’d read over material that he had already examined, and carefully analyzed text that he had not yet seen, hoping to find clues. He became accustomed to short, frequent naps, twenty to thirty minutes, resting only when his eyes could no longer stay open. Montague did not think he should spend even one full night sleeping, not while his people were in danger. There was vital information to gather. He could only hope that time was on his side. Whether the sun lit the sky or the moon claimed the night, as long as he wasn’t looking after Rayne Volpi, the new king, he revisited Gabriel’s Diary.
“I know the copper is what helps control Alexandal, but what does it actually do?” Gretchen asked.
“Copper is the mineral that the Nekrums use to mentally connect with their slaves. It relays the co
llective knowledge of every member connected to the host; instant communication. They form a hive mind, the host and his mages. The exiles of Illyrium found a leader in Demitri, the one controlled by the Nekrums. The aliens used their host to recruit them. They still do. Once the host infects the outcast’s blood, they become victims, programmed to live like savages and do what the host tells them to do while the Nekrums give the orders from above.”
“How powerful are they?” asked Gretchen.
“Later dubbed mages, the exiles were taught how to carry the Nekrums’ host’s spells. The host selects a series of words forming a melody of vowels and consonants, placed in a specific order, to generate sounds that manipulate material. The mage just has to pronounce the incantation correctly to apply the curse. But these mages possess no magical qualities themselves; they only act as deliverers. They wear black, the color that absorbs all colors—a symbol that represents the cleansing of life, ridding it of its beauty. Their numbers have tripled since the Great Flood of Illyrium. Something’s coming.”
Gretchen looked as if she was about to cry. “And Rayne…his skin… are you sure the boy isn’t cursed or one of them?”
“The boy is one of us,” Montague said, like a reflex. “We raised him. And he is the last Volpi.” But Montague wasn’t even sure if Rayne was the last Volpi. That answer never satisfied Gretchen. She’d asked him that same question many times before.
Gretchen turned her eyes to the floor. Tears fell.
“I know,” Montague said, holding her shoulders. “He is different…He’s not a narcissist.”
Gretchen laughed. He knew how to make her smile.
“I can’t yet be sure about what happened to Rayne, but he is healthy and his blood is pure.”
Montague and Gretchen accompanied the king just about every day from dusk till dawn since the day he was born. They were the only two people that had keys to the king’s room. If Rayne did leave the castle, he was escorted by guards of Montague’s choosing; men he knew he could trust. It was critical that the boy’s blood was protected and kept far from the enemy. Even though it seemed that Demitri was focusing his search on bastard children, potentially carrying Volpi blood, Alexandal, an assumed puppet of the Nekrums’ host had eyes and ears throughout the kingdom.
Under a Veil of Gods Page 10
