“I came because you commanded your men to bring me,” Rael replies with no small amount of disdain. “I am no murderer, so it is not I you seek.”
“Oh but it is, Dahken,” Pagus disagrees with a small smile at Rael’s stunned reaction. “Yes, I know of your kind. The Cleansing was not so long ago that the Paladins of Garod have forgotten your kind.”
“I do not understand, Lord Pagus,” Rael says. “Paladins?”
“Paladins of Garod,” Pagus repeats. “We led the charge against the Loszians hundreds of years ago. We taught our people to fight the darkness, and We Cleansed the land of your vile kind as well.”
“You are one of these Paladins? What does that mean?” Rael asks.
“I am a priest, but I am also a warrior, sworn to battle the foes of Garod wherever I find them,” Pagus explains. He then says with an air of haughtiness, “My compatriots call me the Rose Knight.”
Rael nods slightly as if this bit of information has value. “I still do not understand why you have demanded my presence. Even if you feel the Dahken have wronged you, I am innocent of such accusations.”
“Are you? Are you really?” Pagus asks with a slight sneer. “I had a brother once, and he was taken from me, murdered.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“My brother was one of the greatest men I had ever known. True, we were born of different mothers. We were brothers in that we fought alongside in the name of Garod. He was the most pious, humble of men even though he wielded great strength both with his sword and his spirit. He healed the sick and wounded, gave his own boots to the destitute and rent great wounds upon the foes of Garod.”
“I killed no such man,” Rael interrupts, drawing a look so sharp from Pagus as to make one think the man’s eyes are daggers.
“He had a wife, a beautiful yet unassuming maid,” Pagus continues. “It is not forbidden for Garod’s priests to take a wife, though it is uncommon. Most find marriage to be too much of a distraction from Our Lord. She came to be with child. It was one of my brother’s happiest days, and I was happy for him until the babe was born.”
“I would think that would have made him even happier,” Rael states flatly.
“Perhaps it did, but the child was an abomination. She bore a baby boy with skin as that of a corpse, no different from yours as you sit before me,” Pagus explains.
Rael’s stomach turns upside down, but for anxiety or excitement, he can’t be sure. “What was your brother’s name?” the Dahken asks.
“I am sure that by now you know, and do not speak again until I am finished with my tale,” Pagus again sneers. “I knew what the child was, as did my brother. I told him what must be done, that it must be as if the boy died during the birth. The Dahken are evil, born of the charlatan blood god, and he could not be allowed to live. My brother would not hear it, even though I begged, pleaded with him to hear the truth of it. I appealed to his wife and found her to be even less receptive. To this day, I believe she laid the seed that would eventually poison him. After a week, I explained to him that it could go no longer, that I would have to apprise our betters of the child’s existence, and they would act. One morning, I arrived at his chambers to take him and the babe into Garod’s custody for trial. I found him gone, and only his armor remained.
“You took Jame from me,” Pagus concludes.
“You forced him to choose between you and his family,” Rael argues. “Have you considered that you drove him away?”
“A priest’s duty, especially a Paladin’s, is to Garod over all things. It was your evil that drove him away.”
“My evil?” Rael returns, and his face grows hot. A Westerner might have appeared flushed, but not a Dahken. “My father chose the love of his family over the hatred of Garod. That was your evil, not mine.
“Pagus,” Rael says, battling to calm himself and his tone, “my mother and father were murdered some years ago by a man whom I myself have killed. Both revenge and justice have been served, and I have but one quarrel with you. I will take what is rightfully mine, my father’s armor and sword, and leave you in peace.”
“You will do no such thing,” Pagus replies, his voice hard and uncompromising as granite. “That armor belonged to a Paladin of Garod, and I will not have it soiled by you.”
Rael stands from his chair defiantly. “It belonged to my father, and by all rights it is now mine.”
“Unacceptable!” Pagus thunders, and he too stands. He leans forward against the table, the knuckles of his fists turning white under the pressure. “You have no claim to it, just as your kind has no claim to life. We stamped you out of existence once, and we shall keep it as such. I offer you but one chance to live – renounce your claim to this armor. In fact, renounce your willingness to ever again wield a sword. Renounce your evil god, and serve me under Garod. This is the only way you leave here alive.”
“I serve no god, evil or otherwise,” Rael argues, but he then realizes his words mean nothing to this man. “What if I refuse, Pagus? Will you have your men cut me down, unarmed, in cold blood?”
“We Paladins made your kind extinct once, and I shall do it again personally.”
Rael steps back and to his left, clearing the table by several feet. He lifts his empty hands before him and says with no small amount of withering sarcasm, “Very courageous – threatening an unarmed man. Garod’s Paladins are clearly men of valor.”
Pagus pulls on his gauntlets one at a time, and before he lifts his helm to his head, he nonchalantly flips one hand towards the Dahken. One of the soldiers comes forward and drops Rael’s sword belt and large shield on the floor at his feet with a clatter. The shield is round and wooden; over two feet across, the wood is unpainted and reinforced by bands of black iron. Rael bends and retrieves both, buckling the belt about his waist and strapping the heavy shield to his left arm. Rael draws his longsword even as Pagus holds the impressive rose mace before his face in a manner of salute.
“Let me take what is mine and go,” Rael tries one more time.
“No,” Pagus replies simply, “you will have to slay me to do such.”
“As you will,” Rael agrees, and he attacks.
Pagus bats away Rael’s first blows with ease, and he returns them with huge two-handed swings of his own weapon. Rael avoids the first, but he finds the mace’s reach is substantially longer than that of his own longsword. He deflects the second attack with his shield, but he feels power behind even that glancing blow. He feints to the left and attacks the Paladin with a head high stroke expected to split a foe’s head from top to neck, but Pagus is not fooled. He quickly splits his hands, keeping one on the mace’s handle and sliding the other up next to the rose, and blocks the attack with the weapon’s long handle in front of his face and parallel to the floor. Rael’s sword rebounds off the polished wooden handle as if it had struck well forged steel. He backs up with the momentum.
“You have some skill,” admits Pagus, though his words do not sound complementary.
The priest launches a flurry of two-handed attacks, and it seems to Rael that the rose headed mace comes at him from all directions. His sword is useless for the other weapon carries so much force that it simply knocks the blade away to the extent that Rael has to fight to keep ahold of it. He hops backward or to the side with each attack, simply trying to avoid the weapon, and it seems to the on looking soldiers that Pagus chases Rael around the room.
Rael cautiously chooses when to attack, finding openings as the priest recovers from missed blows, but his sword only caroms off of Pagus’ armor. He cannot seem to penetrate or even scratch the plates. Rael aims his strikes at the joints of Pagus’ arms and legs, where the plates come together leaving just enough gap to allow movement, but he finds the chain mail underneath to be just as solid. Pagus brings the mace around in a massive stroke that would no doubt crush every bone in a man’s body. He just narrowly misses, and Rael takes the advantage for just a moment. His sword clangs loudly off of Pagus’ vi
sored helm, and the priest seems no worse for it. The two stand off for a moment, and Rael clearly hears metallic laughing emanating from the helm.
“Your weak steel cannot penetrate this,” Pagus denigrates. “I wrought it myself as Garod’s strength flowed through my limbs. You combat the power of the King of Gods.”
Rael glances around the room in the hopes of finding something of use, and as he brings his attention back to his foe, the steel rose flies at him again. He barely lifts his round shield in time to feel the wood splinter and hear the iron bands protest with the impact. The force knocks him backward, and while he backpedals off balance, Pagus lands another blow, more terrible than the first. The shield completely shatters, Rael’s wrist with it, and the Dahken turns his face to keep a thousand tiny wooden daggers from showering his face and eyes. He lands hard on his ass, his legs having given out under the strength of the attack, and he blinks up at his attacker.
“And now,” Pagus intones softly, “stand upon your feet to receive Garod’s final blow.”
His left arm useless and wracking him with pain, Rael rolls slowly to his right so that he is on his hand and knees. His sword clatters softly against the carpeted stone floor, still held firmly in his grip. He regains his feet and turns to face the Rose Knight, his arms hanging limply at his sides. Rael watches, awaiting a blow that does not come, and to his amazement, Pagus discards his rose mace.
The paladin comes close and delivers a mailed punch directly into the Dahken’s chain mailed chest, and though it is strong, Rael’s blood gives him the might to withstand it. Pagus’ face changes from one of collected arrogance to sudden surprise, as if he expected some other outcome of the blow. He is even more surprised when Rael rams his sword clean through the rose adorned chest plate, his heart and the plate on his back. Staring into Pagus’ gray eyes from which the light fades fast, Rael lightly pushes the man backward, and he falls to the carpeted floor with a clanging thud. Rael watches dark blood stain an expensive looking rug even as his own bones snap back into place and mend.
Rael turns to survey the room around him. The four soldiers still hold their position by the door. One begins to move forward, his hand upon his own longsword, but one of his comrades holds him back with a hand laid softly on his sword arm. Rael picks up the rose mace and steps to the glass case a mere ten feet away. Up close, he sees that it is not all glass, but is in fact six glass panes fashioned in the shape of a rectangle and held in place by gilded grooves. Seeing no way to open it, and not really caring, Rael easily shatters the front pane of glass with the mace’s rose shaped head, and he then discards it to one side.
No one interferes as he strips away his own chain armor down to the linens underneath and slowly dons the bluish plate, struggling with the straps and buckles as they are made to require assistance from another person. Eventually, he is clad toes to shoulders in the armor, and he discards his own leather sheath to buckle his new sword and its sheath to his belt. Lastly, he straps the gemmed shield to his left arm.
As he makes to leave Pagus’ chambers, one soldier drops Rael’s heavy purse upon the floor and backs quickly away, while two others remove the bar from the doors. They part hastily to allow Rael passage from the rooms, staring after the corpse colored man in silence.
9.
The lonely ruin of Sanctum is as it was when Rael last saw it years ago. Nothing outside the keep itself has changed at all with the exception of the continued overgrowth of the weeds and vines that seem intent on wrapping around the ruin. Inside, Rael finds nothing to resemble disturbance. His feet leave prints in the layers of dust that coat the floor in his and Demon’s old rooms as well as the library in which he had spent a number of hours reading.
The truth is that Rael doesn’t really want to be here; he’d like nothing better to be far away from this place. In fact, it was only days after leaving Martherus that he began to feel the soft pull in his blood, his gaze always shifting north, but he has certain needs that he knows Sanctum can fulfill. He intends not to linger long, not even a day if he can manage it, for he fears that some of Garod’s priests may yet remember the former Dahken stronghold.
After slaying Pagus, Rael fled Martherus with as much speed as his feet could give him. He considered buying a horse, but he thought it may make him to conspicuous. Instead he struck out across open land, avoiding anything resembling a road, town or village as much as possible. He slept without a fire with only the stars and moon for light and ate only what he could find and carry.
After weeks of traveling unmolested, he approached Pret’s lands, but the merchant lord would not receive him. At every turn, every door, the man’s servants turned Rael away. After several hours of trying to speak with his former employer, he finally left and struck out south toward Sanctum. Rael was nearly speechless when a mounted Lord Pret rode him down several hours later.
“It pains me,” Pret said from horseback, “that I can’t open my door to you anymore, but you must understand. An emissary from Aquis accompanied by soldiers came to my home looking for you. You murdered Lord Pagus and stole from the priests.”
“I did not,” Rael replied. “Lord Pagus never intended to let me live. He hated me for what I am, not what I have done, but it was not murder. It was an honest duel of two men.”
“The priests are not warriors,” Pret disagreed.
“Pagus was. He wore full plate and wielded a mace. He called himself a Paladin of Garod.”
“Even so, do you deny that you stole from the priests?” Pret asked, motioning toward Rael’s new shield and armor. He then added, as if convincing himself, “I remember seeing that armor in Pagus’ chambers.”
“I did not know it, but he said it belonged to my father. I took only what was mine. He wagered his life against mine, and I won,” Rael explained coldly.
“There may very well be more to your story, Rael, but Aquis and Garod have already judged you guilty. I can’t be associated with what you’re accused of being, and I must assume that the priests watch my every move. Don’t come back to me again,” Pret said, and he turned and rode away.
Rael searches Sanctum’s library for facts that he had seen once, years before, and he finds it to be frustrating in the least. The Dahken were warriors, not historians or bookkeepers, and the musty old scrolls and tomes lay about the rows of shelves with no apparent organization. As he peruses them, his mind wanders and begins to formulate a system for dividing up the various writings. After an unknown number of hours, Rael begins to find the information he seeks between Chronicles and personal writings of Lord Dahken long since gone. He makes notes on a scroll of his own using a charcoal pencil.
Rael chose to comb through the library first for his other task frightens him deep down, though he would never admit it to anyone. Rael stands, torch in hand, before the great banded doors that lead into the Dahken treasury. He knows that something lurks in the darkness behind those oak doors, and he is loath to disturb whatever it may be. Unfortunately, Rael does not know when he will be back or whatever sources of gold and silver he may find in the future. The Dahken spent centuries amassing wealth from their adventures, wealth they never used but continued collecting, and he needs to make certain he has an ample supply.
He carefully places the torch in a wall mounted sconce opposite the double doors and considers the heavy wood bar that keeps them closed. He watches his shadow dance against the door in the torchlight like some sort of cavorting demon. Demon… Do the doors keep me out or something else in?, he wonders. Rael places his shoulder under the wood plank that serves as a bar and finds it far lighter than he expected but no less solid. He leans it against the stone wall to the left of the doors, needing to angle it slightly because it is longer than the ceiling is tall. Keeping his eyes on the door, he pulls his shield from its place strapped to his back and slides his left forearm through the steel band to grip the handle.
Rael gently grasps the right door’s pull and finds that it opens far more readily than he expected. Th
e erratic torchlight dispels the gloom only a few feet into the room, and the reflection of jewels and gold, quite a lot of gold, meets his eyes. A sound the likes he has never before heard meets his ears. It is the sound of hundreds, maybe thousands of gold coins being dislodged and flung upward as if some great form had settled underneath of them, and either the light from Rael’s torch or the opening of the door suddenly disturbed that thing from its slumber.
Rael’s free hand reflexively goes to his sword hilt, and he very nearly draws it before cursing himself for a fool. He cannot even see more than five or ten feet into the room, and something does in fact move softly, or slowly, through the heaps of treasure. Never taking his eyes from the treasury, he half turns and feels the wall until he finds the sconce and its torch. He takes the torch from the wall and steels himself to enter the room thinking, Most creatures fear fire as much as steel.
Cautiously, Rael enters the room, and he finds that the torch’s light still does not seem to penetrate the inky darkness within. He senses that someone or something hovers just outside the light’s reach, and it watches him like one of Tigol’s great cats preparing to pounce upon its prey. He waves the torch in an arc before him, extending his arm in the hopes of revealing whatever it is he cannot see. After a moment of such, he considers how foolish he must look as the torch has shown him nothing.
Rael’s vision is now further obscured by bluish streaks from the torch’s brightness as compared to the room’s dark. He wills himself to stand still, and he closes his eyes for a moment. They burn as he does so, and the streaks flare bright blue against the blank canvas of his eyelids. As they begin to fade, first to purple and then to black, Rael hears movement through the treasure. Something moves slowly, causing stacks of gold and silver coins to fall over and clink on each other and the stone floor. He opens his eyes, and the treasury’s darkness disconcerts him. In the confines of the stone walls, he cannot be sure if the thing he cannot see is moving around deep within the treasury or if it is six feet away, toying with him.
Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael Page 7
