Leaf and Branch (New Druids Series Vol 1 & 2)

by Donald D. Allan

  The constant, welcoming ache of the lash marks on his back throbbed in a feeling that approached ecstasy. God has revealed the last heathen! My work can be completed and free the Church to resume its rightful position as the power over this Realm. His thoughts ran through his head in rapid sequence. They could be wrong about him being the Target, but that was highly unlikely and unimaginable. His agents knew better than to toy with that bit of news. No sect member was to ever mention the Target in missives unless they were absolutely certain they had found him. The agents in Jaipers are young, that's true, mused Seth, but their devotion is strong and I had attached them to my best assassin; the man codenamed "Knife" for that very reason.

  Seth had briefed Dennis 'Knife" Petard himself, along with Jeremy Lions, and Peter Custard down in the Chamber. Dennis was one of the original Church Sect members and could always be counted on to complete his mission goals. And now he is dead – my top assassin! – killed by some local law enforcement commoner. The chances of that happening were minute and yet, despite the odds, it had happened. That loss coupled with the loss of the novice coin was unacceptable.

  Seth now understood the rage and joy that warred within the Archbishop. Seth's fury at losing the coin and his top assassin was enormous and he needed to lash out at something, anything to quell the rising storm in his blood. This emotion competed with the knowledge that the Target had been found. Ten years had passed since that eventful night when the Church had come so close to achieving its goals promised under God.

  Seth himself had killed that bitch but had missed her whelp then he had lost him. It was as if the very earth had risen to hide him from his sight. He had relived that night every day of his life since. At the time, his mind had been clouded and confused by magycs from the bitch, but inspired, he had targeted the centre of that confusion and had blindly fired his arrow. The scream from the bitch had been like a clarion of joy to his ears. The confusion had immediately lifted, and he spied her lying in her pooling blood, her life pouring into the ground she cared so much about. The irony had been exquisite! he remembered.

  Of her son, nothing could be found. No sign, no marks on the ground, no anything to hint to his location. He had disappeared off the face of the earth. The powers that God gave him had not been enough to pierce the fog her evil magycs had laid down to blind him to the boy. He still remembered that terribly agony in his soul when he had recognised that he failed the Lord so spectacularly. Not even the wet blood of the bitch in his hands could ease the wound to his soul. That night, after the Archbishop had failed to end his misery, he had started flagellating himself and he had not missed a night since.

  But now he was FOUND! Seth found himself standing with the missive crushed in his grip and arms upraised and his face turned to the heavens in sheer bliss. The echo of his last thought came back to him and he realised he had screamed it out loud. Startled he looked over to the seated Archbishop and saw the flushed and furious look on his face. His vision spun as the horror and embarrassment of his outburst overwhelmed him and he fell to his knees in front of the Archbishop, hanging his head in shame.

  "Forgive me, Your Holiness," he whispered. "God's Love fills me to over flowing, and I forgot my place."

  Seth felt the Archbishop lay a trembling hand on his bald pate and he shuddered in ecstasy.

  "Rise, my son. Sit."

  Seth regained his seat and composed his face. He could see looking at the Archbishop he seethed inside. Using his gift from God Seth realised that the Archbishop was furious with him for placing his own agenda and past failures in front of those of the Church. Seth was ashamed.

  "I recognise your joy, Seth, and I share it in truth," whispered the Archbishop. Seth felt the feeling of righteous anger that started to rise within the man. "But this is dire news! This loose coin was not retrieved and now it finds itself in the very hands of the person we most wanted not to have it!"

  The Archbishop was not aware that his voice had risen but Seth heard it and felt the mounting anger behind it. Seth knew his own personal feelings regarding the Target had blinded him to the true issue at hand. The Target was a direct threat against the Church and he had to be stopped. His own failure was the cause of the Archbishop's anger. He knew. Oh yes, he knew. Seth sprawled on the floor and prostrated himself in shame. The Archbishop had risen to stand, towering over his prone form. He clutched his cane with whitened fingers. His arm shook with barely suppressed fury.

  "This damned coin! It was tracked all the way to Jaipers by your best man! Your best!"

  Seth heard the disdain and contempt in the Archbishop's use of the word 'best' and cringed inside.

  "He failed, didn't he? Failed!"

  The Archbishop was shouting now; his face was flushed a deep red but with splotched, bright white cheeks, his eyes flashed with hatred and the anger. With every word, the Archbishop struck Seth across the head with his cane.

  "You. Let. The. Coin. Fall. Right. Into. His. Hands!"

  The last word came out as a screech and Seth pulled himself into a ball on his side. Blood poured bright red and freely from his head where the cane had split open the skin. His ears rang and his vision swam and he nearly sobbed with shame, but not pain. The truth was: he had hardly felt the strikes. To Seth, each stroke of the cane had driven home his failures – his failure to His Holiness and his failure before God. The strokes had merely reinforced his shame. He deserved the punishment.

  He lay in silence and watched his blood slowly pool on the stone floor around his head. He would not die anytime soon, he knew, for he was too versed in the knowledge of just how much it took to kill a man and knew his wounds were superficial at best. And head wounds always bleed a lot. He also knew that the Archbishop lacked the strength to do any real damage. Only the anger of the Archbishop had fuelled what strength he managed. Still, that last stroke had been the worst, he thought admiringly, and it had been the hardest. But sadly, it was also the last, and Seth knew he deserved more. The wounds on his head would heal, but his heart and soul had taken the blows directly. He had failed. He had failed his Eminence and God. He was tempted to heal himself but forbid it. This was his penance.

  The Archbishop stood hovering over the still form of Seth, his breathing ragged and wheezing in his throat.

  "You will correct this," he ordered softly and Seth was surprised and pleased by how calm and clear he sounded when he spoke. "You will recover the coin. You will bring that evil spawn to the Chamber alive," he emphasised the last word with feeling. "And when you do, you will bring me to the Chamber to judge him before God and we will end this blight. Are we clear?"

  Seth nodded once and nearly lost consciousness at the simple gesture of nodding. He had lost more blood than he thought and felt a weakness in his limbs, but a part of him latched onto the fact that the Archbishop had just said he would come down to the Chamber to judge the boy. Joy fluttered in his chest and the thought of showing His Eminence the glory of the Chamber brought a quavering smile to his face. Such joy will be mine to show His Holiness his life's work in the celebration of God!

  Just then, the Archbishop drove the tip of his cane into the blood on the floor directly in front of Seth's eyes and he blinked despite himself, focusing on it with all thoughts of joy fleeing and forgotten. Seth felt the blood on the floor splash across his face and, inexplicably, it repelled him.

  "Clean up this mess and see to it," snarled the Archbishop and slowly turned back to his desk.

  Sometime later, after Seth had stumbled out of the room and away into the darkness of the corridor, the Archbishop sat quietly at his desk and considered recent events. Discovering that the coin had been found in the bitch's old room and then sent to the far off west coast only to be found by the last of the heathen druids was almost too much to bear. For the past few months, he had waited to hear that Seth's assassin had recovered the coin and now so much more had happened. He felt a loss of control and pushed back the rage that accompanied it.

  He glanced to th
e stone floor near his desk and could find no traces of the blood Seth had spilled. That is good, he thought, for nothing must give away my secret workings for God. He remembered the joy of beating Seth and how good it had felt to give in to the anger. He was reminded of the sexual desire it used to bring to him and he smiled in fond memory of those nights spent in private in his bedchamber. God has been good to me, he thought and mentally gave thanks.

  Beating Seth had been energizing. He remembered how the edges of his vision had tinged with red and the anger he had let loose threatened to overwhelm him and control his actions. He had felt his heart pounding painfully through his rib cage and had thought for a moment that at his age he feared it would soon stop forever, but at the moment, he had felt so very much alive!

  The Archbishop had so wanted to crush this man lying in front of him, and he had gripped his cane in eager anticipation. But he could not. Seth was his finest weapon. And so he had stopped himself but the caning had been over far too quickly for his likes. Every part of his very being had urged him to raise the stick to continue. Slowly he had willed himself to remain still and with momentous effort, he had pushed his anger back inside where it belonged – small and tight within his chest. He had stood there for several minutes, watching the blood slowly congeal around the head of Seth.

  The Archbishop reached out with a trembling hand and took the missive in his fingers, bringing it close to his face to scan the words once more. They were easily committed to memory, and he lazily swivelled in his chair and let the parchment slip from his hand to fall into the small fire in the fireplace. It caught immediately and blazed fiercely for a mere moment before vanishing into white ashes.

  If only I could wipe these druids clear from the earth as easily as I can burn this parchment, he thought tiredly. My life's work all but ruined by these druids – or draoi as they liked to call themselves. The word of God had been smeared and thrown down to the lowest of lows within the Kingdom. It had been replaced by the Word and science. The shame is mine, he thought. I had allowed it to happen all those years ago when I watched helplessly as the King destroyed whatever hope the Church had of recovering from the foul acts and treasonous words of Bishop Bengold. I have endured through it all, he mused not for the first time as he rubbed the aching joints of his hands. I thought the demons gone and now look what has happened.

  When Seth had returned from killing that demon's spawn and reported that he allowed her son to escape, the Archbishop had been beyond rage. He wanted her spawn killed before her eyes. He wanted her spawn ripped open before her to expose the evil that lay within. He wanted her to witness the last hope of her kind being slowly destroyed until all taint of the druids was washed clean from the earth. It was to be his gift to God and proof of his faith and unfailing worship. All of that had been denied to him. Denied.

  He thought back to that day ten years ago in the Lord Protector's chambers when he had come so close to regaining the Church's authority in the land after months of detailed planning. His Sect had come so close to killing the Lord Protector and then that bitch interfered. She was one of the two–person Word contingent that advised the Lord Protector. She had stumbled on to the assassination effort and stopped it. She had used and exposed her magycs to the Lord Protector and himself. The horror of seeing such evil loosed upon the world had struck deep within the Archbishop's core. It brought back the horror of the revolution when he had lost the Church and witnessed the use of magyc for the first time.

  She had revealed her foul powers to the Protector and to all. The Archbishop could recall in vivid detail the image of her looming over the Sect assassin she had just killed, a horrible grimace on her face as she gloated. God had intervened then, he knew. He had intervened and told him what to do and what to say. The Archbishop chuckled as he remembered turning to her and accusing her of the very acts he had just been attempting. The Lord Protector had hid behind him then, seeking solace behind the robes of his Papal office. She stood there accused and exposed and looked up at them and fled. She escaped the castle with her son helped by her husband, an officer in the Protector's Guard.

  Later, he knew he should have killed the Protector himself. He had the opportunity and could have laid the blame on the bitch. He had failed to find the courage or strength; he couldn't be blamed for that. His was the power of faith. Killing was the purview of those God chose to act for him.

  From then it had been easy to find the other druids. The Lord Protector had encouraged the hunt and financed it. The Church Sect knew what to look for and they crusaded across the realm rounding up druids in every village and hamlet. At times, people rose up to help them or keep them hidden. All were culled. For a time every tree from Munsten to Bergen held the swaying corpses of druids and sympathizers. His Church had eradicated them until just the boy survived. A boy with the potential to grow into something that had to be stopped. For ten years, they searched and hunted and now he was found and on the run.

  The Archbishop thought then of Seth and was satisfied that he had allowed him one last attempt to recover from his one failing. So many little mistakes had built up over the years. Like the coin which had escaped detection all these years only to be found in the old chamber the bitch had lived in. That angered him greatly. His people had let him down, but he blamed the evil that lay in the land. An evil his Church continued to work against and would never tire from.

  Deep in the Chamber, he had a small locked chest full of the evil coins. All efforts to destroy them had failed. They could not be melted for their gold and so they were locked up and placed on a sanctified alter deep in the Chamber. It was guarded night and day by members of the Sect. One guard at each Bishop point – two looking in and two looking out.

  It was through the tireless efforts of the Sect that they had determined how many of the coins existed. They had hunted them down and then counted them carefully. Satisfied that they had found them all, they were locked up. Now it was discovered that one coin had eluded them for all these years and they doubted that this last coin was even the last. Perhaps details revealed through torture are not always accurate, he hissed to himself. But that was past and now this one coin was found and it had been tracked all the way to Jaipers. There, against all odds, they found Bill Redgrave and the spawn boy. Evil worked in mysterious ways, and the Archbishop did not doubt that great evil was at work, conspiring against the Church. But God was guiding them in this effort, he was certain of that.

  The Archbishop's hands started to tremble again. The shaking episodes were coming more often now and getting harder to hide. He pressed his hands against his desk to quell them as best he could and waited until the moment passed. Afterward, exhausted, he leaned back in his chair in relief.

  He looked up at the icon of his God on the far wall and pleaded with it. "Forgive me, my Lord," the Archbishop cried in prayer. "My sin was pride. Let nothing stop me from demonstrating that magycs are the evil that works through Man! Let its existence serve as proof of your magnificence and allow you to resume your rightful place in the minds and hearts of all who live in the Realm! Through your Glory, will the Church resume its rightful place and rule the hearts of Man! Through your blessing, I will humbly remain thy most trusted and willing servant!"

  The icon of God on the other side of the room suddenly exploded into light, blinding the Archbishop. He blinked furiously to see again and stared in awe as a blurred form stepped forward, bathed in the light to tower over him at his desk.

  And then the word of God filled his ears and Archbishop Reginald Greigsen laughed loudly in rapture – the sound distorted in the empty stone room.

  Twelve

  Munsten, 900 A.C.

  KNIGHT GENERAL FREDERICK Bairstow strode purposefully down the hall that led from the audience chamber with the orders of the Lord Protector John Healy still clear and loud in his burning ears. Dressed as he always was in full regalia, he made for an imposing figure. His armour clinked loudly as he made his way down the wide corridor back to
his office. The grimace on his face was permanently etched in the wrinkles on his aged skin. Without his helm, the grey in his hair could be clearly seen in the stubble of his shaved head, but his physical fitness kept the appearance of his fifty years of age at bay. Furious, he clenched his gauntlets in his right hand and unconsciously smacked them hard against his thigh as he walked. With practised ease, he held the pommel of his sword in his left hand to stop it from swinging wildly with his gait. As he made his way down the long entranceway, his eyes no longer noticed the years of history of the Realm that resided in the numerous ornaments, tapestries, and display cases that decorated the hallway. The audience chamber behind him lay central in the castle and accessible only by this contained hallway. Outside the walls lay gardens that filled the empty spaces between the central and main castle areas that surrounded the chamber. Inside the hallway, afternoon sunlight streamed through the openings cut into the arched roof above him, and years of dust glittered in the air and swirled in eddies behind him.

  His mind had already started methodically examining options to fulfil his latest orders and pushed aside the irritation he felt regarding the level of minutia in the Protector's interest in the security of the region. His brother, General Brent Bairstow, was in charge of the Protector's Guard, and he would be even more annoyed by the orders. The orders defied reason and anger swelled in his breast.

  He mentally spat and swore out loud as he flew past the first pair of saluting sentries in the hallway. He failed to notice their eyes tracking him with surprise and a smattering of sympathy. In an instant he was past them, his boots ringing and echoing off the polished marble floor. If he had noticed the movement of their eyes – despite his urgency to escape the hall as quickly as possible – he would have stopped and loudly reprimanded them for failing to remain impassive and immovable in their assigned duty. They were his brother's men, but that didn't mean he couldn't berate them for failing their duty. Bairstow was a stickler for protocol and allowed no lapses by his men or in himself. He knew his men respected that, and that they knew with certainty exactly what was expected of them. The military thrived on order and discipline and he provided both with an almost religious passion. He lived to serve and nothing gave him more satisfaction than the call his country placed on him. He imagined he looked calm and official, but internally he seethed at the Protector's lack of trust in him and his brother.