by A J Allen
“Look.” Morwyn uncurled her arm from Solina’s waist and pointed toward the approach of flickering torchlights on the footpath.
Everyone watched, transfixed, as four hooded monks lowered the golden litter carrying the Holy Seer to the ground. Torches burned around the edge of the clearing, casting their drowsy yellowish light over all.
Old man Rabek sat behind a makeshift desk, his quill and inkwell at the ready—the same as ever.
The Holy Seer was slumped to one side in her chair, breathing with her mouth agape.
“Your time approaches, as does mine.” The clarity in her voice was gone, replaced by a raspy, death bed whisper. “First, each contender will lie in the grass on his back and place the crown of his head at the top of the round, flat stone assigned to each family. Next, each protector shall do the same until every stone has formed a five-pointed star.”
The silk folds of her crimson robe quivered as she raised her shaking hand.
Simon knew he should worry for the Holy Seer’s condition yet he could not hold onto a single vexing thought for longer than it took to smile at Rachel again.
“What are you all waiting for?” Kovoth barked. “Form your circles around the stones immediately.”
The four contenders staggered like tavern drunkards, fell on to the grass and, with the help of the guards, shifted into their assigned positions at the top of each stone.
Callor snickered. “What now? Are we to read our future in the stars like soothsayers?”
“Silence!” Lord Lionsbury ordered.
Rachel giggled as she lay on the grass next to Simon on one side and Jack on the other, just like spokes in a giant wheel. “Look at the stars. Aren’t they beautiful? I’ve never seen them so bright before,” Jack said as he pointed into the sky. “I just saw a shooting star. That’s a good omen for all of us.”
Simon couldn’t stop smiling even if he wanted to. Jack was right. How could a feeling this warm and wonderful be anything but a sign of good things to come? He let his body relax into the soft, fragrant grass. The air was pungent with the same earthy, incense aroma of the Holy Seer.
“Now, I want all of you to close your eyes and not open them until told to do so,” the Holy Seer instructed. “My monks will place a rare, sacred plant onto each of the stones. In our language it is called... Eelamassi.”
Rachel gasped and covered her mouth. “My father said it was a myth,” she whispered in Simon’s ear. “His books only mention it once.”
Simon stifled his chuckle. “Can we eat it? I can’t wait until supper.”
Mr. Kovoth tapped the flat of his blade on Simon’s foot. “I’m watching you, slave. Keep your mouth shut and listen to the Holy Seer. Your very life depends on it.”
Simon knew he should be frightened of this menacing thug but couldn’t summon the necessary fear at that moment to even care that Kovoth loomed over him with a sword.
The Holy Seer coughed. “The last great battle fought by the Asmadu Vohra was on the Burning Plains near the ancient ruins of Sardanapal far away in the Darguza ancestral lands. The bloodshed on both sides was beyond measure yet, by destiny’s grace, the five patriarchs and their loyal forces prevailed.”
Simon turned his head toward the padded sound of approaching footsteps and squinted through his partially closed eyes. A hooded monk carried what looked like a large daffodil with several buds each the size of a man’s fist. Clumps of earth clung to its dangling roots. The Holy Seer continued.
“The morning after the battle, your ancestors went to collect our heroic dead. There, on the Burning Plains, they witnessed an astonishing sight.”
The monk placed the plant on the flat, round stone.
“A strange flower had grown, covering the entire battlefield. As each bud blossomed, its pistil grew like a vine, first searching, then finding the nearest fallen warrior.”
“What’s a pistil?” Simon whispered.
“Shhh,” Rachel tittered. “Don’t you feel wonderful? I can see the stars inside my head now. Can’t you?”
The Holy Seer hacked and wheezed. “One of our patriarchs, Zadicus Tiberion, asked an old woman, a local shaman, the name of these plants and why she was uprooting them. This... is what she told him.”
A rattling sound came from the stone behind Simon’s head. Something swept over his hair like a branch of willow leaves in the wind. “Did you feel that?”
Rachel giggled. “It tickles.”
“It feeds on the blood memory of a people, and that blood must be freshly spilled,” the Holy Seer told them.
The same tingling sensation fluttered over Simon’s throat.
“And from that day, the five patriarchs discovered the secret of bestowing the life force of our greatest heroes, a sacred power that we now... give to you.”
Something pricked Simon’s neck. What was that? It wasn’t an insect bite, more like a pin or a puncture. He wanted to touch his neck but couldn’t move his arm, nor did he care to.
Esther screeched in the distance, then, after a pause, sounded much closer.
Simon felt safe in the knowledge the bird was watching over them all, but he didn’t know why. He half-opened his drowsy, clouded eyes expecting to see her light next to him on the ground, yet what he saw swooping down from the heavens was not a hawk.
A glorious winged woman, her hair flaming out behind her and adorned as if in the midst of battle, stretched her hand toward him. “Do not be afraid, Simon.” Her voice was like the sound the stars made when they sang together. “Prepare for the battle to come and I will never leave your side when you are cast into the darkness.”
Simon shook his head. “Rachel? Did you see—?”
His eyes flashed open. The stars overhead swirled in the cosmos, dancing in whirlpools of spinning light. The constellations assumed their preordained forms and each glittering beast and forgotten god fled across the endless heavens hunted by something unseen by mortal eyes. Simon wanted to say something, to rise and run, but his limbs refused to respond to his urgent pleas.
The boundless space overhead flickered as if the backdrop for moving paintings and murals on a black wall. A battle raged before his eyes, the curses and cries of men at war, the clang of steel against steel, the crack of blade against bone, the stench of blood, guts, and bowels; the reek of death was everywhere.
In his next breath, the panorama changed, flipping like drawings in a book and with each new scene Simon’s muscles prickled and ached with newfound strength and agility as though a potion was coursing its dark way through his body and soul.
Was he dying? Had death finally come for him?
A bewildering profusion of searing colors whirled and welded into human forms, both thrilling and frightening, as if peering through a door suddenly left ajar into some fantastical world previously unseen by human eyes. Simon was in the blood heat of battle now, wielding a mighty sword, sidestepping enemy thrusts, ducking and pivoting around the shadowy enemy’s blade then sweeping to deliver a two-handed, decapitating strike. He spun on his heel, the weapon’s strength now part of his own, unified and one.
He had no sense of time passing anymore, no feeling of his mind moving from one instant to the next, only a soaring euphoria in the limitless expanse of the moment. Vista after bloody vista exploded before his eyes. Simon swung an ax and cleaved a faceless thing of nightmares, its hideous cries screeching in his ears.
He fought another with his bare hands, fending off flesh-ripping claws; crouching, he lunged for its throat, driving his dagger deep and slicing it open.
No hesitation, no doubts, his internal fears harnessed and hurled back against the external foe, every movement inherited and part of his nature. He swung his leg around and kicked something in the head. He grappled it to the blood sodden ground, delivering bone crushing fists of punishment.
He twisted the serpentine neck until it snapped and the creature disappeared.
“Who dares trespass and disturb my sleep?” A growling voice screeched fro
m the fathomless abyss. “I am not yet ready to wake. Go back and die with your own pathetic kind, boy, before I change my mind.”
Simon sat bolt upright. He was alone in a charred and desolate room, the ceiling shattered, opening onto the universe of all creation. Blood pounded in his ears, while the eye-shaped brand on his chest ached as though it had been seared into his skin only moments before. Where in the name of all things holy am I… and where is everyone else?
A vast corridor expanded before him, one he’d seen before in childhood nightmares.
This was the only way out. Though he couldn’t see it, there must be a light at the end. There had to be because there’d always been one before.
Simon pulled himself to his feet and rushed headlong, running as fast and far away from there as possible.
A blinding flash of red light engulfed him. He fell back, falling through space, his body suddenly driven against the cavern wall by a force, a lance of piercing light spearing deep into his heart. He clutched at the burning brand on his chest and groped his way along the slimy rocks with one hand.
With every foot he crawled, his newfound strength and bravery seeped out of his bones into the muck and filth. He cowered, shivering in the frigid, foul-smelling dark.
“The old witch sends you to your death.” The beast roared, thunderous laughter reverberating off the cavern walls. “The Age of Heroes is over and will never return. Soon, all will be like you… and a slave... to me.”
Six monstrous heads swung toward him, ravenous, reeking mouths of twisted fangs opening wider to devour him whole.
Simon yelled and opened his eyes.
Strong hands were pinning him back. He screamed again until he felt the cold splash of water against his feverish, sweating face.
He shook his head and blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the threatening phantasms pressing in on him from all sides.
“Simon, look at me. I am Lord Lionsbury. Do you know who I am?”
Simon gasped. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Lady Bellemar, holding a basin and cloth, stood at one side of the bed, and a worried Mr. Joren on the other. Meanwhile, his Lordship stared into Simon’s face with an anxious demeanor.
“Your Lordship... where am I?”
“Back alive at Farrhaven.” He raised a cup of water to Simon’s mouth. “You need to drink.”
“Rachel, where is she? I have to find her before it...”
“She’s safe and unharmed, Simon. Everyone has returned. You can see your friends later. Now drink.”
Simon gulped the water until it was gone. “What happened to me?”
Lady Bellemar refilled his cup. “We were worried about you. The Holy Seer visited you each day and prayed for your swift recovery.”
“Each day?”
“The first are said to have returned from their journey after a few hours, isn’t that correct, Lord Rabek?”
The old scribe sat at a desk in the corner of the room jotting in his journal. “There is but a single account of the ceremony before the patriarchs chose our first king. After that it is never mentioned again. In the aftermath of the Burning Plains the surviving Asmadu Vohra completed the crossing by first light of the next morn, yet young Blackfyre here crossed over for three days and returned.”
He pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. “A miracle by anyone’s account, wouldn’t you say?”
Simon could not comprehend all that he was hearing. He drank water like a man dying of thirst and wished for nothing more than to gorge himself on a heaping plate of hot food in bed. “Crossed over? Where? I remember the forest and my friends then everything—” He shuddered as a dark specter of dread passed through him.
Lady Bellemar tucked another wool blanket around his shivering body. “You have to rest now. You’re still delirious.”
“How ill was I? I’ve had a fever dream before but none like this. I saw, smelled, and felt everything as I do now and there was the presence of something... something that’s plagued me with nightmares since I was a child.”
“And what was its name, dear?” The Holy Seer leaned on her cane. A hooded monk stood on each side of the open doorway. All bowed before her Holiness. Lord Lionsbury and Mr. Joren helped her to a chair near the bed. Her gaze remained fixed on Simon.
“So, did you not ask its name?” she asked.
“But it was only a fever dream, Holy Seer. Was it not? How does one ask the name of a specter?” For some reason Simon was ashamed to have answered her in such a dismissive manner. “I will admit that much seemed terrifyingly real. I felt such new, incredible strength that I could face any foe, then it drained from me like blood from a wound that could not be closed.” He clenched and unclenched his hands.
“I felt powerless before so many horrible things I didn’t understand, as happens to any who cannot wake from a nightmare. Isn’t that true?”
“Is that what you truly believe it was? A mere child’s nightmare?” The Holy Seer tapped a long, bony finger on the handle of her cane. “To face our greatest fear, we must first know its name. It cannot be destroyed in The Corridor of Shadows that joins our worlds but it can be revealed, though I shudder to dwell upon names that should be long forgotten.”
Simon sipped his water. “I don’t understand, Holy Seer. How does one destroy something that’s not real? And why attempt such a thing, since it can’t truly harm us?”
“Though you have journeyed far, it is sadly evident you have learned little from your sojourn, my dear. Little—if indeed anything at all.”
Simon felt a touch offended but had to keep it all in. He rummaged around his brain for a suitable, inoffensive response.
“I mean no disrespect,” he started. “It’s only that a person may see and believe anything he fancies if he succumbs to a fever, or some special potion or—” He touched the stinging wound on his neck. “Poisonous plant. The Eelamassi, isn’t that what you called it?”
The Holy Seer pointed her shaking finger at his neck. “The plant’s sap, its life blood, now runs through your veins too and with it the blood memory of our greatest warriors. Those memories must become part of your living, breathing soul so that all protectors become as one in a single, powerful life force.”
“But why? You say I have the blood of heroes pumping through my heart but how I am to be tested?”
She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, breathing in labored gasps. “Help me from this chair.” Lord Lionsbury and Mr. Joren lurched forward to help The Holy Seer to her shaky feet. She placed her cool, scraggy hand on Simon’s cheek. “Not every protector meets their greatest fear in the Corridor of Shadows. Some still remain hidden and bide their time.”
“But what do the mighty armies of Miradora have to fear from dreams and apparitions? Who would dare challenge such powerful forces?”
The Holy Seer hobbled to the door and paused. “Can you remember seeing anything or anyone else?”
The others in the room exchanged uneasy glances.
Simon closed his eyes and struggled to recapture more of the fugitive images seeking to hide away forever from the light. “I think... I think there was a woman. She came down though the sky straight toward me as though she—” A sudden icy dread chilled his nerves, silencing his voice.
“She had wings?” The Holy Seer smiled, her thin, furrowed lips softening her stern face. “And did she, child?”
Simon rolled on his side. He didn’t want to talk anymore about shadowy corridors, dark magic, or strange flying apparitions. They can frighten but they couldn’t hurt him.
“Please forgive me, Holy Seer, but I must sleep. You say there are many challenges ahead but they are still a mystery to me. I cannot help Marcus Evermere be crowned King if I’m too weak to stand on my own feet.”
“You will stand, Simon Blackfyre, or fall, never to rise again. The choice is yours. I trust I need not say more than that.” She leaned on her cane. “Sleep well then, for soon it begins.”
Simon was about to ask another qu
estion but thought better of it. His head and body ached and all he wanted to do was find refuge for a few hours in untroubled sleep without sight or sound of any kind, even if that meant not holding Rachel in his dreams tonight.
The Holy Seer swayed and gestured toward the small book on the bedside table. “I left a gift for you. It may help you sleep.”
Simon looked down. “I... I cannot read very well. I’m sorry.”
Her cheeks were furrowed and writhed like rain-washed crags.
“Well, now. Humor an old woman and at least try. One gets nowhere at all in this world by lying down and reciting what he cannot do.”
Simon obeyed and opened the book. He blinked several times at the detailed cursive script on the first colorful parchment page.
“Can you read the words now?”
“The Chronicles of Miradora and the Age of Heroes.” Simon was astounded to hear the words flowing effortlessly from his lips. He flipped the page and read the first paragraph to himself. He paused and looked up at her. “How am I able to do this? I could barely read and write my own name only a few days ago.”
“The blood memory carries all.” She passed through the door supported by a monk on each arm. “There is a realm as real as this one, you know, ruled by dark majesties who desire that all should bow before them or perish forever from the face of the earth. Do you know of the ones called the Choldath?”
Simon’s fingers were knotted like a cord around the book. A blind rage swept through him. The Choldath were a myth, a fairytale told by many highborn to strike fear into ignorant, superstitious peasants and slaves.
Naturally then, the old woman assumed that he, a slave, should be frightened by the mere mention of the name and so remain humbled and in his place.
Simon hadn’t believed when he’d first heard the stories as a boy at the camps and he certainly saw no reason to believe now, just because he could finally read their cursed name in a book. Simon closed the tome and returned it to the bedside table. “My eyes still hurt, Holy Seer. Forgive me but I will see better when I’m rested. I’ll read it then.”
“Let us hope so, Simon Blackfyre of Grimsby, for all our sakes. For one could say you were simply a lazy boy. Perish the thought of what happens to boys like that.”
