His mouth was small and lipless, pulled back enough to show lines of razor teeth, but what set him apart the most were the almost foot long ears steepled off his head. They were pointier than his teeth and had tufts of that white hair pouring out like a forest. The monster walked closer to her, his feet sliding along the rocky floor as if it were made of ice.
"I am the caretaker," he said, touching his bulbous head with his giant fingers. "And who might you be?"
"The woman you kidnapped," she said, her dagger still out between them. The monster made no movements to close the gap, only holding the lantern as high as he could. It swung in a small breeze that wafted through the cave.
He searched over her face, as if it were the first time he'd really looked and was having troubles placing one human from another, "Duneclaw blood, yes. And something else. Dangerous business that, Elves are not to be trifled. And they leave such a mess in the closet."
She tried to answer but couldn't find a question in his babble. "Maybe?"
But the caretaker ignored her, setting his lantern beside her as he struck another match and toddled off to the final dark corner, "Almost forgot, time slips so quickly when you don't watch it," he muttered to himself loudly, unused to having company. "Yes, yes," his voice shifted again, as if he were talking to someone else in the room, someone bothering him, "I will take care of it, and I won't scuff your boots this time."
The caretaker placed his match against a set of three candles dripping out of a candelabra then moved to a fat one guttering next to a skull. Ciara jumped at that, her elbow knocking into the lantern beside her, earning a glare from her child napper. Stretched out across a plain wooden table was a full skeleton, resting as if it fell asleep after a hearty breakfast and never awoke. Without looking back at her, the caretaker removed an oil pot and took to working some into the tiny scraps of what could have once been leather clinging to the skeleton's frame.
"I'll be quick about it," he said to himself, "I'd find you fresh if more adventurers would fall down here." Only the pelvis and some of the caved in ribcage still had leather on it, most having been eaten by centuries despite the caretaker's best machinations.
"Are...are you going to kill me?" Ciara asked steadily.
The caretaker turned his entire shoulder to look at her, his shrunken neck unable to do it properly, "Why for?"
She pointed at the skeleton under his hands with her dagger. He smiled, a disturbing sight as it only highlighted the rows of razor teeth, "I no more killed this one than a hurricane destroys a fly. And she does not demand blood. Only an oil and the occasional cuppa."
He returned to his work, talking to something in the secondary crypt. Ciara looked around the tiny room but could find no signs of anyone else. Whatever free space existed was afforded by his moving a stack of books out of the way. The entire back wall was nothing but bookcases, stuffed to bursting, some sagging under the ancient weight. A tiny bed, mostly straw with a blanket tossed on top, was tucked away to one side, surrounded by even more books. She felt strangely at home in the library of a schizophrenic monster.
"How long have you been here?" she asked.
The caretaker waved his arms around, "Long enough to read all these books many times over. And yet their endings never change," he paused and rose, closing the oil pot, "Except for Dignity & Bias when someone tried to spice it up by adding a scene of a werewolf fighting undead. I must say, I was rather upset necromancy was no longer practiced. The original author would have given that iconoclast such a liver chomping."
He shuffled off to his nest, picking up a pair of glasses and settling them on his so hawkish nose even some raptors would declare it a bit much, "There, now to business."
Ciara kept her dagger raised even as he settled into the only chair in the small room, crossing his legs. The robe's hem fell away enough to show a very green foot, gnarled and twisted, with only four toes sprouting their own armory for nails. "You are here for something, yes?"
Despite the weirdness of being interviewed by a monster wandering around in a dressing gown deep in an ancient tomb, Ciara calmly responded, "Yes. A sword."
"A specific sword, or are you looking to merely upgrade your current model?" he pointed towards her dagger still aimed for his heart. Probably where his heart was. Did monsters even have hearts?
"A specific sword," she rolled her eyes at his insolence, and he chuckled at hers, "A sword named after a man."
"A sword named after a man? How very Freudian."
"Freudian?" Ciara asked.
"You have never heard of Sir Freud?" the caretaker tapped his chin dramatically as if he'd never seen it done, only read about it. "Very strange man, always concerned everyone was sleeping with his mother. Heard he died trying to convince his battalion a dragon was just a cigar." He snapped out of his reverie as soon it took him, "But you did not find this specific sword named after a man?"
"No."
"Despite coming upon a tomb drenched in riches with a shining plate of armor and a blade that can never tarnish?" He pressed, enjoying the game.
Ciara; however, was not, "How long have you been watching us?"
He giggled again, like a schoolgirl caught stealing raspberries. It was disconcerting coming from a gods knew how ancient grey skinned monster. "Long enough, long enough. What?" he called to behind his shoulder, "She wants me to tell you 'kings is dangerous to mess with. They'll only break your heart, invade your lands, and make everyone dress in short pants.'"
"She?" Ciara asked, looking around again for the source of his information. Was Isa here? Where were the others anyway? "Where's everyone else?"
The caretaker tapped his fingers against his wrist, counting out something, "Most likely 2/5ths of the way to the Tower of Ashlan."
"The Tower of Ashar?" she asked, her brow wrinkling.
He slapped his forehead, "Ashar, of course. You Osteros hate your lan's don't you?"
"They left me?" she mumbled to herself, ignoring the dialogue coach.
"There was not much choice, the Ebony Men can be rather persistent," her head snapped up to him, "You failed to notice the last patrons? They made a dreadful mess of the foyer, tossing skulls everywhere."
"That was our priest, actually," she admitted, guiltily.
"Gods never could keep their noses out of the dead," he muttered. "Your Empire men, I assume your enemy, broke through after your group and attempted to slaughter everyone in the room lest a white flag be thrown."
"What happened?" she was a spectator to her own life now and didn't like it.
"Your king stood down, surprisingly bright tactic from a head muddled by a crown. They tend to be more throw wave after wave of peasants against a problem until it is not there anymore. Thus your enemy corralled them up and carted them away, torching the tomb in the process."
"Then why am I here? Why am I not torched or with them? And why don't I remember it?" her dagger spun back to him, dancing near his collar. Monsters may not have hearts, but they certainly had necks that could be slit.
"Ah, she said you'd be trouble. 'Smart ones is dangerous.' She said that a lot, typically to dumb ones," he babbled again, trying to push the dagger away with his fingers. "If it is so important, I incapacitated you with a personal mixture, then pulled you through one of my more cleverly hidden passages before the Empire's men noticed you."
"Why?" Ciara wanted to pull her hair and scream at this monster. Scream at him for every little thing in her life that had gone kidney kicking wrong since that autumn day.
His soulless eyes twinkled in the candlelight, "Because you knew that wasn't the sword of Cas."
He leaned back in his chair, the bulbous head listing to the side as if it had trouble remaining upright as he picked up something propped up against the wall like a broom or mop. The caretaker placed it across his lap delicately and looked into Ciara's eyes, "This is."
The blade was simple. So simple you'd never notice it in a pile of used swords at a blow out sale after a big ba
ttle.42 A longsword so forgettable it could have passed out of the annals of history before anyone knew it was there. The only hint of something special was in an etching, hasty and jagged, as if dug into the blade in an emotional burst by a nail, 'Liam.'
The caretaker nodded, his glasses falling askew as he passed the blade to Ciara. Her dagger dropped into her lap as she took the grip of Liam. Gods, she was going to have to rename the thing. Raising it slowly, she looked down the blade so much had been lost chasing. It hummed with a power more terrifying than magic, age. Dragons and empires fell at its edge, or so the legends went. What's one more life to it?
"Careful," the caretaker said, "he's still sharp."
Ciara nodded slowly, her eyes still drawn to the etching as if it could give her some hints as to the woman who wielded it. "The scabbard's beside her body," he said, nonchalantly pointing to the skeleton.
For the first time, Ciara rose to her legs, her head skimming along the low ceiling. The table she'd been left to rest off the drug upon creaked in response, grateful to have her weight off. Slowly, she inched towards the skeleton, its endless grin seemed wrong. She expected Cas to be scowling, even in desiccated death. The bones offered no resistance as she scooped up the scabbard and returned the blade to its second home. Perhaps it'd finally found a new first.
The Caretaker rose on his unsteady legs, adding more weight to an overcrowded situation. He barely came to Ciara's chest, which made conversing with him extra awkward. "We have two choices before us. Two paths diverged in the smoldering crypt."
She narrowed her eyes, and looked towards the scabbard in her hands, running her fingers along the surprisingly in shape belt. Where'd the little monster manage to get his claws on that?
"We remain here, discussing recent turns of phrases I have failed to learn," the Caretaker continued, reaching over to pick up the lantern. Ciara twisted her mouth up at that idea. "Or, we visit the Tower of Ashar."
"Impossible," she said, "the Empire's guards will be all over it, if they don't catch us on the road first."
"Then let us take a road they dare not travel," he grinned wickedly and turned from her. Digging his claw deep into his back bookshelf, he yanked on a handle and the entire wall shifted revealing a hidden doorway. The Caretaker jumped in, his bare feet slapping against hard stone.
"Wonderful," Ciara muttered to herself, "I will die a happy woman if I never have to see another secret passage," as she followed after the monster.
Unattended for the first time in centuries, the bones of Cas settled in for a quiet rest.
The weary eyes of a prince rolled up to the rising portcullis of what was supposed to be his keep. Aldrin paused, the chains around his arms jangling against his thighs as he glanced at the very few Empire men pacing about the walls, some even limped. However they took the tower, it was not one without loses. An increasingly unfriendly hand shoved him in the back and he jerked forward, into the Tower of Ashar's courtyard.
A few of the soldiers pacing about the door looked up at the prisoners, their armor askew. Helmets had been tossed to the side, revealing receded eyes blinking rapidly in the setting sun. Ashar's courtyard was little more than a stopping point, a place to leave a few horses, work out some growing aggression through a duel, or have a quick execution before lunch. It wasn't even much of a tower, little past four stories with a long abandoned dungeon and rotting armory. Any tactical advantage would only last until winter, when the icy breath off the frozen seas whipped through poorly insulated walls. The Osteros only held onto her because it was theirs. If it weren't for whispers about the Empire wanting it, she'd have been dismantled and turned into a Bed and Brick of Something We Call Oatmeal.
The man who spent the past ten miles shoving Aldrin in the back for nearly every breath he took, called out to the fellows taking a break beside the stables. It was all gibberish to the prince, who responded to every Avarian order with a wave of his manacled hands and a cheery "Go conjugate yourself." Their other capturers began to disband, wandering off to the walls to chat up their fellow soldiers. Rumors and gossip were the lifeblood of a man trying to climb the broken social ladder.
Eventually only the leader, a man with a rabbit's fur stole wrapped around his fat neck beneath the black armor, and the stick thin soldier with a wispy bit of black above his pursed lips remained. Their leader was arguing with the other soldiers, or possibly asking one of them for a sweet. It was all Avarian to Aldrin.
The heavily chained head of Taban perked up as he looked about the courtyard, his trained eyes noting and taking stock of each arm, every blade, and more importantly the keys to the cursed manacles. He tried out different scenarios in his head, but each ended with either Aldrin foolishly stepping into a blade or the bumbling priest knocking into a brazier and setting the tower aflame. Sighing, he dropped his head and listened into the conversation.
Isa grumbled, stumbling again to the ground. Her legs were unsteady beneath her ever since she came to, midway through being shoved down the narrow passage into the makeout cave. That was a bit like dropping an angry cat into a bath, a few of the soldiers still sported scratches and bite marks. But her energy was obliterated quickly and she'd fallen to her knees. The soldiers bound her hands quickly and kept their distance, afraid they'd react against their commander's orders to keep the prisoners all alive.
Kynton offered his hands to her, the only one not in chains. The soldiers were uncertain what to do with a man of the gods in their midst and offered him the ultimatum of, "Come with us and we won't kill you." This took quite a few dramatic pantomimes to get across before Taban curtly translated for them. After the Avarians realized the dark one was fluent, they whispered only short commands behind their hands.
The witch tried to roll back to her feet on her own, but fell back on her haunches, getting a large mud splat all over her behind. Again, the priest offered his hand to her, "Come now," he chided to the angry and filthy witch, "it will not bite."
Hating herself, the soldiers, her mother, and especially the priest she nodded her head, allowing Kynton to take her hands and lift her up. Her head rose proud, even through the exhaustion of a near total cataclysmic magic blowback and a forced march over a day and a half. The priest stepped back from her glare and almost cast the eye at her.
"I promise, I will not tell a soul," he whispered.
The soldiers bickered some more, their furred leader not getting the answer he wanted. There seemed to be some factions within the group. Aldrin watched as the pair rose up, and the tension in their muscles as they addressed a possible superior as if he were a piece of snot dangling out of a stable boy's nose. The crisp Avarian was coming to a crescendo when another voice broke across the courtyard.
A man limped from the doorway of the keep, his hand draped protectively over his bandaged side. In strange sympathy, Aldrin's own wound cried out to its kindred. His face was gaunt, more so than the others, and a wanness clung to sinking cheeks. Age circled his eyes like a dog on the hunt, but still he pulled himself high, ordering to his two soldiers. The men both stood straight up at the limping man's approach, saluting. He argued back with them about something, probably how we're all in this together, there's no I in team, and let's get out there and kill some people for the Emperor. The limping man pushed past furred soldier, shoving him off to the sides as if he were an insignificant speck, and stood before Aldrin.
The prince tried to rise, his meager height bringing him barely to the limping man's chin. Something in him seemed familiar, not the scarred and broken face, but the barring. The command of every moment in his life. It must have struck the limping man as well, for he pulled his heavy hand away from his wound and placed it upon Aldrin's shoulder. Leaning in closer to inspect the outline of the face, he mumbled in passable Ostero, "Dark hair was better."
The General rose again and turned to the furred soldier, who passed him the blade of Cas. He took the sword, peeked beneath the leather wrapping, and, scowling at their discovery, said for the
prisoners to understand, "I will take them to Vasska."
Marciano scowled, an expression he'd been unable to shake since they took the tower. He didn't bother to threaten or cajole the prisoners, only walked with his measured march into the main gate of the keep and towards the hall that Vasska appointed as his own. One of the serving girls, a mousy thing that whimpered whenever a soldier passed squeaked at the line of chained people passing before her. The one in blue, and oddly unbound, bowed momentarily at her before the sandworm kicked him in the backside.
The General chose to ignore it all. Secretly, he'd hoped the scouting party the Emperor specifically chose to send out into the wild, and did not inform his general of until they'd taken the tower, would return empty handed. Vasska's beloved Springday would pass unrecorded and they would all head home before the Osteros could raise their proper army. As well as the Huntars, the Bulgers, and the Whits. Talk of rebellion was rife, even amongst his own adopted men. They splintered at the slightest hint of disagreement. It made mealtime a real treat, with the whimpering Ostero servants scuttling off to their corner for fear of the ravages of the soldiers, while his exhausted men glowered into their bland meals and clutched harder to hidden daggers. Only by the grace of Argur would anyone make it out of here alive.
Marciano walked around another of Vasska's relics placed atop a stone altar, this the hipbone of Argur's favorite demi-god, someone so obscure Marciano called him "mumbledegoop." He'd have kicked it to the ground if his side weren't aching and his head pounding. The priests that flocked around the Emperor were as useful with healing as they were at fighting. He'd had to rise from the sick bed, kicking and pushing a few aside, to clean and bind his wound himself.
Passing the long tables, which lay unused as only twenty or so soldiers hovered about the place like misplaced bees uncertain where they'd left their hive, Marciano clapped his heels against the hard Ostero stone. He grumbled a bit louder, and the priests that survived their first assault rose, their heads recently shorn as was the custom when entering a new dwelling. They bumbled away from the head table, a purple runner with edges in ivory and gold its solitary decoration. Only the bowed head in the middle didn't rise. It continued in its prayers as if the real world were as ethereal as the creatures it spoke to.
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