by Colin Taber
Then the sky winked.
In a moment everything changed.
A coldness rose in me to make my soul shiver. The voices within whispered in frightened tones, their fear making them quake.
Something terrible was coming, and then even the Inquisitor lost his grin.
I heard Pedro gasp behind me.
As I began to turn, the voices began whispering bittersweet sympathy, urging me to be brave. Then I heard Maria's mind-voice, and she only had two words to say, “Bye, Mama.”
I turned to see Pedro staggering back as his arms tightened about Maria. They both stared with wide eyes at a swirling vortex of darkness that opened up in front of them.
“No!” I screamed.
The crowd cried out.
Beside me the Inquisitor turned to face the challenge.
The vortex sucked at the light, the dark within it chill and malicious. Out of it stepped the robed man I'd first seen almost five years ago, the cultist who'd taken the redheaded boy.
I hated him!
I yelled, “Get Maria away!” And then rushed forward to put my body between them.
Pedro stepped further back.
Behind me the Inquisitor chanted.
The robed man, calm and in control, looked straight at me. A hungry grin split his face to reveal bloodstained teeth. “We're well past that now, we don't just need children.”
The thought hadn't occurred to me.
Was I his target?
Pedro called from behind, “Juvela!”
I looked over my shoulder.
Pedro stood with his arms pinned by four cultists while a fifth snatched Maria.
I turned my back on their leader to lunge for my daughter.
More blackness arose about me, not of vortexes, but swirling robes. We were outnumbered.
Sef charged through the ballroom, heading for the doors to the balcony. Despite his desperation, I knew he wouldn’t make it.
In the square below, the people of the city began retrieving their discarded oleander and amulets. A voice called out from amongst them, “The Lady of the Saint is forsaken!”
Something then hit me from behind to send me sprawling.
I blacked out for a moment, but then came to. Ignoring the pain, I tried to get back on my feet, only to realise that it was already too late.
A dozen cultists stood at the far end of the balcony with knives held to the throats of Lord and Lady Liberigo, and Pedro and Maria. Dark vortexes swirled about them, ready for their escape.
Pedro looked to me with fear in his eyes, and with my celestial vision I saw the colours of life drain out from him. I could see his fate; a pale, stiff, and cold body lying butchered and cursed, with his soul eaten by ritual magic.
Their leader strode past to join them. “We don't just want children, now we need whole bloodlines.”
I cried out.
Inquisitor Anton stood behind me still chanting his prayer.
The cultist leader laughed and then ushered his people through their vortexes. I got up and leapt after them, but only succeeded in grazing myself on the balcony’s paving.
They were gone.
Sef cursed as he finally got through the doors.
The Inquisitor finished his prayer, one I now recognised as the litany for the dead. He’d never intended to stop them.
On my knees, I threw back my head and wailed. My heartfelt cry fell into the long and deep notes of Schoperde's song of sorrow.
Anton cursed my heresy before kicking me in the back of the head.
The darkness that followed was a mercy.
Part II
-
Ossard, The Pious Empire
9
-
Sorrow
-
I awoke in my parents’ home, nestled amidst the linen of my childhood, and in the familiar surroundings of my old room. My mother sat beside me mopping my brow with a cloth, while whispering for me to be still.
For the briefest of moments I lay calm and blank, until the agony of my daughter's goodbye ruined me afresh.
She was gone!
That misery was then doubled by my memory of Pedro having a knife held to his throat as he too was taken. I cried out, “My family!” and struggled to rise, but my mother's hands held me down.
“Hush, you can't do anything for them now.”
I gave up my failing efforts. “What happened?” And behind her I could see Sef standing at the doorway with downcast eyes.
“In the absence of Lord Liberigo, Benefice Vassini has claimed rule of the city. There’ll be a proclamation tomorrow at noon.”
No wonder the Inquisitor had done nothing; the kidnapping of the Liberigos had delivered control of Ossard to the Church.
“What kind of proclamation?”
“Your father says that the Benefice and Inquisitor have claimed governance, and that the Council of Princes is to be disbanded.”
“What about the other council members?”
“They’ve all been taken.”
I was stunned.
She went on, “And Pedro’s brothers are too far away.” His three older siblings acted as ambassadors in distant Porto Baimio, Lixus, and Vangre.
“Sweet Schoperde!” I whispered.
“Oh Juvela, there’s such misery in the streets!”
I struggled to sit up, and this time she didn’t stop me.
My mother took a deep breath. “There was a new round of kidnappings. So many have been taken that they’ve stopped ringing the Cathedral’s bells. People say that well over a hundred are missing, including all of the council, and five of their family lines.” And then tears overwhelmed her composure. “The city is ungovernable.”
“Pedro and Maria?” I asked.
She just shook her head.
They were gone, my husband and daughter – gone!
My own tears came and their issuing hurt, them running hard and hot.
Some witch I was, something I’d still probably die for, yet all I could do was sob.
I'd grazed my hands and knees back on the balcony. My once smooth skin now swelled black and blue, and spread with rugged scabs, but the real hurt lay underneath. My heart wasn't just bruised, it lay smashed and ruined – trampled by an army of cultists and then worked over by the Inquisition.
It seemed that the Church had got everything it wanted; control over the city, a free hand to deal with the cultists however it saw fit, and then perhaps me. Would Anton still allow me to go into exile? I doubted it. I couldn’t in any case, not until I knew I'd done all I could to save my family.
My family...
-
That night, standing at my old bedroom window, I looked out across the rooftops and watched the distant warehouse of the ritual burn. The flames leapt high in flashes of orange, blue, and yellow, fed by oil and wood. They consumed the building and my memories of a city forever changed. The Ossard I'd grown up in, the free and easygoing place where anything could be bought or sold, the city known as The Whore, was gone – and I dreaded what might replace it.
Taking in that sea of countless rooftops only dragged me further into despair.
Where could they be?
Even the most thorough search would have trouble finding them, it complicated by a tradition of giving buildings hidden cellars and exits long ago used to avoid raiding pirates and tax collectors. And if the orderly districts of the city would be difficult to search, then the slums would be all but impossible. The filthy warrens of tightly packed buildings and twisting alleys dominated the city, including most of Newbank, the opposite riverbank, along the city walls, and around the port.
It seemed hopeless.
For a real chance of finding them I needed help. Quite frankly, I needed a miracle.
A knock sounded at the door. I turned to see my mother enter and Sef's shadow haunt the corridor behind her – as always he watched over me.
She said, “Your father’s at the Guild, they're talking of organising searches
. Don’t worry, they'll find them.”
I nodded, but wasn’t much cheered.
She carried something behind her back, something heavy that strained her arms. “I have something for you.”
I finally smiled and went to her.
She held before me an old book, something thick and dusty. It was no ledger, no family tree, nothing at all like that. Within me, for the first time since Maria and Pedro's disappearance, the voices again whispered.
Mother said, “It was your grandmother's.” She shook her head trying to fight off tears before pushing on, “I don't know what it is, but she used it. I think it gave her power.”
The strongest voice in my head whispered, “The Book of Truth!”
And I was sure it was her; my grandmother.
I reached for the tome amidst a rising babble of head-bound voices and could feel the power within me begin to stir. My fingers touched it and the voices gasped.
Hope was here, hope, hope to see Pedro and Maria returned!
I took it from my mother’s trembling hands.
My sense of awe faltered, and then crumbled, giving way to despair. “Mother, I can't read!”
She guided me, forcing me to turn and put the book down on the bed. With a smile, she said, “Neither could your grandmother.”
“What?”
She indicated the closed tome. “Just try it.”
I opened its stiff leather cover, stained where so many hands had held it, to reveal brittle pages yellowed with age. They spread before me covered in lines of dense script marked by slashing and generous strokes. It was beautiful. Before I knew it, I found myself running my fingertips along them, and with that the voices in me spoke, “...their only choice, for the Goddess of Life existed in a time of only one other god, Death, and between them, together and in union, they forged a mortal world...”
Stunned, I lifted my fingers from the page. The action brought silence. I turned to my mother and said, “I think I know it!”
My mother embraced me. “You should rest. Your father will do what he can with the Guild, and perhaps tomorrow we’ll see what you can do.”
I nodded.
She broke her grip and step by step backed away. She remained scared of the magic, the Church had done that to her, but she knew there was more to it than the priests’ dark dogma of fear. When she reached the door, she said, “I’ll bring up a lamp in case you wish to read.”
I smiled. “I'd like that. Thanks, Mother, you’ve given me hope.”
10
-
The Book of Truth
-
In the bedroom of my childhood, by the light of a lone lamp, I let the voices read to me led by the strongest, Vilma, my haunting grandmother. She was there to help, to see me through this awakening, and to see me become more than I was. I felt her presence, and almost glimpsed her, as if she was woven of drifting smoke.
Never did we speak to each other, but read on she did. I listened to her whispering voice as my fingers slid along the tome’s lines of slashing script. She didn’t tire or miss a word, she just continued on, through the night’s long darkness until the flames feasting on the warehouse faded, and up until the coming of dawn.
It was only a start, and we both knew it, but it left me forever changed.
-
Afterwards, it was hard to describe how I felt.
I sat by the window lost in thought as the sun rose to wash over me with its golden rays.
Strangely, I felt born anew and so alive, but also cold and numb. No, it was more than that. I felt uncomfortably chill and deathly stale.
I wondered at that, at such contrasting sensations – life and death. Perhaps in some way I’d been reborn and in the process part of me had also died. Regardless, one thing was certain; I‘d begun to see the world differently.
The Book of Truth...
There was nothing in the book about how to use magic, let alone anything to help me understand what talent I might have. In that regard I felt disappointed, but it did speak of the cost of utilising such gifts.
It said that a responsibility came partnered with working magic, something that touched upon more than oneself. The passages concerning this were brief but grave and also warned of being greedy for power. It gave me a premonition, it rank with dread, and I knew that a day would come when that cost would weigh heavily on me. Still, I told myself, such worries were for another time. Fatigued and distracted, such a thing was easy to believe.
The beginning of my illumination came through the book, but it was only the start. The ancient tome wasn’t what I’d expected, neither a listing of spells, lessons of the magical, or a guide to a witch’s art. Instead it was a record of the world’s history, its true history, it holding the divine truth.
It left me shocked, but also exhausted and confused.
Astounding as it was, I just didn’t have time for it. I mean, all I really wanted was to find Maria and Pedro, but these new revelations, I wondered; could they help me in my search?
“Yes!” my grandmother whispered.
I couldn’t see her, but I sensed her as the air chilled.
The feeling didn’t sit well though, not after all that I’d read. From where I sat by the window, I looked back to the tome where it lay on the bed. It set me to shiver.
The divine truth...
It was unbelievable and so well hidden, yet obvious all at the same time. And it had already touched me, but until now I’d never known.
A war was raging, one that was being fought right around the world. It was a secret war, a divine war, and it pitted the goddess of life against the god of death. Sometimes it was a war of bloody battles, other times bandits and raiding pirates, or plague and famine, or even cultists stealing children from dark and dirty slums. Each of those happenings was another victory for Death and the bleak world he promised.
Unknown to most, this war had been going on for thousands of years, and only now was coming to a close. And that was the worst part, for Life, Schoperde, had all but lost.
Now was a time for the last empires to fall, sanctuaries to be overrun, and for peace to choke on gore. In the end there would be nothing left but ruin and whatever Death chose to build upon his bloodily won ground. That was why Ossard had become a place of abductions and murder with only worse to follow.
And here I was with so many burdens weighing down on me, and no idea of what to make of it. I wondered if it wasn’t my problem, but with my family stolen away that simply wasn’t true.
With a grim face, I turned back to gaze out the window. The sky above the city was busy with long grey clouds moving in from the west. By the light of the rising sun, something that should have painted them gold and amber, they only looked ominous.
Drifting in my thoughts, I eventually found myself lost. It was a sanctuary of sorts and led to another; daydreams, in particular, the dream that had given me respite from the lustful fevers inspired by my mother’s lotus.
It returned as before, with me passing like a bird over the steep and narrow valleys of the coastal sounds. Eventually, I arrived at an area of rolling hills, green and spotted with herb-brush that climbed from behind rocky bluffs and beaches. Nearby, but back from the water, and amidst the heights of those hills, a canyon opened wide. Its sides fell away deep into the soil with small streams of water seeping out to trickle down until they found its bottom. There, half hidden by mist, they watered a wondrous fern forest.
The images of my sanctuary left me feeling settled and content, but I had to drag myself away from it. It was an indulgence, and such daydreams weren’t going to save my family.
My family...
I felt confident that they were still alive. With so many people taken in the past few days the cultists had to be building to a ritual beyond anything they’d already run. Simply, I had to find Maria and Pedro before it was enacted.
A knock sounded at my door.
I got up and went to it.
Sef stood there taking in t
he sight of me, his eyes wide with surprise.
I smiled. I was changed, not only did I feel it, but from Sef’s reaction he could see it.
He said, “I came to check on you.”
“I’m good, the night has agreed with me.”
“So it seems.” His surprise faded, replaced with a cautious smile.
“At noon I'm going to go to Market Square.”
“For the proclamation?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll accompany you.”
I shook my head.
“Juvela, you’ll be in danger. They may try and take you.”
“Sef, I know I’m new to this, but I also know that I’ll be safe. It would be better if you went with my father and found out what the Guild is doing about searches. I’ll need to know when I return.”
He nodded, reluctant, but willing to trust me.
11
-
Founding The Pious Empire
-
For the first time in my life, I walked from Newbank to Market Square. I passed under grey skies, dawn’s dark clouds having moved in to smother the sun and lend the city a sombre air. The tight streets about me were again busy with traffic, but all of it subdued. It was as if everything held its breath waiting to see what would come, waiting for the Inquisitor’s unveiling of the new.
Before long I was crossing the wide way of the Cassaro Bridge and leaving my home district for Ossard’s Heletian heart. Here the streets ran thick with late-morning crowds, many also making their way to Market Square.
Oleander hung from many doors, twigs of its long leaves tied with bunches of the shrub’s wilting pink blooms. Some homes even hosted braziers or pots that sat in windows or doorways from which the bitter stink of their smouldering offerings arose.
The crowds grew thicker, but moved aside for me. I saw their sideward glances and heard their whispers, some from their lips, and others escaping their thoughts, “The Forsaken Lady!”
