by Colin Taber
And found!
Kurgar hissed.
I found a spark from each of them, the fading lights weak and wavering, and chased by a smothering dark. Without hesitation, I took them into my care, fed them, shielded them, and then washed them in a generous share of my own stolen power.
They blazed into life.
Forged!
Kurgar growled.
Having secured them, I crafted a shell for each and filled them with strength. Back in the real world, I pressed heavily on their clammy chests to feel jellied blood squirt and cracked bones shift.
Beginning at my palms, warmth came to their bodies. It was there that I focussed my power as I worked to drag the Lord and Lady back. Colour returned to their faces, them gasping as their backs arched, while their eyes opened wide to bulge with shock and pain.
Beside me, Pedro fell to his knees.
“Sleep,” I whispered.
Their breathing calmed as their eyes closed.
Kurgar snapped, “Get out of here! Get out of my city!”
I stood and looked to him, pulling Pedro up with me. I then waved Sef across, getting him to stand with us as my dear old friend held Maria.
Kurgar snarled, “Go! Get out! Take your damned family and be gone!”
Exhausted, I said, “As agreed.”
Surprisingly, Kurgar’s anger was quick to fade, his scowl melting into a grim smile. “Not Sef, though. Our deal was only for your family.”
Sef paled.
I said, “He comes with us!”
Kurgar shook his head. “No he doesn’t, he’s not family – and there’s more to it than that.” He looked to Seig Manheim. “Go on, make your demands.”
Seig stepped forward. “Sef Vaugen of Kaumhurst, formerly a priest of Kave, and marked in that service, you cannot leave.”
Sef’s shoulders slumped.
“He must be free to go!” I insisted.
Seig said, “No, this is a matter between Sef and Kave. He must remain as his divine mark demands, for that is part of his punishment.”
“Punishment?” I asked, wondering if it had anything to do with me.
Sef turned, his face bleak. “My soul and service are promised to Kave.”
“You can go back on that – I’ll protect you.”
Seig called out, “Tell her your truth!”
And Sef cursed under his breath. “I can’t go, I’m sorry.” His tears began to flow as he handed Maria to my husband; she was sobbing too.
I begged, “Please Sef, come with us. If you stay here you’ll die!”
And Seig growled again, “Tell her!”
Sef swallowed as he wiped away tears. “I can’t leave because I’m marked, and must follow that mark’s conditions.”
“Who marked you?”
Seig bellowed, “Tell her, Sef, the coward of Kaumhurst!”
“What’s he talking about?”
My old friend shook his head in frustration. “My mark’s not from a rival god, but Kave himself. I’ve been damned for turning from battle, for choosing not to fight to the death...” And then his jaw froze, despite him staring at me as though he had more to tell.
Watching him, I could see the muscles of his jaw and neck spasm, while his eyes seemed to plead with me to be heard.
I could feel it, there was more to his tale. Sorcery hung about him to hold him back – the same kind of casting that ensnared me at my first meeting with Pedro.
He took a step towards Kurgar, but turned to look at me. “Go Juvela, I’ll deal with my penance and find a way to join you.”
“No, Sef!”
Seig called out, “Yield to your mark!”
Sef winced. “Go, while you have your family!”
“Sef!”
“Go, Juvela, find your place in things. I’ll see you again.”
Seig growled, “Get here!”
And with one last whispered goodbye he did.
Kurgar laughed. “Not all goes to plan, does it? Now get out of my city!”
I stretched out my hands, taking the opportunity to bless Sef’s soul and build a bond from it to me.
We would see each other again.
And then we rose into the smoke-heavy air, it giving way to the colours of sunrise. Pedro held Maria, as I used my power to lift his parents and us from the rooftop, and head towards the Newbank Gate.
Kurgar yelled, “You’ve stolen from the bloodline. I’ll have to kill eight others to make up for it. You’ve the blood of innocents on your hands!”
His words sickened me, but I couldn’t change what I’d done. In the end, I’d just have to make sure that bringing back Lord and Lady Liberigo was worth it.
Please, Schoperde...
Soon we'd be out of the city and safe beyond its walls. The following days would see us out of the valley and seeking shelter at Marco’s ruins. In that time I’d have much to consider: Could I somehow contact Dorloth and enlist her aid? I also had to be ready for Felmaradis, face my grandmother, and find a way to help both Marco and Sef.
And what of Schoperde; could she really be dead?
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The End
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Continue the adventure in the next few pages!
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Ossard’s Hope
Ossard’s Hope
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Book Two
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The Ossard Series
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By Colin Taber
For my readers
Most especially the crew at our Facebook fan page.
Without your enthusiasm and encouragement
a great deal less would get written.
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Also thanks to;
Mum & Dad, Brad & Iris, Jen, Lee & Lucy, Melissa & Brendan,
Millicent & Simon, Stefen & Janet, Paul & Suzanne and Tanya.
The Truths of the World
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Three races of man separated by the ages;
The high, the Lae Velsanans;
the numerous common-men of the middling nations;
and the lowly Saldaens.
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Three branches of magic, each with a league to control them;
Mind, governed by the women of the forbidden Sisterhood;
Soul, wielded by the priesthoods of the faiths;
and Heart, regulated by the Cabal of Mages.
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Three realms of existence;
Ours of soil;
the Celestial of souls, gods, and magic;
and the Elemental.
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Three stages of godhood;
Avatars, seeds within mortal shells;
the New-Born, awakened gods upon our world;
and the Elevated, those matured and raptured to the next.
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And all in a world forged by the goddess, Life,
in partnership with her husband, Death.
Yet now they are estranged and waging divine war,
a war that promises doom for us all.
Maps: The City-State of Ossard
Maps: Northern Dormetia (west)
Maps: Northern Dormetia (east)
Maps: Ossard & The Northcountry
Maps: Fletland & Environs
A Prelude In Two Parts
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Part I: Falling Ossard
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People fought; men, women and even children; Heletian and Flet; Loyalist versus cultist and the followers of the New Saints. Doom was coming. Weapons swung to cut and stab or just to crush and kill. Blood ran free in Ossard’s gutters, with all of it lit by fire, flaring as the city’s buildings began to burn, while embers rose to carry the fury and condemn whole streets to a future of ash.
Grandmother looked into the living world from the black and blue celestial void. Her soul was strong enough now to do more than she would have ever dreamt possible when she’d first been condemned to her ghostly existence after being burnt at the stake by the Inquisition. Back then, weak and frail, she’d begun eating morsels of soul stuff s
o as to grow in strength, until she could devour whole souls. Now, she was strong enough to finally deliver on the curse she’d cast against her murderers that had so marooned her.
And she couldn’t wait for the chance!
Back in the mortal world, over ten thousand were dead in the city, with more to join those corpses before the coming dawn was through. Grandmother planned on taking as much power from that feast of souls as she could get away with, a feast not meant for her, but the very gods. Yet, she’d risk stealing from them because of the gain in power.
With power came opportunity!
The opportunity that loomed was the chance to cross back into the realm of the living, the unfolding chaos bringing the two realities closer, blurring the boundaries between worlds. Once there, by possessing a discarded mortal shell, she’d make her lone dream reality; a dream of vengeance!
The Inquisition would bleed a river!
Grandmother had two faces; a warm, maternal half built from her living past, and the colder creature forged in the void by her hunger for revenge. As she grew in strength, so did her disharmony. Usually she wore the face of whichever personality dominated at the time, but now she began to split amidst her boiling power.
Like a conjoined twin, for the first time, the dead grandmothers could face each other.
“Why would you want to return to the mortal world; our place is here?”
“I’m yet to get my revenge, not just on the Inquisition, but also on that bastard Anton!”
“Revenge has its place, but it’s no reason to go back. This is a decision for both us, not you or I, but we, for we are bound, despite how much we have grown in difference.”
The celestial about them, normally a cool and calm void of darkness marked by soothing washes of indigo, was now a place of white hot sparks and blazing waves of electric blue. Hundreds of thousands of life-lights flared in the chaos of the city’s fall and were further stirred by others who disturbed the void’s normally placid currents as mortals called upon divine blessings, power for cabalist castings, or worked ritual magic. Yet, all of that was dwarfed by the squalling interest of the very gods, whose gaze caused the void to seethe.
Amidst it, circled by scores of enslaved souls, the two factions that made up Grandmother argued over their single fate. One side, the kinder but weaker, couldn’t compete with the bitter half that had grown so strong on soul-feeding as she’d basked in her hatred.
“I want this chance, not just for revenge, but for justice!”
“And what will you do with it? Claim Inquisitor Anton and then be marooned in the mortal realm?”
“I will take more than him, for the Inquisition will come to claim back the city, and when it does, I will bring them crashing down!”
“How can you know?”
“They’ll come, they’ll have to – or they’ll lose part of their precious Heletian League!”
“Our concern should be Juvela. We should be working to see her through her awakening.”
The bitter half glared at the maternal side. “You can look after her if you will, but I’ve had enough!” And with that she grabbed at the nearest of the enslaved souls and drained them. Blinding light flared, and for a moment a way opened, a way that led back to the mortal world.
A Prelude In Two Parts
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Part II: Rising Yamere
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The Lae Velsanan, tall and lean, ran his fingers through the congealed blood that had puddled on the stone steps. The obscene pool lay dark in the night, but showed off its vivid scarlet whenever the wild fires around Market Square flared. Forwao stood before the Malnobla, the grand building from which all power in Ossard had flowed, but now, all around it, the city fell only into riot and ruin.
Ossard was falling – just as he’d foreseen.
Beside the Lae Velsana, despite the late hour, a small abandoned girl played next to the pooled blood. Above them, warm drips of the rich fluid fell from the strung up body of Benefice Vassini, his twitching form dangling from the Malnobla’s grand balcony, half burnt and stuck full of arrows.
Forwao had come to witness the fall and was now almost ready to leave. He was only waiting to see her. As he waited he decided to work one small mercy, one of the few to grace Ossard on this most terrible of nights.
From above, the Benefice moaned; he’d been kept alive by a curse that refused to let his soul break its link with his ruined body, stopping him from finding peace. The cultists had so bound him to make him witness not just the fall of the city whose spiritual well being he was responsible for, but to do so in slow agony.
Forwao rubbed his bloodied fingertips together, spending power to counter the cultist curse. Above, the Benefice sighed and found his release. At the same time, Forwao also sensed her arrival, for he was the Chronicle of Yamere and was here to fulfil his divinely appointed duty to record history.
He could have used the powers gifted to him as part of his office to have seen this from afar. Instead, he’d chosen to come and bear witness, for he knew this was an important dawn coming. This wasn’t just history, but an Age’s turning point.
And there she was!
She was so powerful – and turbulent!
She glanced at him and the horror about her, but was resolute as she marched from the chaotic square, bodyguard in tow, heading for the Malnobla’s doors as she went to secure the freedom of her family. The only distraction to her determined mission was her roiling hunger.
And that was exactly as it should be!
Forwao dipped his head in respect, but once she’d passed he didn’t linger, making his way down into the chaos of the square where the city’s factions brawled.
It was his job to know things, and he’d been graced with the tools needed to record everything that would shape Lae Velsanan history – even if it were sourced from a middling. Right now, he used those tools to walk through a yawning portal, seeing him leave the bloodstained cobbles of Market Square behind.
His next steps landed on the marble of his garden courtyard half a continent away: He was back home at the heart of the Fifth and Final Dominion.
Forwao took a seat on a carved bench that overlooked an ornamental pond, as he pulled his cloak about himself against the cool of the night. Here, he gazed up from his courtyard, a place unlike so many others in the surrounding pillar-city of Yamere, the towering capital of Lae Wair-Rae. This was a private place, a space walled not for boastful show, but instead for quiet reflection.
His long blonde hair hung past his shoulders to occasionally be caught by a dull breeze. It blustered weakly, but in every direction, and in that it reminded him of the chaos unfolding where he’d just been.
Doomed Ossard...
He’d walked those bloody streets, them littered with the dead. Now, in peace, he sat a vast distance away, moved by the divine aid that his office bestowed.
He’d even seen her; Juvela.
Just the thought of her brought tears to his eyes, born from both grief and joy.
There would be such suffering, and so much of it hers to bear!
He shook his head at the thought, trying to free himself of the melancholy that would claim him if he dwelt on such things. Simply, not all lives could be fair, just as they couldn’t all be long and prosperous. Sometimes people were fated to teach others through their suffering, just as sometimes souls were there to be sacrificed for the world’s sins.
Forwao dragged his thoughts away from such darkness: Soon it would be time for him to speak of what had happened, to tell of it to his High King. His message would be backed up by reports magicked at speed from the Dominion’s colony at Quor.
Later today, the High King would send his own message. In the end, it was the most important of the many messages being sent as Ossard burnt, for it was the one that would carry a threat.
The threat of war!
The message would go to the Holy Benefice of the Church of Baimiopia and would be solely concerned with events in Ossard. It would
see High King Caemarou threaten to take the city-state himself and make it a Lae Velsanan colony if the Heletian League couldn’t reclaim it from the cults by the first day of spring – a timeline that would give them just over a season.
With that message many would fall, not just people, but in time, cities, kings and nations. Today, an age of the world began its end.
And, Forwao the Chronicle, despite his divine talents, couldn’t see anything for certain beyond that. Such a truth gave him cause to smile, for in that lay all kinds of possibilities.
By My Own Hand
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A Second Belated Introduction
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There are many things in the world that we can’t understand – even for an awakened god. So here, in an effort to make your understanding of this record smoother, I intrude to explain how I have structured this second volume.
During the chaos of those dark days, as Ossard fell, it was hard to follow all that was going on. Consequently, some of the knowledge I recount here actually came to me later, or more so, its clarity did – long after its first arrival as rumour, whimsy or intuition.
Back then, some guidance came to me in visions and dreams, but a good portion of it – most of it, in fact – came via the celestial bond I’d established at my parting with Sef. Originally, I’d set that link to feed him the strength he’d need to survive Kave’s trials. Over time the bond changed. Quickly, it also became a link between our minds and even grew to include those closest to him.
That window on his life came at the same time I began to wrestle with my own failing health. My unfortunate turn was caused by the first stirrings of my rousing addiction to soul feeding, for that curse moved to strike at me very early on.
