The Ossard Series (Books 1-3): The Fall of Ossard, Ossard's Hope, and Ossard's Shadow.

by Colin Taber

  Our precious wine, of the very little we had – and I was just drinking it!

  I replaced the goblet and lay back down, promising myself that I’d not be so indulgent again. Angry now, I resolved to sleep – yet remained tense.

  Before I knew it, I was sitting up and draining the goblet.

  I cursed myself and lay back down.

  Dark thoughts drowned me, some of sadness, others of regret.

  And then, like a serpent in the grass, my hunger came slithering forward to tempt me.

  I could feel all the souls about me; not just Pedro, Maria and our coming babe, but the others that were also nearby. I could sense them without even trying, so many of them, starting with Kurt and Baruna, my parents and my inlaws, and so many others.

  At first, I revelled in just sampling one or two, but then my increasingly drunken wits began to falter in my struggle for control. My hunger pushed me right up to boundaries I dared not cross, and then tried to lure me over them.

  I was surrounded by thousands of souls, all there for the taking!

  Just sensing them left me shivering. I buzzed with the feeling, a rush that grew and tried to overwhelm me. Finally, with an audible gasp and cry, my body jerked as I wrenched my focus away from them.

  Pedro awoke, startled. “What’s wrong?”

  I could only gasp for air while I shuddered.

  He took me into his arms. “It’s only a bad dream.”

  I began to calm down – well, as much as I could.

  “Juvela, talk to me?”

  I struggled with my breathing as my eyes filled with tears.

  He just held me.

  I clung to him. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice trembling, “I was afraid.” I choked off a sob.

  “Don’t be, I’m here.”

  And, unknowingly, he was right: He’d been a salve for me, something to soothe my burden.

  His touch might have been losing its power over my hunger, but if I took double the dose, perhaps it would be good for at least a few more nights. Desperate, I ran my hands down his back and moved to kiss him.

  He was quick to respond in giving me comfort.

  Chapter 6

  -

  Possibilities

  -

  Anton groaned in the darkness, but was yet to fully rouse. He’d been dumped back in the cell a while ago after his questioning, leaving Sef to see what he could do for him.

  The Inquisitor’s injuries had been of bruises, grazes, cuts, and, Sef suspected, some broken ribs. Lost as Sef was in the dark, he could still work Juvela’s hope, her grace mending the worst of his patient’s ills.

  Thank you Juvela, thank you for your comfort!

  Through Sef, her healing gift lingered, keeping both of them whole, though time would be needed for Anton to fully mend. And that’s what worried Sef, for he had no idea how much time they might have left.

  He was also certain that the healing this time hadn’t been as thorough or quick. That begged the question; if it was so, how many more beatings could the two of them take before they were finally beyond help and to be added to the smouldering pile of Ossard’s dead?

  Or, worse still; why was Juvela’s power failing?

  Something like the distance between her and Sef shouldn’t cause a problem, not for an awakened god in blooming health.

  But what if she was unwell?

  Anton moaned, bringing Sef’s thoughts straight to the one he’d been most trying to avoid: And what of Anton? There’d been a time when he’d come to trust his friend in the cell’s dark, to depend on him as he would fresh air or the sun’s light, but the revelation of his identity had poisoned that. When Sef thought of Anton, he couldn’t help but recall the terrible things the man had done; the declaration of Juvela as a heretic, her abduction by Loyalist thugs at his command, or the damn man standing by as Pedro and Maria were stolen away along with the Liberigos.

  To go through such a litany saw Sef’s anger stir. It made him not want to heal the man, but to grab him by the neck and throttle him.

  Easy, Sef...

  Yet, now they were cell-brothers – and the man had shown another side, one of sorrow and regret.

  Still, it was Anton who’d burnt Juvela’s grandmother at the stake!

  It didn’t matter how hard Sef tried to tackle the revelation of his companion’s identity; it was an almighty shock he was yet to come to terms with.

  What a bastard!

  Or was it; what a bastard he’d been?

  Anton had indicated that he’d been forsaken by Krienta for failing to stop Ossard’s fall, and now, instead, claimed to have seen the hope in Juvela.

  How likely could such a turning be?

  On the surface, Sef found such a thing hard to swallow.

  Yet, Anton seemed sincere, and here and now, locked in the same cell, he had nothing to gain from deception.

  How, by all the gods, could Sef discover the truth?

  The situation mired Sef in what could only be an endless debate. Right now, he didn’t know enough, he needed to hear more of Anton’s story. Sighing, he cast his thoughts elsewhere, and like a grappling hook, they quickly found something to snag upon.

  The rosetree returned!

  He smiled at the thought, but his joy only lasted a moment before falling into a frown.

  Such a miracle, but already extinguished by cultist axes!

  Or so he supposed.

  He shook his head and focussed his thoughts on Juvela.

  Dear Juvela, hear me and know I wish you well.

  Life goes on, hard as it might be, and continues in a dark and damp cell. At my last witnessed sunset, I saw what I was told was a wood of rosetrees you returned to a ridgeside deep in the Cassaro, past Goldston town.

  They were distant, but a marvel. A light was amongst them, it glowing golden in the soft dark of dusk, seeing me again stand in wonder at your power...

  “Sef?” It was Anton.

  He swallowed before answering, “What?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  He sighed. Once, not so long ago, he’d seen his anonymous friend as an anchor, but now he couldn’t help but be guarded. To be so made him feel guilty, but he couldn’t help it; Anton had once brought so much pain and fear. He was the enemy.

  Yet, perhaps he was changed...

  Regardless, it wouldn’t hurt to share his thoughts. Besides, they had the time to pass.

  Sef cleared his throat and said, “I was thinking of what I saw when they took me out of the cell.”

  “For your last beating?”

  “Yes, just a day or two ago, however long it was.”

  “And the memory of outside is still strong with you?”

  “Yes. The senior priest of Kave, Seig, took me to the roof at dusk and showed me the order that they’d brought to the city. The fires were out, but for one where they worked at burning the dead, and then, as the last of sunset’s colours faded over the sea to the west, he bid me turn east and look up the valley.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Well, at first I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at, but after a moment, I could see that something had spread out darkly across part of the north ridge far up the vale. It was on the ridge’s slope, and at its heart twinkled weak lights, them aglow in a soft yellow.”

  “Lights? What were they, fires?”

  “Far from it, though I have to take Seig’s word for what it was. He claims it to be a wood of rosetrees, something planted or somehow raised by Juvela and her people during their trek away from the city.”

  “The rosetree returned?”

  “And lit by some kind of divine light.”

  Anton sighed from the dark, almost wistful. “It sounds beautiful.”

  “Indeed, but Seig said that they were sending people to cut it down. I suppose it’s already happened.”

  “A crime!”

  Sef agreed. “Such is the world we live in.”

  -

  Tim
e passed in that dark place, the cold a constant in partnership with the damp. Rats came and went, but didn’t harry the two men, for the vermin preferred Sef’s old cell where the other prisoners remained, seemingly unconscious. While time was hard to measure lost in the dark, it nonetheless passed. The occasional soft wheeze came from their neighbours’ cell, but little else. Whoever was there didn’t stir, not even to call out in their sleep or moan in pain. In truth, Sef thought them terribly injured, knowing that such quiet could only signal their coming deaths.

  He tried to pass on what blessings of healing he could, but he’d never been very strong with the celestial. Aside from that, under the weight of his own injuries, he was in no condition to do much else.

  Most of all, what he tried not to think about was that with each fresh visit from the rats, the prisoners were probably, little by little, being eaten alive.

  Despite the macabre happenings close by, Sef and Anton found a strange kind of peace. Through moments of sleep and silence they shared that cell and occasionally would talk. They moved little, restricted by their pains and aches, yet, as time passed, so did their ills as Juvela healed them.

  When Sef felt strong enough, despite their lack of food, he decided it time to check over the cell. The whole idea had been triggered when he’d remembered the blade secreted away in the drain’s brickwork.

  As he rose and moved off, Anton, who’d been sitting next to Sef so as to share their warmth, roused. He’d been sleeping, or so Sef’d thought after listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing. Out of the darkness, the Inquisitor asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “Well enough, or as good as one can feel when half starved and left to rot.”

  Anton chuckled.

  Sef smiled at the sound, the soft laughter echoing off the walls of their barren home. It felt as good as sunlight. Before long, his own mirth joined it.

  Anton jokingly warned, “Be careful or you’ll shit on yourself.” He’d assumed Sef had gotten up to relieve himself.

  The big Flet burst out laughing anew, and before long the dark was a place of roaring mirth. He went back to sit down by his friend.

  Sef’s friend; Anton the Inquisitor.

  “Shit on myself? It’s too late, we’re already in the privy!”

  And then they joined forces to murder the silence.

  “Oh Sef, all cultists should be such fun!”

  On hearing that, the big Flet laughed so hard that he thought he’d wet himself. Finally, after they began to calm down, he wheezed out, “And inquisitors, too!”

  They awkwardly embraced, as Sef’s doubts faded.

  Anton offered, “They say laughter is a medicine.”

  Sef chuckled, revelling in the contrast between his warm feelings and their dire surroundings.

  They sat in silence for a moment, before Anton said, “You should get back to the privy, before you soil yourself – if you haven’t already.”

  Sef laughed at his words and did get up to return to his previous task. “I was checking the drain, there’s a blade hidden in the stonework.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I found it not long after I was first imprisoned.”

  Sef could hear Anton get up, letting out a soft groan as he rose.

  “Stay, you’re not well.”

  “I’m fit enough, even for a good old witch burning.” His words stopped. After a moment of silence, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  “Anton, it was meant as a joke, if but a poor one. Don’t trouble yourself over it – just don’t repeat it.”

  The big Flet could hear the Inquisitor come forward.

  “Sef, you’re a good man, and like me one who’s changed allegiances in these hard days. I’ve been abandoned by Krienta, him amongst the ascendant, just as you have left Kave for Juvela, even though her cause is in decline.” His hand found Sef’s chest, and then moved to pat his shoulder in the dark. “Oh, Sef, the woe that is coming! I have such burdens that I bear. That dark knowledge is a curse!”

  Sef didn’t know what to say to such a confession, yet found some words, as his own hand gave Anton’s a reassuring pat. “Share what you know, for what I hear is passed on to Juvela, and if it’ll help her then you can be relieved of some of your burden.”

  “She knows?”

  “She does, but I don’t know the how of it exactly.”

  Silence came, silence in the dark. Finally, Anton’s voice sounded, “Sef, I can see something in the celestial...”

  “You can still manipulate power, even without a divine patron?”

  “I’m strong enough to look, not really to do anything else. I can’t break us out of here or do anything of real use.”

  “That’s something at least, to see, I can’t even do that.”

  “Sef, she’s marked you, but not with a mark of hate, just one of love. She not only protects you with it, but follows your life day by day. It’s her that heals us.”

  “She’s our lady of hope.”

  “And renewal,” whispered Anton with a sudden and soft reverence. He added, “She must know what I know, for it might help.”

  “What, Anton? What do you know that she must?”

  “That Life is dead, or near enough to it.”

  “But there’s hope, there has to be?”

  “I suppose, but it’s hard for me to see it.”

  “You say near enough?”

  “Schoperde hasn’t done a thing in more than twenty years. Such a period can be but a day in the mind of a god, yet it’s not just that she hasn’t been seen or heard, or that she’s left her followers blessless or her foes curse-free, it’s that she’s also abandoned the Divine Covenant. She is bereft of life because she has no power, spending the last of it to seed Juvela and the others.”

  “How can you know such a thing?”

  “I’m sorry, Sef. She was already so weakened that none of the children of Death are surprised. They saw her efforts, the desperate strain, as her great being in the celestial broke up at the time of the seeding.”

  Sef could only shake his head, the movement unseen in the dark.

  “They say she used the last of her power, her very own life-force, to seed a final generation divine. She perished in the effort.”

  “Perished?”

  “Found Oblivion.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she was too weak to fight on alone. It was her last chance to create some resistance. A final hope.”

  “And you and the other faiths have been hunting her seeds ever since?”

  Anton whispered, his voice quaking, “Yes.”

  “How many have been found?”

  “Too many. Not all, but I’ve heard of dozens.”

  “Dozens,” Sef said wistfully, thinking of the power caught and destroyed. “Oh, what a waste!”

  “Yes,” Anton admitted, “I know of six caught in the Heletian League; one each in Lixus and Heletian Saldae, and two in both Greater Baimiopia and the Kramer. I’ve also heard of lone avatars found in Evora, Fletland, Burvoy and a dozen others in Lae Wair-Rae. And that’s just in Dormetia. The faiths of Death’s children have been watching. It’s said the rewards bestowed on those who discover the avatars are magnificent.”

  “Leaving Juvela alone as the last of her breed,” Sef said in sorrow.

  “There may be others; this final seeding has souls that are hard to find. It’s no doubt how Juvela managed to survive undetetcted for so long, and so there may yet be others. There’s also Dorloth in Kalraith, and perhaps that’s Juvela’s best hope. Whether Juvela seeks her out for refuge or to make some kind of alliance, it’s undeniable that the god of the gargoyles has matured and grown strong.”

  “Has anyone else survived the hunt?”

  “Dorloth is the only survivor of the god-hunt – at least, that I know of – and from a whole other age.”

  “Yes, the fall of the Lae Velsanans’ Second Dominion.”

  “There are those who think she’s avoiding her elevatio
n.”

  “Why?”

  “We can’t be sure...”

  “You must know something?”

  “Personally, I think she’s waiting for a mate.”

  “A mate?”

  “Yes, even the divine can want to love and have children, particularly if they’re alone and the foundation of a new race. I think she wishes to found her own pantheon, so that, if she’s elevated from this world, the gargoyles will still have a god amongst them to protect them.”

  “I’m amazed at what you’re saying.”

  “That’s why you must pass it on.”

  “Tell me; if Schoperde is dead, then what should Juvela do?”

  “I hate to say it, but I don’t think that this is a case of if. Schoperde is dead, the celestial’s equivalent of a rotting corpse – yet not even that now remains.”

  “But...”

  Anton’s voice softened to soothe Sef’s denial, “Yes, there’s always hope, but with each passing day it fades.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That Schoperde, Pordanamae, Maia, whatever name you want to give her, she’s all but spent. Her great works – this very world and others – are all beginning to fail. We can see her labours unravelling in fundamental ways: The trees died out in the Northcountry over a hundred years ago, the harvests fail more often than they once did, and similar tales can be found all across Dormetia, yet it’s only the start. It’s said that there are seasons where even the fish of the sea abandon their regular waters, seeing us come closer to a time where famine and pestilence will no longer be the exception, but the norm. Our world is losing its vigour.”

  Sef nodded in the dark. “I know it. I can’t deny the truth.”

  “And there are other truths to discover.”

  “Like what?”

  “That the gods, Death’s children, have also come to realise this, but in their enslavement are unable to stop it.”

  Sef cursed.

  “I think many of them now understand that what they’ve done is wrong, and that all life is dying. Yet, every day, through their addiction, they continue to eat of a pie that only grows smaller. They have doomed themselves, their followers, and all the worlds, but can’t fight their deep hunger. It’s too late to fix what they’ve broken, so they loot the ruin.”