The Priest of Blood

by Douglas Clegg

  You may wonder how the Old Ways and the New could live side by side, yet if you look around the world, even in the most intolerant land, there is some tolerance, particularly when those being tolerated have no land and no coin to steal. Charges of witchcraft were rare in those days, and when they were brought, underlying the charge was theft, or a poisoning, or adultery, where bewitchment may have been the action of the accused; but it was not the crime that committed the woman to death. But things were beginning to change, and as the abbey and its monks grew richer, and the baron sold more of his knights off to the Crusades for a mercenary’s share, I began to notice that the whisper of sorcery and witchcraft was growing stronger among those in Christendom, as if an enemy were growing in the ranks.

  Kenan told me about his fears of the witches in the Forest, and how even hunting the stag, he had once seen something that utterly terrified him and made him rush to the church for a blessing and a Mass from our Pater. “We chased the stag for three days, deeper and deeper into the woods. This was so many years ago, before you were even born, and I was still a boy, training with my own master. We did not understand how one stag could have the energy to keep running, without stopping for eat or drink. Exhausted, I ran with my master into a clearing, and there we saw our stag—which was snow-white and with a great crown of antlers that were of so many twists and turns that it seemed impossible. And there the beast went into a bog that was as black as night.

  “My master and I cut through the brambles, and waded into the bog. I had a spear, and he had his bow, but when I entered that water, I felt as if I might burn—it was so hot that bubbles came up from beneath its surface. Still, my master entered the water, though I stayed near the muddy land. I called to him to leave the stag to its fate, for the beast waited at the center of that terrible bog, as if watching the both of us, taunting us to follow it in. Then my master took one step farther as he aimed his arrow for the stag’s neck, and in that one step, his fate was sealed. He slipped, and went beneath the surface of the water. The stag went to the other side of the bog, slipping back into the woods. And I waded into the bog, calling to my master, wondering where he had gone. Finally, he came up, and he nearly thrashed me, thinking I was some demon.

  “He told me that when he went beneath the water, he saw such things as he thought never to have dreamed. He saw a war on Earth of demons and sorcery, and a woman whose cloak was the night as she swept down upon the world of men and made them tremble. He forbade me to tell this to anyone, then we returned to the hunting party to tell them that the stag had gone too deep into the Forest to be tracked.

  “The worst of it was that I, too, had seen something in that water. I never even told my master. Before the stag departed the bog, it spoke in some language I could not understand, but I knew it was a corruption of the Old Tongue. It spoke to me directly, although I could not understand it; still, I knew its message: we must never come to this place again, and were I to do so, I would die. I remember how unnatural that beast was, Falconer, with its white coat and its antlers that seemed like brambles themselves. The priest told me that the demons of old lurk where the Church has not yet consecrated. The deep of the woods is a deadly place, and the servants of Satan are everywhere there, waiting.”

  Despite the chill I felt at his story, I admit that it intrigued me, for I was not afraid of bogs or stags, and I wished to have great adventures. Perhaps my head had swelled in the years I had eaten the baron’s food, but my childhood in the mud-and-straw hut seemed another life, a dream I, a huntsman’s apprentice, the Falconer, had once had—a nightmare, perhaps. I had even, in my mind, created a family from the baron’s house, with Kenan Sensterre as my father, and my mother as the rarely seen matron of the castle, the baroness.

  In many ways, my master seemed to be the kind of father that children only dream about, although he did not suffer idleness or stupidity or falsehood without drawing a whip out and tying one of the working boys to the post. I had even suffered under this punishment, but it was meted out with such efficiency that I could not take offense, for I often stole an apple from the kitchen wench, or fell asleep at the edge of the pond when I should have been herding the swans to the butcher’s block. I took kindly to my benefactor. As I grew older, I showed him the secrets of teaching certain birds—mainly blackbirds—to speak. He told me that in his travels, he had seen birds with long tails singing songs in pitch, and promised that if he ever traveled to the southern mountains again, he would capture one and bring it back to me. Later, he decided that he couldn’t encourage this, because of the fears of sorcery that abounded, since many believed that talking birds were the Devil’s emissaries.

  I revealed the secret of my trainings of the falcons and, where possible, even the swans: being there the moment they emerged from the broken shell in their nest. “You must be the first they see,” I told him. “Even the falcon’s mother cannot be the nestling’s first sight. You must be the one. Your face. Your voice. Your eyes. Then the bird will follow your every move and will not leave your side. It is impossible to train them well if they already have flown from the nest.”

  Then, one day, he asked me again about the gryphon. “You told me more than a year ago of a legendary beast at the bottom of a well,” he said. “I have since heard of this well, although my kinsmen do not know of its location. Tell me, Falconer, were you telling me the truth about this?”

  I nodded. “As far as I understand what is true, sir.”

  “Then take me there,” my master said. “I must capture that creature.”

  Chapter 4

  ________________

  THE GRYPHON

  1

  It was a day of fog and omens of foreboding. We watched as an owl flew out from the gassy marshes, like a ghost in the misty air, although neither of us spoke a word about it. A family of beggars met our horse on the road, and this, too, was a sign of ill tidings, for beggars were considered blights and presagers of turns of luck. We passed by them, and I glanced back at the man, hobbled by nature, in a cart pushed by his too-weary wife and their three young children. I thought of my own family, and how close we were to being such as they.

  The enshrouding mist grew thicker as we passed along the swamp. My master now and then said a word to me about the silkiness of the water and how it seemed deep for that time of year. I glanced down from the horse and thought I saw faces in the cloudy water alongside the raised paths. We rode into the arms of the Great Forest together, me in front, leaning back against his body. I shouted directions as we came to the verdant path that twisted and turned and looped between trees and over hillocks. The mist lessened the deeper we went. His horse bounded over rotting logs and continued to gallop along what had once been a road but now was covered with fern until the Forest grew too thick around us. Then we dismounted, and he led the horse a ways before tying her up just before the last thin line of grassy, rocky path that ended completely along a gully.

  “This wood is dangerous,” he said. “The wolves are hungry this year. You have ventured this far before?”

  I nodded, pointing off through a bramble thicket. “Through there,” I said. “They call it the Forest Door.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “Folk,” I said, for lack of a better word.

  “Ah, commoners.” He grinned. “They’re not afraid of these woods?”

  “At times afraid,” I said. “At times, not.”

  “There are folk who live here,” Kenan said. “They are full of old devilry from the days before Christian charity. They cling to sorcery.” His voice took on a distinct tone, as if he were afraid to speak like this surrounded by the trees. “My father told me once of these folk.”

  “I have seen them,” I said. “But they are not devils. They live more humbly than even my brothers and sisters. And yet they are richer than kings in some ways.”

  “If they live in this Forest, they are trespassers and poachers,” he said sternly, but again I detected a quiver of fear in his v
oice.

  I jumped over a mossy stone and stepped into the emerald darkness as trees began to block the sun above us. I cut my arms and face a bit on the brambles. Kenan drew his knife and slashed at the branches, which were full of a purple berry that I’d been told all my life never to taste. Then, past this sentry of Nature, we both saw the ancient stone wall. It had more gaps in its masonry than when I’d been younger, and the overgrowth of vine and fern had all but devoured it.

  “It is not too much farther,” I told him, and ran to the wall and scrambled over the top of it. On the other side of the stones, I glanced around the thickset trees, and located the mound that I believed to be the well. When Kenan and I stepped up to it, he said, “This is a Devil’s Fountain.”

  I laughed, and he reached out with his hand and slapped me so hard I fell to the ground. Rubbing my cheek, I looked up at him.

  “This is the well I have heard of,” he said. “It was sealed so long ago that I thought it was simply a legend. And you say there’s a gryphon at the bottom of it?”

  I nodded, rising, not sure whether or not I should near him again. “I heard it once. It wailed, but was weak.”

  He leaned over the mound and began tearing the vines from its top, using his knife to cut away at the roots from nearby trees. “Get over here!” he shouted. “Boy, get over here!”

  I did as I was told, and went to help him clean off the well. If there had once been a seal to this well to block its opening, it was long gone. Instead, we both looked down into its darkness. A stench unlike any I’d before experienced wafted up from that pit.

  He whispered, as if afraid of being overheard. “Are you certain there’s a gryphon?”

  I nodded and whispered to him, “With a huge wingspan.” Then, to prove something to him, I leaned over the edge of the well and shouted, “Gryphon!”

  My voice echoed back up to me, then faded.

  I watched the round darkness and thought that if I could not prove my gryphon to my benefactor, he would likely tip my legs up and throw me down the well as punishment for a lie.

  But as we both listened, a sound came back up from the depths of the well.

  It was a faint oooo, then a screech that truly might’ve been the rasp of a great bird.

  2

  Kenan organized a party to go out into the Forest the next day, with me, the captain of the hunt, running on foot beside them. Rather than merely cut the brambles of the Forest Door, they brought torches at midday and burned most of it, managing to contain the fire so as not to overtake the Forest itself. What had been the Forest Door was now a desolate, blackened floor that still smoked with ash as I walked through it.

  I had begun to think that I had done wrong by leading the huntsman there. I saw in his gang of hunters an odd blood thirst. They shot arrows at rabbits and other small animals they encountered, leaving the dying creatures where they lay—it was a pleasure kill, which I never understood, given the hunger and want of my own upbringing. Then, when they reached the ancient wall, rather than simply leaping over it, they wished to ride on through. So, with several of these fellows, I had to help pull down stones from the wall, which was heavy work, and which exhausted my body and spirit. But still, we pressed on, and came to the well.

  Kenan was the first down from his steed, then came a young man just married named Reinald, who had come from the southern countries to claim his dowry and take up a station with the baron. He dragged down the net he’d brought, and a trident made of iron that was used to bait lions, he’d told us. “This will subdue any creature,” he said, his voice a muted growl.

  I admit that I got into this sport and became excited as all the men gathered around and tied a rope about my waist and shoulders, with another between my legs with a small plank as a seat of sorts. The gleam in the huntsman’s eye told me that there would be a rich reward for capturing a beast that few had ever seen. He passed me a torch and warned me about burning myself. I was to descend to the base of the well and see in what condition the gryphon remained, then they’d toss the net down. I was to secure it around the gryphon, then take one of the ropes at my waist and attach it to the noose at the edge of the net.

  “Use your fire if you need a weapon,” Reinald said.

  Only then did I become a little frightened of what I faced, but I saw the crew with their courage and bravado, and felt that this would be the crowning moment of my life if I carried it out.

  Down, down, down they lowered me. The light from my torch brightened the dark descent. I saw scratches and strange symbols scrawled into the damp, mossy stones. The smoke from my torch made me cough, and now and then I had to grip it tight for fear that I’d drop it below. They lowered me slowly, but it seemed like hours before I reached the bottom of the well. It was muddy, with perhaps less than an inch of water. I glanced up to the entry of the well, and it seemed like a pale coin above me.

  What I first saw as I brushed the torch about was that the well was wide at its base, like a large, round room.

  I saw the creature off to one edge of it. The beast lay curled, forming a circle, with wings that encompassed its form.

  I glanced up to the huntsmen above me, but was afraid to shout to them for fear of stirring the gryphon. I waved my torch as if it were a flag. As I did this, the torch’s fire diminished. Perhaps it was the damp air that took away the fire, but before I could do much more than stare at the creature, my torch had nearly turned to a soft ember.

  Then I heard a whoosh above me, and the distant shouts of the hunting party. I looked up and saw a twisted ball fall from above. It was the net. I moved to one of the cavernous recesses of the well and the ball of netting dropped, unraveling slightly to the wet ground. I quickly ran to get it, and began to unfurl it so that I could somehow get it around the creature. I touched something sharp and hard with my foot, and, using the last bit of torchlight, looked down. Were they bones? Had other creatures been trapped in this well along with the gryphon?

  Then, fearing that I had awoken it, for I was sure I heard a slight rattling noise, I glanced back through the shadows to the beast. Was it sleeping? Had it died? I didn’t know. I could not be sure, although I heard no breath from it. My torch diminished to little more than a spark, giving off a feeble candlelight so that I barely could see my hand in front of my face. I walked slowly to the creature, but in the growing dark, it seemed simply to be dead, and the stench I had smelled was a sulfurous odor off its slick wings.

  I took nearly an hour getting the net around it, greatly relieved that it hadn’t stirred. Even dead, this gryphon would be a prize. Just as I got the net sealed at its noose, my torch went out completely.

  I did my best with the ropes, tying them to the noose, attaching it to the rope from which I’d been lowered.

  Once I felt it was set, I gave a high-pitched whistle. As I did so, I thought I saw movement within the net.

  The men above began hauling the rope up, and it went fast because the gryphon was not as heavy as it had looked.

  Soon after, the rope dropped, and in the dark I felt for it. I knotted my seat and strap into it, and was lifted up again.

  When I reached the lip of the well at the top, I saw that all but the two men who had drawn me up were gathered around the beast in the net.

  My master’s face was ashen. He drew his sword, holding it aloft.

  Other men cut away at the net.

  The wings were not as I had expected. I’d been told that gryphons had wings with gold feathers like a hawk, but with a great shine to them. But these wings were like a dragon’s, and seemed like an eel’s skin pulled over arched bone. The wings were ragged also, but if, as legend had it, this beast had been in the well for as long as any of the crones’ memories, it no doubt had torn itself on rocks and the stone wall of the well trying to get out.

  The huntsman said, “It is the Devil himself.”

  I looked at him, shocked, and the others. This could not be the Devil. It could not be. The man named Reinald, using his
sword, drew back one of the wings.

  Beneath the enormous wings, a man’s body. It was shriveled and dried, like a corpse, and naked. He had barely an ounce of fat to him, and seemed a bag of bones. But when the wings had been drawn apart, his eyes began to open and his lips, ragged and parched, parted slightly. His eyes were pale white, and I saw for a moment his teeth, which were like a wolf’s.

  Swiftly, Reinald raised his sword above the creature’s throat, brought it down, and severed the head from its body. Then he plunged the sword into the breast of the creature, twisting it as if searching for its heart. He drew his sword out, and it did not drip with blood at all, which seemed more than miraculous to me. It was a chilling sight to witness, and I daresay that all of us had that feeling of ice in our veins at that moment.

  Reinald tossed his sword to the ground as if it were cursed. He looked first at the huntsman, then to me, pointing at my face. “You have brought us to the Devil’s Jackal, boy. This is damnation.”

  I stood there, shaking, confused, until the huntsman came to me and said, “I have heard of these creatures, Falconer. I have heard of them, but did not believe they existed. The wars brought this one here, I’m sure, from the East along with other pestilence. It is a demon that brings plague with it.”