The Crystal Crux - Betrayal (YA EDITION Book 1)

by A Werner

  Pero vomited.

  When the filth had been fully purged, he wiped some of the blood and puke from his face and lifted his voice, screaming mad at the woods. He hollered and screamed and hollered some more. His wailing was so powerful, it frightened off the fauna that had been following him. They could no longer gaze upon his countenance. Pero de Alava had become the most dangerous creature on Eagles Pass. He was a monster or a god or something worse. His spirit was sheer fire. ‘To heck with Melfi. I’m marching to Parthenope. I’m going to the palace and kill every member of the Fabbro family.’

  Pero kissed Zaon one last time. He surveyed his surroundings. The forest was quiet, calm and still, a warm summer night. Streams of silvery moonlight descended down to the flat earth through a variety of cavities in the canopy of the trees. There was no secret magic living here keeping the air cold and the foliage putrid. It was peaceful and smelled pleasant, and riled his troubled heart.

  Pero unsheathed Miriam and formally instituted the religion of rage. Man, woman or child, beast or angel, friend or foe, he could now slaughter and exterminate without conscience. There was no more compassion beating in his heart. ‘Pero is justice,’ so saith Pero.

  Chapter 37 – Inkling

  Pressing forward, gripping Miriam tightly, his armor shining, clanking and making a frightful sound, Pero de Alava strutted through the quiet forest without fear. He defied anything in the wood to test him; fight him. Volcanic rage burned in his veins. He was desperate to expend it, burn it up in a mindless blaze of ruination. The only problem was there was nothing out here to ruin. He was marching through the most peaceful place on earth and nothing is more humbling to a fiery spirit than dead calm. Each step forward into its soothing arms was shrinking his resolve.

  ‘Where are those wolves,’ he thought gritting his teeth. ‘Where are those demons? I want to ram my blade through their black hearts, if they have hearts.’

  After an exhaustive hour of strutting and fuming, chopping at tree and bushes, passing in and out of grey shadows and grey light, the outrage was nearly spent. He slid the shiny sword back in its sheath, unbloodied again.

  Pero de Alava was lost. He was somewhere in the Eagles Wood. He closed his eyes and breathed the fresh air. He thought on the words of his long-winded friend. “You have a divine purpose in life.” Pero had little reason to dismiss this conclusion. There was no logical reason he should still be alive and yet here he was. ‘Am I God’s enemy or just His tool?’

  Frustrated, Pero reopened his eyes and found himself facing a large, conspicuous structure of cloth and metal. He was stunned he hadn’t noticed it before closing his eyes. At first glance the structure appeared rather primitive. It was a signpost of some sort, a stretched out piece of soiled white leather, ten-feet-high, ten-feet-wide, supported by a frame of iron poles. An enormous electric blue eye with coal black liner, narrow on the left side, gradually growing wider on the right, was dyed into the center of the white leather hide. It was filthy, having endured years of sun, rain, wind and snow. The eye was facing the direction from which he had come, not the way he was going. Was it a warning or a welcome? The icon was strangely familiar but Pero could not demystify it at the moment.

  Pero spotted more of these enormous banners trailing off in both directions, equally spread apart, the next nearly twenty yards away. ‘I must be nearing a city.’

  Scrubbing the stubble on his sore chin, Pero proceeded slowly beyond the blue-eyed structure. Once he was standing clearly on the other side, in front or behind, he couldn’t be sure which, he heard the baying of wolves in the distance behind him. It was the first sound he had heard in more than an hour. He wanted to believe their howls were nothing more than a coincidence but his intuition said otherwise. A wee small voice had come alive inside of him, working hard to convince him that he had crossed a fateful line. He had either left somewhere or entered somewhere, somewhere important.

  He decided to continue his journey but his steps were much stealthier now, his constitution not so pigheaded and challenging. In fact, he started wishing his armor wouldn’t shine so brightly and be a bit less noisy. He didn’t want to be seen or heard by anyone or anything, not now.

  A curious glow began flickering at far point.

  Pero’s pace quickened as he moved faster through the staggered trees towards the light, the intensity of the illumination growing.

  ‘Which town is this,’ he thought nervously, a hint of paranoia returning. ‘It is so bright. It must be a town. Am I known here? How far from Capua have I travelled?’

  Pero suddenly stopped and leaned his left shoulder against the narrow trunk of a young ash tree. The star that had brought him to this place was a mere fifty yards away now and it was not at all what he had expected to see. It was bright, monumentally bright, but neither a town nor a village, not even an isolated assembly of thatched huts. It was a single family homestead with a detached barn. The yard was fully encircled by a unique arcade of forty fiery torches. The bases of the torches were huge, towering nearly twenty-feet above the earth. The intensity of their lofty dancing flames lit the whole clearing as if it were day.

  Disheartened, Pero dropped down on one knee. His blue eyes stared blankly at a campfire near the homestead. A cast-iron cauldron supported by a tripod hung in the blaze. Thanks to a gentle breeze, Pero could smell a minty herb in the cauldron. The odor teased his stomach. He was starving. He had eaten next to nothing all day, nothing but an orange from Gisele’s basket and a few hurried bites of pasta and cheese. And what remained of those food bits were expelled when he vomited after Zaon’s tragic ending.

  The door to the hovel creaked open. An elderly man and a teenage boy exited the house and approached the cooking fire.

  With a tall black ladle, the elderly man started to stir the contents of the cauldron before cautiously sipping a spoonful. When he offered the teen a taste, the youngster scoffed at him before sitting down hard on an equally hard bench.

  Pero blinked suspecting an insect had just stung him in the eye but there was nothing there. He turned his head slightly away from the campfire scene as another wave of unfamiliar intuition swept over him. That wee voice tried to raise his awareness of his surroundings. Pero refused to heed what he sensed was moving closer. Before he could wheel back around and watch the clearing some more, a cold wind brushed over his warm skin sending shivers down his spine. Something unseen gripped at his shoulders, restraining him. This sensation got his full attention but he wasn’t sure what he could do about it. The phantom seemed to have him in its clutches. He didn’t understand why but there was no fear, not yet. He merely wondered if this sensation were a specter or his overactive imagination playing tricks on him. Perhaps the stories were true. Perhaps he was losing his mind and this was what going mad felt like. And if he wasn’t barmy and this was supernatural, was the ghost restraining him or protecting him? Maybe this phantom was a friend, the long, lost spirit of his deceased father rising from the grave to aid his journey.

  The wee small voice refused to trust the specter and implored Pero to run.

  ‘There are no ghosts, no flying horses, no little men the size of leaves. This is war for my sanity.’

  Another terrifying gust of winter rushed up from behind him. This wind carried within its vapors the putrid stank of Eagles Pass. Pero turned to face it and the gust caught him straight in the face. His long black hair flew out behind him. ‘Magic. Black magic.’ Before he could be truly astonished, the hellish roar of a demon shook the earth. Pero’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Hell is coming.’

  No longer confident, Pero realized he had absolutely no desire to fight this dreadful beast. His feet were grounded by indecisiveness. He could picture Zaon’s black marbled eye as life escaped. ‘I’m next.’ He was afraid to make another poor decision. ‘Run? Stay? Cry? Scream? I’m always making mistakes and people die. My judgment is flawed.’ So he did nothing.

  The whispering wee voice that had been urging him to move finally had enough
of his indecisiveness and yelled at him, commanded him rather. “Run!” And Pero ran.

  He pushed off the ash tree with his arms and bolted for the salvation of the fiery torches.

  As he ran he felt the thin cold fingers of the ghost drawing back on his shoulders once again. His mind started to ramble. His imagination became his own worst enemy. The growls of the monstrous beast were deafening. He could smell its rotten breath in the air. The creature was going to open its cavernous mouth and bite down on him any second now. Those razor-sharp teeth that carried away a thousand pounds of screaming horse flesh were going to plant themselves in his skull. He was going to collapse at the first instance of pain and get stomped to death seconds later. The horror would be unbearable.

  Desperate, Pero left his feet. He jumped in the air and seemed to soar weightless, flying further than he thought humanly possible. He flew headfirst into the illuminated clearing.

  Without an ounce of grace, as if his body had been thrown there by some giant uncaring hand, Pero crashed down hard on his stomach inside the colonnade of torches. Flapping wildly like a landed fish, he flopped about in the dirt thinking this extra effort to stay in motion might save him from being grabbed. He knew it probably wouldn’t work but he didn’t know what else to do. He had never known such terror.

  Finally, considering nothing had yet happened, he spun around to face the dread beast like a man. ‘Come, demon, come.’

  Chapter 38 – Sanctuary

  “My Dios,” Pero de Alava breathed. “Cerberus has broken free of his chains.” In the tree line just beyond the reach of the light, a magnificent and frightful creature, a ferocious, snarling bear stood on its powerful hind legs, towering some twenty-feet tall, as tall as the torches. Cycling its claws maddeningly at the air, the beast snapped its steaming jaws, its bellowing roar a complex language of frustration and rage. Pero de Alava, in all his travels, had never seen nor heard of such a thing. It was terrifyingly beautiful.

  As the seconds passed, the Spaniard began to sense the wonderful magic of the illuminated sanctuary. Try as it might, the enormous bear could not enter this hallowed ground. It had to remain out there in the black.

  The creature appeared mad and started swatting the trees, breaking off limbs and branches. The projectiles rained down in an uncoordinated shower, failing to strike the target. It was an act of desperation.

  Discouraged by its failure, the humungous bear hunched down on all fours and started rocking back and forth, its expression morphing as thoughts seemed to whiz about its mind, studying the surroundings, reasoning and scheming, its thick head slowly twisting from side to side to side.

  In a moment of clarity, the bear edged forward and dared to touch the light. Its pearl black eyes fixed their gaze on Pero, hypnotically trying to seize him and draw him near. It was a hostile sensation that for a brief moment, clawed at the back of Pero’s eyes. A cold chill rushed through his body. This bear was more than bear. It was a man or it had the soul of a man, an evil man, a necromancer.

  The enchantment may have worked had it not been for the distance between them. With focused concentration, Pero easily dismissed the spell with a shake of his head, his blue eyes rapidly blinking, keeping the link permanently disrupted.

  The creature growled and vented a few last quarrelsome yelps before retiring. It slowly backed away, the thick, matted coat absorbed into the darkness of the forest’s arms.

  Exhausted by the ordeal, Pero de Alava touched his nose to the ground as the tendency to pray nearly got the better of him. He quickly extinguished that exercise as he reminded himself of his new goal. ‘I’m going to Parthenope to murder the Fabbro family.’

  The hiss of the campfire suddenly reminded Pero he was not alone. Righting himself quickly, he pulled his face up out of the sand and whipped around so as to be sitting on his backside. Pero eyed the lowly peasants with a quick and menacing glare. ‘There may yet be blood.’

  The teenage boy had taken up arms. He was a holding a stout piece of timber in his shaky hands, his hazel-green eyes trying to look intimidating and menacing. In a heartbeat, Pero sized up the lad and found nothing about him to fear. The teen was a strong fellow but way too nervous and clumsy to be bearing a weapon, even a stick. His stance was crude, unbalanced and technically amateurish, wholly unimpressive.

  The old man was regal, grey-haired and handsome and might have been intimidating had he chosen to be but he didn’t. He stood straight as an arrow, tall as a knight, his long, neatly shaven face wearing a warm look of surprise, the ladle from the stew pot resting quietly in one hand. He bowed his head respectfully as if offering welcome.

  Pero peeked over towards the house for a moment to see a tall woman in a blue frock standing at the open door with a small shirtless male child gripping her right leg.

  No one said a word.

  Pero, his manners returning, cracked a skeptical smile before rising to his feet and brushing the dust from his trousers. “May I enter?” He offered.

  “Enter you have,” the old man responded. “But you are welcome all the same.”

  Pero took a sure step forward before realizing his sword was missing. The symbol of his new religion had somehow fallen out of the sheath while he was flying through the air. He turned about and spotted Miriam resting in a hazardous place near the tree line where the humongous bear had been standing. It was still in the light, but barely.

  Rejuvenated and confident, Pero de Alava strutted to where the sword lay. As he lifted it, a trail of sand fell off the blade. He stood there for a long minute defying the darkness. He wanted one more look at that bear. His heart began to beat faster anticipating the reentry of the beast. Maybe, if he stood in this spot long enough, it would sense him and come. ‘Dios doesn’t listen. Can I tempt the devil?’

  He was disappointed. Nothing happened. Pero sheathed his sword and headed back towards the old man.

  The dark-haired teenager, his stick still at the ready, made an intimidating move forward. The old man stepped up from behind him and removed the branch from his clutches.

  “You are too impetuous, my son,” The old man chastised. “This is a time for talk. This knight has the advantage anyway, and would dispatch you in an instant.” He threw the stick on the ground. “Always so quick to quarrel. Have you not learned anything from me? Your temper will be the death of you.”

  The teen seemed both embarrassed and angry. “Yes, yout lessons are all the same. We are cowards. I must knuckle under and be diplomatic.” He turned his back to his father and trampled off towards the detached barn. “What did being diplomatic ever do for you?”

  With sad eyes, the old man watched his son disappear in the barn. For a long moment, he stayed lost in a thought or a memory before kicking the stick further away from him. He tossed the ladle in the cauldron and brazenly approached Pero. His right hand fell squarely on the knight’s left shoulder.

  “I don’t know how you survived your encounter with Major,” the old man gushed, “but God must think well of you. No human has ever entered Ithaca by way of those woods. It is unheard of.” The old man bowed a tad. “I am called Turstin and that hotheaded youth was my son, Tomas.”

  ‘All these pleasantries. First Gisele and her oranges and now this man and his soup. I’m here to claim a blood throne. I can’t do that if I’m viewed as something less than menacing.’ Pero, however, knew he required shelter and sleep. He couldn’t be something he was not, not right now anyway.

  Acting like the Pero of old, the pleasant administrator who routinely embraced his stewards, Pero placed a warm hand on Turstin’s shoulder. “I am called Pero.”

  Turstin led Pero to the door of the house and introduced him to his wife Druda and his nervous young son Dato.

  As the four entered together, Tomas reemerged from the barn. The brooding teen had been spying on them through a crack between the boards. He was actually a great deal more curious about this mysterious knight in their midst then he had originally led on. Pero de Alava w
as the first human being he had seen in years.

  Tomas returned to the cooking fir and grabbed his stick. With a heavy head, he sat back down on the bench and poked at the fire until the stirring caused the flames to mushroom into a more pronounced blaze.

  ‘I’m trapped. How did he get in here?’ Slowly Tomas turned his attention towards the tall torches. ‘If he found a way in, perhaps there is a way out. I could leave if only I knew how he evaded the bears and wolves.’ Tomas didn’t think long on it. It was an old thought that he never acted on. He knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Not now. Not ever.

  Chapter 39 – Winked

  The albino giant, Sinibaldus, sat in a very small tent that crowded him on every side. The crystal he commonly wore on a cord around his neck was resting on his worn fingertips, inches from his pale white face. His powder blue eyes glared crossly into the depths beneath the clear façade.

  The Bellerophon Crystal was energized, generating dozens upon dozens of colorful beams of light which bathed the tent room in a kaleidoscope of harmless fire.

  Sinibaldus could see beyond the light beams. His mind was exploring a supernatural world of garbled puzzling images which swam through a turbulent sea of multicolored fog. It was an ocular nightmare, a minefield of distorted information, faces, bodies, limbs, emotions, and voices that would drive lesser minds to utter madness. But Sinibaldus was not so weak. In fact, he was quite gifted. And upon this gift, he had added experience.

  The Magi, or Magician, as many considered him to be, strengthened his mental insight to withstand the bombardment of sights and sounds dashing through the Crystal’s heart. In a trance, he could actually touch the memories of others, their hopes and dreams, their fears and sins, and change the story. People would remember different, relive tragedy and heartbreak over and over. All this editing was exhaustive work that was getting more and more difficult with age, sapping numen from his body and leaving him with cold sweats and shakes. Sinibaldus refused to heed the mortal toll it took on him. Armed with the Bellerophon Crystal, he was like a god, visiting places he had never been, exploring space and time through the recollections of men and monsters, beasts and birds.