Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Map
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Epilogue
Acknowledgements
The Adventure Continues
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Angel's Truth
Copyright © 2012 A.J. Grimmelhaus
All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any form other than that in which it was purchased and without the written permission of the author.
Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Illustration © Tom Edwards
TomEdwardsDesign.com
This e-book edition published August 2017.
Find out more about the author at: www.WriteHandPath.com
For Mum and Dad.
1.
Four words. Muffled, muted.
Any other sounds were lost as Tol put his shoulder to the door, winter-swollen wood scraping over the uneven stone. It was colder than usual, the door stubbornly resistant.
The knight shoved him, and Tol cracked his forehead on the oak, door reluctantly moving as he fell against it.
Another shove, harder this time, sent Tol stumbling off-balance into the abbot’s tiny study. The four words nearly made sense: almost identifiable.
He recovered his balance in three paces, the door already grinding back across the stone floor. His mind pieced together the muffled words as the door slammed shut behind him, muted echoes marking the knight’s departure.
We have been betrayed.
The words echoed through Tol’s mind as he took the final steps forward, the abbot’s desk only a few yards away.
Betrayal. A word never used lightly by the church. Nor its knights.
Tol stepped onto the worn rug, his feet finding the familiar threadbare patch at its centre. He had stood in this exact spot many times, listening to the abbot’s lectures and reprimands and trying not to anger the man who would decide his fate, the man who had trained and punished him in equal measure. Today felt different.
A faded tapestry loomed on the wall to Tol’s right, depicting the Seven’s defence of a wounded angel. He had seen it often enough he knew every detail, likewise the faded rug he stood upon, and the large desk in front of him, its umber hue. The abbot, too, looked little different: maybe older, more tired today. He looked small behind the oversized desk, the mountain wall at his back. Behind the old man’s head two iron hooks had been hammered into the stone of the mountain, and although Tol couldn’t see it, he knew a cobwebbed sword dangled point-down, crossguard straddling the nails. The room was almost the same as usual. Almost.
A Reaver - a knight of the Reve - stood motionless to Tol’s left, his hulking frame nearly obliterating all the weak winter light seeping through the lead-lined window. Another church knight had delivered Tol to the abbot’s study, and he had spied a third in the snow-packed courtyard. Betrayal was not a word spoken lightly by the church, and even less by the Knights Reve, those knights sworn to defend the Church of the Nameless Maker. Tol had seen their muddy white surcoats earlier and hoped, perhaps, that this rare visit heralded the knights choosing boys from the abbey as squires. That’s not why they’re here, he realised. Those four overheard words made their true purpose clear. They’re here to deliver the church’s justice.
But for what crime? That was the problem; there were so many to choose from.
How much do they know? Tol wondered as he felt the abbot’s grey eyes wash over him. I’ve been warned enough, maybe this really was my last chance.
‘What did you do this time?’ the abbot asked, an ink-stained finger crooked at Tol’s bloody lip.
‘Sir Erik is known for his patience,’ the old man continued, ‘so how did you provoke him into giving you that?’
‘Told him I could find my own way here and didn’t need a nursemaid.’
‘Yes,’ the abbot sighed, ‘that would do it.’
Now I know it’s bad, Tol thought sourly, his gaze drifting back to the huge knight at the window and the broadsword at his hip. If he’s not disciplining me for disrespecting a knight, it must be bad.
There was a sheathed sword lying on top of the abbot’s desk, but Tol knew the old man was no fool. And faster than he looked. Tol had learned that the hard way on the practice ground.
The knight’s the danger. A wall of muscle and sinew, still staring at something beyond the abbey’s walls. Tol glanced at the sword on the abbot’s desk. No, he decided, he’s probably put it there in the hope I’ll reach for it. The old man was sneaky like that.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ the knight said, turning away from the window, his surly features almost obliterated by a dark, unkempt beard. Behind him, through the fogged glass, Tol glimpsed a smudge of colour making its way up the snow-covered mountain path.
‘The church has a task for you,’ Tol heard the abbot say. He leaned back to try and get a better view out of the window, but the big oaf had shifted his weight, the window now totally obscured.
Visitors? It was the last day of the year, tomorrow heralding a new year and a new century – an odd time for anyone with sense to visit an abbey, not when there was such a dearth of ale, merriment, and most especially women.
Tol’s attention snapped back to the abbot, a single word piercing his thoughts.
‘—and deliver a message to the sisters there,’ the abbot finished.
‘Sisters?’
‘I have your full attention now, do I?’
Tol nodded and the abbot said, ‘You will journey to the convent of St. Helena and deliver a message. You must leave immediately.’
‘The New Year’s feast,’ Tol protested, ‘I’ll…’ He clamped his jaw shut. Two days of travel: a rare journey. And one with women at the end. ‘Never mind,’ he muttered.
The knight cursed. ‘Send someone else.’
The abbot gave a slight shake of his head. ‘I have made my choice, Sir Brounhalk,’ he said. His eyes lingered on the knight for a moment. ‘How long do we have?’
‘A quarter-bell,’ the knight said, ‘maybe less. I’ll buy you what I can.’ He strode across the room, and thrust his hedge of a beard in front of Tol’s face. Something hard thumped against his chest. He looked down and found a dagger in the knight’s hand, the sheathed flat of the blade pressed against Tol’s ribs.
‘You see my sister,’ Sir Brounhalk growled, ‘give her this.’
Tol nodded, taking the gift from Sir Brounhalk’s fingers. Before he c
ould utter thanks, the knight was already moving, reaching the door in three long strides. He turned back and addressed the abbot, ‘There’s a pack in my room,’ he said. ‘I won’t be needing it.’ His head swivelled to Tol as he wrenched the door open. ‘Demons take you if you fail, boy.’ The door thumped shut behind him.
The abbot moved quickly, wiry arms propelling him up from his chair. His ink-stained fingers brushed the red leather scabbard of the sword lying across his desk, and Tol watched as the old man lifted the scabbard with his left hand while the right gently grasped the sword’s hilt as though he might draw it.
Tol realised he was holding his breath, letting it loose in a ragged sigh as the abbot’s hand retreated from the hilt.
‘Take it,’ he said simply.
Tol took the scabbard, fingers tracing along the spiderweb creases in the burgundy leather.
‘Don’t dawdle, boy,’ the abbot snapped, ‘dawdlers get killed first.’
Tol smiled. If the abbot was still spouting his usual sayings, maybe things weren’t as bad as he’d thought.
*
The upper halls of Icepeak Abbey were deserted, soft echoes of footsteps drifting up from the ground floor and bouncing off the rough-hewn grey walls as the abbot led Tol towards the rear stairs, Sir Brounhalk’s heavy pack now slung across his shoulders. The familiar stale smell of moisture clinging to the abbey’s walls was more prominent here, deeper within the mountain. Unfinished corridors ended abruptly in half-hewn rock where the boys’ labours had been interrupted by chores or weapons training.
Tol was thinking hard. In less than a minute he had gone from believing he was about to become a punitive example at the hands of a knight through to hearing that he was being despatched to, of all places, a convent. Of course, he thought, this could just be an elaborate trick to lull me into complacency. Another of the abbot’s tests, perhaps, or a final cruel punishment: hope dashed at the last second. Life, Tol knew, was very often like that. So, too, were the abbot’s lessons.
‘Am I in trouble?’ Tol asked as they reached the ground floor, the old man leading him deeper into the mountain.
‘We are all in a great deal of trouble,’ Father Michael told him as they reached the cellar door. The abbot looked over at Tol as he fumbled with the handle. ‘Ah,’ he said with a trace of a smile. ‘The convent. You think the task before you too good to be true.’ The abbot smiled weakly. ‘So sometimes you do listen.’ He opened the door and started shuffling down the slick steps, the moisture here worse than the rest of the abbey. ‘The men you saw on the path are no friends to the church,’ he said as Tol followed him down the steps.
‘I can fight,’ Tol said, ‘you don’t have to send me away.’
‘Oh, I know that all too well, Tol,’ the abbot said, walking between the empty, cobwebbed wine racks. ‘And that is why you must be the one to make the journey to St Helena’s.’
Tol’s eyes narrowed as the old man led him deeper into the mountain. That sounded like a compliment.
‘They are coming for the secret at the heart of the Knights Reve,’ the abbot told Tol as they neared the wall, a mouldy wine rack teetering against the rough-hewn rock. ‘When they fail to find what they seek here they will go next to St. Helena’s,’ Father Michael said, stopping to face Tol. ‘You must get there first and warn the sisters.’
‘What se—’
‘There’s no time to explain,’ the abbot interrupted. ‘When you reach the sisters you are to tell them “the Truth is in peril” – those exact words, mind. Repeat them.’
Tol recited the words uncertainly, half his mind wondering whether the old man had finally lost his wits. The other half was wondering how he was supposed to get past the men coming up the mountain.
The abbot appeared satisfied, one crinkly hand darting up to grasp the lip of the wine rack and pulling it towards them. It hung motionless for a second, then toppled over, dozens of bottles shattering and spilling their contents onto the cellar’s floor as the cobwebbed wood splintered apart.
It looks like blood, Tol thought, staring at the crimson pool and seeing a distorted reflection of Father Michael ripple across its surface. The image shattered as the abbot waded through the wine and glass. He grabbed a faded tapestry that had been hanging behind the rack and pulled it away from the wall.
‘Follow the tunnel and you will come out on the far side of the mountain. You know the way from there?’
Tol nodded, his eyes on the hole in the wall. ‘Follow the road east.’
‘You must not fail, Tol. Get to the convent and warn the sisters. Do whatever they ask of you, and trust none save the Seven, or the First Father himself; there is a traitor within the Knights Reve.’
A traitor? It was starting to sink in now. Tol was leaving the closest thing to home he had known for eight years. For years he had longed to escape the brutal training grounds of Icepeak, the pitiless monks who served as his wardens, and the freezing mountain winds that lashed through the halls even in the middle of summer. But now it came to it, Tol realised he had, after a fashion, grown comfortable with life in the abbey. He tolerated the other boys for the most part, and had even learned a thing or two from the monks, grizzled former knights who had taken vows. And the abbot himself? He had pushed, battered, and threatened Tol at every turn, yet for all that he hadn’t treated Tol any different to the other boys, hadn’t singled him out for special treatment. ‘Father Michael…’
The abbot smiled, though it never quite reached his eyes. ‘You have been the biggest pain in the backside ever to grace these walls, Tol Kraven, but you are the most resourceful lad I’ve trained; if anyone can succeed it’s you.’ He leaned in closer, grey eyes pinning Tol where he stood. ‘And make no mistake, you must succeed, whatever the cost. More hangs on this than you could know.’
The abbot pressed a faded, tattered book into Tol’s hands. ‘This may provide some comfort.’
Tol stared at the words etched onto the front cover: The Names of Salvation, the holy text of the church. Comfort? Might do for starting a fire in a pinch.
Their eyes met one final time, the abbot resting a hand gently on Tol’s shoulder. ‘May angels guide you.’
Yeah, right. Chance would be a fine thing. Tol nearly said it aloud, but couldn’t quite bring himself to, no matter how many times Father Michael had punished him over the years. ‘And may they guide you true,’ Tol said, giving the formal response. He took a deep breath and stepped through the cellar’s wall into the dark tunnel beyond as the first echoes of battle drifted down the steps.
*
The tunnel felt like it was getting smaller, the narrow walls closing in on him as darkness - utter, impenetrable blackness - kept him blind. There could be a crevice yards away and he’d never see it, never know it was there until it was too late.
Never enter a place without knowing the way out.
The abbot had said that, another of his little wisdoms. Then he’d sent Tol into just such a place. ‘Always assume the worst,’ his father told him a long time ago. ‘With a name like ours it usually comes to that.’
Maybe the tunnel was blocked. Maybe there wasn’t a way out.
Tol scraped his head against the low ceiling. It was definitely getting smaller.
The heat made things worse. The tunnel smelled stale and musty, a library never dusted. Breathing was difficult now and he could feel panic gnawing at his bones. He just wanted to run, to get it over with. He was already hunched over with his knees bent to keep low; running wasn’t possible. Walking was difficult enough, and only possible if he trailed his fingertips along the sides of the tunnel. Without light he kept walking into the wall.
He scraped his head again, and was forced to duck lower. The tunnel sloped gently downward, rough-hewn and coated with oily moisture. Tol was pretty sure his fingers were a bloody mess, but he’d long ago lost any feeling in them from prolonged contact with the damp stone. He felt his arms spreading out like wings, following the walls as the tunnel widened.
He paused, slowly raising his head an inch, then another.
He drew in a deep breath and felt a chill in his lungs. Tol blinked. Was he imagining it, or was the darkness fading? He hurried on, and felt the air cool. Moments later he felt a chill breeze and knew the end was near.
Almost there.
A blast of icy air struck him as the darkness gave way to incandescent light, and Tol hurried towards it, longing to escape the narrow confines of the tunnel and the sense of panic that had been threatening to overwhelm him. He blinked, stumbling out into the blinding daylight. He stopped at the last moment as he felt snow underfoot, the whole vista before him pure white in its brilliance.
It felt like the toes of his right foot weren’t on the ground any more.
Tol shivered as he felt the wind on his skin - full and icy, the wind of the upper mountain.
He glanced down. He was standing on a narrow ledge, half of his right foot already dangling over. A gently sloping tunnel, he realised. Not steep enough to reach the ground; he was still hundreds of feet from the bottom.
A gust of wind slammed into him, spinning him round and sending him over the edge.
2.
Stetch stared out over the snow-capped roofs to Findhel’s gate. Lord Brondac’s manor house offered a fine view of the small town, the three-storey building perched on a slight rise against the northern wall. Stetch watched as the ragged train of men returned, some dragged on litters while others limped or staggered in blood-spattered furs.
The door clicked open behind him, but Stetch kept his eyes on the men outside, gradually working their way through Findhel’s streets back to the docks. To an observer, he might seem unaware of the figure who had entered the guest room, but he was listening closely for the footfalls. If they were unfamiliar then Stetch was far from defenceless. A sword was draped across his left hip, and his fingers tapped his belt buckle, itching to spin and draw. If the intruder closed the distance quickly, then there was still a dagger tucked into Stetch’s waistband and another secreted in the top of his right boot. If all else failed, there was a sturdy vase two feet to his left on a table. Open space behind him, but against the wall over his right shoulder there was a dresser, his mistress’ ivory comb left on its top. The point, he knew, was sharp and would serve as an adequate weapon. Stetch was far from his homeland, and to his mind that meant he was in enemy territory; everyone was an enemy until proven otherwise. Or dead.
Angel's Truth (Angelwar Book 1) Page 1
