by Philip Blood
"Which one?" Aerin asked.
Mara took him by the ear and shook his head, though she was fairly gentle this time. "You know quite well I meant the one who just left."
Aerin rubbed at his ear when she let loose. "His name is Darel. I don't know much more about him, though I think he is from a wealthy family. He told me his teachers had two Guardsmen watching over him."
"I know all that, did he tell you his last name, or where he lives?" Mara asked impatiently.
"No, that's all I know. Did he do something wrong? Because if he did it's probably my fault and you should just punish me," Aerin said bravely, trying to protect his new friend.
Mara surprised him when his words brought a genuine smile to her face. "Oh ho, he already has you willing to protect him; he makes friends fast. No, he has not done anything wrong. In fact, Aerin, you may have helped me greatly. We'll know soon enough anyway, Yearl will tell me what I want to know later."
"Yearl?" Aerin asked. He quickly looked around to see if Yearl would appear out of the shadows again at the sound of his name.
Mara's far away gaze returned to Aerin abruptly. "Enough, let's get you some dinner; since you skipped lunch you must be starving. A boy like you needs to eat if you are going to be strong enough to fight the Togroths!"
"Togroths!" Aerin said, but he was on the move as Mara's old but surprisingly strong grip on his upper arm gave him little choice.
"That's what you told me this morning, you said you wanted to be a great fighter," and here she paused and her voice sounded a little exasperated, "like Ragol. If you're going to be a warrior you have to eat, boy!"
Now that food had been mentioned Aerin's stomach began to growl, making truly horrendous sounds.
Tocor was following them and laughed at the sounds coming from the young boy. "His stomach knows what it wants, that’s obvious enough, if only his brain would listen."
Once a filling meal of lamb, carrots, and potato stew had been eaten, Mara pointed to the stairs of the common room that led to the bedrooms above. Aerin took the hint and stood up ready to go to bed. The Quarian had his hood up but the light from the fireplace reflected off the gold highlights of his eyes within the shadows. His low voice emerged, "Safe rest, Aerin."
Aerin answered, "Thank you, Tocor."
"And may your dreams lead to your desires," Yearl's voice added.
Aerin blinked. Yearl was sitting only two seats away from where Aerin had been eating and yet he had not seen him the entire meal.
The common room wasn't dark, but there were shadows and a thick layer of smoke, Aerin decided he had just missed the quiet man. He noted that Yearl was wearing his long cloak with the hood up, his face and lavender skin hidden in the hood's shadows.
"And I thank you was well, Yearl. Good night all," Aerin replied and headed for the stairs.
Tocor, Yearl, and Mara remained speaking in low voices that no one else could hear.
Aerin reached the top of the stairs and found Dono waiting in the hallway. The red head’s wide eyes showed fear.
"Dono, what are you doing here? Did you see that man?" Aerin asked in an excited voice.
Dono looked beyond Aerin nervously, but no one else was in the hall. "No, I waited but he never came out. That's not what I'm worried about, it's Lor."
Aerin grabbed the obviously scared Dono by the arm. "What's happened?"
"It's what Darel said..."
Aerin nodded his encouragement.
With another look over Aerin's shoulder at the empty hallway, Dono continued. "Darel said Lor wouldn't go in without the rest of you, he shouldn't say that kinda thing to Lor. He will take that as a challenge, and Lor never refuses a challenge."
"Are you saying Lor is going into the Church tonight, alone?" Aerin demanded.
"No, he already went in. I moved to another building with a better view of the street after you left and stayed till after dark. Lor showed up on the street, and I think he checked to see if I was still where he'd left me before, and then he went on in. I waited about an hour but he didn't come out. What are we gonna do? I'm scared, THEY might have him."
"Calm down," Aerin suggested, letting loose of Dono and pacing in the hallway. "Remember, it could just be a church, we don't even know who ‘they’ are. He might just be talking to a priest or something."
"I have this bad feeling," Dono said, a tremble in his voice.
"All right, wait for me out by the gate, I'll be there soon."
Dono nodded and headed for the door, he looked a little calmer as he quickly slipped out of the Inn.
Aerin went to their room and got out his sweater, but then he realized he was about to break his promise to Mara. He stared out the window overlooking the Inn's courtyard while pondering what he should do.
The door opened behind him and Aerin turned to find Mara.
"What's wrong, Aerin?” she asked him, puzzled.
"I have something to ask you about if you have a minute."
Mara shrugged. "I have time for you, Aerin, don't worry."
"Well it's not really about me, it's a question one of my new friends asked me and I didn't know the answer."
Mara gave him a half smile of encouragement so he continued.
"You have talked to me about friendships, so I thought you might know the answer to this question. My friend, ah... Dono, asked me this… if you made a promise to a friend and afterward make a separate promise to another friend, and then later you find out that due to something you had no control over you cannot keep both promises, what should you do?"
Mara considered him a moment with her deep-set eyes seeming to look into his very soul. "Well, would one of these friends be in great need?"
Aerin nodded.
"And the other promise, is it of equal need?"
This time, Aerin replied, "No."
Mara shrugged. "Then it's easy, you keep the promise to the friend in the greater need."
Aerin looked nervously at his feet. "But what if the other friend doesn't understand the reason you're breaking a promise?"
"If they are truly your friend, and you broke the promise for a noble cause to another friend, they will understand. If not then they really aren't your friend."
Aerin nodded. "Thank you, Mara, that helps... I'll tell Dono tomorrow. Well, thanks and… ah, good night."
Mara moved slowly toward the door. "I need to speak with Yearl about something; I'll be back in a few minutes." At the door, she turned and paused with the door open and spoke again. "Aerin, you tell your friend to be very careful,” and here her voice took on a hard edge. "Good friends don't get their friends killed."
Aerin gulped. "I will, Mara."
She nodded, "Be safe, Aerin." Then she closed the door behind her.
Aerin immediately went and got a piece of paper from Mara's bag, and then sat with a quill at the table. After dipping the pen in the ink and thinking for a moment he penned a quick note, which read:
Dear Mara,
I think you are my friend, but as I made a promise to another friend and he is in need, I must break my promise to you. Please don't send me to an orphanage, but whatever awaits me on my return, I must go now. Please forgive me.
Your friend, Aerin
He left the note on the bed and then pulled his only sweater on over his head. After checking the hallway, through the barely cracked open door, Aerin made his way to the end of the hall and the exterior stairway.
Once he had passed through the door Mara walked into the hallway from the opposite way and went straight to the room. She read the note swiftly and a small smile played across her lips as Aerin quoted some of her own words back to her. She moved to the window and made a quick gesture toward the gate with her forefinger.
Aerin did not go around to the front of the Inn but instead used a small tree to climb up to the wall and jump down into the street to where Dono was impatiently waiting. The two boys retraced their path, Aerin following Dono. The route to the church was somewhat difficult; things looked different
in the darkness, so it was good that Dono was there to lead Aerin.
One thing helped, Aerin didn't fear the long drops as much since the darkness made it hard to see the street below, yet he had to watch the placement of his feet more carefully. He kept his mind on Lor, the way his friend had moved, trying his best to learn from the expert. They soon arrived at the Church. Torches were attached to the outside of the large doors casting shifting shapes on the stone flooring. The strange triangle symbol in the stonework seemed to twist and bend as the shadows and light moved across.
Dono went over to the edge and gazed down on the entrance to the church.
"Anything?" Aerin asked, crouching down beside Dono.
"No."
Aerin looked over the large structure of the church and felt a shiver of fear; the many carved faces in the stonework seemed much more sinister and alive than they had in the light of day. "Maybe Lor already left while we were gone?"
"Maybe, but my heart tells me he’s still in there. What should we do? It's been a long time now since he went in."
Aerin considered. "If he was coming out I think he would have already. We can go to the city Guardsmen and tell them our friend went in and hasn't come out, but I don't know how seriously they'll take us since we're just kids. We could tell them about the dead man," Aerin finished, his voice lower at the end.
"No, I don't want to go to the Guards!"
"Then I don't see any other choice besides going in ourselves," Aerin said with a sigh.
"All right, are we going to stick with that story about being interested in joining?" Dono asked.
Aerin considered for a moment and then answered: "I don't think so; we'd best just try to slip in unnoticed at this point and see what we can see. Lor probably gave them that story and he's still in there."
Dono was shaking slightly. "What if..."
"Shut up, don’t even think that! He's fine, I'm sure of it, we'll find him."
"All right, let's get this over with before I wise up and run away," Dono decided.
They made their way to a place a few blocks away where they could get down to the street level and approach the Church. When they reached a dark corner near the church entrance Dono put a hand to stop Aerin and whispered, “Take off your shoes, they will echo too much on the stone if we need to hide or sneak around.”
Aerin nodded and they both hid their shoes in the shadows of the rough stone corner.
Glancing upwards, Aerin noted that the church seemed much larger when approached from street level; there were ten stairs up to the landing before the large double doors. The boys waited until no one was on the street and then quickly slipped from the shadow of a doorway and crept up the side of the stairs along the edge of the church. At the top landing, Aerin instinctively avoided walking on the dark brown stone mark of the triangle and dot.
From inside the church, the sounds of a low mumbling hypnotic rhythm leaked out to disturb the still night. Flickering torchlight lit the wide hallway that beckoned them further into its throat. The hall widened out as it progressed and the backs of hooded men could be seen sitting in pews. A large statue stood at the far end of the inner sanctuary and faced the throng, it depicted a man who stood with uplifted arms and he looked down upon the mortals below with a cold gaze.
As they entered the church Aerin felt a wave of awe and reverence for the deity depicted by the statue. He tried to shake off the feeling because he suspected it was the power of the believers, not the actual deity.
Dono pulled Aerin's arm and pointed silently to a smaller door off the main hall. Aerin nodded and they scampered across the stone floor and tried the door, but it was locked. Aerin started to move away, but Dono's hand disappeared into his sleeve and emerged with a stout piece of bent baling wire. He inserted it into the lock and began feeling around. Aerin watched the hall and fortunately no one seemed to be coming. The scraping of the wire in the metal lock seemed overly loud to Aerin and he was sure someone in the main hall would notice, yet the mumbling continued unabated.
There was a particularly loud ‘clack’ as the lock turned. Dono quickly opened the door and Aerin followed him inside. They closed the door as quietly as possible.
"Where do you think this goes?" Aerin whispered.
"I don't know, I don't usually hang around in churches," Dono whispered back.
Suddenly approaching footsteps could faintly be heard echoing dulling in the stone hallway. Frantically the boys looked for somewhere to hide. There was a low table along one side of the hallway with a white and red tablecloth draped almost to the ground. Dono flung the cloth open and the two small boys got under quickly. Without a moment to spare they let the cloth drop back down into place. Unable to see, the boys heard the footsteps get louder as the two churchmen rounded the corner. They were speaking as they went past.
"What Malachai says is true; we must keep the faith strong! Unbelievers have no rights under the eyes of Mumand."
"Aye brother, Malachai speaks with Mumand's voice."
They continued passed and were soon gone.
Aerin slipped out and Dono reluctantly followed.
Dono looked at the corridor ahead. "What now?” he whispered.
Aerin shrugged and pointed the opposite direction of the departed churchmen. Dono nodded and they headed that way.
A few turns later they heard voices coming from behind a doorway. Aerin tugged on his ear to signal they should listen at the door. He could almost hear the mental sigh of resignation as Dono accepted the idea. They both crept up and placed their ears against the coarse wood. Aerin smelled a waft of men’s cheap cologne as he pressed up against the door.
"...should be disposed of, and quickly," a male voice exclaimed passionately.
A second voice, this one of smooth silk, answered calmly. "No... I have uses for a fresh young one like this... the rascal must be taken to a place of preparing and converted."
"As you wish Sar Malachai, I will attend to that immediately.”
"Bide a moment, brother Gallow. Do either of you have any questions?"
Dono waved frantically for Aerin to remove his ear and get away, but Aerin kept his ear to the wood and held up his hand in a 'wait' gesture.
The third man's voice spoke for the first time and he seemed very excited: "What of our holy mission tonight? Must we postpone in light of this intrusion?"
"No, it was just a curious child. It changes nothing, all is in our control. It would take us a month or more to achieve a time when all parts would come together so perfectly once again. No, we go forward as scheduled. Bring your Saintly brothers to the Roan chamber; there they shall receive Mumand’s final instructions. I want no mistakes; the Trelic heir must be removed tonight."
"It is Mumand's will," the excitable voice agreed.
"Indeed, remind the faithful to move swiftly once the gates are open; we must rely on surprise to achieve our goal. Once the Guardsmen are reinforced we will have little time to complete our mission."
The excited churchman responded with righteous indignation, "We are guided by Mumand's hand, they cannot stand before us!"
"May Mumand guide you all," the silky voice intoned, "Remember when the watch calls three be prepare to move swiftly and silently. The gates will open before the echoes of his voice die."
"But who is to open the gates?” the excited man asked.
"We have faithful men in the guise of Guardsman; they will open the gates at the proper time. Brother Gallow, it is time for you to go down and brief the creatures that Mumand has sent us for this holy mission. Have them take the child out through the sewers."
Dono's face was nearly purple; he held his hands together in silent supplication for Aerin to move before the churchmen reached the door. This time, Aerin nodded and crept away quickly with Dono. They just made it around the corner of the hall when the door opened behind them.
Dono's eyes were the size of Kingdom gold pieces and he was looking frantically for a place to hide, but this stretch of t
he corridor was completely empty. Aerin stood near the edge of the hallway and listened. Luck was with them, they heard the footsteps of the two men retreating down the hall away from their position.
Dono's breath released in a rush as they heard the footsteps growing quieter.
"You nearly got us caught!” he hissed.
Aerin put a finger to his lips for silence and then slipped around the corner of the hall after the departing churchmen.
Dono reluctantly followed. They tiptoed past the closed door where they had listened to the silky voice of Malachai and then hurried to catch up to the men ahead of them.
The men came to an opening on their right and one of them proceeded down the spiraling stairwell while the other continued ahead in the corridor. After a moment of indecision, the two boys crept down the torch lit stairs after the one who had descended deeper into the bowels of the church.
As they descended the stairs Dono felt the freedom of Strakhelm's streets growing more distant and the stone of Mumand's grip growing tighter. He thought he heard something behind them, but the young red head didn’t see anything when he looked back over his shoulder.
Aerin stopped to peek around the corner at the priest who currently stood at a rusty iron-bound door. Because Dono was still looking backward he ran into Aerin. The only thing that saved them from discovery was the fact that the man was rattling a large key ring at the time and it masked the softer sound of the boy's collision.
Aerin gave the sheepish Dono a wide-eyed look of silent reproach but then returned to peeking around the corner at the churchman. The man finally found the key he desired and twisted it in the large lock mechanism. The grinding tumblers protested movement but gave up to his superior strength.
He pulled open the resisting door, and almost instantly a strong stench wafted into the hall. Aerin instantly recognized the smell of rotting garbage and human waste; the unmistakable smell of the sewers.
Then a deep guttural voice came echoing out of the sewer's darkness. Involuntary fear and horror iced the blood in Aerin's veins as the horrible memory of his parent's deaths returned. He had heard the unmistakable sound of a Togroth's ugly inhuman speech.
