by F. E. Hubert
benches and other supplies for that evening’s main event.
Boys ran up and down the field with the makings of a bonfire. It was piled in a marked area on the field next to the keep. The major domo stood nearby to keep a strict eye on it, making sure the pile didn’t creep any closer to the vulnerable dry wood of the keep’s upper stories.
A row of smaller cooking fires and grilling pits sat at the edge of the field, spreading an intoxicating aroma of wood smoke and roasting meat. The podium in the courtyard now stood on the field, this time draped with blue cloth and decorated with small spring flowers.
Under their feet, Dun thanked lady luck for small favours. Getting enough speed into his swing was hard work, but at least he was facing the right way.
Up, and down again. He stretched his fingers. Almost. Up again. This time he could feel his fingers glide over the metal of the wall sconce. And down again. He grimaced at the dark mouth of the hole below him, as he swung past it. It was easy to imagine falling into it. With a final grunt of effort, he swooped back up.
His fingers closed on the bracket. He pulled it straight out of the wall. The flaming heat of the torch burned his hands as he swung back over the pit. He couldn’t drop it now. Thick blisters appeared on his fingers. He tried to get hold of a piece cool enough to hold, without dropping the fire down on the floor. It was his only chance to get out. He got a hold of the torch and gripped it tight.
The empty bracket clanged against the edge of the pit. Dun didn’t hear it hit anything else on its journey down the hole. The struggle slowed his movement, but he was still swinging. The flame flickered in the rush of air that swooped past it as Dun swung forward. His chances weren’t going to get better. As he started to move backwards again, he reached up toward his feet with a grunt.
He was probably going to set himself on fire, he just hoped to be free before the flames could do any real damage. He stretched the torch as far up above his feet as the length of wood would reach. He held the flame against the rope, keeping it as still as he could, against the pendulum of the rope and the trembling of his muscles.
With a reluctant hiss, the heat of the fire sett the damp rope to a smoulder. The ruddy edge of heat produced a snake of acrid smoke that turned into a thicker plume as Dun watched. The rope caught and tiny flames licked its surface in a quickly spreading pool. He fell back and relaxed his muscles. Then he took up his swinging again. Now he could only hope that the fire would burn through the rope before he turned into a human candle, and that he would land anywhere but in the pit when it did.
He did, but only just. While he pulled himself up from the dangerously rounded edge of the hole, he thanked whoever had been in charge when they appointed bodies to souls, for giving him strong and muscular arms. He pulled his legs up after him. A few swats ended the smouldering on his right boot. The hot leather stank like a tanning tub.
The thick stone walls of the cellar kept out the sound from outside, so he couldn’t judge whether the festivities had started yet. It didn’t matter much anyway. For his spell to be effective, the people only needed to be close enough to him, when he said the final words of the enchantment.
It was the first of five he found in the leather bound booklet the old wizard buried in the garden. Only figuring out how to open the book had taken weeks of his concentrated devotion.
He’d made camp in a tight cluster of trees, and he sat working it night after day, after night, not noticing that he shivered with cold. When he finally pried the layers of protection from the book, he understood why the wizards was so adamant that he shouldn’t use any of the spells in it.
The words sizzled on the pages, lit up by light of a colour that no natural source would ever emulate. They burned in his mind, even now.
Everyone participated in the celebrations and most were already halfway drunk, their senses overwhelmed by the sudden abundance of food and drink after the meagre rations at the end of winter.
Some of the guards were sitting back in content stupor and he even saw one of them snoring peacefully, his face resting between plates on the table. He shook his head. After his capture, Solis must have discounted any chance of danger to let his men drop their vigilance like this.
Up on the dais, two bodyguards flanked Solis and Vera. They occasionally glanced to the side, but they focussed their attention on the plates in front of them. And, in the case of the guard on Vera’s side, on the allures of female beauty.
She looked a blue flower in the grain. The fire turned everything into an orange backdrop to her pale beauty. She laughed, and Dun could feel the power of the spell dig its claws deeper into his mind.
He stepped into the open space in front of the dais. Vera’s mouth opened in a perfect circle of surprise. Solis jumped up from his seat, kicking his chair back to make room. The guards both fumbled for their swords.
“Don’t bother.”
Dun opened his hands and raised them to his sides with the palms facing out.
“Sorcery didn’t save the old man,” Solis stepped up on the table and gestured to his guards. They tried to do as he wanted, but most had trouble standing up from their benches without falling down. “And it certainly won’t save you.”
Dun just smiled and lifted his hands over his head. Words blurted from his mouth as the spell gained momentum and squeezed itself from between his lips in a speeding avalanche. After a syllable or two, all he could hear were the thundering echo’s that vibrated from the words of power. He couldn’t have stopped speaking if he wanted to.
Then, silence. Followed by the faint gasps and exhaled breath of the hundreds of people in the field. The spell he chose – later he thought that maybe it had been the other way around, that it chose him - took away the will of those it was cast on. It seemed an appropriate punishment for those who followed Solis’s orders without question. To be turned into an even more mindless version of themselves.
It worked. They lost their will, including the will to live, and stopped breathing. Scores and scores of bodies covered the field. Most still sat in their spots on the benches, sagging over the trestle tables and drooping down the sides.
Fear for Vera filled his mind as any poker of ice. He explicitly excluded her from his casting, but just the skirting edges of something as powerful as this could easily hurt her in some way.
He jumped up on the raised platform. Solis had dropped down on top of Vera and he could only see swatches of blue satin silk. He grabbed the short cape Solis affected and flung his limp body to the side.
Two pale blue eyes stared out at him from under the table, then they closed. It took a hart stopping eternity for them to open again from the slow blink.
She was alive.
A drop of saliva trailed down her lip. Refusing to let the thoughts that knocked, enter his mind, he lifted her up and sat her in a chair. She leaned heavily against the armrest, but sat more or less upright by herself.
He stood up and looked over the remains of Spring fest. He killed almost everyone he ever knew. The magnitude of what he did felt heavy, threatening to crush him into the ground. Then he felt cold fingertips paw feebly against his clenched fist.
Kneeling beside the chair, he took Vera’s hand in his and kissed it gently. She needed to be taken care of, but there was something else he would have to do first, before they could leave this cursed place.
There was no way he was powerful enough to damage the book that held this spell, let alone destroy it. He trembled to think what the other, more ominous looking spells would do. Or this one, in the hands of a stronger wizard. He had no choice, he would have to hide it. Deep and far, where even he himself wouldn’t be able to get at it.
After he carried Vera inside and wrapped her in the biggest fur blanket he could find, he hurried through the woods. Hoping, praying, that the leather bound book would still be where he left it.
The pit
Standing over the dark eye of the pit, he remembered how the wall sconce had clanged against t
he side once and then plunged soundlessly into the darkness below. A draft rose up from its depths and caressed his cheek.
He shuddered at the touch. Would it be enough? He held the book out over it. It seemed to think it might be. It felt sticky to his hand, and for a terrible moment he thought that when he let go, it would not.
The sound reminded him of wet fabric being torn loose. After an eternity, the book fell. It fell like a rock. Hard, fast, and straight down. He didn’t hear it hit the bottom, but heard the echoes of the spells’ outraged fury in his dreams for the rest of his life. And every time he woke, he was grateful for that moment of sanity that made him throw them down into the deep.
The huge bonfire that led the villagers up into their final dream burned all night. He had to draw Vera from the window to stop her from staring at it.
As soon as she could sit on a donkey, Dun packed as many supplies as he and the second donkey could carry. The spell killed all the horses in the stables, but the donkeys were stubborn as ever, but they didn’t seem to mind leaving the keep either, and no-one looked back when they headed out for the planes of Io.
***
