The Seven

by Robert J Power

  “There is something near, calling,” he said, and a cold shard slid down her spine.

  “We are close to Vahr. Let us finish this ride and sit among our comrades.”

  “No, Arielle. You go on without me. I must wander a while,” Iaculous said strangely and dropped from his horse.

  “Iaculous,” she called.

  She hobbled her horse next to his before chasing after him through the forest of grey. He did not wait for her, yet he did not run from her either. When she caught up with him, she felt the heat emanating from him. His eyes had become grey. With an audience, Iaculous continued talking, oblivious to the low-hanging branches and their grey leaves as they smacked him in the face as they walked.

  “It started here only a few hundred years ago. The first weavers of the source were all Venistrian,” he said, and she did not know any of this. “They spread out and sowed their oats throughout the seven lands of Dellerin. They wed and made children, and each generation was weaker than the next. Their source weaving ability diluted and whittled out until few practised the old ways.”

  “Iaculous, come back, my darling,” Arielle cried, but he was not listening. He was giving her a lesson. Hadn’t she wanted to know this? The distant glow of Vahr disappeared beneath the clustered forest, and though she was with her future betrothed, she felt alone.

  Then she didn’t feel alone at all. She felt a dark presence around them and somewhere ahead, something even darker. She patted the sword at her waist and fell in step with him. “What is ahead?”

  “You can feel it now, can’t you?”

  “Yes, and I’m scared.” She felt lured towards the darkness. Perhaps beyond the next tree, it waited. Or over a little hill.

  “I feel a hundred-fold what you feel right now. It consumes and embraces me.” That strange, unearthly tone entered his voice, like a beast hidden beneath his skin was clawing to get at whatever called to them.

  “This is wrong, Iaculous,” she whispered and took his hand to bring them back to the path.

  Iaculous suddenly kissed her, and Arielle felt the energy surging through her body. She had never felt such desire in her life. It was like walking a desert for a lifetime and being gifted a tankard of cooled water from an oasis. She fell to her knees, and he with her. They kissed, and she felt his passion. It matched her own. Arielle drank him in, and he drank her, and whatever fears she had felt disappeared entirely.

  Then Iaculous broke the kiss. Arielle felt desperate, cold, and unfulfilled. As far as first kisses went, it was rather impressive, but it didn’t feel like a kiss between soulmates. It felt like something equally powerful. Such was the price of imagining something beautiful for far too long, she thought.

  “Your soul is more powerful than mine,” Iaculous said in that strange tone and walked from her.

  “Stay here with me,” Arielle called back, but he had already left her.

  19

  The Rock Of Iaculous

  Arielle followed yet again. She did it because she needed to know what lay farther in. What pulled at him so severely? It also pulled at her.

  “I can’t seem to shake you, can I?”

  “We are Hounds. We stick together.”

  “We were Hounds,” he countered and shrugged.

  “The kiss,” she said and found no other words.

  It had felt like a kiss goodbye and not the beginning of something wonderful. It crushed her—not at it being their last but more that it occurred in such a way. She had imagined their first kiss to leave her breathless without cessation as desire overcame her. She thought a kiss from a soulmate would stop her heart with pangs of ecstasy, but perhaps the anticipation could only ever allow a feeling of anti-climax.

  “I’ve always wanted to. I’m glad I did,” Iaculous said and marched onwards through the forest’s dark.

  The treacherous undergrowth and deathly grey leaves filled Arielle’s mind with dread. She could not shake the thought that this would be her last march ever. Her limbs did not feel their own, as though possessed by an invisible being of menace. Yet, she took no rest until they came to a break in the forest overlooking an open glade free of any other growth. No tree was standing within a hundred feet of a tall rock in the centre, and it drew her to stare upon it.

  It was black onyx. Smooth, pure, as tall as any man, and as wide as his stomach. It looked like a devil’s clawed finger had broken through from the burning depths of its fiery domain below. Every few breaths, a light from within pulsed and shone through the stone until it became translucent. It burned her eyes as though she stared at the sun. What light was bright enough to shine through stone, she wondered. Despite her trepidation, she thought the rock beautiful.

  “We should not be here,” Arielle hissed to Iaculous, who had fallen to a knee as though in prayer.

  “This rock is not of this world. This rock tears the goodness from the ground,” he whispered.

  Without warning, pain pierced Arielle’s head like an angry blade, spinning and cutting. She remembered the worst hangover she had ever felt after drinking three nights with Heygar and Cherrie at the winter solstice, and this pain was tenfold. Blinding and disarming. As though someone had sent a cleaver through her head, into her mind. She screamed and collapsed beside him, and Iaculous did not react.

  “You are too weak to be here, Arielle.”

  The rock pulsed once more, and his hands glowed a bright blue. She knew that of the two loves of his life, he was choosing the other, right in front of her eyes. Just like Bereziel did.

  “Let us go from this ungodly place, Iaculous,” she moaned and held her head as though she could somehow stop it from splitting in two. His disregard for her pain stung her, and though she wanted to curse him, she scrambled over to him instead. She had seen this happen before. His own weavings blinded him, as Bereziel had been at the end. Desire had driven him from Heygar’s friendship, and not even Cherrie could sway him from such actions.

  “Wait for me by the road,” Iaculous muttered, and his hands became fists. He stared down at the rock like a cat eyeing its prey. “We are not alone,” he whispered. He waved his hands in the air nonchalantly, and some pain dissipated. It felt merely like a needle through her skull.

  “I can see nothing.”

  “Look to the edge of the far tree-line and listen.”

  Sure enough, without the debilitating pain blinding her, Arielle could make out six figures standing among the trees. They were dressed in long, hooded cloaks and stared at the pulsing rock.

  “Can you hear it?” Iaculous whispered and crawled a little closer to look down.

  Despite her apprehension, Arielle crawled with him. She listened and, after a time, heard it. They were singing.

  “This rock is source energy in corporeal form. I could take a thousand wounds a thousand times and die as many times over and take only a fraction of what it possesses.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “My master’s teachings,” he muttered as though accepting Eralorien’s wisdom on such a strange thing was beneath him.

  “And who are the figures?” Arielle asked warily. She had seen the lust of desire in men, and she saw it now in his desire for the power in that rock.

  “They are acolytes of the darkness who worship this stone. They imbue it with their own souls and kill this land. None of them has any real power. Though I am an apprentice, I can feel their weakness from here,” Iaculous whispered.

  A wave of clear energy surged from the onyx monolith, through each figure, and off into the glade and trees beyond. After a moment, there was another and then another. It reached out and touched Iaculous and Arielle as it did. Arielle felt as though an ice dragon had leapt upon her and numbed her senses, while he appeared invigorated with each pulse. His eyes faded over into the grey once again.

  “Those fools sing to a rock and believe it to be a deity. They cannot feel what I feel,” he growled as though in war.

  It terrified her. He was drunk on the energies pul
sing in the air. He would wake up the following morning with regret and weakness and realise he was still only an apprentice touching great things for the first time. Arielle knew this because Eralorien warned him loudly of this whenever he caught him pushing too far. Damn the old man, but he had been right.

  Each of the hooded figures knelt in front of the rock, and their song intensified. It was primal and beautiful, and each note penetrated her soul like no other song ever had before. Arielle felt a wave of sudden warmth, and beneath her, the ground quaked.

  “Do not follow,” Iaculous said in that source-drenched voice.

  “I will do what I must,” she cried.

  Despite the pain, she took hold of his shirt. Instantly, an invisible hand dragged her to the ground as though accosted by a rambunctious drunk eager for sport at the witching hour. It pinned her fast, and her body lost all strength. All she could do was breathe and ache.

  How dare he.

  “DO NOT FOLLOW,” she heard in her mind, and fresh pulses of pain surged through her head. It was a warning of Iaculous’s power over her, a reminder to know her place.

  Arielle felt his mind, his warmth, and his love. She felt the frustrating struggle that came with desiring her body and soul over the energy of the source. She struggled from these unwanted emotions, but the harder she fought, the more she experienced. Could she ever forgive a man who hurt her like this?

  Iaculous released her from his thoughts and left her lying in the damp grass on the verge. He released all holding of the pain in her mind in one last act of cruelty, so she would know never to interfere with his actions again. He left her to writhe in pain as he walked down through the glade towards the figures. It was as if he were out for a stroll in the paved streets of Dellerin city during the season of harvest.

  The figures leapt to their feet as Iaculous neared, and a blinding flash of pain took her mind completely. Arielle moaned and called out for him, but he never answered.

  Pain.

  She finally understood pain like this. She had always questioned the pain ever since the first man. Throughout her life, her thoughts had never been far from the first man. Heygar had chosen the first man, and he had chosen well. Arielle had only been fourteen at the time, and though she had been no deity of innocence, after that night, she had become a woman.

  Cherrie had dressed her down to look even younger than she was and added to the deception with the slightest dabs of paint to bring out her youthful features in just the right places. For the price of a bag of silver coins, a worker had unlocked the back entrance to the house of ill repute, smuggled her in among the rest of the frayed whores, and left her with a bag of sweetened almonds to suck upon, adding to the repulsive illusion.

  Before the endeavour, Cherrie had tested her how best to entice. As they paraded her out in front of the bald man with the flat chin, she had played the part well. The first man had certain needs, and she was the only one capable of the task. Leaving his entourage of a dozen formidable protectors behind, he led her to a small room with silken sheets, rose petals, and the stench of shameful deeds. He had locked the door and set about destroying her. It wasn’t enough he wanted to rape the innocence from her either. His tastes were nastier.

  The first strike with a closed fist took her off guard, and she fell loudly to the ground, smashing the bedside table as she did. She had cried out in alarm, and her childish wails elicited a moan of pleasure from him. He picked her from the floor as though she were nothing but a child’s doll. He managed two more strikes before she recovered her senses and retrieved the concealed weapon beneath the mattress.

  Heygar had given her the option of a tool at hand, and she had chosen a suitable, if not brutal, piece. She recovered the cleaver, turned on him and swung fiercely without hesitation. It was six inches wide and four deep, and its sturdy wooden handle held expertly carved finger grips. It embedded itself in his head, and he dropped to his knees, gripping at the handle, but it would not budge from its place among matter and bone.

  Arielle had waited for the screams and the splitting stream of blood to erupt and hasten her escape, but there was neither. Instead, there was a wet gasp and the sound of desperate scraping where his fingers tried and failed repeatedly to pull the blade free. He had slumped back, his face drooped, and his eyes stared separate ways, but the hands continued regardless. Somewhere among the ruin of his split-apart brain, a desperate attempt to survive kept him fighting. A stream of blood finally appeared on either side of the blade and with it, the realisation that the fight was done.

  He had dropped one hand limply at his side just as he gripped the weapon. He pulled weakly before ceasing the fight altogether. He tried to scream, and his tongue fell from his mouth and hung to the side. He reached for her but not to kill, not even to hurt. When it came down to it, nobody wanted to die alone. Arielle had knelt down beside the dying man and took his hand. She bade apology to the beast for her doing and whispered how big a bounty he had earned. He hadn’t screamed, for his mind no longer remembered how to cry out, but it remembered pain.

  For years, Arielle had wondered what it must have felt like in those last few moments. As she lay sprawling in the grass in the middle of a forest of grey, weeping trees, she finally knew.

  She held her head as though some nasty young girl had cloven it in two, and she cried for Iaculous again as he fell upon the figures. Their grey cloaks whipped out behind them as they formed up around him. Arielle wondered if they could sense his strength or if they were alarmed at his presence.

  They fired black spheres of fire at Iaculous. Each projectile was closer to a cancerous ball of sputum than the fire forming around Iaculous’s hands. It was always the dark against the light. She knew this well. The six fierce balls of fire engulfed and knocked him to his knees, and the figures surrounded him. The rock pulsed ferociously, and all the pain left Arielle completely. As all the source energy focused around the seven figures below and not on her delicate mind. It was as though it was a living, breathing beast.

  The light in Iaculous’s hands became a stunning blue fire around him. Like the pulsing wave from the rock, it shot out through the valley and up past Arielle, who ducked beneath its surging power. She felt a terrible burn across her face and screamed.

  The flame disappeared as soon as it appeared. Around the edge of the tree line, branches smouldered, burned ochre, and then fell to ash. Down below, in the centre, Iaculous was the only man left standing. His assailants lay in a circle around him, patting down their own clothes as he had the night before. Arielle felt no phantom hold upon her anymore.

  “Who do you serve?” Iaculous roared, and the glade shook. His hands pulsed blue and beautiful, but more than that, they pulsed in time with the rock he stood beside. He touched it absently, and both rock and weaver pulsed in perfect harmony at a frantic pace, like a flickering candle behind a stained glass lantern shade.

  Without thinking, Arielle ran down the slope towards him. She feared for his life, his soul, and whatever came after.

  “We serve the true leader, Mallum,” hissed one acolyte. His hood had fallen away. His hair was silver, and his skin was wrinkled and broken.

  “Where is he?” Iaculous demanded as though nothing in the world mattered but their master’s fate. None of the acolytes gave answer. “WHERE IS HE?”

  Arielle felt the air heat terribly as his words burned into her mind. She stumbled and tripped but somehow stayed upright. She reached him as he raised his arms into the air, and all six figures rose into the sky.

  “Beyond the Hundred Houses, but you cannot beat him, Hound,” another acolyte wailed. An invisible, godly hand spun and rolled him as though he were swimming playfully in a river.

  Behind them, the hum of the rock grew, and Arielle saw large cracks appear along its side. The screams of each man rose as they floated higher. She had heard of strange things in tavern talk of great deeds when the source infused itself around a weaver with potential, but never had she imagined such terro
r. Their screams of fear were mixed with pitiful pleading for their lives as they rose deep into the sky and showed no sign of stopping. She couldn’t make out their faces anymore.

  “What has taken hold of you, Iaculous?” Arielle cried.

  All around her, the world exploded in one final pulse of energy. She saw all six men fly off in six different directions across the night sky as if released by an airborne catapult. She watched in horror, knowing their fate, until a large piece of rock struck her across the face and knocked her from this world.

  20

  Day Three

  The grey world was burning golden fire, and she stumbled around on shaky legs. Arielle could only remember darkness and the echo of their screams. She felt torn skin on her cheek and the warm, bubbling blood seeping out, making a ruin of her clothes completely. She wavered but caught herself before she collapsed. Her bloody hands shook as though she walked the frozen north.

  Around her, trees immolated in flame and lit up the glade just enough for her to see the true devastation at Iaculous’s cruel hand. Cruel. Just like Bereziel had become. She never thought Iaculous could turn like that, but men were men, weren’t they? Perhaps more accurately, weavers were weavers.

  Two of the acolytes lay strewn apart on the ground, their arms and legs torn from their bodies. Their last agonised expressions were etched forever on their faces and, in her mind, all nestled up safely with the bald man. The other four acolytes were thrown deep into the forest, and she doubted anyone would ever recover their remains. Being unable to do a thing but scream against rushing air filling your lungs as the ground appeared before you was no way to meet an end. Better you never see it coming.

  Arielle shuddered and tried to clear her spinning thoughts.

  The large, pulsing rock had disappeared from its place, leaving little more than shattered shards and rubble in its place. Iaculous was sitting among the ruins of the rock with crossed legs. In his hands was the bandoleer. He was placing the choicest cuts of ruined onyx into each glass. The rage he had shown had left him completely. He was a man at peace between ruin and devastation.