Chapter 21
The Thing made Odale go through the large stone halls, dragging Septimus along with her. Or, she walked and he had to follow. She had only grabbed him one time, and that was when he had been about to walk in the wrong direction.
Odale didn't talk, either, which was strange. It almost unsettled Septimus, as if it was an angry silence. Like the calm before a storm. It scared him, to say the least. What scared him more was that she had burnt him when she touched him. Literally, burnt. As if she'd heard what heard what Septimus thought, Odale turned her head to look at him. "Hurry!" she snapped.
"But-"
"I said hurry," she repeated. Her voice was strangely monotone, now when she talked. Septimus didn't dare to argue, and hurried.
Rodrian was usually very careful. He was careful with how people saw him, wearing what and with whom. That day, however, he had been less so. He hadn't realized it until he was on his doorstep, that he was wearing a rebel's cloak.
Rebel's cloaks were very obvious. They were dark red, lined with two black lines on the outside, and the inside was lined with wolf fur. If one looked closely, they'd notice that the brass buttons had little sheep-heads on them. It wasn't something that one would miss.
Rodrian sometimes wondered why on earth they would have to wear something so obvious, and he'd never figure out why. Usually, he'd take it off in some darke alleyway or outside of the city, but that day he had forgot.
It was night, though, and darke. Still, the boy had seen him. What a boy had to do outside in the middle of the night was something that Rodrian would never understand. But he knew that the child had seen him, and he couldn't let the boy get away. The boy saw him. Rodrian could see that the boy knew what he was going to do, he turned to run.
Rodrian, however, was faster. Before the boy was even able to scream for his mother, he had grabbed him by the neck and put one hand over his mouth. He then wrapped the boy in the cloak, with the furry side out. Holding a hand over the boys mouth, he carried the boy into his house. Well inside, he shoved the boy into a closet. "Runa?" he called. He had entirely forgotten that it was in the middle of the night, and that she was probably sleeping. Rodrian silenced himself.
Instead he grabbed a cloak, which was hanging on iron hooks on the wall and tore it to long pieces. Rodrian walked back to the closet, dragged the boy out again, and bound the boys hands and feet. "I don't want to hurt you," he spoke, in latin.
"Nakka," the boy said. Rodrian knew te language, he knew what language it was, but he barely spoke it himself. He knew, however, that nakka meant 'no'. He wondered what the boy said no to.
The boy, however, seemed to be able to speak latin. "Where are you from?" Rodrian asked.
"Snowlands," the boy said, but Rodrian didn't understand what he meant.
"And what's your name?" he asked.
"No," the boy snapped. "Killer of wolves, I do not talk to."
Rodrian suddenly knew where the boy was from. The boy had to be one of those traveling people, who lived outside of the cities, but now and then passed through them. Rodrian frowned, he wasn't sure what to do.
He lifted the child up. He was surprisingly light, and Rodrian carried him into the living room. "Are you cold?" he asked the boy. The boy looked to his side, and stared at at something. He then turned back to look at Rodrian, nodding.
"Cold," he admitted. Rodrian turned to light the fire.
"It is cold," Rodrian said, as the fire was slowly burning in the fireplace. He sat down in front of the boy. The boy had dark brown hair, which was dripping wet.
"Is that daughter of you?" the boy asked, and nodded in the direction of a portrait depicting Lorea.
Rodrian shook his head. "No, that's my niece," he replied.
"Niece?" the boy frowned. Rodrian supposed he didn't know what it meant.
"The daughter of my brother," he said. "Her name is Lorea."
He decided to try to speak the boy's language. "Rodrian ujunga," he continued, slowly.
The boy laughed, and Rodrian didn't know it was for his pronunciation or his name. "Let me make food for you," Rodrian said.
They were finally, the Thing thought, outside the Darke Halls. The two children, that was what the Thing saw Odale as, were painfully slow and the boy hadn't known in which direction to walk. Outside the doorway to the Darke Halls stood the ghost of Tertius Fume.
The Thing knew who he was, It's former master had spoke of him much. Tertius Fume was apparently sly, but the Thing thought It was slyer, and maybe It was right. It made Odale go forward, to Tertius Fume.
As the Thing had guessed, he did not recognize Odale, or Septimus, but he stared at them as they approached. "Who be you?" Fume asked, once they were close enough to talk.
"Nobody," the Thing said, in Odale's stead.
"Sum," Septimus said.
"How be you?"
"Darke," the Thing replied.
"What be you?" Tertius Fume asked.
"Nobody," the Thing repeated.
"The Apprentice of the Apprentice of the Apprentice of DomDaniel," Septimus said. Tertius Fume stopped to figure out who Septimus was, and Odale and Septimus walked past him and into the Darke Halls.
For Septimus, Alther wasn't very hard to find. He was much clearer than all the other ghosts and other creatures around them, who were all old and transparent. The Thing made Odale follow him.
Alther soared a bit away from the crowd, with his eyes closed. The Thing understood that it was some kind of human, or ghostly, emotion of sorts. To not want to attach oneself to whatever was happening around, but It thought of it as stupid.
Septimus, however, went up to the ghost. He begun to recite a banishing spell, backwards, and the Thing stopped. It would take a few minutes, It knew that. Impatiently, Odale tapped her fingers on her arm. The Thing just knew it was one of those Spells that could not be hurried, but had to take a certain amount of minutes or seconds or even hours to complete. If it was disrupted, the caster had to begin all over again.
The Thing did not want that to happen. So, it waited.