He wove through the darkness with the stink of decay about him, the feel of mold on the crusted fragments of fabric that stuck to his flesh. The rain beat down with enough force to hurt. Blinding, freezing, debilitating. Pebbles and dirt inside his boots drove him to distraction -- so much so that he pulled them off in a frenzy. He pulled at the offending scrapes of fabric, scratching at skin underneath with long sharp nails with animalistic intent to remove that which aggrieved him. Like an animal all he knew was the here and now of lightning slashed skies and driving rain and a black maze of stone that was confounding to his sense of direction. He saw a hundred things in the flashes of lights - a hundred ordinary things that his mind could not put words to, could not connect to things a man might know. So he fled, seeking haven and knowing nothing of what form that haven might take.
Long streamers of hair plastered to his face, blinding him almost as much as the constant flashes of lightning. The storm had washed away the stink and the film of dirt from his skin. He pelted down a narrow way, crouching close to a rough stone wall. Two shapes came out of the darkness from the other way, protecting themselves from the rain with a cloak held over bowed heads.
He cried out. They did, a woman's voice and a man's in fear and surprise. His was the rage of an animal caught off guard. He stuck out, pushing them backwards, running away from their sprawled forms, desperately wanting out of this maze. There were lights through the haze of dark and storm and he veered away from them, pelting through a thin and dirty alley, past a makeshift shelter where ragged figures huddled. He scattered the outer fringes of their belongings in his rush, and they cried out, emerging out of the darkness to defend what was theirs. There was a wooden fence that blocked his path. He beat a fist against it in pure blind panic of all the walls closing in about him. From behind the alley folk skulked towards him, the glint of dull steel in their hands. Gibberish came out of their mouths. It grated on his hearing, as the rain did and the thunder and the harsh sound of his own breathing. Somewhere in his madness a tiny awareness that he should have understood glimmered at the back of his mind. It made him afraid and being afraid made him angry. He snarled at them and lunged, bearing one backwards under his weight, hands about a thin throat. A blade sliced him from the side, cutting under his armpit and scouring his ribs. Pain of a different nature from what he had known in this cold, dark place laced through him. He screamed, flinging back his head, wet strands of hair whipping about his shoulders, his face. He cried something and did not himself know where the words came from -- or even understand what they meant . He extended one hand and a streak of lightning every bit as blinding as that released by the sky rushed out to envelope the knife bearing. The creature did not even have the chance to scream and his sizzling remains caused the others to scatter in disarray, abandoning their make shift shelter for favor of the rain slicked streets outside the alley.
The one under him was cringing, face hidden under crossed hands, body a tight knot of fear. There was no threat there now. He sensed that as any animal might and rose, favoring his injured side. He touched it with his fingers gingerly, felt the gaping edges of flesh leaking warm liquid. He brought fingertips to his lips, tasting the salty stuff. A chill passed over him. He hugged one arm to the wound and loped back out to the street. There were figures coming down the way towards the alley -- towards him, drawn by the screams and the magic. He veered away from them and heard their calls following him. Out. Out. Out. That was the extent of his thoughts. Escape was the whole of his world and this maze seemed lacking of any convenient exits.
The young priest came in with a tray bearing tea and sweetbread. The Prophet stood at his window, ignoring the service, staring into the storm darkened night. He looked over the shadowed rooftops of the city that had built up around his temple and in the distance, perhaps some fifteen, twenty blocks away there was faint flare of light that was not descended from heaven. The Prophet's eyes widened. His hands rose to touch the cold glass of the window panes. For a moment his lips moved, silently reciting some prayer. Then he turned to fix his aide with hard brown eyes. In careful precise wording, the Prophet gave the young priest a message to carry, biding the man repeat it before letting him leave to find Sinakha. When the priest was gone, the Prophet left the study and strode to his private rooms, where he shut and locked the door. Beyond his bed chamber was a small room he always kept locked, where certain holy relics were kept. He wore the key on a chain around his throat just below the symbol of the High God.
Inside there were chests and boxes. He rummaged about, looking for a particular chest and found it finally under a stack of wooden crates. It was not quite of the nature of the others. Metal and oddly smooth with a odd locking mechanism that was triggered not by a lock, but by softly clicking dial with numbers about its edges. He turned it this way and that and back again. Then lifted the top to reveal a deep well filled with things that must surely have been relics of some past god, for one of them held place in the world today. He found what he desired, wrapped in a sheet of felt, closed the chest and spun the dial. He took his treasure back into the softly flickering light of his bed chamber. On the bed he unwrapped it. A pair of plain, steel colored bracelets. Smooth and featureless on the outside, scarred with lines and ridges on the inner cuff. He picked one up, running his fingers along the inner rim, found an indent and pressed it. A tiny red light, no larger than a pin head began to flash, signaling life within cold metal. The Prophet smiled to himself.
After all these many, many years, the spark of life remained.
Yoko ran all the way back up the hill to Meta-Rikan castle. Her side ached from the exertion, he cloak was a sodden weight that hindered more than helped her. The gate guards barely recognized her in her headlong rush, and moved reluctantly out into the rain to halt her progress. She wiped hair from her face and with uncertain glances at each other for the wild look in her eyes, they let her pass. Past the main bailey, around the side gardens of the palace where walkways shielded her from the driving rain; through the kitchen courtyard and into the cathedral gardens. She was limping by the time she entered the cool, dry corridors of the dormitory. She left a trail of water behind her, him of the new cloak dragging the floor.
At her father's door she pounded mercilessly until the sound of footsteps approached from the other side. He opened the door a look of censure on his face for whoever came so diligently calling at this evening hour. The look shattered into one of concern when he saw her and her state.
"By the goddess."
"Father. Father you've got to come. I didn't know what to do. The lightning -- the lightning destroyed everything. There's nothing there. Oh, goddess there's nothing in the grave!"
"Yoko calm yourself. You're shivering. You'll catch your death." He reached to draw her into the warmth of his rooms and she shied back, afraid that once she entered the comfort she might not be inclined to leave, and she needed her father, who knew so much more than she about wizardly matters to come and see the grave himself.
"You've got to come!" She cried. She was verging on hysteria, she knew she was and could not stop it. "Please, please come."
Geo Note stared at her, aghast. Then he rummaged in the nook by the door for his own cloak. Came out with a second one and demanded she give up the soaked one she wore. She did so frantically, dropping the wet thing on the floor outside his door and donning the dry warmth of one of his winter cloaks.
They started back out into the rain.
He stopped to catch his breath, vision spinning from the pain in his side and the last nearby flash of lightning. The thunder crack that followed shook him to the bones. He pressed his back against a rough stone of a wall and howled in retribution for the scare it had given him. The night sky gave him no heed, rumbling without note of his presence.
There was a wide street with many lighted doorways and windows. He abhorred to travel down it, vulnerable to the light and whatever dwelled within it. He had no choice save to go back, so he clung to the shadows as best he could, hurrying with what strength he had left after running so long, with the blood draining out between his fingers.
A doorway opened and someone stepped out under an awning with a bucket to dump in the rain. He brushed past ruthlessly, a scream of surprise drifting in his wake. There was a intersection that was smaller and darker and he took it instinctively. Someone shouted behind him and he flung his head about, wild eyed to look. Shadowed figures had followed him. They began down the little dark street behind him. Panic. Escape were the only things his mind could process. The only things that it had processed since his memory began. A wagon blocked his passage and he veered around it, driven into an alley much like the one he had been attacked in before. Nothing but stone wall at the end of it. He hissed his frustration and spun to escape the trap. But dark, robed figures blocked the mouth of the alley. Others pelted through the rain behind him.
He was ready to go through them, not caring that there were more of them, but a low, rhythmic chanting began to issue from their lips. It paused him. It made a dread pass through him that he had no notion the origin of . He staggered against a discarded barrel. Righted himself with a hand on the wall. In his moment of disorientation others had entered the alley. There were faces close to him. He screamed in outrage and struck out, raking a man in the face with his nails. A hand slapped around his upper arm, and something stung the underside of the flesh. His head snapped around a snarl on his lips. There was a man with drenched black hair, a few inches taller than he, with oddly luminescent green eyes. He lost the snarl in a haze of senses beginning to swim. Tried to pull away but the man swung out with a club in hand. The business end of which connected to his skull.
The chanting was the loudest thing in his head, louder even than the pumping of blood and the pounding in his skull. His knees gave way and the man let him go and others came upon him with their clubs. He ceased to know anything, which was a relief.
Geo Note stood looking down over the ravaged pit where the grave had been. Water dripped off the cowl of his cloak, off the ends of his mustache. Yoko stood behind him, arms wrapped about herself under her father's oversized cloak.
"He's not there." She said. "Is it magic?"
"I don't know." Geo Note replied quietly. "Do not jump to conclusions, girl."
"Conclusions? Father -- his body is gone!! What happened to it?"
He swung his gaze to regard her, then jerked his head towards the city. Light flared in the midst of the maze of houses and shops. A growing ball of energy that momentarily illuminated the night and the tower of the Temple before it subsided and let the storm regain it's dominance. Yoko felt it too. Something that was not nature originated. Something drawn from that plane where magic dwelt. A powerful dark spell that only the most powerful, the most skilled might use and survive the summoning.
"Goddess." Geo Note whispered. "That was -- an Exodus spell. Yes, yes, I'm sure of it. And at the Temple of the High God!"
Yoko mouthed a curse -- a prayer. Terror and hope ran through her. She grabbed her father's arm and pulled him away from the shattered grave.
"We've got to go to the temple, father."
Gathering wind neither knew they still had, they ran through the city streets towards the temple of the High God. They passed commotion and panic on the way. People were in the streets despite the rain, holding glass covered lanterns, upset in their faces and voices. The closer they got to the temple, the more crowded the streets, some running away from the temple, most going towards it.
The street they followed, along with half a dozen others bled into the temple square. A crowd of perhaps a hundred folk braved the rain before the steps. Cries rent the air. Screams of anguish and mourning. The face of the temple to the right and above the main steps had been gouged as if by lightning strike. Chunks of stone littered the steps and ground. There were bodies on the ground that priests and townsfolk labored to take within the shelter of the temple. The Basilica guard stood wary and watchful, helping when they could, attempting to keep the majority of the stunned crowd out of the way of those helping the wounded -- or the dead. It was hard to tell.
Geo Note caught the arm of a priest, demanding to know what had happened. The priest looked at them both with frightened, spooked eyes. "I don't know. I don't know." He cried. "I was at prayer within the temple shrine. I saw nothing but priests and Basilica guard going out and then a great explosion and cries of men in agony. The Prophet himself came, and --- and everything was confused. A demon, he said. A demon attempted to destroy the temple of the High God."
Yoko couldn't wait. She slipped past her father and up the steps. A temple guard tried to prevent her, but she evaded his reach and entered the great hall of worship. The ceiling towered above, supported by a hundred arches. Faintly the wind whipped echo of bells could be heard from the towers. Row upon row of benches receded in the distance, ending before the grand dais where stained glass windows looked down upon the place where the Prophet preached. On the floor and upon benches men were laid. Blood stained the carpet. There were more cries of women and children clustering about the bodies than there were from the injured. There were few signs of life as was surely to be expected by mortal men caught in the brunt of an Exodus spell. If that was truly what it had been.
She passed the charred remains of a man, his face unrecognizable under the crust of blackened flesh. The bright glint of the holy symbol at his throat was the only sign that he might have been in the employ of the temple. She cringed and passed on, looking from face to face of those frantic people in the temple. She heard a prayer being said over a dead man, and saw the Prophet himself kneeling over the corpse, holding the hands of the man's widow while the woman sobbed out her grief. He rose, pressing her into the care of one of his priests and his eye caught Yoko.
"My child, this is no place for you."
"What happened?" she demanded, forgetting all honorifics in her desperation.
The lines in his face deepened, his eyes took on that almost glow they had when he preached from his pulpit. "A spawn of hell has walked among us and wrecked havoc on the good and faithful children of the High God. Look around you --" his voice rose so that people around them could hear. Eyes were drawn to him, cries quieted as the people in the temple strained to hear the words of their Prophet. "--Look at the grievous injury done to the earthly bodies of God's servants. Look outside at the damage done to the house of the High God in hell's attempt to usurp our faith."
People crowded the doors of the temple, the guards not able to keep them back as they struggled to see and hear Angelo.
"Careful, careful my friends for the victims of hell's jealous wrath lay here. Victims of the dark that threatens our very souls. Be strong. Be faithful and ward your hearts and minds against the dark forces that bring such destruction and pray for those it has struck down."
Yoko felt sick. She saw the faces of the women bent over their husbands and brothers and sons and the nausea rose. An Exodus spell had done this. Could it have been -- had it been cast by -- him ?
"Who did this?" she whispered, tearing her eyes away from the mourners, looking intently up at Angelo. He was damp, she noticed. And his face and hands were dirty, as if he had helped to bring the dead inside to sanctuary. He put his hands on her shoulders and she stared up, bedraggled and shivering from cold.
"A spawn of hell, my dear. One of the soulless demons sent to destroy us."
"Where is he?"
He lifted both brows at the question. "It is not a thing to concern yourself with. It is a matter for God's minions."
"Is he here?" she cried, her voice rising enough to attract attention.
"Who do you speak of?" Angelo asked in bafflement.
"Rushie. Schneider!"
He blinked at her. Whispers began to circulate around her. Geo Note came up behind her, a solid presence at her back.
"Dark Schneider? Dark Schneider is dead my dear. This has upset her terrible, Geo Note, perhaps you should take her home."
"His grave is empty." She cried. "I saw it. I did. And that spell ---"
Angelo looked past her to Geo Note, who solemnly nodded accent to all she said. Angelo frowned.
"Risen from the grave? It is not possible or godly." He looked around at the expectant listeners. They hung on his every whisper. He lifted his voice so that all could hear. "I do not know this man Tia Note Yoko speaks of. So I cannot say whether the demon who murdered your husbands and sons wears his form -- but if what she says is true, then he is surely the work of the dark master of hell. Only a creature of hell could walk the earth after rotting so long in the grave. God save us all."
The cry went up. Outrage and calls for justice. Angelo turned his pious eyes to Yoko. "Spurn your thoughts of this devil, Yoko. Have faith in the High God."
"Where is he? He's here, isn't he? What have you done with him?"
"It is not your concern, girl."
"Yoko." Geo Note restrained her when she might have surged forward and laid hands on the Prophet.
"I want to see him." She cried.
"You can't." Angelo said calmly. "Whether he is what you say or not, he is mad. And dangerously wild. It is not safe."
"I'll take her home." Father said, bodily pulling her with him, through the crowd, some of which cast her dour, angry looks. Past the bodies and down steps back into the rain.
"He's there." She said, held close to Geo Note. "Angelo has him in the temple. I know it. I sense it."
"I believe you, daughter." Geo Note said. "But there's no helping for it now. Not with the dead in his wake and the town up in arms. Wait until the storm stops and emotions cool. Then we'll see what might be done."
"How could they take him, father? How? Unless he's injured -- or not himself."
"Calm yourself, Yoko." Father's arm tightened about her shoulders. "We'll deal with it later."
Later was much later. Someone, likely father, slipped a sleeping drought into her tea and she slept like the dead late into the afternoon. She woke up in the little chamber off of father's rooms where his servents somtimes slept. She was in a long white sleeping gown and her hair had dried in a mess of tangles. She lay, blinking grit from her eyes, no accustomed sunlight streaming in to let her know what time it was. For a moment she was more concerned with the strangeness of the room she found herself in than the events of the prior night. Then memory came back. She swung legs over the side of the bed, searched for clothing and found nothing of hers. She ran from the room and into father's rooms. Empty. Then out the door and down the dormatory hall, regardless of her state of dress and to her own rooms. She doned whatever clothing was easiest at hand. Ran her fingers through the mess of her hair and finally twisted the whole lot of it up in a bun and jammed hair pins through to hold it.
The sun was out. Aside from puddles in the courtyard there was no sign of the storm last night. She stopped a priest in the cathedral courtyard and asked where the Great Priest was. The man did not know. She accosted two more with similiar results. Ran up the stairs into the cathedral and asked the Holy Sword on duty if Geo Note had appeared today. No. Not today. Not even for morning prayer, which by the by, Yoko had missed herself.
Back out into the courtyard. Where would he be? The Temple? Should she go back to the temple and confront the Prophet herself? He never took her seriously, unless he was complementing how she looked, and he would surely not take her requests to heart unless Father was there to back her up. She needed to find father. One of the Great Priest's aides walked across the gardens, arms full of scrolls, about some important task. She yelled across the courtyard to get his attention, then pelted full out towards him. Oh, his look of disapproval was priceless. She ignored it.
"Where is my father? Have you seen him today?"
"I believe he is taking audiance with the king." The priest sniffed.
The king? The king! He had gone to Larz about it without waiting for her. She hissed, turning on her heel and running down the covered walk towards the palace. She had to slow to a more dignified pace once inside the royal walls. People stared at her nonetheless as she passed. There were a great many whispers behind sheilding hands. There seemed a cloud of speculation over the whole of the palace. The guard contingent had doubled. She saw Linden conferring with a trio of Dragon Guard. They all looked at her when she hurried up, frowns on their faces, worry in their eyes.
"Where's the King?" she demanded. "I've got to see the king."
Linden nodded to his comrades and took her by the arm, leading her away. "He's in conference."
"I know that. With my father. I have a right to be there, Linden. Where? In his study? His office?"
"Is it true?"
She took a shaky breath. "I don't know. I -- maybe. Angelo wouldn't let me see him. The King has to make him let me see him."
"They say he killed a begger outside The Polished Owl Tavern. They say it was a man with no more than rags on, who had long silver hair. Eleven men were killed outside the Temple. Three survived. Priests, the Prophet's guard, volunteers at the temple who came outside to see what the commotion was."
"If it was him. Then they threatened him somehow. He reacted to that."
"He didn't blink at killing a man even when he was at his best." Linden reminded her. "What if -- what if he's back -- again -- and he's evil. Like the Prophet says."
"He's not evil. He was never evil. He just didn't have the other half of his soul. The good half. And just what is the Prophet saying?"
"That if the wild man they have in the temple cellars is Dark Schneider then we'd all best hope that the King decides for swift justice before he strikes us all down."
"Oh, Goddess, and you support that?"
"I didn't say that. You asked me what the Prophet was saying."
"You know all this might be mute if it's not him. And the only way to find out is if somebody who knows him goes to see him. And I've got to get the King to agree so Angelo will let me do it. Now take me to Larz, Linden."
He did, not quite happily. The guards at the door to the royal study were not thrilled to have her intrude upon their master's meeting. Geo Note looked up from a cup of tea and frowned darkly at her. Larz, sitting across from him, merely lifted a dark brow with a look that said he had expected her intrusion earilier.
"Lady Yoko."
"Your majesty." She didn't pause between the respectful bowing of the head and her plunge into the room. "This is ridiculous. Why can't I see him? If it's not him, great -- good, then everyone's mind will be set to rest. If it is, then who else is going to be able to talk to him?"
"Yoko." Father repremanded her for daring to demand anything of the king.
"It's all right. I understand you were a bit distraught last night, Yoko. You seem a bit distraught now. Your father is advising patience on my part concerning what they have at the temple. Which is most certainly wise advice if it is my old adversary. He is never to be taken lightly -- regardless of state of mind."
"I wholeheartedly agree." Yoko said, trying to sound reasonable. "But don't you think it would be better for all concerned if I were to go -- and if it were him -- maybe talk a little sense into him."
"My daughter does seem to have that ability with him." Geo Note added.
"I'm aware. But Angelo reports that he is beyond reason. That he rakes at the walls like a rabid animal and screams jibberish into the air. Angelo suggests that this time, when he came back to life -- he came back without human reason."
"Then -- then all the more reason why I should be allowed to see him."
"The city is up in arms. They demand retribution for the dead -- for the descecration of the holy temple. Good men are dead. What should I do about that?"
"How can you try a man without reason? Isn't that a point of law in Meta-Rikan? That a man who cannot reason cannot be tried for crimes he commits."
Larz opened his mouth, then shut it. He chuckled and inclined his head in respect of her rational. "Very good. Perhaps you ought to be a litigator, Yoko. All right. The three of us know him. So why not make the trip to the temple and have the Prophet show us the mad man in his cellar?"
The black iron door with its small square of grill just above her easy eye level stood like an omen at the end of the narrow dark hall deep under the temple. Two levels underground, and it was cold and moist and smelled of mildew. Straw littered the floor to seep up some of the moisture, but it couldn't keep it out of the air. Yoko had on a light cloak and still she shivered. Six guards walked among them. Two king's men and four Basilica guard, one of them being the Prophet's captian, Sinakha. Yoko felt tiny and powerless crowded in the walk surrounded by armed men. Her father was behind her, as was the king and the Prophet who was a frowning presense. Captain Basilica looked through the grate, then motioned one of his man to put key to lock. The door swung open and Sinakha and his guards moved into the cell, lanterns held alouf, casting shadows about the stark corners of the little room.
Yoko stood in the door, searching the shadows. There was certainly no where to hide. Nothing but a drain at the center of a stone floor that sloped inward towards it, so that refuge, human or otherwise might flow towards it. There in the far corner, a huddled form. Legs were curled up against the body, arms wrapped around them. Head ducked to knees. Rags barely covered flesh. There were few enough of them and they indeed looked as if they had been rotting for years. It was the hair that made her close her eyes a moment and breath a sigh of relief -- of sudden panic. More white than silver, it draped about his shoulders and arms in tangled disarray.
"Rushie." She whispered and stepped towards him.
"Lady. No Closer." Captian Sinakha warned even as the curled figure shifted, lifted his head to look up at them. Clear blue eyes narrowed, arched black brows drew down and between one breath and the next he was upon her, the closest to him. Her head snapped back from the blow he dealt her and she crumpled, dazed. He paid her no more heed, intent on attacking those behind her. Sihakha had out his club, as did his men. All she could see from her position on the cold floor was a jumbled movement of limbs. The thump and thud of clubs on bare flesh made her wince. A guard staggered back into the arms of king and Prophet. Schneider went down next to her, one arm outflung and almost touching her. Blood under his nails, and wrists encased in plain iron bracelets some three inches in width. They were upon him, the guards that remained standing. Sinakha took a pair of cuffs with a short length of chain from his belt and snapped them over the plain bands Schneider already wore. Then he grabbed Yoko by the arm and yanked her to her feet, pushing into the arms of her father. They took her from the room against her will. She cried out that it was all right. That he was only disoriented. That they needed to give her time to talk with him. But they heeded none of that. They exchanged looks over her head that said plainly they would talk later without her hysterical presense among them. That they would discuss his fate without her, when of all of them she had the most right to be there.
He was alive. Rushie -- Schneider was alive. A saddness she had pretended wasn't there for the last three years lifted. Her cheek throbbed, her elbow hurt where she had hit the ground, but she was happy. He had not left her after all. Granted he was not exactly his most charming at the moment, but what did one expect newly risen from the grave. She sat in the Prophet's outter office with an ice pack to her cheek, the nervous aide serving her tea and cakes while the king, the prophet and her father conferred within. She curled her legs up in the chair, grinning madly and not able to stop it. A single tear made a slow path down her cheek. And once he was back in his right mind, he would make it all right again. He could do that. She had faith in him.