Yoko was in a frenzy. The whole of the castle, it seemed was a bee hive of gossip and speculation and righteous indignation over the contempt the Prophet had received when he had striven his best to offer a hand of friendship and benediction. It was abominable. It was of course to be expected from one such as Dark Schneider.
Yoko felt herself go stiff with anger every time she heard an uninformed, snide opinion on what ought to be done with the demon spawn the church had taken under its guard. Oh, and he was under the temple's power now. Fully and irrevocably after his little performance in front of king and court. The fool. The great, prideful fool!!
Father wasn't talking to her. He was playing the part of the betrayed, as if he had personally been injured by Schneider's outbursts. As if his reputation was bruised because he had encouraged leniency. Maybe it was. Yoko hardly knew anymore what to put her faith in. All she knew was, they had dragged Schneider's limp body away under very tight guard, and the nobles and the priests had called for the witchfires to cleanse Meta-Rikan of his foulness. And shock of shocks, it had been Angelo who had calmed the cries for reprisal and convinced them all, king included to let the church try and save the soul, if not the man.
She found she did not believe his words anymore. She found suspicion in what her own eyes had told her when that light from heaven had pierced the throne room ceiling. She found herself thinking dark and blasphemous thoughts concerning the Prophet and his High God.
Of course they wouldn't let her see him. She was not entirely certain where they had taken him. When she marched up the steps of the Temple, the guard calmly took hold of her arm and led her to a small side chamber where captain Sinakha held his offices, where she was informed that she was not allowed anywhere in the temple but the shrine and if she did not obey those rules then she would not be allowed in the temple at all.
She went back to her rooms and pressed her face into her pillow, trying not to cry in her frustration. Her options were becoming more and more limited. Sheela was not taking visitors. Her husband, if one were to believe the whispering of maids, had not been pleased with the familiar look Dark Schneider had gifted his wife. There had been arguments, the maids said.
Yoko was in fear of hearing that witchfires had been lit and herself too ineffectual to prevent them. She had spells at her call, but hers were mostly healing and defensive magics, those condoned and taught by the church. She could not by her self, overcome a mob, or the determined guard of the Prophet. Which led her to ponder that she dearly needed the assistance of those who could. Of those that did have a voice that could not be ignored by king and court.
She went in search of Linden. Found him in the Dragon barracks, playing dice with a comrade and pulled him away from the game. He went with her, off duty and out of uniform, long dark hair pulled back in a tail at his neck.
"Were you there?" she asked, when they walked the streets below the castle, out of the range of prying ears.
"No. I heard."
"I'm afraid, Linden. It's like they've been building up this hate for so long and all it took was Angelo to set it on fire. They'll kill him if they can."
"He brought it on himself, from what I heard of it."
"Goddess, Linden, he brings everything on himself, but this time he can't fight it and they're cutting off every source of support he has."
He said nothing, stuffing his hands in his pockets, watching his boots take step after step. Yoko stared at his profile, desperate for some sign of support.
"You followed him once."
"I followed the Samurai Resistance. We just happened to strive for the same goal."
"He achieved that goal."
"Yes. Without him we would all probably be dead now."
"He needs our help."
"What more can we do?"
"Get Gara."
Linden turned dark eyes her way, face stretched with surprise. "Gara's in the East." He said slowly.
"I know. I don't think the Prophet or the king would let me send a messenger. Why invite trouble, they say? I need someone to go to him that they don't know about."
"Oh, Goddess, Yoko. Do you know what you're asking? I would loose my place in the Dragon guard. I would be court marshaled for desertion."
"Gara would protect you. Schneider would, if we free him. I would take the blame."
"You couldn't. We've been over this."
"Linden, I don't have anyone else. I know I'm asking a terrible thing of you -- but I don't know what else to do. They're going to kill him."
"Yoko ---"
"Please, Linden. Gara has to know. He's my only hope."
He stopped in the street to stare at her, his face stricken, but she thought, touched with the hints of grudging acceptance.
Time passed. He was not quite certain if it had been a day and a night or two. It might have been more. The darkness gave up no clues as the passing of time. He had his hunger and his thirst to tell him that more than a reasonable amount had gone by without benefit of water. Then ears sensitive to the slightest sound, since they were all he had to rely on in this black pit, picked up the sound of footsteps and the grating of a key in the lock of his cell door. Not the same cell, he thought, for the light from the lantern did not spill through a grate in the door. Only when the heavy portal creaked open did the yellow illumination grace the harsh lines of the cell.
His eyes rebelled at the light, pupils shrinking in sudden discomfort. He turned his head away marginally, lowering lashes in no particular mind to show interest in his visitor. He knew it wasn't Yoko. The sound of the steps had not been hers. Therefor it was an enemy of his. When his sight adjusted he saw that the guard captain Sinakha had hung a lantern from a bracket by the wall and moved to stand by the door, waiting for his master who stood in the portal to enter the cell, before he himself stepped outside, closing the door behind him. That left Schneider alone with the Prophet. Angelo. Who stood staring down at him with his hands hidden in the folds of his sleeves, his face, as always touched by the serene hand of the truly faithful.
"So is it you?" Schneider asked, sitting comfortably against the wall, holding the chains near the ring where they were attached.
Angelo lifted a brow. "Do not presume to know me."
Schneider laughed. He seemed to recall Devin Angelino saying something similar so very long ago. "It is you. Where have you been all these years? Why don't you wear the same body?"
"Oh, you seem to know everything else, why not the answer to that? The Prophet comes from across the sea, from the west to spread the word of the High God, haven't you heard?"
"Humm. No, I was busy conquering the world -- or being dead. The little things tend to escape attention. Like what you've been up to Devin."
"Don't call me that." Angelo stepped forward threateningly. Schneider tilted his head, interested in the weak spot he'd found.
"Why not? It's your name."
"It is the name of a man who was betrayed."
"You were betrayed? That's laughable. I thought it was the other way around -- you handing the world to Ansasla in return for your own personal power."
Angelo hit him. A stinging slap at the first, then a backhanded blow on the return. He crouched over Schneider, knotting his hair in one hand, pulling his head back and grasping his jaw with the other. A tingle of power went through his fingers into the core of Schneider's skull. He ground his teeth against the pain, refusing to cry out, even when it seemed his brain was about to explode.
"Don't ever mention that again in my hearing, you thief. You murderer." Angelo whispered, close to his ear, when he had let the pain drift away. "You took the glory that should have been mine. They gave it to you, when they had promised it to me."
"They used you, you moron." Schneider ground out. "They gave you petty power to placate you and you danced to their bidding."
"Liar." Again with the pain and this time Schneider's body rebelled, trying to jerk out of the Prophet's grasp. The chains prevented him, the debilitating nature of the spell stole his strength. He called Angelo the foulest string of names in his vocabulary and the Prophet's fingers strayed over his eyes and god god god the agony turned into a lucid and living thing. All he saw was red with the white hot center of pain.
He came back to himself sprawled on the floor with Angelo's perched over him, knee in his gut, leering down in satisfaction. "Do you know," the Prophet said. "How easy it is to take a body once the soul is broken?"
Schneider stared up at him, shaking from residue pain, at a loss to understand what Angelo was babbling about now.
"I was only gifted by god with telepathy back then, before The angels came to me. I could read men's inner sins, their desires, their truths and lies. It made me a better priest. It allowed me to reach levels of power where I could do more good. I was never born with the curse of black magic. I am not a creature created by it, like you. I am a mortal man, and unlike creatures born with the gift of magic, my lifespan is a mortal one. Only when They gifted me with the power was I able to prolong it. You asked why I wear a different body? There is a way, if the soul is broken and the spirit destroyed, to leave an old body and take a new one."
"You're a body snatcher." Schneider hissed. "You profess morality and you do that? That's an evil even I wouldn't contemplate."
Angelo ran a knuckle up the side of Schneider's jaw. "You don't have to. You wear the same face you did 400 years past. To accomplish the things I had to accomplish, to bring faith back to the world, I had no choice. But, you are right. It is a not a fate that a moral man should be subjected to. I only took the bodies of those cursed with dark magic from birth. Those born with hell's gift. And do you know that with each body taken, I gained the magic that was theirs? And kept it, even after I had moved to a new form. I've had twenty-four forms while you've held this one. Can you imagine how great my power has become with the combined might of eighteen wizards at my use?"
"I didn't use the Exodus spell that night. You did."
Angelo smiled at him. "Sometimes sacrifices must be made in the name of the god, to further His dominion."
His dominion. Angelo's dominion. Angelo stole the bodies of those born with the gift of power to further his own power. Angelo contrived this whole thing to get him within his control. Angelo wanted him. His power, his body.
"How many years have you dreamed about this?" he asked. "Getting me? The ultimate power. A body that won't age?"
Angelo leaned close. "Since the first day I discovered I could take the body of another and make it my own."
"You're going to be disappointed. I don't break."
"Oh, you will. I've become very good at what I do."
There was a period of time that he could not organize his thoughts. They scattered like puffs of pollen on a strong breeze, ripped asunder by Angelo's persistent hammering at the walls of his soul. It grew worse the more he refused to shatter. He had after all, survived admirably in hell. What earthly torture could be worse than that? Although in hell, he had not been stripped of his power. That in itself was as much of a torment as the things the Prophet inflicted upon him. Knowing that had those wards had not been fastened on his wrists, he could have blasted Angelo to hell where he belonged, no matter the Prophet's claims of having the power of twenty odd magic users. They couldn't have been all that, if they'd let Angelo conquer them. Twenty odd hedge wizards were nothing when it came down to true power. He told himself this, when the pain receded enough for lucid thought and Angelo left him in peace. And he held onto the satisfaction that the Prophet would never break him. He might kill him, but never destroy his spirit. That would gall the man more than anything else.
How many days? Four, five, since the little fiasco in the throne room? He didn't know why time was suddenly so important to him. It had never mattered before. He wished Yoko were here. She soothed him, when she wasn't yelling at him, or trying to tell him what to do. He thought of her face when the pain got to be too much, thought of her laughter and the sweet smell of her hair. He used her mercilessly as a lifeline to sanity, when he thought he might be slipping over the edge, she the truest and most pure thing in his life.
The door creaked open. He did not bother to turn and look. Just lay on his side, his head cradled on one arm, with his back to the portal. Angelo hated it when he ignored him. Angelo hated to be dismissed as trivial.
Only it was not Angelo. He heard a feminine gasp and for a fleeting moment his spirit soared, thinking it was Yoko, somehow gotten past the Prophet to see him. He rolled to his back, the effort costing pain and stealing his breath. He thought he had bruised if not broken ribs, courtesy of one of Angelo's fits in response to some blasphemy or another of his. He couldn't recall exactly what he had said to inspire the kicking frenzy.
"Schneider!" It wasn't Yoko. Very surprisingly it was a robed and jewel adorned Princess Sheela. More surprising still was the fact that her brother, Larz stood in the shadow of the doorway behind her, members of his Dragon Guard shifting behind him. His expression did not look happy at all.
Sheela dropped to her knees beside him, her face trembling with dismay at the way he must have looked.
"Oh, what have they done to you?" She whispered. She reached out to touch his hair, which was miserably lank and dirty. He hated the feel of it on his own skin. He hated being filthy and bloody and bruised. He shut his eyes and sighed, wondering how she had managed to talk her brother into allowing this sojourn. Larz, as far as he could tell was a convert to the Prophet's way of thinking. He said nothing, not trusting his voice and unwilling to show that weakness with Larz looking on. Sheela's dark eyes welled with tears. He remembered Yoko saying she was married now. Queen of Judas. He recalled her husband on the dais beside Larz. The man had not seemed to suit her. Not in regality, not in power of presence.
"Why won't you give in?" She said. "Just give up your stubborn pride and bend knee to the church? Don't let them believe you're what the Prophet says you are. What can it hurt?"
Foolish girl. As if it would matter to Angelo. He could do a thousand penance's and it would not be good enough for the Prophet, because the Prophet damn well knew what he was and what he wasn't.
She sobbed in frustration when he wouldn't respond to her plea. She leaned over him, her hair falling across his shoulders and pressed her cheek to his. "I'm so sorry."
"Sheela! Enough!" Larz gripped her shoulder, pulling her up and away from Schneider. "You're a married woman. Remember it. You've had your chance and failed. As I said you would. Now come."
Schneider fixed Larz with a level, cold glare. "You're his puppet and you don't even know it."
The king didn't dignify that with an answer, only a quick, furious glance. He walked his sister from the cell without a look backwards and the door was shut behind them, plunging Schneider back into darkness.
"Yoko, it makes no sense. Why won't he just do what they want?"
They were in a small, private shrine in the Cathedral. Sheela and Yoko knelt before a statue of the Goddess, knees protected by velvet pillows, heads bowed as if in the act of prayer. It was the only way they felt they might meet without censure. Without prying eyes and ears observing them. That it had come to this in her own home.
"Because he's a fool." Yoko whispered bitterly.
"You should have seen him. He looked so battered and weak. We've got to do something. He'll die under the church's care."
Yoko clenched her hands before her, eyes under her fall of hair burning with anger.
"He'll never give in. Not now."
"I don't understand?" Sheela's voice rose loud enough to attract attention and Yoko glanced over her shoulder to make certain no priest paused by the door to see what prayers were being recited with such vehemence. No one came.
"How bad was he?"
Sheela took a shaky breath, lashes fluttering down to cover pain in her eyes. "He wouldn't talk to me. Dried blood and bruises. Perhaps the marks of a lashing -- I couldn't see well in the cell. But -- but I've heard tell that church inquisitors don't always leave marks."
Yoko cursed under her breath, imagining those things done to him. Him. Her Rushie. And hating the people responsible. The man responsible. That Angelo dared lay a finger on him, she would never forgive.
"Gara will come." She whispered, saying a true prayer that her message would fly fast and true to the Ninja Master. "Perhaps with Arshes Nei, if she's still with him. Matters will be set right."
"If Schneider's even alive by then."
"Don't say that. He's lived through worse."
"With his magic."
She had no answer to that. She kneeled before the goddess and wished she had the faith she had at fifteen and mourned that she probably never would again.
Geo Note had, in his lifetime done things for the greater good that he was not proud of. Sometimes things were required to uphold the laws of man and god, that men of conscience found abhorrent. He knew very well that with power and responsibility came hard decisions, but even holding that knowledge close to heart, he found himself bothered by the prophet single minded persecution of Dark Schneider. He understood the reasoning. He understood the people's growing distrust of things magic after the devastation that Ansasla and its minions had left in their wake. He understood the need to give the people reassurances that the church was indeed guarding the sanctity of their souls against the blackness of perdition. But his own sect had never been one to preach the fire and brimstone messages that those that followed the High God did. He had a problem with the burning of witches. He had a problem with the torturous efforts of inquisitors to evict admissions of guilt or innocence from those suspected of trafficking with the darker powers.
He did not know quite whether to believe what the Princess Sheela had told Yoko of Schneider's condition. Yoko seemed to believe. Yoko was miserable and distraught. Yoko, who hardly ever cried, sat in her room, stone faced, with silent tears running down her cheeks. It broke his heart on the one hand and hardened it on the other. He had used her relationship with the boy Rushie, the form Schneider had been trapped in for fifteen years, to concrete a control of sorts over the wizard, yet he never had planned that she loose her heart to him. He had hoped she might share his own practicality, but he should have known. She was too much like her mother. Too volatile of emotion, too quick to judge and to give her heart. Too easily hurt. As she had been, over and over by the damned dark wizard. And still she championed him.
A week passed and she stopped talking to him at all. She hardly ate. He began to worry for her health as well as her mental well being. She sat in his study, high in the Cathedral tower and looked out the window over the new city, staring at the spires of the Temple of the High God. And he could not stand it any longer. He went to Angelo , as one holy man to another, to voice his concerns.
The Prophet received him in his office, prim and proper in his crisp robes and his holy symbol of office glinting at his breast. His smile, as always was a thing of warmth and welcome, inviting any to share in his aura of faith. It never faltered, even when Geo Note explained his reservations, questioning the wisdom of the Prophet's decision.
"I understand." Angelo said sagely. "The worship of the Goddess and her sibling gods, has ever been a more inclined to forgive and over look the things lurking in the shadow of hell, than that of the High God. Perhaps in years gone by, that inclination was not as much a danger to us. But now, with the world disrupted by the passing of the God of Destruction and the things brought over the boundary between this world and the darker one when it --- died --- my friend, we can not afford to relax our vigilance."
"Perhaps. But in this one case -- it is possible that what you see as a devotion to the powers of hell, is more pride and arrogance on the part of Schneider."
"Ah, I hear your daughter's words from your own lips, Geo Note. You let the girl's misplaced devotion influence you. She needs to be taken in hand. I mean no disrespect to you, Great Priest, but why did you never arrange marriage for her? It would have brought stability into her life. She runs wild now, without the humbleness or decorum of a proper young woman her age. She moons after a demon spawn."
"She is a pious girl." Geo Note defended.
"She is reckless and headstrong and need's a husband's guidance. She has power and cold be such a force of good for the God if only tutored properly. You have done what you can with her, Geo Note. But how much can a father truly achieve with a wayward daughter?"
"It is true. She has rejected my few proposals of marriage. I thought to give her time to get over her attachment to Schneider, but that seems an improbable thing now."
Angelo leaned forward, a light of passion coming into his eyes. "I have made no secret of the fact that I admire the girl. I find her strength of will commendable, her beauty soothing to look upon. I have taken no wife in all my years of crusade for the High God's doctrines. I would take her in hand. I would show her the path of true redemption and of true faith, if you would consent to give me her hand, Geo Note."
Geo Note took a breath of surprise, quite thoroughly shocked by this turn of the conversation. Never would he have imagined the Prophet had eyes for his daughter.
"You would marry?"
"In the eyes of the God, marriage is sacred. Let our lines be joined. It would be a marriage blessed by the goddess and the High God."
"I --I hardly know what to say, your holiness? You've taken me by surprise in this. It is a most generous offer. I will consider it. I will speak with Yoko of it. I cannot promise she will be well disposed to it, considering her preoccupation with Schneider."
"Perhaps it is time that she be treated like any other young woman of high breeding and given in the marriage her father wishes, regardless of the fancy she refuses to let go of. I will speak with the King. Perhaps with his blessing on the union, she might better see her path to duty."
"Yoko? Are you here?" Geo Note lifted his hand to rap on her door, listening for the sounds of movement within. She opened it after a moment, her face thin and strained, her hair a tumbled mess about her shoulders as if she had not taken a comb to it in days. She might not have for all he knew. Perhaps the Prophet was right. Perhaps she did need a powerful hand to guide her out of this misery she inflicted upon herself.
"Child, have you eaten today?" He stepped past her into her room. She stood at the open door, as if she did not quite know what to do with him in her rooms.
"I had an apple for breakfast." She admitted. He frowned, the hour being well past dinner.
"That is all?"
"I'm not hungry."
"Yoko, I want you to snap out of this self-destructive mood. You'll make yourself sick, if you don't eat properly."
"Father, I'm all right. Leave me alone."
He drew his brows at the rejoinder. She glared right back, one hand on the door knob the other on her hip. "Is there something you wished, Father?"
"I wished to talk reason to you, girl."
"I'm perfectly reasonable. What need?"
"I've had a proposal of marriage for you."
She stared at him blankly.
"One that I am seriously considering."
"How can you consider marriage for me?" she finally declared archly.
"By the law of the land, Yoko. You are my daughter and unmarried and therefore my wishes on the matter are law."
She blinked, then laughed. "Oh, goddess, are you serious? You've never before 'considered' such a thing. Is it because I won't pretend to ignore what's being done to Rushie? Who asked for my hand?"
"The Prophet."
At which pronouncement she caught her breath, eyes widening in amazement. Her face went white, drained of blood and the hand on the door knob began to shake. She brought it to her breast, clenched in a fist.
"And -- and what did you tell him?" Her voice was a barely audible whisper.
"I told him it was a generous offer and that I would consider it."
"You did not!" she cried at him, lunging towards him, fingers grasping the lapels of his robes. "I will not!! How dare you? How dare he? Do you think I'm some piece of meat to be sold at market?"
"He's gone to talk with the king on the matter." Geo Note managed to get in over her screeching.
"I don't give a pig's ass! The king can join the both of you in ---"
"Yoko!!" he took hold of her before she could utter that curse and shook her, hoping to bring her back to her senses. She twisted out of his grip, wild eyed and wary, then ran for the door, despite his calls for her to stop. Then she was out of it, pelting down the hall like a hunted doe, scattering a pair of priests on their way to prayer.
Geo Note stood outside her doorway, declining to call after her before witnesses, frowning darkly at the curious looks of the priests when they turned their eyes to him. They quickly continued on their way to the Cathedral. No matter what the Prophet thought about the proper submissiveness of women, this was not going to be an easy matter.