She went away and Kall-Su couldn't get his bearings. He had drifted aimlessly between blackness and the nauseating, restless fever dreams. These dreams were more flashing images of nightmarish intensity than the realistic renderings the Prophet sent him. He couldn't find his way out of it, until the quiet, unintrusive sound of singing gradually made itself known. And then he drifted with that for the longest while, anchored by the soothing sound of a woman's voice.
Then she went away and the song went with her and he despaired. He didn't remember her going. Just swam against the current to awareness and there was silence again. Overpowering, monumental silence, as if all the living things had crawled away to abandon him to the dark, windowless stone coffin that this place had become. The thought of dying crossed his mind. A fleeting, abstract notion. A passage to escape. Who would care?
He drifted off again. Came back to the scuffling sounds of someone in his cell, vaguely saw shadowed figures moving about. He shut his eyes and they went away.
"Does it hurt?" Angelo purred, leaning over the cot, face a shadowed mask in the darkness. Recoil in hate - pain - fear. And the Prophet laughs at all of it. Pulls him up by the front of his tunic, drags him off the cot and he can hardly gather the strength not to sprawl bonelessly to the floor.
"Pray to the god for the souls of all those unfortunate ones you've destroyed." Angelo hissed in his hear. "Admit to the god that you are a damned soul. A wretched sinner who may never receive true absolution."
The small stone alter waited in silent attendance for those utterances. "What do you want of me?" A heartfelt plea. He teetered on the last legs of his endurance to fight the madness.
"Your soul." Angelo whispered. "I want you to hand me your soul."
He blinked in confusion in that, not understanding.
"You will." Angelo promised. He wrapped an arm about Kall-Su's neck of a sudden, dragging him backwards, off his knees and onto his feet. Slammed him against the wall where the head of the cot rested, grabbed one wrist and drew it upwards. There was a ring in the stone that had not been there before. Newly set into the wall, with a set of manacles attached by short lengths of chain.
No.
"No." He cried in panic. Fought against it, but his body betrayed him with its weakness. One wrist fastened with a snap of the lock and he was lost. Hardly a reason to fight against the other one being caught and locked into the cuff, other than the fear of what would happen once he was helpless.
"I told you there would be punishment to pay." Angelo declared, in his fire and brimstone voice. As if he were preaching a sermon to a lot of avid parishioners. The bloody tatters of his shirt were ripped off his shoulders. That alone hurt. He caught his breath, trying not to shiver. "If you will not learn one way, you will learn the other."
Through hazed senses he felt some slight bit of arcane power stir. From the corner of his eye he caught a faint snakish outline glowing in Angelo's hand. What use pride? What use self-respect at the beginning if he would loose it at the end?
"I'm sorry." He said desperately, as if he were the child in his dreams again and this were Grandfather he was trying to convince. "I didn't mean to do it. It won't happen again, I swear."
"You swear to what? To the demons in hell that spawned you?" the lash kissed his lower back. He hissed in pain, clenched his fists and tried to think how to reason his way out of this while his mind was still coherent.
"No, no, to the One God. Let me beg forgiveness of him. That's what you want, right?"
He hated the whining tone in his voice. The lash licked his shoulders, the tip of it snaking about to burn into his throat. He spasmed against the manacles, pressed against the cold grit of the wall as if it might swallow him up and deliver him from the torment.
"The One God will not hear the prayers of those that don't truly repent. You can beg for absolution for eternity and if your soul is black and your heart impure, then you will always be rebuffed."
Slash. Slash. He cried out, yanking uselessly at the ring. Then why hammer at him so relentlessly to utter the damn prayers? To beg for absolution, if Angelo was so convinced that the one god would turn a deaf ear.
Ah, but eventually he will. The words slithered inside his head. When you have no pride left. No will but what I allow you to possess. Then he may turn his eyes upon you. I need him to forgive you. A damned vessel is of no use to me.
Incomprehension. He wasn't even sure he heard it, as the agony of
the lash spread over him. Engulfed his
Angelo undid the manacles with a touch and a whisper of Unlocking magic. Kall crumpled to the floor and lost his senses before he reached the stone.
Came to at a scratching at the door. The turning of the rusty handle. He blinked dazedly, still sprawled against he wall. The door would not open at someone's attempt. It had never been locked before. It was subtly terrifying that it was now. As if he'd had some freedom of choice before that had now been taken away from him.
He pushed himself up against the wall, moaning at the agony the movement caused him, wide eyed at the expectation of Angelo walking through that door. But no door in this place would be barred to the Prophet, so it was not him. No one else would have a care to try his door and fail at it, save the girl and why she did so was beyond him. The scratching stopped. She was going away. He tried to say something, but his throat was so raw that he couldn't utter more than a pained croak. Had he screamed so much? He couldn't remember.
He dozed. He had made it as far as the cot. Rested his head on his arms along its edge, having no strength to pull himself up onto it. He saw his mother talking with Grandfather at the doors of the church. He stood near the vestry door at the back of the naive, trying to overhear their words. Grandfather was yelling about something. About him? Mother stood there with her head bowed, her hands folded before her. She was crying. About him. He knew it was about him. Tears welled up in his own eyes. Guilt that somehow he hurt her without even knowing how. He turned to run away and the new priest caught him by the shoulders. Long, bony fingers biting into his flesh. He was so surprised his mouth opened in shock, a scream trembling to be released. The priest clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him backwards, into the vestry, shutting the door between them and the church outside.
The priest bent down close to his face and hissed. "Spying were you? Degenerate little half-breed."
He stared up at the terrifying priest, eyes round with fear and shock. He did not want to be alone with this man in the small robe lined walls of the vestry. He did not want to have the man's hands on him, preventing escape.
"I --I wasn't." He tried to protest, but his words came out shaky and tremulous, as if deep down he knew -- he just knew -- that denying anything this man said was wrong. The fingers tightened on his shoulders, and he started crying. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I won't do it again." Hysterically apologizing for a thing he had not done. Anything to get out from under those hands and those fervent, mad eyes that looked at him as if he were a thing to devour, while at the same time the thin lips called him unholy filth. He was so afraid his whole body shook. The priest had never looked at him like that before. Never before with anything but cold detachment and revulsion.
"Please let me go." He begged in a tiny, hiccuping voice.
"No. You need a lesson."
His wrists were grabbed, wrenched up over his head, his body dragged along with them. Fire burned along his back and his head spun in disorientation, not knowing where that all consuming pain had come from. He didn't know where the stone wall had come from, or the harsh manacles that cut into his wrists. He thought if he kept screaming mother would hear and come to see what was wrong. He thought there had to be an end to this. The fire bit into his lower back, across his thighs, scorched the tender flesh beneath his arms. He screamed and cried and writhed. He would never ever do anything bad again. He promised it, over and over. He screamed for his mother, until the priest told him she didn't care. Until the priest told him she ordained this. Told him she thought he needed to be purged of the evil that cursed in his blood.
He went still and silent at that, crushed beyond what the pain could bring. He believed it. He believed it because she had told him as much. Because she had to have heard his cries and she hadn't come.
"Do you understand that you are lost?" the priest whispered against his back. And he thought he was. He couldn't say it. The priest's hands turned him around, so that his back grated against the wall. He blacked out from the hurt. But the priest brought him back with a sly little tweak inside his head. The priest's fingers touched the relatively whole skin of his stomach, the fingers trembling.
"How badly do you want to die?" he asked.
The boy didn't know how to answer. The boy's mind blanked with bewilderment and fear. Somewhere the man curled tighter inside his protective shell, trying to distance himself, but failing because his tormentor knew the path beyond his defenses.
He hung there and shivered, half way between the dream and the reality, mind spinning with the question put to him. The priest -- the Prophet took a shaky breath, almost smiled at him, as if satisfied with the lack of answer, then he leaned close and whispered.
"Such a beautiful body to be conceived in sin. When its mine I shall atone for the sin of its making by washing the evil of all those that oppose the will of the One God from the face of the earth."
The Prophet's lips brushed against his, fluttered away, then pressed back against him in a guttural excitement, one more act of possession that he couldn't fight against, could only endure while the pain ate at his consciousness and threatened to drown him.
"Soon." Was the last thing he heard before it pulled him down.
The castle was abuzz with the arrival of Geo Note. The servants whispered among themselves in speculation, ears riveted to the casual conversations of the people who were close to the matters close to their hearts. All of them worried over the lady Yoko's condition. All of them had their own notions what ought to be done, though no one of them dared voice those opinions anywhere near the dark wizard, who had the lot of them trembling in their shoes. His fits were lengthy and destructive. Half the wall surrounding the castle court yard was a crumbled mess, from the last one Forty feet of wall reduced to bits and pieces of mortar and stone and all from one tantrum caused by an argument with the lady Yoko's priestly father while the two of them were yelling at each other in the courtyard. There was a clear view of the city from the kitchen doorway now. The merchants who brought wares didn't even bother with the front gates, finding it easier to pick their way past the rubble. The guards were in a frenzy.
Though not all of them were certain exactly where their own lord was, they all knew he was in some grave danger from the anxious faces of captain Kiro's men when they gathered together to speak of it and the quiet and sometimes tense conversations between the castle's other wizardly occupants. Quite a few of the more superstitious servants left little offerings on doorsteps of milk or bread, hoping to appease the spirits who dwelled in earth and air, and have them bless their lord where ever he might be.
Gara sat on a bench outside the kitchen, chewing on a sweetmeat stolen fresh from the cooling racks, and watched the men clear the rubble away from the ruined wall. He didn't like the wall being down. Did not like at all the vulnerability it placed the castle under. He cursed Schneider for not having a shred of self-control. But he understood the pressure. He understood the frustration.
"Lord Gara." A boy ran across the yard towards him. He waited for the youngster to reach him, lifted a thick brow at the boy's red face, his puffing breaths of exertion.
"What's the rush about, boy?" he asked calmly.
"The lady sent me to fetch you."
"The lady?"
The boy looked about as if he were spreading a dread secret and whispered. "The elvin one, lord Gara. She gave me a copper to run and find you."
"Did she now? And what were you to tell me when you'd accomplished that task?"
"She's at the Raven and the Otter Tavern. She wants you to join her."
Both brows rose. Odd inspiration for Arshes to have that would spur her to send a boy to fetch him. But then, after the practice field, he didn't know quite what she was thinking. But he rose anyway, after he'd sent the boy off, and walked through the rubble of the wall and down the thawing city street outside. Spring was most definitely in the air. The Sta-Veron natives claimed they could smell its sweet nectar in the air. It was early coming. A sign, some said good luck in the future. Gara hoped so. They were due it.
The tavern was one preferred by the castle garrison. Not particularly genteel on the outside, but serving a fine selection of ale and wines, and a tasty fare. There were a few soldiers drinking at the bar. Arshes sat at a table by the fire, with her back to the door. She had a bottle of wine by her elbow and a half filled glass that her finger's toyed with.
"Drinking by yourself in the middle of the day." He observed. She looked up at him dryly.
"You state the obvious so deftly, Gara."
He hid a grin and sat down opposite her. The girl at the bar brought a second glass.
"What's the occasion?"
"I was thinking." She tapped her short, hard nails on the tabletop. "That if it comes to civil war in the south -- if there's a need to intervene - that we ought to join forces. We work well together." She stated this fact as if were a offhand strategic anomaly that she had only just noted. He sat back in his chair, face careful neutral.
"I've always thought so." He agreed.
"Darshe is being selfish refusing to associate himself with the problem."
Darshe --- selfish? That was a novel idea from Arshes.
"He's carrying a grudge. I thought you were ready to separate Larz's head from his body not so long ago, too."
"I was. I still would if he offered harm towards my friends, but I understand that he was deceived by this Prophet. I understand that even a man of Geo Note's strong character was misled. It says a great deal about this evil man we face. If Larz makes amends for his mistakes, then I will hold no grudge."
"That's good to hear, Arshes. There was a time when you would have."
"And you would not have?" She asked, then lifted a hand to stop him from answering. "No. You were ever more reasonable than the rest of us. Ever quicker to see what escaped our notice."
"I hope it doesn't come to that." Gara said quietly. "I'm finding myself dreading the thought of another war. I think, after this is over, I'd like to sit back and just relax for a summer or two."
"You're not getting that old, Gara." And there was a hint of a smile on her face.
He wasn't quite so certain. But, if one were going to go campaigning again. What better companion than the Thunder Empress?
Schneider rubbed the bridge of his nose, cursing blackly under his breath. He was tired and irritable and one way or the other had not seen much of sleep lately. The great priest was annoying him. The great priest cast what Schneider perceived to be dark, accusing stares his way whenever their paths happened to cross, which was not a great deal, since the day the man had arrived. Geo Note was not a fool, after all. He was not a man to blithely tempt fate by positioning himself to frequently within the scope of Schneider's bad temper. He and his little priestling, when they weren't blathering holy drivel about the goddess and her benediction around Yoko in the deluded idea that bringing her closer to her faith might snap her out of her self-deception, were harassing the castle folk with their religious talk and even going out into the city. They weren't particularly preaching. Geo Note had never, Schneider had to admit, been a fire and brimstone sort of priest, but they were most certainly in Schneider's estimation testing the religious waters of Sta-Veron. They were cool waters to be sure. Kall-Su had never encouraged the spread of religious organization through his domain, always being a touch shy of it himself. There was little chance of Geo Note starting a blazing rush to worship the goddess, but it irked Schneider just the same. Priest irked Schneider in general.
His head pounded with the last bout of far-sensing. It hurt as much from the throbbing pressure of frustration born of failure as from exertion. A fine sheen of sweat touched his skin. It was almost warm in the castle for a change. Amazing. He walked into the main hall, hungry from the Seeking, by passed the women sewing by the fire, all of whom watched him from beneath their lashes, and into the kitchen. He had come to rather like the old cook. She wasn't afraid of him. She made lurid suggestions which amused him. She always gave him the choice delectables from her cooking.
It smelled of roasting pork today and baking bread. There were cooling apple tarts on racks by the ovens.
"Well hello handsome boy." She cackled, her hands coated with flour. He never corrected her on the truth of their age differences. "Come for a tumble with old cook?"
He summoned a lecherous grin, despite the headache and the strain. "Is that the going price for a bit of your cooking, old crone?"
"Perhaps a juicy kiss will do. I expect tongues."
He laughed outright and selected a tart. Stood against the counter and downed it in two bites, while Cook kneaded dough. Her helpers sat along the table against the wall, peeling sweet potatoes. The old witch, Ayntha sat among them, deftly slicing skin from a knotty potato. He stole another tart.
"You like to make the air come alive with all the power you pour into it." The old witch commented. "Even a dullard like me can feel the crackle of your efforts."
His mood slipped back into shadow, reminded of his failures.
"Not that it does any good." He muttered, downing the tart, the heat of the kitchen suddenly becoming unwelcome. He strode for the open door, pulling his hair off the back of his neck to feel the coolness. The old witch's voice drifted after him.
"Enough power in the air to pull spring back weeks before its due." He wasn't sure that was true, but hedge witches tended towards superstition, practicing a different sort of magic than sorcerers who held true power.
"Must be hidden well and truly if all that can't find what you seek." He stood in the doorway, ignoring her babbling. Half hearing the sound of her voice as she told the women peeling roots with her of her own practice over the years. Of how she used to make a fancy bit of coin finding lost children and the like, using herb lore and witchcraft and nothing more than a lock of hair to create a divination that would lead to the lost soul. Witchcraft and herb lore and the complex creation of spells that relied on powers other than those generated by the caster herself. So far below a wizard such as himself as to be almost unnoticed and most certainly not deserving of his attention. The spells of hedge witches were almost a throwback to the witchcraft practiced in dark attics by the ostracized society of witches who practiced in the old world. Real power was a fantasy, all they'd had to rely on was the benevolence of the spirit world and that they got only rarely.
He leaned against the door, watching men cart cut stone into the courtyard to repair the wall. He and Geo Note had been talking about Yoko. The Great Priest had mentioned something about Yoko, being a good, religious girl, probably holding a fair amount of shame over the notion of having a child out of wedlock. How that might be eating at her as well as the loss of the child itself. Schneider had not agreed and the conversation had degenerated from there.
He recalled seeing a thick old book in Kall's library. Augury's, divination's and spells of the ancient world. It had been nestled within a section of texts concerning the concocting of spells using symbols and herbs. Trivial reading, he thought. But, Kall had always had a taste for meaningless knowledge. Angelo was hidden with wards strong enough to keep out his most strenuous questing. He wondered if something that held nothing of his power, no hint of the magic he used, might find the scent of what he sought. A lock of hair?
He had been trying for weeks to find a mental trail. Would a physical one be easier to locate?