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Chapter 13: I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus
The audience chamber of the ancient castle was a wide, round room with more than a dozen enormous marble pillars reaching from the floor to the ceiling twenty feet up. On the walls between the pillars were intricate mosaics of friezes depicting the expulsion of the vampires by Saint Marcus. On the floor were more mosaics that represented the founding of the city. Twelve-foot windows made up the difference in space, each pane of glass a milky white.
Marcus' eyes were wide as he regarded Rolle standing silently in the door of the audience chamber. The elder was not surprised to see him in the same clothes that had been brought to him in Nova Scotia when they had departed. The vision of Rolle standing there was exactly the way Marcus had always imagined. The only things missing were the red burning eyes and the sneer of fury on the boy's face.
Surprised by the sudden appearance, several guard in the room reacted with low snarls. Among them were Renata, Aro's shield and personal bodyguard. Her sharp red eyes narrowed as she moved closer to Aro.
Two other vampires advanced on Rolle. Both were large and intimidating. Though Rolle was only an inch or two shorter than both of them, each of them were at least thirty pounds heavier and all of it represented sheer brawn. Felix approached from the left. Rolle's eyes flickered to him first, taking in the vampire's unyielding eyes and dark hair. Santiago strode toward him from the right, his eyes equally as hard and uncompromising.
The smallest of the Volturi rose from her seat on the far side of the room. Jane watched Rolle with mild interest. Her pale brown hair was pulled back from her face into a tight knot giving her the illusion of age beyond her mortal years where she had been frozen.
Each of them had a single burning question on their minds: How did this person get in without notice? Aro and Marcus worked together to reclaim control of the room and mask their unease at the sudden appearance.
"Why it's young Rolle!" Aro's smile did not reach his eyes.
"You're late," Marcus said, mustering as much annoyance as he could.
"So you are the one who attacked Carlisle's coven?" Aro's words were matter of fact, but his tone was stiff. "And the one who reportedly killed our own Demetri!" he added with a curious light in his eyes. His voice almost sang as his hands clapped together.
Rolle's face was lowered, but his eyes were raised taking in the room around him, flicking to the faces of each vampire.
"Shall I bring Caius?" Felix asked.
"Yes, well thought, Felix," Aro said graciously. "Thank you."
As Felix slid past Rolle and into the hall beyond, Aro returned his scrutiny to the seemingly plain American youth before him. Aro was immediately pleased with this fact, knowing the boy would be easily underestimated. Aro had learned eons ago to never take anyone at face value, but for those without his years of experience, he knew it could be an advantage.
"Welcome to Volterra, my young friend," Aro said, turning and taking the four steps to his chair on the dais. Renata moved with him as if she were attached. He took his seat and steepled his hands in front of himself, looking expectantly back at Rolle. When Rolle made no attempt to answer, Aro chuckled. "You may speak," he granted with a smile.
"Thank you," Rolle said softly.
"Amazing!" Aro delighted. "Who would have guessed? Court manners from an American? Although," he paused to point out, "it is in very bad form to enter any keep unannounced, let alone unattended. You'll be sure to not make that mistake again?"
Rolle nodded and answered, "Yes, sir," being careful not to mutter.
Aro turned to Marcus. "Truly, my brother, you have a most excellent eye. What was it again that you said intrigued you about the boy?"
Marcus hated when Aro made him repeat something he needed no prompting to remember. He buried his annoyance in his apathetic reply. "He appeared to have some natural tracking ability."
Aro nodded thoughtful. "By an interesting coincidence, we seem to have an opening for someone with such talent," he teased. "But what have you done to make your eyes so... unique, young Rolle?"
Rolle glanced around the room as if the question confused him. "Nothing."
Aro chuckled again as Caius entered with Felix. The elder paused several feet from Rolle and looked him up and down.
"This is him then?" Caius asked. He looked up at Aro as he asked, "Is it true about Demetri? Have you seen it?"
"We were waiting for you, my dear brother," Aro answered and beckoned Caius and Marcus to join him.
A warning in the form of a low growl bounced around the room.
When all three elders turned to find the source, Marcus found the sneer on Rolle's face that he had expected to see earlier. The cause of the sneer, however, was not Rolle's vengeance. The cause turned out to be Felix who was standing directly behind Rolle, purposefully staying out of his field of vision to goad him.
"Now, now, Felix," Aro scolded. "Don't be like that! There's no cause to make a bad impression. You may be working together very soon."
As Felix moved, Rolle quieted and the remaining brothers claimed their seats. With a slight gesture of his hand, Aro indicated a place before them where Rolle should stand. A soft, serene smile appeared on Rolle's face for an instant and then was gone again. Aro noted it, but made no mention of it. He would know the reason for it soon enough. Once the stage was set, Aro let the show begin.
"Marcus has been waiting for you, my young friend. Why were you late?"
"Mechanical difficulties with the plane," Rolle answered promptly.
Aro smirked, pursing his lips. "I meant for the past sixty years."
"I wasn't sure who killed me," he answered after a slight pause. "I wasn't sure until I found the other one following him."
"The other one?" Caius interrupted. "What do you mean?"
"Demetri," Rolle answered. "He... he was removing obstacles."
Aro leaned forward in his seat. "Explain."
"His intentions were to destroy Carlisle Cullen, but when he discovered Marcus in the area, he thought he would take the opportunity to advance himself by breaking the triumvirate. He thought he could remove Marcus and blame the Cullens, then come back here and claim the seat for himself."
Aro watched Rolle carefully as he spoke, but there was no hint of dishonesty from the boy. He had always found it best to give someone enough rope to hang himself first before discovering the truth in his own unique way.
"And your intentions?" Caius asked.
Several eyes flicked to Caius after his question, and it was more than Marcus and Aro who noted the Caius did not challenge this accusation, nor did he press for more proof of the allegation. A new chill filled the marble room, but it did not affect the temperature a single degree.
Rolle looked up, his expression was unreadable. "I have none. I came because I was told to."
"How did you know this about Demetri?" Aro asked since Caius purposefully did not.
Rolle shrugged. "I don't know."
"Then how could you know what his intentions were?" Aro asked again.
"I just do," Rolle answered. "I just... know things sometimes."
"Is that how you tracked the man who killed your mate?" Aro asked.
The air left Rolle's lungs in a whoosh and he reeled as if Aro had smacked him. "What?" he gasped, wobbling where he stood.
Marcus raised a cautioning hand to Aro at the same time Renata stiffened and moved closer. Rolle seemed unable to contain himself. He pulled on his hands, wrapping an arm over his chest, rocking from foot to foot, and fidgeting like a young child. Aro was faced with his own honest confusion over Rolle's strange behavior. He glanced at Renata to ensure she accompanied him, and he climbed down the stairs to face Rolle.
Aro held out his arm appearing to offer support and a steady hand. Rolle reached out and missed his hand on the first attempt, flailing for the thin fingers a second time. The knowing expression on Aro's face slid off like melting wax as he experienced something he hadn't felt in a long time: pain.
Instead of the smooth flow of knowledge that normally blossomed in Aro's mind, images exploded behind his eyes. Sharp fragments of thought raced across his brain and felt as if they shredded the tissue they came into contact with. The jagged splinters of Rolle's past had neither framework nor frame of reference. There were faces laced with painful barbs of memory. There were many patchy experiences with no beginning and no end that seemed to belong to no one at all, and yet somehow made up the litter of Rolle's life.
Sensations overwhelmed what Aro could only refer to as Rolle's 'past': suffocating darkness and weight, blinding brightness that seared the eyes and flesh, painful floating murkiness without sight. The pulse of the earth itself seemed to be the backdrop, connecting everything within Rolle's mind with a deafening roar.
Most faces were unfamiliar as they popped before him like bubbles in boiling water. He recognized a few: Carlisle, Edward, and other vampires that Aro had never met personally but had seen in other's minds. What he found more disturbing were the faces he knew all too well: the Romanians, and vampires whom Aro knew were now merely memories and dust. Demetri was there as well, his face a mask of determined anger before evaporating into thin air.
Aro's free hand flew to his head. Renata reacted immediately, pulling her master free from Rolle's grasp. Without Aro's steadying hand, Rolle partially fell and collapsed to one knee as the other vampires in the room converged on him. Felix and Santiago trapped him to the floor as Jane directed her frightening energies at him.
Rolle threw back his head and gasped, his feet kicked against the mosaic floor smashing the antique tiles as his body spasmed under the pain Jane inflicted on him. When he drew enough air into his lungs, his scream of pain filled the chamber. More dark-cloaked guards rushed into the chamber, coming to the aid of their masters.
"Jane!" Aro gasped. "Enough."
The sneer on Jane's face remained, but she obeyed Aro's order. As soon as her attack ended, Rolle drew another breath but the sound that escaped him wasn't one of pain. The hysterical laughter that erupted from Rolle had a frightening wondrous quality to it. He sounded as if he were awake for the first time in his existence. He raised his head and gazed at her in awe.
"That was you?" he breathed.
Jane's menacing sneer disappeared, startled by his response. She glanced at Aro, waiting for him to announce that Rolle was simply mad.
"Please! Do it again," Rolle begged.
Assuming that he was now simply goading her, Jane released the full force of her fury onto him. The mere possibility that someone would toy with her enraged her. Rolle's responding shriek of pain was satisfying to her anger, and yet between each gasping breath his screams of pain were interspersed with his mad, amazed and astonished laughter as his body writhed in the cruel stone hands of the Volturi guard.
Aro frowned, confused by the insane reaction before him. He stared at the boy on the floor and glanced at Jane, recognizing her singular focus on Rolle and what it meant. "Jane," he said softly to make her stop. She complied immediately. He then waved Felix and Santiago off.
Rolle continued lying on the floor. His laughter rang out uninterrupted from the screams. The sound was delighted and miraculous. As his laughter died away, he sat up slowly. With bright clear eyes and a wide smile he stared at Jane.
"Thank you."
Jane stepped back in shock. "What??" she spat in rage.
Rolle took a deep cleansing breath and smiled again. "Thank you!" he repeated. "I never thought I'd ever feel anything so pure again."
Jane turned to Aro aghast, barely holding herself back. "Master?" It was a question and a plea.
Aro reached out and smoothed his fingers against her cheek to calm her, as Caius demanded to know what he had seen. Aro gave Caius a meaningful look but said nothing. Instead, he turned to the guard in the chamber.
"Santiago, would you and Sergei escort our new friend to the casement?" he asked them, adding to Rolle, "We will discuss your situation and call for you shortly."
Sergei came forward and replaced Felix, taking Rolle's arm and pulling him up from the floor.
Before they left, Aro called out to stop them. "A moment, please," he said, then turned to Chelsea and nodded once.
A tall and beautiful vampire walked across the room and paused in front of Rolle. Her features were flawless and her dark blonde hair flowed around her exquisite face, but the innate cruelty in her eyes marred her beauty like a scar.
Rolle looked into her mean expression and glanced around the room finding the same look on the faces of every guard present. Their eyes were filled with fire for him. He winced at their intentions. As far as they knew, he had attacked Aro and each one was now considering ways to punish him for that. Having so many minds contemplating possibilities and plans broke Rolle's focus. A low hum filled the castle as if a large truck had parked nearby. He clenched his jaw and breathed through his nose filling his head with their scents.
Chelsea stepped around him and looked to Aro who had returned to the dais. She made her way toward him as she shook her head.
Aro met the expectant faces of Sergei and Santiago and motioned for them to proceed. Together, the two guards escorted Rolle from the audience chamber. Another guard, Corin, followed in their wake. She turned and nodded to the dais with respect before leaving. The heavy doors closed after them with a whoosh and a bang.
Though Rolle offered no resistance and would have followed them without complaint, Santiago and Sergei pulled him down the hall with hard jerks to keep him unsteady on his feet. The cool air of the castle hall stirred with dust as they passed. They manhandled him through several corridors and down a flight of stairs into a subchamber of the southeast tower.
"You'll learn some respect before you see them again," Santiago promised. "We don't allow that sort of thing here."
The door into the casement was pushed open and Sergei flung Rolle into the room. He spun across the floor and crashed into the old wooden sword racks of the armory. Metal and wood clattered to the floor in broken chunks. Rolle scrambled to his feet as Corin closed the door on the men and took a guard position outside.
Sergei dusted his hands across each other. "You don't come here and attack our Lords," he informed crossing the room toward Rolle.
"I didn't!" Rolle tried to explain. He knew their plans weren't to destroy him, but they both understood how much damage they could do that Rolle could heal from before being taken back to Aro.
Santiago's hand flew in a backward arc and caught Rolle across the head. The roaring sound began before Rolle struck the wall again on the opposite side of the casement. Rock cracked under the impact and dust dropped from the rafters.
Rolle got back to his feet again. "Don't hit me," he snarled.
Both men laughed. "Hit you?" Sergei barked with laughter. "We're just having a little talk."
"Yeah, we're just teaching you a few rules," Santiago added. "A little lesson in right and wrong."
"You don't understand," Rolle growled.
"No, amico," Santiago corrected. "It's you who don't understand." The men advanced on Rolle from either side. "And we're going to help you with that before you see Aro again."
"So there won't be any more misunderstandings," Sergei said with a brutish grin.
"No. See..." Rolle breathed, teeth clenched. He shook his head as he crouched. "...I'm not locked in here with you," his voice grated. "You're locked in here with me."
On the other side of the door, Corin vomited the blood of her last victim as the air pulsed with a single thick beat. Dust swirled into the corridor over the sill of the heavy ancient door. Delicate dancing tendrils curled in the air like smoke for a moment, then were sucked back under the door as if they were never there.
§∞•••∞§
The heavy doors closed after Rolle and the guards with a whoosh and a bang that echoed throughout the room. Those that remained behind did not appear eager to leave, wanting to know more about the stranger.
Caius turned to his brother again. "Well?"
Aro steepled his fingers, pressing his lips to them as he stared into space a moment. "The boy's mind is.... unlike any other I have ever encountered," Aro admitted.
"He's unstable," Caius stated. "He should be destroyed. He doesn't understand his gift let alone know how to control it." He turned on Marcus. "You might have found a useful tool, but you turned him when he was dull and damaged. He'll never be of use to us now."
"Perhaps," Aro murmured, distracted.
"Were you in pain?" Marcus' question to Aro was barely a low breath.
"It was not comfortable," Aro partly admitted, but said no more about his experience. He turned in his seat to face Marcus. "You said he expressed innate skills of a tracker?"
"What of Demetri?" Caius demanded. "Is it as the boy claims? Has he killed Demetri?"
Murmurs of dismay erupted throughout the room in a vampire version of a gasp. The guard seemed to move as one, stepping closer to their masters.
Aro looked darkly at Caius, understanding once again that his brother's unscrupulous timing was deliberate and had many motivations prompting it. He masked his reaction quickly and regarded Caius with smiling eyes.
"It would indeed seem this is the case. How fortunate for us that we are so quickly capable of refilling that unique role, wouldn't you agree brother?" he said with intentional clarity, the turned to address the guard present. "Rest assured that we do not condone such methods for seeking advancement, my friends."
As he spoke, Thomas entered from the left side of the room and crossed quickly to Marcus as Aro continued speaking.
"Be that as it may, we will deeply grieve the loss of one of our own, and though his skills may be replaced by another, we can never replace one such as him. Demetri was a loyal friend," Aro forced himself to say, guessing the truth of Demetri's ambition, "and sought always to protect us all."
Though Aro knew the words professing Demetri's loyalty were all a lie, he also knew not to publicly muddy the name of a man who had friends in the guard. The rumor mill would circulate the truth in a far more palatable way for those who would not want to hear it.
"You can't seriously be considering keeping the boy alive?" Caius asked in dismay.
Aro clenched his jaw a moment before he forced a pleasant smile to his lips. This wasn't a discussion any more. Caius was openly challenging him in front of the Guard, blatantly planting the seed of dissension between them for everyone to see. There was a time, too long ago now, when Caius knew to never publicly challenge him. It was a honor they gave each other, to keep such conversations and decisions private, to always appear unified before the Guard.
Aro turned coolly to Caius. "As I said before, brother, the boy has been left wild too long. He is simply young and untamed."
"And how will you tame him? " Caius wanted to know. He waved a hand at Jane. "How will you control him?"
Caius strode across the dais toward Chelsea. "Did he waver? Did he bend?" he demanded from her, already knowing the answer. He spun back to face Aro.
Thomas bent down to hand Marcus a small slip of paper before stepping back with a nod. Marcus unfolded the note and read it before handing it to Aro. Aro, too, read the note and scowled before handing it to Caius who seemed to begrudge the distance he had to cross to retrieve the note.
Dacians have left Romania
Caius crumpled the note in his hand. "Do you know where they've gone?" he wanted to know, his voice still colored with the heat of his questions to Aro.
"No, sir. Afton and Roman are trying to locate them now," Thomas answered.
"This could present a problem," Marcus opined.
"You have a gift for understatement," Caius said brusquely. "What of the boy?" he still wanted to know. "You can't seriously consider him as a replacement for Demetri!"
"We would be short-sighted to not consider," he enunciated with a pointed look at Caius, "all options. You act as if we have no time to decide, brother," Aro laughed at the thought, using a lighthearted act to calm the unrest in the Guard over this matter. "Marcus' young friend is a small matter," Aro continued. "We have larger priorities to deal with than this mere boy, don't you agree?"
Aro took the crumpled note from Caius' hand. "What could they be up to?" he mused, turning his thoughts to the broken images he had seen from Rolle.
Their Romanian enemies had been utterly silent for more than fifty years following reports of an enormous disturbance akin to a civil war. Since then there had been absolutely nothing heard from the ancient ones. The entire matter escalated and resolved in a single night, and had happened in a remote part of the southern Carpathians. No vampires from the region had been heard from since, except the Dacians who had crawled back into whatever tomb they had hidden themselves in.
A notion began to form in the back of Aro's mind. He rubbed a thoughtful finger across his lips, recalling memories and stories he had gathered from many minds since that time; stories of a fabled vampire with skills more lethal than any ever found before.
Had Caius been right to guess? Was Rolle this same rumor come to reality? Had the Romanians discovered the boy? Did they send him here now as their weapon? Why had he attacked Carlisle's coven? If he was the so-called assassin, why had his attack on Carlisle been so non-descript? Marcus' memory of that event was that of a rather clumsy youth whose skill seemed more based on luck than deadly ability.
Corin burst into the chamber, the doors flying open with a startling crack. She fell to her knees. "He's destroyed them!"
§∞•••∞§
A/N: A giant shoutout to Irishgirl, Songster, and Philadelphic. You guys are the rails of this train, keeping me straight and on-track. Thanks to Nikki Pattinson over at Twilighted for always being on top of her game. She validates my chapters for posting with amazing speed.
I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus
The Myth of Orpheus
http://www(dot)renaissanceastrology(dot)com/orpheushymns(dot)html
"amico"
[friend] (in Italian)
Rolle's favorite line "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me."
From "The Watchmen" http://www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=JYAcUZ-Av0E
The casement
http://www(dot)castles(dot)me(dot)uk/rooms-in-a-medieval-castle(dot)htm
The room in the castle called the Casemate was a later addition to the castle and was a covered chamber for storing musketry or artillery.
The solar
http://www(dot)castles(dot)me(dot)uk/rooms-in-a-medieval-castle(dot)htm
The room in the castle called the Solar was intended for sleeping and private quarters and used by the Lord's family. It became a private sitting room favored by the family.