logo
  • Issue 34 – Spring 2017
  • Issue 33 – Winter 2017
  • Issue 32 – Fall 2016
  • Issue 31 – Summer 2016
  • Previous Issues
  • About Silver Pen
    • Silver Pen Bylaws
    • Writers Forum
    • Fabula Argentea
    • Liquid Imagination
    • Youth Imagination
    • Write Well Blog
  • Silver Blade Staff
  • Grand List of Cliches

  • Home
  • Issue 28
  • Issue 28 Stories

Published by Associate Editor on November 28, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 28, Issue 28 Stories, Novellas, Short Stories

Perfect Beauty

by Richard W Black

pink-dressShe woke. Looking around, she realized that she was naked and in a strange bed of a luxury hotel. But then, she had no idea where there was a bed that was familiar. The clothes laid out on the dresser said glamorous. She put them on and checked her appearance, she was perfect beauty. She was also late, so she hurried out.

For a month, the woman known as Mia Nettles had performed her task with her usual thorough adherence to detail and expertise. The subject was not too difficult since he was not a social person and did not often venture from his living quarters in the evening. His routines were habitual and rarely varied. If she were one to care, she would have felt pity for him as a lonely person with not much of a life. Yet, she was a professional doing a professional’s job professionally. Regardless, what human could not feel compassion for him?

Walking to her appointment, she felt the back of her left hand, there was a bump from the identity chip for Mia Nettles. With a deep breath, she got into character.

In the bar, she chose a table where she could see the entrance and ordered a drink from the robot waitress that transmitted it to the robotic bartender. Two minutes and thirty seconds later, her comet-tail, a vodka and juice concoction was delivered and the robot held out the electronic pad with the bill.

The robotic voice, mechanical and indifferent, said, “Fourteen-fifty.”

Avoiding the robot’s eyes, she presented the back of her hand. The name and photo of Mia Nettles appeared on the screen. “Add twelve percent,” she said. It was a foolish custom to her organized mind. Logically, the bar should charge the ideal amount for the beverage and service that included a profit margin and adequate salaries for the human employees who operated the establishment. Her tip was calculated to not draw attention to her from the other customers.

The robotic voice thanked her and moved on to other customers. Now she waited.

He entered, took his customary seat at the end of the bar and ordered where he chatted with the robot bartender as it made his drink. She frowned; most people ignored robots unless they required something from them, even the ones that were allowed to legally appear in a human form. The technology had advanced to the level of making completely human androids, humanoids they were called. But they were completely illegal and the penalties were quite severe for violating them. Through observation, she determined this guy preferred robotic interaction to that of the human kind.

steampunk-barTime to work, she took her drink and headed in his direction. The bartender filled his order and scanned the back of his hand as Mia slid onto the stool beside him. Predictably, the bartender’s protocol program prompted it to move away discreetly when two humans were about to interact.

“Friend of yours?” she asked jokingly.

“We need them to do the jobs humans won’t,” he replied. “Might as well treat them with respect.” Justin Cane was annoyed when people criticized robots considering the human behavior he had witnessed in his life…

When he turned his head, his thoughts were immediately cut short by the sight of the woman. If there was a definition of the ideal woman for him, she was it. This gorgeous creature had a shapely figure but not supermodel skinny, dark smooth skin, buxom in the chest, cushion in her buttocks and character to her pretty face. Her scent lingered in the air and he took it in. However, in the back of his brain, he wondered what would bring her into his world, given his foul disposition toward the human race?

“I hear that,” she responded with a grin.

“I love mankind…” he said, quoting an ancient philosopher who once used a cartoon character named Linus in a comic strip series entitled Peanuts to espouse his wisdom.

“It’s people I can’t stand,” she finished.

They tapped the rims of their glasses together in a toast to similar thoughts and took a sip, sealing their comradeship to an idea. There was a moment of silence as each sought a subject given that they were complete strangers. They settled on politics, an odd choice, and the despicable nature of the Federation president. Both considered politics a necessary evil but looked forward to the day when humanity would outgrow the need. They moved on to the sorry state of entertainment and music. It was amazing on their shared opinions. They switched to shots and trashing the latest celebrity couple. Musicians were next.

Then Justin’s com-link buzzed and he cursed under his breath when he saw it was the director. A text message, he was required in the director’s office in five minutes. How he hated the fact that his boss thought he would be doing nothing of importance on his day off. Fine, Justin did not have a social life or hobbies but it was still his time to do with as he pleased. For a moment he considered defiance but his personality refused that option over obedience. But what was he doing? Nothing but drinking in a bar.

Without thinking, he slid from the stool and rushed toward the door. When Director Newman said five minutes, he meant that his agent had better be there in five minutes. He was almost outside when he realized the stupidity of what he had just done.

Mia sat confused at the bar abrupt nature of the man. Looking up, she noticed that the robotic bartender was regarding her in a manner she thought was a bit strange. Did the machine comprehend in its electronic circuitry what the man was unable to in his organic brain? Briefly, there was the possibility that she might have to terminate the robot.

Then Justin was beside her.

“JCane12151954,” he said, smiled weakly then rushed for the door.

She grinned and his com-link number was already committed to memory. The mechanical bartender stiffly slid over and offered her a refill. She hated how functionally perfect robots were but nudged her drink glass toward him through the empty shot glasses like a plow pushing them aside. She might as well; she had a few hours to kill.

Across the city, Justin was in the office of the Director of the Federation Special Security.

Unbelievable, thought Justin. The assignment was ridiculous. It was his brother’s doing, he knew it. Justin had ignored Jason’s calls for weeks and the agent assumed his brother was creating a reason to make Justin contact him.

“Just how credible is the informant?” Justin asked Director Newman.

Newman considered the question for a moment then replied, “Very credible.”

Suppressing the desire to swear, Justin could only nod. He was stuck with the assignment. Nevertheless, he was not about to go anywhere near the Diamond Office on New Hope if he could absolutely avoid it.

“The informant was not identified,” continued the director, reading Justin’s thoughts. “But the information about the payment was correct and completely accurate in every detail.”

The informant suggested that there was someone on the inside of the president’s entourage who was an assassin. With nothing else to go on, when the president was informed, he insisted that the Director of the Security Service call on his best agent to take on the challenge and report directly to the president. Yeah, thought Justin, that report to the president part had his brother’s finger prints all over it.

“What precautions are being taken to protect the president?” Justin asked.

“We ran all the scenarios through the computer and it recommended that we completely replace the security teams and assign Hugh Koenig to take over leadership of the president’s personal security detail,” the director said.

“Where do I start?” he asked, but the director was no longer listening to him. The meeting was over. The president had accepted responsibility for the mission and the Director of the Security Service was all too happy to give it to him. Should there be any screw-up that resulted in the death or injury of the president, the director was theoretically off the hook, his political career safe.

The special agent went to his office to think. He had one and only one lead to follow. He reviewed the data.

The payment was a large one and flushed through several banks from Earth to the Moon and through Mars until it reached its destination. From there it went to Spike. Security Service experts in computer hacking found the payment but could not trace it back to the source. Still, Spike was a shady character who solved people’s problems for a hefty fee and often not legally.

Justin Cane’s position as a common field agent for the Security Service was a puzzle to all his colleagues up to and including the director. A man from a wealthy family with a famous brother should be running the security agency if not some multi-trillion credit company. Or he should be living the life of a spoiled rich brat with wild parties, women, and all the pleasures available to the wealthy and powerful. One popular rumor was that he was a spy for the president sent to report on those in the Security Service who were disloyal. Complicating the situation was his lack of social skills and he was not talkative and therefore had no one who could explain who he was to those around him. In fact, he was so isolated from human contact that his fellow agents often referred to him as Robot.

Justin the Robot sighed. Where to begin?

Spike was a cautious type. He kept himself invisible and had others do his dirty work. As such, he had never been arrested or charged with a crime. But the shady businessman had to use the data net to transfer payments like anyone else in the Terran System whether on the deepest space station or in a cabin in some isolated woods on Earth. The use of a common currency and a mechanized banking system prevented many credit transactions for illegal activities but the criminal class was intelligent and innovative. Funds were washed through a myriad of schemes to throw off enforcement agencies. However, there was always a name at the end of every trail.

With so little to go on and the clock ticking, Special Agent Cane had few options but to flush the man out of the shadows. He sought a court order by throwing around the president’s name, which irritated him. He had Spike’s accounts frozen. The collateral effect was to make it impossible for the sleazy character to do business. He hoped that Spike would have to come into the light and seek out the source of the injunction. Perhaps he could force Spike into a mistake that might lead the agent to the one plotting the assassination.

woman1Then he brought up the thin file on the informant and tried to concentrate but his mind drifted to the woman in the bar, so beautiful and sensual, her scent still seemed real in his nose. It was ridiculous; he had never met a woman who interested him. No, that was not completely true. He had never met a woman with whom his socially awkward temperament did not repel. All his life he lived under the shadow of his personable brother. The guy could walk into a room of strangers and leave with a new friends, acquaintances, possible business associates and com-link numbers for a dozen or more women. Justin entered a room filled with people and gravitated to the peripherals where he observed dispassionately without anyone taking notice or initiating contact. His thoughts continued to return to her while his investigation went nowhere.

Agent Cane waited all day but nothing happened, just a clock that ticked off the minutes. His brain could not focus on the file so nothing new came to mind. Finally, to his relief, his com-link notified him of a call. But not the one he was anticipating, most unexpected.

“Hey, it’s me,” said the familiar female voice, and the photo on his com-link confirmed that it was the woman from the bar.

She was at a café a block away and he had given her his number… She left the perceived invitation slide out there waiting for him to accept.

Special Agent Justin Cane considered the file on his electronic pad and frowned. The sound of her voice enticing him away from tedium was irresistible. Why not, his one and only lead was leading nowhere.

Leaving the Federation Special Security building with his guard down, Justin was surprised by the approach of two very big and very well armed thugs. One growled something about the agent’s presence being requested. The next moment, a hover van the size of a small room sped to a stop and Justin was politely shoved inside. The blaster at his side was not much of a comfort. If he tried to draw the weapon, he would be dead before it cleared his holster.

“Agent Cane,” snarled Spike from an overstuffed chair that had difficulty supporting his obese body. “I am called Spike.”

“I have been expecting you,” replied Justin, attempting to sound authoritative. Nevertheless, he felt like a dead man standing, flanked by the two thugs and with two more behind the grotesque person. He had passed the classification of fat several kilos ago.

Spike

Spike was a disgusting man who gave off a horrible smell with a mouthful of food and the appearance of someone not accustomed to cleansing cylinders. “You Moonie scum, what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded then washed down whatever was in his mouth with Martian red beer.

Justin had an immediate dislike of the overweight slob. Like most of the seven billion born on Earth, Spike had the culturally popular concept that his birth gave him a supremacy over the ten billion born on the thousands of space stations, on the Moon cities or among the Martian colonies. It infuriated Justin that this fat turd considered himself superior—worse, he knew the agent’s birthplace and therefore had already researched him.

“We got word that a hitman has been hired to take out the Federation President,” said Justin with all the bravado he could muster. He had expected this confrontation in an interrogation room, not on the adversary’s turf. “Your name was linked to it through a very substantial payment.”

“Do you really think that I am so stupid as to let someone trace me back to a hired killer?” sniped Spike. The rapid response suggested that he already knew why his accounts were under scrutiny.

Justin winced. He had spent the day studying Spike as he waited for his subject to contact him. The thuggish businessman was right; it did not make sense from what the agent knew of him.

“What was the purpose of the payment?” Justin asked.

Spike shrugged and a candy bar appeared in his hand, Belgian chocolate from the looks of it. “I hired a hacker.”

Justin waited while the fat man chewed. It was illegal to hire hackers but tough to link the client to the hacker so they were rarely prosecuted. Yet he was not going to let his only lead off so easily. A good interrogator knew how to use silence as a weapon against the guilty.

Finally Spike surrendered, “He was to hack into the computer system of…an important entity.” Before the agent could ask, he quickly added, “And I have no idea why. I just did the hiring.”

“What entity?”

“Client privilege.”

“You tell me and I’ll release your accounts without charges,” Justin said in a bluff. If he was unable to dig up any evidence of wrongdoing by Spike, a judge would soon do so anyway. “Otherwise…”

Spike considered his options then said, “The Security Service data base.”

“I also want the hacker’s name.”

“You’ll never locate him.”

“I’ll trace the credits you paid him,” said Justin confidently.

The condescending Spike laughed and Justin seethed with anger but was in no position to threaten the other man. “This guy does not need credits,” scoffed the overweight thug. “He could drain a bank in an hour. No, he works for information. I gave him what he wanted, he did the job then severed communication.”

The agent mulled it over. What was the connection between a hacked Federation Security Service computer system and an assassin?

“I want my accounts unfrozen,” Spike demanded.

“I’ll take care of it,” Justin replied, his word was his bond.

“You know,” remarked the fat man between bites, “they said you looked like him. I don’t see the resemblance.”

It was nothing more than a parting shot, Justin knew, but he tried not to breathe a sigh of relief as he stepped from the van, or was thrown depending on the semantics, and walked away with his back to the two thugs who escorted him out. A blaster round in the back was still a possibility. Anyway, his mind was on the new puzzle of how to track the hacker and he forgot that he was originally headed to meet the woman from the bar.

Across the street, Mia watched Justin stumble from the hover van while sitting at an outdoor café. He was walking like a man unaware of his surroundings and that was not good. Though she appeared to be just another patron, her brain was taking in the entire scene. The streets were crowded with pedestrians. Nevertheless, she knew that five of them were armed and had their sights on Justin Cane. There was movement slightly behind her. A woman in a long coat stepped from the café and stopped beside her. Mia sipped her coffee with its cloud of whipped cream floating on the top and allowed her head to swivel nonchalantly to the side. There was the distinct outline of a plasma rifle under the coat.

Meanwhile, Justin was barely out of the blast range when Spike’s van exploded behind him and knocked him off his feet. Chaos ensued on the street.

“Are you all right, agent?” asked a man hurrying up to help Justin who was on his hands and knees.

In his scrambled head, he realized he did not know the man so how did the guy know Justin was an agent? Instinct told him to act.

Twisting to the side, he balanced on his hands and kicked the man in the vitals. The half-raised blaster in the attacker’s hand fired into the sidewalk where the agent had been a second before, threw up chunks of concrete and left a black scorched hole. There was screaming and people who suddenly found their quiet day turned into terror fled in every direction. Though his training told him to draw his weapon, Justin fought the impulse, chose instead to leap to his feet and grab his attacker as a shield. The poor man with the smashed genitals immediately took two blaster hits in the chest, putting him out of his misery. Justin knew instantly that he was outnumbered and out-gunned.

That was Mia’s evaluation of the situation as well from her vantage point at the café. To her trained eye, she saw the entire ambush progress and end with the target dead along with two more of the attackers and a third one wounded. It was time to make her move; as the woman with the plasma rifle took a step forward and brought the weapon out from under her coat. Mia stood up behind her and, in one motion twisted her head, snapping the neck. Then she snatched the rifle from the woman’s dead hands. Flicking off the safety and activating the electronic sight, she prepared to fire.

At the same time, Justin had four blasters firing at him from every direction. Two more shots struck the dead man he was propping up as he worked a few steps closer to a doorway where he hoped to find some cover. A blaster round zinged past his shoulder and he felt a sting. Suddenly, a plasma rifle fired with its distinctive sound and the green energy balls it propelled exploded into human flesh. Two of the attackers were blown to pieces. The odds were now even.

“This way,” Mia yelled and Justin saw who had saved him.

The other two attackers were scrambling to find cover but they still had the edge if Justin stayed put. So he let the dead man drop and sprinted in the direction of the woman with the plasma rifle. It made no sense. He had no idea who she was; she might even have set him up, but in the seconds he had to decide, it was the only course of action that gave him a chance to live.

The attackers were taken by surprise and two shots from the plasma rifle kept their heads down.

Together, Justin and Mia sprinted down an alley ahead of blaster fire after his remaining assailants recovered. The rounds blew off pieces of red brick but were ineffective.

A block away, Mia tossed the weapon in a trash container. They kept running.

They paused to catch their breaths several blocks away where pedestrians and vehicle operators were unaware of the madness happening not far away.

Justin was about to make a call on his com-link when Mia covered it with her hand. “What are you doing?”

“Calling for backup,” he responded, annoyed by her tone. He was a Security Service agent for the Federation of Nations and Colonies, how dare she question his judgment?

“Then you just give me a few minutes to get clear of the potential fire zone before you do,” she snapped back.

She was going to walk away and he was going to let her when sanity hit. What was she talking about?

She hated to be the one to tell him, but someone just tried to ambush him. Did he know who they were or why? She was not that confident that those he considered friends were friends but she was sure he had some very organized enemies.

“Alright,” he said and held his com-link up so she could see him switch it off. “No contact with anyone until we figure out who I can safely call.”

Justin had to admit that she had a point. As far as he knew, only the director knew about his assignment. Someone powerful enough to want to take out the president could also corrupt the director or those around him. It bothered him that, when he reached the conclusion that he had to think and plan before he did something stupid, he looked up and there was her smiling face. Okay, it was a beautiful smiling face. However, if he could not use his com-link, he also could not use his ID chip and it was a good bet his apartment was not the safest place to go. He was screwed.

“I’ll hide you,” she said simply.

The lack of emotion stunned him. She was offering to risk her life for a man she barely knew aside from a cartoon quote. He felt an emotional twinge even if the gorgeous woman did not.

They walked the city for several hours making sure they were not being tailed. Eventually, they were in the hotel room registered to Mia Nettles. Night was falling outside and the news on the viewer screen reported the incident.

Justin grimaced in pain.

“Maybe we should get that shirt off and see what damage has been done,” Mia suggested.

Removing it was an excruciating experience. The wound was a bloody mess but not serious. She did her best to clean and bandage it with the travel first aid kit she purchased in the hotel gift shop. Her touch was tender and she made every effort not to make it too painful. It still hurt like a blazing comet.

“Nice work,” he said as he admired her patch job. “Where did you learn to do that?”

He felt somewhat exposed; he was half naked and forced to take the pain while she was completely dressed and in control. The vulnerability aroused a desire in him and he hoped she would not notice.

“Space…” He waited for more as she collected the blood-soaked towels and empty bandage wrappers. She was action oriented and not much on small talk. Tearing the towels into manageable strips, she fed everything into the hotel’s waste disposal. She re-examined the bandage more as a way of covering over the uncomfortable silence until she saw that he expected her to contribute the details.

“I was part of a terrorist assault team on the Rim,” she said.

Abruptly she moved away from him for the view out the windows to hide her face.

There were a dozen or so space stations on the outer orbit of the Terran System. Located far from Earth, they were often targets of one terrorist faction or another, mostly those fanatics who were against humans moving beyond their solar system and poisoning the rest of the galaxy.

“I’ve never been to Earth,” she continued in her rehearsed story. “So when I rotated out, I thought I would see it before deciding what to do with my life.”

“Welcome to Earth,” he remarked.

legsBut what he was thinking was that she was one beautiful and desirable woman. Even more so now that she had laid bare a part of her inner self. They had a brush with death and barely escaped the kill zone which had established a mutual reliance. It was implied that they might be the only ones they could currently trust. The air was filled with a tension, a sexual tension created by their situation.

She was speaking again while he was lost in his thoughts. “What?”

“Room service,” she repeated. “I thought I had better order room service. Best if you—we don’t go out.”

“Good thought.”

An hour later, the robot brought in the tray, Mia swiped her left hand over the bill and added twelve percent for a tip.

Justin emerged from hiding in the bathroom suddenly starved.

She arranged the food on the table. He munched on the fries that came with his steak while he popped the cork on the Bordeaux. He sampled the wine and poured two healthy glasses then saw the amusement in her face. “Best wine in the galaxy,” he said.

She sat across from him. “So how does a guy who was born and raised on the Moon have Bordeaux as a favorite wine?”

Digging into the steak, Justin did not hesitate to talk about his personal life with a complete stranger. It seemed to him so natural to tell this particular woman all about his life of woe. After a long drink of the soothing wine, the story spilled from him.

Justin and Jason were identical twins, born to the fourth wife of Sherman Cane. The Cane family settled on the Moon when the primary economy for the satellite body revolved around mining minerals and they made a fortune. Several generations later, the Canes had their fingers in all sorts of business enterprises, legal and illegal. There were three space stations mining the asteroid belt carrying the Cane name. A young Sherman, as happened with wealthy and powerful men, wanted more wealth and power.

There were ten children from his first three wives but the sons born to his fourth wife were his favorites from the moment he walked into the nursery. Partly, it was because he loved her more than the other three women and more than any other person in the Terran System except Sherman Cane. But as the boys grew to young adults, he particularly loved Jason. Of the two boys, Jason was the most like his father with an ambition that even exceeded Sherman’s. Had Sherman not given his sons unlimited wealth, he might have feared that Jason would murder him for the inheritance. Nevertheless, the father watched his back. Blazing Suns of Orion, he loved that boy.

Justin, however, was quite a different story. He was the good son, obedient, faithful and trustworthy. All the characteristics Sherman hated in a man. Such men never amounted to more than upstanding citizens. So pitiful.

The boys were identical in appearance; no one who did not know them intimately could tell the difference. In fact, when they chose to impersonate each other, only their man servant, Reginald, could tell them apart. Sherman wanted to raise gentlemen so he entrusted them to a man with education, refinement and a family history of domestic service. What he had not anticipated was that Reginald had become their surrogate father as the boys found in him the affection they did not receive from their biological father.

The unique traits of the twins emerged with their choices of careers. Neither cared for making more credits, they had more wealth than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Jason wanted power, much to Sherman’s approval, and went into politics. With unlimited financing, he could buy any office he desired and he wanted nothing more than to take the presidency of the Federation of Nations and Colonies. Absolute power appealed to him. Justin wanted to bring criminals to justice.

Mia pointed her knife at Justin with one hand and hid the amused expression with the other as she chewed. “You’re the brother to the President of the Federation. That’s why you look familiar.”

Spread out across the solar system, Earthlings had colonized the Moon and Mars. There were bases on the two Martian moons thousands of space stations from Earth to the asteroid belt and a dozen in orbit with Pluto. Robot missions had gone out beyond the Terran System and were sending back data in preparation for combined manned and robotic exploration of Orion. Though Earth was united under one planetary government, there were still political movements battling for control. As well, wherever humans established bases and colonies, there were factions among the residents and hostility toward Earth since most of the political power was gathered on the planet. To keep order, there was the military which patrolled space and the Security Service that was charged with keeping the law in the cities, bases and colonies. There were local police forces but the Security Service had jurisdiction wherever it chose to have jurisdiction.

“Wait a minute,” she interrupted. “You’re brother is president and yet you have some lowly job as a cop?”

In fact, Justin was such an unknown that only a few of his fellow agents remembered that the president had a twin brother. So unremarkable had been his career crime fighting that no one knew he was doing it.

“I am more than a cop,” he retorted, just a little annoyed by the description. Secretly, he had imagined his life as this superhero agent racing around the solar system fighting crime and destroying terrorists. Instead, he had amassed an unremarkable career as a steady agent who was always at the office or out on an investigation. He was reliable, efficient and boring but with a solid record of putting away petty criminals and terrorist nobodies.

Much to his father’s disdain, Justin joined the Service as a common agent. Sherman could have bought him a mid-level role but the boy insisted on making it on his own merits because he detested the wealth and power of the Canes. How Sherman hated him for that. It was the last tear that ripped father and son apart.

The brothers were never close but always in competition with each other and in constant conflict. The end of their relationship came earlier over a woman. Justin met her at one of Sherman’s dreadful parties he threw to allow Jason to network. It was for Justin love at first sight. He thought she was the perfect woman for him, his perfect beauty. He did everything right, exactly as Reginald taught him to treat a woman.

For Jason, it was lust at first sight. He saw that his brother wanted the woman and determined that he would take her away. When he saw that she did not want him but his brother instead, he pretended to be Justin and seduced her physically and emotionally. But the revelation after he took her was too much for the woman to deal with psychologically. She fell apart, then destroyed herself.

The scandal was covered up by massive amounts of credits but the rift between brothers was too deep to heal. The moment Justin realized that his brother was going to get away with murder, he determined to become a Security Service agent.

“So you live with the guilt of your brother’s crime,” summarized Mia. “You’re trying to punish others for what he got away with.” The woman read him so well after only knowing him a few hours.

“Jason Cane caused the death of a woman, then purchased the silence of everyone involved and yet no one seemed disturbed by it,” pouted Justin. He offered her a refill on the wine then emptied the last of the bottle in his glass. “Then he bought the presidency. A man, not even 30, is the leader of the entire solar system.”

He had not noticed that he consumed a majority of the bottle and was slightly inebriated.

“I need a shower,” Mia announced abruptly. That summed it up nicely for Justin.

She ignored the desserts she had ordered but he could not resist the ice cream while he listened to the water running and thought about what was happening in the next room. He felt the throbbing in his arm and decided to mix a healthy measure of vodka from the mini bar with the frozen confection. A warmth flooded over him as the alcohol did its job and he laid back on the bed and listen to the news with his eyes closed.

In telling his story, he realized how much Mia reminded him of the lost love of his life. He had not exactly been an outgoing person before the tragic death but he had to admit that he turned in on himself after he learned of it. There was a certain profound justice that a woman who reminded him of the one he lost would so resemble her.

When Mia walked from the bathroom in a bathrobe while drying her hair, his imagination took over his fogged brain. Her smooth bare legs and arms and a hint of her full breasts sparked a desire within him. Then she noticed him watching her. For a moment, they both froze in place as each decided what to do about what they were feeling.

Before he could stop his mouth, he blurted out, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

Inside, he cursed his stupidity, thinking he had ruined the moment with such dribble, such a cliché.

But then she approached the bed, climbed on top and straddled him with her legs.

“Yes,” she said, almost in a whisper, bending down and lightly kissing him.

After another pause to consider their situation, he reached up for the belt of the robe, untied it and slowly pulled it open. She was as beautiful naked as he had imagined. She remained still and let his hands explore her smooth flesh, almost purring with pleasure. He took in her scent. When she kissed him again, it was soft and gentle. Suddenly, their desires exploded into passionate sex and they brought each other to sweet release.

With only the light of the Moon, they were together, naked under a single sheet, his arm around her and her head on his chest. The world outside would have been forgotten were it not for the news channel playing in the background.

She broke the silence, “What just happened?”

“Two people in love just expressed it?” he offered, though he immediately regretted using the L-word?

“Love?” She paused for a moment in thought. He was about to apologize for saying it when she asked, “That is how you describe love?”

“Two people with mutual feelings for each other, yes, I would call that love.”

“I’m sorry,” she explained, “I have little experience with the emotion.”

“If love were an emotion, the human race would have died out generations ago,” he said. “Love is an action, a choice. Since the moment we met, we’ve made choices that have brought us closer together.”

Mia blinked. He could not see that a question appeared in her eyes. Events might have been different had he noticed and asked what she was thinking.

Instead, she touched the wounded arm, “You’re seeping. I should change the bandages.”

He abruptly sat up. “What did they say?” The agent in Justin was alert.

She realized his attention was on the viewing screen.

The news anchor was doing voice-over while the images were of Special Agent Hugh Koenig shaking hands with President Jason Cane and the photo of the outgoing security head who was retiring. It was a public relations attempt to explain why the president had a new head of his security. The old security chief was expected to fall on his sword and pretend that he had submitted his resignation voluntarily.

“So, the president is getting a new head of security,” shrugged Mia. “How news-worthy is that?”

“Spike, he hired a hacker.” Justin concentrated, an idea was brewing.

He looked at Mia but she just shook her head in confusion.

“The Service uses an intricate computer program to select the protection teams for the president,” said Justin. “It takes human error out of the process.”

The two stared at each other, both considering the implications.

He leapt from bed and paced nakedly back and forth then slapped his forehead with his palm, moaning, “Why would someone hack the system?” Then he stopped. “Oh no!”

He was in a rush, now. Quickly snatching up his clothes, he dressed.

“What are you doing?” Mia demanded. “What do you know?”

“It’s all so simple,” Justin explained. “Spike’s hacker broke into the computer system and changed the programming so that it picked the candidate for the president’s security that the plotter wanted. He knew the director would take the computer’s recommendations so that, if anything went wrong, he could say that he followed protocol.”

“Who wanted?”

Justin stopped with one leg in his pants and one leg out. He considered the question for a moment then shook his head, “I don’t know. It could be one of a hundred groups with a grudge or cause.”

Mia glanced at the viewing screen. “You think that the new security head is going to kill the president?”

“It’s the only answer that fits the data.”

“So what’s your plan?”

Justin froze. Reality hit.

If he activated his com-link, he could be tracked. That would be bad.

She jumped from bed and started to put on her clothes.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I’m going with you.” And before he could refuse her help, she quickly added, “You need my ID to move around.”

It made sense and he nodded his approval. She grinned but she had no intention of being left behind in any case.

“Um…” He stopped at the door and turned to her. “We can pick up on the other thing later…?”

She kissed him. “A choice,” she said then checked the hallway, all clear.

They slipped out the service entrance of the hotel, their goal was New Hope.

New Hope was a city island which did not have a specific location. When the Federation of Nations and Colonies was established, many would not accept the capital being in the former nation of an old enemy. Therefore, finding a diplomatic place to locate the central government was an impossible task. Then the first Federation president proposed an island, a floating city that was not connected to any continent. There were only two ways to visit the 1000 square mile city, by air to one of the many hover pads or by sea where naval ships docked in one of the three massive ports connected to the islands by long bridges. Security for the city was the tightest anywhere in the solar system.

The problem was that Special Agent Justin Cane could not just fly to the island and walk into the Presidential Palace. After the shootout, the assassin or assassins would be on the alert for him, especially if they controlled the security team around the president. He had to get close to his brother and verbally warn him without being detected.

“Reginald,” Justin said. But he saw that Mia did not understand. “Reginald McDougal raised us. If I can get to him, he might be able to get us inside.”

With Mia’s ID chip, they rented a hovercraft and flew it into a hover pad several blocks from the Palace. Penetrating beyond would expose Justin’s presence on the island city and Mia would require a reason for entering, which she did not have. Getting a message to Reginald was equally as difficult without giving themselves away. Fortunately, Justin knew the man better than he knew anyone else in the solar system.

The tea bar was in the same district as the Presidential Palace. It offered tea made in the traditional style with water heated to an ideal temperature that allowed the leaves to steep for the optimum amount of time. Tea was Reginald McDougal’s only vice in life and Justin knew it.

As he sat in his booth and savored the brew, Justin slid in across from Reginald and Mia nudged him over to prevent the older man from leaving. Justin thought the move was unnecessary but was surprised at how the former servant had aged.

When the brothers had their falling-out, Reginald was forced to choose between them. Justin had no use for a man servant but as an aspiring politician, Jason needed of a personal assistant to provide a multitude of services. The choice was obvious for Reginald and he thrived in his role. Still, he missed having both his boys.

“Justin…!?” Reginald exclaimed.

“Shhhhht,” Justin quickly cautioned him. “I need your help.”

Reginald’s eyes widened as Justin told him the story. He met Hugh Koenig and the other members of the security team; they were competent people. They had all been very busy dealing with the president’s hectic schedule. In fact, President Cane had requested a few days of solitude and seclusion to recharge.

“What?” reacted Justin. “When?”

“Oh well, he flies in from the Montreal speech to the space mining unions tonight…”

Justin cut him off, speaking to Mia, “That’s when they’ll act. With him out of the public eye, they can escape before anyone is alerted. We have to get into the Palace.”

“As soon as the security scanners register your ID, they’ll be on to us,” she responded.

Justin glanced down at the back of his left hand then his eyes drifted to Reginald’s hand and he followed his gaze.

The former caregiver was indeed committed to his two boys. In the restroom of the tea bar, he allowed Justin to make a slit into his skin and remove the ID chip. Justin made a similar slit and removed his identity chip. They switched chips and sealed the slits with liquid skin.

While Mia paid the tab, Reginald took Justin aside. “Do me one favor?”

“Anything.”

“When this is over, reconcile with your brother. For me, if no one else.”

He started to respond with a list of grievances that all originated with Jason and protest that he was not the bad guy in their personal war but he could see the blind love for both of them in his eyes.

“I’ll try, Reginald,” he said, instead of what he wanted to say. “I’ll do my best.”

Strangely, he actually meant it. Neither brother would ever, could ever lie to Reginald.

The plan was simple; Reginald would remain at the tea bar while Justin used his ID to enter the Presidential Palace with Mia Nettles as his guest. As Justin and Mia walked across the city toward the Palace, she had something on her mind.

“Reginald loves you,” she said finally.

The statement took Justin by surprise. “Um, yeah I guess he does.”

The Palace entrance for high-level aides and staffers was unmonitored by human guards. So long as the ID chip was on the list of those with access and their guests were not on any alert list, the doors automatically opened. Reginald McDougal then had clearance into the most secure parts of the family quarters so the trackers following people around the palace would record nothing out of the ordinary. As an added precaution, Justin dressed in a suit to appear exactly like his brother and Mia wore a dress to show off her attributes that would distract anyone from looking at the president. The computer would record Reginald walking the hallways but all human eyes would see was President Jason Cane and his latest female friend. Their one concern was that they could not smuggle weapons in with them, the security sensors which scanned for them would set off alarms.

They made their way down the private corridor to the Diamond Office where the president greeted dignitaries. Justin put his ear to the door; someone was in the next room.

Calming his spirit, Justin carefully turned the door handle, eased the door open and entered with Mia right behind him.

President Jason Cane stood at his desk with Hugh Koenig. There were four other members of the security team with him, two on either side of the door where Justin and Mia stood and two others at the main entrance. Everyone froze.

“Gun!”

Who…? Justin thought the voice was his brother’s.

Hugh Koenig drew his blaster. Jason dove over the desk. Justin threw an elbow into the throat of the agent nearest him while Mia kneed the other one in the genitals, grabbed his weapon and tossed him aside in one fluid motion. There was the muffled sound of a weapon firing and a round passed between Justin and Mia. Justin pulled the blaster from the holster of the agent with the crushed windpipe. He blew a hole in Hugh’s chest then fired at one of the agents at the main door but they were already dead and Mia had the blaster pistol against the head of the agent from whom she had taken it.

“Mia…!”

The blaster kicked in her hand and the agent’s head blew apart.

Before Justin could stop her, she shot the agent clutching his throat.

Clap, clap, clap. As he sarcastically applauded, Jason stood to his feet.

“Well done, brother dear,” he said mockingly. Then to Justin’s surprise, his brother looked at Mia, “Finish it.”

Confusion overwhelmed Justin. But as he turned to look at Mia, her foot shot out, kicked the weapon from his hand and it went flying. He grabbed for the blaster in her hand but felt a blow to his shoulder that threw him into the wall and made his wound hurt. Knowing he would not be able to disarm her, he leapt over a couch, expecting it to blow apart in a foam and fabric mess, but it did not happen.

“Oh Justin,” said Jason’s extremely irritating voice, “I can’t have you damaged.”

Justin peeked over the couch. Mia was advancing slowly on him with the weapon in hand but not pointing it at him.

“You should be honored, brother,” continued the president. “I knew you would figure out the assassination plot against me. Although, there was a three percent chance that you would be injured in the street ambush. Still, it was a risk worth taking to ingratiate Mia with you.” He shrugged in answer to the questioning expression, “You wouldn’t come willingly. I called and called and called. You ignored me.”

“There was never a plot,” stated Justin.

Jason laughed, “I was the plot. I was the informant and the hacker that poor buffoon Spike hired.”

Mia slowly circled around the furniture and Justin backed away.

Jason was casual, showed no concern for the other man’s fate. “I have Radium Cancer.”

“You’re a drug addict?” demanded Justin, all the while trying to maneuver to avoid Mia.

“That’s harsh. Anyway, they create these marvelous drugs that blow your mind but then they do have side effects.”

Radium was the newest drug to make the rounds of the underground society. Despite the warning that six in ten users would develop an incurable disease that consumed the vital organs, millions tried it and became addicted to the lifestyle. In his arrogance, Jason Cane thought he was different and had nothing to worry about. Consequently, he was dying and there was nothing medically which could be done to save him, except…

Synthetic organ transplants extended life for millions and were common place as the law prohibited living organ transplants. Unfortunately for the young president, Radium Cancer quickly corrupted any new organs even synthetic ones and death soon followed.

And, while the technology did exist, cranial transplants were especially made illegal with stiff penalties. Early exploitation by body snatchers brought about a host of laws to prevent people from being killed so that those willing and able to pay extraordinary sums could take over their bodies.

“I need your body,” stated Jason nonchalantly as though there was nothing unusual in it.

Mia cautiously worked in closer.

“You wouldn’t begrudge your brother a longer life, would you?”

Justin realized what was supposed to happen and Jason smiled, “Yes, you always were the more logical thinker. Mia will be gentle. She’ll just deprive you of oxygen until you expire. I have a team of surgeons two floors down ready to make the switch. The story, and you’ll like this part, will be that you died while saving me from assassins.”

“How can you do this?” Justin asked Mia.

“You’re going to be quite the hero,” Jason continued. “Posthumously, of course.”

But Justin was still in disbelief that Mia would betray him. “After what we felt for each other?”

“It won’t work. She’s not who you think,” chided Jason. “There is no emotion in her.”

perfectbeauty_robotJustin’s foot struck out and the blaster in Mia’s hand smacked into the wall. But then she was in close to him with martial arts skills he had difficulty countering. Her reflexes were faster than his so he jumped and rolled away from her.

“She’s a humandroid,” Jason said. He remained at his desk, his arms cross over his chest. “I’m here to tell you that there are very few limits to fabulous wealth.”

Unable to believe what he was hearing, Justin looked at Mia. “You’re a robot?”

“You don’t listen well. She’s the most sophisticated humandroid credits can buy. And, she was programmed to be your perfect woman. They said that you would be so infatuated with her that it would never occur to you that she could be a plant.” He laughed, “And you would especially not suspect that she was a humandroid. Think about it, brother, this is your ideal companion. Oh, such perfect beauty.”

Jason shifted to try to look his brother in the face, “Admit it, you prefer a cold hard machine to human contact.”

Mia was on Justin again, her face lacked any emotion, and he was barely able to disengage from her by wedging his legs in her stomach and hurling her into the air. His momentum threw him on his back. He was tiring. She would soon wear him down.

“I’m even thinking of keeping her around,” remarked Jason. He leaned back against his desk, merely a spectator. “I want to experience what you think is the perfect woman. I even have research into how I can get my own android body. I could live forever. My thinking is that the solar system needs for me to never die. I’m indispensable.”

While his brother rambled on, Justin spotted a discarded blaster. It was almost impossible to reach it and fire an accurate shot but it was at least a chance. Diving past Mia, he scooped up the weapon and somersaulted away. Unfortunately, Mia was too fast. She was on top of him, they rolled and tumbled into a wall. The two ended with Mia’s back against the wall holding Justin in front of her, one hand around his neck and the other gripping his hand with the blaster.

Jason was no longer amused but impatient and his voice turned hard, “Finish this now, Mia.”

For a moment, Justin wondered what death would be like. Then Mia whispered into his ear, “I choose to love you.”

Unexpectedly, he felt the hand with the blaster pistol raise up. There was the shock in Jason’s face as he realized it was pointed at him. The weapon recoiled slightly as the small energy beam rocketed across the room and struck the president in the chest before he could react.

Staggering slightly, Jason ripped open his suit coat to expose the black and red blotch on his white shirt. His face revealed his last thoughts of confusion with the way the events had transpired. He was dead before he slumped onto the floor.

Released from Mia’s grasp, Justin jumped to his feet and trained the blaster she left in his possession on her with two shaking hands. She made no effort to evade him. He gripped the pistol tighter and willed his finger to pull the trigger. Looking into that beautiful face, he could not do it.

“I love you, too,” he said softly.

He did not ask and would never ask but sometime within her processing unit, she had developed the capacity to make choices based upon logical precepts. And she made the remarkable choice to love the man for whom she was created as his perfect beauty. To the humandroid, the logic was that he was therefore her perfect match. Remarkably, his twin brother was the antithesis.

The Terran System was shocked by the assassination attempt on the President of the Federation of Nations and Colonies and saddened by the loss of his twin Justin Cane, the Security Service agent killed defending his brother. Five traitorous assassins were killed in the attack along with the arrest of several doctors implicated in the plot. Jason Cane cremated the body of his brother and scattered his ashes outside the family lunar compound surrounded by his family. Only Reginald McDougal knew which brother had really been murdered by the assassins but he would never tell anyone. Secretly, he applauded Justin’s efforts to save his brother then carry on Jason’s work and would do all he could to help the surviving twin.

Jason Cane and Mia Nettles were married and many owed the greater success of the presidency after his marriage to the chieperfectbeauty_eyef executive’s choice of such a capable woman. When the president’s term ended, there was a call for Mia Cane to run for office but she graciously refused. The two retired to the family estates on the Moon where they appeared to live quietly, though rumors for years after persisted that the couple shared many secret adventures under assumed identities. Wealth could buy much and that included anonymity when desired. After a long life, Justin, aka Jason Cane, died. Mia cremated his body and scattered the ashes around the lunar compound. The fate of Mia Cane was never known. Though old at the time of her husband’s death, she appeared younger than her years. Some claimed that she rode beyond the Rim with the first manned missions to Orion. Others said she ended her days on an isolated space station grieving for her lost love. But there were those who maintained that such a woman of perfect beauty would live forever.

  • Continue Reading

Published by Associate Editor on November 17, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 28, Issue 28 Stories, Novellas, Stories

Swallow the Moon

red-moon

Swallow the Moon
by Lisa Langeland

…born under red moon
and marked in blood
shall the wolf swallow the moon
and seize the sun

Loosed in grim dissolution
will winter descend
and ungird the winds
issuing ruin and darkness

So begins the age of the wolf…

(translated excerpt from the Nökkvimál)

 

Haldis hummed an old lullaby as she rubbed down the draft horse—much as she had done almost every night for the past five months—and paused to contemplate the growing dusk. The trees just beyond their camp wavered in the firelight, and crickets chirped the end of summer. The horse shift skittishly under her brush as a howl pierced the stillness. Another answered the call none too distant.

“Curse those wolves,” said Leiden as he took hold of the horse’s bridle. “These last few winters have starved the fear out of them. They grow too bold for my liking.”

“They do what they do to survive, as we all do,” replied Haldis, glancing up at him. His tousled blond hair needed a good trim. Not that he’d notice, she thought.

His hand strayed over hers. “How can you say that after what one did to you?”

The scars on her left shoulder and upper back hid far deeper secrets. “I have no memory of the attack. You know that.”

“And yet you always insist the wolf was black,” said Leiden.

His brown eyes searched her face for answers, but Haldis knew he would find none. Of that one detail, she was certain yet her mind refused to share any others. Like where I’ve been for the past year, she thought.

The fire behind them flared as Leiden’s younger brother, Reid, threw more wood on it. He stared intently at her. “Surely, you’d have them all wiped out if you could have your way.”

“They fear us more than we do them,” said Haldis, gently brushing the gelding’s flank.

“And yet they seem to be trailing us these last few days,” said Leiden, “perhaps hoping to take down one of the horses.”

Haldis doubted it. She had grown up near the Ironwood, the very woods beside which they now camped. Eight armed guards and the encampment’s fires would dissuade all but the most curious or desperate of wolves from straying too close.

“You can finish this,” said Leiden to his brother. “I need to speak with Haldis.”

“Like that’s all you want to do,” mumbled Reid as Haldis handed him the currycomb.

Leiden slipped his hand around hers and led her past the guards taking their evening meal. He gently drew Haldis behind the last wagon as he leaned back against its rear door.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” said Haldis, poking him teasingly in the chest.

“I guess I did…do,” he sighed reluctantly. “Your village—it isn’t far from here. It’s no bother to make a slight detour.”

Haldis dropped her eyes and began tracing circles on his forearms. “There’s no one left, you know that.”

Leiden was giving her the option to lay her nightmares to rest, but the wounds were too fresh. For her, it was as if the massacre had happened only months earlier, instead of more than a year ago when she had returned from an early morning of herb collecting in the Ironwood to find a scene as eerily quiet was it was grisly. Those unfortunate enough to rise early had been bled out in the road with their throats slit, their wares scattered about, and the doors to their homes and shops left ajar. Her home was no different, and her father’s unlit forge silently heralded what she found inside: her father barely visible under a table and pots strewed on the floor around the bodies of her four younger brothers. The memory constantly teased at the edge of consciousness. Haldis inhaled slowly and deeply to calm the familiar anxiety.

Leiden brushed back several honey-colored strands of hair that had fallen across her face. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Haldis smiled weakly at him. “If you hadn’t found me…”

“I couldn’t leave you to die,” said Leiden.

He had found her—unconscious and barefooted—five months earlier while gathering firewood in the Ironwood. She had been garbed in an ornate black-laced gown. The eyes and hooklets that travelled the length of the bodice, and its elegant flared sleeves had led them to mistake initially her for a woman of status.

“Most people would have,” said Haldis, but she had quickly learned that was not his family’s way. “Instead you took me in.”

Leiden leaned in closer to her. “Haldis, I…”

She clasped his arms as an unshaven man suddenly emerged from the night. He carried a dead wolf across his shoulders. Leiden pushed her behind him as the guards, swords in hand, converged on the visitor. Reid ran up to join them.

“Didn’t mean to give you all a fright,” their visitor said.

“And who might you be?” inquired Leiden.

“Siarl, the earl’s forester,” he said. He lowered the wolf’s scraggy body to the ground and then pushed back the edge of his cloak to reveal the earl’s livery.

“Did he attack you?” asked Reid as he nudged the carcass with his foot.

“Hardly,” said the forester. “It’s rare for wolves to attack anything other than livestock. Still, I was tasked with seeing to those that to stray too close to Brynmoor. There are a right many people coming for the festival, not unlike you I suspect.”

Leiden nodded. “We’ve been on the western trade route since spring. The festival is our last stop on our way back to Westerfeld before winter sets in. We’ve heard rumor of some attacks here about.”

“Haldis was attacked by a wolf,” blurted Reid with a nod at her.

Leiden gave him a withering look.

“Well, she was,” said Reid sheepishly, “just not so recently.”

The forester eyed Haldis. “Then you know the beast all too well.”

Haldis sensed there was a question in his statement, but she shrugged. She was tired of talk of the past and of wolves. Leiden’s grandmother came up and put an arm around her shoulder.

“Surely you men can find kindlier subjects to speak on,” said Ora, “like the harvest festival.”

“Ay, ma’am,” said the forester with a broad smile. “With our young Lord Cerrin now Earl of Highmont, we have much to celebrate this year. There are some superstitious folks in these parts who feared he would be struck down unexpectedly, like his father, before this day came.”

“Superstitious of what?” asked Reid.

“An old prophecy from long before even I was born,” said his grandmother. “It’s nonsense.”

“Ay, but Lord Cerrin was born during the eclipse,” said the forester. “To those who believe, it lends credence to their unease.”

Reid poked Haldis in the side.

“Weren’t you born then too?” he whispered.

Haldis gave no reply, but the forester’s furrowed brow told her that he had heard the question, yet he said nothing.

“You’re welcome to stay the night and join us on the last leg to Brynmoor tomorrow,” said Leiden, breaking the uneasy silence.

The forester nodded his thanks and joined the guards at their fire. Haldis retired to the caravan wagon with Ora, but found sleep elusive. Her mind kept ruminating on the wolf. Do I remember it as a wolf attack simply because of the scars? she wondered. Her only memory was of the darkness springing at her. Frustrated, she sat up in the dim wagon. Ora slept soundly in the bed beside her. Haldis wrapped a shawl around her and slipped outside, keeping to the dark side of the wagons to return to where the wolf still lay. She knelt next to it.

“Not so mean and fierce like this,” said the forester as he rounded the wagon. He crouched beside her, seemingly unsurprised by her arrival.

Haldis placed her hand on the animal’s side, almost expecting it to rise with breath. She was acutely aware of the forester studying her.

“This wolf that attacked you, have you seen it since?”

“I think it’s dead,” said Haldis.

His gray eyes held a bemused look. “Either the beast is dead or it isn’t, miss.”

Haldis stared at the wolf in silence.

The forester tried again. “Where was it that the wolf attacked you?”

“What does it matter now?”

“To me, not so much,” said the forester, “but for the earl, I would know where you met it.”

“In Prynton,” replied Haldis softly.

The forester’s expression softened. “No survivors, I heard.”

Haldis ran her fingers through the wolf’s gray pelt. “I was in the Ironwood when it happened.”

The forester nodded understandingly. “It might be best if you went in, miss. The wild ones are afoot tonight.”

◊ ◊ ◊

romancitygatesThe caravan passed through Brynmoor’s city gates at midday, after which the forester took his leave. Leiden pulled up the team of horses when they reached the commons.

“It looks like we’re the first to arrive,” said Leiden to Haldis who sat on the bench beside him.

“That’s a good thing, right?” she asked.

“Very good.”

Having their pick of prime locations, the last leg of their journey would likely be as profitable as
the ones that preceded it—no small feat since it was his first time leading the caravan. At only twenty, it was a responsibility he had not expected to assume for several years, but the unexpected death of his grandfather had shifted procurement to him while his father took on the day-to-day management at home. His father had groomed him for the role his entire life, yet he still felt unprepared.

Leiden roped off the reins and hopped to the ground, helping Haldis descend after him. She had grown increasingly melancholy as they neared the city. It can’t be easy for her to be back, he thought, especially since she used to attend the festival every year with her father and brothers. He squeezed her hand as his grandmother approached and his brother began to unhitch the horses to stable them.

“Haldis can help us set up while you get the trade permit from the bailiff,” said his grandmother. “And don’t let him give you any grief. He liked to banter with your father. I think it was a game between the two of them, silly men.”

Leiden chuckled. Having accompanied his father on many occasions, he easily tracked down the bailiff. While he questioned Leiden exhaustively, he was reasonable and fair. Permit in hand, Leiden called on several of their regular trade partners to renegotiate terms for their goods, an act made more lucrative since they were unable to use competing offers to work the price higher. By the time he returned to the wagons, Reid had just finished securing the tarpaulin over their booth, and the commons had filled up considerably in his absence.

“No troubles, I presume,” said his grandmother.

“None,” replied Leiden, “and I’ve already made this stop profitable.”

“Your father will be pleased to hear that,” she replied. “Since there’s nothing left to be done, I suggest we take our evening meal and turn in. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

Her assessment proved accurate. Leiden spent the day making the rounds with the local merchants while the others manned the stall. It was late in the evening before he headed back, but throngs of jovial people still crowded the commons for the festivities. He spied his brother dancing badly to a jig.

“He’s really quite awful,” said Haldis as she came up behind him.

“Just don’t tell him that.”

Haldis laughed and entwined her fingers with his as she leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Pardon me, but are you the merchant from Westerfeld?” inquired a short, slightly hunched man. The man’s dress, though simple, reflected a house of wealth.

“I am,” replied Leiden.

“Excellent,” said the man. “Lord Alban, my master, directed me to collect you both.”

“At this hour?” asked Haldis.

“It is late, I know,” apologized the man. “Alas, he was quite insistent.”

Leiden stifled a groan, wanting to simply spend what was left of the evening with Haldis. Father would never pass up a business opportunity, he reminded himself, least of all with the former regent of Highmont.

Haldis answered by hooking her arm through his. They strolled away from the revelries, soon leaving the crowds behind for the peace of a secluded avenue framed on one side by the high boundary wall of the earl’s estate. She skimmed her fingertips against its surface.

Lord Alban’s man abruptly stopped near a gate in the wall. Several guards emerged from the darkness and surrounded them.

“What is this?” asked Leiden.

“You are free to leave,” said Lord Alban’s man, “but she stays.”

“Haldis is a free woman,” said Leiden, barely able to contain his disgust that this lord thought privilege meant could take any woman he wanted. “Our business here is finished.”

“If you elect to withhold her, then your family’s business will indeed be finished.”

“What do you mean?” ask Haldis.

The man stepped in closer to her. “Lord Alban can see to it that his family is banned from trading in this region.”

Leiden’s breath hitched in his throat. “Why would he do that?”

“That is Lord Alban’s business,” said the man. “Would choose this woman over your family?”

Leiden glowered at the man, unable to stomach either option.

Sensing Leiden’s hesitation, the older man gave a nod to the guards. One suddenly seized Haldis while, at the same time, his compatriots shoved and held Leiden back.

“Leiden!” shouted Haldis.

He watched helplessly as the guard dragged Haldis through a gate in the wall.

“You would do well to forget about her,” instructed Lord Alban’s man. “She is no longer your concern.”

“You have no right,” asserted Leiden.

“But we do,” declared the man. “No good will come from associating with her ilk, and do not attempt to seek recourse. My master does not make petty threats.”

The guards waited until Lord Alban’s man departed before depositing Leiden near the festivities, laughing at some merriment to which only they were privy. He found their brazen indifference antagonizing, but he knew better than to take the bait even though he was seething—at the former regent’s presumption as much at his own reticence to contest it more vigorously. Still, he knew a petition to dispute the lord’s will were limited—more so since Haldis was born within the earl’s domain and unrelated— and would find few advocates.

Torn between his familial duties and Haldis, Leiden wandered back in the direction of the caravan, hoping some option would present itself along the way that would allow him to safeguard both.

◊ ◊ ◊

The guard pulled Haldis deeper into the grounds, binding her wrists and ignoring her repeated inquiries. They soon came to a terraced area that, in turn, led to a walled garden built into a natural depression in the terrain. The lower garden was lit by a solitary lantern, allowing Haldis to discern arched colonnades with gated doorways at either end of the garden. Two pikemen were posted at each. The guard tugged her down a staircase into the sunken garden and thrust her into its center where a well-groomed, gray-haired man paced the paving stones. The man halted in front of her.

“Who are you?” asked Haldis as she straightened up. “Why have I been brought here?”

“I am Lord Alban,” he said. “I have but a few questions I would put to you.”

“About what?” asked Haldis.

“You were born seventeen years ago during the eclipse, correct?”

“That’s what I was always told.”

“And you are from Prynton,” said Lord Alban.

“Yes.”

“How is it that you alone were spared the fate of the others?”

Haldis was tired of being asked that question. “Does it even matter?”

“I don’t suppose it does.” Lord Alban played with the rings on his fingers as he hovered over her. “Tell me, have you been attacked by a wolf?”

Haldis flinched. How could he even know that? she wondered.

“Yes or no?”

Haldis nodded.

“Then it left its mark on you?” asked Lord Alban.

Haldis remained silent.

“Did it?” demanded Lord Alban.

“Yes!” exclaimed Haldis. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Show me.”

Haldis shivered despite the unseasonable warmth. Does he really expect me to undress?

“Your cooperation is convenient, not necessary,” he whispered as he nodded to the guard that had brought her.

Horrified by the insinuation, Haldis loosened her bodice and shrugged her dress and chemise from her shoulders. She clasped the front with her bound hands as it dropped down her back.

“So the wolf has finally shown itself.”

“I don’t understand.”

He touched the crown of her head gently. “I am truly sorry, but it must be done.”

◊ ◊ ◊

swallowthemoon_redmoonDael stretched out his legs as he perched atop the balcony railing with his back to the manor’s outer wall. The festivities in Brynmoor proper will continue well into the night, he thought, and Cerrin will disappear half way through them. It was one of his cousin’s most annoying habits, one picked up after witnessing his father’s gruesome death at the age of ten—leaving him withdrawn, as well as parentless for his mother had died in childbirth. Shortly before his death, their grandfather, the previous earl, requested that Dael be sent to keep Cerrin company.

After nearly three years, I’m still not sure where he goes, thought Dael, but he won’t be able to indulge in such behavior now that he’s earl; better him than me. He considered it a blessing to learn the duties of leadership without being compelled to assume it—the benefit of being the spare son.

“There you are.” Cerrin strode purposely toward him, his movements as deliberate as his attire and his demeanor as dark as his neatly combed hair, which always curled disobediently at his temples. “Come with me.”

Dael slid off the railing and fell into step beside his younger cousin. “What’s happened?”

“I believe Lord Alban may do something unfortunate,” said Cerrin, “in the name of the prophecy.”

Not that again, thought Dael. “How so?”

“My forester mentioned to Lord Alban that he met a survivor of the Prynton massacre,” said Cerrin, “a girl by the name of Haldis, who was born during the eclipse as I was.”

“That no doubt caught his attention,” said Dael.

“I fear what he might do with that knowledge.”

“You think he intends to kill her?” asked Dael. Would Lord Alban truly be so brash?

“He hired a band of mercenaries to slaughter an entire village,” replied Cerrin, “clearly because he feared this girl would fulfill the prophecy. I believe him capable of anything.”

Dael suddenly wished he had consumed less alcohol. “Where would he take her?”

“The one place he always goes to be alone with his thoughts.”

Aunt Elyn’s garden, thought Dael. Given its proximity to the lake, Lord Alban could dispose of the girl’s body easily—definitely not what their grandfather had in mind when he built it as a wedding present for Cerrin’s mother.

Despite the late hour, they had no difficulty finding their way to the garden due to the bright moon. Lord Alban’s voice emanated from below, but Dael was unable to make out more than a few words. They circled around to one of the lower entrances to approach unseen. Dael gently nudged open the outer gate, grateful that its hinges refrained from rasping. Cerrin slipped in ahead of him and crept along the wall to the inner gate where their position provided them an unobstructed view. Lord Alban bent to whisper something to a slender young woman. She blanched and then loosened her dress, letting the back slip free of her shoulders.

“So the wolf has finally shown itself,” said Lord Alban.

The woman frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Lord Alban laid a hand on her head. “I am truly sorry, but it must be done.”

“What must be done?” challenged Cerrin, barging through the gate.

Dael had little choice but to follow, but two spears came down to halt their entrance. Cerrin glared at the guards and then Lord Alban.

“I would remind you,” said Dael as he stepped in front of his cousin, “that Lord Cerrin is now earl and will not be hindered on his own lands by his own guards.”

Realizing their error, the guards quickly withdrew their weapons and let them pass.

Dael strode up to Lord Alban and stared the older man squarely in the eyes. “I believe my cousin asked you a question.”

“My lords…Cerrin, please,” begged Lord Alban as he tried to block access to the woman.

Dael grasped his arm to hold him still.

“For your safety, I beg you leave now,” pleaded Lord Alban.

“I doubt this girl is a threat to anything but my virtue,” replied Cerrin smugly.

Lord Alban pulled free of Dael’s grip. “You do not understand.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” said Cerrin, his humor evaporating as quickly as it had come, “not your actions of last year and certainly not now.”

“The prophecy…” began Lord Alban, but a disdainful glare from Cerrin stopped him short.

Cerrin and Dael circled behind him. The young woman slouched, hugging her loose dress to her chest. Her long hair fell forward, obscuring her face but revealing healed puncture marks on her left shoulder. Jagged scars etched several inches down her back from them.

“I see no harbinger of doom,” stated Cerrin.

Lord Alban swung to face him. “Then you are blind, my lord. She bears the mark of the wolf.”

“That proves nothing,” said Cerrin. “Would you punish her for her misfortune?”

Lord Alban refused to meet Cerrin’s gaze. “She is from Prynton.”

“We come back to that,” stated Cerrin. “Do you fear your own creation?”

Lord Alban sputtered.

“Yes, you,” snarled Cerrin. “Would you take her life as you did those in her village?”

The woman suddenly straightened and glared at Lord Alban in a mixture of rage and anguish.

“If it would protect you, then yes. The prophecy…”

“You made these events happen,” snapped Cerrin.

“She was born during the eclipse just as you were, and it is she who bears the mark,” insisted Lord Alban. “It cannot be simple coincidence that she alone survived the massacre and is here now, just as you take your grandfather’s place as the Earl of Highmont.”

Cerrin shook his head is disbelief. “Leave us. All of you.”

“Surely you do not intend to be alone with the object of your destruction,” exclaimed Lord Alban.

“If that is my fate, then I have little power to avoid it,” responded Cerrin. “Now leave.”

As Lord Alban did so, Dael cut the ropes that bound the woman’s wrists. “It’s Haldis, yes?”

She nodded as she pulled her clothing back up over her shoulders and retied the laces of her bodice.

“What if he’s right?” she whispered.

“Intentions are not the same as deeds,” said Cerrin, “especially those you clearly have no desire to commit.”

Lord Alban won’t be so easily deterred, thought Dael. He eyed his cousin, who scowled in deliberation. Cerrin abruptly turned to him.

“Meet me in the northeast corner of the grounds at midnight,” ordered Cerrin.

“Cousin?” asked Dael.

“It’s time we put the prophecy to rest,” he replied. “We need to go back to where this started.”

Dael didn’t understand, but Haldis evidently did.

“I can’t go back there,” she stated.

“Don’t you want to know the truth?” asked Cerrin.

“Do you?” she countered.

Dael admired her pluckiness. A sideways glance at Cerrin told him that his cousin appreciated her candor far less.

Cerrin’s intense stare shifted to him. “Midnight, northeast corner.”

He turned on his heel and walked from the garden.

“Where are we going?” called Dael at his cousin’s back.

“My village,” answered Haldis.

“What can he possibly hope to find there?”

She rubbed her wrists. “I don’t know.”

Dael cursed his cousin’s impulsiveness, but retrieved the abandoned lantern and led Haldis to the manor’s kitchen, which was unoccupied due to the late hour. He put her to work helping him gather a day’s provisions.

“Can’t you see how foolish this is?” she asked.

Dael regarded her, noticing that light freckles dotted her cheeks beneath her amber eyes.

“You have to understand,” he said. “When my cousin gets an idea in his head, there’s no changing his mind. He’s determined to see it through to the end, no matter the price.”

“But that price may be his life.”

Dael knew she was right. He also knew better than to argue with his cousin in such instances. The best he could do was to protect Cerrin from himself.

“Was it truly a wolf that attacked you?” he asked.

“Five months ago, I woke up with no memory of the past year—not where I’ve been, not what I’ve done,” she replied as she bundled up the supplies. She lifted her gaze to his. “I don’t remember being attacked, and yet the scars are there. What other explanation can there be?”

What indeed, thought Dael. He took the bundle from her hands and swung it over his shoulder. “It’s time to go.”

She followed him silently as they left to rendezvous with Cerrin. Their lantern brightened a neglected hedge that lined the eastern boundary of the estate. It was the only side not replaced with masonry. Dael lifted the light to chase away the shadows cast by the overgrown bushes, but Cerrin was nowhere in sight.

“Over here,” came a whisper from the corner where the hedge met the wall.

Dael squinted into the shadowed intersection.

The hedge’s boughs shifted outward, and his cousin emerged from the murk like a specter.

“There’s an opening through here,” said Cerrin. “We’ll be able to leave unnoticed.”

Dael held the branches as his cousin slipped back into the darkness. The lantern revealed a well-hidden gap between the hedge and wall. He entered the passage with Haldis close behind. On the other side, two horses already waited.

“Handy that,” commented Dael.

“My father showed me,” said Cerrin. “Cover for me while we’re gone.”

Dael was stunned. “I’m coming with you.”

“I need you here.”

“You need someone to watch your back,” contended Dael. “If not me, then someone else.”

“Fine,” spat Cerrin, obviously annoyed at having to change his plans. “I guess we’ll need another horse then.”

“I don’t know how to ride,” confessed Haldis.

Her admission seemed to irritate Cerrin further. He clenched his teeth.

“She can ride with me,” offered Dael.

“Fine,” repeated Cerrin as he mounted his horse. His tight rein forced the horse to dance in a circle before moving off.

Dael gave Haldis a resigned shrug. He stashed their provisions in the saddlebag on the other horse and then mounted, helping Haldis up behind him and motioning the horse after Cerrin’s. They made good progress until clouds obscured the moon and forced them to decrease their pace lest the horses misstep.

His cousin said little during the journey nor was Haldis particularly talkative, although her silence he could understand. Dael was relieved when Prynton finally came into sight as dawn tinged the horizon behind them. He maneuvered the horse between the burned out buildings. He felt Haldis trembling.

“Just breathe,” said Dael, placing his hand on hers. It was cruel to bring her back here, he thought as he dismounted and tied his horse beside Cerrin’s near the village center. Dael helped Haldis down from the horse. “Better?”

She nodded, but was clearly unnerved by her last memories and the remnants of her home. She strayed to the town well where she absently traced the well’s mortar with a fingertip.

“This is where the wolf attacked me,” she said, “and where my memory ends.”

“Then it began here,” said Cerrin.

“What began?” asked Dael.

wolf-headdressHe glanced at Cerrin when he gave no response, but his cousin’s attention was focused elsewhere. Dael followed his line of sight. Men garbed in wolf headdresses and animal furs converged on their location.

Dael propelled Haldis toward their horses. They were quickly cut off, and a masked man grabbed Haldis from behind. Dael moved to intervene, but fell to his knees, momentarily dazed, as he was struck in the back of the head. His assailants held him as they poured a bitter liquid down his throat, shoving a cloth into his month to prevent him from spitting it out. An unnatural lethargy quickly seeped through him. Dael lost consciousness as his leaden body pulled him to the ground.

◊ ◊ ◊

By the time Leiden reached the wagons, everyone had turned in save two guards standing watch over their stall. He sat down on the steps at the wagon’s rear and remained there as dawn rose. He heard the door open behind him.

“Leiden?” asked his grandmother. “Why are you sitting out here? Is Haldis with you?”

“I think made a mistake.”

“We all make them, dear,” said his grandmother. She placed a hand on his shoulder as she eased herself down on the step next to him. “The question is whether it’s the kind you can live with.”

It was one to which he already knew the answer.

His grandmother patted his leg. “Then why are you still sitting here?”

Leiden kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He retraced his steps to the gate in the wall. No guards remained, but he hesitated. Would they think him trespassing? Surely, the new earl would be lenient, thought Leiden. Even so, he slipped cautiously through to the earl’s grounds which were expansive. He headed toward the only buildings he could see and soon found himself at the edge of a stable area where he saw ten men readying horses. The forester was among them. He saw Leiden and came over.

“What are you doing here, lad?” he asked.

“I was hoping I might get an audience with the new earl,” said Leiden. “It’s about Haldis.”

Siarl the forester’s stance turned rigid.

“What’s happened?” ask Leiden.

“The earl and his cousin have gone missing,” said Siarl. “The main guard is searching the grounds, but a sentry thought he might have seen them leaving with a young woman.”

“Haldis?”

“I believe so, given the description. The captain of the guard doesn’t put much stock in it, but two horses are also missing,” said Siarl. “Why do you want to see Lord Cerrin?”

Leiden explained the situation.

“Lord Alban is missing as well,” said Siarl. “Somehow your girl is the key. Where might they have gone?”

Leiden knew of only one place. “I’ll tell you if you take me with you.”

“You aren’t really in a position to bargain,” said Siarl.

“All I want is Haldis back. I need to make this right.”

Siarl regarded him. “Meet us at the main gate.”

Leiden hurried back to the wagons, retrieving his bow and quiver, and then headed to the stable to saddle one of the guard’s horses. His task was interrupted by Erling, who began saddling another horse.

“What are you doing?” asked Leiden.

“My job isn’t just to protect the caravan, sir. And even if it was, I’d still go with you.”

Leiden clamped the other man’s shoulder in gratitude. “I’ll fill you in on the way.”

They met up with the earl’s men and set out toward Prynton, arriving by late morning. Only the burned out husks of the buildings stood. Leiden pulled up his horse as they passed what had obviously been the blacksmith’s shop based on the forge that had withstood the conflagration. Haldis was right not to return, he thought.

“Someone was here not long ago,” said Siarl, pointing to the fresh indentations in the soil.

“Those came from a lot more than three people,” said Erling.

Siarl nodded and began tracking them from the village.

“So they met up with another group?” asked Leiden.

“That’s one possibility,” said Erling.

The implication was not lost on Leiden. But to what end? he wondered.

Siarl called them over to the edge of the Ironwood. “The tracks head in.”

“Can you follow them?” asked Erling.

“They’ve made no attempt to hide them,” said Siarl. “And even if they had, I’ve yet to find a beast I can’t track.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Haldis blinked away the blurriness in her vision, bringing into focus several roughly hewn openings near the ceiling and through which cool air and dim light seeped. Dael lay unconscious a few feet from her. She crawled over to him and gently turned his head to examine where she had seen him struck. No blood matted his brown hair.

That’s something at least, thought Haldis as she climbed to her feet and tried the windowless door that blocked their exit. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. She sat back down next to Dael. After a time, she noticed a slight twitch in his fingers. He groaned groggily and his eyelids gradually fluttered open. Dael squinted at her, his pupils nearly engulfing the blue irises.

“It’ll pass,” said Haldis, helping him sit up. “Just give it a few minutes.”

He grimaced as he tenderly felt the back of his head. “How long have I been out?”

“Given the weak light, I’d say it’s probably near sunset,” said Haldis.

“And Cerrin?”

“You were the only one here when I woke up.”

“But you’re okay?”

“They didn’t hurt me.”

Dael let loose a sardonic laugh. “No, they just drugged and kidnapped us. Who knows what they’ve done to Cerrin. If they believe in that ridiculous prophecy, he might already be dead.”

“Then why keep us alive?”

“Good question,” considered Dael, pulling up a leg onto which to rest his forearms. “They must have followed us from Brynmoor.”

Haldis was less certain. There were too many of them, she thought, to have remained hidden during the entire journey. Somehow, they knew we would be in Prynton.

Before Haldis could give it further thought, she heard the door tumblers click free. Several men flooded into their small cell and pulled her and Dael to their feet. They were led down a long corridor of cells and through a fortified door into an open-aired amphitheater encircled by sheer cliffs save for a single narrow fissure. Scattered doorways and windows penetrated the towering walls. At its center, a series of raised platforms had been carved from the bedrock. Their captors brought them to the uppermost level where a stone altar rested and a man clad in furs and a wolf-mask waited. He pulled a large object from a sack and casually tossed it at their feet. Haldis recoiled. It was Lord Alban’s head. The man chuckled as he removed the mask. It was Cerrin.

“I would think you’d be pleased, Haldis,” said Cerrin. “He did intend to kill you.”

“Are you bloody mad?” exclaimed Dael, aghast. “What have you done?”

“Many, many things,” replied Cerrin, “most of which I’m sure you wouldn’t approve.”

Dael strained against the hands imprisoning him. “Why are you with these people?”

“They’re believers.”

“In what?” asked Haldis, trying to squelch her growing unease.

“The prophecy and our place in it.”

“Then why kill Lord Alban?” asked Dael. “He was its most ardent believer.”

“He feared the prophecy,” corrected Cerrin. “We fed his paranoia to draw attention away from us, but his actions revealed—quite unexpectedly—that there was another player essential to its fruition.”

His hazel eyes shifted to Haldis. He reached out to touch her face, but his fingers paused just above her cheek. “This is where we made you.”

“Meaning what?” she asked curtly.

“We marked you with a wolf’s teeth and then anointed you with its blood.”

Dael glared as his cousin, incredulous. “The scars, you did that to her?”

“She has her place in the prophecy,” replied Cerrin, “as do I. Certain sacrifices must be made.”

“Like my family and everyone in my village?” asked Haldis horrified. Her blood drummed fervently in her ears.

“Lord Alban was responsible for that, although my men did set it ablaze after taking custody of you to ensure no one noted your absence among the dead,” explained Cerrin. “Fate spared you to bring forth the wolf age.”

“And how many are you willing to sacrifice to achieve that?” asked Dael.

“As many as required,” replied Cerrin. “I too have sacrificed those closest to me— my father, our grandfather.”

Haldis saw Dael’s face whiten.

“Father was an accident,” confessed Cerrin, fidgeting with the gold clasps of his vest, “but grandfather grew suspicious of my absences and the company I kept. If he had just let it be, he could have died a natural death.”

“What happened to you, cousin?” asked Dael.

“I was born,” said Cerrin, “as were other things.”

He gestured to a man to bring over a basket draped with a cloth. Cerrin lifted back the cloth to reveal a baby. “This is your son, Haldis.”

Haldis felt as if the stone beneath her feet meant to swallow her. That’s where the year went, she thought.

“The drugs effected your memory,” said Cerrin. “You wandered off in your…delirium.”

“Escaped, more like it,” muttered Dael.

Cerrin cast a disapproving scowl at his cousin before brushing back some hair that had fallen into her face. Haldis tried not to flinch.

“Fate brought you back to your son,” said Cerrin. “Our son.”

“No!” exclaimed Haldis. She yanked herself free of the man holding onto her, but Cerrin seized one of her arms possessively.

“You bastard,” snarled Dael.

Cerrin backhanded Dael in the face, knocking him to the ground. “Why is he even still here?”

His man nodded, and then he and another man proceeded to half drag, half carry Dael away.

“Don’t do this,” begged Haldis. “He’s your cousin, your own blood.”

“The only blood that matters is what runs through your veins.”

◊ ◊ ◊

dark_forestStill dazed, Dael staggered as his captors guided him through a dim, unfortified passage barely wide enough for three men to walk abreast. They soon broke from the stone crevice into the moonlit forest outside and halted in a small clearing not far from Cerrin’s stronghold.

“This is as good as place as any,” said the bigger of the two. The man freed a long knife.

The other man pushed Dael to his knees and tied his wrists behind him.

And to think I came along to protect that bastard, he thought as the knife-wielding man circled around behind him. From the corner of his eye, he saw the knife begin to move toward his neck, but his executioner suddenly groaned and lurched into Dael before sliding to the ground. Two arrows protruded from his back. His associate called out in alarm, but was similarly silenced. Stunned, Dael staggered to his feet as a group of men emerged from the trees. All but two wore the earl’s livery. In the lead was his cousin’s forester, bow in hand. He freed Dael’s wrists.

“How did you find me?” asked Dael.

“We tracked you from Prynton,” replied Siarl. “My lord, where is the earl?”

“He ordered this,” hissed Dael.

Several of the men exchanged confused looks.

“My lord?” said Siarl.

“He’s deranged,” declared Dael. “He confessed to murdering our grandfather and causing his own father’s death. He also returned to me the head of Lord Alban.”

“And Haldis?” asked a blond man about the same age as him. He held a long bow, but was not one of the earl’s men. “What of her?”

“She’s important to Leiden,” said Siarl without elaborating. “He can be trusted.”

“She was alive when I last saw her,” said Dael. “They’ve probably drugged her again.”

“Again?” asked Leiden. “That’s why she can’t remember?”

Dael nodded, unable to meet Leiden’s gaze. “It’s probably better she never does.”

“My lord?” asked Siarl.

“They’re the ones who kidnapped and scarred her, so she would fit into that ridiculous prophecy,” explained Dael, silently wishing that was all they had done. “And Cerrin…he forced her to bear his child.”

Leiden’s hand tightened around the grip of the bow, leaving his knuckles white and the muscles in his forearm taut. It was the only outward sign of his ire and a restraint Dael knew he himself lacked.

“Cerrin has some plans for her,” said Dael as he picked up a sword from one of the fallen men. “I don’t know what, but we have to stop him.”

“We are not much of a militia,” stated Siarl, “and you’re injured, my lord.”

“We just need to buy enough time for reinforcements to arrive,” said Dael. “Who here is the fastest rider?”

A man stepped forward.

“Head back to Brynmoor and tell the captain of the guard what’s happened,” said Dael. He pulled off his signet ring and handed it to the man as proof of the message. “Go with speed.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Haldis studied the windowless room into which she had been confined. She searched the room for the chamber pot and forced herself to vomit up the acrid liquor they had made her drink—one she suspected was tainted by whatever they had used on her before. She hid the pot under the bed as muffled voices came from the other side of the heavy wood door. Wiping her mouth, she quickly threw herself down on the bed and feigned stupor as a girl about her age entered with an elderly woman.

“Why did they drug her?” asked the girl. She laid out a wine-red beaded gown beside Haldis. “Do they want her to miscarry again?”

Haldis struggled to keep her expression vacant.

“It’s only for the ceremony,” said the older as she spread out combs, brushes, and hairpins on a dressing table.

“They should have married when they first brought her here,” said the girl as she helped Haldis to her feet.

Together, the two women stripped Haldis down to her chemise and dressed her in the gown. As they walked her to the dressing table, Haldis deliberately stumbled forward to scatter the hair accessories across the floor. She slipped a large hairpin inside the cuff of the gown as the older woman righted her into a chair and the girl retrieved the items. None the wiser, they proceeded to comb and elaborately braid her hair down her back with another that encircled the crown of her head. Smaller braids draping around both like rope.

They slipped a silver filigree knuckle ring onto the center finger of her right hand before giving her over to a burly man. He hooked his hand firmly around her elbow and brought her back to the amphitheater, its precipices embracing the hunter’s moon above them. Cerrin stood beside the bonfire-illuminated altar while at least twenty of his followers loitered in front of him. A man Haldis presumed was a priest gestured to her escort to bring her up to the dais, but on the side opposite Cerrin. The man released her and positioned himself a few arm spans away.

Haldis fingered the head of the pin hidden in her sleeve as the priest addressed the assemblage. She tuned it out and took in her surroundings as surreptitiously as she could. She spied a doorway she might be able to reach before being intercepted. If I cause a sufficient distraction, thought Haldis. She caressed the hairpin again and fixed her gaze on the priest. He raised his hand to quiet Cerrin’s cheering followers and placed the other on her shoulder.

“Under this moon, we shall bind this woman to our lord and herald in the age of the wolf,” he announced as he smiled down at her.

Haldis slipped the hairpin into her palm and moved swiftly, plunging it into his chest. Stunned silence gripped the onlookers, but it lasted only a moment as Haldis dashed from the platform. Fingers snatched at the back of her dress, but abruptly fell away just as she made it to the doorway. She ran down the ill-lit passage, but was tackled from behind as she came to a broad chamber. Haldis slid hard into the floor, scraping her palms bloody. Cerrin grappled with her legs in an effort to pull her toward him, but Haldis kicked him in the chest and scrambled to her feet and into the nearest hallway.

“You were born to this,” bellowed Cerrin as he pursued her, “and you will play your part!”

Haldis pulled up short as she found herself in a kitchen, startling a scullery girl stoking the fire. Cerrin dug his fingers into the braid at the nape of her neck and yanked her backward to the floor. Her head banged into the edge of the hearth, spared only by thick braiding. The girl fled.

“You should be honored,” declared Cerrin as he straddled her and tried to snare her arms. “Fate chose you to be more than the lot you were born into. In time, you’ll see things my way.”

“You’re mad,” spat Haldis.

She blindly reached into the hearth to scoop up a handful of ash and flung it at him. The gray powder exploded in his face. Haldis knocked him off of her and clambered to her feet.

Coughing, Cerrin wiped it from his eyes with his sleeve and tried to blink away the soot. “There is nowhere you can run that fate won’t return you to me and no one who can help you that I can’t kill.”

Haldis snatched the girl’s abandoned wrought-iron poker from the hearth. The ragged-wrapped handle bit into the abrasions on her palm, and heat radiated from the opposite end where the tip flushed amber. It might not be as hot as one from my father’s forge, thought Haldis, but it will still do the job.

◊ ◊ ◊

Leiden loosed an arrow into the man chasing Haldis, but Cerrin slipped into the doorway before he could let fly another. The remaining assemblage stirred and began to move on their position.

“Go after him, Lord Dael,” said Siarl, “but take Leiden and his man with you. We’ll deal with these others.”

The three nodded wordlessly and split off from the main group. Two of Cerrin’s followers broke from their fellows to intercept them.

“Behind you!” yelled Erling.

Leiden felled both in quick succession.

“Your aim is impeccable,” said Dael when they reached the doorway into which Cerrin had disappeared.

“I had a good teacher,” replied Leiden with a nod to their companion. He had never used his bow on anything other than game, and the realization that he had likely taken the lives of several men weighed on him.

Erling turned to Dael. “Perhaps it might be best if I take the lead, my lord.”

Dael gestured down the hallway in assent.

“Keep your bow at ready, Leiden,” said Erling. “Swords are ill-suited for this narrow passage.”

Leiden reached back to count the arrows in his quiver. Only five remained. Not good, he thought as they came to a large chamber from which three other passageways branched off.

“You know Haldis better than anyone, Leiden. Which one would she take?” asked Erling.

Leiden contemplated each passage in turn. If I pick the wrong one, he thought, it might cost Haldis her life. So might indecisiveness.

A light footfall scraped against the stone from the passage to his left. He swung around, nocking an arrow in his bowstring as he did so. A young girl stopped in her tracks with a squeak when she saw the arrow aimed at her. Leiden slowly eased the tension on the string, pointing the arrow downward.

“You’re here for that woman,” stated the girl, almost sobbing. “You have to help her.”

Leiden approached the girl warily. “Where is she?”

“They’ll kill me if I tell you.”

“Then show us,” ordered Dael.

Leiden knew that approach would do nothing to allay the girl’s fears. He gently put a hand on her shoulder. “We can keep you safe. Please.”

The girl hesitated, but then nodded and warily led them into the hallway she had exited. They passed several bisecting corridors when a pained shriek suddenly reverberated through the passage from just up ahead of them. The girl froze.

“Stay here,” whispered Leiden as he moved past her to follow Erling and Dael.

They rushed into a chamber where they discovered Cerrin thrashing on the floor holding the left side his face. Haldis stood behind him, a poker in her hands. Her hair was a disheveled halo around her head. At seeing them, her surprise was replaced by relief.

“Leiden?” The poker slid from her fingers and clanged against the stone floor.

He quickly closed the distance between them and embraced her, watching as Dael and Erling dragged Cerrin to his feet and doubled him over a table. Elongated burn marks tracked from his brow to the collar of his jacket.

“I’ll find something to bind him,” said Erling, calling for the girl to help him.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” gasped Cerrin to his cousin. “You still could serve me.”

“There are people in this room I would trust with my life,” said Dael. “Sadly, you’re no longer one of them. I can’t believe I ever trusted you.”

“And you shouldn’t,” stated Haldis.

Leiden reluctantly let her draw away from him.

Dael pushed Cerrin into the table. “What is she talking about?”

Cerrin remained stubbornly mute.

“He lied,” said Haldis. “That baby isn’t mine.”

Dael twisted his cousin’s arm. “Is this true?”

“I figured she’d be more compliant if she thought it was,” said Cerrin. “We wouldn’t need to drug her then.”

“Because you knew it would cause me to miscarry,” said Haldis. “Again.”

Leiden came up beside her. “You really were pregnant then?”

She averted her eyes. “Apparently.”

It took every measure of discipline for Leiden to squelch the urge to throttle Cerrin, but it did nothing to assuage his guilt. Dael was not so disposed. He clamped Cerrin’s arms behind his back and slammed him down into the table.

“You’re a sick bastard, you know that?” hissed Dael as Erling returned with some salvaged cord.

Cerrin smirked despite the burns. Dael secured his hands, pulled him upright, and prodded his cousin behind Erling and the girl as they took point again while Leiden and Haldis brought up the rear. They met no resistance as they retraced their steps, but Erling halted the group just inside the doorway to the amphitheater to scout ahead. He quickly returned.

“It would appear that our unexpected arrival worked in our favor,” said Erling.

When Leiden emerged from the passage behind the others, he saw Siarl and his men rounding up the handful of Cerrin’s followers that still lived. Siarl waved them over.

“I see you were successful as well, my lord,” said Siarl with an askance look at Cerrin.

“That credit goes to Haldis,” said Dael with an approving nod, “and I know just where we can lock up my cousin and his cohorts.”

◊ ◊ ◊

amphitheaterHaldis shivered as the first chill air of autumn descended into the walled amphitheater. Daybreak had already begun to hide the moon as she studied the gap that led out to the Ironwood. It would be so easy just to disappear, she thought. She could stay and face the constant shame of having been raped—even though she had no memory of it—or try her chances in another village. With no family, she knew either option likely led to bleak prospects.

“You’ll catch cold standing there,” said Leiden as he hugged a blanket around her.

Haldis said nothing, unsure how to broach the uncertainty of their relationship.

“Haldis…”

“It’s alright,” whispered Haldis. She steeled herself for the inevitable rejection.

“It’s not,” replied Leiden. “Lord Alban’s ultimatum—you or my family—I wasn’t prepared for that kind of decision.”

“Your family should come first, not me.”

He turned her around and tenderly stroked her cheek. “I would very much like them to be one and the same.”

Haldis frowned and pulled away. “How can you still want me after all this?”

“It doesn’t change how I feel.”

“But I have nothing, Leiden,” professed Haldis. “I’m just a blacksmith’s daughter.”

Leiden caught her bandaged hands. “And my grandfather was the illegitimate son of a priest, but he refused to let that define him. My family’s business is his legacy.”

“Your parents..,” began Haldis.

“Will understand,” he finished. “The choice is mine, and I would call you my wife—that is, if you’ll have me.”

Speechless, Haldis studied Leiden, silently wishing her father could have met him.

“You don’t have to decide here, in this place,” he said.

“You already know my answer.”

“Yes?”

Haldis nodded.

Leiden bent to kiss her, but a shout from a guard spoiled the moment.

“What now?” groaned Leiden.

The forester’s men were congregating in the prison area. Haldis and Leiden pushed their way through to the front where Dael and Siarl stood. The cause for the alarm was obvious: everyone in the cell was dead.

Haldis pointed to several white objects beside one of the bodies. “Mistletoe berries.”

“It’s the same here,” called Erling from the neighboring cell.

Dael rushed to his cousin’s cell. Haldis and Leiden caught up with him as he threw open the door. Cerrin sat against the wall and greeted them with a condescending smile confined solely to the uninjured side of this face. On the other, the burns had already begun to seep and blister.

“Do you really think I’d take my own life like some common dog?” he taunted. “You should know better, cousin.”

Dael yanked Cerrin to his feet and shoved him violently into the wall. Leiden seized Dael’s cocked arm, using it to pivot him away, and then placed himself between Dael and the object of his rage.

“How can you protect him after what he’s done?” growled Dael gesturing at Haldis. He surged forward, but Leiden held him back.

“He’s goading you, my lord,” hissed Leiden. “He wants his blood on your hands.”

“Because he’s too much of a coward to end his own life,” stated Haldis from the threshold.

Cerrin’s smugness waned.

Dael shoved off Leiden’s hands and stormed past Haldis, his rage palpable as he brushed past. Leiden rejoined her at the door and leveled a pitiless gaze on Cerrin.

“You will die,” he stated, “but not today and not by our hands.”

Haldis hooked her hand around the door handle. “Pray the king’s tribunal is merciful.”

With that, she closed the door on Dael’s cousin.

◊ ◊ ◊

A company of reinforcements arrived shortly after sunrise and helped flush out a few remaining holdouts hiding in the stronghold. Once the prisoners had been chained together, Cerrin was bound atop a horse’s saddle. Dael mounted his own horse and took the other’s reins, but Cerrin’s attention was fixated on Haldis. His cousin’s upper lip quivered unconsciously as she climbed up behind Leiden on his mount and tenderly wrapped her arms around him.

Dael shook his head in disbelief as they moved out. Cerrin’s current predicament had done little to lessen his obsession, he thought. No doubt he’ll grace us with his incessant taunts all the way back to Brynmoor.

His cousin, however, said not a word, and they arrived without incident. Dael immediately sent a messenger to the king’s court, but it still took over two weeks for the three lords of the tribunal to arrive. Their deliberations, in contrast, took less than a day, for Cerrin denied nothing. They found him guilty of every offense to which he was accused and sentenced him to hang with his followers. Dael was far more surprised by their intent to recommend that he succeed Cerrin.

On the eve of the execution, Dael found himself drawn to his cousin’s cell. Cerrin lay on the straw pallet, staring at the ceiling, seemingly indifferent to Dael’s presence and unconcerned by his impending punishment. The burns mottled his face, their leathery edges pinching taut against the undamaged skin.

Dael leaned against the metal bars. “Haldis married Leiden.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Cerrin. “She will always belong to me.”

“She was never yours.”

“We were bound the day we were born.”

Dael held back his angry retort, trying to emulate Leiden’s self-control. “The prophecy is a farce spouted by some heathen cleric centuries ago. It’s meaningless, and it was all for nothing.”

Cerrin scoffed. “Its meaning can’t be comprehended by one such as you.”

“You’ll be dead by this time tomorrow. The prophecy won’t save you.”

Cerrin laughed at him. “I don’t need to be saved. The prophecy is already in motion.”

Dael shook his head, dumbfounded by his cousin’s unyielding refusal to renounce the ancient prediction of ruin. It was then that he realized Cerrin had been lost long ago.

◊ ◊ ◊

“You’re sure you don’t want to be there?” ask Leiden.

Haldis glanced back at Brynmoor as the three caravan wagons passed through the city gate. A sudden cheer out rang out from behind them, no doubt from the crowd gathered for the execution—the same crowd that had only weeks earlier celebrated Cerrin as its young earl. Their exuberance sickened her.

Too many had already died to venerate the prophecy, thought Haldis as she settled back onto the bench beside Leiden. “It won’t change anything.”

“It might give you closure,” replied Leiden.

“I’ve seen enough death,” said Haldis, quietly adding, “and caused enough.”

Leiden reached over to take her hand. “It’s not your fault.”

“How is it not?” asked Haldis. “Everyone is my village is dead simply because I lived there.”

“Cerrin manipulated Lord Alban to feed his fear—with no regard for the outcome—and then killed those who got in the way of what he wanted.”

“He wanted me,” whispered Haldis, “needed me to give validity to the prophecy.”

“And yet you resisted his influence over you, even when it was near absolute,” said Leiden. “You were no willing participant.”

“Then why do I feel so guilty?” asked Haldis.

“Because you care,” said Leiden. “You wouldn’t feel the weight of it otherwise, but it’s not your burden to shoulder.”

Haldis knew he had taken several lives to come to her aid and was struggling with that knowledge. “It’s not yours either.”

“I know.”

swallowthemoon_wolfHe hooked his arm around her waist and slid her closer to him on the bench. Haldis leaned into him as the wagon skimmed the Ironwood. Something caught her eye in the dim understory. She stiffened as it resolved into a distinct form of a wolf. A black wolf.

“Haldis?” asked Leiden.

The beast’s yellow eyes captured hers as the wagon came even with it. Her mind insisted it meant nothing, but an unsettling sense of kindred clutched her—as if the wolf sought to rouse what Cerrin believed slumbered within her. The question is, thought Haldis, do I?

The wolf then yawned and trotted back between the trees. Their crowded silhouettes quickly swallowed it.

“Just a shadow,” replied Haldis as she turned to Leiden. “Nothing more.”

 

Lisa Langeland lives in Minnesota, but spent her youth in various locales in eastern South Dakota and, as a young child, in a central Ontario mining town. She has an insatiable curiosity and a laid-back, self-depreciating sensor of humor. She is also an amateur nature photographer. Her fiction has appeared in “New Myths” and “The Colored Lens.”

  • Continue Reading

Published by Associate Editor on November 17, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 28, Issue 28 Stories

The Raven and the Forest Girl

ravenby David Landrum

The Raven and the Forest Girl
I

Noelani still had nightmares.
“I’m sorry,” she would say, crying. “I still have dreams about it.”
He reached up and brushed away her tears.
“I was at the pond,” she wept. “Except in the dream, they threw me in and the stone was around my neck. I was drowning.”
He held her. She squeezed him, pressing her body against his and soon fell asleep. He remembered the first time he had seen her.

 

He had been with Elisedd. It was the last day they were together before the Druids selected him for sacrifice. They had returned from hunting, riding through fields guarded by scarecrows, and dismounted at the King’s house. Wanting wine, and wanting to avoid the crowd of sycophants who would waylay Prince Elisedd with petitions the moment he stepped in the door to the Great Hall, the two of them cut through the kitchen.

Squatting by one of the hearth fires, a young woman—she might have been eighteen—fed kindling sticks into the small flame glowing there. Rian thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes on, though her loose hair and the blue bracelet on her arm told him she was pledged and not eligible for marriage. Still, he gazed at her, his heart charmed. She had delicate features: a long, straight nose, big eyes, and a high forehead. Her stance made her shapely buttocks strain against the simple buckskin dress she wore. Her brown locks cascaded over her back. A light fuzz of hair covered her shins. She was barefoot. She built the fire with a look of intense concentration.

They went into the next room.

“Who was the girl by the fire?” Rian asked. “And, yes, I saw that she’s pledged.”

“Her name is Noelani—daughter of Garth. The Druids are training her.”

“For what? Religion?”

“Sort of.”

“She’s pretty.”

“She is,” Elisedd agreed. “Too bad.”

Rian and Elisedd drank wine and went into the Great Hall. They stopped cold. The King, a grave look on his face, stood by his judgment chair. Four Druid priests stood about him. Grave expressions covered their faces as well. The priests made Rian leave. He waited outside. After an hour, he and several others were admitted to the hall. A herald proclaimed the news that shocked everyone in the kingdom. Elisedd would die to open a path of divination.

Rian managed to gain an audience with Cathasach, the King, Elisedd’s father.

“This is barbaric,” he said. “Mother told me no one has died this way in hundreds of years, and you know she served seven winters of pledge before she married father.”

“The situation is grave,” Cathasach said.

The Romans had won several victories last spring. Now that cold weather had ended they were on the march again.

“The Romans have offered us a treaty,” Rian said. “The other tribes who accepted their terms have been treated well. If we defy them, we’ll be enslaved.”

“The sacrifice will tell us how to defeat them.”

“Sacrifice!” Rian shouted. “This is your son!”

“Mind your tongue, boy,” one of the King’s advisers warned, putting a hand on the hilt of his sword.

“You’re Elisedd’s best friend,” Cathasach said, motioning for his adviser to stand down. “If you truly love him, you’ll accept what he has accepted. In the past, the duties of a prince sometimes required sacrifice. We look to the past customs as a hope of freedom. Think of his death as the equivalent of death in battle.”

Rian understood from Cathasach’s tone of voice that his audience was ended. He bowed and left. When he got outside, he began to curse, swear, and throw stones. Afraid someone would see him, he mounted his horse and rode at a wild gallop toward the woodland that separated the territory Cathasach ruled from the lands the Romans had settled. After a time, he slowed his horse and led it to a pool to drink and rest. It was there that he saw her.

The girl—was her name Noelani?—stood at the edge of the forest. Rian stepped into a thicket of linden trees and watched her. Once more, he marveled at her beauty. She stood a moment, reached up to grasp the shoulders of her garment, and pulled it over her head.

His blood jumped at sight of her nakedness. Her slender body glowed in the greenish forest light. She had full, round breasts, hips as shapely has he had imagined them when he saw her by the hearth, a gentle tuft of red hair at her juncture of her thighs, long legs and delicate feet.

She lifted her hands and began to sing. Her song, in a language he could not speak, sounded as if it was a hymn from paradise or a song the gods had written. Its beauty and power captured him. He thought the loveliness of her body expressed itself in her song and that she had just sung out herself—her soul, her essence. He remembered his mother had told him the ancient paeans were not mere tunes, but whispers of heaven and earth in their power and harmony.

As she sang, animals appeared: four deer, a small lynx, and two wild dogs. Rian wondered if he should protect her, but remembered she was a pledged woman—and her being clothed with the wind complicated the matter. Also, she evinced no fear at the appearance of the predatory beasts in the menagerie. She smiled as she stroked the coats of the dogs, which were large and ferocious. Birds appeared then. A raven lit on her shoulder. Linnets landed on the ground about her feet. She held out her hand and a white bird of a type he had never seen perched on her index finger.

After a moment, she lifted her hand. The white bird flew into the wood. The lynx, the dogs, and all the deer but one followed it. The other birds flew off, though he noticed that the raven lit on a branch and watched her. The deer waited patiently as she clothed herself with the garment she had taken off. She patted the deer’s neck. The creature licked her hand. She turned and began walking away from the wood. The doe followed her. Rian watched until she and the animal disappeared down the path.

He lingered, contemplating what he had just seen. Again, he recalled what his mother had told him about her time as an acolyte to the Druids. There were women who had the power to draw animals to their side. They were called Gatherers because the animals that followed them were used as sacrifices. So this was Noelani’s role as a pledged woman. He wondered if the deer would be sacrificed as a part of ceremony for Elisedd.

He rode aimlessly at first, but then, on a whim, followed the raven the girl had summoned as it went from tree to tree, allowing Rian to get closer to him than such birds usually allowed, then flying off but perching in sight, as if it were leading him. He rode a long way along a woodland path and came out of the forest into a land of wide meadows and grain fields swaying in the breeze. Scarecrows with bells tied to their lifeless limbs made a ringing noise to frighten off birds. He saw houses here and there. He suspected he had ridden into Roman-controlled territory. If it was the kingdom of Ghynath, though, which it probably was, he would be in no danger. They had signed treaty with the Romans and lived alongside them in peace. Rian’s family owned land in this kingdom. The Romans had allowed them to retain it. His family rented it out to tenants who farmed it.

He rode on, following the raven until he came to the edge of a town. Roman banners flew on some of the buildings. He stopped to rest in a grove of trees by a pond. His horse drank as he rested. A group of men walked by. One of them greeted him in Latin. He replied in the same language. A man following the group stopped, regarded Rian, and came over to him.

“Greetings, young man. I am Orev. I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before.”

“I’m not from around here.”

“A stranger then. You’re a Celt. I can tell that from your accent and appearance. You speak Latin very well.”

“My mother spoke Latin. She taught me the language. My father had me speak it to the merchants he did business with. Later—well, the king’s son employed me as interpreter.”

“That would be Prince Elisedd. Pity what befell him.”

“You know about that? How?”

“Informers, shall we say? Many in your kingdom don’t agree with what your king plans to do.”

“Neither do I. We should make a treaty with the Roman like the Ghynath have done. And what the King plans to do with his own son is a barbaric practice our people abandoned generations ago. The King has fallen under the sway of the Druids.”

“They’re desperate to preserve themselves,” Orev answered. “The Romans don’t treat them very well when they conquer an area where the Druids hold power.”

“The Romans? You speak of them as if they were a people separate from you. Aren’t you a Roman?”

He was dressed like one. Rian could tell from his speech that his Latin was his native tongue.

“I am a Roman Citizen, but I come from the Provinces and don’t exactly give my loyalty to them. So the answer to your question is yes—and no.

Rian suddenly felt glum.

“Do Romans approve of human sacrifice?”

“They abhor it, as everyone should.”

“I wish they would launch an invasion of our land before Elisedd dies. They might rescue him.”

“He won’t be rescued, but the Romans will gain your kingdom.”

Rian looked at him. “Are you a prophet?”

He laughed. “Prophecy is from God,” he said, sounding almost as if he were quoting rather than just making a statement. “I only observe and judge like anyone else.”

“Do you have a prophetic word for me?”

Orev looked straight at him. “You will thrive, but someday you will become a man—and not a man. You will live a life that is not a life, but you will be restored to life and be full man once more.”

Rian blinked. “What does that mean?”

Orev gestured and laughed. “I don’t know. If it made sense, it wouldn’t be a prophecy. But it will make sense to you one day.”

With that, Orev took his leave.

His horse finished drinking and trotted over to him. He patted its neck. Rian remembered how long he had been riding and thought he needed to return to his own land He returned, arriving back in the kingdom near dusk. Because he was an employee of the king, he had an apartment in the royal compound, but he did not want to go there. He did not want to be near the place. He hoped Cathasach would come to his senses. He ate at a tavern and heard that the Prince had died. The Druids stabbed him the stomach and interpreted his writhing and the blood that flowed from his wounds. The sacrifice was auspicious, the people in the tavern said. Cathasach would defeat the Romans. The kingdom of Voltanda would remain free.

Rian went home. His mother and father tried offer words of comfort over Elisedd’s loss, but he was sullenly inconsolable. That night when he went to bed he dreamed a raven flew into the bedroom. After that, Rian found himself at the edge of Brendályn’s pond and saw a group of men dragging Noelani, hands bound, screaming and pleading, to the water to drown her. He woke with a start. Dawn had come. He smelled porridge cooking, got up, washed and dressed. After a trip to the privy, he came into the kitchen. Fenella, his sister, who was visiting with her husband, stirred a pot of oatmeal hanging in the fireplace. Barran, her husband, sat at the table with Rian’s father. He took his place with them. His mother came in. Her feet and the hem of her dress were wet with dew.

“Our neighbor Ahern has brought me distressing news,” she said. “The Romans have assembled a force and are coming this way. Cathasach has called us all to arms and they’re going to kill the girl who is their Gatherer.”

All three men in the room stood, alarmed.

“Kill her?” Rian repeated. “Why?”

“She defiled the ceremony.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, Rian. But she’s to die at noon today.”

“Are they going to drown her?” he asked, afraid of her affirmation.

“She is a virgin, so they will not shed her blood,” his father said. “We need to report to our units. Rian, the King will probably need you to stand at his side as an interpreter. Go to him immediately.”

Rian’s father and Barran went outside, saddled horses, and galloped off to join their home guard units. Rian lingered behind. Though he knew it was his duty to report for service to the King, he decided he would not go. By his brutality toward his own son, and Rian’s best friend, Cathasach had forfeited his right to Rian’s loyalty. He would rescue the girl and take the consequences. They had killed Elisedd and lied about his death throes being auspicious. Now they were going to kill a young virgin woman. Surely, he thought, the gods did not approve the murder of innocent people. The King, on the advice of his Druid Priest, had slain a young man who was brave, dutiful, and obedient to his father. Now they planned to kill an innocent girl who had denied her own desires in the service of religion.

His mother, who must have caught the look in his eyes at the table, ran out of the door to their house, arms extended.

“Rian, don’t try to interfere,” she cried.

He looked down at her. “Why not, Mother?”

“They’ll kill you.”

“They seem very keen on killing people these days—people who have done harm to no one.”

“We mustn’t ask questions.”

“I question when a brave young man and innocent maiden are murdered.”

“Don’t say that! You’ll bring the wrath of the gods upon us.”

“I like to think the gods are as offended at this as I am. If the gods are higher than we, it would seem their compassion and sense of justice would exceed our own and so they would aid me in what I plan to do.”

“Rian, please,” she wept.

“I’m sorry, Mother. I have to go.” He rode off.

He galloped to Brendályn’s pond. He wore a sword and dagger, but as he neared the place he remembered it was sacred to the Goddess Ardwinna. Carrying a weapon into a place sacred to her would constitute sacrilege. As he rode, the impossible questions of right and wrong, the sacred and the profane, the holy and the common ran through his mind. A sacred place was a place of peace; hence, weapons were forbidden in its precincts. Did such a space sanctify murder? The Goddess Ardwinna, a chaste goddess who had never known a man, exuded gentleness, love, kind, and purity. Would she approve the brutal killing of a virgin in her own sacred territory? And what had Noelani done? Surely she would not have deliberately blasphemed. He had only glimpsed her twice, but in those moments he read devotion in her gaze.

Girls who were pledged as she had been pledged agreed to their vows and did not enter service at the direction of their families, as many girls did; they entered service at an age when their reason could discern choices and when their bodies were developed to the point that they understood desire and had some idea of what their vows would demand of them. Noelani had agreed to the pledge and, when he saw her, looked like a determined woman who had embraced a solitary life willingly and with absolute commitment.

Would she even want to be rescued? In his dream, she had begged and pleaded. Had he only dreamed what he wanted to see?

Rian tethered his horse in a brake of birch trees. Their white and black trunks stood, slender and lovely, in the light of noon. Their bright leaves fluttered in the breeze. A moment later, he heard chanting. Near a calm pond surrounded by willow trees, he saw a group of mannequins—four of them, better-made then what you might see in a farmer’s field, but unendurably grotesque. The Druids had set them up in connection with the ceremony about to take place. Amid the chanting he heard a woman sobbing.

He sneaked close to the noises. Coming to a stand of massive cottonwoods where chattering leaves concealed the noise of his approach, he drew closer.

Four men armed with swords and javelins went past him followed by a procession of Druids—eight of them. Two led Noelani. She wore a white smock, just like she had worn in his dream. A rope encircled her wrists. Another rope looped about her neck. A Druid carried a stone to which the rope around her neck was attached.

“Please,” she wept. Rian tensed. He put his hand on the hilt of his dagger. “For the love of the chaste Ardwinna, be merciful to me! I tried not to. I didn’t mean to.”

Rian undid his sword belt and cast it aside. Even if the men escorting Noelani to her death were armed, he would not bring a weapon into a sacred place. He would save her by the force of his body, though he did retain his dagger to cut the rope they had put around her hands and neck. After uttering a quick prayer to Ardwinna, he bolted out of the thicket.

CS00634POPAs he did so, a number of things happened simultaneously. The Druids and their guards halted and faced him. At the same moment, he heard twanging, the whistling of what sounded like arrows, and saw one of the Druids and two of the guards fall to the ground. Taking advantage of the confusion, Rian sprang, sliced the rope that tethered Noelani to the stone, and cut the cord binding her hands. At the same moment, ten armed men in red uniforms—Romans—broke through the underbrush. Acting instinctively, Rian seized Noelani’s arms and leaped with her into the pond.

The two of them splashed, went under, and came up. A melee had developed on the shore just a few feet from them.

“Can you swim?” he asked Noelani.

She nodded, water streaming from her hair on to her face.

“Let’s make for the shore.” He pointed. “Maybe we can escape.”

They swam to the side of the pond opposite the battle. When they emerged, dripping wet from the deep, bushes shook and they heard the clattering weapons and armor and the creak of leather harness. Eight Roman soldiers, swords drawn, formed a semi-circle in front of them.

Rian produced his dagger. A solider stepped forward.

“Give me the knife, boy,” he said in Brythonic, the Celtic tongue. When Rian did not respond, he added, “Be sensible. You don’t have a chance against us.”

Rian sighed and gave him the dagger. The man looked like an auxiliary—a local who functioned as a scout and translator for the Romans. The thin smock Noelani wore was soaked and her nakedness showed through its sodden fabric. One of the Romans gave her his red cape to wear. This was a good sign, Rian supposed. Also, they did not bind him. The auxiliary, named Dolan, gestured for them to follow. Rian glanced to the other side of the pond. The Romans had captured the four guards. They had killed all eight Druids. Rian and Noelani followed Dolan and the Romans.

They led them to a staging area. A squad of cavalry and probably 300 foot soldiers lolled in ranks under Roman banners. Dolan led them to a man who wore gold-inlaid armor. Rian knew this meant he was an officer—probably the unit commander. After a short conference, Dolan gestured. The soldiers pointed. Rian and Noelani found themselves in the presence of a Roman official.

“I am Arius Nebridius,” he said, “Commander of Hispana, Legion IX of the Imperial Roman Army. Who are you?”

He spoke the Brythonic language fluently. He had probably been born here. The Romans had occupied parts of Britain for hundreds of years. They gave their names.

“Maiden,” he said, fixing his eyes Noelani, “what is your association with the Druids?”

“I am a pledged woman who serves their needs.”

“In what way?”

“I cook for them. I clean up after their sacrifices. I obey them and act as their servant.”

“Dolan tells me they were going to kill you—drown you in the pond. Why was that?”

“I committed sacrilege.”

“Can you explain?”

“I”—she breathed in to steady herself. “I vomited at the sacrifice of Prince Elisedd. The sight of him crying out, and writhing in a pool of his own blood sickened me. What I did made the sacrifice inauspicious, and they sentenced me to death.”

“Such barbarity should sicken anyone. I am sorry your eyes had to look upon such a sight.” He turned to Rian. “You, boy—you saved her life. Are you a relative?”

“No, sir.” He hesitated and then said, “I’m in love with her.”

The commander laughed. “Well, now. This is getting interesting.”

“He was Elisedd’s best friend,” Noelani put in.

Everyone reacted to her words. Custom dictated that women—especially virgin women—spoke to men only when spoken to first.

“Indeed,” Nebridius said. “I’m told the action of the Druids was unpopular and has alienated the people of this kingdom.”

“I don’t know about that, sir,” Rian put in, “but it certainly alienated me. As you said, it was a barbarity. Our people are disgraced by such an action. And then they were going to murder her—a virgin and a pledged woman—because she reacted as any human being with a tender heart would react when beholding such a cruel and bloody act.”

“You speak well, young man.”

“Ego narro vestri lingua, Dux. Ego servo ut a reddo pro nostrum rex regis.” (I speak your language, Commander. I served as a translator to our king.)

“That’s even better. Would you be willing to deliver a message to the leader of your people? If you do, we will reward you. And you can have the girl.”

“She is under vow,” Rian began.

“No,” Noelani said. “The Druids took the status of holiness from me. My vows are nullified. I am nothing but a lost soul.”

“If you deliver the message,” the commander told Rian, speaking loudly to indicate he was making an official promise, “you can have the girl. Otherwise, we’ll sell her as a slave, and I think you know what that will mean for her. I don’t want war. I want a treaty. The terms will be generous. There is no reason for bloodshed. Will you agree to this?”

Rian said he would.

The Romans took Noelani. She told him later they housed her with the Vestals at a temple just inside their territory. Rian’s tribe, the Voltandi, had gathered for war. He brought Nebridius’ terms. The chieftains and clan leaders thought them reasonable. The King, though, led by the Druids, refused them. That night, the leaders of the tribe deposed him. Celtic kings did not rule by right but were subject to the Council’s decrees. Cathasach’s nobles felt outrage that he had sacrificed his own son and groveled at the beck and call of the Druids. Many Celts had become Christians; even those who worshipped the old gods did not trust the Druids. They also censured them for what they had intended to do Noelani.

Things developed rapidly after this. A parley was arranged. The nobility elected a new ruler and signed a treaty with the Romans, who demanded a sum of gold each year, which the leaders deemed not a burdensome amount, and permission to build settlements and military bases on Voltandi land. To Rian, though, the finest moment came when he rode to the Temple of Vesta and to Noelani, who had received manumission—freedom from her vow and transfer to his authority.

The two of them rode off together as the sun set over the forest of their homeland.

They came to the farmland the chieftains of his people had given him as a reward for his service. He looked over at her when their horses came to a halt.

“This is where I live. I”—

“I am your wife,” she said. “I must be. The only other thing I could do is return to my relatives—my mother and father are dead. My brothers and sisters are loyal to the Druids. They’ll make me a slave and a whore if I seek refuge with them.”

The shadows lengthened. When he glanced at her, her beauty made him tremble.

“What do you want, Noelani?”

“I want you to take me into your home. We’ll consummate our marriage. I am your wife.”

“Should we go to the temple first?”

“Ardwinna will bless our union. We can declare our pledge before her later.”

He took her as his bride.

Things went their normal course. The leaders of his people had given him a fair tract of land near the Forest of Cistonion. They soon had children—three boys and two girls. The Voltandi lived equitably with the Romans. Rian and Noelani’s farm prospered. Their children grew and married. Two of his sons married into the ruling clans of the Voltandi. One of his daughters, Seana, had a bent toward religion and thought to pledge herself to the service of Ardwinna, but then fell in love with a young man and decided to marry rather than vow herself to chastity and service. She had the gift of prophecy and knew gods spoke through her. She learned the prophetic songs of the people. Even as a wife and mother, she spoke as an oracle and a bard who knew the ancient hymns sacred to their people. After their children were grown to adulthood, the Romans withdrew from Britain.

The Roman army had maintained security for the Celtic Britons. Their withdrawal led the Picts, the Irish, and the Anglo-Saxons, to invade the land. It was at this time that Rian’s people sought the help of the goddess Morrigan.

It was also at this time that Rian received the gift of prophecy.

One night he dreamed the former King’s life was in danger. That morning he left Noelani with the children and went to Cathasach’s estate.

“You are in danger,” he told him. “You need to flee.”

Cathasach sneered. Rian could see how much his behavior—sacrificing his son, condemning Noelani—had filled him with guilt and remorse. His deposition had also filled him anger. And he was not well-disposed toward Rian, who had rescued Noelani and rebuked him for his design to kill Elisedd.

“How do you know this?”

“I dreamed it.”

“You can interpret dreams? Since when are you a prophet?”

“Prophecy belongs to God,” he said, almost before he thought of it, remembering when Orev, whom he had not seen in all these years, had said the same thing. “My daughter has the gift of prophecy. Perhaps a bit of it lies in my soul as well.”

“From ‘God,’ you say? You’re a Christian now?”

“I am a follower of Ardwinna, as I have always been.”

“The girl? Is she well?”

“She’s well.”

“I don’t think someone who has defied the gods like you did in rescuing her has any spiritual authority. You’re not qualified to tell me anything.”

Rian thought to mount a scathing rebuke of Cathasach. Here was a man who had been suborned by religious fanatics, a thing that led to crime and his deposition. Rian restrained himself.

“I’m obligated to tell you your life is in danger and you should flee this place. I came here out of affection to you, my Lord—and out of loyalty. You were my sovereign. For many years you led our kingdom well. I respected you, served you, and stood as a loyal retainer in your wars, poor though I was. The Divine Power sent me to deliver a warning to you. Do with it as you chose.”

Having said that, he left.

He thought Cathasach would reject his counsel, but the old man retired that morning to a stronghold one of his relatives owned. He also summoned several loyal kinfolk who rallied to defend him. Sure enough, a group of hired killers from another tribe attacked his home the day he left. When they found out where he had fled, they moved on the fortress only to be attacked by his kinsman.

Cathasach rewarded Rian with money and an apology. The incident bolstered his fame as a prophet. He sought Orev but could not find him and assumed he left in the Roman evacuation.

Over the next few years, his prophetic gift protected the kingdom. His people defended themselves against the raiding parties—Picts, Irish, Vikings—when they raided Voltandi territory, With his guidance, they were able to defeat the Anglo-Saxons. Rian knew their plans and movements. Each time they attacked, the Voltandi would be waiting for them. Rian’s words never fell to the ground.

He knew prophecy was not a ladder to wealth or power. It was a gift, and he functioned as steward of it. Noelani’s understanding of the limitations spiritual roles imposed helped him exercise discipline and not use his gifts from personal gain. The years passed. They grew older, saw their grandchildren and managed their prosperous farm. When he reached age 45, Noelani died from an infection brought on by a broken leg.

Grief darkened his life. His mother, past sixty, wise and beautiful in her age, told him how all who live will die and that he had shared many years with Noelani. Her children were her legacy and carried her life and blood. He tried to be consoled.

It was also at this time that the rulers of his people began to seek the face of Morrigan.

He had warned them twice to avoid her. “She is treacherous and seeks to enslave all who cross her threshold. No good will come from an alliance with her.” But the rulers were uneasy. Rian’s prophecies enabled them to remain free and to intercept raiders and know the plans of enemy armies—but his wife had died. What if Rian died too? He was as vulnerable as any human being. Morrigan demonstrated her power and supposed good will by aiding the Voltandi in a battle against the Anglo-Saxons. It ended in a notable victory for the Celts.

Rian again warned them.

“Morrigan is the Goddess of Discord. It is not in her nature to bring good.”

“She is the Goddess of Battle,” Badden, their king said. “She gave us victory. How could you doubt her good will?”

Rian returned to his farm. His hired men harvested grain. Their wives worked at various tasks. Their children played or did chores. He walked to Noelani’s grave. As he stood there, he knew what would happen and waited patiently, eventually hearing hoof beats. A group of armed riders approached, Badden among them. They circled him.

“Don’t kill my retainers,” he said. “And spare my daughter and son-in-law. They’ve done no despite to you. Of course, I haven’t either.”

“You have my word no harm will come to your people, though they will have to find work elsewhere,” Badden replied. Rian knew he was a man of his word. “Your daughter is a prophetess and married to one of the ruling clans. We would never do despite to a servant of the goddess or to the families of our rulers. As for your last point, we’ll let Morrigan decide that one.”

MorriganThe sky darkened as in an eclipse. Silence fell. Birds ceased to sing and the wind grew still. It was as if the land held its breath. A swirl of purple smoke rose inside the circle of horses. And Morrigan appeared.

She wore a long purple garment. Her pale skin and red lips made him shudder. Her hair fell in a black wave to the small of her back. She was barefoot. She leveled a look of absolute contempt at Rian.

“Foolish, hollow man,” she sneered. “Did you think that through some puny gift of magic you could stand against me?”

He did not reply. He turned to Seana who had seen the riders and rushed over with her husband and some of his hired men. “The hymn of Laoise,” he told her. She nodded.

“Do you assume there is magic in an old hymn to the gods that could overcome me?” Morrigan laughed. “I’ll show you whose power is the greater. You are nothing. I will make you a man and not a man.”

“You will,” he replied, and he knew he spoke with the voice of prophecy, “but you will be underdone by the scarecrow you plan to make of me, and by a raven, your totem animal. In the end you will lose all you have gained.”

Her face showed dark thunder. He felt the transformation.

On the ground he beheld the limp, lifeless shadow of a mannequin—a scarecrow, a man and yet not a man—hung on a cross piece. He could see and could feel the dry wind of autumn and the sunshine on his head. But he did not feel his heartbeat, did not feel the flow of his blood, the warmth of his bowels, nor the rush of air into his lungs. Morrigan smiled at her enchantment.

“Let this be a warning to anyone who would defy me,” she said, with emphasis on the word me. Your kingdom will grow in power as long as I am obeyed. This farm will be abandoned. The wood adjacent to it will become mine. I will make it a sacred place, and you will supply me with chaste girls to serve as my acolytes and attend my altar here.”

With that, she vanished.

Orev’s prophecy came true. Rian was a mannequin. But the story was not over. As the sun set, he watched Badden and his soldiers ride off. He wondered at the years that lay ahead.

II

The Demetae could have defended Wells Fortress easily except that Morrigan lent the Voltandi her evil magic. The goddess would not lower her dignity by standing in their ranks, but she sent her flock. After the besieging army approached with ladders and siege towers ready, the sky darkened. A mass of black birds came like a storm wind, diving at the soldiers, flying in their faces, pecking at their eyes and tearing at their skin. Men fell from the parapets; the birds flew hard enough to upset vats of boiling oil and molten lead, setting the upper walkways afire. The creatures clawed and tore at the flesh of the defenders, while the assaulting members of Voltandi clan hoisted their ladders and rolled their siege towers forward. The Demetae were unable to regroup and fight back. In minutes their enemies had surmounted the walls and swarmed inside. The flock of Morrigan rose into the sky and disappeared, a black cloud moving off toward the eastern forests.

Gowan fought his way out of the scene of slaughter. He hoped to find Kennis amid the crowds of terrified women running about, but he did not lay eyes on her. He and five other men formed a squad and managed to escape through the livestock gate. Pursuers came after them. They scattered in five directions. Gowan fled into the forest running until he could not go on.

Too cautious and too afraid to sleep, he rested until some of his strength returned and pushed on until he found a brook. He drank and dunked his head in the icy water. Looking up, he saw black smoke rising a good distance away. Wells Fortress—burned, its people slaughtered and enslaved. Kennis—he didn’t want to think what had probably happened to her. He realized how close he was and that the Voltandi would eventually scour the area of fugitives. Gowan drank more water and headed deep into the forest, where he would be more difficult to track.

He moved steadily into the woods north of his conquered homeland. The massive trees blotted out the light of day. An eerie green glow was his only illumination as he moved steadily, putting as much distance as he could between him and the battle site.

The wood abounded in dangers. He saw two massive bears and a wolf. Where a solitary wolf stood, the pack was not far away. For the next two weeks, he hid—climbing trees when search parties appeared, sleeping in caves and hollow oaks, surviving by eating nuts and fruit he found, drinking water from clear streams, once or twice catching fish with his hands and eating them raw. On the afternoon of his fourteenth day in the wood, head throbbing, stomach empty, Gowan spotted a clearing and made for it.

He saw a small house in the middle of a field. Several more structures, collapsed or sagging, stood off in the distance. He saw no people, no animals, no smoke coming from the chimney on the one building still standing in the midst of what appeared to have once been a fairly good-sized farm. He made his way toward the house.

It sat empty. The shutters stood open. No door separated it from the elements. It was empty of furniture. Gowan looked around, stepped inside, and turned to once again scan the area around the house. He saw outlines of what had once been plots of cultivated fields. Stalks of grain grew in clumps here and there. He hurried over to them, stripped the heads from the stalks, rubbed the chaff from them, and chewed them. An overgrown patch to one side of the house suggested a neglected garden. There he found pumpkins and turnips amid the weeds. The farm orchard still bore fruit. He cut up one of the small pumpkins and ate it. He also found some carrots.

The food made him sleepy. Even though the sun still shown, he settled into one corner of the empty house, took off his tunic and boots, rolled up in the tunic, and immediately fell asleep.

common-raven-3aHe woke in the morning, sore and hungry. After relieving himself and putting on his tunic, he headed for the garden. Gowan stopped in his tracks when he saw a raven perched on the tumble-down garden fence, staring at him.
He looked around. Seeing no other birds, he relaxed. Morrigan’s flock did her bidding, but not all ravens were evil—though most people considered them birds of ill omen. He opened the sagging gate and walked into the area enclosed by a lopsided fence. The raven flew over to a roost a few feet away, staying closer than such birds usually stayed to a human presence.

Going back to the garden, he found five more pumpkins, several turnips, and some onions. He would not starve. He harvested the produce and stored it in the house, found firewood, and kindled it with the flint he carried at all times. He spitted the vegetables and searched for water. Not far from the house, a spring flowed. He took a drink of the icy water and felt his spirits rally. He might survive. All he had known had been taken by his clan’s enemies. Still, not everything was lost. The Voltandi would subjugate his people, not massacre them. Kennis’ beauty would mean she would be raped—or possibly taken as a prize for one of their high-ranking chieftains to marry or make a whore. He sighed and felt a surge of anger, but what was the point of anger? He could not alter what had happened. Perhaps she had escaped—not likely, but he could not rule out the possibility. Kennis was a brave, strong, crafty young woman. As he knelt to turn the garden fruits on the spit, he heard the raven scream. Looking up, he saw it posed above the door of the house.

His fears returned. Why was it following him? Birds avoided people. Could it be one of Morrigan’s flock coming to spy him out? He gazed at the creature and sighed with resignation. If Morrigan had sent it here, he could do little to prevent it from revealing his presence. Gowan doubted he was important enough to merit the goddess’s attention. The Voltandi had probably agreed to worship Morrigan or provide her with young women to serve at her shrine. It crossed his mind that Kennis, if captured, might have been forced to be one of Morrigan’s forest girls. When he thought this, the bird on the lintel squawked and flapped its wings.

Its behavior startled him so much he stood. The bird did not fly but continued to cry out in its high-pitched, grating voice and to flutter its wings.

“Trying to tell me something, bird?” he scoffed. The sound of his own voice startled him. The bird quieted. Its shiny round eyes seemed to meet his and then it lifted off and flew over the fields and outbuildings toward the tree line.

Silence fell. Gowan checked the vegetables. They had softened. He ate ravenously and then set out to explore the limits of the abandoned farm that had become his refuge.

The outbuildings had sagged or fallen down completely. He found nothing useful in them, though he could burn the boards for firewood. The privy had collapsed on itself. The scent of hog manure told him a broken-up fence had once enclosed a pig sty. If the pigs had gone feral, he thought, they might be living in the wood nearby and he could hunt them. He noticed more patches of grain, nearly ripe. He could harvest it over the next few days.

He thought of his own holdings, his bachelor house, his forge, and the few possessions he had owned. All of it would have been taken by a Voltandi soldier. Possibly he could build a new life here.

Going further out, he came to the place where the scarecrow he had noticed yesterday stood. It had held up remarkably well, given the length of time the farm must have been abandoned. The straw stuffing and the old coat and pants had not turned to dust in the sun, rain, and winter snow. A dried gourd formed the head. The painted eyes, nose, and mouth shone dark and clear in spite of exposure to weather. The scarecrow stood at the limit of the property. As Gowan surveyed the ground past it, the raven lit on the scarecrow’s shoulder. Gowan laughed.

“One hell of a scarecrow you are,” he chuckled. The bird gaped at him. It appeared to be the same one that had fluttered on his doorstop. Maybe it had a nest around here. Or it might be the previous owners had befriended it—made a pet of it. He had known people to do this. One of his friends—now dead or enslaved, he thought—had taught a jackdaw to mimic words. As this remembrance crossed his mind, the raven cackled, “Forest girl.”

He gaped. The bird fixed its eyes on him as if to confirm what it uttered constituted a genuine communication, not mimicking or stock and store. Gowan shook his head. His grief over Kennis coupled with hunger and exhaustion had made him think mad thoughts. He turned and headed back to the house.

Once inside, he dug a pit for his food, lined it with stones, and covered it with old planks so animals would not plunder his store. He tried to dismiss what the raven had uttered, but he could not stop thinking that the very phrase—and it was not a phrase used in everyday speech—had crossed his mind only an hour before.

He stepped to the door and wondered if the sacred wood of Morrigan lay nearby. If the bird had a connection to her, it might have come from there. He remembered rumors that her forest was somewhere in this area. Her altar and the forest girls who brought a daily sacrifice to the stones sacred to the goddess lay within her sacred wood.

As the day wore on, his curiosity burned. Just past noon, he made his way toward the tree line and into the dark of the ancient forest.

Gowan fought through the underbrush and eventually found well-defined trails. They did not lead to the edge of the forest where the trees ended and cultivated land began. They picked up about thirty feet from the forest’s edge. Yet they were wide and well-worn, as if people walked them frequently. He followed a half mile or so and stopped cold. A few feet ahead of him, he saw Kennis.

No mistaking it and no hallucination. She wore a coarse, threadbare dress—sleeveless and shorter than modesty allowed (it came above her knees). Her hair fell about her shoulder in tangles. Her feet, legs, hands, and arms were dirty. She held a double handful of acorns.

At first he could not speak but the recovered his voice.

“Kennis! Kennis!”

She looked at him. He thought he glimpsed a flash of recognition on her eyes, but then her expression went hostile and ugly, her stance belligerent. She opened her mouth, hissed, spat at him, and, clutching the acorns to her breasts, sprinted down the path into the woodland darkness.

Gowan followed. Kennis ran with bare feet down the forest path. He gained on her, calling after her, but she did not turn about or respond to his voice. Gowan had almost caught her when he slowed to a stop.

In front of him two more women stood. They wore garments identical to what Kennis had on, but they were filthy dirty, their hair long, matted and tangled. Long curly nails protruded from their fingers and toes. Their wild eyes challenged him. They opened their mouths wide, tongues extended, and hissed at him.

He looked up saw two of them posed in tree branches above him. One was naked, the other wrapped in a smock full of rends. He heard more hissing a saw a trio of the women off to one side of the path. Hatred and murder shone in their eyes. They moved toward him. Kennis had disappeared.

Gowan put his hand on his dagger and backed up. He did not want to kill women, even wild women of the forest who looked to be possessed. As he backed away, the wild females stayed put. He walked backwards until he was a good distance from them, turned, hurried to where the path ended, and returned to the fields and open land.

He paused, trying to get his breath and tame the crazy thoughts going through his head. It had been Kennis. No doubt of that. She had even briefly recognized him. But what had happened to her? How could she have transformed in such a short time? And who were the other women? What had he just seen?

Glancing up, he saw the raven sitting on in a tree branch looking down at him.

He remembered what it had uttered earlier in the day. He wondered for a moment if it would say “forest girl” again, but as it stared at him he knew such a repetition would not be necessary. Kennis had been changed to one of Morrigan’s savage acolytes. She had been captured and given to the Goddess of War and Discord. Morrigan had enchanted her and consigned her to serve her altar in her sacred grove. He looked up at the raven.

“Are you an enchanted creature? Are you one of Morrigan’s flock? Do you mean me evil or good?”

It did not answer nor move. He fancied it listened and understood but did not have voice to reply. After a time, he turned and went back to his house. He stirred the ashes of the fire, threw on more wood, and watched as it blazed up. He decided not to eat anything more, though hunger gnawed at his insides. Darkness fell. Gowan stared into the fire and remembered.

A wise woman had told him about Morrigan’s forest girls. She had called them “forest maidens,” but everyone else called them “forest girls.”

“They are captives delivered as tribute to the evil goddess. They attend the altar in her sacred wood and live their lives as wild, virgin acolytes. They are under some sort of enchantment. Living under the spell of the goddess makes them like animals. They are extremely dangerous and will destroy anyone who comes into their realm.”

Weariness came upon him. He started, though, when he heard chanting. He listened, stepping away from the fire so its crackling would not interfere with the song that wafted through the dark. It rose in a solemn, eerie, melancholic strain—like a threnody, like a lament, though softer; not a lamentation exactly, but a song sung so sadly it broke his heart. Kennis’ voice was part of the choir. She was there, in the wood, not very far from him. He could rescue her—or could he? Gowan covered the ashes to his fire, went into the house, rolled up in his tunic, and fell asleep.

The Raven spoke to him.

He dreamed of it. It spoke, but not in words. Still, he understood. Kennis, it told him, had been taken captive and delivered to the goddess, who had made her a forest maiden to serve to her altar. The bird was not one of Morrigan’s flock. He would reveal who he was later on. There was a way to rescue Kennis. He, the raven, could not reveal it, though.

“Who can?” Gowan demanded in his dream.

“The oracle,” the bird told him.

“Who is the oracle?”

No answer. He only saw the raven perched on the shoulder of the scarecrow.

“Who are you?” he asked the raven.

“Orev.”

Gowan woke. He ate turnips and found a blackberry brake by the abandoned outhouse. After cleaning up by the spring and washing and drying his clothes, he spent the rest of the morning gleaning grain from the patches of volunteer stalks growing in clumps about the field. At the end of his labor, two bushels of wheat filled the ceramic storage urns he found in one of the outbuildings. He roasted a portion of it. When he carried it inside the house to eat, the raven lit on the table, gazed up at him with its dark, round eyes, and squawked.

“Orev,” Gowan said.

The bird stared. Gowan remembered more of the dream. The thought of Kennis hissing at him, her eyes exuding the look of a madwoman, her hair—which he had thought so beautiful—matted and tangled, her body filthy dirty, bare feet, clothed in an immodest garment—the memory sent surges of pain though him. He fought down his anger, sat in the rickety chair he had dragged from an outbuilding to the main house, and glumly ate. Though he knew ravens were carrion birds, he threw a handful of wheat kernels on the tabletop. To his surprise, the bird snapped them up. The two of them finished eating. Gowan went to the spring to drink. The raven followed him. After slaking his thirst, he heard Orev squawk. The creature flapped its wings and flew into the air. He rose in a high arc, descended, and landed on the shoulder of the scarecrow.

Gowan once more remembered his dream.

He walked to where the mannequin hung on its pole.

“This is the oracle?”

The raven made no sound. Gowan smiled to think of an oracle with no ability to speak. But as he thought this, he felt something buffet him. He felt no pain, but some kind of force hit him like a gust of wind strikes one on a blustery day. He seemed to see the sun, the stubbly fields of grain, his own face, and the ruins of a building all at the same time. After only a moment, everything reverted to normalcy.

His heart pounded and he felt short of breath. As he contemplated the origin of the spell that had overcome him, the raven rose into the air, screeched, circled him, and flew to a berry bush. Gowan puzzled. The raven screamed. He understood that he was to follow it.

He walked the long distance. Orev the raven would perch and, when Gowan drew close, would fly to a new mark. This continued until he crested a hill and came to the ruins of an ancient structure. It was the ruin he had seen in his confusing vision when he stood in front of the scarecrow.

He followed the raven inside. It settled on the ground and pecked.

Gowan stared in puzzlement. The raven drove its beak down furiously in one spot. Gowan drew his dagger and tapped with its hilt where the bird had pecked with such determination. The stone floor seemed hollow beneath that area. Elsewhere, it sounded solid.

He looked about him. It was a Roman ruin. They had abandoned Britain many years ago, but the structures they had built dotted the countryside, some still in use, others crumbling and uninhabited. On one wall of the structure he saw a six-pointed star. Racking his memory, Gowan finally recognized it as the symbol of the Jews. They had come here with Romans. This must have been a temple to their god, he thought. The raven screeched and fluttered. Gowan looked around for a heavy stone (he would not risk breaking the blade of his dagger), found a round granite boulder, and began to hammer at the hollow spot. After seven or eight hits, the space in the floor shattered.

sword-LGReaching into the hollow spot beneath the floor, Gowan felt something cool and metallic. His fingers encountered a sharp edge. He realized it was a sword, grasped the hilt, and drew it into the bright light that filled the roofless building.

He held it up. It was a magnificent blade, richer than any he had ever seen. Jewels adorned its hilt. Its long steel blade glistened. He marveled at its balance and its workmanship.

“My sword,” a voice said.

Gowan cried out in fear and turned to face a man in a purple tunic. He wore a black braided beard. His hair fell in ringlets to his shoulders. A gold torq encircled his neck. Rings adorned each of his fingers. He chuckled.

“I’m sorry I frightened you, Gowan. I’m Orev—Prefect of Midian. That is my sword you’re holding. Your grasp of it enabled me to break the enchantment in which I have lived for 2000 years. Prior to this I could assume human form for short periods of time. Now I can assume my human form and remain in it as long as I desire.”

Gowan gaped. The man smiled.

“It feels very good to be human again.”

“You were imprisoned in the body of bird?” Gowan said, not knowing how to even speak of what he was seeing.

“In a manner of speaking. I was killed when Gideon’s Hebrew army overcame our forces at Orev—the place came to be named after me. Of course, it’s a good idea to protect yourself with an enchantment. My spirit passed into the body of my totem animal, the creature after which I was named, and remained there, more or less, until now. One of the Hebrews took my sword as a prize of war and passed it on to his heirs. So it was for thousands of year until it arrived here. The last heir to it departed hastily when the Romans left Britain. I’ve nested around that sword for more than twenty centuries.”

Gowan blinked in amazement and, after a moment, offered the blade to Orev. He backed off.

“No. I can’t touch it until it draws blood once more. The sword is enchanted with powerful magic—the magic that transformed me and has kept me alive for so very long. It will serve both you and me well—me to gain full life once more, you to recover the woman you love.”

“Its magic can help me get Kennis back?”

“Most certainly. But I’ve been a raven for 2000 years or so. I’d really like to eat something other than carrion and dry seeds.”

They returned to the abandoned farm. Gowan listened, astonished, to the story Orev told him. “I arranged for an enchantment. I paid a huge sum of money to a sorcerer. Zeeb, my co-commander, laughed at me, saying I’d been taken in by a charlatan. He’s dead. I’ve been alive all these centuries—and now I’m human again.”

Gowan vaguely remembered the story of Gideon from when a Christian priest had read it from their sacred scriptures. Some of his family had converted to that faith. Kennis seemed favorably disposed toward it. Gowan remained a worshipper of the ancient gods and goddesses, though he remained persistently skeptical of religion.

“The sword is enchanted?”

“The magic that carried my soul to the body of a raven and has now changed me to human form once more draws on ancient magic from when the world began. One stipulation, though—why do sorcerers always set down conditions?—is that I may not touch the sword until it draws blood. If I do, I will revert to being a bird. Once the sword has drawn blood, though, I can take it up and resume the life torn from me so long ago. The blood of Morrigan will serve the spell superbly.”

Gowan shot a startled look at Orev.

“The sword is more powerful than Morrigan?”

“The magic in it is. She is a young goddess. Her strength is formidable, but it is as a child’s understanding compared to this.”

They ate. Orev enjoyed roast grain and vegetables. After eating, they made their way into the wood of Morrigan.

Almost immediately they spotted the forest girls peering from behind tree trunks, perched in overhanging branches, lurking in thickets of underbrush. They hissed and mewed, glaring with hatred at the two intruders. Gowan and Orev moved down the path toward where they assumed the altar might be. The hissing and threatening noises increased. Gowan gripped Orev’s sword. Orev had taken Gowan’s dagger to defend himself if need be. As they continued on, darkness began to fall.

It was not the darkness of coming night. The sun stood at noon. Yet the green light that filtered through the trees dimmed. The daylight dulled and the dark grew profound. Gowan knew they had encountered the darkness of Morrigan’s anger. The hissing and cursing of the forest girls sounded through the gloom.

They heard another voice speaking.

“Fools. Blasphemers.” The voice was female. “How dare you tread into my sacred grove? I’ll kill you both with my bare hands.”

“Hold up the sword,” Gowan heard Orev say. They stood in total darkness now.

Gowan raised the sword. Immediately the sounds of the forest girls stopped. The darkness disappeared. A few feet from stood a woman he knew had to be Morrigan.

morrigan2He saw the goddess he had heard so much about. She might have been beautiful, but malice and hatred had distorted the lines of her face so much that he could hardly look upon her. Her countenance radiated evil and murder. Yet he saw fear in her expression as well. After a moment, she sank to her knees and then dropped more, falling forward, supporting herself with one hand. Behind her, as many of thirty forest girls stood. They only stared—not at Gowan and Orev, but at their stricken mistress. Their eyes conveyed bewilderment, fear, and grief.

Morrigan managed to lift her head and look at Gowan and Orev.

“You—goddess,” Orev said. “You are overcome by the conquering power of Baal-Peor. Yield or we will cut your guts out.”

She tried to stand but dropped down. Raising her eyes, which still radiated murder, she said, “I yield. What do you want?”

“This young man bears the grievance, not I. He will speak to you.”

Morrigan’s gaze rested on Gowan. He could see her searching his face for a hint of weakness, for some way to break the enchantment that had enthralled her.

“I want several things from you. First, you will free the maiden Kennis, who was given to you as tribute by the Voltandi and serves as one of your altar maidens.”

“It shall be done.”

Gowan felt his boldness grow.

“Further:  you will abandon this wood, lift all enchantments from it, and give it to my control forever. You will relinquish all claim to it and you will set free all the women who serve as your acolytes. Further, you will disassociate yourself forever from the Voltandi.”

Anger boiled in Morrigan’s eyes, but she said. “These things shall be done.”

“One thing more. Rise to your feet.”

The goddess struggled to her feet. She swayed and trembled as she did so. Gowan raised the blade and, in a lightning quick motion, flicked it across her cheek.

Morrigan let out a harsh cry of pain. A trickle of blood ran down to her jaw. Gowan had not cut a large swath on her face, though he had cut deeply.

“You will bear a scar on your face as testimony that not all fear your evil doing. I have no further demands. You are a goddess and must keep your word. Your divine nature is your oath. I release you to go.”

A flash of black light exploded. It lasted only a second, and when it dissipated Morrigan had vanished. Absolute silence fell over the wood, which now glowed with the green light of sun shining through the thick trees. Gowan could tell the enchantment was gone. The grip of Morrigan’s evil magic had been released.

After a moment, he heard screaming and weeping.

The forest girls. They wept and gasped at their appearance—that they were unwashed, their hair tangled and matted, fingernails uncut, dressed in coarse, dirty smocks. The ones who were naked put hands over their breasts and intimate parts and rushed to hide in thickets and behind trees. After a moment, Kennis broke out of a tangle of vines, came running, and threw her arms around Gowan.

She wept and wailed. He comforted her, telling her the curse had lifted and she was safe. After she calmed down, he sent her to the other women. Morrigan had 30 acolytes who brought sacrifices to her altar. Kennis spoke to them. They shyly emerged from the wood, except for the five or six who were naked. Even these spoke to Kennis from their places of concealment. While all of this happened, Gowan heard birds singing, a thing he realized he had not heard until now in these woods. Only evil things had lived in Morrigan’s sacred grove. Her spell lifted, it had already begun to populate with benevolent and beautiful creatures.

Though he did not know how they would care for the forest girls, Gowan thought they should leave the wood. Orev and Kennis agreed. They led the women down the path leading out of the trees. Like Eve of old, the women with no clothing wove coverings of vines and leaves. Led by Orev, Gowan, and Kennis, all thirty of the women—some young, some a little older, but none past thirty—walked in a long line to the abandoned farm where Gowan had found refuge.

Even as they walked along, Gowan noticed the beautiful fruit brought by the breaking of Morrigan’s spell. The women, their initial shock gone, chattered, volubly rejoicing that they were free. They laughed and sometimes broke into spontaneous dance. They leaped for joy. Some wept quietly, but the tears were tears of happiness, not of anguish. Kennis held Gowan’s hand and as they walked along.

muddy“Almighty God, I stink!” she lamented. “My hair is filthy! This garment is shameful.”

“At least you have a garment,” he said.

When they arrived at the farmhouse, the women washed, enduring the icy water from the spring. Orev and Gowan donated their tunics to the women bereft of garments. The other women cut strips of cloth from the hems of their smocks and were able to make skimpy dresses for the six women still unclothed. They laughed, saying they were dressed immodestly but would think of themselves as Artemis of old, whose skirts revealed her thighs. Gowan and some of the women scoured the abandoned farm for more food and found grain and vegetables.

“There is a storehouse filled with food in Morrigan’s wood,” Kennis told Gowan and Orev, “but we were so joyous at being free of her spell we didn’t think to carry any of it with us. We can go in tomorrow and see if it’s still there.”

The sun set. The moon rose and the river of stars appeared. The women, including Kennis, wept. “We didn’t see the stars or the moon all through our enthrallment. Mine was only a few days, but some of the women have been captive for years.” Weeping, almost all of them circled the fire Gowan built and fell on their knees. Prayers to the Lord, to Ardwinna, Eostre, and Odin sounded in warm dark.

“The god you worship is powerful,” Gowan said to Orev.

“He isn’t worshipped anymore.”

“Where will you go? Know that my roof is yours. What little I had I lost in the war, but any service I might give in thanks for you setting Kennis and the others free, I will give.”

Gowan and Orev slept in the farmhouse. Kennis went to sleep with the other women, who had bedded down in pairs to keep warm and covered themselves with reeds or taken refuge in the outbuildings.

In the morning, Gowan looked for Kennis but couldn’t find her. She was not among the women and none of them had seen her that morning. As he feared the worst, he heard someone approaching and turned to see Kennis, and a woman a little older than she, walking toward him. The woman, blonde, very tall—a head taller than Kennis, who was not short—wore one of the cloth-sparse dresses the other women had fastened together for her. She moved with dignity and sadness.

“Gowan,” Kennis said, “This is Drendala, Princess of the Voltani clan.”

He gaped. The war that had destroyed the stronghold at Wells and enslaved his people began when the Voltandi had accused the Demetae of abducting Drendala. As he gazed at the woman, his anger showed, despite his efforts to restrain it.

“You have reason to be angry, I know,” the woman said, her voice even. “Believe me when I say I am a victim of treachery, as your people are. It was Morrigan who abducted me long ago and has kept me a prisoner in her wood. She also spread the rumor that your tribe had abducted me and made me a whore. Morrigan is the goddess of discord and war. She was able to poison the minds of my people because the gift of prophecy has gone from us—a thing also done by her evil.”

Gowan puzzled a moment but then connected oracle and prophecy. He blinked.

“We did have a final prophetic word,” Drendala continued. “I knew of it because the ruling women in our family were taught it and preserved it through the generations. Now the curse has been lifted, I know the time of its fulfillment has come. The spell I memorized can summon prophecy once more. My song is all that is lacking. I must ask your permission, though, to sing it, since you broke the evil enchantment that enthralled the prophecy that guided our people since we became a tribe.”

“I don’t understand all of this,” Gowan replied, “but I trust your word. Please sing.”

Drendala lifted her hands and sang.

The song, in a tongue Gowan did not know, rose to the new day’s sky. It rang with beauty, but its melody also expressed power and wonderment—as if the woman singing it spoke ancient truth she knew well but truth which still amazed her. When the song ended, Gowan felt empty—the way he felt at the loss of a thing he cherished. Drendala drooped as if the recitation had taken her strength. Kennis gripped her arm. As Drendala said this, her eyes lit up.

Coming over the ridge—as if he were walking out of the sun—a tall man strode toward them. Gowan noticed that the scarecrow he had been so used to seeing had disappeared.

As the figure drew closer, Gowan guessed his age at perhaps forty. He looked about him as he walked, his head turning to take in the sights all around, the light in his eyes and the look on his face indicating pleasure at what he saw. When he came near to them, Drendala sank on one knee.

“Grandfather,” she said, her voice quavering.

“He smiled widely, taking her hand so she stood.

“I’m surprised you still remember me.”

“How could forget you? I’ve thought of you ever day of my life, all these years. After Mother taught me the Hymn of Laoise, I sang it every day in your memory.” She gestured. “These are my companions—Kennis and Gowan of the Demetae.”

The man glanced over at a raven sitting in the branch of a near-by tree. Apparently, Gowan though, he could still take on his raven form when he desired.

“And Orev,” the man said. “From him I know something of Gowan. Kennis, I am charmed.”

Kennis bowed to him. Gowan stared in amazement.

“You’re Rian?” he stammered.

“It seems I am—once more.” Rian took the weeping Drendala in his arms. “Peace, child,” he said. “All is restored. Norland is well, though his heart is broken over losing you. You and he will be wed before the moon is new.”

“I only wish Mother was alive to see you restored,” Drendala wept.

Rian suggested they return to the farmhouse. Gowan looked to see if Orev still occupied his perch on the crossbar in his raven form, but he was nowhere to be seen.

◊ ◊ ◊

Things happened quickly after this. When Gowan, Kennis, Drendala, and Rian returned to the main part of the farm, the women were preparing food in the cooking utensils they had carried out of the storehouse in Morrigan’s forest. The smell of baking bread wafted through the air. At Rian’s suggestion, he and Gowan went into the grove and hunted down two feral swine. The women skinned the animals and dressed the meat. They had found more smocks in Morrigan’s storage barn. All of them could be properly clad now, though the dresses were still deplorably revealing for maidens to be wearing. They gave one to Drendala, who was thankful for it, though she was so tall it left what she considered far too much of her legs uncovered.

A number of the girls were Voltandi. When they heard the new man who had appeared just now was Rian, they knelt in reverence. One told Kennis how Rian had disappeared long ago. His renown as a warrior and a prophet remained to this day. They interpreted his return as a portent of blessing.

Gowan told him of the war.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “for the losses your people sustained. I can only say on behalf of my people that all of this was the doing of Morrigan, Goddess of Discord and Strife. She began by enthralling and imprisoning me many years ago. Then she abducted my belovéd granddaughter—all to bring war and discord—and so my people would seek her help and thus come under her control. Her scheme is at an end. It only remains for us to see that our tribes reconcile.

“Us?”

“You’re a good man, Gowan. The young maiden who loves you is a worthy woman.”

Gowan realized what Rian meant. “I’m a yeoman—a blacksmith who served in the King’s army. Neither Kennis and I are remotely related to the royal family.”

“Most of your rulers died in the war. It’s time for that to stop, and it will stop. Your bravery and has been noted by your superiors.”

“We’re a conquered people.”

“Your clan won a major battle to the north just yesterday. Our losses were heavy. Your people are far from defeated. It’s time to end the bloodshed that we all know was Morrigan’s doing. I think you would do well as a ruler. And you have a sword charged with powerful magic.”

He had left it at the farmhouse.

“It doesn’t belong to me. You would know that. It’s Orev’s.”

“Does he want it back?”

“I don’t know.”

“He will let you know tonight.”

That night, Gowan slept with Kennis.

“You proposed to me, but Father gave his permission when my family was at breakfast the morning of the attack on Wells. I was going to tell you at noon. Then the alarm sounded and you went to your place as defender. My family hid me in a cellar, but a house across the street caught on fire and the smoke filled up the place I was hiding. When I ran from there, the Voltandi took me captive and delivered me to Morrigan that very day. By Father’s permission, we’re married, even if haven’t stood before a priestess. I want to begin our life together.”

She yielded her virginity to him. In the morning, a squad of Voltandi rode into the farm. When they saw Rian and Drendala, they dismounted and did obeisance.

Orev did not speak to Gowan in a dream, but when he returned from relieving himself in the woods (the women had claimed the old outhouse as their privy), he ran into him in human form.

“Your sword is in the house,” Gowan said. “I’ll get it for you.”

“Keep it. You need its magic more than I do.”

“I don’t even know how to use its magic.”

“You’ll know how when the time to use it comes.”

“Don’t you need the sword?”

“I’ve decided to return to my homeland, though I know after two millennia nothing from my time will remain. But I like the climate. It will be a long flight, and if I’m going to take the body of a raven, a sword will be a bit of hindrance.”

“Thank you,” Gowan said, feeling stupid that he had given so simplistic a reply to such a gracious gesture. Orev smiled, transformed, and, in a flutter of ebony feathers, flew, rising into the sky, diminishing to a black dot, and finally disappearing from the range of Gowan’s sight.

The End

 

David Landrum’s speculative fiction has appeared widely, and his fantasy stories in Non-Binary Review, Black Denim Review, Mystic Nebula, Dance Macbre–and in Silver Blade. His novellas, The Last Minstrel, The Prophetess, and Shadow City, and my full-length fantasy novel, The Sorceress of the Northern Seas, are available through Amazon.

  • Continue Reading