The Divided Knight - Chapter Five

Thaddeus had once seen a piece of parchment that listed Athelden as a royal town, with a lord mayor and a full council, but, to him, it had always been nothing more than a larger than average village. It was an important village, the last true bastion of civilization on the King's Highway before entering the easternmost part of the kingdom, but it was still just a village, and Thaddeus had hoped, when he'd left it twenty years before, that he would never set foot in it, again. Athelden was a place of bad memories for him, a place where he'd always been miserable and alone, a place where no one – not even the Catharzen Monks from the abbey outside of town, who had raised him from the time he was little more than a year old, and who had banished him from their ranks when he'd turned sixteen for reasons he'd never understood – had ever truly accepted him.

The Brothers of Catharzen have always been an odd lot, Aylander said as Thaddeus approached the village. Even for humans.

“They existed in your day?” Thaddeus asked.

Thaddeus, my day, as you put it, was only four centuries ago. Don't tell me you didn't know the Order of Catharzen is older than that. Much older.

“I might've known that once, but you should know that I stopped caring about them when they cast me out.”

A moment passed before Aylander said anything else. Indeed. My apologies.

It surprised Thaddeus how genuine Aylander's apology was. Do I really still carry around that much bitterness about what the monks did? he wondered.

Thaddeus had entered the village, now, but something was very, very wrong. Nothing he saw looked as he remembered it. The buildings lining the road were far more dilapidated than he felt they should have been, and most, if not all, of them appeared to have been abandoned months ago. The only sounds he heard as he walked were the wind, the scuff of his boots on the ground, and, off in the woods that surrounded the village on three sides, the cries of a few birds.

Off to his right was a building that Thaddeus recognized as having been an inn back when he'd lived here. Back then, a sign had hung outside the inn with the ridiculous image of a fat, smiling dragon painted on it. That sign was gone, now, but the metal rod above the tavern's door it had been suspended from was still there, along with the chains that had held it, which swung lazily in the afternoon breeze.

A fat, smiling dragon? Aylander asked. Why that?

Thaddeus chuckled. “It depicted the name of the tavern,” he said. “The Sated Dragon.”

You seem to have fond memories of the place.

“Their food was good. Some of the best I've ever had. The woman that ran the place was nice, too.”

Your memory seems to indicate that you thought she was a little, shall we say, more than nice.

The woman who had ran The Sated Dragon had been named Zoe, and Thaddeus's teenage self had thought her the single most beautiful creature in all the world. Thaddeus hadn't had the chance to say goodbye to her before he'd left – the monks had been in too much of a hurry to be rid of him – and he'd always wondered what had become of her in the years since. Now, as he stared at what was left of her tavern, with its sign gone and its front door fallen off its hinges, he felt a sudden wave of grief threaten to overtake him. He was sure she was dead. He was sure everyone from Athelden was dead, and had been for some time.

“I wondered if you would ever return to us.”

Thaddeus drew his sword and whirled in the direction the voice had come from. Standing there, in a place he hadn't been only moments before, was the oldest looking man Thaddeus had ever seen. Dressed in a plain brown robe that was much too large for his emaciated form, the man regarded Thaddeus with eyes so sunken in their sockets it was like they were black pits. Much the same way as he'd had a fleeting memory of a prior encounter with the spirit who had sent him on his current quest, Thaddeus immediately felt he'd seen the man in the robe, before, though he couldn't quite pin down when. Thaddeus didn't need that feeling, though, to know that the man was a monk from the abbey.

“Do I know you, Brother?” Thaddeus asked. He hadn't put his sword away, and still held it at the ready, though he was only vaguely aware of it.

“I am more than just a Brother, Thaddeus,” the old man said. His voice was surprisingly strong. “I am the Abbott.” He glanced at Thaddeus's sword. “And I mean you no harm.”

He's the one who made the decision to send you away, Aylander said, stating a fact that Thaddeus knew only too well.

Thaddeus kept his sword out, though he did lower it so that the point rested on the ground. “You wanted me to come back? After you and the others were in such a hurry to get rid of me?”

“Thaddeus, there is much you do not understand. I wish there were more time for me to explain it all to you. There isn't, however, a fact I am sure you are already well aware of. To answer your immediate question, though, yes. I wanted you to come back. We all did. And we all wished we had never been forced to send you away.”

“Then why did you?”

“The life of a monk was never the life you were destined for. We knew that from the moment you were given into our charge. And, when you reached your sixteenth birthday, we decided the time had come to set you on your true path. None of us ever thought to see you again. But we all hoped. And, now, you are here.”

Fascinating, Aylander said.

Thaddeus regarded the Abbott in silence for a long time. At last, he put up his sword, folding his arms across his chest. “What happened here, Father?” he asked.

“Let us go to the abbey,” the Abbott said. “There are things there that can explain what happened here better than I ever could with words alone.”

The Abbott turned away, an act that was followed at once by a sudden rush of wind. Thaddeus blinked, and then found himself standing with the Abbot outside the ruins of the abbey. Though it had been midday when they'd been standing in the street outside the tavern, it was now closer to evening, with the sun low in the western sky behind them.

“You used magic to transport us,” Thaddeus said.

The Abbot looked at him. “There are other forms of magic beyond the Path of Light and the Necromantic Arts, Thaddeus. Most have been long forgotten. Those that have not, however, are preserved by the Brothers of Catharzen. It was one such form, a form which allowed me to summon the wind, which carried us here.”

He used no spell! Aylander's excitement was impossible to ignore. He used no spell!

“You spoke no spell to summon the wind, Father,” Thaddeus said.

The Abbot gave a dry laugh. “Spells. Such things are for mages. The magic I used is an old form of magic. So old, it predates the existence of the spoken word.” He started walking toward the ruined abbey.

Thaddeus fell in beside the Abbott. “Father, why are we walking into the ruins? The abbey looks as abandoned as the village.”

“Largely, it is,” the Abbot said. “But neither it, nor the village, is nearly as ruined as you think.”

“Father, I know what I see. I know what I saw.”

The Abbot smiled. “Don't be so sure of that, Thaddeus. You of all people should know how easily the eyes can be deceived.” He turned his head to look at Thaddeus, and, when he did, he no longer seemed as old as he had back in the village. “Surely the Conclave taught you that much.”

They stepped into the ruins. However, once they were inside, the abbey looked exactly as it had when Thaddeus had been exiled from it twenty years ago – an imposing structure made of stone, with vaulted ceilings, lit by torches hanging from sconces on the walls. They were in the great hall, and corridors branched off of it heading north, east, west, and south. The opening to each corridor was a darkened archway, but, if one looked beyond the openings, they could see each corridor was lit further down by more torches. Thaddeus knew where each of those corridors led – the one heading south would take him to the cell he'd lived in, a spartan room with a cot, a desk, and a modest bookshelf lined with books he never touched – and he had to suppress a shiver. Never had he imagined he would be back in this place.

“What spell kept it hidden?” Thaddeus asked. “I felt nothing.”

Nor did I, Aylander added.

“Still thinking in terms of spells,” the Abbot said. “No spell kept it hidden, Thaddeus. Nor could it have. Spells don't work that way, which I hope you'll come to understand before all of this is through.”

A table sat in the middle of the great hall with benches on either side. Normally, this would have been a table where the monks enjoyed a meal, but, now, it was covered in books and scrolls. A figure in a dark robe like the Abbot's sat at the table, hunched over an open scroll and furiously scratching notes in its margins with a quill pen – which was not at all the way one of the monks would have normally treated one of the scrolls. The Abbot led Thaddeus over to the table, bringing him to a stop beside the busily working monk.

“Sister Zoe,” the Abbot said, “look who has returned to us.”

The monk – who, as it turned out, was not a monk, at all – put the quill pen down and looked up, scowling at Thaddeus. “It's about bloody time!” she said. “We were starting to think that you were dead.”

Thaddeus stared, speechless. Sister Zoe was the same Zoe who had run The Sated Dragon all those years ago. Not only that – she looked like she hadn't aged a day since the last time Thaddeus had seen her.

Zoe glanced over at the Abbot. “You didn't tell him?” she asked.

“No,” the Abbot said, “I didn't.”

“Z-zoe?” Thaddeus said, at last.

She looked back at him. “Yeah, Thad, it's me.” She gave him a crooked smile. “Long time, no see.”

“But . . . but that was twenty years ago!”

“And I don't look like a woman who should be in her fifties, do I?”

“You look just like I remember.”

A moment of silence passed between the three of them. Even Aylander had nothing to say, though Thaddeus could sense how intrigued he was. Finally, Zoe said, “Don't you know what that means, Thad? Don't you know what I am?”

Thaddeus recalled he had been given lessons concerning the Conclave and their relationship with the Order of Catharzen, but, because they had been about something that, at the time, he had wanted to forget all about, he couldn't remember any of the details. He was, however, familiar with the rumors that were commonly circulated about the Order, rumors that claimed the Order's monks had perfect memories, and that no better healers were known outside the Order's clerics, who were female more often than they weren't. Did that mean Zoe was a cleric? But why hadn't she aged? Clerics were just healers. They weren't magic users.

“Well,” Thaddeus said, “it's apparent that, since you're here, and since the Abbot addressed you as 'sister', that you're supposed to be a cleric. That doesn't tell me, though, why you haven't aged.”

Zoe frowned. “It should,” she said.

“Why?”

Suddenly, without any memory of performing the act, Thaddeus found himself sitting down on the bench across the table from Zoe. The Abbot sat beside him, his hands folded together on the tabletop, his eyes closed as if he were asleep. When he looked at Zoe, Thaddeus was surprised by how startled her expression was.

“I really wish he'd warn me before he did things like that,” Zoe said.

“Waste of time,” the Abbot muttered without opening his eyes.

“This whole thing is a waste of time! Weren't you the one who said Atraxos's forces would make for the Spires the moment he freed himself?”

The Abbot's lips curved upward in a smile that, in the torchlight, Thaddeus thought looked amused. “We have a little while,” he said. “Long enough for you to tell Thaddeus what he needs to know.”

Zoe glanced at Thaddeus, then turned her eyes back to the Abbot. “I'm not just going to tell him,” she said. “I mean to go with him when he leaves.”

The Abbot opened his eyes at that. “I can't allow that, Zoe,” he said.

“That's too bad. I've already made up my mind, and there's nothing you can do to keep me here.”

The Abbot took a moment before responding. “That's not necessarily true, you know. There are ways you could be made to stay.”

“I know, but you won't use them. They go against everything we've pledged our lives to, and would make us – make you – no better than Atraxos.”

It would be nice to know what they're talking about, Aylander said.

Tell me about it. “Excuse me,” Thaddeus said, “but I'm still right here, you know. You can talk to me.”

Zoe looked at him. “How much do you remember about what the Conclave taught you regarding their relationship to the Order of Catharzen?”

“Not very much. I was pretty angry, back then. Angry at what was done to me. I tuned most of those lessons out.”

“Let's just say that the relationship was not always a pleasant one. For a long time, we kept all knowledge of ourselves to ourselves. No one knew how many of us their were, and no one had any idea of the things that we knew or could do. The Conclave kept pressing us, though, and even had a number of monks tortured. Eventually, they told us that, if we did not give them access to our secrets, they would hunt us all down and wipe our Order from existence. And so we made a deal with them. We'd give them access to what we knew, we'd let them in on our powers and how many of us their were, and, in return, they'd give us access to their secrets, secrets we would keep until the time was right, which was something only we were to be allowed to decide. And that's the way things have been for the last three centuries.”

Had Thaddeus been taught the things Zoe described? None of it sounded like the Conclave he had known, especially the part about them threatening to wipe out the Order of Catharzen if their demands weren't met. There had been a relationship between the two of them, though, and Thaddeus vaguely remembered it having something to do with lore and ancient knowledge. Secrets. “Clerics do use magic to heal, don't they?” Thaddeus asked.

“One of the secrets we gave the Conclave access to,” Zoe said. She smiled. “And that isn't all a cleric can do with magic.”

“Tell me about the village,” Thaddeus said.

“It used to be real, once upon a time,” the Abbot said. “A royal town, with a council, and a lord mayor. Then the Red Death struck, and it spared no one, save those people lucky enough to be here, in the abbey. Originally, we had no intention of creating an illusion that anything of the town survived, and, for a time, we didn't..” He looked at Thaddeus. “That was before you came to us, however.”

“Why did my arrival change things?”

“You were something different, Thaddeus,” Zoe said. “Something remarkable and, perhaps, even miraculous. You see, we always knew who you parents were, Thaddeus – or, at least, who they had to have been. Based on your looks, then and now, your mother must have been human. Your father, however . . . Thaddeus, your father was Eltaran.”

Thaddeus didn't know which shocked him more – what Zoe had said, or the fact that Aylander wasn't surprised by it at all. And, if Aylander wasn't surprised, that meant it had to be true. But how could it be? No Eltarans had been seen in the kingdom for more than four centuries.

Not in the kingdom, no, Aylander said. It was always suspected, though, that some of our people still lived on the other side of the Ivory Spires in our ancestral homeland. That must be where your father came from.

The land on the other side of the Spires is barren, though, Thaddeus thought. How could anyone be living there?

I don't know. But I do know that a lot of things can change in five hundred years. Maybe it's no longer so barren, there. Aylander's voice grew wistful. Perhaps we'll get to find out.

“Care to share with the rest of the class?” Zoe asked.

Thaddeus looked at her. “What?”

“We know you were just talking to the soul of the Eltaran you're carrying around inside of your sword. What does he have to say?”

“You could ask him yourself, Zoe,” the Abbot said, sounding amused, this time, as well as looking it.

She grinned. “You're right. I could. Al aloshkan k'ren!”

A fourth person suddenly appeared at the table. He wasn't there in the flesh, however, as the far wall of the great hall could be glimpsed through his ethereal form, which looked nothing like the demonic creature Thaddeus has battled outside the royal palace. Tall and built like a warrior, Aylander wore a blue tabard with a gilt-edged tree embroidered on the front. His head was hairless, and there was a composure and serenity to his features – all save for his eyes, however, which showed surprise at what Zoe had done.

“How . . . how did you do that?” Aylander asked, his voice sounding as ethereal as his appearance.

“I know a few old Eltaran spells,” Zoe said. “I've tried to find the one that would allow me to separate you from Thad's sword, but haven't had any luck, so far.”

“You are a . . . remarkable woman, Lady Zoe.”

“I like to think so. And you can just call me Zoe. Now, what were you and Thad just talking about?”

“I was telling him how I think it likely his father came from east of the Ivory Spires.”

Zoe nodded. “We think so, too. And we think that's where he needs to go. There's something east of the Spires that Atraxos wants. Something that will give him access to powers he can't be allowed to have.” She raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn't happen to know what that might be, would you?”

Aylander narrowed his eyes, but Thaddeus spoke up before he could answer.

“Zoe, what kind of question is that? Aylander isn't part of the Order of the Crimson Serpent, anymore.”

Zoe looked at him. “Of course he isn't. I know that. I know what that sword of yours can do, and wish I knew how a ghost – Solanas's ghost, maybe, but still just a ghost – wound up with it. But Aylander, here, is an Eltaran Sword Priest. He's one of the True – that tree on his tabard says as much. The True knew things that even we have no clue about.”

“She speaks the truth, Thaddeus,” Aylander said. “And, though I am loath to admit it, I know what it is that Atraxos seeks. There is a well of power in the Eltaran homeland, a holy place that the True were created to protect. The True have always been Atraxos's staunchest enemy – even during the days of the Great Mage War, and long before we allied ourselves with the Torvaran Empire, we opposed him, protecting that which he must not have.”

“And now the True are gone,” Zoe said.

“Yes,” Aylander said, sounding mournful. “Now the True are gone.”

“Thaddeus, the True shared their knowledge of this well of power with no one. No one except us.”

“And you shared it with the Conclave, didn't you?” Thaddeus asked.

“We did,” the Abbot said, answering for her.

“And now everything the Conclave knew, Atraxos knows, doesn't he?”

“He may not have at first,” Zoe said. “Not when he was still having to share Galgana's body. Now that Galgana is gone, however, it's almost certain that he does.”

“Gods Above,” Thaddeus said, shaking his head. “Gods Above, how could you be so stupid?”

“The decision to share this knowledge was not made by us, Thaddeus,” the Abbot said. “It was made by those who came before us, who thought it unlikely Atraxos would ever return.”

“Which doesn't absolve us from blame,” Zoe said, looking pointedly at the Abbot. “All of our Order share in it, though the mistake is not ours.”

“So what do we do?” Thaddeus asked. “And what does that have to do with who my parents were, and why you created an illusion of a village long since dead?”

“Thaddeus, who was the last person known to have been fathered by an Eltaran?” Zoe asked.

The answer came without Thaddeus even having to think about it. “Solanas the Elder.”

“Who was the most powerful single mage in recorded history. Thad, when you came to us, all those years ago, we sensed that you had a great deal of power, too – perhaps even more than Solanas had. We knew we had to protect you, but we also knew that we couldn't reveal to you who and what you were – not until the time was right. We created the illusion of the village for you, and changed it with each passing year as you grew older. Everything went well until you turned sixteen. That was when your powers began to manifest, powers you were not yet ready to control. We feared we would have to reveal all to you much earlier than we had planned, but that was before I stumbled upon an old book full of Eltaran spells. That book gave me the spell which allowed me to summon Aylander, and which also allowed us to . . . divide your soul, Thaddeus.”

“Divide my soul?”

“They used a forbidden spell, Thaddeus,” Aylander said. “It's fortunate for you that it worked.”

“We split you into two separate people,” Zoe said. “Each identical on the outside, but with only one having the powerful magical abilities you were born with. And then, we sent you both away.”

“That other me,” Thaddeus said after a long silence. “He's the Wanderer, isn't he?”

“Yes.” It looked like there were tears in her eyes. “And he's always known who he was.”

“You must follow him,” the Abbot said. “Into the lands east of the Ivory Spires, where we sent him when the Order of the Crimson Serpent resurfaced. Though he is powerful, he is not as powerful as he could be. Not as powerful as he should be. He needs you. He needs to be complete.”

“No,” Thaddeus said.

“No?” asked Zoe.

Thaddeus looked at her. “He doesn't need to be complete. I do. When do we leave?”