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?”
