Chapter Twenty-Four
A storm raged at night, the darkness split open by spidery tendrils of electricity and shattered by cacophonous booms of thunder. Baron Ewald von Hoth’s castle stood atop a low rise, overlooking a valley of farm fields, a collection of peasant houses not far outside the main gate. In the distance, near a swollen riverbank, a small village shivered under the storm’s onslaught, illuminated by flashes from the heavens. The wind howled and bent trees. Rain punished anything in the open, turning dirt roads into bogs.
The baron paced in a candlelit room of his small castle, his face set with uncertainty and worry. Hoth had come to the frightening realization that the world he lived in was not entirely the world he had been raised by the Church to believe in, that there were other forces at work, mysterious and dark forces that hid in the shadows, lurking, waiting for opportunities to intrude in the lives of men. And now he was going against all of the teachings of his life, investing his future in a course of action that he had never really believed existed, and he was afraid he had acted too late.
How could he have known? How could anyone have been expected to believe there was another world just beyond the shadows, hiding in the twilight?
Another round of thunder shook the stones of the castle, drafts of wind accelerated through the cracks around the windows, slipped in quickly through doorways and flickered the candles of the room. A ripple of lighting flashed through the room, briefly overwhelming the candlelight and casting long shadows in all directions. The air in the room grew cold. Hoth walked to the fireplace and stuck his hands in front of it. He turned form the fire, his face uncertain.
“God would not desert me in my hour of need, would He?”
The man to whom Hoth spoke stood near a window on the other side of the room, staring through the glass at the storm outside. The man’s hair was long, pulled into a ponytail with an indigo length of ribbon; his hair was white but still possessed streaks of its original black. The man was dressed not dissimilarly from the baron, but his clothes were different. To Hoth, they gave off a curious, almost indefinable and barely noticeable hue of purple, though they were, for the most part, a collection of brown materials.
“You cannot be so sure of God’s plan, Ewald,” the man said, turning and fingering a walking cane, rolling it in the fingers of his hands. “All we can do is try to direct it to our purpose.”
The storm churned violently outside and the man turned back to the window, cocked his head to the side and stared into the cloud-choked night sky. He raised the walking stick up to his chin and closed his eyes, his lips moving almost imperceptibly, the sounds of his words drowned out by the timpani of thunder unleashed by the storm. Hoth watched curiously, as the man lifted the walking stick a few more inches and then quickly jerked it down toward his waist.
KA-BOOM! A crack of noise louder and more violent than any before shattered the storm for a moment, almost quieted it; the air shook and the candle flames nearly snuffed out. Hoth’s eyes grew wide at the sound; he’d never heard anything like it. It was almost as if the air had been split asunder. The man smiled and turned toward Hoth.
“Ewald, your prayer has been answered,” the man said, motioning with the tip of the cane out the window.
Hoth strode quickly across the room and stepped between the man and the window, looking through the panes at the small boulder lying in a large depression in the muddy yard outside. Hoth was astonished, shocked to see the inky black spheroid in the divot outside. Nearby, stone benches were overturned from the force of the impact; a marble statue of his grandfather laid on its side, its upraised sword buried in mud up to its hilt.
Hoth rushed from the room, down corridors of the castle and took the steps to the first floor in pairs, unable to contain his enthusiasm. For months he had been haunted in his dreams, seen shapes in shadows cast by candlelight, wondered constantly if the snickered words of the old woman could be true: the demon is going to come for you now. He hadn’t believed it at first, much in the same way that he had only partially believed – and partially was much too strong a way to describe it – that his wife possessed some sort of innate magical abilities.
She was magical. She was also far below his class, the youngest daughter of the dairy farmer who tended his herd of cattle on the far edge of his estate. He had known her since she was a young girl, ignoring his father’s admonition not to mix with the peasantry, even for sexual gratification. But Hoth had never been able to stay away for long, and, as the girl grew, Hoth had yearned for her more. Everyone had noticed, and the dairy farmer’s wife had encouraged the girl to spend time with Hoth on his many visits to inspect the herd. When the girl had reached marrying age and rumors began to spread of her potential to be engaged to the butcher’s son, Hoth had descended into a frenetic state of despair: he couldn’t let the girl marry this other man, this boy, this butcher’s son; but he was forbidden by social codes to marry her, discouraged by discretion from even bedding her for fear of creating a bastard.
And then the old woman had come into the picture one morning in the market place of the village. It was just a few weeks after Hoth’s father had died, leaving Hoth the new master of the estate, a bachelor baron alone but for servants in a smallish castle in a valley along a lonely river. The old woman: the basket weaver’s mother. Hoth hadn’t even had a need for a basket; he had merely ridden to the village for the cold comfort of being around people, even people with whom he could not properly mingle. People who weren’t servants, at least not in name, people who could, in theory, ignore him as just another person.
The old woman had only said “You can have whatever you like, now you’re the master,” as he had turned a basket through his hands, examining the work of the craftsman who had made it. He had looked up at the old woman; she sat on a small stool in a corner of the of the stand, chewing on a cud, an almost-toothless half-smile on her lips as she looked at him through cataracts.
“Of course I would pay the fair price,” he had said, trying to sound reasonable, understanding of the commoners who lived in his barony.
“Of course, m’lord,” the old woman said. “There’s always a price though it’s not always fair, but you must do what your heart tells you is true.”
The old woman glanced around the stand, her eyes searching the through the street, never focusing on anything but looking for something, the expression on her face a mixture of dread and possibility. The look held Hoth fast. He knew of the old woman, second-hand, from stories over-heard in the castle kitchen, asides whispered by servants in hallways, half-giggled stories told by older women at dinner parties. It was said she could read tea leaves and tell a person’s future based on the positions of the stars, but he had never given the stories a moment’s consideration.
She leaned forward through the shade and poked her face into a shaft of sunlight near the front of the stall; her cragged face put in stark contrast with her dull eyes and blackened teeth. She licked her lips and stared up into Hoth’s face, locking her dead eyes on his.
“The girl can save you, master Hoth, if you can save her, first,” the old woman said. “Avenge your grandfather’s honor, restore your family’s name; only, you must find a way to harness the magic inside the milk maiden’s mind. But if you do marry her, the evil will come looking for you from out of the depths of hell, so you will have to be ready.”
The old woman glanced quickly around, checked over her shoulder through the entryway that led from the stand into the wooden hut behind it. “But you’ll need help if you’re to unlock her fortune, to release her gift before she becomes too old and set in her ways and finds herself cursed with the bottoms of cups or staring at the moon. There’s a man who knows the ways of the unseen world, a man who can control the ether that binds all life, but you won’t have long to find him after you consummate your union with the girl, for the devil’s spawn will feel the change and come looking for their supper.”
Hoth was taken aback inside though he had remai
ned composed in the old woman’s presence. He wasn’t entirely surprised that the old woman had heard of his marriage offer to the girl; he had been certain the word would get around after he had spoken with her father, but the old woman’s sudden disclosure discomfited Hoth in a way he was unable to reconcile. He had no idea what to make of her words, so foreign to him were the ideas that they verged on incoherence.
“What?” he had asked, placing the basket down and turning to see if his man-at-arms was nearby, not out of concern for his safety, but to see if the man had over-heard the old woman’s outburst of fortune-telling.
“The girl has a magic inside her, m’lord, a power she only feels as a dream,” the old woman said. “It can be unlocked and made whole, and your marital union will be like a key to the lock, opening the door, but once the door is opened, any can walk through until closed from the other side. And the first one through to bolt the passageway from the inside will have her power unto himself.
“But once the door is open, it is open to the other side as well, and the forces of darkness will come quickly looking for their way in, so you will have to act quickly, m’lord. Look for the warlock in the woods on the nights when there is no moon; but, beware, for he too will have a price.”
Just then a woman slipped through the entryway from the hut behind the wood-framed canvas stall and glanced at the old woman and the baron. The woman saw the odd expression on the baron’s face, a confused composition of disbelief, shock and muted outrage.
“Mother, back inside the house,” the woman barked, staring at the old woman until she slowly rose from the stool and shuffled into the shadows of the hut beyond. The woman turned to Hoth and smiled apologetically. “Pay her no mind, m’lord; she’s an old woman who daydreams out loud.”
Hoth had nodded, turned and worked his way back through the village to where his man-servant stood with the horses. He turned and looked back down the main street, at the filth and muck and ramshackle houses. At the far end was the town’s church, the only stone structure, and his eyes traced the architecture up the tower to the top, and the cross that glinted in the morning sun.
As Onorien told the story, Arris could almost see it in his mind’s eye, as if he were watching a movie-in-a-movie, a translucent overlay of the story of Baron von Hoth hovering in the air between him and Onorien, in sepia. It wasn’t so much a story told with words as it was a window on the past, a trance induced by Onorien with his words, allowing Arris to see the memories of another person as if they were a documentary film. Onorien paused and Arris broke out his reverie, the moving images in his mind fading and the room emerging from soft focus. Arris concentrated on Onorien for a moment, trying to shake the sensation of having awoken from an afternoon nap, his mind drifting with the after-thoughts of a half-remembered dream. Onorien smiled slightly.
“Baron Ewald von Hoth feared a demon had been summoned to murder him and abduct his wife. The demon wanted the girl because by killing and eating her, it would consume her divine ability and become stronger,” Onorien said. “The baron vowed to protect his wife, but there was nothing he could do, because non-Divine weapons have no effect on demons. So, he prayed often for God to intervene, eventually seeking out a druid who lived in a nearby wood. And, then, one night a meteorite landed on the grounds of his estate, and he took this as a sign from God that the ore in the fallen stone could be forged into a blade that could smite the demon.
“With the help of the druid, he found a blacksmith with alchemical powers who was able to turn the metal into a Divine Instrument, a sword capable of slaying more than merely the creatures born of the earth,” Onorien said, stepping past Arris and running his eyes along the length of the black blade. “The baron intended to fight and kill the demon with the sword, and, as the legend goes, march into hell and kill Satan.
“But it was not to be. The baron was found one morning shortly after the sword was delivered, burned on an upside-down cross, the sword and his wife missing. Nobody saw anything. Nobody ever knew what happened.”
Arris stood in the room in silence, his eyes lingering on the sword for a moment before he turned his attention to Onorien.
“Demons eat people?” Arris asked, incredulous.
“So the legend goes.”
“I thought they just poked you with one of those three-pointed spears while you waded around in the burning-hot molten lava or whatever it is.”
“Brimstone.”
“Right, brimstone.”
Just then, Nereika walked into the room and stood silently inside the far doorway. She glanced at both men for a moment, and then settled on Onorien.
“M- … Doctor, we’re ready, now,” Nereika said.
Onorien nodded and turned to Arris. “Feel free to indulge with the liquor cabinet and cigars in my study, Mr. Arris, and enjoy the rest of your evening. I must go and attend to another matter.”
With that, Onorien walked across the room and past Nereika, who stared a moment longer at Arris, her face an uncertain mix of emotions, before she pivoted and followed Onorien. Arris watched them walk down the hallway until they turned a corner, and then stared around the room, again surveying the array of weaponry and artifacts on display.
“Okay, so it is an all-inclusive resort,” Arris said softly, “just one without a tub with spare swim trunks.”