Chapter 9 – A Bridge Between Cradle and Grave...
“I do hope you enjoy it. Olga and I loved tending to the bees before the fog arrived.”
Gareth smiled as Wren accepted the clay jar the silent woman who must have been Olga handed her. Gareth did not feel comfortable during the Ceremony of Pledges. He could not avoid noticing the tough sinews defining the woman's neck, the wrinkles that fanned from her eyes, the premature white that streaked through her dark hair. Those features, coupled with the way the woman kept her eyes upon the throne room's stone floor, rose suspicions in Gareth that her life had been far from easy. Yet she offered Wren a cherished gift that came from happier times.
“We know it is so little,” Olga's husband, a round man with dirt rings circling his neck and forearms, trembled before his new gray-eyed king. “But it's a treasure our home has always cherished. Especially when it is cold, I like to say that sweet honey tastes better than gold.”
Gareth smiled broadly. “Wisely spoken. I too suffer the cravings of a sweet tooth, and I know it has not been easy this season to save pleasures such as honey. You and your wife show me much kindness.”
Olga shifted. Gareth noticed her eyes lift from the floor to peek at the dark war dog seated next to the gray-eyed king's throne.
Gareth's beard shook as he laughed. “Don't worry, Olga. Asguard's sweet tooth is as terrible as my own. He would be honored to lick honey offered by your hand.”
Olga dipped a finger in the honey jar held by Wren and stretched her hand towards Asguard. The dog's tongue happily lapped the offered sweet, and Olga giggled. Gareth smiled upon the throne, wishing the governance of a kingdom could be as easy as giving all of his people a dog.
Asguard belched. Gareth suspected Asguard would sleep well that night with a full stomach. The dog had eaten a chicken quarter given by the village butcher, several strips of venison provided by a huntsman, a pair of strawberry tarts baked by the priestesses of the Maker's temple, and too many meatballs for Gareth to keep count. Gareth frowned when Asguard suddenly trumpeted his indigestion, an act that turned Olga's giggles into laughter, and that led even Wren to smile. Gareth feared the throne room would soon smell sour if that war dog was given any more to eat.
But Gareth would not deny Asguard any treat offered that night. Those treats were tokens of his subjects' loyalty, gifts that promised allegiance to a new Stonebrook king. Every morsel Asguard devoured symbolized a pledge to the stone throne. The village embraced the dark war dogs after the prior night's travails, and Gareth knew his Asguard provided a symbol around which to bond as powerful as any crown.
“I offer the gift as our pledge to the new King,” spoke the husband. Olga instantly ceased her laughter and bowed with her husband.
“I accept your pledge with humility and honor,” Gareth replied, “and know that the two of you have made close friends with Asguard.”
The Stonebrook crown set heavily upon Gareth's brow. Like the keep, the crown had not been crafted to glimmer, nor made to give any comfort. Masons of the first Stonebrook king chiseled the crown from a single stone. That stone band that ringed Gareth's forehead itched and chafed. It weighed upon his head so that it soon strained Gareth's neck. Not one jewel sparkled. Filigree did not wind about the band. The Stonebrook crown was only a gray, unadorned band, without points, without adornment, without splendor. That most ancient Stonebrook king had been wise, and so he had his masons craft a crown that would give those who wore it no comfort.
“That was the last of the day's pledges,” Wren commented after escorting Olga and her husband out of the throne chamber. “I cannot remember a more pleasant pledge ceremony. Times have been better without the cold and fog, and yet, I thought the pledges contained more mettle than I can recall.”
“The people's spirit seems strong,” Gareth ran his fingers through his long beard. He too had feasted that day, and it was not easy to keep a beard clean through so much dining. “Markus has underestimated our people's will. I fear too many of our Stonebrook ancestors suffered that error as well.”
Wren nodded. Some truths were hard to accept.
“The king's inner chamber has been made ready for you, Gareth.”
Gareth rubbed at his eyes. “I doubt I'll be able to sleep. Too afraid I'll wake to find another monster clutching at my throat.”
“Even a king needs rest, Gareth.”
“Then I'll find whatever peace I might in the throne.”
Wren snorted. “That will make a hard bed. I doubt many Stonebrook kings have found that throne peaceful.”
Gareth nodded. “At least it will make a warm one. Something has broken in that fog to give warmth back to our fires.”
Gareth thought that stories of the heat's return to village fireplaces had been his best news all day. The outside temperature kept falling just as the fog continued to thicken. Without a flame capable of sharing some warmth, many had feared the cold would begin to kill its first victims by nightfall. Yet the Maker showed mercy, and fires again filled homes with heat. Finding the fuel needed to maintain those fires became the current problem. Families crowded into shared buildings so that the cherished homes they left behind could be dismantled for the wood capable of keeping the hearth flames dancing.
Welcome as the fire's warmth felt in the throne room, the heat also magnified Gareth's exhaustion. He could not depend on Asguard to keep watch through the night, not after the dog yawned at his side following the day's bounty of treats.
Even the stone kings required sleep, and Gareth feared he could not deny the temptation to dream.
“I'm going to get some air.” Gareth stretched and stood from the stone throne.
Wren frowned. “You'll freeze.”
“I have as much fur as Asguard,” Gareth slapped his knee and Asguard came to his side despite the fully belly that whispered the dog to sleep. “I'll be too cold when my dog is too cold.”
“At least let me send guards with you,” Wren replied. “We have no idea what might be lurking in the fog tonight.”
Gareth shook his head. “I'll not be the first Stonebrook king to need escort through our ancestral grounds.”
“No one would question your bravery to walk with guards,” Wren responded. “Even our history fails to remember the last time the gray-eyed kings faced a fog summoned by a necromancer's magic.”
“I'll keep my walk short,” Gareth grunted.
“Short or not,” Wren answered, “I'll have my eyes upon you.”
Gareth waved his hand. He lacked the energy to argue with his sister.
The chill air slapped Gareth's face the moment he left the keep's throne room. The keep's halls remained too narrow and twisting to give him reprieve from his thoughts. Guards stood at attention as he passed, but none fell in file behind him. Wren would be too aware of her brother's mood to show such obvious surveillance, but Gareth knew every guard he passed would report the pace of his steps, the direction he followed through the halls, what mounted antlers he paused to regard to Wren the moment their king walked out of their sight. Walking kept him awake, but those tight halls and the feeling of eyes on the back of his head made Gareth claustrophobic.
Thus Gareth's thoughts were distracted when he again bumped his head upon stone as he left the keep through the narrow and short portal. He nodded at the surprised guards there stationed, who wondered what business motivated a king to forsake the keep's warmer and more secure walls for the cold and fog that lingered about the grounds between the keep and the village's earthen berm.
Gareth could hardly see the dark dog next to him, but the sound of the dog's panting reassured him. Asguard's keen senses would give him warning of any danger shuffling through the fog. He knelt to pick up the branches and limbs his boots kicked as he walked, rare finds following King Harold's ravaging of the lost grove. He tried to imagine what Thorn must have felt when he found a writhing arm of bone in his grip rather than simple fuel for his family's fire. He wondered if he would have been as brav
e.
The chill numbed him, but it did not pain him. The cold lacked the pain he had known from the dog bites he had taken through his years at Ebon's kennels. His thoughts swirled. How terrible were the powers that besieged his people? Was terror the only weapon possessed by those minions in the fog? Or, would more terrible creatures soon come that would deny the dog as well as the sword? Was the basilisk's poison to blame for the crooked thing his brother must have become? Or, was there always a darkness in Markus that would have bloomed no matter the sight of that old serpent? What kind of magic could have possessed small Cassandra to wield the knife that drained her family's blood? What power had coursed through her hand? Had the ancient Stonebrook kings been so cruel as to deserve the punishment of the fog and the cold?
Asguard sniffed at the fog. He stopped abruptly, and curling his lip to show his long teeth, emitted a low, deep snarl.
“Of course you would have one of Ebon's curs at your side. I am only fog, brother, and I can still smell your dog. What have you been feeding him?”
Gareth jumped and twirled at the disembodied voice. He saw only the fog.
Asguard barked at Gareth's side. The dog's hair bristled. His teeth snapped at the air.
“Hush, Asguard,” Gareth commanded. “Sit and be still.”
The dog reluctantly followed his master's command. Gareth nodded. He needed to give Asguard a task to help the dog focus discipline, something to keep his dog from bolting into the fog to attack invisible voices.
“The old stone crown fits you well, Gareth,” Markus's voice hissed from the mist. “It accentuates that messy growth of a beard. It does me good to remember a time when I craved such an ugly crown. Reminds me how far I have come.”
“I assumed you summoned the fog to take the crown for yourself.”
The fog sighed. “I no longer crave the strength of stone. I hunger for another power.”
Gareth grunted. He would not guess at riddles concerning his brother's motivation.
“It has been a long time since I last looked upon you, Markus,” Gareth growled “Wouldn't you do a king a favor and step out of the fog so I can look upon what you've become.”
The fog laughed. “I am far away, brother, but I will do what I can to please a Stonebrook king.”
The mist gathered and swirled. Fog thickened into cords and tendrils that knotted together to shape muscle and bone. Gareth held his breath as he watched the wisps and shades tie together into his brother's shape. All of Markus's limbs elongated to unnatural proportions. Long arms extended his brother's thin fingers far beyond his knees. The lower legs stretched and elevated Markus's height several feet above Gareth's. A long, thin neck struggled to support Markus's swollen head, around which a halo of ice swirled.
Gareth's breath turned to vapor as he stared upon the twisted image of his brother the fog brought to the Stonebrook king. A pair of golden and glowing orbs opened within the fog. Gareth immediately recognized his brother's eyes, no matter that they were now so enlarged. They were the basilisk's golden eyes, with their pupils narrowed until they became slits. Gareth well remembered watching his brother's eyes shift their shape in the days following the basilisk's death. Gareth could not judge how truthfully the contorted image of fog represented his brother, but he knew he stared into Markus's eyes, eyes that no longer belonged to the Stonebrook line, eyes that were not intended to belong to man.
Markus laughed, and the mist shimmered. “I swear, Gareth, you look more and more like your dogs each time I spy upon you. Tell me, how does the weight of that crown feel upon your brow? Do you realize the crown will force you to sacrifice your dogs?”
Gareth shook his head. “I don't think the crown will. I am already called the dog king.”
The fog threw back its head and bellowed in laughter. “To think father thought the village possessed so little imagination. Oh, the crown forces all the Stonebrook kings to eventually give up what they love most. You've not been in the throne for a week. Wait until your people turn upon you.”
“I trust the pledges of their allegiance.”
The mist sighed. “The commoner is a fickle creature, Gareth. Today, their words swell with admiration. Tomorrow, your title will brim with scorn when spoken from your people's lips.”
Gareth snarled. “You fail to give them the credit they deserve. They have already humbled me with their courage and loyalty.”
The fog swirled into a funnel and broke Markus's shape. The cold intensified as the cords of fog came back together to reconstruct the brother made of mist.
“You've spent too much time on the dog field,” Markus scoffed. “A kingdom's loyalty is far more fragile than that of a pack's. Give your people a bit more time in the cold. You will see, Gareth. You will see how those people who today pledge you loyalty will betray you tomorrow.”
“The Stonebrook kingdom again knows courage,” Gareth growled.
“And your throne has much to learn about fear,” Markus's voice hissed.
Gareth's gray eyes peered at the mist. “Empty magic will grant you little power.”
“You are as arrogant as any other Stonebrook king.”
Markus's height expanded as the fog swelled. The arms and legs thinned to long spindles. The golden eyes floated like a pair of moons. “The Stonebrooks still fail to imagine anything more splendid than that dull, gray crown of stone resting upon your head. I need something much greater to quench my thirst. Always, so much confidence placed into rock. Have you not seen how my fog seeps through those stone walls our ancestors believed impregnable?”
“What is it you want so badly that you would use daughters to butcher families?”
“I use daughters to put out their father's eyes,” the fog sneered. “How I hate those gray eyes. It is hard for me to believe I once cherished such gray eyes. Hard to believe that I too was so foolish as to believe that my gray eyes gave me the strength of rock, that my gray eyes made my enemies tremble, that gray eyes made me strong. I have better eyes now. Golden eyes. The basilisk's eyes. You could never guess how well my new eyes help me see in the darkest of places.”
Gareth's beard bristled. His patience ebbed. “What is it that you want, Markus?”
“I want your faith,” Markus's eyes burned in the mist. “I want a devotion that makes the Maker envious. I want temples built in my name. I want the living and the dead to worship my name at the altar. I want faith that transcends weak pledges of loyalty. I want a power Stonebrook kings could not imagine. I want a power that follows the living into the grave. I want to be a god.”
Gareth squinted through the fog into Markus's golden, reptilian eyes. His brother's words were crisp in the cold air, but Gareth recognized that they were crafted by a serpent's tongue.
“I will become the bridge between the living and the dead,” Markus hissed through the mist. “The basilisk was very old, Gareth, but the basilisk was not ancient. I feel the ancient ones waking from their slumber. The ancient ones wish to return. I will raise them upon the ground, so that they can repopulate the land, smash man's kingdoms and return the earth to a time before your stone kings arrived to tame this world with fist and law. I will bring the darker wilderness back, brother. And I will be rewarded with forgotten powers that will make me divine. I will judge who, among the living and the dead, shall have access between the cradle and the grave. I will grip a god's power.”
Gareth growled. “You would forsake your kind to blanket the world with cold. You would suffocate the light with shadow. You would bring back the darkness.”
The glow of Markus's wide, golden eyes intensified in the fog. “Oh, and I have such keen eyes to see through such a night. You didn't understand how right you were, Gareth, so long ago when you warned of father's foolishness to take the ax to that ancient grove. Mankind is only temporary. Mankind is only a custodian until the ancient ones return. That basilisk that killed father was but a remnant of the old ones. I have seen the ancient ghosts brother, and they will bring a splendor and
magnificence back from the tomb. The old groves will again crowd the land, and man will again understand his place.”
“We would be slaves,” Gareth hissed.
Markus laughed. “No more than Asguard is a slave to your leash. Do you not care for your pack? Do your war dogs not prosper beneath their master?”
Gareth shook his head. “You do not understand.”
“I think I do,” Markus's golden eyes winked at the Stonebrook king. “You will be tested soon enough, Gareth. I have a purpose besides fear for thickening the fog. The ancient ones toss in their sleep. I prepare the bridge for them to return. You are foolish to think I must hurry to come to you. I have more time than you can imagine. The ancient ones wake, and even the walls of the Stonebrook keep will shatter before them.”
The fog shifted in icy wind. The mist swirled, as Markus's form vanished into the snow and wind with a blink of his golden, basilisk eyes. Asguard whimpered next to his master, who trembled in the chill.
Gareth frowned. Markus threatened much more than he first guessed. Markus wanted so much more than an ugly, stone crown. And that crown now felt very heavy indeed upon Gareth's head. Gareth knew little of the ancient, lost days. He knew so little of the creatures who once stalked the land. He had never believed he would need to put so much stock into the nightmare stories of blind storytellers and toothless soothsayers. Gareth knew he could not discount those tales. The basilisk had killed his father. The basilisk had transformed his brother. And though Gareth knew so little about the dark magics he now faced, he realized that the old ghosts and ghouls were very real, and he shuddered to consider the night they should rise from their slumber at Markus's invitation and again claim dominion over man.
“We must find him, Asguard,” Gareth knelt next his loyal dog and stroked his companion's fur. “I hope that there's enough of the old Markus left for either one of us to track.”
Asguard lifted his nose to the wind. Already, that war dog searched for traces of that golden-eyed necromancer as the world continued to darken.
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