A Different World: Part 1 - The Siege of Penthorpe Keep - 5. Chapter 5

The being underneath had mostly human features. Everything about her had the appearance of being young: her nose was petite with a slight, mischievous upturn, and her lips were soft and narrow. Her eyes scanned them, glowing a lustrous yellow, the pupils thin, long slits like the eyes of a feline. Her body was slim and curvy in places. This newcomer who had stepped into the fray and saved their lives had the body and appearance of a seductress. Skold, however, sensed this was simply the work of a powerful glamour spell, the manipulation of one’s appearance through magic. He sensed the thing beneath the illusion was much older and far less human looking.

Everyone was tense, waiting to see if she was a threat. Seeming to sense this, the creature smiled. Her hair, long and thick and dark red, danced in the wind. Her red lips pulled back into a slow smile. “You can put away your swords,” she said, “I mean you no harm. If I wanted to kill you, each and every one of you would already be dead.”

Skold, Maeglin, Sonja, Konstantine, and Valyuun made no move to put their swords away.

“No offense meant,” Maeglin said, “but we are not putting our swords away just yet. Not until you tell us who you are and what you’re intentions are.”

She looked at him patiently. “As I said I mean you no harm. I was simply on my way to Pen’thorpe Keep when I came across your group. It seemed like you needed help so I intervened. As you can see revenants are dangerous creatures enthralled by corrupt magics. As for my name I am Eolyn Qixisys you may call me Eolyn. I am a seer.”

“A seer?” Sonja uttered; she glanced at Skold...she looked afraid. She could tell by the way Valyuun took a step back and Maeglin’s back straightened and Konstantine’s gloved hand tightened around the handle of his sword that everyone else was too. Skold only knew the lore of their kind but had never encountered one...until tonight. Of the fae, seers were one of the oldest most powerful and rare breeds. Their kind had been the first to roam the earth long before elves. Seers were known to be able to see the past and the future, as well as what one was thinking and feeling - so the stories went. Seers were as revered and feared as necromancers.

Skold was unafraid, unimpressed. However he sensed it would be wise not to piss this creature off. I would be no match for her, he thought.

“We should head back to the castle,” said the seer. “And we should bring one of the bodies so you have a viable alibi.”

Without another word Eolyn began to walk gracefully in the direction of the Keep, the elves staring after her.

The sun was starting to rise by the time they made it back to the castle. There was no use in sneaking back into the castle: General Cevna and two dozen troops stood before the castle, waiting for them.

Skold and Konstantine wrestled with the revenant, pulling it along with chains. It gnashed its teeth at them and dug its heels into the ground, looking around wildly. The journey back to the Keep seemed to have taken twice as long thanks to the undead creature. Maeglin led the way with the seer directly behind him; her dark robes billowed out behind her, blown back by the frigid morning wind. She appeared not to feel the cold whatsoever.

“What is that?” Cevna said, gaping at the revenant.

“A revenant, General,” Maeglin said. “Once it was one of my scouts.”

“In the name of Valhalla,” Cevna said breathlessly. “I’ve never seen one before this moment. It’s the work of death magic, is it not?”

“It is.”

“And who is she?” Cevna nodded at the seer.

“This is Eolyn Qixisys. If it were not for her showing up when she did, we would not be here.”

“You all need to come with me,” said Cevna, showing no recognition at the sound of the seer’s name. “The counselors are furious. I should be putting you all in chains and shackles but...considering what you brought back with you...” Trailing off, he turned, cape swinging out behind him, and led the group towards the castle. Gears shifted and turned as the gate was slowly pulled up. Once inside the courtyard, Cevna turned to his troops. “You, you, and you,” he said, pointing at three elves, “take that monstrosity to the dungeons. Make sure it’s secured. We don’t want it getting loose in the castle, now do we?”

Skold handed his chain to one of the troops who took it timidly, giving the revenant a cautious berth. He was more than happy to give the burden to someone else. His muscles ached and he was cold. I hope this excursion was worth all the trouble, he thought. May the Spirits of Valhalla bless us if not. Cevna led Skold, Maeglin, Sonja, Konstantine, Eolyn and Valyuun through the castle, moving swiftly. After their journey through the frigid night Skold wanted nothing more to be in his quarters, in his bed; the way things were heading that was unlikely to happen on this morning.

The counselors were waiting for them on their thrones. Skold wondered if their bottoms ached from sitting on stone all day; he had to bite his lip to keep from snickering at the thought. None of the three counselors looked happy, Viktor least of all - but then Viktor never appeared to be happy unless he was being malicious, only grumpy and ruffled. There was a loud groan as the doors to the chambers slid shut, followed by a tense silence. Valyuun kept scanning the counselor’s face before him, jaw clenched, eyes wide and fearful. He was visibly shaking. Cowardly worm, Skold thought. Why Maeglin is so fond of him I will never know.

“You abandoned the castle when we specifically told you not to,” Althon said, speaking to Maeglin, “recruited others to go on a personal mission while leaving the castle vulnerable. This is treason, you understand, forall of you. But Maeglin, I am surprised at you the most. And you as well, Skold.”

“We have good reason to do what we did,” Maeglin started. “We found-”

“Silence!” Viktor spat. “You will not speak unless asked to speak!”

“Who are you?” Alagossa asked of Eolyn.

Eolyn stepped forward, pulling down her hood, fixing the three counselors with her vulpine eyes. “I am Eolyn Qixisys, one of the three remaining seers left in the world.”

The three counselors exchanged glances; the look in their eyes told Skold all he needed to know: they were surprised and frightened.

“I happened upon this group just moments ago,” said Eolyn. “It’s a good thing I did, or else they would not be here to tell you of their findings.”

“Findings?” Althon asked. “What findings?”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you before I was interrupted,” said Maeglin, shooting a heated glance in Viktor’s direction. “We found what happened to my scouts. They were up in the hills, the same hills where we felt the strange presence coming from. They were dead - looked almost as if they’d been eaten alive by something that was not an animal or anything so mundane. The bodies rose and attacked us.”

Skold stepped forward to lend his support. “It’s true. There were four of them. And I found this.” He pulled off the amulet hanging around his neck and held it up for all to see. The light reflected off the bone-trinket. Every flame in the room seemed to flicker as a chilly gust of wind wailed through the room and everyone shivered at once.

“What is that?” Viktor said, turning his face away from it as if it was something obscene - and perhaps it was.

“As I said I found it. I have no idea what it is.” Skold set it on one of the pulpits. All nine bodies in the chamber, excluding the guards standing watch at the doors, gathered around to examine it, approaching it slowly as if it would come to life and attack them.

“It’s vile,” gasped Viktor. “I dare not touch it.”

Skold looked down at his feet, forcing himself not to smirk. Superstitious fool. Behind his swagger he is every bit as much a coward as Valyuun.

Alagossa looked up at the seer. Something about the way her eyes narrowed down told Skold she did not trust the seer. Part of him approved; there was a part of him that did not trust the seer either. There was something sly about her. “You said you were on your way to the castle. Why?”

“To lend aid wherever I can.”

“With all due respect seers are not known for involving themselves in politics,” said Viktor. Skold blinked in surprise: Skold had never seen him be humble with anyone else but King Yaldon himself.

She grinned, her lips seeming to spread across the entire lower half of her face. Skold was reminded of a jester, of a sly beast who was adept at buying one’s trust before biting them when their back was turned. “On the contrary, seers are often involved with such matters...It just hasn’t been written down because no one knows about it.” She turned her gaze to the trinket laying on the pulpit. “As I’m sure you know, the revenants were the work of death magic, the work of a necromancer. A very powerful one at that. This war has attracted the attention - the interests dare I say - of many ancient forces. And not just necromancers. What these forces are I cannot entirely say. But since the spreading of man, and not with their downfall, it seems the fae are stepping towards the forefront again, stretching their legs as the saying goes.”

The chambers went quiet. Skold thought he could smell fear.

“There’s a revenant in the dungeon,” Maeglin said after a moment.

“I should like to see it,” said Althon.

“Me as well,” said Alagossa. “Viktor I think you should see it as well.”

Viktor looked at them, long-faced and afraid, but offered no argument.

                    …

The steps leading down into the dungeons were steep and spiraled around and around. Even though everyone in the ragtag group of eight elves and one seers carried a torch it seemed no amount of heat could chase away the cold that seemed to grow the deeper down they went. Skold found himself peeking in the corners, looking for any enemies hiding in the shadows, even though somewhere in the back of his mind he knew there were none. He could hear the growls and snarls of the revenant, the chinking, rattling sounds of it trying to break out of its chains.

There it was, arms and legs chained apart. Blood, thick like jelly, and bits of rotted flesh clung to the shackles. It went still and looked at them with dead-white eyes that appeared to hold a measure of intelligence. Then it went back to baring its teeth at them, jaw clenching and unclenching.

Skold glanced at the seer and found she was staring back. Their eyes met and a knowing smile curved her lips. He didn’t like the way she smiled at him, as if she knew something about him he didn’t know about himself. Whether she’d saved their lives up in the hills or not he didn’t trust her one bit: He sensed she had ulterior motives; whatever motives those were they went beyond “helping” them. He decided he would confront her when they were away from the others, even if it was just to call her out on her lies.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end: Suddenly Skold got the feeling he was being watched by another pair of eyes. He looked at the revenant who’d stopped moving again and was watching him. No, not Skold but something - or someone - behind Skold - and everyone was too busy talking over the revenant to notice, except for the seer. She too was looking over her shoulder, into the shadows behind them. Skold couldn’t see anything, even as he held his torch out, but he knew something was there. He remembered when Maeglin and the others and he had been in the hills, the voice he’d heard when he’d picked up the trinket. I never should have picked it up, Skold thought, feeling the briefest hint of fear. I should have left it where it was. He remembered what Eolyn had said in the audience room: This war has attracted the attention...of many ancient forces.

And what he felt standing behind him, watching them from the shadows, was very powerful indeed; it was the same force he’d felt up in the hills. How was it possible the others could not feel it? Perhaps it did not want the others to know it was there, perhaps it only had eyes for him. Why so, if this was the case, Skold had no idea, but at this point he was almost willing to accept anything.

From the darkness, where the volatile force lurked, invisible to everyone but Skold and the seer, a voice spoke; Skold recognized it as the same voice he'd heard up in the hills when he'd picked up the mysterious trinket, just seconds before Maeglin's dead scouts were resurrected. The voice was deep, masculine, full of greed, want, and power. “Come to me, Skold…I want your soul.”

For a moment Skold's composure, the ice wall that he'd built up over the years, starting with his mother's death and fully formed by castration, fell into ruin. He was afraid. He hadn't been struck by such fear since he was a child, when his mother would have to come to his bedside at night and sing him songs because he was terrified of the monster underneath the bed. It was the kind of fear that made his eyes stare agape and his lips quiver. The voice he'd heard made him think of every bad thing in the world: of lying, cheating, stealing, of the rape and murder of innocents, of degradation.

So caught up in this sudden burst of fear that he did not hear the sound of the struggling revenant finally breaking free from its chains, knocking Viktor and Althon to the dusty ground as if they were nothing but rag dolls. When Skold did turn around and to face the revenant it was too late. It was on him.

It grabbed him by the folds of his wolf pelt, chains dragging behind it, and slammed him up against the dungeon wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Skold lashed out reflexively but the blow was futile. The undead creature's face was pressed up against his. There was no shaking himself free from the creature; there was no turning away from its rancid smell.

When it spoke it spoke in the voice of the one who had brought it back into its crude form of life - in the voice of the one Skold had just heard seconds ago but could not see. “Come to me Skold...I want your soul…”

                    …

When Skold went up to his quarters the seer was waiting for him; she was sitting on the edge of his bed, legs crossed over each other. He stopped - he knew the guards placed outside wouldn’t have let her in without his say-so. He was about to ask when she laughed and said, “It’s not that difficult really. I’m full of nifty tricks.”

He glared at her and tried to regain some sense of composure; he still felt shaken with the revenant in the dungeon. “What do you want?”

Eolyn stood up and strolled from side-to-side, turning once to look out the window. “You don’t have much respect for your elders, do you?”

“So you came here to lecture me on manners, is that it?” Skold said. “I don’t have time from your games. I’m tired and it’s been a long day. Get to the point or get out.”

“Alright, then.” Eolyn stopped, turning to face him. “We haven’t had much time to talk since I found you and your party in the hills. You felt him, didn’t you? The necromancer?”

Skold looked down at his feet and remembered the fear he’d felt when he’d heard the voice spoken, the paralysis that came over him when the revenant attacked him. It had taken everyone to pull it off him. I let my guard down, he thought. I let my guard down and made myself vulnerable. How disappointed Father would be. “Yes,” he said. The words were trying to catch inside his throat, to keep from being voiced. “I felt him. He called me by name. How could he know my name?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Eolyse said.

Skold sneered. “What, you don’t know? I thought you seers were supposed to know everything.”

The seer fixed him with her eyes, which were filled with rage. Her face rippled and for a the briefest of seconds Skold glimpsed how she really looked: wrinkled, grey skin, red-rimmed eyes, springy white hair, a mouth full of fangs. The thing standing before him was a crone and possibly the oldest thing to walk the earth. For the second time Skold felt his guard drop and could only stare in surprise. Then the false facade was back in place and she had the appearance of being young and vulpine again. “If you wish to keep your throat do not mock me again?” she growled through gritted teeth. Then she became more relaxed. “Despite what you might think we seers are not all-knowing. The future is an ever-changing entity. In one second an outcome will present itself and then change in another as choices are made. Such is the case with this war, which has clouded my sight. Yet not all things are unclear. While the future is always subjected to change everything has a purpose. The force of Cerbyendeuyng threads through everything. Like you, for example. When we were in the dungeons with the revenant and the necromancer spoke I had a vision of you.”

“A vision of me?” Skold said. “Doing what?”

“It would be wrong of me to tell you,” Eolyn said. Her voice became gentle and her face softened. “I’ve already interfered in the way of things enough as it is by aligning myself with King Yaldon. One must discover their destiny for themselves. All I can do is advise and guide but the decision always belongs with the souls themselves. All I can tell you is to pay attention to your dreams. Listen to them. Our dreams are the best guide of all.”

And then, within the blink of an eye, before Skold could ask what she meant, the seer was gone as if she hadn’t been there at all.

                        …

“Come to me, come to me little elf and kneel before me...”

The voice of the necromancer beckoned him and Skold came, appearing out of the rough mouth of a dark tunnel. He was wearing his armor, the red cape hanging from his shoulders. Though he turned his head this way and that to look at his surroundings, Skold could not make out any of the details. It was as if he was seeing himself through someone else’s eyes. He started to climb the steps of a stone platform, his eyes now staring ahead of him, full of wonder and need.

“Yes, that’s right, little elf. Closer, closer...bow...”

Skold stopped and knelt down slowly into a bowing position, his face dipped towards the stone floor…

WHOOOO-WHOOOO! WHOOO WHOOO WHOOOOOO!

An all too familiar sound jerked him out of the dream. Someone, one of the guards perhaps, was pounding on his door. “Commander, they’re here!”

“Come in!” Skold hissed, half tumbling half climbing out of bed, not caring if he was completely naked. Already the two elves who had stood outside his door were pulling his armor out of the wooden chest. Skold glanced out the window. It was the middle of the night. Smoke was rising from the plains, marked with the flaming head of torches. Vague, ghostly shapes marked the presence of the opposing force closing in on the Keep, already starting to climb the crude path that led up to the castle. It was impossible to count just how many troops there were for their army seemed to stretch back as far as the eye could see. They’re here, he thought. They’re really here. The moment’s finally come.

Normally Skold would have insisted on putting on his own armor but in this instance there was no time to be stubborn. With the help of the two elves, Skold had his armor on in minutes. Elves ran down the corridors, wearing their armor, carrying swords or bows with quivers of arrows strapped to their backs. Several heads nodded in his direction, perhaps searching for words of encouragement. Skold had none to give but he nodded back.

Skold shook the sleep from his mind and forced himself to focus. He followed his men up the spiral staircase and through the door that led to the top of the castle, into the cold night air. Snow drifted heavily from the air; gusts of wicked, flesh-cutting wind chopped at his face, numbing him instantly. Jagged cracks of thunder flashed through a sky so black with clouds that he could not see the moon. On both sides of him he had a perfect view of the courtyard, where General Cevna was gathering his forces and commanding them into formation. The sheathing sound of swords being drawn made his ears prickle. To the front of him Paladin’s troops approached quickly, seeming to climb the mountain with ease. There were a mixture of elves, orcs, and…

“Are those hellhounds?” Konstantine said from beside him. Skold had been preoccupied with taking stock of the scene before him to notice Konstantine’s presence prior to him speaking. Skold looked back at the opposing army, at the humongous four-legged shapes seeming to weave in and out of the dark, marked only by their bright red eyes and the smoky fumes coming from their snouts and muzzles.

“Yes, I think those are,” he said, when he could find the words.

Konstantine cursed. “It’s going to be a long night.”