This is chapter 2 of my fantasy novel, The Spell Reaper. If you haven't read
chapter 1, please do so, or this will not make a lot of sense. Please offer critique. Thanks!
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Neilin lay on his belly, crouching among the thorny bushes. Patchwork dark clouds, like shredded bits of sackcloth, obscured the half-moon. Waving trees above creaked at the urgency of the wind in his face, a wind that bore the stink of cool moisture preceding a storm.
Rain is good. Prey beds down. Easy to kill.
He slunk on all fours to another clump of shrubs, nose jutted skyward. The alluring perfume thickened in the clearing ahead. Each gust brought another morsel of the tantalizing scent to his twitching muzzle.
Blood... Recent...
Something had died, or was dying just ahead of him. Foamy saliva dripped from his fangs at the cloying redolence of death dancing in his nostrils. He crawled to the edge of the clearing, peeking out of the ground cover that had masked his approach.
Just a little closer...
He risked stepping a paw into the clearing. He would chance being seen. Anything to slake the acrid void in his gut. Burrowing inch-long claws into the dirt, he settled his felid body to the ground and waited for a break in the clouds.
Neilin could not see his prey under the veil of darkness that covered all, but he could smell it. Dead blood and burnt wood. He could hear its ragged breathing as it slept in the clearing. Whatever it was, he could catch it. Though starvation had blunted his preternatural agility, he was close enough.
From here, I can catch anything.
He crouched, patient as death, waiting for the moonlight to come again and reveal his victim.
One sprint and it's mine…
* * *
A deep roar of distant thunder broke Neilin from his dream. He lay on his earth-bed by the dead fire, looking up at the glowering night sky. The moon was veiled by patchy clouds. A cold, wet breeze stirred the creaking branches overhead.
Wow, that was the most vivid dream. It felt almost... His skin prickled as he finished the thought. "Real."
Never had he experienced such a sensation. Usually, his sleeping mind entertained itself with far-flung oddities and nonsense. This dream mirrored his present circumstances far too closely for comfort.
Something is wrong.
Neilin rummaged through the darkness with his outstretched mind, hunting for thoughts that were not his own. Hunger and desperation crouched at the south edge of the clearing.
Oh, Gods...
The wet wind blew away the moon’s black shroud. In the scant argent light, he saw nothing but shadows, though his mind told him something lurked in their cast. Hot fear boiled up into his throat as he stared into the silver-trimmed darkness at something that surely stared back.
I’m done for.
He knew it. To run would be futile. He could not climb fast enough to escape this. His knife and his bow were hidden in the grass, under the drape of the night. He was helpless. Death waited for him on four legs. And, death, he could sense, was done waiting.
Leaping to his feet, Neilin screamed towards the south, hurling sticks and rocks and whatever else lay within his flailing grasp.
Gods, help me!
Fear cracked his voice as he bellowed at the invisible threat in the shadows, jumping and gesticulating like a madman.
Please!!
The distant malevolence transformed. Hunger and desperation melted into confusion and fear. Death on four legs fled into the valley.
Neilin’s heart kicked at his ribcage as though begging for freedom.
Thank you thank you thank you…
Parched and panting, he scoured the clearing for other dangers hiding in the blackness. He could sense nothing else waiting to taste his blood.
A jolting boom announced the imminent storm. Heavy raindrops pelted trees in the distance, extinguishing his hopes of building a fire to stave off other predators. Neilin fumbled in the darkness for the tree and scrambled up the trunk. He reached his hunting perch as the applause of rain on the forest canopy swelled to a roar.
A hot white streak stabbed through the inky sky, followed immediately by a deafening retort. Neilin hoped that the Storm Gods, having their pick of so many trees, would choose an unoccupied one. Embracing the tree trunk like a lost friend, Neilin cowered under the thick canopy until dawn eased through the retreating clouds, glowing red on the horizon.
Below, his camp appeared the same as when dusk had hidden it from him, only drenched. The innocent visage contradicted the tragedy that had nearly become of him hours before.
"I’m bloody finished with this," he proclaimed to the tree bark as he climbed to the ground. He fished his knife out of the wet carpet of leaves. "And, may I never climb another tree as long as I bloody live." For Neilin, a month of scratching sustenance from the wilds was enough. "I’ll take my chances with the two-legged predators," he told himself as he picked northward through the leaf-strewn scrub.
An hour later, his soaking feet landed on the packed gravel of the road to the Kinea. At the end loomed the massive tan stone walls of the Imperial capitol.
I hope Brother Marrick's offer is still good, he thought, attempting to wring some semblance of order out of his chaotic appearance.
He stretched his mind toward the wooden guard houses flanking the gate. Predictably, they exuded the abject boredom of their occupants.
Perfect. Neilin donned his own mask of disinterest as he passed through the gate, eliciting not the slightest bit of attention from the incurious guards. He strolled, unmolested, back into the very heart of the Empire.
Back home.
* * *
The smoldering summer sun bore down on Neilin as he scrabbled up the flimsy wooden ladder. Waves of blistering heat splashed up at him from the sun-baked expanse of timber that was the roof of the Eastern Temple.
I’d be safer climbing a tree, he thought.
A weak gravelly voice floated up to him from the ground.
"Be careful, lad."
"I will, Brother." he replied to the frail priest below, whose short-cropped hair matched his dingy white robes.
While Neilin was grateful to Brother Marrick for taking him in, he suspected that this chore might have constituted some form of penance.
He lurched up the gentle slope of the roof to its peak, trailing a thick cord behind. Neilin snaked the coarse rope around the key piece in the center of the roof, then dragged the end back to the edge and threw it to the ground.
"Okay! Start pulling!" he yelled.
The rope groaned in dissent at the weight of the oak beam to which it was tied. Five Ovates in green below pulled the rope in tandem, hoisting it up the side of the temple. Neilin contributed his considerable muscle to the effort, pulling the stout beam over the lip of the roof and dragging it to its destination.
He untied the rope and tossed the end back to the ground for the next burden. Pulling a mallet from his waistband, he hammered the board over a gaping hole in the roof using iron nails as long as a finger.
One finished, he thought, surveying the fissure.
Gods know how many to go.
After his banishing experience in the forest, Neilin had marched straight through the doors of the Eastern Temple, prepared to beg. Despite the boy’s fear of the contrary, Brother Marrick had welcomed him warmly and offered him sanctuary without hesitation. He spent the better part of a week simply eating and sleeping in recompense of his month of privation. In exchange, Neilin agreed to aid the Druids with their temporal works, such as repairing the recent storm damage to the roof. As he helped hoist another beam, he was sure that he would pay for this arrangement.
Much of the Eastern Borough was visible from his vantage. Through the summer haze, he could make out the docks at the eastern end of the city, jutting like wooden tongues into the mouth of the bay. He smiled, remembering his times he spent there.
Maybe I should go back someday.
His smile sagged as he wondered how much of the borough could see him. In specific, whether or not his parents, who lived nearby, would see him.
I ought to be safe today, he thought with a snicker.
The nearest holy day is months away and we’re not close to any pubs.
The construction had continued through the afternoon until his back and arms screamed for relief. He gingerly descended the ladder and lurched into the temple. The oppressive blackness tinged his sight with green until his eyes overcame the change.
The temple was a wide rotunda built of hefty oak and punctuated with narrow slit-like windows all around. Concentric rings of backless wooden benches made up the seating, while the center of the building was home to a symbolic representation of an ancient Druid circle, though much more ornate than the one he had recently abandoned. The polished granite obelisks were as tall as was he, less than half the height of the stones in the forest, and were embellished with cryptic runes. In the epicenter sat a round, flat altar of the same polished grey stone.
No blood had ever stained the altar, as the Druids had long since done away with the messy practices of the past. Instead, mystical herbs and foodstuffs were ritually burned over fires fueled with oak and holly branches.
How convenient, he thought cynically. According to Brother Marrick, the smoke was said to purify the spirit while the ashes, scattered over the temple grounds, sanctified the earth below.
Out of respect for the priest, Neilin followed along during the weekly moots, performing all the motions. By his reckoning, however, the moots were simply meetings of deluded, but well-meaning people who came to thank the faceless Gods for everything. He could not fault the Druids for their sincerity, but he thought it was all quite ludicrous.
Still, he was at peace there. At one time, the temple had been his only source of comfort. It had also been the very place where Neilin had eventually divined the nature of his "problem" with voices, nearly half his lifetime ago. A moment in time which changed his life forever.
* * *
Over the weeks preceding Samhain, the annual feast of the dead, Neilin’s voices had grown torturous inside his young mind. He could scarcely concentrate and his parents had grown exhausted with his fitful behavior and his frequent absences from home. The arrival of the Holy Day had meant that his parents would deign to grace the temple with their appearance. That their only son had shown interest in attending had been enough to illicit their consternation.
That night, however, even his presence in the Temple had done little to assuage his demons. His sole haven had been invaded. Angry voices warred with the plaintive ones for Neilin’s attention, and his sanity.
Through the maddening din, one of the voices rang clearly into his head, bringing with it a note of familiarity. Somehow, he knew this demon’s voice, but not how it had gotten into his head. Recognition hit him like lightning. The voice was that of his mother.
He knew it was her.
But how can it be? he had wondered as he looked at her, eyes closed and kneeling beside him in quiet prayer. He further questioned his sanity, until a familiar older couple passed in front of them to take a seat nearby. The voice in his head had shifted from a prayerful plea to something much less pious.
...nice of you to grace us with your presence... it had chastised.
Neilin had known that such hypocrisy was well within his mother’s aptitude.
It has to be real.
What he had thought were demonic voices were simply the impulses of anger coming from his parents, voicelessly despising each other. Neilin had known better than to inform his parents. Such talk would have earned him a trip to the sanitarium faster than claiming either madness or possession.
For the remainder of the moot, Neilin had entertained himself by swimming through the sea of voices, trying to figure out to whom each belonged. A deluge of potential uses for his newfound talents had flooded his juvenile brain, very few of them of a constructive nature.
That's what got you in this bloody mess, he reminded himself as he walked through a small set of doors in the rear of the Temple. He stomped down the dark staircase and into a circular earth-hewn cavern, dimly lit by lanterns. Numerous narrow tunnels branched out from the chamber. In the center sat a long table that cradled a black iron pot and a stack of dishes.
He walked to the end of a short hallway and plunged his reddened face into the cool water of the cistern before returning to the table. Still dripping, Neilin scooped several ladles-full of brown stew into an earthenware bowl and began shoveling it unceremoniously into his mouth.
The food had long-since cooled and congealed, but it tasted well-seasoned, thanks to the Druid’s fastidious garden outside of the rear entrance to the catacombs. Neilin was unsure what meat was in the pot, but scarcely cared.
Not venison, anyway. Thank the Gods.
Tearing off a chunk of coarse flatbread with his teeth, he mused that the time would have been opportune for a pipe-full of some of the sweet black leaf that he had sampled when the weather had been cooler. Unfortunately, his prized pipe had met an untimely end under the heel of his father’s boot.
"Bastard," he muttered past a mouthful of stew.
He washed down the meal with a mug of sharp dry wine made from the Ovates’ garden bounty. Neilin slouched in his seat, sapped of energy by the dense meal.
Up at dawn to prune the garden. Again. Then, more repairs. He sighed, resting his forehead on the table.
Better than being eaten in my sleep. Right?
Neilin knew that his sojourn here would not be long. He did not relish the thought of cadging handouts from Brother Marrick, knowing first-hand the poverty under which the priests lived. The encroaching holy season threatened to make temple-life hectic. He had to find something else.
Something for me.
After his meal and some well-earned lounging, Neilin dutifully sat through the evening prayer ceremony before descending into his cell. The room in which he slept was small enough that he could touch both sides simultaneously, offering just enough space to hold a narrow cot. Brother Marrick had told him that the original purpose of the catacombs was as a burial place for generations past and that many of the old graves still remained. Sleeping among the dead was only slightly disturbing if he let himself think about it.
His room was deathly quiet, except for the occasional echoing chant from the sanctuary above. Though damp and musty, the atmosphere below was delightfully cool compared to the stifling summer night outside.
Soon, I'll find something for me, he thought as tried to find a comfortable position for his sun-burnt shoulders on the rough canvas cot.
Soon.
