The Medievals 1, page 12
part #1 of The Medievals Series
With nothing to occupy the vague drip of time, Wendolyn simply stares at the dark, studying it. The dark first started as a unified shadow that consumed every inch of the cramped, empty cell. She would wiggle her fingers in front of her face, but they were invisible to her. It is a strange sensation to feel her fingers move -- to touch them to her face -- and not be able to see them.
It is enough to make her doubt her own existence.
But as her eyes have adjusted to her new reality, she can see the faint impressions of her fingers swimming in the dark pools of air; and the once monolithic shadow has become a horde of shadows that all feed upon each other in their grim abundance.
If Wendolyn stares long enough, she recognizes varying shades of darkness, with deep blues bleeding into the blacks, making the room look like a collection of bruises. And if she stares even longer, the shadows have eyes.
And mouths.
And fangs.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Wendolyn’s heart jumps into her throat as a blood-curdling shriek suddenly invades the cell. On instinct, she throws her arms out in front of her face, her hands protecting her from whatever has come for Wendolyn.
And then the sound is gone, trailing off with speed.
After a moment -- after the silence once again replaces the shrinking tail of the scream -- she pulls her hands down and discovers she is still alone in the cell. It was only a disembodied howl.
Did it come from her mind? Did she imagine the inhuman shriek?
It is the only sound she has heard since she was thrown into this cell. The only sound besides her own breathing and crying.
When she was first shoved into this prison, her knees hit the hard ground, and then she launched herself back at the cell door, desperate to escape before the door was closed on her forever. The door sentenced her with a ker-clink. It was a sound that said: “You will never leave this room.” And so she screamed without pause until her voice abandoned her throat.
And as she screamed, she wailed her fists against the door. And she threw her body into the walls. And she punched and she punched and she punched. Until she could finally feel her warm blood wetting the walls. And she felt as though she had skinned her knuckles on the wrong side of eternity.
For a long time, longer than hope should allow, Wendolyn had felt every inch of the cell walls, searching frantically for a hole or a covered window out of which to escape.
She was like the bird. The sparrow that got trapped inside of the cottage years ago and flailed about the rooms as it also frantically searched for an escape.
Wendolyn was no more than four. She and her father had arrived home after a day at the market and they were greeted by an unexpected clamor as they opened the door. With the evening sun cutting into Wendolyn’s vision, she at first thought it was a bat. Her father had handed her a nine-knot stick as he grabbed hold of a blanket, and together they attempted to gently shoo the bird to the open door.
But the scared and stubborn bird insisted on flying into everything but the doorway. At some point, the sparrow landed on her father’s head, and Wendolyn laughed as he spun around the room trying to swat it off. But the more he fumbled about -- knocking over a chair, then the table -- the tighter that sparrow hung on.
Finally, Wendolyn’s father crashed into the wood stacked beside the fireplace, and the bird flew off his head and disappeared out the front door. Then Wendolyn’s father pulled her to the floor, where they laughed together over the confused bird.
Wendolyn smiles in the dark, the memory warming her body from the inside as a tear cools her cheek.
She closes her eyes, squeezes them tightly, trapping the memory of her father on her eyelids. His laugh. His arms around her. His chin against her head. If she can hold her eyes shut, maybe he will stay with her.
For as long as she can, she will keep these eyes closed.
◆◆◆
Ker-clink.
Wendolyn wakes to the sound of the cell door being unlocked, the creaky report of the rusted hinges drawing Wendolyn’s eyes open.
And a stinging light pours into the room.
Wendolyn shields her eyes, which burn from the torchlight after so much darkness. She slowly spreads her fingers open across her eyes to reveal one of the saurians entering the cell. It is the one missing both of his ears.
“What do you want with me!?!” Wendolyn yells at the saurian, her voice stifled as it is reborn in her throat.
Without speaking a word, the saurian moves to her, bends down, and grabs her with his monstrous hands.
◆◆◆
Wendolyn is strapped to a stone table in a cavernous room, torchlight flickering off the jagged black rock of the walls. She cannot lift her legs. Or her arms. Her head is the only part of her body she can move.
The vast room is round, and the curved walls are crowded with bird cages, each holding one of the darklings. With their black plumage in such close agreement with the shadows, it is difficult for Wendolyn to determine how many there are; but the stacked cages reach the high ceiling.
And as Wendolyn strains her neck to the right, she sees that there is no floor to the room -- not one that she can see. Instead, the circular room descends into a dark pit, one that appears to have no bottom.
Meanwhile, the stone slab that holds Wendolyn rests on a platform in the center of this room, a thin walkway leading to an arched doorway, where the saurians stand sentinel.
At her side, within reach if only her arms were free, there is a smooth black orb. It is the size of her own head, perhaps slightly bigger, and it rests on a stone pedestal. Its glassy surface reflects the flickering torchlight. And within the scintillant orb, Wendolyn can see part of her own reflection. She can see her knuckles, marked by a latticework of gashes and dried blood from when she pounded on the walls of her cell. She can also see her chin and her shoulder.
And on her shoulder, she can see her birthmark peeking out from her tattered shirt.
Suddenly, all of the birds come alive at once, flapping and cawing with a chilling excitement, their harsh cries echoing above and below Wendolyn. She turns her head back to the archway, where she sees Waldron has entered.
The darklings are welcoming their master.
Fear finds her throat as the cloaked figure slowly moves along the thin walkway until he reaches her side, where he stands over her on the platform, his glowing red eye peering at her, the mask hidden in the shadow of his cowl.
He raises his hand above his head and makes a fist, and the birds fall silent again.
“You will forgive me for leaving you so long in that cell,” he says, his gravelly voice mocking his own apology. “But it was necessary. You see, only once you live in the shadows can you see that it is the light that conceals evil from our eyes, not the darkness as we were told.”
“Who are you?” Wendolyn asks, unable to stop her voice from shaking.
“I am Waldron,” he says in a measured voice, revealing to Wendolyn a name she already knew. But what she does not know is who he is; from where he comes; and what it is he wants from her.
Then, after a long pause, Waldron reaches a hand out, touching her cheek with the back of his rough finger.
“Wendolyn,” he says, almost whispering to himself.
Hearing the cloaked figure say her name so intimately -- and feeling the chilling touch of his finger on her face -- it is like a spider slowly crawling up her spine.
“Welcome. This is the Memory Chamber,” he says, his arms gesturing to the cavernous room. “I have been anticipating this moment for some time now, looking forward to having you on this table.”
Waldron moves around the table as he continues, forcing Wendolyn to strain her neck to see him as he speaks from behind the cowl: “You should know I have expended great effort for many years to find you and your kind.”
Her kind?
A memory flashes in her mind of her father’s words to her in the cottage: You carry a power within you.
Wendolyn wishes she knew the secrets that her father kept from her until it was too late. She remembers that very night she was taken, when he said to her back at the cabin, “I will tell you more when the sun comes up.”
But for Wendolyn’s father, the sun never came up again. And now Wendolyn is left without knowing who she really is.
Waldron stops on the other side of her, standing next to the black orb.
Then, with a wave of his hand, Waldron opens the door of a cage far above them. Wendolyn is reminded that Waldron can control things with his mind, as he did in the forest when he trapped her and her father in the prison of trees.
With his foreign tongue, Waldron calls out to the darkling in its open cage, now flapping its wings and cawing with excitement.
And then the single, chosen bird flutters from the cage and wings its way to a perch next to Waldron on the platform, where it waits obediently. Like the birds from the forest, this one has a numbered collar. And the symbol that worried her father:
⍦
With another wave of his hand, the other birds reclaim their silence.
Wendolyn watches as Waldron touches one hand to the crown of the tamed bird’s head, and then touches his other hand to the black orb.
“From the darkness, I searched the Earth for you,” he says, and suddenly a moving image appears on the face of the orb.
To Wendolyn’s shock, it is an image of her against the tree in the Cumbrian forest, staring up from the snow-covered ground. It is as if someone is watching her from a high vantage.
And then she remembers: the bird. It was staring down at her while she was hiding from Landon and Galen -- while she was playing Sanctuary with her friends from the village. It was the day her friends first feared her, and the day she began to fear herself.
“How did you--?” Wendolyn’s confusion blocks her from finishing her question. She has never seen such dark magic, if that is what this is.
“This is the Rune Stone,” Waldron says, indicating the black orb. “It is an ancient tool of my people. With this stone, a person can see inside a mind.”
Wendolyn has heard children in the village speak of the magical race known as Runes. But only as relics of an age long ago.
“The darklings and the Runes have a relationship that stretches far back into time. They have a memory greater than most men, and the Rune Stone allows me to see those memories," Waldron explains. “These birds are my scouts. Whatever they see, I can see.”
He moves his hand across the darkling’s head, and then a new image magically appears on the orb. It is Wendolyn again, standing near the lake at night, the hot wind leaving her fingers and then stripping the bark off the trees.
It is haunting, watching herself through another’s eyes. And seeing the wind leave her fingers before she fell to the ground and vomited.
So it did happen.
“For years, my darklings searched everywhere for you,” Waldron continues. “I sent them far beyond the Realm, thinking that the Caemon would never risk hiding you within the walls of the Northern Barrier. But all the while you were being hidden in plain sight. A rabbit hiding in the jackal’s den. And now that you are here, my little rabbit, I can finally ask you the question I have been longing to know the answer to.”
Yes, Wendolyn thinks, tell me why I am here.
“Where is the staff?” Waldron asks.
What staff? Wendolyn asks in her mind, although the words do not leave her lips. She knows not of the staff he speaks. And this gives her an idea: perhaps Waldron has mistaken her for someone else.
Hope blooms in her throat.
“I do not know what staff you speak of,” Wendolyn says. “You have the wrong person. Please, just let me go.”
Waldron’s shoulders fall, and he subtly shakes his head. “Wendolyn, you disappoint me with your lies.”
“I am not lying!” Wendolyn protests.
“You have a choice,” Waldron says. “You can give me the location of the staff. Or I will find it within your mind myself.”
As Waldron speaks, he removes his hand from the crown of the bird’s head, then floats his fingers above Wendolyn’s forehead.
“You have to believe me, I do not know!” Wendolyn cries.
“We shall see.”
And as Waldron’s finger touches her temple…
Pain.
Like Wendolyn has never felt before, and never imagined possible.
It is like lightning piercing her skin and then shooting through the length of her body. Wendolyn’s arms and legs spasm violently and uncontrollably, testing the limits of the straps that bind her to the table.
Her bones burn from within.
Her eyes feel as though they are being stabbed by a thousand tiny pins.
Wendolyn’s spasm throws her head to the side, and she vomits. Her stomach feels raw. Bile stings her throat.
When she finally opens her eyes again, she can see the Rune Stone. On its surface, she sees her father, his image shaking because of her quivering body.
Through her trembling vision, she sees:
Her father turning back to her, his eyes glowing with the reflection of their burning cottage. He is pulling her along against her will.
The memory vanishes and Wendolyn’s body writhes in pain.
“Stop it!” Wendolyn cries out to Waldron, desperately wanting the pain to end.
But he does not stop. Instead, he moves his finger along her forehead, and the pain worsens, like a knife slicing into her mind.
When his finger stops, a new memory appears on the glassy stone.
Wendolyn and her father are trapped in the prison of trees. Her father is shielding her from Waldron and the saurians. And then he is whispering something to her: “Wendolyn, you have a great weight that sits upon your shoulders. Never forget this.”
As Wendolyn lies on the table, writhing, tears spill down her cheeks upon seeing her father. It was the last time she saw him. And now she is reliving the pain of losing him, while also enduring the torture of Waldron’s searing touch.
She unleashes a scream upon the room, one that could splinter rock. To Wendolyn, she believes it is the last scream that will ever leave her mouth. This pain is killing her. Her soul is fracturing. And shortly, there will be nothing left inside of her.
And then everything stops.
Her body goes still.
Waldron stands over Wendolyn, having removed his finger from her forehead.
“That is enough for now,” he says.
The tears continue to leak from her eyes as the image of her father -- gone from the Rune Stone -- remains in her mind.
“You killed him,” Wendolyn says weakly. “You murdered my father.”
As Wendolyn says these words aloud, she knows it is true. Her father is dead.
“The Caemon knew such a fate was possible when he swore to protect you. I gave him a choice. He chose death. Admirable for a man not of your blood.”
Wendolyn refuses to believe the meaning behind his words.
Waldron seems to read her mind, the red eye seeing through her: “In time, you will believe it. You already know the truth. It is simply hiding. It is already there, buried deep inside that mind of yours. And together, we will plumb those depths. We will find the answers I seek.”
With those words, Waldron turns from the table and leaves the room, the darklings coming to life again, cawing and flapping their wings, a discordant salute to their master.
But Wendolyn remains prostrate on the stone table. Her legs are numb. Her hands are trembling. She can hear the faint puff of her own breathing, but she does not feel alive.
Instead, she feels like one of the fish that she prepares for market. Her bones removed. Her flesh sliced off.
She is a gutted fish.
{Richard}
There is no turning back now. After two days of travel, Richard is passing through the Mori Gates, the only egress in the Northern Barrier for hundreds of miles in either direction. For the first time in his life, he is leaving the walled safety of the Realm and entering into the Beyond.
As his vision clears the Mori Gates, Richard’s first view of the Eternal Forest is restricted by the coin-sized hole in the wooden drum that has served as his secret conveyance these past two days.
Unbeknownst to Ivanhoe and the other two men chosen for the mission, El Cid and Loxley, Richard has stowed away with them in their supply wagon, tucked into one of the four barrels meant for rations. His limited view of the forest reminds him of the way his view of the world has long been limited by the castle walls.
When his father had told Richard that he could not join the search party to find the kidnapped girl, Richard knew he had to act quickly in order to escape the confines of the castle. That evening, knowing that Ivanhoe and the others were departing within the hour, Richard had begged off dinner with his father and mother, feigning a stomach illness. After telling his parents that he was retiring to his room for the remainder of the night, Richard instead slipped beyond the security of the guards and made his way to the King’s pantry, where he found the waiting supply containers destined for the mission.
That was the extent of Richard’s plan. He acted on impulse. He left no letter for his parents and he packed no weapon. In truth, he put no forethought into what he might do if his unwitting couriers suddenly discovered him in the barrel. And all he has with him are the clothes on his back, the saurian stone forgotten in his pocket, and the foolish wish to wipe away the disparaging sobriquet of the Poet Prince and prove that he is a leader worthy of the crown.
He also did not fully consider the discomfort of being folded inside of a barrel for going on three days. With his knees tucked into his chest, Richard wonders if he will ever be able to unbend them again.
Luckily, he has positioned himself so that he can observe the progress of the journey through the small aperture in the side of the container, which helps draw his mind away from the cramped living quarters. Were it not for the annular view of the world outside, he would have gone crazy in the first hour of the journey. Instead, he has been able to see trees and mountains and sky, by both sunlight and moonlight.
