A Prayer of Hope and Bones Read online

  "Lord Invar. Would you like some broth? It's onion and leek. It's more water than solid, but I keep a pinch of salt with me in a tin, that'll liven it right up."

  Invar looked at the rat catcher, Middigan. The man's hunched sinewy frame was huddled in a filthy robe. His gap tooth smile honest and warm. Invar waved his hand while his belly rumbled.

  "Save it for those are weakest, Middigan. We all need to be able to walk out of here on our own feet, come the hour."

  Middigan screwed up his ugly face. He assessed the huge paladin in front of him.

  "Begging your pardon, Milord, but you look like you could do with a bit of sustenance yourself. You're the one needs to lead us out of here, and you can't do if I need to carry you. Truth be told I don't think I could bear your weight. You're like a bull on two legs."

  Invar peered over Middigan's shoulder at the citizens of Crowburgh. Scared and drawn in the dim light. He glanced down at the ratcatcher.

  "How is everyone holding up?"

  Middigan lowered his voice.

  "They're frightened milord. No one here seen any kind of sorcery in decades, if at all. Now in the space of a night, myths out of storybooks have jumped out the pages at us and are trying to eat us. It's a lot for people to take in."

  Invar felt a wave of nausea, but steadied himself on his sword.

  "Lived here all your days, Middigan?"

  The ratcatcher nodded.

  "Yes, these walls and streets are my home."

  Invar's look was grave beneath bushy brows.

  "You know the secret ways through the city? You can get me to the temple of Angall?"

  The old ratcatcher looked puzzled.

  "Yes milord. There are ways. But with respect, I do not think god will help us survive."

  Invar rested a heavy gauntlet on the old man's narrow shoulders.

  "No Middigan, but he left us the means to stand for ourselves."

  Middigan glanced over his shoulder at the fearful citizenry of Crowburgh.

  "I'll do my bit, sir. This is my home. It's stood a long time and I want it to stand another thousand years. "

  Invar smiled at Middigan, despite his pain.

  "Everyone knows you. Everyone greets you. But no one knows you are different?"

  Middigan shrugged.

  "They're decent enough folks in Crowburgh, milord. But I think my affliction would test the kindness of even these good folks. Learned to be subtle, and use my gifts to help keep the place vermin-free."

  Invar leaned in close and nodded to the old man.

  "You're not afflicted, Middigan. To have the Magus within you is a blessing. It's a gift."

  The ratcatcher's eyes were sad.

  "It made your life easier milord? To have the light within you?"

  Invar thought about his long life. It had been one continuous battle against a force even the gods could not defeat.

  "I wouldn't say easier."

  Middigan slurped a spoonful of soup and shrugged.

  "Doesn't sound like a gift to me."

  Invar found himself laughing at Middigan's words. He had met few less educated men and few wiser. He leaned in close.

  "These creatures. These servants of the Sorrow. They are not here for you or for the people of Crowburgh."

  Middigan sat down and slurped his soup. He dunked a stale corner of bread into the broth and bit into it. Greasy liquid ran down his grey whiskers.

  "What do they want?"

  Middigan offered a morsel of the loaf to the old paladin. Invar stared at it took the bread and bit into it. His stomach wanted to reject the sustenance but he held it down.

  "They want something is hidden here. In the temple of Angall on the hill. They can sense the light from it and it frightens them as much as it drives them insane with hunger."

  "What is it?"

  "It is prayer. A page from an old book of prayer Angall himself wrote. For reasons lost it was removed and lain dormant under the temple of Angall here in Crowburgh for centuries. It can be used to kill the Green King, the plaguelord of the Sorrow who wages war against us. It can halt this war before it ravages across the world."

  The ratcatcher shook his head and swallowed the stale bread.

  "I am no sage milord, and know little of magic. But I know such a spell would tear apart any who tried to use it. Magus Heart or not within them.”

  Invar thought of Alfred. He had felt guilt leaving to lad to enter the Torrent with so little training and so little hope. But a sliver of hope was about all they had left. He wondered if the acolyte was still alive.

  "There is one can use it. I don't know if he is still alive, or if I can get the page to him in time. But at my age, I have to take a few things on faith."

  Middigan set his wooden bowl down on a barrel. He stood and brushed the crumbs from his dirty garb.

  "I can help you. I know all the secret routes. But these people? They need our protection."

  Invar shook his head.

  "We cannot fight all these beasts. There are too many and I am weakened. But these creatures, like everything born of the Sorrow, are addicted to the taste of magic. It is madness to them. If I can find this lost page, I am certain they will follow it. They will not be able to resist. The people here are not what the Sorrow wants. If I get the page I believe I can draw them away from here. If I ride hard, I can make it to Ironghast and get the prayer to my Order. There we can make a stand. As one with the Magus, there is a place for you there too. With your own kind."

  Middigan gulped and glanced at the wooden door to the cellar where they hid.

  "I can help you. I can help lead them away from here. These beasts would come after me as they come for you?"

  Invar nodded.

  "They would. The magic in you, however small, is irresistible to them."

  Middigan ran a hand across his grey stubble. He squared his narrow shoulders at the knight.

  "Well, it's nice to feel wanted."

  Invar smiled and struggled to his feet. He felt the poison coursing through his blood, draining his strength. He did not know how long he had left. Middigan held his elbow to steady him. He glanced over his shoulder to ensure the citizens could not see, and whispered to Invar.

  "One more thing, milord."

  Invar cracked his neck and took a deep breath.

  "Yes Middigan."

  "I think I may have an idea can get a few of these vermin off our back. We all have our talents. I am no paladin who can channel holy magic. I am however, somewhat of a specialist in killing rats."

  3

  Alfred was alone in his quarters in Ironghast, contemplating his strange becoming.

  The fire burned low in the hearth. The monks left him a supper of black bread and strong cheese, but when he smelled it all appetite left him. Alfred was surprised there was no rumbling in his stomach, no weakness in his limbs. He could not remember the last time he had sat down to a proper meal. He should be ravenous. Yet he no longer needed it.

  He lay down on the straw mattress when he arrived back in his room, but all he did was stare at the fire until it burned down to embers, his eyes as wide as saucers. He was not the least bit tired. So he got up and threw another log on the fire.

  The eldritch armour stood alone in the corner. When he had entered his room and closed the door, it prized open like a clamshell, allowing him to walk free. He had turned back to it, expecting it to talk to him.

  But it was just lifeless metal.

  Alfred's father had long been a clockmaker in Durn. He grew up in a house full of springs and cogs, intricate machinery with moving parts. He was accustomed to complexity in a way most people in the realm were not.

  Alfred had expected the armour to be some variation of this. A level of engineering only the gods could forge. He peered inside the open armour, looking for a contraption. There was nothing.

  Inside it was just smooth polished metal. He stood before the open metal shell, pondering its nature. He ran a finger over the surface of th
e separated breastplate.

  Not steel or iron, not silver or gold. It was light and strong. A chunk of rock the size of Alfred's head had bounced off the helmet and he felt nothing. Not even the vibrations through the metal. Memories returned after he awoke amongst the rubble. The battle beneath the ruined city. The horror of the Sorrow as it warped life itself to use as puppets. He thought of the celestial beings themselves, the objective of their long quest.

  Alfred had not known what to expect. Angelic beings were unknowable. How could anyone imagine the nature of something created amongst the stars by the gods? Beings with a single uncluttered purpose. The entity he had communed with, he had absorbed inside his own body, was spiritual in nature. Holy light personified. Having no physical form, Alfred could not imagine any sword or arrow harming it.

  So why the armor?

  Alfred inspected the Angallic script was etched into every inch of the armour. Even for Alfred, perhaps the one person whose gift allowed him to read the language, it was a riddle. But the more parts he read the more made sense. He ran his finger up a line of deep glowing writing on the arm.

  It's a blessing of binding.

  He crouched down and examined swirling scripture on the left calf. The metal was worked to resemble an open scroll.

  It's a blessing of constraint.

  Alfred started to understand. The armour was not there to protect the angelic being. It was not simply a means to deflect sword and stone. Alfred stood and spoke aloud.

  "This armour exists to contain the power of what is inside, not to protect it."

  The next question was obvious. It sent a chill down Alfred's spine.

  What is happening to me that requires this many blessings to contain it?

  A polished copper mirror stood against one wall of Alfred's quarters. He left the armour and walked across to it. Staring back at him was something the same shape as the young priest who had left the seminary in Old Vassonia. He wore the same black robes, but now they were tattered, patched and faded ashen grey. Yet now Manzak's jest rang true.

  I do look taller.

  The mirror was not smooth and the low fire in the hearth played tricks on the polished surface. But Alfred could still see he was changing with each passing hour. He thought he looked like a specter of Ironghast. His face so pale and smooth it looked like a mummer's mask. He touched the skin and leaned in close. It did give off a pale glow. His eyes caught the light. There was a shine to them, orbs of polished glass.

  Alfred had given in to many weaknesses in his young life. Lured to drinking, lust, gambling and feasting, but never vanity. He was decent looking young man, with lively blue eyes and unruly black hair, but he was no prince among men. Yet now he found the firelight playing off his marble skin the most fascinating thing in the world. It was not vanity. He found everything he looked at fascinating. Alfred stepped back and pulled his rough robes over his head, letting them fall to the floor. He stood there barefoot and bare-chested, with only woolen hosen covering his lower half. Hard labor was something Alfred had preferred to avoid most of his young life. While his brothers climbed trees or wrestled, Alfred had preferred to sit under a tree with a book.

  Life at the seminary in Old Vassonia had been austere at times and the food plain, but it was not demanding. Besides, Alfred had spent most of his time either sneaking off to the library or smuggling in a bottle of wine and getting drunk as he read by candlelight. His physique reflected this lifestyle. So he did not recognize the half-naked young man looking back at him in the copper mirror.

  If he thought his face looked like it belonged on a marble statue, his body now made a fine sculptor's muse. Every muscle defined in pure white. Shadows played on the lines of his torso and arms, deepening them. He looked like a statue celebrating a great battle. He traced his fingers across what had been a soft stomach. Now it rippled as hard as oak. The lines down his sides dipped beneath his hosen were like valleys. But the celestial spirit inside him was not finished rebuilding Alfred.

  He could feel a churning in every fiber of his being. His internal workings moved as some metamorphosis repurposed old apparatus. Alfred was seized by a moment and he flexed his new limbs, opening and closing his hands to feel the power. He threw out a fist at the copper mirror.

  He stood staring as the metal reverberated like a tolling bell.

  The dent in the copper was three inches deep and distorted reflections around it. Alfred stared at his unblemished white fist. He felt no pain. He noticed a few motes of holy light drifting around his fist like tiny moons around a world. They flared brighter for a moment and faded to nothing.

  Alfred Sorrowhammer.

  Alfred spun around. He searched the shadows of the room for the voice but knew it came from within. The same voice from his strange dream of death in the Torrent. The bizarre crystalline structure spoke to him with a voice like glass. He turned back to the distorted mirror.

  "What have you done to me? What is happening?"

  I am improving you. To better serve the Light. I am dying so you may live to fight.

  “Are you awake inside me?"

  Only while I am building. Once I am done, I will sleep within you for a thousand years. I will flow dreaming through your blood like wine.

  Alfred blinked his crystal eyes at the mirror. He could not imagine a thousand years.

  "I find it hard to imagine surviving past tomorrow, spirit."

  Your days will be long. Much work to do.

  "I still...don't know what is expected of me.”

  There was a moment's silence. The metallic voice boomed again inside his head.

  I am repurposing you, Alfred Sorrowhammer. When I am done, your new purpose is to cleanse.

  Alfred stared confused. It was a difficult thing to have a conversation with a mirror He wondered if the recent trauma had driven Deena and Manzak insane too.

  "Cleanse what?"

  Impurity.

  Alfred could not help a short bitter laugh at the mirror.

  "Have you seen the world, spirit? It's pretty impure."

  You will be busy.

  Alfred had a worrying thought. He glanced over his shoulder at the armour the celestial had fashioned for him.

  "Am I a danger to the good people here? The monks and the other refugees? That armour is your old skin. It has many blessings of containment."

  You are a danger.

  "To what?"

  To everything demonic or undead. To everything tainted with the Sorrow. To impurity. You will show it no compassion or mercy.

  Alfred sensed this ancient spirit was both wise and simple. Angall had fashioned it for a single purpose. To rid the universe of the Sorrow. Cleansing was all it understood.

  "I don't want to be a danger to people I care about here. I want to save people from the Sorrow. Not be an executioner."

  You are the thing the Sorrow fears. Without compromise. Without mercy. Without rest. Without doubt.

  Alfred remembered something Invar had told him, and Invar's master had told him in turn when he was a squire.

  "Invar Ironbound told me once doubt is what makes us human. To question our actions and righteousness. It's what stops us becoming tyrants and crusaders."

  I am made without doubt. I know what the Sorrow does. I have seen it turn worlds into rocks. Stopping it is my only purpose.

  Alfred stood straight. He was feeling stronger and more filled with holy light by the moment.

  "I want to stop it too."

  They are coming. They are many. Be ready.

  "You can't sleep either, Alfred?"

  Alfred felt the girl's voice calling him as if from deep sleep. He blinked and turned to see Deena standing in the doorway.

  She looked ethereal and terrifying. A moving statue. The jewels of her eyes shone and her hair was bright as fresh blood. Alfred felt the strange warmth kindle in his chest that grew whenever blessed were in proximity. He also felt an all too human twinge of lust and butterflies seeing Deena in her silk robe.
The white garment clung to her athletic frame and shimmered in an unseen breeze.

  "Deena. You look..."

  She smiled at him as she looked him up and down.

  "As strange as you do?"

  Alfred felt self-conscious at his half nakedness. He picked up an overshirt and drew it over his head. It messed his black hair and he tried to smooth it down as Deena glided into the room. He cleared his throat and glanced at his reflection in the mirror. He walked to the window and gazed out into the moonlit Bleaks far below.

  "I tried. To sleep, I mean. Out of habit, or comfort maybe. Just to lose myself in a dream for a while. Away from all this war and blood. But I don't need to sleep. Perhaps I never will again.” He shrugged. “I will get a lot more books read, I suppose."

  Deena drew up beside him at the window and Alfred felt a twinge of excitement.

  "I spent the last three hours looking at a spider weaving a web into corner of my window. The silk absorbed the moonlight in a thousand ways. The spider's little legs were so busy and industrious. Such a purposed little creature. I couldn't stop looking at it. Everything is so..."

  Alfred watched a ragged cloud flit across the moon.

  "Fascinating?"

  "Infinitely."

  Alfred held up his hand and flexed strong fingers.

  "I think we are becoming purposed too, Deena."

  Deena reached out to her side and brushed Alfred's fingers with her own.

  "It is frightening, and beautiful."

  Alfred felt the furnace inside him roar. Raw golden sorcery surged through his veins.

  Like attracts like.

  Deena drew her hand back, but he knew she had felt the excitement.

  "We both had hard roads to get here, Alfred. We lost family and people who cared for us. Protected us because we were unable to protect ourselves. We were beaten, hunted. We were both small and weak on the outside no matter how strong we wanted to be on the inside. At the mercy of Witchfinders and armoured men. At the mercy of greed and violence. All I ever wanted to be was strong enough to fight back."