A Prayer of Freaks and Sinners Read online

  Deena gave him a patient, tight lipped smile.

  "Do not worry, father. We have no problem not touching one another."

  Latherus sighed.

  "That's good. It is your doom to be together but forever apart."

  Alfred stood up assumed a pious demeanor.

  "I am a holy man, father. I have given myself to Angall, and forsaken such things. We are strangers, me and this...girl."

  Latherus sat back on his dirty step and picked up his water. He took a sip and his eyes became clear and focused.

  "Lord Angall is the light in the dark. You are each other's light in dark times to come. You both have such trials ahead. You will fight and die side by side a thousand times over. You are each other's reminder of why you fight. Remember that. Protect each other."

  Alfred and Deena looked at each other.

  Alfred could see the defiance and fighting spirit. He doubted a speck of friendliness lived within her. That suited him just fine. He would sooner understand the mind of Angall than that of a girl like this.

  5

  The aspirants stood in a high domed chamber in the heart of Ironghast.

  Around the rim of the circular room, ascending benches, creating an arena of sorts. Invar told them it was built as an oratory where visiting offshoots of the temple could come to debate the finer points of Angall's Riddles.

  Alfred thought it looked like a place to throw acolytes to the lions.

  It was lit, only one large standing candelabrum next to where Invar stood. He glared down at them. His bushy grey brows knitted together.

  "You will be armed, when you enter the Torrent. But you heard what Latherus told you. What will shield you is your faith. Not in an esoteric or philosophical way. In a very real way."

  Alfred stood surveying his brothers and sisters. They looked as nervous as him. All except Deena, who jutted her chin with the same fiery determination she always had. Alfred took a measure of the others.

  Peyter, the big-boned flat faced youth with rotten teeth. He seemed like the bully of the bunch. He had singled Alfred out with jibes and jostling.

  Thank you Angall, thought Alfred.

  Farah, the freckled big toothed girl with wild straw coloured hair. She seemed to complain about everything but Alfred saw a mask for fear and doubt.

  Next to her stood Dunc, lithe and black haired, with sharp alert features. His accent cultured like an aristocrat's boy. Yet he wasn't haughty. He seemed like a born diplomat. Alfred felt he might be able to trust him.

  Alfred's gaze shifted along the line.

  Manzak, swarthy with searching dark eyes and knotted muscles. He walked with a sloping grace that warned of danger. Many gold rings studded his tanned ears and a single stud in his nose. Alfred knew him as a Rhyfian nomad. Hawkers and travelling tradesmen, who despite their seedy reputation, well known as being devout of Angall. He stood apart from the others, defensive.

  Last in line, Sebastian. Tall and blonde, with sculpted cheekbones and startling grey eyes. He looked at the others like an athlete sizing up the competition. Sebastian looked stronger than all of them together, save perhaps Manzak. Alfred felt in his bones that Sebastian would walk over his crippled body to reach the prize.

  As motley a group of crusaders as could ever be assembled. Not one of them had anything in common, apart from a strange little-seen blessing and the fact that the King would have them all killed by his Witchfinders.

  Alfred didn't trust them as people, yet there was a strange crackling bond between them. As if when in proximity to each other, their blessings ignited. The solitary candles joined to become a greater flame. It felt like a tingling in the skin and all the hairs on Alfred's arms stood up. He felt a warm flickering in his heart and an almost tangible charge in the air. He had to fight not to let his throat and eyes glow with dawning magic.

  Alfred was sure that the others felt it too, almost too intimate a sensation to speak of aloud. He had felt it when close to Deena down in Latherus's room.

  That was an awkward moment, he thought.

  In those moments it felt not like individual blessings but one shared by all. Alfred thought of what Latherus had said to them in his chamber.

  That much magic will explode like a falling star.

  Alfred wondered if the blessing had been separated like that into several bodies because it could not be contained in one. Perhaps why he and Deena could never touch once they had communed with their angels?

  Alfred found himself imagining the feel of her pale skin against his, like some demon tempting his soul. He bit down hard on his lip.

  Focus, for Angall's sake!

  Invar stood tall with his hands behind his back. The last soldier from an eradicated order, trying to beat the new recruits into shape. To then send them on the greatest mission of their lives. He looked a foot taller and his eyes bright in the candlelight. What had once seemed shapeless bulk beneath his robes now shown as seasoned muscle. Alfred had spent a lot of time with the old paladin in the past weeks, but in all that time Invar had given little away about his past.

  Alfred knew the story of how his master Ulric Godwine had entrusted him with the last Manticore egg during the purges over forty years ago. But after that, in the time between the escape from the battle and reaching Ironghast, Invar rarely spoke.

  Now Invar Ironbound stood before them and looked grim in the candlelight.

  "You will have blades, but having taken you all through the basics, most of you are no bladesmen. Manzak, you show promise with your knives, but you are used to fighting cutpurses and vagabonds. Dunc, your family taught you some fencing, but there are no rules of etiquette where you are going. Sebastian, your arm is strong and you swing your axe well, but you let pride and rage get the better of you, it puts you off balance nine times out of ten. Farah, you are long limbed and fast, but you must find true aggression in your heart if you are to survive. Alfred, for a boy who had never picked up steel, you have surprised me with your potential. But you lack faith in yourself, and until you find it you will never be a Knight of the Blaze. Deena, I am not sure who taught you to fight, but it was the most scurrilous, vicious, amoral, underhanded, merciless brute in the entire world. But you are the size you are, girl, and no amount of heart can make up for your diminutive stature."

  Invar gave Deena a raised brow, hinting that he knew who had instructed her.

  Deena clenched her jaw and smiled back.

  "It was a long journey to Ironghast master Invar, with many challenges through dangerous lands. My captain taught me well."

  Invar grunted and nodded.

  "Well, your mentor and protector, Captain Blackweather, had kindly volunteered to help us with this next phase of your development."

  Alfred heard the collective quiet gasp from the line. They all remembered the giant beast that had accompanied Deena to Ironghast. But to his surprise Alfred noticed that Deena most of all showed her nerves. This rattled Alfred more than anything, because she was the only one who knew the quality of the monstrous pirate.

  Alfred could also see Invar not best pleased with this arrangement, and that it had been handed down to him by higher authority.

  The paladin and the pirate had almost come to death blows within the first moments of meeting, which increased the tension in the room ever more. The aspirants stood nervous and shuffling in their line. Invar glanced at each of them in turn.

  "Steel will not get you through the darkness of the Torrent. Angall is the light in dark places, and you must learn to direct and summon your blessing in more ways than just a cinder to ignite a candle."

  Alfred had a flash of memory, of a time falling hard onto the flagstones of his seminary school, in the altar of the sacred flame. So shocked that first occasion he had breathed the fiery mote from his throat. He had been hungover that morning, and had no inkling that his momentary display of sorcery would lead him here.

  Now he stood in front of the last Knight of the Blaze, drawing up his courage for what a
mounted to a faith-imbued suicide mission. Alfred had always scorned the idea of heroism and the notion of crusade even more. And now dreading whatever Invar had planned for them.

  The paladin's gruff voice called out.

  "I want each of you to centre the feeling of Angall's Whisper in your hearts. Feel it swell behind your ribs like a bonfire inhaled. But do not let it loose as mere cinder. I want you to stow it there within you. Control it and shape it. The potential of it. You all think that first cinder the limit of your blessing, but all wrong. All great blazes are begun with a single cinder. Once you are communed with your angel and mastered of your blessing, I tell you that you will all breathe flame like dragons. A cleansing holy fire that will burn the scourge of the Sorrow from this earth!"

  The nervous aspirants all took in deep breaths and attempted to calm their minds. Not easy with hearts like hammers. They didn't want to fail whatever test being put in front of them. They didn't want to embarrass themselves in front of each other. Most of all they just did not want to die.

  Alfred gathered his blessing within his chest. He felt it condense like thick hot smoke. At first his natural instinct to cough it out as he had done so many times before. Let the tiny cinder drift out of his mouth and guide itself to where it wanted to go. But he resisted the urge. He glanced over and saw Deena the same. Her cheeks puffed out and her hand over her mouth, willing herself not to breathe out the magic. A funny image and Alfred had a momentary hiccup of laughter that almost caused him to burp out the mote. Deena noticed this and had to suppress her own moment of laughter. For a split second they held each other's gaze, caught in the moment of their own ridiculous predicament.

  In that instant, the serious nature of their training, the sickening fear they felt at the impending quest, the constant threat of being hunted by Witchfinders, it all faded to nothing. Just two young people, trying not to look foolish and failing. The first time Alfred had seen anything close to a smile on her face.

  Then the moment passed. She gave him a nod and wide-eyed gesture that said stop it I'm trying to concentrate!

  Alfred looked away as he needed every bit of concentration to master this new manipulation. After a few moments it settled. He felt full like a paper lantern, and the warmth in his chest not unlike pride. But there held inside him, buoyant and alive.

  He looked around and the rest of the aspirants calmed down, starting to gain control. They ended up back in a loose line. Invar gave them a dark smile and grunted approval.

  "Good. A promising start. Look, I'm not here to tell you war stories, ladies and gentlemen. And I won't pretend to know what you will experience once you have communed with these slumbering angels that are as old as mountains. But I'll tell you what I learned from experience, as the last paladin on earth. If it can help you, it helps you. So let me be clear."

  The aspirants felt the strange collective communion bond them once again. A shared light, like huddling around a fire to share stories. Invar watched as their eyes glowed in unison. He nodded then continued.

  "As a young man, masterless and lost, I scoured the world for three years, until by chance I found an ancient reliquary buried deep in a desert. The material of that reliquary, which at first I thought the being's body, a shell it had drawn around it, like a hermit crab. That shell went on to become my armour, and my sword. The thing within a being of pure light and magic. Beautiful! Like nothing I had ever seen or imagined. The clues to reach it given to me in a letter by my master Ulric Godwine, before he died. There but a sliver of angelic power left within it. Like the last dregs in a wine bottle. Who knows how long it has been there or how much had evaporated over the centuries. I will not bore you with how many secrets I had to unravel to know its location. Or how many men and misadventures tried to kill me trying to reach it. I say like the dregs of a wine, but breathing wine. This angelic life is unlike anything we understand as living. But it is conscious and alive. Even the smallest droplet of it. In that way, blasphemous though it is to say it, the angelic life is not that different to the Sorrow. It does not have eyes or heart or limbs as we do. But each droplet of it is alive as an entire being. The more there is, the stronger it is, but even a raindrop of it is a whole mind. Does that make sense?"

  The aspirants nodded but in truth few of them could grasp this concept quite yet. Invar continued.

  "Their minds are not like ours. Sometimes they can seem heartless or cruel. I think our minds confuse them. Once we absorb them, they cease to be conscious creatures. They lose their form as when we melt honey in hot tea. We will only know them afterwards in our dreams and visions. They live in the deepest part of our minds."

  Alfred felt a burden of responsibility on his shoulders at what he was being sent to do. The same responsibility he had shirked all his life. He noticed that Deena almost in rapture, absorbed in the magnitude of Invar's story. The paladin continued.

  "Them being living things is where the danger lies. You cannot choose to commune with it. It must choose you. It can see deep into your very soul and know all your secrets and flaws. If you are not strong enough a vessel, or are deemed unworthy for any reason, even reasons only the gods would understand, then it will consume you in a fire hotter than the sun. Even your ghost will be reduced to ashes."

  This sent a collective shiver through the aspirants. Yet the warmth of their shared blessing bolstered them, gave them courage. Alfred thought he could hear the emotions of the group, as colours and sounds.

  Invar regarded them all and then ran his fingers across the tops of the candles nestled in the candelabra next to him. The flames flickered and danced.

  "So now to the subject of holy light. You all feel it now, gathered like a little storm inside your chests?"

  The aspirants nodded.

  "That light is the true source of your power. Every paladin is blessed with the Magus Heart above their liver. It is the vessel in our body that absorbs this holy light. It's the only thing that gives us a chance to survive communion. But you all have something else as well, in the form of Angall's Whisper. What you have inside you is more than a key that unlocks a door. That little spark does more than gain you entry to the Torrent. It is the vital spark that will wake these dormant angels that have slumbered for millennia. Once you are communed, if you survive, the light within guides sword and arrow, even in untrained hands. It gives arms strength and legs speed. It will give you visions and premonitions of danger. It will seal your wounds, and keep you warm in a blizzard. It will give you sustenance instead of food, and keep you rested in lieu of sleep. All this given to me, in its own small way, and but a droplet of one of these beings. No paladin ever knew more. What lies beneath the ruins of that city hidden within the Torrent, is something no Knight of the Blaze ever saw. Whole, intact celestial beings of pure holy light. The generals of the heavens. They will commune with you, or they will destroy you. But if you are blessed by them, you will each become paladins of such grandeur. If your bodies and minds survive the process, you will have the very light of Angall himself inside you. You will be the light in the dark for us all. And let the Sorrow beware."

  Alfred knew that if anyone erupted into a ball of holy flame, it would be him.

  He almost laughed the dark bitter laugh of the damned. Then he caught sight of Deena. She stood tall and straight, her blue eyes wide in rapture. As if she having a vision of the communion to come, the closest any living being could come to God.

  If anyone can survive infusion with the Holy Spirit, it's her, thought Alfred.

  Alfred decided in that moment that if his courage wavered for himself, he would find it for her. He did not expect to survive this mission. He knew that from the start. But he would see her there to the end if it took his final breath. Even as he thought this, his legs regained their strength and he stood taller. He focused on the blessing inside him and listened as Invar finished his lesson.

  "And now let me tell you about your limitations. Yes, despite your strengths, you will have some. The light
will change you, but it is still limited by its host. That's you lot. It may be pure and perfect, but you all are not. It's only way to gain corporeal form is to mesh with yours, yet the flesh is the flesh. Channeling such holy power will exhaust you, tiredness like you have never felt. Your body is the air that the holy flame needs to breathe. But it is too much for mortals like us to sustain."

  Alfred thought he understood.

  "You're saying we cannot use the power of light for long?"

  Invar nodded.

  "As your own strength fades, it will fade. The more concentrated power you use, the quicker you will exhaust it. It is a finite resource for you, and you will need time to recover and replenish it within you. What I made you do at the start of this lesson, by breathing it in and holding it within you, is how you replenish it. You are vulnerable during this time. So within the Torrent and when fighting the Sorrow you must work together, time your use of power so that you can protect each other. Because if the beasts come for you, they will smell your weakness, and that is when they will pounce."

  Alfred and the rest of the aspirants glanced at each other. Sizing each other up and building unspoken alliances. They might never have met under any other circumstances of life. They may hate one another and never be friends.

  Yet they were dead without each other.

  Invar's face became even darker than usual. His mouth turned down beneath the heavy grey beard and his eyes shifted off to the doors.

  "And now, for the practical side of today's lesson. I can sense the presence of our guest teacher for the day. Are you ready for the rules?"

  The double doors to the chamber creaked open. In the darkened hallway beyond something lurked. Something monstrous that breathed like a bear. The aspirants all tried to remain calm but the fear and sweat showed on their faces. Only Deena seemed to go calm. As if she had been tested by such monsters before. Invar spoke husky and low.