Colin Tabor - The Fall of Ossard

The noise of the crowd faded, but Inquisitor Anton waited for silence. Finally he addressed them, “People of Ossard, you live in grave times, the gravest, but know that I have come to put things right!

“You think the kidnappings are out of control, but they aren’t. It’s your faith that’s run amuck!

“What kind of city allows its people to grow so lax? What kind of people accepts it becoming so? Your home might be rich in coin, but it’s a pauper of devotion!

A lone voice yelled, “Saint Santana will save us!”

The Inquisitor’s face grew sharp with rage. “You have been deceived, there is no such saint! She is nothing but a fraud and vile heresy!

“It is the weak-willed and feeble-minded who are prepared to adopt a new saint on a whim that have allowed the cults to gain a foothold in your city. You have been fooled by the very people who are stealing your children!”

The crowd grumbled with several voices rising above the noise.

“They said Saint Baimio was a false prophet too!”

“Our faith is strong!”

“Saint Santana has kept my child safe!”

“The Lady fights with her blessing, we saw it!”

Inquisitor Anton turned to me and beckoned me forward.

So this was what he wanted me for.

I stepped up, nervous, half expecting him to denounce me. Behind me, Pedro moved closer in support, but Anton waved him back.

Maria looked to me with sad eyes while the air of unease grew.

Pedro stood anxiously. He could also feel it.

I whispered something to him that surprised me, “I love you.”

My husband, that tall, strong, and handsome man I’d always dreamed of, stood there with our daughter in his arms and tears in his eyes. He nodded, and for the first time in years no fear beshadowed him.

Something had grown between us, and not something to keep us apart, but something to bind us together. Regardless of what might come, right there and then I found some solace. It was as if, finally, we were a true family.

Inquisitor Anton turned to the crowd and said, “Before you stands Lady Juvela Liberigo, a symbol of this city. She is a Flet with a Heletian husband and name, and a mixed-blood daughter, little Maria. Many of you also believe that she is the servant of Saint Santana, I ask her now: Are you in the service of this so-called saint?”

The crowd fell silent for my answer.

So the Inquisitor wanted me to denounce Saint Santana, fine, simple enough. I cleared my throat and said, “I have never been in the service of the false saint, Saint Santana.”

“Had you ever heard of this fraudulent saint prior to the events of yesterday in which suspicious third parties anointed you her instrument?”

“No.”

“Would you describe yourself as a particularly spiritual person?”

I hesitated, not sure what answer he wanted. I’d promised my soul to Schoperde, and while he probably expected that, I doubted it was the revelation he was after. “My faith is strong and righteous, and it isn’t owed to any false saint.”

He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look angry. “And you have never, in any way, felt that you have been touched by the questionable power of this supposed saint?”

The vision of the huge eye watching over the city came back to haunt me. With a slight shiver, I couldn’t help but glance skywards. “No, never.”

“So your actions yesterday were your own, and not guided by divine power?”

“They were my own. I saw a mother crying for help and went to her aid.”

“Do you believe in Saint Santana, or that she is the protector of children?”

“No, she is a fraud.”

And the faces in the crowd began to drain of the little hope that had lit them.

Inquisitor Anton turned back to the packed square, raising his arms beseechingly. “You have been lied to! Cast aside your false relics and oleander. Krienta will look kindly on those of you who renounce your heresy, but only if you do it now!”

Across the square, oleander dropped to the cobblestones amidst the clatter of discarded amulets. Satisfied, the Inquisitor didn’t even bother to suppress a grin.

Then the sky winked.

In a moment everything changed.

A coldness rose in me to make my soul shiver. The voices within whispered in frightened tones, their fear making them quake.

Something terrible was coming, and then even the Inquisitor lost his grin.

I heard Pedro gasp behind me.

As I began to turn, the voices began whispering bittersweet sympathy, urging me to be brave. Then I heard Maria’s mind-voice, and she only had two words to say, “Bye, Mama.”

I turned to see Pedro staggering back as his arms tightened about Maria. They both stared with wide eyes at a swirling vortex of darkness that opened up in front of them.

“No!” I screamed.

The crowd cried out.

Beside me the Inquisitor turned to face the challenge.

The vortex sucked at the light, the dark within it chill and malicious. Out of it stepped the robed man I’d first seen almost five years ago, the cultist who’d taken the redheaded boy.

I hated him!

I yelled, “Get Maria away!” And then rushed forward to put my body between them.

Pedro stepped further back.

Behind me the Inquisitor chanted.

The robed man, calm and in control, looked straight at me. A hungry grin split his face to reveal bloodstained teeth. “We’re well past that now, we don’t just need children.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to me.

Was I his target?

Pedro called from behind, “Juvela!”

I looked over my shoulder.

Pedro stood with his arms pinned by four cultists while a fifth snatched Maria.

I turned my back on their leader to lunge for my daughter.

More blackness arose about me, not of vortexes, but swirling robes. We were outnumbered.

Sef charged through the ballroom, heading for the doors to the balcony. Despite his desperation, I knew he wouldn’t make it.

In the square below, the people of the city began retrieving their discarded oleander and amulets. A voice called out from amongst them, “The Lady of the Saint is forsaken!”

Something then hit me from behind to send me sprawling.

I blacked out for a moment, but then came to. Ignoring the pain, I tried to get back on my feet, only to realise that it was already too late.

A dozen cultists stood at the far end of the balcony with knives held to the throats of Lord and Lady Liberigo, and Pedro and Maria. Dark vortexes swirled about them, ready for their escape.

Pedro looked to me with fear in his eyes, and with my celestial vision I saw the colours of life drain out from him. I could see his fate; a pale, stiff, and cold body lying butchered and cursed, with his soul eaten by ritual magic.

Their leader strode past to join them. “We don’t just want children, now we need whole bloodlines.”

I cried out.

Inquisitor Anton stood behind me still chanting his prayer.

The cultist leader laughed and then ushered his people through their vortexes. I got up and leapt after them, but only succeeded in grazing myself on the balcony’s paving.

They were gone.

Sef cursed as he finally got through the doors.

The Inquisitor finished his prayer, one I now recognised as the litany for the dead. He’d never intended to stop them.

On my knees, I threw back my head and wailed. My heartfelt cry fell into the long and deep notes of Schoperde’s song of sorrow.

Anton cursed my heresy before kicking me in the back of the head.

The darkness that followed was a mercy.

I awoke in my parents’ home, nestled amidst the linen of my childhood, and in the familiar surroundings of my old room. My mother sat beside me mopping my brow with a cloth, while whispering for me to be still.