R. Salvatore - The Ancient

They’ll let me bleed out up here, above it, he reasoned, and he decided then that if the worm came under him he would cut free his ankle and drop upon it, all caution be damned!

That thought rang as a beacon of hope in his mind, turned his fear into action, into violence, as he had trained to do for all of his life.

But the worm reared up like a cobra, and before Olconna even appreciated that fact it lashed out.

Olconna tried to respond with the dagger, but so shocked was he that he didn’t even realize that his weapon arm was gone until he saw it disappearing into the awful beast’s mouth!

Now he screamed. There was nothing else. Just the pain and the helplessness-that was the worst of it for a man like Olconna.

No, not the worst. The worst of it were Vaughna’s echoing words, a creed for her, a lament for him: Every moment precious.

The worm took its time, lashing and tearing, and Olconna felt no less than six more stabbing and slashing bites before he finally slipped into that deepest darkness.

Cormack sat on the rail of the beached boat, his shoulders slumped as if all of the air had been sucked out of his lean body. Before him, Milkeila paced nervously back and forth, continually glancing at the surprising man in the black suit.

The man who had just informed them that their entire world was soon to be washed away.

“Are you to let him keep the soul stone?” Milkeila asked, pacing.

“It is your stone.”

The shaman stopped and turned on her lover curiously.

“I would counsel that you let him keep it,” Cormack decided. “It is the most important of gems, I agree, but if what Bransen says is true, then he is all but helpless without it.”

“And with it, he walks with the grace of a warrior,” Milkeila added as both watched the young man, who stood across the sandbar going through a series of movements and turns, the practice of a warrior, as brilliant and precise as anything either of them had ever seen. Cormack in particular appreciated Bransen’s movements, for his training in the arts martial as a young brother of the Order of Abelle had been extensive and complete.

Or so he had thought, but in watching Bransen, Cormack recognized an even deeper level of concentration than he had ever achieved, and by far.

“I believe his every word,” Milkeila admitted, and she seemed surprised by that statement. She turned to see Cormack nodding his agreement.

“It is too outrageous a story to not be true.” “We have to tell them-all of them,” said Milkeila. “Your people and mine.”

“And even Mcwigik’s,” Cormack added. “At the very least, Mithranidoon must be abandoned.”

Milkeila lamented, “A wall of falling ice to wash us all away.”

Three Perspectives

On pain of death!” Brother Giavno said again, becoming dangerously animated. Out on rock-collection detail, Giavno and his two companions had been the first to note the approach of Cormack and the strange-looking man in the black suit of some exotic material-Giavno thought it was called “silk,” but as he had seen the stuff only once in his life, and many years before, he couldn’t be certain. The stranger wore a typical farmer’s hat, but Giavno noted some black fabric under that as well.

“Greetings to you, too,” Cormack replied.

“How can you be alive?” one of the other brothers asked, and Cormack tapped his beret.

“God’s will and good luck, I would say,” the fallen monk replied.

“You know nothing of God,” Giavno growled.

“Says the man who whipped him nearly to death,” Bransen, at Cormack’s side, quipped. “A godly act, indeed-at least, according to the mores of many Abellicans I have known. It is strange to me how much like Samhaists they seem.”

Giavno trembled and seemed about to explode. Behind him, over the rocky ridge, some other monks called out and soon a swarm of brothers was fast running toward the rocky beach.

“Why did you come here, Cormack?” Giavno asked, seeming as much concerned as outraged-a poignant reminder to Cormack that he and this man had once been friends. “You know the consequences.”

“You thought me already dead.”

“A death you earned with your treachery.”

“Your definition, not mine. I followed that which was in my heart, and many of the brothers here, I would wager, were glad of it. I find it difficult to comprehend that I was alone in my distaste for our imprisoning of the Alpinadorans.”

“What you find difficult to comprehend is that you make no rules here, or anywhere in the Church. If Father De Guilbe wished for your opinion on the matter, he would have asked. And he did not.”

“Ever the dutiful one, aren’t you?” Cormack replied, and Giavno narrowed his eyes.

“Alive?” came a shout from behind, and Father De Guilbe, surrounded by an armed entourage, appeared over the crest of the hill. “Are you mad to come back here?”

“How would I know differently?” Cormack asked. “I remember little beyond the sting of your mercy.”

“Play not coy with me, traitor,” said De Guilbe, and unlike Giavno, there wasn’t a hint of compassion or mercy in his tone. He turned to the nearest guards and said, “Take him.”

“I would not,” said the man standing beside Cormack.

Father De Guilbe dropped a withering gaze over him-except he did not shrink back in the least. “And who are you?”

“My name is Bransen, though that is of no consequence to you,” Bransen replied. “I am a man here not of my will, but of misfortune, and I come to you only to repay the debt that I owe to this man, and to the people of some of the other islands.”

De Guilbe shook his head as if not comprehending any of it, and Bransen let it go, for it was of no consequence.

“I bring a grave warning that your world is about to be washed away,” Bransen said. “It is my duty to tell you that, I suppose, but whether you choose to act upon it or not is of little consequence to me.”

A couple of the monks bristled, obviously focusing on the last part of his quip and not the more important announcement. Of the group, now twenty brothers, only a few raised their eyebrows in alarm, and even that became a past thought almost immediately, as one of Father De Guilbe’s entourage announced, pointing at Bransen, “He has a gemstone!”

Cormack glanced at Bransen in alarm, but the man from Pryd Town seemed bothered not at all.

“Is this true?” asked Father De Guilbe.

“If it is, it is none of your affair.”

“You walk a dangerous-”

“I walk where I choose to walk and how I choose to walk,” Bransen interrupted. “Feign no dominion over me, disingenuous old fool. My father was of your order, a brother of great accomplishment. No, not any accomplishment that you would understand or appreciate,” he answered De Guilbe’s curious look. “And more to your pity.”

“From Entel?” Father De Guilbe asked. “Your swarthy appearance bespeaks a Southern heritage.”

Bransen grinned knowingly at the obvious ploy.

“It matters not,” De Guilbe said. “You are here with a criminal and carrying contraband.”

“Contraband?” Bransen said with a mocking chuckle. “You presume to know how I came about this gemstone. You presume that I have a gemstone. You do not understand Jhesta Tu philosophy, yet pretend that you have any understanding of me, or of what I will do to your guards if you send them forth, or of how I will come back in the dark of night and easily defeat any defenses you construct, that you and I will speak more directly at your own bedside.”

It took a while for all of that to digest, and Giavno at last broke the uncomfortable silence by berating Cormack, “What have you brought to us?”