19.11.16

Sir Roger And The Witches - Prologue


   The tempest in her head had only worsened with time. When she had awakened that morning, the white noise and sharp colours would have fit inside a teacup. Now they spilled the brim, sticking to the inside of her skull and making a home there like rogue spiders. One look at her brother’s stiff face told her he had the sense of it too. Neither could say quite what it was. Neither knew what might make it go away. Wordlessly, as were most of their decisions made, they set out for the market as planned. All that could be done, came the silent decision, was to act normal, hard as that may be even without the stormy intrusion of the day.
   It had been her idea, and at her insistence. Go to town. See people. Meet them and talk to them. Her brother had opposed this, staunchly at first, but she’d worn him down slowly and surely. The straw that broke him had been the reminder of how their mother had lived and died; alone, friendless, both hateful and hated, in this very castle not a mile from town. He still had reservations about mingling with the common folk. With the ‘normals’. Though, these reservations were now outweighed by his fear of becoming the reviled hermit his mother had been.
   They had started with short walks along the main street. Then, long walks. Taking the leap to lunch at the inn had been a hard one, but they both survived relatively unscathed. After taking a few days off to recover, they tried the market in the town square. Now they went every week without fail. Her brother was still a bit lagging; he didn’t talk much, though this was true even when they were alone. He was working on ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. But he walked among the common folk almost invisibly now. She was proud of him, and of herself, and justifiably so. Breaking the eons-old barrier between humans and sorcerers was deserving of pride.
   Harvest season had truly begun; potatoes and pumpkins and apples and parsnips crept into the market stalls, replacing the summer berries bit by bit. One man had an orchard’s worth of apples, all shades and sizes, surrounding him like a fortress of fruit. She always enjoyed stopping by this stand. She didn’t feel any particular way about apples.
   There was no way of guessing how old he might be. His skin seemed too pale and smooth for a man who worked a farm. He appeared a dainty, freckled child that had somehow had children of his own. The youngest often stayed with him as he peddled, busying herself atop the counter with whatever she could lay her tiny hands on. As the tall dark woman approached, the baby looked up from her scattered pile of toys, face slack with the look of permanent wonder that all children possessed. Her father looked up as well, though he had the sense of mind to smile. He lifted his hat to his visitor, the tiny bouquet of feathers in the band riffling in the breeze.
   “Good morning, madam! How does the day find you?”
   She could see it in his eyes. She could always see it, and it always hurt. Behind the warmth and cheer on his face, there was fear. Worry. Uneasiness. Completely unconscious, she knew. People never knew why they felt anxious around her. She didn’t know the mechanism behind it, herself, but it was plain they could feel her wild energy. Though the hurt stung her heart, it was always assuaged by the gratitude she felt that they tried to hide their unease. She smiled graciously at his warm welcome.
   “Very well, sir. I am enjoying the weather. It is most pleasing.”
   She reached across the fields of apples on display, towards the small child staring at her in wonderment. She patted it twice on the head.
   “And good day to you, young one,” she intoned. The fear pulling at her aura loosened slightly, as the apple seller relaxed. He tensed immediately after as someone called him, not by name, but by title.
   “Dad! Dad!” A boy no older than five weaved his way through the crowd towards the apple seller’s stand. He leapt out of the throng, grabbed the wooden edge of the display and pulled himself up on his tiptoes to see the man of the hour. “Dad, can I have a penny?”
   The apple seller gave his tall, dark customer a knowing smile.
   “Pardon me,” he apologized, and leaned over to speak to the boy. “What’s it for, then?”
   “There’s a lady selling rock sugar,” said the boy sheepishly. His father stood straight and reached into his trouser pocket. He pulled out two pennies and dangled them in front of the boy, just out of reach of his eagerly extended hands.
   “You get two,” he ordered, “and bring one back here for your sister, alright?”
   “Okay,” said the boy, nearly dancing with excitement.
   “Anything else?”
   There was an infinitesimal pause.
   “Thank you,” came the hurried response. The apple seller dropped the pair of pennies into his son’s hands. The boy ran off, dodging the crowds like a pachinko ball.
   She had been formulating the words in her head all the while. She was glad for the boy’s interruption, as it gave her time to make them sound right.
   “You have beautiful children,” she said, slowly and carefully. “And so very polite. Your son is quite the gentleman.”
   His proud smile was a rich reward.
   “How kind of you to say, madam,” he said with a nod. “Unfortunately, I can’t take the credit. They got it from their mother.”
   She believed this to be a joke, and so offered a smile of her own. It went over smashingly. She slid a coin from the lining of her cloak and offered it to him.
   “May I take an apple ‘for the road’?”
   “Of course, madam.” He diverted his daughter’s attention towards their customer. Her unsure gaze followed his pointing finger.
   “Go on, then, sweet,” said the apple seller. “Give the nice lady an apple!”
   The baby looked to him, eyes wide with confusion. She turned the same look on her customer. Her father helpfully pointed to one of the hundreds of apples before her. She leaned forward and grabbed one in both chubby fists, raising it up and out to the nice lady. The lady accepted it in one long, graceful hand.
   “Why, thank you, my darling,” she said, with a quiet laugh. She slid the apple into a cloak pocket, then pressed the coin into the baby’s palm. Tiny fat fingers closed instinctively around it. When they opened closer to the baby’s face for examination, the apple seller swooped in and stole it before it could be eaten.
   “Most welcome, madam,” he said in his moment of preoccupation. “Have a lovely…”
   He trailed off, as he looked up. She had gone. He didn’t have long to dwell on her, much as he wanted to, as other customers began to come around.
   She hated to leave like that; vanishing into the crowd like the mysterious wispy woman whose image she preferred to shed. Hated it but could not have avoided it. It was louder, now. Louder even than the buzz of the market surrounding her on all sides. That the apple seller had not fled in vicarious terror was a testament to her achievement in the field of appearing normal. She was feeling ready to flee herself.
   As she dissolved into the market crowd, a man fell into step behind her. She led him to a quiet corner of the square, at the mouth of an alleyway. Only then did she turn to look at him. He wore a flat cap to keep his wild shock of white-blond hair under control.
   “You can feel it, can’t you?” he asked quietly.
   “Of course I can.” She looked around, lowered her voice. “Not ‘it’. ‘Him’. I think it is Old Skull. Something is wrong.”
   Her brother paused a moment, listening. His chest rose and fell in steady rhythm.
   “Gone,” he breathed. He did not look at her.
   “Gone,” she agreed. “And coming for us.”
   He looked sharply at her, as if she’d cursed. “What makes you say that?”
   “It has only gotten louder. Have you listened?”
   He thought carefully for a moment. His sharp glare turned into a sideways squint, eyeing up the milling crowds in the market. She took his silence for a yes.
   “Why,” said her brother. “Why would he come for us?”
   “Why would a moth fly to a flame?” She took him by the arm, clinging like an insistent child. “We have to get away from the crowds. There is no telling the harm he could do here.”
   She switched her grip to his hand, and began to lead him around the edge of the market square.
   “You have a plan,” he observed.
   “No. I do not. I only hope to keep the town innocent of mad sorcery. We must make plans elsewhere to help Old Skull.”
   They paused in their discussion as she dodged a man pushing a cart of potatoes. Her brother followed her handhold fluidly around the curve.
   “He…cannot be cured,” said her brother, apologetically. “I hope you know that.”
   “Of course I do,” she snapped. Her bear of a brother looked suddenly sheepish.
   “I’m sorry. I did not want you to be disappointed.”
   Her pace relaxed slightly, though the grip on his hand did not falter.
   “I won’t be,” she said, quietly. “I will even do it myself, as long as no one is hurt.”
   She stopped suddenly. Her brother ran a few more steps, carried by his larger momentum, before he slowed to a halt beside her. Their handhold did not break. They studied the street before them with blank intensity.
   Black. It was all black. The whine had stopped. The colours had faded. The world had returned to its everyday hum. The siblings looked to eachother across the span of their arms. Each got a glimpse of the other’s bewildered face before the white crashed down upon them.
    It was everywhere; stinging her brain, ringing her ears, blinding her like errant sunshine. Her brother squeezing her hand as the same overwhelmed him was only a butterfly’s touch on her fingers. She stifled a cry as her senses were torn to shreds.
   She could not stifle the one that came forth as teeth sank into her shoulder. Strands of her luxuriant curls caught in snarling snaggles of yellow bone. She threw her elbow backwards instinctively; it connected with rail-like ribs. The grip on her shoulder did not waver for an instant. She hit again, and again, harder, and harder…
   The teeth were ripped out of her flesh, more painfully than the bite itself. She turned, ready to fight. Her brother had pulled the assailant away and thrown him to the ground. He stood between them, prepared to defend his sister with fists or with magic.
   At a glance, he looked like any other old man. Frail and skinny, liver-spotted and long-bearded. Bald as a baby and hunched as an ancient grandfather. Blind, it was plain to see. No light could pierce the pearly clouds in his jaundiced eyes.
   His teeth, what remained of them, ran over with brittle foam. It stained his beard all the way to his waist, down the front of his tattered and filthy robes. He panted like a dog in the dead of summer as he fought to stand.
   What no one could see, save the two he had come for, was his aura. They could feel it, certainly, those astonished observers. He radiated death and madness. His wild energy raged about him, searching for something to consume.
   The siblings fought to keep their focus. They had only one: harm as few people as possible. This proved to be difficult, as more and more townsfolk had gathered around to watch this inexplicable spectacle. They kept their distance, though this hardly mattered. A sorcerer on the edge of his sanity had a destructive potential that rivalled a small supernova.
   One man ignored the border of the crowd. She saw someone running from the edge of her vision; as he pushed past the silent observers, her heart froze. He went straight for the old man.
   “Please, do not!” she shouted. “Stay away!”
   The apple seller ignored her, falling to his knees next to the thing that looked like an elderly man trying to stand. He hooked his hands under the thing’s arms, cradling it carefully.
   “It’s alright, sire, I got you,” he said softly. “No worries.”
   “Let him go,” said her brother. His voice was low, deep, rumbling like the earth. “Very slowly. Back away. Do not startle him.”
   The apple seller bore into her brother with a glare as vivid as the unseen tentacles of energy flailing around him.
   “Startle him?” he barked. “You mean like throwin’ him to the ground? At his age? Who do you think you are, tough guy?”
   She broke, then. The apple seller looked at her. The hatred in his eyes shot a crack through her already ice-cold heart. That kind face, twisted in contempt, almost pushed the danger from her mind.
   She watched helplessly as a gnarled, veiny hand reached up and grabbed the apple seller by the cheek. The thumb fell across his lips. One yellowing fingertip dug into his ear. He looked down to the old man in his arms, not confused but concerned, wanting to help. To the very end, wanting to help.
   His eyes widened, widened, taking up most of his face. He moaned incoherently into the thumb blocking his mouth. He released his grip on the old man, grabbing his wrist instead and trying to push it away, but that bony hand was stronger than it looked.
   The skin underneath it started to crackle and peel, crisping and breaking like weathered bark. Oils and fats ran down his chin, down the old man’s wrist, dripping onto the ground between his knees where they sizzled in the dust. The moan turned into a scream soon enough, though it was muted by the molten flesh sealing his lips like wax on a letter.
   The apple seller fell backwards, trying to scramble away, but the old man leapt on top of him, keeping his scorching hold tight. The mad sorcerer let out a roar not human, not even mammalian. He planted his other hand over the man’s eye, the heel of his palm against his nose, fingers in his hair. Smoke rose from these fingertips. A sickening, sticky smell arose as the concealed eyeball began to melt into its host’s head.
   The apple seller’s boots, scrabbling to find purchase on the packed earth, began to slow. His flailing fists ceased their frantic beating on the old man’s chest. The screaming was the last to stop, dying down gradually to soft, twitching grunts.
   Most of the crowd had caught on, and were fleeing with screams of their own. The apple seller had gone from a helpful young man to a disfigured vegetable in a span of seconds. The eye still intact was wide and blank, staring unseeing at the autumn sky. His body shivered and writhed under the old man’s weight, baptized by drops of brittle foam from the roaring maw.
   A few of the bolder marketgoers that had stumbled forward to help were now backing away. She and her brother were the only ones slinking towards the grisly scene.
   “Old father,” said her brother quietly, “are you there?”
   The old man turned, still crouched over the apple seller. He huffed at the air like an animal. The electrical thorns in the air around them started to prick harder.
   “Answer if you know me,” continued her brother. “If you remember.”
   “Or me, old father,” added his sister cautiously. “Answer us. Please.”
   The old man lurched to his feet, dripping yellow ooze from one corner of his lips. He turned to face the siblings and began to shamble blindly towards them. He half-raised his hands, coated with tatters of crispy skin.
   “Back,” breathed her brother. “Back away. Let him follow.”
   She knew it would hurt, but she felt it was owed. She looked back at the splayed body on the ground. It had not stopped twitching. The fingers jerked over and over, begging her to come hither.
   Two small figures had appeared in the road, only a few feet away from the charred spectre. Nobody to shield them. Nobody to turn their eyes away. The small boy held tightly to his smaller sister’s hand.
   “Don’t look,” said her own brother. “We can’t worry for them if we want to keep them safe.”
   Struggling to avert her gaze, she kept careful tandem with her brother’s pace. Staring into that monster’s face pained her greatly. They had known Old Skull, though not well. Nobody could. In his elder years he had been reclusive, and more often than not in a bad mood, but he had been human. There had always been something to talk to and reason with when they crossed paths. Now he was a creature they hoped to lead to a quiet corner and put out of its misery.
   She heard a soft sound, like the mewling of a grouchy kitten. Her eyes snapped instinctively towards it. The tiny girl was struggling in her older brother’s grasp.
   “No, Anna!” she heard him hiss. “Don’t!”
   The baby was not of an age to understand. She mewled louder, trying to shove her brother with all the force she could muster in her two-foot frame.
   The fine hairs on the old man’s arms raised up. He stopped shambling. His breath whistled slightly through his nose as he paused, scenting and listening. The boy, too young even for school, knew precisely where the danger lay. He fixed on the old man, frozen, trying not to be seen. His sister slipped his grip as fear overwhelmed him. On unsteady legs, she toddled towards her father’s fallen figure.
   “Hey!” barked the sorceress. The blind eyes turned back to her immediately. With a low growl, the creature started slouching after her once more.
   “Get the children,” she whispered to her brother. “Bring them to safety. I will keep him away.”
   “I won’t leave you. The risk is too great alone.”
   “Kill him, then. Right now. End this.”
   “We have to think, not act. If I make a mistake he could go off.”
   She knew this. Had seen it before, even, had seen the towering cloud of destruction that nothing could endure. Now, she could see the baby girl, crawling towards her father. Could hear the contented cooing give way to shocked silence as what remained of the apple seller’s face formed in her undeveloped vision.
   Nobody could have stopped the sudden wail that burst forth from the tiny girl. That shrill siren shattered the sorcerers’ trance on the creature. He clapped his curled claws to his ears with another reptillian growl. Hunching, slavering, he turned his back on them, loping unsteadily towards the children.
   The sorceress threw her arms wide as she leapt in front of him. The air between them cleared and hardened, distorting the light like a pane of thick glass. The constant wild whine of his madness was muffled to her ears. He ran up against her barrier like a slow, drooling bird, rebounding off it with a hiss of indignation. A far-flung gob of spit hovered before her, bubbles drying and bursting in yellow streaks on the air. After a quick shake of his head his cloudy eyes settled in her direction.
   He leapt, howling with rage. His animal brain beat his body against the shimmering shield, hoping to break through with sheer stupid strength. Fists pounded, fingers scratched, teeth tried to gain purchase, leaving more oozy streaks. She pushed the children from her mind and focused. Clawing and biting could not hurt the barrier, as the mad monster refused to learn, but his poisonous energy could. She could feel it thinning at that very moment. 
   Her brother was by her side in an instant. The shield doubled in strength as he added his power to hers.
   “This is making it worse,” he warned. “We need to calm him.”
   The tiny girl behind them was still wailing, driving nails of insanity into the remains of the old man’s brain. His eyes rolled like a frightened horse’s as he pawed and bit at the solidified air.
   “We need to kill him,” she replied. “Go. Take whatever you can and drive it through his head.”
   “Are you sure you can hold him?”
   “Yes!” she said sharply. “Please, go! Hurry!”
   “Do not lie to me,” said her brother, calm as anything. “Are you sure?”
   She shot him a glare, but it quickly softened. He asked out of love, not of doubt. She took a deep breath to remove the frantic tremor from her voice.
   “I am,” she assured. “But you must go now. He—“
   The siblings turned in unison as a bright streak of scarlet lit up the air. It spattered like a virulent sneeze across the waning barrier. As one, they looked to the old man beyond their safeguard.
   Streams of red were pouring from his nose, his ears, even the tiny ducts in the corners of his eyes. His growling and hissing had stopped, replaced by rattling heaving breaths. His thin chest was pulsing in and out at an alarming rate. They smelled it before they saw it; smoke. The soft, wet, wispy kind that arose from roasting meats. The blood from the old man’s ears and nose was turning black as it dried to a crisp. The invisible tempest around them had faded to a low toll of thunder. All topics of debate vanished from their minds as the monster collapsed to its knees, the pearls in its eyes rolling up to red-streaked white.
   He reached for his sister and pulled her into a bear hug, breaking their shield.

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