Belial - Episode 1 of the Elder Bornshire Chronicles Page 3

  Instead, Belial curled back her teeth; put her perfect mouth to his ragged, chapped lips in an embrace. Mrandor’s one good eye widened. Belial inhaled a long and deep feast. A sharp travisher of nothingness scraped Mrandor’s mind, body and soul. Earthy magic scoured him until only vague consciousness and ruinous desolation remained in his decrepit human carcass.

  Mrandor flopped between her wings like a speared fish. Then, his body stiffened. Still, Belial withdrew shards of Lucifer's influence from Mrandor—every shaving. Everything he had ever been, she ravaged.

  She drew her mouth into a sneer and conducted an evaluation of the ancient assemblage of a man before her, hoary and withered.

  Mrandor screeched into her mouth at that point. Once held away, centuries of misery rushed into him in a gush of humanness.

  Looking away, she vomited Lucifer’s blackness onto the forest floor and watched the ground try to withdraw from the steaming sludge. Long and hard, she spewed until she created a small pond of filth around the artesian well.

  Lost souls, faces pressed the surface from inside of the goop, screaming, disappearing, rising, and falling. The poisoned water rolled over black, an ever-flowing fountain of venom. Then, she turned her attention back to the howling Mrandor.

  Too weak to resist her, he tried to raise his desiccated arms to fend her off, but she embraced him again and exhaled a portion of her fabric into his open mouth, filling his lungs until they neared bursting. The pressure infused her being into every living cell.

  Mrandor’s body convulsed as his limbs cracked and straightened. Blonde hair returned to his baldhead and scoured arms. Muscle invaded his chest, limbs and buttocks. Bright blue of his youth returned to his previously cloudy eyes—both of them.

  Scars faded. Facial hair returned. His hands grew strong and he used them to beat at her face.

  Undeterred, she ignored the pummeling, sat him down and examined him as a human might pull the wings from a moth. She had restored his youth from the Black Forest’s memory of him.

  “What have you done?” he barked. His voice no longer rasped. He stopped and marveled at her work. His body stood strong, young, and capable.

  “You have no utility as a broken, weak-minded, scatological drudge. I drew Lucifer’s inutile remnants from you. I have withdrawn your bleary age and replaced those wasted years with youth. I have restored a mélange of magic facilities to you. Is that not what you desire most?”

  Though it was a lie, Mrandor nodded to the affirmative. Once more, he stood tall and strong. His eyes grew in wonder. He held out his arms, inspected himself, and touched his face. Even he could not camouflage his wonder at the miracle.

  “Why grant me mercy?”

  “Mercy? You are but a tool to me, Mrandor. Yes, I know your name. This forest speaks to me. Having inhaled your soul, I know all of you, the base of your evil. I know how you murdered your father and your mother, the teachers you killed. I have counted the innocents you butchered, including your own youth.

  She passed her right hand over her left. A flask appeared.

  “Find me a child, the younger the better. Drain its blood and put that blood in this flask. Return it to me within three days or your age will revivify, as will your pain. Your strength will fail and you will falter, but I will hold you in that state for eternity. I know the crimes you have committed, the sins that lay upon you. So, what is one more? The atrocities you relish galvanize your condemnation to Hell. So will you be a prince in hell or a drudge in this world?

  “No mercy laces my action. I know the concept. I have never seen it. I believe it but a myth. I have simply enabled you to be my tool. My brother thought you useful. I have mastered Hell in his absence, and I assure you that mercy is not a part of my lexicon, or in yours.”

  Mrandor’s excitement ended. Realization that he had only returned to somewhere in his sordid past had not been as he had hoped.

  “You cannot be forgiven, Mrandor.” She shook her head slowly and slightly as if counseling a child. “Bornshire’s god is real, but God would never exonerate a soul like yours. How could He? He could not forgive something as beautiful as I. Why, slugs like you are ants in a vast and dry desert. You are not even worthy of His thought. Why would He grant forgiveness to such a wretched creature?”

  Mrandor turned his gaze to the ground.

  Belial did not let the gesture go unaddressed. “I know what you think. You will not escape me. You will not overpower me. You will not retard my efforts as you did my brother’s. I am not your second chance. I have come to obliterate this world, but I will let you live in it, rule in it until the end if you serve me. I have specific tasks that you must accomplish.”

  Mrandor met her gaze with simple loathing.

  That quickly changed, as Belial explained, “We will build a new flock, a cache of followers who will willingly die for us. We will obliterate this land.”

  “That has been done to towns and cities through our existence.”

  “Yes, temporarily, but those were local and small-scale events. My vision is much greater. I have not come to rule, but to destroy.”

  Already Mrandor’s sarcasm began to creep back. “You will do this how? Many have tried.”

  “We will coax out the proper situations to provoke His champion, our enemy, my brother’s murderer. We will scheme this man’s demise, take all that he has that is dear to him. We will destroy his feeble faith in his God. We will turn him to our side, and ultimately, I want you to kill Arthur Bornshire, his friends, his allies and his kin. I want you to bring me their bodies. With their corpses, I will create a superlative host against which even Michael cannot stand. Together, you and I will destroy all that God has created upon the earth. I will not be ignored.”

  Mrandor percolated those thoughts and then asked, “I understand my stake in the moment, but in the end, I will find myself where I am now. Why should I help you rather than just let you kill me now?”

  “You wish revenge on the Bornshire line. Together we will snuff out their flame.”

  Mrandor scoffed, “Such a feat is easier claimed than accomplished. Arthur has allies. He has friends. He gutted your brother. He needed only to find him.”

  Belial allowed a slight frown. “We will eliminate them. His mother, his father, his daughter, his friends and their relatives will meet their end. I will repurpose them to my ends. In doing so, Mrandor, it will be I who can save your eternal soul from the fires of hell, not God. It will be our army, yours and mine, that assails the gates of Heaven.”

  Mrandor kept his head down and raised his eyes to look through his shadowed lids. “I will need gold and secrecy. The rest of this landscape I have commanded before.”

  “You shall have what you lack,” she replied, “everything that Lucifer never gave you.”

  “What I need is autonomy,” Mrandor muttered. “Work your demonic condemnations as you will, but leave me to do what I will to meet your end.”

  “And if you fail?”

  “What if I succeed?” He paused, and Belial sternly regarded him. “I will find a way or make a way. Nevertheless, should I should fail, what have you lost?”

  Mrandor traversed the Black Forest with great haste. Three days he had to ply his talents, but circumstances did not always turn to his liking and obstacles presented themselves at inopportune times. Therefore, he sprinted. His youth allowed him to dodge branches and hop over fallen logs. He ran quickly and for miles without shortness of breath. His new patron may prove to be advantageous until her usefulness wore thin. After that—

  He inhaled the substance of the Black Forest. He had subdued this forest in his time, bent acre upon acre to his will, but now the forest worshipped him because he had fed it with blood. Trees cleared a path for him, bowed to him, begged for his caress. He digested the emotion and let it aggravate any gratitude he may wish to feel for Belial. Like any other creature he had ever met, he sized her as an instrument to be turned to his favor or broken and cast away.

  He c
rouched at the edge of the town called Backswain where, as a child, he had discovered his father’s unfaithfulness to his mother.

  A fragile voice spoke from deep within him, his own child voice, That is not how it happened.

  Mrandor shook his head to reorder his thoughts. His father had been unfaithful and that perfidiousness caused his mother’s death.

  No.

  He growled faintly and pressed the juvenile voice to withdraw.

  Circling the village, only leaving the cover of the ancient trees to cross the road in two spots, he scouted the village, remembering the previous positioning of the buildings through Backswain and reconciling his memory with structures that had been erected since his days as a child. The Black Forest sheltered the people of Backswain from the weather and most world events. Even Rome stayed away from the Black Forest. Mrandor had constructed the forest’s reputation through no particular scheme, but through his actions, his work, and his pride, the fable amplified. To the outside world, one might wish to bear a broad stride away from the Black Forest, but the residents of Backswain let no loosely cast rumor penetrate their mean life. They tilled with their hands in the dirt and wasted their years as they coaxed their beans and potatoes to sustain them and their livestock.

  Humidity elbowed its way into the day, obliging Mrandor to tie his hair back away from his face. The hateful sun hammered on the village while farmers and a few tradesmen went about the drudgery of their lives. They slopped filthy hogs, sheared skinny sheep, and planted and collected crops. A blacksmith rang his anvil and at the edge of town. A tanner scraped a large hide.

  Tree shadows eventually licked the edges of the village. Strangers would have thought evening approached. Mrandor knew the sun still had hours before lying down beyond the trees, but the village would decrease its workload and settle toward evening.

  Dressed in britches, a light tunic and with knee-high leather boots, Mrandor stepped out onto the rutted wagon road. Another sign of Rome’s lack of influence this far east; a road without stone might simply be a path. He walked steadfastly into the village.

  He nodded to the first person that he came to, testing the viewpoint of the individual citizen. Would they ask questions? Would they snub him? Would they be curious about his presence and sound an alarm?

  A few people spoke, none took more than a slight notice. From a wagon, one farmer with a wispy long beard waved to Mrandor and indulged in a smile. Mostly, Mrandor found himself ignored as if strangers passed through Backswain daily.

  Maybe they did. He had never returned here. Drifting about the town as the shade redoubled its efforts to encroach, he walked directly up to the particular house that had belonged to his father’s whore. He rapped upon the door and waited patiently. From the other side of the wooden portal, he discerned muffled voices, a shuffling.

  A small girl opened the door.

  The little girl who answered delivered wide blue eyes and a genuine smile when she saw a man at the door. Her black hair reminded him of crow feathers, tresses straight down her back. Her broad smile expressed an unveiled innocence. The odor of it doused him with exhilaration of what he could do to her. Cutting her and draining her blood would be a sweet morsel indeed. What he might do beyond that itched his inner thirst.

  “Hello,” she said, flamboyantly, opening the door widely, a welcome reception. Her smile beamed.

  “Well, hello to you,” he said and wrestled his best attempt at a smile to his face. He knelt so that he could look directly into her fragile eyes. “You are quite lovely. What is your name?”

  “Aemilius!” she answered. She put her hand out and took his, grabbing his index and middle finger and giving them a hearty shake.

  “Who is there?” a fractured voice called from inside, out of sight.

  Unflustered, Aemilius turned toward the voice and then back Mrandor’s way. “What is your name? My grandmother asked. She is old.”

  Mrandor now genuinely smiled. “Is your grandmother’s name Adele?”

  Aemilius’ face crowded with surprise. “How did you know that?”

  “Who is it?” Adele called more loudly.

  “A stranger!” Aemilius called back into the house. Mrandor thought quickly, wishing to minimize his time at their door. People may notice. People might talk. He did not fear them, but he preferred to leave a mystery behind that would echo across the ages.

  “My name is Sabinus. My father’s cousin lived somewhere nearby a long time ago. He knew your grandmother. I have come from far away to see her.”

  “How far?”

  Mrandor blinked slowly, trying not to clutch her young throat and strangle her for her impudence.

  “Many months.”

  Aemilius shuffled her feet and eyed Mrandor suspiciously, as he stood up, exhaling slowly to control his stimulated ire.

  An old crone shambled to the door. Her hair had grayed and wrinkles cut canyons through her face, “Where are you from and what is your business here?”

  “My parents lived in Rome before I was born, so I am a Roman citizen. Most of my life I lived in Britannia. My parents died five years ago. I search for my remaining kin.”

  Adele’s aged face softened a bit. Her wrinkles relaxed, though the brown spots on her face darkened when she quit glaring at him. “Who were your parents?”

  Mrandor realized the shadows had reached him and the village had begun to earnestly settle. “Have you ever traveled from Backswain?

  Adele shook her head negatively. “I have too much to do here.”

  “Then, you would not have known them. They never traveled this far from Rome until our relocation to Britannia. I know only that I have family who live here. I had a hard time finding the place myself. Your Black Forest has a bit of a worrisome character. No one in this part of the world wants to talk much about it.”

  Adele put her hand on her granddaughter’s shoulder. “Don’t trifle with the forest. It will not negotiate terms. Stay on the road if you know what is good for you.”

  Realizing that Adele had summarily dismissed him, Mrandor clung to his last shred of patience and attempted to reinsert himself as she reached to close the door. He put his hand on the door, but did not shove it. “Yes, yes, I have been warned about the forest, but I am here now. About my family—my father’s cousin. I would like to see them. His name is Gracen.”

  Adele released the door and put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes squinted. She blinked several times and wiped her eyes with an old rag. “Do you have a place to stay the night?”

  “Maybe a place down the road,” Mrandor lied, enticing the invite from the crone. “But if you might at least tell me where they live. I will go there and delay you no further.”

  She backed away from the door and waved him in. “Come and sit a meal with us. You may stay the night. The sun grows short and the forest dark. Tomorrow, I will take you to where they lived.”

  “Lived? Has something happened?”

  “Yes,” Adele admitted. “The story is lamentable. Let us share a meal. I will tell you the story. You have a right to know.”

  Mrandor placed an upset look on his face, held the expression shortly, then wiped it clean and replaced it with one of humility.

  “I don’t wish to put you at a disadvantage by my presence,” he murmured. “I did not mean to intrude. People may speak ill.”

  Adele took a step forward and put her furrowed hand on his youthful arm. “Don’t spew such nonsense. Gracen was a dear friend to me. Any folk of his is welcome in my home.”

  Mrandor entered the small two-room cottage, looked around, and refused to let his intentions infect his actions.

  Adele and Aemilius assembled a meager meal of bread and mutton and placed a plate on the table for Mrandor. Mrandor sat down, constraining his thoughts to the moment of the meal. The home was smaller than he remembered and the paltry garnishing of the interior tripped his memory. He thought the woman quite wealthy in his father’s days and her home glorious, though he had never been ther
e.

  “Hard times here?” he asked.

  “No more than usual,” Adele replied. “My daughter caught a fever in the spring and died. We both miss her, and the work mounts as does my age.”

  Mrandor allowed his curiosity a single tidbit. “And the girl’s father?”

  Adele glanced at Aemilius before replying, “He was a Roman soldier, a scout. He passed this way on a trip, stayed two days, and then he was gone. It was the summer. My granddaughter came that winter.”

  “I see,” Mrandor replied. From that point, they ate quietly for the next few minutes.

  “You have traveled a great distance?” Adele asked, renewing the lease on their conversation.

  “Yes. Two years I searched different townships for word of any of my folk. With Rome but a memory, much was destroyed from a records point of view. The turmoil in the world has cast people like leaves upon an auspicious wind. Have many others passed through?”

  Adele chewed her mutton and then after she swallowed, she answered. “Backswain has little to do with the world beyond the tree line. Civilization does not infringe here and we don’t travel outward. We may send a wagon to the south for seed in the spring, but other than that, we fairly much keep to ourselves. We answer to no tax official, only to each other.”

  They completed their meal and cleaned away scant dishes. With that done, Adele ordered Aemilius off to bed.

  “I want to hear your story. You are going to tell one, aren’t you?” Aemilius complained, but Adele wasted no words, herded her into the smaller room, and drew the wool curtain.

  Adele smiled carefully, “That girl will be the death of me.”

  “Indeed,” Mrandor answered with a reflected smile that he hoped covered his restlessness. He wanted to savor the moment of charade for as long as possible.

  Adele lit a thick stub of candle as night approached. Idly, they chatted for a time about Mrandor’s made-up travels and Adele showed interest in his tale. After an hour, the old woman leaned up on the table and crossed her hands. Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, she prepared her story.