Everflame (28 page)

Chapter 25:
Leverage

The forest was dark by the time he had reached the path that led to the Floyd’s cave. He preferred the night. There always seemed to be less interference at night.
What deviants must these be, to live inside of a cave
, he thought,
so afraid that the world might see the evil inside of them.
He shook his head. Disappointment did not begin to describe his feelings. It had been disappointment for a while, near the beginning, when he had felt a yearning to help or change people. That had been very naive of him, very naive indeed. There was no changing these people, who had allowed evil to soil and corrupt their hearts. The only help that he could provide them was to end them; to destroy them. In that way, disappointment had turned to pity, had turned to monotony, had turned to frustration, had turned to disgust. As he walked along the forest path toward inevitability, that was the predominant feeling. Total revulsion.

• • •

Nikolas Floyd hovered over the bubbling cauldron of stew, letting the steam hit him full in the face. He inhaled the wonderful smell of boiling meat and vegetables, savoring it like a precious thing. He exhaled and smiled.

“It’s the simple things,” he said. “The older I get, the better they are. Simple things.” His mouth watered and he dipped the ladle in, drawing out a chunk of boar and carrot with the broth. He blew upon it to cool it, and then he sipped the broth. “Delicious.” He dumped the rest of the contents of the ladle into his mouth and chewed. He lifted an eyebrow as he did so, his curiosity taking hold. “You sure this is boar meat?” he asked Iolana as she sat, sewing up a ripped shirt.

“Yes,” she replied.

Nikolas tilted his head slightly and continued to chew. “Something’s not normal. Different.”

“That’s nice,” said Iolana.

Nikolas looked at her, realizing that she was not paying attention to anything that he had been saying. “Thinking about them again, aren’t ya?”

“Sorry,” said Iolana, putting down the needle. “I’m just worried, that’s all.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nikolas, putting the ladle down. “They are the ones.” He walked over and sat down next to Iolana, placing a fatherly arm around her shoulders. “Do you have doubts?”

“No,” said Iolana. “I know they are the ones. I could see it when I looked into Evercloud’s eyes.”

“Then what’s the worry?”

“What if they find out, Father? What if they figure out that the footprint was a lie and that the feather is a fake? They will leave, won’t they? Their faith will be broken.”

“Iolana,” said Nikolas in a calming voice. “The only way they will ever figure that out is if they really do find Tenturo. And then what will it matter? The lies will have been a means to an end, and the end will be good. Like tricking a child into taking its medicine. Ben and Tomas will never tell them, unless they find the Ancient.”

“I know. I shouldn’t worry.”

“Oh, you should worry,” came the voice of a man who had suddenly appeared in the room. “You should worry your little heart out.”

Nikolas and Iolana got up as quickly as they could and Nikolas put his frail body between Iolana and the intruder.

“What do you want? Who are you?” yelled Nikolas.

“I’m looking for Ben Floyd and Tomas Floyd. Where are they?”

“
I don’t know what you’re talking about,” shot Nikolas. “I’ve never heard of them.”

The intruder took a step toward
Nikolas and Iolana. “Do not lie to me, old man. I do not appreciate it. Lie to me again and I will kill you in the most inefficient way that I can.” The intruder frowned. “And I hate inefficiency.”

“Leave us alone, you evil man,” yelled Iolana.

“How dare you call
me
evil.” The intruder clenched his jaw and continued to close in upon them. “Tell me where they are,” he said through his teeth.

“Never,” cried Iolana.

The intruder grabbed at Nikolas, catching him by the shoulder. He ripped the old man away from Iolana and put his hands around Nikolas’ throat.

“Tell me or he dies.”

“Run, Iolana,” choked Nikolas, clutching at the hands around his throat.

Iolana did as she was told and ran out of the cave and into the forest as fast as she could. A voice crept inside of the intruder’s head and whispered to him.
Kill the old man.
Retrieve the girl.
The intruder lifted Nikolas off of his feet and threw him at the wall of the cave. His head thudded loudly as it impacted against the rock and he fell to the floor, dead. Without a moment of hesitation, the intruder ran after Iolana.
Take the girl
, said the voice.
We’ll use her as leverage.

Iolana ran through the forest as fast as she could, thorns and brush tearing at her legs. Tears streamed from her eyes and blurred her vision.
Father
, she thought. Her heart ached as she pictured that man’s hands around her father’s throat. She hated herself for running. She hated every step that she took away from him, but she didn’t stop running. She couldn’t stop running. They had been over this, time after time, Ben and Tomas and her father, warning her that something like this might happen, warning her that if the wrong people found out about their mission that they would try to stop them. Every time, they had told her the same thing. Run, no matter what, Run. So she did what they had asked, even though it killed her inside.

The intruder watched her as she ran through the forest, stumbling over herself. He shook his head. This was no challenge.
Stop wasting time
, said the voice impatiently. The intruder took off and within seconds, he had cut off Iolana’s path.

“You can’t escape,” he said simply.

She flew into him, kicking and punching with every bit of energy and anger she had. It did nothing to him. He didn’t even bother to shield himself from her attack. She backed away, bruised and broken of spirit, tears rolling down her porcelain face.

“What kind of monster are you?” she cried. “What do you want?”

“I only wish to make the world a better place,” said the intruder. “And to do that, I need to find your brothers.”

Iolana wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at the man. He was much bigger than her, there was no way that she could escape him. His hood was pulled bac
k and she looked upon his face.

“What happened to your eyes?” she said.

“Childhood tragedy,” replied the man. “The doctor said I’d never see again.”

“You’re blind?”

“I do not see in the way you mean, but I would like to think that I see things much more clearly than most.”

“How can you do this if you can
not see?” asked Iolana.

“Let’s just say things have a way of speaking to me.”

Iolana continued to look at the man who killed her father and noticed that he carried no weapon.

“You have no weapon.”

“Yes.”

“I will take you to my bothers,” said Iolana with venom in her voice. “And I will watch them kill you.”

“That is very unlikely,” said the man.

Iolana turned around and began to walk toward the Glass Desert.
We will avenge you, Father.

The intruder followed behind her, fully understanding why this woman led him to her brothers. She deemed him incapable of harming them.
That’s fine
, he thought.
You will see your error in the end.

• • •

The sun was ablaze above the Glass Desert, but the wind helped to cool their heads. Iolana had never wished ill upon another creature in her life, but she relished in the possible ways this man might die. She wanted it so much, she didn’t even care for her life.
If I die of thirst,
she thought,
so then will he. If a poisonous snake kills me, he will die as well.

“How do you
live with yourself?” she asked him. “A murderer of innocent men.”

“I have never harmed anyone who is innocent,” he replied.

“My father was innocent,” Iolana said through her teeth.

“Your father was guilty of heresy against the Holy.”

“You are mad,” she said, hoping to anger him. “You are a fool, and your Holy is a tyrant.”

“The Holy is the only good thing this miserable world has ever known. You should repent to him and throw yourself upon his mercy now, before you end up like your pathetic father.”

Iolana spun around and spit in the man’s face. “I will never bow to a tyrant. Never.”

The man wiped the spit away from his face and then grabbed Iolana, throwing her to the ground just as a gigantic claw came groping over a dune. The man grabbed hold of it and held on tightly as it carried him through the air. He let go of the claw as the crab raised him over its body, and he fell onto the giant creature’s shell. Iolana rolled over on the desert floor to see the man hanging onto the crab’s shell. The man held on with one arm and began to pound at the shell with the other. The creature spun wildly, trying to shake him loose, but he would not release his grip. Finally, after minutes of pounding at the shell, it gave way and the crab fell to the ground, broken. The man got up from the carcass and regained his bearing. Iolana looked at him in horror.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“Keep walking,” said the man. Iolana looked around, unsure
of which direction to head in. “You don’t know where you are.”

“I don’t know where my brothers are,” she admitted. “I just knew that they were coming this way.”

“Then it is no longer necessary for you to lead. Follow me.”

The incident with the crab had renewed
Iolana’s fear in the man and she was no longer sure that she wanted him to find her brothers.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m a messenger.”

“And who do you carry a message from?”

Tell her nothing,
said the voice.

“Keep walking,” said the man.

“No,” said Iolana. “You’ve killed my father and search for my brothers, most likely with the intention to kill them. I won’t follow you. Kill me if you will, but I won’t follow you.”

“Have it your way,” the man raised his hand and a cool
, blue light came forth from his palm. Iolana tried to avert her eyes, but too late, found herself unable to move. The man walked over to her and picked her up at the waist, throwing her over his shoulder like a child. The man walked on as images flew through his mind of another giant crab, a hole, a small man and a dark passageway.
You must hurry
, said the voice in his head.

An hour passed and the man came upon the carcass of a different giant crab. Large birds sat upon its carapace, picking strips of its flesh out from the cracks in its shell. The man shooed the birds away and walked to where the crab’s shell met the dune. He sat Iolana, still paralyzed, onto the sand and began to dig at the side of the dune.

He’s going to bury me alive
, thought Iolana. She struggled to free herself from her invisible prison, but it was no use, she couldn’t move a muscle.

The man dug for a while and after he had made a sizable hole, he began to throw punches at the bottom of it. Iolana could see into the hole from where he had left her
, and after a couple of swings, the man had punched the bottom of the hole out, revealing empty blackness. He began to widen the gap he had made, and after a minute, Iolana realized that she wouldn’t be the only one going down there.

“Hello,” came a voice from deep inside the blackness. “Did you forget about the passageway? Did you find Tenturo?”

“Yes, Padre,” said the man, smiling. “Why don’t you come out and say hello?”

Chapter 26:
The Witch’s Nightmare

If one could fly high enough and somehow get rid of all the fog, they would see that Oldham’s Bog was located inside a great maze. The most harmless place in the maze, being the outer ring, was the place where Riverpaw and Evercloud had begun. Some didn’t even consider the outer ring to be part of the maze, given its docile nature and the fact that it was impossible to move further into the maze unless one knew exactly how. The inner portion of the maze, however, had a much different reputation.

In villages around Ephanlarea, nasty
, old men would scare children with tales of what they called the “Witch’s Nightmare.”
Mind yer elders
, they would say,
or the witch’ll getcha and putcha in her nightmare.
They’d make up stories of trolls and goblins and any other nasty things that they could think of to scare the children. The truth was that no one who had ever entered the Witch’s Nightmare had ever returned to tell the tale, so no one really knew what horrors lied in wait.

It was also said by the nasty
, old men of Ephanlarea, that the witch herself lived at the center of the maze. The old men would tell of a large, black castle, covered with the slime of the bog. They told of how it towered into the sky, blotting out the light of the moon, creating a darkness that none could escape. Even the evil creatures that inhabited the Nightmare dared not go near it. They said that the witch was a tall, thin woman, with fingers like razors and eyes like ice, quick as lightning and just as harsh. She sat upon a grotesquely decorated throne, a tyrant over the souls of children who had misbehaved. Unfortunately for Evercloud and Riverpaw, these fairy tale descriptions paled in comparison to the cold truth.