Chapter 7: The Obsidian Order

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April sat down and looked across the room to where Cy leaned against the door frame. He was beginning to feel the first tendrils of pain that preceded the third wave. A searing pain stabbed at the back of his eyes while hot needles lanced up his spine. Suddenly Cy screamed in agony. A raging fire seemed to burn through every nerve of his body until, mercifully, his chin fell onto his chest and he lost consciousness.

 

April sat as if frozen, staring at the form by the door, compassion for Cy mixed with the stark terror of looking into the abyss of the unknown.

 

Jepp knelt in front of April and spoke to her in a calm voice. "April, talk to me."

 

She tore her eyes away from Cy and looked at Jepp. Doubt chased fear as emotions played on her face, and latent tears glistened in her eyes as the lamplight shone in them. Jepp searched April's eyes as if looking for an explanation, then he turned and looked at Cy and said with a grimace, "Well, it seems like Cy's gotten us into more trouble."

 

Turning back to April, Jepp asked, "How did you meet Cy?"

 

April looked away for a moment then back to Jepp, and she began to explain, from her recent memory, how Cy had found her in the clearing in the forest. She told him of her memory loss and all that Cy had related to her of her sudden appearance. She hesitated for a second before telling him about the trance that seemed to overtake her at sunset and what Cy had experienced when she was in the trance. All the while Jepp sat quietly listening to all she related. When she finished, Jepp asked her, "You still don't remember anything about yourself?"

 

"Nothing," said April. "At least nothing that's really clear. It's like there's a cloud over all my memories. The memories are there, it seems, but too hazy to make sense out of them."

 

Jepp nodded then said, "I don't know what Cy has told you, but he's not just a hermit hiding himself in the woods. He's much more than that."

 

April looked quizzically at him, and Jepp sighed, a long, deep sigh borne of frustration. "April, you need to know the truth," he said softly. "Cy is a very special person."

 

He squatted on his heels on the floor, and began to tell the story of how he and Cy had met and become friends. "Cara and C'elaine and Cy had all known each other since they were tots. My folks moved here when I was near about grown."

 

"You were twelve, Jepp," Cara offered sarcastically from the other side of the room.

 

Ignoring Cara, Jepp continued, "I got to know Cy because of Cara and C'elaine. Even back then something about Cy marked him as different. He wasn't exactly a loner, but he spent a lot of time off by himself, out in the wildest parts of Marntz and Stell's Reach. He used to tell us stories, fantasies I called 'em, but only for a while."

 

Cy lifted his head to look into Cara’s eyes. The potion she had given him was having its desired effect. Cara helped him to the couch so that he could rest more comfortably.

 

Jepp continued to tell his story, "One day, oh, I'd say more than 30 years ago it was, a man and his wife were killed, horribly mutilated, by members of the Obsidian Order. Four men were responsible for the killing. They fled the city and made for the hills and Stell's Reach, intending to head for Breach Pass and the lands of Hosha on the other side, but the four of them made a mistake, picking the house where Cy and his parent's lived as the one to take over for the night. Cy was about fifteen at the time, but he was visiting C’elaine when the men showed up. His father told the story later of how the men had said they wanted to 'entertain' themselves for the night."

 

Jepp looked down and paused for a second or two, then looked back at April.

 

"Cy's father said that he and his wife had fed the men and were standing together in the kitchen when Cy came in from visiting C'elaine. His father told us how when Cy opened the door all four of the men turned to look, and how Cy began to shimmer and then disappeared. Almost immediately after Cy vanished, the four men all fell to the ground, dead, cut to ribbons in an instant, and Cy was nowhere to be found."

 

"Some time later C'elaine showed up with Cy. He complained of a terrible headache, and went to lie down while C'elaine sat there and explained to Cy's father how Cy had knocked on her window and begged her to run away with him. She had pushed him away, but when she did she felt how feverishly hot he was. When she touched his forehead to be certain, she knew he was very sick."

 

Jepp looked down and said, "From that day on, I never heard Cy or his parent's say anything else about what had happened that night."

 

Jepp paused again, longer this time, as if to compose what he had to say next. "That's not the only time strange things have happened around Cy, either. I could tell you a half-dozen tales that would raise your hair on end. I can't tell you how Cy does it or why he has this incredible power, but I can tell you I know that Cy is a good man, a better man than I am, I'm not afraid to admit. I've seen it too many times, and it has been shown in too many ways."

 

A sound from Cy caught Jepp's attention. He stood up and moved toward Cy when the door opened suddenly, hitting him and knocking him down. Black robes began to fill the room as men from the Obsidian Order swarmed inside, and Cy began to shimmer once again.

 

Cy's image wavered then, with a soft pop like the muted sound of a cork coming out of a bottle, he vanished. A black-robed man by the door fell, slashed in a hundred places. Next to him another fell. Another collapsed in a soggy heaps beside Jepp. Like a wave passing through water, death moved through the mass of robed men. More fell until the few remaining men, the ones crowding the doorway, had fled and down the street, terrified, as if death itself pursued them.

 

Jepp looked on in shock at the carnage around him. He stood up and moved to where Cara and April stood, unharmed. They were the only ones in the house still living. Around them a half-dozen bloody bodies lay on the floor. April's eyes were wide in horror as one hand covered her mouth. Cara looked out the open door to the blue sky above the roofs of the neighboring buildings. For a long minute no one dared to speak.

 

After that moment of shocked horror, Jepp shook his head as if to clear it and looked around the room at the dead men. He looked down and saw blood all over his clothes. A gnawing fear chewed at his gut as he thought about what he had just witnessed.

 

"Cara, close the door," Jepp said.

 

She didn't move at first, but then a shudder seemed to pass through Cara, and she looked over at Jepp.

 

Jepp nodded, and she walked over to the door and closed it. He moved to the windows and, reached through the opening, grasping the louvered wooden shutters to pull them closed. Before he closed them, Jepp took one last look around. The sun had dropped below the rooftops of the city. He turned to look at Cara, exchanging a glance that spoke eloquently to her. Both of them knew what had just transpired bode ill for them and for Cy and April. Little did they know that what they would face in the coming days would test them as they had never been tested before.

 

Crossing the room to April, Jepp spoke to her, "Are you okay?"

 

When she didn't answer, Jepp took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake as if trying to wake her. The faint outline of a face formed in his vision, and he let go of her, stepping back to look at her in astonishment. Outside, night had fallen.

 

Looking over his shoulder, Jepp called to Cara, and the look on his face startled her. She had never seen such fear in his face. Even in the worst circumstances they had seen, she had never known him to be so affected by events. Jepp was a rock of stability in her life. To see him so unnerved was terrifying to Cara.

 

"This is bad," Jepp whispered, half to himself, half to Cara.

 

Moving closer to Jepp, Cara grasped his arm. Her voice trembled as she spoke, "Jepp, I'm scared, really scared. What are we going to do?"

 

As Jepp was about to answer her, the door swung open. Cy stumbled through and said, "We have to leave. Very soon."

 

Haggard lines creased Cy's face. His breathing was ragged, and fatigue was evident in his whole frame, but the look in his eyes made his determination unmistakable. He was a man possessed by absolute need, and nothing short of an army would stop him from the task he had set for himself. Walking over to where April stood, still unaware of her surroundings, Cy turned to Jepp and Cara and said simply, "The time has come."

 

Cy picked up April and, steeling himself against the vision that appeared before his eyes, laid her gently on the couch. He stared out the open front door and drew a deep breath, then turned to Jepp and Cara and said simply, "I need your help."

 

Jepp glanced at Cara and saw her nod almost imperceptibly. "Whatever you need, Cy," Jepp said softly, “you’ll have it.”

 

The determination shone in Cy’s eyes. The strain of the past few hours was plain in his movements and in his voice, but the concoction Cara had given him still sustained him somewhat, that and his indomitable will to see this through.

 

"First I have to tell you what we're up against," Cy told him grimly. "If I thought I could do this alone, I'd never ask you. This is way out your league and maybe out of mine, too. Cara knows a little of the story, I'm sure, but there's much more that she doesn't know, and the time has come to tell you all of it. You need to know what you're fighting for... and against."

 

Cy walked over to the door he had left open and closed it, then sat on the floor with his back against the door.

 

"My parents, the ones you knew, weren't really my parents. I'm sure Cara knows this. C'elaine knew and wouldn't have kept it a secret from her," Cy said, looking at Cara.

 

Another slight nod from her confirmed the fact. Cy smiled, partly at Cara and partly at the sudden memory of a day, many years gone by, when he had come down the lane to C'elaine's house and spied her and Cara huddled together, whispering in the shade of a gnarled, old codill tree.

 

The grip of nostalgia nearly choked him, and he had to clear his throat before he could go on, "What Cara doesn't know, and what I never told C'elaine, is the story of how I came to live with the people you knew as my parents."

 

Cy glanced at Cara and smiled again, then continued, "You also know that my mother was an herbalist, and that she was very skilled at what she did. She had a unique knowledge of herbs and plants and their medicinal powers. How she came to have that knowledge is an important part of this story, one that I've never told to anyone before. It's what ties all the threads of this story together.”

 

“When my mother was a young woman she had an experience very similar to what is happening to April and what happened to C'elaine, as well. She found herself pregnant with no memory of who she was or who the father was. All of this happened in a small town at the foot of the mountains on the other side of Stell's Reach. Her child was stillborn, and the birth nearly killed her. Still hoping to find some hint of her origins, she ended up in the hills around Marntz. By chance she stopped at my father's house to ask for some water and never left. She ended up marrying him."

 

Cy paused and stood up. Cara spoke quickly in the pause, "Let's sit at the kitchen table. I'll make us some tea."

 

"No, Cara, there's no time for that. Let me finish," Cy told her.

 

"My parents told me they found me on a rock table in a clearing in the forest. Remembering how they described it to me, how I was bundled in a strange blanket that was, I realize now, identical to the one April was lying on when I found her.”

 

“My mother knew all about herbal medicine. She and my father were in the forest collecting herbs when they found me. She always said she couldn't remember how she learned about them, but she taught me many things about the powers to be found in plants and herbs, and like April, my mother suffered from amnesia. She told me about the one memory she claimed to have from before. It involved a strangely carved stone, which you know as the Runestone, and the power it could convey to its possessor."

 

Cara and Jepp looked at each other and then at Cy.

 

"Those are just legends, Cy. There's no truth to them...," started Jepp uncertainly.

 

"There's more to the stories than you think," Cy responded. "Years ago my mother and I found a way to link my mind to the Runestone using one of her herbal concoctions. There's a vast amount of knowledge to be gotten from it, in every subject you can dream of and many, many more you've never imagined.”

 

“I've accessed some of the knowledge contained in it,” Cy continued, “and it tells me the history of a world, this world. It’s a history far longer than you would believe, and it tells of a civilization that lasted for hundreds of thousands of years. It tells of years filled with wars and great scientific advances and more wars. It speaks of incredible discoveries, of fantastic energies created and harnessed by the hands and minds of men and unleashed on the populace of this world until it teetered on the brink of disaster. It tells of the devastation that followed, of the runaway destruction of a world that had thrown away reason and compassion for superstition and greed."

 

Cy turned away from them and spoke once more. Raw emotion transformed his voice into something resembling an inchoate snarl, "That's why we have to leave. The leader of the Obsidian Order wants the power of the Runestone for himself, and I can't let him have it."

 

As soon as Cy finished speaking, Jepp and Cara began to assemble supplies from around the house. A food pouch and water skins were quickly filled. What few weapons they possessed were collected from their storage place. Jepp, while a capable fighter, preferred less violent means of dealing with a situation. His preferences meant nothing in this case. The fight was just beginning, and it would be long, hard and painful. There was no avoiding it, and the attack they had just experienced made that truth abundantly clear.