Dark Soul Silenced - Part One (16 page)

Part Three - The Hunt

Chapter Seventeen

Once Daniel and the other two were secured Josef finally found the time to stop and think.  Since the attack started he’d been acting on instinct, taking the actions that seemed right from moment to moment.  First he checked on his men.  Two were injured but not badly, just some scratches and bites.  The artifacts blessed by the almighty had protected all the witch hunters, their weapons had carved through the attackers.  That should have pleased Josef, yet it didn’t.  Somehow it had felt too easy.  He suspected the attack had only ever been a diversion, something to distract them while the girl was snatched.

And what of Ser Daniel?  He had clearly used unnatural powers.  How could one of the Order have fallen so far?  It was almost unthinkable.  Something else nagged at Josef too.  If Ser Daniel had fallen under the sway of the dark powers then why had the attackers focused on him?  Why had they fought him at all?  Were there factions within the darkness?  It must be so.  Any other explanation would go against everything the Order believed, everything they stood for.

Josef was annoyed with himself.  He had been so focused on catching the girl, on proving that she was tainted by darkness, that he hadn’t checked the others in the party.  Now the father had shown powers too, as had Ser Daniel.  Maybe the mother had powers as well.  He’d had her bound anyway, and a pendant to ground any powers placed around her neck.  At least he and his men were safe from influence, or attack, from their prisoners now.

One thing was very clear.  The girl truly was as important as the Prefect had suspected.  The creatures that attacked had sacrificed many of their number to capture the girl, and once she had been taken the rest faded back into the forest like wraiths.  All except those attacking Ser Daniel.  Those had carried on until Josef and his men intervened.  It was as if Ser Daniel was important too, was a threat to the attackers.  Once again Josef felt his thoughts edging out over a dangerous precipice.  He turned his mind away, trying to decide what action to take next.  The Seeker Amulet should still work, should guide him to the girl, but its powers were limited.  He couldn’t risk using it till the morning when they could act on its directions.  He itched to try it though, to prove the connection remained.  To prove he hadn’t failed.  He resisted the urge, pacing restlessly back and forth instead.

Daniel lay on the ground, his body a mass of pain.  He had scratches and bites everywhere.  Jon’s healing had brought him back from the brink but he was still weak.  Daniel’s own powers had helped too, but his reserves of energy were low.  His efforts limited.  He tried to reach out, to draw in more energy, and hit a wall.  Something was blocking him, preventing him reaching his surroundings.  It must be the pendant that had been hung around his neck.

He tried moving his head, experimenting to see if he could work the pendant loose then remove it, but it clung to him as if glued in place.  He suspected that any attempt to remove it by hand, if his hands were even free, would also fail.  He lay still again, focusing his attention on the pendant.  It resisted any attempt to probe it with his power, deflecting his probing away, but in doing so he detected a pattern.  Probing in a certain spot always resulted in being pushed away in a particular direction.  It was slow going but he painstakingly mapped out the patterns of energy surrounding the pendant. 

When he had finished he thought he detected a weakness.  Not a direct one, but a consequence of the interplay between the patterns.  He tried to probe in just the right way, saw his efforts deflected, but not in the direction he wanted.  He tried again, this time he was closer but still not there.  After several more efforts he succeeded, his probe was deflected towards a second pattern, though it bounced off the second pattern at the wrong angle.  He persisted, but now he had to be even more precise.  Tiny changes to how he probed the first pattern led to massive differences once it was deflected.  Sweat started to drip down his face and he felt himself tiring, but he would not give up.  Even once he managed to get his probe to reflect from the second pattern correctly there was a third, and if he succeeded there he had no idea how much power he could draw down such a narrow probe.  Maybe it wouldn’t be enough to achieve anything.  He pushed all that from his mind, concentrating on getting the angle from the second pattern right.

After each failure he pictured Mary’s face, pictured how scared she must be, and forced himself to try again.  No matter how long it took, he
would
succeed.  He had to.

Time had no meaning for Gerome.  His entire existence was focused on a single thought — to gain his revenge on Ser Josef.  His mind had no space to wonder at how he was up and moving.  If he thought of the moment Josef stabbed him, or of waking on the burning funeral pyre, it simply added to his rage, to his hatred of Josef.  All he had ever done was to hunt out the darkness in people.  He had found the darkness that no others could find.  He had sacrificed himself time and again, driving himself to the edge of endurance, to ensure the safety of the people.  Josef had taken all that from him, had accused him of harbouring darkness of his own.

Awareness of the direction to travel burnt in his mind at all times, an awareness of which way Josef lay, though with no concept of distance.  It didn’t matter.  Day and night he moved at a shambling run, determined to reach Josef as soon as possible.  As he ran images played across his mind.  Images of Josef suffering, dying, screaming, burning.  Gerome’s grip on reality had been weak before he died, now it was gone completely.  His anger and desire for revenge were partly stoked by the dark magic animating his body, but mostly they came from his own mind, his own soul.  Rafael had set Gerome in motion then forgotten about him.

Now Gerome sensed that he was drawing near.  The dark of the night offered concealment, allowing him to draw close to the camp without being seen.  Sure enough he saw Josef standing near the fire.  All thought evaporated.  With a scream of pure animal fury Gerome charged.

Josef froze as the bestial scream rang out, as did his men.  Something came charging from the darkness.  Josef gasped in recognition.  It was Gerome, exactly as he’d looked in Josef’s dreams.  Gerome locked his gaze on Josef and ran straight for him.

One of the guards, Rolf, leaped to intercept, plunging his sword into Gerome’s chest.  Josef was certain Gerome was animated by dark powers, there was no other explanation, yet the blessed sword seemed to have no effect.  Gerome seemed unaffected by the wound, but he turned his attention to Rolf.  Gerard leapt on the guard, dragging him to the ground.  Other guards ran forwards but it was too late for Rolf.  Gerome ripped the man’s throat out with his teeth, carried on clawing and biting at the spasming body.  Several guards landed heavy blows with their swords but they had no effect.  One plunged his sword into Gerome’s throat, again without visible effect — and when he pulled it clear the wound healed instantly.

Josef and the other guards stepped back.  Josef was shaken to the core.  He knew the guards must be too.  They had never faced something like this, never heard of such a thing.  How could a creature so clearly of the darkness manage to shake off swords blessed by the Almighty?  And how could they defeat such a creature. 

Seeing Gerome’s blackened features an idea came to Josef.  He grabbed a burning branch from the fire and swung towards his former comrade.  It caught Gerome’s attention immediately.  He stood warily, intelligence returning to his eyes, for the moment at least.

“Ser Josef, really.”  The voice was rougher than Josef remembered, slightly sibilant, but unmistakably Gerome’s.  “You left me atop a burning pyre yet here I stand.  Do you truly believe a burning branch will stop me from having my revenge?”

“
Revenge for what?”

“
For your betrayal!  For your striking me down when I was defenceless.  For preventing me continuing my work.  Have you any idea how many agents of the darkness will now go free because of your actions?”

Josef stared at Gerome for a moment, desperately trying to think of a way out of the situation.  Gerome reached out, grabbed the burning branch.  The flames licked at his hand and arm but caused no damage, and he showed no sign of pain.  He simply smiled cruelly at Josef.

“If I let you have your revenge, what of these others?  Will you leave them be?”

Gerome glanced at the others dismissively.  “Them?  I care nothing for them.  They are no more than sheep, going where the flock takes them.  It is you I wish to see scream.  You I wish to see dead.” 

Gerome’s voice grew louder as he spoke, his grip on the rage within clearly weakening.  Josef tried desperately to think of another way out of the situation.  He was almost tempted to sacrifice himself, yet he doubted Gerome’s word.  Once Josef was dead what was to stop Gerome working his way through the guards?  He must harbour some hatred for those who helped with his downfall.

Gerome suddenly lost patience, or control.  He leapt forwards, sweeping the burning branch and Josef’s sword aside and dragging Josef to the ground.  The guards leapt forwards, shouting in dismay.  They grabbed Gerome and tried pull him clear.  Gerome had a tight hold on Josef though, leaning forward ready to rip out Josef’s throat.  Josef was able to struggle enough, combined with the guards efforts, to ensure Gerome took a chunk out of his shoulder instead.  It was still a vicious wound.  Worse than the pain was the feeling of corruption, of darkness seeping into his body.  A darkness that the blessed bracers and necklace did nothing to prevent.  Even as Josef struggled against the demon that Gerome had become his soul shrank at the fate that lay before him.  Nothing they possessed seemed able to withstand the darkness within Gerome, which meant the darkness would spread and Josef would soon become like Gerome.  He suspected that even death wouldn’t spare him now. 

As the guards wrestled with Gerome Josef felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into the roiling darkness.

Chapter Eighteen

Daniel finally managed to form his probe correctly to bounce from the second pattern and strike the third, but from there it went the wrong way.  There was only a tiny gap that he could exploit if he got the angle right, but refining the probe was now an order of magnitude more difficult than before.  Changes in direction the width of a human hair sent the probe off in wildly different directions.  He was exhausted.  Sweat poured down his face and some of his wounds had started seeping blood again.  He refused to give in.

Then the creature came charging out of the darkness, attacking one of the guards.  For a moment Daniel’s attention wavered, but he forced it back.  If he glanced away he would lose everything he had achieved so far.  He would have to start again.  Shutting his ears to the terrible sounds he concentrated even harder.  He probed again.  And again.  And again.  And then suddenly, somehow, he managed it.  The probe deflected from first one pattern, then the next and finally just the right spot on the third.  He felt connected to the world again — albeit by the most tenuous of threads — and he cautiously started to pull power back through the link.

To begin with it was the tiniest of trickles, but he used that power to first secure the channel then widen it.  He found he could use the power he drew to push back against the pendant’s patterns, widening his connection to the world around him more and more.  In a matter of seconds the flow had gone from a trickle to reaching the levels he had been able to draw on before being captured.  The pendant’s power was still in effect, but his channel was secure.

He drew more power than he had ever before.  His body rapidly healed, wounds sealing and flesh knitting.  The power was flowing so quickly that he was almost swept away, but he knew he had to work quickly.  Whatever had attacked the guards could come for him, Sarah and Jon at any moment.

Fighting the torrent of power Daniel focused on his manacles.  Making them drop free of his wrists was a simple matter.  He staggered to his feet and reached for the pendant.  Removing it was a much harder task, but he needed to be free of its effects.  He grabbed the pendant, using power to force it away from his body.  With a huge wrench he dragged it free before flinging it away into the trees.

Daniel turned towards the guards, and the creature attacking them.  He saw that it had Ser Josef on the floor.  It was trying to rip at Josef’s body while the guards were trying to drag it off.  The creature was winning.  Josef looked in a bad way.  He seemed to have stopped fighting — though his eyes still showed an awareness of his surroundings.

One of the witch hunters magical blades jutted from the creatures back, complicating the guards efforts as they tried to avoid being skewered on it.  The blade’s power seemed useless against the creature.  For that matter, the guards defensive wards seemed to be useless too.  Studying the creature Daniel could see why.  Its power emanated from within, from a twisted knot of darkness and hatred at the heart of the creature’s warped soul.  The blades and wards were designed to fight a different type of darkness, a different power, and simply had no effect on this type.

Daniel wondered if he could deal with the creature.  Would the power he could draw on also be useless against its tightly bound core of hatred and evil?  Should he free Sarah and Jon so the three of them could flee, could pursue Rafael and Mary, while the creature concentrated on Josef and the other witch hunters?  Did he owe Josef and the others anything after being bound by them? 

No.  He didn’t.  He could walk free with Sarah and Jon with a clear conscience, in fact certain that what he did was for the best.  That saving Mary had to come first.  He knew all that, yet he stepped towards the creature preparing his power as he went.  Something inside wouldn’t allow him to leave the witch hunters to their fate.

Everything seemed remote to Josef.  He was floating on a sea of oily darkness, occasionally it washed over him but so far he had managed to avoid sinking.  He could see Gerome’s maddened face above him, trying to rip and tear, and the guards valiantly wrestling with Gerome.  Josef was certain that Gerome could easily throw off the guards, kill them if needed, if he wasn’t so fixated on killing Josef.  That thought kept him fighting to the limited extent he could.  While he still lived Gerome’s attention would not turn to the guards.

Suddenly someone new appeared in his vision.  Daniel had somehow freed his arms, thrown off the amulet, and stood above Gerome and the guards.  Josef felt despair then.  Clearly Daniel’s powers were similar to Gerome’s, resistant to the tools of the Order.  Josef waited to see Daniel attack the guards, coming to the aid of the beast that had been Gerome.

He watched in surprise as Daniel reached past the guards, grabbing Gerome’s head and managing to hold it still.  Gerome was too far gone to realise something critical had changed.  He kept clawing at Josef, trying to bring his head close enough to rip and tear. 

Josef could see the darkness in Gerome now, saw it coiling through what remained of Gerome’s soul.  It was twin to the darkness he could feel eating away at his own soul.  Looking at Daniel he saw something very different.  Strands of power of many different colours surged around Daniel.  Unlike Gerome’s power, which was firmly centred within Gerome’s body, Josef could sense Daniel’s power being drawn from all around.  From the trees and the fire, from the nearby sea, from the ground.  Even from the sky.

Now Daniel unleashed that power, letting it flow from his hands deep into the heart of Gerome’s soul.  The darkness there resisted, fought back, but it stood no chance against the tidal wave of power.  With an unearthly screech Gerome’s tensed then his darkened soul simply blew away.  The guards were left holding a blackened corpse.

Daniel’s power didn’t stop though, it flowed on and struck deep into Josef’s core — driving the darkness before it.  Josef found it within himself to smile.  He would die without the corrupting blackness tainting his soul.  Perhaps the power Daniel poured through him was tainted too, the Order’s teachings would certainly say it was, but the difference was palpable.  Where the darkness from Gerome had been loaded with evil and hatred the power from Daniel was a far brighter thing.  It… well, it tasted Josef supposed… of all the sources.  Of trees and plants, of the ground and the sea, of the chill night air.  Even the tang of the energy from the fire felt natural.

As the last of the oily darkness was driven from his body Josef relaxed.  The wounds he’d taken were still fatal, he had no doubt about that, and what was left of his soul felt weak.  He had no energy left to cling to life now, but he faced death without fear.  As a far more natural darkness washed over him he surrendered to it, happy to leave the mortal world and travel towards the embrace of the Almighty.

Awareness slowly returned to Josef.  Bright light was shining through his eyelids.  He could feel a gentle breeze brushing his body where he lay, and hear it gently sighing through some trees.  Everything was peaceful.

There was no pain from his body, no sense of the grievous wounds he’d suffered at Gerome’s hands.  He became certain that he had passed on, that he was beyond death now.  That he might have reached the realm of the Almighty.  His heart started to beat faster and his mouth felt dry.  Josef was scared to open his eyes, overwhelmed by the moment.

“
Food’s ready, get it while it’s hot!”

The rough voice, and the words, rasped across Josef’s attention.  He opened his eyes without thinking, found himself blinking up at a crisp blue sky and tree tops.  Groaning he struggled to sit up.  Someone rushed over and helped, easing him into a sitting position.

“Careful.  Don’t try to get up.”

Josef blinked at his helper. It was Samuel, one of his guards.  For a long time he just stared around.

“I’m alive?”  He brought a hand up to his wounded shoulder.  The skin was a little tender but there was no hint that it had been ripped open.

“
Yes Ser Josef.  You’re alive.  But only thanks to the girl’s father.  He used his powers to heal you.  Ser Daniel helped too, lending his strength he said.”

“
Healed by the power?” Josef asked, appalled.  “Then I am tainted, touched by the darkness!”  The reaction was automatic, embedded.

Samuel looked uncomfortable.  “It could be Ser, it could be.  We… well… we discussed it and we didn’t know what to do.  I took the liberty of using the Purity Orb and it showed nothing, it found no darkness within you.  That convinced some of us but, well, after last night others have doubts.  Our weapons failed last night, our protection was useless.  Could those creatures fool the Purity Orb too?  Could that darkness be within you?”

Josef shook his head vigorously, stopping quickly as the world seemed to spin around him.

“
No.  It was for a while, when Gerome — or whatever he’d become — attacked me.  The wounds he caused were infected with the evil he carried.  My soul was being dragged down by it.  Then Ser Daniel appeared.  He destroyed Gerome and somehow drove the darkness from me.  He used power but… it was different.  The darkness was unnatural, evil, but the power Daniel wielded felt… natural.  It was being drawn from our surroundings.  From the trees and the sea, from natural sources.”

He could see the doubt in Samuel’s eyes, felt the same doubts himself.  The Order’s teachings were very clear — any use of magic, no matter how it was used, meant the user was tainted by darkness.  Could those teachings be wrong?  Could there be power’s that came from a different source?

Or was his own mind tainted, either by the initial darkness or by Daniel’s power?  How could he possibly tell?  The power Gerome carried had been impervious to their blessed weapons, and Daniel had shaken off the powerful warding pendant designed to prevent him wielding any power.

Josef knew that without Daniel’s power he would be dead, as would his men.  They could not possibly have stood against Gerome.  And if they were to recover the girl they’d probably need that power again.  He met Samuel’s uncertain gaze.

“I feel as I always have, but that means nothing.  I need you and the others to follow me still, to obey my orders, but you must be on your guard.  Watch me for any signs I have been corrupted, that I am not acting in the best interests of the Order.  Can you do that?”

“
Yes, I can.  I think the others can all be persuaded as well.”

“
Good.  And we will need to take Ser Daniel and the girl’s parents with us too.  I have no doubt Ser Gerome’s reappearance was related to those creatures that attacked.  There may be others like him, others we cannot stand against.”

Samuel’s face twisted into a scowl.  “I suppose.  I’m not happy about it, and the others won’t be either.”

“Think of it as keeping a close eye on them then.  We certainly need to.  I don’t want them striking out alone and reaching the girl before we do.”

“
That makes sense.  I think I can convince the others.  So what do we do?”

Josef sighed.  “I’m not sure.  I need to speak to Ser Daniel, see what he knows.  The girl’s parents too.  I don’t know what Gerome had become, but the Nightwalkers I do have knowledge of.  They cannot stand the light of the sun.  If the girl was taken by a Nightwalker they won’t be travelling by day.  We can use the Amulet to track her, and try to rescue her during daylight.  If she was taken by something else then… I don’t know.  I suppose we still do the same — rely on the Amulet to guide us.”

“All right.  The lads are shooting us glances, I’ll go talk to them.”

Josef nodded his thanks, then climbed to his feet.  He felt a little unsteady but not too bad, all things considered.  The girl’s parents sat quietly by the fire, eating.  Daniel stood apart, gazing towards the forest.  Josef unsteadily walked to join him.

“Ser Daniel, I believe I owe you my thanks… and my life.  For that matter I may owe you my soul, though I worry that I have only swapped one form of damnation for another.”

Daniel turned to face Josef.  Josef realised he could still sense something around Daniel, an aura of power.  Once again it was a multicoloured rainbow but now the strands were woven tight, seeming to form a shield around Daniel whose face was pinched with concentration.  Then Daniel relaxed and the tight pattern fell apart, though the colourful threads still twisted around him.

“Ser Josef.”  Daniel sounded tired.  Josef wondered if he had slept at all.  “For saving you I need no thanks, it was the least I could do.  As for damning you… no, I have not.  Though your beliefs may never allow you to believe that.  These powers are still new to me, very new, but last night I saw the stark contrast between those who embrace the darkness and the powers that I have access to.  Those that Mary and now her father make use of too.”

“
I think… that is…”  Josef stopped, took a deep breath.  “It is hard for me to admit, it goes against all that I was taught, yet I saw a difference too.  I see it still.  I see the power swirling around your body, I saw it formed into a shield when I approached.  And I can see that you draw that power from your surroundings, from things that are natural.  The creature that attacked me last night was as different to you as night is to day.  It carried only darkness.  Its power was corrosive and vile.  Yet… everything I was taught by the Order tells me that all magic power is evil.  That all such power comes from darkness.”