The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (78 page)

Claudiu and Ghregûr shared
a look. That was what they wanted to hear.

Asmodemus noticed,
scowling. “I don’t have any more time, my Lords. I must take my
leave of you.” He didn’t wait for a response. His Holo-Crys went
dead with the last word he’d spoken.

A short silence
ensued.

Then, the Swüreg King
turned to face the Rigă-Kur. His look was smug. “I hear your son,
Fenris, struggles against this new Twelve.”

Claudiu waited for nearly
a minute before replying. He would not lose his cool to the likes
of a creature with the wit on par with that of a brick. “There was
a Fist of the Light sent to disrupt his plans. Since those idiots
following Rûdulfolo had said such an act was impossible to conduct
upon the Melded World, my son was caught unawares.” He paused to
make sure he was fully collected. “But, make no mistake; he will
have them in tow by the time of your arrival. I promise you
that!”

“
And if he
doesn’t…?”

Now, it was the Vülfen’s
turn to grin internally.
They are all
dolts, the whole lot of them!
Claudiu
didn’t answer right away, pretending to think hard on the
issue.

Ghregûr waited
impatiently, chomping at the bit. “He should be added to my
retinue, if he should fail to have the Twelve in his possession by
the time of my arrival.”

Idiots, one and
all.
It was so easy. It was like skinning
a newborn, very little fuss, only a bit a squirm or two in the
beginning. Then, the rest was like chopping wood. Go through the
motions and get the job done quickly.

He pretended affront. “Why
should he be under your command? He’s a Councilor himself. He’s the
Snowman’s Hand after all.”

“
He is also failing
miserably with the task given onto him by our Great Lord. Maybe he
was too green for a job as critical and time-pressed as being the
Lord of the Vanguard. Maybe he was ill-suited for the job.” The
Swüreg King looked very pleased with himself. “Vülfen do not make
good leaders of Swüreg.” He said it as a matter of fact. It didn’t
matter that Fenris commanded more than just fifteen hundred Swüreg
warriors. He had Prēosts, Nixae, Jötuns, IsigWyrms, Dēowulf and
many other high Creations at his beacon call. And, he had the
Hross. There had never been a collection of such diversity from
Storm under a unified command before. What Fenris had done over the
centuries was nothing short of spectacular. And, he had done it by
himself with very little help from the Vülfen Kur
Ambalaj.

The Hross…

Claudiu felt himself smile
openly. The first expression he’d allowed himself to reveal since
he’d called this meeting some time ago. “I would like to place a
wager upon it. Are you game, old friend?”

The Hlāford Dhŏŏm laughed
- a jiggle of anticipation. “Of course, of course.”

“
If
Fenris fails to gather the Twelve by the time of your arrival, then
he shall indeed report to your good offices. You may treat him as
you will. I ask only that it is just and no harm befall him. But,
if he does have them, then you will afford him
every
resource at your disposal and
declare he is to be above reproach, excepting you authority, of
course. I want him to be your chief military commander, in charge
of
all
Swüreg on
the Melded World. What say you to that?”

Ghregûr squinted hard at
his counterpart, loving the idea of the upstart Fenris groveling at
his boots, but finding it equally revulsive to have the brat
commanding his vast army.

The Rigă-Kur gave the
Swüreg King the necessary space and quiet.

“
Deal,” said Ghregûr at
last. It was rasp.

“
Good,” began Claudiu, but
stopped when he realized the other had blackened his Holo-Crys
before he’d started speaking. The aged Vülfen was by himself in his
throne room. “It is of no consequence,” he said to himself. “Either
way, Vülfen power and influence would grow.”

Secretly, he hoped Fenris
would fail in his task. He hoped the Fist of the Light
would
keep the Twelve
hidden just a while longer. To finally see the Hross put to the use
they’d been created for would be interesting.

Not even Fenris knew of
this and they’d been his closest companions since birth.

“
Nothing will stop the
Vülfen from ruling alongside the Great Maelstrom.
Nothing!”

Claudiu’s laugh rippled
through the gigantic chamber until it turned to a howl, terrifying
the many guards and servants, standing outside the throne room,
waiting.

It was a terrible keening
that didn’t stop for nearly an hour.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Part Four:

Price of
Equilibrium

Antisthenes says that in a
certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as
soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become
audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next
summer.
-
Plutarch, Moralia

Winter must be cold for
those with no warm memories.
- Movie:
An Affair to Remember.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Growth

Day Two, Friday, 3:53
am…

The tracks ended about a
hundred feet from the rock face, an unexpected thing to find here
where there should have been homes and yards. It took him more than
a minute to realize the snow had been recently turned. It had been
wiped down, possibly by large boughs of pine, because when he
looked closely, he could see the individual paths of the needles in
the snow itself. He knew, as he scrutinized the huge jumble of
rocks and boulders, the band of humans he had tracked earlier were
somewhere within or behind this great wall of rock, warm and cozy,
protected and safe. It didn’t matter the falling snow was beginning
to cover what was left of their tracks, he could tell. They were in
there, a group of considerable size, resting, regaining their
strength.

He sat in the snow, not
making a sound, and listened. His eyes were closed, his mind open,
searching.

It took only a few moments
before he sensed it, atop the rock pile, sitting much like he was
doing, a creature of large proportions, all of its senses pointed
toward him. He could almost feel the heat of its’ gaze through the
cold of the night.

Oralé mano, they are
organized!
he thought, letting his body
slip into a trance, content to sit there the entire night,
immobile, determined.

He would find out. He had
too! He had to make sure Andrew was safe.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

A Waking Dream

Day Two, Friday, 4:14
am…

The Legacy of
Truth.

The Talisman of the
Kring-Hël.

Joaquin awoke, in the
cave, under a pile of throw blankets. Jason was at his side and the
tiny, plump form of Louis upon the other. He was glad everyone else
was still asleep, feeling the true weight of what they were up
against hit him full force. There was little he could to fight such
an onslaught and, in the end - he lost. He gave in and was very
grateful the others didn’t have to witness him cry, weeping like a
child, lost and without hope. It was a woeful sobbing, coming for
somewhere deep inside, every exhalation hurting him to the core,
every gulp of breath like poison in his lungs.

He wept for a long, long
time…

*****

With tears drying upon his
face and his nose stuffed with mucus from sobs, only minutes
before, had been wracking at his body. Without any cause he could
readily discern, he was stunned into motionlessness, no more
crying, no clenching at his gut, no movement at all. Within those
seconds, the thought had come and the knowledge had followed -
unabated, easy and without any impediment, without any pain.
Merely, there was something he didn’t know in one moment and did in
another. The sudden knowing of it had frozen him in place. He lay
there upon the makeshift, bedding, quietly thinking, and blinking
away his tears.

He could see it clearly in
his mind’s eye, plain as day as if he had known it all of his
life.
The Legacy of
Truth
, a talisman made real by only the
Reborn Kring-Hël. It was the key, bringing life where there was no
life, the fulcrum that would unleash a power never seen before upon
the planes of existence.

And I know where it
is
, thought Joaquin as he lay there. His
mind automatically took him to the very foundations of the mighty
Eagle Rock. That huge conglomerate boulder had forever towered over
the 134 Freeway, between the cities of Pasadena and Glendale in
southern California. The Eagle Rock - a huge mass of sandstone and
sedimentary stones overlooking a small community of the same name -
shaped like an eagle’s head and formed as an eagle in flight at the
same time.

All at once, he was
standing there, as though he’d been magically transported from the
cave. Now, he stood there, before it - though there was no snow. He
looked up at the looming massive, remembering. At one time, back in
the early years of the fledgling communities that had surrounded
Los Angeles, bandits and outlaws had hid in caves that supposedly
riddled the ridge, comprising the Eagle Rock and its immediately
vicinity.

Flash!

Next, he was walking upon
a road - the road leading from the left of the great Eagle Rock. He
was walking upon a slight incline toward the hills beyond. He
frowned, a little surprised to find himself traversing up Scholl
Canyon Road. Why was he trudging toward the large garbage dumpsite
that had serviced most of the northeast area of Los
Angeles?

The answer never came.
Seconds later, he was in some crazy, fast-forwarding world. His
speed increased. He was no longer walking. His pace was too fast.
In fact, he couldn’t even run this fast. He was flying up the road,
turning left, then left again as the road continued to race on by
underneath his feet. He turned right twice and left again, soaring
over a long curving turn, edging him right, before he continued
along a long straightaway. He climbed higher and higher as he went,
the trees growing ever taller, the landscape becoming all the more
wild and untamed. The road zigzagged back and forth a bit through
giant pines and sycamores, until he came to a sharp right turn.
Here the road seemed to turn back upon itself, rising sharply as it
did so, until it straightened out once again. The vista before him
widened. But, he had little time to consider it, as he was forced
slightly to the right. He found himself before a wide grove,
surrounded by trees, at least a half-mile square. At the middle of
it, he could see a large crucifix made of stone, standing at least
twelve feet high upon a three-stepped dais.

The
Marker
, whispered something in his
brain.
This is the place where lies the
Legacy you seek.