II. The Initiate

A fledgeling knight finds more than he's looking for in the Inner City.

            Thanus ran his finger along the signet ring on his right hand as he walked down the well-manicured cobblestone streets of the Inner City.  The stone-revetted shops of the merchant’s quarter drifted by, out of focus and out of mind. It had already been two weeks since he returned from his training in the neighboring nation of Solis... and nothing. Not a single contact.  No subtle turn of phrase, no coded messages, not even a furtive glance at the ring. It wasn’t his sigil the ring bore; it was a symbol far more ancient, far more powerful.  Who would recognize it? When would they contact him?

            A passing noblewoman eyed him warily. His father would be furious to see him parading around the city in his gleaming new plate mail, but thanks to his training at the Citadel of the Sun, Thanus was a knight now. His father’s objections were moot. 

Even with his helmet removed, few recognized him beneath his coif.  Thanus wanted savor every moment of his anonymity while it lasted. A little boy jostled him as he walked by.  Thanus smirked at the longhaired child as he scurried off.  Had Thanus been recognized, that certainly wouldn’t have happened. 

The smirk froze on Thanus’s face as he eyed a brand, a half moon above the boy’s right cheek.  That was no boy--he was one of the Orphaned.  Thanus cursed and quickly reached for his belt pouch.  Of course! His gold was gone.  Thanus shook his head, chiding himself.  There would always be more gold, but he would have to learn not to be so careless. Thanus’s eyes widened as they fell upon his right hand.  His ring!  He’d taken his ring!

            Frantically the armored knight raced through the city on the trail of the boy.  Berran the Bard had told him stories about the Orphaned, but he’d never seen one up this close.  Only a few thousand remained, travelling in bands, only visiting cities on rare occasions.  The Orphaned were definitely not welcomed. In the cities of Kairnmoor they were banned entry.  Every one of them were thieves.  Thanus wondered how this one had even gotten into the Inner City.

            His armor clanked loudly as he chased the halfling down the street. Women drew their belongings close in alarm, men scoffed, but Thanus would not be deterred.  He had to get back that ring!

            The boy paused to look back at his pursuer, just long enough for Thanus to reach out and grab his wrist.  A child’s blue eyes looked up at him in fear, from a child’s face.  It was uncanny.  Being so close to one of the Orphaned made him slightly queasy. He knew the boy must be more than 200 years old, but with the un-aging mind and body of a ten-year-old child.

            Berran had told Thanus the story when he was but a child. Two centuries ago, Kairnmoor was not small nation it is today: it was the seat of an empire that stretched across most of the Sheltered Lands subsuming even much of Thanus’s own kingdom of Ara’Valon. Kairnmoori orphans were traditionally abandoned, left to fend for themselves.  Hungry and on the streets, many turned to thievery, so the Kairnmoori towns and villages began the practice of branding child-thieves with a half-moon just above the right cheek as a mark of exile.  Left to fend for themselves in the inhospitable Moorlands, they bound themselves into bands like brigands, but they were wracked with hunger and pestilence, and the bodies of children could often be found along the remote roads of Kairnmoor. The Archmagus Seleana the White, the greatest wizardess the Eyrth has known, came across an orphan girl while travelling in the Moorlands, dead from hunger.  The sight touched Seleana so much that she brought the girl’s body back with her to her throne at the pinnacle of the Tower of Secrets.  Seleana cast a powerful spell, a spell of the First Circle, a spell unlike the world has ever seen, a spell so exacting that it killed the wizardess.  Every child that was branded with a half-moon in Kairnmoori fashion became enchanted, that they would never know such natural hardships as hunger or illness again. But the spell did more than that: the branded orphans never died, never aged, never lost their childlike innocence.  Today the same children roam the Lands, thieves and outcasts, living eternally until they meet death by unnatural means.  Berran had meant for the story to inspire compassion for the poor, but instead it made Thanus regard the Orphaned with severe discomfort.

“The ring!” Thanus commanded as the little boy squirmed, trying to escape his grip.  “I know you have it,” Thanus admonished.  “If you return it now, I promise you no harm.”

The child stopped squirming for a moment, and dug into his pocket.  “You mean this?” he asked innocently, “You must have dropped it.  I’m glad I found it for you.”

            Thanus glowered as he took the ring.  He began to chastise the halfling for lying but his breath caught as he spied the wall behind the boy.  The child wriggled free, racing away, but Thanus paid him no mind. He stared at a giant sigil painted haphazardly on the wall of a shop. The shopkeeper shouted orders to his underlings, scrubbing at the paint to no avail.  They would have to wait for a fresh pail to arrive in order to cover the mark.  The sigil was a red “H” with the final stroke continued as a line crossing through the letter. Thanus gulped. So close to the castle! How had they gotten into the Inner City? The red sigil was the sign of the rebels; it meant “No Houses,” an absurd call to end the aristocracy.  The occasional crossed-H might be found scrawled in the slums of the Outer City, but if they had managed a brazen move like this... the rebellion’s influence must have grown considerably since he left for Solis. Thanus was doubly glad no one recognized him.  If others knew he had witnessed the shopkeeper’s negligence, consequences would have been necessary.

            Thanus quickly ducked across the street, into the familiar shop of an old friend.  Though a blacksmith as well as a swordsman, Bain Treyvand likely hadn’t touched a forge in years.  Certainly he wouldn’t be operating a forge in the Inner City, the noise and fumes were unsightly and unwanted.  Much of the bejeweled daggers and finely wrought steel displayed in his shop was imported from Solis or the Glade, though most of it was forged in the Outer City by the hands of Bain’s many apprentices.  The elderly blacksmith stood with his back to the door, gingerly polishing an ornately carved longsword as Thanus entered.

            “Ahem,” Thanus cleared his throat.

Bain turned his head slowly, his eyes flickered over Thanus’s ring before registering the young man’s face.  Thanus’s heart skipped a beat.

            The old man knew who Thanus was, but the old man did not bow.  Instead he drew himself tall, meeting the young knight’s eyes levelly. “What men bask in the light of the sun?” he said the secret words in the Ancient Tongue, softly as if the walls might have ears.

            Thanus gasped involuntarily.  He hadn’t expected to hear the secret words here--much less from of the mouth of a blacksmith. His heart raced with joy.  Finally! “Men who won’t rest ‘till the shadow’s undone,” Thanus offered the rehearsed reply in a hushed murmur.

            Bain nodded, a tone of acknowledgement in his voice:  “Initiate.”

            “Brother,” Thanus replied, giddy with excitement.  Bain the blacksmith, a man Thanus had known for years, was a Templar of the Golden Dawn.

            Thanus had always wanted to be a knight, but his real reason for studying at the Citadel in Solis was to find the secretive Templars.  Everyone knew the myths but no one Thanus knew had ever met one. They were an ancient secret society that spanned kingdoms, rival houses, class lines and racial tensions for the sole purpose of preserving peace and combatting evil. He had searched for them desperately to no avail, until the week before he left.  Men had abducted him from his room in the dead of knight.  Bound and blindfolded, he was taken to an underground lair where a council of men shrouded in hoods had sworn him to the Oaths of the Dawn.  Like all initiates, they gave him a ring and a quest.  Once he had completed the task they gave him, the Secret Council would take his ring and remove their hoods.  He would know the faces of his fellows, and men like Bain would call him “Brother.”  He would be a Templar of the Golden Dawn.

            “You haven’t left the city,” Bain said flatly.

            “I’ve only been back a week and a half.  It’s not a simple matter to get away.  More importantly, I need a plan. This isn’t something I can do alone.”

            Bain nodded. “This task is of unusual importance for an Initiate.  A lot is riding on your shoulders. Time is of the essence, but perhaps your delay is for the best.  You must choose your friends wisely. I have been asked to warn you: there is a traitor in your court.”

            Thanus looked alarmed. “The rebels?”

            “There are whispers, but our ears are many. Someone plots against you, Thanus. Against the House of Vael. Against the kingdom of Ara’Valon.  And they know about the weapon.”

            “Who?” Thanus demanded, alarmed.

            Bain shrugged, “Invisible voices, I’m told. You have your work cut out for you.  But what better man to hunt a traitor than the king’s own son?”

            Prince Thanus nodded, Brother Bain was right.

“Something dark is stirring, Initiate.  Our ears say as much in Solis, Kairnmoor, and here in Ara’Valon.  But more than that, I feel it in my bones. There’s something more at play here than crossed out H’s and brigands playing at rebellion.”

            Thanus nodded, and looked out the window pensively.  Suddenly the city looked different, cast in a sinister light.  The mundane moments took on a nefarious edge as Thanus realized anyone could be a rebel. A rickety pen carrying a quarry of prisoners bound for the dungeon passed along the street; the king’s justice must have been administered. Who was worse, the miscreants in the pen or the ones free to roam? Thanus frowned as a child hurled a rock at the pen, and a wave of enthusiastic shouts and jeers animated the onlookers.  He would have thought citizens of the Inner City would behave with more decorum than the common slumkind bound in the pen. The display was a disquieting reminder that civility was nothing more than a thin veil disguising the more brutal nature shared by common-men and noblemen alike.

            Thanus agreed, something dark was stirring. Something dark indeed.

Author's Note

So I'm worried about being too obvious with my exposition. I'm seriously debating taking the paragraph out where Thanus remembers the backstory of the Orhpaned ( “Berran had told Thanus the story when he was but a child....") and placing it somewhere else in the novel. Is it too much of a digression?

Reviews

[Sam Marsella]

Reads well. Solid. I might need to read the first two chapters again in more detail, but just as a suggestion do you think you could somehow add a description of what Thanus and this kid look like?

I like it so far.

[Leah]

I don't think it's too much of a digression! I seriously can't help but fall in love with this story already. You have great characters and wonderful description, and I absolutely loved the passage abou tthe Orphaned. It's something new, different, and interesting. I was surprised to find that Thanus is the prince! I'll just go back to reading more of this now... :)