Feldare Tales: A Dark and Stormy Knight

"I thought as much," she replied, staring at her tea as it steamed and swirled, reflecting her mind quite nicely. "They still insist it's not really him?"

"They say he's been brainwashed to act as he is now, so that he could do something very, very important," explained Tammer. "They got really loose-tongued after he slew their wizard, and we threatened to turn the whole lot of them over to the duke."

"Why haven't you?" asked Nadia, looking at him curiously.

"I believe the woman who says she's his wife," said Tammer. "She is very adamant about it, and I cannot believe that she would be so if he were truly as he appears." He looked over at the half-elf, still lying at the base of the bar. "You're lucky, you sack of dung. Someone vouched for your life, or there would be an unfortunate accident within this hour." Gavin just glowered at them, his eyes spitting hate and death.

Nadia looked at Tammer hard. "You're sure of this?" she asked. "I don't want him escaping again."

The low rumble of a chuckle escaped Tammer's lips. "Somehow, I don't think our lad there will be doing much escaping today," he said. "You sort of made his sword wielding rather problematic. But it is good that you bound his wrists anyway, I hear he is a very capable wizard himself, as well as knight. We would not wish him to heal himself or something equally discomfiting."

Gavin said something in the guttural and vile speech he had last used in the basement. It hurt the ears, it did, and felt like steel dragged down stone in one's mind.

"No one here speaks your foul tongue, Templar," said Tammer. "And your pitiful magics will not bend my will. Pray to your fell god that your friends can cure you, or I will simply put down another rabid beast. It would not be the first." The cold expression in Tammer's eyes rather frightened Nadia, even.

It was well after sunup that half a dozen huntsmen had trickled into the bar and hung about, helping to keep an eye upon the half-elf. Nadia was lying upon a long bench napping when Gavin's ‘friends' were escorted in by Trevir and two other huntsmen.

Nasina ran across the room and to the prone man. "By the One, what have you done to him?" she said loudly, waking Nadia, who sat up blinking.

"What did I do to him?" screeched Nadia, coming up off the bench in a doeskinned blur. "Ask my backside that, as he used it plentifully, and my maidenhood!" She stomped across the room, her fists clenched. "Your precious husband raped me several times in the last day and a half. Be glad he's still breathing."

"I apologize," said Nasina. "Perdan did not expect him to revert to the newer personality first. Perhaps we should have taken more precaution against that event."

"Can you undo it now?" asked Tammer. "Without the mage?"

Again, Nasina nodded. "I can do it. I also know the arts, though I was not a match for Perdan's skills," she said. "Can we lay him upon a table?"

Tammer nodded and watched as the two large men lifted Gavin and sat him with distasteful gentleness upon the table. Gavin was still spewing forth the foul words of the grating language as they moved him and Nasina sat the golden ring upon his brow. This last required the assistance of one of the large men, holding Gavin's head still for it.

He spat curses and vileness dripped from each syllable.

Nasina stood placidly by his head, unrolling the blood-stained scroll and she began to read. These words were similar to the foul ones he used, but gentler, more melodic. As she spoke, the ring about his skull began to glow with a blueish light, then pulse. Gavin's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he began to chant a litany, one of disgusting words, that made the skin crawl. He was fighting it.

Nasina stopped reading from the scroll and started over, speaking more strongly and firmly. The torc once again lit up and began to pulse more fiercely. Gavin's chant became more pronounced as well, but there was an undercurrent this time, of fear and concern.

There was an almost audible crack, as if a whip had snapped in the air over Gavin's form.

He had twisted the arm broken in the upper half hard enough to break one of the lower bones, he moved back and forth, screaming his lungs out, and still cursing in the guttural, foul tongue.

Then the torc flashed. Gavin went limp in that moment, and his breathing slowed. Nasina collapsed into the arms of one of the large men, her eyes fluttering shut as the golden ring about Gavin's head lost its glow.

The large woman stepped forward, prying one of Gavin's eyes open with her thumb. "He lives," she said, speaking to Nasina, who was trying to regain her feet.

"But is he Arviel?" asked Nasina looking down at him.

The man lying upon the table groaned in agony as he slowly regained consciousness. His eyes opened, revealing a mask of pain and torment. "Nasina?" he asked.

The slight woman smiled. "Yes," she said, "but we cannot yet be sure you are Arviel."

"I know, ask," he said in an ultimately tired voice.

Nadia felt her heart twisting in her chest. Why do I care anymore? This man abused me and even if well now, he is that woman's husband. Her thoughts filled with images that were both enticing and terrifying. She shook her head, to clear them from her mind.

Nasina said, "When we met, you stole something from me, what?"

Arviel smiled broadly through the pain. "Your maidenhood," he said, chuckling hollowly.

Nasina frowned at him. "Smart ass!" she said. "That's partial proof right there, however that is not correct," she chided. "Now speak plainly, else these good huntsmen may just run you up a tree somewhere and let you dangle."

Arviel turned and regarded the near dozen hostile faces around him. "Oh, my," he said quietly. "It was your bracelet, that your father gave you. You wear it now, but you wear it in your hair."

Nasina reached behind her head and pulled the ring binding her hair in a tail from it. She held out a small bracelet, much to small for her to wear in long years. "It was one I have had since early childhood, and does no longer fit," she explained. "Arviel and I met long ago, when I was a child."

"Now," the large woman said, stepping forward. "We must know what you found out."

"Of course," said Arviel, nodding. "But I don't know where the papers went."

"I have them here," he said, pulling a stack of parchments from behind the bar. "What of them?"

"They have much information that could harm the Black Theocracy greatly," said Arviel "Including plans about an imminent attack upon your good duke." He grinned. "It comes back fully now. "They have a person infiltrated into his bloodline, and wish to supplant him with their own man, thereby making Morrovale into an outpost, as some other realms in this region already are.

"If you speak lies, Templar, I'll gut you and make a vest of your hide," said Tammer. "Someone get a leech here and get those arms set," he said, and two huntsmen left the tavern at a run.

Nasina and Arviel, and the large woman sat in a knot, speaking and the two women holding documents before him for him to read, as his arms were pretty much useless. He spoke quickly and replied to questions put to him. Nasina spoke to Tammer at length after about half an hour. Tammer then spoke to one of the two-dozen huntsmen gathered by that hour. Half of them left immediately.

"They go to warn the duke," Tammer told Nadia. "He was planning a hunt in the morning, tomorrow, I remember hearing other nobles speaking of it. The assassins from the Black Theocracy planned to kill him then, along with anyone else that was near to him." Tammer chuckled. "It seems that his hunt will be pushed up a day on the schedule and his game will be much more satisfying. Arviel relayed where they are encamped."

Nadia nodded, and gave a smile, but inside she was rather confused. "Tammer, I think I loved him," she whispered to the old huntsman. "Even after he abused me."

Tammer put an arm around her shoulders. "I understand, it does like that sometimes," he said. "But who you loved was not who he is, that man is gone now, both of them were not real, neither the blank man who you fell in love with, nor the evil man who bent your mind to his will."

"I suppose that they are both dead," she said, rising from the chair. "If they were ever real."

Tammer patted her arm. "They were real, just not permanent," he said.

"I'm lonely," said Nadia and left the Tavern.

---

The next several hours were a blur of activity.

Tammer attempted to pay the farmer, Charnen, for his time, but the man oddly refused payment and actually acted as if he felt guilty of something. He left about noon, begging that he needed to return to his farmstead. He was sent off with thanks by several huntsmen for bringing their own home.

Nadia was not to be found in town, or her home. People assumed that she wished to be alone for a while. They could not blame her, from what was heard of her ordeal.

Duke Anasper immediately called forth his finest cavalry and led them to the location of the Black Templar encampment half a day's walk north west of Morrovale. They utterly surprised the vile host and none of that foul group escaped. The duke, himself, was said to have slain the leader, though some murmured that he did not, but that he had fought quite bravely and well, nonetheless.

Arviel was collected by the Ducal Guard after a few hours and brought to the duke's home ‘Ironwall,' for observation and further debriefing. It was revealed to those who needed to know to buy their silence, that the duke and several other Windir bordering realms had been working out this scheme to get someone into the Black Theocracy for some years now, and it had finally born fruit. And from the volume of documents that Arviel had with him, that harvest was plentiful.

---

It was two days later. Nadia finally had returned to the Pierced Boar. She did not divulge her location the missing days.

"Well, lass, from what I hear, things have worked out, more or less," said Tammer, setting a mug of mead before her.

Nadia smiled wanly. "So I hear, as well," she responded.

"I know it isn't justice, Nadia," he said, a look of displeasure on his face. "It's not even close to fair. You deserve someone be punished for what befell you."

"What befell me was, in large part, because of my own foolishness," she said. "I should have known that he was not to be fully trusted as I did."

Tammer laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Guilty of caring is a charge I would gladly face, Nadia," he said.

Her smile changed to one of somehow almost beatific softness. "It is one you are guilty of many times over, old man," she said quietly, patting his hand. "I suppose that you got burned more than once in your dealings."

The old man chuckled. "Indeed I have, but I don't think the scorches from those burns were nearly so painful as yours, lass," said Tammer. "I feel horrible about what happened."

A quick look at him from her somewhat haunted eyes told Tammer he could never know the pain she had felt at the cruel hands of the villainous Arviel. He simply squeezed her shoulder and let her think a moment.

"I think, Master Tammer," she began, "I loved him, even when he turned evil. In my heart, I felt secure knowing he would tell me what I needed to do, like a slave."

Tammer grunted a noncommital sound, and his head shook. "It's no way for a freewoman to be," he said.

"Oh, I know," she nodded emphatically, "and eventually, I remembered that."

He reclaimed his hand, using it to pick up a greasy rag and wipe ineffectually at the counter top of his bar. "If you need to speak to someone of it, I could pass word to the Lady Hyandai.. . ."

"No," said Nadia. "She does not wish to relive her pain, either." She rose from her stool, smiling, and swallowed the last of the mead. "I will cope. As we huntsmen do."

Tammer grinned after her as she walked out of the tavern, her head level and her gait proud. Two other huntsmen, sitting at tables, eating, turned to watch her shapely backside in her doeskin pants. They glanced at one another, then at Tammer, to ensure that they had not violated a taboo. Tammer grinned at them and winked. "She'll be fine," he said.