Fan Fiction ❯ Burning Bridges ❯ ...And Climbing Higher ( Chapter 5 )

Laughter rang out across the courtyard once again, and Hardin glowered down at the table before him as he tipped back his mug again. After having his few drinks, Hardin felt no less agitated. A bit less steady, to be certain, but that laughter from the other side of the fire grated on his raw nerves. It was impossible to simply let himself think the matter over logically while he was over there.

Hardin had never seen Sydney in such a cheerful mood as he'd been in after the dance. The musicians among them had reconvened, and were playing folk tunes for those who still felt like dancing, who were many. Sydney had joined them, and though the dances were simple and required little finesse, he still outshone them by far - despite having had a few glasses of wine himself. As usual, several of his followers were clustered around him, but instead of his usual distant demeanor, he was chatting and joking with them as any normal man might have. Hardin had never heard him give an honest laugh before - Sydney's laughter had always been haughty, or tainted with bitterness. But this night, it was as if his heart was filled with joy.

Kirrienne came to sit down next to Hardin briefly, and he couldn't decide what he thought about that. She had told him that Sydney was always like this after such a ceremony. He enjoyed the dance, she said, as much as everyone else enjoyed watching him. It was obvious he was the gods' hand in the world just from the way he moved. And was Hardin all right? He looked troubled. After a bit of soul-searching, he assured her that he was fine, and no, he didn't want to talk. The drink had lowered his inhibitions, perhaps, but he found that even the thought of a possible intimate moment with her honestly did not do a thing for him. After a little while, she left him alone and went to join the dancing, and her laughter mixed with Sydney's just as the smoke from their two wreaths had. One that he should have wanted and didn't, and another that he shouldn't have wanted, and... did. Or so he'd thought for a few moments.

Hardin continued to sit by himself late into the night, ignoring those who tried to make conversation with him as he emptied the wooden mug before him again and again, wishing desperately that the drink would overcome him. Anything to stop his mind from wandering where it would each time the sound of Sydney's voice drifted across the courtyard. He couldn't even leave to go back to the sleeping quarters to escape it; occasionally while seeking distraction among the sight of the other brethren, he spotted a couple slipping away from the others, holding each other close as they left, whispering softly to each other.

He couldn't take it. He just couldn't take it. His mind told him one thing, and his body simply would not listen. The burning eyes, the swaying hips - they danced before him in memory, and he couldn't shut them out. Gods... he couldn't really have thought those things, could he? Why could he not get it clear in his mind that Sydney was no woman? Why did the man have to give him those damned looks, time and time again?

The turbulence of his thoughts left him so preoccupied that he never heard the footsteps behind him, until a fold of fabric brushed his shoulder and drifted down around his face. The softness of the silk was inviting against his weathered skin, and he inhaled sharply, breathing in the strong smell of incense that permeated the fabric, when a soft, singsong voice spoke.

"Tra la la, Hardin."

Hardin's blood ran cold, and though he knew what he would see, he turned. Sydney stood behind him, one arm outstretched to drape the silk scarf around Hardin's neck. With a flourish, he released it, and it fluttered to rest upon Hardin's shoulders.

Unable to speak through a suddenly tight throat, Hardin angrily snatched the silk away and dropped it. Sydney inclined his head playfully, regarding him with mock dismay. "Hardin..." he gently reproved him. "Will you not celebrate with us?"

"What is it that you want from me, Sydney?"

"So conflicted, so confused..." Sydney noted in an infuriatingly patronizing voice. "So much has happened to you in the past months. Cast those worries aside, for just one night, and let yourself be free."

Hardin slammed the mug he held down onto the table with such force that the handle cracked off in his hand. He barely took note of it, and simply tossed it aside. "I shall be free again when I've left you far behind me, Losstarot," Hardin growled dangerously. "Now leave me be. I want nothing more than to be left alone, without your tricks and your taunting."

He began to turn away, but thin metal blades arrested the motion, touching his chin and cheek with a gentleness that even hands of flesh would not have been able to surpass. Ever so slowly, Sydney turned Hardin's face back towards his own as he leaned closer. His face was flushed, whether from exertion or the wine Hardin couldn't tell. "I know... what you want," he murmured in a voice that grew ever softer, until the last word was a whisper.

Those eyes, those dark, piercing eyes, would not let Hardin look away as Sydney's left hand came up to stroke his cheek. The mage's lips were parted in a seductive smile, and Hardin unconsciously began to lean forward. Sydney's eyes closed as he leaned down, and Hardin found himself fascinated by the curve of his long, pale lashes. The soft burst of Sydney's breath touched his lips, warm and smelling of sweet wine, and his mouth opened to drink in that warmth.

The world, which had faded away unnoticed, abruptly reasserted itself as the musicians began to play a new tune. Suddenly Hardin realized what he had almost done, and he sprang to his feet in alarm. The ale made his head spin, and he put a hand to his head as he leaned back upon the table, away from Sydney, to avoid stumbling. As Sydney's face came into focus again, Hardin could make out the same inviting expression, and he suddenly became clear on exactly what must have been happening. "Is something the matter, Hardin?" Sydney asked innocently, taking a step closer.

Before Hardin had even the time to fully consider the action, his fist struck Sydney squarely in the chin, sending the mage tumbling backwards to the floor, knocking over a pile of firewood that had been stacked against the wall with a loud clattering. Sydney's expression was one of utter disbelief as he raised one metal claw to his face, and found blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He regarded it for a moment, then raised his astonished face to look at Hardin again. His expression hardened to pure, unmasked rage, his eyes burning with fury.

Hardin paid it no heed. "Was this the reason you took me in instead of killing me when you found me, Sydney?" he ranted, towering over Sydney with his fists still clenched. "So that you could use your damned compulsion to keep me as one of your little toys - another man-slave to fawn over you and indulge your every perverse whim? An easy mark, with little spirit left that you would have to break on your own?"

His voice rang in his own ears, and he suddenly realized he was shouting. A glance around told him that nearly everyone in the hall was staring at the two of them, and he took an uneasy step back as a few of the brethren rushed to Sydney's side. Sydney ignored them, still staring up at Hardin with silent rage.

"I thank you for the food, the shelter, and the clothing," Hardin said after a moment, forcing himself to lower his voice to a growl once more. "But it is not worth my soul, nor even my body. I am leaving."

Two of the brethren were helping Sydney to his feet as Hardin turned and began to walk away, but he didn't look back; he simply waited for the burst of fire or bolt from the heavens to strike him down as he departed, or the footsteps of Sydney's men as they rushed in to avenge their beloved master's honor.

Nothing of the sort happened, and Hardin emerged from the confines of the keep into the open streets of Leá Monde's town centre alone, in the depths of the night.

Though the moon shone brightly, Hardin found it was going to be difficult to find his way out of the ruins. The ale had left his body clumsy and his wits dulled, and he quickly realized that out of habit, he'd exited the keep not to the area of the city that would lead him to the portal in the mines, but to the streets that led him to the river where he so often found peace as he sat alone. After pondering the idea of going back through the keep, Hardin decided it didn't matter - he had no desire to come face to face with Sydney or any of his followers now, and he had no idea how to activate the portal anyway. And besides, he had been told that there was a normal route in and out of the city; even if it was a difficult one, he could handle it on his own, certainly. Below ground, through the cellar, Duncan had said, and from what others had said, he suspected it lay in this direction.

He surveyed the vine-covered buildings one by one, trying to determine which one might contain the tunnel that would lead him outside, but they all looked the same, at least to his clouded mind. It was a welcome dilemma, however; the time he spent in frustration over finding dead ends again and again kept him from thinking of what had transpired earlier. He'd reached up to touch his face once, feeling a stinging sensation beneath his short beard, and his hand had come away with traces of blood. Sydney's claws had been gentle and harmless when they'd caressed him, but when Hardin had jerked away, he'd cut himself on the razor edges. Once Sydney had a man in his clutches, he thought bitterly, they could not remove themselves unscathed until he allowed them to go free.

But now his mind was occupied with the task of finding his way out of the maze of ruined buildings and tunnels that could lead anywhere. At least they were not poorly lit, for somehow torches and lamps burned in small hollows that had been carved in the walls, though there were no signs that anyone had travelled down those paths recently.

Upon pulling himself up to an upper ledge, Hardin found a path leading through a darkened building, where sections of the floor had completely fallen away. The door on the other side, however, might lead somewhere more promising than the empty shells of houses he'd found so far, and so Hardin carefully made his way around the gaping holes in the tiles. With satisfaction, he discovered that he'd emerged on the other side of a portcullis that he'd been unable to open, and a thin metal gate beyond that marked the top of a staircase which led below ground once more. A faint blue light emanated up from corridor, and Hardin cautiously descended.

He paused at the foot of the stairs, trying to take in his strange surroundings through the haziness of his mind. The subterranean chamber was chill and damp, the walls of pale stone nearly undisturbed by the earthquake two decades before. Doors and windows that had been boarded up long ago were set in the walls all around, and an eerie blue light glowed in a street lamp in the center of the chamber, giving off an appearance not unlike moonlight in winter. Sydney had mentioned once that the ever-burning torches elsewhere in the city were enchanted long ago, in the age of Müllenkamp, and from the odd color, Hardin had no doubt that these lamps were the same.

Scuffling noises could be heard in the adjacent rooms; no doubt rats foraging in the larders. As of yet, Hardin had seen nothing else moving in the city aside from the occasional bat, and he had definitely come to think this curse that Sydney had cautioned them against was nothing but a superstition - perhaps a ruse to keep his followers from leaving as Hardin had.

His rage and shame resurfaced at the thought of it, and he had to lean against a wall for support as a spell of dizziness overwhelmed him. The ale was catching up with him, he supposed. The small cuts on his face tingled, almost burning, but when he touched his chin, this time his hand came away clean. Wind howled through the chamber through some unseen crevice, and Hardin froze as the sound seemed to resolve itself into a faint whispering.

...blood...

Hardin's head shot up, and he glanced around the room in suspicion, but the wind had died away. All was silent, and he shook his head. The drinking had made his mind weak, and Sydney's warnings now fed his uneasiness with this strange place. It had been the wind, nothing more.

Another gust touched his face, and the shallow wounds stung again. He lowered his head against the draft, shivering.

...sweet liquor of the flesh... intoxicating... warm...

His head rose again, and he warily took a step backwards towards the staircase, scouring the room as the wind died again. Nothing moved - the magical lamplight did not even so much as flicker. It was all his imagination, he decided, and anger flooded his alcohol-fogged mind. It was all Sydney and his mind games; even now, outside the cultist's grasp, Sydney's words still consumed him - even to the point of making him hear things that weren't there!

The room abruptly blurred before Hardin's eyes, and he fell to his knees as he was overcome by vertigo. Fearing that he might vomit, he squeezed his eyes shut against his surroundings as they spun recklessly around him.

The wind began to howl again, then a sudden silence fell, broken by the sound of footsteps and the crackling of a fire.

Hardin's eyes flew open, and he found himself kneeling upon the floor of a small, sparsely furnished chamber - back in the keep, from the looks of it. Something was strange about his sight though; everything seemed fuzzy around the edges of his vision, and despite his fogged mind, things he looked directly at seemed more clear and vivid than his eyes had ever rendered anything before. A small, efficient fire was burning in the hearth on the left side of the room, and straight in front of him were the room's only furnishings: a small table which held a candle, book, and open bottle of wine; a simple chair beside; and against the far wall, a bed slightly larger than the ones the brethren's sleeping quarters held. All were made of old, weathered wood, and a threadbare rug before the fire was the only spot in which the stone floor had a covering.

In the chair sat Sydney, staring down angrily into the metal goblet he held, swirling the drink in circles within it.

His teleportation! Forgetting his dizziness, Hardin started to stand, to open his mouth and express his outrage, but the door to his left opened, and two of the brethren entered. They didn't seem to think it odd that he was standing there in the other corner, though they must have seen him - the corner was not all that shadowy.

"He's nowhere within the secured area, Sydney," one man stated; Morrison was his name, Hardin recalled, and Jonas was the other. "He must have gone outside."

"Good riddance, I say," Jonas put in.

Sydney didn't look up at them as he shook his head. "Then look for him outside. Find a swordsman and take him with you; you may need him, if one of the spirits forgets who you are and in whose memory we come. He can't have gotten far. Bring him back immediately - and unharmed, mind you."

Jonas and Morrison exchanged curious glances before turning back to Sydney. "Why?" Morrison asked, disbelief registering in his voice.

"I say we let the spirits do as they will with him," Jonas muttered.

Their questioning was silenced when Sydney looked up from his drink, staring at them so viciously that Jonas actually took a step back. "And I say you find him and bring him back," Sydney said, his voice harsh. "Do you question my authority?"

"N-no, of course not," Morrison said quickly. "But it's just that..."

"He struck you, Sydney!" exclaimed Jonas. "That cannot be tolerated!"

Metal flashed in the light as Sydney's goblet abruptly crashed against the wall beside Morrison's head, causing the two men to flinch. The mage stood and approached his two followers, staring at them intensely, and they did not move. Time seemed to pass with painful slowness, and then finally Sydney spoke. "Find Padric, and have him accompany you on the search."

Morrison nodded simply. "As you wish, Sydney." Jonas agreed matter-of-factly, as if no tension had passed between them.

That accursed charisma of his! As they left, Hardin opened his mouth once again to speak his mind to Sydney, but before he could say a word, the mage went to stand before the fireplace, looking blankly down at the fallen goblet and the small pool of red wine that had drained from it. After a moment, one metal fist slammed into the wine-splattered wall, sending small chips of stone flying, then Sydney turned and stalked back across the room, plucking the bottle of wine from the table as he flung himself down on the bed angrily.

He still hadn't so much as acknowledged Hardin's presence, which seemed incredibly strange, but something in Sydney's eyes made Hardin hold back. Sitting there on the bed, one leg hanging over the edge and the other drawn up to his chest, tilting the bottle of wine back as he drank deeply, he looked more like a brooding adolescent than the savage manipulator Hardin imagined him to be. The hand holding the bottle dropped limply to his side over the edge of the bed, and the other came up to cover his face, though not quick enough to hide the expression on his face - an expression Hardin could only describe as... broken.

As much as he didn't want to care, the look on Sydney's face reminded him of the nights he'd watched him sleeping; but this time it was wide awake, a conscious misery with no restful peace to be seen. Hardin felt his anger melt away in spite of himself, and he reluctantly opened his mouth to ask what was the matter. "Sydney..."

The simple calling of his name produced an effect Hardin hadn't expected, though, and Sydney's head shot up to look straight at the corner where he stood. The mage's eyes startled Hardin by being red-rimmed and shimmering with tears, and by seeming to look right through him without seeing him. "Hardin...?" Sydney whispered hoarsely.

Something strange was nagging at Hardin's mind, telling him he was missing something important. The way Sydney seemed to look right through him, the words of Jonas and Morrison... Before Hardin got the chance to ask Sydney what was going on, the mage's face took on a look of profound horror that Hardin had never imagined him to be capable of. "Gods, no..." he whispered. "Hardin... What have I done?"

Deeply disturbed by Sydney's unusual behavior, Hardin couldn't think of what on earth to do or say, and then the dizziness overcame him again. He dropped to one knee, a rushing sound in his ears...

Suddenly he was back where he had been, in the eerie blue light of the streets below Leá Monde, with the sound of the wind whistling in his ears. It almost seemed to him that the wind laughed at him as it died away. Bracing himself against a wall in case he was overcome again, Hardin got to his feet, but now he only felt the normal unsteadiness of being somewhat drunk, and he had no idea what had just happened. A disturbing thought was finally coming to light in his mind - Jonas and Morrison spoke of someone who had struck Sydney... they might have been talking about him. But he'd been right there, hadn't he?

No, that couldn't have happened. Sydney had cast no spell, and yet here he was, just where he'd been before. He must have lost consciousness, and had a dream...

But then, falling unconscious and dreaming on one knee? That was unlikely. In a daze, he sat down on the lowest steps of the staircase behind him, momentarily forgetting his decision to leave Leá Monde far behind him. As repulsive as Sydney's behavior had been, this was even more disturbing. Even if he had simply had been dreaming, or even hallucinating, everything he'd seen had been so very vivid - even his wildest dreams had never been so precisely detailed. Whatever had happened, it was beyond anything he'd ever experienced before, and he was at a loss to explain it.

He was even more confused when he realized that he was not alone. Across the chamber, a small figure stood, almost appearing to glow with an unearthly pallor beneath the strange light of the magical lamp. Hardin squinted at it as he tried to make it out - it couldn't really be a child, could it? The small figure swam in and out of focus before it finally resolved itself, and then Hardin's eyes widened in shock. It couldn't be... it just wasn't possible, but...

"John...?" a small voice called.

His eyes filled with tears at the sound. "Philip!" he heard himself shout, forgetting his confusion about the recent happenings. The familiar eyes were as bright and filled with youthful glee as they had been before he'd become ill, and the air was filled with playful laughter as the boy turned and ran, heading towards the one door that was not boarded up.

Hardin echoed the laughter himself as he gave chase, roaring with it even as he felt his eyes filling with tears. The dead walked in Leá Monde, Sydney had said. He could be with him again - he could speak to his little brother! Perhaps Philip even knew where their parents were! Entering the next room, he saw his brother beneath another of the magical lamps, one hand around the post as he swung around it in play. The boy paused as Hardin entered, and gave him a wide grin. "John!"

"Gods, Philip!" Hardin stood staring at him for a moment, still stunned with amazement. It seemed to him that the lamplight illuminated thin threads, drifting upwards from the boy's hands and feet, but that didn't matter - it was Philip! Perhaps that was how the dead appeared in Leá Monde, but as long as they appeared at all, Hardin didn't care. Opening his arms, he stepped forward to embrace his little brother.

Yes, living blood - sustenence of the spirit, sweet and tasty!

This time, the words were so clear that Hardin could not make himself believe it to be his imagination, and he looked around suspiciously. The wind began to howl again, and suddenly a gust struck Hardin with such force that he had to reach out for the lamp post to keep from being knocked off his feet. Lurching forward, he got a closer look at Philip's face...

Philip's face, he discovered, was not Philip's. A child's face, to be certain, but it was a mere wooden parody of a little girl's, warped and blighted by long years of decay in the darkness of the undercity. The laughter resolved into a terrifying giggle that sounded nothing like Philip's warm laughter, and one hand, clutching a gleaming knife, rose as if tugged at by the string that rose from the wrist.

Letting out a startled curse, Hardin stumbled backwards, fumbling for the sword at his waist - and quickly discovered he had forgotten to take it with him when he left the Keep. Unable to think of any other option, he tried to turn and run, but another gust of wind slammed into him, knocking him to his knees. We shall drink to our eternal health!

The child's giggle sounded again, and a sharp pain ripped through the back of Hardin's right leg. He couldn't keep from crying out as the wind rushed past again, and the wound began to burn and tingle in the same unusual way the smaller ones on his face had earlier.

Savor the pain, the pain that ages this draught! A fine vintage!

Hardin tried to stagger to his feet through the agony, and found his wounded leg unresponsive - the little fiend had hamstrung him! Pushing himself onto his back, he thought to batter his attacker with his bare hands, perhaps even wrest the knife away, but the child struck again, tearing deep into his stomach with the sharp blade. The wind rushed past again, deepening the pain, as his blood soaked through his shirt in only an instant. Not content with that, the child standing over him twisted the knife in his gut, and a scream emerged from Hardin's lips that he could not even recognize as his own voice. The knife lifted and struck again, this time at the hand that Hardin lifted instinctively as a feeble shield.

His surroundings began to grow dark, and even though Hardin knew it must mean he was dying, at least the pain seemed to be growing more distant as well. The child's knife found him in the side, in the shoulder, and in the neck, each time seeming less and less important, and then Hardin's world went black.