Demon Age: Will of Shadows

Chapter 4

When his eyes finally fluttered open, Audoin was once again in the darkness with the thick smell of incense all around him. His struggled to make sense of the shadows that surrounded him and he tried futilely to clear the fog that jumbled his brain. There had been a creature, another one, and a woman with a long silver braid. Wilmetta. The name came back to him unbidden. As the haze began to recede, Audoin realized the walls were lined with books. He was in some kind of study.

"Ah, good," he heard a booming voice say. "You're awake. We were beginning to worry."

Audoin started at the sound of the voice, but he was staring up at a ceiling that was drenched in shadow. He pushed himself up and realized that he was resting on a makeshift palette that had been shoved hastily into one corner of the cluttered room. Globes and crystals and all manner of other bric-a-brac filled the shelves and tables and crowded into the spaces that were not already covered with priceless manuscripts. A large desk holding piles of dossiers and a mess of papers and folios stood quietly at one end of the room and behind it sat a large figure.

The shadowy stranger rose and came toward Audoin. He had no energy left in him to resist. His thoughts were a tangled web of confusion and he found he could not sort through them.

"Where am I?" Audoin demanded, throwing back the covers and rising from the wedge of pillows and furs with an effort that was gargantuan. The mysterious new stranger came on. Audoin could not remember where he was or how he had gotten there, but he remembered the fear — a new emotion for him. Blood roared in his ears.

"If you come one step closer, I'll gut you!"

Audoin reached for his knife, but his grasping hand found only air. He looked down at his waist to see that his belt and the sheath that usually hung from it were missing. In fact, all his clothes had been replaced and instead of musty old leathers, he was now wearing a neatly woven shirt and soft grey trousers.

The stranger drew closer as Audoin grit his teeth and braced himself for a fight to the death. Just as he prepared to jump at the dark shape, gathering the very last of his strength, the shadow came to a stop, only a few feet away from where Audoin stood poised for attack.

The stranger was standing in a shaft of warm lamplight, revealing himself to Audoin for the first time. He was a big man, with a round face and ruddy cheeks. A thick tangle of shaggy grey hair covered his head and his jaw bore the smattered remains of a sandy copper beard. A long hooked nose protruded from the center of his face, huddled between two great dark brows, and he wore a look that seemed to Audoin to be rather smug. The big rounded mound of the man's belly was visible, even beneath the heavy layers of his dazzlingly woven robes, and gemstones glittered at his porky knuckles. A nauseating cloud of perfume wafted all around him and more gold and glitter and gemstones sparkled at his neck and his wrists and his toes.

"I am Ishman Yulghari," the big man said. It was the same booming voice that Audoin had heard earlier, there was no mistaking it. "And I am His Most Holy Head Priest of The Order of the Black Temple."

Bits and pieces of Audoin's memory flooded back to him as the strangers words settled. The Order of the Black Temple. Audoin had never heard of it before, but there more than a thousand different religions in Ashusrith. It was impossible to keep up with every one. He gave the glittering man a suspicious look over. There was no denying he looked the part of the priest, dressed as he was head to toe in robes of fine soft purple velvet worked all over in silver and gold thread.

"What am I doing here?" Audoin demanded of the priest. "Where am I and what have you done with me?"

The priest smiled. His face as not unkind. He adjusted a few of the heavy chains that hung about his shoulders and motioned toward a chair that stood open before the cluttered desk. Audoin hesitated, his head pounding and his muscles still aching from the trauma of...how many nights had it been now? He no longer knew.