The Knight Who Sought a Crone
Chapter Eleven

I cannot remember how I arrived only I found myself following the strange woman clad in blue to an unmarked hut. An unmistakable flavor of primdil flowers and spring water aromas filled my nose. The home, despite lack of resources in the middle of the woods, appeared clean and straightened. Before this woman, I was a defeated man. Having lost my sword in combat, I was no longer a Temple Knight. Having fought fellow brothers and killing them, I would be shunned and excommunicated, perhaps sentenced to death. Even worse, none would grieve.

She led me inside and I reluctantly followed. Perhaps better to die to a strange old woman cooking my flesh to stew than face a trial of my peers. She had but two rooms to her hut with the branches and vines of common plants strung from the walls and ceiling which impeded my tall frame as I sat upon a crude mattress shoved against the south wall of the smaller room. I watched as she moved into the cooking room and the smell of a smoky broth filled my air. Food or a poison? Let it be poison.

Without a word, she offered the meaty broth to me within a bowl. Nice flavor to cover the tiokot stench. My death would taste like game masking the poison stirred within.

“Eat,” she uttered softly. Sure. Thank you strange woman for the early death. I need it. I lifted the bowl to my lips consuming the warm, yellow broth. It was thick, like a molasses soup as it burned with heat down my throat. I stopped after a few gulps, looking to the woman whose eyes I could not see as she urged me to continue, placing a small vial of a bright, green liquid of an unnatural hue upon the table beside me. I finished the broth, the taste of an unpleasant game mired in a liquid I could only describe as bland piss. Reaching for the vial, she wrapped my hands to fold around the glass and popped the cork.

“Drink,” she muttered. One gulp, the burning liquid embraced upon my tongue and down my throat. I could feel the sudden release of all of my skin tearing apart from within, the combination of her concoctions working chemically within my body. The sudden unravelling of every fabric of my being from my skull down to my toes collapsed the glass to shatter into several pieces upon the floor. My eyes exposed wide, my lips and tongue went numb, colors flashed in my head twisting in odd designs and shapes as memories came flooding through like the force of a tidal wave. I couldn’t feel my fingers, but I knew they were there as my open palms appeared to grow strange plants sprouting from the fingertips.

Sweat beaded down my brow, over my neck and chest as I struggled to tear my clothes to nakedness. I couldn’t escape the indescribable fire consuming my flesh, my heart pumping in incoherent beats to the ferocity of the pain scorching across my body as I fell to the floor. What type of death was this?

I awoke three days later. I couldn’t remember a damn thing from the past few weeks. I couldn’t even remember why I have this tattoo on my wrist. If you had asked me, I couldn’t even tell you my name. Standing over my bed was the strange lady dressed in blue who I only remembered being named Fersyn. But it wasn’t a poison she administered for she had prepared my mind and body for what she was about to indulge.

I spent three long years with this woman and not one day did I ever see her skin or face. By day she would instruct me on sacred secrets of magick, of our world named Roth, hidden mysteries known by the Knights and the Magi and those not yet discovered. Her visions flanked by a spirit of the sun and the moon. Pure light of being and elevated consciousness. The sun and moon born of sacred womb to guide the victory of our gods. It didn’t make sense at first, nor did it ever, only intended to guide my hand to instruction of ancient prophecy first told thousands of years before my own current time.

By night, she would show me the mastery of sins; sacrificial magick of blood, bile, semen or other integral fluids deemed sacred and to demonstrate the differences of the magic I knew and the old magic of the Chaos Gods. These were forces I was not even aware of and each night she prepared me for these dark rituals, she refreshed my suffering in Seuverat. It was during these lessons she aided my meditation in understanding my vision; the pitch black banner with the blood red sunwheel, a sword composed of souls and a God-King yet to be born.

As the seasons continued, renewal to high sun and harvest to low sun, I was also instructed on the mixtures of plants and properties of them. Giving them names described in the Ancient Tongue and proper combinations to produce healing or death. It was by decree I were to take long and extensive documentation on her teachings, writing down furiously her words as best transcribed and shuffling parchment and ink on a nearly hourly basis. On the days of equinox and solstices, she permitted me to relax, giving me ample time to study what I had learned or perfect my own visions and meditation.

When the days arrived for the full moon nights, I was instructed on cartography and scale where Fersyn described the layout of Roth; the mountains, the oceans, the deserts and other terrain across all the continents. I found the task difficult at first, but after meditations and dreams, my own soul guided my hand to draw perfect representations to scale. Starting first with my own city, then moving to the greater region, and realm. Continents and oceans came naturally as I was directed to the lands on the opposing side of Roth where the vicious men and women I fought in Seuverat originated. By the sixth full moon, I had grown to master the art of the maps where she felt comfortable with one more copy.

I felt blasphemous as I scribbled the names of the Temples in Ancient Tongue on the map she ordered. As the others, I drew to scale, the locations of the Temple of Light, Fire, Wind, Water, Rot’harim, the Warrior and the Soul in their proper locations across Roth. The final temple, The Temple of the Knights was drawn on the sacred land of Terish, the holiest of our sepulchers. The Magi are unaware of this location for our safety and for theirs. Protected by sacred magick, the land prevents Magi from arriving and protects our relics and codices. I wondered why she asked me to draw this map only to be reminded my efforts were for a future time, a future need, not to be known in my era.

As my deeds continued in earnest to her tutorials, I could feel a sense of completion after many months to her service. I learned of rites and rituals unknown during my training at the Temple of the Knights after my oath and I learned her knowledge far surpassed anything our sacred texts had contained. She had set my deadline for the third renewal equinox, a time when the sun would be partial to an eclipse.

Fersyn prepared my body and soul for the day, providing me a cooling broth which numbed my body and mind to her debriefing. On this day, she laid out all of the notes I had taken, the maps I drew and the spells and rituals and written prophesies she wished me to know. Everything before me covered a workbench outside of her home where she separated the texts and maps into two categories; one of them to share and the other to keep sacred to entrusted people then provided me with a small map showing the location where the items would be buried for the future time.

As the day drew to a close, she led me into a vacant grove in the woods and seated us facing one another. With a wave of her hands, I fell into a trance and witnessed the events unfold of the past few years replay within my head. As she guided my meditations, I could feel the cold of suffering engulf my body to be warmed by a light within a familiar room. I remember this room, where I passed my final test to become a Knight, before kneeling to the Sword of the Verdui and accepting my mark. Here, I saw myself looking into the room from behind a glass looking down amidst the sounds and visions of old and new death around me.

Here in the room, I saw a pair of men. One of them dressed in a white tunic from shoulders to his knees and in his left hand, I saw a series of scars with golden tendrils. Standing in front of him, a man of similar features clad in black. The man with the gold hand focused upon me, upon others of my kind and others who took the oath of our service. I listened to the melodic words of his soul; the True Verdui, the name of which Fersyn ascribed within my studies.

She ceased the meditation as he placed his hand upon our sacred weapon. I looked upon her as the sun above had masked behind the moon casting an eerie gray sky upon the trees which whispered to high whistles of a pleasing tone.

“Today is your final day here,” she reminded, “tomorrow, you will return to your time, return to your life and pass on what you have learned. I give you only two instructions; to your first born son, grant him the path to the sacred knowledge, the knowledge permitted to remain within your family. To your first born daughter, give her the path to the common knowledge; the plants, the maps of the land, the details of history and life of this world. They must be given to a trusted king and used upon the time when your sword is shattered, when the Knights are no more. Once the Knights are no more, the sacred texts will be required to train the True Verdui. When you leave here, you will be given what you need to return to Kora; a stipend of gold, clothes, a weapon for protection and the knowledge I have given you.

“When you return home, use the gold wisely for it will be what you retain of your legacy. You are no longer a Knight and must not return to the order. Doing so will risk everything I have given you. Should any of your generations become a Knight, your line will end. Do you confirm my words?”

I nodded my head. Fersyn had no reason to doubt me. How could I return to the order after the awakening she gave me? She continued.

“I have one more gift to bestow upon you. As this is your final night here,” she lifted a hand to command a pair of trees to part revealing the beauteous woman I led to her village standing in her pristine naked glory.

“Rysa,” I muttered.

“Rysa is but one of my sentient spirits I had sent to the world; to learn of your kind, and your race. She was born of the tears of childless widows and given sentience with my own aztmudin. As she and her sisters grew and adapted to their surroundings, I learned more of the human race, how cruel and vicious you have become since you were seeded on this world. I also learned how you can love, the true emotion of the gods. When you awake, you will be alone.”

Fersyn was right. I was alone. In a grove of trees without a bed or home to my surroundings. I rested my head upon a rucksack and a heavy gold pouch within, a large dagger to my defense, and a fresh set of trousers, boots and jerkin to compliment with a black cloak to disguise in. Rysa was nowhere to my side and fittingly so. She was but a ghost in my mind and to my flesh. I took two weeks to hitch rides to Yumphen, later to purchase sail around the eastern and southern coasts to return to Kora. Yumphen had been ransacked and pillaged and only recently began to rebuild the docks and support structures as I bargained my way for passage. Pure coin gets you what you need.

I had learned in my missing time the northern houses seceded from the southern houses and declared war on Sarat for the murder of King Rathmana. It was a brutal civil war ending with the split of the kingdoms in a peace treaty. A new king Rathmana was installed as head dynasty of Simnoma. When I settled into Kora with the remaining gold, I purchased a modest home to start over. I found a wife and fathered five sons and seven daughters over the years. I made wealth with a partnership by the Denwich and Rorchil families and as I grew in my old age, I willed the remainder of my wealth away from my children to fund a new wing of the Koran University for the advancement of knowledge in economy and sciences. I provided Fersyn’s explicit instructions to my oldest son and daughter as I lay in my final days.

I was a hard man. Led a harsh life and I never told them of my experiences as a Temple Knight. I reminded them of her warning, never attributing it to her and my children made the promise in front of me to pass to their offspring and so forth. What I learned from Fersyn, I passed to my children that in a time of moral decay when sinister forces have conquered your way of thinking, your way of life and your own culture, you must never forsake your own spirit and the duties to the greater consciousness you can bestow.