Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) (20 page)

“Keep going Marco!” Mitment shouted from behind him.  He felt the bridge shake dramatically, and looking back over his shoulder he saw the center of the bridge start to crumble away.

“Run Marco!” Mitment shouted, and Marco saw her stretch her hand out in front of her, reaching towards him.   The thought of feeling the pain of her dead touch spurred him to run even faster somehow, and he accelerated his steps.

The bridge underneath his feet started to collapse as he approached the shore, just behind Iasco.  Sensing that disaster was about to overtake him, Marco jumped forward, grabbing the lady around her shoulders, and thrusting them to the shoreline, just as the bridge gave a loud cracking sound.

Marco turned and saw Mitment standing upon a fragment of the bridge that somehow hung in the air while the structure on either side of it dissolved and collapsed downward into the water of the River Acheron.

“Mitment!” he shouted, and extended his golden right hand towards the spirit.  A rope of something solid shot out of his fingers and extended towards the guard, who leaped up and forward to grasp it just as her portion of the bridge melted away beneath her.  She swung forward hand over hand for three motions, then flung herself to the shore, and tumbled into a heap at Marco’s feet, as he allowed the beam of energy to disband.

“Well done Golden Hand.  Thank you for saving the girl,” Iasco spoke from behind his shoulder.

“Marco, thank you,” Mitment said as she stood up.  “You saved me, and I will not forget.”

Marco wasn’t sure how he had managed to help the spirit.  He had wanted to help her, but had no idea that the gesture of his hand alone would cause something to happen.

“Let’s move on, shall we?” Iasco asked, and they walked back down the river bank to meet the road that brought the spirits from the world of the living to Charon’s dock.  The ferryman stood and glared at them as they passed the waiting spirits.

“He’s not going to forget this,” Mitment said quietly as they hurried past and out of Charon’s sight. They journeyed up the cavern that Marco and Mitment had traveled before when Marco had left the land of the living the first time.  They stopped once to snack on some of the food in Marco’s pack, and they took turns sucking water from his finger, then moved on again.

They reached the surface at night, coming up to the cave opening when it was dark at the monastery of Saint Joseph on Station Island.  They did not know how close they were to the end of their underworld journey until they suddenly smelled salt air and felt a breeze stirring against them.

“Should I really do this?” Mitment asked, stopping a few feet below the opening of the cavern.

“You will suffer no harm, and I will appreciate having you with me, as someone who I can trust,” Iasco reassured the guard.

“Then I do it for you, my lady,” Mitment said, and they proceeded to climb the last few feet upward, and returned to the world of the living.

“Would you look at that!” a voice exclaimed, and Marco saw that there was a small handful of monks praying around the perimeter of the stone wall that circled the cave entrance.

“Oh, to see the star light again!” Iasco said, as she stood on one side of Marco and looked up at the sky, while Mitment stood on his other side.   “It’s quite a sight, isn’t it Mitment?” she turned to look at the guard.

“Where is she?” Iasco asked a moment later.  Marco looked at Iasco, then looked at Mitment, then looked back at Iasco in confusion.

“Where did Mitment go, Golden Hand?” Iasco looked up at Marco, with a look of concern on her face.

“Where did you two come from?” one of the monks asked.

“She’s,” Marco looked at Iasco, then looked at Mitment, in whose face he saw the same concern and confusion he felt.  “She’s right here, next to me,” he motioned.

“I don’t see her,” Iasco’s eyes widened.

“Oh no, my lady,” Mitment softly groaned.

“You two need to come out of there right now,” a voice called from a slight distance, as a monk approached from the dining hall.

Marco recognized the man, Brother Patric, who had been so kind to him when he had last been on the island, his memories gone at the time.  But he was more concerned about Mitment’s suddenly invisibility than anything else.

“I see her right here,” Marco spoke.  “She’s right beside me.”

“I’m a spirit of the dead, back in the land of the living.  I’m a ghost, and no one can see me or hear me,” Mitment exclaimed slowly.

“She’s become a ghost, and I can’t see her,” Iasco arrived at the same conclusion at the same time.

“Why can I see her?” Marco asked.

“Would you please come out of there and explain yourselves?” Brother Patric was at the wall, holding a lantern up high.

“Marco?   Is that you?  Again?” Patric asked.

“Brother,” Marco said, holding Iasco’s hand to help her cross the wall, as she held her slitted impromptu dress closed with one hand.

“Maybe I should just go back down to the underworld again,” Mitment said, hanging back.

“No, Mitment, wait,” Marco answered her immediately.

“What’s she saying Marco?” Iasco asked.

“She thinks she should go back to the underworld,” Marco told the lady.

“Marco, what’s going on?” Patric asked.

“Mitment, come with us, at least for now,” Marco said, as he climbed over the wall.  “Brother Patric, this is the Lady Iasco, leader of the Temple of Ophiuchus.  She and I have traveled through the underworld and have returned now to the world of the living,” he turned to tell the monk and the others who were with him.

“Are you dead?” someone asked.

“No, we’re very much alive,” Marco answered.

“How did you get down there?” someone asked, as they started to walk towards the hall.

“Is she coming with us?  Why can you see her but I can’t?” Iasco asked.

“She’s coming with us,” Marco assured the lady as he looked over at Mitment nearby.

“Who are you talking about?” Patric asked.

“Let’s get inside, please, and then we can talk,” Marco felt hemmed in by the questions that seemed to be coming at him from all sides as they reached the building.

A monk held the door open, and they stepped into a hallway that Marco recognized.  “How long ago was I here before – three months?” he asked.

“About that,” Patric agreed, and he showed them to a room where the three travelers were joined by two monks.

“What have you done?” Patric’s companion asked when the door was closed behind them.

Marco looked at Iasco, not sure how to explain the long, complicated and unbelievable series of events.

“The Lady Iasco is the chief priestess of the Cult of Ophiuchus,” Marco began.  “She was murdered by assassins, and went to the underworld.  I was sent by the spirit of Ophiuchus down to revive her and bring her back, so that she could lead the fight of good against evil.”

The two monks looked at Marco, wide-eyed.

“Do you expect us to believe that?  She rose from the dead to fight against evil?  You personally resurrected her?  This is preposterous!” Patric’s companion said.

“Fantastic as it sounds, it’s true.  And we have brought another companion back from the dead as well, Mitment, a guard from the island of Ophiuchus, who Marco killed himself a year ago,” Iasco added.

“Where is she?  Where is this other resurrected woman?” Patric asked.

“She wasn’t resurrected,” Marco spoke after a moment’s awkward hesitation.  “She’s still just a spirit.  She’s here in the room with us now though,” he added.

“How are we to believe all this nonsense?” the unnamed monk exclaimed.  “Tell us the truth about how you came out of the cave!”

“Mitment, would you do something to prove your existence to these men?” Iasco asked.  “Come lift this lamp,” she directed.

Marco watched as Mitment leaned into the table and picked up the lamp that sat in the center, then swung it in a small circle in the air, before setting it down.

“How do we know that you didn’t just use sorcery to make that happen?” the monk asked.

“Tell him to go to a different room and make a command, then come back here and I’ll do it,” Mitment said to Marco.

“Mitment says,” Marco repeated the suggestion, and watched as the monk got up and left the room, with the unseen spirit in pursuit.

Thirty seconds later he returned.  “Did they stay here?” the monk asked Patric as he gestured towards the two guests.

Just then Mitment walked over to Patric and raised his hood up over his head.

“Holy Mother!” the monk swore.  “That’s just what I asked the spirit to do!”  He looked around the room wildly, trying to spot the invisible spirit.

“It’s true?  You have a spirit from the underworld with you?  It’s all true?” Patric asked.

“How is it that you know all this now, but the last time you were with us you didn’t remember anything?” he asked Marco.

“The last time I was in the underworld I drank from the fountain waters of the River Lethe, and forgot all.  This time I didn’t,” Marco said easily.

Patric and the monk both sat down.

“Suppose all of this is true?  What is this great evil you’ve come back to fight?” Patric asked Iasco.

“There is a kingdom far away, the land and the people called Docleatae,” Iasco began.  “The king of the land is Moraca, and he is a powerful leader.  He is obsessed,” she paused and looked at Marco speculatively, “He is obsessed with eternal life.  He wants to never die.

“He has surrounded himself in his court with many powerful sorcerers and alchemists, and they do many things to keep him alive.  They have for a long time,” she told her small group of listeners.

“Moraca is already over three hundred years old.  For many years his power was held in check by his neighbor to the north, the kingdom of Prester John, but that kingdom fell to treachery and attack many years ago, and since then Moraca and the Docleatae have grown in power and strength,” she told the others in the room.

“His arm has grown long, and he now controls many other kingdoms, and has begun to build a great navy to go with the mighty armies he has.  He is the power behind the Corsair raids that have grown so bold, and he is the power that conquered Athens,” she nodded to Marco.

“He has made a deal with the darkness itself,” Iasco told them.  “As long as he continues to grow in malevolence and strength, the darkness will support him and lend its power to his sorcerers.”

“How long has the evil been helping him?” Patric asked in horrified fascination.

“The evil power fights an eternal battle in movements that occur over centuries, not days.  The evil one has been behind Moraca for two hundred years or more,” Iasco answered.  “He will not, of course, receive eternal life through evil, but he does not acknowledge that.

“If he were to find out what you have just done for me Marco, he would spare no effort, he would leave no stone unturned nor any city standing, to find you and capture you as his guarantee of returning to life,” she looked at Marco directly.

Marco felt his skin turn pale, and his throat grow tight at the thought of being hunted down by the forces of Moraca.  He had faced the sorcerer in Athens, and he and the spirit Ophiuchus had run away from the power of that evil servant to Moraca.  Marco had faced and nearly been killed by Iago, Iasco’s brother and also a sorcerer, who had likewise been a servant to Moraca.  And Iago had led the Corsair raids in search of the Gorgon’s blood, one of the very ingredients that Marco had used to bring Iasco back to life.

“I’m afraid he does know,” Marco whispered.  “Not about me specifically, perhaps, but he knows something about a formula to revive the dead, I’m sure.  His Corsairs were looking for Gorgon’s blood; he must have some reason to want it.

“What are we going to do?” Marco asked, staring at Iasco.

“What can you do?” Patric echoed.

“We’re going to fight!” Iasco said.  “Evil always wages these wars, and goodness always triumphs.  We are going to lead the way for goodness to triumph again,” she said calmly.

“But how?” Mitment asked.

“Mitment wants to know how?” Marco conveyed the question.

“Oh Mitment my dear, I should have remembered you were part of the conversation,” Iasco said, “but I was too excited by what Marco had done to think straight.  There must be a reason Marco can see you but I cannot.

“Marco, when you were in the underworld, did you and Mitment ever touch one another?” she asked.

Marco shuddered at the recollection of the pain of the dead spirit’s touch.  “Yes,” he answered quietly.

“That touch must have given you the ability to see her, even here among the living,” Iasco explained.  “I did not ever touch her spirit when I had my body restored, and so I have not developed the connection with her that you have.”

“That’s interesting, and it makes it all the better that I slapped you around, now doesn’t it?” Mitment told Marco.  “But it doesn’t answer my question.”

“Mitment still wants to know how goodness is going to triumph,” Marco repeated.

“All in good time,” Iasco answered.  “We’ll deal with that question later.  More immediately, we need to arrange for our return to Ophiuchus as the first step.”  She turned to the monks.  “What ships are available to carry us?” she asked.

“The pilgrims’ ship will arrive tomorrow morning, and leave tomorrow afternoon,” Patric said.  “It will be able to take you to Lacarona.”

“Good,” Iasco said.  “How long will that journey take?”

“Three days,” Marco said promptly, recollecting the trip he had taken not many weeks prior.

“That’s it then.  And we’ll need funds to hire horses and have provisions for the trip from Lacarona to Barcelon,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Funds?” the monk said in a warning growl.

“Certainly,” Iasco answered.  “Time is of the essence.  We must have horses to reach Barcelon quickly.   There are many things that must be done, and it’s our responsibility to do so.”

The monk’s expression indicated a clear reluctance to assist, but Patric stepped in.   “Our own funds are limited, but we can provide enough for you to ride to Compostela, and perhaps the cathedral officials will provide the rest of what you need?” he suggested.