Prologue.2 - the Tyrant's Offer

Two leather and mail-clad guards loitered at the cell door and watched. “It’s curious how he does that,” one said to the other.

“I know, mate,” his companion said, gripping the metal bars of the cell. “The old rogue is something else. Few people in Blithe Haven will see, never mind be able to do that. He's too dangerous; they won't ever let him out of here.”

The prisoner barely heard them and went on with the ritual. Castor knew the guards watched him sometimes. He also knew that the ritual wasn’t technically legal in Blithe Haven. But, he reasoned, he was already in prison.

“Make way!” a voice shouted from down the hall, accompanied by the same clatter of iron boots heard from downstairs. A second later, a tall, well-armored, pale specter of a man appeared.

The two guards glanced toward the oncoming knight. They left off their conversation and gaped at him.

“Not quick enough,” the knight said. He marched up and stood between the two guards, who had still not moved from the cell’s swinging door. One of the guards opened his mouth, but Malthus grabbed both of the men’s un-helmeted heads and bashed them together fiercely. The effect was like that of throwing an overripe cantaloupe against a wall. Blood spattered like a small bomb, flinging a streak across the face of the kneeling prisoner. Castor slowly peeled himself away from his occult practice, and the phantoms vanished in the dust.

“Malthus, what a mess!” said the man who came trundling down the hall in the aftermath of the carnage. He quickened his pace to the cell, where the guards lay bathed in their own blood. The man was aging but broad-shouldered, regally dressed, with short hair and grey patches in his beard. A gold pendant, bearing the image of the Blithe Fruit, rattled against his chest. “This is my new bodyguard, Malthus. He comes all the way from Caldyra, land of the ashen heart, to join our merry community.”

The prisoner, unimpressed by the presence of the intruder and his murderous thug, stood and slowly turned towards them. “Head Magistrate,” he said. “What ill wind brings you here?”

The Head Magistrate, Mason Beech, smiled a snaggle-toothed smile of decaying yellow teeth. “My old friend, it pains me to see you reduced to this. It is, of course, where you belong. You are a seditionist for practicing the heretical dark arts. You should thank my wife, gods rest her soul, for if not for her request you would have been burned in the sacrificial pyres at the very Harvest Festival where you were apprehended.”

No, Mason, you don’t honor her request. You’re a man who has no honor. You keep me alive because one day you thought you might need my help, because there’s no one like me here.

Stepping past his acolyte, the Head Magistrate pressed his hands into the metal grating of the prison bars. “The annual Harvest Festival will soon be upon us, Castor. Not only that, but it’s the 500th anniversary of the death of our Founder. May he return to us soon to cleanse the earth of all of the scum and the heretics, such as yourself. In honor of this momentous occasion, in addition to 500 prisoners, I will send just as many free commoners as the selected to the sacrificial pyres, one for every year that he has been gone.”

The prisoner knit his brows and sighed. He stared at Mason and regarded him as coldly as he would a cockroach or a demon.

In a typical winter solstice Harvest Festival in Blithe Haven, only 400 to 700 people were sacrificed in the bonfires. They hurled this offering at the feet of the Sun Goddess, patron divinity of Blithe Haven and the core of its messianic legend about their great Founder. About 100 sacrifices would be pulled from the ‘free commoner citizen body.’ Volunteers, eligible at age 18, were preferable. If they didn’t get enough volunteers, the remaining spots would be chosen at random from a drawing. The other 400 were scraped from prisons or from the pool of 'probable heretics,' those suspected to have committed a crime that lacked evidence, or those with ‘criminal ancestry’ family members of prisoners. Only volunteers were given a bite of the Blithe Fruit, which numbed their pain, before being burnt to death in the ritual flames.

In such a brutal and superstitious society, many commoners tried to run away when or if they could. The Head Magistrate, however, was not above sending kill squads after deserters. And even if one could successfully escape, the chances of finding safety were slim. Most cities and villages nearby were just as harsh, if not more so.

Mason clutched at the iron bars and gave them a hard tug. “This I will do. Your son, Stratus, has turned 18 this year, has he not? He is now eligible for the rite. Since he inherited the criminal ancestry from you, it is my duty as Head Magistrate to include him as a sacrifice to the Sun Goddess at the Harvest Festival. Your son will burn, Castor. The fires will purge his heresy and go some way toward purifying our community from your sins.”

A tremor rattled through the old prisoner.

Mason smiled “So, you can hear me, eh? I'll do it, unless you help me here and now. I leave that choice to you.”

Author's Note

Synopsis: For 500 years, the ruling nobles of Blithe Haven have preyed on the commoners. They used the mythical fruit in their Sacred Grove to assure dominance. Heeding the cries of the countless souls of the human sacrifices to their Sun Goddess, along with the prayers of a certain prisoner, supernatural powers are summoned that augury relief and vengeance. Strangely, this supernatural power is offered to an unlikely recipient: Sayra Beech, the daughter of Blithe Haven's most powerful tyrant and noble.

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