~~~~~
This one's for you, father. I hope you drown in it.
Finias lifted the heavy mug of ale and drank, sucking it all down in one long gulp after another. It tasted suspiciously watery, but he didn't care. He sat alone at a small table in the back of Ye Merry Mug, a loud, raucous tavern on the corner of Fountain Square, near the east gates of Corendar. He'd been here almost an hour, his instincts helping him keep a low profile while watching the Artorans, Sotherans, Venrians and even a Movrisian or two drink, sing, and laugh all around him. Finias wasn't here to get drunk with them, though. He'd come here because he needed to be around other people. He wanted to peer into someone else's life and not have to think about his own.
"One more," he said to a passing barmaid, a pretty young woman with dark hair, who looked so flustered that Finias suspected she was new. “And some of that Arley's ham.”
No matter how intently he watched the other denizens of the tavern, though, he had trouble escaping from the day's events. He wanted to whack that fool Aiden across the face with his mug for getting him riled up to his cause, only to walk away after getting cheated. Those guards were nothing more than thieves playing dress up, and they should count themselves lucky Finias wasn’t the type to hunt them down in their sleep. But those were small, unimportant things. What really troubled him tonight was the Warshield.
The man was dead by Finias' own hand. He'd aimed for his neck and head, fired both shots, and those arrows hit exactly where he'd wanted them to hit. There was no mistake. It didn’t happen by accident. He'd killed him because he wanted to, and now he couldn't stop seeing the Northman's body in his head, arrows protruding from his neck and skull, blood everywhere. But the worst part of it all, what had him sitting in this tavern drinking watery ale, was that he wanted to be sick about it, but he wasn't.
I did it because it had to be done, he thought. I did the right thing.
He needed to believe those words, even though they felt hollow. He thought back to Aiden’s story of his own first kill, that Anduain Thorn. He'd told Finias that he didn't have any mercy for him, even after seeing in his eyes his last desire. That was duty, though, right? Aiden was a soldier, in a battle, and he'd killed someone who had been trying to kill him just moments earlier.
He'd done the same thing here. Just like Aiden. He’d been a soldier, and tonight his battle had been stopping that Warshield. He wasn't a murderer. Not like his father, and his brother. Not ever like them. He was a soldier. At least for one short night.
His rumination was interrupted when he realized someone had approached him. Finias looked up and saw a middle-aged man with long, graying brown hair standing nervously at the other end of his table. He wore dirty, frayed, woolen robes, dark green, very similar in style to a Resurrectionist war priest, the kind who fight with the armies, and he leaned on a thick wooden walking stick. He guessed the man had fallen on hard times lately, because he looked to have lived a very rough life. In fact, he'd have thought him a beggar if beggars were allowed in the taverns. The man raised a fidgety hand in greeting, and Finias nodded back but didn't say anything. The priest, or whatever he was, looked like he wanted to sit down in the extra chair, but then stopped himself awkwardly and looked to Finias for permission. Finias nodded, slightly amused now that the ale had begun to kick in, and the man sat down.
He fidgeted nervously in the chair, and kept leaning forward as if about to say something, only to change his mind at the last second and look away at the crowd of patrons instead. This happened five times before Finias decided he couldn't take it anymore.
“I don't have any coin for you,” he shouted over the din of several Artoran soldiers singing at the next table. He knew they were Artoran because of the song, which celebrated the dragons of old, and the chaos they had sown. It was a song he’d heard more than once growing up. The old man muttered something back that no one could possibly hear.
“What?” Finias said, leaning closer. The disheveled priest seemed uncomfortable, and he scanned the crowd again before finally leaning in closer.
“I'm not a beggar,” he said, just loud enough to hear.
“Then who are you?”
“I'm Riordan,” he stammered. He looked around carefully, as if his revealing his name might get him in trouble.
“Riordan?” Finias asked, and the man nodded, and then scanned the crowd again. He was awfully fidgety, either constantly wringing his hands or rubbing his face. His erratic behavior made Finias wonder if he might be sick or maybe just crazy. Finias raised his drink in greeting. “Well met, good man.”
“I-I saw you,” he said, stammering. “With the Northman.”
“Aye?”
“You killed him?” he asked. “You and–and–and the other man?”
“Yeah.” Finias gave Riordan a fake smile. “But I've been told that I can't really talk about it.”
“You're in danger,” Riordan said in a loud whisper.
“What?”
“You're in danger, here,” he repeated, louder. “I have to talk to you, outside.”
Finias narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“I want to help you.”
Finias drummed his fingers on the table, and stared at Riordan, who didn’t flinch this time. He hadn’t expected this, to be accosted in the middle of a pub by a crazy man who looked like he’d woken up in a barn after an all-night bender. And he certainly didn't follow men like that out into the street at night. But he had to admit, he found himself intrigued by whatever this priest had to tell him.
“Sure. What the hell,” Finias said. He took one last gulp of his drink and stood up. Tonight had already been dangerous, thrilling and completely unpredictable, so the chances were pretty good by now that the rest of it would be fairly mundane. Besides, he was willing to throw his reservations aside for a little while if it gave him something else to mope about besides his own life. Either that or the ale was a lot stronger than he'd first thought.
“No. Not the front door,” Riordan said. “The back. We should go out the back.”
Even more foolish, Finias thought wryly, but he followed Riordan anyway, through the crowds and out the tavern's back door. The door led into a narrow, dimly lit alley crowded with wooden crates and boxes, small piles of hay and trash, and linens hanging from windows. At first glance it seemed empty, but there were too many hiding places to be sure. Finias smiled at how completely stupid he was being, and how little he cared. Still, he had just enough self-preservation in him to at least let his hand rest on the hilt of his sword. Casually, of course.
“You're in danger,” Riordan began cautiously, also scanning the alley.
“You mentioned that already. From what?”
“From them!” Riordan pointed vaguely off in the distance. “The men you gave him to.”
“The guards?”
“No. No, not just them.” Riordan looked around again, then lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “The people at the palace. The King and his councilors.”
Finias wondered if Riordan was crazier than he initially thought. “The King is after me?”
“Not him. Not exactly. It's his men. They don't want anyone to know about them. About what you found. They're keeping it all a secret. That's why you and your friend are in danger.”
“Uh huh.” Finias nodded slowly, curious about where this might be going, while trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. “A Warshield wanders by Alvarton of all places, kills people in broad daylight, and that's supposed to stay a secret? Sounds like they have their work cut out for them.”
“Listen. You have to listen to me,” Riordan said, nearly pleading. The look on his face clearly told Finias that he was formulating his argument as he went along. “I did what you did. I found something like you did, and they threw me in a dungeon for it. For three months!”
“Three months? Wow. For finding a Warshield?”
“No. No, not-not exactly. It wasn't a Warshield. It was... something, though. And they
threw me in jail for it. For warning them!”
Finias made a show of looking up and down the alley. “You don't look like you're in jail right now.”
“I escaped! I got out, because... because I have to fix it.”
“I think, Riordan, that maybe you need to go home and get some sleep.”
“No! No sleep. No, I-I-I need to fix this. And I need help. From both of you.”
“You too, huh?” Finias shook his head, his curiosity quickly turning to boredom. “Do I have a sign over my head that draws you loons in from all over?”
“I'm not a loon,” Riordan said slowly. “Listen. The Warshield... he-he wasn't just a Warshield was he?”
That struck a chord, and Finias eyed the old priest carefully. “What do you mean?”
Riordan smiled. “I'm right, aren't I? It was one of them? A tenebrous?”
“A what?” Finias stepped closer to Riordan, suddenly taking this conversation much more seriously. “Start making some sense.”
“It's what I call them. They're Bergsbor, Anduain, or even our own Calderan brothers, but they've forgotten who they are. They fight together, against all the rest of us and they share their abilities. They're not of the three kingdoms, nor of the three Paths to the Goddess, so at first I thought they were seculant. Outside of the Three. But now I realize that they're hidden from the faith. They're veiled, by someone. Someone who's decided to send them after us.”
Finias frowned. The man was loony, but at least he’d been correct about him being a priest. The barrage of Resurrectionist terms signaled as much. Unfortunately, Finias hadn’t been raised in the faith, so he didn’t understand any of it. All he knew about Resurrectionists was that they worshipped a goddess, and the number three. “How do you know this? About the Warshield?”
“I told you. We found them, in the north first. But now they're here.”
“Who is 'we'?” Finias asked. Riordan was slow to respond.
“My friends,” he said finally, but he looked away from Finias as he spoke. “My friends and I found them.”
“Where are your friends, Riordan?”
“They're dead. Like you will be soon.”
Finias struggled to focus, and push past the effects of the ale so he could make sense of what he’d heard. This story could all be in Riordan's head, even his supposed friends. But he seemed genuinely distracted by the thought of them, and he'd known about the Warshield's ability to fade. Well, not that specifically, but enough to know that this Warshield was somehow different.
“This is my fault,” Riordan said to no one in particular. “I found them first, and I told them about it. Now they want to keep it a secret so they can use it, but you know now.” He looked at Finias with scared eyes. “Now you know.”
“Who exactly is coming for me?”
“They're not stupid.” Riordan continued as if Finias hadn't spoken. “They let you think everything is normal, then they come and take you in the middle of the night.” He looked up at the night sky. “Nights like this.”
“Riordan, look at me.” Finias grabbed the priest’s shoulders. “Now, let's just suppose all of this is true. What do you suggest we do about it?”
“You have to let me help you fix this,” Riordan said, finally looking Finias in the eye.
“Okay. How do we fix it?”
“We have to find your friend,” he said. “We need him too. We can't do this alone.”