Spring of Black Flowers Chapter 1

Introduction

For your reading pleasure is a look into an early chapter of Spring of Black Flowers.

Chapter 1

The sun had risen well above the horizon by the time the meltwater stream they followed was joined by another, pooling deep enough to splash above their ankles. The white lion of Aldrimar stretched itself across the Henric’s back, his black cloak wrapped tight around him against the morning chill. “How much further?” He muttered to himself. His uncles had woken him well before dawn, and they’d been walking since.

Zak stopped short, and for a second Henric thought a mistake had been made. Instead, he and Samael locked eyes. “Here?” Zak asked.

Samael shook his head. “Around the bend. I marked us a spot ahead.”

“All the way out here?” Henric asked. “Or is that part of the initiation?”

That got a laugh from his uncle. “I stopped here on my way back from the city and crossed over. It’s a good spot.”

Zak was the older of the two, almost ten years Henric’s senior, and in many ways his role model. He wore his sandy hair cut short, though he’d had a week’s growth strapping his chin. “Here is as good as anywhere. Right where I thought it’d be.”

Samael, Henric’s younger uncle and only five years his elder, rolled his eyes and turned to Henric, “Do you remember what the Book said? Do you remember the words?”

Of course he did. He had been learning them for years, preparing for this moment. Still, Henric had not slept the night before, nervous. Usually it was a boy’s father, not his uncles that led his initiation, but Gareth Aldimar was far away assisting in the King’s campaign to turn back the hordes of Gors threatening his lands. Father would tell him to be brave right now, and so Henric nodded.

“Good.”

Samael dug in his pack for a small bundle of chalk. He took out a stick, and began to mark out old runes on tree trunks and stones in a rough square around them. At each point, he said the old prayer as he drew on the accompanying marks. When he was done, he joined the other two in the stream, and asked “Are we ready?”

They both nodded.

Henric thought back to the afternoons in the Lord’s Study of Zaksburg with his father, sitting at the old desk. The walls were lined with the old books collected by Aldrimars over the generations, but there was no other book like this one. Bound in simple brown leather, Zakaran, the first Aldrimar for whom Henric’s uncle was namesake, had kept journal filled with secrets and heresies in the eyes of the Congregation.

Henric recalled the passage about Zakaran’s first walk in Death, and the words he had spoken to cross over. “Muzum ala thebeth.”

His uncles nodded. They began to repeat the words over and over, and soon Henric began to feel a the water tugging at his feet, urging him to move. He listened, staying with the words as he began to feel the forest around him slipping away, the sounds of the world disappearing until it was only their voices chanting and the intensifying sound of running water.

A few moments later, the two brothers stopped their chant. Henric continued, eyes shut, twice more before he noticed his uncles stopped.

“Open your eyes, Henric,” said Samael. “Don’t be alarmed, we’ve crossed over.”

He saw grey. Everything had disappeared, along with the warmth of the spring morning. Instead, he saw that the stream had stretched out in all directions, a thick fog rising off the water. The sky above was black as starless night. The water was cold filled with debris of fallen leaves and branches, but the current was strong and Henric could feel it tugging at his ankles, urging him to follow. When he looked at his two uncles, their faces seemed both there and not. He found himself taking a few steps downstream before Zak caught him in one strong arm and held him back.

“Careful now!” said Zak.

“Something is calling to me down river.”

“Ignore it, Henric.”

Henric tried. The harder he worked to put it out of his mind, the more the feeling tugged at him, until he could almost hear something shouting to him from beyond the fog downstream.

“What’s down there?” he asked, frightened.

“There’s no way to know without going to look, but we won’t be doing that,” said Zak. He noticed his nephew’s confused expression, and continued, “This is the River of Souls, Henric, Death. The current gets stronger further you go, and it is easy to get caught in it. Even we could not help you there if you should get swept away in it. And that’s not even mentioning the denizens. No. It is too dangerous for your first time in the River.”

He remembered the denizens from the Book. Creatures that dwelt in the bends and pools of the River, consuming souls unlucky enough to be swept to them. Though nobody had seen one in generations the Book went on at length about the dangers of denizens when in Death, and described the three methods to deal with one, prayers for binding, banishing, or breaking. He had only learned the very first of them, the simple binding. The boy let that sink in, then took a deep breath. Maybe I’m not as ready for this as I thought.

“Are you okay?”

He nodded.

After he had composed himself, Henric took another deep breath and called aloud, repeating the old words written in Zakaran’s old book. “Lady of the River, I beg you hear my prayer! I ask your favor, that I may always work to preserve your River’s flow against those who would profane it.” He had shouted it, as loud and as deep as his fourteen year old self could muster, and noticed the fog shift a bit around them. He looked to his uncles, and they seemed impressed. He had done well, and surely the Lady of the River would bless him.

Again the fog shifted, but little else happened over the sound of the river. He waited there for a few minutes before giving up, and turning back to his uncles. “What was that?” asked Zak.

“I don’t know,” said Henric, abashed. “I thought I did everything right…”

“No, not you,” said Zak. “Did you feel that Samael?”

A worried look crossed Samael’s face as he nodded. “Something moved the fog.”

“Is everything alright?” asked Henric.

“Of course,” said Samael. He and Zak shared a glance. “Let’s go.”

As Henric took a step back towards his uncles, he felt something grab his back and suddenly flung him backwards into the water. It was much deeper than he had expected, and he struggled for a moment to get his feet beneath him. When he stood the water was almost to his waist and the current threatened to sweep him off his feet again. Distantly, he could hear his uncles shouting his name somewhere out of sight. He put his hands up to shout back, but a rumbling laugh came from behind him, low and menacing.

“A boy,” it said, sending shivers down Henric’s spine. He spun to see a dark figure in the fog behind him. It was thin and tall and cloaked in fog, but the stench of it, like rotted flesh filled Henric’s nose and almost made him gag. “A living one! My lucky day.”

Henric tried to back away, but when he tried to lift his feet the current almost knocked him off balance. He didn’t dare running. “S- s- s- stay away,” he stammered, trying to visualize a loop of light encircling the shifting figure. That only made the denizen laugh.

“Why would I do that, boy?” even though he couldn’t see it, he distinctly got the impression the thing was smiling. “You’re my way out of this place.” The fog rushed up to meet him, he threw his arms up over his face.

Somewhere behind him he heard someone shouting, “Henric!”

“Over here!” he shouted.

“Duck!“

He did, and felt his hair standing on end as a blast of purple-white energy surged past him. The creature hissed as it shifted out of the way. Henric didn’t wait for someone to tell him to run.

He remembered what the Book had said about returning to Life. He focused on the slowed beating of his own heart, hearing it and clinging to it, and using it almost as a rope to pull himself against the current.

Zak came splashing forward, blade in hand, Samael a few steps behind him. Samael’s hand glowed a brilliant violet light, and with a commanding shout of “Vade!” the light burst forth from his hand in another blast like before. Henric was too busy running to see the creature shift its form out of the way, and then change its form into a huge water serpent and lunge after them. Zak slashed at the thing with his sword as it tried to slide past him, cutting it deeply and making the denizen stop and let out a horrible cry of pain. Once Henric had run past them, his uncles raced after him towards the shallows, towards Life. Each of them concentrated on their still beating hearts, leading them back to their living bodies.

***

Henric’s head snapped backwards, and then forwards as he awoke, sending him face first into the bubbling stream. His nose hit a rock in the bed, and he noticed red dripping with the water off his face as he stood. Samael helped him up.

“Are you alright?”

He nodded. Or shivered. Possibly trembled. Just the thought of the denizen scared him. “I think so. What was that thing?”

“Specifically? I’m not sure,” said Samael. “I didn’t get a close enough look.”

“I did, and I’m still not sure what that was,” said Zak. “But it stunk.”

Henric noticed the Mark on his left hand, the lines of the strange glyph seemed to be dyed into his skin with a purple-black ink. He tried to rub at it, but it would not come off, which he was glad for. “Are we safe?” he asked. Zak looked to Samael.

“We must be,” said Samael. He looked up, and noticed the sky had changed to the golden tones of sundown. “They aren’t supposed to be able to cross into life without a body.”

“What was that light Sam?” asked Henric. “How did you do that?”

“Yeah,” added Zak. “What was that?”

“It was a banishing,” said Sam.

“A banishing?” asked Henric. “When did you learn how to do that?”

Samael only nodded. His face scrunched up as though he smelled something foul, but it was gone almost as quickly as it had come. “It’s gotten late, let’s go.”

“But…” said Henric.

But Samael was already up and walking away, leaving Zak and Henric a bit surprised with no choice but to follow after.

***

On the way, Henric could still faintly smell that awful stench of the creature everywhere around him. He tried as best as he could to put the thing out of his mind, it could not get him here in Life. It wasn’t until they came upon the corpse of a raccoon and the smell grew almost overwhelmingly strong that Henric realized the creature had smelled of Death. The revelation set his mind at ease, and felt himself falling back experimenting with the budding sense he seemed to feel like smell. He soon noticed pleasurable smell cutting through the stink of Death, the sweet aroma of Life. The forest through which they walked was filled with both, decaying leaves which gave birth to new life. Predator fed on prey, and new life was being born. Henric was amazed at what he could feel and did not notice as his uncles slipped away from him, around a bend in the stream.

When he finally caught up to them, they were talking in hushed voices about something, and when they noticed him coming he could hear the change in the conversation.

“There you are Henric. Is everything alright?” Zak asked as Henric approached.

“Yeah.” Henric was confused at the question. “There’s just so much going on here. I needed a moment.”

“Fair enough,” said Zak. Both brothers shot each other concerned looks. Then Samael nodded.

“Henric, I’m was not sure if you sensed it.” Samael put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder, and Henric could see tears in his eyes. “Your father has died.”