The Chosen by Kris Kramer (read the beginning after the end novel TXT) 📕

“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.”

Chapter 15

“Something moved over there.” Riordan pointed to the south, his hand shaking. Finias followed the gesture to see a patch of darkness between two small houses at the southern edge of Alvarton. He frowned, hoping Riordan’s tick was just nervous tension, and not an illness that made him spin outlandish stories.

“I'll check it out,” Finias grumbled as he jogged away.

The two of them had spent their evening knocking on doors, waking everyone up in the hope that someone here would know where Aiden lived, or could at least point them in the right direction. Riordan was adamant that they needed his help to save them from the trouble they were in, though he hadn't been clear about why. Finias would have been happy with just leaving the man a note here in town, warning him of some vague danger coming his way, because what good was a cowardly old soldier to them at a time like this? In fact, if Riordan hadn't been so eager to find him, Finias would have suggested they move on without him, especially since locating him had proven to be especially aggravating.

They'd woken people at eight different houses so far, each more irritated by the intrusion than the last. One especially angry old man yelled at them for a good two minutes before Riordan calmed him by apologizing profusely. The worst part, though, was that they all knew who Aiden was – the Coward from the Silver Hills – but no one could be more specific than that in describing where he lived. They just pointed off to the west and expected that to be enough to track down one man in the hills in the middle of the night. When pressed for more information, one of the villagers told them, “He lives in the woods, you crazy buggers. It's not like they number the lots out there,” and that had been the most useful information they'd received so far.

Finias huffed in annoyance as he approached the two houses, despite his natural instincts to stay quiet. He stepped delicately on the soft grass, keeping his keen eyes focused on the darkness, looking for any sign of movement. Finias knew what signs to look for, and despite Riordan's protestations, he’d seen none of them tonight. He reached the edge of the first house and peeked around, scanning for movement. An oak tree stood proudly in the grass behind the two houses, a few of its branches swaying in the gentle breeze. But other than the rustling leaves, nothing moved. If someone was following them, they were damn good at it. So good, in fact, that it strained credulity.

“Nothing,” he said as he walked back. Riordan nodded while anxiously rubbing his hands together, his walking stick resting in the crook of his arm. Once Finias reached his side again, the priest took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for something, and then stalked off toward the next house. Finias rolled his eyes in disbelief and followed. They’d been here an hour since leaving Corendar, and Riordan had already sent him off four different times to check the shadows or to investigate a noise. Even worse, Finias had let him do it each and every time. It was his own fault. He’d let himself get dragged out here on nothing more than a whim, a distraction to keep him from other worries. But the novelty had worn off. And he still hadn’t determined if he was indulging a stark raving lunatic whose claims of death and danger around every corner were just delusions of an old man and his ale.

“Is this how they got you?” Finias asked while the two of them walked slowly toward the next house. “Sneaking up on you in the middle of the night?”

Riordan nodded. “Fadeblades. I was at an inn in Corendar. The King's Chamberlain arranged for us to stay there the night we came back from... from finding them. That night, fadeblades snuck in and took me in my sleep.”

Finias pursed his lips. He knew fadeblades well. They were men and women trained in the art of stealth, poisons, and death. They were spies and assassins, mostly, and they were not to be trifled with if you could help it. They were also a convenient boogeyman for someone who may not be entirely sane.

“That's why we had to stay in the city and not at the palace,” Riordan continued. “People had to see us. They had to see me go into my room there and never come out, to keep suspicion off the King's men. To everyone there, I probably just left in the middle of the night. Or I snuck away, or went mad, or whatever other rumor was spread to keep suspicion off the King's men.”

Riordan told an incredible tale. Claiming to be taken in the night by fadeblades sounded like a story children would tell to scare each other, not a priest several years past his prime. Maybe he really did go mad and he'd just made the whole thing up. It was only a passing thought, one of several he'd had tonight about this crazy little jaunt, but this one at least jogged his memory, reminding him that he didn't know many of the details about this endeavor. Details he should have asked about much sooner.

“What did you call that Warshield, earlier? A tenebrous?”

Riordan nodded. “I take it you’re not Resurrectionist?”

Finias shook his head. “My father considered religion a sign of weakness.”

“Ah,” Riordan said, frowning. “A shame. Tenebrous are those who walk in the shadow, obscured from the light by something, or someone.”

“Sounds appropriately ominous.”

“Actually, it’s quite literal in this case. Those men and women, including that Warshield, don’t quite know what they’re doing. They’ve had a spell cast on them that changes their reality, like a dream that takes them