‘I saw father today in the drawing room. He looked particularly disturbed by something as his face was blanched. I asked him what the matter was, and he told me he had received a letter from grandfather. However, he never told me what had unsettled him so badly. On the bright side, I’ve found out that he has begun an extensive investigation into the old woman’s prophecy and the encampment. Knowing this puts me at ease, that I am being listened to.’ - Excerpt from Isten Blodyn’s diary, January 1263.
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Grey clouds were pulled closed across the sky like thick cotton curtains that blocked out the sun. Cold rain fell from above, drizzling on the pedestrians that bustled through the crowded streets, their clothes sticking to their skin and their hair matted against their foreheads. There was a slight hastiness to their pace as they went about their activities. They wished to return to the dry warmth of the indoors.
Colossal freight ships carrying merchant cargo sailed across the Porthladd river in strict single-filed queues under the careful watch of the vessel traffic operatives. Most ships had three erected wooden masts which carried their sodden squared sails proudly like flags that rippled against the buffeting wind. The sailors scurried about on deck preparing to dock their ships at port under the harsh commands of their ship’s captain.
Men and women carried wooden crates and boxes from the merchant ships that docked at Pentref’s port. They teetered slightly as the gangway swayed beneath their weight and continued their struggle to the nearby shops that they had sold their cargo to.
Slowly following them was their ships’ captains, dressed in colourful doublets with floral scrolls that lined their sleeves. They were each stopped by customs officers that charged their freight based on weight, to which the captains paid up the fee with a bribe to lessen the total cost. Each ship contained a great deal of wealth, for they could only make the journeys to the nearby countries and ports a few times a year. They knew it to not be wise to upset these men and women.
There was more than a hint of an acrid stench in the air that made Heledd scrunch her nose in disgust. As she swept her vision across the brick buildings that lined the waterfront, she saw women from the window ledges throw buckets of human waste into the streets. It sloshed as the excrement splattered against the trenched road, the dirtied fluids mixing with the wet mud.
Her boots squelched as she traipsed across the muddied road, her rider’s boots being tugged with each step she took, leaving depressions in road behind her. Her foot eventually connected to the wooden pallets of the dock, and she left imprints against its surface to be eventually washed away by the rain.
In the skies above their heads, spirits danced gracefully between the cool raindrops sending currents of wind to spray against the people in the streets. Currently blind to all save those of the Church, their wonder was not lost on Heledd who stumbled into those in front of her as she was distracted by their frolicking.
Finally, she separated from the crowd and pushed open the tattered wooden door of a brick building painted all white except for its black half-timber frames. A sign above it marked the shop as an apothecary, and the smell of herbs that were released when the door opened only made that clearer.
She weaved her way past wooden cupboards and shelves that were awkwardly positioned around the shop, with the odd exotic plant or herb and bottles placed precariously on its rickety shelf. The frame had screws missing and the wood had long rotted by now. How it still balanced without falling, she was unsure of.
“What do you want?” A shrill voice asked from behind a similarly rotted wooden desk.
Heledd didn’t respond until she stood before the table, and her silence was response enough that the man flung his body up from searching beneath his desk. His face contorted in panic, but it receded and was replaced with a look of pleading subservience.
“Ah… Ms Heledd…” The man started to wring dry his hands. “Have you come… What have you come for?”
“I am required to collect a prescription on behalf of the Church of Cymorth.” She responded airily.
“Of course…” He trailed off, fidgeting as he stood waiting.
“One for a fifth, two for a ninth, three pounds of gold brings the end of a night.” Heledd said, reciting the phrase from memory.
The man nodded, then disappeared under the desk, then bobbed back up with a small box in his hand. He slipped it before Heledd, and she took it from the tabletop placing it inside a pouch attached to her belt. Two coins, with a king’s face inscribed onto both sides, flashed from inside her wide cassock sleeves and were placed into the palm of the apothecary’s hand. Once again, the coins disappeared.
“If you may, follow me.” The man unlocked the half door that led behind the counter. Heledd followed him as he led her to the poorly lit back room which contained shelves with packaged herbs and plants; half opened crates and boxes with an assortment of powders and pill capsules; and sacks with the carcasses of dead wild animals. The smells that had blended together within this room were equal to that of the excrement that polluted the harbour streets.
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As she was scraping the remains of a cobweb from her face, she heard a click of a door being opened and then the din of the streets.
“This way.” The man held the door ajar, an anxious expression on his face. Heledd stepped past him and back onto the streets. Though this time, she was in the back alleyways that led away from the port.
She followed the path away from the back door without saying a word in response to the apothecary, attempting to blend into current of the crowd. She slipped between each row that formed like threads on a loom, weaving her way back and forth until she felt she had suitably disappeared into the crowd.
The rain began to fall harder as she was taken along with the streaming crowd, flowing through the winding, unplanned streets. The area of Pentref she passed through was built from mostly timber that was predominantly brought to the city by the merchant’s freight ships.
What once came from the lustrous forests of the Western provinces of Cymorth, chopped and shipped to Pentref, was sold to carpenters who hastily built these houses to home the freemen poor.
Now, its lustrousness was gone. The timber had been infested with woodlouse that ate the damp wood, while the small windows were ridden with mould. The houses’ borders were covered unintentionally in excrement that leaked from underneath the privies and cesspits, or from the trenched streets that overflowed, or from the buckets that were launched from the windows above.
Heledd took in this sight pitifully and pushed out of the crowd towards the slum buildings. She strode slowly to where a group of young boys and girls, dressed in rags with mud caked feet, played in the gaps between the timbered houses. They stopped to stare at her as she got closer, some turning to run away, darting into the next alleyway over.
She wasn’t interested in any save one child, whose fingers were scabbed and tainted black, though not by mud or dirt. She reached out to the boy, hands grasping and eyes examining the ailed appendages. The boy’s eyes had constricted, and his mouth contorted slightly as he watched her in fear.
She let go with her right hand, and she made it cross to her left hip where she withdrew her book of Scripture.
“Consano.” Heledd whispered a gentle prayer in Reinheithian, channelling her Malevolent energy through the book of Scripture. Her prayer was received and accepted, and an incorporeal golden light shone out from her body. A gust of wind overhead responded, and the shapes of spirits answered her calling.
Though her eyes were fixed on the boy’s hand, she felt the presence of the golden elfin wisps that danced around her head before twirling down both of her shoulders into her hands. They coalesced into a sphere, almost bubble like in nature, above her opened book of Scripture that she held between her cupped palms.
The boy’s fingers were directed into it with a coaxing smile from Heledd, and he felt that gentle weightlessness of floating in the sea. The black taint of the scabbed hands gradually receded, with flecks of dead skin falling away into the liquid golden globe. His fingers, red and raw, began to knit together once again with fresh skin forming. Initially, it was delicate, like tissue paper, but it strengthened and was eventually indistinguishable from the rest of his hands.
The boy’s eyes dilated in shock at the Miracle being performed on him by Heledd. The pain that had once sent jarring electric shocks up his arms had vanished without a trace. He withdrew his hands and held his fingers in front of eyes, staring at them in marvel wonder.
To ignore those trapped in the vicious cycles of life, despite having the power to aid them, was not something she agreed with. God had given his blessings to humankind to perform Miracles on his behalf. Those who ignored this commandment were heathens and to be stripped of power which should be given to those who were deserving and willing to act on behalf of God as spiritual conduits for his power.
Heledd dispelled her Miracle, closing her book of Scripture as stood up from her crouched position. The spirits roiling above her head shot away into the grey sky with a blast of chilling air, her black cassock and gown blew against the wind. After rubbing the stunned boy’s head, she left for her destination once again.
She re-joined the crowd and was taken away in its torrent that flowed upstream, winding up the sloped roads into the Noble District. Strained breathing and huffed pants marked those who made the journey from the lower slums to the higher realm of Pentref. It finally broke at a built-up plaza, where the crowd surged to fill up any available space in all directions.
As Heledd strode clockwise around the slick cobbled square, she was bumped into by a woman dressed in a dark grey bodice and skirt. Her hair and clothes clung to her skin, matted wet from the heavy rain. She held a basket firmly between her elbow, supported by the fleshy forearm and bicep, and in her free hand was a folded sheet of paper.
“God blesses you.” The woman smiled at Heledd while handing her the sheet of paper before moving beyond her, deeper into the plaza’s crowd. Heledd frowned slightly, shoving the pamphlet into her pocket, already knowing its contents for she and her convent created most of the truths that were within it.
Something caught her eye as she continued forwards, and she turned her attention upwards to see it. Lazily drifting after the woman was a fox dressed in cream robes and a tattered black scarf. From time to time, it pranced, jumping on and from one invisible foothold to another. None other than she herself paid attention to the fox, for they were unable to see it, otherwise they would goggle in awe of it.
Her mind was still occupied on the sighting of that fox spirit as she crossed absentmindedly onto the street that led into the Saint Hans Cathedral. She had seen this type of spirit becoming more, common, of late, however, she did not like them. Rather, she felt a strong revulsion towards them.
Heledd had the Sight since she was born, which in part was the reason the Church had accepted her into the monastery so young. Up until a few years ago, she had never seen them in Orbis, and from the confirmation of others, much wiser and older than she, they had never existed until that specific day. The Pontiff had summoned the whole of the ecumenical Church to inform them of this new spiritual discovery.
Now she only saw them when she passed the gentry by happenchance, like in the plaza for instance. Each time she was near them, a sense of disgust flooded her mind that she never felt when she saw her elfin spirits. It felt like maggots were burrowing deep into her skin, hooking themselves into her flesh.
She shivered. She broke from her thoughts, dispelling her stupor, as she pushed open the double bronze doors that led into the main hall of the Cathedral. All that was left of this task was to receive the sample from her superior and give it to her agent.