A Storm in the Making

Chapter 21--Old Bones

Chapter Twenty-One

Old Bones

Actually, not hard at all.  The traffic flow on the pathway was all one way.  South.  I just walked along in the same direction they were all headed.  The pathway split into a “Y” about halfway up the hillside.  One path continued on up over the hill, the other one meandered around the edge of what looked like an ancient cemetery before it, too, went on up over the hill.  The group was divided on which path to follow.  About half continued straight, the rest turned to the right, past the ancient cemetery. 

I followed those on the cemetery path.  I was intrigued by the headstones. I could see, even at a distance they weren’t just ancient, they were ancient’s older, uglier brother.  The sun risen. Well, I should say they had risen. There were two of them. Twins suns that glared down unkindly from that solid lavender sky onto the lichen-covered, hand-carved stones. Like unkempt rows of tattered, weary soldiers, they wobbled drunkenly up the hill. 

I didn’t realize how steep the hill was until I stood at the edge of that cemetery, staring upward at the field of jumbled graves.  Many of them still bore strange, upright headstones written all over with the strange runes I had seen in two other places now—the gateway and the fireplace.  The runes were obviously a common theme here on Dardara. 

Even though I knew it was an optical illusion, the tall slim headstones appeared to tilt; as if many of them had just gotten weary of the passing centuries.  I could easily imagine them giving up marking the resting place of the bones beneath them, just tilting over out of sheer exhaustion seeking eternal rest themselves.

That weird lavender sky turned the green lichen crawling all over the headstones into a sickly yellow-green.  Sharp, needle-like grass that grew with wild abandon between every stone surface, reached for the alien sun above with spindly hands.  A crumbly-white scale vied with the lichens for space on every stone on that hillside like a creeping plague; chewing away at the stone like tiny nanobytes programmed to return the stone to sand.  It was depressing and at the same time, a monument to the struggles against the greatest enemy of that grizzled resting place—time.

“A morbid place to be on such a beautiful, sunny morning as this, is it not?”  Spoke a masculine voice behind me, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin. 

Startled from my contemplation of the cemetery, I whirled around only to be even more startled to find a tall, black-shrouded figure standing not far from me under the only tree for miles around.  For a split second, the shrouded figure resembled the ghost of Christmas past standing there in the shade.  Now that was an eerie thought to have in a cemetery. 

Then I noticed a strong, square, very human, hand resting on the hilt of the longest sword I had ever seen. The sword was attached to the orange belt of an inner, very ordinary white robe of a very ordinary 4th Level wizard, beneath the mysteriously-shrouded figure in question. To be honest, it was the only sword I had ever seen in real life.  A large, gold, ring adorned the hand holding the sword.  That ring was not ordinary.   

“Sheesh, you scared the hell out of me!” I snapped at him before I thought. It was pure idiocy to snap at anyone with a sword as huge as his.

A hood concealed his features, but I could hear a chuckle plainly coming from its depths.  For some reason, that chuckle irked me more than his sneaking up on me.   I felt my temper flare.

“Peace,” the man laughed, reaching up to pull back the hood of his cloak.  “Could we start over, perhaps?”

 “Yes, this place is peaceful,” I agreed, deliberately misunderstanding him, but when I said it, I realized it was true.  Despite that alien, lavender sky beating down on that treeless hillside, it was peaceful here.  Quiet.  Not even insects disturbed the silence.  I inhaled a deep, cleansing breath and realized the air was filled with the scent of dry grass in a warm sun.  It, too, was a peaceful scent.  Like the scent of my straw-filled mattress on the bed I’d slept on the night before.

“Peaceful, yes, but that, too, is deceptive.  Beneath the peaceful surface lies the mouldering remains of lives long past caring what goes on above them.”

“I suppose,” I again agreed.  “And, you’re quite right, it is too sunny a morning to contemplate such a morbid subject.”  Deliberately I walked towards him.

Then the man did the weirdest thing.  He dropped to one knee and bowed his head.  “Sir William Helm, at your service, My Lady.”

I looked around to see if anyone saw what he had done, and was embarrassed when I saw several people looking strangely at us from the trail as they walked past.

“Please get up,” I whispered.  “People are looking at us.”

He looked up at me then from his kneeling position and found myself looking down at a head of tousled brown hair, which the man shook to rearrange into a less disorganized mass of waves. They fell well past the man’s shoulders when his hood dropped.  It would take a while to get used to men’s longer hairstyles on this planet after living so long with my brothers buzz cuts back on earth.  

A tanned face, as square and strong as his hand, smiled at me like he found life in general an amusing joke on everyone.  He had straight brown brows above hawk-like, denim-blue eyes that missed nothing. He had a square chin that jutted stubbornly out, offset by a full bottom lip that looked soft to the touch.

I held out my hand to help him up.  To my surprise, he grabbed it, but instead of standing up, he bent his head over my hand.  I tried to draw back my hand, but he clamped down on it with his gloved fist and kissed my hand before I could stop him.

“To you I pledge my service and my life,” he finished.  Only then did he stand up.

 He stood between me and the path up over the hill.  I stepped forward, daring him to prevent me from passing him.  He didn’t, but neither did he totally give way.  He only stepped back far enough to allow a minimal passage past him to the path.

 Head high, heart pounding, I passed so close to him, our robes brushed against each other.  I could smell his masculine scent; a potent combination of man, almost hidden beneath the scent of some spicy, woodsy cologne.  That surprised me, causing me to almost stumble as I looked back at him.  He was the first person, male or female here who I’d met that wore cologne.  He wasn’t from Witches Isle, then, some inner instinct told me, the same one that was warning to be very cautious around this guy. 

He reached out a hand to steady me.  I shied away from him just enough for his hand to fall short.  This close, I could see that the black stone in his ring was carved into the shape of a rose.  An unusual shape for a setting in a ring, I thought to myself as I reached the path and started up it without waiting to see if he followed or not.