Lief panicked; the shadow’s voice was eerily familiar. He’d heard it before. But it sounded different—matured. He suddenly knew exactly who this man was and he couldn’t believe it. The last time he’d seen him, he was younger and shorter; not like the towering form that now stood before him.
“Please,” Lief begged. “I was just doing what I was told?”
“Ah,” the shadow chuckled. “Your job, right? Following orders?”
“Yes. Yes. That’s right.”
“So you are not responsible for your own actions?” the shadow roared. A surge of darkness swallowed the room. The entire boat creaked as if each wooden plank was twisting.
“I am! I am!” Lief said, shielding himself with his arms folded over his head. “I’m sorry.”
“I once said ‘I’m sorry.’ And I truly meant it. But all it did was get me killed.”
“Please, I didn’t want to. I swear.”
“You didn’t want to what, fisherman?”
The shadow pulled him in close. Lief felt its breath upon his cheek. But the fisherman turned away and closed his eyes. After what he’d done he couldn’t look a resurrected Rayne Volpi in the eyes.
“I know who you are,” Lief admitted. “I don’t know how, but I know it’s you. I kidnapped you two years ago, regretfully.”
“And?”
“And I tied you to a post—”
“Surrounded by piles of oil-soaked wood,” the shadow finished. “Men like you disgust me—empty heads. You don’t use your brain nor do you want to. You look for someone else to give you orders because you don’t know what to do yourself. You feel like you have no purpose. You are lost. And you want to be found.”
The candles in the room relit.
For a moment, Lief’s fear abated. He suddenly felt emotional, realizing the faults of his life. “I am lost,” he said.
Suddenly, the darkness returned. “Well, I found you,” Rayne said. “And I will tell you what not to do.” Rayne’s grip tightened. “You shouldn’t have groped that young lady earlier today. She asked nicely for you to stop. And you refused.”
“Never again, I swear,” said Lief.
Rayne’s wide green eyes shrunk down into slits, studying Lief’s fearful expression. “I believe you. And I will make sure of it.”
Lief’s heartbeat doubled.
“Do you know what separates humans from animals?” Rayne asked.
What does that mean? Lief thought. The fisherman’s teeth chattered. His mouth was too dry to even fold his lips to speak.
“I’ll give you a hint. Without this, humans couldn’t have built the kingdoms that they’ve built today.”
But the fisherman didn’t know. He was too scared to think. He didn’t want to know.
“Technology,” Rayne said. “And how can one create technology without hands to operate tools.”
“No!” Lief shouted.
Rayne released his hands from the fisherman’s wrists. “Like a tadpole you will live, trapped in a puddle with no way out, without ever growing new arms and legs. You will never touch her again, nor will you ever tie another knot.”
At first there was no pain, but Lief felt a slight tingling at his wrists and ankles. When he looked down where he felt the sensation there was nothing but a stub at the ends of his limbs. A paralyzing pain pulsed through him. Without feet to stabilize a standing position, he toppled over. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t; the fisherman’s tongue was also severed.
The ghost of Rayne Volpi disappeared.
THE SECOND village, an upper class section of the kingdom next to Royal Hill, was one block from the castle gates. At his home, a three-story miniature castle, the Ikarus speaker and high priest of The Temple, Elmer Mongs, relaxed to the smell of the fresh wet air after a downpour had slowed to a steady drizzle. Under white moonlight, he puffed on bogweed for a late night smoke out on his porch. His son, Fervan, was inside, sound asleep in his bed. Elmer sat quietly rocking back and forth in his wicker chair, listening diligently to a relentless tapping he at first thought was water dripping from the roof into his buckets. But as the rain nearly stopped, the sound got louder and faster.
Elmer became suspicious. He’d had a long day preparing documents for upcoming hearings and wanted nothing more than a night of peace and quiet. But as speaker of the Ikarus council, he had a lot of enemies. Over the course of two years, Elmer had sentenced more criminals for petty crimes to prison than any other speaker in history. Although he was a priest protected by The Temple his paranoia grew.
Grabbing his knife, he rounded the corner of his porch and saw the buckets clinking against one another. It was just the wind. His discovery was a quick relief to a sudden jolt of fear. So he placed them back where they belonged, catching the runoff from the roof to drink, this time further apart so the rims wouldn’t rattle.
The speaker went back and sat on the edge of his chair and stared into a forming puddle in front of his home. The running water was soothing to hear.
Along the murky surface of the water, he regarded his reflection as he took a drag of his bogweed. The plant eased his anxiety. Before long, Elmer melted comfortably into his chair. Thank you, Montague, he said, laughing. He exhaled a cloud of smoke into the night sky.
Just when the speaker started dozing off, he heard a soft voice whisper, “Fire starter.” He sat up instantly and became alert. He looked around, but could see no one. “Fire starter,” the voice said again. Then, the whisper turned into a growl and shouted, “Fire Starter!”
Elmer jumped. “Who’s there?” he yelled.
Dogs barked in the distance. Birds flew out from the surrounding trees. But there was still no one in sight. The speaker’s closest neighbor was at least fifty yards away and across the street.
But then everything became quiet again, oddly quiet. Although he saw the ripples, he could no longer hear the sound of the drizzling rain splattering in the puddle. It seemed to
