Chapter Eight

Absalom hated the Blackwoods. 

The Blackwoods was situated east of Rulem. It was acres and acres of dark and tall trees with branches that reached up to the heavens in prayers holding up their leaves like sacrifice. The trees were hundreds of years old; they had grown with Rulem ever since the first stone of the great city was laid. In the old days, it was considered sacrilege to cut down a tree in the Blackwoods. The rule was lifted was many still held on to it. Archaic Absalom thought.

But Absalom wasn't here to look at the trees or contemplate the backwardness of the people of Rulem. He was here for the hovel that was before him. The building itself was decrepit and abandoned. Two of its four walls had fallen in and the roof was gone. The walls that did remain were already crumbling over and it was overgrown with weeds. It looked pathetic and no man of Absalom's status would be caught dead around it. But Absalom had grown up in this very hovel.

Absalom was born in Valar, in a small little town called Gilgal close to the Valar-Aldar border. When he was three, his parents had fled Gilgal and sought refuge in Rulem and they had lived in this very hovel. His father had died a year later, a knife in the stomach during a drunken scuffle. They could not afford a healer so his mother tried to treat him but the wound got infected and his father died. Absalom had been very young but he understood when his mother had told him that his father was no longer with them. He took it like a man –like his father taught him. 

From then on, things only got worse. His mother found work as a maid in the Warden's tower but it took most of her time and she barely found time to be with her young son. For days on end, Absalom would find himself alone in their little hut in the Blackwood –hungry and cold. The Blackwoods offered no comfort to the young boy, only silence and at times danger. Thus, his hatred for the woods. On one of those days, he wandered into the city hoping to find food. Instead, he found that the people in the city were not too hospitable to dirty orphan boys who begged for food and were all too eager to kick him out of any establishment he stepped into.

When he was thirteen, he ran away and he never saw Rulem for another ten years. While he was away, he became a new man, a better man. It was only natural that he rose swiftly through the ranks until he became the Chief Advisor to the Warden of Rulem.

"My Lord" A horseman approached him bringing him out of his memories. 

He turned to watch the man approach on his black mount. He was dressed in black chainmail and Absalom could see the white tower on black background embroidered on his tunic –the symbol of the Warden of Rulem. This man was one of Warden's guards.

"Yes?" He asked facing the older man. He shrunk under his gaze and Absalom hid a satisfied smile. It was the way of things – for ordinary men to cower before beings greater than them like himself. Absalom pulled his cloak close. It was a fine piece made of the finest material and it featured a red lion prowling across a field of black, his personal emblem. "Speak" he ordered.

"My L-lord Advisor" the man continued with a little stutter. "The prisoner is conscious again"

Absalom grinned. "Excellent. Tell Amnon to keep him that way. I will be with him shortly/"

The nameless guard saluted and rode away quickly, eager to escape Absalom's presence. Now they fear me, He thought as he watched the man leave. Once upon a time, they had treated him like the scum of the earth and now he was the second most powerful man in all of Rulem. Time changes everything. 

Absalom took one last look at the hovel and then turned away. It was time to go. He had other duties to attend to.

He placed his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The shadow of one of the trees before him darkened and distorted. Absalom took a step back to allow the shadow expand. It crawled across the floor like liquid and spread until it was longer than the tree who cast it. Then, it bubbled and hissed until suddenly, a horse burst out of the shadows. The horse looked gaunt and thin like it was made of skin and bones but Absalom knew the truth, it could outrun any horse in all of Aldar and Valar. It was no normal horse, it was a Shadowmount. The horse made nary a sound and kept its red eyes trained on its master. 

Absalom mounted the Shadowmount with an ease born from years of practice. "Run" he ordered.

The black horse bolted into the forest headed for the Warden's Tower. 

The prisoner's cell smelt like a combination of seven-day-old shit and piss that had been left to ferment. The smell was so thick, it almost made Absalom's eyes water. Almost. He had been in worse situations. A simple cell in the dungeons of Rulem was nothing compared to some of the horrors he had faced on his journeys. If anything, it seemed a small mercy.

The owner of the cell was hanging from the ceiling with his hands held up by thick leather cuffs and only the tip of his toes touching ground. His formally tanned skin had turned pale and was designed with scars – some were fresh and red and others had healed. He had once been a muscled man, when he was still the captain of the Warden's Guard but now his he looked almost wasted after weeks only enough food to keep him alive. He used to have a full head of hair but now it was clean shaved with ugly purple bruises on his face. 

"Are you ready to talk?" Absalom asked as he stepped up to the prisoner. He looked up, his face was swollen and covered in welts. Amnon had gotten a little too eager in his interrogation. Absalom didn't mind. The Warden and most of his council believed the former captain to be a traitor who had sold secrets of Rulem's defense to Valarian spies and Absalom had encouraged their belief. Especially since it made the Warden hand over the interrogation of the captain to him while he awaited his imminent execution.

The prisoner croaked out an answer.

"I can't hear you" Absalom said patiently.

The prisoner took a deep breath, harsh and long, and repeated himself. "Water"

Absalom smiled. "So that's what you wanted?" He waved his hand and Amnon stepped in. His enforcer was a giant of man, standing at least a head and a shoulder over Absalom himself. Much of his face was ugly and he had a scar that ran from the bottom of his left eye all the way to his neck. He held out a canteen to the prisoner and Absalom watched fascinated as his dry lips latched on to the bottle and began to suck on it like it was life itself. It's funny what happens when you dehydrate a man for four days. 

"Alright. That's enough" Absalom said and immediately Amnon pulled the canteen away from the thirsty prisoner. The giant bowed and left the cell once again leaving Absalom alone with the prisoner and the terrible smell in the air.

"I'm really sorry about all this you know" Absalom began, "Personally I would have loved to have you at my right hand. I treasure strong men. It's something that is lacking in my generation. Peace has made the people docile and weak. They need a strong leader that will whip them into shape"

"And.." The prisoner started with great effort. "And that leader, is you?"

"Naturally." Absalom replied, "Only the strongest are fit to rule. Men like you and I"

"I'm nothing like you"

Absalom laughed. "Of course, you aren't. There are no men like me. But for one of your species, I admire your strength and I'm offering you a seat at my table when I come into power." He paused. "And all I ask of you is that you give me the information that I need."

The prisoner said nothing.

"Where is the girl?" Absalom asked.

His prisoner suddenly looked up. There was a light in his eyes, something he had been sure Amnon had beaten out of him

"The girl?" he asked, his voice was still hoarse from lack of use.

"Yes, the whore in your employ. Where is she?"

The prisoner looked at him, his black eyes staring into Absalom's blue.

"You still haven't found her?" He asked. Absalom's silence was enough of an answer and the prisoner burst into laughter. The laughter itself was an ugly thing, it was more hacking and coughing than any pleasant sound, but the implication was the same – the prisoner was delighted.

Absalom's vision clouded red for a moment, and he felt his control slip. His anger came roaring out like a beast and he lashed out at the prisoner with the back of his fist. He felt flesh tear under his fist and thick red blood splattered to the ground. When he reigned in the beast, the prisoner's lips were split, and blood was flowing out in rivulets.

"Now, look what you made me do" Absalom said quietly as he stared at the blood on his fist. He removed a handkerchief from the inside of his cloak and wiped his fist clean.

"She escaped." The prisoner managed to say through the blood dripping out of his mouth. "She's escaped you and your bloody hounds. At least one of them did. Deus! Yachwah be praised. That's all I needed to know. You're doomed now. The whole world will know" That pesky light was there again in his eyes. What had been dark pools of frustration on the face of a man who had lost all was now twin jewels sparkling even in the darkness of the cell. 

The door to the cell opened and Amnon walked in again.

"What is it?" Absalom asked. 

"Our men in Rushford just sent word," he said. "They found the girl"

Absalom grinned and turned to his prisoner. "What was that you were saying about her escaping?" The man glared at him, his face looked like it was carved from stone. The delight in his eyes was gone, replaced with something Absalom was very familiar with – hatred and rage and something else underneath it. "You know all this time that you've been our guest down here. I've always admired you for one thing. You never showed any fear" Absalom grabbed him by the chin and brought his face closer for observation "But now I can see it. Lurking underneath even as you try to hide it. It's all there in your eyes. You care for this girl"

He paused and watched as his prisoner stilled. He was trying to control himself, Absalom realized, and he almost laughed. "I'm going to enjoy this" He turned to Amnon. "Tell the men that I authorize them to use any means necessary. Any sacrifice they need to make." His eyes found his prisoner's and he watched as the fear overtook the hatred in his eyes.

"Bring me the girl's head"