The Wolf Esprit: Lykanos Chronicles 3

The bishop visited my cell each day. I presumed his visits came at such intervals, for I lost my sense of time in the darkness. With the light of his candle, he brought a fresh tray of bread and water. He even furnished me with an empty chamber pot and removed the one I’d used. Despite the unexpected kindness of this act, I couldn’t help but plead with him to show me mercy. To this, his inevitable response was to lock my cell door and walk away, taking the candlelight with him.

Upon twice of his visits, my wolf awakened, transformed by the perceived threat. Both times, the bishop returned my beast to slumber, at once filling my mind with the cold numbness I bore no defense against. The bishop did this without anger, performing the act with the same sense of duty he performed with all others. Perhaps I misunderstood his purpose, but it seemed he meant only to ensure the docile endurance of his prisoner.

I couldn’t say how long this went on. Being locked in total darkness drove me mad. It was more than a week, perhaps two, before Bishop Toussaint arrived and spoke to me.

“Stand up, Esprit. They summoned you to court.”

At first, I did nothing but plead for his mercy. But when he repeated himself, I scrambled to my feet as if my words had met with success.

“Follow me,” he instructed.

Toussaint walked led us down the hall of cells until we entered the chapel where we first. The carved effigy of Christ, crucified above the altar, was all to be seen in the darkened room. When he set his candle in a sconce, I realized he meant to lead me back up toward the light of day. Along the halls that had seemed perilously dark upon my arrival, the solitary candles now gleamed in a way that filled my soul. With a sense of vigor, I followed the bishop with a close step.

But after only a single flight of stairs, I realized how weak I’d become. My legs gave out as I gasped for air. After a second flight, Toussaint took me in his arms and lifted me like a child to carry me. I placed my head in the crook of his neck with affection for the man’s unexpected kindness. We ascended this way up a dozen flights before reaching the level I’d awoken on. We ascended two more levels past this floor until we entered a space I could not have predicted.

More opulent than any room in the Forteresse Roussade, the bishop had brought us to what looked like a palace. Pale, rose-colored marble columns with golden caps soared to a gilded ceiling filled with frescos of angels in Heaven. Upon the gleaming parquet floor, he set me down to stand on my bare feet.

“Follow me,” he bid.

We walked in silence only a dozen feet before entering a salon filled with several men and guarded by wolf sentries at the doors. Blazing sunlight bathed the lavish room, streaming in through banks of windows near the ceiling on the western end. It astonished me how the light made the marble walls and endless gold leaf-rimmed frescoes shimmer like portals to another world.

On the north, two men sat on a carpeted landing, leaning back on gilded chairs of emerald silk and gold styled as thrones. The man on the right was the miserable bastard who’d interrogated me before condemning me to the earth beneath this magnificent room. Below these men, a congregation of others murmured in separate conversations, each dressed more elegantly than the last.

The men turned their attentions to me in unison as the bishop stopped among them to speak.

“My lords,” he said with a deferential bow to the two men seated above us. “I present you with Esprit of the Forteresse Roussade, styled as the Chevalier du Roussade. He is a son of the renegade Maximo of the long destroyed Palatine pack, and the only known living grandchild of the ancient heretic, Sempronius of mons Palatinus.”

Both men’s eyes shot toward someone who stood below them on my right. Among the brocaded satins worn under powdered wigs by the others stood a tall man in a foreign suit of crimson velvet, golden buttons, and immaculate black leather hunting boots. Unfettered by a wig, he wore his dark hair back from his closely shaven face, and his rich blue eyes caught the light as he stared back at me with fascination.

“Step forward, boy,” the seated bastard bid me. With hesitation, I advanced past the bishop to stand at the foot of the small riser.

“If you will, Marquis,” he said to the other man. “As I told you, I am quite satisfied.”

The other man stared at me in silence for a moment before addressing me.

“What is your age, child?”

“I am eighteen, sir.”

“Insolent boy,” the other spoke up. “You stand in the presence of the Marquis de Archambault. You will address him as your lord.”

“Forgive me, my lord,” I answered with a deferential nod. “I was eighteen last December.”

“And your human family? They live in Saulieu?”

“No, my lord. My human family are traveling artists. They roam the nation performing. It was in Saulieu while they performed for the townsfolk that we parted.”

“But where do they come from, then?”

I hesitated.

“I was raised on the road, my lord,” I answered. “My father was born in Aziney, but I have never been there.”

A look of disappointment took hold of Archambault’s eyes. The other man sneered with unmasked revulsion.

“Travelers,” he said to the Marquis with disgust. “He has not even the breeding to stand before us. You see what animals we deal with. They must be stopped.”

“My dear Vicomté, there is no question of that. I have traveled here at your invitation to see to it done. I mean only to understand them. If you will oblige.”

They were words of patience, but even I could see Archambault had meant to dress down this loathsome man, this Vicomté who sat beside him as if a peer.

“Forgive me, my lord.”

“And Gabrielle?” Archambault asked. “This Baroness du Roussade? She is your Alpha, though not your maker?”

I struggled with the question.

“My lord?”

“It was not she who released your wolf prematurely? You claim it was the other? Her mate?”

“Gabrielle did not perform the ritual, my lord,” I said. “My father released my wolf. But it was not premature—we both agreed I was ready.”

“Your father, but not Gabrielle?” The Marquis’ eyes did a double take, as if my wording confused him.

“She’s the Alpha of their pack, and he hasn’t even the simple courtesy to refer to the witch as his mother,” the Vicomté added under his breath.

“But why not her? Is it not her right to welcome wolves into her den even among their heretical ways?”

Again, I was at a loss to answer.

“I don’t know, my lord. He’s my father, and she’s my teacher.”

“Your teacher? In what does she instruct you?

“In mathematics, literature, and history—the new sciences being developed in Paris and London.”

“And of the Lord in Heaven?” the Vicomté sneered. “What does she teach you about His plan for us?”

“She’s taught me only a little about human religion,” I answered with hesitance. “She’s taught me the stories as they relate to the artwork of the masters throughout history.”

“There, you see. He thinks as they do, worshiping the vain idolatries of humans, of mortals.”

“I mean for you to tell me about what she’s taught you of her powers,” Archambault said without acknowledging the Vicomté’s declaration. “What do you know of her heretical forces?”

“I don’t understand you, my lord,” I said, only realizing his meaning moments after.

This man, this lord among these lycan, wanted to know of Gabrielle’s gifts, the abilities she’d confided to me that morning in the warehouse. And that memory triggered an avalanche of details. That her wolf could manifest fire with her mind—that she’d used this power to keep their enemies at bay. More so, I realized the man who sat beside Archambault was the Vicomté du Chastain, who had sent army after army to the fortress to destroy her. I stood in his palace in Dijon, leagues east of my home.

“There, you understand me,” the Marquis said. “I see it in your mind. What did she tell you of her Satanic power?”

“Only a little, my lord…”

“Speak up, boy.”

“She explained our gifts come to us over time,” I continued.

“But she is a child, yet she wields a terrible force that obviously did not come to her over time, as you say.”

“She said some lycan gifts manifest themselves to protect us when we’ve suffered abuses. I’m not certain what that entails, but she told me men had injured her when she was a girl. She believed her wolf developed her unusual abilities to protect her from all such men.”

“Nonsense,” Chastain declared. “Heretical nonsense, all of it. The Lord does not grant such gifts to the unworthy because their childhood was unideal. Who among us can claim our childhood was ideal?”

The Marquis looked to the man in crimson velvet standing to my right.

“Don Lupofiero, what say you to this boy’s claims?”

The man didn’t answer but stepped forward to appraise me. He looked into my eyes with a warmth I didn’t understand.

“He tells the truth, my lord, as he understands it,” Lupofiero said, then turned around to address Archambault. “But he understands little of what he speaks. He knows only what they’ve told him.”

“But what do you say of his claim?”

“He simply repeats a lie she’s told him,” Lupofiero replied, returning his eyes to mine. “One our father told us all. Indeed, our lycan abilities come to us through time, but it’s obvious she’s discovered some secret to developing her powers prematurely. As I see it, there is no other explanation.”

“And you continue to have us believe this secret did not come to her from your father?” Chastain scoffed. “That he never shared this secret with his eldest son?”

“Your point, my lord? You believe I’ve hidden this secret from the court? Neigh, that I’ve hidden the ability to set your bones aflame and take this palace as my own? To what end would you believe this of me? Why even come to this realm? My father had no such power. He lies dead as proof of it. If you had such immeasurable force, my lord, would you not simply march to Rome and supplant His Grace from the Holy throne?”

“I do not believe the Vicomté’s insinuation,” Archambault spoke over Chastain when he drew breath to respond. “But even you must concede the unlikeliness that this woman, this lycan who was little more than a girl when she first unleashed such demonic power, must have learned it from an ancient master. Or do you believe the Devil himself came at her unholy bidding?”

Lupofiero returned his gaze to Archambault and nodded.

“It is true, my father and me disagreed about many things. Perhaps, in his tutelage, he guided her to take the wisdom for her own. I was a disappointment to him in a great number of ways, and certainly as a pupil. Perhaps the answer was there in those endless texts I ignored from impatience. Or perhaps he prized her above the rest of us. She arrived at the castle with the ability to hear human thoughts, as none of us could. But whatever the answer, it seems clear to all here this boy knows nothing of it. He cannot even prevent your subjugation of his wolf.”

A silent murmur of approval rose from the other men.

All except Archambault, who withheld an answer for several moments, glancing at Chastain’s disgust over the room’s agreement.

“I’m not so sure,” Archambault said at last. “Bring me the human.”