Rise of Tempest Merlin

Chapter 17

The Poltergiest’s Story

I always found it odd how much of our destiny could rest upon a single sentence.

"Would you like to free your wife from hell, Matthias?"

I snapped my head up and reined in my horse hard, almost making the animal rear. My narrowed eyes searched the shadowy forest around me for the source of the voice, but met only grayish trees and twisted underbrush. "How do you know my name? Who are you?"

No answer.

"What do you know of my wife?" I demanded.

The voice was deep and echoing. "I know she died on a night howling with the snows of mid-winter three years ago, after you drove her from your castle screaming she was a w***e. Her cheek purpled with the welt from your fist. She did not live to see the dawn."

The words strangled in my throat. "No."

She had never been found. Most assumed she had died that night, but I had held out the hope that somehow, someway, she had found a haven somewhere and had simply run away from me. After that night, who could blame her?

Seasons, what have I done? "Iolanthe..."

"Do you wish to free her soul from its suffering, knight?"

I looked up, blinking into the depths of the towering trees that rose like a loose palisade on either side of the trail. "How do I know you speak the truth? Is she truly in Hell?"

The underbrush rustled, and I could barely make out the silhouette of an enormous horse's head cloaked by the shadows of the forest. Its head mounted a large, tapering horn.

I felt a stab of fear. A unicorn. A powerful creature of the Fae. The common folk's tales of them relate them being guardian spirits of the forest. And that was true, to an extent. They were obsessed with maintaining nature's balance within the forest, always acting to prevent over-hunting or cruel trapping.

But I had also heard darker tales of the beasts, told in whispers by drunken sorcerers over late-night mugs of ale. Of how Unicorns could lure virgins to them, only to consume the maidens' souls to fuel their dark powers...

The unicorn quivered its lips, the voice booming. "I was with your wife when her soul left her body. I know its fate."

The creature turned and walked casually into the vast depths of the shadowy forest. "Come." It disappeared from sight, its voice echoing after it. "Come, if you wish to know of your Iolanthe."

I was torn only for a second. Of course this had to be a trap, some sort of trick. But if there was even a small chance I could find my wife...

I slid from his horse and prepared to lead the beast through the underbrush, but my mount refused to move. Too spooked by Faerie magic. Instead I left the animal where it was, taking only the sword belt hanging from the saddle. I trotted off after the unicorn on foot, wishing I had more armor on me than just a leather shirt.

How long I followed the magical beast's trail, I have no idea. It was easy enough to mark, as the creature left behind large and very distinct hoof prints in the leaf-strewn mud of the forest floor.

Yet the character of the trail changed slowly but significantly the deeper into the forest I plunged. After a few hundred yards the hoof prints shortened, then elongated as any evidence of the fore hooves vanished. As if the creature no longer walked on four legs.

A changeling unicorn. This was new to me. Dark magic was a certainty here.

My stomach knotted and pulled taut. Against the unnatural sorceries of a creatures of the Fae, the bowels of even the bravest man can easily to turn to water.

I continued on anyway, squelching my fear with one thought: Iolanthe.

An argument coiled at the root of it. A stupid, stupid argument.

As always, Iolanthe and I had screamed at each other about my mistresses.

With a fief inherited from my father, I was a lord now, but only a minor one. As was the custom, I was expected to warm the bed of pretty young women. I kept up two mistresses. Not an impressive number compared to some of the other lords at court, but in the constant struggle for status among the nobility, it was enough for the barons and dukes to at least consider talking to me at court. A lord without mistresses was considered to be domineered by his wife, and was thus less than worthy of consideration. And I had to admit I enjoyed my time with my illicit lovers. Kayla had fiery red hair but a meek temperament, willing to do whatever I bade her, no matter how humiliating. Hita was a bit plump, but commanded a bosom most men would gladly die snuggled in.

Iolanthe fumed at the practice, at my willingness to go along with it, at my mistresses themselves. SHE was my wife. She was adamant that my bed should be reserved for her and her alone.

She was technically right, of course. I should have been content with only her, the other lords be damned. Iolanthe was not a great beauty like the sorcery-enhanced courtesans that haunted the castles of the upper nobility, but she had a way of looking at me under fluttering eyelashes that made my heart stammer like no other. Her dark tresses flowing in the moonlight, pale skin arcing across pert breasts, deep, deep emerald eyes that sparkled with mischief whenever she ever-so-slowly let her unlaced dress fall to our bedroom floor...

Why could she never understand that Hita and Kayla were just playthings? Courtly trappings, really. As useful to me in court as a sword was useful to me in battle. And of course I enjoyed laying with them. What man wouldn't? But in truth they were interchangeable with the millions of other women in the Eleven Worlds. Iolanthe was the woman I always came home to. Always.

But that did not keep her from yelling at me for my indulgences, as she had the night three years before. The argument was as bitter and nasty a one as we ever had. But then, in the heat of her screaming, she blurted out her own affairs, with a squire and then with the squire' friend a year before. She realized what she had said only after it escaped her lips, and her tirade stumbled abruptly to a halt. She fell to the straw-strewn floor, sobbing quietly, blurting out that she loved me so much but was always so lonely and mad at me. That she slept with the squires only to have her revenge on her unfaithful husband...

Moments of stunned silence stumbled by. A small part of me accepted what she did and even sympathized with it. That was almost instantly drowned by a sea of crimson rage that welled up from the dark pit of my bowels. I tasted bile and before I even understood what I was doing I punched savagely, sending her sprawling across the room.

I had never hit her before. Many men, of course, beat their wives to ensure their obedience. It was a husband's prerogative in the Worlds we lived in. But before that moment the idea of physically hurting Iolanthe truly repulsed me. Now it was all I could do to stop myself from hitting her again and again until she moved no more. Instead, I had my men-at-arms throw her out of our castle, hissing to her that she was no longer a wife of mine.

The pain of that memory tore at every corner of my soul ever since. I stumbled after the unicorn's trail, tears welling in my eyes at the thought of it.

It took only a few hours for me to come to my senses that night. I ordered my men to bring my wife back in, thinking she would be huddled by the castle doors. But she was not there. Barely-visible prints in the snow led out into the blizzard-tossed night and soon disappeared completely in the constantly shifting drifts.

We searched. Seasons, my men and I searched, for days, then weeks and months, and now for years, for her.

What had she done that had been so truly terrible? She slept with other men even as I slept with other women? If she had been guilty of anything, than I was also, tenfold more. And she had done it only to spite me.

And I had killed her for it.

I am the one who deserved to be in Hell. I quested for her almost constantly these past three years, as much as the limitations of my mortal frame would allow. My quest became all-consuming, for what meaning had my life without Iolanthe? My fief fell into utter neglect and was finally rewarded to other hands, but I did not care. I had a horse, a sword, and coins occasionally donated by sympathetic friends. That was enough.

The forest trail left by the unicorn gradually thinned out and opened into a broad, sunlit glade overrun with heather shushing in the soft breeze. Tall gray standing stones dotted the broad clearing, their mysterious, ancient carvings obscured by thick coats of ivy.

In the center stood my quarry, no longer a horse-like creature but a human-shaped being with horse-like features. It stood taller than me by at least a head, its entire body covered with short, soft hair the color of newly-fallen snow. The beast was definitely a female, judging by the enormous breasts she now sported and smooth cleft between her legs. She also possessed a massive musculature unmatched by even the most powerful knights in five kingdoms. My skull would be naught but an eggshell in her thick-fingered hands. A mane of pure gold spun down from her equine head and muzzle, matched by a lustrous, similar-hued tail falling away from her backside. It still possessed its unicorn's horn, a cream-colored appendage coiling about itself to an impossibly thin point an arm's length from her forehead.

Judging from the altered aspects of the tracks I followed, I had expected the unicorn to wear an altered form when I saw it again, but the being before me still made me pause in shock for a handful of heartbeats.

Steel rasped on leather as I freed my blade from its scabbard. My knees proved weak from fear, but many years of battle experience served me well. No matter what this demon intended, it would not find me easy prey.

She smirked. When she spoke, her voice now had a decided feminine timbre, but still very deep. "If you wish your beloved free, it would be wise not to threaten me."

"Your kind knows nothing but lies, demon. Give me proof that you know of Iolanthe!"

The creature nodded and then dipped her great head, eyes fluttering shut. Tremors seized her limbs, her muscles spasming and twitching of their own accord. Finally her movements stopped and she stood still. Her lips trembled. "M-Matthias?"

"Iolanthe?" Her voice was unmistakable, no matter how out of place it seemed on the equinoid behemoth before me. "Is it truly you?"

"Husband, help me! I suffer! Gods, I suffer! Forgive me for what I did, forgive me..."

"Iolanthe!" My sword fell to the ground as I ran up to the creature, shouting up at what I hoped was my wife's spirit. Had the creature channeled it somehow from the netherworld? "There is nothing to forgive! It was my fault! Mine! Forgive ME! Seasons, please, forgive me, Iolanthe! Oh, gods..." I thumped on the creature's midriff in anguish.

The Unicorn woman shook her head, fluttering open her eyes. She looked down at me, herself again, her expression unreadable. I thought briefly about diving back toward my sword, but no. What was the use? What was the use of anything, now that I knew what I had condemned my wife to?

The creature had its own voice once again. I had expected it to mock me, to deride me, but instead it raised its massive hands and gently stroked away wetness from my cheek. "Tears," she said. "You must still love your wife greatly, even after all this time." She pursed her lips. "I can allow you to join her. How you rescue her will then be up to you. But the price I ask will be twofold."

"Anything," I said, surprised by how sincerely I meant it.

"First, you must give me your soul. Freely."

"Done." I had expected such a demand, and was more than willing to pay it.

"Second, you must sire a child for me."

"What?"

"I desire an offspring, and my time to conceive is nigh. You will do as well for a source of seed as any other. You will lay with me, and I will take you in body before I strip you of your spirit."

"But..."

"Those are my demands, knight. Accept them or not. But I do find it amusing that the second would be the one which is causing you the most difficulty. Did you not keep mistresses before you sent your wife fleeing into the dead cold of a winter's night?"

"I haven't cheated on Iolanthe since."

"Yet in order to help her you must do so again. Choose."

I was torn. I swore I would never betray Iolanthe again, in this life or the next. But if I didn't now how could I ever free her? Damn this creature for making me choose.

My voice sounded very small as I formed my answer. "Very well."

But it seemed like I had been tricked. And now my wife’s soul was andering along on a plane of existence where no one could go and I was trapped in hell for a lifetime as a breeding stud for demonesses and Fae creatures.