Page 53 - North Star Magazine 2022

tried to avoid looking; he had thought that, perhaps, if he didn’t see himself, then maybe the whispers of the broken beast atop the hill were not true.
But he did look at himself, in excruciating detail, each morning when he rose from bed. His hair, once black as a moonless sky, as smooth as a stream of milk poured from jug to glass, was now matted, vandalized by pests. The vermin colonized the fibers on his scalp, but strayed away from the vacated “badlands’’, where the bald patches sporadically spread throughout the apex of his body. Streaks of silver were outnumbered by the remaining black one hundred strands to one, yet this did not conceal their existence. His eyes were wrinkled to the point that one could barely see the white of them and his cheeks drooped well beyond his chin.
He took his final step towards the door when the knock came. He took a deep breath and muttered a word under his breath “Netoniis.” The eyes of the wolf engraved into his black walking stick began to hum and glow a faint blue. He felt his heart begin to bang against his chest and a chill went along his spine. Another knock came to the door, but this time a voice came along with it.
“Good morning, Saun. We have come a very long way to speak with you. Please open up.”
Rilos recognized the quaint inflictions of their words. They were from the capital. The empress had found him.
Blink intervened to calm his friend. “If she had found you, they would have bursted through the door already. Though, even if she did send them, the fact that you’re not in shackles yet is a good sign. Maybe you can convince them you are not the man they may or may not believe you are.”
He nodded and cleared his throat, then called out in a gruff, crackled voice, “I’m on my way. When ya old, ya move a bit slower ya know.”
“There you go old timer, show them you’re an uneducated farmer, not one of the most powerful sorcerers known to man,” Blink loved the persona, mostly because it gave him the opportunity to torture his dear friend when they returned to the safety of their home.
Rilos turned away from the door and tossed his walking stick. The black staff landed in a pile of rubbish and quickly inherited the dust which had been accumulating over the years. He returned to his position with his hand on the old wood handle, unlatched a small lock above the midsection of the door and accepted his fate.
Rilos began to slowly open the door. Each inch releasing a screeching noise that made the men from the capital shudder with disgust. Rilos lifted his eyes. Three men. Two outfitted with boiled leather dyed black, with two blades hanging from their hip, and one wearing a black silk suit. Their sigil, a black