Jeremiah’s Tale, part 6
Early the next morning Jeremiah strode into the square in front of Hector’s castle, stood facing the front gate, and waited.
The castle was little more than a square stone keep atop a low hill, with a small walled courtyard in front. It had been built centuries ago, and the town had grown up around it, close to the shelter of its walls. In all that time, the lords of Edessos had never faced an open challenge of the kind that Jeremiah now presented them.
A crowd slowly gathered. At first they stuck to the edges of the square, afraid to put themselves too close to Jeremiah lest they be caught in the crossfire. But no attack came. The iron gates of the castle remained shut.
The crowd began to grow restless, whispering to each other at first, then muttering, then finally working up the courage to shout. “Coward!” they called at the castle gates. “Where is Lord Hector? Come out and face the wizard!”
Still no response came. Jeremiah remained silent, watching.
Naomi and Tobias stood to one side of Jeremiah, at the front of the crowd. “Do you think he’s coming out?” Naomi whispered.
“He has to,” Tobias answered. “If he fails to answer a challenge like this…” But he sounded dubious.
“But what’s taking him so long?”
“If I could hazard a guess, he’s trying to get his guards to do his dirty work for him. But they aren’t having it.” Tobias shook his head. “Hector can’t show cowardice in front of his men and keep their respect. If he doesn’t handle Jeremiah himself, they’ll turn on him. Jeremiah’s laid a nice trap for him.”
There was a movement atop the castle wall then, as half a dozen guards took up positions atop it and aimed crossbows down at the square. The crowd shrank back further, but all Jeremiah did was raise his arm and hold his fist high. The guards hesitated, their aim wavering; then they abruptly raised their weapons, pointing them at the sky, and took a short step back from the parapet. All the while their faces showed confusion, as though they were not entirely sure why they had just done that.
The crowd’s muttering grew darker then, and they eyed Jeremiah warily, slowly starting to grasp the implications of his power. “Dark magic,” a few of them muttered, and made warding signs.
Finally the gate opened. A tall, heavyset man walked slowly out, clad in full armor and flanked by four guardsmen. From a chain around his neck hung an amulet with a large golden gem inset, which glowed faintly.
“You.” Hector glared at Jeremiah. “You dare lead this rabble in insurrection against me? Guards, seize him!”
The guards took a step forward. “Stay back,” Jeremiah commanded them, and they stopped in their tracks. “The crowd is here only to watch. There is no need for you to get involved. This is between Hector and myself only.”
Hector stared at his men furiously, but they made no move, and indeed seemed unable to. “Fine,” he barked. “I’ll handle this wretch myself.” He took a step forward, drawing his sword.
Jeremiah made a sharp chopping motion with one hand, and Hector’s sword clattered to the pavement. His right arm hung limp at his side. Hector suddenly looked alarmed, and clutched at his amulet with his left hand.
“Nice trinket you have there,” Jeremiah said in a conversational tone. “Did Ranald make it for you? Told you it would protect you against my magic? And now you can’t find him, can you? That’s why you waited so long to come out – you were trying to find your pet wizard. But you couldn’t, because he knew the truth. He’s probably miles away by now. I doubt you’ll see him again. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that little bauble is absolutely worthless. All it does is glow in the dark. A child could make it do that, if he had sufficient skill with mana.” Jeremiah shook his head sadly. “And you would have known that, if you had any feel for mana at all. But you don’t, do you? None whatsoever. You’re completely blind to it.”
Hector abruptly turned and ran for the castle gate. But Jeremiah made another motion with his hands, and the armored man fell heavily to the ground. The guards wavered a bit, appearing to struggle to rush to the aid of their commander or possibly to flee in terror, but they could not move.
“We’re not finished here yet,” he chided Hector. “Don’t worry, you’re not hurt. Not permanently, anyway.”
“Kill him!” a voice called from the crowd. Other anonymous voices shouted agreement.
“Oh, I could,” Jeremiah called back. “I could easily stop his heart and leave him here to die. He might even deserve it. But no. If he dies, his uncle inherits the lordship of Edessos. And he’d be even worse. You see, Hector here is a coward. His uncle Armand, for all his faults, isn’t. Which would you prefer, a monster who was afraid of his own shadow, or one with no fear at all?”
That quieted the crowd. “So congratulations, Hector, you get to live,” Jeremiah continued. “Deserving or not, you’re better than the alternative.”
“What…” Hector gasped, his eyes wide with terror.
“What, indeed,” Jeremiah said. “Shall I show you what a real magic item looks like?” He held his fist in front of Hector’s face and opened it, revealing a small purple orb. "Pretty, isn’t it? It’s a mind orb, made centuries ago by sorcerers from the dark lands of the East. Quite powerful, and quite dangerous in the wrong hands. With this I could command your every move. You couldn’t so much as breathe without my say-so. And that is the least of its powers.
"If I wanted, I could make you my puppet, and rule through you. But I find that prospect singularly unappealing. No, I have a much different fate in mind for you, Hector.
“You see, with this orb I can actually make changes to your mind. Rearrange it to suit my own purposes. Make you the kind of person you ought to be.” Jeremiah smiled, though his eyes were dark.
Utter silence descended on the square. The assembled crowd stood motionless, watching.
“Let’s have a look inside your head, shall we?” Jeremiah reached a hand down and laid it on Hector’s forehead. Hector abruptly grew rigid.
What Jeremiah saw with the orb’s aid was like mana-sight, but focused entirely on Hector’s head. He could see lines of colorful energy coursing through the man’s mind, and with the aid of the orb he was able to make sense of it, identifying thoughts, habits, memories, emotions, predispositions, and the myriad connections between them. It was more complex than anything he had ever seen, and for a moment he marveled at it.
But all was not well in Hector’s mind, and Jeremiah could clearly see how diseased it truly was.
“What have we here? Oh my, you are a twisted one, aren’t you? This is quite fascinating. I can see how your whole mind is structured, how one set of thoughts triggers another, how memories and feelings and experiences all come together to shape who and what you are. And it’s quite a mess in there, Hector. You’re completely the wrong way round.”
He pondered one purple-red strand of Hector’s mind and frowned. “Why, look at this. It makes so much clear. You’re really just frightened all the time, aren’t you? And so you try to make yourself feel powerful. And the way you feel powerful is to hurt other people. Force them to do what you want.” Jeremiah shook his head. “And they call me dark.”
He sighed. “I can see we’re going to have to make a few changes. So let’s reroute this particular thought pattern, shall we? Let’s change it so that whenever you harm your people, whenever you fail to do your duty to them, whenever you inflict injustice upon them, you feel, not power, but fear. Abject, paralyzing fear. Fear of punishment for your crimes.” Jeremiah leaned in close to Hector’s face. “Fear of me.”
With the orb’s aid it was but the work of a moment to divert the swirling lines of Hector’s mind into a new configuration.
Then, in a thoughtful tone, he continued, “But that’s only half the equation, isn’t it? Well, I see here that your father at least attempted to teach you how to be a proper ruler. It may not have taken, but the idea of good and wise rulership is at least there. And that gives me something I can work with.”
He smiled. “What your father taught you – duty to your people, justice, good stewardship – all of that, from now on, is what will make you feel powerful. Do you want to feel good about yourself? Be the man your father tried to make you be.” And with a small mental effort Jeremiah made it so.
He pondered the new arrangement of Hector’s mind for a bit, watching with great interest as thoughts started to move in new patterns. “There, that should do,” he said. “Though I’m afraid it might take a while for you to figure out what kind of man you are now. Just try not to muck it up too badly, will you? I’d hate to have to do this again.”
Jeremiah then rose, standing straight and turning to face the crowd. “I give you a new man,” he said, gesturing down at where Hector still lay on the cobblestones. “A better man.”
The crowd in the square merely stared at him in silence, their expressions ranging from confused to utterly terrified. Some of them appeared to be casting warding spells under their breath. Tobias merely shook his head sadly, while Naomi glared at him in open contempt.
Jeremiah looked at them sadly. “I suppose thanks is too much to hope for,” he muttered.
“What did you expect?” Tobias said. “Hector is at least an evil that they understand. You, on the other hand, are a worse evil, because they don’t know what you can do to them. And they aren’t all that keen about living under the rule of a Dark Lord.”
“Do you think that’s what I intend?” Jeremiah protested. “Does nobody here understand what happened this morning?”
“You should have just killed him,” Naomi spat. “It’s what he deserved. This…” She gestured to where Hector still lay on the ground. “This is just wrong. You’ve changed, Jeremiah. This power you wield has corrupted you. You’ve become an evil man.”
Jeremiah looked around at the hostile faces surrounding him, and sighed. “So be it,” he said. “If darkness is my inheritance and my destiny, then so be it. If it is my fate to do good and be despised for it, then so be it. I do not ask for your thanks or your understanding. But I will continue to act when my conscience demands it, to right wrongs by any means necessary, and I do not ask anyone’s leave to do so.”
He turned to face Hector, who was staring up at him in confusion. “They are your problem now,” he said. “Rule them well. I wash my hands of them.”
He then turned and strode away from the castle, heading downhill to where a road ran through the middle of the town. When he reached it he turned east. He did not look back.