Free Blood of War by Remi Michaud

Someone listening to his thoughts may have scoffed then, shaken his head derisively. A prisoner? Here? The listener would have said, and rightly so, that he was a respected, honored guest, that he could leave whenever he so chose, and no one would try to stop him—well not much.
    Jurel would argue that he was not a prisoner of the Salosian Order. He was a prisoner of himself, of his past, and of his failings. Stepping outside the walls that penned him would get him killed inside the month. He was not sure of many things, but of that, he had no doubt.
    His finger twitched suddenly, as though he had felt a static spark. He focused and could not help the sneer that curled his lips. His finger rested on a black leather cover, so black it drank the light. Above his nail, ragged from nervous chewing, letters the color of blood were embossed. It was a title he knew and though he had seen a book like this almost daily since setting out with Kurin last winter, he had never read it.
    He recalled the first time he had tried. He and Kurin and Mikal had been on a cold road, fleeing from Soldiers of God, fleeing to the Abbey, though at the time, Kurin would not tell Jurel where they were going, and Jurel, still having no clue of who or what he was—what he was supposed to be, he amended—had had more questions than Kurin was willing to answer. Finally, in a pique of frustration, Kurin had told Jurel to read this very book: ANCIENT PROPHECIES: GOD OF WAR. He had said it would help. Grudgingly, hesitantly, Jurel had opened that book and had been surprised when a bolt of energy had singed his fingers.
    “ Why didn't you warn me it would do that?” Jurel had asked, outraged.
    Kurin had simply stared at him wide-eyed, oblivious and he had sworn to himself he would never try to open it again.
    Why not, he thought. Crippled, homeless, alone; why not an oath breaker too?
    The book slid free with a faint hiss and fell into his hand with a weight that seemed at odds with its relatively diminutive size. He stared at it, felt its unaccountable heft, felt again the dread, and the taunting call of the thing, as though the world receded from him, as it had the first time, until all that was left was him and the book.
    As if he was in a trance, he walked slowly to the nearest table and sat, never taking his eyes from the blood red letters on the front cover. For a time—a moment, a minute, ten—he simply stared at it, not noticing the occasional moment when the library door cracked open to let a set of eyes peak furtively in, only to widen in surprise when they found him, and dart back out of sight as the door closed gently.
    It was with the profound reluctance of a man entering a burning building that he extended a finger and touched the hard edge of the cover. The book called to him, black as night, leering at him, daring at him to raise the cover, to discover what secrets lay in waiting just a turn of a page away. He took a deep breath, and with a convulsive jerk, opened the book. Just as with the copy he had in his own room, the same copy he and Kurin had carted halfway across the kingdom the previous spring, there was a blood red page with golden lettering embossed into the surface repeating the title.
    Again, he let his finger trace the lettering, knowing that he was stalling, but also knowing that he dreaded what he might find lurking in the pages that waited, waited...
    Heaving a sigh, he blew out his breath, puffing his cheeks.
    He turned the page.
    * * *
    The courtyard was dusty, dry and gritty, the rains having cleared up early the previous day and releasing the full force of the late summer sun while he had been engrossed in the pages of the confounded book. No matter what he did, somehow stones managed to find their way into his boots, to lodge themselves between his toes and in the tender spot under the soles of his feet. Sweat glistened on his forehead and ran into his eyes as the white hot medallion that was the sun slashed the sky