Free Call of the Kings by Chris Page Page A

morning. ‘I was reminded of a further visit when you mentioned it last night.’
    ‘You two go. I’m going to bake some bread. You might not eat and Tara’s getting that way as well, but I need sustenance.’ Katre smiled. ‘Besides, I got a mighty shock the last time finding out that the abbot was my birth father. That place holds too many bad memories for me.’
    When the three of them had left the last time, the abbot, Kate’s mother, and former husband were suspended in complete terror over the huge drop to the jagged rocks of the Devil’s Pit below as the stunned villagers looked on. Twilight had left their fate in Tara’s hands, although he knew that there was a big difference in actually killing someone and removing their hair or fingers, especially for one so young. He had been through this himself as a tyro veneficus, the first decision to end someone’s life, and had not liked it, despite the constant reminder from the long magus that evil will always resurface if it’s not eradicated.
    It was now Tara’s turn and she had decided that the suspension over the Devil’s Pit was sufficient punishment for all three, such that they would never throw anyone else over the abyss, regardless of their heresy, real or false. After a sufficient period of time babbling in abject terror as they were suspended over the jagged rocks and crashing waves, Tara had waved her father, grandmother, and the abbot back to dry land, where they had collapsed at her feet in a display of pitiful, grovelling supplication. A short speech along the lines of ‘don’t do it again or the next time you will go down into the pit’ from the redheaded tyro met with a wall of sworn redemptions and they left. Twilight fully understood Tara’s reluctance to take a life, and although it wasn’t the judgment he would have taken, as Merlin had done with him, he let her decision stand.
    It was now time to see if Tara’s benefice had worked.
    Immediately when they appeared in the clouds over the village of Skellighaven Twilight knew something was wrong.
    There was the unmistakable trace of a strange venefical aura everywhere. In and around the village, the monastery and, worryingly, the nice big hovel and lands of Nell and Patrick Delaney. Twilight’s worst fears were realized when he saw Tara’s treacherous grandmother walk out of the hovel laughing with her bald-headed son-in-law, Tara’s father.
    It looked as if their treachery had borne fruit and they had occupied the Delaneys’ hovel. So what had happened to the Delaneys?
    ‘Let’s go down there right now and confront them.’ Tara’s voice was strained. She had a bad feeling about the Delaneys and was beginning to regret letting the abbot - she still couldn’t refer to him as her grandfather - and her grandmother and father live.
    ‘Leave it for a while,’ said Twilight gently. ‘Let’s find out who this strange veneficus is and what has gone on. Unlike this new astounder, our auras cannot be traced, so he or she does not know we are here.’
    The bells at the monastery began to ring, and slowly people began to emerge from their hovels and walk up the hill. Herders left their cattle, the soil-tilling tools of plant husbandry were downed, women stopped drawing water and beating their clothes in the river, and the wood chopper ceased his monotonous rhythm. Soon almost everyone from Skellighaven was in the large chapel at the front of the monastery. The faithful had gathered. With twenty-four chanting monks arrayed around him, the abbot walked slowly through the back entrance and mounted his wooden rostrum. With his fingerless hand tucked into the sleeve of his dark brown habit and a huge silver cross on a chain held in his good hand, he stood and surveyed them all until he had absolute silence.
    ‘Dear brethren of Skellighaven,’ he began in a sonorous, arrogant intonation he reserved for speaking down to people, ‘we are extremely lucky to have here in our small community of