Tragic Innocence

Chapter 53

“We are here,” Crow’s lowered voice was like a beacon to the maidens as they both glanced up fiercely at the hulking citadel, so deep and tall, right before them.

Pentulla stumbled backwards, her head growing light and airy.  She would have surely fallen over if Crow had not been so vigilant on her well-being. 

Clumps of thick bone-like bramble gnarled thickly at the base.  The walls were not as smooth as she had imagined them to be, but were jagged with huge spikes that stretched to the endless height where the eerie gargoyles hunched wickedly with bulging eyes shut tightly.

Soft flapping snared their hearing and they gazed up at the dizzying heights overhead, the moons eclipsed by the upper ledge.  Pentulla gasped as she could barely make out a gauzy black material that clung to white long knobby sticks.  A soft gleaming snared her eye and she cried out.

“The dead of long ago,” Crow muttered bitterly as he shook his head.  “This was Rolac’s idea of a burial to all those who apposed him.”

Pentulla was horrified.  She had not known this!  And here she thought she had gained her entire memory back.  “He found it fitting to impale dead people upon his walls?  Why can I not remember this?”

Crow frowned, his eyes glazing with anger.  “Not all had been dead, Pentulla,” he paused at her small wail of despair with a curt nod.  “He did not bother with the massacred bodies until after you vanished.”

Zolata shuddered, Beepoe hissing at her discontentment, “It was his idea of a hoax.”  She pressed her head down and marched dutifully along the exterior until the shadows began to deepen as the moons, like twin gods, turned slowly overhead.  “Some joke,” she scoffed with resentment that left bile in her throat.

Pentulla quaked and imitated Zolata’s manner of keeping her eyes averted.  The smell was overwhelming, though it had been so many centuries ago!  But how was that possible?  She struggled to keep her eyes lowered, for the sounds of hollow sticks filled the air, like bamboo chimes at market.

Crow’s strong presence pounced upon her as she hesitated a bit, he lingering behind her, bringing up the rear.  Did he know anyone that dangled so cruelly just above?

Pentulla glanced quickly behind and found a dark scowl marring his celestial beauty.  Thick, dark shadows accentuated the hollows of his cheeks and beneath his brows where they softly brushed at his frowning lips.  She quickly turned away.  It would definitely seem so, she thought sullenly.  Perhaps she knew several here as well, but seeing that she had been swept away during the climactic aspect of the debacle, there would be no way of knowing just who was taken and where…

She shuddered at her own horrific thoughts.

“He was barbaric.  It could only get worse once we get within these accursed walls…” Crow hummed, immediately sensing Pentulla’s perturbed mood.

She nodded somberly, pulling a straying lock of hair that grazed her lashes, catching and tickling her face.

“Where is the entrance?” Zolata’s clear voice wafted over the perpetually dreadful howling of the castle’s walls.  Her hands hovered lightly, never daring to touch the black jagged spikes of the barrier.  She bent low, ignoring the annoying toss of her cloak.

Crow brushed past Pentulla, his hand lightly squeezing her shoulder for encouragement, as he pressed his head against Zolata’s.  Their low murmuring voices grew urgent.

Pentulla felt a prompting, like a soft whispering from a waking dream as night faded into day.  Sudden warmth ebbed from her chest and radiated over her body.  She gazed down and found the jewel glowing softly.  Then she remembered Mikash’s little riddle he had spoken of in her dream.