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GNO Chapter Excerpts Page ~ B1C16 Quick-Browse
Chapter Quick-Browse For Graven's Grotesque: A Gothic Epic
Chapter 16 Excerpt Teaser
Description: The Real Inquisition of Lazarus ~ 5 Paragraphs
The astrologer turned to Hugon as his face burned brightly in the Moonwindow’s glow. “God, no!” he gasped, his eyes welling.
Hugon cocked himself back, considering. “God knows what?”
At once, the Moonwindow drew the attention of the two men; as it now shined with a bluish hue; and, in its very centre, a point of brighter blue light spread outward, swelling into an azure ring that slowly expanded outward and toward the round perimeter of the brass mirror.
“What new thing is this?” Hugon asked, stepping away from the astrologer and his Moonwindow. “What happens?” He pulled his dagger from the tabletop. “What comes over you?”
The astrologer peered upward at Hugon, chuckling and crying in the same. He shrugged his shoulders. “‘Tis his mother.”
He crossed his forehead with his thumb, in the sign of a cross, continuing with tearful laughter as he rose to his feet and faced Hugon. “Saint Denis, protect us.”
Hugon pressed his dagger against the astrologer’s chest. “Collect yourself! Tell me!”
The man tried with uneven reply, “His mother—no—we cannot speak of her, m’Lord!” He grabbed Hugon’s arm. “Not here; not now! No!”
Hugon turned and slapped the Moonwindow off the tabletop, sending it to fly across the hall. It came to rest before the terrified servants. He pressed the blade against the astrologer’s neck. “What of his mother?”
The man soiled himself and wept.
Hugon pressed him. “Who is she?”
“She is—I beg of you, m’Lord.”
Hugon pressed the blade beneath his jaw.
“She is: Lil— m’Lord, we must not!”
Hugon drew a trickle of blood. “L’il—little what?”
“No,” the astrologer insisted, “M’Lord, not now!”
“Now!” Hugon growled.
“Lilith! Heylel! Lucifael! Morningstar! She has many names,” he cried before collapsing to the floor, and crumbling into a self-absorbed and sobbing mess-of-a-man.
“Wa-hoom! Wa-hoom! A distant battle horn resounded without the castle hall. Hugon turned attention to the hall's half-secured iron-strapped double doors and motioned for his men to better secure the entryway. Outside the hall, and betwixt the distant and urgent call-to-arms, Hugon heard hasty commands of immediate defence without the double doors, altogether with overlapping and hideous cries of dying soldiers. The doors rattled with the beating and pounding of fists and halberds; and with a tension, underscored by muffled cries of urgency.
The interior of the hall filled with a tomb-like silence as hundreds of eyes lay fixed on the double doors when Lazarus looked at the huddled servants and spotted a lone boy, weaving his way through weeping children and women. The boy crouched near the Moonwindow and looked for eyes upon him when he spotted Lazarus’ stare. With a gleam in his eye, he gestured toward Lazarus, pressing his finger to his lips before collecting the Moonwindow and stealing his way back from whence he came.
Lazarus turned his attention to Hugon and found him spinning about and addressing the head of D’Alcicourt; “What, in the name of God —”
Outwardly, Hugon’s brief stare suggested an attempt to glean from it, any revelation that might somehow disclose a strategy; however absurd, which might include attacking him after he had secured enemy fortifications. Yet, he quickly dismissed the severed head, and his own disconnected reckoning; and he turned to the stricken astrologer. “She, who? What is this Demon Woman of many names?”
"Boom!" A colossal explosion rocked the hall through its very footings. Servants and soldiers scattered with their lives as a torrent of roof stones crashed onto the centremost floor of the hall; and the shear power of the blast all but slapped every guard to the ground. Debris poured downward from the roof, as a dense column of dust spilled to the floor and mushroomed outward to fill every corner of the hall with billowing grit and ash. And in the aftermath—in that brief and settling moment, when men clumsily collected themselves—when the last of the dust settled and silence pressed down upon the hall like a held breath—
Women and children screamed; men scrambled behind themselves; and the ring of swordsman fled from Lazarus, leaving him crouching near the floor and appearing as though ready to pounce upon the unveiling presence before him. Ears back, eyes wide, wings splayed, and fangs at the ready, Lazarus hissed at that which the dissipating brume revealed. Before him, the Swine Giant beat its wings, raked its claws through the air, raised its tusks, and introduced itself with a resounding roar even to rattle the castle's wall stones...
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