Arc 2: Chapter 20: Council
The oaken table shuddered as Brenner slammed his fist down. “I will not abide that thing on my land. What do you intend to do, Ser Kross?”
The knight-exorcist remained unfazed by Brenner’s anger. With his armor and cloak cleaned, he looked as gray and stoic as a castle gargoyle where he stood center-stage across the great table. All the knights and high-ranking servants who sat in the hall, a council chamber high in the largest tower of Antlerhall, turned their eyes to the warrior-priest.
Emma sat at the table, though all those aged soldiers had contrived to make as much space around her as possible, so she seemed an island at one lonely corner. I leaned against a pillar fashioned into the shape of coiling serpents at her back, watchful.
Ser Kross met the lord’s angry eyes. He paused a moment before speaking, as though waiting for the last echo of a rumble of thunder to pass. “I assure you, lord, I have no intention of keeping idle. You must understand, however, that this is not a threat you can overcome through force of arms — we have already made that mistake once.”
The gathered knights shifted in discomfort. Many of them still bore burn wounds, and many chairs in the council hall sat empty.
“Then how, exactly, do you intend to rid us of this menace?” Brenner’s glower could have intimidated an ursinwyrm. Indeed, no one else in the hall had dared to speak through his blustering. “I called you here to banish Jon Orley with your Sacred Arts, only to lose a great portion of my bannermen yesterday.”
I wonder if anyone’s got the guts to mention he’s the one who tried to joust with the Hellrider, I thought wryly. To be fair, I kept my mouth shut as well.
He jabbed a calloused finger into the scarred wood of the ancient table. “You tell me that Orley is merely bound, not dead, and that at some indefinite point — likely soon — he will break free.”
Kross nodded calmly. “That is my understanding as well, my lord.”
“And are we to understand that, all this time, the spirit plaguing us has been a Creature of Hell? That the Carreons brought a demon into our midst?”
This interruption came from one of the knights, a long-necked, wheat-haired scarecrow of a man named Ser Gors. His eyes reminded me of an exotic lizard’s — wide and bugging. At times I believed he might even produce a long tongue and try to lick them.