The Shadow of the Moon-Lydia's Tale

Chapter Seventeen

Father Rytt rotated the Aephren in his hands and smiled warmly at them both. 'So you survived in the end, I felt you may.' He patted Faulke on the arm. 'Actually I didn't, I thought he would slit your throat Faulke and let Lydia go.'  

He carefully laid the heavy bar down. 'This is most interesting. Thank you for bringing it to show me?' 

Faulke put his powerful forearms on the table and leant forward, his eyes filling with liquid jet. 'We had little choice when we found out you'd disabled our star drive.' 

Father Rytt held up his hands in a show of mock innocence. 'Not me Faulke, my Seer V'ereel. My apologies my dear Faulke, it was only pure inquisitiveness on my part that drove her to do it. I felt that if I'd invited you back to tell me the reason for your visit, in your keenness to get home you may just have forgotten me. And please don't do that with your eyes, it is most disturbing.' 

Faulke sat back, his eyes cleared. 'Why don't you just go down there and ask him like you normally would?' 

Father Rytt suddenly found a small burr on the base of the Aephren that required his close attention, he drew it close to his fleshy face, licked his thumb and wiped it across the metal.  

Lydia wondered if the priest had heard Faulke. 'Why you don't just go down and ask him yourself?' 

'My sweet, don't be offended.' He spread his hands wide and looked heavenward. 'It is a vagary of all failed actors that they like a few theatrical moments in their lives to make up for the adoration they might be otherwise have received. My little show was not meant to deceive but merely put your minds at rest. What I told you was to put you on guard but the Halout can be a little ... emotional. It was perhaps better you did not know how emotional.'  

'Can you tell us anything about this?' Lydia picked up the Aephren and turned it over and over releasing little facets of light that ran to and fro across its surface. It had an unearthly feel about it, as she lifted it, it lightened perceptibly in her hand as she dropped it its weight returned. 'It's strange this effect isn't it, the heaviness and the lightness as you move it.' 

'Whatever you feel, I don't feel it Lydia,' Father Rytt sat back and looked up at the stained glass window above them. 'So she bought this did she, the cunning old priestess?' 

'God.' corrected Lydia. 

'God on Ax, priestess here on Alamut. She probably travelled in many guises.' He took the Aephren from Lydia and weighed it in his hand. I can tell you that our resident Seer will not touch it. She says there are some things not mean to be seen.' He looked sharply at Lydia, 'I wonder what that could mean?' 

Lydia shrugged her shoulders and looked blankly at Faulke. 

Rytt held it up to the light and ran his fingers over the engravings. 'It is a beautiful thing, ancient of course, the language this is written in is much older than the three millennia ago that it was given to the Old Man. I've read many archaic scripts but this one is more challenging than anything I've seen for a long while. It speaks of a weapon, a weapon of the gods, waiting to be unleashed upon their enemies.' 

Lydia cut in, 'the Hammer, yes, but how will it be released?' 

'Only a true believer can weld the Aephren and unleash the Hammer.' Father Rytt stood, walked round the table and stood in the middle of the room. 

'What does that mean?' Faulke drew back and watched the priest causally tossing the bar from hand to hand. 

'Is like some sort of death ray? Who will be able to work it?' Lydia pressed. 

Unexpectedly Father Rytt stepped back and tossed the Aephren high into the air above him. Instinctively Lydia watched it tumble upward, as it reached the apex of its path she leapt from her seat, raced across the room and snatched it from the air. She looked at Rytt, he was motionless, standing like a statue, his hand outstretched as if the Aephren had just left his palm. Then a shudder ran down his body and he shivered back into life.