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I will not listen to false lords idolized with some man-made structure.

Plus, ;) I want that update!
 
Grubnessul: Yes XD working on the update now as we speak XD . Had to rest my eyes a little haha

Avernite: =( How about you , always guessing my plots ! Now that's mean !

grayghost: Ahh yes .. the tease . I think I got that as a quiz result somewhere XD

comagoosie: Everyone should kiss my ring before they speak to me , eh ? Haha

Avernite: good for you ! Update coming up ! Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam !
 
Throne said:
Whatever you say, master! *begins kissing the ground canonized walks on*

Haha !! that's edging on blasphemous/unsanitary ! XD Update is 90% done . Just going to do a few more paragraphs then proofread !
 
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Chapter LXXXIX: Aztec Magic​

15 March 1610

José had been a bit jealous of Arturo in the beginning—it was not every day that people from Madrid ever came to visit Veracruz themselves. Usually, it would be some Andalusian merchant from Seville or some Portuguese tradesman from Lisboa. José would watch the ships from those cities sometimes when they made port. The seminary that he and Arturo attended was tantalizingly close to the open sea. José would enjoy the sights especially whenever the galleons made anchor. The massive vessels dawned on the horizon. They were little island offspring of the Peninsula coming to visit the warm embrace of the Gulf of Mexico. They wafted in swiftly like some massive pelican skimming the water for a landing.

José dreamed of the Peninsula—the center of the world many would say. But it was not just because the Peninsula was the heart pump of the Empire, but also because he wanted to be on that Continent that his father—albeit a German—hailed from. His father, the Elder Steiner was one of those wealthy hacienderos whose plantations dotted the countryside. Señor Steiner had come to the New World as part of the late Carlos I’s introduction of German lifeblood into the Spanish culture and his liberal grants for colonization rights to well-to-do gentlemen.

When the Elder Steiner arrived in Mexico, it was still more Totonac than Spanish although the rapid spread of the account of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin was quickly changing the landscape faster than the building of schools and modern plantations could. José recalled excellently the stories of how his father and mother met. his mother was just a simple translator at the time and she was the only one who could understand the Elder Steiner’s Austrian accented Spanish. When the Elder Steiner had realized that he had fallen in love, she asked the young lady if she would translate something for him to her parents and promptly asked them for their permission to marry her.

The family’s main plantation, which the Elder Steiner cultivated after converting his vast holdings in the Continent into capital, was a large plot just outside the city. José remembered the stories of the Elder Steiner gaining the locals’ respect not just for the choice of wife he took, but also because he tilled the land along with his clients for his own needs. It probably helped that he was not of the same build or hair colour or even the exact same language than the Spanish overlords which tended to derive some suspicion—rightly so whenever the army and constable gone—from the locals. “Pedro” was his father’s colloquial name; a kind of play on the Germanic surname.

When José asked his father why it was that none of the other fathers of the haciendas were as friendly to the locals, the Elder Steiner had told him that many of the plantation owners wanted to live the way rich grandees in Spain lived and that’s why they wanted to go to Mexico; the Steiners, on the other hand, were here to work. José chafed at that lesson each time. He was not as robust as his father and his fairer skin only managed to irritate him when too long in the sun. Both the Elder Steiner and José’s mother knew that the young lad was not cut out for the fields, but they made him work anyway to teach him the harshness of duty and life. “Out here, my son,” José recalled his mother telling him one night while cleaning the blisters on his hands from working in the fields, “in the frontier of the Empire, all men work equally; not in the same way perhaps, but always equally.”

“This is what it means to live in a Viceroyalty,” he remembered his father added to his thoughts. “Each man works for the other out of necessity and there is no time to be idle here or to worry if a task is below you.”

“Why did you want to come here, Father?” José recalled asking. José had not received a quick answer that day. Instead his father had told him he would tell him in the morning after. That was the day both Father and Son stayed up most of the night to await the birth of José’s younger brother.

When Arnold was born, the Elder Steiner had brought José to the bed where his mother was still holding onto the young babe happily holding the swaddling clothes close to her heart. The Father kissed the Mother on the head and gazed into the young Arnold’s dark eyes as if he found the fountain of youth. “This is why we are here, José,” were the father’s words, “for a new life, a new world; this is the place of fertility and future where we will all work and grow.”

The New World was vast and glorious indeed, José acknowledged, but ever since he was just a boy, he was always drawn back across the waves. It was to that Continent that he wished to visit—to acquire that sense of history. It was this sense that brought him to the seminary. “I have to, Griselda,” he had told the young lady that had fancied him. Griselda Sanchez, the daughter of another wealthy plantation owner, had liked José since they were both ten years old. Perhaps it was José’s Austrian looks or perhaps because he was one of the only young plantation heirs that was not a spoiled fool.

“But being a priest… you would forfeit your inheritance? You would forfeit a family…?” the young lady asked him. It was here that she held herself back lest her intentions bubbled to the surface through the alabaster sheen that was her skin.

“My younger brother is fit enough for it,” José countered with a kind of resolution that was unlike him. “I have to do this,” he repeated, “This is my calling.”

Griselda had looked at him in his haphazard clothes with a rueful chuckle. If it was not for her discerning knowledge of the boy, one would easily assume the ill-dressed eclectic book worm was some incompetent or madman. Griselda knew better, however. She had seen him sweat in the fields along with his aging father. She had seen him gather water at the well like any servant. There was no grimace of pain in the boy’s expression even in the hardest of work. At the same time, Griselda thought, both he and she knew that the priesthood was perhaps the only way José could serve anyone adequately.

“Do you think that they will let you read your history books in the seminary?” she tried challenging him. Her desperation was subdued enough to not alert the other to her motives.

“There will be enough books there,” José answered back although slower than her biting question. He could tell from her expression, however, that it was not a sufficient answer. The orbs that brought the colour of a cooling night into the light of day set downward to the dirty path they stood. “Please understand… I will be part of living history. You see this is what I’ve been talking about, Griselda: a link to the past. One thousand six hundred years of unbroken tradition from the very source—”

José could tell that his words were not helping the situation. The lofty exultations were nothing but a dead drum beating further away from Griselda’s ears. The young lady had not spoken to him since.

With his parents’ blessing on his choice, however, he held no regrets. He was always ahead of his class and he always reported back to his family through correspondence the progress he was making as well as bombarding them with the most boring of theological discussions and exegesis every time he was afforded a holiday to return home. His parents listened intently although both were simple enough folk that it was good enough for them that they received the Lord every Sunday and obeyed His commandments. They had no need to prove how Apostolic succession worked or all this about Councils and this and that. The Elder Steiner had met some Irish Protestants in Sevilla one time and they had a discussion that gave him a headache at the end, but he was too stubborn of a man to believe what heretics had to say.

Young Arnold only recently had his eighth birthday and was already helping in the plantations. Whenever José visited, he would take off his uniform, don the clothes of a regular farmboy, and showed his younger brother the ways of the farm—José knew his father was already getting too old to properly train the young one. “Someday you will be master over these plantations, Arnold,” José told his attentive sibling. “In order to know how to govern them, you must first learn how to run them.” Arnold would give him nods that intimidated even José. Even at the age of eight, Arnold was stronger and better built than José was at that point of his life. There was no jealousy there, though. José thanked God that He provided the family a suitable and strong heir.

After work in the fields on those Christmas weeks when José would be home, he would spend many evenings teaching Arnold how to ride on a horse as well as tell him stories of the saints. “Were the saints always good people?” Arnold would ask his older brother.

“Not always,” José enjoyed answering. “Sometimes they started out as weak, cowardly, or sinful people; sometimes the worst kind of people in the world, Arnold. But the grace of God enjoys working through such imperfect instruments.”

“And that is how they can perform miracles?” was the follow up question.

“Correct,” José stated with an exaggerated bow of his head to acknowledge the fact.

There was a meandering pause as both trotted down the open areas of the main plantation. As they passed by, tenants would make it their initiative to come out of their dimly lit huts and wave at the passing princes. José would many times dismount and greet the families in person or deliver gifts from the main house depending on the urgency of the family—usually medicines from the city or some extra food he saved from his own evening meals—to give to them. This pass, however, he did not want to interrupt the important conversation.

“I heard… brother,” Arnold was a bit hesitant in his question and so obviously so that José turned his eyes from the road to listen intently. “I heard that there are some people in the city that can perform miracles also.”

“Oh? Who might these be?” José asked, his curiosity engaged.

“I heard the Ortiz family can perform miracles,” Arnold said while keeping his eyes forward onto the moonlit path.

José had heard of the Ortiz family especially since the only son also went to seminary with him. “Ahh, those are not miracles,” José laughed quietly, “medicine is indeed a part of our gift of intellect, but people can be cured aside from miracles as well, Arnold.”

Another short pause as if the young lad was pushing aside boulders in his mind. “But I don’t mean that, brother,” Arnold said with a slow tug at his thoughts, “I hear they have special powers other than just healing.”

The older brother laughed a little nervously. “Such as what?”

Again, Arnold struggled with his thoughts and took his chin down closer to his collarbone and pouted as if he was meting out the answer with his teeth. “I heard that the family used to be able to change peoples’ minds.” Arnold could only offer that but José was already bringing his horse closer to Arnold’s; the little boy detected the confusion and attempted to grind his thoughts into better words. “I heard some stories,” the younger one began with his best articulation passing through his mouth with such friction that he grimaced, in thought, at the heat building up in his throat. Nonetheless, he forced it out. “They say that a long time ago when the Spanish came, two of the conquistadors—they were brothers like us—were captured by the local Aztec tribes during a raid. They were going to kill the two men but the elder said that he would show the Spaniards their power first.”

José was gripping his reins tightly as he strained to hear the young boy pass words past his clumsy tongue. “Go on, Arnold, you can do it,” the older one plied on the poor boy’s speech impediment hoping that his smooth words could even out the boy’s muscle and unclog the throat.

“The Elder,” Arnold went on, “tied both brothers up on opposite sides of a small field so that they could see each other and put five rocks in between them. He took some of…” and here Arnold faltered slightly perhaps because of his troubles with talking but perhaps because of the gruesome nature of the story. “He took… some blood from the younger brother and put it on the middle rock so that both can see. He then said that the older brother would now kill the younger brother…”

José could already see the distress in Arnold’s eyes at the tale. Where could the boy have heard such a thing? It also made him feel uneasy, but he needed to know the rest. “Go on, Arnold, I’m right here.”

The boy gave one of his acknowledging nods once more as if suddenly reassured that the mere presence of the lanky José could dispel the demons of the Mexican night. “The Elder said that the older brother was to choose a rock to carry back to his camp with a rope as punishment for trespassing on their land. If the older brother chose one of the four outside rocks, his younger brother could help him take it back. But the Elder said that if he chose the rock with his brother’s blood on it in the middle, the younger brother would be killed and he would need to take the rock back to the camp alone.”

“And the older brother could see the bloodied rock?” José asked trying to hide his impatience. Arnold nodded—it was faster than labouring to make the acknowledging words.

“The elder then made some gestures and said loudly that the brother would choose the bloody rock,” the boy continued, “They untied the older brother… and… and he chose the rock with the blood on it even though his brother was crying not to choose that one…”

“Impossible…” José attested sternly yet with a nervous laugh to hide the implications, “just some old folk story…”

“It’s true brother!” Arnold said with a frustration that forced frustrated words to condense through the channels in his eyes. “I’ve heard it many times from the clients and even some of the old soldiers in the town—they all swear to it. You can even ask Mother and Father! The granddaughter of the Elder still works in the town as the Apothecary and she abandoned her native name for the Ortiz of her husband to hide it they say…”

“Now that’s just gossip, Arnold and I won’t have any of that—”

Arnold hung his head a bit ashamed at his own outburst. “Just ask Mama and Papa…” the young one said with a resignation in his voice.

José had done more than just ask his mother and father. Ever since that day, he also wanted to know more about the Ortiz boy in his class and had gotten to talking with him. Although all of the people José asked—including his mother and father—claimed that the story was true, only the Ortiz boy denied it as just a tall tale. The rest of the narrative, which he had gathered in bits and pieces, was that they killed the older brother after he chose the bloody stone and set the younger brother free to tell the camp of Spaniards and their Tlaxcalan allies that the powers of the Elder was real and that Aztec Magic was real. Some even claimed to know where the stones were hidden after the Spanish returned and slaughtered the villagers.

Perhaps it was a twist of irony that all the time he spent interviewing Arturo Ortiz that José found himself befriending the young man. A year they spent in seminary together and the pariah status both gained—one for his family’s past and the other for the commoner nature of José’s father—seemed to only solidify their friendship. Eventually, José almost forgot about his initial curiosities into Arturo’s family history and legends. But now that Arturo’s mother had healed the Frenchman with the power of mixing blood, those suspicions and memories returned once more.

As José now approached the laying body of Renault de Fronsac, he remembered another story circulating about that doomed latent power: that these Aztec spiritualists had the power to make one believe that someone dead was alive and that villagers would sometimes see women still in bed with the corpses of their dead husbands…

José’s hand was almost to Renault’s wrist when Arturo came to the door. “What are you doing?” was the question that locked José into a frozen stance.

“Was just checking on him… I finished cleaning the other bed,” the boy said turning around quickly. Arturo was already giving him a curious look.

“He’ll be alright,” Arturo said swiftly, “the others are getting ready for our expedition into the jungle. Didn’t you say you wanted to come along?”

José quickly remembered his previous jealousy of not being around Peninsulars and how he had asked to accompany them. “Yes, let me get my things…” he said as he quit the room swiftly.

Arturo watched him go without losing the curious expression on his face. His eyes turned, however, to the bed and watched the quietness of Renault’s body. He looked over his shoulders before entering the room.

interlude2.gif


Interlude​

Rodrigo looked over his shoulder as Captain DeWitt hopped out of the window to give chase. Over his other shoulder, Lara and Carlos were rushing down the hallway to try and cut off Pablo from getting to the parking side of the building. Tom, smeared with the darkening mix of Taguchi’s blood was in Rodrigo’s arms still unconscious.

“You’re going to be alright…” Rodrigo found himself saying. “You have to get better soon… I’m counting on you… we’re all counting on you…” he added as if the words were just flowing out of his lungs spontaneously. He held the limp body closer to him before tugging on it and placing Tom back on his bed. Perhaps it was the cold wind from outside of the window that had chilled Tom’s skin to that chilly temperature that now bit against Rodrigo’s grip but Tom Royce was cold enough to be dead.

Chapter XC: The Dead (coming soon)
 
An excellent chapter! Starting from Magical beginnings and descending into the harrowing darkness of native rumour, this puts a different slant on things!



haha and good to see the modern day is still as bleak as ever :D
 
English Patriot said:
An excellent chapter! Starting from Magical beginnings and descending into the harrowing darkness of native rumour, this puts a different slant on things!



haha and good to see the modern day is still as bleak as ever :D

I hope it gave a little edge on things XD . A little tension perhaps !
 
Great update! I liked the background from José and the way you ended the chapter.
 
Capibara: thanks ! It was fun to write :D

comagoosie: haha , i'm going to leave it up to you guys to figure out how the Elder did it XD
 
It's true - Goodkind's torture scenes are so well described that they're almost personal.
Nice chapter, by the way.
 
I just read some interesting plot twists. So Renault faked the poison, that was brilliant. Both on his part and yours. I never expected it.

The introduction of Marcus Councilman adds a very devious twist to the story.

I can't wait to see how this turns out.
 
Lotus-6: Thank you !

ColossusCrusher: It was a calming chapter to write XD

crusaderknight: Ahh yes ! I did enjoy putting that twist in XD . Glad you're enjoying it !
 
Interesting background, to be sure, but we're still having all the same cliffhangers :p
 
Nice update, as usual (damn, only my second post after My Return and I start to repeat myself again :p)

But, I missed something I think, where does it say Renault faked the poisson? o_O
 
Avernite: Haha the same eh ? XD Was it expected ?

Grubnessul: faked the poison ? o_O not sure what you mean ?
 
Crusaderking said so!
 
canonized said:
Avernite: Haha the same eh ? XD Was it expected ?

No, usually you remove at least one or two real cliffhangers per update (and add new ones to it), this update was more informative. Which makes it a slight change in style.
 
Grubnessul: Oh haha , he was talking about a previous update ! When Renault was younger and they were infiltrating Little China

Avernite: I'm glad you picked up on that XD . Yes , a little bit more informative than usual . I felt like a meandering style of narrative XD .