The Dead Man's tale

His eyes sprung open. The room about him was constructed of dressed stone with a ceiling just high enough to let him upright. He could see wisps of spider webs dangling from the cracks above him, a sarcophagus whose cover had been propped to one side, and three men who all stared at him with different degrees of interest. All this he could see because of the weak light that trailed down the staircase behind him and the votive candle that the tall one in front of him was waving back and forth as if trying to ward off flies.

"Do you know who you are?" Asked the tall one from out of his cowl.

And he meant to say "no" but no sound came whatsoever. That was strange. He moved his mouth in a circular fashion searching for the root of the problem while he took in the other little incongruities about him. When the candle swung far enough away from his eyes he could see the one of the three who sat on the floor against a near wall. The man was small and wiry of frame and he had a bow, too small for hunting big game, laid out on the floor beside him. He wore a tunic and breeches that fit badly and were torn just below each knee. In his lap lay small pile of arrows. He was holding one, wrapping shreds of a cloth the same color as his breeches around the tip. He was shivering.

Was it cold?

"Can you hear me?"

He nodded to the cloaked figure in front of him. The candle gave a rippling light that showed the surroundings for what they were. Dust and rot and decay and somewhere in the recesses of his muddled thinking a voice was telling him that there should have been a stench. But he smelled nothing.

"Simeon," said the man in front of him. "Your name is Simeon." He repeated as if that word should have had meaning. "You remember?"

Remember what?

"Your name is Simeon and you have a task. You are to–"

"He doesn’t know what you’re saying!" Said the one who was seated at the edge of the open tomb.

"I say he does." Scowled the one with the candle. His voice was heavily accented, yet somehow familiar. "The signs have all been given. Never have I done this before, but many times have I seen it done. Before you cry out again may you remember that our lives are in the balance."

The seated one made a sound that Simeon – he was called Simeon – took for disgust. The sound was cut short and nearly became a whimper. Then the one on the sarcophagus reached over to a flask that sat atop a small, round shield. He drank and drank until a line of red dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.

The cloak turned and the face within became both serious and animated. "Listen. I know you can hear me. You want sleep, do you not?"

Simeon realized that he did. Sleep, sweet sleep. Something about his environs was making him so very sleepy.

"One small thing and then you may rest for all the ages." Then the face and the candle came very close. "We are ringed in by the sorcerer Julian and his unholy band. They have trapped us here in the crypt. We cannot leave. They cannot enter. Every night they come–"

"And since that acolyte you hired left on his bloody watch!" Said the one with the flask a moment before wiping his mouth with a shirt of boiled leather.

The tall man ignored the outburst.