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    Innocent Fugitive: Aed's Journey Vol. 1
    Innocent Fugitive: Aed's Journey Vol. 1
    Innocent Fugitive: Aed's Journey Vol. 1
    Ebook195 pages3 hours

    Innocent Fugitive: Aed's Journey Vol. 1

    By Charles G. Dyer

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    About this ebook

    Wrongly accused of witchcraft, pretty young Aed escapes death at the stake and drowning. Latent magic is aroused in her and she certainly needs it on her journey.

    A series of adventures takes her to Dragon's Mouth where she finds her sorceress mentor, Aitheda who might be immortal.

    Aitheda has an incredibly powerful magical sword called Gobansaor. This sword will affect their lives far more than they realise. Aed studies hard and hones her skills using the four elements of magic. She will need every bit of that skill to survive...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles G. Dyer
    Release dateAug 6, 2013
    ISBN9781301492480
    Innocent Fugitive: Aed's Journey Vol. 1
    Author

    Charles G. Dyer

    Charles Dyer is a consulting engineer, former senior lecturer and former technical magazine editor. He creates 3D models to help with visualisation and realism in his writing.

    Read more from Charles G. Dyer

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      Book preview

      Innocent Fugitive - Charles G. Dyer

      Innocent Fugitive

      Aed's Journey Trilogy #1

      Charles G. Dyer

      Copyright 2013 Charles G. Dyer

      All rights reserved.

      ISBN: 978-1301492480

      Smashwords Edition

      License

      Thank you for downloading this ebook. Whether it was purchased or on a free promotion, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

      It would be greatly appreciated if you could post a review on the site where you purchased this book. If you have any comments about this book, good or bad, you can write to me at cgd@telkomsa.net.

      Other books in the Aed's Journey Trilogy:

      Book Two – Tragic Events

      Book Three – Strange Times

      They can be found at:

      https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/chas1951

      Contents

      Chapter 1 – Wrongly Accused

      Chapter 2 – The Great North Road

      Chapter 3 – Three Marks

      Chapter 4 – The Journey Continues

      Chapter 5 – Gorm Doire

      Chapter 6 - Beag

      Chapter 7 – Tyre Na Lorc

      Chapter 8 – The Loch Mell Incident

      Chapter 9 – A Birthday

      Chapter 10 – The Dragon's Mouth

      Chapter 11 - Rivalry

      Chapter 12 – A Moment Of Joy

      Chapter 13 - Gobansaor

      Chapter 14 - Civilisation

      Glossary

      Chapter 1 – Wrongly Accused

      As a child, Erin ma Milrey was a delight to her parents and an example of purity and beauty that was the envy of the other villagers. Regrettably, this envy grew into a malignant cancer as she matured. By the time she was seventeen, the young men were fighting for her favours and jealous girls of her age had started whispering malicious lies about her.

      The more charitable inhabitants used to describe Erin as gentle, kind and unselfish. Such traits were still valid when her long gleaming auburn hair had reached the slim waistline of her slender comely body that was as perfectly proportioned as a goddess.

      Blessed with a soft delicate skin that was apparently flawless and smooth with a flush of healthy pink, she set the hearts of all the men of the village pounding every time they saw her. Malevolent female tongues painted wicked lies in furtive dark whispers.

      The majority spurned the village idiot or amadain as he was called, though his real name was Elatha ma Tuired. Rather than treating him as a source of entertainment they regarded him as a scapegoat for all their troubles.

      Unable to bear seeing him outcast, as a young girl Erin had made it her business to befriend him. In doing so, she discovered that he was not an imbecile but simply hard of hearing. This impediment caused him to misunderstand speech and to speak in a peculiar manner.

      At first, only other children ridiculed Elatha but all too soon, adults joined the gang to poke fun at him. Erin's demure appeals to others to refrain from bullying Elatha were scoffed at and she was told that she was too naïve and softhearted.

      The amadain had adapted to the torment when Erin took him under her wing. As an act of self-preservation, he played along with the mockery and reciprocated by becoming a prankster. In teaching him to articulate properly, she noticed that he was quick-witted and dextrous. With her encouragement he developed these skills to become an entertaining mimic and jester.

      After an incident that he immortalised in verse, Elatha's station in the village improved to the point where he could live on the proceeds of his craft.

      "A miserly man failed to pay.

      His angry creditor him did flay.

      Chased from town to pass,

      He said, "On my sore arse

      I sit astride a sorry ass."

      In Erin's early adolescence, her parents forbade her to see him any more. It was the only time that she defied them or did anything deceitful. On the pretext of visiting a friend, after all Elatha was a friend, she met him secretly and taught him to read and write. He in turn showed her how to use a slingshot. Although she believed that she would never need the skill, he insisted that she learned to use it and she became quite proficient and deadly accurate with the simple weapon.

      Unknown to Erin, the very thing that her father feared was unfolding. Elatha was falling in love with her. She was the only person in the village to show him any compassion or basic human kindness. In her sparkling green eyes he was simply a downtrodden soul in need of a friend. The thought of a romantic involvement with him never once crossed her mind.

      Erin seemed to be oblivious of her beauty and the effect it was having on the village. She had weathered the confusion of adolescence without succumbing to curiosity or wantonness. The favours she bestowed on the young men of the village amounted to no more than innocent tasks, such as, carrying her basket or running errands for her.

      Regarding herself as too young to entertain thoughts of romance, she was not conscious of the teasing effects she had on the young bucks. She never deliberately flaunted herself or did anything provocative. Nevertheless, everything about her, from her smiling green eyes under a rich russet crown to her sweet fragrance of breath and body, titillated the imaginations of her admirers and taunted the resentful adversaries. Not being able to find any real faults, her sinister foes had created their own increasingly nasty fabrications. These lies were deliberately aired around her protagonists who initially leapt to her defence but in time began to believe the tales.

      Women and girls alike found their jealousy fuelled with every month that passed. Falsehoods, reinforced by superstitions, detracted from Erin's pleasant unassuming nature and undermined the solid purity of her personality. Forbidden fruits and unattainable desires often held more attraction for men than the ready meal or the brazen flaunting of promiscuous sluts. In the public houses, the talk frequently gravitated to fantasies with Erin when liquor loosened the tongues of men enough to disclose their innermost thoughts.

      Not only was Erin endowed with exquisite looks, she was a diligent scholar with an agile mind. Perhaps if she had been the village idiot then the hags would have been more tolerant. The natural order would then have been balanced and she would have been accepted as average. The fact that she was so pure and innocent, trusting and kind should have weighed sentiment in her favour. In reality, these attributes simply stoked the fires of jealousy. Her inability to sense the growing hostility and to take it personally was probably her greatest failing.

      Although her father, Conar ma Milrey was not a drinking man, he soon got wind of the tavern talk and started to worry about his beloved daughter's safety. The men could be tolerated as long as they left their crude tongues in the public houses. Their lecherous talk might have been quelled by a timely marriage. What was even more worrying was the gossip that his wife overheard. Village hags would stop talking when they noticed her approaching; even so, Moira ma Milrey had ears and she caught snatches of the rumours.

      At one of their clandestine meetings, Elatha told Erin what he had overheard.

      Oh Elatha, how can you listen to such ceilidh? She laughed and shoved his shoulder.

      Seal it? What's that? By their words your fate is sealed unless something's done soon. Really Erin some of the words you use must be curses to be sure, he said.

      Sorry, you know how I love the Old Tongue, she said the word carefully. Ceilidh simply means gossiping. With a disarming smile she added, And I'll hear no more of it. She firmly believed that his poor hearing must have caused him to hear incorrectly. However, she would be the last person to chide him on that sore point.

      Months went by and the whispers grew louder and more vicious. Moira and Conar would lie awake at night and exchange the stories they had heard. It reached a point where they felt that Erin should be sent away for her own safety, but they could not decide where best to send her. The fact that the girl had learned the Old Tongue, at great expense to her father would make her a sought-after scribe in a city but her parents were at loggerheads over which city would be best.

      Conar had a well-established drapery business, which he could ill-afford to abandon. Cloth made from flax and wool were the mainstay of his enterprise but he also held stocks of exotic fabrics such as, silk and cotton that were favoured by the more wealthy townsfolk. As the only cloth merchant in the village, his income had always been guaranteed. Lately, he heard that some people had bought fabric from other towns to avoid coming to his shop.

      Using Erin as a means of showing off her sewing skills seemed innocuous enough to Moira. She stylishly clothed Erin in the best fabrics in the hopes of attracting business to herself and to Conar. The village boys were delighted and the girls were furious. Such blatant displays were intolerable. What should have been lauded as an enterprising venture was regarded as exhibitionism. Elatha inadvertently fed the cancer by rhapsodising his unrequited love.

      "To the ire of the hags

      Dressed in coarse rags,

      Out came the village rose,

      Dressed in fine clothes

      To push mother's wares."

      Expensive education had been yet another reason to envy Erin. It set her apart from her peers and, in their eyes, above them. After all, only landed gentry and nobles were privileged enough to be educated. There is never greater satisfaction for the deprived than being able to destroy or deride the enriched. Childhood friends shied away from her soon after her lessons began. Erin had been too engrossed in her studies to notice the slights and cutting remarks.

      The whispers spread and grew like seeds of uncontrolled weeds. Before the concerned parents could stop procrastinating, the whispers became a mob-inciting roar. Accusations of witchcraft were now openly made. Erin continued to chide Elatha for his increasingly adamant repetitions of the rumours. People crossed the street when any of the ma Milrey family left their home above the drapery shop. Conar's business had dwindled to the few travellers who had not heard the stories.

      Too late, the amadain tried to make amends and he launched a one-man protest against the lies by reciting a verse that summed up the situation.

      "Lying in mousy squeaks,

      A witch the hag seeks,

      Though there be not one,

      She'll fib until she's done.

      Envy is the hag's itch

      That turns innocent to witch."

      In all the mounting hostility, Erin remained unflustered. She refused to believe that she was the bone of contention that the village dogs were gnawing. Despite her superior intellect, she was still a child at heart. When blatant confrontations were made, she believed them to be misdirected and brushed them cheerfully aside. This apparent disdain only made the perpetrators more frustrated and more determined to bring her down.

      Beneath her smooth skin Erin had a ruffled soul. Unknown to her parents or anyone else, she had been fascinated by and drawn to the pagan gods of old in preference to the oppressively dominating Christianity of her time. Her education had exposed her to the wonderful and fantastic world of the Celts in which beauty flourished and a spiritual loveliness prevailed. The ancient druids had revered nature and taught that the soul did not die but moved into another body when the old one expired. To her it seemed to be far more appealing than the grim threats of purgatory, hell and damnation that the Christians preached.

      One particular lesson had made an indelible impression on Erin. Her mentor had said that on the surface the imported religion appeared to have squashed all the pagan juices from the veins of the people. It was therefore strange indeed that the Christian clergy had adapted pagan customs, rituals, festivals and entities. Obviously he was not taken in by their preaching and he wondered why they saw fit to perpetuate beliefs that were so contrary to their own.

      It had amused and delighted her to discover that many of the saints that were honoured and worshiped by the villagers were thinly disguised adaptations of pagan gods and goddesses. The venerated patron Saint Brigid, who was thought of as the exemplar of virgins, was none other than the exalted goddess Brigit. She could say, ‘By Brigit,' with impunity and often did. Her favourite deity was the goddess Epona, who Erin pictured as a petite woman with her long golden hair streaming out behind her as she rode about on horseback.

      Many of the village denizens had taken to wearing amulets to ward off the evil that they had convinced themselves emanated from Erin. The warding talismans took various forms, such as, cloves of garlic or a stone with a hole in it. Others protected their homes by burying a bottle full of nails under their doorsteps. All these charms and trinkets had their roots deep in paganism and, if the villagers only knew it, sorcery. Superstition bred fear and panic that were reaching fever pitch.

      Finally, a delegation of old hags, jealous competitors and hen-pecked husbands approached the village council and demanded that Erin be tried as a witch. Trumped up charges of infanticide, causing crop failures and illnesses were levelled at the girl. The council were faced with the unenviable choices of a riot if they did not act and the spilling of innocent blood if they did.

      Early the next morning rough hands ripped open the door of the draper's shop and heavy booted feet thundered up the stairs to wrench the terrified girl from her bed. Her parents were threatened at dagger point to remain in their bed. Erin was frog-marched out of the shop and bound with rope before being thrown into an ox-cart.

      The cart trundled off to the village meeting hall amidst shouts from her captors. We have the witch! Come and testify against her.

      Amidst a hail of rotten vegetables, Erin wept quietly against the splintery boards of the cart. I'm not a witch. Epona help me, am I? The more cruel jeering assailants added pain to her anguish by pelting her with harder objects, such as fresh turnips and beets. Long before she arrived at the hall, she was bruised, dripping with a foul-smelling slimy mess and shivering uncontrollably.

      She wondered bitterly if her pagan leanings were to blame. If she had embraced Christianity more sincerely would she be in this predicament? Despite her doubts, she felt compelled to silently appeal to the old gods rather than the new. They seemed to be so much more forgiving and co-operative with people than the Holy Trinity.

      The farce of a trial was conducted under the watchful eye of the mayor, overshadowed by dark-mantled clergy. After the accusations had been made by dozens of screaming women and some reluctant men egged on by hysterical wives, some lechers demanded that she be stripped naked on the pretext of looking for the mark of a witch. Elatha watched in horror, knowing that he dare not interfere unless he wanted to suffer the same fate.

      The ropes were roughly removed and eager hands groped at her chest and elsewhere when the flimsy vegetable-stained nightgown was torn from her trembling body. Flushed with embarrassment and shaking with fear, she tried to hide herself behind her hands. Her arms were

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