Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I Read Free

Opposite the door was a fireplace, which was keeping the room warm and lit. Everything was the same shade of dark brown, which made Peter think that everything here must be centuries old.
    On rubbing his face, he was brought up short by the stubble that had grown. He must have been unconscious for a number of days. He experienced a brief pain in his stomach which he recognized as intense hunger, which reinforced this suspicion.
    There were slippers by the bed. He put them on and opened the door to peer into the world beyond. Outside looked much like inside, with the wooden walls and floors and earth ceilings. It was a wide corridor, slightly curved so that the room Peter had been in was on the outside, and the wall of the room looked slightly concave from the outside.
    He wondered where he was. He hadn’t ever seen or heard of any place like this. He might have wondered if he had been kidnapped, but if he had, why would his captors have put him in clean pyjamas and made him feel safe, in a bedroom of his own – with a door that hadn’t even been locked?
    From the other rooms nearby, there was a low ambience of background noise issuing, which sounded like muffled speech. Peter’s impression of the place was that it was very monastic, judging by the colours and the layout of the corridor and rooms, and the generally subdued feeling that being here seemed to impart.
    ‘Hello…?’ He looked up and down, wondering if it would be a faux pas for him to speak loudly.
    ‘Hello.’ Someone was walking toward him from the right. It was the man in the black suit. He led Peter back into the small room, closed the door, and they sat down on the bed. ‘Welcome to the Guild. You were badly injured, and those kinds of injuries are beyond the normal medical profession.’
    ‘The Guild,’ Peter repeated. ‘Guild of what? What is it you do?’
    ‘All in good time. How are you feeling?’ The man sat calmly, with his hands on his knees, as Peter stood up again and walked slowly in a small circle near the door.
    ‘Better than… whenever it was. How long was I…’
    ‘Four days. You were unconscious for four days, you healed very fast.’
    ‘What did I heal from?’
    ‘A broken heart. The other person, who was attacking you, had broken your heart, literally, into pieces.’ Peter stood still, shocked, and felt himself pale. The man continued. ‘When you passed out I dispatched the person who had done it and brought you here.’
    Peter sat down on the floor, with his head in his hands, for a long moment. Broken his heart into pieces? That didn’t even sound possible, especially when the heart was a soft piece of flesh, and when his attacker didn’t have a weapon to tear or cut it with. When he felt able to again, he spoke. ‘So who are you?’
    ‘My name is Eric. I work for the Guild.’
    The Guild. Everything so far seemed to be revolving around it, whatever it was. Peter stood up again, shakily, and offered Eric his hand to shake.
    ‘Peter. Peter Rutherford.’
    Eric stood and shook Peter’s offered hand. ‘Actually, we know who you are. While you were unconscious I looked you up. Unable to find work, even though you’ve betrayed an obviously high level of intelligence. A string of bad luck, eh?’
    Peter nodded. He was starting to feel impatient. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you know about me, and you have this Guild. I get drawn into that… whatever it was, and very nearly get killed, when all I wanted was to stretch my legs before bed. I have no clue what this is, what I nearly got killed for, or who you are.’
    ‘I was getting to that.’ Eric opened the door and motioned, in a suddenly stiff and formal manner, for Peter to use, which he did. After stopping to close the door again, Eric led Peter down the corridor, which was very long indeed, but eventually they came to an end, where there were stairs leading down. At the bottom of what turned out to be another long flight of stairs, was a continuation of the corridor