Sword of the Scarred

by Jeffrey Hall

  “Answer me.”

  “Because Mum is out.”

  Requiem ran his hand through his hair. He had forgotten that Sasha was away for the evening, studying the flowers that blossomed on Moonsland’s edge at nightfall with the rest of the botanists from Glimmer. An opportunity only available to her when Requiem was back from his travels. Back from his adventures. Not on a job.

  “What is it?” he said sternly. It was the first time he’d been in a bed in weeks. A bedroll and the nip of the night wind just wasn’t as comforting. All he wanted to do was sleep.

  “Nothing.” His son whispered, as if afraid to answer him.

  “Running from my words ain’t no better. Answer me.”

  He heard the boy swallow in the darkness, as if he were gulping down the black like a medicine to cure his fear. “I’m sick.”

  Requiem sighed. “You sure?”

  He thought he saw him nod in the darkness.

  “Speak up. Can’t see you in the night.”

  “My skin feels hot.”

  “Sure you ain’t just missing your mother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come here then.”

  The boy shuffled forward. Requiem put his hand to Mote’s forehead just like his own mother used to do to him when he would come down with the snots. It felt hot. Like a piece of steel left out in the sun for too long. He cursed his luck.

  “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  The boy stepped away from his hand and sniffled. Maybe he was crying, or maybe he was trying to emphasize his own sickness. Either way, a sudden pang of regret filled him. Wasn’t this what Sasha was trying to tell him about? The chasm he had created between him and his boy, a thing torn open from his own absence. A gaping hole without a bridge to his own flesh and blood’s thoughts.

  “Wait.”

  Mote stopped at the doorway.

  “You need some water?”

  “Yes.” And this time when he spoke he thought he heard the hoarseness of his voice.

  “Just stay put.” Requiem rose, his body popping and his muscles screaming at him to lie back down, but he kept on. He stepped past Mote, lumbered into the hallway, opened the door to their manse, and went outside to their yard. There the stones of the well rose in the middle of their small patch of land like a blemish rising in the darkness. He put his hands to the rope and lowered the bucket to the well’s bottom. It slurped as it entered the contents far below. He pulled it up, despising the cold air of midnight and the fact that he was in it yet again when there was a warm bed only yards away back inside. On top of it all, there was a rogue cloud of the Abyss lancing the moon, a wound against its perfect pale face. An ill sign, one that countless seers and gazers, those who looked to the Abyss to tell the future, said was an omen of a coming tragedy.

  Maybe next time I just get a room at the inn, he told himself, but shook his head. This is what fathers do. This is what I’m supposed to do.

  The bucket appeared over the edge of the well and he unlatched it from the rope. He carefully brought it inside, only a few misplaced falls of his feet causing its contents to slop over the bucket’s edge. When he reentered their home he found Mote waiting in the hallway. He had been watching him.

  “Drink this,” he said, and handed the boy the bucket.

  The boy took it and then dropped it. The cold water went everywhere, splattering onto Requiem’s feet, onto his shirt.

  “By the forsaken Abyss!” cursed Requiem. “What happened?”

  “Sorry,” said Mote, barely higher than a whisper. “It was heavy.”

  “Heavy? Heavy! That pail was barely full.”

  “My arms are…”

  “Are what?”

  “Tired.”

  The answer infuriated him even more. “Oh? You’re tired. Try walking the continent to fight monsters and make coin for your family to keep a roof over their heads that ain’t stone like the miner’s holes only to come home and find you can’t even spend a damn moment in the house you created ’cause you got a boy too weak for his own good.”

  Mote just stood there, taking his words, trembling slightly in the raw blanket of night.

  Though somewhere deep down Requiem knew he should stop, his exhaustion and frustration won out. “Say something!”

  But instead of speaking, Mote just started to cry.

  And that sound disarmed him, snatched away his anger, and revealed to his own self the monster he was being, the beast he continued to be.

  “Mote, I—” He reached for him, but the boy was too quick. He ran into his room and slammed the door shut. Requiem went to follow but hesitated as he reached for the doorknob. What would he say? What could he do? The wound was already made, and he was no healer. He was a warrior. Making wounds was all he did.

  So he stood there, leaning against the wall, empty bucket in his hands, listening to his boy’s sobs intermixed with harsh, guttural coughs, forcing himself to endure his own new wounds.

  He wasn’t sure how long Mote cried for, only that as he stood there listening to him, the spear of moonlight that fell through the hallway window turned from a glowing weapon of destruction to nothing more than a daggery nub across the floorboard.

  At last, the boy’s sobs dwindled to whimpers, his coughs, more sporadic, until he heard nothing at all.

  Requiem stood upright and looked into the bucket. It was like staring into a void where all light was swallowed and sucked away, a monstrous mouth whose hunger could never be satisfied. Slowly, he wandered down the hallway and arrived once more at the well. When he arrived he noticed how choked the sky was, how everywhere he looked there seemed to be some cloud or string of Abysmal fog masking the stars and moon beyond. It was only thanks to the glimmer stone of his own home that he was able to see what he was doing, where he was going.

  He hooked the bucket back to the rope and lowered it until he heard the plop of the bucket as it connected with the water. The air was colder then, the frigidness meant to push him back inside, but he forced himself to stay there and complete what he had set out to do, the cold another small punishment he ordered for himself.

  Finally the bucket reappeared, its contents slopping over the edge and onto his clothes. The biting water found its way to his skin. He unlatched the pail and once more made the journey from well to door.

  He didn’t make it far down the hallway. He entered their kitchen, found a cup in the cupboard, and snagged it with his thumb and forefinger. Carefully, he brought it into his grasp with the bucket, careful not to spill a single drop of its contents. He returned to the hallway and walked the rest of the way to the closed door at the end of it. He listened for a moment, resting his head against the wall, closing his eyes as if he meant to nap there, but opened them when he heard a small muffled cough.

  He waited a minute longer. There was no other sound. He stuffed the bucket under his arm and worked his fingers around the knob. He turned it gently, careful to not make a noise, and the door swung open.

  A warmth met his face. A warmth, and a stench. It smelled of illness. Of sweat and body. He scrunched his nose at the smell, but ventured forward in the almost-dark. Mote lay in a fetal position on his bed, his sheets off, a brow of sweat just barely visible, his breathing constricted and nasally as if someone were pinching his nose. Requiem set down the bucket on the nightstand next to him and then the cup, careful not to make a sound.

  He went to put his hand on the boy’s back, but hesitated. What good would it do now? So he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door so gently that when it clicked shut it sounded only like the chirp of a bug.

  He stood out there for a while, thinking, replaying what had transpired in his head, until he heard footsteps at the house’s main entrance.

  The door swung open and there stood Sasha, a figure only identifiable by her bronze hair caught in the flare of the glimmer stone.

  For a moment, neither of them moved. Neither of them exchanged a word. Only when the door swung shut behind h
er did she speak.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I think he’s sick.” He nodded toward the door.

  She hurried inside, dropping her satchel in the hall as she rushed forward. “You sure?”

  “He’s hot. Coughing.”

  She passed him and he could smell the night air on her, the dirt and the faint scent of the flowers she had been working with. She burst into their son’s door. Requiem heard shuffling and then the slight mumble of voices. Hers, then his.

  Silence followed. Requiem waited, listening. When after a few minutes he heard nothing else he peered around the corner. He could just make out the sight of their two bodies on his bed, one of her arms clenched tight over his sleeping body, the other rubbing his hair as if trying to release the sweat that caked it.

  “He alright?” said Requiem.

  She sat up on her elbow. “He’s burning up.”

  “Just the snots?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You gonna stay there all night?”

  “Where else would I go?”

  Requiem shifted uneasily at the door. She put her head back down and kept rubbing Mote, singing slightly.

  “I need to go,” he said.

  “Where?” she answered, without lifting up her head to see him.

  “Got a job.”

  “At this late in the night?”

  Requiem shifted. “I need to go.”

  “He’s sick.”

  “Just the snots, ain’t it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Well, we need the job.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “When it’s done.”

  He heard her sigh.

  “What? Pay is good.”

  “We don’t need weight anymore.”

  “This manse ain’t standing for free.”

  “Go on then,” said Sasha. “What do you want me to tell him?”

  Sorry, he almost said, but caught himself. “Hope he feels better.”

  “That’s it?” she said.

  Requiem went into their room, gathered his things, what little he had.

  “That’s it?” she repeated.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” And without another word he was walking down the same hallway, putting his feet in front of himself as fast as he could, not running, as running would admit to the world, admit to himself, that he was fleeing. The door closed behind him, and the cold, bitter air welcomed him like a forgotten friend, taking him once more into its embrace, batting aside the stifling heat at his back. He breathed heavily, sucking in the air like it was nourishment meant to heal his tattered insides, and it might have if not for the darkness that loomed overhead.

  This time it was utter and complete. A black ceiling built to cancel all light. The moon. The stars. All of it was sealed so tightly that their glows couldn’t even help him see if it were clouds that blotted out the sky, or if it was another void. An endless hole that loomed overhead, luring all life into its trap, slurping down the world like it was drink needed to quench its terrible thirst.

  Worst of all, Requiem felt himself being pulled towards it, but didn’t fight it. Such a horrible blackness and he didn’t resist. Instead, he hurried towards it, glad for the new speed that was not his own. Relieved that he was given an excuse to move faster and faster away.

  And on he went until the void swallowed him whole, cancelling the views around him, shielding him from his own home.

  Or so he thought.

  For as he was pulled into the darkness it began to disperse, peeling back like the rind of a rotten fruit to reveal a face, clear and pale, like the moon was hiding all along and knew how to break through the ridiculous veil of the darkness. A way to lure him in.

  And as the void continued to fall apart, the face became clearer. Its eyes were full and bright and green, like two flawed glimmer stones. Its lips slender and pursed. Its cheeks barely rutted, the antithesis to the moon he thought it was.

  He blinked and there was Sasha, looking not just at him, but into him, as if she had chased him out of their house and tracked him down in the darkness he fled to, the fear he hid inside.

  But the world materialized around her, pushing aside the void that framed her face, becoming reality, although strangely halved.

  Caught, he had no other choice but to say, “I’m sorry.”

  His voice came out gravelly and hoarse. It didn’t sound like him, yet he was sure he had said it. He felt his rough tongue move. He felt his stiff jaw open, both sending a wave of pain throughout him.

  “Sorry for what?” Her eyebrows rose in confusion.

  “For leaving.”

  “You didn’t leave us. It was your damn stone that made you go.”

  “Is he awake?” Glassius’s voice penetrated his thoughts.

  “Seems like it,” said Sasha.

  Requiem’s mind started to work, pulling itself out of the darkness. He was aware of their surroundings. The sky overhead, blue and cloudless save for the minor trickle of Abysmal gas that threaded through it. Hills in the near distance. High grass that rose to either side of them like hair on the back of a dog risen with fear. The stone of the Alley of Fangs was gone. The city too.

  “Am I dead?”

  “No, but…” Sasha looked away from him.

  “Your face,” said Glassius. “It looks like that stone of yours is finally getting greedier than you can handle.”

  Requiem put his hand to his cheek and felt the raw pain there beneath a makeshift bandage of leaves and mud. He followed the pain up his face until he reached his eye. Another bandage had been placed over it.

  “Is it gone?”

  Sasha shook her head. “It’s still there, but your sight isn’t.”

  Requiem tore away the bandage.

  “Wait. Don’t—” Sasha tried to stop his hand but he batted her own away.

  Slowly he peeled away the sticky mixture, hoping to find it all to be some type of cruel joke, but the more he pulled away the more he could feel the bubbly rent upon his skin, the one that ran from his neck, up his chin, over his cheek, and up to his forehead.

  And through his eye.

  He touched around it, trying to make sure he had really pulled away all the bandage blocking it, but found only marred flesh. He closed his other eye and once more returned to the darkness.

  The stone had finally come for his head, starting with his eye.

  He swallowed, trying hard to not show the fear or discontent that welled inside of him, trying hard to remind himself that he was never supposed to live that long in the first place. But it was a feeble attempt.

  This wasn’t something he could walk away from now. He couldn’t give up and go to the Abyss and draw his last breath as the selfish creature he had shown himself to be.

  Not yet. Not when there were too many questions that needed answers. Not when there were too many battles to be fought. Not when people still needed him.

  “I tried to save it, but I couldn’t,” said Sasha.

  Requiem looked past her, ignoring her apology. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere on the Bothanian border,” said Glassius. The commander leaned against a boulder that rose like a tombstone to a giant at his back. “West, I think.”

  “How’d we get here?”

  “The Geomage.” Sasha pointed, and there, sitting in the grass, her head barely above its tips, was Dash. A similar bandage was wrapped around her neck. A bruise formed around her eye. She looked like she had been brought back from the dead, and maybe she had.

  “You alright?” said Requiem loudly, though his voice hurt to speak.

  The woman looked up, met eyes with him, and then swallowed.

  “Hope that’s a yes.”

  “She can’t speak,” whispered Sasha. “They cut her throat, missed her artery by a hair, but went deep enough to take her voice.”

  Requiem’s gaze didn’t leave the Geo
mage’s as he felt the despair in her face. The look of a lost life stuck in the trappings of its own body. A look he had seen plenty when looking at his own reflection.

  Did he cause this? Did he bring this trouble to her feet and beg her to take it?

  Yes, he found himself answering. Of course you did.

  “Doesn’t know it yet,” said Sasha. “Tried to speak when she first came to, but only came out lighter than a growl. Told her it was just her throat healing. Told her she needed time. It was enough to calm her down. Enough to get her to point us to a way out.”

  “That seer does know her way around the city, I’ll give her that.”

  Dash’s eyes welled with tears before she looked away.

  “She knows,” said Requiem.

  “Huh?”

  “She knows her talking days are done.”

  “How do you know?” said Sasha.

  Requiem stood, using his blade to come to his feet. His head felt heavy. His new vision made him feel dizzy. He kept trying to open his wounded eye, hoping it would bring back his sight, but when he touched it, he felt his lid was open.

  It’s gone, he told himself.

  He meandered his way through the grass, taking notice of Garp, who sat at the bottom of a nearby hill, looking up into the sky, still muttering to himself, tracing something up there with his stump. Requiem wondered if the man even knew his last bit of family was done, or if the davlish’s gas had sapped him of even comprehending that.

  At least he was alive.

  The sight of Grey wrestling with that monster before he was crushed beneath a hundred pounds of stone, stone Requiem had put there… He didn’t know why, but the last sight of the man was staying with him.

  He’d seen plenty die before. Seen them go, and forgot about them by the time he fell asleep the same evening.

  Maybe it was because he had somehow cared a lick about him in the end. Maybe, despite Grey’s constant ridicule and hatred of Requiem, he had found someone who understood him. Or maybe it was because he was one of the reasons he was still here. Still standing. Still breathing.

  When he reached Dash, he was surprised and relieved to see her kneeling over the girl. She held a gourd of water and was dribbling some of it into the child’s mouth. The girl looked so thin now. So weak.