by L. S. Kyles
Chapter 7
Half a league south of Eastpost, lying on a hillside and covered in sod, Jaysh Denbauk couldn’t see anything either. He might have blamed the folds of canvas drooping into his line of sight or the coming of the setting sun and the giant crescent-moon shadow this was creating in the basin, but none of these things were giving him problems.
It was his prey that was giving him problems, the complete lack of prey that was.
In an effort to rectify this problem, he was chewing his vine like a mad man. He didn’t know why, but vine had a way of priming his cerebral think-pump, and right now he needed it primed in the worst possible way. He had a mission on his hands—one designed to hunt down and destroy the mysterious killer of the Sway—and so far said mission was going nowhere fast.
He slid towards the opening in his canvas—careful not to disturb the cat-thing sleeping in the small of his back—and searched the surrounding pasture. He didn’t have any solutions just yet, only guesses, but he thought he had the problem narrowed down.
Whatever was spooking his prey, it was probably related to the bait, the concealment, or the weapon. He just didn’t know which.
He lowered his eyes to the valley and surveyed the head of the decoy jutting from the reeds. It was an ugly thing, he knew, a stitched abomination of hides and pelts and homemade thread. No legs or feet (didn’t need them to lay there on the ground), but it did have a tail and a head. The former was fashioned from frayed twine and the latter from three old beaver pelts. The tail of one pelt hung down on the left and always reminded Jaysh of a hound’s ear.
He stared at the makeshift ear, then at the rest of the decoy. It resembled no animal he had ever seen. No visible mouth or nose, two different-shaped buttons for eyes (different colors too), and a snout that hung down from the head like an empty stocking. Try as he might, the stitching had fought him in that regard, and no matter how many times he pressed the stuffing into the muzzle, it always seemed to find its way back inside the neck.
Oh, well, he thought, and spat a streamer of vine-juice into the grass beneath his chin.
To be honest, he was not worried about the decoy’s appearance, not when it smelled the way it did. What the thing lacked by the way of visual esthetics, it more than made up for with regard to scent.
Jaysh, himself, was wearing an outfit he’d left hanging in the woods for a week, an outfit that reeked of pine sap and evergreens instead of unwashed crotch and armpit. The patchwork monstrosity to the north, on the other hand, was stuffed with ten of the sweatiest saddle blankets the royal stables had to offer.
He’d shoved the saddle blankets into the decoy, tied the decoy to a pack horse, and led the pack horse to where they’d tethered their own steeds. From there, he’d dragged the decoy from a length of rope—never touching it with his hands—and left it in the basin below; decoy, blankets, rope and all.
There were his tracks out the basin, of course—tracks leading from the patchwork decoy to his concealment on the hill—but he strongly doubted they would scare away his prey. The killer was not likely to spy a handful of footprints beneath six hands of grass, not when the scent of horse sweat was so thick in the air.
He spat another streamer at the grass beneath his beard and shifted his eyes to the mouth of his camouflage, knowing even as he did so that his camouflage was not the problem. His concealment was a sheet of canvas on the ground, covered with grass and briars and other vegetation, and then dotted with a few shovelfuls of sod for added realism.
Needless to say, once he and Serit had wriggled beneath these screens and settling in on their bellies, they were virtually invisible to the naked eye.
Unless…
He sat up on the elbows and gazed down at the bulge in his shirt. He stared down at it until he was sure none of its wretched lilac glow was seeping through the fabric, then he let his eyes lose focus and wondered what the bulge would look like when nightfall came. He wondered, as well, if he’d been wrong to keep the wretched thing.
Originally, he had wanted nothing to do with the raya amulet. He remembered Reets and Mums, and everyone else at the coronation, wrestling the thing over his head, and he remembered thinking, Just you wait! Just you wait til I get by my lonesome! I’ll have this thing off my neck so fast!
It was only later, while sneaking through Serit Brandmore’s bedchamber in the pitch black of night, searching blindly for a map on the innumerable book shelves lining his room, that Jaysh realized the error of his way. Perhaps a glowing hunk of amethyst had its advantages after all.
In truth, he could have retrieved a torch or lantern for the task, or even a candle, but those would have left behind a smoky residue, possibly giving him away. What was more, carrying around a charred chunk of wood tended to leave him stinking of campfire, a scent that was nearly impossible to wash clean.
With the raya, though, he could explore caves or gather his belongings before dawn and never go near a fire, and if the purple light did leak from his shirt, he could simply stuff it in his pack like the rest of his tools.
It wasn’t, though (leaking through his shirt, that was), so he left the amulet where it was and lifted his eyes from the front of his shirt to the prairie in the north.
The third and final problem—or possible problem—was actually standing somewhere behind him. It was the weapon he and Serit had brought along to take down the mystery killer.
Well, brought along wasn’t quite accurate. He and Serit hadn’t really brought along anything. The banning thing had followed them down here, trailing along behind like some giant crystal puppy-dog.
Before speaking with Serit, Jaysh had referred to the thing as the shadow, namely because the thing followed him around just like a shadow, even though, by light of day, it looked nothing like a shadow. It was only later that he learned the creature’s true identity, that it was a kryst, and that there had been two of them. They apparently protected the king and the king’s family.
This had come as kind of a shock to the woodsman—seeing how he had no recollection of a kryst (or most of his childhood, for that matter)—but the shock was not the reason he refused to look behind him. It was because looking behind him would be a tremendous waste of time.
After engaging in several days of scouting and hunting in the kryst’s presence, he had observed no negative effects from having the creature around. It was almost as though animals registered the crystalline man as nothing more than the chunk of stone he resembled, as though they had trouble seeing it at all, much the same way that Jaysh sometimes had trouble seeing it, even though he knew it was always there.
Would it leave, Iman had once asked, if you told it you had urges?
No, Jaysh had told him, it doan’ never leave.
Well, I don’t see it now, Iman had countered.
Trus’ me, Jaysh had explained, shaking his head as one who knew, it’s still there.
So no, Jaysh didn’t believe his sparkling protector was the problem. It had never been a problem in the past and, until something happened to change his mind, he didn’t believe it would be in the future.
His partner on the other hand…
Jaysh rolled his eyes to the right without daring to move his head. His partner, Serit Branmore, was lying two paces in that direction, nestled down in his own camouflage and, for the most part, making no sound at all.
Well, there was some whimpering from time to time (never a good sign on a hunting expedition), but Jaysh was willing to take it. He’d take whimpering over talking any day of the week, especially since Serit had already proven he could talk with the best of them. The man had shown up at the stables this morning—mouth running like an escaped convict—and he had talked ever since.
Generally speaking, Jaysh liked General Branmore. He couldn’t say why this was exactly, since he actually had more in common with the Hinter-minded Reets, but the kinship he felt for the whisker-lipped historian was undeniable. As far back as he could recall—all th
e way to that lumpy green thing floating in his mind—there had always been a kind of partiality for the old man.
Today, however—out here on the most dangerous mission of the four, a mission that could, potentially, save Jaysh’s kingdom and the only way of life he knew—the old coot was pushing that partiality to its limits.
It had all began when Serit arrived at the stables and refused to wear the treetop clothing Jaysh had retrieved from the Shun. The old man cited allergies as the reason and claimed the garments reeked of tree mold and bark rot. He simply could not wear them.
Jaysh was irritated, to say the least, but since the clothes did reek of tree mold and bark rot, he quickly let the matter go. As inconvenient as Serit’s man-stink might be to the integrity of the mission, a few poorly-timed sneezes would get them killed just as easily. Jaysh had let the old man keep his uniform.
He drew the line at the medals, though. Real live allergies were one thing, but foolhardy superstition was quite another. So when the old codger reported that he meant to wear his array of jingling pendants on the mission, because they had always brought him luck, Jaysh nearly came unglued.
Keeping in mind that he needed the old man—or, rather, that Iman had said he needed the old man—Jaysh kept his voice level and calmly explained to the general that the metallic clatter from his lucky pendants would likely get them the same treatment as the crumpled bear they had seen in the Shun.
Upon hearing this, General Branmore was more than happy to leave his jingling medals behind. Of course, had Jaysh known the old man was going to talk, he wouldn’t have made such a fuss. The occasional clink of steel was nothing compared to the incessant yammering of his tongue.
Young Jaysh, should the kryst be behind us.
Young Jaysh, should the kryst be standing so still?
Young Jaysh, should the kryst be standing so far behi—
“Young Jaysh?”
Jaysh winced, his teeth freezing on the vine within his jaw. He lay there playing opossum beneath his blankets and hoping feverishly that the old man might grow tired of calling his name, maybe roll over for a nice nap.
“Young Jaysh,” Serit called again, this time in that oh-so-annoying puppy dog whimper. “Young Jaysh, can you hear me? Are you still there?”
Spitting a stream of saliva into the reeds beneath his beard, Jaysh said, “I hear yeh.”
“Oh, good. Good,” the old man sighed, as if there were a chance Jaysh might have left. “Young Jaysh, do you remember what I said before about the, um…the kryst and its relevant histories, specifically the passages on puissance?”
Jaysh stared blankly at the prairie. He had no idea what that last word even meant, but at the same time he had no reason to believe Serit hadn’t mentioned it either.
This morning, after refusing the treetop attire and then whining about his medals, Serit had done nothing but make mention of the kryst. It was history-this and legend-that—blah, blah, blah—all the way from the doors of the stable to the hills of the Sway.
Wrinkling his face, Jaysh said, “I member yeh talkin, yeah.”
Serit’s camouflage rustled sharply. “Good, good. Well, young Jaysh, I was laying here, and I was revisiting those passages and entries and I…,” he released another high-pitched snivel, “…it occurred to me that we might have overlooked certain aspects of the kryst’s capacity that might be crucial for the success of our mission.”
Staring at the gap of light between the hillside and canvas, Jaysh said, “If’n you’re still worried bout that kryst wanderin off—”
“Oh, no. No, no. That’s not…It’s not the creature’s positioning that vexes me. It’s more the…um…,” he broke off in another groan, one that sounded like the ghost calls Gariel used to make when she’d learned Jaysh was sleeping on the Hill and had sneaked up there to give him a hard time.
Forcing the spectral cry from his head, Jaysh said, “Is it the just-standin-there part? Cause less’n there’s a—”
“I, uh…no. No, that’s…the passivity’s fine. It’s more the kinesthesia of the…the, uh…,” Serit trailed off again and this time Jaysh was worried. If the old man wasn’t upset about where the thing stood, or how the thing was standing, what else could there be?
Hazarding a guess, he said, “Are yeh thinkin it’ll leave us high’n dry? Cause it doan’ do that. I can tell yeh now it—”
“No,” Serit said, cutting him off. “It’s not that. Well, it is that. In a manner of speaking. Not that I believe the kryst will abandon you—I know it’s not permitted to—I’m just…I’m worried that it won’t…,” his voice cracked, ending in another puerile moan.
Jaysh sat up on his elbows and stopped chewing, a pang of worry suddenly flaring his chest. Normally, when it came to someone else’s fears—especially Serit’s fears—he simply considered the source and dismissed the matter. But all of a sudden, he couldn’t do that. All of a sudden, he felt as stiff as a board and as light as a feather, the general’s words growing loud in his ears.
The canvas beside him gave a creak and the old man within gave another groan. “I think—” Serit said “—I think I’ve made a horrible mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake. I think…I think the histories might be wrong, young Jaysh—I mean…I know they’re wrong. Sections of them are, at least—and the legends, too, for that matter—but if they’re both wrong this time—if the histories and the legends are mistaken—then I think…I think we may…,” he paused, swallowed hard, then said, in a strained tone of voice more frightening than the silence, “…we may be in grave danger.”
Jaysh took a breath and forced his jaw to resume chewing, still trying to prime the think-pump in his head. He could almost hear the machinery up there popping and snapping and struggling to roll.
Once they got going, he stopped chewing and said, “You’re thinkin all that cause’a them hist’ries?”
Serit’s concealment shook with what the woodsman could only assume was the nodding of a head.
Jaysh said, “But I thought you was the one what said the kryst—”
“I know what I said,” Serit hissed, “but that doesn’t make it true!”
Jaysh winced and drew back from the canvas. As he did, he heard his brother’s voice come to life in his head: And Serit…well, you know Serit. He had some issue with the kryst and the histories, something to do with the integrity of the Sway Mission…
Jaysh hadn’t been at the roundtable meeting when Iman laid out his plans for the kingdom’s salvation. He had given Iman his blessing—the king’s blessing, that was—and that had been the end of his involvement. After that, Iman and Gariel had tracked Jaysh down in the royal gardens, had delivered news of the meetings, and had assured him that all was well.
But what if it wasn’t? What if this was just one more of the good captain notorious screw-ups and the butcher’s daughter was simply backing him so she could be queen for a day? Because yesterday in the garden, hadn’t Brine seemed a bit nervous about the Leresh Mission?
Jaysh spit in the grass, his mind whirling with tales of the kryst, and said, “So you’re sayin that thing din’t really kill all them Lathians?”
“Yes. Yes, of course it did!” Serit bawled. “Of course, it did. At the end of the Lathian War, we followed the kryst down the southern road counting bodies all the way. It killed scores of Lathians, left the path red with blood, but…,” a weak rustling sound as the old man’s head turned slowly in disbelief, “…but that was a wholly different situation from what we’re doing now. We’d been attacked, young Jaysh. The king was responding to a crisis and, naturally, the kryst was there to protect him, but this…,” more weak rustling, “…this is different. This is us asking the kryst to kill on behalf of the kingdom—not the king—and there is no historical record indicating the kryst even understands the issues of the kingdom, let alone cares about them.”
Listening to the eerie calm of the Sway as it accentuated the gentle purring on his back, Jaysh said, “There
ain’t?”
“No,” Serit said, his tone sad. “There is not.”
Jaysh could feel a mild headache settling in. Either the buzz from his vine was starting to fade, or the Serit-induced stress was building in his temples.
Driving a finger into the side of his head, he said, “So what’re yeh sayin?”
“I am saying,” Serit went on, “that we can’t assume the kryst will fight unless…Well, unless you’re in danger.”
Jaysh frowned at this, thought about it, then said, “What about them uglins?”
“What uglings?”
“The ones them old kings sent the kryst—”
“Those are histories!” Serit all but cried. “See! Those are the entries I am speaking of, the entries we can’t prove! I know I sound like a crazed zealot, young Jaysh, but you must trust me on this point. I am speaking from several ages—No, no. I’m speaking from several generations of research, enough that I have actually lived through some of the histories, actually seen the events themselves and then read the poppycock that king’s put to parchment. The discrepancies are alarming, young Jaysh—Alarming! Some are outright lies and the others—those entries based on some semblance of truth—are clearly embellished.”
Wincing a little, Jaysh said, “Bellished?”
“It means,” Serit said, sounding like his will to live was draining away, “that the historians added to the entries so they would sound more impressive.”
Jaysh nodded, a picture of Iman passing before his mind’s eye. “Added to em, huh.”
“Yes. Whole passages of speculation. Page upon page of fiction. I’ve seen it, young Jaysh. Historians seeking recognition. Kings craving legacies. Adding a half-truth here, omitting the mundane there; in a sense, they are rewriting our pasts. They are changing the very face of our reality.”
Jaysh waited to see if he were finished—hoping that he were finished—then said, “But wudn’t it you what tol’ Iman—”
“I know what I told Iman, young Jaysh—I know! But you have to understand he was pressuring me—the council was pressuring me. They were staring at me and speaking with that tone that implies if I don’t have an answer then what good am I. And I just lost it! I told them everything, young Jaysh! The histories, the legends, everything that was written down! I told them everything!”
Jaysh hesitated, then said, “But not about them add-ons?”
“I tried,” Serit blurted. “Once my nerve returned, I did. I went to Iman the next day and tried to explain about artistic license and redaction, but he only…,” a quavering moan escaped his canvas, “…he only grinned at me. He grinned and told me we would be fine, that the kryst was our best chance at dispelling the mystery killer, and that we had to try and save the people of Jashandar, that I had to agree with that or I would be sentencing thousands of royal subjects to exile or death.”
Serit moaned again, this time louder. “So I did. I agreed with him. I told him it was worth a try, that I might be wrong. But don’t you see, young Jaysh, I had to say that. I had to. I didn’t want to be the one who said, ‘Don’t try,’ only to find out later we could have succeeded. I had to agree with him. I had to.”
Having lost numerous debates with the silver-tongued captain, Jaysh understood all too well what Serit was saying. He simply couldn’t tell the man. In the place in his brain where kind retorts were formed, he was still trying to wrap his mind around the precarious situation in which they now lay.
“So you’re tellin me—” he said, his voice clipped with exasperation “—that we’re layin out here in the open—” he paused to spit a streamer of saliva at the grass “—an’ we doan’ know the kryst is gona help?”
Serit swallowed hard, then whimpered out a sad little, “Yes.”
Jaysh lay there for a long time, the purring on his back becoming a deafening rumble.
Serit said, “And to be honest, young Jaysh, after what happened at the end of the Lathian War, I have often wondered if these krysts aren’t a sort of giant crystal lemming. After what we found in the castle upon our return, it makes me wonder if they aren’t simply waiting to fall over dead, without rhyme or reason.
“If Aden wasn’t an example of that, I don’t know what is. By all accounts, his demise was inexplicable. He’d faced more powerful enemies than Lathian spies, and in far great numbers. In fact, compared with the forces Lorn overcame that very day in Lathia, the attack that ended Aden’s life was a trifle, a silly joke.
“So who is to say this situation will be any different, young Jaysh? Who is to say that if Lorn’s capable of thwarting the mystery killer, he actually will?”
Jaysh opened his mouth to ask just why in Sira’s Black Pit the kryst wouldn’t help, but as he did something got in the way. He had no idea what Serit was talking about. Oh, he’d heard about the Lathians and the Lathian War, but who was this Aden? Or Lorn?
Cocking his ear at the pasture, he said, “Come again?”
“I said,” Serit repeated, “for all we know, Lorn may take one look at this mission and—”
“Who’s Lorn?”
There was a cricketless silence for a time, then Serit said, “Who’s Lorn?”
Jaysh didn’t like the sound of that. He disliked it so much that he went ahead and didn’t respond, aware of a tightening in his ribcage that was slowing becoming a stitch.
Serit said, “Young Jaysh, are you not feeling well again?”
As fate would have it, Jaysh wasn’t feeling well, but his current affliction had to do with the imminent demise he and Serit were apt to suffer, not the grief-induced amnesia to which the general was referring.
This misdiagnosis had come about several days prior when Jaysh had disclosed to Serit and Iman that he did not remember a castle kryst or a kryst that followed his father.
Later, when Serit and the council had questioned Jaysh about this, the woodsman couldn’t rightly tell them he had no memory of the past the ten ages. He certainly couldn’t tell them about the hovering green square in the midst of his mind. If they thought he was mad now, what would they say after hearing that?
Bearing that in mind, he did what anyone would have done in such circumstances and lied through his teeth. Well, in truth, the council did the lying for him. He simply stood there looking sad and nodding his head.
When it was pointed out—by multiple parties—that Jaysh had not only seen the krysts, but had been protected by one and, later, rescued by the other, the council was quick to concoct this grief-induced amnesia theory.
Poor Jaysh, who hadn’t cared two licks for the old king let alone grieve for him, had simply gone along with it.
Serit said, “Young Jaysh?”
Jaysh chewed his vine slowly, thinking about whether or not he wanted to have this uncomfortable conversation. The answer, of course, was no, but he didn’t know how to pull that off. He lay there and he chewed and eventually a thought—like a far and distant campfire—took light in his mind.
It was an old trick he’d seen Iman use on a number of occasions, a ploy the good captain used to fool attractive women into believing he was more intelligent that he actually was. Of course, in Jaysh’s case, there was a good possibility the ploy wouldn’t work, given his dearth of acuity and his great lack of sociability, but what did he have to lose?
Taking a deep breath to steady the quaver in his voice, he said, “D’jou say Lorn?”
From the canvas beside him, another spell of ringing silence, followed by General Branmore saying, “I did.”
“Hmph,” Jaysh said, glad the old man couldn’t see the grimace on his face. “I thought yeh said somethin else.”
“So you do remember Lorn?” Serit asked, sounding skeptical.
Jaysh clenched the vine between his teeth. He hated lying to Serit—hated it like giving Zeph a swift kick in the head—but anything was better than talking about the blockage in his mind.
He drew another deep breath and said, “Yeah, I member im.”
; “And you remember Aden, as well”
Jaysh frowned, but managed to say, “Yeah.”
Serit stewed in the silence of the prairie, seemed to be on the verge of challenging the young woodsman on this pint, then said, “Well, in that case, you know exactly what I’m driving at, do you not?”
“I, uh…,” Jaysh faltered, thought the ruse was up, then remembered another of Iman’s tricks and said, “…do you?”
“I believe I do,” Serit said. “It seems to me that if Aden had it within his being to fail the royal family against a threat well beneath his prowess, the same possibility exists for Lorn to fail his king—And that was the connection I tried explaining to young Iman, the connection between the two krysts. But the good captain, as you know, would not listen.”
“Uh-huh,” Jaysh said, happy the focus was shifting to his dear old friend. “Iman’s like that.”
“Yes, he is,” Serit insisted, “although…wasn’t he acting under your orders?”
“My, uh…,” Jaysh scratched his beard, “…yeah. Yeah, I guess he was.”
“Well, then, he’d have to listen to you again, would he not? If you were to explain to him what you saw that day?”
Jaysh felt stiff and light again. “What day was that?”
“The day Aden fell,” Serit said, as if it were obvious. “It would be most credible coming from you, young Jaysh. You actually saw the kryst fail, the only living person to do so. We have secondhand accounts from those who responded to the screams, the handful of people who were walking down the streets and responded to the cries, and of course the detritus we found in the castle halls…but if you could detail those events in your own words.”
Jaysh said nothing, only stared ahead.
“I’m sure those memories are painful, young Jaysh, which is why I have never asked you to share them, but now—seeing how we might be at risk…And knowing I’d never ask you to do so if I didn’t thi—”
“Serit.”
Serit hesitated, as if slapped, then said, “Yes.”
“Yeh need to hush.”
“Oh, I’m…I’m sorry, young Jaysh. Am I upsetting you?”
“Huh-uh,” Jaysh said, staring across the basin, “there somethin over there.”
