An Elegy of Heroes

by K. S. Villoso

  “Didn’t say you weren’t. But keep silent. We’re safe on the road so long as you keep quiet.”

  “It’s all just stories, isn’t it?” He glanced back at the shadows, remembering the tales the men used to share when they got bored. There were things there, the men had said. No smirking or glancing at each other, as he had come to know men who ridiculed him did. You saw them sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the fogged light. People had walked into the forest and never returned. Babies had been found that needed to be killed, their teeth as sharp as needles, their cries a beast’s wail into the night.

  The clerics forbade such stories, of course—the wood was sacred to Yohak, the Chief Kag god, and it wasn’t as if everybody saw or believed otherwise. But Kefier had grown under a different god, Ab, the one the Kags called Arfaraw, who battled demons and other gods and was scarred all over, and who watched you when he could, but not always. Not always. They used to light incense at the edge of the wood where Kefier once lived, to appease spirits they couldn’t see or fight themselves. They even left food offerings sometimes.

  He took a deep breath. He was older than he used to be and it was about time he looked at things from a man’s perspective. He didn’t feel like it, though. Thunder cracked through the sky, and he felt even worse. Soon the light would be gone. Now…

  The rain started falling then, shifting the air into a pale, hazy, streaked-grey. The driver pulled his cloak up over his neck. Kefier, without a cloak or a blanket, wrapped an empty sack over his head. Distracted by the sudden cold and the foggy scent of wet earth, he didn't notice the cart stop or the stranger pull up beside him until they were well on their way again.

  “Hello,” the man said after a few moments. There was a strange expression on his face. He was wearing brown and tan riding leathers. His eyes were brown—no, green. Grey. Kefier blinked, unsure. What stood out was his voice, which was very smooth, like a singer’s.

  “Good weather, this,” Kefier mumbled, looking around him.

  “Barely. Good is when it starts to rain like God’s pissed at us.”

  “You mean when it rains like God’s pissing on us.”

  The man smirked. “I like that.”

  “I’d prefer we stay away from blasphemy until we get off the road,” the driver interjected.

  “Begging your pardon, but does not Yohak of the Wood live here? Hence, God-talk being appropriate…”

  “They don’t like it.” Without taking his eyes off his horse, the driver jerked a thumb to the forest and then promptly bit it.

  “You farmers are all the same. There’s a lot of potential for some of these woods, but heaven forbid we touch them for fear of stirring some goblin or another.”

  “I’m sorry. Not goblins,” the driver corrected. “Demons. If you talk about them some more I will throw you both on the road.”

  “Me too? I didn’t even say anything,” Kefier mumbled.

  Both men ignored him. “Listen to this. An entire farm in Tirador, torched by some feud or another. Blamed on these things.”

  “The children were found dead on the field,” the driver said. “Their eyes were taken.”

  “You blame these things, and so the real villains run off without a taint to their name.”

  “The feuding family’s children were also killed. Their farm was not torched. There was a fight going on, as it happened. When they returned with their men injured and dead they found their children as such. Bloodless, too. Explain that.”

  Clearly, the man didn’t know this part of the story and fell silent, chewing on his lip. Kefier took this time to offer him an onion. The man looked at him again, puzzled, and Kefier had to nudge it at him before he accepted. Kefier noticed that he glanced at the forest from time to time while he peeled the skin.

  “How are you?” the man asked, after a moment.

  Kefier turned to him. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “That’s just my way of getting acquainted. My name is Doras.” He held out his hand.

  “Kefier.”

  Doras noted that he didn’t return the handshake, and dropped his hand to the side with a rueful smile. “In Gaspar, your name sounds like the word for cultured milk.”

  “So I’ve been told.” He sniffed. “It’s actually Ke-if, but in Kagtar—”

  Doras smiled. “I know.” There was another long silence. “Well, Kefier, I just wanted to say that you look well. Like you just crawled out of a horse’s ass.”

  Kefier wanted to laugh at that, but the exhaustion was beginning to crawl all over him. He dropped his head. “I’m sorry. I just spent the last few days in a very uncomfortable situation, mourning men I was proud to call my friends. Then I wake up here, and nothing, absolutely nothing makes sense. Hey, you,” he called to the driver. “How did I get here?”

  The driver didn’t even hesitate. “I picked you up from the side of the road.”

  “Just out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “Sure.” His tone was dull.

  “And you’re dropping me off at Vildar because you just happen to be heading that way.”

  “Yup.”

  It made so little sense to him that he was afraid to question the man further. It was a probably a ploy by Gaven. What he’d done the past few days wasn’t enough, so now he was going to try to break him like this. Show a man the sky after so many days of darkness, then take it away again, and how close to madness can you get?

  Doras’ calm voice broke his thoughts. “So I take it you won’t be staying in Vildar. Are you going home, then?”

  Kefier struggled to reply to that with a straight face. “Cairntown was my home the last few years. Now if I go back they will kill me.”

  Another pause. “You must have been born somewhere else.”

  “I was born in Gorent, actually.”

  “Then why not go back?”

  He smiled. “Because if I go back there, they’ll want to kill me, too.”

  Instead of laughing, Doras looked sombre. “I find that hard to believe. Don’t you have family? If you’ve been gone as long as you say, then they must miss you.”

  Kefier resisted the urge to jump off the cart. It was rolling fast and although he doubted the fall would kill him, he was hurting too much to risk more pain. He detested the audacity of this Doras, though. Those were questions even Oji had never asked. The answers to them remained buried in the past, where they belonged. He took a deep breath. “If I can, I’d like to go back to Jin-Sayeng. There’s a woman.”

  “Ah,” Doras said. “There always is.”

  He didn’t want to say more than he already did. He thought of how Lisa had once told him she wouldn’t mind living in Jin-Sayeng, if it’s better than this wormhole, and now that the wormhole was closed to him he wondered if she would remember those words. If he could ever send a message to her. If she would still take him, or talk to him at all.

  “There’s this story I read once of how a woman undid the most powerful mage in the history of Dageis. Here in the Kag, they call her the Witch of the East. Have you heard of her?”

  Kefier shook his head. The man settled against the sacks behind him, chewing on the onion. His mouth was a thin line. “There was a witch in far off Gaspar who sewed together a bunch of dead children and created a creature so hideous and evil that to gaze upon it, they said, would turn anyone’s soul black.”

  “What a load of nonsense,” the driver snorted. “Souls don't have colour.”

  Kefier gazed at the moving road underneath him, his thoughts turning as the wheels of the cart turned. He touched Oji’s sword. Everything seemed to catch up to him at that moment. He closed his eyes. Doras said, “I’m sure you don’t have stories like that where you come from.”

  “No,” he agreed, eyes still closed. “We have ah—nothing. Stories about the winds and the sea. Nothing so morbid.”

  “Then your family, who wants to kill you, probably won’t. Whatever you did. This, here, is not a quiet land.”r />
  “More bullshit,” the driver quipped. “We haven’t had a war in years. Peace and prosperity for all.”

  “Peace never lasts for long,” he said.

  They grew silent again. Stories, Kefier thought, opening his eyes now to gaze at his surroundings. The Kag Forest took up much of the lands west of Kago, where Cairntown lay. It sprawled through the land like a maze or a blanket, depending on which historian you read. The provinces of Cael and Kiel had managed to settle in the midst of this dark wood, while the kingdom of Hafod had to deal with it to the south and east of their boundaries.

  Nobody had ever explored the wood fully, Kefier had been told. Oh yes, some had tried. It wasn’t just the stories, though. Whichever way you looked at it, there were reasons for avoiding that wilderness. The god who walked around in penance. Spirits. Wild animals. Unmapped mountain ridges. Locals who would just as rather stab you and make off with your money than assist you. Even the Boarshind didn't like taking clients that wanted them to do things in those woods—Baeddan was still a Kag at heart and had been known on one occasion to say that he would rather cut an arm off than send his men that close to Cael. It was a humbling thought.

  “What's the worst thing they can do to you, anyway?” he remembered Oji asking someone who had been born and raised in Cael.

  “The god is feared for good reason,” the man had said. “And wild animals can be killed. But the others? I don’t think fear even begins to describe how I look at it. When they kill you, you don’t just die. They claim your soul for their own—your soul won’t travel through the agan river. It just stays behind, as its slave.”

  Jin-Sayeng’s stories, like Gorent’s, were tame in comparison. In Jin-Sayeng, they had dragons, and stories of little men who lived under mushrooms and gave you gold if you were polite enough. Granted, knowing his tongue, he was likely to get cursed and start pissing blood instead, but that was still better than this. And ghosts. Why not ghosts? Ghosts just needed help, right? If they didn’t scare you first with all the moaning and the blood. Kefier paused from his musing and noticed that they had entered an open field. The wood was a disappearing blanket behind them.

  Doras had been napping, but when Kefier looked at him he woke up. He glanced at the horizon. “I guess this is good bye, then,” he said, smiling at Kefier. There was a hint of sadness in his eyes.

  “Don’t you want me to take you all the way to town?” the driver asked.

  “Got business here. Thanks.” He flipped a coin. The driver caught it.

  “Take care,” he said. He started to lift his hand in a kind of gesture, but seemed to change his mind. He pushed himself off the moving cart. It was only when the man was no longer in sight that Kefier realized he had left a bundle behind. He took it with him when the driver eventually dropped him off, hoping he would run into him again in the future.

  Vildar echoed a youthful Cairntown, bustling and crowded, peppered with hues of brown and red instead of sand and grey. Several street vendors shouted behind stalls. A few sluggish horses trotted by, dragging carts while their sultry-looking masters whipped them to motion. Children darted through the streets. And there was, of course, the occasional passer-by, who looked at Kefier and stared as if he ought to be somewhere else—most of them fair-haired and pale-skinned.

  He longed to mingle with them, to explore the streets and shadows to his heart’s content as he had done in Fuyyu. But he realized, with growing alarm, that it didn’t seem possible. If he had stuck out in Fuyyu like a sore thumb, here he was apparent as an extra head. The further he got into town, the more he saw people gazing open-mouthed at him.

  It wasn’t long before someone came up to clasp a hand around his shoulder. He jerked back, reaching for his sword, and noticed that it was a man dressed in leather armour. He knew about guards from his time in Fuyyu and froze. The guard pointed at him. “You’re new in town?”

  He nodded. The guard frowned. “Any reason you’re here?”

  “I’m visiting an uncle,” he said quickly. “He’s sick. Wasn’t very careful in Cairntown. Went to a seedy whorehouse.”

  The guard didn’t look amused. “Can you tell me where he lives?”

  “Down the ah—” He was going to say harbour before he realized where he was.

  “You’ll have to come with me.”

  Kefier lifted his head. “Why? I’ve done nothing.” He felt his muscles tense. He had just been inside a dungeon. The guard reached for him, and without thinking, he pulled out his sword. He hadn’t known that there were two other guards behind. They fell on him. His battered body wouldn’t allow him to fight any more and he allowed them to drag him down the street.

  The only other occupant was a heavyset man, young, perhaps only a few years older than Kefier. His hair was a full golden yellow, not the deep, muddy colour of Kefier’s, but near that of dandelions. His serene expression was out of place against the shadows under his eyes, the stubble around his face, and the filth blanketing his forehead and cheeks. “My mother named me Camden,” his cell-mate continued. “You are?”

  “Kefier,” he said. He glanced at the room beyond the bars—it was empty, save for a wooden door at the other end. “You don’t sound like you’re from here.”

  “I’m thinking you’re not, either.”

  “So we’re here because we’re strangers?”

  “They’re idiots, you ken. I just arrived from Nalvor, port south west of here. I believe it’s having something to do with papers, or a lacking of them. I have never heard of such a thing before, yeah? I’ve been sitting here for five days.”

  “How long before they kill us?”

  “Bout five more days, I suppose.” Kefier paled, and Camden gave a short bark of laughter. “You’re not acting as tough as you look. I don’t know. Perhaps they’re planning to keep us until we turn out to be not criminals, yeah?”

  Kefier swore under his breath. “Where did you say you were from?”

  “I didn’t, but I’ll say. I’m from Baidh.”

  “Across Hafod?” Kefier asked.

  Camden nodded. “Small island country. Beautiful place. And friendly people, I’m thinking, not like the bastards here, yeah? Mother of mine! Forgive my language.”

  Kefier swallowed. “Do you know a family by the name of Lawin?”

  “No. Larwin, you say? Even then. I can't say I have. Why?”

  “My mother was raised in Baidh.” He was surprised at how easily the words came out. Something to do with the last few days, perhaps, and how close he’d been to death since.

  Camden’s brow shot up. “You’re half-Baidh?”

  “No. I mean—” He rubbed his wrist, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden. Why was he blabbing to this man anyway? But it felt wrong to stop now. “My mother grew up in Baidh, although she was of Gorent stock. A family by the name of Lawin adopted her. She returned to Gorent to marry my father.”

  “Gorent. I should’ve guessed. Your colouring’s about right. We’re having a few Gorentens in my parents’ farmstead working for us. Good folks. But your accent’s a bit different, yeah? Not as thick as I’m used to. You’ve been in the Kag long?”

  “Long enough.” Why not go back? He struggled to keep a straight face.

  “I’ll be telling the truth, now.” Camden's expression hardened. “I was here having to do some important business. A friend of mine got married three years ago and had a son. Boy took after her, yeah? Her eyes and hair and everything, out the crib. I was his godfather. Her husband got a bit of fortune. Not a lot, But he thought to take her and the boy for a trip up to the mainland. They were wanting to see Nalvor, and Cael, glorious Cael, pay a visit to the temple of the great mother there. I heard it’s a grand sight, white marble and stone…”

  “What happened?”

  “They were going back along the road when the boy disappeared. She only turned her head once and he was gone. Her husband stayed in the mainland to find him. He told me when he returned he couldn’t find anyone to help look
for the boy. People said it’s been happening all over and that he wasn’t the only one. I wanted to help them out best way I can. So here I am.”

  The door swung open, halting their conversation. A man walked in, clothed lavishly in shades of blue. He held a hat in his hands, which he wrung sideways as he stared at Kefier and Camden. His eyes were weepy.

  “You can speak Kagtar?” he asked.

  “Last time I checked,” Camden said.

  The man jerked his head back, to an unseen figure behind him. Then he took a step, as if to take a closer look, his nose wrinkling. “Even that one?” he asked, pointing at Kefier.

  “So the Kags lack manners even in Cael,” Kefier murmured.

  The man wiped his face with his hat and chose to face Camden instead. “A bad time for you both to be abroad. We’ve had too many—incidents.”

  “What incidents?” Camden asked.

  The man shrugged, wiping his face again.

  “What incidents?” Camden repeated, grabbing the bars with both hands. The man jumped back involuntarily—Camden cast a huge shadow over him.

  “Attacks on the farms and fields, dead livestock…”

  “Missing children?” Kefier ventured, much too quickly.

  The man raised his eyebrows, then turned around and shut the door behind him. The voices died down. Camden shuffled back to his seat and gave a deep sigh. “You just had to open your big mouth, yeah?”

  “What did I do?”

  “Now he’s thinking we know more than we should.” He shrugged. “Can’t say I’m blaming you, though. It’s unsettling, all these things.”

  “You think it has anything to do with those demons? From the wood, like they say?”

  “I’m thinking they’re just children’s stories, yeah?” Camden was visibly amused. He began to swing his legs back and forth, like a pendulum. Kefier watched the movement, for lack of anything else to watch. “I’ve been reading of them. You’re thinking they have something to do with farm attacks and dead livestock?”

  “Maybe.” Kefier shrugged. He saw that Camden had lost interest in him and was peering through the small window above them. He was tall enough to lean against the sill comfortably while standing on the bench. “What’s happening?” Kefier asked. He paused and heard faint music coming from outside.