by Stefon Mears
“How would he get it in, in the first place?” Qalas asked.
“A plank at a time,” Amra said, smiling now and warming to the topic, “along with shipwrights, sailmakers, and the rest of whatever the ship needed.”
“That’s assuming,” Cavan joined in — he couldn’t help himself — “that he needs to put something in to pull it out. What if—”
“If I may,” Ehren said, and Amra bowed her head in smiling deference to him. At least, on this topic, and for the time being.
Cavan and Qalas nodded to him, encouragingly.
“Thank you,” Ehren said, then turned to Reesa. “In truth, I suspect this backpack holds more secrets than even I know, and I’ve been its custodian these past fifteen summers.”
“Custodian?” Reesa asked, around a mouthful of sausage.
“That is how I choose to see my role,” he answered with a shrug. “I was but a boy, studying at the temple then. During morning prayers one day, a wounded man burst in.”
Ehren frowned at the memory. “His heritage, impossible to place. I would have sworn he had the thick teeth and shoulders of a man with orc blood, but the fine, almost pointed ears and tree bark brown shade to his skin as though he had forest elf blood. And yet the better part of his features seemed human.”
“What was he fleeing?”
“We never got to find out. Whatever it was, it never reached us. Perhaps it could not approach a place sacred to Zatafa.” Ehren shrugged. “I reached the dying man first. He reeked of blood and sweat, offal and hard travel. I gave him water. There was little else to do, save prepare him for his journey to the afterlife. His entrails hung behind him, and some of them were missing. He didn’t even have much blood left to bleed.”
“What happened?”
“I was the first to reach him, but others were only a step behind. They began assessments of what, honestly, we already knew but needed to verify, and then to do what our prayers could do to ease his suffering before he passed beyond.”
Ehren drew a long, slow breath. The air was still enough that Cavan could hear each pop of the fire, and the distant cry of a wrest bird.
“He did not try to save his own life. Most men, they would have clutched their entrails. Tried to stuff them back inside, as if by primal need. The recognition that what was outside needed to be inside.”
Ehren slowly shook his head. His voice grew quieter. As somber as Cavan ever heard him.
“Instead, he clutched this backpack instead of bits of himself.” Ehren shook his head again, slowly. “I do not know if I could have done the same.”
Ehren blinked as though coming out of a trance.
“Either way, as his last act in this world, he thrust this backpack past two other, more advanced novitiates and into my arms. His lips moved with words, but I could not hear them, and I did not recognize the pattern his lips formed.”
“I have been its custodian ever since. And though I sincerely doubt that its interior could provide the air needed for living beings” — Ehren raised a droll eyebrow at Amra — “anything else I can fit inside it, seems to await my need.”
“So you do have to put things in, before you can take them out,” Qalas said. “I’d started to wonder.”
“Perhaps,” Ehren said, mirth in his eyes again and his natural smile back in place. “Or perhaps its custodian must keep certain secrets to himself.”
“In either case,” Cavan said through a deep breath, “we’ve finished eating. And now we have more weighty matters before us.”
Comparing details about what Cavan and his friends had noticed during the ghostly battle did not take long. It was the sort of thing that three of them had done many times before — gone over something they’d witnessed, to make sure they each had all information available for their assessments.
Qalas had only been through it once or twice, for he had not been with them all that long, but he had fallen quickly into the efficient, swift distribution of information.
Each person made statements about what he or she observed, first the simple facts, then conclusions that could be drawn with a high degree of certainty. Lower certainty speculations were left for later, and all questions were confined to details and clarifications.
Reesa, of course, had probably never seen anything like this before. But then, Cavan suspected that she had never seen anything like a ghostly battle scene before either. So she would most certainly have been excused, had she failed to contribute anything to the general knowledge base.
Amra began things, of course. She had noted the arms and armor of the raiders, their numbers — a dozen knights attacked by twice that many raiders — as well as that those raiders struck on foot, yet slaughtered horses.
This meant that their own horses were hobbled in the distance, likely toward the outside edge of the small woods, in the direction they’d ridden from.
These details also meant that the raiders knew exactly where to find their foes, what they needed to do once they found them, and that there was no risk of returning with booty they could not carry.
In other words, this was no simple banditry. Even the most incompetent bandits would keep horses rather than butcher them.
This assault was intended as a massacre.
Ehren did not know much of tactics or weapons, but he noted that the knights had seemed to keep no watch. Every one of the ghostly knights had arisen as though from sleep. So they clearly felt they were in safe territory. He also raised the question — in case anyone had observed a potential answer — of why they were traveling together.
Amra, however, pointed out that they might have had scouts or watchers who were killed in silence, before the battle proper had begun.
Reesa suggested they might have been part of a larger force.
Amra pointed out, however, that a battle like the one they witnessed would have been heard for some distance. Drawn aid for the knights, if they’d had a larger force nearby.
No slouch with a bow himself, Qalas had more to say about the archery. The raiders had brought only the one archer, which he, Cavan, and Amra all agreed was strange. The knights all wore armor. Why would the raiders not soften up their foes before the slaughter?
And yet, only one archer fired arrows into the melee. An archer who waited until the battle was well underway, then struck with the accuracy — and the fletchings — of a forest elf. Further, the archer seemed to show no concern over whether his or her arrows struck knights or raiders.
Or, to be more precise, that archer targeted both sides.
Amra then postulated that both sides needed to die during the fight.
Discussing that took some time, because it seemed so unusual from a tactical perspective, but Cavan tied it all together with an observation of his own.
Cavan pointed out that if both sides died by violence, while battling each other, their spirits would be filled with the fire of combat. That passion, that bloodlust, would cling to their spirits, as well as seep into the very bones of the combatants when their bodies died.
Cavan’s theory: necromancy.
The necromancer would have had to act quickly, to achieve the maximum benefit from the slaughter. The passions of the dying were known to fade rapidly from their bodies, though Cavan believed the effect on the spirit lasted longer.
But then, Cavan’s knowledge of necromancy was cursory and theoretical.
Still, the concept was troubling enough that he had to pursue his theory to its end.
Cavan’s theory continued that it was likely that the raiders, and the archer, were both sent by the same necromancer to slaughter the knights. The raiders likely didn’t know the archer existed until the arrows started flying. The archer made sure no one left alive, and reported back when the battle finished.
The necromancer could then have come to the woods and raised a number of … high quality servants.
Cavan hadn’t been able to call them “good” servants.
In fact, Cavan considered it the most like
ly possibility that the necromancer had ridden out with the archer as his or her personal guard, in order to be on hand as soon as the slaughter was complete.
Ehren confirmed that wanton slaughter for necromancy was just the sort of thing that Istanlos would regard as a great offense. All the more so if the knights had been in the service of the necromancer in the first place.
That was a thought none of them enjoyed, but none could dispute was a possibility.
Amra pointed out that there may have been a more mundane answer. It might have been a noble hiring raiders to be rid of a rival and that rival’s supporters. The raiders would have been killed to remove witnesses.
If so, there was a simple way to determine which theory was more likely correct.
They spread out and searched the area.
Alas, it did not take long to determine that no graves or cairns stood nearby. And digging shallowly into the dirt showed no signs that bones had simply been left behind, either, to say nothing of any armor and weapons.
No, it seemed to be likely that Cavan was right. And that the necromancer might even have raised the horses to serve in death, as they had in life.
And this was why Ehren, Amra, Qalas and Reesa all then stood to one side of the clearing, while Cavan alone stood in the center.
The fire had been extinguished and its remains scattered. The bedrolls all gathered and put back in the saddle bags of their horses.
The clearing was as smooth as they could make it, given their attempts to discover any lingering remains.
Cavan did not relish what he had to do. Detecting active magic and strong enchantments, that sort of work was easy. If they were strong enough, he did not even need a spell to enhance his perceptions.
Even lingering spells could draw his attention, if they were the right type of spells.
But this…
Cavan had no way of knowing how much time had passed since the necromancer had raised all these knights, raiders, and steeds. Assuming Cavan had been right in the first place. Assuming that this was what happened.
It might have been…
No.
This was not the time for might-have-beens.
Cavan believed he was right. Ehren seemed to agree that it would be sufficient offense against Istanlos to cause that scene to be repeated. And to get them this quest.
Besides, if Cavan was wrong, he would recover from the blinding headache.
Cavan stood alone in the center of the dirt clearing. Overhead the sky was clear, and pale blue. The sun still hours from its apex. He stood ringed by pale evergreens whose breed and nature he did not know.
Ordinarily, that would have been fine. But for what Cavan was doing now, what he did not know could prove dangerous.
So the first thing he did was note the evergreens, each of the closest about a half-dozen strides away. Their dark needles smelled sweet, slightly sticky. Their bark, so much more like beech in color than even the pines Cavan had seen around Drien.
Cavan drew slow, deep breaths of late summer air. Cool, this far north, but not yet cold. Hints of rain on the air, coming west from the Wailing Woods. But rain that would not be here until at least the morrow.
Cavan separated out the feel of that breeze on his skin, the scent of rain it carried. Narrowed his focus onto the trees.
Twice before, Cavan had met trees that could uproot themselves and walk. Could lash out with their limbs, and even creak and groan in patterns that formed a language of a kind.
Cavan had learned to feel the nature of such trees, to ensure that he never unknowingly harmed one.
These evergreens around Cavan now, they were not walking trees. Though Cavan might not know their breed, he could tell now with certainty that they were trees like most others. None even played host to dryads, or other active forest spirits. Or at least, none close enough to merit Cavan’s attention at the moment.
One layer of potential interference removed.
The next would have been Cavan’s friends, but they had been good enough to remove themselves out of the clearing into the woods. Not by far, it was true, but far enough that their presence would not matter much.
This clearing might not have formed a perfect circle, but it was not far off. It was close enough that, if Cavan was right, a necromancer could confine his magics within it.
Now that Cavan was confident that nothing along the ring of the clearing could distract him, he was ready to proceed with his working.
The limitations of Cavan’s aborted training would make his task only more difficult. Had he been fully trained, he might have known conjugations and declensions of the verb Neel, which governed most forms of magical detection, that would have stretched further into the past. Or any of the right place nouns to target his efforts. Perhaps even the nouns for the right kind of…
But Cavan did not know these things, and he thrust from his attention concerns about knowledge he did not possess.
Instead, he focused on what he could do, and how he believed he could determine what magics, if any, had been done here.
Cavan began with the simplest approach. All part of tuning himself to understand what was now, so he could better determine what was then.
“Neela asa,” he whispered, and gave himself time to adjust to the enhancement of his wizard sight.
Those pale evergreens all now glowed flickering green with the auras of their lives. The reds and yellows of his friends, easily spotted, then ignored. The sky above, paled from blues to faint shades of gray.
And here within the clearing itself, the ground…
The dirt here should, if anything, have become a darker brown. Full of the potential of life, or perhaps flickering here and there with the auras of other things worth finding, if they happened to be near enough to the surface.
In fact, if there were bodies or other remains here within the clearing, especially remains of those who had died by violence, Cavan would have spotted violet tinges or flashes to mark them.
But the dirt here had a faint aura of a deep vermilion.
That was a sign of magical interference here. Some great working, if not recent.
Had Cavan been a better wizard, he might have been able to puzzle through characteristics about that working from the aura that remained. But it was too old for him. Too faint. All the clues that a more powerful wizard might have gleaned from merely examining the aura were clues that lay beyond his skill.
But Cavan was definitely on the right track. And he knew a way to learn what he needed to know.
The key then, was to hook into that aura, and trace it back to its roots.
Cavan gave himself to the working then. He might not have been fully trained as a wizard, but he had continued his training on his own after he was sent away by Master Powys. Cavan had kept up all the exercises, and continued to push and learn as much as he could, whenever he had the opportunity.
What was more, Cavan had combined his lessons in wizardry with those things he had learned in his training to become a warrior.
No matter what Amra would have said, the two approaches had interesting parallels.
One such parallel was that, when the time came to act, the time to think had passed.
So Cavan trusted to his limited training and broader experience. He chanted, focusing on his goal rather than the words he chose. Gestured when his hands knew to gesture. And pulled the right bits of herbs and other components whenever the spell he was developing called for them.
In this way, Cavan dug a path into that vermilion aura, and traced it back through time itself. Gripped and clung and climbed through the past, while the aura seemed to fight him, shifting and twisting as though to throw off his mind and leave Cavan’s sense of self somewhere in the past, perhaps even with no way back to his body.
But of tenacity Cavan had a surfeit. He clung and chanted and pushed his way deeper through that aura. Compelling, then demanding that it reveal the secrets of its origin.
At first, this showed him nothin
g but the aura itself, an all-encompassing color that carried with it a kind of distant cold.
But Cavan fought and struggled with that aura, as though he were catching a fish with his bare hands, and it represented the first food he’d even seen in over a week.
Sometimes, in any struggle, the held and the holder twist the same way at the same time. In that moment, it is as though the holder needs no effort at all.
Cavan achieved such a moment and used it to thrust as far as he could, as fast as he could, into the depths of that vermilion aura.
A trap lay waiting.
Just like that, the vermilion was gone.
Darkness. Confinement on all sides. Cavan, in a coffin. The coffin underground. Chilling to the bone. The smell of decay, grave mold and ancient dust.
Not just a coffin. Chains. Just as ancient. Iron colder than death itself. Fixed to his wrists and arms, ankles and legs.
Cavan’s armor, gone. His sword, his pouch of spells, even his friends — all gone. Cavan alone. Confined. Facing the end of all.
What heat Cavan possessed leached out of him through those chains. Slowly. Like bleeding to death by drops.
No.
There had to be a way through this. Out of it. He was not in a coffin. He was not chained. Cavan knew these things. His body stood in a dirt clearing while his mind dug into the details of a spell…
And yet that chill was there, leaching away his strength. His sense of self. His limbs, unmoving. No way to escape.
No! This simply could not be.
Cavan summoned to his mind the image of that vermilion aura. The feel of it, its distant chill a different quality than the very present chill all about him.
The vermilion aura was a truth. Its distant cold was a truth. The clearing was a truth. This casket, these ancient iron chains, these things were lies.
All of the bindings on Cavan, they were lies.
He was caught in a lie.
Truth. The answer was truth. He needed truth stronger than the lies that held him.
Cavan pressed against those lies with the truth of the spell he sought — its aura, its chill — but it was too new, too unknown. The source of more questions than answers.
