by Ember Lane
“Just what is this?” Desmelda asked.
But Frank didn’t answer. He tore forward, running at the line of guardians. Scaramanza descended, lopping the tip off a spear as Frank kicked out at a guardian and forced it out of line. It doubled over, but quickly recovered and grabbed at Frank’s outstretched boot. Frank’s quickly drew his foot into his body as he swiveled to one side. Like a striking snake, his foot then struck the adjacent guardian in its side while Scaramanza counterbalanced him and stabbed at another. The guardian in front of him recovered fast, striking Frank’s undefended stomach. Frank toppled backwards, but he rolled with the fall and jumped back up a couple of yards in front of the line.
Billy yelled and then stomped forward. His swished his elfen sword about as if a blur of steel would be defense enough, but Billy hadn’t seen the guardians in action when they’d taken on the dastaries. Within an instant, they’d snagged his blade and sat him on his butt. Merl ran into the line while he screamed at the top of his voice. Cleaver raised, he fell on the closest guardian, slashing his vicious weapon down and rending an arm from his target. He sailed through the line as they parted for him, and he stumbled when the expected resistance evaporated. Merl clattered to the stone floor, sliding along it, spread-eagle. His cleaver slid away.
Billy jumped back up and roared in fury. Frank joined in, jumped forward to engage the enemy again. Red magic hit the guardian line. Huge vines materialized out of nowhere, snapping around the guardians and binding them tightly. The guardians shimmered, breaking Desmelda’s magical bonds easily, but Frank had already taken advantage of their momentary bondage and use Scaramanza to behead one and decapitate another. As soon as the guardians were free, they closed on Frank. One picked him up as if he weighed nothing and tossed him like matchwood.
Frank sailed through the air, crashing onto the floor. He bounced and rolled until he smacked into a stone pillar. Billy yelped as the guardians then surrounded him, pummeling him to the floor making him cry out in pain. Adrenaline rushed through Merl. He scrambled toward his cleaver, only to see Quaiyl standing impassively before it. Merl grabbed its handle, then sprung to his feet. “Help us!” he screamed at the construct, before whipping around and diving into the guardians that surrounded Billy.
Once again, and even though none were turned towards him, all parted for Merl, who crashed through the group and onto Billy. Billy’s upturned elfen sword speared Merl’s gut as Merl fell towards his friend. Merl screamed in shock and pain when the cold steel slid through him. Billy’s blade sliced at Merl’s lung. Merl burped blood. Landing on Billy, Merl heard his friend scream in anguish, but it was like Billy was in a distant place, and he was receding all the time.
“No! Merl, no! No! Frank! Desmelda! Help me!” Billy’s pleas grew fainter.
Merl became cold, very cold. He rolled off Billy while his friend wriggled out from under him. Billy slid his elfen steel from Merl’s gut, and Merl gasped a sharp breath. His lips trembled, just like he was sobbing, but no tears stained his cheek, instead his eyelids grew heavy. Merl shivered. The guardians retreated.
Frank looked down. The Wizard of Quintz stared. Merl noticed true fear in his eyes, and he wanted to reach out and tell Frank it would be okay. That they could do it without him. Billy’s tears soaked Merl’s tunic.
“I killed him. I killed my only friend.” Billy heaved and his words echoed and spluttered. Merl’s heart went out to him. He tried to console Billy, but he just couldn’t speak.
Desmelda’s ruby magic enshrouded Merl, but it was puny, ineffectual against the deathly strike Billy had unwittingly administered.
“It’s no good,” she whispered, her voice had a distant feel to it, echoey like it had travelled down a seashell. “He’s too far gone.”
Merl could feel it. He understood it. His heart was ready to give way, to rest. Blood pooled around his gut and spilled from his bubbling lips. Gloomy Joe whined. The dune dog’s ensuing howl of sorrow tearing the last beats from Merl’s heart.
Quaiyl bent. Frank began hitting the construct. The Wizard of Quintz berated Quaiyl for not helping, for doing nothing but stand and watch. Quaiyl’s hands slid under Merl, and the construct lifted his broken body up. Frank screamed, but Merl couldn’t understand his words. Merl was freezing now. It was like his whole body had been covered in a fresh fall of snow.
He saw his dad, his true dad, the one that wasn’t perfect. The one that had never tried to be perfect, and Merl finally understood how perfect he truly was. He saw his dad as a filthy zombay, tied to a chair next to Walinda Alepuller. But then his dad became better. He returned to the man who drank ale and danced. He returned to the man who tended a young Merl as he grew through adolescence. He returned to the man who held baby Merl in his arms as he escaped a castle in the dead of night. Then Merl’s dad vanished, as if he hadn’t existed before that time.
“I’m not your dad, Merl.”
Merl knew that. He’d known it for a while. But now he knew where his true dad had lived. It was a castle, but more. It was a castle that stood atop a hill. Great buildings surrounded it, all perched on rocky tiers that descended until a final shelf where a whole arc of cottages nestled within the bounds of a great encompassing wall. The castle had a cloud sitting over it, and on that cloud sat a golden bowl, and from that bowl’s spout, everlasting water fell. Two words were engraved on one side of the bowl, but Merl’s reading failed him. One was engraved on the other. It looked familiar. He could almost hear it in its reading. He just couldn’t understand it. What he did do was memorize it. Though what use that would be, he had no clue.
As far as Merl knew, he was dead already.
A curious phenomenon appeared in his mind’s eye. It was a line of rectangles, and each rectangle was empty, barring one on the very far left. That one pulsed with reddish crimson, like a blood-colored sun shone through it. Merl knew this single, luminous, red rectangle was the most important thing in his life at that time. He understood he had to cling on to it—to keep it alive—in order to evade the abyss of death that loomed underneath him. It was like his heart, and like that organ the red pip was fading rapidly.
A waft of sweet, flowery scent washed over him. It whooshed up his nostrils and filled his lungs with its headiness. He was set down upon something damp, but whether it was the last of his blood pooling or not, he couldn’t tell. The flowery bouquet was stifled by an earthier one that Merl recognized as moss. Words, like the ringing of crystal bells, danced over his eardrums. His pulsing, red rectangle strengthened a little. Its color shone harder, as if it had become more saturated.
Merl followed the song as it roamed around his mind. A warm hand spread on his stomach. A pillar of heat dove into his body. It dissipated as its power spread through him. A second red pip filled the rectangle adjacent to the first. Its color grew deeper as well, until it spilled along to the next empty rectangle. Merl’s eyes snapped open.
A raven-haired woman looked down. Her white skin was smooth and flawless, like it had never seen the sun, nor felt the whip of a sharp wind. Rich red lips pouted in seeming disappointment, but gray eyes narrowed with interest.
“Merl Sheepherder, eh? Hardly the name of a great hero.”
“That’s because I’m no hero,” Merl replied. “Where’s Gloomy Joe?”
The woman inclined her head. “Gloomy Joe? The dog? Why do you ask about him over your friends?”
“Because he can’t look after himself. Because he’s Gloomy Joe. He’s part of me, that’s that.”
“Then he’s by your side.”
Merl reached out but found he didn’t have to. Gloomy Joe was already there, just like the lady had said. “Who are you?”
“Melody, and I, Merl, are what you seek.”
“Did I die?”
Melody offered Merl her hand and pulled him up to sitting. He was in a cave, or perhaps more apt, a grotto. A cylinder of sunlight shone down, its source many hundreds of feet up. It fell upon a patch of grass and moss no more than twenty
feet in diameter. Flowers lined a rich, green pond, and moss blanketed the many rocks that were scattered about.
“Your good friend Billy Muckspreader tried to kill you. My constructs did nothing but avoid you, even tried to protect you. It is lucky that my old friend Quaiyl stepped in when he did. Merl, your friends acted first. My guardians merely stood and protected me from your party’s inquiry. You were not known to them. Your intrusion wasn’t anticipated, and you were very nearly little more than nothing as a result.”
“I was very nearly bloody dead, that’s what I was,” Merl said, wondering why folk had to talk in riddles.
“Precisely,” Melody replied. “Little more than nothing.”
Merl chose to change tack. She was clearly learned and learned folk loved riddles more than anything. “Where are my friends?”
Melody’s lips creased to a thin line. “Friends don’t kill one another.”
“Billy didn’t mean to kill me. It was a mistake! I fell on his blade.”
Melody stood. She was as thin as a wisp and dressed all in black. Yet dressed wasn’t quite the right word. Her clothing was unusual. It reminded Merl of Quaiyl—slick, shiny like grease, and all in one piece. Her words were like a song, and like a song, they could reflect both light and dark within their everchanging inflection. “A mistake? Or does Billy covet what you have? Does he secretly want to be Merl Sheepherder? Does Frank what to rule the castles of your dreams? Does Desmelda want his hand in marriage? Will she rule by his side until poison fills his veins and Frank wilts?”
Merl recoiled from the woman’s words. “No! Not bloody likely. They aren’t like that. They aren’t evil.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as eggs is eggs, and blue is the color of the sky. As sure as a dune dog is daft—no offence, Gloomy—and a dune cat is smart. I’ll bet Billy doesn’t even know how to covet. Nor do I for that matter.” Merl nodded hard to reinforce his statement.
Melody smiled. Merl instantly decided it suited her. Yet her smile, like the song that dressed her words, could betray both the light and dark. “Then they will be fine. Where is my old friend Stobart Torped? Why did he not bring you? If he had, my guardians would have let you through without any battle. There would have been none of this strife.”
Merl’s heart sank. Was Melody the secret Stobart had been about to reveal? What fate would befall them now?
He cast his eyes to the flowers that hemmed in the pond to avoid her gaze. “Men came—Alarians—they…” Merl hesitated as he glanced back at Melody. He owed her his eye contact, because that meant honesty. She had saved him. As his gaze met hers, he thought he could see something in her eyes—an urgency, or perhaps worry. Her teeth bit at her bottom lip, and she held her breath. Merl chose brutal truth. It had served him in the past. “They done him with an arrow straight to the heart.”
“Done him?”
“Shot him. Killed him. Done him in. They came for us, for him, just as we’d unraveled the secret of his farming constructs.” It then dawned on Merl that Melody was a construct too, yet there was more to her than even the guardians. Perhaps more to her than Quaiyl. “You’re one as well.”
“Stobart Torped’s dead?” She brought the back of her hand to her forehead, and she gasped, falling silent as she clearly chewed over the news of the man’s death. After a while, she stiffened. “Forgive me. Stobart was a dear friend. He would expect me to aid you in any way I can despite his demise.” Serenity settled over her. “But you asked me a question.”
“Yes,” said Merl, feeling guilty for intruding into her grief.
“You asked if I was a construct. What of it? There isn’t much of a gulf between a construct and an NPC, you know. Just differing functions—differing opportunities. One serves, the other chooses to serve. That is why the NPC continues to function even with the absence of the lords.”
Merl decided he liked the grotto. After the cold, soulless hall, it was nice to be somewhere warm and fragrant rather than dusty and devoid, but he wished Frank and Desmelda were with him to spar words with the strange woman. Merl was right at the end of his ability to serious-talk. His head was hurting, and his words were drying up faster than ale at a dwarf’s wake. He knew she expected him to ask another question, but if he was honest, he was out of them. Well, not exactly. He had loads of questions. For instance, he really wanted to ask her what he was. As far as he could see, he wasn’t an NPC. Every time he looked into a lake or something, he never saw words above his head. Yet he didn’t feel like a construct either. He certainly didn’t feel like he was made from a few crumbs of an old, dry brick. He wanted to ask what oomph they needed to put in to make decent constructs. But if he was honest, he just couldn’t be bothered to ask another question. Questions always led to trouble.
He needed Frank. Merl was tired. He’d nearly died, and then he’d been brought back to life. He had a rather troubling dream to think about too.
“Do you think you could talk to Frank instead of me?” Merl asked her.
Melody raised her eyebrows. “Frank? Speak to Frank? I think not. The Wizard of Quintz would use me to make a huge army. He would have my children march to distant lands and act as fodder to protect precious knights. He would wage war fueled by his cloaked anger. No, I will not expose myself to Frank, because Frank is likely no better than the lords of old. Alas Stobart Torped. Alas his death, may the land mourn! His death must be the start of peace, though it also must be avenged. Would Frank do that for me, and then walk away? Or would he take one victory and use its symbolism to shackle a new idea?”
If Merl hadn’t been confused before, he was now. But he somehow thought her burden was his to carry and not Frank’s. Merl had seen war now. He’d witnessed soldiers at work. He’d fought elves and stormed a goblin camp. Merl had decapitated zombays.
“Your burden is mine to bear,” he blurted, and instantly regretted it.
And Melody smiled. “What makes you think a lowly sheepherder can avenge a great man like Stobart Torped?”
Merl sat up, but before answering he had to deal with a truly excited Gloomy Joe. The dune dog wagged its tail. It wagged the whole of the back of its body. Its tongue lapped at Merl’s cheeks and slobber flew all over the grotto. Even though trepidation filled every inch of Merl’s body, even though it rinsed his soul into a tiny ball, Merl smiled at his friend, Gloomy Joe.
He didn’t answer the woman but pointed his dog to the small pool and let him drink. Merl crawled over to it too and crouched by it, cupping his hands and sipping. He considered his problem in the simplest terms. He had little clue about loyalty, about treachery, although he accepted one man might covet another’s possessions. Lyall Fencehopper sprang to mind. Lyall had a habit of building a fence that was, essentially, built to fail. Each time a storm had ripped through Three Face Valley, his fences conveniently fell down. Lyall’s neighbors were then in for a few months wrangling as the slippery bastard would try and build his fence a few feet over on their land. Merl didn’t think Frank coveted his fields, nor Billy or Desmelda. Plus, he wasn’t sure what he had that anyone might covet, apart from Gloomy Joe, but the dune dog seemed to pick and choose his friends dependent on who had food in their pockets.
“He should be avenged,” Merl eventually said. “They killed him for no reason, and if I can’t do it, then someone has to.”
“Why?” Melody crouched by him. She smelled of flowers too.
Merl was on sure ground now. The business of an eye for an eye was ingrained in mountain men, even gentle folk like him. “Because, if you get a bit of rot in yer barn, you need t’cut it out before yer whole barn falls down.”
“But it’s not your barn to mend, Merl.”
“Nope, but it coulda been.”
“There can only be one place that the soldiers came from, and that is a town called Salastar. The town is governed by a despicable man, Mayor Lynchwell. There is one person in this land that could have ordered Stobart’s death, and that is Daemon Mercer himself. T
hat order must have trickled though Daemon Mercer’s proxies all the way down to Lynchwell.”
“Lynchwell killed Stobart just because this man called Daemon Mercer asked him to?” Merl couldn’t figure that out. You didn’t just kill because someone asked you to. There had to be a good reason, like if they’d killed, or raped, or kept stealing. “What did Stobart do to Daemon Mercer?”
“Do?” Melody asked. “He didn’t do anything to deserve death. He toyed with constructs to try and figure out how they worked. He unlocked the guardian, and then replicated them. He released Quaiyl.”
“But if he knew all about the guardians, why didn’t he build himself an army to defend his farm?”
Melody reached out and cupped Merl’s cheek. “You are too young for this world, though not in years, in knowledge. You are too naive in the ways of the world. Let me tell you this, Merl Sheepherder, Stobart Torped wasn’t interested in himself. He was interested in one who would come—one who could unlock all the secrets of Arthur14579.” She drew his face around and stared deeply into his eyes. “He was interested in you. Your protection was all that mattered to him.”
Merl scratched his head. He wasn’t sure about what Melody said. He highly doubted Stobart was that interested in him, or his protection, because Stobart hadn’t known him for more than a few days. Unless…
“Wait a turn or two. Is this all to do with that prophecy that I’m supposed to be in?”
“What prophecy?” Melody asked. “There’s a prophecy? The sneaky bugger never told me that! I just thought he had sent Baldrock and his duplicates after Quaiyl and when Quaiyl rose up again, he knew you were the one.”
“What one?”
“The one they call, ‘New Lord.’”
Now Merl was positive Melody had the wrong person. “I ain’t no lord. Hell, most days I didn’t even cut it as a sheepherder. I nearly always lost a sheep or two, an’ Billy had t’help me find ‘em. I ain’t no lord, but Frank could be.”
