The Coin of Kenvard

by Joseph R. Lallo

  A sparkling gash on the wall of the cave drew his attention.

  “He was smart enough to leave a path, at least.”

  He quickened his pace. A few long strides took him to the first place where the cave split off into others. Another mark indicated which path Deacon had taken. The draining of the cave meant that it was mildly less slick than it had been hours before, affording him a bit more speed. He traced the path backward until he came to a particularly large cluster of intersecting tunnels. One by one he searched the mouths of the different passages and found no mark. With each eliminated path, he grew more certain of what he would find. Sure enough, when all of the tunnels leading in one direction had been eliminated, he found the mark on the opposite side. A thin rivulet of water trickled near the mouth of the small tunnel, with its descending slope heading off to the left of the flow.

  “Don’t go left. I ground it into him,” he growled. “Deacon!”

  His voice echoed through the tunnels. Desmeres rummaged in his pocket and wrapped his fist around the copper coin. He let the mark press firmly against the flesh of his hand.

  “Deacon, I know where you went!” he shouted, continuing along the path. “It is the one place that your curiosity and my luck would conspire to send you.”

  He continued on his way, shouting at each intersection. Sometimes he was simply shouting in hope of a reply. Other times he was shouting for little reason beyond venting his frustration at fate’s unwillingness to allow things to go smoothly.

  “I couldn’t tell you what you would find, because you would have sought it out. I couldn’t let you come here alone, because you might have stumbled upon it. Was I a fool to suspect when we’d gone past the danger you wouldn’t retrace your steps just to fall into its jaws? Evidently so. If fate has torturous plans for you, one would think it would have the decency to leave me out of them.”

  He stopped, in part to scan the walls for the next mark, in part to listen for a reply. He was far more familiar with this section of the cave, having so recently and so notably returned. There was a considerable distance to go before he reached Epidime’s chamber. He was only a few branching tunnels from the main path. In many ways, this section was the major crossroads of the whole tunnel system. It was likely more lives were lost here than any other part of the cave. One could not reach this point without a considerable amount of climbing. Half of the tunnels from here dropped sharply into jagged pits or into slick-walled chasms filled to varying degrees with water. Those who reached beyond this section at the wrong time of year unknowingly faced the threat of rising waters blocking both their way out and their way forward.

  The faint scrapes Deacon had left behind would be easy for him to find, as he knew roughly where he’d left them. Desmeres was having a terrible time spotting the one for this section of the cave. There was every chance Deacon had taken a wrong turn here and met some unfortunate end. He was considering this, and grappling with whether he should feel sorrow or relief, when he heard something approaching.

  “Deacon?” he called.

  In reply, the scratching, scampering sound quickened. It was plainly no human charging in his direction. Desmeres pulled his hand from his pocket and slipped a dagger from its sheath. There was no preparing for what came next, however.

  Mott burst from the darkness, body lashing and legs slashing. Fragments of his freshly broken stone shell still clung to him. He struck Desmeres hard, driving the half-elf back to the wall. Desmeres regained his footing and swiped his blade. It cut neatly through two of Mott’s legs. They fell to the ground and twitched. Mott recoiled. He snagged the sliced away extremities with his jaws and tail and hobbled back to the tunnel entrance he’d come from.

  “What is that thing?” Desmeres hissed, wiping blood from his cheek where the creature had made superficial contact.

  He knew better than to assume it would die from its wounds, or that it would keep its distance. If he’d known something like that lurked in the caves, he probably would have thought twice about setting up camp in so open a place the previous night. Better to kill the thing now before it got the chance to do the same to him.

  Desmeres edged forward. He saw its eyes catch the light of the lantern first. When it didn’t strike, he edged closer until it was fully lit. The thing had its head low and its wings flat. It watched him suspiciously. When he inched a bit closer, it spread the wings and chattered out a threat. This was the first full look he’d gotten of the thing. In addition to the haphazard anatomy, it also crackled with lingering bits of stone.

  “There is no world in which nature creates something like you,” Desmeres said. “Tell me Deacon didn’t make you.”

  The monster held its ground. As Desmeres tried to work out how best to dispatch the thing, his eyes caught something else. Just above the creature’s raised wing, a fresh mark had been carved into the wall.

  “Deacon came this way,” he muttered. “I don’t suppose you killed him? He’s a friend, but death might be a mercy as opposed to what will become of him if he crosses paths with what’s left of Epidime.”

  When he mentioned the D’Karon name, the monster’s eyes took on a sharper, more penetrating look. It twisted its head around and aligned the disembodied leg in its jaws with the twitching stump. Tendrils of black knitted the cut together. A similar curl and alignment with its tail restored the second leg.

  “I can see I’m going to have to cut you into far smaller pieces,” Desmeres said.

  Mott chattered a challenge and scrambled forward. Desmeres thought he was ready for the attack. A quick turn and jab should have been all it took to drive his dagger through the skull of this mismatched creature. This time, however, the thing did not attack in a frenzied scramble. It moved with purpose and guile. Though it was a mass of limbs and coiling body, every bit of the thing was narrow and spindly, leaving little for Desmeres’s blade to bite into. A skilled slash of the blade missed the body and carved a long gash in the thing’s wing. It shrugged off the attack and clamped its jaws around Desmeres’s false hand, locking his grip around the lantern. The end of its tail coiled around his knife hand. Thus entangled, it flapped its wings and scrambled its legs to force him back.

  Desmeres tried to fight against the thing, but its strength was inhuman. He stumbled backward. His back struck the wall. He slid along it, boots slipping and stumbling. Then, with a single startling step, he ran out of floor.

  Both man and monster pitched off the edge of a precipice. Desmeres tried to wrestle a hand free to perhaps grab hold of something, but the beast ensnaring him held on tightly. He struck the steep slope of the cliff face. The lantern flew from his grasp. Another sharp blow produced a squeal of pain and a hideous crunch of chitin from his attacker. Finally, they splashed down into icy water. This was finally enough to separate the horrid thing from him. Desmeres flailed about in the inky frigid water. With all his equipment weighing him down and a hand made from animated metal, it was all he could do to stay above water. The darkness was complete, his lantern having landed some distance away.

  In what felt strangely like fate was toying with him, Desmeres’s blind paddling took him to a shallow stretch of the crevice, a place where at least his feet could touch the slippery stone. He got a firm foothold and painfully worked his way up the slope until he was on moderately dry land.

  He gasped and sputtered for more than a few moments, retching cave water up and blinking away the red and blue sparks that crowded his otherwise useless vision. If the water hadn’t been so cold, he probably would have been doubled over in pain. As it was, he was half numb. His pack, though waterlogged, was intact. The lamp had either finally sunk or been carried around a bend, as the only hint of light came from the threads of enchantment that animated his false hand.

  Desmeres ran the thumb across the tips of the metal fingers. A rapid metallic click filled the cave. Bit by bit the threads were illuminated, casting a weak blue glow around him. The slope he’d dragged himself
onto was the mouth of a tunnel. Water was sheeting out of it, suggesting a cavern farther up the slope was draining through it.

  “Take stock,” Desmeres croaked. “What have we got? Rudimentary light. And perhaps some torches that I can light if I can dry them out. The rest of my equipment, less the bedroll. Deacon had the pads, so I have no means to communicate. I don’t know where I am, but with the cave still draining, I at least have the trickle of water I can follow to the heart of the cave, and from there a fighting chance to find my way back to a path I recognize.”

  He trudged a few unsteady steps along the slope. “Of course, I am a creature of this world who betrayed the Chosen.” He wormed his hand into his drenched pocket and felt for the coin. “No burn from the mark, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some higher being up there who is still holding a grudge for my slight against their avatars.”

  Behind him, a few distant splashes separated themselves from the rest. Desmeres shut his eyes and took a breath.

  “I must have angered one of the trickster gods,” he breathed. “Who else would conjure up this sort of torturous end?”

  He turned and snapped his false fingers again. The light pulsed and he saw Mott’s pathetic, half-broken form haul itself onto the slope. Twisted, fractured limbs slowly straightened and healed. Gleaming eyes locked on him. Desmeres realized his blade was not listed among his assets. Constant clicking and snapping of his false fingers kept the beast visible. Its eyes measured him as it stalked painfully toward him.

  He gave a glance upward and addressed the unnamed powers that were who saw fit to taunt him with this fate. “The least you could do is send me out with some sort of message,” Desmeres said.

  Mott stopped briefly, as if to wait to see what he had to say. The pause didn’t escape Desmeres’s notice.

  “Oh, so you can understand me, eh?” he said, backing slowly away. “Further evidence someone sent you.”

  The abomination kept pace with him. If talking would keep the thing distracted, he would keep the words flowing. He didn’t know what he would do with the time it bought him, but it would be nice if he could use his mouth to get himself out of trouble for once.

  “The way you piece yourself back together, you’re someone’s masterpiece, I’ll bet. Maybe that’s what sent Deacon after you, hmm? He heard something and just had to investigate the nameless horror. He was from Wizard’s Side. They were all a bit off on that side of Entwell. Anyone who would willingly submit themselves to the whims of Azriel for a final test—”

  Mott’s head snapped up. He charged forward, closing the remaining space between them in a flash. Desmeres flinched and held his false hand up in defense. It was the only part of his body likely to withstand those jaws without serious injury. For a moment he remained motionless, hand held up. The impact that should have come never did. Desmeres cautiously snapped the fingers of the hand. A pulse of light revealed Mott inches away, expression serious, eyes locked on his.

  “Heard something that piqued your interest?” Desmeres said shakily.

  The thing didn’t react. It was waiting. Desmeres tugged the last few minutes from memory. The name Epidime had produced a reaction, though hardly a promising one.

  “Deacon?” he offered.

  Nothing but a tip of Mott’s head.

  “Azriel?”

  The thing tapped its legs in place, suddenly brimming with barely restrained enthusiasm.

  “Why in the world would you know who Azriel is?”

  Mott clattered in a circle around him and hopped in place.

  “Do you want to find Azriel?”

  The response was a squealing chatter. It didn’t convey much meaning, but the absence of violence was as close to an affirmative as Desmeres was likely to get.

  “You’ll understand if I am not confident you can be trusted, since you just tried to kill both of us. If you want me to help you, you are going to have to earn a little trust.”

  Mott scrambled back a bit and tipped his head sideways. His eyes darted. Finally, he turned about and launched into the darkness. After listening to some splashing and scratching, Desmeres snapped his fingers a few times to reveal the beast had returned, not with something useful but innocuous like his lantern, but with his blade. He raised an eyebrow and gingerly plucked it from the thing’s jaws.

  “Handing me my knife… I can think of a few better ways to prove you’re not an enemy, but point taken. One last test.”

  Desmeres clumsily fished the coin from his pocket. He touched the Mark of the Chosen to Mott’s snout. There was no flash of light, no sizzle of flesh.

  “… Well, either your soul is pure, or you don’t have one. I don’t imagine I’m going to get any better evidence than that. This way.”

  #

  Myranda looked over the pages of her pad. Deacon’s innovation had permitted a handful of key people across the world to deliver each other messages without the delay of runners and travel across kingdoms. In truth, only Deacon, Myranda, and Ivy used them with any regularity. But now the stylus had been scratching out messages without pause for over an hour. After she’d ensured that whatever unexplained foe had come and gone wasn’t showing any signs of return, she’d sent out a message to all with a pad to tell of any unexplained phenomena, great or small. Replies had come quickly, and in huge quantities. There were far too many replies for her to sift through reliably. That didn’t stop her from trying. At the moment she had no better option.

  She raised her head at the sound of someone in the doorway. It was Ivy. The two hadn’t spoken properly since Myranda had returned, beyond a brief handoff so that Myranda could attempt to get Leo to sleep while Ivy joined the soldiers to ensure the city was secure. Since then, Ivy had been bouncing back and forth between Leo’s room and the windows to watch the horizon.

  “Has he woken again?” she asked, already on her feet to see to her child.

  “No, no. He’s still asleep. Now I’m the one who can’t sleep. But I’m not sure I should be. What’s going on, Myranda?”

  “I don’t know.” She gestured to the notes she’d transcribed from the messenger pad. “I’ve gone through as many messages as I can, but there isn’t much of value there. I hadn’t appreciated just how many tiny, meaningless curiosities happen each day. All I can do is try to think of how Deacon would deal with it. No one can make sense of hordes of words like he can. I’ve sorted them into piles. These are innocuous, things that could be a trick of the eye or a drunken delusion. These are more worrisome, things many people saw and could agree upon. So far, there have been only three reports of something of the scope we saw. The would-be attack on Kenvard, a flight of dragoyles over a lake to the northeast, and a glimpse of some black carriages rumbling into the Rachis Mountains.”

  Ivy looked over Myranda’s record of the unusual happening a few hours earlier. “Did this feel… I don’t know how to describe it. Did this feel familiar to you?” she asked.

  “I’ve faced waves of nearmen many times,” Myranda said.

  “I know, but this felt… I don’t know… deeper than that.” Ivy sat down beside Myranda. Her expression was distant. “I don’t remember much from before you found me. A little bit of the D’Karon generals trying to ‘train’ me. And before that, I only really remember flashes. It could just be that I’m back in Kenvard now. Maybe the feeling of home combined with the look of those soldiers from the window. It felt so much like the only real memory I have from when I was Aneriana. Those awful things rushing through the gates… And there was something else. I could barely see them in the distance, but something about the nearmen looked wrong. Different from the other times we fought them.”

  Myranda drummed her fingers. In the heat of the moment, she’d been more concerned about what the warriors could do than how they looked. She tried to recall their appearance, bathed in the orange light of Ether’s flame.

  “Yes,” Myranda said. “I think you’re right. Follow me.”

 
; She marched to the stairs and down to the courtyard, Ivy in tow. After the long flight, Myn should have been sound asleep. The great creature had a shelter of her own in place of one of the palace stables, but it was empty. Instead, she had planted herself in front of the palace steps, eyes fixed on the southern horizon, faithfully watching for any new threat.

  “Myn,” Myranda called.

  The dragon turned and lowered her head.

  “Your eyes are sharper than mine in the darkness. Do you remember the color of the attackers’ uniforms?”

  “Red,” she said.

  “Red. You are certain.”

  “They wore red,” Myn said, raising her head again to watch the horizon.

  “But the D’Karon soldiers always wore blue. They were posing as our soldiers,” Ivy said.

  “Not always,” Myranda said. “This happened once before. A massive attack, approaching the city of Kenvard from the south, in Tresson armor.”

  Ivy covered her mouth. “The massacre…”

  “Caya mentioned glimpses of the white wall. You said the bowl spilled twice. Any of the dragoyle sightings. And the fact there is never any residue of magic afterward. Could these all be glimpses of the past? Flickers of what was?”

  “How could it be? What would that mean?”

  “I don’t know… But there is a great deal in the recent past between the Northern Alliance and Tressor that we can’t afford to have repeat. And New Kenvard has borne the brunt of the years as well. If this is the threat I think it is, we need to solve it before things get worse. We’ve worked too hard to put the past behind us for it to rise again.”

  #

  A night watchman grumbled and tugged his leather hood a bit farther over his head. A cold, miserable rain was falling. The spring weather and the relatively temperate location of Territal had convinced him he didn’t need to worry about warm clothing, but now that he’d been soaked through the cheap uniform he’d been given, he was wishing he’d invested in an overcloak. Or at least in some brandy.

  “Head down to Territal, they told me,” he grumbled to no one in particular. “Ulvard will be its own kingdom again. There’ll be plenty of places to earn some legitimate money.”