A Home in the Hills

by Robert J. Crane

  Baraghosa let Alixa drop with a clatter—

  He caught Tanukke in the same way as he had Longwell’s spear.

  Then he thrust up, sending Huanatha and her blade spinning backward in an airborne cartwheel.

  “You have your own battle to fight, queen,” he sneered.

  He rounded on Alixa, looming over her. “As for you—”

  “LEAVE HER ALONE!”

  Jasen’s voice ripped through the throne room.

  On Scourgey’s back, he bounded across the stone floor, teeth gritted, pain roaring through him, his steely gaze set upon Baraghosa, fixed on the sorcerer who he would kill, would use the very last of his energy to destroy—

  Baraghosa’s expression flashed with surprise, then he swiped with his cane.

  Jasen hit the wall, rebounded, and lay face down in the dust and cracked stone that had skittered over the floor, Scourgey sprawled somewhere beside him.

  The world seemed to fall away from him. A fog crept in. It had been clouding his mind for days now—not just his mind, but all of him, lurking in the shadows. It came with the blackness that was eating its way through him. He’d staved it off, waiting for this moment …

  But they were losing. For all their trying, Baraghosa was stronger than he ever had been.

  How could he be beaten?

  How could Jasen beat him, when he lay here like this, broken and crumpled?

  He might as well stop now … might as well give in to the fog …

  He was so tired …

  He could rest …

  He breathed … and the pendant dug into his chest as his lungs filled with dusty air.

  His mother’s pendant.

  We are so proud of you.

  But you aren’t done yet, son.

  He had promised to stop Baraghosa. If it took the last of his strength—he had promised them, his ancestors— that he would see it done.

  He could not stop now.

  He had to rise.

  Across the distant clanging of Huanatha‘s and Trattorias’s swords came footsteps. They should’ve been muted by the battle going on between former queen and false king. Yet Baraghosa had a strange way of overpowering sound. In the storms over Aiger Cliffs, Jasen had been able to hear him easily, even when thunder ripped open the skies and boomed every few seconds and rain poured down like a thousand drums all beaten at once.

  “You would have been useful, you know,” Baraghosa mused quietly. “The children I took from Terreas … they were all useful, of course … life is power, you know—yes, of course you know, for you feel it deserting you. It is why you lie powerless before me.

  “But in life, you would have been useful, yes, very useful. You have a certain … determination to you. Oh, I could have put that to great purpose … but of course, I have gained a different sort of power now.”

  An echo of the clifftop battle came back to Jasen—the lightning, flashing white, its energy harvested. The people of Aiger Cliffs had been against it … but even there, Baraghosa had been able to worm his way into achieving his ends, as he always did.

  “I had to expend some of it putting down that useless wretch,” Baraghosa went on—Longwell flashed in Jasen’s mind now, lying upon a piece of wreckage of the boat he had commanded out of Reikonos—“and still more to dispense with you and your captain. And what to say of Nonthen?” He sighed, a heavy, weary breath. “I wished not to, I truly did … but I offered them an alliance, many times. Yet when they refused to listen—when they attempted to banish me from their city … well, I had to act. A shame; they would have been helpful against the Prenasians, when they come … But there are others. And their end will serve as a warning to others.

  “You know, Jasen,” said Baraghosa. “We are not so different.”

  He stooped down—and his hand reached under Jasen’s face, taking his chin in a grip that was deathly cold and somehow unnaturally smooth, as though his hands possessed no lines, his fingertips no prints—

  He lifted Jasen’s head.

  Jasen looked at him through a whirl of dancing white spots.

  “You wished to protect your homeland,” said Baraghosa, gazing at Jasen with his awful flat eyes, the pulsing lights perched upon his shoulders. “And I wish to do the same. It is why I work to bring about this alliance, so that when they spread from the east—which they will—I can protect it.”

  “You will fail,” Jasen wheezed.

  Baraghosa’s mouth rose in a faintly amused smile. “No, Jasen Rabinn. I will not fail. For unlike you … I am not powerless.”

  He smiled now, a ruthless grin, his teeth showing—

  He meant to kill him.

  Jasen braced for it, the white dots clouding his vision, swirling, swirling—

  And then he saw—

  There were souls here. Dozens and dozens of them, all surrounding Baraghosa.

  And among them, at the forefront, right over the sorcerer’s shoulder, a face Jasen recognized.

  Pityr.

  27

  Pityr smiled at Jasen, a boyish grin. Warm, comforting, it was a grin that Jasen recalled as if he had last seen his friend only yesterday. It had etched itself into his mind, the same way his mother and father’s voices had, their faces.

  His mouth fell open. His eyebrows knitted.

  His friend? Here?

  But of course. It had been Baraghosa who Pityr died with.

  Baraghosa … who killed him.

  And as Jasen looked upon him, he thought—he could find out how it happened. In the same way as he’d been able to pick through the souls out at the gates, souls who, he realized now, were also tethered to Baraghosa, tied to the sorcerer because it had been his destruction and discord that had wrested them from their bodies—Jasen could sift through the last parts of Pityr’s life.

  He could know, finally, how he died.

  He could know if it hurt.

  But as he reached out to do it, with invisible hands, Pityr held them, stopped him from going any farther.

  He only smiled down at Jasen, yet Jasen felt his response, even without Pityr saying it.

  The circumstances do not matter.

  But— Jasen began to protest. He needed to know—needed to know how his friend had been loosed from the earth …

  And he needed to know if it would hurt him, when death finally came to take him.

  It may, Pityr thought, as kindly as he could. But only for a moment.

  Jasen blinked. I’m scared.

  Pityr nodded. It’s not so bad.

  Seemingly out of nowhere, Longwell flung himself at Baraghosa once more, his lance whirling. It swept through the air in a mad blur, impossible to dodge—

  And still the sorcerer avoided it. He sidestepped as though he moved out of the way of a pair of dancing butterflies rather than an armored warrior who thrust a spear at his neck. Then he put out his palm—the lights above his shoulders, down very low to him now, pulsed with a flash—and Longwell careened across the throne room, smashing into the far wall. The impact was vicious: cracks spread out from where he slammed into it.

  He dropped hard, lance fallen—and he did not rise.

  Only Huanatha stood now, swinging with Tanukke, its broken blade almost comical against the curving blade Trattorias wielded. Yet still she battled, still she ducked and wove and pivoted and parried, pushing her advantage where she could, dropping back when she could not.

  Baraghosa turned back to Jasen, favoring him with a flat smile.

  Scourgey growled, teeth bared.

  “You know it’s hopeless,” said the sorcerer. “You can feel it, can’t you? The end?” He stepped closer, peering down at him with eyes that were almost flat—peering into him. “There’s almost nothing left in you.”

  Pityr loomed beside Baraghosa. He looked at Jasen, his smile fading … and then he glanced at the glowing orbs positioned just above Baraghosa’s shoulders.

  He nodded.

  And suddenly, Shilara’s voice filled his head, even at the mo
ment he realized.

  How is he different?

  You already know. You just don’t know that you know.

  The lights.

  They were not beacons at all, dancing in the air to herald Baraghosa’s arrival to the many lands he sowed division within.

  They held his power.

  Upon wobbly feet, Jasen rose. He had to brace himself again the wall behind him with both hands, pushing himself upward with all the energy he had in him. Baraghosa was right: the end was almost upon him. Those black tendrils had penetrated almost to his very core, at long last. He could feel them, winding around and around it, the last light place in him. But he’d held them off—for this.

  He reached out—

  Baraghosa’s smile faltered. His eyebrows flickered in toward each other, the only time Jasen had ever seen confusion upon him.

  He reeled backward, asked, “What are you doing—?”

  Jasen’s fingers touched the orb.

  Light flashed. It was like the flaring of a fire—wait, no, that was wrong. It was like the flaring of every fire across the whole world, all of them burning in one huge, continent-sized pyre. A blinding white, whiter than anything Jasen had ever experienced, it enveloped every single one of his senses, as if somehow his eyes could not take it all in, so it flowed into his ears, through his nose, into his skin—

  Then he was in Terreas.

  And it was peaceful. So, so peaceful.

  The village spread before him under a clear blue sky. The mountains were picturesque and quaint. The grasses were just coming midway to knee-height—early summer, a comfortable warmth beamed down from the sun, not yet so hot that seeking shade became Jasen’s most common pastime. Smells came to him, breads and pastries wafting from the bakery. Meat was cooking, and though it had none of the exotic, interesting spices that he had discovered out in the world beyond Luukessia, it was the most delicious smell he had ever known.

  But of course it was. It was the smell of home.

  The village was quiet … and yet it was bustling too. People passed by, faces he recognized—there was Griega Marks from the assembly, talking amiably with Euonice and a rather moderate-looking Hanrey. And farther down the street, Stewert Wells, walking his faithful old dog, its white fur stained by mud where it had dived into the stream on its morning walk.

  But there were so many others, people that Jasen did not recognize. Had he forgotten all of Terreas’s people already?

  No—he realized, with widening eyes. He hadn’t forgotten.

  These were people he had not met.

  These were his ancestors.

  He stared at them, and they smiled as they went past, like he were a gawping child—which he supposed he was.

  He turned on his heel, around the village square, to take in the full shape of it …

  And his heart skipped—not just one beat, but a dozen, surely.

  A space within the moving crowd had formed, quite naturally. And within it, hand in hand—were his mother and father.

  Jasen stared. His breath caught in his chest—if indeed there was breath to fill it.

  His mother laughed … and oh, how he’d missed that sound. His stomach squeezed as it came to his ears, soft and gentle and so much like home.

  He staggered for them, tears in his eyes.

  “Easy, son,” said Adem, reaching forward to take him by the shoulders.

  Jasen gripped him.

  His mother came around his side—and he reached out for her too, winding an arm around her waist. He was as tall as her now, but in her embrace it was like he was a child again—and he held fast, firm, crying in the square.

  She was warm.

  This was home.

  And he’d been gone from it for so long.

  “We are so proud of you,” his mother said. There were tears of her own in her voice, he could hear them. He could feel the ache in her chest too, as if their touch made a bridge between them, and he could cross it, could physically feel her emotions.

  “I love you,” he sobbed.

  “We love you too,” said his mother.

  He pulled away from them, at least far enough that he could look them both in the eyes, ascertain that they were real, not some—some figment of his imagination that Baraghosa had conjured to ensnare him with. But no, those were his real parents. His father had the same hair, all the right lines upon his face, where the stress of running the assembly had weathered him a little more than time alone would have. And this was his mother, her face soft, her eyes the same brown Jasen remembered, with its dark little flecks like the jewels inlaid on Trattorias’s stolen crown. This was their scent, this heat he felt from them was theirs.

  He was home. At long, long last—he was home.

  “Am I dead?” he asked.

  Adem shook his head. “You’re not done yet.”

  “But … how …?”

  “Feel death,” said his mother, leaning in. Her gaze was so loving—oh, he’d missed it so—but she implored him with it too. “It’s here, in your hands.” She touched him, then, a palm stroking across the back of his hand, and he did feel it—

  Terreas vanished.

  He was back in the throne room.

  Baraghosa’s orb glowed in his hands.

  Pityr nodded at him over Baraghosa’s shoulder. He had a faint smile upon his lips still—but he stared at Jasen, very intensely, meeting his gaze hard.

  He was not alone.

  The veil had fallen again—not a slip, like the short bursts he’d had before today, but like an entire curtain had been ripped from its rail. There were so many dead here, all those souls who he’d touched in Tarratam, he’d been brushed by. Every last one of them was like Pityr, anchored to Baraghosa, carried across the land and the sea to places far beyond where they ought to have gone to rest—

  They whirled around him, constantly, out of sight of all but never gone, because the sorcerer held them close, always.

  And they hated him.

  Baraghosa was oblivious. He saw only one thing: Jasen, grasping the glowing orb that had danced so lazily, like a firefly, innocuous and yet the source of all of his vast power. And no matter how he pulled back—the orb remained in Jasen’s hand. It had no surface, nothing solid about it—but he held it there, held it firm.

  Panic rose on Baraghosa’s face. He stared at the orb, at Jasen.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, voice rising in alarm.

  “You make people feel alone,” Jasen whispered. “You spread fear, and you divide, so those you have most strongly wronged feel alone, alone in hating you, and in being able to take their revenge upon you. But I am not.”

  The voices of the dead rose around him, baying for Baraghosa’s blood. Yes, there were so many lonely souls here, people who had been cut off or forced out. And sorry as Jasen had felt, consumed by self-pity in equal measure to his determination at times, he realized he had felt only a fraction of what these people had. Exiled from villages or cities, or simply cut off from their friends and families, loved ones all pulled away by an invisible chasm that Baraghosa grew, they’d thought themselves against an entire world. They had not found friends like Jasen had, warriors willing to stand with him, or those, like Alixa and Kuura and Burund, who simply took up the mantle because it was right.

  They’d been so alone, in life.

  But in death—they were many.

  “You do not know power,” Jasen said, and he rose, straightening for the first time in days, as if the souls of the dead fed him, brought new energy to his failing body. “Life has power. Death is powerless.”

  Baraghosa stared. His face was haggard. “What are you doing?”

  “You did not kill my family,” Jasen said. “But you did kill Pityr. And you have killed many more. They’re here now. Do you feel them?”

  Now the sorcerer’s face twisted in panic.

  His mouth opened and closed, the way a fish’s did. But no words came out. He could only stare.

  And then, gritting
his teeth, he lunged forward, but Jasen snatched the ball of light out of his reach.

  Baraghosa staggered backward. His alarm ratcheted higher. His face, always pale, was now ghostly white.

  “You do feel them, don’t you?” Jasen asked, still cradling the orb of light, now separated from its master. “You see them all around you—the people you have murdered. They follow you, night and day.” His lip curled. “They hate you, Baraghosa.”

  A terror like no other filled Baraghosa’s face. His neck jerked around, following the dead—they spiraled around him, a tornado of the dead, their faces twisted and angry and all of them screaming at him—he took them in, perhaps acknowledging them for the very first time, understanding the full might of their united hatred—

  And then a dagger ripped through his chest from behind.

  He stared, horrified, at its bloody tip pointing out from his ribs.

  Behind him, Alixa gritted her teeth, clutching the blade’s handle tight.

  “You are a bastard,” she said—and she twisted the knife.

  Baraghosa howled.

  The lights faded, like candles going out.

  The power within them ebbed. Jasen could feel it, like water flowing past his hands and out, an ocean’s worth of it pouring away.

  Baraghosa hung for a moment, then Alixa yanked back the dagger and blood gushed from him, pooling at his feet. The corners of his lips down as far as they would go, his eyes flat, he looked almost like a child’s drawing, a rendering of what stalked through nightmares, then he slid slowly to his knees.

  He lifted a weak hand, touched the hole the knife had left as if he was checking it had really happened—that he had really been mortally wounded.

  At the far end of the room, Longwell rose up from the heap of broken masonry and staggered over to them.

  “Your reign of terror has reached its end,” he said.

  “Reign of t-terror?” Baraghosa wheezed. His flat eyes landed upon Longwell—but they were fading now too, the light in them vanishing the way his glowing orbs were rapidly diminishing to nothing. “I was trying to protect … all of them.”