by Anthony Ryan
Next to me, Toria stiffened, arms wrapping tight around her chest. I suppressed the impulse to reach out a comforting hand. It wasn’t her way.
“He would want to make testament,” I told Delric, finding I had to cough away a catch in my throat to get the words out.
“Anything I used to rouse him will kill him before he could speak,” the Supplicant replied. “If you talk, there’s a chance he’ll hear it.”
With that, he gave a short nod and moved away to tend to another soul who might live to see the dawn.
“A fucking tainted arrow,” Toria said, jaw clenching. She moved to Brewer’s head, putting a hesitant hand to his sweat-covered brow. “Should’ve taken four men at least to bring him down.”
“That it should.” I watched Brewer’s lips twitch, wondering if, somewhere within the fevered confusion of his mind, he might be trying to voice his testament after all. I thought it strange that throughout our years of captivity together I wouldn’t have cared one whit about his death, yet after a few months of shared liberty here I was swallowing tears. There was also a small, shameful part of me that didn’t relish the prospect of dragging his carcass to the grave come morning.
“Fetch the noble,” I told Toria, gathering up a blanket and throwing it over Brewer’s torso. “And that sack of plate.”
“What for?” she asked with a puzzled squint.
Brewer gave a deep, rumbling groan as I swung his legs off the cot. “Payment,” I said, grunting as I hauled him upright. “And not a word to the Supplicants or the captain. And especially not Ayin.”
The Sack Witch’s conical shelter still sat beneath the branches of the tall birch. As I brought the cart to a halt, smoke rose in wispy tendrils from a recently dampened fire close to the entrance. The shelter was sealed with some form of animal hide edged in yellow by the soft glow of a candle within. I had worried there might be a crowd of others seeking the Caerith woman’s particular talents, but it seemed whatever custom she had enjoyed after the battle had dwindled come nightfall.
The old carthorse’s irritated snorts joined with Brewer’s increasingly pained groans as I climbed down from the cart, finding myself seized by uncertainty now the task lay at hand. What is there to fear? I asked myself, staring at the flickering outline of the entrance. She can help him, or she can’t.
Still I dithered, thoughts of the chainsman looming large at the forefront of my mind. I also felt a mounting certainty that Evadine, should she hear of this, would take a decidedly dim view of seeking assistance from a Caerith witch.
“Are we doing this or not?” Toria enquired from the back of the cart. She had hold of one of Brewer’s arms, his inert state having given way to much flailing about as the cart trundled its rickety course from the camp.
However, the decision was taken from my hands when the shelter’s entrance parted and its occupant emerged. In the gloom, the two diamond-shaped holes in her sack were bottomless, her eyes catching no glimmer from the torch held by Sir Wilhum. He had come along willingly enough, I assumed in expectation of chancing an escape should the opportunity arise. So far, however, a journey marked by the presence of a good many soldiers, most in a state of aggressive drunkenness, had quelled any such notions.
The Sack Witch strode past me to glance over the cart’s side at its stricken occupant, heedless of the halting greeting I offered.
“A poisoned arrow,” I said as her anonymous gaze lingered. “We don’t know what kind.” I paused, watching the sack’s shape alter as she angled her head and leaned closer to Brewer. I heard her make a few sniffs before she straightened, the black holes of her eyes turning to regard me.
“We can pay,” I said, gesturing to Toria, who duly held up the sack containing Wilhum’s armour. “Finest plate. Worth fifty full letins, according to its former owner here…”
The Sack Witch spoke then, her voice seeping through the weave in a wet rasp. The words were comprehensible but only just, the product of lips too malformed to utter them with any precision.
“I have no need of armour.” She stepped closer and I found I had to suppress an instinctive desire to retreat. This woman exuded a curious earthy scent, like a forest kissed by the first rain of autumn. In truth, it was not altogether unpleasant, but it was unnerving. This was not how a person was supposed to smell.
“But,” she went on, the sack pulsing with her words, “I will take payment.”
“I…” My voice faltered and, as before, I found my gaze snared by the twin voids of her eyes. “I have some coin…”
“Your words, your…” she raised her hands, pale and strangely clean in the torchlight, miming a quill tracking over parchment “… skill. That will be your payment.”
I nodded in agreement. “Whatever you require, I’ll write it.”
The eyeholes lingered in silent regard for a heartbeat longer. “Bring him,” she said, returning to her shelter and disappearing inside, leaving the entrance open.
“How did she know you’re a scribe?” Toria asked, as the three of us manoeuvred Brewer’s feebly struggling bulk off the cart.
“She heard Gulatte’s men say it,” I said. In fact, during my confrontation with Sergeant Lebas, I hadn’t thought the Sack Witch close enough to hear his words.
The Caerith had us set Brewer down at the entrance, displaying an unexpected, perhaps unnatural strength by dragging him the rest of the way herself. I took note of the bared forearms that emerged from her mildewed cloak as she did so, the flesh smooth and lean, lacking any sign of the malady that had ravaged her face.
“Wait,” she told us in her malformed rasp before pulling the covering firmly back in place. I began to call out a query regarding how long this would take but stopped. Whatever was about to occur within was clearly not for me or anyone else to know.
“You know this is absurd, I assume?” Wilhum asked a short while later. We had scraped the damp ashes from the witch’s fire and rekindled a blaze with what sticks we could gather. Toria, ever the scavenger, shared some dried beef she had purloined during her tour about the wider camp, even tossing a portion to the noble. He responded with a gracious bow and finely spoken words of thanks that set her lip curling.
“Caerith mummers tour this realm gulling folk with promise of cures, curses and charms,” Wilhum persisted when I gave no answer. “Why is this one different?”
“Because the other soldiers in this camp are scared shitless of her,” I replied. “I’m wagering that means something. Besides, what other option did we have? And, since we’re bandying notions of absurdity, my lord, disinheriting yourself by swearing fealty to a man with no more claim to the throne than a chamber pot strikes me as particularly absurd.”
I expected anger, or at least a caustic rejoinder, but the young noble merely sighed and chewed on more beef. Eventually, he murmured, voice quiet with sad reflection, “I was disinherited long before I ever heard tell of the True King. I went to him a pauper save for the armour I wore and the horse I rode. He accepted me with as much grace as if I had delivered him a hundred men-at-arms and a cart laden with treasure.”
“Why’d your old man kick you out?” Toria enquired. “Lost too much at cards, was it? Got one wench too many up the stick?”
Once again, Wilhum confounded my expectations by smiling. It was not the winning wonder he had shown Evadine, rather just a slight, sorrowful bow to his lips. He had washed the grime from his face back at the camp and his flawless features made for a surreal image in the fire’s glow, as if one of Master Arnild’s illuminations from the Scroll of Martyr Stevanos had somehow come to life.
“In truth,” he told Toria, “it was love that brought me to this pass, my dear. And yet, I find myself unable to regret it.”
I felt my enmity for this man slip away then. The ingrained resentment of the low-born for the high, and the base jealousy he had provoked, suddenly felt like the petty indulgences of a child. He was right; he was as much a pauper as I. If anything, his plight was worse for his crime r
emained noteworthy and unforgivable, at least according to the king’s edict.
“You should run,” I told him, nodding to the gloom beyond the glow cast by our fire. “They’re all sleeping it off now and I doubt the picket line will be well manned tonight.”
“I thought your captain told you to keep me guarded?”
“She told us to get you to our camp, which we’ve done. Go. We won’t stop you.” Watching his wary indecision, I added, “However high her standing, and her blood, do you really think she’ll be able to save you from a traitor’s end when the king learns of your survival?”
“I owe her…” he paused, lowering his head and making no move to rise “… more than I can say. Since no sergeant appeared to shackle me, I assume she expects me to run. But doing so would put her at risk and that I’ll not abide, even if it puts my neck beneath Sir Ehlbert’s sword. In any case—” he let out a thin laugh “—where in all the world would I go?”
We all turned to regard the shelter as a low moaning emerged from within, a moan that soon rose to a panicked shout.
“What’s she doing to him?” Toria said, getting to her feet. She started towards the shelter, snorting in anger when I moved to bar her path.
“Ever hear of a cure that was painless?” I asked, then grimaced as Brewer let out another shout. It was shorter than the last but richer in pain and followed by several more.
“You don’t know the Caerith like my folk do,” Toria told me. “When I was a girl the local shrine sent a missionary across the mountains to preach the Martyrs’ example to those heathens. Next summer we found his rotted head impaled on a stake outside the shrine’s door. They’d come a hundred miles or more to send a warning.”
“Perhaps they just really hate visitors,” Wilhum suggested. “My father certainly did.”
Another voice rose from the shelter then, softer and far sweeter, a voice raised in song. It ascended to entwine itself with Brewer’s shouts and for a time the two formed a discordant melody. Soon, however, the pained cries diminished as the soft singing continued. The words were alien but their cadence once again put me in mind of the chainsman; this was a Caerith song and, judging from the quietude it instilled in Brewer, possessed considerable calming power.
“That can’t have been her,” Toria breathed as the song faded, face tense with poorly concealed fear.
“If not, then who?” I asked.
“Something… else. Something she conjured.” Her voice became a whisper, the firelight catching on her fear-widened eyes. “We shouldn’t have done this, Alwyn.”
“Perhaps,” I admitted, glancing back at the now silent shelter. “But it’s done, nonetheless.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Sack Witch reappeared with the dawn, my bleary, misted eyes finding her standing a few paces off, wreathed in the smoke from our dying fire. Sleep had claimed us some time in the night when the strain of a day spent at slaughter finally took hold. It was the kind of sleep that only arises from exhaustion, a dreamless void for which I was grateful, for I knew my slumber in the days or even years to come would be less forgiving.
The Sack Witch beckoned with a pale hand and I rose on stiff legs, following her to find Brewer lying in our cart. He was still unconscious but the clammy greyness had faded from his skin. He remained pale but hints of pink showed in his face and his broad chest swelled with a regular, steady rhythm. Peering at his hand, I found it bandaged with clean muslin that concealed the wound. However, the ugly, mottled purple was gone from the surrounding flesh.
“I suppose,” I said, swallowing away the tremor to my voice as I straightened to face the Sack Witch, “it would be best not to ask how this was done.”
Her sack crinkled as she angled her head, conveying a sense of puzzlement. “His blood was riven with a blight,” she rasped. “I took it away. Now his body heals itself.”
I nodded, deciding further elaboration wasn’t needed. I was keen to be gone from here before too many eyes witnessed our presence. “How long will he sleep?”
Her sack crinkled further. “Until he wakes.”
I shrugged, voicing a thin laugh. “Of course. So, I assume you wish to conclude payment—”
“You should not fear me,” she cut in and I found my words instantly stalled. It wasn’t so much due to her interruption as her tone, for the malformed rasp was suddenly gone. Her voice now possessed an accented fluency that made it clear every word she had spoken up until now had been a performance. Her lips were as whole as mine, her voice possessed of a deep sincerity coloured by a faint note of regret.
Something about that voice, about the hurt I heard in it, drew an honest reply from my lips before I had chance to cage it. “I’ve known two of your people before. One an outlaw who worked charms. The other far worse. A very bad man, with a… worrisome ability. He also sang songs.”
“Are there no bad men among your people?” she asked. “And, therefore, do you judge them all as evil?”
“Many.” I gave a rueful, subdued grin. “But no, not all.”
“Who was he? This man of evil?”
“A chainsman, a man who gathers captive outlaws and takes them to be sold for labour.” I paused, again possessed of an urge to say more than I should. A lifetime of honing instincts geared towards survival left me in no doubt that this woman was dangerous, and yet I felt utterly secure in her presence. Is this a spell she weaves? I wondered. Am I enchanted now? Still, I spoke on and I know now it was not due to some form of unnatural compulsion. Rather it was out of recognition that, even though this woman’s face remained hidden, she understood me in a way no other had.
“I think he wanted me for something,” I told her. “After he sold me to the Pit, he tried to buy me back. I don’t know why, but he had the look of a man who had made a grave error.”
The sack shifted as the head within nodded. “I know of this man. And you are right to judge him evil, but he was made such. A heart twisted by the ills of the world and his own misjudgements. I also know why he wanted to buy you back, and you were fortunate he did not.”
“Why? What did he want of me?”
“To kill you. His… ability is what your people term a curse. It enables him to glean coin from your nobles but also makes him forever an outcast. And it is fickle, as befits a curse intended to make its victim suffer. It plays tricks; it taunts; it leads him along paths best untravelled.”
“Why?” I inched closer to her, taking in her scent once again and finding it transformed. Whereas the night before it had been off-putting in its strangeness, now I found it an intoxicating floral melange that brought forth memories of the Shavine Forest in summer. “Why would he kill me?”
“Because his curse told him, too late as is its wont, that one day you would kill him.”
My face was so close to the sackcloth mask that I saw her eyes clearly, morning sunlight penetrating the weave to paint a glint on shadowed sapphires. I swallowed a sudden flood of drool, my heart pounding and sweat beading my forehead.
“So,” she whispered in her flowing, raspless voice, “you came to me on a field of blood after all.” Her tone was one of satisfaction coloured by sadness, as if she had received a long-promised gift and found it wanting.
“Enough,” she murmured, stepping back. Instantly, the laboured throb of my heart calmed and the heat prickling my skin faded to a chill moistness. Also, the allure of her scent abruptly vanished, slipping into the autumnal musk from before.
Despite the sudden shift in sensation, I found I still had to suppress the urge to reach for her. There was more I wanted to say, more I wanted to know. About the chainsman’s curse. About how she had taken the poison from Brewer’s veins. But mostly I wanted to know about her.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied with a brisk finality that told me it would not be forthcoming. “It is time for payment.”
She reached into the folds of her mildewed cloak. For a second I entertained the absurd
thought that she might be about to present me with a bill listing services rendered, but instead her hand emerged holding a book. It was old, the leather binding dark and cracked, the brass clasp tarnished and scratched. It bore no title on the cover or the spine, the aged leather engraved with complex whorls and interleaved patterns.
Holding it out, she maintained her silence until I consented to take it, undoing the clasp to look upon a page of dense but precisely inscribed text. Leafing through several pages I found the text interrupted by pictograms and illustrations, all rendered in simple ink rather than the gold and multi-hued dyes employed by Master Arnild. I found it instantly fascinating and confounding in equal measure for, learned as I was, I couldn’t read a single word.
“What language is this?” I asked, glancing up at the Sack Witch.
“The language of my people. Or, more precisely, one of the many languages once spoken in the lands your folk call the Caerith Wastes.”
I continued to thumb through the book, captivated and mystified. “And what does this book pertain to? Is it scripture?”
“Scripture?” Her tone held a faintly amused note. “My people have no equivalent of that word. But yes, I believe it has… sacred meaning.”
“Believe?” I frowned at her. “You can’t read this?”
The sack creased around her neck as she lowered her gaze. When she spoke again the humour had vanished from her voice. “Your people call it the Scourge. To my people it is Ealthsar: the Fall. Much was lost to us, our ancient stories and the knowledge to read them perhaps the most grievous loss of all, for it is in such things that the soul of a people lies.”
“You think I can translate this?” I asked, looking again at the book. “This has no more meaning for me than a cluster of chicken scratchings.”
“Meaning will come, in time. Unlike me, you can travel these lands unimpeded. There are places you will go that I cannot, places where the means of unlocking the knowledge in those words can be found.”
