Wisdom Lost
Page 37
And his parents would pay a price, this night, for trying carve out a better life for themselves by sacrificing their children.
“The only way to truly master the art of war is to master the hedwicchen,” Taern had said to the gathered Haearn Doethas. “And the only way to truly master the hedwicchen is to fight a grief beyond reckoning, a grief that would destroy the soul unless repressed behind a barrier of emptiness. You must cut all bonds with your previous life in order to create this grief. But, you are strong. You are the Carreg Da. You are Hackeneth. This will make you stronger than all who have come before you, and with that strength, there will be change. We will guide our people from their mistakes, from these mountains. And we will carve out greatness through your actions.” There had been no cheering at his words. Most of the Haearn Doethas had been in their hedwicchens.
Leyr had gone first. He had no parents left to him, so he’d had to slay his sister. Rinx had taken the same route that Hafgan and Yurin were asked to take. As far as Hafgan knew, neither Leyr nor Rinx had left their hedwicchen in the week since.
“Yurin…” Hafgan grabbed his brother’s shoulder, and the man tensed up. He could have spun around, swinging his fists, and Hafgan wouldn’t have been surprised. But instead his shoulders slumped and he took a great shuddering breath. Not for the first time, Hafgan wondered at how much of his brother’s mild madness was real, how much feigned. His opinion was that it was somewhere in between.
“Yurin, my brother… we need to choose. We have been asked to do an unspeakable thing this night. Something that is intended to break us. Something that will break us, unless we dig so deeply into the hedwicchen that we can suffocate the grief. And you, my brother, have not the ability. We must leave this place together, and start a life elsewhere. With a different clan. Or in a different country. Ardia, maybe. Or Algania.”
Hafgan had little hope of convincing his brother. Hafgan had pitched this idea twice already, first half-heartedly and then more forcefully. What was Hackeneth to them, anyhow? Couldn’t they live better elsewhere? Couldn’t they have an impact on the world outside of this barren place without… doing this?
Yurin said nothing. He didn’t turn around. He didn’t breathe. The snow continued to fall, forming a sheet upon his head for the long minutes where nothing happened. Perhaps he really would be convinced, and they could abandon this grotesquery.
And then, he spoke quietly. “We must do as Taern says. We must follow his orders. We must.”
The snow continued to fall, heavier and heavier, like a white, leaden blanket.
“Yurin…”
His brother turned and stared at him, his eyes not shifting for once, not darting about with uncertainty. Clear as the stars peeking through the clouds.
“I will do it, little brother. You need not stain your hands.” With that, he turned and walked toward their parents’ cabin.
Hafgan gripped his spear with white, shaking hands. His parents would die this night at the hands of his brother, or his brother would later slit his own wrists if he failed. There was no leaving the mountains.
But he might spare his brother further madness.
“You bleeding dog of Taern!” Hafgan shouted, his words consumed by the blizzard around them. “All you are is a bleeding dog, less than a man. And, like a dog, you should be beaten.” He launched himself at his brother, spear spinning.
Yurin put up a small fight, but he’d been surprised. Truly stunned by Hafgan’s single-minded, hedwicchen-driven attack. By the fact that his brother would attack him, here and now. His unconscious body lay in the snow within moments.
Hafgan felt no grief while driving his spear into the sleeping bodies of his parents. Nor any joy at saving his brother.
He felt nothing.
***
A week had passed since Leyr had had Hafgan thrown down here, into the impenetrable and inescapable darkness that was the Pwoll. Maybe had been a week. Maybe it had only been a day. There was no way to tell.
The Pwoll was a cylinder bored straight into the ground, deep within the hallowed halls of Limner. The walls were smooth and unscalable, and a bit slimy from whatever moisture permeated this place. With his broad shoulders, Hafgan could barely turn around, let alone sit or lie down. Every bone in his body, every muscle in his body, ached from the lack of movement, from the awkward angles. His back was on fire, his neck and shoulders feeling as if they were being crushed by stone. And, though his legs wanted to give out, they had no choice but to hold him up.
His hedwicchen had failed him, down here in the Pwoll. His only company was himself and his gods-forsaken memories, being relived without the protective ability to strip his emotions. For whatever reason, he relived the night of his parents’ murders over and over again in his head. He recalled exactly how easily the spear had slid into the chest of his father, followed by that of his mother. He remembered how the blood slowly spread across their threadbare blankets. Hafgan had turned and walked away without a backwards glance. He need not look, for in his hedwicchen, he had objectively acknowledged his success.
When Hafgan had tried to leave the hedwicchen, days afterward, he had almost been torn apart by grief, guilt, and anger. But, he was strong enough to handle it, and he could return to the hedwicchen when the pain became unbearable. The emotional torment would have been worth it, too, had he been able to save his brother from madness.
But, as it was, Yurin had not been saved. When the brothers had reported back to Taern, Hafgan shared how they had each blooded their blades, Hafgan on their mother and Yurin on their father. Yurin, however, could not or would not lie. He had fallen to his knees, telling a story of cowardice, how he had run from his fate like a goat might flee an avalanche. He’d begged and wept, asking to continue serving Taern.
And, Taern had acquiesced, allowing him to serve as an errand boy, scout, and assassin. Though he’d seen his brother little since then, Hafgan knew that Yurin’s hands were stained red with blood. Almost as much as his own.
Unable do anything but ruminate, Hafgan could not help but consider the what-ifs. What if Yurin had allowed them to flee Hackeneth instead of killing their parents? What if Yurin had stuck to their story rather than telling Taern that he was a coward? What if his brother had been less of a coward?
Within his own madness brought on by his isolation, Hafgan cursed his brother’s name, screaming it to the unlistening gods. He swore to make his brother bleed for forcing his hand. He called his brother every name he could think of, condemning him every way that he knew how. And then, he wept and sobbed, losing whatever moisture was dropped for him into the Pwoll by his caretakers. He begged his brother for forgiveness, calling out a hundred different decisions he could have made that night. But, his brother never responded.
The Pwoll was already breaking him, and it had only been a week. Or maybe just a day.
***
The gwagen were near.
Soulless and furious, the gwagen lurked deep in the caverns of Limner. He could picture them, hunched over with their heads tilted to best hunt for the sounds of their prey. They were near silent in their hunt, predators to the core. And, when they would sense some movement, maybe a rodent, or maybe a lost and wayward Wasmer, they would burst into violent action, shrieking and sprinting toward blood.
Their howls cut through the stone walls of the Pwoll, the echoing such that their yowling seemed to come from every direction. Hafgan, half-awake—always only half awake—tried to spin around to fight them off, but he could barely turn around. He could feel their damp breath at his shoulder, and smell their stale, flaking skin. The sharp pain as their teeth began to tear into his throat…. He would flail out with a fist, instead cracking his knuckles on rough stone.
The pain would bring him back.
It was a dream he was experiencing. A nightmare. He was alone in the Pwoll. Completely and utterly alone. There were no gwagen, not here. They were a hollow, dark memory from a time when he’d had the ability to defend himse
lf. When he’d had the ability to stretch his legs or have a clean glass of water or look up at the sky. When he had been free.
But even awake—as awake as one could be in a place like this—Hafgan could swear he heard the howls of the gwagen, somewhere in the distance.
***
More time passed. Hafgan’s body acclimated to the Pwoll, somehow unknotting and finding ways to become more comfortable. The smell and feel of his waste, drained into a small hole in the center of the Pwoll, no longer bothered him in the slightest. His kept his face clean and free of hair, pulling out each hair individually daily with his fingernails, the small pain of each extraction becoming almost a song to him.
His caretakers would come twice a day, or maybe once a day, and toss food down to him. They were not cruel to him; they would rap their spears five times to let him know that they were tossing down strips of meat and a small, disposal bladder of water. They were ordered not to talk to him, of course, per the rules of the Pwoll. It was meant for intense contemplation of one’s wrongs, depriving a person of senses to enlighten the mind, and the caretakers were only meant to provide food. That did not keep Hafgan from speaking to them.
“My friends,” he had said one night, in Wasmer-tongue. “Did you witness the Cylch, that day? Do you believe the power of your Flawless God to be good? Look at what it wrought upon our people. Look at how weak and cowed our people have become! This god has destroyed us, turned us into cowering shells of what we once were. Has it done the same to you?” Of course, there was no response.
Another night. “I believe in your Flawless God. I believe in my folly. Bring Leyr down here and let us speak. I’m certain we can reach an understanding.”
A different night. “My friends, you bring me a feast again, already. You are my saviors. But, please make no noise. I want to be left to my solitude.”
The worst thing was that he was not being sardonic. He truly wanted to be left in the Pwoll.
Chapter 31
Her head feeling as if it were in a vice, Morgyn slowly regained her senses without opening her eyes.
Last she remembered, she’d been bouncing off the ground, carelessly failing to flee from The House. Now, she was… here. Wherever here was. She didn’t appear to be bound; she moaned and moved her limbs as if having a fever dream, not finding any resistance at her ankles or wrists. It seemed like she was reclining on a chair, in fact—something cushioned. She could smell roasted chicken and garlic, which made her nauseous stomach churn, and she could hear several voices speaking calmly.
“And, aye, I followed your vague orders. I did everything that Escamilla told me,” said a deep, familiar voice. It seemed wrong that Fenrir would be here; maybe her brain was actually damaged.
“Yet, she is lost to the world. You were to protect her above all else, and you simply and obviously failed.” Morgyn had to repress a shudder upon hearing Tennyson’s high-pitched voice. So, they had brought her to The House. She would not leave this place alive.
“She wouldn’t have been protected if an army of forty thousand overwhelmed her much smaller force and she’d had a sword buried in her throat. The best thing I could have done was slay the little duke—which I did, by the way.”
“He oozes heroism, this man.”
Morgyn’s eyes shot open and she moved instinctually toward the voice. Barin sat just across from her, over a laden table, his voice bringing a surge of joy that she couldn’t restrain. He saw her move and his face melted into a warm, toothy smile. Despite her pounding head, she smiled, too, and made to stand up before she realized that there was a knife at her throat.
“Ah, the urchin awakes,” said Tennyson, sitting at the head of the table with no plate of food before him. “I didn’t expect that I would ever see you again. Frankly, it boggles the mind to try and understand why you would ever return to Rostane.”
“It’s my home,” she mumbled. She could feel her ogra against her chest, practically burning a hole into her skin. “We always return to our homes.”
“It is an unusual dinner party I am hosting. I have you, Morgyn, a turncoat and traitor. Barin here is one of your friends from Recherche Oletta, a rival from the lowest rungs of society. One of de Trenton’s Blue Worms, of course, simply observes from afar.” Morgyn followed his gaze to a powerful, but bound and gagged, Sestrian woman under heavy guard in the corner of the room. Fenrir’s eyes kept straying towards the woman. “And, of course, I have my old friend Fenrir. Who very well may have betrayed me, as well.”
“I would never do that. Remember, I am just a dog that follows orders,” Fenrir said with a rueful smile. He seemed calm, collected, and confident, as if there was no danger here to his life. Yet, danger was omnipresent when Tennyson was involved.
“A dog can follow the command of many voices.”
“When that dog is a survivor, it’s a good policy.”
Tennyson laughed. “I have so missed your company, Bull de Trenton, Coldbreaker and Duke-Slayer. The House is diminished without you among our ranks.”
Fenrir smiled disarmingly. “Why would you have thought I’d left your ranks?”
“Come now, Bull. You forget to whom you speak. Even hadn’t you been seen training among the Adders and in the company of this one, it was particularly damning when you pointed out Canor during the execution, considering how he was carried off by a couple of your Adder friends.” Tennyson was relaxed and sure. Morgyn felt the opposite, particularly since a blade still rested on her shoulder. Behind Barin and Fenrir, each, were also a pair of guards to ensure good behavior.
“I was just waving to an old friend.” Fenrir’s voice had cracked.
“And were you overwhelmed with emotion, having to violently embrace Yarem the Head because you missed him?” Tennyson’s hand went beneath his cloak.
“Would you believe ‘yes’?” Fenrir asked, a quaver in his voice even though he continued to smile. The man was a cunning moron. Tennyson laughed.
“Should I just take him out back?” Garrett asked, he being one of the men standing behind Fenrir. His hands were twitching at the dagger he wore at his belt.
“Nonsense, Garret the Quick. Sometimes, a little good humor goes a long way. For instance, the Bull knows some brilliant jokes that are sure to brighten anyone’s day. Why don’t you regale us?”
Fenrir paled, and swallowed deeply. “I certainly couldn’t, not with a lady present.” He nudged Barin and raised an eyebrow, the implication pretty clear after the bastard had disabled Barin with a switch-kick to the sack. Barin wasn’t baited. God, she had missed her surrogate brother.
For as long as she could remember, Barin had been there to protect her. She’d met the older man one day when trying to pick his pocket. Stealing from a thief is never a good idea, and Barin was no exception. Yet, instead of beating her and tossing her into the gutter, he’d consoled her. He’d advised her. He’d even given her shelter.
He’d smiled at her. And, he’d simply loved her, treating her like family.
When she had been buried in debt and constantly threated by loan sharks, it had been Barin who had cleaned her slate. When she’d been apprenticed to the abusive Roal, Barin had been the one who’d broken his neck in a back alley. When she’d simply been scared and alone, he’d held her and told her that it would be all right.
She loved her surrogate brother more than anything. Which was why she had been avoiding him for such a long time. Recherche Oletta couldn’t know that she still valued his life, lest they continue to use him as collateral. On the surface, he was a member in the lowest rungs of the organization, but in truth, he was just there to ensure the more talented, connected, and versatile Morgyn would stay honest and aligned.
“What about you then, man of Oletta?” Tennyson turned his attention toward Barin, and man paled in response.
“I’ll tell a joke,” Morgyn said, taking the focus off of Barin.
“A joke from a traitor. This should be fun,” Garrett said, still fingering his weapon.
“An Ardian, a Rafónese, and a Sestrian walk into a bar. All women. The Ardian asks the bartender for a drink, and he pours her a glass of beer. She smiles her thanks and walks away. The Rafónese woman asks the bartender for a drink, and he pours her a glass of fine wine. She’s pleased, and finds a seat.”
Morgyn had everyone’s attention. It was entirely unnerving; even through her cloudy, beaten skull, the fear was too much. Her heart was pounding like the fluttering wings of a hummingbird, and she froze.
“Finish the joke,” said a parrot-masked monstrosity sitting to Tennyson’s right.
Morgyn tried to swallow, but couldn’t gather the saliva. She took a deep breath and continued.
“Then, the Sestrian asks for a drink. The bartender spits in a glass, pisses in it, and tosses in some kerena butts. He slides it across the bar to the Sestrian woman. She looks at the drink, looks up at the bartender, shrugs, and takes a deep drink. ‘Better than I’m used to at home,’ she says.” Morgyn paused after the punchline, insulting both rotgut Sestrian ale and their misogynistic culture. It was greeted with nothing but silence as all eyes turned toward the head of The House.
Tennyson tilted his head like a dog trying to understand a command. He leaned forward and placed his fingers together in a steeple.
“Kill her.”
Cold fear sliced through Morgyn as rough hands jerked her head back, baring her naked neck to a curved dagger. She struggled, but more hands grabbed her and easily pinned her arms to her side.