A Path to Coldness of Heart

by Glen Cook

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  LATE AUTUMN 1018 AFE:

  BEYOND THE RESURRECTION

  Ragnarson bellowed, “Silence!”

  He had the voice of command still, and it was loud, yet the effect was neither quick nor comprehensive.

  “I will have you beaten if you don’t stop running your mouths.”

  Those people knew he was not given to idle threats. They knew, too, that there was no precedent for him doing anything of the sort. Only…

  Only this was, clearly, not the man whose arrogance had driven him to disaster beyond the Mountains of M’Hand. This man had been chastened and tempered.

  He had a harder feel, and, maybe, a new disdain for past tolerance. He might even have developed a streak of cruelty.

  He had been in the thrall of the Dread Empire. Only the shell might be Bragi Ragnarson now. Best not to irk the possible monster concealed inside. Though, still, he was just one man.

  Even so, the Thing hall so quietened that the proverbial pin would have sounded like a clash of cymbals. It seemed, almost, that everyone had stopped breathing.

  In that desolation of sound a small voice asked, “Daddy?”

  The tiny question had more impact on Kavelin than did all the murder and maneuver of the year just passed. Bragi Ragnarson, startled, looked down at the boy in the old-fashioned clothes, who looked back with puzzled hope.

  The hard man changed. He scooped the boy up, settled him onto his left hip. He peered into the Sedlmayrese delegation, beckoned Kristen, shook his head slightly when Dahl Haas started to follow.

  Ragnarson settled his grandson on his other hip, then declared, “The bullshit will stop.” That sounded certain as death. That made it plain who would be in charge. Special pain was in store for anyone who disagreed. All of which he sold without having one soldier behind him.

  “I made a big mistake. It cost me more than I can calculate but it cost Kavelin even more. It almost cost everything that three monarchs did to make this a principality where every subject could be proud to live. I will not repeat that error. I vow that here, now.”

  He was improvising, promising what many wanted to hear but meaning it. His intensity permitted no questions, however much future and established enemies might want to know about his relationship with the Dread Empire.

  His piece said, he spoke past Kristen to Inger, “Give them the rest of today to get their minds around this.”

  Inger managed a nod. She looked to Josiah Gales, who nodded in turn. “Don’t we all? Need time?”

  Bragi Ragnarson carried his son and grandson down to the floor of the hall, followed by Kristen Gjerdrumsdottir. He set the boys down, took each by the hand, walked out, headed for Castle Krief. He was not armed. Today he had no need.

  He was improvising still, going on instinct. For the moment instinct and timing were enough.

  The news had gotten out already. People came to see. Most remained quiet and respectful. There was almost supernatural awe in their attitudes.

  There was, as well, hope.

  Nature had blessed Kavelin. A tide of economic improvement was rising. But the political situation remained calm mainly because the contenders were exhausted and, in Inger’s case, impoverished. Ordinary folk dreaded the day she obtained fresh resources.

  This might herald the possibility of avoiding all that.

  A wondrous hope it was.

  ...

  Inger stared at Josiah Gales as the excitement oozed out of the Thing hall. He said nothing. Neither did Babeltausque, nor did Nathan, who had rejoined them, still shocked. Dr. Wachtel fidgeted but kept his mouth shut.

  “What do we do?” Inger murmured. “What do we do?”

  She harvested no advice. Josiah, though, looked like a man who had shed a huge moral burden. Nathan was afraid. His future no longer looked as sweet as it had—that age of bitter almonds. Babeltausque stared in the direction the Heltkler girl went as Ozora Mundwiller led her tribe away.

  Inger was worried about the sorcerer. Something was going on with him. Something obsessive. It might be a harbinger of a darkness to come.

  She hoped she was wrong. She hoped she was imagining it. She hoped he was not just one trivial mishap of an emotional trigger short of crossing over into the night land that had claimed Father Ather Kendo.

  She hoped, but, this morning, she had no confidence that she would ever see anything good again. Hell had become impatient. Hell was coming to her.

  Josiah said, “What do we do? How about we go home, hunker down, and see what happens next?”

  Bragi was back. He had come in like some natural force, gathering the ley lines of power and expectation to himself. Nothing would happen ever again without his hands being on it, in it, or taken into account. He had managed it so easily, so instinctively.

  Bragi was back but he had changed. He was the nostalgically recalled hard case but there was more to him now. Inger thought it might be a new maturity.

  She said, “You’re right, Josiah. Let’s just ride the lightning and see where it takes us.” Bragi’s behavior suggested that would not be the hell she might have expected.

  He was not a Greyfells.

  Though the day was advancing and it should have been getting warmer, a scatter of snowflakes fell during the transit to the castle. The flakes melted instantly but did proclaim the imminence of winter.

  Inger realized that the trees had shed most of their leaves. When did that happen? She had been too preoccupied to notice. That was sad. Autumn was her favorite season. She loved to see the colors.

  “Josiah, the leaves are gone.”

  “Uhm?”

  “We’ve been missing the good things.”

  Gales grunted agreement despite having no real idea what she was thinking. He was good that way. Nathan and Babeltausque contributed supporting nods despite being even farther in the dark.

  ...

  After sixteen days in hiding, while rumors of his death abounded—though no body ever surfaced—Megelin made a run for safety, into the desert north of Al Rhemish. He was accompanied by Misr and Mizr, an ancient chamberlain called abd-Arliki, and a grizzled, one-eyed rogue called Hawk in his presence and Boneman behind his back. Boneman was a villain of no special stature. He was involved with Megelin’s court through the twins, who had used him to protect their area of corruption. He was dangerous but was known amongst the low mainly because he often bragged that he was evil.

  That declaration did not come from the heart. He did it to intimidate.

  But for the uprising Megelin would never have crossed paths with Boneman. In the most dangerous hours of the riot, as the good people let themselves vent ancient frustrations, those whose lives might be forfeit had to support one another. The twins brought Boneman in because he was strong, desperate himself, and lacked a conscience. He agreed not just because of the generous pay but because he knew hard men might use the chaos to mask writing a bloody final sentence to Boneman’s tale.

  Boneman spirited his charges away with considerable finesse. “It’s what I do,” he bragged, not pleased about having to do it with feeble old men, a weakling king, and a score of donkeys with a mass of cargo.

  Megelin wondered why the twins insisted that so many animals were needed.

  The party headed north, the direction pursuers were least likely to look. Megelin did not initially realize that they were following the track that his father had taken when fleeing Al Rhemish at an even younger age. Unlike his father, Megelin did not have a horde of enraged Invincibles behind him. There was no pursuit at all. All Al Rhemish thought he had been killed. Even Old Meddler thought him lost and was distressed. Megelin bin Haroun was a feeble tool, blunt, bent, and cracked, but had been, even so, the best blade left in a dwindling set.

  All went well for several days. Panic faded. Fear drew back. The pace slackened. The band moved on more through inertia than from a need to escape.

  Then the dread returned tenfold, with the king badly
shaken.

  Mizr demanded, “What is the matter, Majesty?” He and his brother were so worn down that neither attended much beyond their own exhaustion. Abd-Arliki was worse. He was fading. Only Boneman remained strong enough to help him. Boneman did not want to bother. He eyed the old chamberlain like he was contemplating getting rid of the burden.

  Megelin gasped, “I know where we are! From my father’s stories about when he was fleeing from the Scourge of God. A little farther on we’ll find a ruined Imperial watchtower that’s haunted by a hungry ghost,” using ghost to mean a ghoul or devil. “My father was trapped there for a while. He wasn’t ever sure how he got away.”

  Never saying so, he admitted that he was not the man his father had been. “We’re probably dangerously close already. If we camp around here the ghost will come get us.”

  He thought that was how it had worked. It had been fifteen years since he had heard the story and he had not paid close attention at the time.

  “No matter,” Mizr said. “We have treasure. No one is after us. We don’t have to stick to this obscure road.”

  “Treasure?” Megelin asked.

  “Misr and I brought the household funds. We will live well wherever we settle. I suggest we turn west.”

  Misr agreed. “Going west will give us a better chance to find help for abd-Arliki.”

  Megelin looked north. There was nothing there to draw him, really. He thought he could feel the demon waiting, insane with mystical hunger. “West we go. Tomorrow. Or now, even. I want to get farther from the hungry ghost.”

  Why had the twins not mentioned the household treasury before? Because they wanted it all for themselves? Obviously, but now they understood that they could not get out of this on their own.

  The real truth was, Mizr mentioned the money only because he was too tired to remain cautious.

  No ghoul came that night but death was not a stranger.

  Though Megelin was not surprised he did see something odd about abd-Arliki’s eyes. They had the buggy look of a hanged man.

  Even Misr and Mizr betrayed guilty relief because the old man no longer hindered them. Megelin was not sure why they had brought abd-Arliki in the first place, but neither did he care. He was busy being exasperated with Boneman, who refused to move on until he interred the old man in a substantial freestone cairn.

  “Hey, show the dead some respect…Majesty. The courtesy don’t cost nothing. You’d appreciate it if it was you. They’s plenty a things out there that’d gnaw on you.”

  Misr and Mizr helped impatiently. Boneman thanked them graciously, then gave his sullen, nonparticipating monarch a black look. “Nobody can’t say I disrespect the dead.”

  Later, the survivors hit an old east-west trace. Following that, they found some shepherds beside a small oasis. Those people had no news from Al Rhemish—nor did they care. They were not sure who ruled there.

  Megelin got his feelings bruised. He was not a hunted fugitive. No one cared enough to bother. He asked the twins, “Did we mess up by running? Should we have stayed?”

  “We did the right thing,” Mizr insisted. “Otherwise, we would’ve beaten abd-Arliki into the darkness. They were coming. It is possible that we ran too far, though.”

  Misr added, “We should have stayed close by and just gone back after everybody finally calmed down.”

  His twin nodded. “Indeed. Panic is never good. I think that it may not yet be too late. We should go back. What say you, Hawk?”

  ...

  Megelin felt like a crushing weight lay on his chest. He surged into panicked wakefulness—and found that there was a weight atop him. It was a large, flat rock half as heavy as he was. Other rocks surrounded him. He could get no leverage to get out.

  A grinning, one-eyed face appeared above, Boneman straining under the weight of another large rock. “Good morning, Majesty.” The villain settled his burden onto Megelin’s groin. “Looks like it’s going to be a wonderful day.”

  Megelin did not quite grasp his situation. “Please. What? Why?”

  “You know I insist on honoring the dead. They deserve all the respect we can give them.” He vanished from view. Megelin fought the rocks, without success. His limbs were pinned, too.

  From somewhere close by Boneman growled, “Will you lay still?” A squishy crunch followed.

  The one-eyed man appeared with another rock. This one was wet and red and had bits of hair and flesh stuck to it. The red was so fresh it had not yet drawn flies.

  Something bit Megelin on his inside left ankle.

  “That Misr just didn’t want to get along. I’m tempted to disrespect him.”

  Megelin tried to ask what was happening and why. Panic took over. He shrieked commands.

  “Now why do you want to get all rude like that? Here I am, busting my butt to do you royal honors, and you’re being unpleasant. Relax, Majesty. Your grave will be the biggest and best of all. The foxes and jackals and vultures will never get at you.”

  Something small took a bite of Megelin. He squealed, imagining things crawling all over him down there. Or maybe he was not imagining things. Another bite followed, then another.

  The sun soared higher. It beat down into Megelin’s face. Boneman hummed as he went on stacking stones. He confided his plans for a future spent enjoying the treasure in all those donkey packs. “The Disciple’s preachers told the truth. If we’re patient God will grant us what we deserve.”

  Boneman said that just before he placed the slab that shut out the sun. That and, “Sleep tight, Majesty.”

  Megelin wept. He begged. Vaguely, remotely, he heard Boneman humming or chatting as he interred Misr and Mizr. Megelin convinced himself that this was only a cruel practical joke. Boneman would dig him out once his bully streak had been fed.

  Despite the pain and terror Megelin fell asleep. Sleep was an escape. He dreamed a dream that recalled his father’s adventure when he crossed this same desert, headed north. In that dream Megelin approached the ghost and recognized him, as his father had not done then.

  That devil was no spirit. He was not supernatural at all. He was Old Meddler, playing the games he played to keep the world a violent place.

  Megelin wakened. The darkness had turned solid. The air had cooled. He could not move. Boneman had done nothing to alleviate his condition. He was lightheaded with hunger and thirst and in substantial pain where insects—small ants, he suspected—had been eating him. Despite all, he felt optimistic. Old Meddler would come for him! He was a valuable resource. Likely the ancient had been on his track for some time.

  Panic threatened.

  He fought it down. He had to keep an iron grip. A rescue would come. He was the goddamned King. He would show Boneman what Megelin bin Haroun could do. Boneman would, indeed, get what he deserved! Boneman’s fate would be the punch line to this cruel joke.

  Something began snuffling round the cairn. It grumbled to itself. It tried nosing rocks off the pile. They were too big. Then there were more snufflers. They growled at one another and grunted as they circled, eager to get at the meat. Then there were a half-dozen things all angrily frustrated.

  Megelin barely breathed.

  But then he began to whimper. The beasts had gotten at one of the twins. A growling, snarling contest exploded as the pack determined feeding order.

  A small rock by the left side of Megelin’s face slipped out of the pile. Its departure let the slab blocking his view of the sky tilt and slide slightly to the left. Megelin was blinded by the light of a millions stars. Then all he could see was a dark muzzle and cruel teeth illuminated from the side by moonlight. Hot carrion breath burned his face and filled his lungs.

  ...

  The winged steed planed high above the desert. Its brain was that of a horse. Its thoughts were neither complex nor quick but they did work in great, slow rhythms that, in time, eventually executed mildly abstract processes.

  It had lived for millennia. It had developed some fixed opinions during that time
. Among them was a conviction that immortality was wasted if it had to be spent as the tool of a defective personality.

  Ages of slow cogitation had been required to reach that one conclusion. The fabulous beast had begun to nibble round the edges of the notion that it might do something itself to alter its condition, but that concept had not yet solidified.

  Meanwhile, it remained a tool and was not happy about that. And it was bored.

  Nothing had changed since the time of the Nawami Crusades.

  Its rider urged it into a downward turn to the right, headed farther to the northwest. The horse soon saw the vultures its rider had spied already.

  ...

  The tiny ancient dismounted. He revealed nothing but was irked. He had failed to mark his useful fool Megelin so he could be found easily, so he had had to spend days hunting. And here lay the price of laziness. He was just hours too late.

  The vultures danced amongst the scattered stones and bones and bluffed a willingness to fight for the little that was left. He swung the Horn off his back, spoke to it, touched it, tapped out a one-hand tune on a battery of seven valves. The carrion birds experienced something neither man nor mount felt. They shrieked and took to the sky so suddenly that there were several feather-shedding collisions.

  Swarms of flies fled with them. Ants of a dozen breeds broke off harvesting and skirmishing and headed home to defend the nest.

  The Star Rider strolled around playing his mystic Horn. There was evidence enough in the recollections of the air and stones and scrubby brush to sketch out what had happened. “Uhm.” A dozen donkeys had left here headed northeast, an unusual direction to travel. Real safety lay closer directly to the west. Maybe the killer felt more comfortable headed northeast. He might be a smuggler or someone who had hidden in the Kapenrungs during the Royalist exile.

  The ancient contemplated one incompletely demolished cairn. Once again cruel misfortune, stupidity, and human fallibility had conspired to deprive him of an asset. Never a prime asset, to be sure, but the best in his dwindling arsenal.

  It had not been a good year.

  Next year might be worse.

  He sensed a threat being born. Specifics had not yet proclaimed themselves. No foe had been so bold as to declare himself. But there were signs and shadows and blank spaces out there. That meant just one thing.