by Martha Wells
The curseling tried to rein in but too late; the horse slammed right into the sword and shrieked in pain. It reared back and dumped its rider, and fell with a thump. The rider rolled to his feet, his shortsword ready. Ilias had been right; his armor was bone, and seemed fused to his body.
Ilias ran back a few paces and snatched up his own weapon. He returned to Giliead’s side, watching the armored curseling warily. Giliead was breathing hard, still holding the much reduced stump of the sword, his hands covered with the animal’s blood. He said, “You were right. That isn’t a horse, not anymore.”
Ilias threw a glance at the creature, which lay unmoving in the grass. The pale moon glinted off a set of gleaming fangs in a distended snout. He held out his sword to Giliead. Giliead dropped what was left of his weapon and took it.
The curseling watched them, though the bone helmet covered his face and Ilias couldn’t see much detail.
“Delphian,” Giliead said the name evenly. “You’re not a wizard. But you know a wizard, don’t you? He gave you something, something that affects anything it touches. Your body, that horse. My father.”
“It was a gift.” Beyond a doubt, it was Delphian’s voice, hoarse but clearly recognizable. “It wasn’t meant to do this. It makes me the greatest poet of this age.”
The bone-carved panpipe, Ilias thought. “But where is...” He trailed off. The bone armor.
Giliead seemed to know already. He said, “Was it last night that it started to change, to cling to you, to grow over you--”
Delphian snarled, “You did that. You made it do that. Just being near a Chosen Vessel--”
Giliead ignored that. “Why did you use it on Ranior? Did he suspect you? Did he know--”
“It was a bargain, when the wizard gave it to me.” Admitting it made Delphian seem to shrink. He crumpled, sinking to the ground. “If I ever came across a Chosen Vessel, I was to let someone close to him hold it. He didn’t say what it would do next.” He looked up at Giliead, and Ilias saw the helmet was fused to his face, that blood leaked from under it. “Please...”
Giliead stepped in, spun into the sword stroke and put all his weight behind it. The blade connected with flesh and bone and drove through it.
Ilias stepped back as Delphian collapsed and his severed head rolled away.
Giliead stood there for a long moment, then he tossed the sword down. He said, wearily, “Well, that’s done.”
Ilias nodded. It didn’t change anything, and it didn’t help. He didn’t feel any relief, or pleasure in Delphian’s death. He felt tired, and sorry for the horse.
* * *
Giliead had to keep Delphian’s head, to take back to show the god and the people of Cineth, but they had to dispose of the rest of the body, to make certain the curse didn’t linger here. No one at the farmstead would help them, so Irissa spit at their feet and took shovels out of their shed, daring them to stop her. She, Ilias, and Giliead dug a shallow hollow in the field and piled brush on it to burn Delphian and the horse’s corpse. It took the rest of the night, and it wasn’t until dawn, when they were shoveling in the last of the dirt over the charred remnants, that Giliead broke down.
He dropped the shovel, sat down on the ground, and wept, harsh broken sobs that made Ilias’ heart twist. He sat next to Giliead and leaned against his side. Irissa dropped her shovel and settled next to them. She didn’t cry, she just looked sick and weary.
This is it, Ilias thought. This is what it’s going to be like, the rest of his life, the rest of our lives. They had been lucky up to this point, astonishingly lucky. And he understood why Menander had put off taking Giliead on hunts. Menander had loved Giliead too well, perhaps, and had been trying to delay this moment as long as he could.
If Ilias had any sense, he would get up now and walk into the woods, trick some farmer woman into marrying him, and spend his life digging fields and fathering babies. Happy, but not safe. Never safe, and knowing too much about what was waiting out there in the dark, just beyond the god’s limited boundary. And how clever it was at slipping through that boundary.
Looking at Irissa, he knew it was the same for her as well, why she hadn’t wanted to look for a husband among the young men of Cineth. She couldn’t bring a brother-in-law into the Chosen Vessel’s house, to be another potential victim and hostage to fate.
The thought that Irissa might turn to Ilias eventually out of desperation, because they both ran the same risk, was bleak past bearing.
Irissa avoided his eyes, and they sat there until Giliead quieted and wiped his face awkwardly on his arm. Irissa said, “We should go. Mother will be worried.”
Giliead nodded, gripped Ilias’s arm once, hard. They got to their feet to walk back down the hills to Cineth.
Houses of the Dead
Ilias didn’t notice when they stepped over the boundary of the last god’s territory.
They were walking over mossy ground in a beech forest, and had come out on a hill that overlooked a meadow. In the distance, tall trees climbed the foothills up toward the peak of the low mountains, and Ilias could see the notch where the pass was, the sharp-etched outline of the cliffs that framed it. The rock was sandy-colored where the trees thinned out, and he thought the country up there would be fairly barren. Scrub and brush maybe, and not much else. Not many places for curselings to hide. Maybe that was why they thought it would be safe, he thought, lips twisting. If his foster father Ranior hadn’t been cursed in the middle of the city of Cineth, despite the god and the Chosen Vessels, Ilias might have thought so too.
Giliead came out of the trees behind him and stopped to contemplate the view as well. His expression was resigned. “What do you think we’re going to find?” Ilias asked. He had held off asking until now, through the long days and nights of walking, and thought he might as well get it over with.
Giliead took a deep breath. “Dead people. The wizard long gone.” He looked down at Ilias, smiling a little. “You know as much as I do.”
“That’s not comforting. I don’t know anything,” Ilias commented as he followed Giliead up the hill. But that was the first time he had seen Giliead smile since Ranior’s death. Maybe the trip was doing him some good. It was still the work of a Chosen Vessel, even if there was nothing much left to do.
The message asking for help had come for Menander, the Chosen Vessel of the Uplands, but Menander was wounded and still recovering, and had conceded that it was time for Giliead to hunt on his own. Especially a hunt like this, where it sounded as if there wasn’t much left to do but assure the survivors that the wizard was gone.
Ilias kept walking, only realizing several steps later that Giliead had stopped.
He turned to face him, taking advantage of the pause to tighten his queue and tie the rest of his braids back. “What?”
Giliead’s face had that look of inward concentration. He said, “The Uplands god’s territory ends here.”
Ilias stopped. A cold sensation settled in his belly and he had the sudden urge to look around for curselings. He shook it off; he had scanned the meadow from the top of the hill and it was empty. The woods on the far side were another matter, but there was nothing in the meadow. Don’t be an idiot, he told himself. You’ve been at sea, that’s godless territory.
But somehow the sea was different.
He realized Giliead was regarding him with a lifted brow, as if expecting more of a reaction. Giliead had been gifted at birth by the god that watched over Cineth, the city nearest the family farm; the gift made him into a Chosen Vessel with the ability to smell curses and see the traces they left in air, earth and water. This was different for him. Ilias glared. “All right, what are you waiting for?”
Giliead’s brows quirked, and he stepped over the boundary.
* * *
It was the morning of the next day when they walked into the traders’ camp. The traders had put their wagons in a half circle, stretching oiled canvas between them to make a large tent, and had dug a firepit at the fron
t. Fur rugs and wool carpets had been spread under the canvas to make a seating area, with a few carved camp stools. Heavy mountain draft horses with shaggy manes and a few mules grazed nearby.
Sentries had seen them approach and had followed them through the trees at a distance, though everyone Ilias saw looked more tired than hostile. A man came out from under the canvas shelter to greet them, his expression understandably wary. Camping in godless country, even for a group this large and this well-armed, was still a calculated risk. He asked cautiously, “Travelers?” He was big, his red-brown hair braided with a collection of metal trinkets and beads.
“I’m Giliead of Andrien, Chosen Vessel of Cineth,” Giliead corrected him. “This is Ilias, my brother.”
“Ah.” His brows lifted, but he didn’t comment. At seventeen seasons, Giliead looked young to be a Chosen Vessel, and Ilias was only a couple of seasons older. They didn’t look like brothers, either. Ilias had been adopted by the Andrien as a boy; he was short, stocky, and blond like the inland Syprians, and Giliead was tall, chestnut-haired, and olive-skinned, like the coastal people. The man said, “I’m Macchus.” He turned to call toward the wagons, “Laodice, they’re here!” He waved for Ilias and Giliead to follow him, saying, “Come and meet the women, they’ll tell you what we found.”
More people were coming out of the wagons, men and women of various ages but no children or elders, which was what Ilias had expected. It looked as if there were at least two families here, and they looked like ordinary traders, except they wore a great deal of copper and bronze jewelry with polished stones, earrings, armbands, wrist cuffs, hair clasps. They must deal in metal, which explained why they had been associated with the family that had wanted to establish the gold mine. Macchus led them under the canvas, gesturing for them to sit. Giliead took a camp stool, pulling off his baldric and setting aside his bow. Ilias settled on the rug beside him, shedding his main weapons as well. The traders were gathering around, anxious and concerned, and somebody stirred up a brazier and put a jar of wine on it to warm.
A woman took a seat on a camp stool brought by Macchus. “I’m Laodice.” She was small, plump and blond, and older than she looked at first glance. “I own the wagons.” She looked at Giliead, her expression a little uncertain. “You’re the Chosen Vessel from Cineth?”
Giliead nodded, calmly pretending not to notice that it was obvious that everyone thought he was far too young. “Tell me what happened.”
Laodice took a deep breath. “You know the story of the Taerae, how they wanted to build a city in the godless section of the pass to mine gold?”
“I do now,” Giliead told her. “It wasn’t heard of in Cineth until recently.”
She nodded. “They kept the word of it close, and only drew settlers from the villages on the far side of the pass. The trading isn’t good there, because the routes from the larger city-states are so long, so many were eager to be persuaded. The Taerae’s reasoning was that since there were gods on both sides of the pass, it would keep the curselings off and wizards wouldn’t dare to come.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” Giliead’s face was grim.
There was an uneasy shifting among the other traders, and someone murmured, “That’s for certain.”
Ignoring the mutters, Laodice continued, “But they drew settlers, probably close to two hundred people, and started to carve a city out of the rock. They hired more people from the villages down in the valleys to help with the building, and of course they had to buy their supplies from the valleys because there’s little land for farming in the pass. They did mine the gold, and for the past few years they did a good trade in it, shipping it out of Cirrdon to the Chaeans.” She nodded to someone standing behind Ilias, and he glanced back, surprised to see a Chaean woman. She was dark-skinned as most Chaeans were, her curly hair drawn back in a single braid, with full lips and a nose like a hawk’s long profile, and somehow the effect of the whole was that she was beautiful. She wore a short silk jacket over knee-length pants, with a Syprian wool wrap over her shoulders. Laodice said, “This is Tolyi, who negotiates the trade for the Chaeans.”
Ilias nodded to her and she gave him a grave nod in return, and he tried to drag his attention back to the story.
Laodice was saying, “At the turn of the moon we went up the pass with our wagons, to pick up the Taerae’s shipment and to bring Tolyi to make the trade agreements for the next year. But as we came up the road into the city, we knew something was wrong.”
“It was too quiet,” Macchus put in, his face hard with the memory. He had taken a seat on the rug next to Laodice’s stool. “No one was on the road, and then no one at the gates.”
“The gates stood open?” Ilias asked. Some of the people watching twitched and stared at him, and he realized he hadn’t spoken until now. Ilias of Andrien, the Chosen Vessel’s mute spear-bearer. The irreverent thought made it difficult to keep his expression sober. “It didn’t look as if there had been a battle?”
“No, there wasn’t a sign of any disturbance,” Laodice answered him, recovering first. “The gates were open as if they had seen us coming, but with no one at watch.”
“We did look for tracks in the dirt,” Macchus added. “But the road was hardened mud, so...” He shrugged helplessly.
“No one came when we called out,” Laodice continued. “We knew that something was badly wrong, but thought it might be bandits, or that there had been trouble in the mine or at the river. I left most of the men to guard our wagons, and took Tolyi and a few others to search.”
“I thought it was the mine as well,” Tolyi said suddenly. Her voice was as beautiful as her face, rich and full. “But as we went through the town, it was too quiet. We saw no one. And of course, we reached the diggings and there was no one there, and no one down by the river panning. There was no hint of anything wrong. Except that there were no people.”
“We started to go into the houses.” Laodice frowned, rubbing her arms as if she was cold. “We found food laid out on the tables, tools set aside. The animals were unhurt, if hungry and thirsty. They couldn’t have been left untended long. We drove the horses and cattle down to the valleys—”
Ilias had been listening in increasing incredulity. He looked up to meet Giliead’s puzzled frown. Giliead said, “But there were bodies? They had all been killed?”
Half a dozen people spoke to correct that and Laodice raised her voice to be heard over them, “No, that was the frightening thing. No bodies, no smell of death, except for goat’s milk or meat that had gone bad.” She lifted her hands. “They were just gone.”
* * *
“This isn’t what we were expecting,” Giliead said later, leaning against a wagon. It was evening and torches were lit in the traders’ camp as the darkness crept up through the trees.
From here they could see it was still light on top of the mountain, the peak and the notch of the pass outlined in red. Ilias didn’t think it could look more ominous if the rocky cliffs near the pass had been carved into skulls. Curseling skulls with horns and big teeth. “No kidding,” he said, his voice dry. “I don’t remember anything in the Journals about a whole city’s worth of people disappearing.”
Giliead grunted, sounding both annoyed and distracted, his eyes still on the mountain. Ilias glanced back at the traders, several of whom were at the firepit making dinner preparations. He caught the scent of roasting meat and his stomach grumbled.
Wizards created curselings and set them loose to kill people. Even in territory protected by a god and a Chosen Vessel, curselings could still creep in and attack isolated villages or farms, if you weren’t careful. People who built a city out of reach of the nearest gods and in such an isolated spot as the pass, frequented only by heavily-armed swift-traveling traders, were not being careful. If curselings killed them it was terrible but not exactly unexpected. This... This was something else.
Giliead shook his head. “I wish I could talk to our god. It’s not good at answering question
s, especially ones that begin with ‘why,’ but at least it could tell me if it’s a bad idea to go up there.”
“I can tell you it’s a bad idea to go up there, but we still have to go.” Ilias scratched his chest absently. Back in the circle of wagons, Tolyi had come out to talk to Laodice. The two women stood near the fire, the light painting Tolyi’s dark figure in different shades of bronze and gold. “What about the Uplands god, couldn’t you talk to it?”
Giliead let out his breath. “It would take too long. I’d have to travel back down the forest road at least two days, and then get its attention. There’s no telling how long that would take with a god that doesn’t know me. And it’s been too long already. If those people are alive somewhere, trapped or imprisoned, it’s been long enough for most to die just from lack of water.”
Ilias frowned at him. “Macchus and the others looked for tracks.” But Macchus had also said the ground was too hard to leave any. Ilias looked up at the pass again, considering it. He had been deliberately thinking of the inhabitants of Taerae as all adults, avoiding the image of dead children, though it was highly unlikely that the settlers had had none. But Giliead was right, even if the people had been trapped, unless they had had some source of water, it had already been too long.
“If they were taken by curses, I might be able to see the traces of it,” Giliead said. He shrugged, his mouth twisting. “Curselings would have left something. Blood, bones, skin, disturbed ground. And they would have killed the goats and horses, too.”
“Not guls,” Ilias pointed out. Guls only wanted people. They preyed on travelers who were alone, or in small groups. They devoured people whole, leaving no remains, and no way to release the victims’ shades.
Giliead shook his head. “Laodice didn’t think there were enough guls up there to take all those people. And the settlers knew to be careful of them. Unless they were trapped somewhere, and couldn’t get away.”
