Chased By War

by Michael Wolff

  “To be a puppet of the Council! Your family was the guardians of the Heart! Yet you abandoned your duty!”

  Lazarus clamped his teeth on an oath. This was nothing new, and the old Khatari would not add his flaring temper to his words. There were enough people seeking him out, anyway. “I was separated from my apprentice. I must know where he is.”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Come on now, Strata. We weren’t always enemies.”

  Strata snorted. “You put trust in mortals that know not the purpose they work for. What foolishness did you throw your apprentice into?”

  “He has the Azerah.”

  Strata’s eyes started from his head. “The Azerah...you bastard. You put the Azerah in the hands of a child!”

  “I did not do anything. He came to me.”

  “Came to you...a Riftgate! By all the gods, he used a Riftgate?”

  “He has. I know. His frame is older than the place we dwell.”

  “And you set him free upon the countryside? Are you mad?”

  “It was not my intention –”

  “Fuck your intentions! You bring disaster in your wake, you traitor. You should have killed him.”

  “I do not put to heel anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Lazarus stretched closer to Strata, pinning him with his augur eyes. “Now listen to me, you slimy vermin. He walks with the last Companion. This I know. What I do not know is where he went next. You will tell me.”

  “Or you will do what? Kill me as you have killed the boy? He will not survive the forces chasing him.”

  “You underestimate him, Strata. You whine about my foolishness to let him be free. Now I am looking for him. You will tell me where he is now or I’m going to follow you home. And there won’t be any regulations to keep me from gutting you like the pig you are. Now. Where. Is. He?”

  The two Weirwynd locked gazes. The world was reduced to the other’s eyes, working frantically to suppress the other. Brown augurs pierced the gray coals. Strata broke the contact. “He approaches Irismil.”

  Irismil. Lazarus marveled at the boy for reaching that leg of his journey. It was still a dangerous leg, and the boy could use all the help he could get. Leaving Strata to fume in his cups, Lazarus crossed the next three chambers, the entertainment guiding his way.

  Not that there was variety in that regard. Wriggling women to screeching flutes, giant furry trolls gulping down kegs of ale to prove who could stand the longest, and other, non-distinct elementals playing cards with the stakes being their souls, and the empty bodies that would serve as sentinels. They were not his problem, not now, maybe never. His purpose was to find someone else.

  “Hello, Shi Yan.”

  Shi Yan raised a blanched face that brightened upon seeing the Khatari. “Master Lazarus!”

  The old man smiled. It had been a long time since he was named so, yet the changes since that happy time was evident in his former pupil. A young child in his tutelage, now she had grown into a beautiful woman. Blue veins lined her porcelain-white frame, with occasional bursts of gold lightning surge in arcs and threads, here and gone in an instant. As per her ikadzu heritage, her hair stood stiff in the shape of a lightning bolt, the forked end placed delicately on her brow. Golden raiment, adorned with the ikadzu theme of lightning, fit snugly to a form lush with curves. Though, from what he remembered of her eagerness, it was most likely the boys that needed saving from her. “How long has it been?”

  “Ten years,” replied Lazarus. It never ceased to amaze him at the speed time often coursed. “It seems you have done well.”

  “Very well, if I do say so myself.”

  “So, shall I assume the great House of Yan has been restored to its former glory?”

  “You may. It took years for the populace to accept me, but they did. They call me “governess.” Can you believe that?”

  “Yes. You always had the bearing of leadership. But what are you doing with a gang of trolls?”

  “Oh. Well, as I said, it took time for the people to accept me. I cannot count how many times my life had been threatened. These trolls act as my bodyguards.”

  “I see.” The fur was deep orange, gold and red. They were enshou, he noted. How an ikadzu, however powerful or elemental, managed to convince enshou trolls of anything was beyond him.

  “So, what are you doing these days, Master?”

  Lazarus gave a simple shrug. “I look after my newest apprentice. Lately I travel. It is an age of peace. Or should I say, it once was.”

  “Yes, I heard of that. What were their names, these factions?”

  “Solvicars and Coicro.”

  “What differs between them?”

  “Not much. One works for the gods, the other, for taxes. It is a foolish rebellion.”

  “All rebellions are foolish,” Shi Yan mocked. “Your favorite quote, as I recall.”

  “Your memory is impressive.” Silence, for a moment. Lazarus did not like what he was about to impose, but the situation demanded dire action to be taken. “My latest apprentice approaches Irismil. I must be there when he arrives. A great catastrophe looms over us if he has not the right knowledge.”

  “I will happily send you there. But first there are a few people I must meet with first. Pleasantries, you understand.”

  “Of course. I can wait.” Shi Yan excused herself and melted into the crowd. Her hulking bodyguards did not pause in their gouging, yet the Fire-marked eyes held upon Shi Yan’s frame with a keenness of any bloodhound. She was safe.

  Lazarus, having completed his meeting, slunk back in the farthest chambers of the celebration. He wanted nothing more of these talking cattle and their plots. After a time, he finally saw Shi Yan come to his side. “Shi Yan.”

  “Master. Come with me, if you please.” The old Khatari followed his former pupil to a white portal—and beyond it, Irismil.

  “Shi Yan, you don’t know the import of this. I thank you.” Silence greeted him. “Shi Yan?”

  The attack was quick. Before he could turn, he felt fingers claw at his temples. Something within him struggled, stretched taut, finally broke. No. Lazarus was locked in paralysis. Shi Yan. Why? The moorings of his soul snapped, and Lazarus felt a draining, a void filling him, a cold, lonely darkness. He felt his body become ether. “Shi Yan...why?” As the draining finished, by some cruel twist of fate, Lazarus was spun about like a top.

  Sutyr was there, a hand upon Shi Yan’s shoulder. The malevolence smoldered in that black visor was a match for Shi Yan’s empty eyes. No...with one final arcane gesture, Lazarus’ spirit was tossed upon the ethereal winds, forever lost to the tides of time.

  LIX

  Time crawled onward, eroded by the harsh cold, whistling through the heavy fur cloaks as though they were nothing. I knew we should have saved the money. The dead men staked along the road suggested otherwise. They too thought themselves infallible to winter’s cruel touch, and now they were dinner for the ravens. Mykel clutched his useless cloak tighter and kept moving.

  “Shayna...” He glanced over his shoulder and blinked. “What are you doing?”

  Shayna tucked her tongue before answering. “Catching snowflakes.” She looked at him sideways. “You’ve never tasted a snowflake?”

  I had better things to do. “No.”

  “Oh, come on. You never built a snowman before?”

  “Plenty. The castle children used to build a whole castle with moats and guard towers and even soldiers.”

  “I bet that was fun.”

  “Not really. I was usually the snowman.” Oh, for the love of fuck, LeKym. The
snowman? That’s the first response that comes to mind?

  “Wait a minute. What do you mean, you were the snowman?”

  “I mean the other kids tied bricks of snow to my body and made me their snowman.” Please take the hint please take the hint.

  No go. She circled around and stopped him with those melting brown eyes. “That’s horrible. That’s a horrible thing to do to a child.”

  “It’s no big deal. Forget what I just said. We’ve got a long road ahead of us.” He brushed past her and resumed the path.

  “Oh Myyyyyykel?”

  “What is it –” That was as far as he got when the snowball pegged him straight on the nose. “What the hell was that for?”

  “Well I don’t know what you call it over here, but where I come from it’s an old-fashioned snow fight.” Her arm whipped forward, and sheer cold exploded off the librarian’s face. “Oh, come on. You’ve never thrown a snowball before?”

  “Shayna, this really isn’t the time. Let’s just get moving before the blizzard gets worse.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’re a chicken. Bock-bock-bock.”

  “You brought this on yourself.” Mykel sighed and felt the weight of the world melt from his shoulders. “What happens next is not my responsibility.”

  “A tip from one person to another. You don’t announce your throw –” That was all she got when a sudden snowball blasted the world into white and hard and cold. “What the hell?”

  “I said I was the snowman,” Mykel began conversationally. Bouncing from the good hand was a perfectly round snowball. “I didn’t say I never got them back.”

  Shayna smiled. The battle was on.

  Their technique was flawless. Scoop, pack shot. The air was alive with small plucks of snow smacking flash. Shayna quickly showed herself a veteran of many a snowball fight; the balls seemed to be an extension of her hand. Mykel found himself forced back to an errant trunk for shelter. Okay. Change of tactics. Three. Two. One.

  He charged from the tree with a lion’s roar, his forearms crossed before the head against the onslaught of snowballs. Mykel smiled at the momentary burst of hesitation. She was just realizing the purpose of his attack; the sudden scuffing of snow meant she had chosen to run. Bad idea.

  He plowed into her at the middle, the momentum carrying them over the sharp decline of a hill, and then the world was a spinning frenzy of bumps and grunts and finally a sharp jolt of pain as the hill ran out of room and suddenly there was something sexy about the fox-felt hat of hers –

  “Well well. What do we have here?”

  Dammit. The sound came from a man in the stocks. Somehow in their tomfoolery they ended at the outer fringes of a fort-city. Quickly the pair bustled up their clothing, much to the prisoners’ dismay. “Oh, come on sweetheart. We’re not gonna bite you.”

  There were three of them. All the prisoners were dirty, dry, wrinkled and stank of sweat. It came as no surprise when Shayna removed her water-skin and gave each man a sip while Mykel nervously stood guard. Inwardly he could feel Ifirit hoping the guards would wake soon and discover the pair. It had been a long time since the last battle, and a few hot-tempered guards would be refreshing after weeks of slugging across the frozen countryside. Mykel was no coward, but he knew that hot-tempered men frequently had hot-tempered friends, especially when embarrassed by a woman.

  There was one prisoner that gave the librarian pause. Dusty with sawdust, the last man’s hands were crippled beyond repair. Mykel saw the finger bones stab out from the skin and winced. That could have been me. Unconsciously the librarian tugged the longer sleeve over the dead arm and hurried before anyone could spot the comparison.

  “Come back later and I’ll show you a trick or two.” Mykel saw the red in Shayna’s cheeks and hid his own by rapping on the iron gates.

  A pair of heads popped over the tops of the wooden stakes, their helmets dented and rusty. “Ain’t ever seen you before.”

  Mykel bristled with sudden memory. Dokon and Koden, the guards at the Kal Jada gates, their greed broad and hearts shriveled. It seemed their coldness was an infliction common to their service-men.

  “Are you deaf, boy? The man asked you a question.”

  The librarian forced himself to ignore the little toadie’s quip and start over. “I am Morgan Lewis, and this is my fiancée Sara.” Mykel had to step back a full three paces to meet the guard’s face, and even then, his neck creaked with the strain. He didn’t like the way the wooden spikes loomed over him, large enough and more to cast a convincing illusion that the walls were a whisper away from falling. “I seek the lord’s shelter for the night.”

  The guards’ reaction was painfully predictable: laughter, heaving, sobbing, ripping and wheezing, rattling the lungs out of air. Ordinarily Mykel was adept at enduring such punishment. Ordinarily. Only now he had Ifirit’s rage twin to his own. It made the seduction of physical domination all the sweeter; it was all that the librarian had to crush the impulse. “Does the lord know you are denying shelter?”

  The laughter cut off as though cut by a knife. “Are you sassing me, boy? Because I’ve got some buddies behind the gate. We’re been itching to take care of some Coicro, and I see a lot of silver on you.” As if on cue the doors parted to reveal a particularly well-muscled guard with arms bulky as some trees. Aside him the guards had climbed down to either side, grinning like idiots. “Maybe we should have Henry here search you.”

  Mykel didn’t know if the guards were puffing themselves up or merely drunk. Whatever he was about to say was cut off when Shayna touched his shoulder, her eyes burning a message of warning. “Would you please let us in? It’s very cold.”

  It had been far colder for the guards, if their eyes were any clue. “Well, I’m not supposed to...but maybe we can talk about it.” The way his tongue feathered his lips left no surprise of his true intentions.

  Shayna smiled...and rammed her knee into his crotch. The second guard fumbled for his sword, too late. Shayna slapped the blade aside as she spun and drove her fist into the guard’s stomach. Deftly the Companion snatched the sword in mid-fall and whipped it upwards to kiss Henry’s throat. She gave a warning glance to the librarian and proceeded to follow the hapless guard into the fort’s foyer. There were a few disagreements, a few rattles and clashes of steel, short and sweet. Shayna shoved the fort gates open and tossed her head to pull Mykel along. He smiled at the guards spread out in prostrate, groaning as though a whirlwind had struck them. In a way, it had.

  At first Mykel thought the guards were the only denizens. There were no children at play, no mothers preparing pies, no fathers making banter over tall mugs of ale. Only the heavy scent of sea brine was there to welcome them. Mykel feared the worst, but as he and Shayna crossed the town a thrum whispered through the air. As they came closer colored towers filled the horizon. Step by step the towers transformed into people. There was a train of wagons ringing the village’s northern end, gilded with bronze. A circus, thought the librarian. But where were the animals, the children fascinated with beasts of exotic nature? There was a thin stream of people passing the wagon, sparing only a chance look. They wore smiles to mask the sadness reflected in their eyes, the helplessness. Knots of women clustered close to houses, speeding gossip to one another, their teeth clicking shut abruptly when the pair bent their heads in acknowledgement. Odd.

  “Daddy! Please!”

  Mykel’s blood ran cold. He knew that voice. He also knew that a nightmarish thing waited for him should he turn. He knew, and he turned anyway.

  Two muscular men, their eyes wicked and leers broad, were dragging a girl to a column of naked slave girls. An iron collar was snapped upon the nameless willow’s neck, one of many other similar collars connected
to one another by chain-links one would find in a soldier’s hauberk. A hellish way to live.

  The other slaves quivered slightly at the spectacle unfolding before them. They knew too well the punishment for an eyelash out of place. To them the affair might as well been invisible.

  The girl’s father was in congress with a skinny little man with enough bluster for ten kings. Indeed, the slaver’s silken clothing – black from head to toe, with crimson lace forming ornate symbols on the chest and golden fire upon the legs – demanded the same respect common to most bluebloods. His thinly curved mustachios were styled in the current fashion favored by the high courts, standing comically on his soft, unlined face. Mykel guessed he hadn’t seen a hard day’s work his whole life.

  “Daddy!” But the father was already gone, pulling curtains down on the windows as to bar the daughter’s screams. The slaver, swaggering with an annoyed air, slapped the screams from the young girl, offering a whispered exchange that left her a porcelain doll in fright. As the caravan creaked forward and the slaves shuffled forward step from tortured step, the young girl’s eye caught Mykel’s, and again the breath froze in his lungs.

  Caryl.

  It was impossible, he knew. And yet there was no denying what he was seeing.

  ***

  “How it is that you came to be...a...”

  “A whore?” She made it sound a silly retort. “I have been named far worse from a good deal less than you. Do not feel sorry. It was not of your plight to dwell upon.” Her words were broken by a glance to the windows, just beginning to glow gold in the dawn’s advent. “I am tired. Hold me till I sleep?” Mykel did so. The warmth of her nudity was enough to rouse warmth in him, and the both slept, curled as lovers as in the stories.

  Red-raven hair, soft oval face and eyes a man could willingly drown in. Immediately Mykel started at a jog, then at a run. Somewhere behind him Shayna was protesting vehemently, but the Companion had already ceased to exist. Just the caravan, and the building fire in his legs from trying to keep up, was real. It was only around a turn in which Mykel saw the chance he needed. He jumped in the path of the caravan; arms outstretched to either side and hoped the horses had good eyes.