Wildmane

by Todd Fahnestock

  The door to Tyndiria’s bedroom stood ajar and Medophae shouldered his way past it. The hinges groaned and the door smashed into the wall.

  Tyndiria was splayed across the bed in her own blood. Great slashes had rent her apart. Her limbs sprawled in awkward directions. Only her face was unmarred, pale and perfect as though she had lain down to sleep, except for one red dot of blood on her cheek.

  “No!” Medophae choked on his bile and staggered forward. “Tyndiria... Gods...no...” He wanted to snatch her up in his arms. He wanted to hold her together, to will her not to die. But she was already gone. Her deep green eyes stared at nothing. Her lips did not move. Her chest did not rise.

  Medophae turned slowly as he surveyed the room. Golden fire crackled and spit, surrounding his body. Bits of the glow fell from him like sparks, disappearing before they touched the floor. His lips pulled back in a feral snarl and the gold light chased away the shadows.

  A bakkaral sat calmly in the corner, licking its claws clean of Tyndiria’s blood. Its eyes never left Medophae.

  “Did you favor her?” it asked. The thin sheet of flame danced along its back. “My master said you did.” It cocked his head, pausing in mid-lick. “Still, she’s no dragon, is she?” The bakkaral smiled.

  Medophae roared and launched himself at the bakkaral. His sword chopped down. The bakkaral danced back, avoiding the blade by an inch. Sparks and chips of stone flew as the sword struck the floor.

  The bakkaral leapt onto Tyndiria’s chest of drawers, bounded onto the wall, rebounded, and landed lightly on the bed next to the dead queen. It kneaded the bed as if it were preparing to lie down.

  “The legendary Wildmane of the legendary temper,” it said as Medophae whirled around. “Is it true you’ve lost entire armies because of this mindless rage?” It sat, brought a claw up, and began licking again.

  In the land of Amarion, only quicksilvers were faster than bakkarals. Medophae was far faster than a mortal man, but he would never catch the bakkaral in a straight chase. He had to calm his mind and think. He had to anticipate its route of escape. His hands longed to close about the little catlike neck, but if he lost control, he would lose Tyndiria’s killer. And that must not happen.

  Slowly, one balanced step at a time, Medophae moved closer. His muscles rippled in anticipation.

  The bakkaral watched this slow advance with interest. Its furry lips pulled away from long, blood-smeared teeth.

  “Your master sent you here to die,” Medophae growled.

  “Now comes the posturing,” it replied, its wild eyes boring into him. “Good. I like this part.”

  “You like this part...” Medophae repeated in a low voice, looking at his beloved Tyndiria on her bed.

  “My posturing is in the form of a question, really,” the bakkaral said. “My master wants to know: did you really think you could hide?”

  Medophae roared and feinted left for the door. The bakkaral launched into the air toward the balcony, but the balcony was Medophae’s true destination, and he cut right, pulling on the power of a god to give his muscles strength enough to move with the speed he needed. The floor cracked under his feet as he launched himself to the side. The bakkaral hit the ground and bounded over the rail into the open air. A bakkaral could float using that flame along its back. It could even cling to stone with its claws. That drop would not kill it like it would a human.

  Medophae followed the creature over the rail into the long fall... —

  ...and caught the bakkaral’s back leg.

  The bakkaral hissed in surprise. With a howl of pain, it whipped around and sank its teeth into Medophae’s arm. Pain shot through him, but Medophae growled and kept his hold. The bakkaral tore chunks out of Medophae’s arm. It clawed and bit, desperately trying to free itself.

  But Medophae kept his hold.

  The ground rushed up at them. Medophae instinctively spun in mid-air, jammed his sword into the solid rock. Hot, popping pain fired through his arm as muscles ripped and ligaments tore. The crackling golden sword cut a five-foot slice through the stone, and stopped their fall.

  They slammed into the wall and he swung the bakkaral into the stone as though its back leg was the handle of a hammer. It didn’t have anything clever to say now. Medophae cocked back and hammered the creature again.

  “Tell me...” Medophae growled.

  “Yes!” The creature screamed. “I will tell you anything you want—”

  “Tell me...” He swung the bakkaral again, so hard its bones crunched against stone. “Do you like this part?”

  “I can tell you who sent me,” it mewled, weaker this time.

  He slammed it into the wall again.

  “Master...!” the bakkaral warbled out.

  Medophae slammed it into the wall again. And again. And again. Soon, the flame along the bakkaral’s spine winked out, but he continued to beat it against the wall.

  When he was done, he hung there for a long moment, the little corpse dangling from his bloody fist. Blinking, he looked down at his hand and dropped it in disgust. The limp bakkaral fell a hundred feet to the jagged rocks below, bounced twice, then lay still.

  Clinging to the hilt of his sword, Medophae hunched into himself. He pressed his face to the cool stone, and his body shook with great, wracking sobs.

  22

  Medophae

  Medophae brought the bottle to his lips and drank half of it in several long gulps. The Teni’sian Clear burned down his throat, settling into his belly, and sending out warmth from there. The haze over his thoughts was a welcome dulling of his pain.

  He watched a huge flatbug, its antenna nearly six inches long, crawl cautiously up the front of the dirty, ramshackle bar. The Sailor’s Cap was the worst drinking establishment in all of Teni’sia, if it could even be called an establishment. The chairs were discarded boxes. The tables were taller boxes. Even the bar was just a stack of boxes. The ceiling was a length of tattered sail that Capper Ben, the proprietor, had stretched overhead and hammered into the walls with steel pitons. The walls themselves actually belonged to the fish market stalls on either side, and the floor was an alley, half dirt and half mud. There were only two things to drink: a homemade Teni’sian Clear, which was almost 100% grain alcohol, and a barrel of flat ale that had likely been lifted from the garbage of a superior establishment.

  The Sailor’s Cap had no sign. During the day, it didn’t even exist because it didn’t pay a stall fee to the wharf master, nor taxes from its sales to the crown. The fly-by-night proprietor set up at midnight and tore down an hour before daybreak.

  The repurposed alley was full of nearly two dozen quiet men sitting on boxes, focused on their drinking. There were a few conversations, mostly a series of monosyllabic grunts. The Sailor’s Cap had the cheapest alcohol in the entire kingdom, and there was plenty of it. This was not a place a decent person patronized. In fact, it wasn’t a place a decent person would even know about. It was a “tavern” for those who had reached the end of their luck, a perfect place to find oblivion or violence or both. For only a copper or two, a man could numb his mind and end up drooling in the mud by sunrise. Or he could find himself knifed and left for dead for the few coins in his pocket.

  And that suited Medophae just fine. He raised the bottle and drained it, then signaled for another.

  He had hacked his hair off, shaved his head bald, and left the palace with a cloak and a hood. He didn’t want to see anyone he knew. The queen’s young captain was recognizable almost everywhere in Teni’sia, but the Sailor’s Cap was a place for the forgotten. Nobody would come looking for him here.

  Tyndiria’s funeral had been a nightmare where he managed only to keep his composure long enough for the service, the last debt he owed this little kingdom. He maintained the veneer of a captain long enough to offer crafted lies of solace and hope to those in the crowd who wept. He had installed Lo’gan as regent until Tyndiria’s cousin, a young man named Collus, could be summoned to assume the throne. Medophae d
idn’t know Collus, and he didn’t care about him. Tyndiria’s golden age had been raked apart by a bakkaral’s claws. The kingdom could fall or stay standing, whichever. It didn’t matter to him. He should never have come there in the first place. She was dead because of him.

  “Queen died today,” a man behind him said, as though he had heard Medophae’s thoughts.

  “Queen o’ what?” a man to Medophae’s left said, then he gave a wheezing laugh that ended in a cough.

  “The girl queen. Tyndiria. She died today,” the first man said.

  “She died yesterday,” a third man, who sat at the box table with the second man, corrected them. “Just havin’ a funeral today.”

  A younger fourth man, maybe only in his twenties, joined the conversation. “She was knifed. I heard there was ten men attacked her.”

  “Well, she’s dead,” the first man said.

  “So what?”

  “Seems like we ought to drink to that, right? Royalty dying and all. Ain’t that what you do?”

  “Bah,” the second man said. “I’m gon’ drink to nothing. Queen never did nothing for me.”

  “But she was our queen,” the first man said. “Seems wrong not to have a drink to her name—”

  “She was a whore,” a dark, gravelly voice interrupted. “Don’t tip no bottle to a dead whore.”

  Medophae raised his head and looked at the man who had spoken. He sat against the wall underneath one of the two torches Capper Ben had stuck in cracks. The man was large, almost as tall as Medophae, with thick, hairy forearms that poked out of his rolled-up shirt sleeves. He had a wide, round face and three days’ growth of black whiskers. He sat alone, crouched over his box table with a bottle of Teni’sian Clear in front of him.

  “She’s a whore who never should’a been queen in the first place,” the big man continued. “And a murderer on top of it all. She killed the man what should’a been king. Lord Magal Sym. Had her guards do it. And she paid ’em, too. Probably raised her skirts for every one of ’em in payment. They’re gonna call her the whore queen, mark my words. I ain’t going to raise no bottle to that.”

  “I heard that, too,” the young man said. “And she was a threadweaver.”

  “Idiot.” The big man shook his head. “Ain’t no threadweavers no more, but there’s plenty o’ whores. And one of them was running this kingdom until today. Thank the gods someone knifed her in her belly.”

  Medophae stood up and faced the man. The big man appraised him without a hint of fear.

  “You a queen’s man, boy?” the big man asked.

  “You’re going to get on your knees,” Medophae said. “And you’re going to kiss this muddy ground, get your lips good and pressed into the slime, and you’re going to apologize to Queen Tyndiria. And then you’re going to apologize to me. And then you’re going to apologize to everyone else in this alley. And then you’re going to raise that bottle and drink the rest of it to her memory.”

  The big man stood up, kicking over the box he’d been sitting on. “I’ll drink to what I want, boy.”

  His words were like knives in Medophae’s hazy mind, and he felt Oedandus rising.

  “Maybe you’re one of them, huh?” the big man said. “One of them guards she paid with her—”

  Medophae lurched across the distance. The big man was ready for him, a knife hidden behind his back. He stabbed it into Medophae’s stomach.

  Medophae growled. No knife could stop him. Entire armies hadn’t stopped him.

  He grabbed the big man by the throat and slammed him against the wall. He gurgled, twisting the knife, but Oedandus’s golden fire was already repairing the wound.

  Hands grabbed his free arm. Medophae threw the big man to the ground and spun, grabbing the throat of the younger man, who’d come to help.

  Golden fire flared over Medophae’s arms and chest, and he hoisted the young man into the air. The godsword sparked and came to life in his hand. Medophae snarled like an animal and thrust the sword into the young man—

  His arm froze. The tip of the godsword hovered an inch from the terrified young man’s chest, going no further.

  There is no justice here, the dark voice said, deep within him.

  I want to kill them. I want to kill them all.

  You are the hand of justice, the dark voice said. Kill the foul children of Dervon and Tuana. Bring justice to mortals.

  I want them dead! Medophae screamed at his god.

  There is no justice here.

  The young man had peed himself. He whimpered and struggled against the iron grip. Medophae dropped him, then looked at the big man, who was scrambling to his feet, holding his knife. He looked at it, then looked at Medophae’s bloody belly, then looked at the knife again.

  “Go drink somewhere else,” Medophae growled. “Or I’ll finish what I started.”

  The big man hesitated, and Medophae hoped he would stay. Oedandus or no Oedandus, he’d pummel the big man into meat. But the big man lurched past Medophae and ran out of the alley.

  Medophae went back to his box and sat down. He raised his bottle.

  “To the queen,” he said loudly.

  “To the queen!” Every single person in the Sailor’s Cap, including Capper Ben, raised their bottle.

  They all drank to Queen Tyndiria, who should have been alive, who would have had a long, prosperous life except that she met a broken demigod, and he had killed her.

  Medophae called for another bottle, and another, and another.

  Hours later, when the sun began to rise, he realized everyone was gone or passed out. The ripped sail was still overhead, but Capper Ben had pushed over the bar and taken his liquor with him. Now it was just an alley with three snoring drunks sleeping in the mud, a dozen scattered boxes, and Medophae.

  He had drained the last of his final bottle, many empties scattered around his feet. He looked at the empty bottle, gripped the neck, then shattered it against the edge of the box. He cut his own throat with the sharp glass, but it healed. So he did it again. It healed again. He kept doing it, over and over, trying to feel that pain more than he did the loss of Tyndiria and the horror of what he really was.

  That was when Regent Lo’gan and a dozen of the queen’s guard found him. The troop gathered in the mouth of the alley. Only Lo’gan came forward. He didn’t seem to even see the bloody box or the broken bottle in Medophae’s hand.

  “It’s time to go, my lord,” Lo’gan said.

  “I’m not your lord,” Medophae slurred.

  “You will always be my lord.”

  “Go run your kingdom.”

  “Sir, come back with me. Teni’sia needs you.”

  Medophae barked an ugly laugh. “The sooner I am gone, the better off you will be.”

  Lo’gan took hold of Medophae’s arm and lifted him to his feet. “We will get you cleaned up, sir. You just need a—”

  Medophae shrugged him off. “Get me a horse,” he demanded. He felt for his pouch of gold. It was still there. Even in the Sailor’s Cap, no one had wanted to steal from him after his outburst.

  “Sir, where will you go?”

  “To find out if Orem’s right.”

  23

  Mirolah

  Sailing had terrified Mirolah at first. She didn’t know how to swim, and the idea of being completely surrounded by water with only a little boat to keep her afloat seemed ludicrous. If she went over the side, she would sink to the bottom like a stone. When she first climbed aboard, the shifting and rocking of the boat had caused her to clutch the rail with a death grip. It was all she could do not to shut her eyes. Only after Orem had coaxed her for the better part of an hour had she let him guide her shakily to the bow.

  Now, two days into the journey, she couldn’t get enough. The wind in her hair, the spray of the water. It was like flying. The breeze from the Inland Ocean was brisk and cool, and she loved it. She never knew she could feel this way. The only stories she had ever heard about sailing were horror stories of the goddess
Saraphazia smashing ships to splinters with her enormous tail, creating waves the size of mountains. Sailors drowning by the score. Arasaurans and replisarks eating them.

  She clutched the rail at the bow and stretched forward into the breeze. No one had ever mentioned this.

  Before he rescued her, she’d wanted to run from Orem. He had represented everything frightening about her life: her love of reading, her secret desire to know more about the past, the foreboding knowledge that her brother had been a threadweaver, and, that perhaps, so was she.

  But now she found herself wanting to help him. She had lived for so long under a blanket of fear that she couldn’t remember what life was like without it. She feared discovery of her proclivities, condemnation for being who she was, death for exhibiting powers like her brother had. But the sea air seemed to peel that blanket away. Orem didn’t want to kill her for being a threadweaver, like the people of Rith did. He wanted her to explore the GodSpill, wanted her to learn. Having him believe in these parts of her, parts she’d desperately tried to hide for so long...it felt like freedom.

  Orem said they were going north to a place called Denema’s Valley, one of the city empires during the GodSpill Wars. It was a civilization that had been utterly destroyed by the capping of the Fountain. Orem said that Denema’s Valley had been a place where scholars and powerful threadweavers had made their homes. In the Age of Ascendance, each of the city empires had had a different culture, and Denema’s Valley had been focused on study, history, and academic pursuits. These learned women and men had separated themselves from other civilizations to get away from the oftentimes frivolous behavior of the lesser threadweavers who had suddenly sprung into existence with the creation of the Daylan’s Fountain. Orem said that the people who built Denema’s Valley were those who would most likely have been threadweavers in the Age of Awakening, before Daylan Morth’s creation made threadweaving so easy. They even disdained the term “high threadweavers”—a word used to describe highly talented threadweavers in the Age of Ascendance—to describe themselves, because it was not a term that was used in the Age of Awakening.