by David Benem
Stevran choked back a sob. “Could you help us? There’re other soldiers heading northeast, to the Silverflow River and regrouping. Soldiers who’ll fight for Rune but not for the general. We could win this war, for the High King. But I fear the general has come undone…”
“You were right to tell me this, soldier,” said Keln, placing a hand upon Stevran’s head and wiping his thumb across his brow. “At ease, now,” he said.
“Aye, sir,” Stevran said, his face drooping with exhaustion.
Then Keln seized the soldier by his hair and plunged the sword into his throat. Stevran gurgled and gasped, falling backward. The sword slowly glided free of his gullet, replaced by a font of blood.
“No!” Bale shrieked, leaping to the soldier’s side. But it was futile. The boy was beyond any help, his heart sputtering its final beats.
Keln shifted and stuck Piter with the sword. The body did not move, and Bale figured the lad had already passed.
“Why?” said Bale. “They were soldiers, just like you!”
“Treason can never be tolerated, in any of its forms, and desertion in wartime is a crime of the worst sort. Orders are to be followed. To the very letter.”
“But your general was marching them to their death.”
Keln laughed. “Aren’t we all marching there?” He stooped and wiped his blade on Stevran’s body. “Rise, spooker. Let’s find your Lector so I can be done with you.”
They found the site by late afternoon. It was a wide clearing in the forest, far from the nearest trail. There was a fallen tree stretched across the tall grass, and beside it a mound of ash. The remnants of a funeral pyre.
Keln took a swig from his wineskin and took a look about. “How is it you know this is the place?”
“I don’t,” Bale whispered, moving slowly about the pyre. “Not yet, at least, but I should know soon enough. Stand clear. Please.”
Bale felt a tingling sensation settle upon him, a disbelieving giddiness. He’d not dared hope he would succeed in finding the Lector’s resting place. But now, he believed he had.
He stooped and began seizing handfuls of ash from the pyre. With each sampling he shut his eyes and mouthed sacred words of divination. The body must be here.
He sensed something. A faint echo, a ghostly call. Then, finally, as he seized another handful of the ash it was there. A presence. An answer. He knew Lector Erlorn was one of the bodies burned at this place. He placed the handful of ash upon the ground, apart from the pyre, and said a prayer of passage. Farewell, my friend.
He then set about gathering kindling, a few armfuls of dry twigs and crumbling leaves. He brought it to the edge of the pyre and stacked it carefully, enough for a reasonable fire. He knelt before it and withdrew from his pack his sleeve of reagents and compounds. Therein he found a vial of powder and sprinkled it over the kindling. Soon it was ablaze, not with natural flame but with a pure, white fire that burned with minimal heat.
“Another fire, spooker?” demanded Keln. “Must we have this discussion again? The enemy stalks this same forest.”
“The fire, like faith, illuminates all things,” Bale said, remembering when Erlorn had spoken to him those same words.
“It had best be out by nightfall, and this had best be the last of it. Tomorrow we’re returning to General Fane, whether you have your answers or not.”
Bale pressed his hands toward the fire, pretending not to hear.
Keln grunted and assumed a seat upon the fallen tree, and after a moment began sharpening his sword with a stone. It produced a squealing, scraping sound, but after a time Bale was able to insulate his thoughts.
Bale withdrew a small brazier and a pair of tongs from his sleeve of pouches. He then found another vial in the sleeve, this one filled with a viscous, milky liquid. He emptied several drops into the brazier and then mixed in a few pinches of ash from the pile he’d set nearby. He positioned the brazier over the flame and sank into the ritual of spellcraft, chanting quiet words of power known only to the Sanctum’s most skilled casters.
The concoction hissed and popped and spat, and, above all, smoked. It was a thick smoke which poured from the lip of the brazier, but it did not rise. Rather, it gathered about Bale before settling into a haze near the ground around him. He sniffed, noting a pungent odor not unlike soured wine.
In time the mixture in the brazier transformed, congealing from a pasty liquid into something solid. It appeared decidedly fleshy, like a swatch of skin separated from a body. Bale drew a sharp breath. The spell succeeded.
He pulled the brazier from the fire and dropped the substance into his hand. He squeezed it and quickened his thoughts, knowing he had but a precious few moments before the substance disintegrated. His bond to the Lector’s body was fleeting, and there was little chance he’d be able to cast the spell again.
He stilled himself, finding an inner reserve of calm with which to surround his thoughts. There, he formed an image of the Lector, of Erlorn, as he looked the last time they’d met. He rubbed at the spongy substance in his hand, and soon felt the connection form.
Much as it did with the Spell of Divination, this Spell of Recounting took Bale’s conscious mind from the immediacy of his surroundings to somewhere else. But unlike divination, this enchantment took him not to a place, but to a time. A time when the substance in his hand was, indeed, flesh, to a time when its bearer still lived.
His mind focused and his thoughts distilled, and just then he was there, within the Lector, within another time not long ago. He could sense not thoughts, but the flesh contained a memory of physical action. Bale searched first for the sensations at the moment of death. He waited for his own mouth to move, to mimic the Lector’s own. But there was nothing. Was a confession spoken? The flesh yielded the answer: the Lector’s mouth had not formed words upon death.
Bale was stunned. A Lector without a confession? He felt doubt creep inside him, but knew he needed to press onward. The fleshy piece was withering and he knew he had but a brief time remaining with this link.
Of the killer there was nothing. It was as though the Lector’s life had been taken in a blind instant, a moment of absolute vulnerability and without struggle. Bale shook his head again, frustrated.
He broadened his inquiry, willing the flesh to yield answers from further back in time. The substance withered further, wasting away as more was demanded of it, but soon there came the swaying sensations of riding, the performance of the routine activities of travel. Prayer, too. Sleep. And then more travel, shifting here to there on horseback. Nausea.
There must be more! Bale set his resolve and pressed ahead, feeling the substance begin to sweat, liquefying and weakening the bond. Time was not in his favor.
He pushed deeper with his mind, seeking other actions, movements betraying both thought and purpose. Not the routines of travel nor the mundane activities of life, but something more. He paused as he discovered something, and for a moment his mouth moved as the Lector’s had. Yet, he sensed these were terse commands rather than revelations of purpose. He gesticulated involuntarily, miming the Lector’s motions, but these were random gestures.
He pressed onward again and then sensed a moment. He slowed his thoughts, ignoring the increasingly mushy texture of the physical link he held in his hand and sharpening his attention to this particular time. This is the moment.
He shifted the substance from his right hand to his left, carefully transferring the liquid remnants as well as the slight, solid remains. He pressed his right hand forward, closer to the cool flame, and waited.
His hand twitched. At first it moved slightly, but then it jerked with more pronounced force. It snarled into an almost painful contortion and began moving. The motions were halting at first, but soon his hand assumed a rhythm. The motions of writing.
Bale attuned all his thoughts to his hand as it moved to form unseen symbols. He bent all his concentration upon the delicate gestures, at first unable to decipher meaning. Not only were the symbol
s being traced in the hand of another, but in an unusual language as well. A drip of fluid bled through the fingers of his left hand. Quickly, now!
After a time, he adapted to Erlorn’s idiosyncrasies and his mind sifted through the languages he’d studied. He beheld the gestures of his hand as though watching a quill pressed to parchment. He yielded to the motions and could see the words etched upon the air. He had missed much, but the hand was moving still. Some answers yet remain.
“And, thus, Lyan, I summon you. I implore you to honor once more your most sacred vow. I will come to the Sacred Place at Cirak, and together we must return to Rune before the Necrists pull His power from the Godswell. I have sent summonses to the others. The very fate of the world is in jeopardy, and only we can save it.”
And then the feeling vanished as quickly as it had come. His hand still trembled, but it was no longer from the echo of the Lector’s spirit. Bale breathed deeply and sat in thought. ‘His?’ Yrghul’s?
He drew a shuddering breath and sat for a long moment. Terrible things are afoot, and my task grows ever more difficult.
Bale opened his eyes and in time oriented himself to his surroundings. Night had fallen and the camp was illuminated by a half-moon overhead. An owl hooted nearby, and there was the drone of frogs calling to their mates. Bale rubbed his eyes and set about collecting his tools, clumsily at first, but soon feeling returned to his limbs.
He rubbed his aching knees and studied the camp. Before him the fire had dwindled to a low glow. Beyond, Keln leaned against the fallen tree, his sword across his lap, and by all indications he was deeply asleep.
Bale thought of General Fane’s orders, of his insistence that Bale return directly to him and report his findings. He knew Keln would not grant him additional latitude to search for more answers, or to spend any more time at the site than the soldier deemed absolutely necessary. Bale would be yanked away by his collar at dawn and marched to the front before Fane. And when his answers did not satisfy the general, he would be slain.
This cannot happen. Bale rolled his sleeve of reagents, stuffed it in his pack, and rose. He paused, then found the handle of his knife and took a step toward Keln. The soldier slept soundly, his chest rising and falling with deep, regular breaths. His hands had fallen to his sides, away from his sword, and his head was tilted back against the fallen tree, his throat exposed.
As he caressed the weapon’s handle Bale thought of riding off with the horses and abandoning Keln at the camp. But he was no horseman and the beasts would never yield to his command. He thought also of fleeing on foot, but knew the Scarlet Swordsman would hunt him and would never relent. The man was a skilled tracker and quite at ease in the wild, whereas Bale was helpless in this rugged land.
The taking of life was against every precept held dear by the Sanctum. They were practitioners of faith, seekers of wisdom, and healers of men. They were not murderers. But, then, how could an action be condemned if no other choice remained? Staying here would mean losing the scant answers he’d secured from the Lector. It would mean delivering his precious information to a man who consorted with Necrists, the Sanctum’s most ancient enemy.
Bale thought of the soldiers they’d encountered earlier. He thought of their grief, of their pain in recounting the battle, and of Fane’s grim commands. He means to lose this war, and to sacrifice everything to our enemies. The Lector knew this.
Bale set his mind to the task and did his best to dispel any trepidation. I have no choice. He withdrew the knife, shouldered his pack, and crept toward Keln. He walked as quietly as he could manage, pressing his feet softly upon the grass. Keln did not stir.
He walked alongside the fallen tree, deciding it would be best to be on the opposite side of the trunk in the event something went awry. Keln would have no trouble clearing old tree, but it would keep Bale out of reach of the soldier’s arms and weapon for at least a few dear moments. He moved carefully to the spot just behind Keln, such that the top of the soldier’s head was within easy reach. Bale studied him for an instant, noting the man’s eyes were shut and his mouth agape. Below his chin was his defenseless throat.
He felt a flutter in his chest and a tremble in his hands, but at the same time felt moved by a greater purpose. He looked at the knife, wondering for the first time whether it was sharp enough to penetrate skin. It was a kitchen knife, and a well-used one at that, but its point seemed deadly enough. He pressed it against his palm and decided that when compelled by enough force the blade would suffice. He leaned forward over the trunk and held the knife with both hands above Keln’s throat.
He breathed deeply again, trying to calm his nerves, but soon realized it was of no use. I am too weak an instrument! He took a step back. Doubt flooded his head. How long will it take for Keln to die? Will he still have the strength to hack at me with his sword? Bale felt as though his knees would buckle, and a whimper escaped his lips.
Then he thought again of General Fane. Of his cruelty, of his mad ambition. I cannot allow Rune to fall to this man. He knew he needed to do this quickly or not at all. He knew also he was not a courageous man, but hoped he could act like one for just an instant.
He swallowed hard and lurched forward, plunging the knife downward, his eyes squeezed shut. The knife jolted suddenly, as though it’d struck against something solid, and then his hands were awash with warm liquid. There was a twist and the knife jerked free of his hands.
He opened his eyes to see Keln flailing dumbly about, slapping at the blade protruding from his collar as though it were a bothersome insect. He groaned and with it came a wet, wheezing gurgle. Bale looked on in horror as Keln grabbed the blade’s handle and appeared ready to pull it loose. He struggled upward and stood, wobbling and stumbling as he did. Blood was everywhere.
Dead gods! Bale squealed and turned and ran, nearly stumbling as fear drove his feet. He dashed headlong into the forest and did not dare look back. Sweet Illienne please spare your loyal servant!
20
BAD BUSINESS
FENCRESS FALLCROW KICKED her black stallion in the flanks, and at last the beast clambered up the rocky slope to hill’s crest. The horse was a magnificent animal, a generous gift from Old Crook, but it’d grown awfully skittish once they’d gotten a sniff of the fighting. “Don’t worry, boy,” she said, scratching the horse’s neck. “None of us is fearless. Some are just better at pretending.”
The heavy forests of southern Rune had given way to hills and wide, winding fields between them. She figured the landscape below would otherwise be a quaint scene of tiny hamlets and herds of sheep and well-tended crops, but for the fact it was presently overrun by thousands upon thousands of men, most of them dead, the rest of them in the last throes of desperate combat. Farmhouses smoldered, fields were left trampled, and all sorts of folk lay about with their guts spilled.
The lads’ loyalties were easily discerned, as the soldiers of Rune were outfitted smartly in silver mail and red sashes and the Arranese looked like charming rustics in hides and leathers. Fencress thought the entire notion of uniforms an odd one, reckoning it would be far more difficult to knife a man if your clothes told him you intended to do it.
There is so little room for subtlety in war. How very typical of men.
“Madness!” said Drenj, beside her.
Fencress tugged her cowl overhead. “It’s a damned shame what men will do for love of country, eh, Khaldisian?” She smirked. “Money, of course, is a different matter, entirely. But even the very best of these fools may kill five or even ten men, and not see a fraction of the coin we do for killing just one. Now that’s just bad business.”
“Rune is losing this fight,” Paddyn said from ahead of them, his eyes darting about as though trying to count the soldiers left standing. “The Arranese will reach Riverweave within a week, at this rate. What will we do if they win?”
“Does it matter? My guess is whoever wins this war will find value in our… talents. There isn’t a corner in the world where kil
ling can’t be turned to coin. There will always be work for the likes of us, my friends.”
Merek maneuvered his horse ahead of them, his green cloak snapping in the wind. His expression was grave, almost scolding in its severity. “It most certainly matters who prevails. There are such things as good and evil in this world.”
Fencress suppressed a chuckle. She knew she needed Merek’s help with Karnag, but found the man’s self-righteousness to be something of an annoyance. “Truly? Is that what your order teaches? I’m guessing your position is that we, seeing as we are we and not they, are the good ones? And they,” she said, gesturing toward the Arranese army, “are evil precisely because they are they.”
Merek ran a hand through his greasy hair. “You’re right about who is on which side of things, but haven’t the faintest notion of the reason why.”
“Listen, friend,” Fencress said. “When you’ve done as much dark work as we have, you learn just what an awful lot we all are. Every one of us. I could give two shits about who sits on what throne and what flag rises from Rune’s towers. Whoever it is I have to kneel to is always going to be some vicious swindler who climbed into that throne on the backs of the poor, the broken and the dead. Folks like us are wise to stay out of the way.”
Merek glared at her, his brow knotted. “I assure you, Fencress, if you ride with me long enough you will learn to think otherwise. There are forces out there,” he said, indicating the battlefield below, “powerful forces at work. They have remained hidden for centuries, waging a secret struggle, but now they are ready to move openly. It has not happened yet, but it will happen soon. You’ll be reminded why it is you keep that symbol strung around your neck. You’ll learn why our forebears built monuments to the goddess Illienne and to the Sentinels, and why those who remain true to the Old Faith are still reluctant to speak the name of Yrghul, the Lord of Nightmares, and still pray he never returns.”
