Day five, midday. I found Lysa in the library. She had somehow procured a small leather bag. She had a knife in her hand, and she jabbed the pointy end into the leather and began turning the handle in a circle.
“Uh,” I said, “what are you doing?”
“You’ll see,” she said. Her tongue poked out of her mouth, and her forehead wrinkled as she applied more pressure to the handle of the knife.
After a few minutes, she had carved two tiny holes into the top corners of the bag. Then she produced some string from her pocket, threaded it through the newly made eyelids and tied a couple knots.
“Snazzy, huh?” she said, now wearing the bag on her back.
“Yeah, real snazzy. What’s it for?”
She shouldered off the pack and stuffed a few books inside. “Rav said I can take these.”
I cocked my head to get a better view of the titles. “The Hidden Power of Triangles,” I said aloud. “You have horrible taste in books.”
“At least I have taste.”
“I was an avid reader in my younger days. What do you say after packing up your tomes of knowledge that we drain Rav’s amphora of mead?”
“I’ve never really drunk anything,” Lysa said sheepishly. “Other than tea and water, I mean.”
“You ought to give it a try. A little sip here, a gulp there, and all your worries fade away.”
She seemed to consider this. I could’ve mentioned how the booze loosens you up, puts a smile on your face, and turns a shy mumbler into a compelling storyteller, but none of that would have interested Lysa. Losing her worries, though? An intriguing premise there.
“Okay,” she said. “Sure. Why not?”
Twenty minutes later, Lysa and I were sitting across from one another at the table in the dining room, mugs filled to the rim with amber-colored mead.
She inspected it cautiously, then took a sip. Her eyes reacted with pleasure, almost pushing her brows into her blond bangs. “It’s like… like honey, but with—”
“With a kick?” I suggested.
“Exactly. It’s actually really good.”
It was good, much better and sweeter than most of the mead Mizridahl had to offer. Some of the shit there smelled like it’d been rolling around in a barrel full of dead rats for half a century.
I raised my mug. “How about a toast?”
“A toast,” she said, chewing down on the prospect of such a thing. “To…” She crinkled her face. “Oh, I don’t know! I’m not good at this.”
I laughed. “Two friends we are…who have come near and far… ah, fuck it. Clank ’em together and let’s drink, huh?”
Lysa giggled and tipped her mug into mine, and we drank. And we talked. She emptied her second mug, and at this point her cheeks were rosy red. Her freckles seemed to blossom with every sip, dotting her pale face in a meadow of warm, soothing flecks.
What a lovely girl. And not that kind of lovely either — the thought never crossed my mind. Not even once. Perhaps this was how fathers felt about looking into the face of their grown daughters — a sense of affection that… well, I couldn’t hope to describe it. It was all new to me.
“Okay,” she said, peering into her third mugful. “Question time.”
I leaned back into the chair. “Hit me with whatever you got.”
She nibbled on the top of her fingernail, then flung the tip at me, wagging it in front of my face. “I had you pegged for being a selfish, narcissistic butt… hole.” I stifled a laugh. “But you’re out here, like what? Saving the world? Why? Why, why, why? It doesn’t make any sense. What’s in it for you?”
“Well—”
She smacked her chest in interruption. “For me, you know, it’s curiosity. I wanna know what’s out there. I wanna see it all. I wanna learn. The world has so many secrets. So many! And I’ve only just begun to discover them. And getting to the bottom of this whole thing — Rav’s brother, the book — there’s just so much to learn. But what about you? Curiosity isn’t what made you come to me, or fly across the ocean or any of that. Is it?”
We both drank. Lysa teetered and tottered in her seat uneasily.
“Are you going to let me speak this time?”
She snickered like someone who’d drunk a cask of wine, her head swaying, eyes moving in crazy directions, mouth permanently fixed in a lopsided smile. “Yeah,” she said, laughing again, “Promissss.”
“The Black Rot—”
“Your killers? Oops, I mean — I mean ashsassh…” She giggled and tried again. “Assashsh… assassins!”
“Yes. My assassins. We’ve all gone our separate ways. They’re trying to find their own selves, and I’m trying to find me. Needs, wants, who I am.”
Lysa tilted her head back and burped. “You’re Astul, silly.”
It seemed letting her drink three mugfuls of mead was a poor idea. Although I wasn’t hoping for deep, meaningful conversation. Just any conversation at all.
“Oh,” she said, slapping my wrist, “it’s only a joke! I’m sorry. Are you sad?”
“Sad? No, I’m Astul. Remember?”
She tried kicking me under the table, but missed and smacked the chair instead. “Well, I don’t know what you want or need. But you are, at least you’ve been to me, a good person. And I’m happy you’re here.”
That was likely the inebriated part of her mind talking, but I’d take it. She reached for the amphora, but I yanked it away.
“Take a break,” I said. “See how you feel in a few minutes, hmm?”
She put her elbows on the table and punched a fist into her open palm, for no discernible reason. “I’ll take a break, mm hm. Small one, okay? My eyes feel heavy.”
Thirty seconds later, snores reverberated across the table. A few minutes later, she was slobbering. I reached over and curled a few strands of hair out of her mouth and behind her ear. Then I sat back, emptied the remaining mead into my mug, and sighed.
A drunk realization had smacked me hard and true. All my life, I’d considered the best part of me the loner within, the drifter who only needed a sword and some wine. But the greatest times of my life, the moments in which I was truly content… they all shared a common thread: someone else. Something else. Be it Vayle, the Black Rot, the long-forgotten fling with Mydia.
I watched Lysa sleep. The drifter, I thought, a doleful shake of my head. The loner. In the end, I suppose we lie to ourselves more than anyone.
I woke with what felt like a hot knife lodged in my temple. The subtlest movement thrust the knife deeper, eliciting a groan from my parched mouth.
After making sure I was still covered up from the waist down — I had a strong relationship with the naked body after a night of drinking — I stumbled down the blurry steps. Probably could’ve seen more clearly had my eyes not been in the shape of slits, but that would have meant more light blinding me, and light mixes with hangovers like fresh mint mixes with a freshly squeezed orange.
Lysa was sitting at the table where I’d left her the night before. A plateful of food lay in front of her. The handle of a fork pointed to the ceiling, its prongs stuck in the broken yolk of an egg — a remnant of a valiant but ultimately fruitless effort to bring food from plate to mouth.
Rav bustled in from the kitchen, bundles of wooden jewelry boxes in his arms. He let them fall from his body and onto the table. One rolled across Lysa’s plate, smooshing her eggs. She grunted.
“A young girl giving herself the old pat on the back with a bottle,” he said, unlocking each box with what looked like a master key. “That doesn’t surprise me. But you? You know enough to not fill your damn belly with firewater before a hard day’s work.”
“I have a vice,” I said.
“You have a problem.”
“I’ll be sure to consult with you when I need some help.” I looked around desperately for something to wet my sandy mouth. A steel carafe sat near the hearth. Looked like the kind of thing one would use to steep tea.
I walked over, grabbed it
by the handle and aimed the spout at my mouth. Soon as the stuff inside hit my tongue, I gagged. And coughed. My face twisted into a shape I didn’t know was physically possible. My entire body shivered as I spat the bitter-tasting shit into the hearth, billowing up a cloud of soot in the process.
“Ack!” I yelled, slapping my tongue in hopes that would dull the horrible taste. “The fuck!” A few eggs remained on a serving plate, so I grabbed one and tossed it into my mouth.
Ever swish around cold yolk and white egg fluff? Yeah, it’s not the most pleasant sensation in the world. Turns out, it doesn’t soak up pungent flavoring either. So now I had what tasted like a mix of dirt, tree root and chewed-up egg swirling around my tongue. Oh, and my head felt like I’d headbutted a fist a few times. And to top off this wonderful experience, I couldn’t quite swallow, because I’d drunk almost an entire amphora of mead, which meant my throat was dryer than the inside of a dead cactus.
But the body is both a marvelous and stupendously dumb creation, and mine tried forcing down the egg, tree root and dirt. All of that got stuck in my throat, and I vomited a conal spray of just awful, terrible yellow-orange mush.
Hunched over and heaving, I was faintly aware of a hand on my back.
“Stumpkorf,” Rav said. “It’s an acquired taste.”
After finally getting a good swig of water — and cleaning up my gut excretions — I had a seat at the table and enjoyed some bread and oil. Lysa was more cognizant now, although you wouldn’t know it by her face. She looked as though she’d gotten into a fight with a ghost. And lost. Badly.
Her face was pale and cold, eyes half-opened. Hair stringy and brittle, crusted to her lips. She look at her eggs and blinked.
“I feel…” She closed her eyes and shook her head, slowly.
“Like shit?” I ventured.
“Yeah, like that.” She nibbled on some bread, took a gulp of water, and ate an egg. Satiation made her come alive.
“What is all this?” she asked, hand hovering over the twenty-some jewelry boxes and coils of thin copper wire.
“Think Rav’s trying to introduce us to his weird fetish,” I said.
The old man ignored my playful jab, choosing instead to focus on unwinding each wire. A series of distant knocks somewhere from deep within the house gave him pause.
“Hmm,” he muttered. “She’s early.”
Rav got up and retreated into the kitchen. His heavy footsteps faded.
“Are we expecting someone?” Lysa asked.
“Apparently he is.”
“Shouldn’t you be kind of worried? You’re always worried about things like this.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Um… forks in the road.”
“Surprises, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Everything about this place is a surprise.” I wiped some excess oil off my mouth with a chunk of bread, then I felt disgusted with myself as that was something the fat fuck Braddock Glannondil would do. “So I’m learning how to relax. Novel idea, huh?”
Rav heralded his return with a loud clap of his hands, which was wholly inappropriate considering Lysa and I still both suffered from searing headaches.
“It’s time for you two to depart. Hurry, now, Cessilo is an impatient woman.”
“Cessilo?” Lysa said.
“Cessilo?” I said.
We looked at one another and would have probably shared a smile under different circumstances. But concern marked both our faces.
“She’s your escort. She will be taking you to my brother.”
“And what about you?” I asked.
Rav looked at his arrangement of boxes and coiled wire. “I have unfinished business to take care of. I’ll meet you there.”
“If you don’t? What then?”
“Then it is likely I am dead. Please ensure my brother joins me.”
I let out a caustic laugh, threw my hands in the air and let them fall onto the table.
“We don’t have a plan,” Lysa said. “How do we kill him?”
“Oh, it’s easy,” I said. “He’s only been around five hundred years. We’ll just figure a way to stab him or something. After we find a fucking exit from Amortis.”
“Enough,” Rav said. “Gather your belongings. Now.”
I spat out a few four-letter words and stomped up the steps, punching the banister at the top. I didn’t mind doing the impossible so long as I had a plan. We didn’t have a plan. Not even a poorly put-together scheme that resembled a plan. We had nothing. Absolute-fuck-nothing.
I stripped out of the loose-fitting clothes Rav had provided me and back into my leather armor. Put my belt on, tapped my blades like a priest saying a final goodnight prayer to his gods, and then went on my way to meet this Cessilo character.
Rav stopped me in the kitchen. He had his arms crossed, as if in disappointment. “Your temper will eventually be your end.”
I chewed on that suggestion for a moment. “You’re right,” I said. “I should have snapped my fingers, clicked my tongue and said, ‘By golly, don’t you worry, Lysa. We’ll figure this out!’ You haven’t given us a glimpse into what your plan is, and now you’re telling us that you’ll meet up with us. But don’t fret! Is that right?”
“The plan is to end my brother’s reign.”
One, two, three… After getting to ten, I sighed and rested my clasped hands on top of my head. “That’s not a plan. That’s an end. The plan is how you get to the end. You’re sending me out into a world I’ve never been to. A place where dead people roam, apparently. All I’ve got is a pair of swords and a nineteen-year-old girl who’s never swung one in her life.”
“Cessilo is a dandy escort. You’ll arrive safely so long as you listen to her.”
“This isn’t adding up for you, is it? What happens when I get there? To your brother’s home. Castle. Palace. Tower of doom.”
“It’s an island.”
“When we get dumped off at this island, what do I do? Snap my fingers and voilà! We’re back in the world of oppressive heat and drying oceans? Do I sing a song, perhaps, and the fabric of the realm peels back, revealing the living world again? Or do I skip through a hidden door?”
Rav opened his mouth, but I was on a roll and didn’t give him the opportunity to speak.
“Let’s say I pop out like a newborn, right onto a sandy beach. Should I traipse right up to your brother, introduce myself and then tell him that while he’s been kicking around here for five hundred years, some things have come up and it’s time to go away? Then I’ll stab him in the belly and watch him bleed out. Does that sound about right?”
Rav bit down on his thumb, as if I’d finally — finally — gotten him to see the problem at hand.
What I’d actually done was triggered him. His arms reached out at the speed of wind, hands smashing into my leather jerkin.
I felt myself being lifted into the air, feet kicking below me. Then my back crashed into the unforgiving counter ledge. Tin cans and carafes and mugs scattered in different directions as my arms flung up uncontrollably.
Rav was in my face, hands shaking me like a dog ripping gristle from bone. “What do you have in there, motherfucker!” he cried, stabbing his finger into my forehead. “Right between your eyes. What’s there?”
I tried to speak, but my clenched jaw wouldn’t allow it. I’d had angry drunks get up close and personal with me before, their stale breath burning my eyes as they demanded an apology for their spilled drink. But never in my life had I seen furor like this.
What I witnessed here was teeth jumping out of Rav’s mouth like tiny daggers. What I witnessed here was sparks crisscrossing between his eyes like lightning dashing through stormy clouds. What I witnessed here was a voice that seemed unfathomably loud, as if it were probing the soft sponge inside my skull.
He turned and walked a line to Lysa, who stood near the mouth of the kitchen in surprise.
“I have given up more than you will hopefully
ever understand for this moment to blossom. I am providing you with an unprecedented passage through space and time. My brother is like any other man. He laughs. He cries. He bleeds.” Rav paused and massaged the bristles on his chin. “He can be taken by surprise. In fact, I believe that is the only way he can be taken.”
I understood it now. I didn’t like it, but I understood.
Chapter 11
She looked like she’d been plucked from a swampy mire. Where the fog never dissipates, the trees are thick and cauldrons bubble inside ramshackle houses. Where stews await the fresh meat of children.
Her name was Cessilo. White threads of thin hair dangled like wisps to midway down her back. Her nose was fat and square, framed with a deep red boil.
She sat in the seat, holding onto reins attached to two horses. Lysa and I sat in the wagon bed.
“Got me three rules,” she said, her voice decrepit. “See this here?” She clenched her hand into a tight fist. “I put this up in the air here, like so, and you shut your mouth. That’s the first rule. Second rule is that if you’ve got somethin’ to say, you whisper it. I won’t have any shoutin’ or rambunctious nonsense in my wagon. Too dangerous out there for that sort of thing.”
“What’s the third rule?” Lysa asked.
“I’m gettin’ to it!” Cessilo snapped, her prune lips strung tight. “Third rule is you don’t leave this wagon. Not for any reason. Don’t care if there’s fire underfoot. You don’t leave the wagon. If you leave the wagon, that’s it. I’m not pickin’ you back up.”
I wasn’t much for rules, but those didn’t sound so bad, especially the last one. After all, taking a stroll outside the wagon sounded about as enticing as wolfing down that bitter tree-bark-tasting shit in Rav’s carafe.
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