The Knife in the Dark

by D. W. Hawkins

  Maarkov clenched his jaw shut, and pulled his broken body toward the desk. Every finger’s width of progress cost him an eternity of pain. It was a long time before he reached the bottle.

  Maaz never uttered a sound.

  **

  The next morning dawned clear and cold, and the wind ran unchecked across the hills. Dormael wrapped a cravat around his face to help keep the wind off—and to keep his swollen nose from running in the face of its chill. The dream weighed on his mind as he helped with the routine of breaking camp. He had no clue what the significance was, but he knew it must be something important if the armlet was taking the time to show it to him. Who had that poor woman been?

  Even more pointedly—had those been the gods in his dream? The silent watchers arrayed around the temple, and the two men beside the altar, all struck chords of recognition with Dormael. He couldn’t be sure, and he wasn’t sure about how he knew…but he knew. He could feel it.

  Did that mean the gods were real? Did that mean that this thing—Shawna’s armlet—was connected to them in some way? Evmir, who had apparently forged the world with his hammer, and Eindor, god of magic, had been the ones to stretch that poor woman over the bowl.

  Dormael half expected to hear the song of the armlet whispering out into the morning, beckoning his own power to join it. He watched Bethany, looking for any signs that the girl had also received a dream from the artifact, but she was oblivious. D’Jenn, too, went about his business as if nothing had happened. The dream, for whatever reason, seemed to have been sent to Dormael alone.

  Who in the Six Hells was that woman over the altar?

  “What’s on your mind this morning, magus? Still brooding over last night?” Seylia asked, coming over to offer him some breakfast. Dormael eyed her for a moment, and took a steaming sausage from her. He needed to share his thoughts on the dream with D’Jenn, but he knew better than to mention them to Seylia. Dormael chose to keep his mouth shut.

  “Just thinking on the journey,” he lied. He unwrapped the cravat to eat the sausage, and Seylia winced at the sight of his face.

  “Your nose is swollen,” she grimaced, “and both your eyes are blackened. She knocked you a good one.”

  “Believe me, I can feel it,” he grumbled.

  Seylia gave him a piteous look, and fished something out of her purse. She took Dormael’s hand, opened it, and deposited her mystery gift inside. Dormael opened his hand and was surprised to see some sort of root.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It’s called Old Man’s Root,” Seylia smiled. “The Mals chew it. It dulls your pain, settles your stomach. Lots of old men on the savanna chew it to help their joints—hence, Old Man’s Root.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Don’t thank me, just try not to get hit in the face again. That stuff isn’t easy to come by,” she smiled. With that, she walked away to finish getting ready. Dormael watched her walk away, taking a moment to admire the way she looked in her riding pants.

  He caught Shawna scowling at him, so he turned away to see to his own preparations.

  They headed west along the dusty road as the sun rose behind them, casting long shadows from the odd bush or tree that dotted the hillsides. The wind blew unchecked over the hills, biting into their backs as they rode. Dormael hunkered deep into his cloak as the day wore on, and was thankful for the Old Man’s Root. His face throbbed in time with his heart, but chewing the bitter root kept it to a dull throb.

  They picked up the pace around midday, with D’Jenn’s announcement that they were nearing Gameritus. Deciding to forego lunch in exchange for the time it would take to prepare it, they rode on towards the capital of Soirus-Gamerit. Dormael did not complain.

  The city appeared on the horizon by late afternoon.

  “Behold, Gameritus,” D’Jenn said to Shawna, waving dramatically toward the city in the distance.

  “It has its own sort of beauty,” Shawna replied, squinting into the afternoon sun.

  “It’s certainly not the ugliest place in the world,” Seylia sighed. Dormael would have chimed in, but his swollen face vibrated every time he spoke. He chose to remain silent as they made their way toward the city.

  Gameritus was the oldest city in Soirus-Gamerit. It was the tribal seat—the city in which the leadership of the tribe made its headquarters—by virtue of its age. Dormael imagined that it might have been a thriving cultural center in generations past, but once Mistfall had risen to prominence in the region, people had no reason to come to Gameritus, save tribal business. Gameritus produced a lot of leather, and made money from selling stone from quarries that it claimed in the region, but little else worth mentioning came out of Gameritus. Dormael was surprised that the kansils hadn’t moved the seat to Mistfall in all the years since its growth, but they stayed in Gameritus despite the popularity of its sister-city.

  Gameritus was a city of squat, single-story buildings huddled low under the city walls, which protected them from the wind that blustered across the hills year-round. Most of the buildings and houses were made of stone, as timber was expensive in this treeless land. The city’s quarries provided most of the stone that had built it, thus the prevailing color in Gameritus was neutral gray. The roofing tiles were varying shades of tan and reddish-brown, but the locals added splashes of color with pennants, flowers, and murals painted along the walls. Every street in Gameritus led toward the center of town, to what was referred to locally as the High City.

  The High City was where all the municipal buildings, residencies of the tribe’s leadership, and temporary clan holdings were—along with a few of the more wealthy, or important, members of the Soirus-Gamerit tribe. The High City was encircled by a protective wall, with extra guard towers built in regular intervals. The fortifications hadn’t been used since the ancient days, as far as Dormael knew, and were of an antiquated design.

  Everything outside the walls of the High City was colloquially called the Low City. Anyone who wasn’t wealthy or powerful resided in the Low City, from skilled tradesmen to beggars. Entire districts, where the once teeming masses of Gameritus would have lived, had been abandoned as the town’s residents sought safer homes, or better opportunities. Beggars and street gangs now ran these skeletal districts, where the ruins of stone tenements stood resolute against the forces of time. The officials had little ability to chase this element out of the city, and contented themselves with keeping the seedier folks confined to the decaying parts of town. Gameritus was a city with two distinct identities.

  Dormael had never been fond of the place—either one of them. The residents of the High City tried very hard to turn a blind eye to things happening in the Low City, and left most of the residents to fend for themselves. The kansil of the tribe spent most of his time in Ishamael, working with the Council of Seven, and his clan leaders all had their own lands and people to worry about. Gameritus, since it was neither the most profitable, nor the most attractive city, was ignored. It suffered from the inattention.

  Dormael was just glad that they hadn’t planned on spending more than a single night in town.

  **

  Bethany squeezed her eyes shut, her mouth twisted into a grimace of concentration. She sat completely still, her legs crossed underneath her, arms resting in her lap, and hands clutching her dress. Her brow knotted up now and then, as if she was straining against some invisible foe. She sat opposite D’Jenn, a small stone lying on the floor between them.

  Dormael tried to hold back a smile at the look on her face, but couldn’t stop it from creeping up. The expression made his face throb with fresh pain, but the sensation was walled away behind his mental defenses. He listened to his Kai, singing in time with D’Jenn’s magic, and watched as his cousin tried to coax Bethany into accessing her own power. It hadn’t been going well.

  “Be calm, dear,” D’Jenn said for the third time since they’d begun the exercise. “Don’t ride roughshod over your power, or allow it to do the same to you.
Simply exist with it. Let it show you the world. Let it show you the rock. Can you feel the rock through your magic? Can you see it?”

  “I see it,” Bethany sighed.

  “Now, reach out with your Kai,” D’Jenn instructed.

  “Alright,” Bethany said, her expression intensifying. Dormael felt her power stir.

  “Now, try to take the rock gently into the grasp of your Kai.”

  The rock gave a shudder and scooted away from Bethany.

  “You’ve got the idea, little one,” Dormael said. “Just try and control it. Remain calm, and work with your power, not against it.”

  Bethany’s brow knotted up.

  The rock began to quiver, then rose slowly from the floor.

  “That’s it,” D’Jenn smiled. “You’re doing it!”

  Bethany opened her eyes and looked at the rock, which hovered in front of her face. She beamed at the innocuous stone, and reached out to flick it with one of her little fingers, sending it spinning in place. Dormael couldn’t keep the smile from his face, and let out a short laugh at the girl’s antics. D’Jenn started laughing as well, and Bethany looked to the two of them with a self-satisfied grin cracking her face in two.

  The rock shot into the air and was embedded into the ceiling.

  Bethany squealed in surprise, her power winking out. Dormael and D’Jenn broke down in a fit of laughter, which Bethany joined after a moment of embarrassment. Dormael reached out with his magic and plucked the rock from the ceiling, bringing it to rest once again on the floor.

  “There’s a lesson in this, dear,” Dormael said. “Do you realize what happened?”

  “I…think so,” Bethany shrugged, “but I’m not sure.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I looked away,” Bethany said. “I stopped paying attention.”

  “That’s part of it,” D’Jenn nodded. “Even more important, though—you got excited.”

  “Excited?” Bethany asked.

  “Yes,” D’Jenn said. “When you saw the rock, and you realized that you were using your magic correctly for the first time, you got excited. It’s normal—but remember what we told you about emotions and magic?”

  “Emotions affect magic,” she said.

  “And how do we keep that from happening?”

  “We have to keep our emotions quiet and our minds clear,” Bethany replied, smiling.

  “And how do we control our emotions? How do we keep our minds clear?” D’Jenn asked.

  “Meditation,” Bethany sighed, deflating.

  “Get to it, then,” Dormael said, hoisting her up by the shoulders and setting her on her feet. “And don’t roll your eyes, love. It’s rude.”

  Bethany hugged both of them around the neck before skipping across the hall to the room she shared with Shawna. Dormael sighed in her wake and rose from his seat on the floor, plucking the stone up into the grip of his Kai. His face was still smarting, and his mouth was watering for a drink of something with a kick.

  “She’s progressing quite well,” D’Jenn said.

  “Quickly, for one so young,” Dormael agreed. “At her age I could barely keep my mind clear enough to sense my Kai, let alone play Flying Rock.” The exercise was a staple at the Conclave, and was among the first games that initiates played in order to learn to use their gifts. As far as using magic went, holding things in a physical grasp was considered one of the simplest types of evocative spells.

  “Indeed. What do you say to a drink?” D’Jenn asked.

  “Nothing, you drink it,” Dormael replied.

  “That wasn’t funny, coz.”

  “No?”

  “No. In fact, now I don’t even want to have a drink with you.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “And you’re a bastard for making that joke. That was terrible,” D’Jenn grumbled.

  He turned and made his way out into the hall, and beckoned Dormael to follow. They went through the narrow hall and down into the common room, which was only sparsely populated by drinking patrons. It was just as well—D’Jenn had chosen the Kneeling Mare by virtue of its being out-of-the-way. They sought a table in the corner of the room, far from other people, and sat down to have a quiet drink.

  “Where did Seylia go?” D’Jenn asked, giving Dormael an odd look. “Did Shawna kill her and stuff her body down a well somewhere?”

  “The gods only know with her,” Dormael shrugged. “You know how she is. Here one moment, gone the next.”

  He suspected that Seylia had slipped away during Bethany’s lessons. Something in the way she’d smiled at him while they had retired upstairs had told him that she would be gone. It was Seylia’s way—blowing into his life for a few short moments, and leaving again in the same fashion. She had learned to care for herself long before crossing his path, so Dormael never worried much about where she went. Seylia was her own woman. He would see her again, until the day that he didn’t.

  “At least I won’t have to listen to her trying to get under Shawna’s skin,” D’Jenn said. “I was starting to think that if I had to listen to one more back-handed comment in a sickly sweet tone of voice, I’d set all the hilltops in Soirus-Gamerit aflame.”

  “Indeed,” Dormael agreed. “Things should get a bit quieter.”

  “How’s your face?” D’Jenn asked.

  “It hurts,” Dormael smiled. “I’ve had worse, though. It’s not broken, thank the gods. Just swollen to the Six Hells.”

  “Next time you should keep a tighter reign over Seylia.”

  “Should I?” Dormael asked. “As if I could control what that woman does, or says. As if anyone could. Besides, why do I have to take responsibility for her?”

  “Because you were the one crawling into her pants, that’s why,” D’Jenn said. “Bethany and I had to listen to the aftermath of your little love triangle.”

  “It’s not a triangle, D’Jenn,” Dormael sighed. “I told you, nothing has happened between Shawna and I.”

  “Yet,” D’Jenn said.

  “What?”

  “Yet, Dormael,” D’Jenn smiled. “Nothing has happened yet.”

  “Fuck yourself,” Dormael said, but he couldn’t keep a laugh from bubbling to the surface. D’Jenn winked at him, and called the serving girl over to order another round of drinks.

  “You should have a talk with Shawna. Find out why she punched you,” D’Jenn said after a long silence.

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Dormael sighed. He knew why she had hit him, though. Now that Seylia was gone and he was able to turn his thoughts to the past few days, he cringed at the thought of how he had treated Shawna. He probably should have told Seylia to keep her bloody mouth shut, but it was a simple thing to see folly in hindsight.

  “Good luck with that, coz,” D’Jenn said. “Just warn me before it happens so I don’t have to listen to the two of you whine about your feelings for half the night.”

  Dormael snorted in reply, and tapped his cup against the one D’Jenn offered in toast.

  They let another round of drinks pass in silence. Dormael sat back and listened to the soft murmur of voices in the room, the tinkle of dinnerware, and scattered bits of laughter. He opened his Kai and listened to the song of the world through his magic, letting his senses float through the ether. People burned in a wizard’s magical senses—at least they did to Dormael. Any living thing was like a beacon of light, its intensity varying, depending on whether that thing was a clover, or a person.

  Emotions could sometimes manifest themselves to a wizard who listened for them, and people were one of Dormael’s favorite subjects upon which to meditate. If a person was distressed, they played discordant notes back to his Kai. Young couples in love practically bubbled with warm tones, and the insane sounded erratic. Dormael sometimes listened to the people around him when he was resting—it had become something of an unconscious habit.

  He sensed it when a man entered the room who felt different than the other patrons. He
was alert, watchful, and filled with something that Dormael could only describe as suspicion. Opening his eyes, he watched the man—a figure in a bulky winter cloak, the hilt of a sword peeking from the edge—make his way across the other side of the common room. He sat with another man, who appeared to have been waiting for him, and bent his ear for a close conversation.

  Dormael would have turned his attention elsewhere, but something about the man bugged him. He wasn’t above a little eavesdropping when it suited him, anyway, so he bent his Kai to listen. He closed his eyes and sought the men in his magical senses, sinking down into his own mind just low enough so that their words tumbled across the ether and resonated with his Kai.

  “…the description.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m telling you, I saw the girl earlier. Red-head. Real nice-looking, too.”

  “Very well. When did they arrive?”

  “Earlier, I don’t fucking know. They’re here now. Renald said you’d pay. Was he jamming me up?”

  “He wasn’t. My organization always rewards those that do the work of the Clever One.”

  Dormael got the distinct impression that money changed hands.

  “Thanks.”

  “Thank the Clever One.”

  “Yes, yes, the Clever One, of course. Don’t get up and walk out with me. I don’t want to be seen out and about with one of you.”

  “Very well.”

  Dormael opened his eyes, and watched the second man scuttle to the door, shooting a glance over his shoulder at Dormael and D’Jenn’s table. The first man—the one with the sword—still sat at the table with his back to them. Dormael looked around, but he could see no one else in the room that looked suspicious.

  “We’ve got company,” he said.

  “Company?” D’Jenn asked.

  “Look toward the opposite wall of the room. There’s a man sitting down in a heavy cloak with his back to us. I think he’s a Cultist.”

  “A Cultist?” D’Jenn said. “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “I just listened to him pay a man for information about us,” Dormael said. “He made overtures to ‘the Clever One’. I’m sure you know what that means.”