Death Mark

by Robert J. Schwalb

  “You’re not the only one who’s surprised,” he said. He shook his head.

  “So why come to us?” she said. She levered herself into a seated position.

  “The Alliance has spent years avoiding attention, listening, watching, and acting in secret. My fellows don’t believe me. They don’t see Vordon as a threat. Tithian’s seduced them and blinded them to the facts. Vordon is up to something and Tyr will be the worse for it. All I want you to do is watch. Listen. Do what you do. But share it with me.”

  “I’ll be sure to march up to the Golden Tower and report. Right. Get the hell out of here, and if I see you here again, I won’t go easy on you,” she said.

  Korvak bristled.

  “But. Fine. If I run across anything suspicious, I will let you know. Maybe.”

  Damn that woman!”

  “Gone again, eh?” said Aeris.

  Loren pushed aside the flap and entered the tent. “How am I supposed to protect her when she keeps disappearing?”

  “Loren, relax. If she gets herself killed, it’s not your fault,” said Aeris.

  Loren didn’t meet his eyes. Instead, he busied himself with his gear. He checked the straps on his armor, the edges on his new swords, anything to avoid answering his friend.

  Aeris muttered.

  Loren put his kit away and sat on the cot. He rubbed his face and looked over at Aeris, who had busied himself with an enormous scroll. A week had done his friend well. His color was back; his eyes were clear. The healer had done a fine job stitching up the wounds, and Loren could not remember the last time his friend complained about the cuts on his chest. He was almost back to normal. Shom’s threat clouded everything though, and Loren’s silence about it had begun to strain their friendship.

  Loren whispered, “You have no idea, Aeris. No idea at all.”

  “Hmm?” said Aeris, distracted.

  Aeris’s health was Loren’s first excuse for his silence. Telling the mage he had forfeited their freedom to protect them both would not have helped Aeris recover. He didn’t need to know. In fact, Loren believed the less Aeris knew about their arrangement, the better. There would be nothing to forgive. Loren could keep Aeris safe. Loren suspected he may have been wrong. He should have been honest with his friend and told him their true situation. Yet he resisted. He could not guess how Aeris would react to being a playing piece in Shom’s game. He might even do something as foolish as sacrifice himself to help Loren escape. If Aeris were dead, Loren could do as he pleased, provided, of course, he could fight his way through Temmnya’s other guards and survive the desert without food, water, or adequate protection.

  Instead of the truth, Loren had stumbled through a lie, explaining they had to leave Nibenay and Loren had hired them both onto a House Shom caravan bound for Silver Spring Oasis.

  The cot creaked under Loren’s weight.

  Aeris dropped the scroll. Loren could see it was a map before it curled in on itself.

  “Loren,” he said. “Really, it’s fine. You can’t tame the wind. Why would you try to tame her?”

  Loren met Aeris’s eyes. He wanted to tell him, had to tell him. He sighed and cracked his knuckles. Desperate for a drink, he left the cot for the ewer on the table. He filled his cup with wine and said, “So what’s ahead?”

  Loren saw his friend wince. Maybe he was still injured. Aeris recovered the map and hobbled over to the table, where he spread it flat, using small stones to hold down the corners.

  “I think we’re here,” he said. He pointed at a large brown swath, somewhere west of a small mountain range with a green band underneath.

  “These are the Windbreak Mountains,” he said, gesturing to the mountains. “Provided we keep them at our backs, we should reach Silver Spring in a few days.” He pointed out a spot of blue on the opposite side of the smear. “But this isn’t going to be easy with two hundred mouths to feed and water,” Aeris added. “We should be traveling by night.”

  The days since his meeting with Giovvo Shom had sped by so fast, Loren saw everything as a blur. He recalled rounding up Aeris before returning to the Shom compound. When he had returned the next day, he found Temmnya Shom and some two hundred soldiers assembled in the courtyard. They set out for the desert. Where they were headed and what they were supposed to do, Loren had not yet been able to sort out.

  Loren and Aeris stared at the map for a few minutes. Loren drained his cup and refilled it.

  “All right, Loren. Cut the shit. What are we doing here?”

  “I already told you; I signed us up with House Shom. We’re muscle. Protection. Nothing more,” Loren said.

  “Protection. Fine.” Aeris smirked. “I understand. But what are we protecting her from? What can we do that those soldiers can’t?” Aeris poured himself a few fingers of wine and downed the contents in a swallow.

  Loren shrugged.

  “This is stupid, Loren. Utterly stupid. I can’t believe you signed us up for guard duty when we were free. We should have just walked away from Nibenay and never looked back.”

  “Don’t you think I feel the same?” Loren snapped. “We didn’t have two ceramic bits between us. How do you think I paid that sawbones to stitch you up? Shom gave us the money to survive.”

  “This smells bad. Real bad,” said Aeris.

  Loren refilled and drained the cup again. The ewer was empty. They sat in silence for a few minutes.

  “Are you sure you can’t tell where she went?” Loren asked, hoping to drop the conversation.

  “I’m serious, Loren. This won’t end well. Merchants are like nobles. They’re all in it for themselves. But fine, I can see you’re not listening. No, I can’t tell where she went. I examined the circle, but the magic’s beyond what I can do.”

  Each night, Temmnya vanished. The first night she went missing, Loren tore the camp apart. He looked in every tent, under every rock, and searched the wastes with no luck. He was just about to organize the soldiers to lead a search in the nearby foothills when a soldier brought word from Aeris. Loren rushed to Temmnya’s tent. Aeris had found an intricate circle chalked onto the stony ground in the center of her tent. He said it was some kind of transportation magic, a ritual perhaps. She had left or someone had taken her. So Loren spent the night in her tent, waiting. He watched the circle, new sword resting on his knees. Sure enough, a flash of light brought her back.

  She was delighted to find him there and took him to her bed as a reward. Sex did little to assuage his anger at her disappearance. She promised him she wouldn’t go again without telling him, yet in the seven days they had been traveling, she had vanished each night without a word or explanation. And when Loren tried to confront her about the risks, she stopped him with a kiss.

  “Each circle bears a coded inscription corresponding with a specific destination. I’ve studied the copies I made, but as far as I can tell, she’s been heading to places in sand wastes. Random spots.”

  Loren knew his limits. He knew nothing about magic and trusted Aeris to sort out the details.

  “What I don’t understand is if she can travel a couple hundred miles in a single night, why the trip? Why all the soldiers? She could have done this from Nibenay,” muttered Aeris.

  “I haven’t been able to sort that out either. She’s determined to do what she wants, no matter what I say,” said Loren. “But it’s our lives she’s toying with.”

  Loren could see Aeris was getting upset. “Don’t worry about it,” he said to Aeris. “You should get the inscription before she returns, yeah?”

  Scowling, Aeris stormed out of the tent, writing kit in hand.

  Loren followed him. It was late and Ral and Guthay were high in the night sky, one green, the other gold and small. The stars shimmered in the darkness. White tents stood all around, twenty-five in neat squares around small campfires. The wind had stripped away the dirt and sand, leaving bare rock behind, rock littered with small rocks and bones, except where silt gathered in the pitted surface.

 
Outside their tent, Aeris made for the large red- and black-striped tent where Temmnya slept in the center of the camp. Although Loren shared a tent with his mage companion, he had spent most nights since leaving Nibenay with Temmnya. Loren, angry about her secrets and recklessness, also craved her touch, the feel of her lips pressed against his own, the smell of her hair.

  Temmnya’s impracticality showed itself in the impossible contents strewn around her tent—a massive bed, two wardrobes, tables, chairs, candelabra, more cushions than Loren could count, plus other oddities and mementos brought along for some inscrutable purpose. Animals grunted in cages. Glass jars holding murky fluid lined shelves. Scrolls and implements lay strewn about, while herbs dried on strings hung from the poles overhead. The sole clear area was the teleportation circle inscribed in chalk on the rocky ground.

  Aeris shook his head in disbelief, as if he were seeing the tent’s contents for the first time. He had inspected the tent every time Temmnya vanished. He moved to the circle, knelt, and examined the blocky lettering.

  Loren moved to a cage holding a furry animal curled up on the wicker bars that made up the cage’s floor. Bright eyes flickered open and watched him as he fed it a bit of meat. The animal clambered to its feet and arched its back in greeting. It sniffed at Loren’s offering.

  “This is different,” said Aeris.

  “What’s different?” said Loren. He leaned over his friend’s shoulder. The writing was gibberish.

  “She’s … I think … yes. She’s gone to Tyr,” said Aeris.

  “Tyr?” What did Tyr have to do with it? What was Shom up to?

  Aeris looked up at him. “I think you know something. Secrets, Loren, after all these years?”

  “Aeris, I’m in the dark as much as you are.”

  “You share her bed. You’re telling me you don’t know what this is all about?”

  Loren clenched his fists. “She ignores my questions. We’re heading west. I know nothing more.”

  “Well, west puts us toward Tyr,” said Aeris. He stood, brushing his hands on his shirt. “This doesn’t make any sense at all. Why march two hundred soldiers across the Tablelands? Why go through the expense at all when she can just rattle off a ritual and be there in a flash?”

  Loren had nothing to add, though he felt dread gnawing at his innards. Aeris was right. It made no sense. Unless Temmnya intended to use the soldiers for something. But what? Two hundred would have a hard time taking on a modest slave tribe. They had no hope of besieging a city. How did Tyr fit into everything?

  Aeris’s face reddened at Loren’s silence. “This isn’t an escort, Loren. This is an army. Did you get us tangled up in some merchant war?”

  “Damn it, Aeris, she hasn’t told me anything. I’ve already told you, House Shom hired us to protect her. She hasn’t told me anything,” said Loren.

  “Well, find out! Push her. You signed me up without asking me. You pulled me into this … whatever this is. We’re no better off than we were in the arena.”

  Loren spit, “Nothing is trying to kill us. In my mind, we’re a bit better off.”

  “Nothing yet,” muttered Aeris. “You’ve been holding something back since Nibenay.”

  Loren could not hold it back anymore. “Fine. Fine. You want to know? I’ll tell you. We’re here because it was the only way I could save your life.”

  “What does that even mean?” Aeris said, his voice rising.

  “You were dying. We didn’t have any coin to pay the healer. House Shom paid. They told me I had a debt to pay and if I didn’t, they would kill you. I felt I had no choice. So here we are.”

  Aeris opened his mouth, closed it, then shook his head. He stormed out from the tent without another word.

  “Bloody merchants,” Loren growled. He dropped himself onto the bed to wait for Temmnya.

  A black-robed templar watched Melech as he threaded the crowd. He was a flat-faced man with small squinty eyes. Two muscled toughs, humans, with old scars crisscrossing their faces, stood nearby. One cracked his knuckles as Melech approached.

  “Evening, gentlemen,” said Melech.

  The templar nodded. The guards glared.

  With the templar behind him, Melech’s thoughts turned to Korvak. Since his unfortunate encounter with the man, Melech had had little time and little luck in digging up anything the templar would find interesting. Well, anything related to House Vordon. Melech knew plenty of things Korvak would love to know, but he wasn’t about to divulge all his secrets.

  Having failed to find anything in plain view meant Melech had to turn over stones he would rather leave alone. Melech had friends aplenty, contacts he could call on. He had enemies too, and his face was not always welcomed no matter how much he smiled or how fast he spoke.

  The sun had set hours before, but the shops and winesinks crowding the main road through Tyr never closed. Caravan guards were always looking for ways to spend their hard-earned coin, and the businesses there specialized in parting them from their pay. In the Merchant District and Iron Square behind him, the shops were legitimate businesses. They sold supplies, weapons, armor, and the usual kits mercenaries needed for desert crossings. Farther up the street, closer to the Caravan Gate, the honest enterprises made way for less pleasant haunts. Brothels and dreaming dens, winesinks and brawling halls all came into view. The shops there catered to every vice.

  Melech waved off a gap-toothed woman leaning in a door frame. She didn’t press him, since a strapping mul warrior stopped to chat and dicker about the price for a tumble in the alley.

  There were people all around, humans of every size and shape, sprinkled with races ranging from the recognizable to the downright strange. Melech saw street vendors selling shiny fruit, delicacies drugged to bring the customers back again and again. Fortunetellers offered glimpses into the future, while entertainers played instruments and sang bawdy ballads on subjects able to make even Melech blush.

  Through them all, Melech walked and did his best to remember which side street led to the Golden Inix, the place he would try that night. The last time Melech darkened the Golden Inix’s doorway, he had been tossed out on his back by the half-giant doorman. He hadn’t done much to warrant such treatment. He had taken a few coins plucked from oblivious patrons. The witch running the inn had sized him up at once. She had had him removed, and not at all gently, ignoring Melech’s protests the entire time. He hadn’t been back since. They knew his face, and Melech knew he wasn’t welcome there.

  Yet he was headed there again, walking up the broad street called Caravan Way, against his better judgment. The Golden Inix was a rare bright spot in an area crowded with shadows. He knew it sat at the end of one of the smaller arteries branching off the main road. Finding it was part of the problem; he would have to come up with some way to convince the guard he was there as an honest customer and not to pick purses from drunks. He hoped the guard wasn’t working there anymore. And if he was, Melech hoped he had forgotten about their last meeting. Melech could think of a dozen places he could go where he wouldn’t face a beating, but none of them except the Golden Inix had Mila Risani.

  She had a sharp mind and a habit of chatting up the out of towners, asking the right questions to coax forth rumors and whispers about the other city-states. Since merchants had their claws in the markets throughout the Seven Cities, she was bound to know if something was cooking with Vordon. Melech intended to charm it out of her. Then once he nailed down what Korvak wanted, Melech could be through with the templar and get back to life as normal. It would be nice to have to look over his shoulder for only the usual sorts of enemies and not have to watch out for his friends eying him too.

  He recognized a few familiar shops. He saw a corner restaurant specializing in Draji cuisine—lots of rice and spices. So he was close. A darkened gap and a wooden post from which hung a sign stood a few paces ahead. On smelling roasting meat, he knew he had found it. The sign, positioned at the alley’s end, bore a golden inix—a massive lizard—an
d a wine bottle. He turned the corner, ducking under the sign, and made his way down the alley. A few beggars and unconscious sellswords littered the path.

  The Golden Inix wasn’t much to look at. It was a long, low structure, as narrow as the road at whose end it stood. A single wooden door under a sign matching the one at the alley’s mouth marked the entrance. A familiar hulking half-giant sat on a stone outside.

  Melech had never had a conversation with a half-giant that went well. They couldn’t quite nail down their personalities. One day you might find one all friendly and personable. The next, he’d be sulking and brooding. Half-giants tended to pick up the personality traits of those around them. Put one in a templar’s care, and you’re bound to get a wicked, cruel, murderous wretch. The same half-giant installed in a healing house could be as gentle and sweet as a baby.

  Jaryx, the Golden Inix’s doorman, was a puzzle. He seemed just as happy sitting on his stone as he was twisting off the head of a drunken lout. He engaged each with the same cheery enthusiasm. Melech liked his head where it was, so he reminded himself to watch his mouth.

  “Evening, sir,” said Melech as he made for the door.

  The half-giant rose from his stone and lifted a spiked club, extending it out across the entrance.

  Melech stopped.

  Jaryx stooped, cocking his head to inspect Melech’s face. Jaryx’s head was twice the size of Melech’s own. It brought to mind a mountainside, all rough and craggy with a bulbous nose, thick lips, and teeth like spades. He stank of cheese.

  “I know you,” he said. Jaryx seemed pleased with himself about recognizing Melech.

  “Oh?” said Melech.

  Jaryx scratched his chin as he nodded.

  “I am afraid I don’t quite recall when and where such a meeting might have occurred,” a little formal speech might throw him off. “Say, was it at the Red Kank?”

  The half-giant shook his head.

  “Maybe the Arena Market, then? I am sure we met there.”