Healer's Ruin

by O'Mara, Chris

  Chalos clung to the saddle as his rode, closing his eyes against the nausea. He hated riding. They'd been at it for hours now, under the plain white sun, the sombre mountains either side of them and the Doyu Basin stretching out ahead. The horizon was a grey blur that hid the great forest of Dallian.

  The slinger opened his eyes to squint up at the sky, trying to spot Mysa. He could see several scrawny black shapes circling overhead, scavenger birds that had been following the force since it had left the camp. Hoping to pick over our bones, he thought. Did these same beaks feast on the carrion of the fallen Gilt Plates? Will we find them eyeless and stripped of armour and flesh?

  The unpleasant image in his mind finally tipped his stomach. Yanking on the reins he peeled away from the main column of Black Talon riders and then slowed to a trot before sliding from the shadamar and staggering a few steps. With a groan, he doubled over and vomited.

  Behind him the sound of the column of soldiers was a deep, thundering roar. A bellow without end.

  As he drew the back of his sleeve across his mouth he heard a rider approach. He turned and looked up to see the smiling face of the Dread Spear peeping out from beneath a dusty black hood.

  'Flailing etherclaws, Chalos,' she said. 'You look pale!'

  Chalos took a deep breath, his eyes fluttering closed.

  'I can't take much more of this riding, Samine.'

  'I overheard Jolm talking to one of his lieutenants,' said Samine. 'We're to be stopping soon. One of the scouts spotted a ravine up ahead, with a spring. The plan is to camp there until the shadamar have regained their stamina. Then we press on to the woodland.'

  Despite their slender limbs, shadamar were far superior to horses in terms of their energy reserves and the speed at which they replenished that energy. It was almost impossible to ride them to exhaustion, although an army in full armour would have more chance than most of doing just that. So regular rests were a good idea, especially when the Black Talon might meet a Riln detachment at any moment. Fighting on a tired steed was not a challenge any sane warrior would relish.

  Chalos clambered weakly back into the saddle. Sweat had broken out on his forehead. He brushed a lock of black hair out of his eyes.

  'Are you alright now?' the young woman asked.

  'Yes.'

  'Do you want to ride with me?'

  He looked over at her, seeing the concern on her face.

  'Um, fine.'

  They wheeled and rode back to the main column. By now, Jolm was far ahead with the most ferocious Krune warriors. When the two slingers rejoined the force they found themselves riding beside sherdlings and pavarine, a few metres ahead of a rearguard of mesh-clad Black Talon warriors.

  'You seem in high spirits,' Chalos said.

  Samine shrugged.

  'Just relieved to be outside, I think,' she said. 'I was in that damn cavern system for hours. The Riln were well fortified.'

  That was true enough. She had been sent in with the second wave of soldiers. Chalos remembered how she had looked when she had emerged, so many hours later, worn out but still able to manage a smile.

  'That's the life of a Dread Spear, I suppose,' he mumbled.

  She was a slinger, like him, but whereas he had been trained to heal flesh, she had been taught to rend it apart. She could blast bones from bodies, pulverise hearts and immolate foes by the score. Her Accomplice, a shifty-eyed iguana, was slouched in a leather pouch buckled to the saddle of her mount.

  She was their siege weapon, as Tankanis had been for the Gilt Plates. No Flint Wizard, but devastatingly effective nonetheless.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, listening to the lowing of the small herd of pavarine.

  'Do you think they know they are to be slaughtered?' Samine asked.

  'They're too stupid for that.'

  'Gods might say the same of us, Chalos.'

  'And they would be right.'

  She laughed then and threw back her hood, running a long-fingered hand through her thick auburn locks. Chalos felt his mouth go dry. She's older than me. Two winters, at least. She probably thinks I'm a child. He cleared his throat, nervously.

  'Dusty,' he said. 'Riding behind all those soldiers.'

  She turned back to him, a quizzical expression on her face.

  'Chalos, why did you become a healer?'

  'And not a proper mage, you mean?'

  Samine smiled. That was precisely what she had meant.

  'Well,' he began, with a shrug. 'I always had an affinity for magic. I liked the feel of it, you know? That resonating note, silent but strong, in your veins, when it's flowing through you... there's nothing like that in all the world. But I didn't want to see battle. Not on the front lines, anyway. So, I chose the Vital Gourd.'

  'You could have been a Scryer.'

  'Scryers always go mad before the others do.'

  'True. But though their lives are short, they live them far from carnage and chaos.'

  Chalos smiled thinly.

  'Had I the choice again, right now I might take another path.' He waved a hand dismissively. 'Anyway, what about you, Samine? Why did you choose to be a Dread Spear?'

  'I was good at it,' she replied without hesitation. 'And I knew that we would be marching on Riln. I wanted to be one of the first to cross the ocean.' Her eyes were fixed ahead, sparkling. 'Imagine, the history books telling of Samine, the great mage, who helped the Ten Plains King conquer the northern empire! I would die happy if I knew I would be remembered for my prowess and deeds.'

  One of the pavarine made a low sound and started to move askew, butting the beast next to it. A sherdling prodded it back into place with a tapering wooden pole. The beast snorted with indignation but allowed itself to be hammered back into formation.

  'Then this mission is a great opportunity for you.'

  'Yes!' Samine grinned. 'We will soon overtake the Gilt Plates, the most celebrated shock troops in the Unified Plains, and usurp their position as the vanguard of the army. Then, we will have both battle and adventure. Who knows what mysteries lie ahead? What terrible foes?'

  'Be careful what you wish for,' said Chalos. 'Something battered the Gilt Plates into submission. Not many have done that over the centuries.'

  'Exactly!'

  'That doesn't frighten you?'

  'It's a chance to show our mettle. To prove ourselves first to Jolm, then to the Duke, and then to the Fenc. And once we impress those grey veterans, our names will make it to the ear of the King himself. Then we will be immortal.'

  'And live like heroes,' Chalos said. 'Or die like them.'

  She laughed with open-mouthed delight and shook her head.

  'You are a dark one, Chalos. Don't you want to die for your kingdom?'

  He knew the answer he wanted to give. It burned on his tongue like an acid. In what way is it, or could it ever be, my kingdom? But he knew nothing would puncture her inviolable sense of duty. Dread Spears were all the same. There was something about having all that firepower to hand that made them live in the moment, hankering after the next excuse to unleash absolute mayhem. They did not ruminate deeply like healers did. They just dreamed of destruction and of the awe on the faces of friends, or the terror on the faces of foes.

  Healers were different, he knew. They could be seduced by the world of magic – lost in their mirrors as the expression went – like any other slinger, be seduced by the strange song of that other world where magic swam in the air like a scent. But there was no release for them. Scryers lived for uncovering new lands, new treasures. Wizards for unlocking new abilities and crafting new powers. Mages like the Dread Spears who had not yet achieved the mastery that differentiated true wizards from the rest simply enjoyed their dalliances with the other world, and the power it lent them in the real one. But for healers, the release came only in the wake of tragedy. They impressed others by setting bones, eradicating infection, closing cuts, restoring burst eyeballs or smashed brain matter. The only time they got to use their powers wa
s when the blood ran in rivers and the screams filled the night. There was no adventure for healers, only woe.

  She's right. I'm a dark one.

  'Look alive, Chalos.' Samine's voice snapped him back to reality.

  A black shape coursed down over the column, its long-beaked head ducking left and right, as if looking for something, or someone. Then the big black eyes settled on Chalos and Mysa Tundra-Shadow dropped onto his shoulder, ruffled her feathers and clacked her curved, unnaturally long beak.

  'Good to see you, Mysa,' the healer said.

  'What did I miss?' the Accomplice asked.

  'You're the one with the bird's eye view,' he sighed. 'So come on, what news from ahead? Are the Duke's scouts right? Is there some sort of ravine up there?'

  He was aware of Samine watching him. She would be able to hear his questions but not the bird's answers. Of course, he would hear only one side of any conversation she would have with the iguana. Accomplices could only be heard by their slingers, after all.

  'Yes, a miserable depression in the miserly ground of this joyless place. To think, a sea once flowed through here! But that was in aeons past.'

  'You could have stopped after that first word.'

  'And spare you the learning? Pah!' Mysa fidgeted. He felt her thin, strong claws poke the flesh of his robed shoulder. 'I tried the water there. A pleasant spring from a deep river. We will be well-rested after a night there but the dawn will bring fresh horrors.'

  Samine leaned over and poked his arm. Chalos started as though torn from a dream.

  'What does the bird say?'

  'Something about fresh horrors,' Chalos said. 'She's in a good mood.'

  'What does she mean?'

  'Yes, Mysa, what do you mean?'

  The bird clucked.

  'So in demand am I. For my wisdom? Oh, yes. We head into an ancient land, where nine eyes watched over petrified guardians as vast as the gods themselves. Our boots disturb things we should have avoided. It was foolish to try and take the straight line to Aphazail.' Again, the bird ruffled those silken black feathers, at times so black that they made the bird seem like a hole in the world. 'We should have skirted around the mountains and avoided the basin. There are reasons why the Riln are not camped on this very earth and why there is no city built over the spring.'

  She was twittering now and agitating, flexing her claws fretfully. Chalos raised his left hand and cupped it over the bird, gently soothing her trembling form. He made soft, susurrant noises and Mysa sighed before becoming still. Through his palm the healer could feel her small body pulse as the heart – powered by magic, but made of flesh – beat steadily beneath the feathers and hollow bones.

  'Well, Chalos?' Samine pressed eagerly.

  'Golems,' said Chalos. 'We are passing through Pheg-Tol country.'

  A whistle escaped the girl then.

  'We must advise Jolm,' she said, wheeling away on her majestic shadamar. 'It seems we may have sport before we even glimpse this great forest!'

  And with that, she was gone, tearing northward parallel to the column. In minutes she would be relaying the warning to Jolm, the enormous mesh-clad lieutenant who led the detachment. Chalos considered, for a moment, going with her. He liked her company, even though he did not share her courage or exuberance. But he found himself hanging back with the sherdlings and the herd of pavarine.

  For some reason, it felt like he belonged amongst them. The herd went towards the killing blade in complete ignorance, after all. Only the Black Talon, and their talismanic and mighty Dread Spear, galloped knowingly into the slaughterhouse, thinking they might find glory instead of a row of hooks.

  Is ignorance what I seek, rather than knowledge? He asked himself as he hunched his left shoulder to help Mysa snuggle into the curve of his neck. I must be the only slinger in creation that wants less wisdom rather than more.

  Somehow the steady beat of the herd's hooves and the glum chatter of the sherdlings lulled him almost to sleep, and he rode on to the ravine in a daze.

  'So tell me, slinger,' boomed a voice from behind a jagged grille set into a pock-marked demon-face of black steel, 'of the myth of the Pheg-Tol.'

  They were seated around a campfire in the centre of the ravine. All around them were tents, sleeping animals and piled supplies. The walls of the ravine stretched up to merge with the night sky where a stunning volume of clear stars sparkled. Chalos knew that the jagged ledges of the ravine were lined with sentries of the Black Talon but he could not see any evidence of them. Proof, he supposed, that they were doing their jobs well.

  Mysa was resting in his tent, huddled on his bedroll. The bird had just come back from an exhausting reconnaissance of the basin's remaining terrain, right up to the dark line of trees that marked the southern edge of the Dallian Woodlands. That she had returned with precious little to report had brought suspicion rather than comfort.

  The healer was sitting around the fire with Samine, who was draped in a thick cape of beast-hide, two sullen Krune officers and the terrible form of Jolm of the Twisted Root. The lieutenant of the Black Talon sat awkwardly on the earth, his legs – which both bowed outward slightly at the knee, a birth defect that he had somehow turned to his advantage in both combat and mounted soldiery – curled beneath him. He wore his full-face helm even now.

  'This pale Rovann whelp is an expert on Riln lore?' one of the officers asked, his tone dripping with cynicism.

  Jolm growled something in the jarring, staccato language of his people. The officer seemed to shrink back at the words, falling utterly silent.

  'I do not pretend to be a student of Riln Lore,' Chalos felt compelled to explain. 'But the story of the Pheg-Tol is well-known by the people of Rova. They are not native to the kingdom of the Riln, having come here from the far south-east, a place called Daran al-pat, where the land is ochre desert, with lush arable lands hugging the clear blue rivers that segment it, coast to coast.'

  He had already lost the two Krune officers. One was picking at his nails, the other glancing away from the others and into the night. Even Samine seemed to have lost interest, staring heavy-eyed into the fire. But Jolm was looking straight at Chalos. Even with the Krune leader's face hidden behind the war-helm, the healer could feel his eyes on him, stripping him to the bone.

  'They were built of clay, stone, metal and anything else that was at hand, and sent to investigate faraway cultures. Legend tells us that they had eight glowing eyes and a ninth invisible one that recorded all they saw, but could also be used to release a lethal beam of magic energy. These riders absorbed the history and wisdom of the entire world but when it came time to return home, they found that the empire that had made them was gone, and the people that now lived there regarded them with terror.'

  'Go on, slinger,' Jolm said, gripped by the tale.

  'They had heard tell of a city called Ranoum P'haktar,' the healer went on, the fire crackling, 'rumoured to be the greatest in all the world. This city had been the one place they had never been able to find, for it was hidden from them by powerful magic. As legend has it, they eventually found the city, but were appalled by what they discovered. The denizens were experimenting with forbidden and unnatural sorcery. Something to do with preventing souls from leaving their bodies at the time of death. So the golems laid waste to the city and, when the killing was done, immediately regretted their actions. In sorrow, they fell into a miserable sleep. And they sleep still, until such a day as the world provides something to pique their jaded curiosity.'

  A pavarine was lowing, softly. A harsh noise from a sherdling, somewhere in the darkness, put an end to it.

  'The Ruin,' Jolm said. 'The city you speak of is the Ruin.'

  'I think so.'

  'That old name you used for it.. what does it mean?'

  'Ranoum P'haktar?' The healer shrugged. 'It translates to Defiant Wellspring. The old words have strange, elastic meanings. Poetic, but oblique.'

  Jolm nodded with a soft grunt.

  'Why do
you think this legend is relevant? It sounds like ancient history,' said one of the Krune officers.

  'Well, Mysa – my Accomplice – talked about seeing something with nine eyes. What else in all of creation, in all of myth and nightmare, has nine eyes? Only the Pheg-Tol, the golems of Daran al-pat.'

  'They are dangerous?' Jolm asked.

  Chalos shrugged.

  'I don't know any more about them,' he said plainly. 'There are people back home who would be able to tell you the whole myth. But I think the golems became involved in various wars throughout their long lives, sometimes siding with the aggressor, sometimes not. I do remember wondering what their martial code was, if any.'

  'Martial code?' Jolm asked, as if the concept baffled him.

  'Their ethics on the field,' Chalos replied. 'Are they cruel, are they sadistic? Do they aid the good or the evil?'

  The Krune lieutenant chuckled under his breath. Coming from the helm, it seemed as if the sound had escaped a deeply buried tomb and hinted at ancient monstrosities stirring to life.

  Samine spoke up then.

  'Will they attack us, do you think?'

  Chalos shrugged.

  'I don't know if they even exist. And if they do, perhaps they are far from here. Or less dangerous than the myth suggests.'

  Samine bit her lip. Now that her energy was waning, she seemed less keen to face the dangers ahead. She seemed smaller, too, out of her intimidating black robes.

  'So many mysteries...' she said.

  'Indeed,' Jolm said flatly. 'It seems we will only know the truth in these myths if it crawls out of the earth and assails us. But at least it will come as less of a surprise.' He turned to the two officers. 'Communicate this to the men at dawn. Nine-eyed devils. Possibly hostile. Take no chances.' The two men nodded solemnly. Jolm turned back to the two Rovanns. 'Your wisdom is appreciated, slinger. I trust with your bird-sight, and the Dread Spear's fury, we will vanquish anything that blocks our way to the forest.' He clapped his great, gauntleted hands. 'Now, be off to your tents and sleep. Tomorrow brings toil!'