by J. L. Doty
The stranger helped Jokath out of the inn and into the street. They turned left and walked with Jokath leaning heavily on the man. Then Jokath remembered that there were no other inns in town. “Wait,” he said, halting near the open mouth of a dark alley. “There ain’t no other inns here.”
“I know,” the stranger said, pulling him into the alley.
Jokath saw the moon glint off a blade, then a horrible, intense pain washed through his chest as the knife pierced his heart. His knees gave out and he collapsed to the ground. The stranger leaned over him and wiped the blade on his tunic. Then the stranger turned and left him lying in the mud. And the last thought that crossed his mind before he died was that the stranger’s knife had been made of obsidian, and it radiated darkness in a way no simple blade of glass should.
~~~
Morgin and Harriok followed the trail of blood through the forest undergrowth northeast of the Lake of Sorrows, tracking on foot, their horses following behind them. It had been pure coincidence that a pheasant had spooked and taken to the air just as Harriok had released his arrow. The pheasant had in turn spooked Harriok’s target, a young buck, and it had bolted just an instant before the arrow struck. The arrow pierced the thigh of its left hindquarter, an injury that would eventually kill the animal, but not disable it enough to prevent it from leading them on a leagues-long chase. No hunter left a wounded animal to die slowly. They would track it, find it, dispatch it, and make good use of the meat it provided.
Morgin suspected that if it had been an arrow from his bow it would not have missed. Not that he was better with a bow than Harriok. He was as good, or better, than most clansman, but any Benesh’ere displayed much more skill with bow and arrow than him. No, something in the steel made his arrows strike true in an uncanny way. He’d begun to suspect the steel warhead on an arrow understood his desire, and somehow found the target regardless of any mischance or ill luck. He kept such thoughts to himself.
They broke out of the undergrowth and onto the Gods Road just south of Gilguard’s Ford. Morgin heard the rest of their hunting party not far behind them. He looked up the road and caught a fleeting glimpse of the buck staggering into some undergrowth just north of the Ulbb. “There it is,” he shouted, pointing. He climbed into Mortiss’ saddle and spurred her forward at an easy gallop.
When he hit the ankle-deep water of the wide ford, Mortiss’ hooves sent water spraying ahead of her, splashes of it glinting in the bright summer sun. Once across the ford he reined her in at the edge of the road near the brush where he’d seen the struggling buck. He dismounted and didn’t need to tell her to wait there.
He carried his strung bow in case he might need to down the buck from a distance. But he found the animal just off the road, lying on its side, spent and no longer able to run. He felt a pang of sorrow and pity for it as he thrust his sword into its heart.
He stepped out of the brush. The hunting party had gathered in the road just south of the ford: Jack the Lesser, Jack the Greater, Harriok, and Jerst. He waved an arm and shouted, “Come and help me. This buck’s too big for me to handle on my own.”
After he’d said it, only then did he recall that his Benesh’ere friends, in their exile, could not cross the ford and stand north of the Ulbb, and he felt shame that he had so callously taunted them, even if not intentionally. In his forgetfulness, he had reminded them of the greatest of all torments for a whiteface. They sat astride their horses waiting for him silently.
He wiped his sword on some leaves and sheathed it. The buck was not the largest he’d downed, so he thought if he gutted it first, he might just be able to lift it onto Mortiss’ saddle on his own. He threw a rope over a convenient branch, tied one end about the buck’s neck, but could only hoist it just off the ground. He gutted it quickly, and with its weight reduced he managed to hoist it high enough to drape it across Mortiss rump. He stood panting by Mortiss’ side for several heartbeats after doing so. He’d damaged the hide and some of the meat in the process, but there’d been no avoiding that. He’d come back for the guts later, since every part of a kill had some use.
He cinched the buck in place with a few short lengths of rope, then walking ahead of Mortiss he led her down to the ford. They crossed it quietly, and when they reached the rest of the hunting party no words were spoken. In silence Jack the Lesser and Jerst lifted the carcass off Mortiss’ back and began butchering it. They’d break it up into pieces to distribute among the five of them, making it easier to carry it back to camp.
“Why not,” Jack the Greater said loudly, standing with his back to them at the edge of the ford looking north. “Why can’t we cross the Ulbb? It’s just legend. Has anyone ever challenged it?”
Jack the Lesser, Jerst and Harriok straightened from dismembering the carcass. “Don’t,” Jack the Lesser said.
Harriok added, “You know it’s been tried. And you know what happens.”
“That’s legend too,” Jack the Greater shouted angrily, and he took one step into the ford. “Just tales told around the fire after dinner.” He took another step forward, the water of the ford rushing around his ankles. “It hasn’t been tried in my time, or my father’s time, or my father’s father’s.”
He took another step, then another, then he marched like a soldier going to battle, his footsteps spraying water in front of him much like Mortiss’ hooves had. He stopped just short of the center of the ford and turned back to face them. “See,” he shouted. “Just tales, stories, legends with no truth to them. Since we never go north of the Ulbb, how do we know we can’t?”
He spun and marched further into the ford, and as he crossed its center he started laughing, loud maniacal cries that echoed through the forest. “Just stories,” he screamed as he marched toward the north shore. “Tales to fool stupid and foolish whitefaces.”
Nothing hindered him or slowed him, and he did not falter as he crossed the entire width of the ford, his cries and shouts growing more unintelligible with each step. “A joke made by kings to fool us all. Skeleton kings and great, giant wolves and enormous half-birds, and dog warriors.”
Morgin recognized his references to the distant past, even if the rest of the hunting party did not.
Jack reached the far shore, stepped onto it, put both feet on dry land and stood there with his back to them at the very edge of freedom. Then he turned about, and they all gasped at the sight of his face. Trails of blood streamed down his cheeks from his eyes. More blood streamed down his neck from his ears, and blood flowed freely out his nose and mouth. When he spoke he spit gobbets of thick brown blood, a color that told them the blood had already begun to clot. “You seeeeeee!” he cried, looking up to the heavens, his arms outstretched. “I can stand north of the Ulbb.”
He stood there silently for several heartbeats, his arms outstretched, his face turned up toward the heavens as if praying to the gods, then he toppled forward like a tree felled with an ax. He hit the water face down with a mighty splash; his body bobbed in the shallow water for a moment, and then the current took him. It floated in the shallows of the ford, drifting slowly downriver, the water around it turning red. Then it drifted out of sight around a bend in the river.
With tears in his eyes, Jack the Lesser said, “I guess now I’m Jack the Only.”
He turned to Morgin. “Will you try to retrieve the body? If it washes up on the north side, none of us can do so.”
Morgin simply said, “Sure. I’ll bring it back to the camp.”
He climbed into the saddle and let Mortiss pick her own way east. Just past the ford the Ulbb narrowed into a raging torrent, then further still it opened up again, and flowed calmly northeast. Just a few leagues down from the ford he found Jack’s body washed up on the south shore. Oddly enough, he had only a little difficulty lifting Jack onto Mortiss’ back, for all that remained of the towering whiteface was a bloodless husk.
He tied Jack across Mortiss’ back, then led her on foot up to the top of a low-lying hill to survey his su
rroundings. He’d never traveled through this part of the forest and didn’t want to get lost. But as he stood there he recalled that Morddon knew this country well. And Morddon remembered the Ulbb flowing south of the hill on which he stood, not north of it as it did now. And he could even make out the ancient riverbed where it had once flowed, dry now, and overgrown with brush.
Curious, he followed the crest of the hill west, the dry ancient riverbed on his left, the flowing Ulbb on his right. As the crest of the hill led downward, the two riverbeds converged about a league east of the ford. There, a massive tumble of stone and earth had spilled into the old riverbed, an ancient cataclysm that had diverted the flow of the Ulbb. The stones were rounded and smoothed by time, telling him the massive slide had occurred centuries ago. And yet, above the tumble of rocks stood a tall cliff of raw basalt, and he thought that if the gods ever wanted to have another cataclysm, they could divert the Ulbb back to its original course.
He shrugged the thought away and began the long walk back to the Benesh’ere camp with his sad burden.
Chapter 17: The Blade is Near
Rhianne had intended to be back in her hut well before dark, but a sky filled with gray, dreary clouds and constant drizzle had brought dusk early to the town of Norlakton, catching her off guard. As she guided the horse into the town at a slow walk, Braunye walking beside her, she glimpsed a dark shadow at the edge of her vision, and it startled her. She looked toward it, but saw nothing there.
“Is something amiss, mistress?” Braunye asked.
“No,” she said, chiding herself for being so skittish. “Just jumping at shadows that aren’t there.”
“Ye done a lot of that lately.”
Yes, she had done a lot of that lately. It had started three days ago with a sense of foreboding, as if something malevolent stalked her from the shadows. Since then she’d had that feeling of a watcher hovering nearby, and had been startled several times by a dark shape moving in the periphery of her vision. She trusted her witch’s intuition, had even attempted a seeking in the hope she could uncover any danger that might be haunting Norlakton, but she’d turned up nothing.
She left her horse with the stableman at the inn, then she and Braunye walked back to her hut to prepare dinner. I’m just jumping at shadows, she thought. Just shadows.
She’d spent the day up at the miners’ camp, treating quite a number of them for a nasty cold making the rounds from miner to miner, and child to child. She couldn’t cure a cold, not without resorting to some powerful healing spells, but she did relieve some of their symptoms, for which the miners and their wives were quite grateful.
The blade pulled at her constantly now, unrelenting in its demands. It hated the fires, feared them in fact, seeking always to be free of them, and for some reason it seemed to think she held the key to its freedom. And she’d come to understand it didn’t want freedom merely so it could devastate and destroy. It wanted its freedom so it could escape from the fires. In some way they tormented it. But what fires? The fires of a hearth, of a cook’s oven, of a campfire, of a smith’s forge—
She almost vomited at the rush of hatred that washed through her soul. That must be it. In her entire life she’d seen a smith’s shop only once or twice, and then only in passing, had had no interest and hadn’t paid any attention at the time. She knew of that kind of fire only as an academic concept, though with the way Benesh’ere blades and steel had recently come to mean so much to Norlakton’s economy, the smith’s craft was in the forefront of everyone’s thoughts.
This time she steeled herself, prepared for the blade’s reaction as she again thought of the fires of a smith’s forge—
Again, hatred washed through her soul, so intense she cringed under the onslaught. And she resolved to not again think such thoughts. But she’d learned something, though she still could not be certain what.
~~~
Something about the town of Norlakton drew the attention of the steel, and Morgin felt compelled to go there. But he didn’t act on that until Harriok and Jack the Lesser came to the Forge Hall to pick up a few steel arrowheads.
“We’re going to the plainface town,” Harriok said.
Jack added, “Need the arrowheads to trade for some nice things for our ladies.”
Morgin stood up from his workbench and said, “I’ll go with you.”
All activity in the Forge Hall ceased as Chagarin said, “No.”
Harriok and Jack said, “No,” as well, and so did the smiths.
“It’s too dangerous for you to walk among plainfaces,” Chagarin said.
The steel agreed with him about the danger, but he still knew he must find out why the town drew its attention. Morgin said plainly, “I’m going.”
They had quite a loud discussion about that, but Morgin refused to relent. So a short time later he found himself standing outside the Forge Hall in the bright morning sunlight as Chagarin, the smiths, Harriok and Jack the Lesser looked him over carefully. He’d donned a hooded Benesh’ere tunic, the straw hat turning the hood into a tent-like affair that hid his face in deep shadow. And he’d augmented it with a bit of shadowmagic just to be sure. A pair of riding gloves hid the skin of his hands.
Harriok said, “He looks Benesh’ere.”
Jack added, “A short Benesh’ere. But I guess he does.”
Chagarin said, “Keep your face and hands hidden. And we can’t call you by your real name, so what should it be?”
“Call me Morddon,” he said.
They all agreed that Morgin had chosen a good Benesh’ere name. The smiths also agreed that they and their sons should all accompany him as bodyguards, but Morgin pointed out that a large, heavily armed troupe of whitefaces riding into town would draw more attention than just the three of them. They compromised; Chagarin and Baldrak would go as well.
As they rode into town Morgin noticed that the plainfaces eyed them curiously, and he realized that if he were in their shoes, curiosity would compel him to do the same.
“Let’s start at the inn,” Harriok said. “The innkeeper’s ale is not bad. And he keeps a small stock of trade goods on hand. And on a nice day like this he’ll have tables outside. It’ll be nice to sit in the sun instead of that sweaty common room of his.”
They stopped in front of the inn, Morgin swung his leg over Mortiss’ rump and stepped down onto the dirt of Norlakton’s main street—its only street, actually. His comrades dismounted nearby and they tied their horses to metal rings hammered into the side of the inn. They took one of the outside tables and the innkeeper introduced himself as Fat John. The innkeeper fit his name.
Harriok and Jack dropped their hoods, while Morgin, Baldrak and Chagarin kept theirs up. Five tankards of ale and a lunch of bread and cheese cost them only four steel arrowheads. Until that moment, Morgin had not truly understood the value of Benesh’ere steel.
The innkeeper brought out his trade goods, and while Harriok and Jack haggled with him, Morgin leaned back and let the lunch and ale settle in his stomach.
He was simply staring down the street, not really paying attention to anything in particular, when he saw her. From a distance he couldn’t make out her face, but she walked like Rhianne, moved like her in every way, and in that moment his heart climbed up into his throat. But as she came closer and he saw her features more clearly, while there certainly was a resemblance, it was slight at best. Up close there were so many differences between this woman and Rhianne; she carried far too many years in her face, her nose and chin were square and rough like those of a laborer, and her eyes were a dull brown.
As she approached she slowed and hesitated, looked at Morgin and his whiteface comrades fearfully. Harriok and Jack had warned Morgin that many of the plainfaces reacted that way; the stature of the Benesh’ere apparently intimidated them quite a bit. Then Fat John approached her and greeted her warmly as Mistress Syllith. He escorted her past their table and into the inn.
“Bit old for my taste,” Jack said.
&
nbsp; Harriok added, “Take a couple decades off her and I’ll bet she was a pretty one once.” To Morgin he said, “You like them older, huh?”
For just an instant, he had hoped they had gotten it wrong. He’d had a moment to believe Rhianne still lived, but then reality had intruded painfully. “No,” he said. “She just reminded me of someone I once loved. But she’s dead now.”
Harriok frowned. “Sounds like you still love her.”
~~~
“What can I do for you, Mistress Syllith?”
Rhianne had to shake herself to focus on Fat John’s question. As she’d stepped from her hut to walk to the inn, the sword’s influence had suddenly begun to grow rapidly, and it now pulled at her painfully. Ever since the Benesh’ere had arrived at the lake, it had hammered at her with such force there was no question it had come nearer. She had concluded that one of the Benesh’ere had found it, and brought it here to their camp near Norlakton. But this! She’d only felt it this strongly once before: when kneeling in front of Morgin in the Hall of Wills after the blade had gone berserk, and it muddled her thinking now.
“Are you ill?”
Focus, she told herself. “No, just a little addled. I’ve never been so close to the Benesh’ere before.”
“They’re fearsome, ain’t they?”
“Yes, they are.” She had to think for a moment to recall why she’d come. “I need a new mortar and pestle. Mine is broken.”
“Well, you come to the right place.”
Fat John happily gave her a new mortar and pestle, as long as she agreed to spend at least two afternoons every twelve-day ministering to her patients from his common room, though he also agreed to feed her and Braunye dinner afterwards. She could probably have struck a better bargain, but it took so much energy to remain focused, her heart wasn’t in it. She bundled up the mortar and pestle in a cloth sack she’d brought, then stepped out of the inn onto the street. She hesitated on the inn’s threshold, trying to catch her breath and steady her nerves.
