Scourge of the Betrayer

by Jeff Salyards

  I was nodding off again when Lloi finally stopped chanting. I looked at her as she fell back against a barrel, eyes shut, face pale. She pointed her toes away from her and then rolled her sandaled feet in circles, to either work out stiff muscles or keep them from seizing up.

  I asked if she wanted food or drink but she declined both. I looked at Braylar, but besides the splotches of wine on his skin, he seemed unchanged. I whispered, “What happens next?”

  She pulled her legs up to her chest and laid her head on her knees. She sounded absolutely exhausted and hoarse when she finally replied, “Can’t say.” Then she forced herself up, legs wobbly, holding the barrel for support. “Need some rest now. He wakes, you wake me. Otherwise, you leave me be.”

  She disappeared through the front flap and the wagon rocked as she jumped off. A few moments later, I heard her vomiting. Even after I was sure she’d emptied her stomach, she continued to make awful clenching, heaving, sputtering noises.

  I wasn’t sure which was the greater oddity—a Syldoon whose Deserter-inspired weapon allegedly stole memories from the dead, or a disfigured Grass Dog who presumably drew those memories out of him like poison. Or an archivist who believed either one.

  And that was the last thought I had before falling into a depthless dreamless slumber.

  ⊕

  I woke when the wagon began moving forward, feeling so tired I was unsure whether I’d slept for mere moments or a month. I sat up and the first thing I noticed was that a prone Braylar had been replaced by a seated Lloi, facing the rear of the wagon.

  I stretched and sat up as well. When she heard me, she turned and offered me her small pouch of seeds in her nubby hand, which I declined. She popped a few more in her mouth, working them open with a dexterity rodents would have admired before spitting out the shells. “Captain Noose figured he been drifting off course long enough. Time to get rolling right and center again. Didn’t bother waking you, on account of you not sleeping last night. I already told him what befell while I was riding solo, but he cautioned me to be ready to retell it again, should you have questions. Which we both figured you might, as you can’t seem to help yourself. So,” she offered me the seed pouch again, which I accepted this time. “Ask what you got to ask.”

  I wasn’t sure where to begin. My questions came in a flood, “What happened to you? Where did you disappear? Were you outrunning the ripper, or—”

  She held up her hands, or hand-and-a-half anyway. “Whoa, easy there, bookmaster. Nah, wasn’t no ripper delayed me none. That is, I seen the feathered bastard, and followed at a real respectful distance for a fair bit. But I knew he hadn’t seen the wagon. They got a real taste for horse. He seen the horses, would’ve been too good a meal to pass up, wagon or no. That ripper moved off in the opposite direction, so he weren’t a worry no more. No, the reason I didn’t come back right quick was, there was a Grass Dog party, looking for those hunters that ripper gutted. Big one, armed to the teeth. They had some outriders, doing what I been doing, and they were heading for the tracks this wagon left in the earth. They found those, that party would’ve run you to ground, killed you deader than dirt, no question. So I gave them a different track to follow, led them back toward the ripper trail. Tried to, anyway. They turned before they caught it, headed back to the party for the night. So I spent the next couple of days and nights laying down track after track, staying just ahead of them.”

  I noticed how exhausted she looked earlier, but attributed that to whatever it was she did last night—I never considered how little she might have slept in the days leading up to it.

  She said, “Couple of times, I thought they was going to hit the ruts this big rig left, and they might have, too, except I finally got them to follow me to the chariot tracks. Not sure if they ever caught that ripper. Big party like that, they probably never even seen him. By the time I got clear of them and found your trail again, took me a good while to catch up to the carnage you left behind. Thought for a flash that war party found you, but if they had, no way you would’ve rolled off. So that was a real mystery.”

  I asked, “Did you find bodies?”

  She spit some husks out. “Blood, yes, bodies, no. Wouldn’t have been too mysterious a mystery if I’d come across a bunch of bodies. I saw tracks, and found a few weapons, which told me it wasn’t any kind of Grass Dogs you tangled with, but that was it. So I got my pony moving fast as I could until I closed the distance. Found you last night, asleep with a crossbow in your lap. The rest you know. Or not. But can’t say what I can tell you that’ll clear it up any.”

  “So… what is it you do exactly? For him, to him?”

  Judging by her expression and the way her top lip puffed out as she rolled her tongue behind it, I assume a husk got jammed in the space in her teeth. A second later, it went flying out the back emphatically. I’m not sure if she was more annoyed by my line of questioning or the trapped husk.

  “Real hard to put it right,” she said. “Partly, because I don’t know for certain. They say a Memoridon could bore you to tears piling one explanation atop another. Never met one. Probably a good thing, that. But I’ll tell you this much. Men think memories are like murals or statues or objects, all stored in a huge gallery, some kind of collection that captures the truth of whatever happened, never changes none. But that ain’t so. They can capture the untruth of something, just as easy. They can change, especially as time leads to time.”

  I said, “That doesn’t really sound… accurate to me, Lloi. What can we trust if not our memories?”

  She leaned forward. “Hoping you’d ask. Happens I got an example in mind for you. Let’s say you’re in a town, walking down a busy thoroughfare. You see a woman in front of you, comely, mannered, real nice on the eyes. You’re watching the way her hips tilt this way and that, when all of a sudden, a thug cuts the pouch off her belt and takes off running down the street. She screams ‘thief!’ but nobody stops the wretch in time. Escapes clean. So an hour later, the city watch is asking around, wanting to know if anybody got a solid look at the man. You step forward, you were right there behind when it happened. Three other people step forward, too. And separate, you all describe what you saw. Or think you saw. Thing of it is, the city watch is awful confused, because every single one of you got something different to say. You claim the man was middle height, had brown hair, wearing a green tunic. Somebody else there says he was a tall dusty fairhair with a bluish tunic, and black boots. Another thought he was on the shorter side of things, couldn’t recall the hair, but thought he had a tuft of beard on his chin, brown boots.

  “See what I’m getting at? All of you would’ve sworn you saw what you saw, but the cutpursing happened awful quick, and your eyes were fixed on those swaying hips just before, and each of you got a different kind of perspective for the thing. Tall witness might have thought the thug was short, when he might have just been short to him, but middling to you.

  “Each account could be different, when each of you saw the single thing. So your memory of the thing would feel true enough to you, but that don’t mean it reflects something real. Maybe one of you in this make believe got it right, maybe none of you did. Hard to say for certain.

  “To each man himself, his memories seems as solid and factual as a stone mosaic, an urn he could turn around and heft, a flower he could sniff. But when I go inside another, I don’t see it or feel it like that. Everything is shimmery, shifting, like it’s bathed in mist and shadow, like… like walking down the foggiest street you can think of, with everything looking not like itself at all.

  “I can move down those streets, through those dusky galleries, the man with the memories might never know I was there. Even if I move something around, tweak it some, take it like a cutpurse myself, I move unseen. Like a ghost, or time.” She puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. “Like I said, real hard to put words to it and have it make any sort of sense. But with Captain Noose there, it’s a different thing altogether. I go into his memories, I see the s
ame thing I see in anybody’s—shady, funny around the edges, echoes where there ought to be none, things shifting right as I look at them square. Now, I go in after he killed someone dead with that flail of his, and it’s… different. Those stolen memories, they don’t look like his own. Oh, they’re murky, sure enough, and all the rest. But they… leak. Every one of them, puddling something that might as well be poison, which is why I said as much last night. They don’t belong, and I don’t go in and take them out, they continue that bitter leaking until they… well, I can’t say for a surety what would happen. But I got my suspicions. Captain Noose might never wake up, Or if he does, might wake a hollowed-out man, no memories of his own. Maybe none at all. Can’t say.”

  She said this with zeal and conviction, but I wasn’t certain I understood. Or believed. “So… are you saying you, uh, retrieve these memories somehow?”

  “Yep. That’s right,” she said. “I go in, find them, take them out of him and into me, and then I destroy them. Walking into another’s memories, easy enough, though I don’t always know what I’m seeing there. But taking them gets trickier, and trickier still when they burn to the touch.”

  “Was this why you were vomiting? Why he was vomiting?”

  She replied, “You’re right quick. Makes you queasy something fierce, having somebody else’s memories inside you, no matter how you want to picture it. Weren’t meant to be there. Torques your stomach five directions at once. I could show you, you like?”

  I quickly shook my head.

  “Thought not.” She closed her pouch. “Got nothing else to add, just now. So—”

  “Lloi,” I interrupted. She looked at me, tired. I didn’t want to press her, but my head was still swarming with questions. “You mentioned the Memoridon. I know little about them, other than the sorts of things everyone hears. They’re memory mages of some kind, right? But—”

  “Can’t say I like this wagon none,” she cast a meaningful glance towards the front where Braylar sat unseen, “but I need some more rest, and I won’t be getting none in the saddle, so wagon it is. You grab yourself something to fill your belly, bookmaster, head up on front now. Expect Captain Noose is expecting you, and if ever a man liked to wait less than him, I never met him and hope never to.”

  She gave me another long look, and I nodded.

  My stomach was indeed rumbling, despite the talk of vomit, so I filled it as quickly as I could and rejoined Braylar.

  He said nothing at first, staring straight ahead. But finally, “You know more than you should already. Be oh so careful with that. Knowledge is a often a very dangerous thing.”

  I had no idea how to properly respond. Who would I tell? I wasn’t even sure what had really happened, so I didn’t know what I could tell even if there was someone tempting offering their ear. I would surely be thought a madman. Maybe the fact I was starting to believe all of this made me one already.

  Braylar handed me the flask and said, “Oh, light the lantern again without my permission and Lloi won’t be the only one missing pieces.” I took the flask and nodded. He added, “But thank you for keeping watch over me. You could’ve taken a horse and left. That would’ve been sensible. Most would have. So… thank you for staying.”

  Even if it meant getting more exchanges with threats laced with strange praise, it was good to have Braylar back from wherever he’d disappeared to.

  ⊕

  Several hours later Lloi emerged, looking not much better, but arguing that she was ready to scout some more. Braylar was reluctant to let her go. But she pointed out that we’d already encountered more in the grass than we wanted to. And so off she went.

  However, she returned sooner than expected. Hearing her approach, I hopped over the bench as Lloi reined up. Braylar looked past her to the horizon, his hand on Bloodsounder. “Report.”

  She rolled her head around slowly on her neck, complying only just before he was about to dress her down. “Couple of wagons. Heading in this general kind of direction, though a little more on the northerly side. Easy enough to slip around them.”

  Braylar stopped scanning the horizon and turned his full attention to her. “Hostile? Or accompanied by rippers, dragons, wraiths, or anything else unsavory that you might neglect to tell us about?”

  She shrugged. “Not that I seen. Watched them file past before doubling back this way. Small wagons, a handful of folk on foot. Walking staffs about the only weapon I could see.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “Does all of the grassland get this much traffic, or did you just pick the most popular route?”

  “Can’t say what they’re doing out this way. Besides inviting attack, that is. But I don’t see them causing trouble for no one. Still, you wanted to know what’s ahead to avoid what you could, so I’m telling you what’s ahead. If you want to steer clear, just redirect a bit more to—”

  He held up a hand. “How much smaller are the wagons?”

  Lloi took her cap off her head, spun it around on her nubby hand. “Can’t say for a certainty. Didn’t creep up and measure it. Both shorter than this rig, but while one was pulled by two horse, the other was hooked onto four, so while I can’t speculate as to total length, couldn’t have been too poor a comparison.”

  He lowered his hand and nodded slowly, as if consenting to his own plan. “Lead us to them.”

  Lloi stopped spinning her cap. “Captain Noose?”

  “You heard me.”

  She stood in her stirrups. “It won’t be no problem to skirt around them. Won’t even lose much in the way of time. We—”

  “We go, Lloi. Now.”

  Lloi filled her cheeks with air and then exhaled long and slow. “You’re the captain, captain.”

  “Sometimes I wonder.” He pointed at the horizon. “Lead on.”

  She did. A few hours later, with dusk not far out, I saw a pair of wagons. Closer still, I made out people walking in front and behind, some riding on mules. All told, there appeared to be a half dozen or so. When we closed the distance enough to make out these details, the procession stopped where they were, directly in our path some distance ahead.

  I’d seen many caravans in many cities, particularly Rivermost, and if this was a caravan, it was the shabbiest and most poorly protected in the known world. They also didn’t comport themselves like soldiers of any kind, just as Lloi had indicated.

  All those in the wagons were adults, almost evenly split male to female. They were a variety of ages, and disparate in dress. Two had simple tunics and robes, made from rough and patched linens. The others had belts and fine pouches. There was no silk or velvet or telltale signs of nobility, but it was clear servants and yeomen walked among merchants.

  Braylar said “Pilgrims” under his breath with the same amount of disdain he might have used for lepers or cockroaches.

  When we were about thirty feet away, Braylar pulled the reins and we came to a stop. Some of the pilgrims exchanged whispers and glances, and then a woman approached us. She was short and stout and had three chins that I counted, and her grooved face was shaded in a ridiculously wide-brimmed floppy hat. She had garters on her hose, buttons on her dress, and a lovely bag hanging from her belt. While not wealthy, she was no peasant. Probably the lady of a small household somewhere, and the others her retainers.

  Lloi was riding alongside us. She pushed her shapeless hat around on her head. “Just like I said. Nobody more dangerous than a mole rat.”

  The woman carried herself with confidence as she approached us, a huge smile on her face. I wondered how she managed such abundant friendliness considering the grim visage of the man she was about to address, but the smile seemed genuine, if a bit oversized.

  She raised an arm and waved, looked at the three of us, eyes pausing momentarily on Lloi, and then she said, “Greetings, travelers! Well met. I’m Jebaneeza, sometimes called Jebaneeza Wrong Hand.” I realized then that she’d waved with her left hand. “I don’t mind this address—in fact, I rather like it—so you ma
y call me as such. If it pleases you, of course.” I didn’t imagine it was possible, but her smile seemed to grow as she said this, and the wrinkles deepened around her eyes.

  She seemed pleasant, especially after sharing mile after silent mile with my patron; it occurred to me that under different circumstances I’m sure I would have grown to like her.

  Jebaneeza waited for us to introduce ourselves. I looked at Braylar, and he was looking at everything before him—the wagon, the people standing around it, their clothing—critically, measuring, in that cold and distant way of his. I began to feel uneasy.

  He looked at her. “Wrong Hand, eh? It’s a shame that bynames are so often filled with malice or cruelty, yes? It’s good you’ve come to terms with yours. How is it you find yourself traveling among the grasses?”

  Her smile shrank a size or two, and her eyes didn’t seem quite as merry as they had, but she kept on as if she were speaking to a long-time friend. “We’re on a pilgrimage. My companions and I, that is. There’s a shrine in the center of the Green Sea, devoted to—”

  “This shrine of yours,” Braylar leaned forward, “it’s made of grass and sod, yes?”

  Jebaneeza shook her head. “Oh it isn’t mine. No, no. It belongs to anyone who would visit. And as for the grass, I’ve never seen it before, but one of my companions has, although I don’t recall him commenting on the construction. Hmm. Sod. Seems a shame to construct a shrine out of sod, but I suppose there aren’t many alternatives in the Green Sea, are there?”

  Braylar lost none of his grimness. “There are no alternatives. And it’s not the center.”

  She tilted her head back to get a better look at him, and I noticed her eyes were of the skyiest blue. She said, “I’m sorry, I don’t quite follow you. The center?”

  “Of the Green Sea. The shrine isn’t in the center. We passed it only a few days back.”

  It took me a moment to realize what he was referring to; I hadn’t considered that the ramshackle building might be a shrine, and I was surprised he’d been cognizant at all during that time.