by Jon Kiln
“Is that what you used at the second monastery?” Draken asked, sounding remarkably calm given the raging madness that must be within him as well as without. “That made the incredible boom?”
“It’s similar. But, believe it or not, this one is worse.”
Soldier-police from the gate writhed around them, hurt from their leaps. One was charred to death, and Pul knew at least one more to match him was left on top. Pul saw no immediate danger. There was time to talk, and that was exactly what he needed.
“I believe it,” Draken said.
“So, what happens now is entirely up to you. Many of these will be detonated today. The bear-masks who will employ them have made blood-oaths to do so directly to the bear-priests. I couldn’t stop them even if I wanted to. Understand that. But there is a choice for you to make. If I tell one of them, a man only I will be able to identify, not to employ his, he won’t. There is only one who swore to me instead of the bear-priests. His target should be easy enough for you to guess.”
Obviously Draken knew Pul meant Carella’s house, where Dayda and Tayda would wait with their mother, locked away from the havoc and insanity in the city streets. But Draken said nothing. He only looked at Pul with the purest hatred Pul had ever seen.
It was E’ghat at work in him. It must be.
Draken, with a calmness that might have fooled someone else, said, “What do you want me to do?”
And then Pul spoke with real conviction.
“It’s not what I want, Old Babe. It’s not what I want at all.”
Chapter 39
The city had quickly become a disaster area. Jace could see that even from outside the walls. Plumes of smoke, some gray, some black, rose from more than a dozen locations. Periodically, he’d hear another concussive boom to indicate the destruction was far from over.
Oddly, he was still too distant to make out the individual screams of the city’s residents over the raging cackle of flames, nor could he see them over the city wall. What his five senses reported could have been a ghost town being razed to make way for something else, nothing sinister about it. But he knew the city was teeming with innocents, sinners, scum, and angels alike. They were all being killed because of one small group’s perceived need to get their hands on a washed-up arena fighter.
It was insanity, Jace knew, but in his experience, precious few things in mortality were not. He tried, and failed, to see the hand of Dramm-Teskata, or any of the gods, in it all. No matter. If he lived there would be time to find the cords which bound her to these events. If he did not survive, the matter was out of his hands anyway.
The overcast day transformed along with the fighting below to a full-on rain. Normally, Jace would have rejoiced at this—something to put out the flames—but he remembered what Draken had said about the water the citizens in Merreline had used against the fire. It hadn’t put it out at all. It had made it spread. Had Jace been so inclined, he might have seen the hand of E’ghat in the rain, but the four-five gods still seemed conspicuously absent.
He made his way around the city wall, feeling it was a mistake somehow to try to go through the same entrance he’d watched Draken and Pul go in through. He didn’t know how he would get in at any other gate, but he gave it no thought.
As he got closer, he did make out some human sounds. Shrieks. Agonized appeals. Confused rhetorical questions hurled at a non-responsive sky. These sounds tore at his spirit, but he pressed on as composed as he could. None of the sounds were positive. There were not even the characteristic shouts of victory and malice from the attackers.
Jace had read about such attacks in the many war histories he’d soaked up during his personal reading times at the monastery. Judging from that, the bear-masks were a uniquely solemn bunch, even when pillaging. Jace didn’t think they would loot or rape, nor would Pul lose control over them. They would do only what they believed they’d been told to do. This was not your average band of half-cocked youth who’d gotten it in their heads that they wanted to cause some trouble; these were dangerous heretics, fanatics beyond reason.
Soon, he was at the east gate. If he plugged his ears he could almost believe nothing was wrong, well, except for the smoke beyond it. The gate itself looked exactly the same as it had always looked the few times he’d seen it. But there was no one at the guard posts. The gate-door was up, as he’d expected, and with no one to lower it, it seemed impossible that he might get inside.
He sighed and continued his trek around the city’s circumference, seeing no one aside from himself. It was an eerie feeling to know that just a dozen yards away from him, at any given point beyond the wall, he would find nothing but madness and motion, death and destruction, but all he needed to do was look away from the wall to see a seemingly endless expanse of rainy nature, purity, and calm. The storm was not really a storm, just a steady, placid rain, the kind the farmers in the area liked to get any time of year.
When he got to Figa’s north entrance, he was happy to see two guards at post, both at the top of the gate. He didn’t have his robe—still being dressed in the beggar’s clothes he and Draken had received from the Shaman in Merreline—but he had his identifying necklace in his pocket.
He held it up without speaking, wishing the sun were out to make it clear.
“Who are you?” one of them shouted down. The soldier-policeman sounded like a scared kid in a treehouse, with none of the usual pomp with which the soldier-police typically kept citizens in check.
“A monk,” said Jace. “This is my necklace.” With his other hand he held the stolen crossbow, but not by the handle, so he looked the least threatening he could.
It was almost more than he’d been willing to hope for, but the gate door immediately came down, and he walked across it, noticing, not for the first time, the tracks of feet that marred its length. A strange sight when it was in up position.
One of the soldier-police came down to meet him, sliding down the ladder in the self-consciously impressive manner of the young. The voice had misled him a bit, as the soldier-policeman was a bit older than he’d expected. He looked strong, and his eyes were clear.
“Why are you here?” the soldier-policeman said. “Don’t you see there is—”
“Whom do you serve?” Jace asked.
“Excuse me?” The lad seemed genuinely lost. Jace didn’t blame him, but he was still saddened that this rite, perhaps the most important rite a monk performs, was far from this young man’s mind.
“Which god do you serve?”
A look of understanding and embarrassment leapt to the soldier-policeman’s face. “Shinna, brother!” He fell to his knees, kowtowing to Jace so the monk could send his faith heavenward.
Jace uttered the prayer of Shinna. It was his favorite of all the gods’ prayers, focusing on beauty even in the midst of mortal woes. It strengthened him to speak it. He resolved to find the beauty in this madness or die trying.
“Back to your post,” Jace told him, and walked toward the insanity before him with a sense of calm that was not a show. The young man gaped at Jace, but then scrambled back up the ladder. His companion had already raised the gate.
Jace felt better than he had in weeks.
Chapter 40
She saw the pattern as clearly as Draken himself might have seen the weakness of an opponent in the pit. She could surmise the target was being drawn meticulously, if such wild destruction could be called meticulous, around her manor.
Others had evacuated, some had died. One glance out the window told Carella that flight was no longer an option for her and Dayda and Tayda now that they were enclosed in a ring of fire worthy of Canon drama. But she didn’t think these fires had fallen from the heavens. She’d caught glimpses of the men in masks, and that was all she needed to know to come to a conclusion. Followers of E’ghat were behind this attack. Those horrible cultists who had first poisoned Draken’s faith and later had led him to the drink and the whorehouses when he could no longer stand the memories of t
he things he had done… These men were now after her, converging on her home and her children.
One of her twins, six years old, now, tugged at her skirt. Carella replaced the heavy curtain and said, “You know where the wine cellar is?” There was no longer any wine in the cellar, hadn’t been for a long time, but she had persisted in calling it that.
They nodded together silently but looked terrified. They often acted in unison, sharing a bond only those born with the same characteristic Dramm-Teskata herself shrouded herself in—twinhood, could know.
“Go to the cellar. Close the door, and don’t open for anyone but me, grandmother Tessin, Pordel, or Jamri.”
Pordel was her new fiancé. They’d grown close quickly, and already the girls were starting to see him as someone who might be a father-figure to them someday. They were hesitant, but they’d been warming to him.
Jamri was the head-servant of her manor. She trusted him with her life, and she knew it was quite possible she’d now need to do the same with the lives of her angels.
“There’s some danger now,” she told them, “but everything is going to be all right. And we’ll have the most wonderful sweets when it’s over. Anything you want.”
“Can we have iced chocolate?” Dayda asked, and Tayda merely nodded her assent. Unlike many young children, her girls rarely argued or even disagreed. Even their taste in food was close to identical.
“Of course, but we have that so often… I want you two to think of something really special.” She was about to send them off when another thought struck her. Something else she should tell them, though at first the weight of the name seemed too heavy to speak. “And Draken,” she told them, not daring to meet their gazes.
“Daddy?” Tayda asked with the unmistakable glimmer of excitement and hope in her voice. “He’s here?”
Curse me! Carella thought, I could have shown a little more tact.
“I don’t think he’s here. I don’t think he’s coming back, ever. But if he does… if it’s him at the cellar door, you can open it. Do you understand?”
They nodded, but Carella wasn’t sure they did. They were smart girls, but they’d never had to deal with anything like this before. So it was only after a few more admonitions that they weren’t to open the door to anyone else, not someone claiming to be a soldier-policeman, not for a knight, not even for the king, that she sent them off. It was amazing, but her promise of a treat seemed to have eased their fears. They were chatting about what they should ask for as she saw them down the stairs.
She ran to the top floor to the carrier pigeon room. There were easier and more reliable ways to send messages within the city, but these birds had come into vogue about five years ago, and Carella had gotten her own flock of them, both to keep up with appearances and because she had always had a fondness for birds. It was more of an excuse than anything, an excuse to have a room full of them, each with their own toys, interlocking cages, and the other accouterments that Carella secretly found so cute. Impractical they may be, but now they might have a real use for the first time.
The birds were in a tizzy, panicked by the explosions and cackle of flames, and by the screams of the victims nearby. Carella then realized that most of those human screams had ceased, and the morbid implications of this chilled her.
She didn’t have time to soothe the birds. Instead, she thought she’d trust in their numbers. Absurdly, tremors of emotion threatened her conviction momentarily. She was going to miss them. The chances of ever seeing another one of her birds again was low and she knew it.
Soon she’d scribbled out as many notes as she dared spare time for. Notes to business and family contacts in the city and to many places nearby, even messages to the king, and to the arena. The purpose in sending the notes was three-fold.
First and foremost, she wanted to make sure her wishes were known regarding in whose care her daughters were to be entrusted in the event of her death, a prospect she looked upon with grim possibility, especially if she were about to be abducted by the bear-masks who had so deliberately not burned her manor to the ground.
Second, she explained, albeit hastily and inadequately, what she knew of the bear-masks and the cult for which they killed. She needed to ensure blame was placed on the right shoulders, and that further attacks from this group could be better prepared for. Though how anyone could prepare for this was beyond her.
And lastly, she explained that Draken was a good man. She didn’t give her explanations for this. She didn’t need to. It was enough that her feelings on this matter be known. She hated him for his weakness, that was true. She blamed him for the hellish life he’d thrust upon her and her babies. But she also still loved him with the unconditional love a mother gives a wayward child, and it felt important for her to do what she could to clear his name. She also didn’t want him to be unfairly connected to the crimes against the city. He’d had his ties with the group in the past, but through all the trials she’d put him through, she’d never doubted that he had sincerely left the cult behind.
One by one, she tied notes to each of the birds and released them, doing nothing to take notice of which bird was trained to go where. The notes varied little one to the next, and if even one found the wrong target, she trusted the recipient would be able to get it where it needed to be, once the attack was over and graves were dug.
Some of her pigeons didn’t even make it past her line of sight, dropping in confusion amid the dense clouds, but others flew beyond where she could see.
She had done all she could.
This done, there was little to do but wait. In the unlikely event they were bombed, the girls might still survive in the cellar. But in the much more likely case that she were abducted, she doubted the house would be searched and the girls discovered. She thought the bear-masks were here for her alone, and she banked everything on that assumption.
She longed to go to her babies, but if she locked herself in the room with them and bear-masks came in to get her, they wouldn’t stop until she was found, and who knew what they would do with her girls if they were nearby as extra treasures for the snagging.
She went to the small entertaining room, not knowing it was the place where Draken had murdered the Edan woman known as Sula five years previous. It was strange to sit and wait, as if for guests, while Armageddon raged at the window. Stranger still when she felt herself drifting off. But the strangest thing of all was that she fell into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 41
Pul didn’t need to send men to Carella’s. She and her children wouldn’t need to be abducted or bombed, and secretly Pul was glad. He still did not share in the bloodlust that some of these bear-masks had. They hid it well, but many of them exulted in any chance they had to make a holy kill. He knew there were others though, like him, who killed only when necessary and always with something akin to sadness in their hearts.
“Where will you take me?” Draken said, and for a moment, Pul couldn’t remember. They’d practiced this all so often but he still hadn’t dared hope, not in his secret heart, that things would work out so well. It was as if he’d gambled a thin wage on an unthinkable amount and now was being told he’d won. He almost couldn’t believe it.
But then he did, and he told Draken where they were going.
A dual-flanking guard of bear-masks led Draken out of the city walls, leaving dozens of their brothers behind to kill and be killed. In their simulations, estimations, and revelations, the priests of E’ghat guessed roughly a third of their number would not return home. It was deemed an acceptable price to redeem the most important member of E’ghat’s scattered ones.
There was a manhole cover nearby, but they were on the wrong end of the city. It would be too rank in the sewers now even for men as hardened as them. Instead, the bear-masks led Draken quickly into the woods nearest the southern gate where the bombing had begun fifteen scant minutes earlier. The woods were not as secure as the sewers, Pul knew, but Draken’s shackles would be plenty stro
ng, and there was no one to unbind them this time.
In the covering of trees, Pul could almost believe the rain was letting up. But a glance toward the open sky told him otherwise. Too bad. Many innocents would die who would not have had to had there not been water to spread the flames. Momentarily, he worried that the rain might destroy the entire city thanks to the extraordinarily powerful bear-traps, but he had to believe that if that happened it was merely the will of his god. After all, who had coaxed the rain from the sky this day, if not E’ghat? Surely the four-five gods would have tried to stop it. Figa was one of their most devout, powerful cities.
“All those people,” Draken said once they arrived. “All those people dead. So many still to die. Families ripped apart. Marriages shattered. Businesses lost. All so you could have me in your hands.” He looked at the city with a blankness on his face that Pul found somehow disturbing, as if Draken were actually less affected by the violence than Pul knew himself to be.
“Yes,” Pul said. “So much that could have been avoided, had you simply stayed where you belonged.”
“If you think I’ll take the blame for—”
“No. No.” Pul interrupted. “You’re right. The glory belongs to the god of bears.”
“There is no such god,” Draken told him, and the conviction in his voice was compelling, much to Pul’s shame. He didn’t know if he’d ever been as sure of anything as Draken seemed of this.
“I’m not here to debate religion with you,” Pul finally replied, wishing he could have said something more cutting.
“Isn’t that exactly what you’re here to do?” Draken asked. “Isn’t that what you hope to achieve? To convince me I’m this holy warrior?”
