Hunter's Legend

by R. J. Vickers

  I nodded my thanks and nearly ran back to the section I had been scouring. I would pull every book off the shelf if I had to. Yet I knew already that none of the books resembled Hunter’s journal. They had the wrong color, the wrong spine.

  With a burst of inspiration, I reached for the compass once more. This time I held it vertical, so the needle could direct me to the floor or the ceiling or somewhere in between. There—it settled on a point just below my shoulder. Turning the compass so it lay face-up in my palm, I scanned the shelf to see which book it rested on. There were three, off to the left, which it appeared to indicate. Not one of them resembled Hunter’s journal.

  I slid the first book from the shelf, fighting the growing weight of dismay. I had done something wrong, surely I had; the enchantment had led me astray. Or perhaps it was pointing me toward a hidden place behind the cathedral, even leagues outside the city. The journal could be lost or stolen now, for all I knew. Maybe Hunter had deposited it here, but one of the cathedral guardians had noticed it and taken it home.

  The first book, too tall and thin to pass for Hunter’s journal, contained nothing but maps and illustrations of the nine Kinship Thrones across the sea. The second was written in another language, though it used the same characters as ours.

  And the third…

  The cover slid right off when I plucked it from the shelf, and the book itself cartwheeled to the floor.

  Hunter’s journal.

  He had hidden his writing cleverly, defacing another book to cover his own with its jacket. Perhaps he wished it never to be found; perhaps I would disgrace his memory by unveiling the truth so quickly. It had ceased to matter, though—Hunter was dead. I would have my revenge.

  Shielding the space on the shelf with my back, I slotted the empty cover between its two companion books, hoping it would be years before anyone noticed the absence. Then I slipped Hunter’s journal beneath my cloak and turned for the door.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” the guard called after me.

  I shrugged. “Not really.”

  Back at The Queen’s Bed, I fetched myself a pot of tea—I had no more money, and dreaded the moment when the inn discovered as much—and settled into my favorite corner booth of the restaurant. I would have locked myself into my room to peruse the precious journal, had it not lacked any sort of natural light; at least I had solitude here, apart from a thin, morose-looking gentleman stirring his hot cocoa at the center table.

  If I had harbored any doubt that this was Hunter’s journal, the first page dispelled it.

  Dear Cady,

  I may give you this journal someday, as an apology for what I am about to put you through. I have roped you into an adventure under false pretenses. Just yesterday we started out, and tonight we are camped alongside the road past Twenty-League Town. You have never experienced these conditions before, and I hope you aren’t so distraught that you abandon me. When you bravely asked how far it was to the next town, I told you I wasn’t sure. I may not have walked these roads before, but I know it is several days yet before we reach Pelek.

  There is much you don’t know about me, although, sly as you are, you may have guessed. I hope someday you can forgive me for my lies and manipulation. You would leave if you knew the truth.

  I was born in the slums. Throughout my childhood, my family was constantly moving between the slums and the most wretched streets of the Market District. My father sometimes held a sheep-shearing job, one that took him from the shearing barn in the city to several village centers nearby, but it was a short season of work, and before long he had blown through the money and landed us back in the slums. I don’t even know what happened to my mother. I was the eldest child, and I tried to take care of her when she was ailing, but one day she vanished. She could have died, or she could have found herself a better place. I have searched for her on occasion, to no avail.

  Whenever my father returned from his shearing season, and especially when we were forced to crawl back to the slums, he turned violent and unreasonable. He drank our money away, and took his anger out on his three children. I was a difficult child, quick to taunt or contradict my father, so I received the brunt of his mistreatment. Thus it was that, at the tender age of 14, I slipped a flask of hemlock essence into my father’s glass. I had spent two seasons saving for it.

  But my dear little sister came home after mucking our neighbor’s pigpen, sweaty and tired and near-dying of thirst. She saw what looked like a glass of weak tea lying untouched on the table and gulped it down.

  It was the hemlock that stopped her heart. My brother knew what I had done. He loved our sister dearly, doted on her and protected her, and his love turned to hatred so venomous he would have killed me where I stood.

  I fled. That was when I first found my job with the treasury. I had always been an intelligent child, and had weaseled my way into lessons during the brief times we spent in the Market District. So it was that I could read and work with numbers, and I used my charm to secure a position as apprentice to the treasurer.

  But once I was secure in my new home, I crept back to the slums and stole my sister’s body before she was cremated. She had not changed from the moment of her death, apart from the grime. At my request, a Drifter enchanted her body to remain forever preserved as it was. Time would not decay it, nor would animals gnaw at it. I wrapped it in waterproofed hide and interred it somewhere safe. Though I had no inkling of how, I made her a promise, kneeling atop her grave: I would someday bring her back to life. She was far too young to die.

  You know the story thereafter, of course. It took me a while to notice you, but once I properly spoke to you, I knew you were unique. You were quiet and studious yet determined and uncannily perceptive.

  I have loved you for longer than you would ever guess.

  When I first announced my intention to leave Baylore, I had motives I did not reveal. My brother found me, you see. He broke the window to my room and left a death threat with the rock that smashed the glass.

  Now we are traveling to escape my brother, but more than that, to learn whether it is possible to raise the dead. I suspect it is, yet it must be a hidden art, since none have heard of its practice. If I am to find a way, I must earn fame and notoriety, enough to bring those with the knowledge flocking to my side.

  It is for this I must apologize. I am a slum rat, a murderer, and a liar. I will have to invent myself anew to cast off that skin, and you will see right through my deception.

  But it is getting dark now, and our candles have to last many days to Pelek. I will continue tomorrow.

  With love,

  Hunter

  Oh, Hunter. Oh, my dear Hunter. He was wrong—I would not have abandoned him, knowing the truth. I would have thought him a tortured soul, one who had repented too long already.

  Yet this was the explanation I had lacked, for years of aimless travel. This was what set Hunter out on such a foolish course, had led to his ostentatious displays. He was intelligent enough to play the fool, so long as it suited him.

  Though I wished nothing more than to lose myself in his memories, in his account of our whirlwind years together, I could not forget the reason I had sought out his journal in the first place: to learn Jakor’s secret. Holding the journal oh-so-gently, I thumbed through until I reached the final pages. He had left twelve sheets untouched. Turning back to the date less than a quarter before midsummer, the day we had arrived in Baylore, I began to read intently. The first few pages were focused on technical details—our search for a house, our stay at The Queen’s Bed, Hunter’s fear that I would suggest introducing him to my parents—and he described his impressions of how the city had changed in his absence. He was a good writer, to be sure, and I became so wrapped up in his prose that I forgot my purpose.

  I wonder if my father ever dared walk down Market Street when he returned from his shearing season. I think not. He would have slouched along the city wall, keeping to the rank shadows, afraid to show hi
s face amongst the population of honest, hardworking merchants. He must never have smelled the baker’s honeyed cakes fresh from the oven, or heard the tinkling of the locksmith setting up shop. My life began the day I left that miserable life.

  Before long, though, Hunter returned to his theme.

  Professor Jakor, the man who calls himself a potioneer, lives and works in Baylore University. How inconvenient! That place is always guarded, and I can hardly speak the truth to buy my way in. I will have to try a straightforward approach, and if that fails, I shall write to this Professor once more and ask for further instruction. Poor Cady. Once again I must lie to you. Surely you will see through my deceit, and surely you have guessed that I am engaged in something dubious here in Baylore. You are far too clever.

  And later that same day, he continued:

  I have just returned from the University. You asked me where I was, of course, and I gave some inane answer. I hardly bother to keep track of my lies any longer, because you can see through them and are (I hope) intelligent enough not to press matters.

  Professor Jakor is a brilliant man. I would not be writing now, if not for the urgency of recording all I learned before my memory scrambles it. To my great fortune, the gatekeeper summoned the Professor at my request, and the man did not seem surprised at my arrival. He beckoned me to his office to speak to me in earnest.

  He has discovered a way to reawaken the dead. He has not experimented on a human corpse yet, but the cat he revived was unchanged after its brief foray into death. I am certain he knows what he is talking about. No fool would be allowed to teach at an institution as prestigious as the University, and this is his life’s mission, his greater calling. Just think of the good he could do! Just as I had hoped all along, he immediately sent a messenger after me when he realized the earnest nature of my aim. As he told me, the greatest difficulty in reawakening human corpses lies in first acquiring those corpses. Most who die are either too old to sustain life given another chance, or in no condition to be alive. Some are mangled or decayed, while far more are immediately cremated by their families. Just think of the outrage it would cause if he asked for bodies for study! Calling all young corpses, must be in good condition, no guarantee of return. Furthermore, his art is a dangerous one, not exactly one that would endear him to his fellows.

  He was not sure of the condition of my sister when he first contacted me, but he hoped I was sane and aware that bringing someone back to life cannot be accomplished from scratch. Today he was delighted to learn that I have carefully preserved my sister so she looks as though she has done nothing more than sleep for these long years.

  He will be ready to commence his work almost at once. If all goes according to plan, my absurd spectacle on Midsummer’s Day will draw so many people that even my father and brother will creep out of whatever hole they inhabit and come to watch. Then, once I have pretended to fly, I will summon my sister and she will walk across the square to my side. My brother will forgive me, I will have revenge on my father at last, and I will be allowed to live peacefully in Baylore forever more. Then I will summon you, my beloved Cady, down from the tower. As you stand before me on the steps, with hundreds of stunned Baylorans to witness, I will ask you to marry me.

  I know, I know. It sounds like an absurd fantasy. So much could go wrong. The authorities could arrest Professor Jakor and myself. My sister’s body could have been stolen. Or the Professor’s spell could fail. My brother might murder me on the spot, after years of hunting me.

  That’s why I refuse to tie you to me before my fate is decided. I won’t have you beholden to a dead man.

  I shivered as I read those words. He had not known the manner of his death, but somehow he had seen it lurking—no future after Midsummer’s Day, no possibility of happiness after years of searching.

  Unknowingly, my eyes flicked back to the words that meant everything to me.

  I will summon you, my beloved Cady, down from your tower. And as you stand before me on the steps, I will ask you to marry me.

  My eyes itched. I turned the page almost violently, but the words were etched in my mind. No use thinking what could have been, I admonished myself. But we could have spent an eternity together. We could have bought ourselves a quaint, gold-gated home in Valleywall and spent the rest of our evenings watching the stars emerge in a lilac sky as the sun sank beneath endless leagues of open country. We could have traveled, joined an expedition to the mountains to search for the Icelings.

  No. I put a fist to my forehead. No use dreaming.

  The next page was already beckoning me on. He described working through the technicalities with Jakor, agreeing to donate a small sample of his own living blood so his sister’s life would have something familiar to ground itself with, and moving the body to Jakor’s study—it was, as I had guessed, inside the box he had relocated on the night of the palace ball.

  The final entry, as he described, was written in a hurried scrawl as he crouched at the cathedral entrance. He had more time than he had realized, but not enough, not nearly enough. Indeed I could see the difference in his usually steady script; the letters were spiked and lopsided, often falling from their lines.

  On the morning of Midsummer, he had set off for the University, instructing me to meet him at the tower. As I read, flashes of my own memories from that day began blurring the text. Hunter was walking to the University, confident this would work better than he expected; I was pacing the house, thoughts unable to settle, sure something would go wrong. Hunter called at the University gates; I left the house behind, trying to lose myself in the crowded square. Hunter was beckoned inside; I sagged with relief as I slipped into the cool emptiness of the cathedral.

  Hunter had promised me he would try to return before making his way to the cathedral, but he had no intention of following through. The blood still had to be warm when it was given to his sister, so he had no time to waste.

  The Professor had an eerie light to his eyes, the delight of succeeding at his life’s goal shadowed by something else. Fear, perhaps, or perverted bloodlust. That such an intelligent, rational-sounding man could stoop to such measures terrifies me—but I’m getting ahead of myself.

  He told me we had to go down to his private workroom, since the blood-collecting instrument (instruments, I now know!) was stored there. We followed a narrow set of spiral stairs down into the earth, to a place beneath the University, a place I can almost swear has sat untouched for many generations. We turned first into a dingy, mildewed hallway, which led to the Professor’s private lair. It was well-lit and crammed with books, that detail I noticed immediately, but I had barely set one foot into the room before I noticed the vats.

  There were four of them, deep copper vats with pipes connected to a machine of tubes and pumps and a gleaming silver needle. Three of the vats were sealed off tight, but the fourth was still open. When I tried to get a look inside, the Professor moved as though to block me, though I saw nothing but dark liquid. I asked him what it was, and he was hesitant to answer. Then I told him I would not give him my blood unless he told me what sort of magic he used to work his miraculous spells. My sister’s body was seated on a chair before me, her head flopped back in a way that stretched the neck almost to breaking, and it was the sight of her that strengthened my resolve.

  He tried to evade my questions, tried to explain his art away with nonsense. But I would not be mollified.

  “If we do not save the girl, it will be your loss,” the Professor said.

  He was wrong. I have lived without my sister for many years now, and I could leave the city, escape my family completely, if she remained dead. Yes, I would never lose that niggling sensation of emptiness, but I could learn to live with it. I could become such a good pretender I would deceive myself.

  “Tell me,” I demanded again.

  And that was when everything changed. I couldn’t go on, not knowing what I knew. How could I? The Professor has gone beyond scientific curiosity in his work. In fac
t, his deeds are all the more twisted because his aim—reversing death—appears on the surface to be righteous. But again I stray from my tale.

  Cady, I hope you find this journal. I have a terrible premonition that the Professor will do me ill. If I cannot bring him to justice, that must be your mission.

  The Professor was using blood to power his spells. Buckets and buckets of blood. He has been draining his victims dry. Killing every last one of them! And the worst thing of all is that the blood he collects must come from Drifters. It is something about their healing magic that powers his spells. I know nothing of medicine, but it was a tremendous amount of blood sitting in those copper vats. Thirty, forty, even fifty Drifters must have died to fill them. He is killing the best healers ever to set foot in Itrea, all in the name of saving people!

  If the Professor’s words had not left me so dizzy and sick, I would have beaten him to death right there. I nearly did, believe me. I hardly know if you would condemn me or praise me for that. I could never have allowed him to touch my sister after that. If she had come back to life filled with the blood of fifty innocents, I would have seen her and felt nothing but revulsion. Like as not, I would have killed her again. The very fact of her life would have been ghastly.

  I wish I had attacked the Professor then. Instead I turned and left. But you see why he must be stopped.

  Oh, bloody Varse, it’s time to go up the tower. I’m hiding this journal very well, but I know you’ll be smart enough to find it eventually. I love you, Cady. Damn it, I love you.

  It ended there.

  I sat back and clamped my hands on the bench, fighting a surge of nausea.

  Drifters’ blood. Jakor was murdering Drifters in the name of healing. All of the vanished Drifters—Taldo, who had saved my mother from the brink of death, and so many other unnamed victims—they were all dead, their blood lying thick and stagnant beneath the University. Jakor’s assistant was a Drifter too; when he no longer had a ready supply of blood within Baylore, would he turn to Samara next? Little though I had liked her, it twisted my stomach to know what could await her. Did she know?