Path of Honor

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Reisil’s voice cracked, and she spun away. She paced down the street, her gait stiff and graceless. She managed a dozen feet before Sodur strode past and stepped in front of her, blocking her path.

  His face was haggard and unrepentant. “I’m sorry Reisiltark,” he said, deliberately using the more formal term of address. Empty words. He was trying to manipulate her, to get her to focus on the plague and not on his lies. That way his plan, whatever it was, wouldn’t be ruined. Her palm itched to slap him. She balled her hands into fists and shoved them in her pockets.

  “It isn’t so simple. With the Iisand as he is—”

  Sodur broke off, a spasm rippling across his thin face. Unwilling sympathy bloomed in Reisil’s chest. Sodur and the Iisand had been close friends before the death of the Mesilasema. But since then, the devastated Iisand had become a recluse, refusing even the company of old friends. The Iisand’s unofficial abdication had hurt Sodur deeply. It had left Kodu Riik drifting and vulnerable. Now his eldest son, the Verit Aare, maneuvered for the regency, while the bickering Arkeinik attempted to lead the land, presided over by Lord Marshal Vare. Little was accomplished. The only thing they all seemed to have in common was that they despised Reisil.

  Her lips tightened, her sympathy evaporating. He had made them hate her. “Why?” she repeated.

  Sodur didn’t answer right away, rubbing his hand over his face and pinching his lower lip.

  Fury crackled up inside Reisil. “Don’t bother. You can keep your lies. You want me to see for myself, act for myself? Then that’s what I will do.”

  “You want to know why? The ahalad-kaaslane are in terrible danger. If we want to serve the Lady, if we want to protect Kodu Riik, then the ahalad-kaaslane have to find a way to resurrect the nobles’ allegiance. I am one of the few ahalad-kaaslane that certain powerful nobles yet trust. They have included me in their discussions, allowing me to offer counsel. If only to appease the Lady. But they do not like you, Reisil. They fear you, and they think you are playing coy with your powers.”

  “Whose fault is that?” she demanded. He ignored her.

  “Worse, given the rift that already exists and their own eagerness to be out from under the ahalad-kaaslane thumb, here you are with the magic to force their cooperation. But if it is believed that you are not welcomed among us, if it is believed that you will not become the banner for the ahalad-kaaslane, the court relaxes. It buys us time for you to do what you need to do. That is why.”

  Sodur paused, wiping his forehead.

  “Believe it or not, your isolation protects you. If they thought you were an immediate threat, they would kill you tomorrow. It’s the only way to keep you healthy and whole until you can solve the problem of your magic. And that, Reisiltark, is my duty to the Lady.”

  Reisil shook her head in disbelief. “Do you hear yourself? What happens when I do manage to conquer my magic? You’ve made me their enemy. They’ll be so afraid of me, they’ll treat me like a Patversemese wizard. No matter what I do now, they’ll always see me as a vicious dog they can’t turn their backs on.”

  “You’re wrong. You’ll cure the plague. They’ll have to trust you. The ahalad-kaaslane will stand beside you.”

  “Now who’s being naïïve? Thanks to you, the ahalad-kaaslane think of me as another Upsakes. No one will believe I haven’t withheld my power on purpose. You’ve painted me a traitor, and nothing is going to wash it away. You should have told me. If you had—” If he had, what? Reisil didn’t know. “I’m not going to be your puppet anymore.”

  “You aren’t my puppet. Trust me—this was necessary.”

  “Necessary?” She shook her head sharply. “That’s just what Upsakes thought when he kidnapped Ceriba and had her raped and tortured. He thought he had all the right answers too.”

  Sodur had stiffened, his face turning pale. “You’re too innocent, too green an ahalad-kaaslane, to understand. You don’t know the court as I do. You don’t know how these things work. But believe me, this is for the best. You will see.”

  “I already see. You’re right about one thing. I have been too trusting. You couldn’t have taught me that better if you’d wanted to.” The quaking inside was spreading outward. However pure Sodur’s motives might have been, an enduring chasm had opened between them, and she felt like she might shatter from the loss. “I guess this is why the ahalad-kaaslane aren’t supposed to get too close to anyone, not even each other,” Reisil said bitterly. “It makes it much easier to betray your friends. But what if you are wrong? Have you thought about that? What if you’ve only made things worse?”

  She didn’t wait to hear any more, but turned and strode up the street, the bobbing weight of Saljane heavy on her shoulder. She reached out again to touch the bond between them. Despite her fury at being manipulated, deep down, Reisil couldn’t help but wonder if Sodur really was right.

  ~He thinks if I gain control of my magic, then everything will be fine. But it won’t bring the Lady back. It won’t make the nobles any less greedy for power. It won’t protect the ahalad-kaaslane.

  But that wasn’t really the problem. It wasn’t the source of the pain screwing through her in slow turns.

  ~He told them to shun me, all the time smiling and holding my hand and telling me they’d come around. He watched to be sure his plan worked, fanning the flames whenever someone might have reached out to me. It’s Kaval all over again. I was so in love with him, I couldn’t see that he was a traitor, that he’d even think of raping and torturing a woman. How can I still be so gullible? Sodur’s right: If I were a proper ahalad-kaaslane, I would have known better. I never would have depended on him so much. All along he’s been playing his game and I’ve been too blind to even notice it was a game.

  ~He does as he believes necessary.

  But Saljane’s mindvoice was flat, chill and unforgiving. Her talons tightened on Reisil’s shoulder.

  ~Is he right?

  Saljane was silent so long that Reisil didn’t think she was going to answer. When she did, it seemed as if she’d changed the subject.

  ~Blessed Amiya does not require such sacrifice of the ahalad-kaaslane. The tradition is human.

  ~What?

  ~It is simpler to have no ties than to have to choose the Lady over someone you care about, as sooner or later every

  ahalad-kaaslane must. But it is not the Lady’s law to be alone.

  Reisil’s head reeled, and she stumbled, glancing up incredulously to meet Saljane’s carnelian eye.

  ~How can that be? Everyone knows it. All the ahalad-kaaslane believe it.

  ~Everyone knows many things that are not true, was Saljane’s terse answer. Just because it is what you do does not mean the Lady decrees it.

  ~Who does?

  ~You do. The human ahalad-kaaslane.

  ~But the animals know better? Why not tell us?

  Reisil got the sense of a mental shrug, not dismissive, but frustrated. ~I did not think it would help.

  Reisil didn’t reply, her thoughts chasing one another. She didn’t have to guard herself against friendship, against taking lovers. Not that she had any prospects of either, except perhaps Juhrnus. He would have her in his bed, she knew, but the idea only made her want to giggle like an eight-year-old. But she wasn’t prohibited. It wasn’t the Lady’s law. And no one else knew it.

  She hugged the knowledge to herself. A secret of her own. Not earth-rending. It wasn’t going to save or destroy anybody’s life. Still it made her feel independent, as if she’d taken her first step out of Sodur’s shadow.

  ~Sodur isn’t right, she said slowly to Saljane, answering her own question. This isn’t going to work. It won’t stop with being suspicious of me. The ahalad-kaaslane will stop trusting one another, and the court will take advantage of our weakness. Sodur wants to make it look like I’m no threat, like the ahalad-kaaslane are no threat, but it’s more than just show. We’re going to become what we appear to be.

  And she winced as she remembered the advice fr
om her mentor Elutark, the advice that had carried her through becoming ahalad-kaaslane: You are who you pretend to be. She thought of the way Sodur seemed to put on and remove masks in the last day. Maybe Elutark was wrong. Maybe you weren’t who you pretended to be.

  She was wrenched back to Veneston as the stench wafting from the shearing sheds overwhelmed her. She coughed, pressing her hand to her lips.

  No time for self-pity, she scolded herself. People are dying.

  She stopped outside the latched door of the main shed. Stacked beside the wall were charred logs. The side of the building was scorched. Someone had tried to burn the place with the sick inside.

  “If you can’t cure them, burn them. After all, they’re only friends and family,” she said acidly. Sodur came to stand beside her, saying nothing.

  Reisil reached for the latch, a twist of wire securing it from the outside. She paused, her eyes streaming at the unrelenting smell. After a moment, she motioned Sodur to follow her around behind the sheds. A row of kitchen gardens stretched the length of the row, taking advantage of the ready fertilizer and sunny southern exposure. Now, however, most of the neat patches were withered and brown.

  Reisil walked along the row until she found a patch of lavender and rosemary growing in a green clump amidst the ruin of vegetables. She collected a handful of each and retreated to the cistern at the end of the garden row. She untied her scarf from her neck and dipped it in the tepid water before rubbing it thoroughly with the two herbs. The resulting odor was pungent and did much to cover the stench when she tied the scarf across her nose and mouth. Sodur followed suit.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, and the doubt in his voice made Reisil’s spine snap straight, glad now that she had not admitted her failure to summon her magic when the nokulas attacked.

  “I am a tark,” she replied, sidestepping him. She returned to the doorway, unfastening the wire and latch. An angled chute led up a ramp into the wide shearing area. The dimly lit oval stretched a hundred feet in length and was dominated by rows of shearing tables. The interior wall around the oval was lined with slatted wooden bins for the wool. Gates leading into the holding pens between the inner and outer wall interspersed the bins every ten feet. Each of these small enclosures was designed to hold a dozen sheep. No doubt the place doubled in winter as both a barn and a village gathering area for meetings and celebrations. A dusty red ribbon dangled limply from an overhead beam. No one was celebrating now.

  The dead and the sick littered the tables and dirt floors. It looked as if many had collapsed in their tracks while tending others. The miasma of death, putrefaction and feces made Reisil’s eyes burn and her stomach buck despite the masking scent of lavender and rosemary. Ignoring her discomfort, she marched resolutely to the closest table.

  The man was dead. He wore only a filthy loincloth around his hips. His arms and legs were black up to nearly the shoulders and hips and swollen to five times their normal size. Black scabs pocked the surface between yellow blisters. His legs and the table were thick with dried, bloody feces. His face was smeared with the blood that had trickled from his eyes, nose and mouth. His tongue protruded from between his lips. His skin, where it wasn’t black and swollen, was yellowed and covered with a purple rash. Flies crawled over him and clustered in his eyes and mouth.

  Reisil moved to the next table and the next, her jaw clenching tighter and tighter with every death until she thought her teeth would crack. She paused to kneel and check those lying on the floor. In some, the blackened arms and legs had ruptured from the pressure of the escaping gases within, the putrid inner flesh crawling with maggots and flies. Reisil swallowed, her tongue dry and feeling too large for her mouth. How could she hope to defeat this devastation with crippled magic?

  Reisil remembered the wizard circle, the tremendous surge of power, of knowing she could call lightning. The blistering power that had filled her then, the glorious, rich fullness when she had grown back Reimon’s arm in that little grass hut on the Vorshtar plain. That power could pinch out the plague like a blown candle.

  But she didn’t have it anymore. Maybe she never did. Then the Lady’s hand had guided her. That hand was gone now. Reisil stopped, staring around her at the bodies scattered like tortured dolls. Most people, the ones who didn’t blame her, said the wizards had done this. And she knew, down to the soles of her feet, that it was true. The plague suited the wizards’ style perfectly. It did their dirty work for them, efficiently, with no wasted energy.

  They will pay, Reisil promised herself. I will make them pay.

  Halfway down the line of tables, Reisil found a girl still alive. She lay sprawled half on one side as if she’d tried to curl into a ball. Her hands were black halfway to her elbows, and her feet were black where they protruded from her skirts. Her breath came in wheezing gasps, and she jerked and twitched in agony. Reisil could hear a soft, crackling sound, like crumpling paper, and realized that it came from the blackened limbs, the gases within bubbling and popping. The girl gave a little groan, her mouth moving, her eyes closed.

  “Here,” Reisil called to Sodur, who dropped down beside her.

  “By the Lady,” he whispered.

  “I’m going to try to heal her.”

  Reisil reached down inside herself. To her astonishment, the magic answered immediately, roaring up ferociously to engulf her with volcanic heat. Power crackled over her skin and snapped in the air around her. Reisil snatched her hands up to her chest. Sodur grunted and scuttled aside as the searing heat licked at him.

  Reisil struggled against the rising power. Either it came too fast and hard or it came not at all. What use was magic if she couldn’t control it? Long moments passed, her mouth growing parched, her skin feeling stretched and tight as the heat grew more intense.

  At last she managed to contain the magic, but it pulled at her like a chained animal, snapping and growling.

  She laid tentative fingers on the girl’s chest, her light touch making the girl twitch and moan. Reisil closed her eyes, concentrating, moving inside. The girl’s body was as bloated and rotten as a corpse floating in a river. Reisil shuddered as she explored the damage. Collapsed blood-ways; pulpy, bruised organs; putrid, decaying flesh. Reisil couldn’t imagine how the girl still clung to life.

  She slid inside on a thick tendril of magic, wincing at the girl’s pained cry of protest, the way her body twitched and flinched. Reisil tried to thin the magic, but to no avail. She pushed further along, determined to do what she had to do quickly. Elation rolled through her as she went deeper. It was working!

  How long she sat over the girl, she didn’t know. Over and over again she repaired tattered nets of veins and arteries, restored putrid flesh, swallowed poisons and corrosion. But corruption returned, sliding unabashedly in behind her as she moved on to the next repair. She was besieged on all sides. Over and over she sought the epicenter of the body’s disaster, the source of the spreading horror. Over and over.

  The girl died.

  Reisil reeled back, feeling the child’s life fleeing away, trying to catch it with spectral hands. But the girl was gone, her body a patchwork of healed flesh and voracious rot. Reisil sobbed, the heels of her hands pressed hard against her eyes, her fingers curling hard into her scalp. She felt Sodur’s hands on her shoulders, pulling her against him in a rough embrace. Dry, racking sobs shook her like a sapling in a rough wind.

  “Next time, next time,” Sodur soothed. The words worked their way into Reisil’s brain, and at last she pushed herself away from him, scrubbing away her tears.

  “Then let’s try again.”

  There were a dozen others still living in the shearing sheds. Reisil tried again with each of them, to no avail. At last Sodur dragged her drenched and shaking body away from the corpses.

  “You cannot do this anymore. Not yet. You still have more to learn. And Kodu Riik cannot afford to lose you. We’ll have no hope then. You must survive and learn to use your power.”

  She resisted hi
s commands, pulling away. She owed these people. She was supposed to save them. That’s what her magic was for; that’s what the Lady had told her to do. Heal my land. Heal my children. If she couldn’t do as the Lady bade, she didn’t have a right to walk away. And who else would care for these pitiful creatures in their last days? Certainly not those hiding in the tavern.

  In the end, Sodur promised to send back ahalad-kaaslane to help. Even then Reisil would have waited for them, but Saljane agreed with Sodur and urged Reisil to leave. Reisil allowed herself to be drawn away, though she couldn’t help but wonder if Sodur would do as promised. He saw her skepticism and there was an answering flare of pain in his expression, but Reisil wasn’t sure she believed it. He wore too many masks, too well.

  Before they left, she insisted on making the dozen still-living plague victims as comfortable as possible on pallets, moving them to a vacant home nearby. Then Reisil incinerated the sheds with the bodies inside, her magic still flaming bright inside her.

  As with the wizard circle, it seemed she could always destroy. It gave her no satisfaction.

  Chapter 3

  The snow began to fall again as Juhrnus rode into Koduteel through the Lady’s Gate. He waved at the guards in the gatehouse, pulling his cloak tight as a chill burrowed into his skin. Snow whirled in his face and melted down his collar, driven by the briny wind off the ocean. The banners along the walls snapped welcome, and Juhrnus gusted a happy sigh, looking forward to a hot kohv, a hot meal and a hot bath. And tonight there would be no rocks or branches or lumps of uneven dirt prodding his backside as he slept.

  Esper humped in an uncomfortable-looking pile between Juhrnus and the pommel of the saddle, protected from the snow and cold by a curly sheepskin. The sisalik’s tail, too long to fit in the narrow space, hooked around Juhrnus’s waist, the tip twitching.

  ~We’re here, Juhrnus announced.

  ~Cold. Hungry.