by C S Vass
“Seal of Love?” Reeja’s nose wrinkled. “This is a tavern not a fairy tale, Master Torin. Why are you asking me about such-and-such of the Seal of Love?”
Torin grinned boyishly. “I have a certain…academic interest, you might say,” he said.
“Bah,” Reeja spat. “Perhaps if more folks had an academic interest in curing the world’s diseases and less so in children’s stories, then this earth would be a better place.”
“Come now, you’re philosophizing,” Torin said. “It was just an innocent question.”
“It’s that Shigata nonsense,” Reeja shouted. He was growing angry. Torin raised an eyebrow, surprised to have gotten as much of a reaction as he did.
When Torin held his silence Reeja went on. “Seal of Love. Why even bother wasting time with such horrific nonsense. Only the mad would try to break such a seal.”
Torin placed his hands on the counter. “I find it interesting that you have such a hatred for demons, but also a hatred for those that would slay them.”
“Don’t give me that,” Reeja said. His eyes grew wide. “Those Shigata, the ones who break their Seal of Love. They don’t kill demons anymore. They’re man-slayers. Killers. Thugs just like any other group of cutthroats. Maybe long ago they killed a few demons. But them days is gone.”
Torin nodded, his silver eyes shining bright.
Reeja’s face grew pained. “I had a daughter once. A beautiful young thing. A fire took her while she was only three. Have you ever lost a loved one so horribly, Master Torin? There is no pain like it in the world. You tell me that these…these Shigata! These people break their own Seal of Love. They murder someone close to their heart. There can be no purer form of evil.”
Torin smirked, oblivious to Reeja’s pain. “I think it may be you who has listened to too many fairy tales. I’ve heard quite a different version of what the Seal of Love actually is.”
Torin found he was gripping his thrygta harder than he realized. The spikes of the dragon had drawn a drop of blood on his finger.
Forcing a dead smile onto his face he said, “I believe it’s time I got you your room for the night.”
Chapter Eight
The blazing tree brought them together.
It was a freak thing. A blast of lightning. Burning pine. Half the forest might have gone up in flames had Donald of the Cult of Jericho not been savvy with runes.
Godwin had watched curiously as the mage worked. Donald spelled out protective symbols and fire wards from fallen branches. Godwin had a certain respect for the old magic, though he did not understand it. Donald’s companions, Frida of the Hall of Copper and Bellweven of Valencia, stared suspiciously at his silver eyes.
After the danger was dealt with they decided to gather around a new fire of their own making. Yaura had attempted polite conversation several times while Bellweven skinned squirrels and Godwin cut potatoes, but suspicion was heavy on both sides. Not just anyone wandered the Chillway these days.
“Where does your road take you, friends?” Godwin asked.
“Far from home,” Bellweven answered. The elf had a certain underlying anger in his voice that made Godwin tense.
“We go to Iryllium,” Donald said. “Might we ask you the same?”
“We’re traveling to Black Wolf,” Yaura said before Godwin could stop her.
“Black Wolf?” Bellweven’s eyes narrowed. “What takes you to that cursed island?”
Frida hit him on the arm. “Use your head fool. Obviously they’re going to Meno. What else would await someone there?”
Godwin could feel Yaura shoot him a glance, but he was determined to ignore it. “Indeed,” he lied.
“Forgive him,” Frida said. Her crystal blue eyes looked earnestly at Godwin. With long red hair, a splash of freckles, and straight white teeth, the woman was quite beautiful. “Our elf friend had been banished from Valencia. It isn’t easy for him.”
“That’s terrible,” Yaura said. “Why were you banished?”
Another storm passed over the elf’s face. “For being unlucky in the flipping of coins,” he said. When they waited for him to continue he elaborated. “I was working as a mage in Valencia. Some noblewoman required my services. She demanded I tell her the sex of the brat in her belly. I tried to insist that magic would fail to help her with that regard, but she insisted.”
“So you flipped a coin?” Godwin asked. “I take it you guessed wrong.”
Bellweven snorted. “Very perceptive of you, Star-blessed. Yes, fate failed me, and the noblewoman wanted my head. Why she cared about such a trivial detail as the giblets between her baby’s legs is beyond me. But to be frank, I consider myself lucky to have gotten away with my head. Valencia is no type of city for me. Not anymore. Not these days.”
Godwin’s fingers twitched, just imperceptibly, when Bellweven called him Star-blessed. “Seems the old magic let you down, Bellweven,” Godwin said while looking straight into the elf’s wood-brown eyes.
Bellweven sneered but made no further comment.
“He was getting it from both ends,” Donald said. The mage of Jericho had ebony skin, and a clean-shaven face except for a prominent mustache. “Valencia is a hostile place. Hostile to magic and hostile to non-humans. Bellweven had the misfortune of being both.”
“So I’ve heard,” Yaura said. “You’ll be glad to put it behind you then.”
“Yes, I truly am excited to lose my home and every possession I can’t strap to my back,” Bellweven said bitterly. “I’m rather blessed.”
“You could keep going north,” Godwin said, hoping to change the subject. “Make for Tallium. The Cult of Jericho would be happy to have you back, Donald. Surely you could find lodging for these two.”
“Perhaps one day,” Donald said. “For now, fate has placed us on a different path.”
“Fate?” Godwin asked. “Or a lingering desire to head south again?”
“That’s none of your concern,” Donald said cooly. “Or is it? You have some kind of loyalty to Lord Shade you want to tell us about?”
“No.”
A tense silence filled the air while the stew bubbled.
“Leave it to the men to jump down each other’s throats,” Yaura said to Frida. She uncorked a bottle from her bag and after taking a swig handed it over.
“Wine?” Frida asked. Then sniffing it smiled. “Oh! I see I’m in good company.” She pulled on the bottle happily.
“Vodka?” Godwin asked. “How long have you been hoarding that from me?”
“None for the boys until you learn how to play nice,” Yaura said, laughing. Godwin took the bottle from her, and she let him. He was glad that Yaura knew how to break an awkward silence. And glad for the vodka.
“Oh, give it here,” Bellweven said. “If anyone needs a drink right now, it’s me.”
“To your good health,” Godwin said.
“Or Shade’s demise,” Bellweven replied. When Donald gave him an angry look, the elf scoffed. “Come off it now, Donald. The man has silver eyes. Shade has no love for him. I think we’re in good company.”
“Why do you think Shade is coming down so hard on the non-humans and the magic types?” Godwin asked.
“Please,” Bellweven said. “Before we get to that, you sound like a boor. You can call us by our proper titles. I’ll not be defined but what I’m not, thank you very much.”
“My apologies, Bellweven,” Godwin said. The bottle had made its way back to him and he handed it to the elf. His body was beginning to feel warm and not just from the fire.
Bellweven looked like he was trying to figure out if Godwin was making fun of him but decided he was sincere.
“I’d like to know too,” Yaura said. “What’s the reasoning towards all of this hostility to magic? Is Sylvester Shade scared of an uprising?”
Frida waved her hand. She took a swig and started to speak, but then interrupted herself by burping loudly. Without missing a beat or paying attention to Donald’s blushing, she continued. �
��He’s just a bigot,” she said. “He’s probably too arrogant to think that the magic folk could do him any harm. When one’s seen as much of the world as I have, you start to understand these things.”
“I take it you’ve seen quite a lot of the world then,” Godwin said. “What’s your reason for traveling?”
“That should be obvious,” Frida said. “I’ve already told you, I’m an emissary for the Hall of Copper. I travel from city to city granting loans and working out deals with local lords and merchants.”
“And debts?” Godwin asked. “You collect those too?”
“Heavens no,” she said. “We have…quite a different kind of folk who do that work.”
“I can imagine,” Godwin said. “So who needed some coin in Valencia?”
“Lord Shade himself,” Frida said smugly.
“And you met with the man?”
“I did. I found his attitudes appalling and his business propositions alluring. Of course, I can’t discuss any of the details. It’s all highly private and protected under contract.”
“Of course,” Godwin said.
“I was on my way out of the city when my escorts decided they had had enough of the Chillway and decided to stay in Valencia. I met Bellweven and Donald as I was leaving, and we’ve been together ever since. They’re my guards for now.”
“You ask a lot of questions, Star-blessed,” Bellweven said. “But you’ve said little enough of your story. You say you’re going to Black Wolf, but from where are you coming?”
“My name is Godwin. I’m going to need you to call me by it.”
“Very well, Godwin of…”
“Brentos.”
“Brentos. How intriguing. The land of magic and mathematics. Are you a scholar like the rest of the people you hail from? Or did fate have other plans for you? Tell me, what’s your constellation?”
Donald looked at Bellweven angrily. “Are you drunk, elf? Don’t accost the man.”
“Oh, how terribly sorry I am.” Bellweven hiccuped, not sounding sorry at all. “Of course, everywhere I go it’s perfectly fine for humans to ask me everything from my surname to my great-grandfather’s profession.”
“You got something to say to me, elf?” Godwin asked.
“Only this, human,” Bellweven said disdainfully. “I know you mistrust me because of my pointed ears and tinged skin. But I mistrust you for something you brought on yourself, not the race you were born into or the stars your were born under.”
“What might that be?”
“You really have to ask, Shigata?”
A silence fell over the camp that was thick enough to cut. Yaura’s eyes shot back and forth over the faces around the campfire, but Godwin kept his gaze on Bellweven.
“Stop this idiocy at once, everyone,” Donald implored. “Bellweven, you have no idea that this man is Shigata.”
Godwin grinned wolfishly. “Oh, but I am. Is that going to be a problem? See my friend here? She is too. So, I’ll ask you again, Bellweven of Valencia. Do you have something to say to me?”
He was ready to grab his blade. He knew he could have the elf’s head off his shoulders in less than a heartbeat. Later, to his great shame, Godwin would reflect that he wanted to do it.
Bellweven started to cry.
Godwin was shocked into stillness. All pretensions of tough-talk died like a weak candle snuffed by a gust of wind. The elf put his head in his knees to hide the tears that streamed down his face.
“This is ridiculous,” Frida said. “There are enough things out in the night that want to kill us as it is. We have no reason to be at each other’s throats. Bellweven and Donald, you are both in my employ and you are not to continue berating these people who have shared their food and spirits with us.”
Donald nodded somberly, and Bellweven sniffled what sounded like agreement.
“What say you, Shigata?” Frida asked. “Can we share food and fire? Or is the night going to get ugly?”
“Of course we’re happy to share food and fire in peace if you are,” Yaura said. Godwin didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but his heart was thumping in his chest. What had just happened to him?
“I think,” Donald said slowly. “There are many things we might have to say to each other. In time. What greater mark of destiny could there be than a lightning bolt bringing our two companies together?”
Yaura snorted. “You might want to remember who you’re speaking to when you talk of destiny.”
“I’m well aware of your order’s mythos, Yaura,” he said. “Which is all the more reason I have to suspect that you might understand the significance of a small act of fate. Travel with us. Only for a time. I think there is much we might learn from each other.”
“Travel with you?” Godwin said, surprised. “We’re not even going in the same direction. We head to Black Wolf, and you’re going to Iryllium.”
“We will take the longer, safer route,” Donald said. “I have no desire to go north up the length of the Chillway. We travel eastward. Once we reach Ice Bay, we can either procure passage north by boat, or simply walk along the safer paths patrolled by the King’s men.”
“Donald, are you sure?” Frida asked. “I mean, is that wise?”
“We’ve barely spent two hours together, and we’ve almost come to blows,” Godwin said. “I don’t know if it’s an arrangement that can work out for another two weeks.”
Bellweven raised his head. “I think I’m ready to go to sleep and part ways in the morning if it’s the same to the rest of you.”
“We’ll do it. I want our groups to travel together.”
Godwin turned, surprised. It was Yaura who spoke. Her her hazel eyes shone like polished wood. “Now let’s eat. I’m fucking famished.”
* * *
The night was dark.
Each of them slept in furs by the fire, quietly shivering. The stars were nowhere to be seen, hidden behind a thick sheet of cloud that stole away even the faintest light of the moon.
Godwin’s dreams were a void filled with passing ghosts. Nothing solid maintained itself in the constant stream of blackness. Just momentary flashes. Visions of things that made his skin crawl and his throat grow dry.
There was a woman. She had pale skin and raven black hair. Godwin convulsed when he saw her. She was covered in blood. The face transformed. It was a different woman. Different blood. She had straight blonde hair and prominent lips. In the dream the blonde woman was more real to Godwin. He knew her name. The blood was birthing blood. A miscarriage.
He shuddered, and the face transformed once more. Now it was Yaura that stood before him. The blood of the body had washed down to the tip of her blade. It was his blood that soaked her sword with the thrygta pommel. He looked into her eyes as she killed him. She was crying.
“Why?” she asked.
He woke with a start.
A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky far away. Remnant smells of burning pine still lingered in the air.
He rose silently. There were four sleeping bodies around the campfire. Something about the scene unsettled him. He needed to wander.
Slipping off the trail he moved through the trees of the Chillway. It was a near perfect darkness. Smiling, he picked out a vial and drank its syrupy green contents.
The effect was immediate.
He felt pressure mounting in his eyeballs. His sight expanded, increasing the peripherals of his vision. Color became detectible, and the forest came to life. The imperceptible motions of the woods, filled with tiny bugs and bits of plant matter, swarmed before him.
Godwin was rather proud of this potion. Whereas other chemists who searched for an obvious way to see in the dark went to cats—big cats if they were brave, small cats if not—Godwin found a way to manipulate the visual system of a far more humble and more optically endowed creature: the helmethead gecko.
The tiny creatures were frequently overlooked because it was common knowledge that cats had more of the rod cells essential fo
r sight than humans in their eyes, whereas geckos lacked them entirely. But the geckos had something better. A multifocal optical system with distinctive concentric zones, each with their own unique refractive properties.
In short, Godwin’s vision became about three hundred and fifty times more powerful than it had been before. And as a bonus, the potion had virtually no side-effects due to the simplicity of it.
Bolstered by his enhanced vision Godwin made his way down to a stream he could now see in the darkness from half a mile off.
He was still worried about the mission he had abandoned. Kanjo was one of his brothers. Why would the Sages sanction his death? If he had committed some wrong, there were ways of dealing with that internal to the organization without issuing a contract.
“Bad dreams?”
He turned. Yaura was standing there, her body strangely misshapen through his gecko eyes.
“Your anxiety is reverberating through the woods,” she said. “I thought you might need someone to check up on you.”
He saw no point in denying it. “Aren’t you anxious?”
“Yes.”
Her answer worried him more than he cared to admit.
“But that doesn’t matter,” she went on. “Anxious or not, we’re doing everything within our power to make sure that we get to the bottom of this mess. That’s all we can do, and worrying won’t make a difference.”
“It seems so simple when you put it like that. But I guess you’re right. The Sages will have had their reasons for acting as they did. They might be angry with us for breaking the contract. Well, with me. It was my contract, after all.”
“They’d be angrier if you harmed a fellow Shigata without understanding why. Besides,” a deeply uncomfortable look came over Yaura’s face. She sat beside him. “Godwin. We have to consider the possibility that the Sages didn’t assign you the contract.”
There was no point in pretending to be surprised. “Yes, but Yar, what does that mean? If the Sages didn’t assign me the contract…”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I think it’s important not to jump to conclusions. It may be that Torin knows something we don’t. It may be that he knows something the Sages don’t, and for whatever reason didn’t have time to properly explain himself.”
