Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3)

by Leona Wisoker

  “Skinny blond weasel,” Captain Ash said promptly, and Tank’s heart sank. “Washed-out eyes, twitchy sort. Called himself Dasin.”

  Tank shut his eyes. Dasin. Of all the people he didn’t miss leaving behind—and yet, his discomfort held more than simple irritation. Dasin hadn’t been all bad. Far from innocent or even good, by any measure Tank liked to use. But there were worse names that might have come to find him. Names he couldn’t win against, if they decided to take issue with any of several aspects of his past.

  Dasin was, comparatively, an easy matter to handle.

  “I’ll go see him,” Tank said aloud. “I’ll see about this contract. I’ll let you know if I decide to take it.”

  Captain Ash shook his head, sternly disapproving. “Your choice,” he said. “Caravan yards, northeastern side of the city. Long damn walk, so send word if you take the job; no point slogging all the way back here. I’ll note the contract in the book for you. Bring your pack along, same thought. Do you ride?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t add: More or less.

  “Got your own horse?”

  “No.”

  “That’s going to cut your pay, wherever you go. Even so, don’t accept an offer of less than a silver round a day for this one, payable each town you reach, after his selling is done for the day. You can haggle a little; start with two rounds and walk away if he won’t give at least one. Keep the contract terms town-to-town, with Venepe, not calendar-based; and if his path takes you through the Forest, the pay goes up to four silver, minimum, for that leg of the trip and anything beyond. Coastlands is easy. Northlands is a lot more dangerous, and the Forest is its own monster’s worth of trouble. You remember all that?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  The captain dismissed him with a sharp, sour wave, and Tank backed out of the small office with considerably more care this time.

  The hot sun turned the damp streets into a steam bath. Tank took his time walking over the rain-slick cobbles, looking around with interest. His previous visit, if it could be called that, to Bright Bay had passed in a mad rush of fear and pain; this was the first time he’d actually seen the city.

  Buildings rose high here and hunched low there, with no apparent pattern. Most were whitewashed brick or granite, but he saw a few sturdy wooden buildings at random intervals. Pottery shops and soap makers, chandlers and tanneries, barrel-makers and blacksmiths filled the air with sound and aroma. Tank’s eyes watered every time a breeze blew pungent whiffs his way. He quickened his step, eager to get out of the area.

  The coastal village he’d grown up in had featured an entirely different set of aromas, but those had been just as foul. On sunny days, when he’d been allowed—sometimes forced—to walk out in the air for a bit, he’d been followed by an awareness of his own sweat and dirt; the ever-present rotten-salt sea air; the garbage that always seemed to pile up in every outside corner and niche.

  Sailors didn’t care what the ports they visited looked like. Those who came to the coastal villages cared even less. Few had asked that their companions bathe first. Fewer had, themselves, bathed any time in recent memory.

  That’s over, Tank told himself, trying not to think about that time: but Avin’s face swam into memory. The boy had always managed to find something unusual during their outdoor time: a feather boasting a bizarre checkered pattern; a worn piece of wood shaped like a duck—if you held it just right and squinted, anyway; an old shoe, a woman’s, high-heeled and expensive once upon a time.

  He remembered that shoe more clearly than most of Avin’s scavenged items. Squat old Banna had taken the shoe away and stared at it with a very strange expression for a few moments before shaking her head and throwing it into the nearest trash heap. Thinking back, Tank suspected she’d recognized the shoe, and that it had told her of an unhappy end to its previous owner’s life.

  Realization shocked through him: even Banna, perhaps, had lost friends along the way.

  Good, came the instant, savage response. I hope she—

  Tank stopped himself before the rage came flooding up. He breathed deeply to center himself in the moment, as Allonin had taught him.

  Breathe and count: one breath, two breaths, three; turn it into a silly song, if that works, or a marching chant. Breathe. Breathe.

  His mind slowly settled into a glassy stillness. Over. It’s over. Today, tomorrow, now: not yesterday.

  He opened his eyes, glanced around to be sure no pick-thieves had moved to take advantage of his momentary distraction, and found a skinny, waifish face peering around a nearby corner. As soon as Tank turned his head in that direction, the street rat disappeared.

  Tank stood still, waiting. After a few moments, the tangle-haired street rat peeked out again; he studied Tank for a long moment, then sidled out of hiding and slowly approached.

  She, Tank corrected himself. Even through the loose, patchworked clothes and malnutrition, the shape was wrong for a boy. He nodded, civil and carefully aware of his surroundings still, well aware that distraction was a game the local thieves played well and that most operated in teams.

  “I ‘member you,” the skinny girl said, pausing a step out of easy grabbing range. Her eyes tracked Tank’s every movement, as wary of him as he was of her.

  “I don’t remember you,” he said flatly.

  She tilted her head to the side, squinting, and backed up a step. “You were all tanked,” she said. “Staggering round like a moonstruck. You walked straight out into the market square and asked for bread instead of tryin’ to steal it like you was supposed to. Blackie ‘bout split himself laughing at you.”

  His heart lurched into a hammering rhythm. “What do you want?”

  She stared past him, her eyes narrowing. Even knowing the game, he chanced a glance back. Nobody behind him, of course, and nothing happening; when he jerked his attention to the front again, she was gone. He put a hand to his belt pouch, surprised to find it intact and untouched.

  He sucked noisily on his teeth, turning in place to survey his surroundings. He wasn’t too far from the road leading to the southeastern market, and on reflection that had been the direction the girl had stared: the same market where he’d walked blindly out to ask for bread. It seemed entirely possible she’d been trying to tell him something.

  Or she might have been playing stupid games, getting him jumpy so he’d miss a real pickpocketing attempt when it came. Lifty had taught him a number of the more common tricks; Tank didn’t underestimate the inventiveness of street thieves these days.

  He looked southeast, thinking it over, then shrugged and went on toward the caravan yard, rather more briskly than before.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rain thundered down as though Wae had decided to flood the world. Eki’s breath howled by. Syrta and Payti were present in the ground underneath Kolan’s feet, in the heat flushing through his body; in the flowerbeds and in the lantern-flames. The gods were everywhere, always.

  Even in the dark. Even in a scream.

  People moved around him, their forms dim as fluttering shadows, speaking irrelevancies. He made no answer, offered no movement; allowed them to urge him up from his chair and to the bed, from the bed to the chamberpot, back to the chair, sometimes into a sunny courtyard.

  None of it mattered. He remained in the dark, in the screaming, in the fire and cold.

  The shadows around him spoke of the gods, prayed in a language he’d nearly forgotten, reminded him of a life without pain. Somewhere distant, bells tolled: not the deeper tones of the Church bells, but the lighter clamor of the Palace bells. He wasn’t sure that the Church bells even functioned these days: vague memory spoke of someone removing the clappers, long ago, but that could have been another of his many, nightmarish illusions.

  He retreated from all the sounds, unwilling to listen. To emerge would be to face the betrayal, the agony, the knowing that those of his own faith had unleashed a torrent of horror upon the world.

  Better for the bells to b
e silent than to celebrate that. Better to live in the intersection of fire and ice than to turn from the shadows and see the stark outlines of truth.

  The dim prayers continued, brushing against him, maddening, compelling. There was honesty in the grieving words. Kolan began, reluctantly, to listen. The protective shadows in his mind began to fade and shred. Questions rose, connecting him inexorably to the normal.

  How did I get here? Where is here? How did I escape?

  Who am I?

  The name Kolan held no meaning. It was an abstraction, a tag to align himself with something he no longer remembered. It meant no more than chair or foot.

  The smells of honeysuckle and lilac drifted past him. Sometimes rain thrummed on the simple, slanted roof. Other times, sunlight poured through wide, low windows, bathing him in the munificence of Payti’s love.

  A tremendous cracking sound, an unearthly scream, a shattering earth tremor: he fell, sprawling over the dirty floor, and a section of the wall where he had been standing simply collapsed, caving into a cascade of rubble that led into a new darkness.

  Fresh air tumbled through that hole like a blow against his skin. He curled up in a corner as far from the collapse as he could get, shivering, whimpering, crying in utter terror of this new threat. It had to be a threat. There was nothing good in the world, nothing safe. Every attempt at escape had been a manipulated game that ended with screams. His. Hers. Theirs. He’d stopped trying, long ago. How long? Time didn’t exist, in the dark. Nothing existed except the screams and the knowledge that he had always been here and always would be.

  After a long, long, terribly long silence, he stopped shivering. After another stretch of nothingness, the faintest glimmer of light formed in the breach: sunlight, creeping down into the hellish pit. He stayed still, watching that painful glimmer until it faded away.

  Then he began to crawl forward, until grit and dirt and chunks of stone cut his hands and knees and elbows. The sides of the opening tore at his shoulders. His toes shredded against sharp edges.

  Kolan drew in a long, long breath and let it out, flexing his toes slowly. The pain was gone. His flesh had healed. The darkness was gone. Sunlight bathed him. The silence was gone. Voices murmured softly nearby.

  He listened, and their words slowly began to make sense, a scattering of clarity against a background of indecipherable mumbles.

  “Hasn’t moved... days.”

  “Tried a book... didn’t even... it.”

  “I don’t think he’ll ever... out... damage.”

  “We have to... trying... what... have there?”

  The words descended back into mumbles as Kolan let go of focus; the effort had already exhausted him. He sat in his simple chair, sunlight warming his face, chest, and lap, and rested.

  The scent of apples and lemons wafted past. Someone bent over him.

  “Opal,” a voice said. It was a male voice, a kind voice, one that matched the comforting smells. “Opal, I have something for you. Look—marbles. Aren’t they lovely?”

  Gentle fingers opened up one of Kolan’s hands. Several slick, cool globes of glass pressed against his palm. The man folded Kolan’s hand around the toys.

  Marbles.

  My marbles.

  Glass marbles in a bag, always by my side. Then gone. Stolen. Fever dream. Didn’t miss them at first, not until—

  Sio Arenin thumping along in perpetual bad temper, always rushing, always looking to scold, especially Solian—

  Solian! Where is he? Did I see him in the darkness? I did—

  Vague images of laughter, of a voice: Not so smart now, are you? Not so perfect now, are you? And you—Here’s what you deserve—

  She screamed protest, fought without result, bound by a greater power. Kolan watched, helpless, raging—

  Give us a child, someone said. Give us a child and the pain stops.

  Kolan held her as she sobbed, terrified and frustrated: I can’t, she wailed. I’m trying. I can’t!

  The screams began again, and again, and again....

  At some point it all became normal. At some point it stopped mattering.

  The marbles shifted in his hand, clicking and grinding a little as they settled closer together.

  Marbles. Sio Arenin. The stairs. Solian.

  Ellemoa.

  The warm sunlight in his face turned into a searing blanket of understanding.

  Ellemoa. Solian. Sio Arenin falling, shrieking. The heavy crack of shattering bone, so like the wall of darkness collapsing. Fever dreams. All a fever dream.

  The marbles rolled around in his hand as Kolan slowly worked his fingers.

  Not a dream.

  Ellemoa. Solian.

  Ellemoa.

  Marbles.

  “Marbles,” he said aloud, and heard a fluttering of startled conversation break out around him. He couldn’t help smiling: they wouldn’t understand the joke, but he said it anyway. “I’ve found my marbles.”

  Laughter started to bubble out. Before it reached his throat, the warmth turned to a terrible cold, the searing touch of Wae and Eki at their worst digging through his flesh and his soul alike.

  Ellemoa. Oh, dear gods, Ellemoa.

  He threw his head back and screamed with the agony of understanding, with the clarity of remembering.

  Shadow priests danced around him, lifting, carrying, binding: tying him down as he thrashed, hatred and fear and pain escaping through sweat and spit and bile. Bitter and sweet liquids slid over his tongue. Brief periods of calm followed, enough to soothe his throat for another round of screaming when the panic returned.

  The voices around him came more clearly now:

  “We’ve lost him. He’s broken.”

  “He might yet come out of it. Have some faith.”

  “He’ll be the first.”

  “There always is a first time.”

  “Wish there was a last time.”

  Rueful laughter followed.

  Kolan followed the laughter like a shaky lifeline: emerged with sunlight flooding the air around him and silence in the room. He lay still, breathing evenly, and blinked until vision focused: a simple wooden ceiling overhead, painted a soothing white. Nothing in the least interesting or notable about it.

  He stared at that bland white through three dimmings of sunlight. Three days. His hand stayed wrapped around the marbles the whole time. Sometimes he clicked them together, or moved them to the other hand, just to remind himself they were there.

  Mustn’t drop the marbles. Someone could get hurt.

  Even in the dark, he could see the sturdy beams of the ceiling, if he squinted a little now and again to keep it clear. The white turned grey and the black shadows between were like cracks back into the screaming; he watched them with care to be sure they didn’t widen and come after him again.

  On the third day of his quiet staring, he knew they wouldn’t. Not while he watched them. It was safe to remember it all, to feel it all, to see it all.

  “I remember,” he said into the early morning stillness.

  His voice moved through roughness, emerging as a barely intelligible croak: it didn’t matter if anyone else understood him. He knew what he was saying. He needed to hear himself say it aloud. Nobody else mattered right now.

  “I remember my name,” he said. “I’m Kolan. I remember her name. Ellemoa. I remember all of it. Everything.”

  The tears came, then, silent and vast: as though Wae had chosen to flood Kolan’s entire body with holy fluid, rinsing out the grey and the black and the red bits that were all stuck in ragged patches along his insides. With the tears came a light, and a clarity, and a sharpness; a touch from Payti, and Eki, and Wae, and Syrta, all at once, all around him: surrounding, comforting, explaining why it had all been the way it had been. Balancing the world again. Giving him a small, small patch of solid truth on which to stand.

  At some point, the restraints loosened. At some point, the tears stopped.

  A priest with short-cropped, sandy hair an
d sad brown eyes helped Kolan sit up. Fed him a light broth. Bathed him. Led him outside to sit in a chair near the honeysuckle and lilac.

  People, both priests and—others—moved around a courtyard. There were some stone benches, and flowers, and other cottages. Kolan watched the priests. He didn’t look at the others. He could feel their dazed hurt, too similar to his own. Seeing them, acknowledging them, risked opening those thin shadow lines into gaping hands that would drag him back into the times of screaming.

  He’d always have to watch those cracks. That was one of the solid truths under his feet. The screams would never be more than a step away. The seeds of red and black and grey would remain in his soul, needing only a careless breath to bloom once more.

  It was a balance. There was no true escape: not after going that far into the dark.

  Balance brought his head up and his shoulders straight. Balance met the gazes of the watchful priests. Balance said, very quietly, “I’d like to go now, if you please. You’ve been very kind to me. I won’t forget. But it’s time for me to go home.”

  Kolan held out the marbles in his cupped palms.

  “I’d like to keep one, if I may,” he said. “To remind me of your kindness.”

  His first almost-lie under sunlight; they clustered around him, worried, anxious, skeptical. He kept his gaze clear and steady, his voice even, his tone calm.

  Balance. Balance.

  “I’m a priest myself,” he said.

  Their expressions tightened, their worry strained further.

  “A priest of the Arason Church. I’m from Arason. I never served in Bright Bay.”

  Not above ground, at any rate, he added silently. They didn’t really want to know the truth, these too-kind, so-sad men who thought they did the gods’ work by keeping the others alive.

  They thought they were redeeming themselves.

  Kolan left them their illusions. It was the gods’ place, not his, to explain the truth of things.

  “I had nothing to do with the madness,” he said, then gave them a very nearly outright lie: “I’m quite sane now. Quite safe.”

  I won’t hurt anyone, at least. That much, I’m sure of.