A Cast of Stones

by Patrick W. Carr

  He glanced up at the sun, his scar pulling with his grimace as if that golden fire constituted a personal affront. “You have watch in two hours.” The first snorted. “Try to look intimidating, boy. I never liked Eck, but at least he scared off the dregs.”

  Errol watched the first slip back the way he came. “When do we leave for Erinon?”

  Rokha shrugged. “Whenever the caravan master says, but it should be soon. He doesn’t like Longhollow, never has. The horses are rested and the cargo’s been loaded, so there’s nothing holding us here.” She dug into the back of the wagon, pulled out a pack, and proceeded to rummage through it.

  “Bend down,” she said. “This will sting, but if you make a fuss the other guards will make you regret it.”

  Fire blossomed on his head as she poured a thick, yellowish liquid on it. The smell reminded Errol of lemonleaf. Rokha waited a moment, then poked his cut with a finger. His head moved back, but he didn’t feel anything except pressure. She threaded a needle, squeezed the skin around his cut together, and proceeded to sew him up with no more apparent concern than she would spare a cloak.

  Errol tried not to think about what was happening on top of his head. “What else do I need to know?”

  Rokha shrugged. “There’s little left to tell. When we leave you’ll ride where Skorik tells you, and when we camp you’ll be assigned camp duties when you’re not on guard. Aside from his taste for fights, Ru’s not a bad employer. You’ll want to challenge for fourteenth as quickly as you can.”

  “Why’s that?” He hadn’t planned on fighting again unless forced to.

  “Because anyone who wants to join up as a guard will have to challenge the fifteenth to do it.”

  His mouth went dry as he pictured a long line of men with punja sticks, all of whom looked like Loman Eck, eager to beat him. “Who’s fourteenth?”

  “Norad Endilion.” She shrugged. “He’s a passable swordsman, but you won’t have any trouble with him.” She tied off the last knot and returned her implements to the pack. The sixth made to leave.

  “What makes you think that? I had a hard enough time keeping Eck from killing me.”

  Rokha turned, her glossy black hair lifting slightly in the breeze. It struck Errol then. With her curved nose and tilted eyes, she was beautiful, like a hawk.

  Her smile came at him, wide and teasing. “Eck was fifth before Ru busted him to fifteenth for sleeping on duty.”

  As he watched her leave, Errol shook himself like a dog coming up out of the water. His stomach growled and he went in search of food. Toward the end of the train of wagons that made up Ru’s caravan he found a large flatbed cart piled with foodstuffs and cooking utensils. Next to it stood one of the fattest men he’d ever seen, almost certainly the cook. He turned at the sound of Errol’s approach, his florid face and light blond hair marking him as a Soede.

  Errol nodded a polite greeting. “Um, hello. Can I get some food? I haven’t eaten anything since this morning, and I’m hungry.”

  The man’s brows came together like a thunderhead. “You think I’m the cook, boy? You’re lucky I’m too busy eating to fight. I’m not afraid of you or your little stick.”

  Errol backed away, his hands up. “I-I’m sorry. I figured since you were standing here by the cart . . .”

  The man nodded, his extra chin flapping. “You thought somebody as fat as me must be the cook. I should sit on you. We’d see how well you twirl a staff after I broke all your ribs.” Like every Soede Errol had heard, he shaped his words at the front of his mouth so that every word sounded as though it had an R in it.

  A man stepped around the side of the wagon, stooped with age. “Everyone thinks you’re the cook, Sven. Why shouldn’t they? You’re as big as a house, and you’re never more than four feet away from the supply wagon. Now, move so the kid can get something to eat—that is, unless you’ve already wolfed down Ru’s supplies for the next trip.”

  The big man redirected his anger at the newcomer. Errol breathed a sigh of relief.

  “One of these days, Grub, I’m going to shut that mouth of yours.”

  The old man snorted, the gray wisps of hair on his head fluttering. “Yep. And then you’ll have to start doing your own cooking. Not too likely.” He waved an impatient hand toward Errol. “Don’t let Sven bother you. I don’t think he’s ever actually had to fight anybody. He’s the second. The only reason he’s here is because Ru is the only caravan master that will feed him all he can eat.”

  Sven’s anger melted from his face, transforming it until the burly man wore a wounded look on his blond features. “I don’t eat that much, Grub.” He turned to Errol. “Really, I don’t, and it’s not my fault nobody challenges me. I haven’t had to defend my rank since I first took it.”

  Grub nodded in agreement. “Yep, but you’ve never tried for first, either, have you, Sven?”

  Sven’s eyebrows rose until his fleshy forehead bunched into rolls. “I’m fat, not stupid. Only an idiot would challenge Skorik.”

  Despite his resolve not to fight unless forced to it, Errol found himself intrigued. In the last three months, he’d witnessed some of the best fighters in the entire kingdom and had been fortunate enough to be trained by one of them. How did Skorik measure up to that? “Is there anyone in the guard besides me who uses the staff ?”

  “Jhade,” Sven and Grub answered at the same time. Grub shook his head and went on. “Strange, that one is. She came from somewhere on the other side of the steppes. Hardly ever says a word. Eats by herself. Sleeps by herself. And makes anyone with enough sense to buckle a belt nervous just looking at her.”

  “Oh.” Errol’s shoulders sagged a fraction in disappointment. “I was hoping to find someone to spar with me.”

  Grub’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’ve never been a guard before, have you?” When Errol shook his head, he went on. “I didn’t think so. Most of the guards go out of their way to avoid exercise.” He smirked and shot a look at Sven.

  The blond man shrugged shoulders the size of hams. “I’ll fight when I have to,” he said around a mouthful of bread.

  Grub laughed before he turned back to Errol. “She’ll spar with you, Stone. If she’s not working, sleeping, or eating, she’s practicing with the sword or staff. Here.” He handed Errol a large chunk of bread and cheese. Then he pulled the lid off a barrel and dipped a tankard. When he withdrew his arm, Errol smelled the malty fragrance of ale.

  Errol took a step back. “Water, please, if you’ve got it. Else, I’ll go find a place to fill my skin.”

  The cook shrugged and poured the ale back in the barrel, the picture of indifference. “Got water in another barrel over here.” He stepped up onto the cart and threaded his way toward the back. A moment later Errol held the same tankard. The ale smell still clung to it. He wanted to drink and puke all at the same time.

  He looked up from the tankard to find Grub looking at him, his watery old-man’s eyes filled with understanding. The cook nodded. “If there’s anything else you need before we break camp, come and find me. On the road we’ll eat three times a day, at camp in the evening and the morning and once while we ride. Caravans travel fast. ‘Leagues are money’ as they say.”

  Over the course of the next few hours, Errol met the majority of Ru’s guards. Without question he’d never encountered a stranger assortment of individuals in his life. It was as if the caravan master went out of his way to hire the oddest people he could find. In addition to Skorik and Sven, there was Jhade, the woman Grub had spoken of. She was of indeterminate age and resembled no one he’d ever seen before. From the yellow tinge of her skin to the tilt of her almond-brown eyes, she was unique. She spoke in a heavy accent impossible to identify, and when he asked her birth village, she acted as if he hadn’t spoken.

  The sword strapped to her back proved to be as different as its owner. It curved where other steel ran straight, bore only one edge, and the hilt looked big enough for both hands. Her manner of speaking made Errol a
cutely uncomfortable. The closest she came to a smile was when Errol asked if she would be willing to spar with him using the staff.

  The oddest member of the guard was Garret Conger, whose common name only accentuated his eccentricity. Short, even shorter than Errol, with a dark grizzled beard, he wore a tattered cassock and steadfastly maintained he used to be a priest, though he refused to answer any questions on how he came to change stations in life. A man more unlike Antil, or even Martin, would have been hard to imagine. Conger boasted a prodigious collection of swear words, many of which Errol didn’t recognize, drank to excess, and demonstrated a broad variety of disgusting personal habits.

  In time, Errol’s turn at guard came, and he stood along the line of wagons loaded with animal hides, breathing through his mouth. Conger, the eighth, stood next to him reading out loud from a book on church doctrine and periodically scratching an armpit. Whenever he chanced across a section that he thought required comment, he latched onto Errol.

  “That’s it, boy! Look at this.” He shoved the book into Errol’s face just long enough for him to read the first word before taking it back again. “What do you think of that?”

  Errol shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t really read.”

  The scruff of Conger’s beard quivered with his outrage. “That’s ridiculous. How can you discern the majesty of the church’s history if you can’t read, boy? Humph. That must be corrected—I’ll teach you.” His gaze fell back to the text. “I tell you, Deas will wipe us out if we don’t repent of our evildoings.”

  Errol gave him a sidelong glance. He tried to keep the smirk from his face, but couldn’t quite. “You mean like swearing and drinking?”

  It was the first time anyone had responded to Conger that morning, and his face lit with pleasure. “Yes!” He paused, nonplussed, and then went on in a softer tone. “I mean, yes, well, those are certainly habits to be avoided if possible, but there are much more important issues, like love for your fellow man, taking care of the unfortunate—that sort of thing.” He looked away, scratching his throat just above his cassock. “I don’t think Deas would begrudge a man a drink every now and then, and as for language . . . well, we all say things in the flare of the moment that we shouldn’t.”

  Someone snorted a few feet away, and Errol spied a mop of curly brown hair that belonged to Onan. “Droppings, that’s what it is. All the church’s talk of Deas and lots and the barrier is just a ploy to keep people in line so those fat priests can line their pockets.”

  “The barrier is weakening.” The words came out of Errol’s mouth before he thought, as though Onan’s rant had pulled the statement from him.

  “Deas forbid,” Conger said, scratching with one hand even as he genuflected.

  Onan curled his forefinger and thumb into a ball and extended the other three fingers in the ancient sign meant to ward off evil. He glared at Errol. “Do you want to bring trouble on us, Stone?”

  Errol tilted his head and smiled. “I didn’t think you believed, Onan.”

  The guard hunched his shoulders as if trying to ward off an expected blow. “I . . . I don’t, but there’s no sense in taking chances. What would you know about it?”

  Errol’s smirk slid from his face. “I heard a couple of merchants talking a few months back. They said things were bad at the edge of the kingdom.” He shrugged. “I’ve heard people mention it, but truth be told, I’m not even sure what the barrier is.”

  Onan swore, borrowing from Conger’s extensive vocabulary. “Then you’re a fool, boy, giving mention to things. Who knows what could be listening?”

  Conger pulled at his jaw muscles as if coming out of a deep sleep. “The barrier?” He paused to interject a few swear words—Errol recognized most of them. “The first king bought the barrier by blood, boy, but that came later. Thousands of years ago, after Deas created the worlds and cast them among the stars, some of the malus, the ones who served him, rebelled out of jealousy. They took form and enslaved this world. Men and women were chattel, playthings. Then Deas’s son, Eleison, came down. He took human form and fought, sacrificing himself to lock the malus away from his creation. But the memory of them remained, and through design and worship of the vile creatures, men opened a doorway for the malus to return, not in body, but in spirit. Eventually, war came that lasted for nearly a hundred years.”

  That didn’t make any sense to Errol. “How could a war last that long? Everybody would be dead.”

  “The evil ones weren’t trying to kill, boy. They wanted to corrupt. The corruption moved slowly. People didn’t recognize it for what it was. Some said the weather was just changing. Others claimed nothing was wrong at all. By the time the truth became too obvious to ignore, everything in the steppes to the east and Merakh to the south had been lost.”

  A shadow passed in front of the sun, and chills like the skittering of rodents ran across his skin. “But there are men there,” he said, trying not to believe. “I’ve heard the merchants talk about them.”

  Conger nodded. “Oh, there are men there. There are even merchants and caravans fool enough to trade into those lands for spices or stones, but the memory of demon worship lingers in those lands, and the taint lingers. Men and women willingly become conduits for the malus, the fallen.”

  “How did the first king create the barrier?” Errol asked.

  “Don’t talk nonsense, boy,” Onan answered. “No man could do such a thing.”

  Errol looked at him in surprise at his sudden reversal. Onan blushed and waved for Conger to continue. “Go ahead, Garret. Tell the boy.”

  Conger smiled, pulled his shoulders back. “A hundred years after it started, the corruption spilled across the Sprata Mountains from the steppes and flooded up from the south. Men fought shapes and shadows that shunned daylight and came at them in the darkness. There was no kingdom of Illustra then, and no king, just a collection of provinces, each with their own ruler. They met at Erinon, the place farthest from the corruption, to choose a leader. The histories say they didn’t know the consequences of their choice.” Conger stopped to spit and swear.

  Errol started at the interruption. The cadence of the man’s words, rough though they were, had held him.

  “What happened then?” Onan asked.

  The would-be priest smiled. “They forced the kingship on Magis by lot. History says he fought from taking it, either through humility or premonition.”

  The hair on Errol’s arms lifted. “Premonition of what?”

  Conger didn’t answer right away. He smiled in obvious enjoyment at the attention. “Magis finally accepted the crown and the fate they’d fashioned for him. He bade good-bye to his wife, Lora. Left his youngest son, Magnus, at Erinon, he did. Said a boy of fifteen had no place in a war, but he took the twins, who were barely a year older. Magis was said to be wise. Leaving Magnus may have been the wisest thing he ever did. Mayhap he just wanted one of his sons to survive him.

  “They met the hordes close to the Forbidden Strait. People have wondered if the outcome would have been any different if he’d chosen to fight at the steppes.” Conger shrugged. “We’ll never know. He split his army and took his half south toward the bigger threat, met the enemy just past the plains of stone. Then he did something no one expected.”

  Onan, his eyes bright, pointed. “He went out alone.”

  Conger grimaced at the interruption. “Don’t be ridiculous. They weren’t even sure what they were fighting.” He turned his gaze back to Errol. “They say he prayed all night before the battle.”

  “Of course the churchmen would say that.” Onan’s tone left little doubt about what he thought.

  “Question some of it and question it all.” Conger spit, left off the curse, and made a point of turning his back on Onan, who edged around to listen to the rest of the story anyway.

  Conger shrugged. “Just before dawn, Magis had a vision. Some say Aurae came to him, others say he saw Deas or Eleison. But the message was unmistakable. He was supposed to chal
lenge the leader of the horde to single combat.”

  Errol had heard enough tales to guess the ending. “And he vanquished the enemy and the rest of the horde fled.”

  The look Conger gave him made him blush with embarrassment. “Don’t be stupid, boy. Magis was brave and by all accounts skilled with a sword, but he and his army fought something less, and more, than human. The leader of the horde accepted his offer. The next morning Magis woke to find the horde gone. How was he supposed to fight an enemy that disappeared?

  “They stayed there on the edge of the plain waiting for word back from their scouts. But no word came. None of the scouts returned. When dusk fell, the horde returned. Magis and his army were surrounded. The enemy mowed them down until only Magis and his guard remained. Magis watched his sons die, hacked to pieces by men grown monstrous. Then the leader of the horde came forward and laughed at Magis’s challenge and honor.

  “But he called Magis from his guard to take revenge if he could.”

  “And then Magis killed him,” Errol said. The hero always emerged victorious in these stories.

  Conger shook his head. “This isn’t a tale, boy. It’s history. Magis was no match for the thing he faced, and he knew it. He drew his sword and advanced. The fight lasted less than a minute. The horde captain, the man-thing filled with the strength of a malus, toyed with Magis before it finished him, cutting him across the throat like a butcher. It held him upside down, shaking him and laughing as his blood sprayed the ground.

  “And then Magis died.”

  Errol shook his head in denial. That didn’t make sense. “If Magis died, the horde would have overrun everything. The story’s wrong. And if the horde killed everyone, who would have brought the tale of what happened?”