The Far Far Better Thing

by Auston Habershaw

  With her what?

  Her death. Yes. Her death and Sahand’s.

  “No,” Damon said softly. “You don’t have to die, Hool. Death is no solution.”

  She whimpered. She howled.

  Damon played his songs. Songs of springtime and rebirth. Songs about eagles and starlight and queens in their castles. He must have come once a day to play, though the days ran together. She marked time by the sound of his voice—a brief glimmer of beauty in the midst of the nightmares. She felt torn between the sound of his lute and the screams of her children. She could not choose.

  In time, Harleck’s ministrations chose for her. She awoke in midmorning, the little window in the storeroom thrown open and a cool breeze whipping through the room. Sloppy, she thought. What if Sahand’s men were to hear me moaning? We could all be dead. The fools.

  She tried to rise; she found that she could, though her legs and arms felt weak. She sat on the side of the benches that had been formed into her bed and tried to shake the smell of sickness from her mane. Her head hurt; she found a pitcher of water on a table and downed it all. The water was cool and clean and the best thing she’d tasted in a long, long time.

  Her wounds had healed, or nearly so—the stitches had been removed (when had that happened?) and it seemed they wouldn’t leave any scars that would be visible past her fur, more was the pity. She wanted to go outside and look around, but knew better. So she waited, testing her range of movement, her strength.

  The door opened, revealing Damon, his lute over one shoulder. His face lit up when he saw her. “You’re awake! How do you feel?”

  “How long have I been sick?”

  Damon blinked. “Uh, well, a little over a week, perhaps? Ten days? I’d need to look at a calendar and nobody seems to have a calendar up here, so . . .”

  “How are we still alive? How has Sahand not found us? I was howling! Are his soldiers deaf?”

  “That was a concern for a while.” Damon nodded. “As it turns out, his soldiers aren’t here anymore. They’ve been recalled to the capital. Every Delloran bannerman in the principality, it seems, has orders to muster in the Citadel. There isn’t a soldier in town anymore.”

  “So what?” Hool put her ears back. “There’s still a reward on my head. Any of these people could turn me in.”

  Damon put out his hand. “Why don’t you come with me? It might be easier just to show you.”

  Hool frowned. “Show me . . . what?”

  In the big common room of the Dragon, one of the long tables with benches had been cleared away. In its place was a chair—more of a throne, really, draped with animal pelts and fashioned out of antlers. At its foot were piled little talismans and Hannite crosses and smooth stones painted with symbols Hool recognized as religious but could not say much more about. As the men at the other tables saw Hool enter, they stopped talking and gambling and even stopped drinking. They stared at her.

  Hool’s hackled raised. “Damon . . .”

  Damon gestured to the chair. “Your seat, Lady Hool.”

  “My what?”

  Harleck was at the bar. He raised a mug in her direction. “To the Beast of Freegate!”

  The men in the Dragon raised their drinks as one. “The Beast! The Beast of Freegate!”

  Hool’s ears shot straight up and she closed her mouth. She held very still. What was going on?

  Damon strummed a chord on his lute. “Ohhhhhh . . .”

  The men, drinks still raised, joined in song immediately:

  The Tale of Our Lady is Gory

  Her enemies many and great,

  And this is a tale full of glory,

  And of Banric Sahand’s worthy fate.

  Our Lady was once free and wild

  A gnoll of a distant cold land

  Until some trappers took her child,

  And gave him to Banric Sahand.

  Revenge, Revenge for the Beast of Freegate!

  Our Lady known only as Hool

  She’s coming for him, the Mad Prince himself,

  And those who would stop her are fools . . .

  Dumbfounded, Hool found herself sitting in the big chair after all. The song was . . . different than the ones Damon had sung before. It was angry somehow. Angry in a way Hool didn’t realize music could be. The great room of the Dragon throbbed with that anger. She saw it in the men’s faces—saw it in the vicious grins they gave when the song reached the part where Hool was dismembering the men who had tortured Api. She heard it in how their voices cracked as they sang her praises. Some of the men even had tears in their eyes. She could scarcely understand it.

  To the Citadel of Dellor she marches,

  No walls and no towers will stand,

  ’Tween her and her justified vengeance,

  On the head of old Banric Sahand!

  The song ended. Damon raised his lute in one hand and, as one, the men of the hall shouted, “REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE!”

  Roars of approval. Men stomping their feet and banging their mugs. Damon stood at Hool’s side, a smile on his face, as then rows and rows of filthy lumbermen and rivermen and laborers lined up to pay their respects. Hool sat perfectly still, like a fox in a trap, waiting for it to make sense. Men asked to kiss her hand (she refused). They knelt in front of her. They spoke to her, tears in their eyes.

  A man almost as big as Hool, weeping like a child, said, “Sahand took my son, too. His brutes murdered him before my eyes. Over a bloody beaver pelt. A beaver pelt, Hann help me . . .”

  And then an old man with a hook for a hand. “The Mad Prince’s men raped my wife regular for three years, till I stabbed one. Then they took this hand. Had the hook ever since.”

  And another: “Kill him, you understand me? Kill that murdering bastard twice. My boy’s weight in silver don’t make no difference to me. I want to hear him scream.”

  And another: “I’m a good hand with an axe and served in the Mad Prince’s army and I’m with you, Lady. If Sahand’s blood is at the end of it, I’ll travel any road you please.”

  And another and another and another. Men who spat when Sahand’s name was spoken, men who wept over their pain, men who showed her their scars and offered her their blood. It went on for an hour, with Harleck’s sons keeping watch at the door, just in case someone they didn’t know came up.

  But no one did. Damon was right: they had all gone to the Citadel.

  Eventually, Hool had to retreat. She left with the chant “REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE!” ringing in her ears.

  When she was alone back in her storeroom, Damon came to join her. “Well?”

  “How did you know? If Sahand heard that song . . . if any of them were spies. That was very stupid.”

  Damon smiled. “I’ve never been very smart. But I just figured . . . Sahand is a monster, right? No matter how much he keeps his people in line, they must hate him. I mean, if Harleck did, then surely . . .”

  “It was still stupid. Those people are all talk. They just want me to kill Sahand—they won’t help.”

  “That’s true,” said Harleck, standing in the door. “But it still means more than you think it does.”

  “Explain,” Hool said, rubbing her shoulders, testing their strength.

  “Dellor has always been ruled by tyrants. Before Sahand there was a man named Ferrod Bosh—a foreigner from some distant place in the south. Sahand came with a mercenary company, defeated Bosh’s soldiers, took his head, and so became prince. That’s been the way of it for three hundred years or more.”

  “So?”

  “So, the people stood aside when it was Bosh’s time. They’ll stand aside when it’s Sahand’s time, too. He might rule us, but we are not his people. He keeps order and he defends us against bandits and such, but his wars are for his own gain and only fools think otherwise. His men are bandits themselves, taking what they please and doing what they like. You heard the stories—we are waiting for a new ruler.” Harleck nodded to Hool. “That could be you.”

  H
ool snorted. “When I kill Sahand, it will be for myself, not for any of you.”

  Harleck smiled. “Spoken like a true Princess of Dellor, Lady Hool.” And with that, he bowed and left.

  She was left alone with Damon. Damon was still grinning like an idiot. “What do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “Princess of Dellor? Has a nice ring to it, eh?”

  Hool punched him in the nose.

  She was pleased to find that her strength, though depleted, was still enough to drop a grown man on his backside. Damon grabbed his face as blood poured down his chin. “Owwww . . .”

  Hool grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him up. “Why don’t you listen to me? There is only one thing I want in the world—there is only one thing that matters anymore. And that is Sahand dying. That is it! I am not going to be princess. I am not going to rule Dellor or be your friend or even be alive. Do you understand me?” She shook him. “I am going to die in Sahand’s castle! I am going to kill him and all his soldiers and all his friends and allies and then I will die. Then, finally, I will be able to rest.”

  Damon hung limp in her grip, his face sad. “You don’t have to, Hool. There is more . . . there is so much more to life.”

  “You have never lost a child. You do not understand.” She threw him to the floor. “You can’t ever understand.” She turned her back to him, curling up on the benches, hiding her face in her own fur.

  Damon got up slowly and straightened his clothes. “You’re right. I can’t understand—not exactly. But I do know this: the only reason you want to die is because you don’t think there’s anything else left for you. And on that score, you’re wrong, Hool. You’re dead wrong. I only hope you realize that before it’s too late.”

  Hool said nothing. Eventually, Damon went away. Then, when she was finally alone, Hool thought of Brana and Api and quietly moaned herself to sleep.

  That night, Tyvian visited her in a dream. Or, at least, she assumed it was a dream at first. He was there, sitting at the foot of her bed, dressed in a way Tyvian would never dress. He had a great mane of red hair streaked with white and he wore a huge fur cloak. He smelled of blood and filth and sweat and a kind of acrid magic that made Hool’s eyes water. Were it not for his eyes—sparkling and blue—she would have never thought it was him.

  “I’ve come to apologize to you.” He cleared his throat. The sound was sharp and clear—not the fuzzy sounds of a dream. Not a dream, then. Perhaps he was simply a ghost.

  “Go away,” Hool said. “I have had enough of dead people.”

  Tyvian seemed not to hear her. “I’ve come to realize my priorities have been messed up for a long, long time. I’ve spent so long trying to get this damned ring off . . . I just . . . I guess I didn’t even know what it was trying to teach me. I didn’t care to know.”

  “I don’t care either. I want to go to sleep.” Hool laid her ears back. Even as a ghost, Tyvian talked too much.

  “You were right, Hool. You’ve always been right. And I never listened.”

  “Obviously. That’s why you’re dead.”

  Tyvian smiled, those bright white teeth shining through the beard like the sun through the clouds. “You’re right. Again. I had reputation, but it didn’t matter. I had wealth, and it didn’t matter, either. I even had power, and I had to fake my own death to escape it.”

  “I told you all of those things were stupid. You did them anyway.”

  “Because I thought I was smarter than you.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “No,” Tyvian said. “I never was. My mother told me once that the most important things in the world were peace, food, home, and children. I thought she meant them as a kind of political goal—the purpose of a good ruler is to provide those things for their subjects. But that’s not what it means. It means that those are the only things that matter in our own lives.”

  Hool folded her arms. “How long do you plan on staying?”

  Tyvian looked at her. “I’m confessing something here. Do you mind?”

  “Can you confess faster?”

  The smuggler’s hairy face fell as some dark thought crossed his mind. “You had all those things, Hool. And for years I had the power to give them to you again. Instead . . . instead I stripped them away from you.”

  Api and Brana’s faces—ghosts she was far more familiar with—rose up again in Hool’s mind. Her ears drooped and her mouth clapped shut. “No . . . don’t say it. Don’t.”

  Tyvian hung his head. “It’s my fault, Hool. Their deaths—my fault. I’m sorry, I—”

  Hool pushed him. Instead of him flying away or bursting into clouds or some other ghostly thing, he fell over and landed on his back on the floor. He grunted with pain. Hool leapt out of bed. “You . . . you’re alive?”

  Tyvian rolled slowly to his feet. “What? Of . . . of course I’m alive. What the hell did you think was going on just now?”

  All the things she was going to say to him, all the howling angry oaths she was about to hurl at his spirit . . . they all fell away. Hool picked him up off the ground and enveloped him in a big, warm hug. She found herself whining, on the edge of howling, even. It was pain, but a different kind of pain. Not the pain of emptiness, but the pain of something lost being replaced.

  Tyvian pushed himself out of the hug. “I’m going to make it up to you, Hool.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I’ve died and spoken with oracles and gods and I know your moment is coming. I’m convinced of it. But I can’t stay. There are other things I have to do first.”

  “This is another one of your crazy stupid schemes, isn’t it?” Hool’s ears went back. “I hate those.”

  Tyvian placed a hand on his heart. “This is the last one ever. I swear it. Look for me.” He squeezed her hand one more time and then left, silently as he had arrived. Hool watched him go. As soon as he entered the common room of the Dragon, he vanished among a hundred other fur-clad, bearded men and was gone. Only his scent lingered—the same old Tyvian scent, but . . . different somehow. Blessed.

  “Who was that?” Damon asked, strolling up the hall. “Another admirer?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Chapter 35

  Working a Hunch

  Myreon couldn’t tell if Xahlven knew that she knew he was the Chairman of the Sorcerous League, so she chose to operate under that assumption. If he knew, then he was taking a big risk keeping her chained up here, an easy cry for help away from dozens of mage-hunting Defenders. But of course, that risk itself was camouflage—any accusation could be easily deflected as nonsensical. No doubt a search of his sleeping quarters would turn up nothing of note. Myreon would expect a mage of his resources to be using an anygate to go to and from his offices back in the Arcanostrum, at any rate. No—any direct confrontation with Xahlven was doomed to failure.

  It occurred to her that the same could be said of Lyrelle or even Tyvian (in his day). This struck her like the dawn itself—the whole world seemed suddenly illuminated. If you wanted to trick a manipulator, you needed them to think you were being manipulated. She needed to act as she might normally act, but needed to select the “normal” behaviors that would get her closest to her goal. She needed to make it seem as though she were stumbling toward victory by chance, not heading there on purpose. If Xahlven got wind of any breath of her intention, and she was done for.

  As the armies marched north in generally fair weather, Myreon considered her options carefully. She had time—it would be another week before they crossed the border into Dellor, which was marked by an ancient and mostly ruined series of watchtowers that Sahand kept intermittently manned. Trevard had a team of augurs working constantly to predict when and where they would make contact with the enemy or whether Sahand would deploy his weapon and, while the future was very much in flux, one thing seemed certain—there were no Delloran attacks in the near term. As this was Myreon’s third military campaign, it was becoming clear to her that most of war was s
imply walking for long periods of time and eating rustic food.

  Myreon took care to eavesdrop as much as she could on Trevard and Xahlven’s exchanges. She doubted this would arouse much suspicion—what captive wouldn’t take a keen interest in the conversation of her captors? As two people went, it would be hard to find anybody more ill-suited to one another’s company. Xahlven was gracious and intellectual and cultured; Trevard was brusque, practical, and dreadfully dull. The Lord Defender had no idea how thoroughly Xahlven was directing his actions—Myreon would have missed it herself had she not been looking for it specifically. Trevard disliked Xahlven, and Xahlven used that dislike as a fulcrum upon which to lever Trevard into the actions he preferred. If Xahlven wanted the army to move faster, he would suggest that such travel was wearing and that they ought to camp earlier to give Trevard’s men a rest. Trevard, predictably offended at the implication his men couldn’t march, would insist they carry on, even if what Xahlven said was technically true. The Archmage of the Ether seemed to be a savant at saying the right thing at the right time to nudge his colleague this way and that. This ought not to have surprised Myreon—he’d done it to her several times—but it was shocking to witness, especially to one considered as learned as Trevard.

  She might have pointed out this manipulation to Trevard, but he didn’t trust her. This was, of course, partially Xahlven’s doing—he often spoke of her in positive terms and would even debate her merits with the Lord Defender. This served to calcify Trevard’s opinion of her as a traitor and a turncoat and a rogue element. If she remained on the palanquin, it was only because sending her anywhere else was too risky.

  In that suspicion, though, Myreon thought there might be a weakness. If she could convince Trevard to send her back to Saldor, she might be beyond Xahlven’s surveillance, if only temporarily. Of course, if she were transferred back to Saldor, it was Keeper’s Court and a quick sentencing for her—that solved nothing. There was no Tyvian to break her out anymore. No Artus. No Hool. Nobody at all.