The Curse Giver

by Dora Machado

  The Pious’s blade scraped the skin around her mark, a slow, deliberate chafing that reminded her of Orell’s tortures.

  “Interesting,” the Pious said. “It’s a very stubborn one. Who did it? Was it Ali the Craftsman?”

  “The Lord of Laonia will denounce you before Teos.”

  “He’ll do no such thing. Crafty as he is, he can’t dodge all the snares.”

  Snares? Lusielle could barely think through the fear. “He’s your lawful guest.”

  “You’re right. I can’t kill him, and yet he’ll die,” the Pious said. “Not even Teos will probe an expected death beyond formalities.”

  An expected death? Bren was in more danger than he knew and, unless she was able to escape the Pious, she wasn’t going to be able to warn him. She had no doubt that she wasn’t meant to survive her interview with the Pious. His blade dug deeper into her flesh, reminding her that there would be a lot of pain between now and the time he killed her.

  “Stop!”

  “I’m afraid necessity spawns injury in your case.”

  The door opened and shut. “My lord!” Vestor stood by the window, clutching the Pious’s red cloak. “What are you doing?”

  “Stay out of this,” the Pious said.

  “No, my lord, you can’t—”

  “You mean to disobey me?” The Pious rose and, holding Lusielle in a chokehold, turned loose his cane on Vestor, who took a step back and then another, until he crouched against the wall with his elbows crossed above his head, enduring the Pious’s blows.

  Lusielle twisted in the Pious’s grasp. She landed a punch and sank her teeth into his arm. Eligious cursed. He slammed her on the floor and came at her with his cane. Lusielle fought back, kicking like a frenzied mare. Her foot made contact with something hard. Crack.

  The Pious’s cane fell out of his hand. Lusielle dove for the cane. Glass clinked on the floor. An unbearable smell stunk up the air. The Pious looked down. A rivulet of pus and blood spurted from the voiding boil, running like a fouled creek down his leg.

  “I’m cured,” he said, surprised.

  Lusielle didn’t wait for a rush of gratitude. She swung the cane and struck down the Pious.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE AFTERNOON WAS HUMID, THE SKY was overcast and the air buzzed with the chirping of the bush crickets forecasting another rainy day for the morrow. Hato stood just beyond the trees, cursing the contrast between his urgent need and his sputtering flow, blaming the last few years of his life lived atop a horse for all his troubles.

  At least he had gotten in some long, full decades. Unlike his lord. He shook off the somber thought. As long as Bren was alive, there was hope.

  They had been lucky so far. They had managed to comb this part of the kingdom quietly, looking for his lord while camping away from villages and farmsteads and avoiding Riva’s patrols.

  The scouts had been discreet and effective when making their inquiries. Regardless, lingering on the kingdom side of the Nerpes wasn’t wise. Riva was anything if not unpredictable and the kingdom wasn’t a friendly place for any man hailing from Laonia. But Hato had to trust that the code was still capable of guaranteeing him some protection. He had to keep looking for his lord.

  Standing just beyond the shadows, Hato could hear the men, who were busy setting camp and building a fire. They were tired, hungry and dispirited. The longer they went without news of Bren, the worse it was for the Twenty’s dwindling morale.

  Hato finished his slow business and buttoned his trousers. Whether the woman lived or not, as long as the Lord of Laonia turned up, and soon, he didn’t care. He shuffled back to his tent and with a grunt, eased down on his portable stool and tapped his fingers on his makeshift desk. His stare shifted from the manuscript he had retrieved from Tolone’s library to the reports piled before him. Nothing new had come from the examining the first, so he turned his attention to the reports.

  He had received no additional news regarding Bren’s whereabouts. In fact, it was as if Laonia’s lord had been erased from the land. He didn’t know what he should make of such disappearance. On the one hand, it could mean that he was on the run in a most competent way. On the other hand … he didn’t want to think about that.

  News regarding his other inquiries was a bit more enlightening although not necessarily reassuring. First, Hato’s scouts had heard that Orell was casting a wide net over an extensive area, giving credence to the idea that Bren was indeed on the run. A second set of interesting reports indicated that Riva himself was near or en route to the area. Word of some sort of upcoming congress was spreading around, a ball or a banquet that was going to take place next week to celebrate the kingdom’s anniversary. Riva was minding Orell’s business closely.

  News from the Narrows was nothing to smile about. The Laonian commander in charge reported he had lost track of a significant number of Riva’s troops. The size of Riva’s sprawling camp remained unchanged and the same amount of fires were lit every night, but the commander wasn’t buying the act. By his count, at least half, if not more of the troops were missing from the camp. In the letter, the commander pondered the risks and advantages of leading a sortie into the camp and urgently requested orders from Laonia’s lord.

  Hato understood the importance of quick action. With Bren absent and his brothers dead, the burden of commanding Laonia’s army fell on him. The commander was rightly worried that Riva was setting up a trap, drawing him into the kingdom’s territories to ambush Laonia’s forces, igniting the conflict that could begin a war, or initiating another charter-endangering claim against Laonia.

  Alternatively, Riva could be pretending to withdraw from the Narrows in the hopes of promoting a similar draw down from the Laonian side, weakening the strait’s defenses as he had done before, planning to return with his full army once the Laonian army moved elsewhere.

  A third, also worrisome possibility was that Riva had indeed commanded the bulk of his troops away from the Narrows. If that was the case, where had the army gone and for what purpose?

  The memory of Riva’s seal embossed on the envelope he had discovered on Eleanor’s desk chilled his stomach. Hato’s ink-dipped quill scratched a quick set of instructions and warnings on the parchment.

  Stay put, he wrote to the commander, don’t bite on Riva’s bait and don’t leave the Narrows unprotected. It continued to be the easiest way for Riva to cross the Nerpes, Laonia’s weakest point. Find Riva’s missing army. Hato also pledged to activate his network to track the lost troops. He did so by writing a number of coded letters which he folded and dispatched in quick succession.

  When he was done sifting through his lord’s correspondence, he turned to review his own. Hato’s able underground network continued to canvass the kingdom and the territories for the information he needed. Some of the reports collected throughout the last few days came from far away through an elaborate relay that rivaled the prowess of Riva’s legendary spies. One of Hato’s messengers had tracked him all the way from Tolone to deliver a fresh batch of letters and reports proposing some interesting leads for the hunt.

  Hato was very proud of his network, of the quality and scope of the men and women he had recruited. He was particularly satisfied with the work of the young man he had sent to serve in Barahone, an exacting fellow named Louis Lambage, charged with scouring Lord Bausto’s archives.

  It had been an easy placement. Hato had “loaned out” the young scribe to Bausto when the latter complained about the sorry state of his archives. Lambage’s work was as thorough as his reports. It was to his missive that Hato turned to now or, more specifically, to the slim package that bore his name.

  Hato unknotted the ribbon and unfolded the wrappings to find a stiff leather binder. A note from Lambage was pinned to the front cover. From the Laonian section of Lord Bausto’s archives. An old letter was folded within the covers. The frail parchment crinkled softly when Hato opened it.

  He recognized his lord’s handwriting, not Brennus, b
ut rather Edmund, Bren’s father. Strange. As Edmund’s Chamber Lord, Hato had almost always been present when his lord sealed his letters and even though his formidable memory wavered sometimes, Hato had no recollection of this particular letter, one of only very few that Edmund had exchanged with his estranged cousin Bausto.

  I entrust this to your keeping, Edmund wrote in bold black letters. Speak of it to no one. As terse as the man himself, Edmund’s curt signature graced the bottom of the page next to his lordship seal.

  Hato couldn’t remember any situation or circumstance that could have provided background to such a short, disconcerting letter between two cousins who seldom spoke to each other. Stranger still, the letter was undated, an omission no self-respecting Laonian scribe would have condoned. Edmund had written the letter himself, without assistance from his scribes. The absence of a date deepened the mystery. Edmund’s long rule had lasted thirty-three extensive and turbulent years. The letter could have been written at any time during those years.

  Hato examined the leather binder. He found no secret pockets sewn in between the covers or in the silk underside, but he spotted something tucked into the narrow spine. With a pair of tweezers, he extracted a small velvet pouch. A little roll fell out of the pouch when he opened it, a coiled strip no taller than his thumb.

  “What do we have here?” Hato held one end with his tweezers while unfurling the little reel. He had trouble keeping it flat. He placed his tankard on one end of the strip and his journal on the other end, carefully smoothing the curled surface.

  There was writing on the parchment, small, tiny letters his eyes had trouble making out. There was also an unusual amount of decoration around the edges. Something was very strange about the parchment itself. Curious, Hato rummaged through his saddle bags and found his magnifying glass.

  “Remarkable.” A veteran of libraries and archives, Hato had seen all kinds of parchment in his lifetime. From scrolls to books, he’d had the pleasure of looking at some of the land’s best works, developing not only a discriminating eye for top quality, but also an earnest appreciation for the relationship between quality and cost.

  What he saw now gave him pause to think.

  Hato knew he was looking at something special, top quality vellum, the unsplit skin of an unborn calf soaked, limed and studded into translucent perfection. He had to blink several times before he believed his eyes. The skin had been finely treated to imbue the surface with a luminescent shimmering.

  This kind of vellum was a rarity, probably imported from the lands beyond the Nerpes. Hato examined the beautiful decorations gracing the strip on either side. A miniature collection of blooming ivies ornamented the narrow margins, a plaited marvel of gold and silver flowers bedazzling the eye.

  The glorious embellishments stood in stark contrast to the strip’s upper and lower sides. They had been bluntly cut, with a blade most likely, a rushed, ragged and uneven affront to the priceless vellum.

  Beneath the magnifying glass, the tiny letters turned into legible script. A trained hand had drawn the fine characters, a strong, vital and angular calligraphy with tall, narrow letters. The fine ink had lost none of its luster. On the contrary, it sparkled on the vellum like jet on chalk.

  But Lambage hadn’t risked his life and livelihood just to impress Hato with a work of beauty. He had stolen the little roll and Edmund’s letter for good reason.

  Hato read the words written on the vellum:

  Doomed and damned are the souls of the wicked,

  Useless are their struggles.

  Few have the courage to endure me,

  None has the mettle to embrace me.

  The wicked will be upheld.

  It was this last line that caught Hato’s attention. He groped through his journal until he found the riddle, a short, ink-blotched paragraph copied in a rush by his shaky hand on the tragic night of Robert’s death. He knew it by heart, of course, but he wanted confirmation.

  The mighty will fight.

  The wealthy defy.

  The mark of the Goddess reveals;

  Hunt, test, trial? Tease, chance, fate?

  The wicked shall prevail.

  Aye, the last lines were eerily similar in both verses. That’s why Lambage had sent him the strip, because the sharp lad sensed the same connection. The verses lacked the stylistic consistency of an accomplished poet, but in addition to the similar closing lines, both attempts shared the same voice, tone, language and theme.

  Hato had to take a deep breath to still his heart. He’d be no good to anyone if he keeled over dead from the heart shock. This had to be the breakthrough they had been looking for, confirmation that Robert’s riddle existed beyond his death bed rantings.

  Remembering his first lord’s enthusiasm for fine parchment and finely crafted books, Hato found it difficult to believe that Edmund hadn’t kept the rare piece of vellum in his prized library. Furthermore, it was out of character for Edmund not to show his find to Hato, with whom he shared his collector’s enjoyment since they were both young men. Moreover, why send it to Barahone, to the cousin he so often berated as Bausto the simpleton?

  Without a date or a solid connection between the two verses, Hato could think of only one thing to do. It wasn’t exactly safe but it should be viable, and it was better than sitting idle on his ass waiting for Bren to turn up. It was also a much better alternative to waiting for bad news. As the sun hovered over the horizon, contesting an imminent death, Hato began to make his preparations.

  Chapter Twenty

  SEVERO DROPPED ANOTHER LOG ON THE campfire, sending a burst of sparks flying into the dark heavens. The night had turned cold and the humid air guaranteed that his boots would be as wet tomorrow as they were tonight. Damn the Twins. His feet were going to rot.

  The mood around the campfire was grim. The men were mostly silent. Dinner had been a meager affair, a watery soup without much taste or meat in it. Still hungry, Severo bit into the stunted apple he had plucked from a squalid tree in passing earlier today. Sourness flooded his mouth. How many days had passed since he had seen his lord last?

  The Twins had surely forsaken the house of Uras. Severo had once been believed in the gods’ protective powers; but these days, his faith had taken a pounding. The gods seemed to be deaf to his lord’s suffering, blind to the curse’s injustices. The Twins had grown lapse of their duties, fat and lazy from indolence, apathy and slothfulness. Surely, cobwebs hung from their sacred swords and dust piled atop the justice code they upheld between their hands.

  What kind of ninny deities posed as immortal warriors and yet neglected to help while Laonia teetered at the edge of disaster? What kind of make-belief fakes refused to uphold the cause of a just man?

  Useless ones; weak, neglectful, fickle shams who didn’t give a damn; arrogant frauds who didn’t deserve offerings or prayers from Severo.

  He hurled the core of his sour apple into the campfire. It flared in the flames, burning hotly, crumpling into sparks and ashes as he was likely to do on the curse’s last day.

  Damn the Twins. Why was he thinking like this? He grabbed his saddle and walked over to where Petrus sat on a log, watching over the horses.

  “Night patrol?” Petrus asked, looking up from the piece of wood he was carving with his hunting knife. The little lantern he had hung on a branch cast light over his lined face. He had been with the Twenty the longest and yet his faith never wavered.

  “Courier,” Severo said, patting the bag securely fastened to his belt. “Lord Hato’s been busy tonight.”

  “Ah, then, the old wolf is up to something,” Petrus said. “Maybe you’ll bring us back some good news for a change.”

  Severo wished. He lifted the worn leather saddle and placed it over his horse’s back, tightening the girdle, checking the buckles, making sure that his numerous repairs were holding. The Twins knew he needed a new saddle. Worse, his steed had taken to limping now and then. He also needed a new horse. Given the circumstances, he wasn’t going
to get either one any time soon. His horse better be in a working mood tonight.

  “Leaving?” Cirillo approached, followed by young Clio, who shadowed him wherever he went. “This late?”

  “Lord Hato is in a hurry to shake the web.”

  “Keep an eye out for the king’s whoremongers,” Cirillo said. “They’ve been out at night a lot lately.”

  “Will do,” Severo said, fitting the horse with the bit and pulling the reins over the head.

  “I’m a fast rider,” Clio said. “I can ride with you if you’d like.”

  “Nay.” Severo slapped the back of the strapping kid. “Someone ought to get some sleep around here, even if it isn’t me.”

  “Do you think our lord is gone?” Clio asked.

  “What do you mean gone?” Severo said.

  “I mean—well, you know—gone to die in peace?”

  It was a fair question, especially coming from someone who had joined the Twenty only six months ago. When you pledged to the Twenty you were pledging your sword, your soul and your life to Laonia’s cause. You gave up your kin, your place, your future. You did it to honor your line and to deliver on the service that your house owed to the house of Uras. You did it for the high honor of having your name inscribed on Laonia’s wall of heroes.

  Severo liked the idea of being a hero. He just hoped he got the chance to be one, because the Twenty faced a daunting task. If they failed, Laonia—and the wall of heroes—would be no more.

  “The Lord Bren didn’t run away to die in peace,” old Petrus said, from where he sat by the lantern. “He’s not that type of man.”

  “Do you think he’s dead then?” Clio asked.

  Cirillo cuffed Clio in the head. “You big pile of snot!”

  “Ouch!”

  “That’ll teach you not to speak like that.”

  “It’s not wrong for a man to speak his thoughts,” Petrus said, “as long as he keeps the faith and honors his oaths.”