The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  “You appealed to their vengeance,” I said. What did I feel? Wonder? Disgust? It was hard to tell. “How was it done?”

  He might have misunderstood my question, or the momentum of his memories might have been too great for him to break, but he continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “We chose six. Two each for Agin, his brother, Baelu, and his sister, Ceren.” Pellin shook his head. “We were clutching at straws and had no idea what to expect, but we succeeded.”

  Bronwyn took up Pellin’s narrative. “In the end we had half a dozen assassins you couldn’t see if they stood right in front of you.”

  To one side, Bolt’s scowl deepened. I stopped Bronwyn, the hitch in her voice telling me what she would hide even now if she could, but it needed to be said, though she might hate me for it. “And how many men and women did you ruin before you were able to get those six?”

  Toria’s head whipped to look at me, and the color drained from her dark skin. She swallowed as if she might puke any second. “Oh, Aer.”

  Tears gathered and spilled from Bronwyn’s eyes, following the wrinkles in her skin down her cheeks.

  “Dozens,” Pellin whispered. “So many.”

  Bronwyn squeezed his arm, then looked up at me. “Pellin quit after his third attempt, but Cesla argued that we had to continue. The Vigil nearly broke.”

  “Tidrian should never have allowed it,” Pellin said.

  Seeing my look, Bronwyn sighed. “Tidrian was Eldest then. Perhaps that was a mistake. Formona might have been a better choice, but she grew distrustful of the gift as she got older. By the time war came to the continent Tidrian and Formona alone carried more than two centuries. Jorgen was even younger in the power than I.”

  “Tidrian put it to a vote. Elwin sided with Cesla”—she shrugged—“as he always did, and Jorgen as well. Pellin and I sided with Formona.”

  I shook my head. “You voted?”

  Bronwyn gave me a slow nod. “Deadlocked, Tidrian had to make the decision he’d tried to avoid. Formona’s voice, as the next oldest, should have carried more weight.”

  “Cesla was ever persuasive,” Pellin said.

  Bronwyn looked at him as if she might offer some word of comfort but turned back to me a moment later. “Tidrian refused to aid in the creation of the dwimor, citing age and fatigue, but Formona claimed it was his way of offering a compromise. He didn’t expect Cesla to succeed without his or Formona’s aid, but they underestimated his strength in the gift. Cesla, Elwin, and Jorgen continued undaunted.” She swallowed thickly. “Somewhere in north Owmead there’s an unmarked grave with the bodies of all the failures in it.”

  “They paid a price,” Pellin said. The eyes of the dead woman held him transfixed, and I wondered if he searched for some forgiveness or absolution there. “Creating a dwimor was far more costly than a delve. For each attempt, Cesla, Elwin, and Jorgen used up a part of themselves. My brothers and I were of an age at the beginning of the war, our birth difference minuscule as the Vigil reckons time, but by the end, they were older.” He sighed. “They paid.” He shook himself. “With a single month of stores left we sent out the six, three women and three men, emptied of everything that made them human. They retained enough knowledge to eat and to kill those whose images were put into their minds.”

  “The scrolls say Agin and his kin were killed by their generals in a squabble for power,” I said.

  Pellin sighed. “For once, we didn’t have to alter history. No one gave credence to assassins that couldn’t be seen. The southern armies fell into chaos after Agin’s death, and we poured out of the north. The church issued the decree that whoever held the gift of kings at the dawn of the new year would be king over whatever territory they held. We lost almost as many people to the bloodshed as we would have to the famine.”

  Pellin fell silent.

  “Why could I see her?” Rory asked.

  Bronwyn’s expression became wistful. “You’re young. The expectations and presumptions you hold within your mind are less rigid than those of someone older.” Her voice dropped into a lyrical cadence. “‘And a child shall see and provide the way.’”

  I knew the quote as I’d known all the others from the time I’d spent preparing to become a priest. “That’s a bit out of context.”

  “Is it?” Bronwyn asked. “Who’s to say what circumstances Aer foresaw when He inspired the writers of the liturgy? It’s confirmed Alor’s insight, has it not?”

  I laid questions of inspiration and interpretation aside. The blood on my hands from a decade ago had put the priesthood beyond my reach, and more pressing matters required my attention. I pointed at the body of the woman with the colorless eyes.

  “Why were we able to see her after she died?” I asked.

  Pellin shrugged. “Her body became a thing, like a chair, or a book, or piece of parchment. Without her life and twisted mind to sustain her, it became nothing more than an object.”

  “When was she made?”

  Bronwyn shook her head. “It’s impossible to say, but it’s unlikely Laewan had the ability to create her.”

  Toria nodded. “He was newer to the Vigil than I. Neither of us could have known it was possible.” Her voice turned to steel. “You lied to me.” Neither Pellin nor Bronwyn answered.

  “So . . . ” I sighed. “It is as we feared. It’s not over. Whoever was ultimately behind the madness of Bas-solas will look to strike again.”

  “It’s possible that whoever turned Laewan could have taught him the means of creating a dwimor,” Bronwyn said.

  Pellin’s mouth tightened, and he shot a quick glance at me before he nodded grudgingly. “If any of you venture from the cathedral, take a pair of acolytes with you. The younger, the better.” He sighed as if he’d been forced to shoulder a burden he’d been trying to avoid. “This strengthens my fear that Jorgen has been turned.” He caught my gaze and held it. “One thing we have in our favor is the amount of time it takes to create a dwimor. Cesla or Elwin working through sunrise and sunset could only produce one every five days, Jorgen more than twice as long.”

  “Produce?” Toria’s mouth twisted around the word as if it tasted of myrrhen root, and she pointed at the dead woman on the table. “You’re talking about a person, a living being, and you make it sound like you’re a cobbler trying to rush a new pair of boots.”

  Pellin took the assault without defense, nodding, but Bronwyn wasn’t immune to the accusation. It was clear everything Toria Deel said hit her with almost physical blows. “You weren’t there. We were about to lose the whole continent.” She turned to the body. “Agin’s depravity ran so deep. Thousands volunteered. Even at that there were only a few we could use.”

  “The ones with a particular gift?” I asked without knowing precisely why I did so. Something in the ancient children’s rhyme tugged at me, a connection I couldn’t quite make, but Alor’s intuition explained Bronwyn’s penchant for quoting children’s rhymes at odd moments.

  Toria must have seen more clearly than I. “Aer help us—they were all priests.”

  Bronwyn shook her head. “Not all of them. People were less—” she paused to hunt for a word—“categorized in that time, but in the end every assassin we successfully created held a gift of devotion.”

  Chapter 7

  Pellin left us soon after, claiming a prior engagement and leaving Bronwyn, Toria, and myself to sort through the assassin’s clothes and search her body for marks, scars, or tattoos that might give us some idea who she’d been before she became a tool for someone else’s hatred.

  “Look again,” Bronwyn said. “There has to be some connection between the dwimor and its target. Agin had killed so many that it was easy to find those who hated him.”

  “You shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “You took their gift of devotion and twisted it into a tool for revenge.”

  Bronwyn met my gaze for a space of time that was just long enough to show me the depth of hurt my words caused. “It wasn’t up to me,
Lord Dura. I had no authority—Pellin and I fought it as best we could.” Her face twisted into regret all the same.

  “Their relationship never recovered.” I said. “Cesla’s and Pellin’s, I mean.”

  Bronwyn gave me a slow nod. “Bolt keeps reminding me how quickly you see to the hearts of others. No. It didn’t.” She flung up a hand. “Pellin insisted we were using evil to fight evil. He said if Aer wanted to keep Agin from power, then a better way would present itself. After his brothers mocked him for the convenience of his beliefs, Pellin disappeared into his books, searching for an alternative he never found. Cesla and Elwin had always been the closest of the three, but the making of the dwimor widened the gap between Pellin and his brothers until it became a chasm. In the centuries since, they hardly spoke.” Bronwyn pointed to the body of the woman. “The dead teach the living, as the healers say. Now, please, look again.”

  I avoided rolling my eyes, just. This same request had been issued half a dozen times already with the same conclusion—I didn’t know her. She was small featured in a way that might rouse protective instincts in a man, and she had legs that showed the musculature of someone used to physical exertion, but without the thick-bodied appearance of a common laborer. This coupled with the lack of calluses on her hands meant she was no farmer’s daughter, perhaps a dancer.

  I didn’t know any dancers.

  “Try sifting through your memories, Lord Dura,” Toria said, “as if you were delving another. Let them flow past you in succession from new to old until you see her.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut so neither of the two women could see the expression I really wanted to wear. “All right, I will. Again.”

  My life flowed past me, but the gift I’d received from Elwin along with the insight I’d gotten from Custos did nothing to bring memory, meaning, or purpose to the dead woman’s face. I couldn’t help but sigh. Ealdor’s memories had seemed as real and tangible as all the rest. I sat in silence with my eyes closed until I couldn’t go back any further, until the day I emerged from the Darkwater Forest. The hole in my memory, a blank wall where feeling and recollection should have been, refuted my attempt to see into it. I skipped back to the battle and continued back until I reached my early childhood, where memory frayed into a chaotic sea of impression and want and little more. “There’s nothing there.” I shrugged. “We never met.”

  “Her features resemble those from the south,” Toria said. “Have you ever been to Caisel?”

  “No. I think I’d remember that. I’ve never been south of the Blood Vale between Collum and Owmead.”

  “Unless, of course, you can’t remember it,” Toria said.

  Only the slightest hint of accusation accompanied her words, which in itself qualified as a minor miracle considering the enmity that had accompanied our initial meetings. It put my hackles up anyway. I knew what had to be coming next, and sure as the sunrise, Lady Bronwyn didn’t disappoint me.

  “True,” Bronwyn said. “I suppose you might have met this woman in the Darkwater Forest or, more likely, on one of your night walks. It’s a shame Rory killed her. If we could have delved her, we might have seen not only the connection to you, but also who twisted her this way.”

  “Does there have to be a connection?” I asked.

  That drew her up short, and she considered the idea for a moment before shaking her head. “Probably not, but it would take longer. Pellin might know.”

  “Where did he go?” I asked. The Eldest of the Vigil had made himself scarce since the day after Bas-solas, leaving the rest of us to do the heavy lifting of delving everyone we’d captured. Even the appearance of the dwimor had failed to engage his attention for more than an hour.

  Toria Deel took a half step back, her expression blank as new parchment. Bronwyn lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “The Eldest requires some measure of solitude. He is seeking . . . an alternative.”

  Toria Deel nodded in understanding, but I had no idea what Bronwyn meant. “To what?”

  She took a deep breath. “He hopes to avoid involving the heads of the church. Circumstances are different now. Even the appearance of weakness on the part of the Vigil is disastrous.”

  I shook my head and she turned to face me, her lips tight with annoyance. “The death of Laewan has put him in an awkward position. Laewan’s gift has gone free.”

  “You hope,” I said.

  Bronwyn and Toria both started at that, then nodded. “Yes,” Bronwyn said. “Desperately. Before Cesla’s death the gift hadn’t gone free in centuries. Finding a free gift takes organization and discretion of the highest order.”

  I could have pitied the Eldest in that moment. “For the second time in ten years. That’s not nearly long enough for people to forget that Cesla’s gift went free as well. And . . . there is still Jorgen’s silence to consider.” There were no easy answers to that concern.

  “Thus our problem,” Bronwyn said. “The four orders are uniquely equipped to help us investigate anyone who shows signs of receiving the gift of the Vigil, but we have failed to find Cesla’s gift in all these years, and now we’re asking them to be on the lookout for another.” Her lips thinned into a line of disapproval that Toria mirrored. “They are calling Pellin’s ability to lead the Vigil into question. They’ve agreed to aid us, but the Archbishop of the Merum has suggested bringing the Vigil under control of the church.”

  “Humph,” I said. “And I bet he’s offered to shoulder the responsibility of overseeing us. That’s very noble of him.”

  Bronwyn nodded. “At this point, the infighting between the Merum, the Servants, the Vanguard, and the Absold is the only thing allowing us to remain independent of their control.”

  Toria nodded. “It’s not inconceivable that, if they managed to find the gift, they would hold it hostage.”

  “Cesla, Laewan, and Jorgen.” I recited the names of men I should have known, other members of the Vigil. “You’re down to four.” I shook my head. “Ten years ago, in the war between Collum and Owmead, the enemy was more than happy to trade losses with us. They outnumbered us two to one. You can’t win a war of attrition.”

  “You?” Toria Deel threw my words back at me like a gauntlet. “Do you refuse to count yourself among us?”

  I pointed to the body of the woman behind me. “I seem to be numbered with you whether I will or no, but we both know that I’m not truly part of the Vigil and can’t be while I have this.” I tapped my head with one finger.

  I turned and pulled the sheet up over the nearly naked woman’s body. Her skin had already started to purple, and other, less savory, processes would begin at any time. “Assassin or not,” I said, “she needs to be tended to.”

  I’d already turned away when a thought struck me, and I pivoted on one heel. “Never mind. I’ll take care of her myself.”

  Pellin woke from a rare afternoon nap in his quarters four hours before sunset without checking the clock candle on the mantel over the fireplace to tell him this was so. The rhythm of his day, established through uncounted years of repetition, couldn’t be thrown off by the temporary disruption of the troubles here in Bunard.

  An openmouthed smile of disbelief pulled his lips to one side without his intention. Troubles? Disaster was more like it. Yet the Vigil remained, and the most immediate threat to its survival had been defeated, at least temporarily.

  On the edge of his vision, Allta entered his sleeping quarters from the anteroom where he’d kept guard along with a rotating shift of Merum acolytes, young men accustomed enough to the sleeplessness of their prayer vigils to maintain watch on the locked door to the Vigil members’ quarters.

  “Ignorant,” Pellin said, dispensing with every word that he would have used to begin this conversation at a later hour except the most important.

  “Pardon, Eldest?”

  His need for clarification demonstrated another difference between Allta and his former guard. Bolt would have made the connection between Pellin’s limited speech and their pre
sent circumstances. Pellin sighed. Perhaps if he spoke through his misgivings, he or Allta might find some clue in them.

  “We are ignorant of our ultimate enemy,” he began. “The Vigil has stood watch over the Darkwater Forest for uncounted centuries, maintaining the sentinels, tracking down the rare exception to the ferocity of their watchfulness, and dispensing our ultimate justice to the kings and queens and the heads of the church. On the southern continent our counterparts do the same for the Maveth Desert.”

  “Yes, Eldest.” Allta nodded without adding anything more.

  Pellin restrained a sigh. “And the rhythm of our appointed task never changed, never altered. The Gift Wars came, the northern church split into pieces, and then the Wars for the Gift of Kings came. Through it all, the Vigil dispensed justice as best we could and intervened when we had to, but the ultimate task never changed.” He turned to face Allta, hoping the discipline of conversing would unlock something in his mind. “We patrolled the forest, trained untold generations of sentinels, and broke the vaults of those rare exceptions who slipped through the net. Do you understand? It was always the same.”

  His guard nodded. “And now it’s not.”

  Bolt might have answered the same. “And when did it become different?” Pellin asked without expecting an answer, because it predated Allta’s service. “Ten years ago.” A moment passed as the sky outside the narrow slits that constituted his windows faded to dun. “Come, my friend, you’ve overheard enough conversations to fill a library, and we never bring guards into our service who lack a certain mental acuity.”

  “Cesla was killed,” Allta said. Even though it had happened prior to his service, a look of frustrated need for revenge darkened his features.

  “Yes.” Pellin nodded. “But something else happened then as well, something we might look upon as rare and wondrous. A man emerged from the Darkwater, a man with a vault who managed to live a life free from the mindless rage every other survivor exhibited.”