The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  “Be careful of that one,” the Chief said.

  Bolt spent half his time scanning the Merum yard for threats and the other half looking at Volsk as if he couldn’t decide which of his legs to break. Rory had a knife in hand, ready for throwing. “It’s not me Volsk needs to worry about,” I said. She was gone before I realized she’d never answered my question as to why the Vigil stopped holding the rulers to account.

  Chapter 18

  Pellin, Eldest of the Vigil, stood in the fenced-in barnyard of a small farmstead tucked in the hills outside the Owmead village of Docga. Allta had dismounted, sword in one hand, dagger in the other, and the guard stood on the balls of his feet ready to spring at the slightest threat or movement. He stayed close to Pellin’s mount, ready to hit the horse with the flat of his blade to send him galloping away—though nothing in the yard stirred. Nothing.

  Beside him, still in his saddle, Mark stared at the carnage, his light blue eyes, normally filled with mischief, wide in shock above an openmouthed gape.

  A figure lay sprawled on the hard-packed earth of the yard, the blistered skin on his face and arms the only indication Pellin had of when he’d died. Even without seeing his gap-toothed mouth he knew it to be Gelaeran, but where was his apprentice, Byre? He dismounted, waving away Allta’s growl of disapproval. “He’s dead and has been for at least three days. It’s doubtful his killer would remain behind so long.”

  “Mark, dismount and draw your knives,” Allta ordered. Their apprentice dropped to the ground on catlike feet, the shine of steel appearing in each hand while he was still in the air.

  The silence filling the hollow—utter stillness so deep it defied even the wind to violate it—set the hair on Pellin’s arms on end as he walked toward the barn. After three days, he would have expected low howls or even whimpers from within, but the hush didn’t end at the barn. It started there.

  “Let me go first, Eldest,” Allta said. “Mark, guard behind him. Yell if you see or hear anything.”

  Pellin’s guard, the thirty-sixth man to hold that position in his long tenure within the Vigil, stepped in front and without waiting for permission entered the gloom. Even from where he stood, ten paces from the entrance, Pellin caught the metallic smell of blood. But the silence was the worst, a noiselessness that spoke of death, a battlefield bereft of any evidence of life.

  Allta emerged a moment later, his face filled with promises of violence he couldn’t keep.

  “Are any of the cages empty?”

  His guard nodded. “Yes, but you need to see this.”

  The fact that some of the cages were unoccupied should have been good news. It meant that at least some of the sentinels might have lived to kill whoever had murdered their trainers. But when Pellin entered the gloom, the first thing he noticed was Byre, Gelaeran’s apprentice—dead but still clutching a sword. Inside six cages lay the furred bodies of six sentinel pups, many of them still small enough to be picked up and held like an ordinary dog. In front of each cage, full-grown sentinels lay dead, each taken by a single slash across the throat.

  Mark came up from behind, made a sound in his throat that might have meant anything.

  Pellin stopped, reached out to grab Allta by the sleeve, not in shock but in warding. “Have you disturbed anything?”

  “No, Eldest.”

  Pellin stifled his customary dislike of the title, only nodding in response. “Open all the doors. I want to see what happened.” When Mark moved to follow, Pellin caught him by the sleeve. “Just Allta. Too many sets of footprints will confuse me.

  Mark nodded, though he still looked at the pups as if he wanted to hold them. “Yes, Eldest.”

  Light flooded the barn, each shaft of brilliance illuminating motes of dust that hung in the air. Pellin inched forward, past the bodies of the full-grown sentinels, searching the packed earth for details of the struggle. He couldn’t find any.

  “Six adults and their pups,” Pellin murmured. “And the earthen floor of the barn is bare of clues.” Pellin stood and turned to address his guard, but Allta’s face had gone pale.

  “Almost, Eldest. There was only one killer,” Allta said, turning from the dead sentinels to face him. “Eldest, we have to leave. I can’t guarantee your safety here.” He nodded to Mark. “Only he can, and he’s not ready yet.”

  Pellin stared at the bodies of the sentinels, their jaws were unstained, empty. Not one of them had managed to wound their killer. Allta wasn’t exaggerating their danger. Not even a man with the talent for space and a pure physical gift could kill six sentinels without taking a wound. If they met the killer, Pellin’s guard, the best swordsman the Vigil could find and train on the entire continent, would be overmatched.

  “I want to look at the body of Gelaeran again,” Pellin said. He pulled a breath full of the stench of death into his lungs, pushed out a long exhale that did nothing to restore his sense of calm, and stepped back out into the yard.

  He stood over Gelaeran’s still form, but his attention was focused on the boy at his side. All of perhaps thirteen years of age, Mark looked younger than he had just a few weeks ago, his pale cheeks fuller, almost cherubic, beneath ash-blond hair. But his hands were older, already corded and strong from countless hours of practice with the throwing daggers that were the urchins’ means of self-defense.

  Pellin sighed. He wasn’t good with people. How was he supposed to mentor a boy? Inside, anger flared at the evil that necessitated what he was about to do. The boy at his side should have been learning a trade or the responsibilities of the nobility. At the very least he should be back in the city practicing his larceny with a joyful air, the way other youths played games. Doubtless Bolt would say that when no other weapon was available, one that was untried would have to do.

  “Before we touch him,” Pellin said, “tell me what you see.”

  Mark nodded, his face devoid of emotion. But instead of replying right away, as expected, the boy knelt to peer at the body, moving ever closer until his eyes were a mere handsbreadth away, despite the smell. He moved, hovering over Gelaeran, searching from head to foot without touching until he’d absorbed every detail. Then Mark stood, walked ten paces away, and turned back to take in the scene as a whole.

  If Pellin hadn’t known better, he would have sworn the boy had been trained as a reeve. Grief at the circumstances that forced Mark to surrender his childhood lodged in Pellin’s throat. More than anything, he wanted to see the mischievous light in the boy’s eyes again.

  “I think Gelaeran died after Byre,” Mark said.

  “Interesting.” Pellin said this in a noncommittal way, even though the boy’s conclusion matched his own. “Explain, please.”

  Mark pointed at the dead man. “Gelaeran’s body is pointed as if he were trying to flee, his feet toward the barn and his head toward the house. I think he heard the commotion and found Byre engaging with and losing to a killer he couldn’t see.”

  Mark shook his head as if unsure of himself. “He tried to run from someone he couldn’t see, and the killer caught him from behind—there’s a cut across his throat.” He paused before turning to face him. “It won’t work, Eldest. I can’t really protect you.”

  “Why not?”

  Mark’s eyebrows, so light they were difficult to see, lowered as he frowned in concentration. “Because we’re taking too long. Staying out ahead of any assassin that’s trying to kill you, even staying on the move, won’t work indefinitely. How long does it take to make a dwimor?”

  “If the person making them is who I think, maybe twenty days.”

  Mark held his arms straight out from his sides, palms up. “Who knows how long he’s been making them. We’ve killed a couple, but we have no way of knowing how many have been made and loosed. Say there are a dozen. If they keep coming at you individually, I . . . we have a chance, but if they come at us in groups . . .”

  Pellin’s apprentice opened up the fine cloak Pellin had bought him to show the daggers at his waist. “Even
if I’m perfect with each throw, if too many come at us at once, I will run out of weapons before I’ve killed them all.”

  Allta, standing behind Mark, nodded. “That was well reasoned.”

  “If you don’t stop the one making the dwimor—soon—you can’t win,” Mark said.

  In spite of Bronwyn’s concerns about Owmead’s king, he had no better choice. “Then we burn the bodies and ride for Andred.” His back and legs twinged in anticipation of the torturous journey they were about to endure. “I need to use King Rymark’s scrying stone.”

  “Is that wise, Eldest?” Allta asked. “He hates you.” He cleared his throat. “And the Grace of the Absold is there as well.”

  Pellin shrugged. In his search for the support of the kings and queens, he was now headed to the seat of the very king he had determined to avoid. “He has reason. And after he sees me, he’ll have more. As for the Grace, it can’t be helped. At this point my message is more important than my freedom.”

  Chapter 19

  Eight days after leaving the sentinel camp, Pellin dismounted from his horse in front of the ostentatious gates to the royal compound in Andred and groaned. Innumerable horse changes had allowed a pace that had turned his backside and thighs into mush. Only nibbles from Allta’s store of chiccor root and regular doses of averin had kept him in the saddle. The combination of pain, weariness, and stimulant worked together to put his emotions on the outermost layer of his skin.

  “I’m going to need a few moments,” he said, detouring away from the gates toward the cathedral that filled the space to the right. His voice came out in a groan. “We will need an introduction at any rate.”

  Allta shook his head. “King Rymark already knows who you are.”

  Pellin nodded without changing course. “True, but his functionaries do not, and despite the fact that our presence has been noted in Bunard, the rest of the continent is still thankfully ignorant of us. Hopefully, we can keep it that way.” He pulled a breath into his lungs and gasped as the muscles in his back spasmed with the effort.

  “Walking will help to ease some of the soreness, Eldest,” Allta said.

  Pellin smiled in thanks, but even that seemed a trial. “The fact that you felt the need to say so, coupled with the look on your face, tells me just how bad I must look.”

  Mark didn’t look much better, but Pellin felt sure the resilience of youth would work wonders on the boy after some rest. His apprentice caught Pellin’s eye and started. “You’re as gray as a corpse.”

  His guard stiffened. “He is the Eldest.”

  Mark nodded. “My apologies. You’re as gray as a corpse, Eldest. What good does it do to escape the assassins if you kill yourself doing it?”

  Allta looked on the verge of offering Mark some sort of physical remonstrance, but Pellin stopped him. “I feel like a dead man, so it’s no surprise that I look like one as well.”

  His guard shook his head, his hair shifting with the violence of the motion. “By no means, Eldest. It’s just . . . ”

  Pellin tried smiling again. This time it only worked on half his face. “I’ll remind you that we are still technically part of the church and that lying is frowned upon.”

  Allta stiffened, and Pellin watched as that directive and his guard’s natural inclinations warred with each other. “You look terrible, Eldest. Your face is as pale as a sheet, and it’s obvious you can’t stand up straight. You hobble across the ground like a crone and your joints creak like—”

  Pellin held up a hand, halting both his guard’s tally and Mark’s weak laughter. “Yes, I know. Let us see if the head of the Absold can be imposed upon to offer some remedy for my appearance.”

  He looked at the Absold cathedral without trying to hide the twist to his expression. Forty years ago, it had been confiscated from the Merum and given to the Absold by decree of Queen Arezia, Rymark’s mother. In all the kingdoms of the northern continent, only in Owmead did the Merum lack the closest cathedral to the throne. Still, he was probably on better terms with the head of the Absold than any other order. That surprised him. Perhaps his own training as a Merum priest somehow served to create tension between himself and the Archbishop.

  Three functionaries and ten minutes later they sat in the presence of the head of the Absold, a woman of forty-something years with lustrous hair that at turns appeared to be either burnished red or brown above deep-set green eyes and a strong nose. Her blue attire, a shade of sky at sunset that carried hints of violet, clashed with her olive skin tone, but the Grace, as the head of the Absold was called, had chosen a black stole to bring the color of her order and her personal appearance into harmony.

  “Please sit, gentlemen.” Hyldu motioned toward the chairs, her brows knitted with concern. Pellin did not so much sit as fall into the proffered chair, and Mark did likewise at his side. Allta maintained his vigil at the door, hand on his sword. Without asking for preference or permission, Hyldu turned aside toward the cabinet on the wall opposite the east-facing window and poured a glass two-thirds full from an ornate decanter. The smell of peaches and spirits filled the room.

  Pellin breathed a sigh that carried almost enough voice to be a moan and took a generous swallow. The cramps in his legs and back eased somewhat, and if the flush in his face came from the drink rather than youth, he was in no position to complain. “Thank you.”

  Mark looked at Pellin’s drink and cleared his throat twice.

  The head of the Absold smiled. “I’m afraid I have to confess my ignorance, Eldest. I can only assume this is your traveling companion.”

  He nodded and took another pull from the glass. The pain from the cramps in his legs and back eased a bit more. “This is Mark, my new apprentice.”

  The boy shook his blond head in disgust, then shambled bowlegged over to the same decanter to pour himself a drink.

  Hyldu’s left eyebrow arched in question. “He’s, ah, a bit young for the job.”

  Out of the corner of his eye—he was too tired to turn his head—Pellin saw Mark smile, then wince as he retook his seat. “She means I’m a bit young to be pilfering the contents of her decanter.” He paused to take a sip. “That’s good, quite good, but I’ve stolen better.”

  “Eldest?” the Grace asked.

  “Mark’s previous experience included stealing and swindling merchants in Bunard as a member of the urchins. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but he’s temporarily the most qualified apprentice we can find. He can accept my gift or his.” He jerked his head back toward Allta, and the room took a moment to stabilize.

  “Winters are cold in Bunard,” Mark said. “The urchins were always grateful for a dram of spirits to help ward away the chill in the poor quarter.” He downed the rest of the glass and sat, blinking contentedly.

  “Ah, yes.” The Grace turned again to Pellin. “I confess that I am surprised to see you here in Owmead and in such a state, Eldest.” Unspoken questions filled her voice.

  Pellin smiled. “You mean the last you heard, I was fighting monsters from the Darkwater and that I currently look like a league of bad road.”

  Hyldu smiled, bringing her face for a moment into harmony. “Yes, Eldest, but the subsequent messages from the Chief of Servants have been brief, and rumors claim the Darkwater evil has engulfed the whole of Collum.” Hyldu leaned forward. “I confess to more than a little surprise that you would come here, Pellin. Brid Teorian is livid that you and the rest of the Vigil managed to sneak off before she could speak with you.” She gave a small laugh at that but stopped when Pellin didn’t join in.

  “What you mean,” Pellin said, “is that the Chief of Servants is upset that we fled before the church could take us all into custody and divvy us up like prized hogs.”

  Hyldu laughed and nodded. “Yes, I mean that.” She favored him with a speculative look. “You’ve placed me in an enviable quandary, Eldest. I naturally assumed that Archbishop Vyne and the Merum would be the recipient of your company and services, leaving the three younger or
ders to squabble over Lady Bronwyn.”

  When she gestured at his empty glass and he nodded, she rose to refill it. The perfume of peaches filled the room once more, and he inhaled deeply through his nose and sipped. “What of Lord Dura?”

  Grace Hyldu pursed her lips. “If you ask after his status, I can assure you that the Chief of Servants took him under her protection when she discovered the rest of the Vigil left Bunard.”

  Pellin smiled. “You mean fled.”

  Hyldu’s smile matched his. “If you wish. However, if you are asking my opinion on which of us would or should receive the benefit of his services, I would say he sounds most suited for Collen.” She waved a hand. “It seems he has an inexhaustible ardor for fighting evils large and small, real or imagined.”

  Pellin shook his head. “Collen would never allow the Vanguard to work with Lord Dura.”

  “Because of his vault?” Hyldu asked. “Don’t be too sure. Collen is as zealous as any Captain of the Vanguard has ever been, but he shows a remarkable, and quite surprising, tendency toward grace for those who strike him as sincere in their repentance.” She leaned forward, her eyes bright. “It makes me wonder what the Captain has in his past that should incline him to such a belief.”

  He didn’t respond. Fatigue and peach spirits leached his ability and desire to engage in any unnecessary conversation. The silence stretched until the relatively lighthearted mood of their banter faded.

  “What’s really happening out there, Pellin?” Hyldu asked. “You and I have always extended the grace to be honest with each other, even when our positions forced us to keep our own counsel.”

  Though the drink made the muscles of his face sluggish to respond, Pellin mustered a smile. For a moment, he considered sending Mark from the room. Knowledge carried burdens, and he’d been sincere in his desire to have the boy as a temporary apprentice only. Mark regarded him and Hyldu with focused attention, no doubt a necessary trait for practicing his larceny. Yet it was a characteristic that might find use in service of the Vigil. Perhaps Mark’s insights would prove beneficial.