The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  Volsk looked at me, his expression completely uncomprehending.

  “You really don’t understand, do you. Look at your last memory of Elwin,” I snarled. “Look at him! Did you notice how often he said there was no need for you to accompany him, how he stared at you without blinking, how he stumbled over his words? How many ways does a man have to scream ‘I’m lying!’ before you figure out he’s lying?”

  “Well said,” Bolt nodded.

  I rounded on him. “Shut it! You’ve helped them keep me ignorant of the very memories that might have helped me find Elwin’s killer.”

  Volsk chose that moment to interrupt me. “You said Robin killed him, Reeve.”

  “Whatever turned Laewan and Jorgen came for Elwin too.” I shivered, remembering a thousand dark strands that came for me from the depths of Barl’s mind. “Robin didn’t kill him—he saved him.”

  I shook my head in disgust. “Pellin promised to let me delve him, but he stayed away. He knew I wouldn’t be able to hold him to his word while we were . . . ” I stopped, not wanting to use the word that came closest to describing what I’d done. I clenched my jaws. If I had to deny mercy to others, as Bolt said, then I would have to deny it to myself as well. “While we were killing those tainted by the Darkwater.” I took off my glove. “He’s not here,” I said to Bolt, “but you are. Enough. I need to know everything I can.”

  “‘Be careful what you wish for,’” Bolt said.

  “That one could be from Bronwyn or Toria.” I chewed my words as though they offended me. “Something more military would suit you better.”

  I walked over to my guard. “I can’t solve this unless I know what I need to know.”

  Bolt nodded and held out his arm, the skin thinned with age but tight over thick cords of muscle that could put a sword through a man within the blink of an eye.

  “You cannot,” Volsk said. “You were ordered not to allow it.”

  Bolt’s brows lifted a fraction. “And you still don’t see what unquestioning obedience has done to us? Even now, after the price of your inaction has been laid bare? You’re a fool.”

  Red tinged the dark skin of Volsk’s cheeks. “I admit I should have followed as Robin told me to. There, I’ve said it. But this is different, and you know it. He has a vault in his mind. Would you hand the enemy the means to destroy us?”

  I stopped, my hand within inches of Bolt’s arm. “Explain.”

  Volsk laughed. “You say you read people? Well and good, but the Vigil knows more about the possible implications of the Darkwater than you can begin to fathom. They’ve spent centuries trying to understand it, using each survivor to test their theories, refine them.”

  “Word games,” I said. “They have no idea what it is.”

  “Think, Reeve,” Volsk said. “Use your own experiences and teach yourself why you shouldn’t touch any of us. I would never have let you touch me if I’d known you were going to survive. What happened during Bas-solas? What made Laewan so dangerous, so deadly?”

  My hand was still within inches of Bolt’s skin, but now I was afraid. I pulled my arm back. “He knew,” I said, my voice barely loud enough to reach my own ears. “Laewan knew what each of his servants from the Darkwater saw.”

  “Exactly,” Volsk said. “And when you touched the butcher, Barl, while his vault was open, you confirmed something the Vigil feared but had suspected only in their worst nightmares.”

  I lowered my arm. “The vaults are a window for the evil within the Darkwater.” I shook my head in denial. “I’m not them.”

  Volsk almost laughed at me, even after cutting his gaze toward Bolt. “So you say. You might even be right. Do you blame Pellin and the rest for not taking the chance? Anything you know could be used against the Vigil.”

  I stepped backward until Bolt’s naked arm was out of my reach. It should be easy enough to verify. What had the Vigil told me that had been used against us, some stratagem that could have only failed because it had been intercepted by the enemy directly from my mind?

  Casting back through my memories, I couldn’t recall any, but that didn’t mean Volsk was wrong. It only meant it hadn’t happened yet. Of course, Pellin and the rest had kept their own counsel, so there wasn’t much for me to reveal.

  Bolt still held his arm out like an offering. “And it’s also possible that you represent the greatest threat to our enemy. You’re a man who knows the Darkwater like no other and also holds the gift. ‘The best weapons have more than one edge.’”

  As much as I appreciated Bolt’s gesture of confidence, I didn’t move. “What can you tell me that can’t be used against us?” I asked both of them.

  Despite the enmity that existed between them, they shook their heads in unison. “Impossible to know,” Volsk said.

  “Perfect,” I said. “I might as well return to Bunard and let the Chief of Servants throw me back in prison.”

  We found a dry spot beneath the trees, and each of us rolled into our cloaks, using our saddles and provisions as pillows. After a few moments I heard the regular breathing from Rory that signaled sleep. Volsk hadn’t stirred from his original position. From Bolt’s spot, I heard nothing except the occasional breath of his horse. I rose and backtracked the way we’d entered the stand of trees. If someone followed us, they’d come to this point. Bolt stood in the shadows of a large evergreen ahead of me, watching the river. The barest hint of light reflected off the water from a new moon.

  He acknowledged my presence with a nod.

  “What are we riding into?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Even if we find Faran and his other apprentice hale and whole, we’ve had enough bad news to fill our plates for a long time.”

  I shrugged. “How can it be any worse than losing one of the Vigil and having an entire city go crazy?”

  Bolt might have shaken his head. “That’s just the problem. It wasn’t an entire city, just a portion of it. If we’ve lost the sentinels, the next time will be worse, but that’s the wrong question. You’ve got to know what the sentinels are to understand.”

  I laughed. “Everyone knows what the sentinels are. Mothers scare their children with tales of them, and every now and then some idiot gets drunk enough to attempt the forest and ends up as a meal. They’re waist high at the shoulder, and they can tear a man apart in seconds.”

  Bolt didn’t reply. He just stood watching the river. His silence and the hollowed-out feeling in my stomach confirmed my suspicions. “They’ve kept the whole truth from me again—am I correct?” I asked.

  I might have imagined his nod in the darkness. “The Vigil is having a hard time committing to trust. They’ve spent centuries hunting down individuals with a vault in their mind, and now they find themselves having to work with one.” He brooded over the river for a while before he went on. “There’s more to the sentinels than just breeding and training, Willet, but even if that were all, it would be enough. I don’t have the words to tell you how hard it is to kill one.” His voice grew louder in the stillness by a fraction. That was the only way I knew he’d turned toward me. “There’s a reason we use them instead of human guards to patrol the boundaries of the Darkwater.”

  Tendrils of fear, like a child’s terror at being alone in a dark room at night, worked their way down my back. “A dwimor?” Inside I prayed, but I didn’t know for what.

  “Aer have mercy,” Bolt breathed. “I sure hope so. I’d much rather fight something that could kill half a dozen sentinels by stealth than something that could take them in a straight-up fight. Overmatched doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  I shook my head. “You’re telling me you think a dwimor could sneak up on a sentinel?”

  “You have to see one to understand,” Bolt said, as if that would satisfy me.

  Nothing stirred on the stretch of grass that separated us from the river, the sound of frogs and crickets incongruously loud in comparison to the sounds of Bunard at night. “I don’t remember the Darkwater being this l
oud,” I said. It was more an attempt to fill the silence between us than anything else, but Bolt latched onto it.

  “It wouldn’t have been,” my guard spat. “Nothing with any sense lives in that forest. The sentinels hunt the plains around it for food, or their trainers bring it to them if game is scarce.”

  In the darkness, with the noise filling my ears, I never heard the footsteps.

  Chapter 23

  “Wha-mmmph.”

  A skinny hand covered my mouth, and I turned to see its twin over Bolt’s.

  “Shh.” The sibilant whisper fell on my ears, and I forced my tongue to silence. The pounding in my chest had a harder time obeying orders.

  “Something’s coming.”

  Rory’s voice drifted across to me like a tendril of fog, and I waited for my heart rate to slow until I could almost count the beats. He pointed back among the trees.

  I searched the shafts of silver moonlight that hit the forest floor between branches, following Rory’s point and squinting until my eyes hurt with the effort. Once or twice, I thought I saw a shadow move, a shift of black on black beneath the trees.

  “I see hints of movement,” I whispered, “but that’s all.”

  Next to me Bolt peered into the darkness, his gaze filled with deadly intent and his hand on his sword. “Nothing,” he whispered. “Absolutely nothing.”

  Rory shook his head. “He’s only twenty paces away now. How can you not see him?”

  “Dwimor,” Bolt and I whispered at the same time.

  “He’s gone still,” Rory said. “Say something, anything.” Then he melted away, merging with the shadows.

  I shook my head, but Bolt was quicker. He turned back to his contemplation of the river as if nothing untoward had occurred. “The only thing that lives in the Darkwater is the forest, trees with gnarled roots and black leaves that create a canopy so thick you can hardly see the ground, even in the daytime.” Sweat beaded on his brow, and I tried not to stare behind me, but my back muscles clenched against the sword or dagger thrust that had to be coming my way.

  “How many times have you been there?” I asked. My voice came out half an octave higher than normal, but my effort served to cover the sound of Bolt pulling his sword. I shifted, trying to shield him from the direction Rory had pointed.

  “More times than I care to recount, but at least once for every year I was part of the Vigil.”

  Then it came, the softest break of pine needles beneath a foot not more than three paces away. I put my hands on my daggers, one gripped for throwing and the second for parrying, though I had no idea how to defend against something I could barely see in a well-lit tavern, much less in darkness.

  I whirled to the sound of impact—of a dagger finding its mark—and swung, finding only air. A split second later I heard the rush of displaced air and the chunk of another blade finding its mark, then the crunch of twigs as a body hit the forest floor.

  Bolt leapt forward, his gaze and sword focused on the back of a man I could now see clearly by moonlight.

  Rory stepped into a shaft of moonlight. “He’s dead. I put the second one in his heart.”

  I rolled him over, my heart somehow stopping altogether as I looked on the face from Aellyn’s drawing. If I hadn’t been terrified enough to throw up, I would have been able to appreciate that little girl’s mastery of parchment and pencil.

  “Dwimor!” Bolt growled the word. “What direction was he coming from when you first saw him?”

  I waited, hoping, but deep in my chest I already knew the answer.

  “Northeast,” Rory said.

  I nodded. Bolt and I would have been dead if the assassin had come from behind us, tailing us from Bunard.

  Bolt growled a curse. “He wasn’t following us. Faran’s dead.”

  My heart missed a pair of beats, and I fought for breath. “Custos!”

  “The librarian’s fine,” Rory said. “The assassin never came closer than twenty paces of where we slept.”

  “You were awake?” Bolt asked.

  Rory nodded in the moonlight. “I’ve never really been outside the city before. Everything is different, noisy in a strange way. I got up to take a look around. I heard the two of you talking and saw him change course, sneaking this way.”

  “Rory,” Bolt said. “Wake Custos and Volsk and get the horses saddled. We’ll ride the rest of the night. According to Volsk, that should put us at Faran’s by midmorning.”

  The thief melted away in the darkness, but Bolt caught my arm as I moved to follow. “We have a problem.”

  “A problem?” I asked. “As in just one? That’s a relief, because the way things were going, I thought we had a whole squad of them. The sentinels are being killed, leaving the Darkwater unguarded. Pellin can’t find the missing gifts.” I paused and my throat tightened. I would have held in what I said next if I could have. “And Gael wants me to find a way for us to be together when I’m not even sure I can find a way to stay alive.”

  “Are you done?” Bolt asked, his tone neutral, as though he really just wanted to know whether or not I’d finished.

  “Yes,” I sighed. “I’m done.”

  “It’s Rory.”

  For a moment I didn’t understand, but then I caught a glimpse of our dead assassin in the moonlight. “If he’s the only one who can see them . . . he’s the only one who can kill them.”

  Bolt nodded. “True enough. ‘When the battle’s going against you, use the weapon that works,’” he quoted. “There are requirements to being a Vigil guard that go beyond having the combination of giftedness and talents to make the best swordsman. Despite all the strings the Vigil pulls to make the rest of the world dance, they’re all priests at heart. I didn’t choose Rory just because his hands were quick.”

  I sighed. “It was because he took care of the urchins.”

  “Yes,” Bolt said. “Despite all the training, most Vigil guards have killed less than a handful of men. Hah, even as an errant I did more threatening than killing. He’s too young to shoulder the burden that comes with taking a life over and over again.”

  How long before Rory’s heart turned into something hard and pitiless? “But we don’t have a choice.”

  “True, but we have to find a way to keep his heart soft.” Bolt shifted to move past me.

  I thought about all the grudges I carried from court and how many times I’d dreamt of evening the score with all the nobles who made it a point to put me in my place. “I haven’t exactly done a great job with myself.”

  I waited for a response, but I’d spoken to the air. I didn’t know if Bolt had heard me or if it mattered.

  We rode our horses at a walk with Rory in the lead, the night vision of a trained thief better than anything the rest of us could muster. When the sky lightened enough to hide the stars and the landscape became a blend of predawn grays, Bolt and Volsk moved to the front, Custos and I followed closely, and Rory took up the rear. We turned west and cantered toward a line of forested hills with barren tops.

  Volsk cast a look at Bolt, who rode close enough to reach out and touch him if need be. He shifted his horse and Bolt followed, closing the distance to just within sword reach. The Vigil’s former apprentice gestured at the empty landscape with a smirk. “Is there some threat here you feel compelled to safeguard me from?” When Bolt didn’t answer, he went on. “Do you sense some danger from me that I’ve yet to reveal?”

  Bolt’s gaze went flat. “I don’t trust you. I’ve never trusted you.”

  Volsk’s mouth pulled to one side, but the expression fought with the tightness around his eyes. “Then allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your keen perception, master guard. Much heartache could have been avoided if the Eldest had taken your council.” Volsk made a point of twisting in his saddle to look around. “But since there seems to be no threat imminent in the dawn, perhaps you could deign to give me space to reflect on the crimes of my wasted life.”

  “This,” Bolt said, pointing at
Volsk, “this is why I never trusted you. Your glib answers never revealed what was in your heart.”

  A door opened in my mind—not far, and not much, but enough to allow a memory to slide through that could have been my own except it had a different face attached to it. “Go easy,” I told Bolt. I would have said more, but for an instant the mask of mocking and self-deprecation fell from Volsk to show something wounded beneath.

  With a gesture he called Rory forward and pointed. “Come, gentleman thief, I have something to tell you.” When Rory came forward, he pointed. “You are in the presence of men whose mortality weighs heavily upon them. From what Pellin told me, Faran’s place should be about a half mile ahead.”

  Rory blinked and squinted against the morning glare. “This place doesn’t have much to recommend it. I like cities better.”

  Volsk nodded. “Understandable, but you may change your mind about that someday.”

  “Doubtful, considering what we’re about to find,” Bolt said.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence, and soon turned to enter a thick stand of woods. For as far as I could see, the trees stretched away from us, not the black twisted oaks of the Darkwater, but old nonetheless—ancient towers whose trunks supported a handful of thick limbs stood close to young saplings no bigger around than my arm. Animals scurried away from us in the underbrush, and the trill and lilt of birds filled the air.

  “Is this the Everwood?” Custos asked, looking around, his eyes bright and curious.

  Bolt nodded. “The southern tip, anyway. It extends north and west from here for ten or twenty leagues before the trees all turn to softwoods.”

  The librarian peered into the shade beneath the canopy, his head jerking to catch each movement of a rabbit or squirrel that darted away from us.

  “Are you hoping to catch sight of the Fayit, old friend?” I asked.

  He turned to peer at me, chewing on his lower lip in false indignation. “Have you ever wondered, my boy, why those legends never die? As far back as the history of man on the northern continent goes, the legends of the Fayit go as well.” He tilted his head to sing.