The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  “You spoke strangely in your sleep, milady,” Balean said.

  She had no response to give him that would ease his concern or her own. “What of those men?” she asked Fess.

  “It’s strange, Lady Bronwyn. They’re sleeping now, at the exact spot I found them when I first set out last night.”

  “Why strange?”

  “Because during the hours of darkness they roamed all through the valley with their horses.” He gave his head a little shake. “I don’t know how many leagues they covered, but they led me a merry little adventure. We might have gone north another four or five leagues before they returned.” He leaned forward. “Lady Bronwyn, they returned to the exact same spot of ground they left.”

  “Did they see you?”

  His blond hair fluttered a bit with his denial. “No. There was enough moonlight for me to see by without getting close. I kept to the ridge to the west. Even in daylight anyone would have been hard-pressed to see me lying on the ground.”

  “With their vaults open, they would have killed him if they had,” Balean added.

  “Curious,” Bronwyn said. “What did they do?”

  “I’m not sure,” Fess said. “There wasn’t enough light to see clearly, but they stopped at various spots along the river for a few moments before continuing on toward the north.”

  A suspicion grew in her mind. “Do you remember these locations?”

  At his nod, she glanced east to where the first hint of orange showed on the horizon. “Then let us ride north as quickly as we can.”

  They circled around the valley where the men slept and rode at a canter that ate up the miles until they came to the most remote spot the men had visited the night before. From her vantage point atop her horse she could see past the broad plain and the shallow streams that wound their way through it to the horizon.

  “I didn’t realize we were so close.” She pointed to a smudge of charcoal at the limit of her sight. Doubtless Balean and Fess would be able to see it more clearly. “There lies the Darkwater—the forbidden forest.” She sighed. “Lead on, Fess. I have a suspicion of what we will find, but we must be sure.”

  Fess took them to a spot on the bank of the westernmost stream, his gaze fixed on the ground. “There,” he said after he’d backtracked over the same ground twice. “That’s where they stopped, but I was too far away to make out what they did here.”

  She nodded, then shifted her weight in preparation to dismount—but dizziness hit her like a wave. The doors in her mind wavered, became nearly insubstantial before firming again.

  Clenching the barrel of her horse, she pointed instead. “Look for silver or gold in the stream. They may have thrown it, but it’s shallow enough here to see.”

  Balean and Fess dismounted and separated, one moving south of the hoofprints, the other moving north. Silence descended and lasted all of two minutes before both men waded into different parts of the stream to thrust their hands into the water. They brought their finds to her, depositing heavy yellowish lumps the size of her thumbnail into her palm. The morning light hit the nuggets, revealing a slight bluish tinge, and weight matching the metal in her palm descended on her heart.

  “Gold.” Fess breathed the word almost as if it were too holy to be uttered. “The forbidden metal.”

  “No,” she corrected. “Aurium is forbidden, gold is not. Though few outside the nobility would know the difference.” She shook her head in disgust. “It’s just very rare. Our enemy is more subtle of thought than I imagined.”

  “If there’s gold in the Darkwater streams, Lady Bronwyn, why would those men hunt for it at night?” Fess shook his head as he saw the flaws in his own question. “It’s stranger than that. Why would they hunt for gold only when their vaults were open when it was obvious that this was their intention even during the daytime?”

  “Your experience as a thief is keeping you from the most obvious conclusion,” she said. She tried to muster a smile, but the proximity of the forest precluded it. She held her hand out toward Fess, tilting her palm so that it caught the early morning light. “See the bluish tinge to the nuggets?” She hefted the gold in her palm. “This came from the mountains north of Frayel. They weren’t hunting for gold, they were planting it.”

  “Why?”

  She took in both of the men with her glance. “You’re too young to have witnessed a rush. The last one happened two hundred years ago in the wastes far north of Collum. Silver and gold carry madness with them, Fess. The idea that wealth can be had for the effort of picking stones out of a stream spreads like a fever, and tales of riches that grow with the telling infect the continent.”

  She paused to look at the forest. “Thousands upon thousands of people flood into the area, searching for it. Our enemy understands human nature quite well, it seems. To overcome the fear of the Darkwater he must pit it against an even stronger emotion, and there is none more powerful than the lust for gold.”

  “But why are these men throwing away the gold they’ve already got?” Fess asked. “It’s pointless.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “It’s fiendishly brilliant and only the evil of the Darkwater could accomplish it. There is no gold in the forest, Fess, and even in the far north of Collum and Frayel it’s rare. If those men we followed simply found the gold and spent it in secret, there would be no gold rush.” She turned to face him squarely. “Whatever is in the forest is trying to lure thousands of people inside.”

  He frowned, still unable to put the pieces together. She waited, watching as confusion flitted back and forth across his features.

  When he looked up, exhilaration and horror fought for expression. “Those men don’t know they’re planting gold they already had.” His brows furrowed. “But that means they traveled all the way here without realizing they had the gold with them.”

  “Their minds are split,” she said. “The vault within their minds allows the evil to use them to its own ends.” She nodded. “My guess is that each time they return to their village, they spend a little bit of the gold they’ve found. In time the secret will surely leak out and the flood will begin.” She pointed. “By then the gold will lead them and everyone else like a beacon into the forest.” She saw her guard and her apprentice gazing at her—one stoic as always, but horrified fascination filled Fess’s face. “In a single night, the evil of the Darkwater will own a hundred men, perhaps a thousand. In a fortnight there will be an army to dwarf the one we fought during Bas-solas, men and women who will move as if they were gifted.”

  “We have to stop them,” Fess breathed.

  A weight of despair settled into her chest. Fess was right, of course, but he had no idea the breadth of the task he’d announced on their behalf. The south side of the forest spanned nearly a hundred leagues and the rivers flowing out of the Darkwater split into dozens upon dozens of streams in the six kingdoms.

  As if she were lifting a weight, she squared her shoulders and pointed to the stream. “Then let us begin where we can. Scour this stream for any more gold and then we will move to the other spots. If we take away the gold, the enemy’s schemes will fail to take root. You remember them all?”

  His hair floated in the breeze as his head bobbed with the earnestness of his assent. “Won’t we run into those men?”

  “Assuredly,” she said, turning to Balean. “In the daylight they will be no match for you. Be quick.”

  When she looked back to Fess, she wanted to weep at the expression in his eyes, a look alloyed of necessity, repulsion, and regret in equal parts. She had no solace to offer or justification that would sound sincere. As a member of the Vigil, she’d worn that same expression more times than she cared to remember.

  Unwilling to endure his regard, she took a step toward her horse, perhaps a second, when a lance of pain through her skull brought her to her knees. Balean had his hands beneath her arms before she could pitch forward onto her face.

  Chapter 51

  She blinked, struggling to merge the twi
n suns that shone in her vision, but the sky spun like a child’s pinwheel. Closing her eyes didn’t help. When she did, a dozen different sets of memories assaulted her, clamoring for attention.

  Who was she?

  A face appeared, blocking the sun, and she locked her gaze onto it as she fought to find the surface in the flood of memories.

  “Lady Bronwyn.”

  She struggled to pull the owner’s name from the maelstrom that swirled in her head. It wouldn’t come.

  A dagger appeared in his hand. She twisted, trying to escape, begging her arms and legs to obey her, but they wouldn’t move. Her hands and feet twitched in response to her commands. Too many voices in her head vied for their control.

  “Lady Bronwyn,” the man said in a voice like iron, “what is my name?”

  Without knowing why, she knew that to fail to answer meant her death. The man jerked and flinched. The cacophony of the memories subsided enough to allow her to see the blond-haired youth struggling to free himself, his wrist held in a viselike grip in the man’s other hand.

  “No,” the boy yelled. “You can’t.”

  The man shook his head, his face locked in an expression of implacable necessity. “The Vigil must survive.”

  The boy rained blows on the man as he grappled for the dagger, but his efforts were no more than raindrops striking rock.

  “I’m sorry, Lady Bronwyn.” He shifted his grip on the dagger, moving with the precision of a surgeon.

  “No!” the boy screamed again.

  Memories swirled in her head. All of her would die. She could do nothing more than whimper as the man laid the edge of the knife against her neck. Dimly, she became aware of the boy’s hand on her, warm and comforting as a summer breeze in winter. Fess. The boy’s name was Fess.

  The man held his hand there while he struggled, a pup fighting against a wolf. Fess grappled for the dagger at her throat but he might as well have tried to uproot a tree for all the effect he had.

  Somewhere in her mind came a memory of being attacked with a dagger, of feeling a hint of cold pressure before a wash of warm blood. The man shifted, not much, but enough to allow her fingers to brush against his skin.

  Her mind lashed out as consciousness faded.

  She came to, the man still on top of her. Now she would die, but the wash of blood never came. Slowly, the man’s eyes emptied, losing their focus.

  The clamor of voices in her head subsided enough for her to pull her gaze from the man’s empty stare to the boy beside him, his face stricken. With an effort, he pushed the man away, prying loose the fingers that had clamped on his throat.

  He was covered in blood.

  “Bronwyn,” she said, her name coming to her at last.

  Sobs racked the boy as he bent to retrieve the blade that had sliced through the arteries of the man’s throat. “Fess,” she said aloud. “Your name is Fess.”

  “Are you all right, Lady Bronwyn?”

  Somewhere deep inside her mind, she knew he called her by another name. The voices in her head receded a bit more. “My pack. Chiccor root.”

  Fess disappeared from view, and she resumed her contemplation of the sun. For some reason that seemed like it should be important, the fact that its light kept the voices away comforted her. Fess returned and placed a stick of chiccor root in her mouth. Eating it proved a challenge at first, but as the juice trickled down her throat she found she could chew and swallow more easily. By the time she finished the stick, she found she could sit up.

  “Another,” she ordered.

  “Lady Bronwyn, are you sure?”

  She managed a nod, and he surrendered another dose of the stimulant. After the second stick her hands shook and her stomach roiled, threatening to vomit the strong root. She turned her attention inward to the memories that still swirled in her mind, separating them from her own so that she could lock them away.

  And failed.

  Unbidden, memories of another woman overwhelmed her, and she looked at Fess as blood surged into her cheeks. “You know, you’re quite well-favored.” She lifted her hands to undo the clasp of her cloak and her next sentence died on her tongue at the sight of the skin covering her hands. How could she be old?

  She sifted through the swirl of memories, gathering those that belonged to Bronwyn, clutching them and letting the others continue their mad dance through her mind. “Move,” she whispered. “You’re blocking the sun.”

  Fess shifted, and a bright yellow shaft struck her eyes, causing her to squint, but it brought blessed relief. The voices of those she’d delved didn’t cease clamoring for her attention, but in direct sunlight she found she could ignore them. For now. With an effort, she pulled her legs beneath her. “Help me stand.”

  Fess put his hands beneath her arms and lifted her as easily as he would have a child. When had she become so withered?

  Her eyes fell on Balean, where he lay on the ground. “Thank you, Balean, for serving me so long and well.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him,” Fess said in a hollow voice. “I didn’t, but I couldn’t move his hand, and then he just went slack and the dagger hit his throat. I didn’t mean to. He was going to kill you.”

  She nodded. “The Vigil guards call it the last duty, though I doubt Balean ever expected he would have to do it. It’s rare, but not unheard of for one of the Vigil to lose control over the memories they’ve gathered. When that happens, they are no longer capable of fulfilling their duties, but they can live in such a state for weeks.” She shook her head. “I’m dissembling. The truth, Fess, is that my walls are breaking, and soon I will have so many different people running around my head, I won’t be able to feed myself. Death is a mercy. Balean knew this, and tried to force you to receive the gift from me.”

  “What will they do to me, Lady Bronwyn?”

  She wanted to tell him she would protect him from the consequences of his actions, but even now she couldn’t bring herself to lie. “Don’t borrow trouble from the future, Willet.”

  She shook her head. “I mean Fess. Your name is Fess.” She tottered over to her horse, where she rummaged through her pack with trembling hands until she found a collection of small stoppered bottles.

  Fess eyed her with suspicion, and she managed a smile. “I have no intention of finishing what Balean tried to start. The chiccor root is effective for now, but I’ll need something stronger, especially at night.” She lifted a small bottle with a thick brownish liquid inside. “This is much the same, but the distillation is far stronger, if harder on the body.”

  She glanced upward. The sun hung in the sky toward the south, close to its zenith. “Go, finish gathering the gold those men sowed in the stream.” He shook his head, but she waved his objection away. “Let us do what we can, Fess, instead of worrying about what we can’t.”

  Clearly uncertain whether he should go or stay, he finally mounted and rode away, looking back every few seconds. She clung to her horse’s saddle for a while before she surrendered to fatigue and sat, letting the sun warm her. A shadow on the ground warned her, and she looked up to see a cloud passing in front of the sun. Then the past took her.

  Chapter 52

  Toria watched daylight fade like the fall of an axe as they continued north. With her hands tied, and her and Lelwin’s horses being led by one of the speaker’s men, their pace was as slow and deliberate as the march of condemned men to the block.

  With the return of the speaker, and with him more men, escape—however unlikely it had been before—was now impossible.

  Lelwin, who had not spoken since beginning their journey on horseback, leaned close and asked, “What’s going to happen to us?”

  For a moment Toria considered dissembling. In truth, she didn’t know what would happen to them, but she felt certain their fates would likely be quite different. Any of the possible outcomes seemed to her a living damnation that made death the most hoped-for option.

  But she had never shied from the truth, however horrifying she
had found it to be, whether within herself or within those she had delved. She could treat her apprentice no differently. “They will try to turn me as they did Laewan. If you had a dagger I would ask you to kill me, but that would be dangerous for you.”

  “How could I be in any greater danger than I am now?”

  Toria sighed. “The gift of domere doesn’t want to go free. With my last breath I would pass the gift to you. The evil that has escaped from the Darkwater would turn you through the gift, forcing your service until you died of old age centuries from now or were killed.”

  Whatever Lelwin might have said in response was cut off as the speaker brought his horse around to ride beside them. “Another day, Toria Deel.” He smirked at her, his face bright in the ruddy light of sunset. “You will soon have what you desired. Soon, on the edge of the Darkwater, we will meet the Icon.”

  Bronwyn drifted in a whirlpool of memories, only occasionally recognizing some of them as her own. During those times she sought to strengthen the rooms within her mind, shoring up walls with stone and banding the thick wooden doors with iron, but as soon as she’d rebuilt one, another would fade into wispy transience. Repairing it, she would return to the first door to find its edges unexpectedly decayed, as though the neglect of thousands of years had eaten away its definition.

  The swirl of memories took her again, and she lived the lives of dozens of nobles, merchants, and commons whose guilt or innocence she’d been called upon to confirm. Male and female, old and young, she lived them all. At times one of those she’d touched had been found innocent. She clung to those memories the hardest, finding in their relative innocence an escape from the twisted joys the guilty had experienced.

  Light and warmth returned, and with them the ability to reclaim herself. She looked down to see the vial of syrupy brown liquid in her hand. Before time or darkness could undermine her purpose, she pulled the cork and let a small sip flow over her tongue and into her stomach. Her heart shuddered under the onslaught of the drug, fluttered within her chest before finding a quicker rhythm.