The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  The doors in her mind strengthened enough to allow her to reclaim her identity and she stood. How long had she dozed, living other lives? She lifted her eyes, searching for light.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Mounted men surrounded her, still and quiet, as if they’d coalesced out of thin air. She looked for Fess but couldn’t see past the horses. Thoughts of fleeing beckoned. Panic put a surge of energy into the muscle and sinew of her legs, but she was in no condition to run or ride at more than a walk. It was doubtful she could even mount up before they were upon her.

  Working against her shimmering vison, she tried to count the men but never made it past three. Then she noticed two women behind the others, their hands bound behind them. She pulled her dagger from her belt, holding the pommel against her palm with her thumb and hiding the blade behind her forearm.

  Then the women came into focus. No.

  One of the men dismounted, smiling as though he’d been given an unexpected gift. “Greetings, Lady Bronwyn. I see from your expression you’ve already made the acquaintance of at least one of my companions.” The dying light caught his feral grin, casting it in lurid shades of red, as if his skin could not contain his malice. “All your power has availed you nothing. You who bent kings and queens to your will now find yourself kneeling in the dirt before me, a mere servant of the Icon.”

  The smile slid from his face, and he snapped his fingers to a man behind him who fell back to hold the point of his dagger to Toria’s throat.

  “If you do not surrender to me of your own will, I will kill her now and then the girl and then you,” he said. “My orders were to deliver any of the Vigil I found—alive, if at all possible, but to deliver you in any case. Toss the knife you’re hiding to the ground.”

  She nodded, making a show of discarding it, and hooked the thumb of her left hand under the glove on her right. “Who are you?”

  “I am a speaker for the Clast.” His gaze fell to her hands, and his eyes disappeared into the shadow of a scowl as he drew his sword. “Understand this, Lady Bronwyn. I will not allow you to touch any of us. Leave your gloves on and kneel with your hands behind your back.”

  Toria shook her head, whether in warning or apology, Bronwyn couldn’t tell. Where was Fess?

  “I said kneel.”

  She lowered herself to one knee, then noticed the vial of distilled chiccor root in her hand. Quickly, before he could object, she unstopped it and swallowed its contents, emptying the bottle.

  His sword trembled with tension. “What did you just swallow?”

  A full score of doses hit her system, and her heart hammered drum strokes within her chest. When she tried to wave away his threat, her hands trembled like stalks of grain in a whirlwind. “Only medicine for a very old lady.”

  One of the other men dismounted and approached her with a leather bag and stout cord. These he used to cover her hands, pulling the cord so that it cut into the flesh around her wrists.

  “You see?” the speaker said as he walked over to haul her up to her feet. “I am aware of the threat your touch carries.” His face split into a smile, but his eyes glittered. “But as I told your companion, I am in a position to grant you your desire. You wished to meet the Icon of the Clast, and so you shall.” He looked north. “In fact, we have but a few miles to journey.”

  A hint of motion to the south pulled her attention, but she couldn’t bring it into focus. Not Fess, she prayed to Aer. Let him escape.

  But the speaker caught her glance and pointed. “Her apprentice. You know what to do.”

  Then he hoisted her atop her horse and tied it to the others. The last indignity they visited upon her was a foul-smelling gag they tied in place. She couldn’t even scream. Overhead, the sun disappeared behind another cloud. On cue, the memories in her mind she could no longer force back behind their doors clamored for her attention. Memories of a thousand men and women tried to break loose from their doors, but the doors held.

  For now.

  She gripped her horse with her knees as they started forward. The chiccor syrup allowed her some control over her mind, but the splinter from the Darkwater still worked to weaken the other doors. Soon she would be overwhelmed, and no elixir in any amount would afford her relief.

  Her heart fluttered, forced past the limits of age and fatigue, struggling to find its rhythm. How long did she have?

  It was still night when they stopped. Toria clenched her teeth as she was pulled from her horse and pushed to the ground. But she would not face the Icon, whoever he might be, on her knees. She levered herself to her feet, her eyes hoping that Bronwyn, still on her horse, might acknowledge her, but in the dim moonlight, her friend stared at and through Toria, unseeing, her gaze darting to movement that wasn’t there.

  The speaker snapped his fingers, and one of the men lifted Bronwyn from her saddle and led her, stumbling, to stand by Toria’s side.

  “Are you well?” Toria whispered to Bronwyn.

  Bronwyn turned to her, her face barely discernable, but Toria could see that her gaze was filled with countless scenes that only she could see. For a fleeting instant her eyes came into focus, latching on to Toria’s face. “My doors are nothing more than mist now.”

  Toria wanted to weep. Only the wonder of how Bronwyn kept herself upright stopped her. They were undone. She prayed the forms from every order for protection over Pellin and Willet, but doubt and hopelessness ate the words within her mind.

  Though clouds moved in to block what little light the moon provided, the speaker made no move to order a torch lit.

  “How will your Icon find us if he can’t see?” She waited with her eyes closed, listening for some sign to see if the speaker and the men who guarded her were under the influence of a vault.

  “The stars of heaven have seen fit to guide him,” the speaker said. “He has no need for the sun or moon to light his way.”

  Toria again detected no tenor within the speaker’s voice that indicated the presence of a vault in his mind, but it hardly mattered. Whether he was sane or not, she could not escape.

  They waited for perhaps half an hour before she heard a sound like a distant rumble of thunder coming from the direction of the forest. Closer it came, until it resolved into the distinct beat of hooves against the ground.

  When the horses stopped some ten paces from her, she heard the jangle of four different bridles. For an instant she took heart at the small number, but her heart sank almost immediately. Though the Icon had no army at his back, neither did she.

  “Well met, speaker,” a voice came from in front of her. “You’ve brought an unexpected gift to accompany one expected.”

  “Icon,” the speaker said in tones of reverence, “my men and I came upon Bronwyn and her servant along the way. His saddlebag is filled with gold.”

  Laughter filled the darkness. “Well done, speaker. I am pleased. But where are my manners? Speaker, go some twenty paces from us and light a torch. Our guests cannot see.”

  Toria waited until the torch flared, but the Icon’s voice was known to her, as familiar to her ears as any other member of the Vigil. By the flickering yellow light she could make out the hooked nose and jutting chin of the man she’d named ally for decades.

  “Greetings, Jorgen.”

  Toria jerked at the sound of Bronwyn’s voice, then fought to hide her surprise.

  “Well met, Bronwyn,” Jorgen smiled. “Well met, indeed.” He turned, and Toria felt his gaze land on her like a weight. “Well met, little sister.”

  “Hardly,” she spat. “You are banished from the light, Jorgen, doomed to spend the rest of your days scurrying about in darkness. How appropriate.”

  He smiled, his amusement obvious even in the diminished light of the torch. “Fiery as always, little one, but I shall not repay like for like. Come, sisters, there is no need for this discord.”

  “Join or die? Thank you. No. We received the same offer from Laewan just before we killed him. Perhaps, if you run now,
you will escape his fate.”

  Jorgen threw his head back and laughed. “Well struck, little sister. I shall enjoy our time together.”

  “We aren’t going to have time together, Jorgen,” she snapped. “You’re going to kill me or Aer is going to find a way to kill you. I have no intention of accepting your offer.”

  “You misunderstand me, sister.” He stepped closer. “I’m not offering.”

  By intermittent flickers she saw horror behind his eyes, an infinite terror that had seized him and refused to let him go. What hell lived inside his mind?

  “Just as no choice was given to me, none will be given to you.”

  Bronwyn, the part of her that she could still refer to as such, watched her doom play out in front of her, narrated by Jorgen’s threats and Toria’s defiance. Much of it went past her. The swirl of memories she’d been unable to lock away kept her from being fully present, and she watched the torch-lit scene around her in a state of abstraction, as though her imminent death was nothing more than charcoal sketches, scenes from a story she should know but couldn’t quite remember.

  But that same abstraction provided one benefit. The fear of dissolution no longer carried the terror it had. It was as if the innumerable strands of memory had dulled her ability to be afraid. Her end approached. She could feel it in the maelstrom of her thoughts and the labored beating of her heart, driven past its limits by the drug. Yet some indefinable need kept her upright, awaiting the proper moment.

  Something tugged at her memory, some task or instruction that she was supposed to perform, but the whirlwind of colored memories within her mind grew every second. Only the vestiges of the chiccor root syrup allowed her some measure of functionality.

  With a shrug, she gave up, allowed the chiaroscuro of memories to continue their dance. Her body, wracked and ruined by the concentrated stimulant, needed only to serve her one last command. Hopefully, it would become apparent.

  “I’m going to have my guards remove your gloves, ladies, but I warn you, any attempt to use your gift on my men will displease me.” He pointed to Lelwin. “I will visit pain upon her that your shallow experience can hardly conceive.”

  She felt a tug as a dagger sliced through the ropes binding her arms behind her. The sword point at her back kept her upright as the guard hooked a finger into first one glove then the other, stripping them off. Next to her, a woman with dark skin and dark hair flexed her hands. She knew her, hunted for the name, but there were too many swirling in her head and none of them seemed to fit.

  A man stood in front of them, speaking. His name, she could summon. It was interspersed with all the strands of memory swirling around her head. Jorgen. A pinprick of warning floated past her, telling her she should be afraid, but the emotion held no more power over her than the ephemeral memory of his name.

  “Now,” Jorgen smiled, “I will give you what you in your pride thought you desired. I will let you delve me, and the truth will be yours.”

  He glanced back and forth between them. “Come, ladies, where is your courage? Show me the evidence of your certitude. Does not the liturgy say that Aer watches over His servants?” He held his naked hands out before him. “Which of you will put Him to the test?”

  The moment she’d awaited jolted her mind, bringing an instant of clarity to the maelstrom she could no longer control. The chiccor syrup ebbed within her veins, its effects fluttering and dying. She tried to take a step forward, but her legs refused to obey. Tremors, the merest quiver that prefaced her collapse, began in her knees. Jorgen smiled, seeming not to notice.

  “I will.” She forced the words and, thank Aer, managed to raise her hand.

  “Boldly struck, Bronwyn.” Jorgen smiled, stepping toward her. “Let me welcome you to a new company.”

  He reached out to take her hand.

  A tremor went through her arm, and she breathed a silent prayer. Please, Aer. Jorgen didn’t seem to notice the shaking that had taken her legs or her inability to focus. Perhaps he attributed it to fear.

  “No!”

  She heard Toria’s scream, would have offered some last comfort if she could have vocalized it, if it wouldn’t have warned Jorgen of some portion of her intent.

  “Bronwyn, please!”

  Heedless of the sword, Toria threw herself forward, but the man guarding her flicked his wrist and the flat of his blade caught her across the temple, sending her sprawling.

  At the last, Jorgen hesitated, possibly sensing something within her surrender he couldn’t attribute to fear. She could have wept with relief when she felt his hand, surprisingly warm, almost comforting, take hers.

  By the light of the torch, she watched Jorgen’s eyes widen in rage and anger as he picked up the most recent thread of memory within her mind and realized the depth and intention of her deceit. He would have pulled back, but the delve he had forced upon her had taken him as well.

  She might have smiled, but she couldn’t be sure her mouth obeyed her command. With her last conscious breath she released the tenuous hold she’d kept on thousands upon thousands of memories, let them flood through the bond with Jorgen. She watched as the memories caught him, not as a river or even as a flood, but as a wall of multi-hued water, a crashing tidal wave of emotions and memories stored over the course of centuries.

  For a moment, perhaps no more than a heartbeat or two in the real world, Jorgen disappeared, but the crashing cataclysm failed to sweep his consciousness from her thoughts.

  In truth, she had expected no less, though she had hoped for more. Somewhere within her mind she pulled a stray thought, one of the few left to her, a request of Aer. Then it was lost, taken by the fading beat of her heart. Nothing more could be asked of her, but as she stepped through death’s door to eternity, she couldn’t help but wonder. Had she succeeded?

  Chapter 53

  Toria squinted through the pain that made the world jump in her vision, as though the entirety of creation had become nothing more than flames and shadows of a torch. She pushed herself to a sitting position, but none of the guards moved to intercept her, their attention captured by the silent struggle unfolding in front of them.

  Jorgen rocked on his heels, his gaze stretched wide in horror even as Bronwyn’s eyes emptied and she surrendered herself to dissolution and death.

  The hiss of displaced air that began over Toria’s shoulder and flew more quickly than her eye could follow was her only warning. Startled, she blinked. There was something wrong with Jorgen’s face, but she couldn’t decipher it by the flickers of torchlight. A soft moan escaped his lips and he turned, one hand slipping from Bronwyn’s as the husk of her body collapsed, the other groping for the hilt of the dagger protruding from his eye. Then he fell.

  Toria struggled to her feet, searching, but light flared, blinding her. The sounds of blows she couldn’t see and the screams of men around her put her head on a swivel. Each time she turned, she caught only glimpses of chaos in the darkness. Then all was silent.

  The bobbing of a light finally gave her gaze a place to rest. Fess stood holding a torch that licked at the darkness, smears of dried and fresh blood covering his face like a mask. As she stood in shocked silence, he handed her the torch and, in what seemed like minutes, quickly dug a grave.

  He knelt beside Bronwyn’s body and in a perfect, clear tenor recited the antidon for the dead, each word in perfect time and cadence from the liturgy. “‘Forasmuch as it pleases Aer to receive the souls of the departed we therefore commit their ashes to the earth, time without end, knowing . . .’”

  When he finished, he bowed his head. “Good-bye, Mother. You knew how much I loved you. Every time you touched me, it was there for you to see.” He took a deep shuddering breath. “I wish I had told you anyway.”

  Toria stepped behind him, put a hand on his shoulder. “What happened to Balean?”

  He didn’t bother to look at her. Instead, he held out his bare arm. “You need to know what I’ve done.”

  She shook her
head, though the gesture was lost on him. “Later. We can’t stay here. We’re too close to the forest.”

  He nodded and with no more feeling than a farmer harvesting grapes pulled the dagger from Jorgen’s eye, pausing just long enough to wipe it on the dead man’s clothes before he moved to retrieve daggers from the other men. Then he moved to where Lelwin had curled into herself on the ground.

  When he cut her loose from her bonds, she blinked, turning her head first toward Toria, then toward Fess. Her eyes came into focus, and she peered at each of the dead men, searching. She stood, her hand held out in expectation.

  “I need to borrow your knife.”

  Fess handed it to her, then took an immediate step back, unsure. But as soon as the hilt slapped into her palm she turned from him to approach Toria. “I’ll need the torch as well.”

  She moved to one of the dead men, her expression unreadable, then knelt and placed the edge of the dagger beneath his belt. Toria watched as she sawed at the thick leather, the muscles of her arm straining until it gave way.

  Aer help her, she was too tired to fight Lelwin’s grief, too tired to do anything except curl in the grass and mud and escape her waking life for a while, but she fluttered her hand, signaling Fess to follow. “I may need your help. She can’t be allowed to do this.”

  Flickers from Toria’s torch did nothing to warm or soften his expression. “I don’t think those men will mind. I can guess what happened. The Vigil is supposed to be about justice, not mercy. Isn’t this fitting?”

  She brushed his argument away, moving to stop Lelwin before she could remove the man’s breeches. “It’s not the men I care about. If you want to castrate them, you’re more than welcome. But Lelwin cannot be allowed to do this.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  She nodded. Better. “If I allow this, it will take her longer to heal, perhaps too long, and Lelwin will never be part of the Vigil.” She knelt next to Lelwin, covering her apprentice’s hand with her own.