by Martin Davey
All too soon he found himself leaving Market Square, the coloured tents already fastened away for the night, the shouts and cries of the vendors nothing but a distant memory. The quiet enveloped Landros like a shroud as he entered Poet’s Corner; so named because the poet of the gods, Marat Solphin, had been once stayed here on his journey to the holy city of Eshotar after being Chosen by Keeper Jerohim. Feren had been so proud of that. One summer he had regaled them all with the writings of Solphin, with his life story. Apparently Solphin had Dreamed Keeper Jerohim little after his twelfth birthday. The only man ever to be Chosen to be poet of the gods. Feren’s eyes had been huge and round when he told Landros that. The rest of the summer he had walked around with a little book of Solphin’s poetry in his pocket. Every chance he would get, he would whip out the book and read a stanza or two in a worldly voice.
Landros’s throat tightened even more at the memory. He struggled out a cough and jumped down from the saddle. He took his time removing his gloves. After the headlong rush to Katrinamal he now wanted to delay his arrival as long as possible.
These cottages were a little green oasis in the general dirt and clutter of the town. They had always seemed a haven to Landros after lying awake at night listening to the fights and the swearing of the gamblers den. These cottages even had gardens at the front. With flowers. Ferens’s mother had chosen gallowblooms and bitterfalls this year, Landros noticed as he stepped through the gate and up to the door. He took a breath before he knocked. Delaying his arrival one last moment.
No answer.
He swore. After all this dread and fear and anticipation, she wasn’t in? He couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t believe it. He stepped onto the little garden, careful not to tread on the freshly planted flowers as he pressed his face to the window.
No candles had been lit to combat the encroaching darkness. Landros could well remember when he had thought this cottage was like a palace from the stories, full of laughter and light. Now it was like a dungeon in the dark grasp of the Nameless One. There was still just enough light to make the shadows in the cottage long and thin. Every corner was a black hole of emptiness, every surface striped by grasping fingers of darkness. The table was still next to the window, four chairs still placed around it, the sink was still next to the eastern wall, the rocking chair was still facing the west window…and it was moving. Landros’s breath caught in his throat. Feren’s mother was sitting in the darkness. The shock sent a chill oscillating down his spine. More than ever he wanted to turn away and let Dorian deal with the woman. But who knew how the Keepers would take such a dereliction of duty? He turned back and raised a hand, barely touched the door. It swung open with unnatural ease.
Squeak...creak…squeak…creak…
Landros waited a lifetime before he crossed over that threshold.
Squeak…creak…squeak…creak…
He remembered his mother sitting in her own rocking chair talking away to herself, laughing happily.
Squeak…creak…squeak…creak…
And then the conversations with herself had grown more heated. More violent.
Squeak…creak…squeak…creak…
Landros took a breath and stepped into the cottage.
It was cool in the cottage, cooler than outside. It smelled like Feren, the same musky mix of berrywood soap and hair oil. Landros tried not to breathe too deeply.
The chair stopped creaking.
“So he can’t even come to tell me himself?” Feren’s mother…Elin, Landros suddenly remembered her name, didn’t turn as she spoke; she sat straight in her chair facing out of the window. The sky was black, the clouds looked silver against the darkness; a scattering of houses, black as gravestones were silhouetted by the moon.
Landros stopped in mid-step. There was no doubt of who she spoke, but how could she know about Feren? He walked further into the room; the fireplace was cold and dark and empty. Landros couldn’t help noticing the Solphin book on the mantelpiece. He stopped just behind the chair, his hands clasped behind his back. When he spoke, his voice was rough around the tightening in his throat. “I didn’t give him a choice. I told Captain Dorian that I would come to see you.”
“And what,” her words were clipped, every syllable carefully pronounced, “gives you the right to tell Captain Dorian what to do?”
Still she faced the window. Landros could only see one cheek, her pale skin taut, her greying hair viciously scraped back into a bun. He said nothing, silent as a sentinel behind her.
“Ah.” His silence must have spoke volumes to her. There was an almost gleeful triumph in her voice. “The Dream?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “So no longer is it Captain Dorian, eh, Landros?” She shook her head and sighed heavily, the brief spirit seeping out of her almost as soon as it had appeared. “So who was it? Keeper Liotuk, the same as the renowned Captain, the same as when you were chosen for the Watch?”
“Jerohim.” Landros stood almost to attention now, back straight, hands clasped behind his back, eyes to the floor.
“Jerohim? You are honoured, Landros, honoured indeed. Did you tell Feren before, before…” her words failed her.
Landros shook his head but, realizing she couldn’t see, he moved around the chair and fell to one knee at her side. “There wasn’t time; we barely managed to share two words this morning.” The admission made him feel as though he had failed his friend somehow. He bit his lip, bitter tears stinging his eyes.
Elin reached out a hand and rested it on the back of his. Her skin was cold to the touch. “He would have been proud of you, Landros. To have seen you so blessed would have brought joy to his heart. You know Feren, he never…never had the Dream?”
Landros looked up, met her eyes for the first time. He wished he hadn’t; the pain he saw there was enough to turn his stomach to ice. He couldn’t help praying that he would never suffer as this woman did. “But I thought…”
“Yes, you thought. Dorian knew. Let him join the Watch anyway.” Elin removed her hand. “Makes you wonder though, doesn’t it. If they knew it was going to happen. Why Visit somebody who is going to be…gone so soon?”
Landros heard the rising temper in the woman’s voice. The cold hatred barely simmering below the surface. This wouldn’t be a good day for the Keepers to hear of him listening to such talk. Desperation made him reach out and take her hand again. He held it tightly. “I’m sure that wasn’t the way of it. I was there, I saw the whole thing. It was an accident.” Even as he spoke, he remembered the way Torra had cut in so sharply, remembered Dorian’s words about the Town Clerk, he may even have been aware of it before we left this morning. “It was just an accident,” he said.
“And Dorian? Where was he when this accident was occurring?”
Perhaps he had made the right choice after all. The contempt, the hatred in the woman’s voice was plain. The wounds here were old and deep and Feren’s death had torn them open anew. But Landros remembered Dorian crying out his warning, running to the accident, falling to his knees, barely blinking as the horse’s hoof had battered him in the ribs. There was a man who didn’t deserve such scorn. He was the only one who didn’t. “He did everything her could.” Something in his voice must have reassured the woman, because she only nodded before looking out of the window once more.
“Everything he could,” she repeated quietly to herself.
But something bothered Landros. Nagged at him like a dull hum on the edge of hearing. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to know. “How…” he coughed, tried again. “How did you know?”
For the first time, Elin looked at him. Truly looked at him; and there was something in her eyes Landros could almost believe was pity. “If you ask that question, then you cannot know the bond between mother and son.”
Landros thought of his own mother, talking and arguing with herself. Thought of the blood running down her chin as she chewed on her own tongue. “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose I do.”
The silence smothered the
room as the shadows deepened and darkened. Landros glanced around: memories, everywhere were memories. His eyes alighted on the Solphin book on the mantelpiece. For lack of anything else to say, he stood stiffly and retrieved the book. A slim volume, little larger than his hand and bound in green with spidery gold lettering difficult to read in the light. It was worn and tattered, every page well thumbed. Landros thought Feren had only taken a passing interest in the poet for those few weeks that summer. He tilted the book to the scarce light still filtering through the window; let it fall at a random page:
They came from the skies
With no mercy or disguise
With their hearts set out in flame
And all the people fell down and prayed
Even as he read the words in that cold, dark room Landros could hear Feren reading the words on a sun-brightened hill with the warm breeze from the end of the world ruffling his hair. He let the book fall closed as though it burned to touch.
“You should keep that. He would have liked you to have it.”
“He would?” Landros looked at the little book in his hand. His heart felt heavy.
“He would. He knew, Landros. He knew you would be good in the eyes of the Five.”
Almost as soon as she finished speaking she began rocking once more.
Squeak…creak….squeak…creak…
It wasn’t long before Landros fled out onto the teeming streets; the sounds of the chair chasing him all the way back to his lodgings, drowning out the bawdy offers of the whores, the challenges of the drunks, the greetings of friends.
Landros could believe he didn’t draw breath until he slammed the door closed behind him. No sign of Pascal, he was probably seeking solace for his woes in the arms of that whore of his. He thought of Elian with her short dark hair curling under her ears, of her large dark eyes and pale cheeks. He could go and see her, but it was already late and she would have a client by now, maybe even have someone now, someone large and fat and stinking pawing at her small white breasts.
He closed his eyes against the thought and fell back onto the cot, still fully clothed, and flicked through the book. He hadn’t noticed the little scribblings along the margins. The reminder of Feren annoyed him. He needed release, needed a moment where he could lay down and close his eyes and not have these constant reminders thrown in his face at every moment. He needed to absorb what had happened; to have the chance to wrap his mind around the fact that Feren was dead. He closed his eyes, draped an arm across his face and tried to steady his breathing.
Memories. Memories of a day the like of which he had never known. Memories of waking in sweat-soaked sheets. Memories of trying to find the courage to tell Dorian about the Dream. Memories of the race. Memories, and more memories all twisting through his mind, each one more confused and random than the last.
And over it all loomed a mask as red as a Watchman’s coat and with a mouth which didn’t move when the creature spoke.
The knocking was loud and impatient. Landros jumped, cursed as he almost fell to the floor.
More knocking. He ran a hand through his hair, thick and knotted; it badly needed a wash.
“Yes! I’m coming!” he shouted.
It was pitch black in the small room. He swore as he stubbed a toe on the dresser. Probably Pascal forgotten his key. He rooted through the drawer for his own key. Or Dorian. Didn’t he say he would be round later?
More knocking. Even louder this time.
Landros found the key wrapped in a sock. “I’m coming!” He rattled the key in the lock, swung the door open. “Can’t you just..." And then he fell backwards, almost falling over a hastily discarded boot, his back jarring painfully against the frame of the cot.
There was no expression on Feren’s white, white face as Landros stared up at him. Blood, thick and red, oozed from the jagged hole and trailed around his ear and down his neck.
Landros would have screamed if he had any breath left in his body.
Chapter 3
The lament of the dead was not an unfamiliar song on the beaches along the edge of the world. Even families from inland towns as far away as Miotan or Harragstown sometimes brought their dead to these stretches of bone white sand in the belief it would ease the passing to Insitur, the realm of the Keepers.
Not an unfamiliar song in these parts, but this was the first time Ysora had ever had to sing the lament. And she sang it for her husband, now dressed in the shroud of passing and lying in state on the funeral pyre.
The breeze was warm, wrapping her skirts about her legs as she sang the funeral dirge, her voice soaring and swirling, mingling with the winds and joining them as they swept and sailed across the green hills and fields. The beauty of it was almost enough to bring her to tears as she sang the final verse of the lament, reaching deep into her lungs, her hands clasped with the effort of hitting the final notes. Even then she realized that it was the beauty of the song that made her heart ache and not the death of her husband.
“It is done,” Gerard intoned. “We are born to the world by the grace of the Keepers and we are born anew once we are deemed worthy of the favour of the Five.” The last of his words were barely uttered before the coughing fit took him as the smoke from the torch blew into his face. “Ysora?” he asked once he had regained some semblance of dignity.
The moment she had dreaded. Kissing the cold corpse of her husband. Before she had found Rhodry unmoving on the kitchen floor, Ysora had never seen a dead body, let alone be asked to kiss one. It had been bad enough kissing the brute when he was alive.
Ysora took a breath, nodded to Gerard, and then delayed the moment some more by adjusting her skirts. There was a murmur of complaint from behind her; probably Citrine—that girl would be in a hurry at her own funeral.
The sand was warm between her toes as she walked. More than once she stepped on a sharp pebble; her winces and sharp intakes of breath probably ruining her dignified poise somewhat. Gerard had joined Citrine and Rhodry’s two sisters to watch her perform the last rites of the Passage. Five people altogether. A small number to celebrate a life. A small number to mourn a passing. Just looking at them depressed Ysora.
Five wasn’t an uncommon number for a funeral in this part of the world where one could walk for a day and see no more than a single house lost and alone as it faced the end of the world. Not a large number, not a small number. But surely there was more to life than this? Living a small, cruel life and then being mourned by a couple of sisters and a wife that loathed the sight of you even in death?
“Ysora?”
Oh yes. The kiss. Burn the body and hurry home to have a sandwich and a mug of warm wine. Such an end to a life. Ysora could almost feel sympathy for her husband. She stood by the funeral pyre, the winds still singing their mournful song. The shroud fluttered under the caress of the breeze and she could see Rhodry’s fat hand, pale as rotten fish. Ysora raised her eyes to look at her four fellow mourners. “He was my husband,” she said. She had tried not to think about what she would say at this moment. She had presumed the words would come to her when she needed them. She had been wrong. The shroud fluttered again; she could see a flabby leg, the thick hairs black against the white flesh. “He…he loved to fish. To see him captaining his boat was to see a man in his element, at peace with the world. The first time I saw him, he was standing proud in his fishing boat. I rarely saw him happier.”
She was waffling; already running out of kind words for a man who was a thief and a bully and a slob. She paused for a moment; looked from one mourner to the next. As if on cue, Cynara stifled a loud sob. Ysora ignored her sister-in-law, a horrible woman as lean and cold as Rhodry was fat and lascivious.
“He was my husband,” she began again. The sooner they burnt the corpse the better. “Four short years we were married. We were blessed with many things, and never let it be said that I was ever forced to spend a night without a roof over my head.” Ysora swallowed. It hurt her throat. She remembered the tiny fishing hut shaking a
s the door swung open in the darkness; Rhodry filling the doorway stinking of drink, already fumbling with his belt as he shouted and swore at her, rain falling like a hundred tears down the pane of the only window.
“The Keepers never saw fit to Visit Rhodry, but I know and they know how he served them in life as he will serve them in death.” Ysora bowed her head. No tears. No more tears would she shed because of Rhodry. Her one wish throughout the past four years was that the Keepers would see what her husband was doing and bring their divine judgement crashing down upon his head. Perhaps they already had and delivered their ultimate judgement in leaving him dead on the kitchen floor.
A gentle hand rested on her elbow. Despite herself, Ysora flinched away from the touch.
“Ysora?”
Ysora nodded, forced a smile for Gerard. “It is done,” she said. “May Keeper Jerohim speed his soul to Insitur.” She leaned forward; found at the last moment that she couldn’t lift the shroud to touch her lips to that cold, putrid flesh. She kissed the air inches above the shroud and tried to avoid his sisters’ eyes as she straightened. Nobody saw fit to complain; there were sandwiches waiting to be eaten and a strengthening breeze from which to shelter.
The torch wavered in the wind as Gerard held it to the pyre and with a great whoomp, the flames took hold and streaked to the sky. The heat was instant, forcing Ysora to step away, but still her eyes never left that shroud. Even now she expected a meaty hand to rip that silver-grey sheet away; expected Rhodry to clamber out from those wind-whipped flames, and come for her, his hands outstretched and his eyes filled with that same ravenous hunger she knew so well.
But he didn’t. The flames swept and danced and crackled and spat; the wood burned and blackened; the shroud curled and melted. And in the middle of it all, Ysora glimpsed soft, pudgy white flesh. She remembered that same doughy flesh writhing and pumping and sweating on top of her, and her heart swelled with exaltation. Her eyes ached with the smoke as she looked into the flames, afraid to blink lest she lose sight of her burning husband, and she thought of the famous poem by Solphin, “with their hearts set out in flame”
