Trail of Pyres

by L. James Rice

Fesele interrupted Inslok. “And I’m sure you mean them. I am not of a position to judge on your first request, but after consideration, I will tell you what little I know of the Shadows of Man.”

  Inslok’s head rotated a quarter, maybe surprised. “Peace with the Hidreng is a delicate issue, achievable, but what do you offer the Mother Wood in exchange?”

  “I…” What the Twelve Hells could he offer these people? Was Inslok fishing, or was there something specific? “I will have to consider this.”

  Inslok’s expression remained unflinching. “Understood.” He nodded to Fesele.

  “The Shadows of Man were… for lack of a better term, bred by the Dontopuor in the Age of God Wars, demons only able to take a human host. Surviving stories extol their effectiveness in battle.”

  No horseshit. “I can attest to this much. What weaknesses do they have?”

  “Water, as you know, and they are vulnerable to the Elements. You’ve two swords, I hear, which prove capable of slaying them. This is no coincidence. Our histories tell of the followers of Sol crafting many weapons to combat the scourge.”

  “A Coerkin now carries a Latcu blade, it too can kill them.”

  “As I said, not a surprise. Your people were the target of the Dontopuor. But since the Age of God Wars, weapons such as these are far more rare.”

  He caught a flicker of something in her cheek, it could be nothing. “Your people have such weapons?”

  “A small collection, not what a people would need to reclaim their home. The better place to seek such weapons would be in surviving artifacts inherited from generations past. And too, do not assume a blade of Latcu will kill them.”

  Godsdamnit, anything would help. “Other weaknesses?”

  “None the histories speak of, except in those times, their Celestial Gates could be closed.”

  Solineus fumed but kept his face straight as he could. He doubted he fooled these people. “How?”

  Her cheek didn’t twitch this time. “Therein lies the mystery, nobody knows. I’ve studied several historical tomes which speak of the event, but never one which describes it. These gates have not existed in over five hundred years.”

  “With the centuries of knowledge your people have… something.” The twitch returned to her cheek, once, just a flash. “I beg it.”

  “The Oxeum Codex might have held answers but its owner is dead, and its location is unknown.”

  He clutched his forehead and muttered in Silone, “Horse shittin’ me.”

  Fesele too spoke in Silone. “The man died in the Vale of Resting Winds summoning a Celestial Gate, we believe this knowledge came from the Codex. If we find it, we will share any knowledge we glean from its pages. Pertaining to this question.”

  He nodded, it was something. “This Mother of Shadow, can she get through?”

  “The power of a Celestial Gate is strongest on creation. If this queen could force her way into our world, she would have. She needs help.”

  “And if she did?”

  For the first time the Chancellor hesitated. “It would be a war the world has not seen in over a millennium. For your preventing that war, the Father of Ages is grateful, it is why we answer your questions now.”

  A chill swept his spine: If the Edan feared the Mother of Shadow, what did that mean for mortal men? “And I appreciate your generosity. There is nothing more?”

  “With sorrow, no.”

  Solineus exhaled. Whatever this Codex was, they needed it. But the first question was more pressing. “I’ve been many candles without rest. Might have a night to sleep, and to speak with Lelishen, see if I can think of a suitable offer for the Father of Ages?”

  Inslok nodded once. “That is agreeable. We will meet here again when the sun zeniths on the morrow.”

  Solineus bowed like a tree about to snap in the wind. “My thanks to you all.”

  Lelishen touched his shoulder and led him from the hall. “You walked onto a couple of skinny branches, but you did well.”

  He snorted. “Any idea what they want?”

  Her head shook. “You’ve an offer in mind?

  “Horseshittin’ hells, no. But we need something.” And he had less than a day to discover what.

  18

  The Mocking Fish

  Mortal questions for the immortal, immemorial, ever lasting but not eternal. Who are you? Why are you here? Every breath to breathe, breed, haste and waste, asking the self same questions of self. Who am I? Why am I here? Two of a thousand questions answered to dissatisfaction, and I’ve a billion more blinks than most.

  - Tomes of the Touched

  Kinesee didn’t know what happened after the dark lady killed them folks, but it wasn’t good. They feared for her life, proven by the skulking shadow of her guard, Maro, an aging warrior who served Lady Ravinrin, but they were just as concerned about the folks grouping in the middle of the night and disappearing north, some leaving tents and supplies behind in their haste.

  Lady Ravinrin sheltered her from dark news, and even Alu hesitated to part with rumors she’d picked up from her sparring partner, Daksin Ravinrin. All Kinesee pieced together was that their welcome might be over any moment, but way she figured it, that’d been true for a while. She might still be a child, a young lady if you listen to Lady Tedeu, but she wasn’t all fool.

  Kinesee rolled from her cot, now in the Ravinrin’s main tent, the morning after the murderes to find the walls collapsing. Her heart jumped, eyes peeled wide; that durned goat had done something terrible. “Tengkur!”

  “Maro took that goat of yours to the ship a candle ago. We’re pulling up stakes.” Alu sat on a chair missing its table, eating a biscuit.

  “They didn’t wake me?”

  “They told me to, this was more fun.”

  Kinesee swung her legs from the cot dressed in yesterday’s clothes. Leaving wasn’t a surprise, Ravinrin stores had been slipping to the ship for the past couple days. “Where’re we headed? And don’t say you don’t know. The way Daksin smooches up to you, you know everything he does.” She puckered her lips at her sister and earned a glare.

  “I get my information by hitting him with a stick.” She bit her biscuit and chewed with a grin. “He ain’t bad looking.”

  Kinesee groaned. “Where’re we going?”

  “New Fost.”

  Kinesee’d heard of the place, a haughty name for what she assumed was just another scattering of tents. “On the Bloody Plains.”

  “Blooded Plains.”

  “Sounds creepy either way.”

  “Well it ain’t.”

  “As if you know.”

  Maro’s mustached face burst through the flap, his voice deep and in command. “Good, you’ve wakened. Lady Ravinrin wants you girls aboard the Silver Lady soon as can be.”

  The girls emitted matching groans, but both got to their feet without argument. Maro was a bull of a man, covered in jack and mail, with a sword at his side and a shield on his back: scary. Nice as could be, but still scary. But Kinesee figured it was his holding Grampu’s sword hostage that kept her sis from mouthing off or dragging her feet.

  They stepped outside to find themselves part of a growing group. Daksin Ravinrin arrived flickers after their eyes adjusted to the sun, all smiles for the Mikjehemlut girls. He was eighteen and pert near six feet tall. He kept his face shaved, after Alu noted she wasn’t fond of beards on young men, and thick black hair fell to his shoulders, framing bright blue eyes. A sweet boy, and Kinesee understood why Alu enjoyed hitting him with a waster.

  Daksin wormed his way through his kin to stand beside Alu. “How are my favorite girls this morning?” Yeah, both of them, but his eyes only lit on Alu.

  Kinesee stepped between them and batted her eyes. “I’m just beautiful.” She stumbled from Alu’s shove and turned with her tongue stuck out. A hand clamped her shoulder, and she turned, eyes trailing up to face the Lady Ravinrin.

  “Is this the behavior of ladies?”

  They replied in uniso
n: “No m’lady.”

  “No indeed. You girls have your things gathered?”

  They didn’t own much. They were ready to leave every day. “Yes, m’lady.”

  Alu said, “So long as Maro hasn’t lost my sword.” She eyeballed the man with a grin.

  “I ain’t so foolish as to lose your greatpa’s sword, I already got a wife, and one woman gripin’ at me every day is enough.”

  The Lady spoke to all her gathered kin. “We sail soon as we’re able. Foremost, we get ourselves onboard. We lost too many getting here to lose more now.” Mumbles of agreement and prayers echoed around her.

  Leto Ravinrin, Daksin’s younger brother, offered Kinesee his arm. “Walk with me, m’lady?”

  Kinesee yanked her arm without being touched. Sneered. “I don’t like boys.”

  “I’m sixteen, a man grown.”

  Lady Ravinrin pointed a crooked finger his way. “A man by age, but not by manners. Until she is fourteen, you walk by a lady’s side, unless with the father’s or mother’s permission.”

  “Yes, grandma.”

  “You are welcome to walk beside me, I suppose.”

  “Thank you, m’lady.”

  “And call me Kinesee.”

  The boy smiled, and Alu leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Now you can stop flirting with Daksin.”

  Kinesee gasped. “I never! And never!” She looked at Leto sideways, a gangly boy who may or may not grow into a handsome man. “Father wouldn’t like you.” She stopped cold, realizing she’d meant Solineus, rather than her real papa. In that moment, she decided that Solineus was father, but Iku was and would forever be her papa. Anything more would confuse her.

  They walked then, a solemn march to the sea. Adults muttered between themselves, voices soft, some serious, some humored, but she paid them no mind. She was more concerned with Alu going soft in the head for a boy. Arm and arm, whispering. She punched him in the shoulder and he laughed.

  Papa would not approve, no how. A foolish notion. Papa would approve, no two questions about it. Daksin was clanblood, a warrior, a young man who would protect both daughters even if he only loved one. “Papa would be right.”

  Leto said, “Excuse me?”

  Kinesee’s face twisted, she didn’t mean to speak aloud. “Nothing.” Right or not, Kinesee didn’t like it. Alu was her sister, every bit of kin who remained alive. Losing her to even the most gracious boy irked her.

  “I heard your father is a great warrior.”

  “He is.” She took several strides during his silence and cut off whatever his next words would’ve been. “I’m fine with quiet, you needn’t yammer all the time.”

  He exhaled. As if relieved. This notion irked her more than the boy trying to talk to her. Had the Lady Ravinrin pressured him to be kind to her? Bad enough she had Maro as a shadow. She glanced at the boy, picking out any feature she decided not to like. He’s got a turtle’s nose.

  They reached the ship in silence, with Kinesee torn between these contradicting aggravations. By the time they boarded she scowled at Leto, and would scowl no matter whether he stitched his lips shut or blathered. She wandered to the rail, ignored by every adult except her shadow, and hoping the stork legged Ravinrin would leave her alone. He didn’t. He leaned on the rail beside her, silent.

  She couldn’t take it any more. “You ain’t gonna say anything?”

  “You told me not to.”

  He bore a dead-fish stare, and she couldn’t decide if he mocked her.

  “You can say three words, now and again.” Leto nodded but stood mum. She glared. “Well?”

  “Im working on the best three words.”

  Now she knew he mocked her. Maybe this Ravinrin wasn’t so bad after all.

  19

  Sundering the People

  See and saw, stuck in your craw,

  the pig in a poke lets the cat out of the bag.

  The Hag!

  Pray, what do you say today to your prey?

  Run now free so I may eat you?

  No, too lazy to earn your feast,

  a Scavenger taking false pride in the kill,

  chewing on the rotting carcass of a once deadly beast who fell of its own accord.

  –Tomes of the Touched

  The first time Meliu put a copy of the Sundering scroll in his hands it brought an unease as if it were the original. She taught him the sounds of the words and their translation, and they intimidated him.

  After studying for three days and reading the scroll a hundredth time, it felt like gibberish. He cast it on the table next to the real thing and huffed.

  “How the Twelve Hells can these words do anything? Just words, they don’t even make so much sense.” The time to read the real scroll drew near, and the tension rose as bile in his throat.

  Meliu opened her eyes, yawned. Sleep was more precious than gold these past several days. “Words are words, just sounds.”

  “That’s the case we’ve nothing to worry about.” He tromped his boots to the tent floor and strode to a bottle of whiskey Polus left behind. “Drink?”

  “I prefer to keep my head, today anyhow.”

  Ivin poured four fingers in a glass and plopped back in his chair with a salute. “Same destination, different route.” The whiskey burned his throat with hints of sweet maple. Smooth. A far cry from cousin Artus’ concoction on the Watch. He grimaced and shook his head of those memories, he couldn’t let Eliles and those left behind and lost bring him down today.

  “The scroll is the power, the written word, the energies are in the gemstone ink. We don’t understand its nuances, but the power is there, and it’s triggered by, perhaps every word, perhaps just certain words.”

  And he needed to read it in a single breath, no pauses. She’d hammered that into him since the first day. No simple task by itself, but they couldn’t risk the Hidreng noting subterfuge. “It’d be damned handy if we understood the thing.”

  “Agreed. The Church lost the art of the lapidary and making scrolls, outside of a few cherished tomes. Even during the Age of Warlords, these guarded secrets became mysteries. We don’t even understand wards, or they might’ve held the Shadows at the shrine.”

  It was easy sometimes to forget the past; the carnage at the Shrine of Burdenis felt ages in the past, even if it was closer to a month. Whenever time traveling, he always went straight to the Watch and Eliles’ tower of fire, or the death of his father. Everything else was a wild blur.

  He sipped his whiskey, a trickle of heat on his tongue. “It’s funny, all this time fretting this scroll, when I sit alone I wonder if my father would be ashamed of me.”

  She squirmed in her seat.”How so?”

  Ivin grinned at the memory of Kotin and his bellicose manner. “He’d thunder straight on up there and read the scroll like it was nothing.”

  “That so?”

  Ivin nodded, skipping a sip and going for a swallow. “No fear.”

  “Then you are the wiser Coerkin.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll be by your side, you read it, it’s over, we move on.”

  “And you march up there just as Kotin would.”

  She laughed. “I’m so scared I could shit a ghost.” She leaned in, eyes intense. “If that scroll triggers, if I’m Sundered from the pantheon, my prayers won’t mean no more than a dying sinner begging forgiveness. My life’s study gone, months, years to return.”

  He swirled his drink. “I don’t want you with me when I read the damned thing.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You throwin’ horseshit?”

  “No. If the scroll works—”

  “It won’t. I didn’t even teach you how to pronounce all the words right.”

  “If. You need to be far away. Safe. There’s no reason for you to be anywhere close.”

  She stood and poured herself a whiskey, stared at him. “My father was a cook and a shit poor one at that. And I ain’t meaning just songs, he’d half poison you with his finest dish. I wonde
r what it’d be like to care if my father were ashamed of me.”

  “I’m sure he’d be proud of you.”

  “For a long time, I figured in a just world he’d be dead and buried. Now, I dream of finding him dead and sobbing, or joyful tears finding him alive.”

  “You care—”

  “No. I don’t. Not when I’m awake. I hope they ate his shittin’ eyes from his head.”

  Ivin blinked, his face scrunched, and he drained his drink. He hadn’t imagined a darkness like this inside her. He wondered what a man could do to turn his own blood so against him. Then, he decided he didn’t need to know. “What’s all this to do with anything?”

  She smiled, a beautiful smile betraying nothing of the hate in her last words. “Hells if I know, we were talking about fathers, weren’t we?” She refilled both their glasses.

  “We were talking about keeping you safe.”

  Her eyes drooped to the amber liquor. “Then not only are you wiser than your pa, you’re kinder than mine.” With a deep breath she quaffed her whiskey, set the glass on the table with a gentle tap, and headed for the tent’s flap. “I’ll see you after.”

  “Meliu…”

  The flap fluttered closed behind her.

  Polus ducked through the entrance. “What the hells is her problem?”

  “Just leavin’ before you caught her drinking your whiskey.”

  “She ain’t the only one, looks like. Good I’ve got cases of the stuff. Father always taught us to wagon the most important stuff first.”

  Ivin stood, sat back down with a grunt. “We got many folks gathering yet?”

  “More’n you might think. People seem right eager to hear the Hero of Istinjoln speak.” Polus grabbed the bottle and drank straight from its lips with a pucker. “This bottle’s a sweeter kiss than any woman I’ve ever known.” He offered Ivin the bottle.

  “Not after you had your tongue down her throat.”

  Polus stuffed the cork into the bottle’s neck, but half the bung bounced across the floor. He held his whiskey high, nubs of cork sticking from the neck. “Mmm, now that there’s the shits.”