Trail of Pyres

by L. James Rice

  The men hadn’t spoken a word in their defense. They fear the bastard… or loyalists in his crew. Ivin’s eye pinned on Gimin with that thought. The Thonian bastard was more to Loduma than a hand.

  Loduma turned to the crew. “Do els mebarin. Sovu lil, dua mede.” He planted the tip of his sword to the deck and leaned.

  Ivin glanced to Nostrolum, and the cat’s whiskers rose on the right side of his face, a gesture Ivin equated to a shoulder shrug.

  A man and woman stepped from the crew, muttered words to Loduma, and stepped straight into the river.

  Ivin mused aloud: “The first woman was diseased. The others were close to her?” It made a brutal sense, mitigating the risk of the disease’s spread. Ivin supposed some captains would’ve killed those people. So too would Loduma, if their blood on his deck didn’t risk disease. No, the Ar-Bdein was ruthless in his quest to survive, and a thinking man.

  Loduma sheathed his blade and cast a cold glare over the remaining crew. “Eimonu sed truar. Sovu, dua mede.” With those hard words he turned and strode to the cabin where they’d taken Meliu, disappearing into its dark hole.

  Meliu sat with her knees to her chest, her wrists raw from straining against her bindings, and rueing how the scents of her perfumes had faded, how her nose detected a whiff of herself. Escape was a dream in the night, dashed when awakened every candle with a mug of Cloud Water forced down her throat. Her own arrogance had gotten her caught, a fact which burned nerves raw.

  The door slipped open with a whisper across the floor and closed with a gentle clack which left Loduma staring at the ceiling. His face was its usual cold brood, but for his eyes bearing an extra squint. He wandered to the Thonian Whiskey and turned the tap to fill a glass. “A woman on board was diseased. She served me well the past three years.”

  Meliu couldn’t feel pity with her ankles and wrists cinched. “She’s dead?”

  “Depends on how well she swims.” He sat on a stool across from her, leaned until his elbows rested on his knees. “You’ve seen this disease before, on your island.”

  She grinned. “A wrong-headed assumption. No, I haven’t.”

  “A wicked coincidence, a disease striking the city such a short time after your people arrive.”

  “Just as likely a trader from Thon, or a Luxun.”

  “No. No. Maybe you haven’t seen this affliction, but you’ve heard of it.”

  She paused. Too long. It made it more difficult to lie. “Maybe, I don’t know.”

  “Tell me of this maybe.”

  “A pestilence struck the clans in the three hundred and thirtieth year of Remembered Time, they called it Rot. They say it started ordinary enough, a cough, aches and pains, then boils. Shittin’ rivers, vomiting, swollen tongue… death.”

  “Cured by your people?”

  She shook her head. “Folks who showed symptoms, it took them days to die, or they killed ‘emselves. Simple. It spread like oil across water for a year and a half, killed all it could, and…” She shrugged. Nobody knew how the Rot arrived, nor how it went away.

  “Herbs, prayers?”

  “Far as I learned, if you caught the Rot, you died. No exceptions. Folks lanced and didn’t lance boils, leeches, prayers, a thousand herbal remedies, but everyone’s tongue swelled and everyone died.”

  He cocked his head and drank, rubbed his lips of the whiskey’s drips. “And those who lived, just lived. Never coughed, nothing.”

  “It was nigh on two centuries ago, I wasn’t there.”

  His eyes latched onto hers, and she held the gaze. Blinking slow. “You know something.”

  “If I tell you, will you let us go?”

  Loduma smiled and puffed two breaths through his nose. “No.”

  Meliu leaned her head back, resting on the wall. “The Rot likely has you already.”

  The man’s gaze was cold as iron in the winter. “How’s it spread?”

  “No word in our lore. There’s only one way I know to survive, and that’s to not to get the disease. If the stories are true, there’s a way.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Either tell me, or I kill the Choerkin.”

  “That’s a given either way. But, honestly, no matter what you offered, I wouldn’t trust you. Just like you won’t trust me if I tell you.” She smiled. “Have you a priest aboard?”

  “No.”

  “In that case, I’ll share, since it won’t do you a flicker of good. You need healing prayers before you take ill. It gives the body the strength to fight the battle before its lost. Lord priests, the high and mighty, the healers themselves, this is how they survived.”

  He grinned, then laughed, then downed his whiskey before laughing more. “And I suppose if I let you pray, you’ll keep me alive.”

  That had been her hope, but it felt a ridiculous fantasy after hearing it uttered aloud. “No, I’d turn your mind to shit with fear and leave you in a corner eating bugs… if you managed to live at all.”

  He stood to pour another whiskey. “Now those are words I believe. I saw what you did to one of those men at the tower. Whatever witchery you possess… the Thonians will wrest from you even as they take your blood and virginity.”

  “Someone will slip up. Sometime. I’ll pray, I’ll escape, and I’ll come for you first.”

  “I don’t make mistakes.”

  “Says the last of the Ar-Bdein. You already made your mistake by betraying me.” She prayed; what beautiful timing it would’ve been, but no power came. She needed time. If she kept him talking, distracted him he might forget the Cloud Water long enough. “So tell me, how did you become the last of a failed dynasty?”

  He chuckled. “You flatter my family. How I survived is a long and troubling story. Perhaps later, after more whiskey I will share some part.” He glanced at the sandglass he used to time her Cloud Water. A quarter candle or thereabouts remained. He emptied his glass and plopped it on his desk. “I’ll return shortly with food and drink.”

  When he turned the latch of the door, she said, “I look forward to your dying with a black tongue.”

  “And I hope to disappoint you.”

  He exited, and she stewed. Meliu’d spent candles staring at the sandglass, if she could’ve reached it to alter its sands… but Loduma kept it on a high shelf for a Choerkin to reach, let alone her. How could she buy time?

  She rose to her feet… more like her foot. Her ankles were bound strangulation tight, pulling her right foot a couple fingers higher than the left. It was hard as the hells to keep her balance, but she needed to try something. She hopped once and wobbled. “Dancing Bastards… they tie a quality knot.” I was smart enough to escape a prison tower… there’s gotta be something to cut these ropes. But Loduma wasn’t stupid, on this he didn’t lie. She sighed and glanced to the window. If her hands and feet were free, she’d slip right through that damned thing and splash straight into the river. And drown. But Ar-Bdein didn’t know this, he’d assume she slipped her bonds.

  A second hop built her confidence, and she hopped twice more, and with the third fell hard to the floor. She glanced to the sandglass, her time trickling away. Her body wriggled, and she snaked her way to a chair near the window and pushed herself up the wall to stand again. Her wrists and ankles ached as she hopped and pushed on the chair, collapsing over its back twice, but she got it beneath the paned glass.

  Several breaths of rest later she worked herself to standing on the chair, unhooked the window’s latch with her teeth and shoved it with her forehead. A cool, damp breeze struck her, and she smiled. The smile faded when looked back to the floor. Getting down from here wouldn’t be pretty. She hopped and crashed to the floor, rolling the best she could to save pain and noise and wriggled beneath the desk quick as she could, in case someone heard.

  No one came, and she peered across the floor, seeking her final destination. There were several chests; if empty, they’d hide her well enough, but they were obvious. She needed the smallest place possible, a place a big man would
never think to look.

  An ornate wardrobe stood against the wall, seven feet tall, and with a mirrored door big enough to ride a pony through. But it stood on short legs with hawk-clawed feet. The front was built to within fingers of the floor, but the sides were open beneath; sweeping space, room for a child or small dog to hide like when her father’d been in a rage. She wriggled until facing the gap. As a youngster she would’ve fit easy, now she wasn’t so sure.

  Her head banged as she shoved, but with a twist the crown of her skull fit, until her ear caught.

  “Shits.” They’d catch her for sure if she left her ear bleeding on the floor. She pushed hard but slow, the skin dragging with a rush in her eardrum. The tip bent and ground on the rough underside until she wanted to scream, but in a flicker she slipped beneath. She flipped to her back, but couldn’t turn herself nose up. She exhaled to make herself skinny and thanked the gods for the tiny breasts she’d cursed so many times before.

  She was under the wardrobe to her thighs when muffled voices came from outside. She squirmed, banging her knees, stifling curses until she curled her legs and feet deep enough into the shadows she figured herself impossible to see without light.

  The door opened. Feet scuffled, then shouts. The voice was Gimin’s, she figured, and in moments Loduma’s tones joined him.

  “Impossible.” At least four sets of feet scrambled around the room, chests opening and closing, and the door of her wardrobe opened. The searcher slammed the wardrobe’s contents with a rattle and crash, and the door slammed closed.

  Gimin’s voice came from near the window, speaking Hidreng. “A tiny girl, she might’ve fit.”

  Loduma roared and glass broke; she heard shards skitter close to her shadows. “How!”

  “You said yourself, a witch.”

  She could hear the Ar-Bdein fume, his breaths ragged. But he calmed. “She wouldn’t leave him. You two, check the sides of the boat. The rails, look for a patch of wet where she might’ve climbed back aboard.” Feet clambered from the room.

  “The witch escaped. We still have the Choerkin, he is useful.”

  “You have the Choerkin, I lost more favor than gold.” His feet paced the room, coming within a pace of where she hid. “She’ll be back. The Bishop was wrong about the Choerkin boy, the witch didn’t travel this far for a man who knows nothing, means nothing. She’ll be back.”

  Gimin’s chuckle was more bass than even his voice. “I recall men who beat their own brains from their head, and others drooling, incapable of a stringing two words together. You might pray you are wrong.”

  The whiskey tap creaked and poured. “No. She needs him. I need her. If she’s made for shore… we’ll see her in Gomjon.”

  “A witch could cling to the hull.”

  “You think our girl is a barnacle?” The laugh was bleak. “What do I know? You might be right. But when she arrives, we must be ready.”

  “The cargo needs checked.”

  “Yes. And everybody keeps their eyes on the Choerkin.”

  Their feet and voices disappeared, and muffled shouts came from outdoors.

  Meliu breathed easier, closed her eyes, relaxed as best she could pinned beneath a piece of furniture. Safe for a moment, it was only then that her memories invaded; a small girl huddling beneath a plain and crooked pine dresser as her parents screamed at one another. She pursed her lips and squinted her eyes to kill the tears of memory. If a fight came now, the end would be worse than her mother lying on the floor with a bloodied lip.

  She meditated in silent prayer, easing her worries and erasing the past, and time faded into a blur. Loduma’s feet came and went. Gimin’s feet came and went. Others she didn’t know. It could’ve been a candle later, it could’ve been three, it didn’t matter: Power came. And she smiled. The ropes binding her wrists grew warm, then hot enough to burn her skin, but they snapped. The bindings on her ankles followed, and blood flowed in painful tingles through her fingers and toes.

  Soon Light would flow. And Dark.

  But only when the timing was perfect.

  39

  Racing to Sails

  Fire boils, fire cooks, fire warms, fire warns,

  there is life in fire.

  Fire burns, fire turns, and fire unlearns the wisdom

  founded in living… to ash.

  To Death. To Ends. Fire may mend.

  Fire in creation. Fire in cremation.

  Smoke on the Water, Flames in the Heavens

  –Tomes of the Touched

  They departed Istinjoln by midday and arrived at Choerkin Fost in the evening the next day, with the Tundra Wolves taking a half-dozen breaks from tugging the sleds. The world was deep gray and overcast, otherwise Solineus imagined he might see the tower of flame from the highest hill north of the castle.

  He noted two key troubles as he climbed from the sled. First, there wasn’t a ship flying a Luxun banner in the bay, so far as his eye could see. Second, the malformed shapes of Taken swarmed the castle and city.

  Inslok strolled to his side, pointing to the horseshoe of stones guarding the harbor. “When the Luxuns arrive, we’ll walk the wavebreaker out and they’ll row in to get us.”

  Solineus nodded. “It’ll be a fight.”

  “One we will win.”

  “And the fight in Istinjoln is one we would’ve lost?”

  The Edan stood silent so long, he assumed the man wouldn’t answer. “If the conclusion was foregone, we would be dead.”

  Solineus shook his head. “We’d never have walked from the monastery, not with the number of Taken we saw when we left.”

  “You presume you were fighting a thing who didn’t mind dying. We would’ve died, so might that demon. Even the Shadows care about dying. When Taken, they are free, the body dying is only a shell. But their being is simple: take and kill. Whatever the other’s name may be, it is something more… it possesses purpose and power.”

  A quote sprang into Solineus’ head. “A being with purpose and power wishes to live forever.”

  “Lelishen mentioned you were well read. Yes. I’m uncertain we could have defeated it, but it wasn’t certain we couldn’t.”

  “Locked antlers. Of a sort.”

  “And don’t mistake me, if its purpose had been to kill us, it would’ve died to do so.”

  Glimdrem had slipped beside them with Rinold right behind him. “Which raises the question of its purpose.”

  Rinold said, “I’m questioning why the hells the Luxuns ain’t here yet.”

  “Their banner flies further out than you can see in his haze. They raise sails now.”

  Rinold squinted into the haze, the gloom aglow as the sun peeped through for the first time today. “I always figured my eyes better’n most folks.”

  Inslok glanced to Solineus. “But there is another question: This ghost, you see him, speak to him?”

  “Aye, Dareun. Lord Priest Ulrikt Sundered his soul in Istinjoln. He can hear me, I can’t hear him.”

  “Fascinating. How? Many have claimed to see spirits throughout the ages. Many of those had lost their minds. How many ghosts have you seen?”

  “Just the one.”

  “More peculiar still, if you’ve some gift, why is it limited to this one man? Over the centuries, the Pantheon of Sol Sundered a couple hundred souls in Istinjoln if our histories are correct.”

  Solineus shrugged. “I never gave it a thought. Now about what you said at the Tomb—”

  “Forget those words. I misconstrued what the Touched said, and the demon of Istinjoln clarifies everything… so much as anything clear came from his mouth.”

  “So the Silone people will remain welcome?”

  “I am the Father of Ages’ sword, not his mind. There will be a need for an arrangement, but I hope we may reach an accord.” He pointed. “We should head for the rocks soon.”

  Solineus turned to Zjin. “When we meet again, maybe we’ll cleanse this island.”

  The Colok bore his lethal smile. “Th
en.” He placed his clawed paw on Solineus’ shoulder. “Ivin.”

  “When I see him, I’ll deliver your greetings.”

  Zjin stepped onto his sled and bellowed, the wolves digging snow and whisking him northwest. Solineus rubbed his chin hairs as he watched them go.

  Inslok said, “You like the bear people.”

  Solineus turned. “Yes. It’s natural, they’re two steps closer to human than you are.”

  Glimdrem laughed, and Inslok blinked. “You are a humorous man.”

  Solineus chuckled. “Good of you to notice. Let’s get the hells out of here.” He rested his hands on the hilts of the Twins as he strolled downhill to the southwest. The murmur of voices was tranquil, despite the promise of gore to come.

  They took a winding route to the shore, avoiding the roads, traipsing up and down rocky hills, scaling tiers of cliffs not much taller than a man. They ducked and walked low when the terrain exposed them to a full view from the Fost’s walls. Solineus spotted the Luxun banner on the horizon and figured so too had the Taken; with luck they’d be staring that way instead of west. They clambered into a ravine maybe four hundred strides from the edge of the breakwater.

  Solineus said, “We’ve good cover here.”

  Inslok nodded. “With a view of the shore we should spot Taken if they head for our rocks.”

  A sharp whistle rose in the air over the bay, high pitched, then trailing lower.

  Rinold spooked, nocking an arrow. “What the hells was that?”

  “A Luxun signal arrow. They know we’re here, but not where.”

  “You got all that from an arrow?”

  Inslok ignored the Squirrel, nodded to Mostelo. The warrior slung a longbow from his shoulder and launched an arrow toward the distant ship. A stinging ring sang from the arrow’s flight.

  Solineus clutched his ears. “Shits, that’s an annoying sound.”

  Inslok’s head shifted to him. “You heard that?”

  Rinold asked, “Heard what?”