by Lynn Abbey
“An old man?” Mina hooted. “An old wounded man, and he bent you to his will?”
Cauvin had an answer for that one: “An Imperial lord. A froggin’ priest of Vashanka. Who was I to argue with him? He said, where are you going? I said out to smash bricks, and he said, take me with you.”
“The merchant who hired you to help him move his stock?” Grabar asked.
“A lie,” Cauvin admitted, then added quickly: “The Torch didn’t want anyone to know he was still alive—especially his enemies. He wanted them to think they’d killed him.”
“Did he know who attacked him? Not some damned Hiller, I’ll venture.”
It was time for another deep breath. “The Hand. The Bloody Hand of Dyareela.”
Mina let out a shriek that was sure to wake the length of Pyrtanis Street, Grabar turned pale as his nightshirt. As he confessed the rest, Cauvin learned—to his astonishment and horror—that the suspicions he held against Leorin could be held against him.
“Nobody’s clean,” Grabar admitted, after Cauvin had related his meeting with Mioklas for a second time. “If it came down to you or your neighbor, your cousin, or your brother, the choice was so clear it wasn’t rightly a choice at all—”
“Speak for yourself!” Mina snapped.
“Sahpanura,” Grabar replied, equally quick.
It was a name, a woman’s name, that meant nothing to Cauvin but, sure as froggin’ sorcery, it froze Mina’s tongue to the roof of her mouth. In the silence that followed, Cauvin repeated something he’d said many times already—
“I’m sorry.”
“I brought you home to be our son,” Grabar said to the wall behind Cauvin’s head. “I knew what you’d done, but Lord Torchholder said, not to worry. He trusted you and so could we, because the Hand was gone. I can’t say I’m surprised the Torch was wrong about the Hand—vengeance has a long memory. But you, Cauvin—how could you not tell us? If not when you found the Torch, then—by the mercy of Ils—after you saved the boy in Copper Corner? I don’t know whether to thank you for that or curse you to Hecath’s deepest hell.”
Mina said, “I know.”
“Frog all, I didn’t plan this!” Cauvin snarled in her direction. “I didn’t ask Bec to follow me like a lonesome puppy. I didn’t tell him to sneak into the palace in the middle of the night. I didn’t tell him to go out to the ruins today, or sneak out again after Soldt walked him home. I’ve done wrong, and I’m sorry—but it’s not all my froggin’ fault. Blame the Torch, why don’t you? His froggin’ Lordship needed someone who knew Imperial to write down his froggin’ testament and, shite for sure, that wasn’t me, was it, Mina? You’re the one taught Bec that an Imperial man was a better man. And, what about Bec … when it comes to lying—”
Cauvin didn’t finish his rant. Grabar’s right fist rounded out of nowhere and knocked him out of his chair. He sprang up, fists cocked and ready for a brawl … but not with Grabar. The pain in his cheek wasn’t Grabar’s fault. He’d have wept for pain or grief or fear or aching disappointment, if he hadn’t cried all his tears long ago.
Mina flung herself on the bed, sobbing loudly and dramatically. Grabar stood on the far side of the table, the look of vengeance on his face. Cauvin held his ground; bad as the moment was, he’d endured worse. Grabar cracked first, stomping out of the house. Cauvin listened for the sound of the gate swinging open, but wherever Grabar went, it wasn’t out the gate.
He waited a few moments. A tear might have leaked down his cheek, or maybe it was cold sweat. Honald the rooster gave his first crow of dawn. Mina’s sobs had quieted; Cauvin was careful not to disturb her on the way out. Grabar was below the loft, tightening the buckles of Flower’s harness.
“I’m coming with you,” Cauvin said.
Grabar didn’t respond, which was a better reaction than Cauvin had feared he might get. He bounded up the ladder to get his new cloak, which drew a sour glance, nothing more from Grabar. They walked down Pyrtanis Street with the mule between them, not saying a word. No matter what they found outside Sanctuary’s walls, it was suddenly easier to imagine leaving the stoneyard than staying.
Shite for sure, Cauvin would have preferred a scolding, even a beating once they’d cleared the eastern gate. (Without conversation they’d agreed that the boy would have come and gone through the gate rather than the Hillside gaps in the wall.) It was bad enough being worried sick over Bec without wondering when Grabar would finally explode.
Flower gave them their first hint of trouble halfway up the treelined avenue to the brick-walled ruin. She planted her hooves and let loose with one of her “I’m here” brays which was answered by a horse on the far side of the trees. Cauvin struck off and found a brown gelding grazing the frosted grass. The animal wore a saddle and bridle; neither was wet enough to have weathered last night’s gale.
Horses were notoriously skittish and not Cauvin’s favorite beasts. He approached it cautiously and counted himself lucky to grab the trailing reins without sending it galloping across the meadow in panic.
“Soldt’s?” Grabar asked—his first word since knocking Cauvin off the chair.
“Maybe,” Cauvin replied. He didn’t doubt the assassin could ride as well as he handled a sword. But Soldt wouldn’t have left a sword lying out in the rain, and it didn’t seem likely that he would have left a horse out either. “Don’t think so.”
Grabar grunted and, holding on to Flower’s lead, indicated that Cauvin and the gelding should go first into the ruins. Inside the wall, they took turns calling Bec’s name.
“This is where I set the Torch up first.” Cauvin gestured toward the roofless bedchamber and noticed a body sprawled on the ground within it. “Frog all,” he swore, and looked for a place to tie the horse.
Grabar did the same with Flower. They met on either side of the body. It was a man in worker’s clothes, facedown on what had been a springtime mosaic. His nose was buried in storm-soaked leaves and muck. Cauvin’s best guess was that he’d been dead before he hit the ground, but his hands were beneath his gut and he could have been cheating. If there’d been a stout stick nearby, Cauvin would have used it to nudge the body; instead, he shoved a foot under the body’s shoulder and booted it over.
“Eyes of the Thunderer!” Grabar exclaimed, leaping clear as the body flopped toward him.
Froggin’ sure, the body was a corpse, a stranger to Cauvin, with a skull-sized hole in its gut. There was gore on the mosaic tiles, but not enough—in Cauvin’s experience—to account for all the missing flesh. He got closer and noticed how the dead man’s clothing was charred around at the edges and that the hole itself had the look—and odor—of seared meat. He prodded with his finger—
“Eyes of the Thunderer! Don’t do that!”
Cauvin straightened. “I wonder what killed him?”
“Wolves!” Grabar decided, then shouted Bec’s name four times, once to each quarter. “You said there’s a cellar. Show me!”
“Couldn’t be wolves,” Cauvin argued on the way to the root cellar. “Wolves bite and tear. That man’s gut burst and burnt—from the inside! There’s no animal that could do that. No weapon, neither.”
“Gods could.”
Of course! Without warning Grabar, Cauvin ran back to look at the corpse’s hands. One was charred, the other was missing along with half a forearm. No way to tell if he’d been Hand—
“Cauvin! Where’s that cellar?”
They found another corpse near the cellar entrance. The pud had lasted long enough to curl into a ball, as if that would have smothered the fire or kept his guts where they’d belonged. He’d died with his eyes open and sheer terror shaping his face. Cauvin glanced at the corpse’s hands as they passed: The palms were burnt bloody, but the backs were pale.
“Hurry up!” Grabar scolded, making it clear that he wanted Cauvin to enter the cellar first.
Cauvin didn’t object, though his eyes took a moment longer than he’d expected to adjust to the dim light, and he stumb
led over a third corpse. It was so thoroughly blasted that its bones were nothing but charcoal and collapsed beneath Cauvin’s boots. There was a fourth corpse just beyond the third and the dark shadow of a fifth beyond that.
“Bec! Becvar!”
Grabar shoved Cauvin aside, not noticing or, perhaps, not caring what he stepped on as he searched frantically for his son. Cauvin let him go. He’d already seen that none of the dead was child-sized and was looking for the Torch. The pallet Cauvin and Soldt had put together for him was disordered, but empty. The fifth corpse was dark because, unlike the others, it wore a black robe.
Cauvin circled the body, getting out of his own shadow. Like the first corpse, the Torch had fallen forward, but he’d gotten his left hand up to cushion his chin before he hit. His head lay naturally in profile. His eyes were closed and Cauvin dared to hope that the old pud was merely asleep. He wanted to finish the killing himself.
“Hey, pud—Wake up—” He nudged a shoulder. There was no warmth, no resistance, no chance that the Hero of Sanctuary had survived to fight another day. “This time they got him.”
“What? Who?” Grabar didn’t recognize the black-robed Torch.
“His enemies. This time the Torch’s enemies got him.” Cauvin slid his hands beneath the black cloth. He wasn’t surprised to bump his fingers against the old pud’s hardwood staff. “He went down fighting—”
“The boy, Cauvin! Where’s Bec? If the Torch is dead, we can’t help him, and he can’t help us. Help me look for the boy.”
Cauvin didn’t argue, but he couldn’t take vengeance on a corpse. He lifted the staff and the Torch, intending to carry both to the pallet, but he’d barely raised his hands above the ground when the black wood warmed against his flesh. Before he could free himself, the Torch’s eyes—scarcely a handspan from his own—opened. Gods forbid, but the old pud’s eyes shone silvery white and streaked with shimmering flame.
Yelping like a stepped-on dog, Cauvin dropped his burden and scrambled backward until his shoulders struck the earthen walls.
“Enough of that—” Grabar shouted, then he saw what Cauvin had seen and prayed aloud as he, too, retreated: “Ils, Father of Life, take me in Your hands, lift me up!”
But the only lifting in the root cellar was done by the Torch himself as he braced that blackwood staff and hauled himself upward, hand over hand, like some skeleton come to life. When he’d risen to his knees, the amber atop the staff began to glow. Froggin’ sure, Cauvin knew exactly how the other men had died.
“Lord Torch! It’s me! Cauvin—the sheep-shite idiot who saved your froggin’ life! Frog all, don’t kill me!”
The Torch didn’t seem to hear or care, or maybe there was nothing left of the old priest except a ghost bent on burning anything, anyone, that got close.
“Lord Torch, it’s me—Cauvin. We’re looking for Bec, my brother. You remember my little brother? He called you ‘Grandfather.’”
“Bec?” The Torch’s voice was raspy and seemed to come from somewhere other than his throat, somewhere other than the root cellar. “Cauvin? Is that you, Cauvin?” With each word, his voice grew more anchored in time and place.
“It is, old pud. What …?”
“You’re not alone. Who’s with you?”
“My father—My foster father, Grabar. We’re looking for Bec. He didn’t come home. We thought—I thought he might have come back out here, to be with you during the storm. Was he here?”
Despite all that he’d said in the stoneyard, Cauvin hoped the Torch’s answer would be no, but the skull-like head bobbed up and down.
“I sent him away. Twice I sent him away.” The Torch’s eyes burnt brighter. “Once, with Soldt, but the boy got loose from his parents. The sky was black when he showed up again. First thing he said: too late to send him home. Oh, the boy thought he was so very clever. Offered to make tea and keep the fire burning so I could tell him stories of Sanctuary. I told him he could make tea and tend the fire, but there’d be no stories, no rewards for a boy who didn’t listen to his elders and deceived his parents.”
Cauvin stole a glance at Grabar. His foster father knew the truth now, but the price was much too high.
The Torch continued, “When the gale began in earnest the boy knew he’d made a mistake—a hole in the ground is no pleasant place when the rain’s falling sideways and the lightning’s struck so close your hairs stood on end. I told him we’d be safe, and we were … from the storm. It was over and the stars were fading when I felt men nearby. I woke the boy and told him to hide himself in the bushes and keep still no matter what. They were after me, not him, and they’d find me, but they’d never look for a boy.”
“We called and called his name,” Grabar said, taking a step toward the entry. “He didn’t answer.”
“That boy does not do as he’s told,” the Torch said, staring at Grabar with those odd, odd eyes. “A leather strap would have gotten him to safety, but I had none to hand.”
“What happened?” Cauvin asked.
“I have some skill with sorcery,” the Torch admitted—and, shite for sure, it was heresy for a priest to speak of sorcery, not prayer. Might as well confess that his god had abandoned him. “Enough that I knew the Hand had come looking for me and that I could attack them before they attacked me. I spared nothing, save my life—and I would have given that, had I been certain I could annihilate them all in a single burst. I took down four of them before my fire burnt out, but there were more than that. How many more, I can’t say. It is bitter morning to find myself yet alive and the boy gone.”
Grabar took off, shouting his son’s name and flailing the bushes that surrounded the root cellar. Cauvin faced the Torch alone. The Torch spoke first.
“The Hand knew where I was—exactly where I was. Not merely this estate, but here, hidden in a cellar. How did they know?” the Torch asked. “Arizak burnt a body. I was dead to the world, but they knew where to find me.”
The old man’s strength failed; his knees buckled. Without thinking, Cauvin lunged forward, catching him before he collapsed completely. The Torch had been light as a child when Cauvin carried him out of the Temple of Ils and lighter still whenever he and Soldt had carried him through the ruins, but now it seemed that the damned black staff weighed more than he did.
The Torch squeezed his wrist. The old pud’s fingers were as fleshless—and strong—as a hawk’s talons. “How did they know?”
“Frog all if I know.”
“They came straightaway to the root cellar, Cauvin. They knew where to find me, and they took the boy. He’s not outside. Your father will not find him; he’s gone. Why take the boy?”
Cauvin twisted free of the Torch’s grasp. “Because they’re the Bloody Hand of Dyareela!” He snapped, a swirl of emotion and memory getting the better of his tongue. “That’s what they do—they collect children!”
“From the streets, not abandoned root cellars!”
“Maybe they thought you were already dead and they didn’t want to leave empty-handed. Gods all be damned, why blame me?” Cauvin protested. “Why does it always have to be my froggin’ fault? Soldt found his way here without my help. He could have been followed. Froggin’ sure, Bec could have been followed. Blame some other sheep-shite fool for a change!”
There was no other sheep-shite fool. There was only the memory of last night at the Vulgar Unicorn. Cauvin had told Leorin that the Torch wasn’t dead and she’d asked—she’d specifically asked—where he was. She’d been angry when Cauvin could only describe the ruins, not give them their proper name.
The Torch read Cauvin’s mind, “You told her,” he accused sadly. “You went to her, and you told her.”
“No. No—there’s no connection. There can’t be.” Cauvin’s hands shook. He clenched them into fists, but that only made the shaking worse. “There wasn’t time. Whatever I did, it didn’t matter. Couldn’t.”
“Not any longer,” the Torch conceded. “The damage has been done, hasn’t it? The H
and has your brother. They took him and left me behind. I’m the one they wanted, if they wanted vengeance … I was alive—I must have been alive—but they took the boy instead.” The Torch fell silent a moment, then said. “I understand. Four died. But there were more than four. Survivors. This close to my body. Saved by luck—by the grace of their goddess. They saw me, no different than a corpse, and they saw the boy. What would they think? A boy standing beside a body—A boy finally making a run for freedom. What would I have thought?”
While the Torch pondered his own question the loudest sounds came from outside the cellar, from Grabar still searching for his son.
“They’re not me, they’re the Bloody Hand of Dyareela. They collect children because children love and children fear more freely than men. They collect children because children can be molded by their love or fear. Children adapt. They remake themselves and become whatever they’re expected to be, whatever they’re taught to be. If a Servant of Dyareela were dying …? If that Servant had learned the secrets of transformation—the poor man’s immortality …? Wouldn’t he have used his last prayer to summon an heir? Better a child heir than a man. Men are willful, but a child is willing.”
The Torch caught Cauvin’s eye. “The greatest trap, lad, is assuming that your enemy thinks the way you do. The Hand has fallen into that trap: They have assumed your brother is the heir of Molin Torchholder.”
Cauvin had no response. He was still reassuring himself that he couldn’t have said anything to Leorin about Bec being with the Torch. He’d blundered badly when he’d revealed the old pud’s existence, his location, but when he’d been with Leorin at the Unicorn, he’d assumed the boy was tucked in safe at the stoneyard. Then Cauvin recalled telling Leorin that Bec had written the Torch’s testament. Unable to hold the Torch’s eerie eyes another moment, Cauvin turned away.
“The Hand believes they’ve found the perfect vengeance,” the Torch whispered. “Stealing my heir, adapting him to Dyareela. And perhaps they would be right … if Bec were my heir. But you and I, Cauvin, we know he’s not.”
