by RJ Baker
The weight left my back but I did not try to move.
Three, my master.
Four, my master.
I sat up.
Five, my master.
Six, my master.
In the corner of the tent I could see a vague shape. She sat with her arms around her knees and her head down, long hair falling in curtains. When she raised her head all I saw were two eyes sparkling in the dark.
“Get out,” she said quietly.
“Master, I—”
“Get out!” And this time she screamed it, grabbing a bottle and throwing it at me. Glass showered me, and I scrambled away. Another bottle followed and hit me on the back, though the impact did not hurt as much as my master’s third scream. “Get out, Girton!”
I ran out into darkness. Rain had started, the sort of non-committal rain which was enough to be uncomfortable but not hard enough to really curse at. I staggered through the camp. Far away I could hear the night market: whoops of joy and laughter that were as alien to me in that moment as flight. I fell over a tent rope, sprawling in the mud, and the sob that escaped me was not one of physical pain, it was from the sort of vicious inner pain that I had not felt since Drusl had died all those years ago – but worse. Drusl’s death had been beyond my control – it had been engineered by others – this time only I was to blame. Any who saw me must have thought me drunk, stumbling from tent to tent, using their small support to push myself onwards. In the dark, with damp hair covering my face, no one recognised me as I blundered through the camp. In the end I found myself in a small copse and curled up on the ground in the damp leaf mould like an animal.
As I lay there I found a small bright point of relief within myself. I was free of the worry I had felt like a crushing weight on my shoulders since I had killed Mastal. She knew. I did not know how, but she did. Now the storm had broken and the worst had happened, my ship had been wrecked and I was cast adrift. The nagging fear of discovery had been replaced by a much cleaner, more focused fear: fear of travelling the new and unknown sea before me. I could not change my place in life and I could not shrug off the hurt that ran through me every time I thought about my master and her voice as she had ordered me away.
But I knew pain.
I was familiar with pain. And if pain was the ocean I was lost in, then I would take some comfort from the knowledge that I had swum these seas before.
And I had survived.
I would survive.
My eyes closed and I wished fervently for warmth.
Fitchgrass
And in my dream I was death and I wore death’s face.
On the plain of grasses a hobby hangs from every seedhead; they have the faces of those you have killed. Fitchgrass the green hisses through the leaves. Fitchgrass the yellow not seen but heard. Fitchgrass the black who tangles the unwary. Fitchgrass the white who knows your secrets.
Fitchgrass, Fitchgrass,
Tied up in stitchgrass.
Heard in the night in the field, heard in the day in the haystack, heard as he steals away the bad children to blight the harvest. Clanging shut the gibbet door. Chasing you, chasing you, a tangle of corn and thistle, flower and fear. Run, mage-bent, run! Run through the fields pell-mell, ground churning underfoot, straw in the air and the scent of sun and mounts in your nose. You know what happens here. Leave her behind. Leave her dead on the stable floor. Leave her dying in the blood gibbet. Leave her black and lined and wracked with pain. You never loved her.
Sour boy, sour boy,
Lost-all-the-flour boy.
Fitchgrass crawls through the fields. Fitchgrass ties knots in grasses. Fitchgrass trips the unwary. Leads you down the path. Only fears the scythe which reaps and opens a vein – blood flows. “Don’t forget me, Girton.” Blood slows, bends and twists, becomes elastic and wraps itself around the dying body of a woman whose face you cannot see. Blood becomes grass, a net of dry yellow stalks as brittle as ice and as unyielding as the cold. You never loved her.
Fitchgrass, Fitchgrass,
Tied up in stitchgrass.
You run from Fitchgrass, king of mischief. Fitchgrass, fast as wind and light as a sigh. A web of dry grass has you and you cannot lose yourself on the endless plains of hissing hobby seedheads. Blood gibbets filled with dolls watch you, point the way for Fitchgrass the green. You are tied and, when you look behind, you drag a net of dry grass. The door slams shut on the woman. Master! It holds you back and you cannot cut the stems and stalks. She is slowing you down. She is slowing you down. You never loved her.
Sour boy, sour boy,
Lost-all-the-flour boy.
Fitchgrass closes, striding, ratter-tatter. Fitchgrass is stiltstagger above you, poised to strike with his warhammer. The ground beneath you ruptures as you suck the magic from it. The fields around you die. Tear it all apart. It is so easy. Easier than breathing, easier than running, easier than dragging a weight. Black fierce you rip the hedging lord stem from stem to scatter on the wind like chaff after harvest, and as you rend him he does nothing but laugh.
Fitchgrass, Fitchgrass,
Tied up in stitchgrass.
And when the air clears, when the hedging lord is gone you are all that remains. The wind blows, the land turns yellow as Fitchgrass’ body. The bodies in the gibbets die and rot to bone. There is blood on the grass, but hedgings do not bleed and the blood is not yours. You look for the woman in the net but she is gone.
Only you remain.
Only we remain.
Chapter 27
I woke to lizard song, the gentle trilling of a small flying lizard as it called to its mate. For a moment I suffered the strange dislocation of waking in an unexpected place: this was not my tent, not my bed.
I had no tent. Had no bed.
But I was warm. In years of campaigning I had slept outside many times and was familiar with the feeling of waking outside, and it was never one of warmth. In the early morning, frost still cracking the blades of grass and the only stable relationship I had ever had in my life in tatters, I should have woken cold and shivering – with self-pity if nothing else. But I was calm, calm and warm, and the world, though still dark, was full of the promise of morning. I could smell flowers, a subtle, honey scent full of exotic spices, sharp and sweet as it teased my nose.
I will give you what you want.
I stood, spun, looked at where I had lain. Scorched into the ground was the shape of my body in yellow, my own souring in the earth and leaf litter of the wood. Here was a small place where nothing would ever grow or live again, where I had stolen the life from the land to keep warm throughout the night. Magic had been succour to me, and it had felt good. How many of the giant sourings that scored the Tired Lands had started with small patches like this? An almost insignificant patch of dead earth. Had the Black Sorcerer’s journey towards murdering thousands and ripping a crevasse in the earth started with an act that appeared harmless, a desiccated yellow patch of ground that he thought no one would notice?
I fell to my knees and brought up what little food was in my stomach, retching, burning, spitting. This wasn’t me. This was not what I wanted to be. I’d let it creep up on me despite all the warnings, despite knowing that the magic wanted to be used, that it had its own low and animal cunning, I had simply let it through. No, it was worse. There had been no volition on my part; it had acted of its own accord. I kicked leaf litter over the shape in the grass, hiding the souring and my vomit. Then, making sure no one saw me, I slipped out of the wood and back into the life of the camp sure that, somehow, people would be able to tell there was something terrible in me, that I carried some guilty mark.
The morning sky glowered and the air was heavy with the promise of the Birthstorm. A sudden burst of stinging hail swept across the camp.
But I pulled my tunic tightly about myself and the morning sky glowered, the air heavy with the promise of the Birthstorm. A sudden burst of stinging hail swept across the camp but the cold was not as chilling as the thought I
may have become the puppet of magic.
I needed purpose or my thoughts would chase me into hiding and darkness.
Arnst’s killer was still out there, and it seemed unthinkable that his death was not somehow related to the spy who was betraying Rufra. If I could not control myself, I could at least control what I did and would put right Karrick’s death. And the place to start with that was Arnst’s camp.
No. It was not.
It was at the beginning. Start at the beginning.
When I had first come here I had met a woman who clearly disliked Arnst. She had not given me her name but she had told me the name of her child, Collis. I should start with her. I felt no grief at Arnst’s death – I would happily have engineered it myself – but I owed a debt to Karrick, however much it annoyed me, and it was like a nagging pain in the back of my head. There was also still a traitor loose in the camp, and it was entirely possible that the death of Arnst had nothing to do with who he was; his death could well have been an attempt to destabilise the camp.
I had to know the truth.
The camp woke as I passed through it, like I was the foam on a wave pushing sleep away before me. Though Rufra’s camp was big, it was not large enough to grant anonymity, and I tracked down Collis’s mother quickly enough. She was at a signing sermon, and so I sat down outside to wait and think.
“Girton?” I turned to find Areth, wandering the camp as she often did.
“Areth, I was just sitting.”
“I sit, often,” she said, and nestled down beside me. “I am worried, Girton,” she said after a while.
“Worried? About what?”
“About Rufra.” She lowered her voice. “Last night a messenger rode in – not one of ours – Rufra has been in council ever since. And Nywulf is missing.”
“Missing?”
“He left yesterday after speaking to the priest Darvin. He said nothing to Rufra either, just rode away.”
“You think these events are linked?”
She nodded. “The Rider was from Tomas,” she whispered. She had the posture, the flying-lizard quickness of one overrun with worry. “It was the call to battle.”
“So Rufra will be moving out his army.”
“Yes, but without Nywulf? Despite what he may think, Rufra needs him, needs his experience. And Tomas, curse him, has chosen to fight at Goldenson Copse as he knows the place preys on Rufra’s mind.”
I sensed Neander’s hand at work.
“Do you want me to find Nywulf?”
She shook her head, her eyes wet with tears.
“What if Nywulf is the spy.” The words escaped her mouth as if they were a guilty secret, something she dreaded letting loose. A tear ran down her face. “What if that is why he has gone? If Nywulf betrayed Rufra it would kill him.” Her voice fluttered around the edges of panic and I touched her face, fighting down the shiver of pleasure that ran through me. I applied gentle pressure, moving her head so she looked at me.
A terrified mount bending to my will.
I pulled my hand away.
“Nywulf would never betray Rufra,” I said, though my heart fluttered inside at the thought.
“But he knows everything about Rufra – his contacts, his battle plans …”
“And he loves him like a son, Areth. No. I cannot believe that. Nywulf will be back. Rufra without Nywulf is like …” I could not think of what it was like.
“Like you without your master?” she said. I nodded, and inside me something hurt. “What happened last night, Girton?” she said gently. “I felt you out in the camp somewhere, like a glow.”
“How do you control it, Areth?” I said.
“Control what?”
“The magic. How do you stop it overwhelming you?”
“Overwhelming me?” She let out a quiet laugh. “I can barely draw enough to heal a cut. If it was powerful enough to overwhelm me do you think I would not have let it when my son was dying?” She glanced up at me, her eyes blue as sea, but in them was a mote of fear. “Is it different for you?”
“A little,” I said, suddenly wary. “Maybe it is because I am not as used to it.”
“Maybe,” she said, and another shiver, this one like a warning, ran through me, spinning and twisting over the network of scars on my body. She knew too much, and if she was scared she may tell someone. What would happen to me then? Who would believe me if I tried to tell them the queen was also a sorcerer? No one. She was safe, but I was far from it. I could almost feel the danger, like a pressure.
I can help you.
I stood.
“Areth, I have to go.”
“Is it something I said?”
“Yes.” She looked hurt and I shook my head. “Not like that. It is something you made me realise.”
“You will be ready though, if Rufra marches? You will be there? You have to be there.”
“Of course. I will be waiting for his call. I think I always have been.” Then I vanished into the crowds leaving the signing sermons, but I was no longer looking for Collis’s mother; I had something else to do first. If I was to serve Rufra I must have control of what lived within me, and there was only one person who could give me that: my master. And more, I owed her the truth of what had happened to Mastal no matter what it cost me, no matter how much it hurt.
I stopped outside our tent, taking deep breaths. If I was to be hated by her, so be it, but it would not be for a lie. I stepped over the threshold and into the darkness. She was still exactly where I had left her so many hours ago, sat with her elbows on her knees, her head down.
“Master?”
“I told you to leave.” She said it very quietly.
“I did.” I remained in the doorway of the tent. “And now I have come back.”
“And you can leave again.”
“I cannot,” I said.
“Why?”
“I lied to you, Master. If you wish to hate me then I would have you hate me for the right reasons.”
She looked up, eyes sparkling in the gloom.
“Talk then,” she said, short words full of impatience.
“Mastal is dead.” I waited in the dark for some sort of reaction – anger, tears, anything – all I heard was the slow susurrus of her breathing. “I killed him,” I added in case she needed some clarification.
“Why?” a sharp word.
“Well …” I could feel my brow furrowing, the words becoming a stutter. Why? I did not know. I knew it had seemed right then, I knew it had seemed like the only way, but now I felt lost, like I was flailing at a reality that slowly drifted away – like I walked a dream. “You were ill, and—”
“Did you doctor the medicine? Was that true?”
“Yes. Mastal showed me the yandil, and it seemed to speak to me. I could feel the hurt in you, feel the poison, feel what should be done with the leaf. I thought I could make him go away, save you myself.” I sounded desperate and took a breath, slowing my words. “But it did not work.” Tears were fighting to escape my eyes. “It did not work, and Mastal said that once the yandil had ceased to work, that was it – death was the only escape you would have from the pain.”
“And you killed him for it.” She sounded disgusted, pulling herself to her feet and starting to turn away from me.
“No, not for that, though I am entirely to blame, I accept that.” She looked over her shoulder.
“And yet, Girton,” she said quietly, “I live.”
“He said I should be with you. At the end.” Breathe out. “I held your hand while Xus approached.” Breathe in. “I felt the brush of the unseen’s cloak, and Mastal, in his anger—”
“His righteous anger.”
“I know that.” The words were angry, and I saw her blink at me, slowly, like a predator measuring distance. “I know he was right to be angry. I was wrong about him. As I have been wrong about so much. Mastal raised a hand to strike me.”
“And you struck back. So much training and yet you had so little control.”
“I did not strike back,” I said softly and relived the moment of Mastal’s death, the horror of it; the exhilaration of it. “He struck at me and I stopped him. I grabbed him by the wrist and in my other hand I held you.” My voice as dry as a souring in yearslife. “I felt everything, Master. I felt your pain, I felt the poison as it hated its way to your heart and I felt the love that Mastal had for you.” I stared, but where I looked into was a bleak place dominated by a mountain whose scars and peaks and crags were the desiccated face of a good man. “I took his life and I used it to drive the poison from you. But it should have been my life, not Mastal’s. I should have given my life for yours. I should …” I could barely speak any more, and my last words had to struggle to escape my mouth. “Cut me,” I said. “I cannot cope with it. Cannot control it. The magic, it is too much for me. Cut me. Send me away if you must but you have to cut me first.” And then she was there, like she always was, giving more than I expected or deserved. Holding me in her arms as I sobbed like a child, repeating over and over again between the tears, “I did not mean it, I did not mean it.”
She stroked my hair, talking in nonsense words that brought no meaning, only comfort.
“Oh my boy, my boy, I should have seen this, should have known.”
“No, Master, no excuses. There are no excuses.”
She pulled away, putting her hands over my ears, holding my head so I had to look into her eyes.
“You are growing up, and it is harder for you to do than any other.” Through the blur of tears I saw her concern, her love, but there was a hardness there, and I knew that I could not ask for her forgiveness, not yet. The way she looked at me had changed. I had never realised how constant was the sense of pride she felt in me, not until today. But now when I looked into her eyes it was no longer there, and I felt that absence as a pain more crippling than any wound.
“Master, I have got so much wrong. Done so much wrong.”
“Then you must put it right. No, we must put it right.” I nodded. “You shall tell me everything, all of it, and then we will work out our next move.”
