Then the Pir monks, each holding a dragonstaff, turned their staves and the Eye of Vasska was upon the floor of the arena.
It was enough. Death would have been preferable to the torture of the Eye.
Each of them had trained through the morning on the practice fields. They were taught the nine basic defenses, followed by the nine basic attacks. One man with a wide girth had fallen to the ground from exhaustion during that first morning. The Pir monks quietly slit his throat. His body had left a long bloody streak across the practice field as they dragged it off. Practice resumed at once. Galen’s arm was numb and his legs shaking beneath him—but he stayed on his feet until the end of the session.
Now, in the afternoon, it was his turn on the floor to test what he had learned in the morning against one of the other Elect. Some of the other pairs were tentatively trading blows in the practice sequence. Their neat patterns of attack and defend, so polite in rehearsal, collapsed into vicious chaos with the first glance of the Eye.
Now Galen could not think of anything but the wild-eyed maniac in front of him who was intent on burying a blade in his head. What the madman facing Galen lacked in talent he made up for in raw and mindless determination. He probably did not see Galen at all—his pupils seemed fixed on something just beyond his target. He was only slightly taller than Galen and perhaps a good ten stones heavier. His curly hair lay in flattened waves down his head, dripping with sweat. Days ago this man might have been clean-shaven, but now his beard had emerged into strong stubble. He might have been a storekeeper or a shepherd or a cooper in his former life, but no longer.
Now the man was berserk with rage, driven beyond thinking by his own inner darkness. His sword flashed through the air, fast and strong, and it was all Galen could do to keep up with the blows raining down on him.
Galen stumbled backward once more, his feet kicking up dust from the hard-packed dirt of the arena floor. At least ten other pairs of combatants battled one another in the large circle, while a wall of screaming Elect were held back just beyond the confines of the arena floor. The time had not yet come for their blood to be spilt.
Worse still, Galen was not sure that the advice his sword was giving him was helping.
“One! One! Two! Four!” the sword was shouting into his mind. “Too slow! You’ll never kill anyone this way!”
“I don’t want to kill anyone!” Galen shouted over the crashing steel. The berserk man was closing on him again.
“By the gods! Another coward,” the sword sang back over its own breath through the air. “A sword of the Rhamasian Guard . . . Two! Four! . . . a blade of the old kingdom guard . . . One! Two! Three! Six! . . . and they put me in the hands of a coward! Six!”
Galen obeyed just as the madman lunged toward him. The sweeping arc of Galen’s blade in front of him pushed the attacker’s thrust aside, bringing Galen in close to his opponent. The smithy took another step in, smashing his free hand into the face of his foe.
The madman reeled backward, blood suddenly running from his nose.
“Well met!” the sword cried with glee. “Two steps back now and reset your stance! He’s coming back at you.”
Galen stepped back, but did not get his feet under him before the madman, having dropped his weapon in his rage, slammed into Galen, lifting him completely off his feet.
“By the gods,” the sword spat at him. “I told you about your stance!”
The air rushed out of Galen as he fell back flat against the ground, bright lights exploding in his vision. By now, however, the madman’s momentum was against him. Though he was pressing down on him still, Galen caught his opponent with both feet, then flexed and catapulted the wretch over his head.
The madman howled as he rolled through the air, then crumpled against the hard clay of the arena floor.
“Get up!” the sword screamed in his mind. “Get up and set your stance!”
Galen scrambled, kicking his legs in a panic to roll over and get off the ground. He quickly turned toward where his opponent had landed. His breath was ragged as sweat streamed down over his eyes. He blinked, trying to clear his vision.
Galen’s foe lay still on the ground, a stain slowly reaching out, feeling its way into the dirt around him.
Galen stared in abject horror. His mind wished and willed the man to rise, to move, to make some sound. He would not—could not—be the cause of this.
“By all the gods of Mount Helista!” The words of the sword rang in Galen’s ears. “I had forgotten how good that feels!”
Galen blanched. In knocking Galen to the ground, the fool had pressed himself down on Galen’s upturned sword. His blood had run down the length of the blade, coating it in a dark sheen. The crimson river had continued in its torrent, flowing down past his grip into a long rill curling around his forearm. The sticky red liquid had bathed him up to his elbows in the man’s stolen life.
“We’ll make a warrior out of you yet, Galen!” the sword sang with confidence.
Galen dropped the blade.
It would not come off.
Galen knelt over the long water trough, which lay just outside his assigned barracks—one of more than a dozen ancient buildings all on the verge of collapse. It was here that he fell sobbing at the end of the day. It was here he remained into the night.
The stars looked down on him from the blackness above, but he turned his back on them in shame. The folk of Benyn had long believed that the stars were the eyes of their ancestors looking down on them through the Veil of Sighs. It was their whispers that were heard by Vasska, their pleadings that brought prosperity and protection to their descendants still trudging through the middle lands below.
He could not face them. He could not contemplate their judgments on him.
“Galen.” The voice was distant and hollow.
He once more scrubbed and scraped his skin, but even in the darkness he knew the stain was still there and would not come off.
“Galen . . . can you hear me?”
It was dark and he did not care. It was night and he did not notice. The Pir monks would discover him outside the cramped barracks, and only Vasska knew what they would do to him when they found him. Whatever it was, it could not be bad enough.
“Galen, please, you’ve got to listen to me.”
He wished she would leave him alone. What did she care, the wife of a man as insane as Galen was himself? Why could she not just leave Galen to his own demons? Did she not have enough of her own?
“Galen! Let it go!” Rhea grabbed his arm, shaking him and pulling at him.
Galen pulled savagely away from her. “Let it go? You were there! You saw! Everyone saw!”
Rhea pulled her hand back slowly. She looked at the ground, considering, as Galen struggled to control himself.
“This place isn’t life. It isn’t you,” she said at last. “Think about someplace that is real! Think about your wife! That’s what is real!”
“My wife?” Galen stopped. He gazed down into the murky water of the long trough. He held up his right arm, dripping wet, the skin raw from the scrubbing. “I have no wife; by the law of the Pir! Even if we could start again, how can I return to her now? How can I ever touch her again with this stain on my hand?”
Rhea knelt next to him. Her eyes regarded him sadly. “It’s gone, Galen. The stain is gone.”
“Gone?” Galen cried. His words were choked with pain. “How can you say that? It isn’t gone, it will never be gone! It’s burned into my eyes . . . my heart!”
“But you didn’t put it there, Galen!” Rhea’s eyes held steady with Galen’s as she spoke, her words strong and even. “You didn’t take up the sword, Galen . . . they put it in your hand! The Pir, the Festival of the Harvest, the Election . . . that is what put it there! That’s what we have to understand and conquer! That’s what we have to fight!”
“What? Fight the church? Fight Vasska himself?” Galen barked back at her from behind tear-blurred eyes. “That is the world, Rhea! You w
ant to fight the entire world?”
“No, Galen, no!” Rhea said evenly, her voice calming. “The Pir are not the entire world. Vasska is not the entire world. They are immense, they are powerful, and they have ruled since before our memories, but they are not the entire world.”
Galen shook his head in disgust.
“There is more to the world than you know, Galen.” Rhea sighed and then leaned back against the trough. “There certainly was more to the world than I knew. You and I are a great deal alike in this, I think. The Pir was my world, too. Then my daughter contracted this so-called Madness of the Emperors. She was clever, a great deal like you, I believe. Maddoc thought she could be cured of it no matter what the Pir taught. Then my beloved Maddoc fell into the madness, too, but did not master it as Dahlia had done. He withdrew from both of us to find solace in another place . . . another realm. Dahlia, my daughter, and I took Maddoc and fled before the next Election. We’ve been traveling ever since and we’ve seen a lot of the Dragonback in that time. Dahlia was convinced that there was a power to the madness; a power even greater than the Dragonkings. I think it may be a power that could take on the world. It may be our greatest hope.”
Galen looked at her for a moment. “You are mad, after all.”
Rhea laughed. “Perhaps I am. If I am, however, I wonder if I am the only truly mad person here.”
Galen shook his head. “There is no hope in the madness, only a curse. The Dragonkings saved us from ourselves when the Rhamas Emperors went mad.”
“So the dragons tell us,” Rhea said, letting irony season her words. “Look, Galen, all I am trying to do is to bring my husband back to me and get back to my child. You can understand that. Dahlia taught me to observe what I see and try to find some meaning in all of it. You and everyone else are here because you are the ‘Elect,’ but no one seems to have any real idea as to why you are the Elect, let alone why the Pir Drakonis brought you here to learn to fight. Until we know the answers to those questions, we’ll never have power over ourselves, let alone the world.”
“Children’s stories,” Galen sniffed.
“But good stories, Galen, good stories! Believe me or not if you wish, but I need your help if I’m going to get the answers that we both need!” Rhea leaned forward, her voice more urgent than he had heard from her before. “I think we can find the truth about it all—the Festival, the Election, the madness, all of it—but I can’t do it without your help. You can go there, to this other place where my husband finds refuge from the world of the living. That is where the secret is buried, I am sure of it. That is where the truth can be found and where you can find your answers, too. I know it, Galen! I just know it!”
“How can you know that?” Galen snapped. “How can you know anything that I am going through?”
Rhea looked down sadly. “Because Dahlia believed it and she is still out there searching, too. I have to know it, Galen, because finding the answer is all I have left to believe in.”
“You saw me out there today . . . you see me tonight.” Galen laughed sadly. “The great warrior! I won’t last long enough for you to find your answers, Rhea, not for you, your daughter, or your husband.”
“You won,” Rhea said flatly, “didn’t you?”
“My sword won,” Galen spat. “It told me what to do!”
“The sword speaks to you?” Rhea said, her eyebrows rising in surprise.
“Yes, it does. Crafted objects just . . . I don’t know, they’re always talking to me, and look what it got me!”
“It bought you life for another day,” Rhea replied. “It sounds to me like you should listen to what your sword is telling you. You could learn a great deal about surviving all of this.”
“Why? Why should I survive at all? Why should I live and not that man who died because of me today?”
“As long as you live there is the possibility of living another day and finding a way out of this horror.” Rhea’s voice grew more urgent. “If not for you then keep living for your wife! If not for her then keep living for Maddoc and Dahlia and me! We can figure this out, Galen, I know we can, but I cannot do it without experiencing what happens in that strange place you both share. I can’t go there myself. I need you to go there for both of us! I need you to learn what it is in that place that the dragons fear—fear so much that they kill all who have been there. Then I think we will know how to free us all and get back to my husband, my daughter, and my life!”
Galen shook in the darkness.
Rhea held out her hand. “Please, Galen! Help me bring my husband home.”
Galen took a great, shuddering breath. “And me? Who will bring me home?”
“If there is a path home for you, Galen, we will find that, too.” Rhea pushed her hand forward once more.
Galen looked down once, nodded, and then took her hand.
He could still see the stain on his hand.
He knew it would never come off.
23
Common Ground
I walk through legions of the dead.
The low clouds blanket the sky above me in a vibrant salmon color. No hint of breeze moves in this place. No sound disturbs it. All is as still as the dead about my feet.
The corpses blanket the rolling plain, their blood flowing in quiet rivulets across the landscape to gather in rank, coagulating ponds. The bodies themselves are blackened, whether with fire or decomposition, I cannot tell. They number like the grasses of the meadow. Some scythe has laid them down forever on these fields to rot and be forgotten.
It is a place that I have never seen before. I know not whether it is a real place or a place existing in the madness only. Nor do I know whether it is a vision of times past or of times yet to come. To me it is a place and a time of its own.
My hand is coated in blood. I look at the crimson stain prominently discoloring my arm, and the smell of the dead overwhelms me. All I want to do is to fall down, hide my face, and hope for the dream to end.
I cannot. I have a purpose here in this terrible place. Somewhere in this madness I must find Maddoc, that strange, crazed man. I must learn what he has learned and understand the madness as only a madman can. It may be the only hope I have of finding my own sanity and of returning home.
“I know this place,” says a voice next to me.
He is here; the strange monk who so often enters my dreams. I turn to him, still curious as to the enormous devastation of this place. “I don’t. Where are we?”
“The name is not important, Galen,” says the monk. “It would be meaningless to you. How is it you know this place?”
“I don’t.” His question annoys me. “I thought the Pir Inquisitas had all the answers.”
“We do,” the monk says, smiling roguishly under his yellow, unkempt hair. “It’s just that we forget them when it is convenient.”
I shake my head. This is my companion in my madness? A monk with questions I cannot answer and answers that I can only question.
I turn away from him. Small demon creatures move across the dead that cover the hills, picking at their armor and scavenging anything that they can carry. They do not seem to take much notice of us.
I wonder for a time what the winged woman might think of all this death, and in my wonder she appears! She floats in the distance above a delicate and beautiful white tower, while between us runs a great crimson river. She does not seem likely to leave the tower, for at the foot of the tower another battle is joined.
Terrible beasts—beasts out of some nightmare whose names are not known to me—are tearing at the stone and mortar. Their claws gouge great chunks from the limestone, shaking the tower and threatening its collapse. The winged woman looks at me and even at this distance I can see her dark eyes widen with pleading and fear.
I am ashamed under her beautiful gaze, for I do not know how to help her in her terrible predicament. I am helpless as I wander among the dead.
Through the silence, a voice drifts toward me from the distance. “Hal
loo!”
The monk turns with me toward the sound. “Do you know him?”
“Yes,” I respond simply. I have been thinking of Maddoc, and in so doing, the madman has also appeared. I see him at the top of a gentle rise, waving at me, his face split with a great smile.
“Who is he?” the monk asks.
“His name is not important,” I retort through a twisted smile. “It would be meaningless to you.”
The monk scowls at me.
I stride up the slope, leaving the monk to brood below me among the dead. My footfalls are unsure on the blood-slicked grass. I pick my way upward between the bodies of the fallen, coming at last to the crest of the hill.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it!” Maddoc speaks with a satisfied nod.
“It is indeed,” I reply. I have found him easily in this place of dreams. I have done what Rhea asked thus far. Now that I have his attention, what am I to ask? It seemed so important in the other world. Here, however, its urgency is lost, and there is a feeling that things are as they are supposed to be. Even with the appalling images all about me, I stand calmly in the midst of the carnage and speak with this man as though we had just met on the street at home.
“Such a waste, however, wouldn’t you agree?” Maddoc says with a shake of his head. “Here they are, painting the landscape red and black and not a one of them has any idea as to why they are doing it.”
“Yes, that is a waste,” I reply, my eyes fixed on Maddoc. “Why are they doing it?”
“Why?” Maddoc is bright-eyed but suddenly sad. “Why do men do anything? Someone beats a drum, sings a moving song, and marches the rest of the cattle off to the slaughter. There is, of course, a lot of talk of duty and honor and loyalty. Then, when enough people have died, the demands of duty and honor are met and the blood can stop flowing for a season.”
“There are some things worth standing for, worth fighting for . . .”
Mystic Warrior Page 18
