by Deck Davis
An overwhelming pity flowed through him. This man had made wrong choices, but people usually did their best. This guy was going to die soon. He couldn’t keep living this way.
Ethan opened his pouch and tipped his coins into the man’s hand.
His eyes widened. “Don’t you need it, lad?”
Ethan touched his wound. It had already begun to crust, to set into the shape that would scar him. “I’m okay,” he said.
The old man grabbed his wrist. He pulled Ethan so close to him that his alcohol fumes were intoxicating. “Thank you, boy. The guild hasn’t lost all its good heroes yet, has it?”
“I’m not a hero.”
The old man eyed Ethan intently. “Keep your eye on the mage,” he whispered.
“The mage?”
“Lillian. Things turned to shit when he joined. Keep an eye on him, and any who are loyal to him.”
The alcohol fumes became too much. Ethan pulled away. He was going to ask the old man what he meant, when a voice shouted his name.
“Ethan! Run, for fuck’s sake!”
Glen ran toward him, darting through the crowds of drunks. Behind him followed a half-ogre, who looked like he was carved from mountain rock.
“Who the hell is that?” asked Ethan.
“The errand I had to run?” said Glen. “That’s my errand’s husband. Get your arse moving!”
Chapter Thirteen
Ethan
“It’s no good. He’s too strong-minded.”
“Then cast him aside.”
“Perhaps.”
“Developing morals now, are we?”
“I have one last trick. Give me time.”
“Time is running out. He will be here soon.”
~
“Say that again, you bastard! You only beat me ‘cos I was tired!”
“Get some sleep next time, pretty boy.”
Arguments like this were daily events in the common room. It was the only place where all the recruits and guild staff gathered at the same time, eager to fill their bellies with what passed for food in the guildhouse. A dozen long tables filled the draughty hall, and recruits gathered in their various gangs and cliques. Laughter met with threats from the more boisterous recruits, while the studious boys hunched close to each other and compared study strategies for upcoming creature exams.
Sunlight streamed in through muralled windows lining the room, spreading multicolored shafts of light over the food-covered tables. The murals changed every ten seconds, the colors shifting in the glass to form one image, then another. Rumor had it that it took ten hours to watch the changes from beginning to end, where you’d see a history of the Soul Wars from their roots until now.
Above the recruits, suspending from the ceiling, was a sword so humongous only a giant could have wielded it. The iron chains fixing it to the ceiling looked too rusted to Ethan, and he always found himself cramming his food down so he could leave before the sword broke free and impaled him halfway through his chicken pot pie.
Ethan ate his meal alone. It was no good expecting to be a celebrity around here just because he was a ‘traitor to the empire’, and it was no use showing off with his swordplay. Better to try and be clever, like Dantis. To watch the other recruits and see how they worked.
Truth was, it was only when you really watched someone that you knew what they were like. People had depths – take Bander. He looked like a warrior from an adventure book, but he used to be a thief, like Ethan. And what about Reck? He looked like a kindly grandfather, eye patch aside, but he’s snapped a recruit’s arm just for laughing. No, you could never take people on their first impression.
His company came when he something brushed against his feet. A brown rat scrabbled for crumbs on the floor. In a place like the guild, full of holes and surrounded by forest, rats were too common a pest to eradicate, and Bander had banned the more inhumane methods of rat catching.
Ethan broke a piece of bread and fed it to the rat. When he realized what he was doing, he laughed to himself. I used to pick at Dantis for doing this. He understood why his brother fed the rats now, even when he didn’t have enough food for himself. When you were lonely, anything could be a friend. Especially an animal - something that wouldn’t judge you.
Was he making Dantis lonely by moving them on all the time? Did Dantis want to make friends, but Ethan was stopping him?
He couldn’t think about Dantis. Not now. He’d never have admitted it, but he was feeling sensitive. Tears brimmed in his eyes, and for the love of all the Gods, he couldn’t think about his little brother right now.
Instead, he tuned his ear to the conversations around him. One boy, in-between shoveling chicken into his mouth, chatted excitedly to the ponytailed boy beside him.
“Mom wrote me last week. Another one went missing in Wolfpine. She’s glad I’m here.”
His friend leaned toward him conspiratorially. “Why doesn’t Bander do something?”
The boy shrugged. “Lillian would root it out in a second.”
“Why doesn’t he?”
“Shh. Bander’s coming.”
Bander approached Ethan, with Glen trailing behind. Glen gave Ethan what looked like a genuine smile, not of the mocking variety the other recruits flashed at him.
“Evenin’ Ethan,” said Glen.
Ethan grinned. “Someone was looking for you, earlier,” he said. “A guy who had a problem with his wife he needed a hero to help with.”
Glen fought to keep his smile from spreading. Bander glared at him. Glen gave a curt nod. “I’ll get right on that.”
Bander leaned on the table and peered with Ethan. “Hulftim’s work is getting sloppy,” he said. “I could swear your face looks the same.”
“Girls love scars,” said Ethan.
“This isn’t a joke, Ethan. You’re not a rich boy here on a scholarship; you’re a thief. When I give you guild funds for an express purpose, and you come back having not done it, I need to know where the money has gone.”
Ethan stabbed his fork into a potato. If only the right words would appear in his mind. He couldn’t tell Bander he gave the money to an old thief who had been kicked out of the guild. Then again, what else could he say that didn’t cast suspicion on himself?
“We were robbed,” said Glen.
Bander turned to the older recruit. “Explain.”
“I didn’t trust the thief with the money,” said Glen, “So I put it in my own pouch, which I double tied to my belt. But it was the ale festival and street rats were runnin’ around everywhere, picking people’s pockets. They must have gotten close enough to me to take it.”
“You know that this means double duty in the forest until you’ve paid back what you lost.”
Ethan grimaced. Forest duty meant combing the mountain forest for abandoned klizerd nests. The giant creatures moved their nests every few months, timing it with their reproduction cycle. They left behind the shells of hatched eggs, which were valuable. Klizerd egg shell could be crushed into a paste and applied to leather to make it fire resistant.
The problem came when recruits accidently disturbed a nest that hadn’t been abandoned yet, and had to deal with an angry klizerds. Yuren the healer was busiest in the afternoons, when recruits returned from forest duty.
“Glen’s mistaken,” Ethan said. He wanted to spare Glen forest duty, but he also didn’t want to get him into trouble for his attempt to cover for him. “I’d already given the money away before he got his pouch stolen.”
“Given away to who?” asked Bander.
Ethan scratched the plate with his fork. “Some old guy.”
“You wouldn’t give away money intended to fix your scar to ‘some old guy.’ Whoever it was, he must have got to you. Don’t make me put you on double forest duty.”
“Fine. It was a guy who used to be in the guild. A thief. Says he was a scribe, but he got kicked out because he couldn’t help himself stealing.”
For a brief second, Bander’s face drai
ned of color. “Go and get some food, Glen,” he said.
When Glen left, Bander leaned in to Ethan. “I never wanted to expel him. Targust is a good man at heart. And so are you, lad.”
“Can I ask you something?” Ethan said.
Bander nodded.
“Why do they blame you for people going missing in Wolfpine?”
“When people feel powerless, blaming someone gives them control.”
“Why do you take it? You’ve done everything you can, haven’t you?”
“Sometimes,” said Bander, “It’s better to take the blame on myself, to spare the guild. The guild is the important thing, because it’s what’ll be here long after I go.”
Ethan almost didn’t want to say his next sentence, but if anyone could take it, it was Bander. “It’s ruining your reputation.”
“A reputation is just words, lad.”
No, Bander didn’t full believe that. Ethan could tell from his face. What else was there to say? If Bander wanted to take the blame on himself for something he believed in, who was Ethan to argue?
Lilian approached from across the common room. Catching his eye, Bander went to talk with him, leaving Ethan alone again. Watching Lillian and Bander take a seat on the masters table, Ethan couldn’t help his thoughts turning.
The man in Wolfpine told him to keep an eye on Lillian. What had he meant? If he couldn’t trust the guild’s mage, did that mean he couldn’t trust Bander, either? He had to find out more. Maybe he could try and get into Lillian’s room and snoop around, but that wasn’t a one-man job. He needed an ally, but he was coming up short.
There was the possibility he could reason with Yart and Bunk, but he had some small influence in the guild. He was a bastard, but a useful one if Ethan got him onside.
Ethan took his plate and cutlery and put them in the washbasin, where the recruits on canteen duty collected it. He returned to his seat and drained his watered-down ale. This tastes like crap.
After finishing his beer, he left the common room and went to the dorm. As he walked up the wooden staircase, he felt woozy. Man, I’m becoming a lightweight. One beer, and I feel like this?
His head pounded. A long day of training lay ahead of him tomorrow, so he crawled into bed and closed his eyes.
He fell into a dream. In it, he was standing on a never-ending plain of dry earth. In the distance, streams of lava snaked through channels cut into the ground. The sound of chanting rose from nearby. He strained to hear the words. The only ones he picked out were “fire trial.”
Someone screamed. Was that Dantis? Was he in pain?
He woke up. He wasn’t in bed anymore, but instead, he realized with a sense of terror that he was outside.
The wind swept around him, so loud it drowned out everything else. He lurched violently from side to side, rocking in the gale like a kite. His stomach felt light. I’m gonna be sick. The wind rocked him, tugging at him one way, then the other.
“What the?”
He strained to move his head. When he did, he saw the guild training grounds thirty feet below him. Ropes wound around his wrists and ankles, tied to a metal fence on the outside of the guild walls.
He was outside! Suspended in the air! Had someone poisoned his beer? Yeah – that was it. They’d slipped something into his beer, taken him from his bed, and tied him so only four knots kept him from plummeting to the ground.
His stomach lurched. Dantis hated basements, he hated rooms buried below the ground. But Ethan? His fear was the opposite.
Someone laughed. There was an open window to his right, where Yart and Bunk were standing in the frame, watching him with wicked grins on their faces. Yart’s shawl flapped around his neck, and his palm-sized cat swiped at the billowing fabric.
Bunk loomed behind him, his grey gigas skin camouflaging him against the stone, his horn dreadlocks standing stiff in the breeze.
“You bastards,” said Ethan. Every time he moved, he imagined the rope knots fraying.
Don’t show them you’re scared.
He choked back his fear. Yart and Bunk, satisfied with their dangerous prank, left the window and disappeared. They’re going to leave me here all night.
A squawk sounded above him. Ethan moved his head, only to see a sharp-taloned eagle fluttered feet away from his face. It cried out angrily and flapped its wings near his head. Its beak looked sharp enough to cut through bone.
With a sense of dread, Ethan realized why it was so angry. In a crook near the wall, there was a nest. Five eagle hatchlings stared at their fully-grown parent, who regarded Ethan as an intruder.
He had to get out, but how? If he loosened the knots, he’d plummet to the ground.
Damn you, Yart, you cruel bastard.
The eagle flew at him. Pain flared in Ethan’s skull as its talons scratched him. Wet blood dripped down his face. His pulse hammered, and adrenaline flooded his body.
The talons tightened, and the agony increased. Ethan roared, startling the bird.
Can’t wait until morning for someone to find me, because this thing is gonna tear my face to shreds. Can’t undo the ropes, because I can’t move. Damn it!
A figure appeared in the window. Ethan was ready to spit in rage, expecting it to be Yart. Instead, it was someone else. Dullzewn was standing there, with serious look in his eyes.
“The bastards got you good, didn’t they?” he said.
The eagle fluttered again. Dullzewn, his fists tight, threw a stone at the eagle, scoring a hit on its side.
“Nice shot! Now…a little help?”
“Keep calm. I’m gonna loosen the knots and grab your legs.”
As Dullzewn carefully cut his robes to help Ethan from his predicament, a thought struck him; forget trying to reason with Yart and his crony – bullies only listened to one thing.
Dullzewn grabbed one wrist and pulled him up, while Ethan gripped the window ledge with the other, getting high to drag his head and chest through the window.
A blur flew past him, crashing into Dullzewn. Dullzewn yelled, and he felt go of Ethan’s hand. Blood poured from a cut below his eye where the eagle, angry about the stone, had attacked him.
Ethan gripped the ledge with both hands now. The eagle flapped its wings behind him. It hovered so close that it wafted with onto his head. He strained to pull himself up. He just needed to get half his body through the window, and momentum would take care of the rest.
A weight smashed into the side of his head, and a beak scratched down his skull. Pain flared in him. He hurried now, gritting his teeth as he pulled himself up.
Wing flapped, wind blew into his face and onto his fresh cut. The eagle squawked and then darted again, gripping his fingers in its talons. Digging deep into his flesh.
Agony burst through him as the talons sunk deeper getting through to the bone. He shouted out, and then he let go of the ledge, hurtling thirty feet through the air. The last thing he felt was the ground smashing into him, breaking his bones. And then there was nothing.
Chapter Fourteen
Dantis
“You need to stop,” said Wisetree. “You’re becoming addicted.”
Dantis let the fear spirit rush through him, tweaking his brain, sending delicious shudders of terror through his body. He hated to even think it, but fear was delicious when it wasn’t your own.
“Most of it is in the forge,” he said.
“It’s in your head, more like.”
“I need it.”
It was true. It was only by taking regular doses of fear that he could trick his senses and guide them away from his real worry; that he’d never leave the Barrens. The problem was, he could feel tendrils of addiction creeping into his mind, spreading out and blooming, casting a shadow over him. If Ethan could see him now, after everything he’d done to help him…better not to think about it.
In the fortnight since Wisetree ate the ogres, more groups had come. A few scout parties at first, then eight warriors. Each time, Dantis herded them to the tre
e, who chomped on their bones and flesh. All the while, Dantis sucked the fear spirit from them.
At first, he allowed himself a taste. But soon, that wasn’t enough. He needed more! He knew he should save most of it to use in crafting, but he couldn’t stop.
He at least put some of it to use. After refining fresh fear in his forge, he paused on the outskirts of Yutula-na and stared at the aged stone. Black clouds loomed overhead, though nothing could ever match the utter darkness of the forgotten city.
He breathed spirit into a stone the shadow fiends loved to crowd around. This was smaller than the rest, barely larger than a watermelon. It took two gusts of spirit to fill it. The stone bighted, and rune marks glowed orange.
The shadow fiends snapped their attention to him. “What you look at?” said one.
“I can understand you!”
Wisetree, a hundred meters away, spoke through his roots. “You’ve restored the language stone,” he said. “Not all the stones of Yutula-na are dwellings. Some have purposes.”
Dantis gazed at the rocks of Yutula-na. One was shaped like a fist, another like a pendulum. What were they for? What could they do if he restored them? If only there more ogres for him to drain.
One of the shadow fiends, taller than the rest, crept forward. He was naked save for shorts that seemed stuck to his shadow body. A large scar marked his belly. He stopped a few feet away from Dantis and patted his chest.
“Xig,” he said.
Dantis patted his plant body. “Dantis.”
“Xig meets Dantis.”
He’d never spoken to a centuries-old shadow fiend before. Hell, he hadn’t spoken to many people in the last few years. His social skills needed a lot of work. Xig seemed to be the leader of the six, and he needed their help gathering materials for his dungeon, but how did he approach it?
“I need something from you, Xig. I know you helped the other grubs. Do you think you could gather things for me? Stones, and stuff like that?”
Xig grunted. He screwed his face, then turned away from Dantis.
