Salinas grinned, and, with a flick of will, shattered the bones in Kelrob’s right wrist. The mage screamed and collapsed back into reality, the last moldering remnants of the city vanishing over a red horizon of pain. The stolen memories burst from his mind in a blistering torrent, and he gave them up, knowing that his death would free them just as readily.
A collective scream rose over the music. Kelrob opened his eyes to see Tasy leap on a table and begin tearing at his bandages, exposing the dripping remains of his fingers. With a shrill cry the minstrel leapt into the crowd, clawing at eyes and throats with his mutilated digits, teeth flashing as he tore a bloody chunk from a naked reveler’s ear. Kirleg joined him moments later, leaping over the bar and laying into the nearest celebrant, his normally severe face warped with rage. Kelrob moaned and buried his face in his hands, sick with the loss of the vision, sick with the consequence of his actions. He waited to be ripped apart, his final due; cries of terror and pain filtered into his ears. He wondered absurdly where Jacobson was, and if he was safe.
Tamrel glanced up from his music, his fingers slowing their furious dance. The revels were quickly devolving into a brawl, the fulfillment of Kelrob’s planted suggestion. The mage watched through trembling fingers as the forester who had served as the right arm of Salinas’s throne drove his thumbs deep into the eyes of a struggling woman. Blood and protein squirted, and the man laughed, pulling his thumbs free and licking at the effluence. Tamrel frowned and altered his strain, voice rising in defiance to the growing chaos, but Kelrob feared even the magic of the Lord of Song would fail in the face of such brutal revelation.
A man stumbled into Kelrob, grasped him by the collar of his robes. It was Glev the ostler, his half-masked face distorted with fury. There was blood on his hands, and on his breath; Kelrob struggled to break free, and Glev snarled, thrusting the mage against the wall with such force that all the air blasted from his lungs. Black spots whirled in Kelrob’s vision, the buzzards of unconsciousness gathering for the feast.
Thick hands wrapped around Glev’s throat and squeezed. With a groan he released Kelrob, who slid down the wall to lie in a half-senseless heap. Looking up, the mage saw Jacobson shove Glev’s face into an oak support beam, his knee lancing up to stab at the ostler’s kidney. Glev groaned and keeled over; Jacobson dealt several kicks to his prone form before turning and offering Kelrob a hand slick with blood. “Come on,” he said.
Kelrob bowed his head to his savior, thinking himself monstrously unworthy. He grasped the outstretched hand, and Jacobson jerked him violently to his feet, the tug nearly popping Kelrob’s arm from its socket. Together they pushed through the outer fringes of the mayhem, Jacobson striking down several assailants with well-placed blows. Kelrob heard Tamrel’s music swelling behind them, harmony in conflict with hideous discord; a collective human wail rose to match the crescendo.
Suddenly the music stopped. Kelrob froze in place, only then realizing how completely the beat of his blood had synchronized with Tamrel’s playing. The silence left a void in his heart, and disentangling himself from Jacobson he turned to stare over the mass of frenzied combatants. Tamrel stood forlorn on his stage, the pale lute dangling from one long-fingered hand. He raised his masked face and said, in a small voice that nevertheless cut through the carnage, “What is this? More false magic. Even in freedom you are not free. Poor creatures that crawl upon the earth, I will deliver you.” Tilting back his head the minstrel began to sing, throat articulating alien words of power. Kelrob felt a great purification gathering, and nearly sobbed with relief. He watched as the brawlers stilled and turned towards the stage, swaying on their bloodcaked feet.
A howl sounded from the throng. It was Rack, the brute; he stood trembling amid a ring of foes, naked save for a patina of gore. Kelrob saw that he carried a bloody sickle in his hand, stolen from one of the harvest effigies. Raising this makeshift weapon, Rack slashed through two opponents and bounded onto the stage where Tamrel chanted unwittingly, lost in the making of his song. As Kelrob watched, Rack lowered the sickle around Tamrel’s exposed neck and drew it across in one slick, professional gesture.
Tamrel choked, wobbled, and fell back. He clutched at his throat, from which no blood flowed, and said in a croaking voice, “So mote it be.” The mask seemed to smile, the porcelain eye-slits to widen in bemusement; the lute fell from Tamrel’s hands, twisting into a bundle of rusted strings and rotten wood. The minstrel took a step forward, tottering on the lip of the stage, then sighed as the wound in his throat gaped wide, opening on nothing.
Kelrob rocked backwards as a blast of music smote the air. In it he heard many things familiar and foreign, songs sung by forsaken campfires and by a thousand glorying throats, in alien tongues and the diverse languages of men, accompanied by the roar of a thousand instruments bleating in atonal cacophony. The music hammered in his ears for several agonizing moments, then died away, leaving a ringing silence broken only by his own ragged breathing. Struggling to rise, Kelrob looked towards the stage, the black spots plaguing his vision growing thicker.
Tamrel’s remains lay strewn on the stage. His bright tunic of leaves had fallen apart, spots of crimson scattering the planking. There was no blood, no flesh, no mask, only an empty pair of tights and breeches, a wig of silver hair, and the degenerate remains of the pale-wooded lute, already crumbling into dust. Rack had been blown clear of the stage, and was lying on the floor motionless, a pool of blood spreading out from his cracked skull. The revelers had frozen, and stared, their mindless rage dying away with the last strains of the music. They shuffled, then slowly fell to their knees, staring mutely at Tamrel’s remains.
A strong arm gripped Kelrob’s shoulder and wrenched him to his feet, setting his other joint to burning. “We need to go,” Jacobson hissed in his ear. “Now.”
Kelrob made no protest, allowed himself to be dragged upstairs and placed in a chair while Jacobson hastily threw together their belongings. He tossed Kelrob’s books into his pack, grabbed the mage’s three spare tunics from the wardrobe (what had become of Salinas’s bejeweled cloak? Kelrob found himself wondering dimly), tied off the pack, and thrust the bulging leather mass into Kelrob’s hands.
“Can you stand?” Jacobson asked, with a furtive glance at the door. “I don’t fancy being caught here when things start making sense again.”
Kelrob nodded, heaved himself up from the chair. “Let’s go,” he said in a cracked voice.
Jacobson nodded, edged closer to the door. “I don’t know what all this is about,” he said as he cracked the portal and peered out into the hallway, “but it stinks of magister.”
“It’s my fault,” Kelrob said quietly. “The memories I took from them, of Salinas...they broke free.”
Jacobson shot him a sharp glance. “Broke free? Not set free deliberately, a punishment for Kirleg’s planned ambush?”
“No!” Kelrob bowed his head, steadied his breathing. “I would never do that,” he said more evenly.
Jacobson stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “I believe you, lad. ‘Tis my fault, as much as yours. I should have insisted we ride.” He took another glance out the door, then stepped into the hallway, motioning for Kelrob to follow. The mage obeyed meekly; more than ever he felt the gaping absence of the chromox. If he had his ring he could contend with this madness, quell it, lay it low...and yet it was magic that had brought about the destruction downstairs, the rebound of his own goodwill. Kelrob frowned as he crept behind Jacobson, more than ever feeling like a lowly, degenerate thing. Together they snuck downstairs and past the common room, which was still clutched in silence. The revelers remained where they had fallen, staring transfixedly at the clothing-strewn stage. The dead lay scattered amongst the living; Kelrob saw Kirleg kneeling near Glev’s corpse, the ostler’s unseeing eyes still wide and fixed with rage. The mage hurried on, calling down a godless benediction on the dead, the wounded, and the wounders, who would
bear the memory of this slaughter the rest of their lives. No, he could not bear it for them. He could only pray to the faceless cosmos, and run.
Kelrob’s horse was waiting in the stables, well-fed and immaculately brushed. The nervous creature had been rendered near-apoplectic by the commotion of the revels; Kelrob brushed his hands along the beast’s muzzle, wishing he could simply cast a calming charm. He waited as Jacobson fetched his horse, or rather the horse of a hapless patron, and slung pack and himself astride it with a grunt.
They spoke no words, but turned and headed south at a breakneck pace, racing past the welcoming scarecrow and its tallow-lit grin, out of the forest and out onto the broad stretch of the Plains of Yield. Bonfires burned at the crossroads, dancers weaving about them; they rode on without pause, working the horses into a lather as they pushed south-west away from the Umberwood. Kelrob expected vengeful cries to sound from the trees at any moment, followed by an arrow-shaft that would mercifully pierce his maddened brain, but the ride was uneventful beyond its crazed haste. At last, as the sun began to climb into the east, they took a small cattle-path and wended out into pasture country, past small ramshackle farmhouses and granaries swollen with the season’s harvest. Jacobson knew a place, he said, that they could hide. This resolved into an abandoned hayloft on a derelict stretch of land that still bore the heavy scar of the plow. They fastened their horses within, and climbed into the loft, which was rank with rotting hay. Kelrob paid it no mind, throwing himself down amid the teeming straw and closing his eyes. He was exhausted, but had little hope of sleep; dimly he listened to Jacobson bed down beside him, the big man grumbling under his breath. Soon he was snoring, and Kelrob sighed, allowing the last of his adrenaline to fade into the pit of his spine. Fleas were nibbling at him, straw was poking into his side, all welcome distractions from the grotesque events of that unhallowed Sowen. At last, resolving himself to his enormous discomfort, he fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, knowing even in its oblivious depth that the nightmare waited for his waking.
7: The Gates of Tannigal
Kelrob woke to the sound of steel shrieking against a whetstone. He lay in the stinking hay for a short while, listening to the sound and staring out the gaping hole in the hayloft roof, only half-allowing himself to remember the events of the previous evening. It was a moment of artificial peace, and it was only when the whetstone became more nuisance than mantra that he sat up and brushed the straw from his limbs. Looking down from the loft he saw Jacobson crouched by a small fire, sharpening his sword. The blade was gleaming, freshly clean, and sparked at every stroke of the stone.
Kelrob climbed down slowly, the ladder wobbling as he set foot to each rung. He said nothing, but joined Jacobson by the fire, ignoring the faint headache forming at the base of his skull as he watched the warrior draw the black stone over the sword’s cutting edge. There was no sign of blood or rust on the blade; the steel gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight, the edges sparkling with near-razor keenness. Jacobson was lost in his work, had barely glanced up at the magister as he descended from the loft. Now he paused, blew a cloud of metallic particles from the sword’s edge, and fixed Kelrob with a bright blue stare that betrayed nothing of his thought. “Good morning,” he said.
Kelrob looked down at the ground. “Is it?”
Jacobson reversed his grip on the sword, extended it hilt-first to the mage. “You can fall on this if you like,” he said, “but it won’t change what happened last night.”
Kelrob shied away from the proffered weapon. “I won’t be needing that,” he said. “But thanks.”
“As you wish.” Jacobson tossed the sword aloft, caught it by the hilt, and ran a thumb along both edges, testing his work. Twice he sliced open his finger, causing him to grunt with approval. “So we ride for Tannigal, I assume? A short go from here, a mere six hours. I’d have pushed us on through the night, if I’d thought the horses could take it.” He flashed a glance at their mounts, nodding peaceably in a corner of the tumbledown building. “Henny had a bit of a limp towards the end, but it seems to have straightened out.”
Kelrob glanced at the bony roan mare, Jacobson’s acquisition in the stables. “Henny?”
“Glev’s old nag. Figured he wouldn’t be needing her.”
Kelrob felt a deep stirring of disgust, more for himself than for Jacobson. “You stole the horse of the man you killed?”
Jacobson’s face went cold, his eyes remote. “The man I killed on your behalf. Remember that I knew Glev. A good man, from time to time, cunning and simple, with a cruel streak that he managed to keep from the beasts he tended. We had a score to settle, but I didn’t mean to do him in, tried to be gentle in fact, but the poor fool was never well.” He looked down into the fire for a moment, then cleared his throat and spat. “Yes, I took his horse. It’s the spoils of war. You can’t steal from the dead, for they’ve no need of anything save a proper burial. Which I hope Glev has, and a safe journey beyond.”
Kelrob flushed and nodded, his hands twisting into knots. “You wouldn’t have had to kill him, if not for me.”
Jacobson scraped the whetstone down the length of his sword. “You’ll have to look elsewhere if you want to be judged, lad. I’ve no right to be pounding righteous nails into anyone’s flesh. Are you hungry?”
Kelrob shook his head. “No.”
Jacobson scraped his blade again, then brought a flask to his lips. “Thirsty? I could make you some of that herbal concoction.”
“No.”
“Ah. A glutton for punishment. I see.” Jacobson laid aside the whetstone and held up his sword, staring at his amorphous reflection in the steel. “Know how many people I’ve killed with this blade?” he asked.
Kelrob shook his head. “Of course not.”
“Neither do I.” Jacobson leveled the blade over the fire, let the flames lick and blacken the fuller-groove. “It’s got to be in the hundreds, though. I salvaged this sword off of one of our own dead on the Ilarks, a young man from the Twin Isles I believe, who died in his first week on the range. It was his family’s heirloom, had been wielded on the Barrier by five successive generations. I imagine it’s tasted enough blood to have a thirst for it by this point. One of the reasons I thought letting it fester in its sheath was a noble end.” He raised the sword, stared along the blade, then looked to Kelrob. “Did you mean for those people at the inn to die?”
“No!” Kelrob cried, his voice almost a sob. “I didn’t want any of it.”
Jacobson nodded. “Intent matters, lad. Guilt is meant to instruct us, but it can also devour us. Truth is that there are all matter of men, and that a man gains and loses honor many times in his life. I’ve seen moments of mercy juxtaposed against vicious atrocity, seen medals pinned on the chests of grinning men who butchered entire legions, seen men go mad from claiming a single human life. What can one ascertain? That all of morality is relative, and that guilt is at best a teacher, and at worst a lie. What happened last night was clearly not your doing, or you wouldn’t be so mopey about it. Believe me, I’ve seen your brethren-of-the-cloth do much worse things on the Barrier, to men and women and children, and deliberately.”
“But those men and women and children were Aks,” Kelrob said, spitting the epithet with vitriol. “They’re barbarians, without speech or mercy or code.”
Jacobson’s eyes sparkled. “There are times, especially in winter, when the raids slacken off. That’s when I’ve seen Taskmasters turn on their own men, and make sport of them. Sometimes they even sack nearby villages for their sport.” Picking up his sheath, he slid the sword home and buckled it around his waist. “Sorry to be the bearer of such grim tidings,” he said, “but you’ve somehow managed to grow up innocent in a fallen world. What happened at the House of the Setting Sun was...unfortunate, but it should gird you rather than break you. Are you sure you’re not hungry? I’ve some eggs here.”
Kelrob perked up d
espite himself as Jacobson produced four pale, enticing ovals and a frying pan. “Where did you get those?” he asked.
Jacobson nodded towards the door of the hayloft. “Over yonder. There’s a farm not a mile from here, with a very prodigious coop. I doubt they’ll even miss them.”
Kelrob sighed. “I was desperately hoping you weren’t a thief. Suppose I should have known better.”
Jacobson cocked one speculative eyebrow, setting the skillet over the flames. “I laid out my resume for your perusal. I’m a true scoundrel, lad, and that’s why you can take it from me: what happened at the inn wasn’t your fault. You were the patsy, placed at the end of a long chain of events. Learn caution if you will, but I refuse to suffer any degree of self-flagellation. If you plan on moping for the remainder of our brief acquaintance, I’d prefer you be quiet about it.”
Kelrob nodded, his hands nervously darting into several hidden pockets in his torn, burned, and discolored robes to fondle their contents. He knew he was responsible, and yet he was not; he had woven magic far beyond his training in a moment of desperation; he would have left the inn with Salinas in tow if the wretch hadn’t stumbled free of his fetters and shattered Kelrob’s ring in defense of himself and the inn. That’s right; he had saved the establishment he subsequently damned. We will remember you always in our sacrifices. Kelrob saw Meela’s face, pale with remembered horror, bowed weeping over an ancestral shrine. He wondered what they would think of him, the people he had provided with panacea and poison, and realized he would never know. He would certainly never again stray into the Umberwood, or even ride within sight of its accursed borders.
Kelrob’s hand toyed with a small brass sextant his father had given him, then explored another pocket, his nervous fingertips brushing against an ivory stylus and inkwell. “I’ll have to report all this to the Isdori Council,” he said, “as soon as my strength returns. That report must include Tamrel. He was a true magical creature, a being out of forbidden legend.” Kelrob winced as he spoke, his mind flickering back to the minstrel’s throat as it parted on darkness. Another death to his name, perhaps the most grievous. “I am hungry,” he said suddenly, realizing that he had a responsibility to keep up his strength. He wanted to arrive at Tannigal hale and aware, the better to deal with the mountain of interviews and paperwork that awaited.
Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Page 9
