Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01]

by The Mask of Tamrel (epub)

  “I am meant to serve you,” he said, hot breath rushing against Kelrob’s skin, “yet I see no outcome to this quest that will be worth the singing. Should I triumph I am the malignant conqueror, a slaver who binds through freedom. Should you triumph I will be forced to yield this body and give myself over to your soul-dead brethren, leaving this world to its decay. I see no way to truth, for you or for myself, save you giving yourself freely into my power; yet I feel the iron fastness of your mind and spirit set against me. O Kelrob, I can show you no more secrets, tempt you with no more visions! To show more would be to pry you asunder, to nurture your native spark in spite of your Will, and then you would be useless, broken, a star-crowned brow with a mind of shadow. O please, Kelrob Kael-Pellin, give yourself into my keeping, and avert these twin paths of doom!”

  Kelrob shivered, Tamrel’s words sliding through his most well-wrought defenses. Jerking away his hand he said, in a muffled voice, “You are nothing more than a mask, Tamrel. You are an illusion.”

  The bard reared back with a howl of strangled laughter. “But, my dear child, all is illusion! This world you perceive is naught but fragments of light rebounding from matter, translated and transmitted by the receptive eye! There is no intrinsic meaning to word or object or being, only the dance of ascribed symbol, and what possesses more signifying resonance than a mask? I do not represent the particular, the exact; I have no fixed point, but am free to rove abroad, the whole world finding itself mirrored in my face! In this I am far more real than a petty object, more real even than a living man, for what is life but the ability to embody symbol?” Tamrel leaned close, his alien gaze burning with conspiratorial fire. “You know that I speak the truth. I can see it in the depth of your eyes.”

  Kelrob heard the truth indeed, spoken with a simplicity that nearly overthrew his mind. He looked about himself, saw the unfolding resonances of each plant and stone and leaf and cloud. The sun transmuted into a flaming god while remaining the logical aspect of fusion his Masters had described, each perceived face in the whorls and knots of the trees became a peering sprite, beckoning him inwards with alluring smiles. His mind overturned, balanced, and redefined the world; the face of the green man peered down at him from the sparse, rattling foliage. Kelrob drew his knees up close to his chest and pressed his face downward, into darkness, which he found possessed its own spiral of symbolic connotations.

  “It is a great sorrow to me,” he said to Tamrel through dry lips, “that I must destroy you. I do not want to destroy you.”

  “Then surrender the quest! It is a simple matter. I will even allow Jacobson’s essence to linger for as long as possible, that you may ease him into his rebirth.”

  “Is there no other way? We could find you another body, that of a murderer or a thief.”

  “Jacobson is both of those things. Besides, I have already stated my need for this vessel. It possesses transmutative elements in abundance, which are necessary for my great work.”

  “And what of this great work?” Kelrob jerked his head up. Looking to Tamrel, he saw the infinity of guises expressed in that porcelain face, the hero and the villain and the lover and the fool. “Is it necessary to burn down cities and butcher the innocent? Surely there is a subtler means of freeing the human soul!”

  Tamrel bowed his multifarious face, almost as if in shame. “It is my absolute nature to personify my absolute nature,” he said. “As long as I exist I must sing.”

  A sudden cruel wind ripped through the forest. Kelrob shivered and clasped his robes tightly about himself, a question coming unbidden to his lips. “Is this world truly so corrupted?” he blurted out. “The things you’ve shown me, the crystal towers and silver fonts, the wildness of free magic...is this truly as the world was?”

  “It was. And shall be again, regardless of my efforts.”

  “How did it come to this? What has been done to the world?”

  Tamrel raised his head, sunlight glistening on his pale cheeks and brow. “I do not know. But together we can find out.”

  A jolt shot through Kelrob’s heart, raced along his spine to the crown of his brow. He saw the dance of symbol being subverted and forgotten, the multifaceted world replaced with a vast and one-dimensional lie, though what the lie concealed and the purpose behind its concealment were yet hidden from him. His right hand tingled, and he looked down to the purpled flesh of his forefinger, scarred and blistered by the flashpowder. It craved the chromox, sent longing thrills through his body that dimmed the fire kindling in his brain. Raising his eyes to Tamrel, Kelrob peered longingly at that wise and malicious visage. It was all too much, too much, and cracking his lips he prepared to speak the words of his complete surrender.

  The light in Tamrel’s eyes dimmed for a moment, leaving the orbs dull, lusterless, human. Jacobson stared out at Kelrob from behind the mask, his gaze wild with fear and accusation. Kelrob cried out and fell back; casting himself down on the cold stone he began to weep uncontrollably, the words of surrender drowned in gulpings and gaspings.

  A gentle hand lighted on his heaving shoulder. “Jacobson wakes,” Tamrel said softly. “According to our agreement I must surrender this body to his stirring consciousness, but you need only speak the word and I will lull him anew. The task awaits, the wheel aches to be turned; heed me, Kelrob, and in so doing heed yourself.”

  “Go,” Kelrob gasped, shaking with disgust at that feather-light touch. “Go, and speak to me no more of this.”

  The hand withdrew abruptly. Tamrel laughed a cracked and bitter laugh. “So it is this step of the dance again, is it? I am a master of many songs, Kelrob, but I sense only discord in our waltz.”

  “I said go, dammit! Begone, and leave me in peace!”

  The laughter came again, dying into faint echoes. “As you wish, as you wish. But know, Kelrob, that the narrative continues whether you fight or surrender to its flow.”

  “I will not surrender,” the mage gasped, his tear-streaked face pressed into the moss. “I will sink like a stone to the depths before I become a mere leaf in your current.”

  The laughter faded into nothingness, and the chill of Tamrel’s presence departed. Kelrob looked up to see Jacobson’s flickering eyes, their steel-blue sheen faded but piercing. The big man drew back a boot, as if to kick at him, and Kelrob curled inwards, waiting for the rib-cracking blow. He shivered in relief as Jacobson stomped the boot back down to the earth, spat, and said, “Get up.”

  Kelrob complied, his cheeks flushing with shame as he rose to tottering erectness. The wind blew cold between the barren trees, whipping at Jacobson’s dirty blond hair. He looked like a hulking scarecrow, face hidden, his already rude attire worn and frayed by days of punishment. Only Andrych, slung and muttering at his side, dispelled the illusion. He looked Kelrob up and down, hands curling into wary fists; finally, with a grunt, he nodded to Kelrob’s glistening cheeks. “Did you have a good cry?” he said sharply, teeth snapping around the words. “I doubt it. The tears of traitors are bitter, only fit to salt the earth.”

  Kelrob wiped at his face, his other hand holding his robes clasped about his body. “What are you talking about?” he stammered, cheeks burning with shame.

  Jacobson chuckled darkly. “When Tamrel uses my body to rove abroad I have the funniest dreams. I heard every word you spoke, and I heard every word he spoke; I saw your grand moment of revelation, and I know what you were about to do.” His right hand darted to Andrych’s hilt, clutched it spasmodically. “I have little affection for my own life, but I thought you prized it a bit more highly, lad.”

  Kelrob bowed his head, his eyes now hot and burning. “I’m sorry,” he said, the only words he could think to say. “I – Tamrel was speaking of his disgust with this world, of its fetters and deceptions. I think he speaks the truth.”

  Andrych hummed at his words; Kelrob wondered at the ease with which the sword had melded w
ith Jacobson, another gleeful parasite. “Yes,” Jacobson said with a mirthless chuckle. “The truth, at the measly cost of your being, my being, and the death of thousands. Would you care to know another truth, lad? Last night I carried you through miles of tunnel, bore your weight with a strength I didn’t possess. I brought you here and laid you down, not knowing if you would live to see the morning, but unable to leave you behind. A trust made is a trust made, especially between doomed men. You would have betrayed me, had I not broken through the beast’s charming facade. Admit it, and restore what little honor you still possess.”

  Kelrob flushed at the chastisement, shards of pride stabbing through his shame. “You carried me because I saved your life,” he said, knowing even as he spoke the petulance of the reply. “The spell I worked took what little strength I had. As far as I’m concerned we’re even, on that count at least.”

  Jacobson shrugged disdainfully. “Aye, you did a fine job bringing down the ceiling on those gibberers. But I must wonder whose life you were really saving, Tamrel’s or mine?”

  “Yours!” Kelrob met Jacobson’s unblinking gaze and held it, though his body trembled violently. “I admit that Tamrel spoke very convincingly. He shows me things to break down my guard, gives me constant flashes of a truth beyond any lie. You know this, just as you know he possesses what he claims to possess. Something has been done to the nature of men, Jacobson! Something that has wounded the world in turn. I know that Tamrel must be resisted, but how can I spurn what I may never again have the chance to know?”

  Jacobson drew his sword. Coolly and calmly he brought the cutting edge up against Kelrob’s throat, scraping it tantalizingly over the mage’s thin growth of whiskers. “All knowledge has a cost,” he said. “Of course the chromox makes magisters think otherwise. They think power is an unlimited well, and wisdom something that can be summoned with a few words and a wiggle of the fingers. You’re all spoiled and childish, up their in your teetering ivory towers. I thought you understood this, which is why I deigned to travel with you.” The blade flicked, and Kelrob felt a faint bite, heard Andrych’s murmur grow into a howl as it tasted his blood. “Now here we are, me with a sticker at your throat, you incapable of admitting, in simple language, that you were about to betray me and the whole world, all in exchange for some visions of crystal cities and the gilded promise of a truth you haven’t earned.”

  I failed. I deserve to die. Kelrob closed his eyes, welcoming Andrych’s hunger. “I would have betrayed you,” he said, the words bursting from his lips like water through a dry stream-bed. “Please, do it quickly.” So saying he leaned forward, inviting the blow, only to stagger as Jacobson lowered Andrych and sheathed it, the blade moaning faintly in disappointment.

  “Good,” the big man said, his hand remaining clamped on the blade’s hilt. “You’ve got some small tatter of honor left. Now answer this simple question: why?”

  Kelrob shook his head faintly. “I broke instead of bending,” he said. “All of this...the death, the lies, they weigh on me more than I can bear.”

  “And are you still broken?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jacobson’s eyes sparkled. “I heard all your words. That includes the last: ‘I will not surrender. I will sink like a stone to the depths before I become a mere leaf in your current.’ Was that the truth, or can I expect you to betray me again at the first hint of temptation?”

  Kelrob stared at him in bafflement. “You still choose to travel with me?”

  “Far as I see it I have no choice. Remember that I only exist on a whim, your whim to be precise. If I kill you, the whole quest unravels, and Tamrel blows my essence to the four winds. Same thing if I leave you behind, though I would do so under any other circumstances. A trust betrayed is never mended in my eyes, a trait that made me very unpopular as a bandit lord. Still, I know how to work with traitors when the situation demands it.”

  Kelrob was a habitual receptor for shame. It was his life’s one constant, a companion that weighted his steps and flushed his cheeks, made him often detest and doubt his innermost self. Now, standing before this man, he felt the true inferno of guilt, a white-hot fire that seared away the purities of his soul and left him in abjection, embodying his lowest and vilest self. Falling to his knees before Jacobson, Kelrob said, in a choked voice, “There is no way you will ever trust me again.” It was statement, bare fact; the fire surged within him, and he toyed with the thought of hurling himself off the rock, then felt resurgent guilt at the destruction his selfish death would cause. He huddled and waited for Jacobson’s reply, hot tears swimming unshed in his eyes.

  Jacobson sighed. It was a long sigh, hinting at weariness beyond wrath. “I like you, lad,” he said in such a disarming tone that Kelrob looked up in bleary surprise. “You do quite well, for a lordling of your moronic class. I’ve seen flickers of true manhood in you, and would be loathe to stamp them out, even at the risk of further betrayal. Can I trust you? That remains to be tested. To start with, you can swear to me, here and now, on nothing less than your life’s blood, that you will walk the rest of this path with me in honor, dedicated completely to the purpose of defeating this parasite. Will you make this vow?”

  Kelrob rose unsteadily to his feet, met Jacobson’s commanding stare, and nodded. “I will not betray you,” he said, pouring his tortured heart into the words. “To betray you would be a betrayal of myself.”

  Jacobson’s eyes flickered. “And a betrayal of countless others. Don’t forget that Tamrel is foul as well as fair, lad. Pretty words and wondrous visions are all well and good, but the stink of burning flesh has the odd effect of damping the brain’s access to Elysium.”

  Kelrob nodded, faintly puzzled by the words but feeling their truth. “I’m sorry,” he said again, faint-hearted before this benediction, knowing that Jacobson only granted it out of necessity. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sure you are. I’m going for a walk, to clear my head and empty my bowels. I expect you both to be ready for travel when I return, though I suppose it matters little where we go. See to that wound on your throat, and cook some food for yourself and your lovely bride. I find I have little appetite.” Without another word or a backward glance, Jacobson turned and tromped off into the forest, his hand still curled with a deathlike grip over the hilt of Andrych. Kelrob watched him go, then sank down on the lip of the rock, his head swirling with a fever of thoughts. He felt branded, and thought of Jacobson’s mention of burning flesh.

  Chapter 2: Betrayal

  Shaking as if with fever, Kelrob returned to the camp, where he found Nuir roused and rocking, her hands clutched over the tattered front of her dress. Leaves clung in her thick black hair, and her dark eyes were wild, the veil haphazardly drawn over her face. She looked up as Kelrob approached, and he bowed his head, unable to meet that haunted look of accusation.

  “Where is Tamrel?” she demanded as he bent to gather firewood, hunger knotting his stomach. Kelrob picked up several damp twigs, clutched them to his chest. “He is dormant. Jacobson is in command of the body.”

  “Well, where is he, then? Run off in the night, I suppose. I think he is in collusion with that creature, if in fact there is any man left in there at all.” Nuir raised her eyes as she spoke, watching the tendril of smoke as it curled around the westering sun. Her face pinched with sorrow, and she looked away.

  Kelrob ceased his gathering, the twigs hanging limp in his arms. He hadn’t thought of what to say to Nuir; certainly he would mention nothing of his recent near-betrayal. Instead he shrugged, and said, “I was just speaking with him. He went for a walk in the forest, told us to build and fire and to be ready to travel when he returns.” The mage’s cheeks flushed as he spoke, shame amplified by omission. “We could warm up some of that food you stole,” he added, feigning a resume of his search for fuel.