by T. A. Miles
“A pity the lunatic boy tried to kill the wrong mage!” Tarfan yelled. “The fire-spitter got away!”
“But none of his men did,” Fu Ran pointed out.
“None so far as we know,” Tarfan grumbled. “You couldn’t even count them coming off their ship, and not even the elf discovered the extra archers.”
“I doubt that the pirate they were dealing with gave them that many of his own crew,” Fu Ran argued without raising his voice. “Anyway they left, and after seeing the knight’s tactics, I doubt they’ll be coming back. We took most of them down and forced the others to retreat. In Sheng Fan that’s counted as a victory.”
Tarfan jabbed his finger into the much larger man’s gut. “Well here, in the middle of forsaken wastelands that’s called a damned close call!”
Fu Ran walked away from the dwarf, resuming his pacing in what space the injured left him, and in spite of his damaged knee. “You’d rather be chased across the wastelands until those bastards finally caught up with us. They weren’t going to give up and now the confrontation’s over with. A close call, but it’s done!”
“Done is it?” Tarfan’s face was red with frustration, his dark beard bristling. “Done? You great, bone-headed lummox! How can it be done while we’re toting around an armored box of disaster! In fact, what’s to stop him charging in here at any minute and making cutlets of all of us?”
“He didn’t attack us before,” Fu Ran reminded. “It was the heat of the battle. It had to be. He just panicked, that’s all.”
“Panicked? You didn’t see his face—whiter than the mountain sprite over there—when you pulled him out from under that demon the other night?” Tarfan indicated Alere with one flung arm. “If he was going to lose it, that was where he should have lost it!”
“The knight is not responsible for this. It is I who have brought all of you here and it is I who will accept the blame for what has befallen you.”
Tarfan and Fu Ran both stopped to look at Xu Liang, having perhaps forgotten that he was even present during their argument.
Quietly, Xu Liang continued. “Fu Ran is correct. Overall, we claimed victory this day. Still, my plan was imperfect, as it involved people who were not mine to command. My bodyguards did what duty required of them, even in death. The Empress herself appointed them to this task, but the rest of you came as friends and allies. I understand now what Tristus was saying, and I have disgraced myself with my inadequate decisions and my betrayal of your trust. I cannot ask for your forgiveness, but I will offer you my sincerest apologies and condolences for any losses suffered.”
Xu Liang stood, bowing to his stunned audience. When he straightened again, he said, “Alere is called to this journey by forces higher than myself. I believe he knows that and will continue on, in spite of what has happened today. But you…Tarfan, Fu Ran, and Taya…do not have to be here. I will understand if you decide to turn back and offer whatever I have to spare that will aid you on your journey home.”
“Where are you going?” Tarfan asked Xu Liang when he walked to the tent’s entrance.
“I must speak with the knight.” Xu Liang held out a hand to stop Fu Ran and Guang Ci as they came forward simultaneously. He said in Fanese, “I must speak with him alone.”
The guard and former guard halted and grudgingly remained behind while Xu Liang exited the tent and approached the slumping form silhouetted against the sunset. At the very least, Tristus hadn’t fled. Whatever he was thinking and feeling, whatever he had heard the others saying about him, he didn’t have the strength or else the desire to flee the unpleasant circumstances.
Looking at the depressed knight, Xu Liang didn’t know what to feel. Inside of this young man was an enemy, one to be greatly feared, but it was not an enemy that sat before him now. It should have been easy to separate the emotions, but Xu Liang was having difficulty. Fear and hatred clashed against compassion and the trust he’d felt just hours ago, before a terrible evil emerged from behind a mask of virtue. Now the torment behind the man’s soft eyes was clear, but at what cost? Had he been the death of Hu Zhong, Yuan Lan, and Bastien? Or had his rage been more focused than even he knew?
“They call them soul burners,” Tristus said miserably and, seeing that he was conscious again, Xu Liang stopped more than an arm’s length away from him.
The knight continued. “In Caleddon, where weirdness and witchcraft flourish, where the children tell tales of demons to their parents, and where men drink the blood of other men, they are given that title. Such things are rejected in Treska, automatically. It is a reflex, like breathing, to denounce the possibility of magic as anything more than foolish superstition and common trickery used to scare or entertain peasants. In Andaria, such things are considered, but only as a menacing darkness that must be burned, like unwanted growth, lest it take over the green and gold fields of our sacred lands.” He sounded bitter, perhaps even mocking in that statement.
Xu Liang offered silence.
Tristus accepted it for a time. Eventually, he said, “It was an old man from Caleddon, who told me about them.”
“Them?” Xu Liang inquired delicately. “The soul burners?”
Tristus nodded sullenly. “They are wraiths, spirits that take up residence in an unsuspecting body and attack the soul, toying with it, driving the person mad.”
Xu Liang selected his words with care. “Is that what you think is inside of you?”
“I don’t know what’s inside of me,” the knight admitted, sounding confused and detached. “I was just thinking about that old man. He’d been caught practicing his strange craft in a village not far from the Citadel one day, and was brought before the High Order Master, whom he accused of harboring a soul burner. I was guarding the old man’s cell when he told me about them. The High Order Master had the poor fool burned the next morning for his blasphemy.”
The knight laughed suddenly. It was a strangled and alarming sound in his state. “Do you know he’s afraid of me? The High Order Master?” Tristus nodded when Xu Liang said nothing, adding, “He is. He would have had me killed, but he feared that whatever is inside of me would awaken and go after him, as it went after the others. Instead he had me banished. He held a trial and everything, not one to make me seem guilty of anything so much as it was meant to make me realize myself a danger to others and unfit for the Order because of the ease with which evil could use me. My intentions didn’t matter, he said. My faith wasn’t strong enough.”
Tears crowded his last statement. He gained control of them and continued, “The Order Master stripped me of my rank and my command, and once I’d safely gone he told everyone of my curse and my deed, that I’d given up my honor and my faith, and turned against God. People I’d grown up with shunned me, speaking openly and behind my back of how I shamed my father’s legacy. My mother died of shame and grief. There was nothing I could do but leave.”
A long silence followed Tristus’ words.
Believing the knight to be relatively under control, Xu Liang chanced a step toward him.
Tristus took notice of the movement suddenly, and convulsed away from him. He was quickly on his feet, backing away. “Don’t! Please don’t. Just stay back.”
Xu Liang stopped, and watched the knight wheel away from him. Tristus took several steps into the near darkness before he dropped to his knees in defeat. Xu Liang thought about seeking Gai Ping for assistance, but he quickly reminded himself that it was his duty to bring the Swords and their bearers together, since he’d opted not to wait for fate to do so on its own. He realized, since taking the bearers into serious account, that he would have to earn their trust and give them his in return, unconditionally. Those in discord among themselves could not hope to stand against chaos, in any form it chose to take.
Xu Liang started forward again, surprised when Tristus didn’t leave or urge him back.
“The Order Masters are right,” the knight mumbled. “My faith isn’t strong enough. No matter what or who I try to follow,
I only ruin things. I destroy them utterly. Whatever is inside of me, I cannot banish it on my own, and I cannot control it.”
“On your own, perhaps not,” Xu Liang said, sitting down as he began to feel tired. It would take many hours to recover from the day’s exertion. “Perhaps with someone to help you...”
“There is no one to help me,” Tristus decided. “Dawnfire was my salvation...and I lost it.”
“It is not conviction I hear in your voice when you say such things, but desperation,” Xu Liang told him. “You want something to save you from this fate. You want to believe that something can, so that you do not feel as much blame when the fury escapes.”
He was simply guessing and wondered if he should worry about the knight’s sudden silence following his words. He wouldn’t have the strength to fend him off if he attacked again.
IT WAS NOT hard to read the reservation in the mystic. Tristus didn’t attack, and he wouldn’t. He was far too aware at the moment, and he was sure that he had never hated anyone more in his entire life than he hated himself presently. He’d just viciously slaughtered at least a dozen men, turned against Tarfan and Taya, and the others assigned to that battle with him. He could only think of how ashamed and terrified he was to have attacked Xu Liang, whom he was only a few solemn words away from being oath bound to serve and protect with his life. In his mind the vow had already been made. It would only be another test of his honor failed.
He had no memory of any of the battlefield’s final moments. He recalled only feeling an intense, burning anger, all thought gone save one: He must kill. Something stopped him. He awakened from his killing trance with the tip of his sword just inches away from the mystic’s heart. He’d have murdered him in another second. He’d have murdered the others as well, and honor didn’t have anything to do with it. It was his humanity that was in question now. He was no better than a demon.
The thought paralyzed him. The tears stopped and he stared at the shadowing ground, forgetting for a moment even to breathe.
God, I’m not even human!
He thought of Taya’s fear while Tarfan led her away from the field of corpses and the individual responsible for leaving them there—in pieces! —and shuddered.
I’m a monster!
And yet, the others let me live. They could have killed me in my exhaustion and instead they brought me back. Why? How can they...how can Xu Liang treat me so fairly after what I did, what I might have done?
What I didn’t do, Tristus amended.
He sat up slowly, wiped his eyes, and drew in a long breath. He let the air out carefully, then raked a hand through his limp hair and vowed to himself, I’m never going to cry like this again. And whatever you are, trapped inside of me, foul murdering thing...I’ll never let you out again.
In a moment, he looked at Xu Liang. The mystic’s eyes were closed. Tristus didn’t know if he was meditating, but he approached him slowly, crawling so as not to alarm him. He couldn’t say where his sword was at the moment—he’d barely been conscious when Fu Ran half dragged him back to the camp site—but he imagined that the others, recalling his berserker state, would fear him whether armed or not. He recalled the look on poor little Taya’s face clearly enough. It would haunt him for some time. The thought almost stopped his approach toward Xu Liang, but there was something stronger than his consciousness when it came to the mystic, that drew him as surely as the rage took him over. But the sway of whatever held him when he looked upon Xu Liang was not a danger.
Tristus arrived at the mystic and was maneuvering onto one knee when Xu Liang opened his eyes, and froze him with the action. Too stunned to be nervous or embarrassed, Tristus stared for several moments into those dark, mysterious eyes, having a thousand questions generated in his mind with every beat of his heart. All the while Xu Liang said nothing, his gaze unwavering.
A display of trust, Tristus realized slowly, and he wondered what to say now that the very thing he’d meant to solemnly ask for had been granted. He hovered before the mystic, looking at him as he’d only dared to once before. Weariness did not degrade the details Tristus had captured in his memory from the first time he gazed upon such grace. Every feature, every line, remained perfect, drawing a stunning portrait of patience and intelligence, and even of kindness. That last trait was something every figure of authority Tristus had ever known—including his own father—had been direly lacking. The mystic’s eyes were depthless, pools of wonder that had unquestionably seen things Tristus could only dream of. Tristus wanted to see those things. He wanted to see the land and the people that had enabled such a person as Xu Liang to exist. He wanted to see the empress that had inspired him to journey so far from his homeland, and... he wanted...
“The wise employ caution.” Xu Liang spoke suddenly, drawing Tristus out of his second trance for the day.
Tristus quickly dropped his gaze to the ground, feeling twice as embarrassed as he did the first time he’d stared so deeply at the mystic, as this time he had a witness; the very subject of his admiration.
However, it didn’t seem that Xu Liang meant to scold him when he rose to his feet and said, “With the sorcerer having survived and the shadow folk abounding we cannot allow our guard to fall. There is still a long journey ahead, for those of us continuing on.”
Still looking at the dark, cold earth, Tristus said, “I will come, if you and the others will have me. I know this may be difficult to accept, but I meant none of you any harm today and I would not seek to harm any of you in the future. I intend to take Master Gai Ping’s advice and make my weaknesses strengths. I include whatever lurks within me when I say that.”
“Gai Ping will be pleased to know that at least one of us is wise enough to regard his wisdom seriously,” Xu Liang replied. “And now I advise you to rest, Tristus Edainien. There are not many of us left who will be able to defend this camp tonight should the need arise.”
Before the mystic could leave, Tristus quickly stood and beckoned after him. “I can help,” he said when Xu Liang stopped. He glanced at the tent entrance, and felt a nervous spasm inside as he considered the others’ reactions to him. He recalled his vow but moments ago and said again, with renewed determination, “I can help.”
“UNBELIEVABLE,” TARFAN MUMBLED. He looked over his shoulder at Fu Ran, held a hand out to indicate the subject of everyone’s interest, and said, “I don’t believe it!”
No one paid attention to the dwarf, their eyes fixed on the young knight, kneeling beside Alere with his head bowed and one hand hovering just above the elf’s ruined back. A faint white light glowed under his palm. His other hand just touched the insignia on his breastplate and his lips moved in quiet prayer. The words were ancient, and even elegant. They sounded important, and they must have been, since the elf’s broken skin was slowly beginning to mend itself.
“Incredible,” Tarfan breathed in wonder. “A cleric? Him?”
Tristus finished his prayer with a traditional Andarian gesture, then withdrew his healing hand, and looked at his astonished audience. He smiled what might have been considered the first real smile since the company had met him and said, “I was schooled for the clergy before training to become a knight.” He glanced up at Xu Liang, his expression altering to one of apology. “I might have said something sooner, but there still would have been nothing I could do for Deng Po. God’s mercy where demons are concerned is often to grant the poor soul a quicker release from its tormented body. I’m sorry about the others as well. If I’d not been so irrational and exhausted after...after what happened, I might have gotten to them in time.”
“You are doing all that you can,” Xu Liang said appreciatively.
“A real cleric,” Tarfan marveled, stepping closer to the rapidly healing elf.
Fu Ran grabbed his shoulder. “Get in line, dwarf. My knee is aching like you would not believe.”
Xu Liang intervened before Tarfan could do more than bristle. “I know some of you have a long walk ahead of you,” the myst
ic said, “but perhaps we ought to be careful about tiring Tristus too much.”
“It’s all right,” Tristus said at once. “It’s the very least that I can do.” He turned to face Taya, who stood at the foot of the elf’s pallet. “I can heal your wound too,” he offered, seeming to know as he spoke the words that no amount of prayer was going to mend what actually hurt the girl. Tristus watched her hesitate, then extended his hand to the dwarf maiden and said, “I meant what I said before, Taya. I’ll do you no harm. You needn’t be afraid.”
She almost looked sad at first, perhaps even shy in the face of what she remembered from the battlefield. And then she lifted her chin indignantly and said, “I am not afraid. I’ve seen plenty of foul tempers in my time among men! Throw another fit like that, sir, and you’ll be making breakfast for the lot of us for the next week!”
“I won’t,” Tristus said, immediately relieved. He laughed as she marched toward him, then scooped up her small hand and looked seriously into her hazel eyes that glimmered with unshed tears. “I promise,” he whispered, then slowly stroked a lock of dark hair out of her eyes and pulled the lady dwarf into his arms, where she began to weep. “I’m so sorry, Taya. I’ll never give you cause to be afraid again.”
“You’d better not!” Taya snapped through her tears. “I’ll have your head myself before I’ll let you lose it like that again!”
THE NIGHT BROUGHT snow and healing, and rest. Their company of fifteen was down to eleven. Bastien still had not returned and, though Fu Ran would display no sadness, Xu Liang knew his former guard did not look forward to the dawn’s search for his shipmate’s body.
