He exhaled slow. “No. I heard tales of Macti magic on the battlefield. Of animal blood and the healing toad—”
Hesher snickered. “Pretenders. They need colorful glyphs and costumes to sell themselves to the bandits, make themselves fierce. But our magic is older. Our magic is the knot of the world. We will undo the knot in your soul.” A cold relief bit Enrick’s heart, but Hesher’s nostrils flared. “But will you permit me to lead her to a heathen heaven?”
Enrick nodded. “After so long, any heaven will do.” The red ash burned but warmed little. “Do you think your heathen gods will accept her?”
Hesher smiled without joy. “We have safe havens for such women lost in battle.”
Such women? “Then you know what they did to her?”
“Yes.” She took the rag out of the bottle. “And if that cold spot in you wants to lash out, feel free. Remember, though, that you will have killed her last chance for salvation.” She took a swig, and a green dribble swirled down her thin lip. “Now, do we begin? Do we?”
Enrick nodded, thin hair falling in front of his eyes. The scars on his head itched. “We do.”
She wiped rupin from her lips. She stood, and consulted a wall of what he thought was clothing... but as his eyes adjusted, its form emerged. Knots. The wall was a collection of knots.
Her thick fingers plucked a red and black mound, then she sat back before him. “She talks to you?”
He nodded.
She gripped the mess of knots, massaging them, fingers like iron worms, flexing in and out. “In daylight?”
He shook his head.
Her eyes closed. “Night?”
“She comes to me in sleep,” he said. “Always the same.”
“Tell,” Hesher said.
“I am chained with black ropes, in my home. A dozen Macti are inside. I struggle. But the black ropes draw tighter. She screams. I cannot see her. But she screams at me as they all go into our bedroom.”
His vision shook. The words were raw cold meat slithering out of his mouth. He’d never spoken of it. Not a whisper.
* * *
Hesher worked her knots, the broken man before her dribbling his story. “What does she say?”
Gripping his knees, Enrick shook his head. “She doesn’t speak—”
The knots of crimson gumroot constricted against Hesher’s fingers. “Don’t lie,” she said, sight turning the same color as the burning ash. “She does not howl like the wilderness at you. The words are sharp. What does she say?” The heart of rope in her hands breathed, looser and then tighter. Her calluses burned as she dug in deeper. “Say it.”
His voice was soft as threshneedle on a summer floor. “She screams.”
The knots breathed deeper. She pulled, eyes on him. “Screams what?”
Twitches bit his eyes with the random fleck of a dewbug. “Coward. She... she screams coward.”
The knots untangled before her hand. Hesher held them to the ashlight. The creature would be revealed from the space in the knot. It cannot avoid looking into a Kulat’s eye, especially one so skilled as Hesher herself. The dull silver glow of a spirit trapped awaited her verdict. Hesher had pulled them free for her people so many times, the tortured souls. She would see a dull silver essence that needed to be drawn out like puss from a sore....
She peered within the knot’s empty mouth.
The Minister writhed before her.
Nothing. Within the knot, no silver shimmer, no ghost of the dead.
Hesher betrayed no horror at the empty sight, but part of her screamed.
His wife, she thought. She... she is not in him.
“Please,” said the Minister. “Is she free?”
“Shh,” she said, staring at the void. But not an unnatural one, for the ashfire light did touch it. It was the emptiness. That was the heart of it.
She was gone, Hesher knew. She died under our blades and anger and went wherever those people go, to wander with their Wayfarer and conquer the world with iron. Part of Hesher cackled at the tortured mind before her. It had forged chains of painful memories upon itself. A little man of spiritual weakness, who failed to save his own, and tortures himself with that memory as he carves out a life of blood and suffering....
The whisper of yellow bones were a breeze against her ear.
He is ours.
We made him, Hesher thought. Just as surely as he made us that day, coffin of weapons upon our shoulder. We made him. A man of vagrant god; ambassador of a ludicrous faith... we laughed at him as he tried to walk among us with courage into a poisoned house. We made him.
Through the knot, the suffering on his face had a taste. Bitter root and ash.
Hesher steeled herself. We cannot help him, baby-tam. There is no ghost to chase.
But can we unmake him?
* * *
His bones hollowed from the pull of memory, Enrick gripped his skull with what strength he had. The dim ashlight made shadows ripple. “What do you see?”
The witch’s face was hidden by the crimson knots in her hand. “Everything and nothing.”
He tore his hair. “No parables! No riddles. She must be free. I have marched awake for days so that I could get here and have her removed to safety! What do you see?”
“A whisper,” she said, eye through the knots. “Of an old promise. From an old god.”
Terror forced his eyes open, meeting hers through the knots. “No... he has forsaken me. He has—”
“He is a wanderer. How hard have you tried to find him? When the anger at your weakness cooled, you became a soldier, a monster of blood and iron. But he is elsewhere. That is why you have not found him.” The final notes of the midnight prayer tickled the air from distant brass pipes. “That is a song of your nomadic god?”
His jaw shook, but he coughed out “Yes.”
With her left hand, she rummaged through a mound of cloth and animal totems. “Here,” she said, then tossed something.
It jangled as he caught it. A leather purse, rivers of cracks. “What is this?”
She grimaced. “I believe you’d call it a donation. Your faith has never lasted long in the old city. But your forefathers certainly tried. There is a resting house for your god and his people at the far end of this road. If you can arrive there, and light a candle, she will be free.” She tossed the knots into the ashfire, and there was a flare of dull red flame.
He huffed, eyes wild. “Are you sure? Are you sure he waits for me?”
She watched the flame of old blood burn. “This is your last chance, Minister. I suggest you take it.”
He stood, holding the purse with both hands, coins clanking loudly. “I... thank you.”
She nodded. “Go on. From what you people say, your god does not tarry. Go as a man of peace, not of the blade. Go and be returned to him.”
Enrick nodded, a blister of hope in his heart, then tore open the door and walked into the night while the last of the evening song played.
He walked the path, words coming from a guttural place inside him:
“Blessed be the Wafarer, who rides on wind... and sea. The light of hope, our intrepid captain, bound... to eternity.”
* * *
Hesher watched him scurry down the path, prayer song muttered beneath his whiskers, the jangle of his coin purse loud enough to wake the poor and the dead.
He walked onward, singing a tune of salvation and bound for a church that had burned down before Hesher had ever touched a knot.
Shadows followed. And grew.
One had a jeweled face and blade in hand. It looked back at Hesher.
Hesher caressed the knotted box at her breast, and nodded.
The shadows descended, but he walked on, bleeding with prayer and wound, bound around the curve of the city, out of sight.
Hesher turned to the ashfire and the heart of rope she’d tossed. Smoke was all that remained. And her memory.
She closed the door and said the Macti prayer for the damned, then cried upon the ye
llow bones.
Copyright © 2013 Jason S. Ridler
Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website
Jason S. Ridler is a writer and historian. He is the author of A Triumph For Sakura, Blood and Sawdust, the Spar Battersea thrillers (Death Match, Con Job, and Dice Roll), the short story collection Knockouts, and has published over sixty stories. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Mr. Ridler holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. Visit him at his writing blog, Ridlerville, jsridler.livejournal.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter @JayRidler.
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COVER ART
“The Rickety Tower,” by Jeremiah Morelli
Jeremiah Morelli lives in southern Germany and currently works as a middle school teacher for English and Art. He sees his painting mainly as a hobby, though he has been selling prints for several years. Colorful, whimsical scenes are what he likes most, and he hopes to publish a children’s book one day.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press
This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.
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