The Forgotten Tale

by J. M. Frey

  I turn to congratulate Lanaea on her well-aimed shot, but the words die in my throat.

  The lass is sprawled back against the cobbles, hair flung wide like seaweed and Bevel’s bow shattered. Blood pools in the dips and hollows of the flagstones behind her head, rich and reeking of copper. It stains her corn-silk hair and pearlescent gown. It blooms like a gunshot from between her breasts.

  And sticking straight up from between her ribs, there is an arrow.

  It is one of Bevel’s, and the shaft bares the perfect blue print of a hand.

  It is the arrow I dodged.

  I feel my throat close up, the bubbling glow of victory lanced and draining, bile heaving in my guts.

  Oh, Writer. What have I done?

  I hear a scrape and a clatter on the flagstones behind me, the hollow metallic clang of a sword striking stone, and then Wyndam is beside Lanaea, clutching her shoulders and screaming.

  Soundlessly.

  Vows

  If her plan to attack the Lost Library has failed, Solinde is satisfied that she at least managed to end the perfect little bitch that evaded her that day in the field. But that is, unfortunately, the only satisfaction she receives.

  Retreating is ignoble. But necessary.

  The wissenesser shrivels up the moment it touches Solinde’s skin, her body too damaged to resist sloughing off the moisture remaining in the creature, and with it, Solinde absorbs what little the wissenesser was able to consume from Kintyre Turn’s mind.

  Wissenssen live in small tidal pools and mucky bogs, and Solinde had found this one moping beneath a mud bubble in the brackish swamplands around the Urlish coast. The creature was easy enough to Deal with. It wanted into the Lost Library, wanted to feast on the minds of the scholars working there, and in return, it had agreed to share whatever it learned with her. Never knowing, of course, that she knew that Wyndam Turn was heading to the Library, and that she was manipulating just the right strings, saying just the right words, to ensure that this mind-flaying creature would do the deed that Deal-Makers were never allowed—kill Kintyre Turn, and all those he loved.

  But now, all thoughts of killing Kintyre Turn have fled.

  The Great Hero of Hain has become, in ways that Solinde never expected to have ever fathomed, unimportant.

  For Solinde is now in possession of the knowledge that there is proof, without a doubt, that the Writer and Readers exist. Actually exist.

  There is a realm beyond the veil of the skies, a world of Readers whose Eyes watch the lives of everyone in Hain. There is Authorial Intent, and when everyone’s Last Chapter is written, there is a Shelf where, after her death, the book of her life will be set. And that means that every ill, every horror, every pain that Solinde has ever had to endure was deliberate.

  An anger so black, so unlike any she has felt thus far, an anger that plumbs depths within her soul where even Solinde did not know hate could seat itself, boils up through the cracks and fractures in her sanity.

  Did Varnet know? she wonders, and she misses her son so fiercely that she feels as if her bones could melt under the deluge of it. Is that why he is missing? Is that why he was taken? Is that why I cannot find him?

  Solinde is laying on the highest turret of Swordshearth castle in Urland, and below her the king tups his mistress and makes sounds like a beached whale. His bellows disguise Solinde’s own as she pulls the two remaining arrows from her arm. She has no power to summon a storm and quench herself, but the sea-salt spray that drifts upward as the waves crash upon the walls of the castle bailey is enough. She absorbs it greedily, directs the bulk of its restorative power to her wounds, and absolutely simmers with rage.

  A Reader! she thinks again. I stood above a Reader, and it looked so . . . human! So small and petty and worthless. There was a child strapped to its chest, a half-breed whelp. How dare it bestow its attention, its compassion upon a Turn when my Varnet is more powerful, more clever, more worthy? How dare that Reader be here, while my son is . . . my son . . .

  Solinde sits up, a revelation crackling through her mind like lightning across the mountains.

  The idiot boy’s Deal! His forfeit had granted her enough power to pull down a Reader, simply because she had not known that this was the person she had grasped with her power.

  A Reader. Who could, according to legend, speak to the Writer.

  A Reader. Traveling with Kintyre Turn, mortal enemy of her son. Either of whom surely must know what had happened to Varnet, where he went. If they were not responsible for his vanishing into another realm themselves.

  A Reader. Who could lead her back to her own realm, show Solinde how to crawl the cracks in the skies that she can tear but never see through.

  A Reader who would help her.

  Or else.

  Decided, Solinde stands.

  The Writer will pay for what he has done to me. To Varnet!

  There is only one more totem left.

  And when she has destroyed it, her son will be returned to her, and together, they will have their revenge.

  Solinde raises her face to the ever darkening veil above her. It is nearly black now. Less than a hundred lights twinkle in the heavens. There are so few constellations left with their attendant stories.

  Soon, she will crawl and wriggle her way into the realm of the Writer. Soon, soon she will end him. When she is reunited with Varnet, she will have power enough to do it. Together, they will have power enough for anything. And together, they will watch this world, this Kintyre Turn, this idiot mute boy, and this Reader drown.

  And she knows just the right leverage to use to make it so.

  Thirteen

  Alis is wailing.

  The rest of the world is silent, but my child, my baby, is screaming. I feel like joining her, feel like exorcising every horrible, ugly feeling that is churning and roiling in my guts in a shrill, anguished cry. Instead, so as not to terrify her further, I swallow hard on the taste of my despair. I feel as if I am doing her a disservice in pretending that I do not wish to scream as well. As if I am betraying her, somehow, in lying about what I am feeling.

  Pip kisses Alis’s forehead over and over, clutching the bottle of blood and our daughter both, whispering soothing nothings as fat, shocked tears roll down her cheeks and soak into Alis’s hair. Her hands are trembling, but Alis doesn’t seem to notice in her own distress.

  The commotion and screaming draws out the rest of Saetesh’s colleagues, who were hiding behind the gallery pillars in the reading garden. Silently, they shuffle into the courtyard, hats doffed and held before them, expressions shocked, or pitying, or worried. A wide halfling man that, I think, is part dryad, kneels immediately before Saetesh and scoops him up. Saetesh screams again when his leg is jolted, then turns his face into his colleague’s chest and balls his fists in his sleeves.

  “If you puke on me, I’ll puke right back on you,” the halfling warns Saetesh, its voice reedy, its flesh made of crackled bark.

  Saetesh makes an incomprehensible moaning sound and shakes his head slowly.

  “That’s . . . super gross,” Pip says, trying not to look directly at his leg.

  “There are healer’s supplies in our camp,” the dryad-born creature says to me. “Come to us when you’re . . .” He does not finish his sentence, only swallows hard, then turns and goes. The rest of his colleagues, six others in all, trail after him, leaving us alone with . . . what is left of Lanaea.

  Wyndam has let Bevel pull him away from her. But when Bevel reaches down to touch her neck, it is clear by the shuttering of his gaze that he finds no pulse. Even to me, the least skilled warrior of the lot of us, it is obvious that all breath has left her body. If the arrow did not kill her, then the amount of blood she lost when she fell back against the flagstones and cracked open her skull did. Ruby rivulets run along the decorative divots in the stonework, an archaic sort of geometry in gore.

  Wyndam crawls over to the astronomy building and rests his back against the stone, staring up
at the now clear sky. His jet eyes are red-rimmed, and starkly dry, but his cheeks are still flushed and stained with saltwater. His hands are painted with her blood, and he holds his fingers against his lips, smearing the stain against his mouth like a last kiss, mourning.

  The despair that has been dragging upon me finally grows too burdensome to sustain. “Th-this is-s-s ah-all muh-my f-f-fault,” I blurt, and I am choking on the words, barely able to get them past my tongue, where they scorch to ash on my lips. I crumple down onto the charred flagstones. My head feels too heavy to keep up, and my sword drags in the dust. “I was com-complete-letely useless j-just now, but I c-c-cou-could have kn-knocked the ar-arrow away-ay in-instead of j-juh-just si-side-step-ping it. F-F-Forsyth Tuh-Turn and his d-damn c-clever footwork-k, aye, Kin-Kintyre? What good is all th-that p-p-posturing, inde-deed.”

  Bevel, no longer needing to be delicate, yanks out the arrow. Even in death, no one deserves to remain stuck like slaughtered livestock. He chucks it aside, fury bunching his shoulders, and then clenches his fists. “I’m going to have to go back and tell Anne that we got her niece killed. Oh, Writer’s balls. I’m going to have to tell Thoma. Lanaea’s father sent her to Gwillfifeshire for safety, and I should have been a better shot, should have . . .” He trails off and snarls, punching the stones at his feet. Kintyre grabs his wrist to keep him from doing it a second time and possibly breaking his own hand.

  Pip shakes her head and scrubs her hands through her hair. “No. I was the one who said this was the First Station. I was the one who said it was safe for her to come. This is my fault. God, I’m such a fucking idiot. You realizing that the books were going missing was the First Station! Then, there was showing up here . . . the attack in the field . . . and now the Library. This is the Fourth. There’s always a goddamned attack at the Fourth, and some newly introduced character always gets Redshirted, and I just . . . I just . . .” My wife’s voice cracks, and she crumbles as well, shoulders shaking as she slides to the ground beside me and folds herself small against my chest. Alis, cocooned now between her parents, quiets. “She deserved better than to just be fridged,” Pip sobs.

  I hold my wife close, rocking her and letting my own tears mingle with hers. My tongue flutters against the roof of my mouth in my shocked despair, and I cannot speak, not now, but I can make soothing noises.

  And behind me, Wyndam is still, and silent. Dead, for all that he breathes still. I had wished so fervently for Lanaea to be Wyndam’s Pip. Instead, she was his Melinda. I have known that pain, and I would wish it on no one, least of all my nephew. Least of all on Lanaea herself.

  “If we have to blame someone, blame the Deal-Maker Spirit,” Kintyre says, pulling Bevel shakily to his feet. “She attacked us.”

  And in a flash, Wyndam is on his feet, one finger jammed into his chest and a silent fury boiling across his face. He shouts a whole string of expletives and words that are silent and too fast for me to lip-read. But it is clear who Wyndam blames.

  “And what is wrong with you?” Kintyre says, at the end of his patience, and his tether. He pushes Wyndam back, out of his space, but the lad is right back in it, swinging a punch that Kintyre shifts to the side to avoid. “Damn you, just say it, boy!”

  “St-stop it,” I say, standing, scrubbing my cheeks with my cuffs. “Both of you, stop! Wyndam, e-e-enough!”

  Wyndam ignores me and swings again. Kintyre stops his fist with his palm, and I expect him to wrench the lad’s arm around and behind his back, as he’s done to me many times in the past when we were roughhousing. I forget, however, that Wyndam was trained by pirates.

  The lad drops his center of gravity. Kintyre, having shifted his own in preparation to grapple, is startled into letting go of his arm. Wyndam crouches quick, swings one leg out in a circular sweep, and knocks Kintyre back onto his arse.

  I don’t have time to relish the look of shock on my brother’s face, however. Wyndam is up again in a flash, hands on Kintyre’s tented knees, using the momentum to flip over in a midair somersault, landing with his feet on either side of Kintyre’s shoulders. He grabs his father’s collar and hauls back his other fist, but Bevel is there in an instant, tenacious as a bulldog. He clamps his arms around Wyndam’s cocked elbow and wrenches the lad back. This time, momentum and gravity work against Wyndam as Bevel deliberately rolls back onto his rump, rocking back and flipping Wyndam into the wall of the astronomy building with his feet.

  But instead of slamming into the stone and going down, Wyndam continues the spin, plants his feet flat against the wall, and springs back, knocking Bevel back down from where he was rolling to a stand.

  “This is some serious Kung Fu shit right here,” Pip says, from over my shoulder, and I glance at her quickly to see that she has now stood as well. Alis is sniffling, but otherwise occupied with examining the old barnacles pressed against her arm. “We should probably stop them.”

  My attention is drawn back to the fight when Wyndam lands a punch on Bevel’s jaw. Bevel, already woozy from his knock against the flagstones fighting the blob monster, drops for the second time in twenty minutes, and now, I am annoyed. Bad enough that they are brawling instead of talking it out like families ought, but they are doing it mere steps away from Lanaea’s remains. Kintyre springs to his feet, meaty paws open to catch Wyndam around the waist, and Pip is right.

  “Enough!” I bellow in my best Shadow Hand voice, and both Wyndam and Kintyre freeze where they stand. “Kintyre Turn!” I bellow. “Go fetch a blanket and the healer’s kit from the cart! Wyndam Turn, you wake Bevel up right now and check his head for injuries.”

  “But I—” Kintyre begins, at the same moment Wyndam gapes at me and begins gesturing rudely.

  “Now,” I roar. Kintyre and Wyndam obey so quickly that I can practically see the blur of their motion.

  Wyndam gently nudges Bevel awake, helps him sit up and rest back against the wall of the astronomy building. Pip goes over to check for a concussion—his balance seems fine, but he has trouble keeping his eyes open, and for one long moment, we are all certain that he is going to vomit. Wyndam flutters around Bevel, checking his scalp for cuts and generally looking contrite, and Bevel stills him with a soft, cupped palm on the lad’s cheek.

  “Heck of a right hook, my lad,” Bevel says softly. “Quite impressive.”

  Wyndam looks torn between pride and confusion at being praised by the man who generally only yells at him for mistakes.

  Bevel chuckles, pats his face once, and says, “Now, open your shirt, Wyn. Let’s see if you’ve torn yourself open.”

  Wyndam looks startled.

  “What, you think we didn’t know? Poor guardians we’d make, then. And poor warriors to boot.”

  When Kintyre returns, a blanket thrown over his shoulder and the healer’s kit in his hand, along with one of our water flasks, he joins the other two to mother-hen and cluck over their scratches and bruises. Alis squirms and wriggles and protests until she can stand beside Bevel, clinging to his knee and staring very seriously into his face as Kintyre dresses the cut on his forehead. Bevel keeps a loose hand around her ankle, to keep her from wandering off, and does his best to smile through the winces.

  Her hands finally free, Pip avails herself of one of the empty phials in the healer’s kit and very, very carefully pours the blue Deal-Maker’s blood into the easier-to-transport glass container, capping it tightly and slipping it into her bra.

  And I?

  I take the blanket, lay it out on the flag stones and carefully, respectfully, roll up Lanaea.

  ✍

  The cart is cleared out, and Lanaea’s remains are placed reverently in the middle. We relocate the rest of our gear to the open stone beside the fountain, building a makeshift camp of pillows and blankets. Capplederry creeps up to the cart, sniffing and meowing piteously. Wyndam has to push the great cat away to keep it from pawing at Lanaea’s body, and eventually, his shoves devolve into clinging to Capplederry’s ruff and sobbing piteously into the fur there. K
intyre and Bevel give him the space he needs.

  When the lad is all cried out, he joins the rest of us where we sit on the lip of the fountain’s basin, washing away the blood. Alis has been stripped entirely, and as the water only comes up to her waist, she is quite enjoying stomping around making big waves, her terror of a few moments ago forgotten. Alis is on her bottom as much as she is on her feet, but the water doesn’t go over her head when she is sitting, and her mother has a close eye on her. Pip has her boots and her leather trousers off, her shirttails pulled low, and is dangling her feet in the basin with Alis, kicking gently and splashing when Alis gets close enough. But her face is grim, her complexion wan, and her freckles stand out in sharp contrast, the way they always do when she is shaken.

  “My hair,” Kintyre moans, clearly attempting to lighten the mood as much as is respectable. He is holding up a few scraggly, singed ends that frame his ear.

  “Better than you suffocating to death, you idiot lump,” Bevel says, but reaches up to help him try to scrub away the thick, greasy soot and purple slime all the same.

  Wyndam’s shirt still hangs open, and he splashes and scrubs at his face before he sits directly beside me, gesturing to his stomach.

  “It looks better,” I say to him, wetting a bit of ragged cloth and dabbing away the crusted, yellowed ointment. “It hasn’t reopened.”

  “That’s lucky,” Kintyre says, head tipped over and one eye squeezed shut as Bevel, kneeling along the basin with sleeves rolled up, scrubs his hair with soap flakes. It smells of lavender. Kin splutters when Bevel scoops up water in one of the cooking bowls and dumps it over his trothed’s head with no warning.

  Kintyre shoots him a look, and Bevel grins cheekily. If Lanaea were not laid out a few paces away, I know they would be celebrating in their usual post-battle, pseudo-pornographic manner. As it is, they are affectionate, but subdued. All the same, it seems to physically pain Wyndam. He looks away, eyes on the cart as I dry his wound and reapply the ointment.