Students of the Order

by Edward W. Robertson

  The hills dumped them onto a prairie where warmer currents battled with the frigid ones tumbling from the heights. Sections of grass had been reduced to blackened ash. Here and there, bodies speckled the ground, rotting slowly if at all in the cold. They'd been stripped of boots, weapons, pouches, and coats. Two villages had been abandoned so hastily that doors creaked open in the wind.

  Ahead, the leaden shimmer of a river reached across the desert.

  They entered the wasteland. The ground was crusty, the dirt cracked. Mounds of pale stone broke the hardpan like the backs of mustering beasts. Nod stopped often to consult and annotate a crude map. Sometimes columns of smoke rose from distant gullies, but Joti couldn't tell if they were the smoke of Summite tribes or of war.

  Two days into the desert, the land reddened beneath their feet. A mile later, it sank away on all sides, exposing narrow spines of rock separated by shallow valleys of packed red sand. At first they walked on the ridges, but after having to backtrack away from sheer cliffs three times, they took to the sands, slogging their way forward as the winds ablated their faces with the red grains.

  Behind the clouds, the sun dimmed to the west. Joti glanced up. Someone was whistling in the distance. The two Marshals exchanged a look. They altered course toward the whistling, which was soon joined by others in an eerie and unsteady harmony.

  They rounded a spine of rock. Ahead, a ribbon of glossy red squiggled across the middle of a canyon like a bloody stream. Shain approached it, tapped it with her boot, and stepped onto it. Joti followed and found himself on a road of red glass.

  They neared a narrow gap in the high rock. Entering it, the whistling doubled in volume. Shafts of glass jabbed from the sand like spears, perforated at the top with holes of various sizes, the wind keening through them like a warning. The shining path led to a large glass tube extending from a wall of blank stone, providing a tunnel through it. Though most of the exposed end of the tunnel looked solid enough, portions of its walls were stretched so thin they had no color at all.

  Shain stopped at the entrance, ticking her nails against the hilt of her sword. "My gut is telling me it's not so sure about blundering into a tunnel made of a substance that could slash me to ribbons if the thousands of tons of rock weighing down on it were to crack it. On the other hand, were that to happen, my gut would be rather too flat to say 'I told you so.'"

  She rocked forward and entered the tube of glass. Nod motioned for Joti and Brakk to follow, then took up the rear. Their bootsteps and breathing echoed from the smooth, tight walls. The cliffs loomed overhead. As soon as they passed beneath the rock, the tunnel darkened like a moonless night.

  Shain drew her sword.

  "What do you see?" Joti said.

  "Nothing yet. I'm just holding this in front of me in case any cave-dwelling monsters are thinking about introducing themselves."

  She shuffled forward. Joti did the same, giving her enough space that if she turned around abruptly he wouldn't be impaled. Bits of sand crunched between the soles of his boots and the hard floor. Ahead, light glowed dimly. The enclosing rock fell away, casting them into a red-dyed twilight.

  The tube curled about, shielding its mouth from the wind, and disgorged them. They stood on a solid pane of glass that paved the entire floor of a small canyon. Shain's eyes flicked to every glint of light from the glass poles and low piles of shattered pieces. Nod surveyed the canyon's rim. As they stood there, the sun slid beyond the horizon, dropping them into a rosy shadow.

  Something tapped against the glass ahead of them. Joti reached for his sword. A figure approached through the dimness, a gnarled wooden staff thwacking in time with her steps. She was built like a barrel, pale robes hanging from her like leaves a tree couldn't quite shed.

  Joti had seen a few dwarves in Ankin Drog, but only at a distance. Up close, he couldn't see how their stumpy legs worked at all, let alone were able to convey the witch forward at a normal pace. The witch came to a stop fifteen feet from them, her hair hanging past her face in heavy curls, her eyes smoldering like faraway fires. She looked neither old nor young.

  "Greetings," Shain said as casually as if they'd met inside a tavern. "My name is Shain, of the—"

  The woman waved a dense hand. "You again."

  "I'm sorry, but I'm rather certain we've never met."

  "Met one of you. Enough to know all of you. Meddlers. Suppose I came to this place to be meddled with?"

  "A raiding party has come to this desert. They're ruthless and they're efficient. We might meddle with your time, but if their army finds you, they'll meddle with your organs."

  The dwarf squinted. She removed a pinch of something dark from a pouch around her bullish neck and tucked it into her mouth. "What do you want, greenskin?"

  "The raiders were last seen in Daryar land. If we approach the Daryar ourselves, they are likely to forcibly donate our skins to the floor of their shrine. But you know them pretty well, don't you?"

  "Well enough to know they won't like you."

  "Unless we were introduced by one whose beliefs they respect as highly as their own."

  The dwarf was as still as a boulder. The wind played uncertain notes on the glass whistles. "The raiders won't stay long. They'll leave as soon as they find out why plants don't stay here, either."

  "I wouldn't be so sure of that." Shain gazed up at the rim of the canyon. "There's been a mithril strike. The raiders may want to take it. If they do, and seize it, in order to work it, they'll be in need of all the slaves they can get their hands on. They'll come here and take whoever they can. They will continue to come back until the strike is exhausted. If you're lucky, that will only take a few years. If you're not so lucky, they could be here for generations."

  "You think these people are bad enough to grab hold of the whole Duk Mak." The witch's eyes moved slowly between the four of them. "And you think you're going to stop them with a fop, a twitchy mouse, a simpering worm, and a child?"

  Brakk made a choking sound that Joti suspected was laughter. Shain drew back her shoulders, looming over the dwarf, who didn't look impressed in the slightest.

  "We'll need no more than four days of your time," Shain said. "But we'll compensate you for forty."

  The Witch of Dazagoon spat green fluid between Shain's boots. "You got nothing to offer me that's more important than what I do here. Now get going and keep going before I curse the bunch of you."

  "You call yourself a witch to frighten the locals away from you. Those of us who've seen more of the world than a few scraps of sand aren't taken by your sham."

  "What would you rather I turn you into? A wriggling centipede? Or a poor bastard rat that doesn't eat nothing but centipedes?"

  "I'm going to say this very—"

  "Enough!" The dwarf slammed down her staff with a glassy ping. "Leave, and don't come back. I got better things to do with my time than argue with arrogant orcs."

  Shain's hand flexed, her face darkening with anger. She looked ready to take the witch captive and force her to take them to the Daryar, a tactic Joti was skeptical would impress the witch's friends into working with the Marshals.

  He blurted, "How much time have you spent here?"

  The dwarf glanced up at him. "Eighty years. By the look of it, that's about 75 more than you been alive."

  "Is this canyon all the land you've been able to heal?"

  "I've also done a few parts outside it. What of it? How much have you done?"

  "None, since I think you might be crazy. But you think the world's crumbling into sand around us, don't you?"

  "I don't think it," the witch said. "I see it."

  "Then you must also see it's crumbling faster than you're healing it."

  The dwarf was now ignoring Shain altogether. "And? If the roof's falling down around our heads, shouldn't I try to brace it up anyway, even if my arms aren't strong enough to hold it forever?"

  "It just seems like you might need help." He gestured in the general direction of elsewhere
. "Maybe the Peak of Tears could loan you some workers. Or escort you to go preach to other dwarves who might be impressed by what you've done here."

  In the last of the light, the witch quirked her heavy jowls. "About time I heard words worth listening to."

  24

  Three steps took Haniel to the door. She shook the door knob, knowing it would be locked, and then began to kick savagely at the bolt. Bronzino went to the construction site by Bowen's house and came back with a plank, and they quickly broke open the door.

  Inside they took a moment to light a candle from Bronzino's cigar. They were in an empty sitting room. The child's crying seemed to be coming from up a flight of stairs.

  The second floor of the house consisted of a long hall with many doors opening off of it. Haniel opened the first one they passed.

  The naked boy inside was probably fifteen, sitting quietly on a bed that was the room's only furnishing. His cheeks were shrunken with hunger, but his face clearly would have been pretty under other circumstances. He looked at Haniel and Bronzino blankly for a moment, and then smiled at them, climbed onto the bed and got on all fours, his ass pointed invitingly at the doorway.

  "All the gods, we're not here for that! Who are you?"

  The boy seemed not to hear them and remained prostrate on the bed. Bronzino walked in, took the boy by the shoulders and got him to sit on the bed facing them. Haniel held the candle over them. Bronzino looked into the boy's eyes and began to question him—"Who are you? What did they do to you? What is this place? When was the last time anyone was here?"—but all of Bronzino's questions were met with blank, pleasant smiles. Haniel made the poppy-shaped fist over her heart.

  The boy saw this and looked worried. He slowly raised his left hand and looked at it. Very slowly he formed the poppy-fist with his hand—getting it right, Haniel noticed, which Bronzino had been unable to do without her help—and then slowly raised the hand and held it over his heart. His mouth still smiled at Haniel blankly, but he now stared at her with silent tears in his eyes.

  Haniel choked on a sob. Bronzino got the boy to stand up, and Haniel got a blanket off the bed, wrapped him in it, and got him to follow them into the hallway.

  The next door had a younger girl who broke into sobs when she saw them, ran into a corner, and shrieked whenever they approached, and they eventually left her alone. The door after that had a much younger girl who would not move at all, although she was clearly alive and breathing. They found a lantern in this room and lit it. They walked out into a hallway and counted seven more doors. The faint crying was coming from further down the hall.

  "We need help," said Haniel.

  Bronzino nodded. "The chances are Bowen is in one half of his house or the other, and both of the ladies know me to say 'hi' to. He's not the Order's sharpest, but he'll be able to get word to the tower and send for healers. Will you be all right here, for a while?"

  "Of course," she said.

  They shook hands and Bronzino left.

  Haniel sat the boy from the first room, still wrapped in the blanket, on the bed with the motionless little girl and then walked into the hall holding the lantern. She walked down the hall, listening to the sound of the child's crying, and opened the door that it came from.

  The girl was sitting on the bed, hugging her knees and rocking, softly sobbing. She stopped crying and looked up, happily, when Haniel came in.

  "Once upon a time there was a brave little bear that lived all alone in the woods," the girl said.

  "What's your name?" asked Haniel.

  The girl thought for a moment. "One day, the bear was hungry, so he went looking for food."

  "How long have you been here?"

  Again, the girl seemed to think before responding. "The bear found a house and in that house lived three dragons, a mother dragon, a father dragon, and a baby dragon."

  Haniel sighed. She walked to the door and the child started to cry again. She went back to the bed, sat with the girl, and listened to a little more of her fairy tale. After a while, Haniel got up and searched the room. Eventually, she found a robe, which she helped the girl get into, and then led her down the hall to the room where she had left the other two. The little girl seemed reassured by their presence.

  The front door opened. Haniel dimmed the lantern. "Everyone be very quiet," she whispered.

  The little girl responded in a barely audible whisper, "But the third pile of treasure was just right." The other two children stayed as silent as they had always been.

  A woman's voice called from downstairs. Haniel took a folding knife out of the bag that she carried, unfolded it, and walked silently to the head of the stairs.

  "Hello! Bronzino sent me!"

  Haniel folded the knife, put it in a pocket, and walked down the stairs. She met a worried-looking woman in her late thirties whose voluptuous frame identified her as the first of Bowen's lovers. She was carrying two baskets, and had a water skin slung over each shoulder, and introduced herself as Karn.

  "Thank you," Haniel said. "Did he say what was here?"

  Kindly concern radiated from the woman's face. "He said that there were children who hadn't been fed in days, and that it was somehow worse than that. He was giving my maid a message to take to the tower, and he seemed so wretched I just grabbed what I could and came over."

  "It's dreadful up there," Haniel confirmed.

  "I don't suppose we're helping any down here?"

  Haniel shook her head, took one of the baskets, and lead her up the stairs.

  Haniel re-lit the lantern, and Karn went to work trying to get the three children to eat and drink. Haniel opened another door and found another girl, lifeless and cold, with a peaceful expression on her face. Haniel covered her with a blanket.

  Another door revealed a boy who let her lead him back to the room with the others, where Karn was trying to revive the unmoving girl with a drink from a brandy bottle. Haniel's eyes doubled in size and she wiped her mouth and grabbed the bottle without thinking, and shuddered with pleasure at the warm shock that enveloped her.

  "I'm sorry, I should have thought of you," Karn told her.

  Haniel laughed hoarsely, "I'm sorry, but all the gods, I needed that."

  Bronzino, Bowen's new girlfriend, and several servants showed up next, followed soon by the local healer, and then by Bowen, who had been spending the night in his room in the tower, and they all went to work searching the house and doing what they could for the children.

  Bowen arrived furious, having received an identical message from each mistress, but this was instantly replaced with a mixture of authority and compassion that Haniel found herself in awe of. She quickly decided that if other wizards thought of Bowen as stupid, it was because of a great sense of decency that prevented him from appreciating the finer points of the Order's business.

  Of the ten rooms on the top floor, only one was empty. Two of the rooms contained dead children; the peaceful girl Haniel had found and an older girl who had chewed open her wrists and bled to death. No one thought to check the basement until several hours later, and the only living being they found there, a little boy, died in the morning.

  Neither Haniel nor Bronzino had looked into the children's minds. With Bowen there, however, this could no longer be avoided, and the three conducted a quick inspection of the seven survivor's minds. Two, the girl who hid in the corner and an older boy who was catatonic, were obviously broken beyond repair: their minds would never communicate with the body well enough to eat and digest food, and their existence would consist of nothing but uncomprehended suffering for the few days or hours until they starved to death.

  Bowen led the two Adepts into the shrieking girl's room, and held his staff. The room faded away and was replaced with a garden—the Spring Garden of the viscount of Slome, Bowen later told them, his first assignment as a wizard—where butterflies the size of books went to and fro amongst brightly colored flowers. A fountain danced and sang a bubbling tune. The little girl, ghostly,
barely present, sat on a bank of moss.

  Bronzino brought the inkpot monkey. It pranced over to the ghost-girl and sat in her lap and she smiled.

  "Mother?" she said.

  There was not enough of the girl left for them to dig up a memory of her own mother. If Bronzino's mother were to appear in their memory-world it would likely as not be as a corpse, and when they looked at Bowen he shook his head with a shiver, so it fell to Haniel. She reached back in her own memory—choking through the surging jumble of her life in the Order and finally finding the placid space of her childhood.

  She was in the messy cottage. Her littlest brother was crying, while two more children were chasing each other around, and something was furiously boiling on the stove; exactly why Haniel's mother had chosen this time to repair a winter quilt was unclear, but she had.

  She dropped her quilting, jumped to her feet, and made the poppy fist over her heart when she saw Haniel walk through the door.

  "My poor, poor Hanny, what have They done to you, child?"

  There was not enough gin in Kroywen, or in the world. Every part of Haniel wanted to weep, wanted to stay in the memory forever, and every familiar sight, every note of love in her mother's voice hurt her.

  "To me? It doesn't matter. There's a little girl that needs help."

  "The medicine woman is down the road, my soup is boiling…"

  "She needs your help, ma."

  She nodded and walked to the door, which opened onto the garden. Haniel's mother went over to the ghost girl, who smiled with delight, put her head in her lap, and watched the butterflies, while stroking the inkpot monkey.

  As gently as they could, Bowen, Bronzino, and Haniel set about cutting adrift the last of the girl's essence and sifting through her memory. Most of it consisted of fragmented moments of vile abuse in the house where they found her—the wizards were all sorely tempted to jettison these as swiftly as possible, but instead they painstakingly went over the rapes and beatings, looking for a face, a name, or a clue. This was of little use to the girl, but the three wizards who were killing her focused as much of their feelings as they could into a white-hot need for revenge.