by David Benem
Their connection to the Crown withered while they busied themselves with dusty tomes and tedious prayers to a dead god. They’d allowed the walls of their Abbey to constrain them like a prison. All the while, their ancient, near-forgotten foe worked its way inside the Bastion itself.
They’d disregarded warnings from the Variden as nonsense, even though they’d worked closely with Valis’s order in the centuries before. They’d puzzled over the news of Queen Reyis’s first miscarriage, considering it an oddity but not an alarm. By her fourth, they were mildly concerned, but the platitudes of their faith soothed them still. They prayed, believing no ill could befall the Crown. The order of things would continue undisturbed, they’d thought, so long as they observed the tenets of their faith.
And thus our very faith blinded us to the workings of our enemy!
He thought of Castor, and of the ragged highlander who held his divine spirit. Despite the man’s vicious appearance and the violent acts attributed to him, Gamghast remained convinced the highlander was Castor’s chosen vessel. The man had uttered what had to be the confession, but the spirit had refused to be dislodged in spite of the Dictorian’s most potent incantations. Gamghast knew Castor had chosen the instrument most suited to his purpose.
And yet there was Kreer. Prefect Kreer, his tall, droop-nosed counterpart at the Sanctum. The man—blinded by self-righteous ambition—had vowed some mad crusade to hunt down the highlander Karnag and tear Castor’s spirit from him.
And perhaps, in the process, doom what little hope remains.
Gamghast smacked the table again.
It seems our faith blinds us not only to the workings of our enemy, but also to whom that enemy really is.
The notion of sitting for a moment longer in his cramped quarters beneath the pile of rocks known as the Abbey angered him. He needed to throw open the shutters of his senses, to consult something other than old books holding accounts of faith-blind, long-dead scholars. He needed to clear his head of the cobwebs that draped this place.
With a pained groan he pressed himself to stand. He grimaced as he struggled to straighten his crooked back, then pulled a cloak over his robes and snatched his walking staff. He left his quarters and limped his way through the dark, stagnant corridors of the Abbey.
Gamghast trudged across the rain-sodden cobbles, clumsily picking his way through the foggy gloom. Rain hammered upon him and trickled from the brown brim of his hood through the white thatch of his beard.
People hurried past him. He overheard many cursing the weather and others worrying over the war with Arranan. Only a scant few troubled themselves with the recent news of the passing of High King Deragol.
He slogged along and soon left the old haunts of the Nearer Ward behind. He passed the estates of minor nobles, the comfortable homes of merchants and the gilded shops of artisans. He then ventured into the lower areas of Ironmoor, closer to the Sullen Sea. Places he’d not visited in what had to have been years. More modest places, those upon which Illienne’s blessing did not seem to so brightly shine.
The cobblestones of the road gave way to gravel and mud. The masonry of prouder structures gave way as well, and here buildings of warped and weathered wood leaned precariously against one another, looking as though a sharp push could send them all tumbling in succession.
A clutch of rag-clad urchins splashed across the wet street before him, hefting between them a wheel of cheese and a few loaves of bread. A shopkeep howled somewhere in the distance. Meanwhile, the urchins leapt into an alleyway, disappearing in the manner of practiced thieves.
Gamghast snorted and walked onward, managing at last to reach a tight grouping of houses. He studied them for a time, uncertain which was his intended destination. Then he spied it, a simple, two-storied home of gray wood, candlelight glowing behind its fogged windows. He approached and thumped the door with the head of his staff.
After the fifth thump the door drew open to a crack, presenting Gamghast with a solitary, twitchy eye. The eye flicked up and down the length of his form. After a moment the opening widened, revealing a tiny, ancient man seemingly made of barely more than bone.
“G—” the small man stammered, thin hand pressed against a skull holding only a hint of hair. His bulging eyes zigzagged about. “Gamghast?”
“Tolem,” Gamghast said with a nod.
“Dead gods,” Tolem grumbled. “Whatever is it you want with me? I left for a reason, as you well know.”
Gamghast looked to the heavy sky and raindrops splattered upon his worn face. “For now,” he said, “a simple respite.”
“Dead gods,” the little man said again as he pulled the door wide. “If you must.”
Gamghast slipped inside the small house, into a cramped room. In the room’s center stood a table stacked with books and aglow with candles, about which were pressed two chairs.
Gamghast pulled away his wet cloak and hung it upon a peg beside the door. “May I?” He gestured to a chair.
Tolem looked nervously about the ill-lit room, fidgeting, but then nodded toward the table.
Gamghast set aside his staff and eased himself into a seat. The chair’s wood creaked and complained but seemed sturdy enough. “Thank you, Tolem.”
Tolem stood nearby, picking at his fingertips. “Wine?” he said eventually. “I have a couple of bottles stashed away. I imagine a visit from such a venerated guest warrants the opening of one.”
Gamghast recognized the sarcasm, but the notion of wine after limping through such weather appealed to him. “That sounds most excellent.”
Tolem grunted and rummaged through a cupboard. He emerged with a dusty bottle and two wooden cups, then settled across the table from Gamghast. “Whatever is it you want?” he asked flatly as he yanked the cork from the bottle.
Gamghast waited until his cup was filled, then took a hearty sip of the red liquid. It wasn’t as fine a drink as what was generally available in the Abbey, but then he reckoned he and his whole order had grown too used to the comforts of luxury.
“And I ask again,” said Tolem, irritation in his tone, “whatever is it you want?”
Gamghast took another sip of his wine, eyes wandering across the room’s many smoldering candles and dusty books. “Why did you leave?”
“Why?” Tolem asked, his voice shrill. “You visit me to ask me that? To ask me why I left the Sanctum? I gave you that answer years ago.”
“You said your faith had faltered. You said you couldn’t serve as a prefect if you didn’t fully believe in the truth of our faith.”
Thunder cracked outside, rattling the home’s thin walls.
Tolem’s eyes twitched. “And you’re expecting a different answer now?”
“No,” Gamghast said tiredly. “It’s just that I find myself feeling much the same way.”
“Oh,” Tolem said, his pinched face slackening.
“Did your faith ever strengthen after you left?”
Tolem shook his head. “No. If anything, it’s left me completely.”
Gamghast stared at his wine, its deep red impenetrable. “Tell me, then, how is it you find hope in a life that lacks faith?”
Tolem shrugged his bony shoulders. “The sun rises in the morning and I still draw breath.”
“That is hardly a reason for hope. As old as you and I are, that breath could give out any time.”
“Is it not hope?” Tolem said. He took a long drink of his wine. “If one doesn’t believe the Elder God’s heavens await us beyond this life, then every new day—what is here and what is real—is cause for hope. Life becomes everything, if after it there is nothing. Hope rests in the desire for more moments, and in the anticipation of what those moments could hold.”
Gamghast shifted in his chair, his back aching. “And,” he said as he stifled a groan, “what if one knows those moments will hold only misery? How can one have hope then?”
Tolem sat for a time, a frown upon his face. Rain hissed and thunder rolled again. “Then,” he said,
after the thunder quieted, “one would hope to meet one’s end with dignity.”
Gamghast took a swallow of wine, a droplet of it falling from his mouth to stain an edge of his white beard. “You have found a workable logic, at least. I, however, find myself struggling to answer a slightly different question.”
“And that is?”
“How can I have faith in the absence of hope?”
Tolem huffed. “You are so shaken by the death of High King Deragol? If so, it seems you had only scant hope in the first place.”
“No,” Gamghast said, “not just that. Our old enemy has been hard at work. They—”
“They?” he exclaimed. “You speak of Necrists?”
“I do,” he grumbled. “We were blind to them, made too comfortable by centuries of near-silence, lulled into inaction by an arrogant belief that they were too weak to rise against us again. But while we slept they accomplished much, and now they have wormed their way within the shadows of this very city.”
Tolem slurped from his cup, then grinned to reveal a mouth of few teeth. “And the great Lector never spoke of these things? Our mighty Sentinel, guarding us from all things evil? He never warned you? Ha.”
“Perhaps they blinded even him. He—Lector Erlorn—was murdered, you know. Murdered by a barbarian from the north, a man I am convinced now possesses the spirit. That man spoke the confession, warning of the return of the Necrists and the need to summon the other Sentinels. And now Prefect Kreer has set out to stop him. He seeks to pry the spirit from him and command it himself.”
“Kreer? That pompous peacock?”
Gamghast nodded. “The very same. He’s not changed since you knew him, still the ever pious and righteous man who alone privy to all the great truths… If he succeeds in displacing Castor, what then? And even if he does not, why would the Sentinels return to save the likes of us?”
“So what little hope you have rests in these Sentinels? In these petty gods? These so-called aspects of divinity? Not me, Gamghast. My faith in them—in their so-called righteousness—failed long ago. They may be powers, but they are not gods. They serve their own ends, as did the High King and his whole line before him. Cursed be the day Illienne and Yrghul descended upon this realm. They were naught but tyrants, and we have always been used as pieces in their game. You should remove yourself from that contest, my old friend.”
Gamghast tapped his bent fingers against his cup, watching the liquid shudder. “It is too late for that, Tolem. I cannot abandon this ‘game’ as you call it, for I am too invested in it and there is too much at stake. The Necrists have gotten to the chamberlain. The war with Arranan is being lost. Our Variden brethren claim the Spider King is in league with the Necrists and may be one himself. Meanwhile, those left to fight for Rune are few and flawed and weary.”
“So what do you intend to do?”
Gamghast rose with a muted groan. “I will fight on. It is not within me to surrender though I know the battle to be a losing one. Perhaps I’ll assume your philosophy, and endeavor to face my end with dignity.”
6
TROUBLE
Fencress Fallcrow sat in The Mewling Mutton’s low-raftered common room, absently peering out the bleary window as she fingered the dice in her gloved hand. The sad street outside seemed little more than mud and the gray sky above wept a steady rain.
“Another round?” grated the white-haired hag preening over her table.
“More of your finest, of course!” Fencress said with a nod of her ale-warmed head, watching as the wench limped across the empty tavern to the sagging bar at its end.
“As bad a place as this is,” said Paddyn with his whistling voice, “it’s a damn sight better than sleeping in the fucking wild again.” He tilted his wooden mug to his lips, brown ale dripping from the corners of his mouth. “I’m sick of scratching at bugs on my ass.”
The old wench returned with a pitcher. She dumped ale into their mugs until foam swelled over the mugs’ lips and tumbled in caramel ribbons down their sides. “Damn lot of drinking for breakfast,” she huffed. “Innkeep’s not even finished frying your eggs and hash.”
Paddyn roared with a burp and Fencress couldn’t help but giggle. The hag retreated, whispering something about drunkenness being akin to blasphemy.
“My friend,” Fencress said, “a belch of that magnificence would be an eloquent curse in any tongue.”
Paddyn smiled his gap-toothed smile then glanced toward the window. “Any idea where we are?”
Fencress flicked the dice upward then snatched them from the air with a practiced hand. “This is Shank’s Hollow, or Shit’s Hollow as I’ve always thought of it. I took a job to steal something from someone here once, ten or so years ago when Rune was last at war. Some rich fuck—the crack-brained brother of some thane—lives in this town, probably still sleeping with all the cross-eyed, inbred whores of this shithole when he’s not counting his coin.” She laughed. “We’re not far from the Sullen Sea. Perhaps a week’s ride shy of Riverweave. The war’s likely just south of that city, if it’s not made the gates already.” She took a swig of ale. “War’s a time of profit for the likes of us. Especially with Karnag taking the heads of all before us.”
Paddyn grimaced and dragged another long sip from his tankard.
A creak sounded nearby and Fencress saw Drenj stepping lightly down stairs that seemed little more than a ladder in the room’s center. The dusky-skinned Khaldisian was wrapped in loose clothes that fell from his increasingly thin frame.
“By the dead gods, come eat something!” Fencress said with a smile and a gesture of her mug. “The two of you are starting to look frailer than ghosts. At least young Paddyn here is trying to fatten himself up with some ale.”
Drenj fumbled with a rickety chair close by, shuddering as he pulled it near. At last he sat and slumped against their small table with what seemed utter exhaustion.
“Drenj?” asked Paddyn.
“I haven’t slept…” Drenj sighed.
Fencress tried her grin again. “Have you and Karnag been up to something? Planning a surprise, perhaps? You know my birthday falls in but a few days…”
Drenj sighed and rested his face in his long-fingered hands. “He was still mumbling on when I left the room.”
Fencress’s smile faded and she took another pull of ale. “He’s troubled by some kind of spirit. Seems to me most times he can master it, but there are times when the two of them rage in a struggle for his sanity.”
“Dead gods,” Paddyn said. “Could he be worse if he loses that struggle?”
Fencress stared to the dice in her glove, a pair with edges rounded from age. She’d found them left on a table in the tavern’s common room the night before, after they’d arrived near midnight. Each had shown just a single pip—a good start in deadman’s dice. Fencress had taken it as an omen and had slipped them in her pocket right then.
We need all the luck we can find.
Drenj laughed, pulling his hands from his face to reveal eyes wet with tears. He laughed again, high-pitched and with a touch of madness. “Worse?” he cackled. “What could be worse? Him dragging us into the old hells of the Elder God?”
Fencress looked to her ale and smiled slightly. “I thought Khaldisians weren’t much for gods, yet now you speak of the old hells and the Elder God? Amazing how folk find religion in desperation.”
Drenj’s laughter turned to a stifled sob. He swiped tears from his eyes, smearing black kohl in uneven streaks. “No… No. You misunderstand us—or what I was taught to fear, at least.”
“Do I?” Fencress said, trying to keep her tone jovial. “Remember, I’ve seen your greed, Drenj. You place gold over gods—and I respect that—but now you’ve found faith?”
Drenj shook his head, his expression dour. “No. Khaldisians don’t worship the dead gods, or any others for that matter. But Khaldisian children are taught there was an Elder God, a creator, and that when He abandoned this place a darkness swept into the void.
And in that darkness demons live, demons sucked from the old hells and into this world by the pull of the Elder God’s wake.”
The wench returned, dropping plates of steaming food on the table with a clatter. “You need something?” she grunted at Drenj.
“Tea, please,” he said weakly.
She grunted and left.
Fencress drew her wooden plate closer, inspecting for a moment the clump of yellow eggs flecked with brown from the shells, as well as the greasy glob of what she wagered was last night’s—or last week’s—meat minced and mixed with potatoes and onions and bits of who knew what else. She seized her spoon and shoveled in a massive bite.
It was delicious. She savored the mouthful, the black pepper and garlic and juicy meat, finding it a feast after weeks of mostly chewy, stringy things foraged in the wild. She gulped it down, washed her gullet with a swig of ale, and returned her gaze to Drenj.
The young man’s eyes were trained on her plate, not in a hungry sense but in a way that seemed to crave something else.
Perhaps normalcy.
“So,” she said, venturing a return to their earlier discussion, “Khaldisians have religion after all, eh?”
Drenj’s eyes, vacant and tired, remained fixed. “Not precisely. As a child I was warned there were demons, demons in the worst parts of the dark. I just wasn’t told about gods who could save me from them.”
Fencress ate quietly, the only sounds at the table those of Paddyn’s noisy chomping and barely-stifled belches. The bar hag returned with Drenj’s tea, though the young man only stared at the cup, dark eyes following the wisps of steams as they drifted from the liquid and vanished into nothing.
