by Ted Neill
“But first we kill the crew,” someone said from the back.
“I’ll second that,” another man said.
“We’ll do whatever we need to do,” Jacko said. “But be patient. We will be free.”
The men played along with their illusion of still being bound—almost too well. They were cooperative and obedient with Guardy. Not a single one had an insouciant word for the guard, who appeared to miss the opportunity to find reason to beat his charges. When he had completed his rounds of watering them he stepped next to the last man in the row and stomped down on his feet. The prisoner coughed and spit but Haille could have sworn he heard him chuckle too, as if he was in on a joke lost on Guardy.
They knew when they had reached a harbor because the waves that had rocked the ship for so long were absent. Jacko was the first to stand up and position himself beneath the hatch. The other men who were strong enough came alongside him. They had no weapons except the very chains that had formally anchored them to their stalls. Haille left his own links behind but all the other men held theirs in clenched fists. The wait grew long as the ship slowed, finally sliding into the quay and stopping with a gentle bump. Sailors hollered as they threw mooring lines ashore, their footsteps pounding overhead. The gangway dropped. The entire deck was alive with the sound of the crew completing preparations to process their cargo from the hold. The lock on the hatch slid out of place with a bang.
“Steady boys,” Jacko said. After a pause of a few breaths, the hatch groaned open.
The light, even on this cloudy day, was blinding, but the prisoners let out a startling war cry and charged up the steps, drowning out the curses and exclamations of the unlucky sailors who stood closest to the hatch. The men fled up the stairs, some running, others crawling, but all free. Their numbers overwhelmed the crew. Haille heard splashes as some sailors dove or were thrown overboard. As Haille and Dennis finally made it up the steps they passed Guardy’s body, his face swollen and dark, his eyes wide, lidless, and bulging, a prisoner’s chain pulled so tight around his neck that the pinched folds of his skin bled.
Haille stumbled on the stairs and Dennis reached over to help him. Haille was weak and his legs—especially his right—were stiff and cramped. He knew he would be no help in the fight and concentrated on escape. Half the prisoners had already leapt the railing and were racing away for freedom.
Haille leaned against the ratlines, breathing heavily, and took in their surroundings. It was their ill luck that they had not arrived at a busy port where they could disappear into a crowd. Rather, they had docked at the quay of what appeared to be a fortress, its blunt, unadorned towers rose up, dark monoliths against a sky the color of iron. It was strange, this place, even for a castle it seemed weirdly abandoned. There were few workers along the docks, no sellers, no merchants, nor women or children. It reminded him more of a military outpost, such as Haines Point, which he knew did not bode well for their insurgency.
Haille readjusted his grip on the ratlines as Scott leapt the rail and whipped his chain across the head of a fleeing longshoreman. The confinement and torture had turned the prisoners into beasts themselves. Dennis, who was nearly unrecognizable in the light of day, bent down to help Haille, but his right leg was obstinate and refused to move.
“Go, I’ll fend for myself,” Haille said but Dennis, perhaps out of some paternal instinct, refused, doing his best to lift Haille into his withered arms. Despite Haille’s own emaciated frame, Dennis was too weak himself, and they both collapsed on the deck, running feet passing on either side of them.
Haille turned his face up to the brutal, angular wall of the fortress. His eyes fell on a single window where a figure, who he guessed was a boy perhaps a year or two his junior, watched with rapt attention. Their gazes met briefly, before Dennis tried to help Haille to his feet again, but by now Haille already knew that the stiffness and spreading paralysis in his body was no cramp but an imminent shaking spell.
The shaking took him. The last thing he remembered seeing was the boy in the window, studying him with a distant, curious expression, just before the deck boards came surging up at him and Haille dropped face first onto the planks.
Chapter 8
The Revenant
A fortnight of hard riding followed. Katlyn, Gail, Adamantus, and Tallia left behind the verdant fields and wild grasslands of Karrith and climbed into the windy steppes that waited at the base of the Rimcur range. The mountains appeared some days, breaking through the clouds in the morning, but were often shrouded again by the afternoons. Yet they were a constant presence, sentinels in the north, reminding Katlyn that this indeed was the farthest she had ever been from home.
Tallia, in contrast, was returning to familiar lands, but it was far from a joyous homecoming. They shared the trail with other Maurvant refugees journeying back after the disastrous campaign into Karrith. They included mostly women, youth, and wounded men. Their party also met up with other Maurvant headed to the lowlands. These were the old who had been left behind. They described villages that had fallen into destitution without the able-bodied to tend to the daily tasks of living.
“Our people are ruined,” Tallia said, sniffing and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “And it is this Magus at the center of it all. May his eyes be picked out by crows.”
But as they moved higher into the steppes, they saw it was Maurvant elders who had come to such unfortunate ends. They came upon villages, the outskirts marked by freshly dug graves. And in many places the living had been too weak with starvation or disease to provide burials. The dead were left out in the fields to rot, where vultures and crows gathered around picked over carcasses. Sapphire stayed close, riding in Adamantus’ crown, while Katlyn watched Soot with suspicion, wondering what carcasses he had alighted on when he left Gail’s side.
It was a frigid but clear day when they came upon Tallia’s home village. It was larger than the others they had passed through, but Katlyn would still have hesitated to call it a “town.”
The shelters were made of animal skins draped over long poles. Many were empty and had fallen into disrepair, the wind having torn hides loose, exposing the bare structures and the empty rooms within. As they neared the center of the village they passed by children, their feet wrapped in rags, their stomachs distended with hunger. Old women and men lined the main square, their eyes empty and forlorn. They seemed to have given up any hope of a triumphant return of their children and their children’s children. Now they reached out with calloused hands and begged for any scraps of food that the party could spare.
Tallia knew the elders by name. She embraced each of them, one after another, many weeping and touching her face and the edges of her cloak. They spoke softly to her in their own language. Katlyn imagined that both sides shared somber news. Finally Tallia turned back to Katlyn and the others. “With so many gone there was no one to tend the crops or the few animals left. Yet the Magus remains, demanding his share from the stores.” Tallia spat. “These people wish to leave but they are too afraid of what he will do to them.”
“He is still here?” Adamantus asked, the wind parting the fur on his mane.
Tallia exchanged a few words with a woman with a leathery face, dark skin, and white hair cut short so that it stuck up in tufts. She was not bent like some of the other woman and she wore a saber on her belt. One eye was clouded and bluish-white but the other burned with a fierce intensity. Katlyn sensed this woman had assumed a sort of leadership role in the village in the absence of so many others.
“This is Edith,” Tallia said. “She says the Magus resides in the former chief’s tent. She will take us there. It is nearly noon. He will be expecting his midday meal.”
“Well, we’ll bring him something else to surprise him instead,” Gail said, pulling on the reins of her horse.
“Show us the way,” Adamantus said.
The Maurvant showed mild surprise at the spectacle of a speaking elk. Perhaps with all they had seen from the Ma
gus, nothing surprised them any longer. Perhaps they were old and had already witnessed too much in their long lives, or even perhaps it was simply that they had suffered too much up to now to display any shock. Katlyn knew they had to be hungry, so she handed them a full bag of provisions, for which they bowed with gratefulness.
“That is kind of you,” Tallia said.
“Careful, don’t make a habit of it,” Gail said, the disapproval on her face plain. “Or we will be starving ourselves on the way back.”
“Noted,” Katlyn said, her teeth grinding.
They followed Edith up a hill that had a commanding view of the village below. The tent waiting there was not made of hide, but rather colorful fabric with elaborate geometric designs embroidered onto it. It shook gently in the gusts of wind. Pendants snapped from the poles on its four corners and its center pole. The path to the door was well worn but the ground all about was overgrown with bracken and sere grass, as if no animals dared to come close to graze. A young boy wrapped in furs with a set of crutches next to him, the handles worn smooth, sat next to the front flaps of the tent. He swung himself up on one of the crutches and greeted Tallia and Edith with a hushed voice.
“The Magus, he is in repose,” Tallia said, translating his words.
“Well, we will wake him,” Gail said, nocking back an arrow.
There was a brief moment wherein each prepared for confrontation: Edith drawing her sword, Tallia, a dagger. Katlyn drew her own sword and unhooked a shield from the saddle of her horse. The boy took up his second crutch and started down the hill, his face pale, his eyes darting back over his shoulder.
Adamantus slashed through the front of the tent and dashed inside. Gail, Edith, Tallia, and Katlyn followed in a crushing rush. The interior of the tent was dark and smoky, a fire burned feebly in a brazier near the center of the room. Trays of rotting food sat, each untouched, before the throne carved from pale, blond wood. Between the high arms sat a figure, his size difficult to discern in the dim light and the folds of the royal blue robe that wrapped his body. His face was invisible, hidden by a low hanging hood. Gail did not wait for him to stand—instead she took a knee and let fly an arrow that struck true in the Magus’ heart and lodged there before Adamantus could even speak, “Gail, wait.”
For a moment they all waited, watching the figure, the moment stretching out to a lengthy minute, then another.
“Is he already dead?” Katlyn asked.
“Perhaps,” Adamantus said. “The air smells faintly of rot. But haste is not advisable,” he added, looking askance at Gail.
Gail shrugged and nocked back another arrow, the sound of the string stretching and the bow bending the only noise in the thick air. It was Edith who took a spear from where it leaned in the corner, approached the seated figure, and with the sharpened point lifted the edge of the hood to reveal a withered, desiccated visage. She and Tallia both gasped.
“It is Kiruna,” Tallia said, her hand to her heart. “Our chief.”
“He looks dead,” Gail said. “Like he has been so for a while.”
She was right. Kiruna’s skin was grayish blue, his lips curled back, his cheeks sunken, the skin thinned into threads so that they could see through them into the darkness of his mouth. His hair was falling out in clumps and his eyes closed tight, as if against a great glare.
“And yet, the smell is not right,” Adamantus said, approaching through the gloom. Gail relaxed her pull on her bow and slung it over her shoulder, coming up behind Edith.
“Look at this food. It’s as if he has not eaten in weeks,” she said.
“Yet they still brought him his portion,” Adamantus said.
Tallia leaned against Edith, gazing into the visage of death. “I don’t understand. All this time, it was Kiruna . . . but I thought he had disappeared.”
Edith covered her face in her hands while Gail stepped passed them both, placing her hand on Kiruna’s stiff shoulder and the other around the shaft of her arrow. “Looks like he had you all fooled,” she said with a grunt. “That was a lot easier—”
She did not finish her sentence. Kiruna’s arm snapped up and his hand seized her neck. She tried to scream but all that came out was a whimper before her feet left the ground, Kiruna standing and lifting her into the air. His eyes snapped opened with a dry crackling noise and he looked out at them with eyes that were empty except for a menacing blue light.
“Adamantus!” Katlyn cried out.
Edith, being closest, lowered her spear shaft and thrust it into Kiruna’s chest. It passed through him and emerged on the other side in a plume of dust. With his free hand, he tore it out and flung it off to the side.
Gail was kicking to loose herself, to no effect. Her eyes bulged and her face turned a shade of purple as she struggled for air. Adamantus was next to charge, swinging his antlers and chopping off Kiruna’s arm. It fell to the ground with a dry crushing sound, like a sack of autumn leaves. Gail hit the floor, gasping, and rolled away over trays of rotting food, dishes and cups clattering.
Losing an arm and being impaled with a spear did not slow Kiruna. Instead he curled his lips, barred his gray teeth, and set his gaze on Adamantus.
“Stygorn, you are too late and too weak to challenge me.” A dry brittle voice like a cackle came from his throat as he raised his remaining hand and his fingertips began to glow. Light arched among his fingers and gathered into a blue-white ball of light. Just before Kiruna released it, he tumbled over, Gail having rolled back and sliced his knee. The bolt of lightning went wide of Adamantus but struck Edith in a searing flash. She fell back, her body smoking, the blade of her sword glowing red hot. Adamantus ducked his head and swung up with his rack of antlers just as Kiruna began to regain his balance. The elk was too quick, however, and the antlers did their work, slicing through Kiruna’s neck and sending his head spinning from his shoulder to roll along the floor into the corner where the eyes still glowed.
Gail crossed the room, set her foot on the decapitated head and fired an arrow into each eye before she collapsed against the center pole, panting. Tallia rushed to Edith’s side but the woman was dead, her body smelling of cooked flesh. Tallia began to weep.
“By the stars what was that thing?” Gail asked.
Adamantus moved close to the mutilated, mummified body and drew the cloak aside with a hoof. In the dim light they could see a bright blue stone set in a leather choker around the severed neck. Katlyn realized she had seen the same type of stone before, on King Oean.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A moonstone,” Adamantus said, lifting the leather collar and stone with a point of his antlers. Its surface moved as if clouds of blue-white swirled just under its surface. “Very powerful and very dangerous.”
“Is that what gave Kiruna his power? Did it make him the Magus?” Tallia asked.
“No, it made him a slave to the Magus. Anyone wearing this, living or dead, would be under the control of the Magus. Kiruna died long ago but his body was a revenant, allowing the Magus, wherever he was, to control him, to see through his eyes, to rule through his victim.”
“Adamantus, King Oean was wearing one when he sentenced Haille. It was a trophy stolen from a dead Maurvant captain.”
“Likely another one of the Magus’s servants.”
“Does that mean the Magus is controlling Oean?” Katlyn asked.
“Yes, in part. But it takes time for the wielder of the stones to take full control. At that point the wearer is usually dead.” The elk turned his head to Edith’s body. “This does not bode well for us.”
“Or Haille,” Katlyn said.
“So Kiruna was long dead?” Tallia asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Adamantus said.
“Then who spoke? Who called you Stygorn? Who said you were too late and too weak?” Gail asked
“The Magus, wherever he is,” the elk said. He dropped his head, cut a hole in the side of the tent, allowing in fresh air and daylight, then stepped out.
Rebellion
Commotion at the docks broke Gregor’s concentration. The elegant script with long serifs slipped out of focus and his eyes drifted towards the window. He had resolved to remain seated, to turn back to his folios, when a man’s panicked scream, followed by what sounded like war cries confirmed to him that something was truly amiss.
The windowsill was cold to the touch and so was the sea breeze in his face, but neither registered long in his consciousness once he saw the battle unfolding quayside. Disheveled, bedraggled men surged up and out of the hold of the ship at port. Slaves, Gregor reckoned, the newest shipment that they had procured to work on the Castle Drahlstrom’s crumbling seawall. But somehow they had freed themselves and neither the crew nor Gregor’s own servants were able to stop them.
“A rebellion on the quay,” a gravelly voice said from behind him. Gregor hid his displeasure at Felix’s unannounced arrival. Gregor was the titular ruler of Drahlstrom and by extension all of the Servior, but Felix still felt free to sneak up on him and, Gregor suspected, check up on him, regularly.
Gregor didn’t like it. But as always he was careful how he played out his hand. After all, his role called for a maturity beyond his years.
“The guards look reluctant to interfere,” Gregor said, noticing how the Servior fighters, men selected for their cruelty and brawn to be the muscle of the order, remained on the battlements.
“I imagine they await orders before they abandon their posts and join the fray. Reluctant they would be to harm slaves, as they would likely take their places on the seawall if we run short of workers.”
“We can send some of our students then, to quell the fight. It might be good practice,” Gregor said, trying to sound bold, decisive, and hiding the speculative nature of his statement.
“We could, sir. Do you think they are up to it?”
Not if you just questioned it. Gregor was growing impatient. His attention locked onto one slave in particular, a young man, pale and emaciated, who had fallen down on the deck, shaking in a sort of fit. Another, older slave bent over to try to attend to him, while the others continued their revolt. The chaos was growing and ran the risk of spreading. Gregor saw two guards struggling to close the doors on the gate between the bailey and the docks while slaves, swinging their chains as weapons, approached. All order might be lost if the slaves infiltrated the castle. Gregor reached out with his power, extending his consciousness around the doors the ways vines might creep along their lengths and edges. Once he held them firmly in his mind’s grasp, he slammed them shut and locked them with a final flourish of his hand.
