“Ah, he can’t speak,” Victor said. He leaned closer toward the girl. “Truth be told, my older sister and I have been caring for him for years. He was abandoned, left for dead, actually.” He put his arm around Marshal’s shoulder. “I like to think of him as the brother I never had. I feel responsible for the poor soul, you know?”
Marshal shook off Victor’s arm and shoved him. The girl laughed, drawing attention to herself from nearby tables. She patted Victor’s hand. “I think if the truth were really told, it wouldn’t be quite like that,” she said. She smiled at Marshal again, though this time it seemed tinged with pity.
Marshal scowled at Victor as she left them.
“What? You didn’t like my story?” Victor leaned in close and whispered, “It’s better than the truth. I mention the word ‘curse’ and everyone will want to throw you out!”
Marshal took a bite of the pork. The meat had more flavor than usual, and some herbs were unfamiliar, but he liked it. Beside him, Victor sighed. “I didn’t even get her name.”
After a few more bites, Marshal’s mood soured. The pity in the girl’s eyes consumed his thoughts. The food felt like iron in his stomach, weighing him down and poisoning his guts. He pushed the plate away and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Victor asked.
Marshal walked toward the door, ducking past other patrons who ignored him.
“Don’t be too late,” Victor called after him. “I don’t want to explain to your mom that you ran off!”
“His mom, is it?” Marshal heard the serving girl ask. Despite his mood, he smiled.
Marshal stepped outside and experienced a drastic temperature drop. He shivered, realizing he had left his coat with Victor. Rather than return for it, he rubbed his arms and set out down the street, anyway.
The sun had set only a few minutes earlier, and a slight grayness still tinted the cloudy sky. The rain had stopped for the moment, but water dripped from everything. Muddy puddles dotted the ground, making his passage difficult. The twilight and dampness matched Marshal’s mood. Even in a completely foreign place like this, he couldn’t escape the pity. Victor certainly hadn’t helped.
A child about half his size dashed past him, ignoring the puddles as if she were in a desperate hurry.
A second later, he realized why. Half a dozen other children of various sizes charged past him in pursuit of the first. A couple of them called after her. The word “curse” caught Marshal’s attention.
The children turned down an alley only a block ahead. Marshal picked up his pace to follow them.
The pursued child stood with her back to a wall. Light spilled out of the windows around her, giving Marshal a clear view. She wore ragged clothes hardly substantial enough for the cold weather. Her right arm looked twisted, malformed like the bones of a bird’s wing. She held it tightly to her chest as she looked around at her tormentors.
The other children mocked her, throwing out insult after insult. Marshal recognized the slurs; he had heard them often enough throughout his life. For a moment, he almost turned away and returned to the inn. But something inside him rose up in his chest. Maybe memories of Titus, or maybe the serving girl’s pitying look had aroused his anger enough to act. He stepped into the circle of children.
They fell silent. In the dark, all they could tell was that an adult had entered their domain. Like all children, they immediately felt the dread of authority and perhaps a little shame.
“She’s a cursed one,” one of the boys offered.
“Look at ‘er arm!” another said.
Marshal stepped into the light beside the girl and turned to face the other children. They reacted in shock.
“Look at his face!”
“He’s cursed, too!”
“Stay back! He might curse you! Grown up curses can spread!”
“Can not!”
“Can too!”
Marshal took a step toward the children, hoping to intimidate them into abandoning this entertainment. While most of them fell back, one boy wasn’t impressed. He waved a stick at Marshal.
“We should smack both of them!”
“Are you crazy? He’s a grown up!”
“A cursed grown up! He deserves it, too!”
The other children seemed to be regaining their courage. Marshal saw one bend down and pick up a large rock. He needed to end this. Unable to think of anything else, he pulled out Volraag’s dagger.
Several of the children gasped. As a group, they began to back away.
“We didn’t mean anything,” one girl whimpered. “She’s just cursed, is all.”
The children broke and ran. Marshal took one step after them and put the dagger away. In the shadows, he thought he spotted a taller figure, hooded and standing silent at the entrance to the alley. He remained motionless as the children rushed past him.
At that moment, a bright light erupted behind Marshal. He turned and blinked several times. It came from somewhere beyond the alley. Had a building caught fire? No, fire would flicker. This light held steady. Not quite sunlight, but something like it. He felt he should know it, but not like this.
Then he saw the shadow. At first, he saw only the usual outline of a man, elongated somewhat by the light. He couldn’t see the figure of the man himself, somewhere within the light. The light blinded him if he looked at it too directly.
The shadow stretched. Where it had been long and thin, it grew longer and thinner, reaching from one end of the alley to the other. How tall was the man who could cast such a thing? More than that, the proportions were all wrong. Angled light could exaggerate shadows, but not like this. The source could not be human. Nor did it seem anything like the eidolon he had seen before.
As abruptly as it had come, the light vanished and with it, the shadow. Marshal shut his eyes to regain his night vision. Only then did he remember the hooded figure he had seen before the light. He turned back to the end of the alley, but the hooded man had disappeared too.
He felt a small hand reach out and take his. He looked down and saw the girl with the twisted arm. With the light and shadow, he had completely forgotten she was still there.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Marshal knelt in the mud beside her and gingerly touched her arm. He gave a rueful smile, trying to indicate that he understood. She reached up with her good arm and brushed his scars.
“Until all curses are lifted,” she said. She broke away and ran down the alley and out into the street.
Marshal looked around, from one end of the alley to the other. What had happened? In the growing darkness, none of it seemed real any more. He made his way back onto the street and looked for the inn.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE CURRENT HELPED propel the rowboat into the shoreline with enough force to ground it. “Watch your step gettin’ out,” the boatman offered. “The Trebia’s like pure ice right now. Get your foot in that and you’ll be wantin’ to cut it off.”
“Thank you, sir,” Aelia said. She got to her feet, leaned on Marshal, and stepped across to dry land.
Marshal saw how many coins Aelia had been forced to pay the man. It seemed an exorbitant sum just to cross a river, but the crossing had not been without difficulty. Due to the high banks and cliffs on this side of the river, they had actually started the crossing half a mile upstream from Efesun. The boatman insisted this was the nearest spot with a low bank suitable for landing. The skies remained cloudy as ever, but it had not rained again.
“How far are the Great Plains?” Victor asked. He clambered after Aelia.
“Not far,” the boatman answered. He pointed downstream and up. “You can see them from up there. Great views all around.”
Marshal looked. The bank rose rapidly into a high cliff. At its peak, a large rock platform jutted out over the river before it turned the bend and passed Efesun.
“Come on, Marshal. Let’s go check it out!” Without waiting, Victor started to climb.
Marshal jumped out
of the boat and landed awkwardly. Aelia caught his arm and steadied him. The boatman immediately pulled on his oars to get back into the main current. “Theon’s wings shelter you!” he called.
Aelia glanced up at the cliffs. “You go ahead,” she said. “I’ll wait down here with our baggage.” Marshal nodded and dropped his pack. He scrambled up after Victor, ignoring the usual numbness and tingling in his hands and feet.
In short order, the two young men reached the top and stood on the rocky outcropping. Below them, the Trebia River churned as it began to swing around to Efesun. They could see the entire town from their vantage point.
Marshal thought he recognized the inn they had slept in. He couldn’t see the alley where he had the strange encounter. He wondered what had happened to the little girl. For that matter, how did such a small girl get cursed? How could she have done something so wrong? Or was she, like him, the child of one of the Lords?
“I still think it’s stupid,” Victor said. “Why a High Master Mage? There’s no such thing in real life. Everyone knows there are only six Master Mages on Zes Sivas.”
It took Marshal a moment to realize Victor was talking about the card game again.
“My father gave me that deck.” Victor turned to look at Marshal. His face had an odd look around his eyes. “Your mom said it would fade… but it hasn’t. Not much.” He looked away, past Efesun, perhaps toward Drusa’s Crossing.
The Bindings toward home. Marshal wondered what that felt like. He reached his hand toward Victor’s shoulder, but stopped when it shook. Stupid gesture, anyway.
“Tell me your curse.”
Marshal and Victor spun around. A man stood a few feet behind them, hooded and clothed from head to toe in shades of gray.
“Who are you?” Victor asked, his hand instinctively straying to his flail.
The man reached up and pulled his hood back. Marshal and Victor took a step back simultaneously. The hood uncovered a hairless head covered in dead-looking skin a horrid shade of grayish-green. Large strips of it flaked off, revealing even more unhealthy looking skin below. His parched lips looked as if they had not tasted water in a week.
“I am not here for you,” he told Victor, his eyes on Marshal. “I am only here for the cursed one.”
Victor stepped between Marshal and the stranger. “You know, I didn’t think anyone could be uglier than Marshal, but you proved me wrong. What happened to you?”
The stranger’s eyes flicked to Victor. “Step aside, and I will not harm you.”
Victor let his flail hang down. “Can’t do that. I’m bound to him.”
“That is… unfortunate.”
The stranger leaped forward, hidden blades emerging from both wrists. Victor swung his flail in an uppercut. The stranger easily dodged under it and slashed with one of his blades. Victor fell back, dropped his flail and clutched at his chest. Redness seeped through his fingers, and he dropped to a knee.
Before Marshal could even think about reacting, the stranger lunged beside him. One blade rested against his neck while the other pointed at his heart. Both of Marshal’s hands, held out helplessly, began to vibrate.
“Tell me your curse.”
Marshal stared into the eyes of the assassin. Unlike the diseased flesh that surrounded them, the eyes shone clear and bright. The light brown irises appeared as sparks of life itself surrounded by death and decay.
“Tell me your curse!” The assassin seemed almost desperate for the answer.
“He can’t!” Victor growled between clenched teeth. He kept one arm held tight against his chest while he tried to find his fallen flail. “He has no voice!”
The assassin looked taken aback. Uncertainty filled his eyes. Marshal could feel a seizure building up within and tried to focus it. If he could channel the power through his hands, maybe he could blow this killer off the rock. He gritted his teeth, concentrating.
The assassin glanced back at Victor. “Then you must speak for him,” he decided. “Tell me his curse, or I will kill you once I am done with him.”
Victor breathed hard, his face red and furious. “I’m not telling you anything!” He found the flail’s handle and lifted it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Marshal watched Victor stagger to his feet and swing the flail once more. The stranger threw Marshal to the ground, shoving both of them under the flail’s trajectory. Victor screamed in pain and collapsed. He rolled away from them, holding his chest.
“My curse is a death that never ends,” the assassin whispered to Marshal. “It is proof that there is no justice in this world, no meaning, just as there will be no justice or meaning for your death.” He paused. “Are you… shaking?” His eyes widened slightly. “This is not the trembling of a coward, but…”
Marshal gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and opened his mouth in a silent scream. Concentrating this hard brought physical pain to his head, but the results were spectacular.
Rather than channeling the power upwards toward the enemy, his body channeled it down into the rock below them. A loud crack echoed across the river, followed by a sound almost like the shattering of glass. The entire rock platform exploded into countless shards that plunged downward along with Marshal and his attacker.
The shock of the frigid water drove the air from Marshal’s lungs. He struggled desperately to get back to the surface. His head erupted from the water and he gasped, sucking in what air he could before the river dragged him under a second time. The current swept him around the bend in the river. Searing pain pierced his body all over, especially where his exposed skin contacted the water. He flailed about, but his arms didn’t seem to be responding as he wanted.
He managed to get to the surface again, pulling in air once more. Even so, he knew some of the icy water had found its way into his lungs. He felt a deep cold permeating his body. He thrashed, trying to get some momentum toward the shore, but continued to be swept along against his will. He caught a glimpse of docks and several small boats as he rushed past Efesun. Did no one see him?
What had happened to the assassin? Marshal flailed in a circle, but saw no sign of his attacker. Only a supreme effort kept his head above the water, and he knew he couldn’t keep it up for long. He plunged under, only to rise again and again. The cliffs gave way to more trees along the bank.
A hand with a grip like iron took hold of his left arm, and he jerked to a stop mid-rapid. His shoulder felt like something had broken. The water continued to pour over him, trying to pull him down and away, but the hand held firm. Someone dragged Marshal out of the water and onto a sandy bank.
His body immediately began to convulse in chills, like his usual seizures, only wet and cold. He had a vague sense of a large figure standing over him.
Heat flooded him as an impressive fire erupted only a foot away. Strong hands removed his clothing, holding him through the convulsions. His body began to calm.
He looked up at his rescuer through bleary eyes. He saw a tall figure with extremely angular features and eyes that didn’t seem to match somehow.
“Fear not, Marshal, son of Varion and Aelia,” said a commanding voice. “I am Talinir of the Eldanim and I am here to help you.”
•••••
Stripped of his clothes and wrapped in blankets beside a roaring fire, Marshal felt warmth begin to return to his body. Talinir left him briefly and returned carrying Victor, with Aelia close behind.
Marshal couldn’t stop staring at his rescuer, though he tried a few times. A glance at Victor showed that he wasn’t the only one. Victor, his expression just shy of open-mouthed wonder, never took his eyes off the stranger who claimed to be Eldanim. Only Aelia seemed unfazed. After greeting Talinir with a respectful bow and bandaging Victor’s chest, she focused her attention on Marshal. Despite her fussing, she could do little. Talinir had taken care of everything.
After checking on something in his pack, Talinir stood and hung an unusual pot of water over the fire. Marshal’s eyes followed his frame all the
way to his face. Talinir was tall, remarkably so, but seemed taller still. Marshal couldn’t figure it out. Something about his height seemed impossible. When they had been standing a few minutes ago, he towered over Victor, at perhaps six and a half feet. But he seemed even taller, somehow. It was as if Marshal’s eyes couldn’t fully grasp him.
He wasn’t exceptionally skinny, either. His muscles matched his frame. Marshal’s arm still ached from the strength that had pulled him out of the water. He had never felt a grip that powerful, even when Balaes the blacksmith had been demonstrating how to hold a hammer.
“The tea will be ready soon,” Talinir said. He added some leaves to the pot, and a pleasant aroma spread out from the fire.
The Eldanim’s sharp and angular face breathed in the steam. His chin, cheekbones, nose - their distinct edges appeared almost carved from dark tan rock. His dark hair, not quite black, hung past his shoulders.
But his eyes kept drawing Marshal’s attention, even more than the odd height. Talinir’s eyes did not match. The left eye, blue and quite ordinary, glanced at Marshal over the fire. The right eye, though, was solid black, sprinkled with shining white spots of various sizes, like a tiny globe full of stars.
The more Marshal watched, the more he noticed something unusual. Talinir seemed inordinately distracted every so often. He appeared smiling and pleasant most of the time, but every few minutes he would tilt his head (always to the right, Marshal noted) and frown. He seemed to be seeing or hearing something the rest of them could not detect. Marshal suspected it had something to do with the strange eye. He wondered what Talinir could see. With a start, he remembered the assassin. He looked around, peering into the brush.
“I saw no sign of your attacker,” Talinir said, as if reading his thoughts. “He must have been swept further downriver.”
“Who was he?” Aelia asked, looking at Victor.
The other young man tore his eyes from the stranger. “He was a cursed freak! His skin was peeling off and he–”
Until All Curses Are Lifted Page 11
