by Jeffrey Hall
Before I took it, he corrected himself, not letting himself achieve freedom from the jury of his own mind.
The fisherman cast, and a small plop could be heard amongst the trickle of the lake’s current and the fishes’ rambunctiousness.
Up ahead, the largest of the town’s buildings rose over the other slightly dilapidated rooftops. It was tilted slightly, as if it were a giant stooping to oversee the little versions of itself beneath its feet. The light pluck of a lute and small chuckles could be heard coming from behind its thin walls.
The town’s gathering hall.
Always the largest place in a town like this because of what it offered.
The same type of healing as the lake to the fisherman.
He knew the town too. Though his travels had only brought him through Drip a time or two, his original home, Silver Hole, wasn’t much different. A town hurriedly erected around a prospector’s claim of a good vein of stone that didn’t yield the dividends that were promised.
There was good stone, yes, but not enough of it to prop up the economy and slew of businesses that swarmed to it like bugs to a body.
Now there were more vacant buildings than people. A carcass slowly decaying, but the world was not quite done with it yet.
At least it was still standing after the Shamble. That couldn’t be said about Silver Hole any longer…
He arrived at the gathering hall and slipped into the nearby ally it and a blacksmith’s shop created. There, he laid the girl down and put a barrel in front of her as to not attract any attention.
He put his finger to her upper lip. Still breathing, though he thought her face looked paler, but perhaps that was the light of the moon.
Requiem stood, adjusted his hood so it covered his neck, and made sure his sword was tucked out of sight beneath his robe. He took one last look at the girl, rounded the corner, and went inside.
The door creaked and the wind swept in behind him, two announcements of his arrival that caused every eye in that low-lit place to turn towards him. Four men hunched over a bar, their ragged and dust-smudged clothes barely discernible beneath the light of the two glimmer stones that hung from the ceiling. A large woman stood on the other side, her sleeves rolled up, her long curls of red hair dancing on her shoulders like tentacles as she worked to scrub clean a glass. Another group in the back sat round a table playing a game of billit, a horde of ordinary rocks piled in the middle and in their hands. Not a single person was drinkless.
“Evening, stranger,” called the bartender. Her voice was soft compared to her look. “You lost?”
Requiem adjusted his hood. The fabric rubbed irritably against his new scars, but he could tell they were hidden. He walked towards the bar.
“I’m not lost, but think I found someone of yours who was.”
“Yeah? Did Old Merrick finally come stumbling back into town?” one of the men at the bar said and laughed, clearly drunk. He was younger. On the verge of middle age. His dark hair brimmed with soot and a few strands of grey.
No one else cracked a smile at his attempted joke. They were all too busy watching. Watching and thinking.
“A girl,” Requiem said, and watched as his words took effect. People shout in their faces what they are keeping quiet on their tongues, Dorja always told him. Speak and watch, two of the most valuable tools to the Scarred.
The drunk laughed again. The others looked to one another seeing if anyone would dare speak. The bartender glanced at another patron in front of her, a man with a long beard that would have been white if not for the black dust that stained it. The man looked down into his cup and drank.
“We all lost girls!” shouted the drunk. “If we had some you think we’d be spending the night here?”
“Would you quiet down, Garp, you sloppy fool.” The bearded man scolded the drunk, and he immediately fell back into his seat.
“Sorry.”
Requiem came up to the bar, but did not sit.
“No one missing a child? No orphanage in here reporting a runaway? No Dread Cultists come knocking a few days ago?”
He watched the bearded man as he spoke. He still didn’t look up from his beer.
“Dread Cultists know better than to come knocking around here. They know they’ll get a bit of the ol’ Drip swing, ain’t that right, boys?” The drunk called Garp pretended to have a pickaxe that he slammed into the table.
“No orphanage here,” said the bartender. “Used to be after the Shamble, but all them kids have since grown up or moved on.”
Requiem had known it wouldn’t be that easy. Why would it be? Still, it wasn’t hopeless. He kept eyeing the old miner with the beard, wondering why he was hiding in his cup. “What are you serving?” he asked the bartender.
“Galligon Red. Bottle of low if you’re looking for something harder.”
“I’ll take the red,” answered Requiem. He didn’t want to drink, but he knew from experience that alcohol was often a weapon in its own right. Drink with someone and you could disarm them sip by sip.
“You got weight to pay for that red?” The bartender looked him up and down.
He fished into his pockets, careful not to dislodge the placement of his hood. He had a few coins still jangling in his purse. The last of his wealth. Just enough for a beer.
He grabbed three shales and placed them on the bar. The bartender started pouring.
“Should have went with the low,” cried Garp. “Keeps you above the Abyss if you catch my meaning.”
The bartender placed his beer down. It looked wine-like in the near dark. He’d thought he had drank his last drink some time ago: a wine cultivated from the finest fruits in all of Moonsland, from the vineyards of Old Bolliad, before they too went crumbling into the Abyss.
Now his last drink would be this bloody piss… “To those lost.” He raised his glass to Garp.
Garp stood at attention like a soldier just given an order. “To those lost.”
They drank. The beer tasted like salty water.
When Garp finished his tumbler of low, he grunted and wiped his lips.
The others in the bar were drinking now too, no longer just staring. He was starting to loosen them. What was beneath this tightly-wound group of people, he didn’t know. But he’d stay there until he had an answer and had somewhere to take the girl… who was hopefully safe out there.
“So where’s this girl you’re going on about? Sure could use some here besides lovely Shara here.”
“Sleeping,” said Requiem.
“Sleeping?” said Garp.
“Victim of the Dread Cultists’ dream dust.”
The others looked up from their drinks again. All except the bearded man.
“Dread Cultists? By the Abyss, how’d you go about getting her back?” said Garp.
I killed them. Tore them apart like twigs in a storm. He wanted to say it, but that type of claim would raise eyebrows. And raised eyebrows led to shut mouths.
“They’re sloppy creatures. Snuck in and snuck her out.”
Garp shook his head. “If that’s true, you got some stones on you.”
Requiem sipped what they called beer. “You would all do the same if you saw it was just a girl.”
“By the Abyss, no!” shouted Garp. “You better believe we’d all go running. Shit, a bump down in the dark sends us half running to fresh air. Shara, another low please.”
“You’ve had enough, Garp,” grumbled the bearded man.
“He’s right. Why don’t you sit this last one out?” said the bartender.
“Nonsense. Need one to raise to our new friend here.”
“Garp—”
Garp grabbed the bottle from the counter and poured a sloppy glassful of the brown liquid into his cup, sending drops of it onto the bearded man next to him.
“Goddam it, Garp! You drunken fool.” The bearded man shook his hand, flicking the drops of low onto Garp’s face.
If Garp felt it, he didn’t show. He just put the tumbler t
o his mouth and kept talking. “Why not wake the girl up? Go to Rennie, our healer at the eastern edge of town. He’s good at—”
“Just shut the hell up, Garp!” The bearded one stood, fuming.
“By the Abyss, Grey, I’m just trying to help the man.”
“You can help him by keeping your mouth shut and letting him be on his way.”
Requiem kept sipping his beer, watching.
“How is that helping him?” said Garp.
“Just sit down.” The man called Grey put his hand on Garp’s shoulder, forcing him down into his seat.
Garp sat there looking at Grey, fuming, but not uttering another word.
Requiem kept watching.
“We don’t want any trouble,” admitted Grey at last, not looking up from the bar.
“I brought none with me. Just a girl who needs to go back to her home.”
“I know what you are.”
Requiem went silent. He pulled the hood around his neck.
“I know who you are.” Grey finally turned to look at him, and when he did, Requiem saw his eyes, things old, silvery and worn. Like flawed gems left out in the sun for too long. “You’re Requiem Balestone. Youngest of the Scarred.”
Requiem took another sip, trying to calm his surprise. If the town knew who he was then he’d have no chance at help. “I think you have me mistaken, friend.”
“No, I don’t. I know ye. I seen ye when the Fallen King embraced you on the steps of the Bald Tower. I was in the crowd when they roared for you. Thousands upon thousands calling the name of a miner just because of a lucky clink,” he said, using the miners’ term for when a precious stone was found in the mines.
Requiem eyed the man. Had he really been in the audience that day when King Larken recognized his find and anointed him as a member of the Scarred? A life that seemed beyond belief at the time. A life that he still lived. One that he didn’t care for anymore.
“I know ye. And I know we’d all be better off if you’d just pass on through this town like a brief wind. Barely felt and then forgotten.”
Silence filled the room. No one drank. No one moved a rock at the back table. Even the bartender, Shara, had stopped cleaning her glass.
Garp laughed. Slowly at first, then louder. “You musta had more of the low than me, Grey! Scarred are all gone, didn’t you hear? Sure as sure they ain’t gonna be coming through old Drip!”
Requiem smiled. “He’s right. I’m not your man.”
“You ain’t? Then show us some skin.”
Requiem kept smiling and downed the rest of his drink. “Where’d you say that healer was?”
The healer’s hut was the last or the first building in all of Drip, depending on which way one was coming. It was nestled into the side of a mountain, half the structure comprised of the rise’s stone, the other half, an amalgam of hewn rock and mud. A dangle of cherry root hung from the rooftop like a shred of leftover sinew, a healer’s sigil. There was no light coming from the windows.
Requiem readjusted the girl on his shoulder, looked behind him to see if the result of the gossip he’d just created at the gathering hall was catching up with him, saw no one, and then knocked.
Nothing.
“Open up,” he mumbled, and then pounded the door.
This time the light of a glimmer stone came to life through the window. He heard a thud, then a gravelly voice seeped through the door. “How many times must I tell these fools not to go into the shafts at night…”
The door swung open and there stood a half-naked elder, balancing on a cane made of crooked wood, its handle curved and pointed like a scythe. The old man had long, wispy hair that barely covered his scalp. Though he was bent and wiry, the veins threading through his arms told the tale of muscles, a life of toil and work.
The man adjusted his glasses as he took in Requiem and the girl on his shoulder. “You ain’t no clinker,” said the man, using a common term for a miner.
“You the healer?” said Requiem.
“Not at this time of the night unless the need warrants it.”
Requiem brought the girl into his arms so that the healer could see her face.
“What happened to her? You club her too hard?”
“Dread Cultists.”
The man peered up at him from behind his glasses. “Cultists?”
“That’s what I said.”
The healer spat. “I am no judge here. A child needs to be put in line—”
“It’s the truth.” Requiem unfolded the robe she had been wrapped in to unveil the pattern sewn into its edges.
The healer peered closer. “By the filthy Abyss… Bring her in.”
He stepped aside and pointed at a wooden table tinged red, a color no doubt earned from all the reset bones and stitched wounds that occurred upon it.
Requiem stepped in and placed the girl where told. He stepped back and glanced around the place’s modest interior. The mountainside wall was crumbling. Piles of rock lay strewn across the floor with pink moss growing from them like dyed plumes of hair. On the other side there was a cot abutted by three full sacks. Hanging above the cot was a tarnished painting of Bolliad.
The Fallen Kingdom.
“You fight in the war?” said the healer as he went about unraveling the girl’s robe.
“Huh?” said Requiem, unprepared for the question.
“The way you’re staring at my picture… Don’t look at something like that unless you cared for it, and the only ones who cared for Bolliad so badly are the ones who picked up a sword for it after it went into the Abyss.”
“I ain’t no supporter of the Eldest, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No? The Younger then?”
“I fought in the war,” said Requiem, hoping that would end the conversation, though it was partly a lie. He’d fought in the war, but never picked a side, mostly because none would have him. Instead, he was called upon only occasionally to deal with the monsters of Moonsland or other sticky situations where there was little risk of him destroying the world like Proth had. He should have seen then that his time as a hero was coming to an end, but he was still too deep in his own grandiose to see past it.
“Me too,” said the healer. “Stood with the Eldest till the bitter end. Watched the banners of Glimmer fill the bridges of Bothane like a colorful sickness coming to pervade the heart of this country. We were ready to die to see it otherwise, but Ardan raised the flag, robbed us of our glory, and gave us over to them like pellets on a plate. After all of that. After all we did for him, he couldn’t even give us that. To the Abyss with the both of them if you ask me.”
“The girl. Can you do anything for her?” The Edge was already calling him back. Nothing in this minor interruption had changed what he had set out to do in the first place.
“Hmmm…” The healer turned his attention back to the girl, who lay sprawled upon the table. He put his fingers to her neck and then slowly walked them down her arm, where he rolled up her sleeve. Her veins looked dark, a symptom Requiem hadn’t noticed, like someone had taken a pen to her skin and attempted to trace her innards. “Dread Cultists, you say?”
“That’s right. Snuck her out just before they could throw her over.”
“Sure about that?”
“Sure about what?”
“Sure that it was Cultists that got her?” He pointed to her veins. “These aren’t the symptoms of void pollen. This is the work of silent stone.”
“Silent stone? You sure?” A rare stone in Moonsland, it was brittle and often broke during its extraction, but a valuable find when sold to the right hands. Bounty hunters used the powdered form of it to put a person into a deep coma.
“Sure as the sun. Used to see soldiers doped by the dozens with this stuff when the Younger found a vein of it deep in Mount Crow. Pumped their arrows full of it. Made a hell of a mess.”
“Well, can you draw it out?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
&nb
sp; “That’s what I mean.”
“What about druid leaf? Folly? Pander petal?”
The man raised an eyebrow. “You know your flowers.”
“Wife was a healer.”
“Was a healer?”
“Is a healer. Was my wife.” Requiem folded his arms. “You can’t fix her?”
“The stone is in her system now. No herb or medicine is going to solve that.” The healer stood up with the help of his cane. “Going to need a Geomage for that.”
Requiem rubbed his forehead. “I don’t suppose there’s one in town?”
The healer laughed. “If there was then I’d be out of a job.”
Requiem cursed beneath his breath. His luck was a stubborn beast.
“Probably won’t find one between here and Bothane.”
He cursed again. “There’s nothing you can do for her?”
“Not besides mop her head, check her pulse, and water her like a mare.”
“Can you take her?”
“And do what with her?” The healer laughed again.
“Isn’t there someone who can take her in?”
“Look around you. This ain’t no palace of good will. This is a mining town. Hard folk making their way by hard work. Barely a mother to be found between these walls. Certainly ain’t no charity.”
“Bothane is half a continent away,” said Requiem, stating his frustration.
“Why’d you take the girl? Should have just let the Abyss have her if you didn’t want to see it through.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what was it like? You save a child, you can’t just partly save them. You either take responsibility for their life or you don’t.”
“I know that,” snapped Requiem.
“Then why are you acting like you don’t?”
Because my life is supposed to be over, he wanted to answer the old man, but kept his words to himself. What did the healer know? Requiem had circled Moonsland a dozen times over, seen things this man’s eyes had only glimpsed in his wildest dreams, yet here he was lecturing Requiem like he was child in his own right.
Perhaps he was. Perhaps even after all these years he was still a spoiled runt begging his mother for things to go his way.