The Mark of Gold

by A. S. Etaski

~Stop, stop! Let me out! Let me go!~

  “—ana.”

  Distantly…

  A voice. Calling me.

  I knew him.

  “Sirana!”

  ~Help! Gavin, where am I? Let me out, please!~

  Long, cold fingers took hold of my arm but I slipped; I was free-floating for an instant. Then they grabbed hold again, dug in hard, and dragged me firmly through a cool, quiet mist.

  My body slumped sideways, shaking and unbearably heavy. I might have fallen down the slope or against Gavin, but someone bigger caught me, holding tightly to my right wrist to keep Soul Drinker pointed away from us. I coughed, dragged air through an aching throat, and my empty stomach clenched down as I froze upon the mere thought that this deadly point might aim toward the mercenary.

  ~He has no idea how safe he is.~

  *Rrrr!*

  “What did you see?” the death mage asked me, his tone that familiar, irrepressible curiosity.

  “G-Gaelan,” I gasped. My mouth moved, but no other words escaped; I could not describe it.

  *Don’t disappear like that again, Davrin! How dare you!*

  Was… was the demon unnerved by what happened as well?

  “Mirages are common with warp rot,” rumbled the merc. “The unknown and the known are the same. It draws out both with no boundaries or care how it affects mortals.”

  I glanced up at him skeptically. “You’ve s-seen this before?”

  He nodded once before his attention went to the break in the world. My teeth ground down on the thought that he might have fought the warp rot without any payment at all, but the forest drew all our attention again. The light from the source was shifting from green to purple.

  Gavin grunted. “Hm. We must cleanse it now.”

  *Agreed!* Soul Drinker squalled. *Get up, warrior! Break it down! I will shield you to the end. Run, hurry! The color you see is only a hint of the Change about to erupt!*

  Seized with urgency, I scrambled to my feet, spotting the second vial in the merc’s hand. Without thinking, I snatched it at the same moment I freed my wrist from his loose grip. I launched myself at the source of the warp rot, following the pathway the two had created for me.

  The merc seemed oddly slow in trying to catch me.

  “Baenar, wait!”

  The pull of the world tilted severely, the closer I got to the center. The way my feet touched the ground grew inconsistent, sometimes slowing just before I could spring my full height off the ground, other times slamming down so hard after a single stride that I thought I fractured my ankle. Nothing hurt, though.

  In one hand were both of Sarilis’s vials; in the other was the relic’s eternal presence. The vials became warm, and the wax seals began melting down my gloves with corks ready to pop. The black blade’s aura shone visibly even to me, encasing my body within a blood-red glow. The valley shifted to a terrifying sublimation, the wounded earth venting like a spring, becoming violet-green air…

  And a cloud of light into which I plunged.

  Worse.

  Into which all that struggled was undone.

  As if it had never been.

  *Throw it! Do it!*

  Supreme focus guided my pitch of the rupturing vials. The bones of my arm bent like reeds, catapulting my attack with a snap, far beyond my best throw in a century. This assumed distance meant anything at all.

  I stared at the progress, waiting, willing the disintegrating vials to land dead center of the headless torso. It arched back, faceless yet screaming into empty space.

  *Baenar, run!*

  An arm of stone hooked my waist, dragged me against a solid anchor.

  ~NO! I must see it—!~

  My boots left the ground, floating before me as we accelerated.

  Drawing away from the center.

  Fleeing as timelessness faded and gravity resumed once again.

  I clung to the merc’s front like an infant bat to its mother, the ground speeding beneath us, the pressure put upon my form at last recognizable.

  We were almost home!

  A man in a grey robe appeared, and the large male grabbed him, too, mashing long ribs against my left arm, pinning it in place. Forcibly hauled together, we crested the hill, made it just over the top—

  “Fethos troth!”

  The merc collapsed forward, I fell beneath him, and Gavin partially so. A shimmering force spell covered us like a bell.

  “Close your eyes!”

  “Close your mind” would have been a better demand as the sky above exploded in utter madness. Seized with terror, I waited for the ground to unravel, for the void to sweep in wide and swallow us up. I grasped at him, at them; I grasped for something, anything solid.

  Anything real.

  “Are you truly finished now?”

  The dead tone drifted out from within his grey hood while crows cawed louder outside the shed.

  Mathias was drinking water he’d scooped from the barrel. Lowering the wooden cup, the skin hunter sighed with regret then grinned. “I suppose.”

  “There is no stopping once I begin.”

  “So?”

  “So, I must hear a firm answer. I may have all of him?”

  Mathias made a wry face. “Not sure I want to watch that.”

  Gavin rolled those new eyes in an old gesture, which was a delight. I smiled, and his glance toward me was so brief that I dismissed it as a tic.

  “Poking fun, monk,” the nobleman said. “Of course, you can have ‘all’ of him. I’ve taken what I wanted.”

  The death mage gave a solemn nod and turned to Rithal. “His mortality can be used against the Bishops. You may find it interesting if you will stay and help. But do not interrupt, no matter what.”

  Rithal reaffirmed a stout nod.

  “I require a bucket of clean water and a cloth,” he said to the Dwarf.

  “Got it.”

  Rithal grabbed an available bucket filled with soiled water from earlier and used it to flush the small middens trench leading outside. He refilled it from the barrel using the clean cup rather than dunking the filthy waste bucket directly, rinsed it out, and tossed the water again. Mathias sorted out some used cloths as the Dwarf filled it for the third time.

  Meanwhile, the naked and gagged Witch Hunter struggled, bound upon the same table which had supported Gavin’s corpse. He shouted to the ceiling with a ravaged voice, the muffled accusations no doubt wild and creative, but imaginary.

  Gavin finally lowered his hood and approached the table, offering Jacob a long look at his pale, gaunt face, and dry, leathery skin. He peered down at the condemned man with his sullen ugliness, the unsettling, inverted colors of his eyes, and his black teeth and fingernails unhidden. Looming, he spoke to Jacob in fluent Manalari, yet it had none of the righteous bluster I was accustomed to hearing from those shouting the language.

  “This began within your soul, crusader. The Sun God planted the seeds of this imbalance long ago, shaped by you and your brethren. Those who challenge it will manifest at the next conflict at Mount Sonai, and I’ve accepted the task to see it through. You shall help your brothers bear witness to the inevitable transition, Jacob, come what may, but your Vis shall not return again to Musanlo.”

  This threat and warning were at once too clear and too nebulous for the Witch Hunter to reconcile. He went temporarily, fiercely mad against his restraints. We had always intended to kill Jacob; there was no releasing him for any reason, any advantage. He had known that, claiming to me that he was ready for death and that it would serve a higher purpose.

  How prescient the statement had been.

  During a pause in which his thoughts seemed interrupted, Gavin once again seemed to glance at me, making eye contact for the beat of a moth’s wing before Rithal set down the full bucket of clean water and offered the cleanest cloth, and the risen mage looked away.

  “Thank you,” Gavin said flatly, rolled up his sleeves, and
got to work. Dipping the rough cloth in the water, he began wiping the dirt, sweat, and stains from the struggling Jacob’s skin as efficiently as he groomed his mare when she was sidestepping. He removed the gag to clean around the neck and mouth; it was both thorough and galling for the Witch Hunter.

  Mathias leaned toward Rithal. “Cleaning the slate?”

  The Dwarf only shrugged. It clearly surprised them all when Gavin disrobed after dropping the cloth in the bucket. Not only did Mathias make a face as the Deathwalker removed his robe, but Jacob went dreadfully silent as they watched the worn, leather armor and his long shirt follow the robe. With deliberation and care, Gavin set them far aside.

  Mathias exhaled in quiet relief when Gavin kept his hands away from his braies and his feet stayed in his boots. Jacob stared at the apprentice’s ribs showing on a hairless torso, at his ropey muscles visibly attached to the long bones of his gaunt frame. Given the disgust and judgement, I had to think it was purely practical that the death mage removed any clothing at all.

  Next, the death mage withdrew his surgical kit from within his pack to set on the chair then gathered a few other items. I recognized some from his buying list with Rithal the morning after our arrival at Troshin Bend. His whole focus was on his motions; he thoroughly ignored everyone. When he turned to reposition the chair closer and begin spreading out his tools, we all saw his back.

  “Aw, shit,” Rithal hissed within his beard.

  “Oof,” Mathias agreed.

  “Dyos karta,” Jacob whispered.

  No response from Gavin, who possessed scars from more scourging than Jacob. Several marks were much older with the way they stretched at the edges as if the skin had grown a lot since they formed.

  However, something else drew Jacob’s attention, and his voice broke on a blurt of surprise. “Archimandrite!”

  “Hm?” At last, Gavin reacted.

  The Witch Hunter pulled on Mathias’s excellent knots. “Y-you were once ordained, cleric? Impossible!”

  I waited eagerly for Gavin’s response, if any, and studied the raised brand of a stylized Sun. It was high in between his shoulder blades and branded into his skin with white-hot metal half his lifetime ago. I’d only seen a glimpse before, but it matched the symbol on the Witch Hunters’ saddle blankets and gear.

  “This is no mark of a cleric, fool,” Gavin murmured, choosing to answer in Manalari, though Mathias and Rithal probably understood most of it. “I never made an oath to Musanlo to betray him.”

  “Only oath-takers have this mark,” Jacob barked like a wounded dog. “Proudly worn where the praying man’s dawn touches him first!”

  “Indeed, so it did, many times.”

  “Betrayer! Corrupter!”

  Gavin turned toward the table with a small vial in his hand and smiled without showing his teeth. “I refused any oath of consequence that would betray my Lady. The branding was forced, a desperate act for a father to cleanse his son of his heretic dreams and his mother’s Ma’ab blood.”

  Jacob looked twice in quick succession. “Archimandrites do not have children. They do not wed; they are celibate.”

  Gavin shrugged, adjusting a few implements resting upon his cloth roll. “I am sure many of them lie with others even as they lie to God.”

  “Your father was bewitched after the whore dropped you!” Jacob drew breath to continue but stopped as something struck him. He began to quake. “Y-you must be the well-fouler of Chirtu Cloister… you poisoned them all, killing the Archimandrite! Confess! We found you!”

  Gavin’s icy blue pupils glimmered. “Indeed, I confess. My intent.”

  The cool lack of remorse unnerved the Witch Hunter. “A-and we executed you, as you were sentenced in absentia! Sworn upon the Temple Pisc’sagrad! There was nowhere you could hide from God’s Warriors, for Musanlo himself led us to you!”

  The Deathwalker sighed. “Correct, again.”

  “Now you’ve made an unholy pact to get revenge upon us. You sacrifice Musanlo’s battle-blooded crusader for power!”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Who is she?! Who is your devil’s slut!”

  Gavin showed his teeth this time. “Were your soul’s resonance not in such harmony with your Bishops, mage, I would not be able to use you in Her name. Remember this when the Veil finally lifts.”

  Motioning to Rithal, my Deathwalker requested his help to force Jacob to swallow what was in his vial. This was a small show on its own, for the resistance was impressive, but the redbeard eventually overcame teeth and jaw and gag reflex with a flexible pipe produced from his gear and pushed down his throat.

  I pondered the possible effects, watching the Witch Hunter gag and cough and curse, then seem to itch all over, quite badly, demanding again and again to know who Gavin’s Lady was. Jacob grew quieter, and I watched his eyes lose focus, his tongue become heavy as his speech slurred.

  Soon, the Witch Hunter stopped trying to speak.

  With that welcome rest upon the ears, Gavin’s final preparations in the quiet shed, coupled with the encouraging caws outside, seemed to calm him. He unrolled his kit, took a moment to study their cleanliness, arrangement, and distance from the quick-breathing body on the table. All smirk and satisfaction had vanished from body and mind before Gavin selected the first tool: a small scalpel.

  The death mage turned and, with careful, long-fingered hands, without hesitation or expression, drew precise cuts in Jacob’s skin at multiple points on his light brown body. Rithal and Mathias were absolutely quiet, watching. Though the drugged captive flinched and moaned, the skin hunter did not seem discomforted in the least, while the Dwarf’s expression was hard and numb to any visible suffering of a Witch Hunter.

  I waited for a pattern to emerge, listening above the roof to the feathers flutter and beaks clacking like Osgrid’s pet. Gavin avoided the largest vessels or cutting too deeply, any action which might lose control of the blood flow. I could not read the marks, but they resembled runes or glyphs as I’d seen the Davrin wizards and Priestesses use. I was thankful they didn’t easily match what I’d seen on the walls of the Forming Pit, or in what lay upon Soul Drinker’s blade and hilt.

  When Gavin was finished with his scalpel, he traded it for a tiny, hand-held basting brush which looked new. Or maybe it was a paint brush. The fact that he could trade for his tools at many crafters’ stalls left me to wonder if the intended use had been culinary or not. Regardless, he dipped the new brush into the blood welling in one glyph before painting a mirrored glyph in the same location on his own pale body before moving onto the next: shoulders, forearms, chest, pits, stomach. Gavin needed to push his own braies down a little to draw the groin glyph. There were none on Jacob’s legs.

  An unsettling whisper bounced strangely off the wall, and I jerked my head toward the door before realizing it was from Gavin. He intoned exceptionally low, his words in the death tongue; for the Dwarf and the man, the crows obscured them but, for once, I understood what he said.

  “My Lady Nyx, Citadel Prophet among Greylords, I am ready. Pain until birth, pain until death, each I’ve endured to see beyond the veil, as it must be. Grant me witness as I guide and know them in one, within this pinnacle soul of the Sun, as you know and have seen him. Grant me witness I may prove I can serve you in walking upon this world, through ages if your need be there.”

  While he chanted, Gavin’s hand become incorporeal before my eyes, the fingertips slipping into Jacob’s chest, deep in to the knuckles, his pale skin surrounded by bloody glyphs. Gradually, the black-eyed death mage began withdrawing his hand with a firm grasp on something which might be all or part of Jacob’s soul.

  It was like a vapor which possessed all manner of vibrant colors, intense and in no danger of fading. Also within was an oddly harsh, serpentine void that lacked any color at all; it moved within the rest like a worm in loose sludge.

  A chill seeped into the room, flowing through the barred door as if
it were wide open and foggy outside. Mathias drew in a breath, his tired body shuddering though he kept his eyes on Jacob. Rithal fixed blue eyes upon the secure entrance; I wasn’t sure what he saw but it made him curse beneath his beard.

  Jacob seemed to come awake as Gavin drew his hand back, his mouth opening in a silent scream. His body seized in violent fits; the restraints fortunately strong enough to keep him in place. His eyes were open, but he did not seem to see anything around him.

  Mathias made sounds of utter fascination as bright red blood from Jacob’s glyph incisions flowed toward the clutch of colors that Gavin held in his palm. At the same time, my risen mage’s own black blood seeped out through the mirror-glyphs on his skin. The dark flow glinted as it flowed toward Jacob’s soul-light, appearing to contain innumerable, tiny shards of glass. It mixed with the red fluid and tainted light cradled within pale, curled fingers, and the two souls became connected as if by a birth cord.

  It was here I saw the pain in the death mage’s eyes, the subtle tremor in his body, a slow-rising agony apparent in his voice as he continued to pray.

  “My Lady Nyx, Grey Maiden of Manalar, I give of my bones and blood to weave the immaculate prison and crown gem of the Brother’s journeyman. As his pleasure and his pain have become a singular edge of flint in life, let this stone heart hold that sharpest edge in death, and slash the Veil in transition when the reckoning is at hand.”

  A low shudder passed through the floorboards, below the ground, and the two males seemed to shake out of their stupor and look around. They did not know what Gavin had said, though the fear on their faces revealed their first impulse to leave mid-ritual.

  No. Not yet.

  “Rithal,” Gavin rasped, his black trance complete. “Have you any grief left to share?”

  At first, the Dwarf couldn’t speak. He tried.

  Then, “Plenny.”

  I saw Gavin’s slight nod of acknowledgment. “Let your offering seal this prison behind his soul. Cut the threads, and the Bishops shall have no defense against their own corruption.”

  Uncertain of the specifics but understanding the sentiment, Rithal moved slowly toward the quaking body, soon standing on the other side of the table. The air grew colder inside the shed, and the black-streaked vapor in Gavin’s trembling hand had begun to take the shape of a man. I saw Jacob’s likeness which pleaded for pity as tiny impressions of hands reached out.