Doomwalker

by Kathryn Zurmehly

  Valen blinked at her back. It was marble pale and muscular but definitely feminine. He expected her wound to be oozing, but it was just coated in dried blood.

  The pus and stench of a demon wound would have marred the femininity of the sight, but in its absence his thoughts more or less stopped.

  Maryx cleared her throat, turning to eye him over her shoulder. Her eyes were very bright in the early light. He shook himself and pulled some salve and bandages from his bag. “You should be in a lot more pain,” he said, “and it should be festering.” He steeled his thoughts and gently pulled away the part of her chest bindings that had been cut so he could get at the wound. It helped to keep in mind the way his mentor had died two days after being wounded by a demon: fevered and with a weeping black sore the size of Valen’s fist on his side.

  She made a questioning noise, then snorted. “Ah. That’s right. Demons have their rights to your people, but not mine. As if we need their help to ruin ourselves.”

  Valen began applying the salve. It could still fester like an ordinary wound, which it seems to be. “What?”

  Maryx was quiet for a moment. “You’re the first human to hear this story in at least three thousand years. I guess someone would care.” She shifted and Valen glared at the back of her head for not making this easier. “Before the glaciers swept the First Age away, before my people enslaved yours and built an empire, the gods- my gods- tricked the King of Demons into a deal. They gave him the secret of their deaths and he forswore all rights to ruin the elves. His powers can’t affect us.”

  Deals with demons. Of course the elven gods had done that. “That’s a simple story.” He thought of the Tribunal’s own legends that might be history, like the Forging of Lyrica’s Shield, or the Theft of Jaryt’s Girdle. They tended to be more specific. “It does explain why you’re not dying from this.”

  “If there are details, they’ve been...lost. Even that outline is forbidden, but Scouts are people who know and do forbidden things.”

  “If your gods sacrificed themselves for you like that, then why do you say that godshard hates you?” He focused on the question because he had to bandage her shoulder, which meant nudging her tunic even higher up her back. She helped, technically, pulling the entire sleeve off gingerly.

  “All elves swear oaths to the gods when we are very young. To the Grave of the Gods, really, now. I guess they hear them still, and still know what has happened in Aeldamarc.” She gave a short bitter laugh. “By any measure, the elven people have violated the Seven Paired Oaths.”

  “Fourteen oaths?”

  “Seven Paired Oaths,” she corrected sharply, “They lay out what we are supposed to stand for and the principles of the Seven.” Valen gently secured the bandage. “No one cares anymore. It’s just a ceremony for children who know how to speak, walk, and follow directions.”

  “It seems like you care.”

  “I’m not very good at being an elf.”

  He backed away and averted his eyes as she very carefully shrugged back into her tunic.

  “The godshard called me ‘Doomwalker’.”

  “That is a good translation of Immor, now that it has come up.” She dragged herself to her feet, grabbing her sword from where it lay. “Don’t we have an army to outrun to Crownshold?”

  Valen stood but did not move to collect his pack. “It said pitied my fate.”

  Maryx sheathed her sword and adjusted it on her hip very slowly, then said, “Does the title Doomwalker seem like a pleasant one to you?”

  “No, but what does it really mean?”

  “There were four Immor who killed the gods. They...happen, sometimes. There are no prophecies of them, just the fact that they will come. Harbingers and victims of doom.”

  “That’s insane.”

  A dark eyebrow shot up over once violet eye. “Because the world is so sane otherwise.” She shrugged. “Doomwalkers are a part of the oaths, so there are Doomwalkers and here I am, despite wanting to run to the southern ice and beyond.”

  Valen grit his teeth and shook himself out of it. This was some elven legend. It didn’t matter. He had his mission for the Herald and now multiple heartstones to deliver to safe keeping within the Temple.

  He grabbed his pack and the two of them broke their momentary camp in silence. It was only when they stepped back on the road that something occurred to him.

  “You said your oath was why you stay.”

  She eyed him warily for a moment, “My gods had great pity for you and your lonely road. If we meet you, we accompany you on it.”

  “And sabotage the attempt to bring doom.”

  “That’s not what they say.” She stared at the distance. “Thank you, by the way, for saving my life and dressing the wound. Let’s go. It’s a long road without horses.”

  Valen followed her onto the road. The elven Doomwalker legend sat in his mind like a ridiculous but terrifying campfire ghost story, impossible but haunting.

  5

  “Tell them this,” Valen’s Herald said, “The Lords’ Council is broken beyond repair. Seek counsel swiftly and flee for shaded boughs.” There was an urgency in her eyes, though her voice never varied. “The Temple must not fall, though it may fade. The priests and priestesses and all their orders will not be abandoned by the Tribunal.”

  For the first time since the Herald visited him when he was too small to lift a sword, Valen wanted to speak to her. His throat felt strained with his questions and—

  And she was gone, and the sun was rising.

  He felt a light kick on his leg. “We’d best get moving, Paladin.” He could hear Maryx’s scowl.

  Her shoulder wound had slowed them down, though truth be told Valen didn’t feel in much better straights. He had not traveled so far on foot in a long time.

  Maryx eyed Valen warily. “Does that hurt?”

  He dragged himself to one knee. “Only after she leaves.” Temple tradition held that priestesses of Lyrica had always received visions of the Heralds in a state of beatific bliss, but less had been said about the far fewer Paladins they had visited. Valen knew why, having endured twenty years of collapsing to receive divine direction with no warning whatsoever. “We need to get moving.”

  “You’re the one still on the ground. We’ve got a week’s walk or so to the city.” She shifted her injured shoulder and winced. “I might take longer than that, perhaps.”

  Valen stood and looked at her, considering. He hadn’t walked this far for years, since he was in training. Maryx might feel like her shoulder slowed her down, but Valen couldn’t move much faster than this if he were on his own.

  “They should have overtaken us by now.”

  “Lorcial must have been hit by a raiding party, moving ahead of the main body,” Maryx said, shifting her sword on her hip and starting down the road, “A very gifted raiding party. I’d been ranging the area for days and saw no sign of them.”

  “Who should have overtaken us.” He caught up to her in a few steps. “There’s something about this that…” He shook his head.

  “I know what you mean. I left Aeldamarc when humans were last at war, when the western holdings attempted conquest. It felt different. For one, I didn’t lose bands of humans outfitted for war in the brush.”

  Valen knew what war- the Westerners’ War- she was talking about, but that had been twenty-odd years ago. It had ended around the time he’d been born. Elves.

  “If your gods declared me some sort of prophet of doom, then I guess something more is wrong.”

  “Recognized,” she said grimly, “They wouldn’t bring that down on anyone. Even broken like they are now.”

  “Was that winged thing one of them?”

  “No. That was…something else. Not from our world. Forbidden knowledge. Which I do not know, as luck would have it.” She shrugged at him, winced. “I left home young, Paladin, and as disgraced as a bloodline can be. I studied the sword as a child and not old books that survived centuries of purges.”
>
  Valen frowned. In the Temple, there was no forbidden knowledge. There was heresy, but those were things that weren’t true. “Why would it be forbidden?”

  She chuckled darkly. “That, too, is forbidden knowledge.”

  “And you don’t care.”

  “Maybe, once, but I’ve forgotten. It isn’t important.”

  “So much for the ancient knowledge of elves that we’re all afraid of.”

  “Oh, the Hierarchs want you all dead. They just have no way of pulling it off.” She curled a lip at the empty air, brilliant violent eyes flashing. “Scouts are just exiles playing at a long-gone war. We do our missions, make our yearly reports at the border, and go about it all over again. They don’t even have scouts make clearing raids near the border.” She lifted an eyebrow at Valen’s scowl. “The Westerners’ War made some humans quite bold in the holdings near Aeldamarc. They were discouraged.”

  “You killed humans.”

  “I know what Lyrican Paladins do. You’ve killed a few yourself.”

  He had, all of them bandits he’d encountered during his travels. Some Paladins made hunting them or even corrupt holding officials a primary focus, but Valen had never liked shedding human blood. “Civilization’s light burns away many kinds of threats.”

  Maryx snorted, then halted, frowning. “You don’t hear that, do you?”

  “What?”

  “Large group on foot…let’s get off the road.” She dropped into the underbrush and almost instantly vanished.

  Valen followed and bumped into her. She gave him a violet glare over her shoulder.

  He followed the elf to the base of an old pine, where they tucked themselves against it. It was lightly veiled from the road by undergrowth, but they could see well enough.

  It was a long time later that they heard the rattle of wagon wheels and the chatter of voices. Valen stopped glaring at Maryx to peer down the road.

  Men marched in front of wagons drawn by skinny oxen. A few rode mules, but not many. A lot of them were missing eyes and there was the clear gleam of a metal hook in place of one rider's hand. They looked rough and undisciplined, but all were clearly armed.

  Valen grit his teeth. He knew what kind of men these were.

  The Holdings were each their own place, with their own laws, and getting thrown out of one usually meant that another was open to you. But not in every case. When Holding law decreed that an eye or a hand be taken, that was a sign to the other Holdings just what kind of criminal this was-- murderers, in all places, rapists in some, worse things still in others. No doubt some men got caught up in lies and other violations of justice. It was an abomination before Lyrica, but so were many things. Regardless, these debilitated men were welcomed nowhere and had a few options left to them. They turned into the most vicious kinds of bandits.

  On a pole next to the driver fo the first wagon, the Beriskar lark banner flew from a pole next to the driver.

  Maryx and Valen watched in still silence as the bandit band passed. They were moving fast, headed in the direction they came from. The bandits looked around them, alert, but they were not about to go beating the brush. It was a big group as they went, about fifty men with three wagons.

  They waited for a long time after the last bandit had passed long down the road before moving back to the road.

  Maryx looked in the direction the bandits had gone. "So Beriskar forsakes the idea of the Holdings."

  "It looks like. Let's go." He turned towards Crownshold, wishing for a horse. If Beriskar had reached out to those kinds of outcasts, he planned for all out war on a scale that hadn't been seen for a very long time.

  Maryx caught up to him in a few bounds, scowling. She must have jarred her shoulder.

  "How is that feeling?" Valen asked, happy to get some relief from the idea of war.

  The elf shrugged, then winced. “I wouldn’t want to fight with it, sword or bow. Drawing a bow would be very difficult...” She touched the quiver strap slung over her good shoulder. “Not that it matters now.”

  “You’ll find a replacement in Crownshold.”

  She snorted derisively. “A human-made replacement.”

  "And how is that worse?" They were speaking quietly. They should have been quiet, but Valen appreciated the break from his thoughts.

  She just eyed him like he was a fool. Valen grinned in spite of himself and everything else.

  Bandits working with a Holding lord on the warpath, elven nonsense about Valen being a harbinger of doom, and a long walk to Crownshold ahead with an army on their heels. He should get to grin at something.

  ✽✽✽

  Maryx sighed, leaning on her unsheathed sword as Valen collapsed into a holy trance again.. It was the second time today, with three days left on the road, and he had come out of it each time even more driven to make it to Crownshold quickly.

  She watched the empty road for a moment, then looked back at Valen where he lay in an undignified heap.

  He looked worn and rough from days on the road, in need of both a bath and a shave. His brown hair wasn’t kept long, but it was long enough that the ways it stuck up amused her. She wondered if he was normally that tan, from years of travelling as Paladins do, or if it was dirt.

  She smirked to herself as she watched him. Of course Lyrica would just toss him around like that. What a foolish divinity. It was a formidable kind of man who would engage a demon as he had, and for the sake of an elf...well.

  Valen stirred, rising to his feet blinking, and she let the thought trail away.

  “Any news from the spiritual sphere?” she asked half-lightly, sheathing her sword.

  “Instructions for the Temple.” He scrubbed at his eyes and settled his pack more securely over his shoulders. He didn’t elaborate and Maryx didn’t ask. The Tribunal as an actual force made her uncomfortable; the Tribunal had never damned the elves, but none of the fifty-six liked them and had made that fact known to their followers.

  “There is a village ahead,” she told him, “Maybe we can find some horses. We’ll cut more than a day out of the journey.”

  “If bandit bands have been passing through, I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  They had not met another bandit band on their path, but Maryx had found what she would bet was sign of the ones they'd seen in the form of campsites in clearings near the road. There were many of those kinds of men, but very few in the same area, and most wouldn't join the Great Road so close to Crownshold.

  They started walking, still slow. Valen’s stormcloud of a mood had only grown darker. She wished for that break in it from several days ago. Here she thought communing with their gods made human holy men happier. Heralds, in particular, because she didn’t think many got their attention.

  She should leave him and head for the deep woods til this war settled into its bloody stride and she could travel freely. She was not a very good elf, even by the low standards applied to scouts.

  Why should she heed the Seven Paired Oaths of her childhood, vows which were going to get her killed? Everyone recited them and no one expected to have to follow them. They were a long list of ‘ifs’ and ‘thens’ inherited from brighter days, recited and then forgotten in festival joy.

  Because she'd said them, that was why.

  Besides, Valen had charged a demon to try to save her life. She glanced over at him and saw a greenish bruise at his throat, brought out by the gold sunburst broach of his cloak. It could have killed him and if he’d been anyone else would have. Blessed by Lyrica or not, his sword would have been shattered like her bow soon enough. He would have died in profound agony. As a Paladin he knew that, but he’d charged in for a stranger anyway not only once, but twice.

  If she was honest, she didn’t think she would have done the same.

  He was Immor, a being pitied by the dead gods and useful to demons. A vision of some secret burning bright power had told her that in Lorcial, though how or why she’d seen it she didn't know. The demon’s mercy towards him had provided mor
bid proof. She had vowed many years ago to travel alongside Immor down his or her dark path, should she meet one.

  Maryx had broken promises, she supposed, but never those ones, and besides, she had never left debts unpaid. She owed Paladin Valen the Doomwalker her life.

  She eyed him again. The bruise stood out even more to her eyes. He could have run. Instead, he tried to fight for her, and then he somehow talked a mad shard of a dead god into dying for her.

  She would keep that old oath.

  Not that it would be simple. No horses and an army on their tale. Well, probably. Outriders should have overtaken them days ago, to be honest. Something strange was going on. Beriskar had nothing to gain by not making straight for Crownshold, though who knew how he'd gotten as far as Lorcial without it being obvious he was coming. With an army, at that.

  She didn't like it. Well, didn't like it more than she already didn't like it.

  Beside her, Valen halted, turning to look at the woods. The sound of galloping hooves resounded, very close for something she should have heard from much further away. She frowned, then the riders came flying out of the woods in Beriskar colors.

  Both Maryx and Valen leapt out of the way, hands on their weapons. The horses' mouths were foaming, their eyes wild. The riders were struggling to control the animals, not paying any attention to their surroundings.

  Maryx drew her sword as the riders wrangled their mounts and got their bearings. She glanced over to see Valen ready, but with his sword still sheathed and rolled her eyes.

  The riders would probably pass them by, but they needed the horses! Or did he want to walk several more days to Crownshold? Besides, those were Beriskar colors!

  Maryx moved in from an angle towards the nearest one, a small woman, trying to stay in the rider's blind spot. They needed the horses. The riders' own weapons were still sheathed, so that gave her time.

  The horse's irritation didn't though. The animal spotted her and shied violently, still not settled from whatever had spoked it. The rider twisted to see Maryx, her eyes as wide as the horse's and just as uneasy, and started clawing for her own sword.