by Dave Dobson
“Well…” I started. “But—”
“Stop talking,” he continued, gesturing with the large hunk of meat he’d been chewing. “Or I’ll have you beheaded.” He continued gnawing on his food.
I swallowed. I stopped talking. This wasn’t going how I’d planned, not at all. Boog had counseled me against my current course of action, but my anger and grief had run too deep.
Stop talking, he’d said, Or I’ll have you beheaded.
With those words, I realized something. Despair, and the madness it begets, can, like pain or disease, get better. My pointless death wouldn’t bring Clarice back. Even if I somehow succeeded in killing her killer, where would I be? Nowhere. She’d urged me, before she left Frosthelm, to hunt down the source of the mystery, and of Marron’s ill deeds. I’d serve her better by acting against him, in whatever way remained to me, than in any other way. Plus, I might avoid being beheaded.
So, standing there, a prisoner in a rebel camp, I came to the realization that life could, in fact, go on, something that Boog had been suggesting for days. I had been holding Clarice’s pendant as I made my proud challenge, and at that moment, I clutched it tighter. Though I’d been looking for immediate vengeance, it was Marron who’d led to Clarice being sent out here, Marron who’d caused us to flee the city, where we were hidden out on the border with Clarice, Marron who’d so distressed Clarice in ways I didn’t yet understand. It was Marron who needed to die. Not be brought to justice, not tried in court, not just suffer humiliation – he needed to die. I retreated a few steps back to Boog’s side, but as I did so, I swore to the memory of my friend that I’d do this one thing for her. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to accomplish it, but it felt good nonetheless. And I hadn’t felt the least bit good in some time.
“That is better,” said the chieftain, tossing the remains of his meat to a pair of long-haired dogs nearby. “So, what have we learned from them?"
“Not much, my master,” said Gora. “They are inspectors, not regular soldiers. At least one of them has some skill with magic. The little one, I think. The big one is likely a warrior of moderate prowess.”
“And what is their mission?” asked the chieftain.
“They will not say,” said Gora. “I believe they were scouts, like others of their guild. They do not seem so seasoned as the others we've encountered.”
That stung a bit, but it was true. I wondered why they were speaking in our language. It made little sense, unless the group did not share a common tongue for some reason, which seemed unlikely. Or unless they wanted us to know what they were talking about, which seemed much more probable, but I could not come up with a reason why they would. It couldn’t be out of politeness.
“Green warriors? Unblooded?” asked the chieftain, picking at some gristle between his teeth.
Gora held up her hands in a placating gesture. “These two, yes. The other, the woman who was slain – she was stronger than these. We’ve seen her before, but closer to the Prelate’s villages.”
I gripped Clarice’s pendant tighter at this. It was all true, but it still hurt – not that she was better, but that she was gone.
The chieftain thought for a moment, then sat up. “Well, if they won’t tell us anything, they have no value. Do you think they’d tell us more under torture? Hot metal? The strop?”
That didn’t sound good. I waited for Gora’s reply with some trepidation.
“No, my master,” she said. I let out my breath, relieved. “I don’t think they have much more of value to share. Their mission can’t have been too important.”
“Well then,” said the chieftain. “They’re useless. Just another pair of mouths to feed, and unfriendly ones at that.” He stood. “Behead them.”
I swallowed, and I saw Boog tense, looking around for some way to escape. We were both tethered by our ankles, tied securely to a pole set deep in the hard ground of the camp, with only a few feet of freedom to move. He kicked his leg, but the tether was strong. He moved to the stout pole. It was six inches across. He pulled and strained against it, but it would not come loose. Two of the warriors picked up their axes and came towards us, grinning perhaps a bit more broadly than I would have liked. Boog turned to face them, and I stood at his side, ready to fight. Not that we stood much of a chance against armed men.
From behind us came the voice of Gora. “Wait, my master,” she said. “I might have use for them.” The two warriors stopped their advance, and looked to their chieftain, as did the rest of us.
“What use?” he growled.
“If they’ve been trained by the Guild, in the city, I might be able to learn what they know, and of the Guild’s capabilities. What we might face, should the war continue. And perhaps the secrets of their magic.”
Though her words were welcome, I wasn’t sure what she was driving at. Boog knew nearly nothing of magic, and I didn’t know much, other than the operation of the warding rods and the Augur’s pool. Magic wasn’t something the Prelate relied on in war. Wizards were too few, too eccentric, their spells too unpredictable to use on the battlefield. But maybe Gora didn’t know this, or wasn’t certain of it. But we wouldn’t be the best sources for this information, even if we could be convinced to tell what little we knew. Gora already knew more about the warding rods than I. There was something here I was missing, some game Gora was playing that I did not yet understand.
The chieftain rubbed his chin. “You’ll take them in? Feed them? Guard them?”
“Yes, my master.”
“And share what you learn? Within, perhaps, two cycles of the moon?”
“Yes, my master.”
The chieftain looked at us, the same way I had seen customers at a butcher judge cuts of meat. If I had to guess, he found us rather rank and gamey.
“All right, then,” he said, at length. “They are your problem for now.”
41
The End of the Road
As we filed into the courtyard, Gora dismounted and then closed and locked the gate behind us, tucking the key back into a pouch at her belt and removing another. She unlocked the chains binding us to her horse, but only at the horse. Our wrists were still chained together, and she held the long chain like a dog’s leash. I would have been angry at the image, but I was too tired. We’d been walking uphill through dry country, bearing packs full of food and other supplies, our wrists bound, for days. I pulled myself closer to the chain to give my hands some slack, and then I fumbled with the clasp of the heavy pack I carried, finally releasing the buckle. The thick leather straps flew free, and the pack slid off my back and hit the ground. I heard an echoing thud behind me as Boog dropped his burden.
I looked around me. We were in a cleft in the side of a mountain, perhaps eighty feet across. At its rear, where the trail ended, was a tall door made of a single solid slab of stone carved with patterns and runes. It must have weighed a thousand pounds. The door was set into the side of the mountain. I could not see how it opened. Above it, as the rock face rose, I could see occasional carvings or stonework, and some windows were set into the cliff face as well. Behind us was a stone wall, probably twelve feet high, with a heavy gate set into it. This wall, plus the two natural rock walls on either side of us and the back face with the door, formed an enclosed courtyard which held a few small structures and a pool of water, probably fed by a spring given its clarity.
I was happy that we seemed to have reached our journey’s end, but I wasn’t sure what Gora wanted now, or how she would handle the situation. It was pretty obvious that she feared that we would try to escape or overpower her. Those thoughts had been constantly on my mind, and I assume on Boog’s, although we’d spoken little on the journey, not wanting to reveal anything to Gora. Not that we would be guaranteed freedom even were we not chained. The little woman was hardly an imposing physical presence, but after seeing what she had done with my warding rod, I wasn't sure that either of us was a match for her, or even both of us combined.
“Come here,” s
he said. Her horse wandered over toward a set of stalls set against the stone wall, and Gora let it go.
“Why?” asked Boog.
“I don’t want trouble,” said Gora. “And I don't want to cause you further discomfort. I’d like to release you, but I need to prepare something first.”
“What? Prepare what?” I asked, rubbing at the dusty edge of my mouth.
“I need to be sure you won’t escape,” she said. “And tear my arms off, or whatever you’ve been planning behind those scowls.”
Boog sat down, which tugged at the chain connecting us. He glared mutely up at Gora.
“Er,” I said. “See. We’re not going to, uh—”
As I spoke, Gora sighed and reached under her traveling cloak. “I am sorry. This may be unpleasant.” She produced the warding rod and slapped the bottom with her palm. It buzzed to life.
“Wait!” I shouted. Boog struggled to rise. I wondered if I could dodge her blow – I didn’t think she’d be very good at swinging the rod at us. The rods were awkward and short, and I hoped she hadn’t trained with them as I had. She might not be able to stun both of us before we tackled her, or disarmed her, or whatever we might do with hands chained together. Boog settled into a crouch, wrapping another length of the chain around his wrists. His face glowed an angry red under the pale brown dust caking his cheeks. I decided to look as fierce as I could as well. I’m not sure if I managed to seem any more threatening than a disturbed rabbit, or maybe a case of indigestion, but it’s the intent that counts, right?
Gora looked at us, her face guarded, ours full of rage and would-be threat. She sighed. Then, she dropped the other end of the chain onto the warding rod. As the chain curled around the rod, sparks raced down the chain, and Boog and I dropped senseless to the ground.
42
Shocking, Just Shocking
Gora’s ageworn voice came down the hallway. “Time to get to work. I’ll have your luncheon ready in four hours.”
And so it was that on the morning of the third day, we roused ourselves from our tiny dormitory room and walked down the hall, bearing our brooms, brushes, and mops. Since recovering from the warding rod out in the courtyard, we’d been forced into cleaning disused chambers in Gora’s home. Or whatever this place was. Excavated into the side of a barren mountain deep in barbarian territory, it seemed more like an abandoned ruin than a residence.
Boog surveyed the room as we entered. This one was cluttered with ancient furniture, mostly made of wood, much of it cracked and dried by untold years of neglect, all of it caked with yellow dust. I thought the dust must come from the dry soil outside, which had a similar color. I didn’t know how there could be so much of it here, unless the stone door had stood open for many years, admitting the elements. Boog reached up to his neck and dug a finger under his iron collar.
We both wore these collars, placed upon us as we lay splayed, dirty, and insensate in the courtyard on the day of our arrival. In the subsequent days, I had examined Boog’s closely, and he mine. They were uncomfortable, as wide as my hand, a half-inch thick, and tight fitting. Each had a single hinge opposite a seemingly simple clasp, but despite our struggles they would not open, yielding neither to Boog’s strong hands or my futile attempts at finesse. I suspected they were held together by magic.
This was no particular leap of intuition on my part. The collars seemed to follow the design and function of the warding rods. I had no real reason to think so, but I wondered if they were produced by the same person, long forgotten. The way they functioned seemed to be simple. If we got too close to Gora, within eight feet or so, or if we got too far away, beyond a hundred yards, they discharged and paralyzed us. We’d already experienced their bite, I when I’d strayed too far from Gora while scouting the structure, Boog when he’d walked past Gora’s bedchamber on the way to the privy.
“We have to get out of here,” Boog said.
“Obviously.” We could neither help Frosthelm nor defeat Marron from out here. The problem was the collars. We’d invented countless schemes, and all foundered or fell apart when it came to the collars. We couldn’t run away. We couldn’t get close enough to hurt Gora. We contemplated hurling something sharp and pointy at her, or setting a trap. If it failed, she might punish us or kill us. If we somehow incapacitated her, we couldn't approach her, and she’d just wake up angry. If we killed her, we would probably be stuck in this place, pacing the area constrained by the collars, until we slowly starved. If we killed her and were somehow able to get a rope around her body, we might be able to escape by dragging her along a safe distance behind us, but that seemed unlikely, unwieldy, and unworkable. And who knew? Maybe the collars killed us when their owner died. Or maybe they snapped open. We knew too little to act, so we waited, frustrated and tense, our anger growing daily.
Boog frowned and dropped his broom. He moved closer to me. Had I angered him?
“What is it?” I took a step back.
“There’s a marking on your collar,” he said, coming closer. “Faint. I didn’t see it before, but there’s more light in here.”
“Where?”
He touched the side of my collar. “Is there one on mine?”
Sure enough, there was an engraving cut into the metal. It was simple, but carefully done. Flowing lines crossed by a jagged stroke. “Wavy lines, with another one across.”
“Yours too.”
I ran my finger over the sigil in Boog’s collar. “It looks like one of the runes from around the pool.” Like one of those set in the tiles around the pool's edge back at the Guild. The scholars who had investigated the pool over the years mostly agreed that a few of the runes represented the four classical natural elements – air, earth, fire, and water. This one resembled the air rune, but it wasn’t an exact match.
“What’s it mean?” asked Boog.
“How should I know?” I replied, perhaps more sarcastically than I intended.
Boog grinned. “You’re the one who scored fifty out of fifty on the languages and scripts exam. I seem to remember you thinking that was a big deal at the time.”
I laughed. “I only played it up because I’d done so poorly at the fencing and swordplay trial. Remember, when Gueran scored four touches in twenty seconds?”
“Mistress Fennick said she’d never seen anyone lose so quickly.”
“She said my Tiger Shreds the Reeds was more like Kitten Finds Some Yarn. She suggested I eat with my hands to avoid injuring myself with the cutlery. And she told me to check my tunic for magnets.” I studied Boog’s collar further. Were the runes mere decoration, or some mark of trade for the maker? Or maybe they were related to how the collars worked.
Boog moved to the doorway and looked out. “It’s quiet out there. You should go scouting again.”
We’d been assessing the layout of the subterranean structure whenever possible. Reconnaissance fell to me, as I was quieter than Boog. I put my broom down and stepped over to the archway leading back to our room. I peered out into the hall. No sign of Gora. I set off, shifting catlike along the dusty stone tiles. I glided past the spacious kitchen and larder and then down the hall to our cramped quarters. I stole past our room, but then I paused. There were footsteps behind me. I ducked into our small chamber. Holding my breath, I peeked back around the corner. Gora was approaching down the hall, on patrol, or on some errand to the kitchen.
I was torn. Should I try to come up with some story as to why I had returned to the room? The privy was outside, the opposite direction from the room we’d been assigned to clean, so that would clearly be a lie. If I hid, our room was small enough that my collar might trigger just from her walking by.
I heard the creak of a door from down the hall. I risked a peek outside. She was standing in front of the larder, her hand on the door, perhaps pondering our upcoming meal. I seized the moment, and ducked out of the room, heading down the passage the other way. I felt a terrible tension between speed and silence. I was good at sneaking around – it was part
of our training, and, unlike my fencing, I’d proved more than competent. But every soft scrape of my shoe on the floor made my lip twitch. I was committed now, though – if I were spotted, no story would excuse my furtive wanderings.
Whether it was training or good luck, I made it to the end of the hall and slid around the corner. I pressed myself against the wall, trying to control my breathing, which threatened to betray my hiding spot. I had not been down this hall before. Boog and I had looked around outside our small room the first night, but we left off exploring the first time Boog fell to the ground twitching from his collar’s discharge. Now, I knew Gora was near enough, so there was no danger of going too far.
This hall was similar to the others. The floor was square stone tiles, and the walls cut from the mountainside but ground smooth. There were occasional sconces for lamps or torches, and a few banners and tapestries hung in tatters, their cloth faded, full of frayed holes from age or insects, coated in the same yellow dust we’d been cleaning for the past few days. A few archways yawned darkly along the sides, leading who knew where.
I heard the shuffle of feet from behind me. Gora was on the move again, and it sounded like she was coming my way. The only good thing about her approach was that it gave me freedom to move further away without fear of setting off my collar.
I scuttled down the hall, my hands tracing along the wall to steady myself and help me keep weight off my feet. I glanced through the archways as I went, but the rooms were all small, either dormitories similar to our bedroom, or too filled with clutter and furniture to afford an easy hiding spot far enough from the hallway. If I wanted to let Gora pass, I had to keep far enough from her to avoid falling prey to the collar.
I went through a couple more turns, wishing the hallway would fork or branch, pausing occasionally to listen for Gora. Sometimes I heard what I thought were her steps, but with the echoing of the halls and the beating of my heart, I could not be sure how close she was. I tried to imagine the layout of the passages as I moved. She wouldn’t deliberately come within range of Boog, but she didn’t know I was here, so she might easily come too close to me, or move too far from me, activating the collar. I didn’t want to get too far ahead, or have her turn back, leaving me collapsed and dead to the world in the depths of the structure.