The Wretched

by Brad Carsten

  She groaned occasionally, the sound rumbling through the walls, and when there was silence, he held his breath wondering if she was still alive.

  Night had turned to day, and he watched the shadows creeping across the floor. He stretched out his legs working feeling back into them and tried to focus on the words in front of him. He had read the same lines ten times to make sense of what the Sage was saying. It wasn't complicated, his mind just wasn't in it. Still, he forced himself to keep going or the waiting would drive him crazy.

  He thumbed through the notes about Liam and Kaylyn, and stopped when he reached his own.

  She was fascinated with his spear, spending no less than a dozen pages on it.

  He read the paragraph again, this time forcing himself to concentrate.

  The tainted one's spear he carries is the most interesting part of this all. The weapons of the tainted ones are tied to another world, and as such, they cannot survive for long in ours. Like a weed pulled out of the soil and left in the sun, they shrivel and die, and yet, his spear has not been affected. My thoughts wander to what might be in him that could possibly sustain it.

  What was in him? He should have stopped right there, but his eyes kept going.

  We don't know much about the tainted ones, but from what we can gather, husks could be loosely classified as some sort of cleric. Thin and gangly, they aren't as strong as the other tainted ones, and don't usually attack on their own, which was why I was surprised to hear that they had attacked Quinn's village. A large enough group could certainly raid a village quite successfully, but there are other tainted ones more suited to the task, and far less valuable.

  The spears they carry are more than just simple weapons, they appear to forge a link of sorts to another being, that the husks can then use to gather information. By plunging it into a being's heart, they can see directly into that life and all that they have encountered and done. It's a quicker and far more effective form of interrogation, but that then begs the question why there was such a large group of them traveling together, and why they attacked a village without any reinforcements? All I can think is that they were in a hurry. Perhaps it had something to do with the sypher's state at the time. Something was driving the tainted ones, and I plan on figuring out what that was. I also plan on figuring out if Quinn can use the spear for the same purpose as the husks. A direct view into their hearts and motives would be invaluable to our research.

  The entry ended there, followed by a detailed account of his assessment. Quinn knew all about that, and skipped forward to the next section impatiently.

  He is a fascinating subject, one that would need a lot more time to study than I fear I have with him. Apart from bonding to the spear, I have since discovered that he is able to use it as an entry point into Gaharah. Up until now we've only been able to identify two doorways into Gaharah: death and casting.

  The links are cast, and as such, open a door for us, and that is the first method. The second is death. A door opens to allow people to pass from this life to the next. The tainted ones use those openings as pockets to hide in during the day, but it appears that Quinn has discovered another method. Whether he is doing it, or is opening a doorway with the spear, I cannot say. I ran a series of experiments where I kept the bracelets inactive and yet he could still move through without any hindrance. Unfortunately, the spear seemed to draw him towards the tainted ones' encampments.

  I haven't said anything to him yet of the danger, as he is already skittish, but if he can find other doorways into Gaharah, the thought is exciting beyond measure. Could he be the one we've been searching for for so long?

  The journal ended there, and Quinn lowered the book slowly, wondering what in the world she was talking about. 'The one we've been searching for?' What did that even mean?

  Quinn started at the beginning again, hoping to figure it out, when the door opened and the assistant came out, looking like she'd just come from the tainted ones' camps.

  Quinn scrambled to his feet. “Is she okay? How's she doing?”

  The woman shook her head, sadly. “I'm afraid the infection is spreading. She's conscious, but she's slipping in and out, and I don't know how long it'll last. You may want to...”—she lowered her eyes—“just say what you need to say, because I'm not sure how long you'll have.”

  Fayre's chest rose and fell slowly. Her hair was wet and sticking to her forehead, and her skin seemed to be carved from wax.

  She smiled at Quinn and then winced as though even that was too much to bear.

  Quinn took her hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “I'm sure exactly the way I look. I don't recommend it.” She shut her eyes and tears squeezed onto her cheeks. “Please, if you see my father can you tell him that I love him. He was all I had, and I was all he had, and tell him that I'm sorry. I promised that I would always be there for him, but—just tell him I'm sorry.”

  “No, don't talk like that,” Quinn said. “You're going to be fine. I got you here. We have some of the best dispellers in the kingdom looking after you. You're going to be fine.”

  Fayre shook her head. “I'm dying. I can feel it all over me. I can see the dark clouds forming. Quinn, I'm dying and it hurts so badly. Please just sit here with me for a while. I'm so scared.”

  What was he supposed to say to that? He squeezed her hand. “I'm not going anywhere. And neither are you. Do you hear me? I said I would take you to visit Brigwell and show you Lyndwon, and—and—you're just not leaving me, okay?”

  She managed a smile. “Thank you. You gave me something to dream about. It would have been nice to see, but you can sit here and tell me all about it once more. Tell me the story of the Branbills again, and the water wheel—” Her words cut off in a fit of coughs, and she winced.

  “It's okay, It's okay.” He held her hand uselessly until the spasm subsided and she'd settled back into her pillows.

  “I felt you outside the room earlier,” she said.

  “I've been here all the time, but they didn't want me in the room with you.”

  “Well, you're here now. So, what were you doing out there the whole morning, surely not just watching the shadows moving across the wall?”

  “No. I said a prayer for you, and I had Madam Sage's journal, but I'm sure you don't want to hear about that now.”

  “I do. It's nice to hear your voice, and it makes me feel like I'm back at the wagons again. Funny how I hated it there my whole life, and now... I'm just going to close my eyes. But talk to me. It's nice to hear your—your voice.”

  He told her everything that had happened with Liam and Kaylyn and their journey. Fayre would give the occasional grunt, or she'd ask a question, but for the most part, she listened with a distant smile. When he got to meeting her in the story, he told her how he had met a pretty woman that made him want to pull his hair out. She laughed, and flinched. She asked questions about this 'pretty woman,' and he told her how the one night she had tricked his friend into making dinner for her.

  “She sounds truly horrid,” Fayre said.

  “Oh, she was the worst, and yet she was—interesting.”

  “Interesting?” I don't think I've ever been called that before.

  “What would you like people to call you?”

  “No, I like it... Interesting.”

  He felt awkward, so he told her about the Sage and what she had written about him in the journal, and with that Fayre's eyes snapped onto his. She tried to sit up, unsuccessfully, and when she looked at him, all humour had left her face. “What exactly did she say?”

  “Well, nothing more than I was the one she was looking for, or something like that—”

  “Where's the journal? Do you have it with you?”

  “Yeah, it's next to me on the floor, but—”

  “Read it to me. Exactly as she put it.”

  He did, and she mouthed a prayer when he was done.

  “Why, what is it?”

  “The syphers. A long time ago the world tur
ned on them. They hated them even more than now.” Fayre spoke slowly, pausing often when her pain was too great. “They tore down their statues, they destroyed powerful artifacts, and the books—they burned the books. So, before it was too late, the syphers gathered all the books that were left and hid them. They hid them in the one place that no one would find them. They hid the books in Gaharah...”

  “In Gaharah!” Quinn said in astonishment. “How can that be?”

  “If we knew that, we would have retrieved the books a long time ago. The Scribes aren't just after knowledge, we're after a very specific piece of knowledge. We're looking for a way into Gaharah in order to get those books back. That's what we've been after for hundreds of years.”

  “But you have the links. Couldn't you use those to get into Gaharah?”

  “No, you don't understand. The links and—and death all take you into a copy of Gaharah, but it's just a reflection of a life; things people have done, and places they've been, but it's not really Gaharah.”

  Quinn's mouth went dry. When he pulled Fayre back from the dead, he had seen into her past. He thought about the other times he had entered, and how he had found Kaylyn in a city he had never seen before.

  “But—I saw the palace. I saw the nightspawn. They tried to kill me.”

  “That's what I'm saying. You didn't enter a copy of the world, you entered Gaharah itself. Quinn, you entered Gaharah. You can get the books.”

  “What's in the books?”

  “It's everything. It's everything that the syphers knew about the world and how it worked. It has to hold the answer to everything. Quinn you've got to go there. You've got to get the answer.”

  “What answer. Fayre, I'm not leaving you.

  She glared at him. “This is what I've spent my whole life looking for, you mule. You've got to find it. I gave my life for this. You have to find it, before I...”

  “Where do I even look? It could be anywhere.”

  She shook her head and again she winced. “It's the archive.”

  “The archive? What do you mean?”

  “They stored everything in the archive, but not in our world. There's a reflection of it in Gaharah, and that's where the books are being kept. It's in the reflection. That's why my father told you to take it. If that was destroyed, then the reflection would also be destroyed, and all would be lost—all the knowledge of generations. Please, you've got to try.”

  “So, this is everything that the wretched knew? Is that right?”

  She nodded. “There's things in there—information that the world has forgotten.”

  “So, they may have a way to help you?”

  “They might. I don't know what you'll find, but it could be anything.”

  He took her hand again. “Okay, I'll go, but then you promise me that you'll fight until I get back. Promise me!”

  She smiled. “I promise.”

  Her eyes narrowed in thought. “You know, when I first met you, I knew right away that I'd fall for you eventually.”

  Quinn blinked in surprise, and she managed a laugh. “What difference does it make now? But don't get too excited, I'm delirious. I'm saying all kinds of strange things today.”

  “I—” he wasn't expecting that. “I guess I've fallen for you as well. And I'm not delirious.”

  She turned her hand, slipping her fingers through his. “I wondered what that would feel like.”

  “And is it everything you imagined?”

  “It's more, and yet now all I'm wondering about is how it would feel to kiss you.”

  He leaned over and kissed her.

  After that, she slipped away. Her sentences became garbled, and she didn't seem aware of Quinn anymore.

  Yellowish blood appeared on her bandages, and Quinn ran to call someone. When the dispellers came in, they ushered him out again and shut the door. He paced outside in the hall, wondering what he could do and feeling helpless to do anything anyway. He thought about the archive and wondered if it could hold the secret to healing her. As unlikely as that seemed, he was desperate and out of options, and he set off down the hall with purpose. He had to reach the archive. He had to find a way to help Fayre.

  Quinn shut the door, shutting out the sound of people and wagons outside. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the dark after running through the sunlit streets of Luthengard. The archive smelled of wood and paper that he now associated with Fayre, and her injuries. If he never saw this cursed wagon again, he'd be only too happy. As desperate as he was, he had to fight back a yawn. He had gone a long time without much sleep, and it was slowly catching up to him.

  His legs hung like cinder blocks, and that weight slowly moved up into his head, numbing the rest of his body as it went. He barely had the strength to walk across the wagon and to stretch out on his back on the floor.

  The floor was hard, but this wasn't the first time he'd slept on a hard floor. In Lyndwon, he had spent far too many nights under a table in a tavern somewhere, and he'd have to brush sawdust out of his britches for days after that. Those were simpler times, and back then, he thought that they were great times, but he wasn't sure he'd return to them if he had the choice.

  His head lightened as soon as it touched the floor, and yet his desperation to reach Gaharah kept his mind awake. He lay there for a long time pleading with his mind to shut off and for sleep to overtake him, but he kept thinking of Fayre, wondering if she'd still be there when he returned. It took a long time before he drifted off, and felt the room stretching around him.

  His eyes snapped open. The wagon and books glowed with a silver light. He looked up half expecting to see the moon shining through a window, but the wagon didn't have any windows, and it certainly wasn't the moon causing it.

  Quinn's head was spinning, and when he sat up, the books blurred past him as though he had leapt ten paces. He shut his eyes waiting for his mind to catch up. He was half aware of the taint around him, soaking into everything, but it took him a while to remember Fayre, and why he was here, and when he did, he scrambled to his feet. His eyes slid over the rows of books, packed untidily into every available space on the shelves. The books stretched out to either side and above, further than the space should have allowed. Some had titles painted onto the spines that glowed with that same silvery light. Fayre was right, he could get into Gaharah. Not just a copy, but Gaharah itself. That should have filled him with awe, but he wondered if it was possible to lose his way in here, and he cursed.

  He didn't want to think about that and quickly forced his mind back onto Fayre. If there was help for her, it would be in here, but where in fate's luck would he even start looking?

  He turned—and something was standing behind him.

  There were teeth, and eyes. A giant hand snapped towards him closing around his head.

  He grabbed onto its arm as it lifted him into the air. His back hit into the shelf, upsetting a pile of books. The thing leaned closer, getting right up into his face. It was huge, at least half again as tall as he was and three times as wide, and its flesh was made of stone. When it spoke, its voice was hard like a boat scraping over the rocks.

  “What took you so long?” It rumbled.

  “What took me—what?” Quinn managed, with his jaw clamped shut under its massive hand.

  “I've paid my debt, many years over, now you will release me at once.”

  “I don't know who you are,” Quinn said, quickly. He was battling to breathe without his feet on the ground. “And what do you mean I must release you? I'm the one pinned up by the neck, in case you haven't noticed.”

  The creature leaned in to examine him with cat-like eyes as large as melons. “You're not a sypher?”

  “No. No. I'm not. I'm not. I'm just passing through.” He scraped his legs back against the shelf, trying to find a foothold before he passed out.

  The creature sighed. He opened his hand and Quinn crashed to the floor.

  The creature lumbered to the door, his shoulders hunched, and Quinn notic
ed the delicate chain around his ankle. It glowed with that faint silvery light, but it didn't look very strong.

  “How grand their walls must be, to have forgotten us,” the giant said.

  He pushed open the door, but his chain didn't allow him to go any further. They were no longer in the city, but overlooking a snow-covered valley. The cold blew in, catching Quinn's thin top, and cutting through him.

  The creature crashed down into a sitting position, shaking the entire wagon in the process. More books fell off the shelves with a thud.

  “Uh, their walls?” Quinn asked, carefully, unsure if he wanted to enter into a conversation with this thing.

  The giant nodded. “My people have been building a home for them for”—he paused to consider—“I don't know how long it's been. I lost count at around three hundred years, but by now the walls must be breathtaking.”

  “What?” Quinn was working feeling back into his neck. “You've been building a home, or walls, or something for three hundred years?” Quinn wondered if the fellow had lost his mind. “Oh, much longer than that. I started counting again sometime after that and got to one hundred and something, and couldn't remember if it was sixty or sixteen. So, I started again and now I am up to three hundred and five. Or was it five hundred and three.” He began counting on his fingers.

  “And you've been building a home for the wretch—uh syphers this whole time?”

  The creature nodded. “They said they'd return with others. They said people would come in their thousands. We had to get it ready for their return. We had to make it safe enough to live in.” He looked back at Quinn expectantly. “Are you the first of the others?” His giant rock face looked so hopeful, Quinn didn't want to be the one to disappoint him?

  “I don't think so?” Quinn said, carefully.

  The giant's face dropped, and he returned to staring out the door.

  “Can you do me a favor? I've seen the snow winter after winter, but I can't remember how it feels. Would you bring me some?”

  “Sure, but can't you just go outside?”

  The giant lifted the delicate chain with a thick finger and shook his head. “I fear it isn't long enough.”