by Paul Lytle
“I don’t like it none,” muttered Jeslin, but then she hushed herself and retreated into a corner. It was not her place to speak at such a meeting, but sometimes her emotions got the better of her. Ayrim understood, for they were getting the better of him, though, thankfully, he was expected to speak in front of the Baron, especially on this occasion.
So he said, “This threat has been present for sixteen years. Together, Dariel and I slew six ern last week, and we thought the threat over. It took only a week for more to arrive. This threat will not be over until the two missing Prophets are found, and I fear that event may be far in the future, if it comes about at all. It is long past time for the power to manifest itself in the two, and yet no one has gone to the Tower to lay claim to the positions. Those two Prophets have either died themselves, and two more have come, or they are too afraid to make the claim, and they stay silent. Either way, the threat remains, and it will likely remain for years.”
“Are we to leave you exposed like this?” asked Dravin, his nostrils flaring.
“Do you expect me to become a soldier of Saparen, perhaps even a Thane, while locked up in the keep?”
“This last attack wasn’t even against one of the three men,” said Dariel Sterwet. Unlike Jeslin, whose occasional outburst was tempered by an understanding of her place, Dariel didn’t seem to be aware that the two visitors to Hyte’s home were several stations above him. No, that wasn’t it – it was that he simply did not care in this instance. The archer (a serf) had never held his tongue around his new friend (who had been adopted into a noble family), and he would not in his friend’s defense. Still, the Baron and his son listened, and Dariel continued. “Last night the ern came for someone else, an unknown party. Do you wish to hide the entire town inside the keep?”
“What else may we do?” asked the Baron.
“You would make this man a Thane in perhaps a short time, no?”
“I have strongly considered the possibility.”
“Then you must trust him enough to protect himself. He is the best swordsman in the town, and I am with him most of the time, and I am no child with a bow. Let us help you.”
Ayrim smiled, pleased at the turn in the conversation. He continued the argument, saying, “You are short on soldiers and Thanes, but we might help replace them. We might find these ern and the traitor that brings them inside the walls while the Thanes are in the west.”
Baron Verios chuckled, and said, “You want to hunt down those who are now hunting you?”
“Simply: yes,” Iylin said.
“Sire,” Gerill said. “I do not wish to endanger my son, and yet the presence of ern and followers of the Absence in this town threatens him, no matter where he stays. The Thanes are too few to solve this problem quickly, and Ayrim is the best swordsman I have ever trained. What I mean, my lord, is that getting rid of our enemies will make my son safer than if he were in the keep, and our job in finding our enemies will be easier if Ayrim and Dariel were to help us.”
The Baron chuckled again, and said, “Master Hyte, you have a brave son here. I have come to pull him from the fire, and have instead been convinced to throw him into it. But Ayrim, be careful. You have fought them, and they are not meager foes.”
“I will be careful, Baron. And we will be swift.”
Chapter 21
Even as an adopted son of a well-respected Thane, Ayrim had never before that day been inside Saparen’s dungeon. For that matter, Gerill himself rarely descended the steep stone stairway into the dank underground prison, for it was spearmen, not Thanes, who guarded the captured criminals of the city. Only when he had need to question one did he go, but there were few conspiracies in Saparen that rose to a Thane’s attention, but such was the case when he led Ayrim Iylin and Dariel Sterwet there.
The air was damp, and dripping water could be heard from the entrance, though no source could be readily discerned in the misty shadows of the cavern. The glow of the torch shimmered off the thin layer of water on the ground, and the stone below was slick. Down there, the rats did not seem to fear the flame of Gerill’s torch, though the guards seemed to shun the light. The dungeon was really rather small, but the darkness and winding tunnels made it seem a labyrinth of ern and undead and lurking nightmares, rather than a simple paths of petty thieves and the occasional murderer as it truly was. Ayrim involuntarily shivered and frail and pale bodies pressed up against the bars of the cells that lined the passage. Never did these men leave their crowded cells, not until their sentences were served, and many were covered in filth from not bathing for months or years. The sound of coughing was ever-present, as were groans of pain and sorrow. The stench was somewhat behind the sight, but it too caught Ayrim and grappled with him. It was a smell of vermin and waste and rotting flesh, and he coughed to try to be rid of it. But not yet, not yet.
Farther down they went, and pleas and curses alike were called upon them. Some spit, and some begged, but Gerill ignored them all, and so Ayrim and his archer friend followed farther, trying to keep their eyes forward, but sometimes failing.
“Why have we come?” asked Ayrim.
Gerill frowned and said, “Drel Tyar. He is the High Priest of Vid’s faith in Saparen. Or he is their equivalent to that position.”
The two young men froze at the words. They didn’t even know the Absence had an organized faith, much less one in Saparen. And they were going to meet one of . . . them! One who had forsaken the Gods to walk in the darkness.
“Keep moving,” Master Hyte warned, and the trio of warriors followed, deeper into the dungeon, until they reached a small cell near the end of the tunnel, where a solitary man sat meditating upon his bed mat. He was as pale and thin as everyone else in the dungeon, and yet he had managed to keep his beard short, and was reasonably clean. His hair fell flatly down his back, clinging to his skin, for the man wore no shirt. His chest sagged, and arms frail, and yet he was imposing, even sitting so still.
“Tyar,” Gerill said, and the man looked up for the first time. His blue eyes seemed dead, yet oddly unyielding, as though Drel Tyar had died long ago, but his hatred kept his body animated.
“Gerill Hyte, my captor,” said the man. “It has been many years since you visited me.”
“Have the years persuaded you to speak the names of your dark parishioners?”
“I have no dark parishioners,” the man’s slow and thick voice drooled. “I am an Ignist.”
“We have no time for games, Tyar. No longer. I caught you in the act of the sacrifice. I witnessed you when you called upon the Absence. Your denials will mean nothing. But help us now, and receive some comfort down here.”
Drel Tyar rocked his head to the side, looking upon the three visitors with eyes askew. “I haven’t the time for comfort, really. Serren is so weak down here. She does not often visit.”
“What do you mean?” Gerill demanded.
“Nothing, only that life hasn’t the hold here than it does on the surface, nothing more. Say, that doesn’t happen to be Ayrim Iylin, is it? My compliments, boy, for surviving so long.”
Ayrim instinctively backed away, and Gerill wielded his sword, the ring of it being unsheathed like a screech in the darkness. In a moment, the shining blade was pointed through the bars, its point at the prisoner’s neck. “What do you know of my son?” demanded the Thane.
The priest of Vid raised his hands meekly, saying, “Nothing, nothing, only that the ern are after him. But then, everyone knows that, don’t they? Ayrim Iylin has become quite famous around this town.”
“Everyone in Saparen knows it,” Gerill Hyte said, “but how do you? The guards are forbidden to speak to prisoners, their superiors hold them fast to that law, and the man who brings food and water is a mute. There are some down here who don’t even know that Baron Verios has a son.”
“But those newly come to our little den down here bring news.”
“And no one is newly arrive
d in a season, so none would know about what has happened these last few weeks. So what has your master told you about my son, and about the ern? What does he plan?”
“Oops,” grinned the Absence Priest. “Did I reveal too much? Strange how the words just . . . slipped out. It matters little. You cannot stop us, Thane. We know where the Prophets are, and no one can stop us.”
“The Prophets?” Ayrim stepped forward, but Drel Tyar turned away from the three men, and as he exhaled, his hands began to come apart into mere dust, and the cloud of crumbling flesh filled the cell and the hallway outside. Ayrim could not see through it much longer, but he watched long enough to see the Absence Priest’s body crumbled where he stood, and then the dust became too much, and he had to close his eyes and turn away. The cloud encompassed them, and it only made it worse to know that it was a cloud of skin, bone, and muscle. All that had been Drel Tyar was swept by an unfelt breeze and dashed about the dungeon. The closest prisoners began to cough, but then it subsided, leaving nothing behind but the man’s breeches.
Drel Tyar had been right: Serren’s presence had been weak in the dungeon, weak enough for a Priest of the Absence to separate the body from soul. The Invocation left Ayrim near tears, and it was not because of the dust.
Chapter 22
Master Hyte went to the Baron with what he had learned from Drel Tyar, but Ayrim and Dariel went their own way, toward the Crimson Veil, where the previous night’s attack had taken place. The common room wasn’t terribly big compared to others in the city, and the innkeeper himself, Haden, sat at the bar right beside the front entrance. There were two hallways that were spawned from the main chamber, the first that went to a handful of rooms for overnight guests, and another that went to the stables. It was only through the front door or through the stables that someone could leave the building, unless, of course, he were to somehow break through the barred windows. Beside the stable exit was a stair, and on the second floor were another score rooms for rent, most of which were empty except during a festival or tournament. The lower rooms were always filled first, and then the overflow (if any) would be housed upstairs.
It was upstairs that the ern had invaded the empty room, and so upstairs did go the two young men with the blessing of Haden. Had it been evening, a few of the rooms, five or so, might have been occupied, but it was nearer to noon. The common room was quite busy, but the second story was empty.
“If they have found the Mages,” Dariel was saying, “then at least they won’t come after you anymore.”
“Maybe,” Ayrim said. “But I would rather face the ern every so often than for Vid to take two of the Prophets. I had hoped the other Wizards would have found them, and ended all of this, or at least moved the battle to the Tower. The Prophets can defend against the Absence better than we can.”
“But the Absence has a member of the Tower amongst them. Is Draughton Xyn working for the Prophets or Vid?”
“I pray the Prophets, because if he’s not, that only leaves four Mages to search for the two new Prophets while ten thousand ern work against them.”
“But if Vid is active in this war, I cannot imagine that his Prophet would work against him.”
“It’s not that simple,” Ayrim explained. “The Prophet of the Absence has a tenuous relationship with the Tower. In the past, that Prophet has sought to help the other Prophets for whatever reason. Some say it is for the power of the Tower, and some say that Vid’s Prophet doesn’t actually speak for Vid in the same way that the other Prophets speak for the Six. Either way, the Prophet of the Absence has seemed to work against Vid on occasion. The relationship is a difficult one to discern at times, I’m afraid.”
“Did I tell you the story about what the Serrenite said to the Whesleran as they were shooting dice?”
“‘Blow on these’? Yes, you’ve told it once or twice.”
Dariel erupted into infectious laughter, and Ayrim turned back to the rooms that flanked the hallway with a quick roll of his eyes. The latter said, “Did Master Haden say which one it was?”
“No, but the lock was broken off, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find.”
“You’ve told me that story four times,” Ayrim said, “but not all that much about your fiancée.”
Dariel spoke somewhat grimly, “She doesn’t like that story, and so when I’m with people who would appreciate it, I tend toward other topics rather than her. I happen to speak about you to her quite often.”
“I’m sure you’ll be very happy together,” Iylin said sarcastically.
“Oh, it’s not like that. She’s a very good woman, and I am thrilled to have her. There are simply topics of conversation that you can have with one person that just won’t do with another. She does not understand the ways of a warrior. She’s quite a bit better than me at nearly everything else; she simply does not understand the bow or the sword. She doesn’t laugh at jokes either. But we can discuss names for children and family friends, whereas when I tell you of these things, your eyes glaze over. I talk to you of warrior things and of jokes; I talk with her about people and events. Honestly, I could not have asked for a better match.”
“What’s her name again?”
“Serih. I’ve told you that four times too, but you only remember the joke.”
Ayrim grinned. “People and events, huh? I suppose my eyes have been glazing over after all. I will try to pay better attention to the things I don’t understand very well in the future. Relationships and people allude me, I fear.”
“You do fine in friendship,” Dariel said. “We just need to work on your ways with women. Remembering their names is a good start.”
The archer had been right about the room being easy to find, for a few yards down the hallway was one of the doors ajar. The reason for this was simply deduced, for the bolt and knob were missing, broken off in the attack. Inside, there was nothing amiss, for the bed was prepared and waiting, and an unlit lamp upon a table next to it. The ern, apparently realizing their mistake, left the small room untouched.
“This door looks like it’s been kicked in,” Dariel Sterwet said, running his finger over the jagged break around where the lock once was.
Ayrim looked at it and agreed. “When they used the Absence at my window, they took part of the wall with it, all of it just dissolved. Here it is only a piece, and Gerill told me the lock and handle remained inside the room. They were not destroyed, just broken.”
“Did they use the Absence somehow just around the lock?”
“Seems a waste of time, so focused an Invocation. Easier to destroy the whole door, or, if they couldn’t, to kick it in.”
“What do you mean, if they couldn’t?”
The swordsman entered the room again, looking around. “We know that the ern who attacked me could use the Absence, but maybe as few as one of them, and I do not believe we left any alive. In fact, after they destroyed the window, they didn’t use the Magic again, which suggests that they could not, since Invocation could have destroyed by blade or caused the ground to drop beneath me. So perhaps the one I killed inside the house was the only one in their group capable of Invoking Vid. But whichever one it was, or more than one, all of those ern are dead, and a different group of ern did this. Perhaps in this new group there are none who could Invoke.
“Except,” Ayrim continued, returning to the doors. “This inn is famous for thick walls and thick doors. Only one in town with the least bit of privacy, which is why the prices are as they are. The only reason it’s not filled completely every night is because their rates are twice that of any other inn in town. But look at how thick and heavy the door is.” And it was that, for the doors were made of oak, and made well, and it took better than average effort to open and close it.
“Yes,” Dariel said. “The kick that broke this door must have been a mighty one, unless they used a battling ram of some sort.”
“That is more likely than a kick, even if the
kick came from an ern. But shouldn’t they have heard a door breaking downstairs? The walls here aren’t that thick. We can hear the voice down there now, and they aren’t nearly as loud as a battling ram might be.”
“But last night they probably had a bard performing. These places can get loud with a good bard around. The noises downstairs probably drowned out the sounds of the ern.”
“Still,” Ayrim said, kneeling at the door. He looked at where the lock had been, studying the pattern of the break. The hole was, crudely, a circle around the lock, with rather few splinters. It certainly wasn’t sawed open, but neither did it seem fully forced. “It doesn’t look right,” Ayrim said. “The break curves too far from the knob for it to be a normal break. It is too clean. The Thanes have had to kick in doors before, and I have seen them. This should have splinters running all the way up the door along the grain.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Perhaps the break was helped along. Perhaps the door was weakened before it was kicked. That might explain the smoother edges.”
“Like the door was cut around the lock before they forced their way in? Seems like a waste of time, and anyone inside would hear the knife before it even made a scratch on this thick a door. With these doors, such a thing would take hours anyway.”
“Not cut. Something else.” Ayrim leaned closer, his head now nearly inside the breach. And then he saw it. The wood around the break was swollen, not as though it had been splintered in one direction when the lock was torn out, but swollen in both directions.
The swordsman gasped, and suddenly he was even more scared than when Drel Tyar had Invoked himself to death.
“What is it?” asked Dariel.
“It was Invocation, but not the Absence.”
The archer shrugged, saying, “Then what did they use?”
“Water. They soaked the door first, then broke it. No one inside would hear the moisture in the door expanding into water, but it would make this sturdy door weak fast. Siege armies have sometimes used the same technique on gates.”
Dariel furrowed his brow. “But there are only a few people in this town who can Invoke Flarow.”