The Pariah

by Anthony Ryan

  “You thought her,” he said, voice filled with scorn, “a witch? A healer, perhaps? You Aeschlin are all the same. So ignorant. So easily gulled. The Doenlisch is beyond your understanding.” He edged closer and I understood for the first time that much of his fear arose from me. Chained and helpless though I was, his fear kept him from laying hands on me again, at least for now.

  “You think me cursed, boy?” he asked, head tilted and eyes unblinking. “I will not deny it. I walk through a world of the dead, and they whisper their truths to me. My song keeps their whispers from driving me beyond the bounds of reason, but I am obliged to let them speak when need arises. Most of the wretches I chain have at least one, a wronged soul willing to share their secrets. Yours is the man you murdered to escape Moss Mill. He whispered your plans when you rode in my cart. He talked of what you did and what you would do. For it is the way with the dead. They are removed from this plane just enough to see not only the paths they walked in life, but the paths of those that wronged them. But—” a spasm of anger passed across his features and he edged an inch closer, fists clenching and unclenching “—they delight in lies. They take pleasure from tormenting me, these sundered, bitter souls. That day at the Pit he waited until I sold you before telling me you would one day contrive to bring about my death. But, here you sit, a bound hog waiting for the butcher, while I—” he unclenched a fist to paw at his chest “—I will see the dawn, boy, and a thousand more. If fortune smiles, I will even get to see the Doenlisch burn. Will that not be a fine sight?”

  He paused, breathing deep as he gathered strength, then lunged for me, both hands clamping onto my head, his thick thumbs digging into my eyes. “But you will not be there,” he grunted as I vainly tried to wrest my skull from his grip, “no matter what that lying corpse says—”

  “That’s enough!” A new voice, sharp with command. A female voice and, despite its noble inflection, familiar.

  The chainsman stopped, hands quivering, my vision flashing red and white as his thumbs maintained their pressure for a second longer. Then, with a shout of frustration, he removed his grip. Tears streamed from my eyes as I blinked furiously, the liquid blur clearing to reveal a vague, slender shape beyond the fire.

  “You are truly the cursed one.”

  I shifted my gaze to find the chainsman had retreated a few paces, once again regarding me with the same mix of fear and frustrated anger. But there was also malice in his gaze as he spoke on. “The curse of a Doenlisch is worse than all others. She bound you tighter than I ever could—”

  “I said, that’s enough.” The slender figure came closer. A cowl covered her face but a few tendrils of hair twisted in the slight forest breeze. I felt little surprise at the hue of those tresses, painted a deep red in the firelight.

  “Our arrangement…” the chainsman began then faltered, voice clipped in a manner that told me he feared this woman almost as much as he feared me. “I was promised—”

  “You got what you were promised.” The woman came closer still, obliging me to crane my neck to stare up into the black void of her cowl. “And,” she added, “if you wish to ever ply your trade in this duchy again, you’ll shut your heathen mouth until I give you leave to speak.”

  A small laugh bubbled to my lips at this; outer sweetness and inner steel had always been her way.

  “My compliments on the voice,” I told her. “Did it take long to master?”

  “I was an actress once,” she reminded me. “Voices are just another tool in my bag.”

  She crouched before me, revealing long, crimson polished nails as she raised her hands to draw back the cowl. Lorine’s smile was far warmer than I’d expected but failed to stir any sense of reassurance. While I could only summon hate and rage for the chainsman, Lorine had no difficulty in stirring fear into the mix.

  “You look… well,” I offered. “Nobility suits you.”

  Her smile slipped a little. “It always did,” she said. “You look…” she reached out a long-nailed hand to tease the hair back from my forehead, fingertips soft as they played over my brow “… changed, Alwyn.” Her fingers traced over my face, touching old scars and new, caressing the uneven slab of my nose. “I’m sorry for that.”

  A spasm of anger had me jerking my head away, spittle flying as I let loose a snarl. “I don’t want your fucking pity!”

  Lorine grimaced and withdrew her hand, voicing a deep sigh. “I can see you have a story to tell. Or is it one you’ve been telling yourself these past years? The Tale of Lorine the Great Betrayer. The treacherous whore who sold out Deckin Scarl and made herself a duchess into the bargain.”

  “It wasn’t just Deckin,” I reminded her.

  “No.” Another grimace, her eyes clouding with sorrow that was either real or more evidence of her acting skills. “Did you know we’re all that’s left? Just us. All the others are gone. Erchel was the only other member of our legendary band still drawing breath, until recently. I heard tell of what happened to him in Callintor. Seemed a little excessive for you, but I assume life in the Pit Mines will do that.”

  “That and more.” A roiling in my gut and increased thump of my heart warned me that my fear was close to overwhelming my anger. I forced myself to meet Lorine’s gaze, hoping hate would keep it at bay, but even hate was proving fickle now. I wanted her to taunt me. I wanted the laughing torment of a well-satisfied victor. It was how this was supposed to end. But all I beheld was a very sad woman burdened by a great deal of regret.

  Lorine shifted, gathering her cloak beneath her to sit alongside me, peering into my eyes with keen scrutiny. “Did you ever reflect on your remarkable good fortune as a child?” she asked. “Left to wander the woods without food or shelter only to be rescued by the great Outlaw King himself. Didn’t that strike you as a little convenient, Alwyn?”

  I avoided her gaze, saying nothing and still trying to stoke my hate, to little avail.

  “Deckin had an arrangement with the whoremaster,” Lorine went on. “Feed up the whores’ most likely whelps and leave them in the forest when they were old enough to be useful, and he found a great deal of use in you, didn’t he? The other bastards were just tools to be used and discarded as need arose, but not you. In you he saw the chance to play the father. Sometimes he liked to opine that you might actually be the issue of his loins, so much did he see himself in you. He was a frequent visitor to that particular whorehouse, so it is possible. Personally, I doubt it. You’ve grown big, but not as big as him. I’d fancy you’re a good deal smarter too, and you’re not mad, as he grew to be.” She leaned closer, a hard insistence colouring her tone. “And he was fully mad at the end. You know that, Alwyn.”

  “I know,” I grated, straining to put my face close to hers, “that his head ended up on a spike because of you. I know that Gerthe took a bolt to the chest and Justan and Yelk and all the others were slaughtered, because of you. I know that I had to slit Hostler’s throat…” I stuttered to a halt and looked away. I had been playing this game of vengeance for years now, and faced with defeat, I found the prospect both wearying and, despite my increasing terror, oddly satisfying. Only one of us could win, after all.

  “Just get it done,” I told her in a groan. “Unless you’ve come to talk me to death. In truth I think I’d prefer a knife to your tongue.”

  “You didn’t always think so.” Hearing the smile in her voice, I looked up to find her laughing, the warmth once again shining in her eyes. “I have missed you, Alwyn. The others too… well, most of them.” She paused, angling her head, features entirely serious now. “What did Erchel tell you before you cut his balls off?”

  I shrugged, or rather attempted to in the confines of the chain. “What does it matter?”

  “Indulge my curiosity. I am a duchess and some measure of civility would seem appropriate.”

  Another laugh escaped me, short and bitter, but still a laugh. “It was after he lost his balls,” I said. “And, in truth, it was another hand that did the cutting,
so he didn’t have long. He told me about Lachlan’s hoard, about the promises you made him and his kin. Told me about how you had them all slaughtered too.”

  “Lachlan’s hoard.” Lorine’s voice grew wistful. “Deckin’s favourite piece of madness. He truly thought he’d found it, you know? Unearthed the secret from the tangle of all those stories he collected. Supposedly, there’s a great cavern dug under the Grey Cliffs on the Shavine coast, and therein lies an ancient, abandoned city from the days before the Scourge. Lachlan, by means unknown, happened upon it and used it to store his fabled treasure. A couple of years ago, I had my dear husband send a party to find this city beneath the earth. They came back with nothing. No cavern, no city, no treasure. It was as much a figment of Deckin’s mind as his dreams of making himself a duke. As for slaughter, I’ll happily confess to removing Erchel’s pestilent kin from this world, but Deckin and the others were not my doing. I’m afraid, Alwyn, you’ve been hunting the wrong fox all this time.”

  She reached out to me again, grasping my chin and turning my face so our eyes met. Her gaze was steady and her voice intent, keen for me to hear the truth she told.

  “The Mill was Todman’s scheme,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought him capable, but it transpired he’d been hiding a good deal of wit behind that brute’s mask of a face. I’d suspected he was up to some manner of mischief when we made our way to Leffold Glade; too many unexplained absences, too much snooping where he shouldn’t. I assumed he was just planning to make off with some loot, maybe sell us out to the sheriff, even though it would have been too late to stop us reaching Castle Duhbos in time to prevent Deckin massacring the duke’s household. But the elaborate trap he set was the work of weeks and bespeaks a mind of remarkable cunning. Todman must have gone to Crown Company just after the old duke lost his head, struck his deal and sneaked back to camp without anyone noticing. He told Erchel it was my notion, of course, and that’s what the little rat told his kin. That night at the Mill…”

  Lorine’s eyes clouded and she lowered her face. “Todman pulled me into a stable just before Crown Company’s bowmen loosed their first volley. ‘You’re mine now,’ he said. ‘The forest, all of it. It’s mine. The duke and the king have ordered it.’ I struggled, tried to get free of him, but he was a strong fellow. ‘He would’ve killed us all, Lorine,’ he told me and I knew he was right. I had tried so many times to steer Deckin from his mad course, but he was set on it. Losing that noble filth he called his father broke him, I knew it, but still I followed. For that is what we do for those we love, is it not? That’s why this heathen fuck knew you would be riding this road all alone at that particular hour. You rode off to save a madwoman who thinks she receives visions from the Seraphile. I dutifully followed a madman who thought he was a duke. We are both made fools by love.

  “I killed Todman that night. Wasn’t so difficult. For all his hidden wit, he was a man driven by lust. A moment of acting the grateful slattern and he relaxed his grip long enough for me to slit him from cock to chops. An ugly death, but I’m of the opinion he died too quickly. Part of his agreement was that I would be spared along with him. He’d told them I was a collaborator in his plot so all I need do was play along. Even so, that bastard Levalle still wanted to string me up with the others, but the King’s Champion wouldn’t hear of it, nor would the new duke who took a very swift liking to me. He liked me even more when he heard the wisdom of my counsel, but it was only when I came up with a scheme to rid the woods of all remaining outlaws that I think he fell in love with me. What I did to Erchel’s kin was revenge, Alwyn, not betrayal, and I’ll go to my grave insisting the world is improved by their absence.”

  Her lips twitched then, eyes blinking tears as she smoothed a hand over my brow and rose. “But not yours. Your absence is a necessity, not a pleasure. I can see you still blame me, still cling to your hate. I can’t leave you at my back. Not now.” Her hands moved to her cloak, drawing it aside to reveal the swollen bulge of her belly. I reckoned she was four or five months along.

  “So you’re about to give the duke an heir.” My guts roiled again with treacherous fear but I managed to gather enough fortitude to grin up at her. “Is it his? Or did you fuck your way through his men-at-arms until you found one with seed foul enough to make purchase on your pestilent womb?”

  A hard punch to my jaw flooded my mouth with the iron sting of blood and scattered stars across my eyes. Painful to be sure, but also a surprise. The old Lorine would have knifed me in an instant.

  “All you have endured and you are still a spite-tongued child,” she breathed, stepping back from me. “I had thought you might be reached, that I could pierce the hate you cloak yourself in. I could have found you a place at my side. This duchy is now mine in all but name. The things we could have done…” She trailed off in the face of the glower I showed her, breath hissing from her lips in resignation.

  “I can see there’s only one way to end this,” she said, closing her eyes and straightening her back as she gathered her resolve. Then, without glancing at me again, she turned to the chainsman and nodded.

  Fear finally won out over hate as I watched him approach, his eyes aglitter with anticipation. Many desperate hopes flitted through my mind. Swain and the others would appear out of the shadows at the last instant. A crossbow bolt would come whistling out of the darkness to strike the vile Caerith monster dead. Toria would fall on him like a ravening fox. None of that happened.

  The chainsman laid a hand on my head and I felt my bowels loosen at his touch. I fought down the pitiful pleas rising from within, but knew that once he got to work I would beg. In the end, I was no different from all those others I had watched weep, implore and promise their way through their final agonies.

  “What else did the Doenlisch tell you?” the chainsman enquired, his fingers tightening on my skull. “Be truthful and I will make it quick.”

  I took in a shuddering breath, fully intending to use it to advise him to find a large branch with which to fuck himself. However, the words that babbled from my lips were these: “She had a book. A book of prophecy.”

  His fingers froze and I looked up to see the flame-like mask of his face had become the transfixed visage of a man both amazed and terrified. “A…” he said in a small, childlike voice “… boo—?”

  The point of Lorine’s knife dislodged a few teeth before slicing through his lips. It was her signature killing blow: a single strike to the base of the skull delivered with enough force to push the blade all the way through. He convulsed and coughed one of his teeth onto my upturned face, followed by a thick cascade of blood that ended when Lorine jerked the blade free and let him fall.

  She gave me a hard, reproachful stare as she crouched beside his corpse, wiping the blade on his furs. “Pestilent womb?”

  I had the good sense to reply in as neutral a tone as I could manage. “I was fairly sure you were about to let him kill me.”

  Lorine huffed and rummaged through the chainsman’s clothes, her hands emerging with a ring of keys. “I trust,” she said, crouching beside me once again, “this balances things betwixt us.”

  I looked hungrily at the keys in her hand, my heart still thrumming from recent peril. However, still I hesitated. I had nurtured my vengeance for so long that letting it go was harder than expected, like severing a part of my soul, diseased and deceitful though it might be. I paused long enough for Lorine to deliver another blow to my head, a slap rather than a punch. “Wake up, Alwyn! I told the truth, and I know you heard it.”

  She was right, of course. Fine actress that she was, it was possible she had sold me a lie. But why bother? If my long-harboured suspicions had been true she would have stood in silence and watched the chainsman end me, or not troubled herself to witness this affair at all. Why would a duchess concern herself with the removal of an old, best-forgotten enemy?

  “Did he know?” I asked her. “Deckin. Did he die thinking you had betrayed him?”

  Lorine’s face
tightened and her throat constricted, lips forming a hard line. Evidently, describing the fate of the man she had surely loved was not easy. But I had loved him too, in my way, and I wanted to know.

  “I saw him only once before they dragged him off,” she said. “He’d heard me bear out the unfortunate Todman’s story, make my claim to be the engineer of this fine trap. I looked over at him as they bundled him onto the cart, all chained and bloody. He smiled at me, Alwyn. Just for a second, but he was always a man who could say a great deal with just a smile.” She pushed the ring of keys into my hand. “He knew.”

  She lingered for a moment, the hardness of her face once again shifting into a warm smile before she pressed a kiss to my forehead. “The mad bitch is going to die,” she told me in a soft murmur. “One way or another. Let her lie and get yourself far away from this realm.”

  She rose and walked away, a slender, cloaked shadow in the gathering dawn mist, soon swallowed by the shadows of the forest.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Fiddling the right key into the manacles was a difficult task, requiring more dexterity than my bruised and recently terrorised self possessed. Consequently, I fumbled my first attempt, causing the whole bundle of keys to slip from my grasp. The protracted stream of profanity that emerged from my lips was loud, echoing through the trees to a considerable distance and raising a hope that Lorine might hear it. If she did, it didn’t compel her to return.

  I slumped in my bonds, body shuddering with exertion and the strain of recent events. The chainsman lay at my feet, blood welling in his mouth and regarding me with sightless but bright eyes. I wondered if the spirits that plagued him in life still lingered nearby or if his demise had released them.