The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4)

by Garrett Robinson

  His words hardly registered. Sun had a vague feeling she had been betrayed, as though she had come upon some beggar who tricked her into a game of chance that she had no hope of winning. “So your stories are lies, then.”

  “Lies? Oh no,” said Albern. “But even the craftiest storyteller knows better than to trust every word coming out of their own mouth, for they know a story is simply something to be learned from.”

  Sun could not help herself: she scoffed. “You cannot honestly think that is true. History is a story, too. But what good would history books be, if their authors simply made them up as they went along?”

  “Historians are often the greatest liars of all,” said Albern. “I have read their tomes. I have seen their version of events that I myself lived through. They were far less trustworthy than I am, and far less accurate, I can assure you. But history is only a story that most people have chosen to believe in, without thinking they made such a choice. Like any tale, we use it to shape the future in the way we want, and darkness take anyone who wants otherwise.”

  Though Sun had been ready with a retort, those words made her pause in confusion. Albern’s words had the sound of a deep wisdom, yet she could not understand them. And something in her still rebelled at the thought of hearing a story that even the teller did not believe.

  Albern studied her, and a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, as though he could read her thoughts and found them amusing. He gave her a moment longer to think before speaking again.

  “Should I go on?”

  Sun nodded, though she was uncertain if she truly wanted to hear more.

  Kaita rose and paced back and forth in the council chamber, her mind working. And as her thoughts spun faster and faster in circles, a blind rage began to build inside her, and it grew until it was like a wildfire ripping across her skin.

  “Kaita,” said Rogan. “What is it?”

  “The archer is Albern,” said Kaita, meeting his gaze. “It must be. And he is bringing them—Loren and the others—he is bringing them to Mag.”

  Rogan paused, lifting his chin slightly as he regarded her. Nian and Tagata still looked lost, but in Rogan’s eyes there was a deep understanding.

  Kaita strode to the table and slapped her hands down, leaning forwards intently. “Let me go to Northwood. I will … I will deliver justice for Trisken, and for all our siblings who fell in the Greatrocks.”

  “Kaita,” said Rogan quietly. “I love you like all our siblings, and with that love comes a profound respect. Return that respect to me, I beg you, and do not lie to me. You do not wish to go to Northwood to deliver justice, but to extract vengeance—and not for Trisken, but for yourself.”

  Kaita faltered only a moment. “And what of it? I have followed your orders for a long time, because you thought me too weak to seek out my revenge. But the time has come, Rogan. And it will mean the same thing, in the end. I have waited so long.”

  Rogan spoke quietly. “I know you have. And I have never thought you weak. But that is not the plan.” Kaita began to flare with anger, but he spoke again quickly. “The time for lurking in the shadows has ended.”

  Tagata looked taken aback, her scars appearing even whiter as a flush crept up her skin. “What do you mean?”

  “I have had many words with our father of late,” said Rogan. “Now I must bring him news of Trisken, but I do not think that will change his mind. In fact, I think it will make him even more resolute. We cannot yet declare ourselves openly, but our period of subterfuge and intrigue is over. The time has come for war. We will strike from the shadows, as we always have—but we will strike with blades and arrows, and no longer with secrets.”

  The effect on all of them was immediate. Nian looked at Rogan in wonder, her eyes shining. Kaita’s hand tightened on the back of her chair, and Tagata seized her greatsword again, as if she meant to march off to battle at once.

  “Brother,” whispered Tagata. “Are you saying… ?”

  “Yes,” said Rogan. “Nian, you have ridden far and long, but I must ask you to deliver yet another message. Rouse the captains. Order the troops to ready themselves. We make for war, and Northwood will be the first to fall before our might.”

  “And I will have my vengeance,” said Kaita, her eyes shining.

  Rogan fixed her with a look. “I do not think so,” he said.

  She flared with anger. “Rogan, you cannot expect—”

  “Unless I am very much mistaken,” he said, “Northwood will not be the end of your shadowed road. But you may try, Kaita, so long as it does not interfere with the battle. I only give you one command: stay alive. Our father needs all of us, now more than ever.”

  Kaita scoffed. “You worry for my safety? It is our enemies who should be worried.”

  Rogan sighed. “Then you may have your vengeance.”

  Now, on that same night, near the Dorsean town of Lan Shui west of the Greatrocks, a dark evening had come.

  A woman named Zhanu lived on a farm just a few spans beyond the walls of Lan Shui. Zhanu was a veteran of the Dorsean army and had fought in the king’s wars. Then, one day, she had retired with much honor and a gift of the king’s gold, and she had settled near the town where she had been born. In the years since, she had taken a wife named Shu, who had died old and happy, and had mothered three children, all of whom had grown and left Lan Shui to live their own lives elsewhere. Now Zhanu lived alone on her farm, working the land each day and visiting the town’s taverns each night.

  Except that recently, she had not been visiting the taverns. Like everyone who dwelled outside the town’s walls, she had been spending her nights locked up in her own home, a weapon near at hand.

  Zhanu stumped about her house, ensuring the windows were closed and shuttered and the front door was tightly secured. She grumbled as she fidgeted with the lock. It was new, having been added only a few days ago by a blacksmith from Lan Shui. Never in her life had Zhanu felt the need for a lock on her door. Lan Shui had never been that sort of town.

  “All the nine lands going to darkness,” she muttered. Zhanu had taken to talking to herself sometime in the last few years, and though she despised the habit, she could not seem to break it.

  A single candle burned in the main room of her house. Zhanu lifted it and brought it into her bedroom, the only other room in the house, and nothing very grand. She had never felt the need for fancy lodgings—truthfully, even two rooms in her house seemed a bit grandiose to her. But her wife had insisted.

  Zhanu set the candle on her bedside table, stripped down to her underclothes, and crawled beneath her thick blanket. It had been a long day in the fields, and she looked forward to a good night’s rest. She snuffed out the candle and closed her eyes.

  Not quite an hour later, they snapped open as something scratched on her roof.

  Skritch, skritch.

  She lay perfectly still in her bed, her whole body tense, waiting.

  Skritch, skritch.

  The sound had moved. Whatever was making the scratching, it was moving from the rear of the house towards the front.

  Come for me, have you? thought Zhanu. Well, you will find no frail old victim here.

  Zhanu slid from her bed, moving as quietly as possible. She lifted her sword from its place on the wall, trying to remain as silent as she could, and crept into the house’s front room.

  Skritch.

  The scratching sound came again, but this time it seemed to cut itself off abruptly. Zhanu paused a step away from the door, listening.

  There came a soft thump, like something landing on the ground outside. Whatever was making the noise had leaped down from the roof.

  Zhanu stole to the wall just beside the door. She gripped her sword in both hands, holding it ready to swing.

  All was silent for a long moment.

  KROOM

  The window behind Zhanu exploded inwards, showering the room with splinters.

  With an old soldier’s instincts, she whirled and stabbe
d out with her sword. There was a sharp shunk as it slid deep into flesh.

  Zhanu froze, staring at her intruder in horror.

  The creature would have been as tall as she was if it stood upright, but it was hunched over on all fours. Its skin was pallid white, mottled with light grey, and it wore no clothing at all. Its long, thick limbs ended in claws as long as her hands, and its wide, red mouth was rimmed with sharp teeth designed for ripping and tearing into flesh. It had long, pointed ears, like an Elf’s.

  Zhanu had buried her sword in its chest halfway to the hilt. Her thrust had been pure reflex. Yet the creature stared at her, and its yellowing eyes were filled with hate, not pain.

  “What in the dark—”

  Zhanu’s words cut off as the creature struck her a heavy backhanded blow. She flew through the air before crashing hard into the wooden floor. Nothing broke, but she bit her own tongue hard enough that she tasted blood.

  She pushed herself up on her elbows just in time to see the creature seize the sword by the hilt and drag it out of its own flesh. It hissed with discomfort, but the wound did not seem to slow it at all. And as Zhanu watched, the skin and the flesh beneath began to stitch together, until soon there was no sign there had been a wound there at all.

  The creature threw the sword past Zhanu. The steel sank into the wall and stuck there, quivering. Zhanu tried to push herself away, but the creature stalked towards her on all fours, its shredded ears twitching, a rasping hiss sounding from its throat.

  “Dark take you,” said Zhanu. “Shu is waiting for me anyways.”

  She spat, and the bloody spittle struck the floor just in front of the creature. It stopped in its advance for only a moment, stooping to lick up the spit.

  A hungry gleam came into its eyes. It leaped for her, and Zhanu knew nothing more.

  Constable Yue of the family Baolan was summoned to Zhanu’s farm the next day.

  One of her neighbors had not seen her in the fields that morning and had gone to investigate. Once he had seen the horror inside her house, he had run straight to Lan Shui and found Yue in the constables’ station. Even as a dark foreboding seized her, she summoned Ashta and Sinshi, the town’s other two constables, and set out for the farm with them in tow.

  Yue had no illusions about what she would find. Zhanu’s neighbor had been too afraid to describe what he saw, but it was not the first such grisly murder she had investigated in the last few weeks. Zhanu’s home looked just as she expected it to. The window beside the door had been broken open by something attacking from outside the house. The front door was still closed and locked; Zhanu’s neighbor had not been able to open it, and had looked in through the smashed window. The constables forced the door open, and inside they found a scene all too similar to others they had seen recently. Zhanu’s corpse lay in the corner, her head propped up against the wall, her eyes staring sightlessly at them. Her sunburnt skin was unusually pale. There was blood on the floor and on the wall, but not nearly as much as one would have expected, considering how the woman’s throat had been torn open.

  “Again,” said Sinshi, averting his eyes. “Sergeant, is it the—”

  “The creature,” said Yue. “Yes.”

  She winced at her own unwillingness to name the thing. It was a foolish superstition. But then, Yue had been born and raised in Lan Shui. She had no illusions that she was anything other than the simple child of a small town, and among such folk, superstition died hard. It was her opinion that such traditions had been started for a reason, and she would not change them unless she, too, had a reason.

  “Should we send another messenger, Sergeant?” said Ashta.

  Yue looked at her. “Would you go, if I asked you to?”

  Ashta and Sinshi both grew visibly paler, and Sinshi swallowed hard. But Ashta lifted her chin. “I would.”

  “As would I,” said Sinshi, his voice shaking.

  “Then the two of you are idiotic, if brave,” said Yue. “I would not send you even if you begged me to, because you would die—just like the last two. And if I do not send one of you because I do not think you would survive, I have no right to ask another of the townsfolk to go.”

  “What do we do, then?” said Sinshi, voice thick with despair.

  “I wish my answer were otherwise,” said Yue. “But we have to keep waiting. I have not sent a report to Bertram for three weeks now—nor the Mystics, for that matter. The king’s collectors have received no taxes. That cannot go on forever without prompting an investigation. We may not be able to leave the town, but that does not mean others cannot come here.”

  “That could take weeks,” said Ashta. “And the attacks are coming more—”

  “Do you think I do not know that?” snapped Yue. “We have warned the townsfolk, and we have warned the farmers. Many have retreated inside the walls, but others are more foolish—like poor Zhanu here, may she rest in the dark. When you have been a constable for a while longer, you, too, may learn that you cannot protect everyone from themselves.”

  Sinshi stared at his feet now, chagrined. But Ashta still held her sergeant’s gaze. “I have been thinking—”

  “When did this start?” said Yue, raising an eyebrow.

  Ashta heard the joke in her tone and pressed on. “I have been thinking. No one has tried riding east. A messenger could reach the Greatrocks in less than a day. Before nightfall.”

  “And where do you think the creature is coming from?” said Yue. “It is far more likely to have its home in the mountains than in the western spur. And even if I am wrong, and a messenger made it deep into the mountains, they would never survive. Satyrs are plentiful there, and harpies, and other, worse things that humans have never named. I have thought of all of this, constable.”

  At last Ashta averted her eyes, joining Sinshi in his awkward discomfort. “As you say, Sergeant,” she muttered. “We will remove the body, and burn her.”

  “I will write a letter to her eldest son, so that we may send it when the road is safe again,” said Sinshi. “He is in Bertram.”

  “Good. Do it quickly, and return to the station when you are through. And do not despair.” Yue looked through the shattered window at the world beyond—too bright for such a solemn day. Too sunny.

  “Someone will come. Eventually.”

  And she was right, though she would not know it for some days yet.

  Of course, we in Northwood knew nothing of all these dark events, and so our lives went on quite uninterrupted.

  I had thought that Loren and Xain would be eager to leave the city and make their way east. But for some reason I did not know, they remained in Northwood for some time. Loren spent long hours walking in the woods with Chet, the children helped Mag around the inn, and Xain skulked about the place as he recovered from his illness.

  Others have asked me, and I have often wondered, why we all did not feel a greater urgency. We had defeated a great evil in the mountains, but we had not wiped it out. I have been called foolish for being so lax about our situation. And indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, I was foolish. But what I said earlier, about stories, and believing them, is never more true than when speaking of the story we live day to day. And we are always prone to believe that which we think will make our lives easier. I thought, as I am sure Loren did, that having defeated our enemy, we would be free from them for a time. After all, they had been hidden in the shadows for so long—why would they reveal themselves now?

  That was our notion, anyway. And so, for my part, I spent much time revisiting my old haunts in Northwood and the lands around it. I visited old friends in the town, for of course I knew more people than only Mag and Sten. There was Len, a distant cousin of Sten’s. He was a somewhat shifty fellow, and he often got into trouble with the constables after being found with small valuables that did not belong to him in the strictest sense—or in any other sense, truth be told. But he was always a joy to play Moons with, as long as you did not wager any money against the outcome, for he was both bad a
t the game and a poor loser. And there was old Elsie, who had been wizened and wrinkled even when I first came to Northwood with Mag. Now she could barely walk, even with her stick, and yet she did not let that stop her from managing her farm, from which came the best butter and cheeses that could be found for a hundred leagues. She had hired hands to help her with the milking and the mucking, for that was quite beyond her, but she oversaw all their goings-on with a sharp eye and an unwavering attention to detail.

  One day, over an afternoon snack and more than one cup of wine, Elsie and I fell to talking about Mag. She had long been friends with Mag and Sten, of course, and in the midst of all our talk—Elsie’s being mostly gossip—she said something that troubled me, and upon which I thought often afterwards.

  “It shall lead to trouble, you see if I am wrong.”

  “What shall?” I asked, cocking my head.

  “You. Mag. All this.” Hefting her stick, she swung it around generally at our surroundings, so that I had to duck to keep from being brained. “She has been sitting still too long.”

  “Not as long as you.”

  “Hah!” barked Elsie. “Peace and quiet are meant for some folk. Folk like me. Not for your kind, or Mag’s.”

  That made me smile. “And what, pray tell, is our kind? What makes us less deserving of the rest you enjoy?”

  “I said your kind, or Mag’s.” Elsie took a sip of wine and a large bite of cheese before continuing around a full mouth. “You are neither of you alike, and neither of you is meant for stillness. And what is this talk of deserving? Deserving has nothing to do with it. A silly notion, if ever I have heard one. It is something inside you that is different, not anything you have done. All the important things about us are on the inside. And what is in you has never been in me. I never was a mercenary, you will notice.”

  “I shudder to imagine it,” I told her. “Any enemy would have thrown down their arms in terror upon seeing you across the battlefield.”

  “Why do you think I never took up the life?”