The twins also practiced casting their batonaxes at targets. When one of AscendantSun’s throws went awry and he smashed open a full mead keg, splashing its contents across the floor, DawnGlow thumped down the stairs.
“Are you ever going to duel each other or are you forever going to fight shadows and furniture?” he grumbled.
“Your comment illustrates why the Auctors were always renowned for their skill with batonaxes, while a Fulgur once sliced off half of his hand while playing with one,” NoName retorted.
“I am humbled,” DawnGlow said, his light manner failing to disguise his chagrin. He helped the twins soak up the spilled mead with rags.
“You seem to be in a rush to get rid of us,” AscendantSun said as he squeezed out a rag into a bucket.
“I am eager to be rid of the incessant tapping and the din of batonaxes chewing up my cellar, and not just for the benefit of my mead collection. Your racket travels through the entire hostel. I am afraid it will announce your presence to some unforeseen visitor. Your noise is an unavoidable evil, but I will be glad when it is no more.”
After DawnGlow had climbed back up the stairs, NoName asked, “Do you think when he talks of unavoidable evil he is thinking of more than the noise?”
“It is a little late to doubt him,” AscendantSun observed. “He has protected us throughout our division.”
“He gives you no reason for suspicion. He treats you as the previous AscendantSun. He regards me as a stranger.”
“Is this about DawnGlow’s batonaxes? He could not split the brace between us.”
NoName chuckled. “Do you realize you are as good as accusing yourself of jealousy? Forget the batonaxes. My concern is their former owner. There is deadness in his eyes when he looks upon me, a callousness in his voice when he speaks directly to me. He guesses the true purpose for which I was created. Eight or so months ago, he might have convinced himself otherwise and took succor in the original AscendantSun’s vague promises, but now, DawnGlow can no longer salve his conscience with delusion. We should leave the Hostel of Fulgur as soon as possible, lest we test our host too much.”
“As soon as you are ready for your mission, we will go. I can always finish my training in the mountains.” A great sadness struck AscendantSun. He was not yet ready to say goodbye to his twin. “I wish we had given you a proper name.”
“We agreed it was easier if I did not have one. You and DawnGlow cannot betray what you do not know. NoName will suffice for now. I must be able to change my name as circumstances dictate. I will take a permanent name afterward, if I survive.’
“If I could share your burden…”
NoName placed a hand on AscendantSun’s shoulder. “Sharing my burden would not lighten it. The knowledge I will live on through you is a consolation.”
“Last year, our forbear killed a dozen or so Jinglemen with an untroubled conscience,” AscendantSun said. “Is the Harbinger’s life more valuable than theirs?”
NoName sighed. “Thank the Forelight that Saint Sebryn freed the old AscendantSun from his vow of pacifism. But for that, I also would have to contend with its breaking. For the first time, I must turn my knife against one of my own kind. Is that not reason enough for guilt? The heart is a balance prone to capricious measure. I know the lives of Mixies and Ors are of equal worth, but my heart tilts otherwise. And the Harbinger’s life is as valuable as that of any other Or.”
“Think of the lives saved by the Harbinger’s death,” AscendantSun urged. “Not just the Mixies but the Ors, also.”
“It is all that keeps me going,” NoName said. “Enough of wielding dances. We’re ready for dueling dances.”
AscendantSun nodded. “I suppose it is time.”
In full armor, they practiced dueling dances of progressive complexity and pace, till they were competent to spar. Even with batonaxes padded to blunt their deadly edges and points, freeform sparring was dangerous. Both duelists suffered bruises and scratches. AscendantSun delivered one blow that knocked NoName to the floor. Begging forgiveness, he knelt beside his moaning opponent and tried to pry open the arms hugging his abdomen. Concern for NoName succumbed to electric fright with the sudden realization that if his twin’s injury was grievous, AscendantSun might have to pursue the Harbinger in his stead. NoName’s assurance that he was fine brought double relief.
DawnGlow’s evident dismay at the twins’ announcement that they were ready to leave Tincranny puzzled AscendantSun. Till now, he had been eager for their departure. Perhaps, he had simply become accustomed to their presence.
“Are you sure you are ready?” he asked.
AscendantSun smiled as he tugged at the golden curls on his head. “See? Almost fully grown. We can be seen in public.”
“When do you intend to leave?” DawnGlow asked.
“Tomorrow,” NoName said firmly.
DawnGlow sighed. “So soon? Very well. I suggest AscendantSun leave in the morning and NoName can set out later in the day. Safer to stagger your departures. This villa is beyond the city walls, but there are frequent patrols of the area. I arranged them.”
“And what will we do if we encounter one?” NoName asked tartly.
“Don’t worry,” DawnGlow assured him. “I will give each of you a letter to present to any city guards who attempt to detain you. It will explain you are acting on my orders, and instruct the guards to let you continue on your business unhindered. Tell them as little as possible. Let their imaginations fill in the gaps. But try your best to evade them. These are suspicious times, and I want to avoid raising any questions, however slight, in the minds of the citizenry of Tincranny regarding my devotion to the Consensus. I will need names for your letters.”
He pointed to AscendantSun’s forehead. “You’ll have to modify your forehead tattoo temporarily to disguise your true name.”
“Perhaps we should wait till tonight,’ NoName suggested.
DawnGlow smiled. “So you can travel under the cover of darkness? Your confinement here has made you forget how much the Ill-weather has enfeebled the sun and quenched the moon’s bloody glow. Day is night and night is a blindness only relieved by torchlight. And carrying a torch would alert every patrol from here to Sunthorn.”
After the twins had furnished DawnGlow with their temporary aliases, he bid them goodnight and disappeared upstairs, and the twins set about amending their tattoos. The brush tickled AscendantSun’s brow as his twin added the minor strokes to his tattoo to alter its meaning. While it dried, AscendantSun applied the symbols for NoName’s new alias to his forehead. He drew the symbols on a piece of parchment and used a needle to puncture along the lines and curves of the pattern.
NoName lay still on the floor, his eyes closed, as AscendantSun positioned the stencil and dabbed paint over it to create a dotted outline. Joining the dots required patience and a very steady hand. The paint dried fast and left little opportunity for correction.
He sighed with relief when he finished. The product of his endeavor was indistinguishable from a genuine tattoo. It would fade over time and have to be retouched. The delicacy required for its application was cause for concern. NoName would struggle to achieve the same perfection by himself if he had to change his name.
AscendantSun woke several times in anticipation of the morning. When DawnGlow finally trundled down the stairs with the breakfast tray in hand, it was both a relief and a disappointment.
While the twins finished their porridge, DawnGlow dashed back upstairs. He returned with a leather backpack and invited AscendantSun to review its contents. The victuals consisted of dry venison sausages, rounds of cheese, and hardtack biscuits, enough by DawnGlow’s reckoning for nine days. In the midst of some spare clothes and a blanket, AscendantSun found a sack containing pyrite, flint, and dried fungus for tinder, and another containing ointments and bandages.
“Oh, and you must wear this until you have left the valley,” DawnGlow said as he passed AscendantSun a bright yellow hooded cloak.
�
�A bit flashy, isn’t it,” AscendantSun said.
“In the gloom outside, it won’t be. Civilian garments of any hue other than yellow have been banned for some time and incur a hefty fine. Saffron is restricted for military use. The last thing you want to be doing if you meet a patrol is wearing proscribed colors.”
“You should take the battlefield pieces,” NoName said glumly to his twin. “I will not need them where I am going.”
DawnGlow dashed upstairs and returned with three silver goblets. He filled them from one of his casks and passed one to each of the Auctors.
“When the old AscendantSun ensnared me in this scheme, he plied me with his last decent honey wine. Now I share the last of my favorite vintage with you.” He tapped on the cask to illustrate its hollowness. “A toast and a prayer. May the Golden Light illuminate both your paths.”
The twins nodded politely and drank from their goblets. AscendantSun said, “My friend, could you leave us again for a few moments. NoName and I need to exchange some final, private words.”
“Of course,” DawnGlow said. The casualness of his words failed to hide his distress. “But do hurry. Remember the patrols. AscendantSun has to leave as soon as possible,” he blurted as he dashed up the stairs.
“Best mead indeed,” NoName commented when the door shut. “Tasted as sour as misery to me. I left most of it in the cup.”
“I thought it tasted fine,” AscendantSun said. “Though I admit it was not particularly good. I guess decent mead is rare these days. Anyway, DawnGlow’s prayer reminded me that we have not entreated the Forelight for his protection.”
“Not to do so would be a serious oversight. Strange that DawnGlow should invoke a god in whom he holds no faith.”
“I suppose he has no better means to express his concern for our safety. Wishing us good luck lacks the gravitas of his true sentiments.”
“Possibly.”
They were in the midst of the Forelight’s Prayer, arms raised in the air, heads pressed against their shoulders, when DawnGlow interrupted them.
“AscendantSun must leave now,” he urged. “There is no time to waste.”
The twins exchanged final, brief farewells. AscendantSun gathered his gear and hurried upstairs.
DawnGlow shut the cellar door and gave him a slim leather envelope, embossed with a spread two-thumbed hand.
“Inside you will find the pass I promised to give you. Hopefully you will not need it.”
As AscendantSun tucked it away, something crashed downstairs.
“I wish your twin would be a little more careful practicing,” DawnGlow groaned. “The both of you hacked and slashed so many posts and beams down there, that I feared you were going to collapse the house.” He noticed AscendantSun’s scowl. “Only joking. Don’t get annoyed.”
“I know. I’m not,” AscendantSun lied, hoping to end the matter. DawnGlow, like all Fulgurs, was so prone to exaggeration at times. Other than the episode with the keg, any damage the twins had caused was minor. Once or twice, a batonaxe might have chipped the wall or scuffed the floor. That was all. AscendantSun was about to set out on a journey that promised at best exile and at worst death, and his friend was needling him about scratches in his furnishings.
DawnGlow led him to the entrance hall and quenched the candles. “A precaution against the light attracting the notice of patrols when we open the door,” he explained.
Both of them slipped outside. AscendantSun looked up at the dark, dreary sky for the first time in over nine months and shivered. Winter’s bite was in the air; its breath whistled about him.
“It is not as dark as you claimed it would be,” he commented as he surveyed the ashen landscape. In the distance, he could discern the wink of lanterns atop of the black walls of Tincranny. A sliver of shadow projected above the battlements—the city’s gnomon—its golden hand unburnished by a reclusive sun. The brittle light from the snowy peaks that girdled the valley of Tincranny barely penetrated the gloom.
“This is a fine day,” explained DawnGlow. “The clench of the Ill-weather is weakening, it is true. The Golden Light breaks the White Light’s grip on the world one finger at a time. The frost’s sting may be fleeting, but it is never far away. The day is stronger, but it still tires quickly. I hear there is hunger and death in the Stretches. The Ill-weather has picked them clean like a famished scavenger. Are you sure you will find a welcome there?”
“The Stretchers are generous hosts and do not forget their friends,” AscendantSun said. “They will provide what they can.”
DawnGlow grimaced. “But they are so”—he searched—“transient.”
“They are transient, but they are not born with the spring and then die with the autumn. They measure their lives in dozens of years. Do not confuse the brevity of their existence with the intensity of their attachment to their loved ones. Though we have been friends since before the beginning of the world, I promise you there are Stretchers who love their friends as much as we love each other, and perhaps even more, since they love in the face of certain death.”
AscendantSun was being disingenuous. Some Stretchers could be fickle in their friendships and treacherous in their dealings with others. But if he admitted to such complexities, DawnGlow would seize on them as proof he was right about their natural inferiority.
DawnGlow half-sang an old poem by BrightGleam Risus.
“They are sparks dying in night’s arms,
We are of the eternal flame.
They are raindrops flung from the sky
Broken and scattered on the ground,
We are streams rising from the earth
Carving our course with the seasons.”
AscendantSun interrupted his friend’s rendition. “I had better go,” he said.
“Agreed,” said DawnGlow. “This is not the time for a philosophical debate.” He made the sign of the open hand. “May the sun illuminate your path.”
NoName lay motionless at the foot of the stairs. The door creaked open. Footfalls descended. He tried to move his head to see who was coming, but it refused to budge. His body was as dead as stone.
“You gave me quite a scare when you made that noise,” DawnGlow said as he stepped over him, grabbed his arms, and heaved him across the floor. “For a moment, I feared your twin would want to investigate. I managed to distract him with a bit of banter. You obviously realized you were drugged and tried to get up the stairs. I was lucky to get him out of the cellar before the drug took effect.”
DawnGlow looked down on NoName with the detachment of a spider eying its freshly envenomed prey. He rested NoName’s arms across his chest, and then evidently changing his mind, placed them by his sides.
As DawnGlow stood over him, batonaxes in hand, NoName groped for an appropriate reaction, but his emotions were as dead as his body.
“Your goblet was laced with an extract of the Purple Bellowtongue,” DawnGlow said. “I assume you are unaware of its properties. You never took much of an interest in herbs. Diluted sufficiently, the extract is a pleasurable relaxant. However, at the dosage you ingested, muscles are relaxed to the point of unresponsiveness. The victim is paralyzed, though conscious.”
In NoName’s deadened state, rage at this betrayal was impossible. DawnGlow, standing above him, looked so far way.
“Before I kill you, I owe you a few words of explanation,” DawnGlow said. “You know that many lifetimes ago, I lost my faith in the Golden Light. His defeat in Gules and our subsequent humiliation convinced me he was either dead or had forsaken us. While others found his hand in everything that happened to us here, I saw fickle chance. I grimaced as they praised Aurelian for what we had achieved by our own toil. I loathed them as they engaged in the basest forms of sophism to excuse some capricious punishment he meted us, or his petulant refusal to answer our prayers.”
A little feeling was returning to NoName’s fingers. He tried to move them. They trembled.
“Yet it was in truth I who clung to specious argumen
ts,” DawnGlow said, striking his open hand against his chest. “I ignored the truth to which I myself am a witness—the divinity of Aurelian. Who am I to question the Golden Light? Who am I to judge the ways of my creator or those of his divine kindred? Do I set fire to the sky? Do I breathe life into the earth?”
NoName felt his anger build. The drug was beginning to wear off, but slowly. Too slowly. The only hope was that DawnGlow would be even more long-winded than usual.
DawnGlow shook his head sadly. “I was intoxicated on my own vanity, till the Ill-weather sobered me. All my lives, I treasured reason above all else. I thought it made me an eagle surveying the world in a glance, but I was no more than a buzzing fly, obsessed with trivial details and understanding nothing. My reason is nothing. I am nothing. The Harbinger of the Dawn whom I once condemned as a fool has opened my eyes. Faith foresaw the Ill-weather while reason failed to predict it.”
Keep talking, NoName urged as he flexed his fingers a little. Must be careful. If DawnGlow notices my movement is returning, he won’t wait to finish his speech.
“When the old AscendantSun first involved me in his schemes, I was struggling to admit this to myself. When I finally did, my collaboration with the Harbinger’s greatest enemy left me in a quandary. I did not want to betray my friend, but I could not allow him to harm Aurelian’s prophet. AscendantSun’s division solved this conundrum. The new AscendantSun is the best part of his forbear: the thinker, the dreamer, the idealist. My conscience was easy in aiding his flight to the Stretches. Hopefully, he will realize his folly and repent. On the other thumb, you are the diseased portion of my old friend’s character: the fanatic, the assassin. With your death, that rottenness will be destroyed, and I will foil the murder plot against the Harbinger.”
A Bright Power Rising Page 16