Talion Revenant

by Michael A. Stackpole

  A very promising student of magick, Chi'gandir's impatience to learn the higher magicks consumed him. He left his tutor, traveled and studied the self-centered arts of the Lurkers, then found sorcerers to teach him irresponsible and destructive ways to channel his talents. They attempted to use him for their own ends, or so the story goes, but he destroyed them. Like a child given a dangerous toy, he set out playing with things and animals and people.

  Known as "the Changer," Chi'gandir used his power to warp creatures. At first he did it for amusement. He added a leg or head to a newborn calf just to watch the farmers react with horror. Then he learned that he could alter people and that, if they were wealthy or powerful, they would pay well to have his enchantments reversed.

  "If he's done anything to Weylan," I muttered to Wolf, "Chi'gandir will end up begging me to reverse the things I'll do to him."

  Anger and fear festered and raged within me. Weylan's tragic life didn't need complicating elements like Rolf or Chi'gandir. Weylan, despite his problems, was a good man and a better friend. Riding all too slowly through the woods, I became more and more convinced they would use him against me. Then again, if I was lucky or Weylan was lucky, Weylan and the ferry would be on the river's western shore and I'd have the bandits all to myself before the ferryman tangled with them.

  Weylan exemplified the Imperial citizen Clekan created the Talions to protect and avenge. His family had operated the ferry for more years than anyone could remember: the eldest son always inherited the homestead, ran the ferry, and raised a family to take over. For centuries the heir took his wife from one of the merchant families that passed through the valley in their travels.

  Until road agents got their hands on Weylan, it was a proud tradition that had no end in sight.

  Ten years ago it all changed—or so the stories I had heard indicated. Weylan never talked about what happened, but folks in the district shared the story with little or no prompting. Weylan's entire family left him behind and traveled off with a rich merchant from Lacia to bring back his daughter Elverda to be Weylan's wife. While they were away a group of bandits, more numerous but less effective than Morai's pack, raided the ferry. Weylan, a handsome youth, strong from years of poling the ferry back and forth across the river, defended his birthright and killed a dozen of them before they captured him, and his captors worked on him.

  The raiders bound him to a tree and deliberately maimed him. They left his body strong and straight while they smashed his teeth in and broke his face. They battered his left eye into milky white blindness and half tore off his scalp. They pulverized his nose, flattened it across his face and left him with very thick and nasal speech. It was said they watched him for several days to let the healing start so no wizard could reverse it; then they departed just hours before his family came home and found him.

  His bride, Elverda, did not reject him. I don't know what her reasons were, but she showed more nobility in that act than I've seen in the rest of the world. Weylan freed her of all promises and told her to leave. She refused, so he married her and then instantly divorced her. He sent her and his family away. If tavern tales had it right, she returned with her father's caravans each spring to ask Weylan to let her stay.

  Morai's bandits followed the road as it turned north toward the mountains. I turned off onto a lesser-used trail—one Weylan had shown me years past—that led more directly into the valley and the ferry itself. I started Wolf down it and murmured a prayer that it would carry me into the valley before Rolf and Chi'gandir reached it.

  The instant I saw Weylan's log cabin I knew I'd lost the race. The sun still flew high in the sky, but I couldn't see Weylan anywhere. The ferry floated at the dock in front of the cabin and two horses trotted wide-eyed and spooked back behind the cabin itself.

  Wolf and I raced to the cabin, but the horse shied as he got close. I jumped from the saddle, tugged my tsincaat from the saddle sheath, and let the horse run off. I knew only two things scared Wolf: magick and snakes. Chi'gandir was enough magic to scare anyone, and no snake was going to worry me while Rolf lurked in the vicinity. I let Wolf run off so Chi'gandir had no chance of getting hair or blood of mine. Without some piece of me to focus his spells, his magicks would be unable to affect me.

  I held my tsincaat before me and crept cautiously to the cabin's southern wall. A faded green curtain prevented me from looking through the window, but it did little to muffle the rhythmic squeak of Weylan's rocking chair. I heard nothing else, and hoped, for a moment, that my worst fears would not be realized.

  I relaxed only slightly, crossed to the cabin's porch, and pulled myself up over the railing. I lowered myself to the porch gently, so the wooden planks would not creak and betray me. I tested the door and it moved beneath gentle pressure. Shifting my tsincaat to my left hand and ready for almost anything, I pushed the door open.

  Framed in the doorway, I stopped and could not breathe. Ten feet into the room, rocking in and out of my shadow in his favorite chair, sat Weylan.

  Bright blue eyes stared at me from a handsome face, looking like matched sapphires set evenly in his head by a master jeweler. His narrow nose lent him a look of great intelligence. His long, thick, black hair hid the tops of two well-formed ears. Two even rows of white teeth flashed at me in a fleeting smile, and his strong jaw gave him a physical strength of character denied him before by his deformities.

  Chi'gandir's black arts made Weylan's face perfect. Perfect, except for the tears rolling down the ferryman's cheeks.

  His noble head topped an atrophied, twisted body. He'd been shrunken to proportions smaller than those of a child. The sorcerer had warped and bowed Weylan's bones like rain-soaked wood, then had swollen and knotted his joints. His ash-gray flesh hung thick and flaccid in great folds over his body the same way a father's robe hangs on his young son.

  He tried to raise his right hand toward me, but that task taxed his stringy muscles beyond their ability to respond. "Talion, Nolan, friend." His voice still came clear and strong. "Kill me."

  I shook my head violently and stepped into darkened, dead room. "Chi'gandir, where is he?"

  Weylan did not hear the full question. The mention of the sorcerer's name tightened his face and wrung more tears from his azure eyes. "When I saw him I begged him to make me as I was. She'll be here soon and I just wanted her to see me as I was, just once." His lips quivered and he swallowed to choke back more tears. His hands tried to rise and wipe his face but they only reached his stomach before they gave up and limply flopped to his sides. "Kill me or I'll drag myself to the river and drown myself before she can see me like this."

  "No!" Anger rose to my face and spat words from my mouth. "You fool, you know a sorcerer's magick only lasts as long as he lives. Where is Chi'gandir?"

  Weylan's gaze flickered beyond my shoulder and a warning rose to his lips, but I'd already seen the shadow on the floor. I spilled his chair to the right with a kick as I drove forward and twisted to the left. The rough floorboards creaked beneath me when I landed—and exploded where Rolf's ax tore into the floor. Without even turning to look at him, I rolled to my feet, spun, and leaped through a draped window onto the porch.

  Rolf ra Karesia turned from the doorway, ax clutched lovingly to his breast, and once again the depth of Chi'gandir's evil stunned me. Scarlet serpentskin covered the bandit and sunlight burnished gold highlights onto his scales. A forked tongue flickered in and out of the wide, lipless mouth in his muzzled, serpentine face. His narrow, slitted nostrils ran perpendicular to the sharp, black-lozenge pupils in his amber eyes. The changes melted his ears into his head, left holes where they should have been, and welded his legs together to form an undulating viper's body.

  Rolf hissed inarticulately and writhed forward. I backed up and vaulted the porch railing seconds before his ax splintered the wood. I retreated several more steps; then, as he pursued, I stopped.

  Rolf rippled off the porch and his torso plunged toward the earth. His upper body teetered o
ff balance before enough of his lower half could reach the ground and right him again. I rushed in, parried a weak ax blow with my tsincaat, and snap-kicked the tottering monster in the head. The blow smashed him back against the cabin, but he whipped his tail around and almost swept my feet out from under me. I jumped above his tail and then cartwheeled to the right out of his range, but abandoned my tsincaat behind in the dust.

  Rolf flicked his tail and swept the blade from his path. He laughed, though it sounded more to me like the choking cough of a dying coal miner than any honest sound of mirth. He came for me slowly and, even in his bestial form, allowed himself to relish the idea of being the first man in a decade to kill a Justice.

  I smiled at him and concentrated. I summoned my tsincaat, and it materialized in my grasp. I laughed when I felt it's heavy hilt against the cold dead flesh of the tattoo on my right palm. I thought about drawing my ryqril from the sheath at the small of my back, but the daggerlike blade would require me to get closer to Rolf than I really wanted if I meant to use it.

  Cloudy membranes nictitated up over Rolf's eyes, then flicked back down. He surged forward and rained ax blows down on me. I dodged the first two attacks, ducked the third, and closed when he raised the ax over his head for the fourth. I lunged and hit him over the heart, but the tsincaat skittered wide along his scales and did not hurt him.

  Seriously unbalanced, I looked up in horror. Rolf towered over me, shifted his grip, and brought the ax haft down on my head. I twisted, but caught enough of a glancing blow on my left temple to stun me. Dazed, I staggered back and fell flat. Stars exploded and cavorted before my eyes while Rolf, all red and gold like a sunset, tossed his ax aside and huddled over me.

  Rolf wrapped his huge hands around either side of my rib cage, squeezed pain through my chest, and tossed me into the air. Like a parent playing with a child, Rolf caught me around my waist with a bear hug that trapped my left arm to my side. My tsincaat slipped from my other hand and the pain prevented me from concentrating enough to summon it again. Rolf shook me twice and then, confident I could not wriggle free, tightened his arms.

  I kicked weakly against his stomach and tried to escape. My left hand remained firmly trapped in his right armpit, yet could exert no pressure on nerve centers deeply shielded by scale and muscle. I screwed my eyes shut against the pain and shuddered when Rolf's tongue played against my sweaty throat.

  His fists ground my ryqril into my spine, reminding me how close it lay and frustrating me with its inaccessibility. I wrenched my head forward to smash it down into his face, but he held me too high up. My right fist beat on his shoulders with no effect. No other options lay open to me. Rolf himself gave me no choice.

  I stared down at my palm, then shook my head to clear my mind. I looked down into his eyes, beyond the madness and anger, and tried to see what sort of man he had been. I pushed my pain away and smothered the regrets lingering from how I dealt with Fortune.

  I pressed my open palm to his forehead. His flesh felt slick and fluidly warm, as if living copper or gold. I felt his brow ripple beneath my touch as the part of him that was a man tried to understand why this hand should be so cold, and why the animal in him instinctively dreaded my caress.

  I breathed in and called his life to me.

  Brief scenes, like pictures illuminating the manuscript of his life, flashed before my mind's eye. I felt his sense of triumph evaporate and I lived through one of his rages. I saw the world through his eyes and understood how he misinterpreted innocent acts and gestures as threats. I shared his pain and deep fear of the world.

  For a heartbeat, when his life had been stripped of the evil and anger, he returned to the innocence of youth, yet retained his adult comprehension of the world. He read his own history and understood the suffering he caused. He knew why I had to take his life, and he knew he had to die. His soul fled into the skull tattoo on my palm.

  I peeled my hand back from his forehead and chose to leave a black death's-head mark there. His body slackened, collapsed, and freed me of the physical pain. Life seared back into my limbs and distracted me enough that, for several seconds, I failed to notice that I'd not fallen with him to the ground. When I did notice, and looked around for the author of this strangeness, Chi'gandir contracted the spell enfolding me and held me tighter than Rolf ever had.

  He rotated me through the air so I could stare at him. He strode through the cabin doorway holding Weylan by the back of his tunic. Chi'gandir settled him on the porch edge as a child might arrange a doll. Then he turned to me and gestured with my tsincaat, which he held in his left hand. "I always assumed, given the stories, that Justices were linked to their swords, but I never imagined such a strong link."

  I nodded gently. "Give yourself up now, Chi'gandir. Kill me and other Talions will never let you rest."

  Chi'gandir wheezed a nasal giggle. "Bravado hardly becomes you, Talion. It is like the ferryman's body, inappropriate and useless." Again he giggled and stroked the blade of my tsincaat. "Rolf's transformation took hair and blood. I wonder what I can do with you and this sword."

  The tingle that stole over my body when Chi'gandir gestured at my tsincaat shocked away my reply to him. I felt my toes merge and lose their individuality. It started as the same uncomfortable feeling when there is something caught between my toes. It spread up through my feet as they began to flow one into the other, becoming a fertile breeding ground for fear and frustration.

  I knew I had to fight him and I knew of only one way to do that. I immediately slowed my breathing, closed my eyes, and willed myself into a self-hypnotic trance. Normally Talions use the trance to monitor the extent and severity of wounds suffered, and can even limit blood flow with it, but in this case, I needed to do more with the control it gave me.

  I looked within myself and cringed at the chaotic ruin caused by his spell. Chi'gandir's magick presented a more urgent threat than the slight damage Rolf had done, so I forced my mind past the bruises and sore muscles down toward my legs. I consciously reinforced my mental self-image, down to five toes on each foot. I used the force of my will as a chisel, carefully carving away at the changes his spell had made. More easily than I expected, I broke his power and blunted his spell.

  Chi'gandir withdrew and I opened my eyes. The sorcerer looked tired, and I realized I could defeat him. Rolf's transformation must have drained a great amount of energy from Chi'gandir, not to mention the job he'd done on Weylan. He had to be close to exhaustion, because I should not really have been able to block his attack on me. If I provoked him enough, he might overtax himself and his spells would fade.

  Chi'gandir's left eyebrow rose, lengthening the diamond tattoo around that eye, and he slid my tsincaat home in his belt. "So Talions fight magick with magick?"

  I snarled at him. "We're taught to deal with all sorts of minor nuisances."

  The sorcerer angrily dropped a hand to my tsincaat. "Then deal with the river."

  I shot toward the river like a stone flung from a catapult and, landing with a splash, I sank just as fast. The spellforce, though it had weakened perceptibly, still held me paralyzed while the water chilled and suffocated me. Air bubbles trapped in my ears echoed my ever-increasing heartbeat. Water washed up my nose and tickled a sneeze of precious air from my lungs. Silt stung my eyes and ground beneath my teeth. I tightened my cheeks and expelled the foul, gritty water from my mouth.

  I closed my eyes, stopped fighting the river, and forced myself to ignore the growing fire in my lungs. I had to concentrate to give Chi'gandir something other than holding me down here to think about.

  I summoned my tsincaat.

  My fist locked over Chi'gandir's half-frozen hand and crushed it to the tsincaat's hilt even before I realized he'd broken off his spell to work another. Chi'gandir's eyes grew wide as terror gripped him. Bubbles poured from his mouth as he tried to speak a spell. The silver-white spheres raced to the surface like sacrificial smoke rising to the heavens. The sorcerer's right hand gestured fra
ntically, but his soaked robe just thrashed and tangled around it in a lethargic mockery of his urgency.

  I drew my ryqril and drove it into his chest. Blood tinted the bubbles that escaped from the wound. Even though my inflamed lungs urged me to abandon him and swim for the surface, I stabbed him twice more and let him go only when confident I'd killed him.

  I tugged the tsincaat from his belt, resheathed my blades, and struck for the surface. My lungs blazed with an ache for fresh air, forcing me to fight the reflex to suck just anything into my lungs. Part of me knew the water would quench the fire in my chest, and another welcomed any surcease from that agony. I tried to ignore all of that and worked at reaching the surface as quickly as possible.

  Chi'gandir's scarlet bubbles lazily drifted past me. The surface looked so far away. Everything darkened, including the shafts of sunlight striking down into the brown water. Odd motes of light and color shimmered before me, but I could not touch them. I stretched for the surface, up there, miles beyond my outstretched fingers, and tried to grab it. My hands closed on nothing and I knew I had lost.

  I took my last look at the surface. My right hand still clawed for it. The wavering, dimming sunlight bleached my flesh and let me see it as those who fished me from the river would see it three or four days hence.

  Water choked my throat as my vision faded. Even as I swallowed the river and it swallowed me, a jet of bubbles lanced down from the dry world and a foolish spark of hope blossomed in a barren, dying mind.

  * * *

  I awoke with a start and immediately started to cough. I rolled myself to the left with a strong push off the log wall with my right hand, and vomited into the basin set on the floor at the bunk's edge. I retched twice more and managed, by begging it weakly, to convince my body nothing more could come up from my empty stomach. Exhausted, I rolled back, closed my eyes, and lay there trying to imagine how I'd escaped the river.

  I felt a cool cloth on my forehead. "Marana?" I opened my eyes and saw a woman I did not recognize sitting on the edge of my bunk.