by Martha Wells
I forgot to sweep out the shed. But he had done it before he went to bed, surely they would have seen it this morning. He gritted his teeth, remembering Castor kicking him out of bed last night, saying he didn’t sleep there anymore. He knew. Amari and the other girls hadn’t known, except for Niale, but Castor had. He knew now that Castor hadn’t been lying when he had said Niale had taken Ilias’ blanket. It was part of making it look like he had never existed.
Maybe Ilias hadn’t done as well at the sheep-shearing as he had thought. Maybe it had been some kind of test that he had failed without knowing it. But he didn’t see how that was possible. He had done well for his size, as good as Castor who was bigger and older. It must have been something else. He pushed off from the tree, wincing as he stepped on a splintered branch.
He walked a long time, long after the night deepened and he could only glimpse patches of moonlight through the branches, until the whole world was darkness and rustling leaves and there had never been anything else. His legs ached and his feet hurt from stumbling on pine cones and hidden rocks. Everything he had ever been punished for as far back as he could remember came back to him in painful detail, but none of it seemed bad enough for this. Maybe they just wanted to scare him.
He barely recognized the stream when he heard it, didn’t realize it was there until he tripped on a root and fell on the muddy bank. He crawled down to it, put both hands in the icy cold water and drank.
The water set heavily in his stomach when he pushed himself up and wiped his mouth. He was shaking with weariness but he didn’t want to sleep here. If I die here no one will find my body and do the rites. He didn’t want to be a shade and he didn’t know how long it would take him to die. He struggled to his feet, waded across the cold stream, and kept walking.
Some long time later he blinked, startled to find himself lying on cold hard-packed dirt. He pushed himself up, yawning. It was still night, but a little more moonlight fell through the leafy branches above, enough to see he had found the road. He must have just collapsed on it and fallen asleep. I guess I wasn’t dying, he thought in relief. He rubbed his gritty eyes. His stomach felt completely hollow, like the inside of a drinking gourd, sloshing with the water he had drunk. He didn’t feel like he was dying, except maybe in his feet. Maybe the only reason he had thought he was dying at all was that children left out in the hill place always died.
He managed to stand, stumbling and wincing. The dirt wasn’t much easier to walk on and the openness of the road made him feel exposed, as if things were watching him in the dark that hadn’t been able to see him among the trees. He limped forward, biting his lip at each step, trying to remember how far they had come before his father had turned off the road.
Maybe this was the test itself. Maybe if he found his way back tonight that would prove he was good enough to stay. But Castor’s words kept coming back to him; there was a finality there that chilled him more than the cold dirt and the night breeze. His mother had always loved the girls best, but he had always thought he was the favored boy. Everyone always said he was prettier than Castor, that he looked more like his father Timeron, and it had always been good for extra treats on festival days. If he had known, if he had had any warning at all, he could have tried harder to be good.
After a long painful time of limping on more or less level ground, Ilias found himself toiling up a hill. Maybe things just felt different in the dark, but he didn’t remember a grade this steep. The road was rough here too, and he kept stumbling into holes. Rubbing an aching knee, he stopped, coming to a reluctant realization: there was no hill like this on the road home. The wagon would have trouble on this slope and he knew he would have remembered it distinctly.
Ilias gritted his teeth against a sob and wiped his grimy face on his sleeve, confronting two thoughts: This is the wrong way and even if you find your way home, they could just take you right back to the hill. He shook the second one off, telling himself, no, it’s just a test. He had to figure out what he had done and find a way to make it right. And none of that mattered if he didn’t figure out where he was.
He had started out at the right point and had crossed the stream, but he must have veered off a straight path in the forest. He didn’t even know if this was the right road. It might not lead to someone’s farm at all, it might lead right out of Cineth’s territory altogether.
Sudden fear cramped his stomach as he wondered if he had gone beyond the safety of the god’s bounds, if this was a place where wizards and curselings roamed. He turned back and stopped again, staring. In the darkness not too far distant, he saw a flicker of firelight. In another heartbeat it was gone.
Ilias took a couple of steps forward, squinting hard into the dark, his heart pounding. He could just see a faint glow. It could be home, a thought whispered, but he knew in his gut it wasn’t. But it had to be a torch or a lamp in a house, mostly blocked by trees or a fold of rock. Then the wind brought him a snatch of sound, hoofbeats on packed dirt.
Limping and stumbling, he ran back down the road. He found the edge of it by falling into a ravine and rolling through brambles. He scrabbled to his feet, trying to keep going straight and hoping he wasn’t doing as badly at it as he had coming through the upper forest. He blundered into rocks, trees, up another small rise and stumbled to a halt.
Spread out below, cupped in the darkness of a small valley, was a big farmstead. Oil-lamps hanging in the portico lit the shadowy outlines of a big flat-roofed two-story stone house. More torches and lamps let him catch glimpses of outbuildings, herd pens, grapevines, orchards, and a large garden. Several men and women were standing around in the yard talking, the wind bringing him snatches of their voices. His heart squeezed with relief and he took a sharp breath, wiping his nose on his sleeve. It wasn’t home, and it wasn’t a near neighbor, though he might not be able to recognize the place in the dark. I did it. He hadn’t found his home, but he had found somebody’s home, and it had to count for something.
Ilias felt his way down the hill, his hands skimming the lush grass. Moving parallel to the house, he finally tripped over a rock and found the edge of a rough cart track that must lead down to the farmyard. He padded down it, his feet throbbing with every step. The track curved around the hill, leveling out as it approached the large dirt yard. He could hear the horses more clearly now, he just wasn’t certain where they were.
“What’s that?” someone shouted.
Still some distance from the torchlit yard, Ilias stopped, turning back as he heard hoofbeats. He saw horses and riders, dark frightening shapes, and backed hastily away.
An unfamiliar voice called out, “A curseling!”
Where? Ilias thought, stumbling and looking around in alarm. He flinched away from a form that seemed to materialize right out of the dark. “I’ll tell you when there’s a curseling, you idiot.” The speaker was a sour-voiced man, suddenly standing over him.
“What is it, Menander?” another man asked. His voice was deep and calm, and the confusion seemed to lessen when he spoke. Ilias saw a form swing down from the nearest horse, tossing the reins to another shadow shape. He could smell horse sweat and leather.
“It’s a boy.” The sour-voiced man sat on his heels to face him. People came toward them from the farmyard, one man carrying a torch. As the light fell on them Ilias blinked sweat and dirt out of his eyes to see that Menander was a man older than his father, inland Syprian, with light-colored hair braided back in a long queue. “Now who are you?”
“Ilias.” He heard his own voice sound raspy from the dust of the road. He stared at the sword hilt poking up above the man’s shoulder, wishing he could touch it. It was carved with a ram’s head, the scrolled horns delicately detailed.
“He’s not from Andrien village, and there’s no other farms near here.” That was the deep-voiced man, standing beside them now. Startled, Ilias looked up to recognize the man he had seen at the market days ago, Ranior, who had been lawgiver. The man with the boy Chosen Vessel. He w
as wearing a sword too, its hilt carved like a gull’s wing. The men in Finan House never wore their swords, and Ilias desperately wanted a closer look at these. “No curses?” Ranior asked, frowning slightly.
“Not a one.” Menander reached down to touch one of Ilias’ feet, frowning at the bloody dirt that came away on fingers. Curses? Ilias thought, baffled, then realized with a shock that this must be the Menander, the Uplands’ Chosen Vessel, who was watching over Cineth now that Livia was dead. “You’ve walked a long way, haven’t you?”
Ilias wasn’t sure how to answer that question, so he kept silent. Menander didn’t press, asking instead, “Are you alone out here?”
That one he could answer. Ilias nodded. “I was on the road and I saw the light from the house.”
“Where did you come from, son?” Ranior asked quietly.
“I--” Ilias looked up into the man’s kind face and for a moment couldn’t speak. This morning he would have told them the truth without a heartbeat’s hesitation. He had never been a liar, except to Castor and his sisters and cousins. He knew the difference between lying to annoy a sibling or to get an extra helping of dinner and a serious lie. But that was this morning, and this day had made it all different. “I got lost,” he finished. “My father said we’d go to the market, but I got separated from him and I’ve been trying to get home. But I took the wrong way through the forest and missed the path, and I think it was the wrong road. I don’t know where I am.”
He must have sounded every bit as miserable as he was, because no one questioned it. Menander lifted his brows and pushed to his feet. Ranior leaned down and scooped Ilias up, carrying him toward the house.
The yard was a confusion of horses and people and torchlight. Ilias winced away from it, relieved when Ranior carried him up the steps and into a lamplit entry hall. Ilias caught a glimpse of double doors opening into the atrium and dull red walls. The floor was a mosaic of a seascape with galleys sailing among forested islands. Ranior carried him through to another room, past two men who seemed to be guarding the door.
This room had dark blue walls, with border paintings of olive and laurel leaves. Bowl-shaped oil lamps, smelling sweetly of good olive oil, lit the room. There was an older girl there, the girl Ilias had seen with Ranior in Cineth, sitting on a cushioned bench with her legs curled up. She looked up, staring in surprise as Ranior deposited Ilias next to her. “Who’s this?” She wore a sleeveless yellow shirt that was too big for her and a pair of doeskin pants with grass stains on the knees. The kind of clothes girls and women wore to ride or take sheep to market or sail on a boat, not that the women in Ilias’ house ever did those things.
“We found him on the wagon track, lost,” Ranior told her, already heading out of the room again. “Take care of him for me, Irissa.” He stopped to ask the two guards, “Where’s Treian?”
“He’s taking a look around the atrium,” one told him. He had a badly scarred face. The other man was missing his right arm below the elbow. They both looked like fishers or gleaners, wearing shabby sun-faded shirts and the short kilts most people wore on small boats, their only ornaments made of wood or shell. Except they had swords across their backs, soldiers’ swords, plain unornamented steel, with leather wrapped around the hilts. The man hesitated, watching Ranior worriedly. “They’re saying it’s the one that got Livia. Is that true?”
Ranior paused, his face set, harshly etched in the candlelight. “I don’t know, Cylides. Menander hasn’t had a good look at him yet.”
Ranior’s bootsteps sounded loud on the tiles as he went back toward the front entrance. Irissa was looking at Ilias in confusion. Her brown hair was held back in frazzled braids and she wore copper rings in her ears. With a bewildered expression, she asked, “Did the wizard try to steal you?”
“No.” Ilias stared at her, baffled. He looked at the two men, who were staring watchfully out the door. Past them, Ilias could see the other room was lit with more bowl-shaped oil lamps, and had dining couches and a low table. A wide doorway, banded by a couple of painted columns, opened out onto the atrium. The one called Cylides glanced at him, and the lamplight caught the gleam of silver among the scarring on his cheek. Ilias looked at Irissa again. “There... There can’t be a wizard here.” There were people here, and lights, and wizards were only in dark places, the deep forest, the hills. But he remembered the story about the isolated village and felt a chill settle in his stomach. But she had to be lying, the way Castor lied.
“There is one here. It’s trying to kill my brother.” Irissa took one of his feet, wincing in sympathy. Ilias was distracted by how awful they looked in the lamplight, all dirt and blood. “You’ve been walking barefoot on the road? How far?”
“Ow,” Ilias told her so she would be careful, though she hadn’t hurt him yet. He was wary of older girls on principle, knowing that some could be friends like Amari, some indifferent, and others outright enemies. “I don’t know, I’m lost. There’s a real wizard, not a made-up one?”
“Very real.” Irissa pushed to her feet, biting her lip as she looked around the room. “I don’t have any water or bandages, and we’re not supposed to leave the room. Does it hurt very badly?”
“No,” he told her, still not sure she was telling the truth about the wizard. For all the times he and Castor had seen curselings in shadows, part of him had known it was just pretend. But his older sisters and cousins usually hadn’t bothered to lie to him, except when Niale told him his mother hated him.
“We can send for water when Treian comes back,” the man with one arm told her, still keeping his eyes on the torchlit atrium.
There was a red-glazed warming jar on the hearth, with a set of matching cups. Irissa dipped a cupful out of the jar and brought it to Ilias. At the smell of warm wine mixed with honey and water, Ilias forgot everything else while he gulped it down. He was thirsty and this was a treat he usually only got when he was sick. It soothed his throat and warmed his stomach and for a moment all he wanted to do was lie down on the cushions and sleep. Irissa brought him another cup before he could ask. She told him, “I’m Irissa, and that’s Cylides and Macritus. They’re from Andrien village. What’s your name? Do we know your family?”
“Ilias. I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He didn’t think that was a lie. He had never been taken to visit this house as far as he could remember, and he had never seen his father talk to Ranior in the market. He drained the second cup and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, saying hurriedly, “How can there be a wizard here? Is it really after your brother?” He wasn’t sure why he was reluctant to give her his family name, he just knew he wanted to delay the moment as long as possible. It would mean things would change, and right now this room felt safe, wizard or not. He knew there were two worlds now, one where people took care of you and one where they didn’t. Having gotten back into the first one, he meant to stay in it as long as possible.
Irissa’s brow furrowed as she looked at the couch on the other side of the room. “Giliead is the next Chosen Vessel. Didn’t you know that?”
Ilias looked blankly at the other couch and realized the lumpy blankets piled there were actually covering another boy. He could see tufts of brown hair sticking up past the reds and golds of the dyed wool. “I knew that,” he said automatically. Maybe he hadn’t believed it until just now.
At the doorway, Macritus, the man with the missing arm, shifted impatiently. “What’s he doing?” he said, sounding as if he was mostly talking to himself. “Treian?” he called softly.
A faint sound pulled Ilias’ attention back to the other couch. Giliead was awake and sitting up, regarding him with grave blue eyes. He was just a boy, a little younger than Ilias, with wavy brown hair coming out of his braids and a mark on his cheek from a fold in the pillow. “Treian’s not there,” Giliead said, blinking sleepily at Irissa.
“He’s supposed to be.” Irissa glanced back at him impatiently, but Ilias thought she was more worried than annoyed. “Macritus, could you--”
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“Don’t.” Giliead’s voice was suddenly urgent. He shifted, sitting up on his knees, pushing the blanket down. “He’s out there, ‘Rissa.”
Macritus was still looking out into the other room and the atrium, frowning, but Cylides turned to look at Giliead, asking, “What do you see, Gil?”
Between one heartbeat and the next, the doorway filled with a solid darkness, the cold breath of death. Ilias yelped, scrambling back and tumbling off the couch, staring in frightened incomprehension. Irissa fell over the couch as the darkness rolled over Cylides and Macritus, even as the two men shouted in alarm and stumbled backward.
The darkness struck Ilias and knocked him backward, and the room went black. He lay on the tile floor, blind, cold and numb, so shocked he couldn’t even feel terror. It was like standing in the surf on the beach and being struck by a sudden powerful wave; the darkness took his breath just the way the foamy water would have. After another moment it passed and he could see the blue-painted ceiling again, the firelight reflecting off it as if nothing had happened.
Dizzy and sick, Ilias rolled over and saw a strange man standing in the room. He was young, dark hair gathered in a queue, his jaw set, his eyes grimly determined. His clothes were fine, a dark green sleeveless shirt and pants, boots and a broad leather belt stamped with blue and gold designs, silver rings in his ears. There was blood on his hands, staining a copper and leather wristband, as if he had been butchering meat.
Cylides and Macritus lay tumbled on the floor, unmoving, and Irissa was sprawled on the couch, her expression dazed, shaking her head uncertainly. Ilias realized suddenly that the darkness had been exactly like a sea wave; it had struck harder at the people who had been standing up. He had been closer to the floor and it had mostly rolled right over him.