by Ben Peek
5.
Afterward, after the baker’s apprentice had guided her to the chair, Jaerc poured her a drink and sat with her until she had regained her composure.
Then he left. A part of him, Ayae knew, was older and wiser than her. She sat on her couch in the warmth of two suns—the fading morning sun and rising midday sun—and berated herself for the tears. She knew she was stronger than this. She had begun with nothing in the orphanage. Yes, she scratched at the burning on the back of her left arm when, later, she stood before her bed and contemplated the empty leather pack. Yes, her partner had left her. Yes, Orlan had left her. They were both different forms of abandonment, but leaving would change neither.
She passed beneath the large tree outside, the light of the two suns shining through the cut-back canopy that webbed itself in dark green across the houses around her. She would return to the Keep, to Fo and Bau and yes, she admitted as she passed a family pushing a cart full of green and yellow and red produce, to Lady Wagan. It will not be long until a kindness is said. She would apologize for her behavior the night before and she would learn as much about herself as she could about the two Keepers.
At the door, she was greeted by Bau, who opened it just before she approached. “Ah,” he said, the first word a long breath. “I was right. You did return.”
“You should make prophecies,” she replied, her tone hiding the rapid beat of her heart.
“I have tried,” he replied, his smile easy with practice. “When I was young, maybe fifty, sixty years of age, I spent six months attempting to write the future down. I would predict weather, trade, births and deaths. I had a very nice quill and expensive vellum.”
“But no luck?”
“No,” he admitted. “I thought it might be a sign of divinity, should I be able to do so. That I was somehow shaping the world without my conscious knowledge.”
Crossing her arms, rubbing at the burning on her left forearm, Ayae said, “I see this failure did not stop you from believing.”
A slight twist entered his smile. “I am to learn patience with you, it appears. But yes, you are right. It did bother me. It suggested that there was no fate, no design at work around us, no reason for the abilities that we had. The answer suggested that we were free to do as we please. In the Enclave in particular, there was a lot of debate about it.”
“And?”
“And?” The twist deepened. “There is no answer. That is the reason for the debate.” Before she could reply, he pulled the door behind him, and walked past her. “Enough of that. We have work to do.”
“What about Fo?”
“Let him sleep,” Bau replied. “He is not pleasant after an evening of failed experiments.”
“Failed?”
“You’re all questions today, aren’t you?”
Opening the door to the Keep, he motioned for Ayae to follow. She considered repeating the question, but decided instead to wait. Ayae retraced her earlier steps with Bau, returning to the empty courtyard. Crossing the sparse ground, the Keeper led her through a small gate to the west and into another part of the estate. The grass grew thickly around a cobbled path that ended in a squat, brown-brick smithy with the stable roofs enclosing it like ribs across a heart. It was cold and gray, unused today.
She stopped. “What is your plan?”
“To set you on fire,” he replied easily and without stopping. “I shouldn’t worry, if I were you. You are in the company of the Healer.”
“Is that a joke?”
He laughed, but said, “No, I’m quite serious.”
“You’d better rethink your plan.”
Holding open the gate to the smithy, he turned to her. “You survived—”
“If you think,” she interrupted, her voice even, “that you can even touch me, then you should think again.”
Bau’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“Think again.”
“Don’t think like a mortal,” he said, as if he were talking to a child. “You cannot—”
“You will not burn me.” There was no give in her voice.
He moved the gate back and forth, a touch irritated, until he finally said, “Let us see how you light a fire then, shall we?”
Pushing past him, Ayae stepped into the smithy. There were horses standing on either side of the building and not one of them paid attention to the new arrivals. The ground was covered in fresh sawdust that had become soggy and dark at the edges. It clung to the soles of her boots as she walked to the tool rack and picked up a shovel. She drove the shovel into the coal beside the furnace, kicked the door open, and dropped it in there.
As she dug in for a second time, his hand closed around her wrist. “You should not play me for a fool, child,” he said softly.
She met his gaze. “I am not a child.”
His gaze flickered, fell to the floor. “No?”
To the pile of coal which was suddenly, and without explanation, on fire.
6.
As if to spite Bueralan, the job in Ille dragged out and turned sour.
He remembered standing outside an empty brick and wood farmhouse next to Aerala, the afternoon’s sun high in the empty sky above. Inside, Liaya, Zean and Kae were moving through the building slowly, working through the traps that had been left within, in the hope that they—on the “tip” they had received anonymously—would run in and be killed. Now, they would comb the building for clues, for the pieces that they were missing in the identity and location of those who were in charge. “It was clumsy,” he said to the Aerala, following her gaze to the edge of the forested skyline. “I assume they did it to make us, to figure out who we had in hiding, but all they’ve done is give us something. It might not be much, but after two months, it is more than we had.”
“Silence would have been their best choice,” the dark-haired archer said. “They were close to starving us out on information before this. Another month like this and we would have no choice but to walk away, to leave Alden to his own fate. It would have been a failure on our part, but it would have been a clean one. Surely, whoever is organizing this must be young, must be someone who hasn’t yet learned patience—someone for who this means more than it does to us.”
“Someone emotionally invested?”
“Yes,” she said without pause, “someone just so.”
Two nights later, Bueralan met with Lord Alden to give his weekly report. He and Liaya had worked up a hypothesis of the number that opposed the lord, a month of math and estimates that he presented without the evidence of a confession, or sighting by his own people. Yet, he planned to maintain belief that Alden and his small army were outnumbered five to one. Even allowing for the difference in training, that left the Lord of Ille at a disadvantage. In his planned responses to the information, the saboteur had included the option of leaving, a choice that he was going to steer Alden toward before hiring mercenaries, if he could.
He wanted, as well, to pull in Deanic, Ruk and Elar. All three had filtered into the town and farms at the end of their first meeting, but little had come of it. Deanic had found nothing and Bueralan knew he wouldn’t last a second job. Ruk, working a whorehouse as security, had turned up a few men and women, but none led back to the center of the movement and he was of the opinion that the job had run dry. Only Elar had had some luck: he had reentered Ille on a mule, head shaved and a two-week beard grown, looking for a dead cousin—the irony of it now struck hard as Bueralan rode away from Mireea—and found himself working on farms. He felt that one of the farmhands lead back to the chain of the revolutions command, but he had not broken him yet. It was the closest any of them got to being in a position of power, but it did not change Bueralan’s opinion about the situation.
Lord Alden disagreed.
“It is one or two men at the heart of it, I am sure,” he said, sitting on the long leather couch that ran opposite the glass window of his office. “Disgruntled soldiers, a wayward child from across the river. I have given you names.”
“All of which have turned up nothing.”
“Like your hypothesis.” The lord lifted his left leg across his right. “Let me ask you, Captain, do you sympathize with these men and women who plot against me?”
A low sigh escaped Bueralan. “I do not take sides,” he said.
“Everyone takes sides, even if they shouldn’t.” Alden nodded to the window, to where a long garden of green, red, and yellow was kept. “Take my grounds keeper, for example. He has worked for me for close to twenty years but I doubt he would be upset if a rebellion took my head off. He may even cheer as the sword came down. He had a sister who had been caught stealing from here and I was forced to punish her for it.”
The woman had been flogged, her fingers cut off after, one each day until there were none left. Bueralan had heard the story.
“I can’t fault him for that,” Alden continued. “But if I were to die, he would lose the money that has paid for his fine house, the money by which he lives now, caring for his sister and her child. None of the men and women who behead me would concern themselves with his welfare afterward, a fact that may or may not escape his attention. He would have no work, no prospects and because he was still working for me when the rebellion broke my gates down, he would have very little chance to turn those fortunes around. But I have no doubt that still he sides with those men and women more than he sides with me, and I would be a poor man if I did not realize that. I would also, I hesitate to admit, have a much less beautiful garden if I did not understand it.”
“And your garden is quite beautiful,” Bueralan said. “But it does not change the fact that you have a much deeper and much better organized rebellion than you believe.”
“Whereas I believe, Captain, that you and yours lack the proper desire to see this through.” Alden rose slowly, his knees cracking as he did. “I have watched you and your team develop a dislike for me, for my cruelty, as it is popularly reported. If my gardener were in my place, I wonder, would he be different? I do not know and it does not matter—but it has led me to believe that there lacks a desire in Dark to finish this. Please, follow me.”
Alden led the saboteur out of his office and down a dark, warm hallway. The walk was not long, but had enough distance that by the time he approached the door, Bueralan had begun to suspect what was going to be revealed.
He was not wrong.
In the center of the room, on a low table covered in a dark cloth, lay Elar. The afternoon’s sun lay thickly across his still, wet form, while puddles of water pooled beneath him, laced with faint traces of red. Most of the blood, however, had already been drained out of him—drained through the cuts, punctures and amputations that had taken place.
“He washed up in the river this morning,” Alden said, closing the door behind Bueralan. “He was found by a farmer who brought him here.”
Elar’s right hand was gone, two fingers remained on his left, crooked like bent wheat. Tar had been used on the ends, burning the skin; from them, his arms and chest were mostly whole, marred by cuts and slashes, half a dozen holding lumps that had been stitched over. With his knife, the saboteur cut open the stitches and found small bags. Lord Alden, standing on the other side of Elar, informed him that they most probably held flesh-eating grubs, given the depth of the wounds when he lifted the cloth away. Following the flow of his body, Bueralan saw the mutilation of Elar’s genitals, the stitched cuts down his legs, the shattered kneecap and the amputated toes that ended in hard black tar.
Reaching up, he tilted the face—the face he knew, the face untouched but for the lines that spoke of his death—to him.
“You may dislike me as you feel fit, Captain,” Lord Alden said quietly. “But there are only villains in revolutions.”
7.
The Temple of Ger had no door.
It sat as it had the day before, half submerged in the lake with the water moving slowly around it, the red light filtering over it and illuminating the smooth walls. Zaifyr contemplated the sight while he stood on the shore next to the cold remains of the Quor’lo, untouched by any insect or animal since he and Bueralan had left. That was not a surprise: what was left after possession was always shunned and ignored by scavengers.
In comparison to the scavengers, Zaifyr had little knowledge of the temple before him. Most priests had turned to sacrifices, had turned to a poor understanding of blood magic, and Ger’s priests had been no different.
Stepping into the cool water, Zaifyr waded out to the temple, swimming the last few meters as the rock and dirt floor dropped away. His hands touched the smooth building, feeling the cool stone that, he imagined, would be a sandy color, if not awash with the rude light from above. But as he swam around the building gently, his searches above water, then beneath, he only proved what it was that he had thought as he stood on the shore: complete and without a break.
When he emerged from the water the haunt awaited him, having finally made its way down the rocks.
“Cold,” she whispered. “I am cold.”
He faced the temple.
Perhaps, he thought, the reason that there was no door was due to magic. The people who lived in the City of Ger had reached a violent end at the hand of the first Mireean people, but the light in the ceiling lent itself easily to the idea that someone in their community had had power.
“You’re old today,” he said to himself quietly. “Your head is in the past, too much time thinking about things you cannot change.”
“Old,” the haunt whispered.
Slowly, he turned to her.
“Old,” she repeated. “You are very old.”
After a moment—in which all his senses rebelled against him—he said, “So we both are. Do you remember here?”
“Yes.” The red from the ceiling mixed with her, leaving splotches of color throughout her body, wounds that would not dry. “It was the first temple in the Spine of Ger. People would travel throughout the world to it. None of the other temples were as well attended as this one, but the priests would only allow people in on the holiest of days. They were allowed to see Ger here, to see the burns that did not stop blackening, the water that poured from his mouth and the soil that ground against him and the wind. The wind that tore at him.”
Zaifyr frowned. “When was it sealed?”
“When the soldiers came.” The haunt stepped past him, her pale feet touching the water, the shadows of her falling like roots that sank deeply. “They did not care for Ger, they did not honor the people who had built a life in the caverns. Economics, greed: that was what drove their army into the mountains and began the slaughter of peaceful men and women and their children.”
“You are much too lucid to be born here,” Zaifyr said quietly. “Much too young for this war you talk of.”
The haunt stood silently over the water.
“You overplayed your hand,” he said.
Finally, the haunt of the woman who had possessed the Quor’lo whispered, “I have never before been so hungry.”
“It will only get worse.”
“I have faith.”
“You cannot see it,” he said, “but all around you are the dead, the souls of all the people who ever lived in these caves. There are so many that I cannot tell where an arm ends, where a foot begins, where the individual remains. There is no reason for faith.”
The haunt shook her head, the lines from her feet deep, but broken in the water’s reflection.
“If I could help you, I would,” he admitted, his voice not yet a whisper. “I would help all the dead if I could. I would continue their journey if I knew but how.”
“I feel him.”
“You do.” Zaifyr ran a hand through his wet hair. “I feel Ger too, but it is simply a trick of time. We do not share the same passing of it that they did.”
“Yours are the words of the faithless,” she said.
He did not reply.
“Faithless,” she repeated, her voice rising.
Still, he did not speak.
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“I can pass to him.”
“You cannot.”
“Lies!”
Turning, the haunt ran to the temple. The water showed no ripple as she leaped up, her body awash in red, a scarred, tragic figure that threw herself at the smooth wall—
—and burst across it.
Heavy of heart, the man who had left his charms in his hotel room and felt suddenly naked without them, eased himself onto the hard ground. It would take a while for the haunt to return to shape, to step from the water to the shore, and by then he would be ready to talk to her again. To draw from her what she knew about the temple. It was possible that this—the smooth shell around the building—had been put up by Ger, but Zaifyr doubted it. For the most part, the defenses of the gods were servants, immortal beings who had been created for the purpose of standing guard for eternity. By and large they were violent, held by oaths that could not be broken, longing for escape as much as they longed for entertainment, for a break in their endless service.
Mostly, Zaifyr knew, they were mad.
Like him, once.
8.
Though in hindsight it was obvious, Ayae was surprised when Bau theorized aloud that her ability to set the coal on fire and her survival in the shop were due to her loss of emotional control. She did not like what he said, nor the way he stared at the burning coal, nor how he turned the conversation to what god or element curled inside her. “Ger’s wards,” he said softly, stepping back from the fire before him. “The four elements—fire, earth, wind and water—that were chained to him, that were guided by his strength, his control.”