We Live Inside Your Eyes

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  “You were warned not to go out there.”

  “Nderin knows a path. In the dark the Dead couldn’t see us. And there are not nearly as many as before. You’ve heard the talk. There’s rumors they might be going away.”

  “Talk is all that is and you’re a fool to listen to it. Last time our people made benevolent assumptions, we ended up as slaves. Guessing at the patterns of the Restless is a good way to get yourself killed, or worse.”

  “The path is safe.”

  “Safe is not a word anyone gets to use anymore, Admir.”

  He wasn’t listening, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “We only saw a few dozen of them, and the garden, it’s hidden among the dead trees.”

  “What kind of garden?”

  “You’ll have to come see.”

  “You’re a bigger imbecile than I thought if you think I’m going to go wandering out there in the dark to see some flowers.”

  “They’re not flowers, though. That’s the thing.”

  I lay down and roll away from him, close my eyes though I know he has ruined the notion of rest for me for another night. “Get some sleep. You have horseshit to shovel in the morning.”

  He sighs his frustration, puts a hand on my shoulder. “Please.”

  “I’ll break your nose for you if you don’t go to bed, Admir.”

  A grunt and he moves away, retreating to his cot, where, like the child I know him to be, he pouts and huffs until mercifully his dreams take him back to battlefields he can hardly recall.

  In that, we are birds of a feather.

  ✽✽✽

  For the second time in as many hours I am dragged from sleep. Incensed, I am instantly ready to make good on my threat to shatter the cartilage in my idiot brother’s nose, but upon opening my eyes to the first harsh strains of daylight through the rents in the stable roof, it is not Admir that stands over my cot, but Uril the Butcher. I know by the look on his long haggard face that there’s trouble. Silently, I rise and get dressed, sparing a moment to sit on the edge of my cot, his presence like a thrummed violin beside me. My back aches, muscles sore.

  “How long?” I ask him, lacing up my boots.

  “Since last night.”

  “We should leave them to whatever fate befell them.”

  Uril, never a man to waste a word, merely nods in acknowledgment, but it’s a redundant gesture. The fact that he’s here and I am getting dressed means we’ve already made the decision to go after our fool kin. And I know why. Loyalty to one another, no matter how misguided, is all we have left, and our numbers are hardly so impressive we can afford to see them reduced, though the fact that Admir and Nderin have been gone since midnight does not augur well for their chances of survival.

  To say nothing of our own.

  I rise and look at Uril’s shabby armor, the boiled leather so inadequate for his bulk it makes it difficult for him to breathe. I have the opposite problem with my own. These past few months, as food has become scarcer, I have lost weight and my armor hangs loose, reducing its efficacy. Soon it’ll be an instrument of music, not war.

  “We should speak to Behar.”

  Uril gives a single shake of his head and pats his belly, which tells me he has already anticipated the request and taken care of it. Which is wise. The less time we waste engaged in noxious verbal jousting with one of the Nightcoats, the better. As we are not permitted blades, we have, on our infrequent excursions beyond the wall, been forced to seek the aid of Karzhaddi and his thugs. Such arrangements are frequently unpleasant, costly, and best avoided, but one might say the same of death, which is, as any fool knows, the likely result of venturing outside unarmed.

  Most of our brethren sleep on around us, as they will continue to do until the house master or his emissary comes and assigns them their tasks for the day. I am still in Dhimiter’s service, but since his health has started to fail (at an alarming rate), he has been much less vigilant in keeping us in line. If we are still slaves, it is to our own memories and shame, and not because Dhimiter is in any way a governing force. He exits his house less and less these days, and on the rare occasions in which he is visible in daylight, his skin has a papery, translucent look. One wonders how long it will be before Rasuk and his master in the Undertaking come for him. Dhimiter has never been unkind, nor will he be missed. That he has any dominion at all (that anyone has) is an affront that will never be forgiven, only avenged when the wheel turns again.

  We head outside into the morning sun, the smell of fresh cut grass a sensory illusion of serenity. It is nothing more than the scent of the lamps, which burn only at night for regulated hours, but permeate the day in the Downs.

  Uril bows his head and does his best to ignore the curious looks of the helpless. Hollow-eyed wraiths watch us with envy only because we have not fallen quite so low. Filth runs in clotted brown rivers down the streets and there is waste everywhere. If it cannot be eaten, it lays discarded alongside those who have been discarded themselves. Once-proud people, thieves, respected politicians, murderers, valiant warriors—all have been made the same by poverty or punishment, and all of them reek of horror. Human, elf, dwarf, and ghûl, no matter what the race, they seem to gather closer together with each passing day despite having nothing to say, as if wretchedness wishes to stitch them together into one tragic tapestry.

  Or as if they are becoming a single sentient entity out of fear of what’s coming.

  The Outer City stinks of death and decay. The perpetual presence of crows overhead, sometimes almost thick enough to block out the sun, fills me with foreboding. At least today we are spared the horrible sounds of the Dead beyond the wall. All is curiously quiet out there, but I am hardly encouraged by the silence. There was little noise the day my father opened the gates to our oblivion, either. I am reminded of this as Uril and I stand before them and the sentries go about facilitating our egress. There are others here—Foresters, farmers, and fools among them—eager to be the ones who return from their adventures with food and supplies... the currency of respect. They will fail, of course. There is nothing out there for anyone, anymore. I suspect even the Dead know that now, know that they’ve won, and that all they need to do is wait it out and we will join their ranks from the inside. Maybe that’s why they’ve been so quiet.

  A watchman atop the tower gives the all-clear. I hear one of the human sentinels mutter something about “a few less mouths to feed.” Cranks turn, gears grind with a ferocious shriek, rust flakes off the cogs, and the chains rattle to life. The doors open, a wooden mouth yawning wide, bathing us in carrion breath. Out here the crows spot the landscape like black marks indicating the location of the fallen. And they are everywhere, some felled by the sentries, others the bodies of misfortunates exiled as punishment for crimes against the Magisterium.

  Inside the wall are farms, houses, homes, as close to an ordinary existence as one can expect in the hell the world has become. There are also dungeons, sewers, tunnels, courts. But out here, there is nothing but dead earth, the grass trampled flat, the clay poisoned by the corrupted remains of the Restless. Fires razed the woods and the trees were twisted and stunted when they returned to life. It is a lifeless landscape, perpetually covered in an omnipresent mist that ebbs and flows like the ghost of a forgotten sea.

  “Move along,” barks one of the sentries, an unmistakable note of glee in his voice, and when I close my eyes, I imagine slipping the blade Ulric passed me up under his helmet and slicing his throat. It’s a brief thought, but the imagined scent of fresh blood, the heat of it coursing over my fingers, stirs my loins.

  And then we are outside, two dozen of us in all, and the gate slams shut with a finality that vibrates through my bones.

  As one, wordlessly, we start to walk.

  ✽✽✽

  We hunted these lands once, brought animals down with unmatched skill and reveled in the kill with our brethren. Carcasses were dragged or carried over the shoulder home to our kingdom for ribald celebrations that wo
uld last until the sun rose, sometimes longer. The following day the streets would be populated by women and children who looked upon us adoringly (or with good-humored pity), as the hangover forced us to seek out the cure. All of that is gone now, stolen from us in a moment, and that world is nothing more than a thing of old stories and wistful memory. Our home is a prison, the streets crowded with wretches who no more recognize our worth than they do their own. And out here, our once-fair land reeks, the foul breeze like a diseased giant blowing upon his meal before devouring it.

  All the animals are gone, either run to safer territory or wiped out entirely, for when the Dead could not get at us, they took what they could. We have even seen them eating clay, and each other.

  We walk for an hour before stopping to rest, midway between home and the sprawling woods in which I spent the greater part of my childhood. Back when fighting the horde seemed like a sound strategy, we lit those woods aflame, watched it burn, the conflagration like the whole world burning as the Restless, who had been using it as a corridor, were cooked. Most considered it a victory, but for months I felt a hard knot of sadness in my throat at the thought of what we had done, of the beauty we had destroyed. Long before I learned to hunt, the woods had been my haven, a magical hiding place, a kingdom unto itself. There I learned to use my imagination to conjure up impossible monsters; I conquered them all like the mighty warrior I promised myself I would someday become. And I did, only to find myself shoulder-to-shoulder with my brothers as we razed that Place of Dreams. Slavery, sickness, grief... nothing has since eclipsed that loss for me. All of us have the day we knew our world was dead. That was mine.

  Ever since, I have become a ghost in a land of ash.

  As I sit upon a rock gnawing on a piece of stale bread and looking up at the jaundiced clouds, Uril taps a knuckle against my shoulder. I look up at him, a stone-faced monolith in armor, and he nods at something behind me, in the direction of the woods. The bread is like a stone that lodges in my throat as I rise.

  Through the phalanx of blackened stems that is all that remains of the woods, one of the Restless comes, cerulean eyes like dull stars trapped in the black hole of its skull. It is horribly emaciated, practically indistinguishable from the spindly arachnidan trunks of the trees through which it moves with incongruous grace. And although nothing but vellum stretched tight over bones, it has somehow found the ability to smile.

  I draw my dagger, but Uril stays my hand. There is a light in his eyes that I know all too well, and without speaking, his words are clear: Allow me this one. There will be more.

  Once the dead thing has been dispatched, the blue light in its eyes remaining lit though its head has been removed, we stand in silence for a moment. At length, spurned by the frustration of inactivity, the quiet is broken as the Foresters take their own path, bound for the hills to the east and to land they hope has been neglected by the attention of the desperate Dead. There are fourteen of them. Only luck will preserve that number when they return. On each of their faces is acknowledgment of this fact. On most, the fear is tempered by apathy. We have lived long enough. We bid them safe passage with unspoken blessings, then watch as another, smaller group heads off to the west and to the plains. I trust no one in this group. They are dwarves but have managed the admittedly enviable task of forgetting where they came from. If they are slaves, the Nightcoats hold the deed, and as such, the nature of their mission outside the walls will go unknown by all but those within the cabal.

  Which leaves only four: me, Uril, and the two young dwarves, Tarek and Veli, who seem to have ventured outside the gate simply for the fun of it, or as a break from the misery that exists within. For them, we have little patience. It is the foolishness of youth that has brought us here, after all. As Uril heads straight on through the woods, I turn to look at Veli, the younger of the two, as he tussles with his friend.

  “You.”

  He stops dead as if I have slapped him. I have always been intimidating in aspect, at least among my own kind, but these days the black hate that exists in my skull has made oil of my eyes. I have seen them reflected in glass and it frightens even me.

  “Yes?”

  “You were a fool to come,” I tell him, and then glance at Tarek. “Both of you. And you are not our charges. If you should fall behind or fall prey to another, we will leave you, so you have a choice: stay close or head home. Do you have weapons?”

  Veli produces a sharpened stick.

  Tarek brandishes a long thin needle, no doubt stolen from his mother’s knitting basket.

  I can see by their faces that until this moment, they believed themselves aptly armed, which they are if they also continue in the belief that the Dead have receded, a belief in my soul I know is wrong. The stench of them fills my nose, carried to me on a breeze that has come from darker places.

  The boys can see by my face that they have made a mistake.

  Tarek stares at his feet.

  Veli clears his throat. “We will stay close, Olta. We will watch your back.”

  For this, he earns more respect from me than I let show. Weaker men would have run. I turn and join Uril, who has just entered the woods like a knife through the ribcage of some enormous beast.

  ✽✽✽

  It is not the world of my childhood within those blackened bones, but the world as it is now: a graveyard. Death and old smoke cloy my nostrils as I follow Uril’s lead through the charred stalks of the trees. The ground beneath our feet is thick and loamy but crunches here and there as burnt wood and bark are driven further into the earth. A bluish haze hangs in the air, as if the last fog got caught in the maze. A brief glance over my shoulder shows the boys following silently, the color drained from them by my words and the mist both. Their faces have hardened now, annoyed perhaps that they allowed themselves to forget their nobility, their pride, the instinct that should govern everything to keep them alive. But they are young and part of a new generation that no amount of teaching can make whole. Those days are gone. Assuming they live to grow older, they will be pretenders, shadows of what our race once was and can never be again.

  A sudden burst of noise and my head snaps back around, my body tensing into a defensive posture, blade extended, breath held. I look up. The sickly clouds are momentarily eclipsed by a multitude of crows as they screech ahead of us, bound for whatever lies ahead. Their numbers seem endless, the cacophony the only sound in the world.

  What do you know? I ask them. What do you see? Would that we could harness their flight, their sight, their wisdom, then perhaps we might stand a chance in the war to come. As it stands, we are merely waiting for the inevitable end.

  It takes minutes, hours, weeks, for the last stragglers to pass over our stilled quartet. The noise recedes. Even still, I listen, for the crows are omens and it will do us well to measure the distance it takes them to reach where they’re going, to reach the instruments of our doom. That there is something out there is not in question, only where it is and how long it will take to reach us, to reach Elldimek.

  I straighten, look back at the boys and note that the mist has thickened into a fog around us. “Come.”

  They narrow the gap between us in an instant and look up at me breathlessly, awaiting my command. In Tarek’s eyes I see the slightest spark of defiance and bitterness. It is a quality I admire. If he can learn to harness it, make a fire from all those unruly sparks, there might be hope for him, yet.

  “Stay close but keep an eye on our backs. I’d rather not have any surprises.”

  As one the boys nod, Veli’s gaze lingering a moment longer than necessary before he moves away, as if he was trying to read something in my face. He won’t, of course. The people who might have been able to divine meaning from my eyes are long since buried. At the thought, I touch the spot on my breastplate where my wife’s silver ring used to hang from a cord around my neck. It is, like so many things, gone now, adorning the finger of another who knows nothing of our love or the anguish which stains that ri
ng. I traded it to avoid starving, to keep death away a moment longer, as I couldn’t keep it from her. Maybe if the balance turns again, I’ll have an opportunity to find it.

  Such notions exist as fragile comforts in the moments before sleep.

  For the first time since embarking on this fool’s errand, I think of my brother. I have avoided it until now because with the summoning of his face comes awareness of his death. He is a warrior, yes, but a poor one, and I can only imagine, based on the excitement that limned his tongue last night, that battle was the furthest thing from his mind. There is a chance, of course, that he ventured out here and encountered nothing, but there’s not a part of me that believes it. Out here is a hell in waiting.

  I expect to find him dead, torn to pieces, or to not find him at all. There was a time when the absence of a body to bury would have haunted me. Not so any more. And should I find him dead, will I mourn his loss? Some part of me will, yes, as any man would lament the taking of kin, but things have changed too much for me to care as I should. He is little more than another body now, and one that has become a burden. The cruelest part of me anticipates the relief I will feel when I confirm he’s gone, for so often it is akin to having a child in my care. With the world on the verge of change once more, I need to be unencumbered.

  Ahead, Uril stops and leans forward. He has spotted something in the murky soup between the dead trees. At my approach, he raises a hand and I cease moving. Behind me, I hear the boys do the same. Then I realize my mistake. Not boys. Boy.

  I start to turn, and a crow explodes toward me from somewhere between the trees to my left. It does not feel like a merry coincidence; it feels intentional, part of a design that will have many parts and leave me in a similar state when it ends. I raise an arm over my face as the crow skims close enough for me to feel the displaced air as he caws and swoops upward. The crows are their familiars. Then he is gone, his darkness stitched back into the shadows that birthed him and I am turning again, scanning the graveyard of bones for the boys and finding only one.