by Rj Barker
“Please, Merela, get up.”
Just leave me to die.
“Merela, get up!”
She knows that voice.
“Get up!”
She cannot. She has not the strength, and though it feels like life is everywhere she does not know how to take it and use it. Does not even know that she can. Not yet.
Then she feels it.
Surrounded by silence. A tiny, barely formed hand takes hers. It has no voice—not yet. No name—not yet. No sense of self—not yet. It is only life, pure life. And in that utter silence, without asking or offering, it passes all it is to her and that is the sharpest pain of all. Feeling the sacrifice, the end, the loss. The tiny almost-hand slipping away as it becomes nothing, gives her everything.
“Get up, Merela!”
She is pulled to her feet.
This is where the real pain begins.
Oh, my boys.
My boy.
This is where the real pain begins.
My boy.
This is a dream.
Chapter 8
Despite that we spent the day doing hard, physical work—moving rocks, painting walls and hauling up heavy wooden beds and unwieldy straw mattresses—I could not sleep when I finally lay down on my pallet. I tossed and turned, partly annoyed at how we had been treated but mostly because the souring underneath Ceadoc throbbed in my mind like a bad tooth in a jaw. Over the years, as I had come to terms, and learned to control, what was in me, I had started to need less and less sleep. What sleep I did get was generally deep and dreamless.
But not this night, and every little sound—every turn or snore or sigh of the soldiers I shared the room with—infuriated me. To make it worse Aydor slept next to me and his snoring was so loud it was like lying next to a great, growling beast about to attack. Eventually, I left the room to pace up and down the courtyard.
Outside the Low Tower I met Gusteffa. She sat on a stone, chewing the last meat off a bone.
“Girton,” she said, and tossed the bone aside.
“Gusteffa. You cannot sleep either?”
“I can always sleep.” She mimed falling to the side in a snooze then abruptly sat up again. “But you and your friend the king are much alike. He cannot sleep either, and so I do not.”
“We are hardly friends any more, Gusteffa.” She scrunched her face up into an exaggerated look of confused pity and patted the stone by her.
“Surely that is not true. Come, sit. The two of you have been through so much together.”
I sat by her.
“We have, but it is as if something stands between him and I—some barrier I cannot pass through. It has been difficult for a long time, but lately it seems even worse.”
“Ah, Girton.” She put her hand—small, like a child’s, like Feorwic’s—on my knee. “Do not despair, these things, they have a way of working themselves out.”
“I have hoped so, but I am not so sure any more.”
“He is in pain, Girton, remember that. I do my best with what medicines I have, but pain is wearing.”
“I know of pain,” I said, glancing at my club foot, ”but I think I only add to his, and since he became obsessed with the place, Ceadoc, he has been worse.”
“Ah, but all this?” She leaned in close to me, and with her other hand she waved at the massive walls around us. “It will soon be over, I am sure of it. Things will be different.”
I nodded.
“Aye, Gusteffa, life weighs on him, right enough.”
“It does. Life weighs heavy on him, and you can be quick to judge, Girton, you have a temper, aye?”
“Right enough. I will try not to judge him. I forget …”
“That it is hard to be a king?”
“Yes.”
“Well, mend your friendship if you can.” She hopped off the rock and gave me that smile she always gave, the one where I could never quite tell if she was mocking me or not, but such is dealing with jesters: it is always hard to see the face beneath the make-up. “Boros is about, Girton, he was looking for you, I think. I should return to the king.” See what respite I can bring him.”
I left Gusteffa and wandered off in search of Boros. A few of the highguard remained, standing either side of the closed portcullis. From outside I heard the occasional shout, or scream, from the shanty city. A steady hammering came from the smiths but I could not see who was working. I heard the tramp of footsteps but no one moved in the courtyard. At first I did not understand and then I realised I heard the guards along Ceadoc’s walls as they patrolled above. The walls ran not only around the front of the Low Tower and over the portcullis but also around the back. Apart from them, all was quiet, all was still.
I found Boros behind the hut where the smith was to set up, rubbing old soot into his sword blade.
“Boros?” He turned, a sparkle in his eye. “You cannot sleep either.”
“Pain is always my companion.” He gestured at his ruined face then looked up at the walls. “I do not think they put us here because there was nowhere else, or to insult us.” He glanced up at the wall.
“You think they put us here because it is an easy place to watch.”
He nodded.
“Or assault. Get enough troops with crossbows on those walls and we wouldn’t last long.”
I looked up again. The rear wall towered over the Low Tower and was filled with dark spaces for crossbows to shoot down from.
“You are right.”
“So I thought,” said Boros, “it may be best for someone to explore a little, see if there are other ways out of this place in case we need them.”
“Did Rufra ask you to do this?” Boros glanced away from me, back to the guards high on the wall.
“Not in so many words.”
“Then it would be best we don’t tell him, aye?”
“And we should not bother Hurdyn’s men with this either,” said Boros. “Those highguard have worked hard with us on the tower and escort duty would be a needless tax on their energy.”
So we set off, sliding through the deep shadows around the Low Tower until we found an unattended door and from there into the walls and body of Ceadoc. I felt the moment we crossed the threshold of the souring far beneath us and, again, I felt lost very quickly. Boros was less so. He led us confidently through tight corridors with low ceilings and up around spiral staircases. As we walked I noticed he made marks on a piece of parchment and on the walls.
“You came prepared,” I said.
“I try to be ready for any eventuality.” If this was true it was the first I had heard of it.
“So Rufra does know we do this?” I said. He leaned in close.
“In the same way he knows you kill for him.”
“All this subterfuge, why can he not just say what he wants?”
“Because he is a king, and where kings go spies follow. You know that.” He shrugged. “Come on. I want to find a way to the top of the wall, just in case.”
I followed him but it was not as easy as we had hoped. We found wooden doors, many locked, some leading to areas far more derelict than the Low Tower had been. At one point we found ourselves walking across a huge hole in the wall. Anyone who had looked up would have seen us cross the huge gap in the stonework, silhouetted against the moon, but none did. Other times we had to change direction to avoid guards, and it was more than just the souring that made me uncomfortable. The corridors were wrong, the floors subtly undulating, the ceilings too low and a thought scratched at the back of my mind that this castle was built for something not quite the same shape as me—something inhuman.
To makes things worse, and though it seemed impossible when I thought rationally about it, I could not lose the feeling we were somehow being herded in certain directions, but that may have been the influence of the souring: it gnawed at my mind. It was like no souring I had ever felt before, dead and yet not dead. The land beneath the castle was gone from life, but there was magic within it, and, in a way I did
not know or understand, it felt hungry. At some point I realised I could feel the life of Boros, which should not be possible, but I did not complain: to feel life in a souring would be a useful skill.
Turn and turn and turn about. Boros making his notes. Scratches on parchment. An ache in my head. The scars on my skin itching abominably.
“We should head back now, Girton.”
“Good.” He looked me over.
“Are you all right, Girton? I am not used to seeing you look troubled.”
“It is this castle. The deeper in it we get, the more bothered I am by it.”
He gave me a small nod.
“There is something oppressive about it, maybe it is the air. Trapped so deep within it for so long. It makes it feel like a cave and that makes you aware of the weight of stone above.” He tried to smile, scarred face looking monstrous in the flickering torchlight. “I think I can take us back to the Low Tower via a more direct route.”
“Then let us go. The sooner we are out of here the better.” He nodded and we set off.
They caught us in a dim, square room.
The ceiling was low enough that if we had worn helms we would have had to remove them or walk bent over. The walls were damp to the touch. The men waiting were scarred and hard-looking, fighters every one.
They did not waste time with talk, simply picked up large oblong shields and moved toward us. I saw my end in them, saw myself and Boros pushed into a corner by those huge shields, long knives punching in and out of our flesh. This room could not have been designed better to stop any of my clever moves. I could not vault their shields, and even if I had brought a heavy weapon with me there was not enough room to swing it. All I had were knives and all Boros had was his sword. Even the magic was gone. We had passed into the souring as we came through the door and I tasted ashes in my mouth.
The men came forward slowly, crouched behind their shields. They were professional and careful. Here to kill, not fight or show off. Boros’s eyes darted from one of them to another.
“This, Girton,” he said as we took a step back, “was not how I intended to go.” He thrust his sword forward at the nearest man but it did nothing except leave a scratch on the blank white shield. “I did not wish to die somewhere so dismal.”
“I do not intend to die.” I looked for a gap—anything I could use—but there was nothing. I could smell the breath of the men as they came on, heavy with spiced food and alcohol. Step by step, pushing us back and back—and we did not have far to go. Boros turned and tried the door. The wood rattled in the stone frame.
“Locked. We are trapped!”
Within me, frustration was like a physical force. Not like this. I had never expected to live a long life—assassins seldom do—but to die in a dingy room in the bowels of a cold and dying castle, crushed into a corner and unable to fight back? I did not want to die like that, and I did not want to die with Feorwic unavenged.
Shields advanced, gleaming stabswords poking out between them. I wanted to strike out, to kill. Since Feorwic had died I had been looking for a target, someone I could legitimately work my anger out on—and now they were here, and I was beaten before even drawing my sword.
And then.
A light.
Not a light in the room. Not an extra torch or an unexpected intervention. A light in my mind. My feet moved until I was against the far wall, and in that corner of a room in the moments before my murder I found the slimmest, slightest, connection to the land. The souring did not quite reach the edge of the wall. It did not matter at that moment that Boros was here. It did not matter that I may be found out for what I was.
I wanted to live.
I wanted to avenge Feorwic.
My connection to the land was the thinnest of threads, spinning and twisting as I pulled on it. Weak and poorly made it was all I had to work with. It was not strong, and the thread snapped within moments of me taking hold, but it was enough. I cast the black hammer. I cast it at the centre of the wall coming toward us, at the point where two shields met. A whirling thing of black hit the shields, pushing them apart. Creating a gap.
Second iteration: the Quicksteps. Forward, between two men. Into the gap, putting me among them. In close, the lack of room worked for me. Surprised faces. Shock at what I had done. Terror because they knew what I was. A man’s face. Mouth open to shout something. My head coming forward, breaking teeth, smashing bone, opening a cut on my forehead. Don’t retreat! Given a moment they will regroup with their shields. Twenty-first iteration: the Whirligig (variant). Blades out, spinning. One blade cutting across the face of the man I headbutted as he falls backward, other blade deflecting a thrust from the man to my left as I spin. His sword batted away, his shield pushed aside, he has no defence and wears no armour. He is shouting something but never finishes, my blade is in his heart. Second iteration: the Quicksteps. Forward to the second man on my left. He is bringing his shield round and I lash out with a fierce kick, staggering him. Boros is behind him, stood with his blade out but not moving, not doing anything, just watching. My blade is wet with blood. I wet it again, slicing across the throat of the man in front of me. I turn to meet the last of the men. He is not near me. He should have run or attacked while my back was turned but he is scared, crouched behind his shield. He is speaking, but I cannot hear for the roar of blood in my ears and the volume of my own shouting: wordless words, noisy anger. He crabs round, and I move with him. Then, finally, Boros moves. His long sword scything down on the man, cleaving in between shoulder and neck. Felling him.
And we are alone.
I am alone.
Because Boros—my friend, a man whose life I have saved time and time again—is staring at me as though I am a stranger. As though I have become something monstrous in the seconds it took to kill four men.
“This was a trap, Boros.” The words are hard to get out. My throat is dry but it is not from fear or exertion. “We should examine these men. See if they have some mark that will identify who they serve.”
He does not answer. Cannot. He is staring at me. His eyes move from me to the men on the floor and back to me. His grip tightens around the hilt of his sword.
“Will you kill me now?”
“What?”
His sword comes up.
“I know what you are. Will you kill me now?”
“I am Girton. That is all.”
“Except the land lies dead beneath you.” Inching around toward the rear door. “All of Rufra’s misfortune, all of that death, and no one knew why.”
“I did not …”
“You are cursed. You have made a deal with the hedgings, Girton Club-Foot. Black Ungar’s pit, they even called you it all those years ago. Girton, the mage-bent. It was in front of our faces and we did not see.” I took a step toward him and he pointed his sword at me. “Stay back, sorcerer!”
Protect yourself.
The voice inside me, weak, but gleeful.
“Boros, we have been friends for years.”
“You have lied to me for years.” Moving around me, toward the rear door. “Try and use your powers, sorcerer, and I will kill you where you stand.”
“You could not.” A moment of fear in his eyes, because he knows that is true.
“If Nywulf had known—if he had known what you are—it would have broken his heart. He loved you like a son.”
A flash.
Nywulf, coughing up blood. Dying in front of me, pulling me close and whispering his final words in my ear. “Protect him.”
“Nywulf knew, Boros, at the end, he knew.” Boros’s head slowly tilted, as if he were trying to understand how that could be. “He told me to protect Rufra and that is what I have done.”
Boros pushed past me, opening the door the warriors had used, turning back before he vanished into the darkness of Castle Ceadoc.
“You are his curse,” he said, and then he was gone.
I did not know what to do. Would he tell Rufra? If he did I was finished. Rufr
a would not stand for a sorcerer, ever. He may have been the architect of new ways—the ending of slavery; the blurring of lines between the blessed, thankful and living classes—but in many ways he was strangely conservative. He would not break entirely with the priesthood, for instance, he encouraged it and even though he said he did not believe in the dead gods he never failed to sign his priest’s book. I could not imagine my king, even if we were still as close as we had been, being anything but merciless if he knew what I was. Boros was impetuous, he may go straight to Rufra with my secret, but he was also loyal. Whether he was more loyal to me or Rufra I did not know.
But I could not control what Boros would do. I could only hope he would look back and see I had never done anything but help and that he would know me through that, rather than simply through the horror of seeing the magic. If he told Rufra, I would deal with it then, but for now I would continue to do what I had always done. I would protect my king.
I knelt to check over the men who had attacked us.
They wore no armour, only loose skirts and jerkins. Some of the men had tattoos but they did not share any designs. Their bodies were scarred, and one had an arm that had been broken and set badly. Fighting men without doubt but the Tired Lands were full of fighting men. Then I studied the room, the low ceiling and the shields the men held in case there were signs of previous owners beneath the white paint.
There were not.
If I had to set up the murder of someone like me I could not have chosen a better place to do it, even down to it being within the souring. I wondered again about the assassin who had attacked Voniss: where they had come from, who they were. They would know what I was, how to set up an ambush for someone like me. I moved over to the wall and, using the knife of one of the dead men, so as not to blunt my own, scratched a message into the wall.
“Who are you?” it said, in the assassins’ scratch, and I wondered if I would find the answer the way most found out who an assassin was—by finding a knife between my ribs.
Chapter 9
It was light by the time I finally found myself back at the Low Tower, my heart beating against my ribs like the wings of a flying lizard. I was not immediately surrounded and chained, which was a good sign. One of Rufra’s cavalry gave me a wave as I walked across the courtyard.