Web of Eyes

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “Just tired,” Whitney said out loud.

  He peered longingly back to his ale, the heady foam finally receding. He was never one to back down from a verbal spat, but the dwarf’s question was one he’d been asking himself since he arrived in Troborough. He’d lost track of the years he’d spent roaming Pantego, thieving and swindling his way to being wanted in more cities than he had fingers until, eventually, every score in every land started to feel the same as the last. Some rare treasure no lord or lady even needed.

  He missed the challenge. The adventure.

  “Tired?” the dwarf scoffed. “What’s a pale farmboy like ye got to be tired about?”

  Whitney glanced up only with his eyes. If there was one thing he couldn’t stomach, it was being lumped into the same meager vocation as his insignificant father. Whitney had seen things nobody in Pantego could imagine, made a name for himself coast to coast.

  “Farmboy?” He rose from his seat. “You hear that?” Whitney said loudly to anybody who might be listening. “I think this little half-pint, rock-eating dwarf just called me a ‘farmboy.’”

  The Twilight Manor went quiet—not dead silent, but enough for Whitney. The bard stopped playing—thankfully. Several regulars turned their attention to him. The members of the trading caravan all slid forward, eager for a show as if used to their mate causing trouble.

  “Aye, I did.” The dwarf slammed his mug on the table, ale splashing over the side.

  “Just making sure you were talking to me,” Whitney said. “You dwarves spend so much time down in the dark, sometimes I worry you can’t see straight.” Whitney hiccuped. He had to use his chair for support.

  “At least we can hold our drink, farmboy.”

  “You really don’t know who I am, do you? Tell him Haam!”

  “Here we go again,” Haam grumbled. “Another adventurer who’s put down one too many. “He threw his towel over his shoulder and climbed down the stairs leading to the storage basement, probably for some peace and quiet.

  “Okay… I’ll handle it.”

  After a few tries, Whitney climbed onto the table and stared down his nose at the dwarf. It made the burly little man’s features darken in anger. If Whitney had learned anything a short while back while slumming in the subterranean dwarven kingdom of Brotlebir, it was that dwarves hated when a human drew attention to how short they were. That, and the things they made from gold were gold all the way through.

  “My name is Whitney Fierstown! Yes, yes,” he said in practiced rhythm, performing an exaggerated bow, “the same Whitney Fierstown of Westvale fame. He who stole the Sword of Grace from right under Lord Theroy’s nose while the right bugger slept face-down in a puddle of his own spit. Had myself a throw with his lady daughter that evening as well.”

  Whitney’s laugh was joined by a few others. He hopped down from the table, his voice growing louder after he steadied himself from nearly slipping in a puddle of the dwarf’s spilled ale.

  “The Mischievous, Master of Mayhem,” he continued. “The very same credited for single-handedly delivering the Splintering Staff out of the hands of the Whispering Wizards. You know them, dwarf? Whitney Fierstown, Savior of the Sullen and Surly—that's you. Hope of the Hopeless and Helpless. Thief of all thieves. The Filcher Fantastic himself.”

  Loud whoops and whistles erupted from the bar. Whitney bowed again, looking up to lock eyes with the fuming dwarf, a humorless smile playing at the edges of his mouth.

  "And you call me a farmboy?” Whitney asked. “Someone get this sad dwarf another ale. He’s either too drunk or not drunk enough.”

  The dwarf appeared thoroughly unimpressed. Whitney rounded the table, his gaze never leaving the dwarf. He plopped back into his chair, grabbed his ale, and kicked his feet up on the table.

  There were a few scattered hand claps before the people of Troborough returned to their business. He wondered how many times they’d heard passers-through boast about similar feats, if he was becoming as bad as the dwarf or even Carlo.

  The bard started plucking his lute again, struggling to find the melody. Alless made her rounds, dodging the grabby hands of several toothless men. Haam had returned now, polishing mugs and not paying attention. Even the members of the trading caravan expected more of a show.

  The dwarf calmly stroked his beard once, then took his turn climbing the table, even though the thing was nearly the whole height of him.

  “And I be Grint Strongiron!” he shouted. The poor bard’s notes trailed off from yet another distraction. Grint’s companions unenthusiastically tapped their mugs on the bar in support while everyone else ignored him.

  “Son of a drunken wife-beater,” Grint went on. “Brother of a coward. Me wife’s uglier than the south end of a horse-headed north. I got seven fingers, nine toes, and enough spawn to start a small war.”

  He took two wobbly steps toward Whitney.

  “I’ve broken more bones than I be able to count, many of them me own. I helped dig out the throne room of the Dragon’s Tail alongside Brike the Pickaxe when yer great, great, grandfather was still an ache in his own grandfather’s britches.”

  He leaned over, getting as close to Whitney as he could without toppling over.

  “Ye say ye’ve stolen from a lord and some wizards?” he continued. “But ye ain’t done nuffin till ye tooken from a king!”

  Whitney’s head cocked to the side before he laughed deep and hard. He looked around, but not a soul was paying attention any longer. Even Grint’s companions had returned to their mugs.

  “Ain’t thought I said nuffin funny, Thief,” the dwarf said. “Even from his bed, the King of Glass still be stealin food from me family’s mouth. Ye’d be doin the world a favor, showin the old prick what the feelin be.”

  “Steal from the King?” Whitney said, incredulous. “What would you have me do, traipse into his throne room and take the Glass Crown right off his head?”

  Grint jumped down, missing the landing either for lack of judgment of too much drink. Maybe both. He stumbled into the next table, disturbing two old men in dirt-covered shirts. His Shesaitju friend went to steady him, but Grint shook him off before turning back to Whitney.

  “If that’s what ye gotta do,” he said. “Otherwise, this li’l display of yers is just shog and spit.”

  “Shog and spit, you say?” Whitney asked.

  “Aye. Heard the King of Glass be havin himself another masquerade in a few nights—one of them fancy balls nobles like so much. If yer so good, I be bettin ye could sneak right in, couldn’t ye, farmboy?”

  Whitney let his feet fall from the table and leaned forward, circling the rim of his mug again.

  “Steal the Glass Crown,” he marveled. Against all odds, he found himself in the town he’d left behind, hoping he might find some inspiration for a new adventure where it all started. And just when he thought life was getting boring…. It happened. Finally, a challenge that might be worth putting his drink down for.

  Whitney tapped the top of his head. “All right, dwarf. Next time you see me, I’ll be wearing it.”

  II

  THE KNIGHT

  “Filth and braggarts, all of them!” the boy whispered through gritted teeth from beneath his sheets. “Liars, thieves, drunks, and murderers!”

  Torsten Unger, the Wearer of White, leader of the King’s Shield, had been winding down for the evening when he heard those words in the voice of Prince Pi. Torsten looked around, confused. The boy had refused to leave his room at the highest point atop the West Tower of the Glass Castle since before the last Dawning ceremony when Pantego’s two moons passed before the sun and signaled the turning of a new year.

  Torsten peeked out of his room, his gaze met by one of the newest members of the King’s Shield out on patrol. Sir Rand Langley placed his fist over his heart, as was customary when greeting the Wearer.

  “Did you hear that?” Torsten asked.

  “Sir?” said Rand.

  “The uh… never mind. It’s la
te. Tired is all.”

  Rand looked at him, puzzled. “Goodnight, sir.”

  Torsten tipped his head and waited for Rand to pass. He’d spent the day overseeing the induction of that very young man into the King’s Shield. The trek down from atop Mount Lister, where Iam was closest and custom dictated the installation take place, had them all exhausted. It was rare that Torsten could shift focus from matters of the kingdom, or filling the needs of Queen Oleander and her sickly husband, so he was happy for the diversion.

  Iam had gazed down upon the ceremony with great joy, no doubt. But even with the Vigilant Eye of the one true God watching over them, Torsten knew the Glass Kingdom would soon need all the security it could get. Rand was a promising recruit, young and a bit overeager, which showed as he fumbled through his vows, but Torsten had a hard time faulting anyone for wanting to serve. Especially since, according to the royal physician, King Liam’s death was imminent. It didn’t matter how much he, or Oleander, or anyone else living in the Glass Castle tried to hide it.

  Once Rand turned the corner, Torsten focused back on Pi’s voice. It was less of a voice now really, and more like a feeling. He left his quarters, hoping to avoid catching any eyes, but even if he hadn’t held the station of the Wearer of White, he was hard to miss. More than once he’d been mistaken for a half-giant. His chest was thick as an iron keg, requiring specially crafted armor from Hovom Nitebrittle, the castle Blacksmith. He stood closer to seven feet than six, and his hands were large enough to pop a man’s skull.

  As he passed more Shieldsman and castle guards, he saluted each in turn but never spoke a word. How could he say he was following an invisible voice to the Prince's bedroom in the middle of the night?

  The arched stone and stained glass door stood a whole head taller than Torsten. He cracked it enough to see a sliver of the Prince’s chambers. It felt dirty, wrong—although he had no ill motives. But the Queen had forbidden anyone, even the Wearer of White, from seeing her despondent son. It had been that way since his predecessor, Sir Uriah Davies, caught the Queen’s heathen brother whispering madness into Pi’s ear and fleeing with his most prized possession.

  It took Torsten a moment to figure out where the boy was, then he saw the bulge in the sheets. A moment later, Prince Pi cast off the covers and stood. He was so young, yet his hazel eyes spoke of a lifetime of horrors. His head was cocked to the side while he paced, his messy, dark, hair hanging limply like a wet blanket. One thing was certain, he looked neither sickly nor grief-stricken.

  “Yes, they must pay for their sins,” Pi said. “The Buried Goddess demands it, and she will do it, not I.” His head twitched so hard Torsten worried he’d snap his own neck. Hearing a boy so young speaking of the Buried Goddess startled him.

  Torsten instinctively stepped backward as the Prince abruptly crossed the room. There was no doubt he’d heard Torsten’s footsteps, but he seemed entirely unconcerned. The pale light of Pantego’s moons gushed in through the window. Beyond its arch, Torsten could see Yarrington’s twinkling lights—candles, lamps, and campfires. Those paled in comparison to the false light reflected off the castle's spires and the flat, glassy plain of Mount Lister overshadowing them, a monument of the ancient God Feud.

  Torsten drew a deep breath before cracking the door a bit more. Countless angular symbols were hastily etched in stone walls, smeared with blood. The Prince may have been young, but it appeared Pi’s devotion to the Buried Goddess exceeded even that of her cultists. Torsten had cleared plenty such miscreants from basement shrines throughout Yarrington since having joined the King’s Shield, and even more as Wearer of White.

  Most believed Nesilia had been dead for thousands of years after Iam brought an end to the God Feud that ravaged Pantego, and Torsten numbered among that lot. Legend was, and so her followers believed, she was not dead, only buried beneath Mount Lister—waiting to exact vengeance upon the One who buried her.

  Did the Queen know of Pi's obsession? She’d never mentioned a word of it to Torsten. The Nothhelm family, which had ruled over the Glass Kingdom for centuries, served and revered Iam—the one true God. What would the people of the Glass Kingdom think if they knew the King's only son was a heretic worshipping the false goddess Nesilia?

  The voice filled Torsten's mind again, this time louder. He grasped his head, slithering his fingers through his hair, biting back the urge to scream. He rolled his head in sharp circles, gnashing his teeth as the foreign words bombarded his mind. When it was over, he looked up to see the Prince clutching his own head.

  “Buried, not dead. Buried, not dead,” Pi muttered over and over. “The color crimson and a thousand eyes. I see the color crimson and a thousand eyes!”

  Torsten’s heart pounded, threatening to burst through his rib cage. He saw large tears flow freely from the young boy's eyes, and his own eyes began to water. The Prince now stood in the middle of his chamber—a room that would dwarf most houses. A circle surrounded him, painted in red on the dark stone floor. Torsten noticed a bloody bandage wrapped around Pi's hand.

  He knew blood magic when he saw it.

  The Prince raised his voice, beginning a chant. The words drifted in and out like the flight of galler birds in spring, ebbing and flowing, sharp tucks and broad swoops, impossible to know where one word ended and the next began. They would seem nothing more than mindless blabbering to any hearer, and that's what they were to Torsten—nonsense.

  Pi’s eyes rolled, only the whites showing. He convulsed, head whirling and hands flapping. Torsten flinched and bit back disgust. At that moment, Torsten finally understood the Queen's eternal dourness. It was her brother Redstar’s fault, but Oleander blamed herself.

  Torsten remembered that day vividly when he found the former Wearer of White in these very chambers after Redstar fled, having attempted some terrible curse on the Prince. The Queen’s brother’s cold heart matched the bitterness of the northern land from which he hailed. When he visited the castle a year ago, Uriah warned against trusting him. Torsten felt it too, that unsettling feeling just from being in the presence of such a heathen. The Queen still let him in. Blood was blood after all.

  As Uriah had expected, he’d betrayed the Queen—why wouldn’t he? Oleander had been taken from Drav Cra to become King Liam’s wife at such a young age. From the tundra to the throne. She had been given a crown while Redstar was left amongst the remnants of their clan after the slaughter, left to pursue his lust for magic until, according to Uriah, he was named the chieftain of his clan as well as Arch Warlock of all the Drav Cra.

  Queen Oleander tried to hide her brother’s betrayal out of embarrassment, but Torsten was the first to see the boy that next day. He was inconsolable. Redstar had stolen the young prince’s orepul and fled to the Webbed Woods, where any who followed soon met their end.

  The Queen blamed the loss of the pagan idol for her son’s madness, believing it held a part of his soul. She sent Uriah with a small battalion to the woods to retrieve Redstar and the stolen effigy, but they never returned. Torsten was named Wearer in his place, wearing the helm Uriah left behind, with no choice but to follow her orders as she sent more and more to their doom.

  Presently, as Pi finished his words, a small spark—an ember—grew in his hand above a spot of blood, but quickly faded. He cursed loudly, words he shouldn’t know at his age.

  “It won’t work without it!” He picked up a wooden chair and heaved it through the open window to the pasture below, no small task for a boy his size.

  Pi peered over the edge to find the chair cracked and splintered two stories below. He planted a foot on the sill and pulled himself up, standing there a long while, teetering back and forth. Torsten threw the door open and watched as Pi tilted forward, catching himself at the last instant. Torsten was halfway across the room when without a word, Pi stepped back down, took a few steps, and collapsed on the floor.

  Torsten froze. He checked to be sure the boy wasn’t conscious. Even the Wearer of White could lose his
head for entering the Prince's room unannounced and unwelcome, but he had to figure out what was going on.

  Everywhere, strewn across every desk, table, and flat surface were notes upon which were the scribbled writings of a child.

  Torsten read them silently. THE COLOR CRIMSON AND A THOUSAND EYES.

  Torsten shuffled some more papers and slid open a drawer. Inside, he found a large stack of parchments with the same three words etched on every bit of white space: BURIED, NOT DEAD.

  Torsten had heard those same words muttered in shadow from the mouths of the realm's cultists, but he couldn’t understand where a boy whose life kept him confined to the Glass Castle could have learned them?

  If the Queen, a devout—if not a bit lax on her attendance of services—follower of Iam despite her Drav Cra heritage, had known her own son was attempting to commune with the Buried Goddess… Torsten didn't know what she would do. Maybe she’d simply refuse to believe it. Or perhaps she did know, and this was just another of her many secrets? Was that why she refused to have any priest, even Wren the Holy, attend to Pi and try to undo whatever foul influence Redstar’s visit had on him?

  Torsten regarded the Prince, who now slept innocently like a child should. The sight of the bloody, candle-lined circle surrounding his body sent a shiver up his spine. He sunk back out the way he came, taking care not to be seen as he descended the spiral stairs into the anteroom below.

  He reached his chambers without complications and removed his armor while staring out his window on the north side of the castle. Torsten grasped the necklace that had been hanging from his neck for as long as he could remember, a pendant of Iam’s Vigilant Eye presented to him by King Liam himself when he’d been knighted. As he looked out over Mount Lister, he let his mind wander to the shocking and blasphemous things he'd seen and heard.

  "Iam help us," he said.

  III