The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

by Tyler Whitesides

  “You don’t think it is a coincidence.”

  “If it is,” said Halavend, “then all my findings since our last meeting are riddled with such coincidences. There’s a Wayfarist saying. ‘A coincidence that strikes but once in a while is a blessing from the Homeland. A coincidence that strikes with frequency is a warning.’”

  “You have a suspicion?”

  “More than a suspicion, I fear,” whispered Halavend. “I believe Prime Isle Chauster is at the center of all this.”

  Lyndel drew back in surprise, but Halavend remained stone-faced. Since discovering the shell, he had learned too much to be surprised. He had steeled himself for the horrible accusations he was going to make against the head of the Islehood.

  “Did you know that Frid Chauster had a brother?” Halavend asked.

  Lyndel shook her head. “Another of your Holy Isles?”

  “Quite the contrary,” said Halavend. “The brother, Domic Chauster, was considered Settled by the Islehood, especially toward the end of his life.”

  “That must have been a burden for a man of Chauster’s position,” said Lyndel. She was an Agrodite priestess. Perhaps she had faced similar familial strain. Did Lyndel have siblings? Sometimes Halavend realized how little they really knew about each other’s personal lives. The research bonded them, and there was little time for much else.

  “It was widely known among the Islehood that the Prime Isle and his brother did not have a loving relationship,” said Halavend. “But I have since discovered evidence to the contrary. I paid a visit to the brother’s widow this week. A woman named Shristen. She lives here in Beripent.”

  “Visiting the widow of Chauster’s brother does not seem a safe action,” said Lyndel.

  Halavend waved her worries aside. “It is common for the Isles to venture into the city to visit citizens, extending invitations to seek Guidance from the Homeland at the Mooring. I didn’t tell her my name, but we engaged in an interesting conversation. Shristen said she hadn’t been visited by an Isle since her brother-in-law had become Prime Isle. She thought such visits were forbidden due to her Settled late husband.”

  “Are they forbidden?” Lyndel asked.

  “There is no official statement from Prime Isle Chauster against visiting his brother’s family,” said Halavend. He didn’t tell Lyndel that it seemed to be an unspoken rule among the Isles and Islesses. Frid Chauster was a stern man. His brother was Settled. Who would be bold enough to cross that line—a line that Prime Isle Chauster himself wouldn’t even approach?

  “She was grateful for my visit, poor woman,” continued Halavend. “Her husband is nearly twenty years gone, and last cycle she lost her only son to the Moonsickness.”

  “He was the one you saw in the Mooring?”

  Halavend nodded, trying to blink away the memory of the sick young man. Glipp Chauster. There would be more on him later.

  “Shristen was quite open about her husband’s relationship with his brother,” said Halavend. “Apparently, it was not the strained brotherhood that the Prime Isle led us all to believe. According to Shristen, Frid Chauster and Domic were actually quite close, from childhood until the cycle he died. In fact, they met together often, in private.”

  “Why would Chauster lie about such a thing?” asked Lyndel.

  “He wanted there to be a social disconnect between him and his brother,” explained Halavend. “If his brother’s actions were ever made known, there would be no connection back to the Prime Isle.”

  “What actions do you speak of?”

  “I looked into the breach of the Egrebel Dam in 1218,” said Halavend. “A maintenance crew had recently performed improvements to the structure.”

  “Then it shouldn’t have ruptured,” Lyndel pointed out.

  “The last person to work on the dam was Domic Chauster,” said Halavend. “Reports say he stayed behind to make a final check on the dam’s systems. It broke the next day.”

  “So Domic planted something in the dam to cause a failure,” Lyndel said.

  “A pot of Blast Grit would be sufficient,” said Halavend. “And I believe he did it under the orders of his brother.”

  “The Prime Isle wanted to wash out the storehouses and destroy the shell.”

  Halavend nodded. “Because the shell was fake. It was fine to send false pots of Visitant Grit with the Wayfarist Voyages. No one ever knew if they worked anyway. But the Prime Isle knew that none of the detonations would succeed, because he had already hired Reejin to falsify the shell. He couldn’t keep up the lie forever, so the breach of the Egrebel Dam took away the pressure. The other Isles understood why Chauster couldn’t authorize more Visitant Grit: because, tragically, the flood had demolished all of the Islehood’s shell reserves. But the general public was kept from the truth so they wouldn’t despair.”

  “What, then, do we suppose happened to the real shell?” Lyndel asked. “If the dam breach served the purpose of washing away the counterfeit, then that leaves the original fragments unaccounted for.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Halavend’s heart raced at the way she understood him, even anticipating his train of thought. “I examined many shipping records from the years when Reejin was counterfeiting. During that period, I found fourteen similar discrepancies.

  “In each instance, a processing factory on Strind documented the weight of an outgoing Grit shipment. But when the shipment was received in Beripent’s harbor, it was recorded to weigh many panweights less.” He help up a finger to stop Lyndel from thinking it was a scribing error. “All of these discrepancies occurred on the same ship, under the same captain. One Mardin Wolsyn. And in every instance, the ship deviated from the most direct course, sailing into the deeper areas of the InterIsland Waters.”

  Lyndel nodded. “They were dumping genuine Visitant Grit overboard.”

  “Yes,” Halavend whispered. Aside from detonating it, dumping Grit into the ocean was one of the few effective methods of destroying it.

  “And what of this captain, Mardin?” Lyndel asked, though Halavend assumed she had already guessed the answer.

  “Dead,” he answered. “Drowned when his single-man skiff went down off the coast of Dronodan.”

  “And the Prime Isle’s brother, Domic Chauster?” asked Lyndel.

  “Poisoned himself a few cycles after the Egrebel Dam broke,” said Halavend.

  “I am beginning to see the repetitive nature of this coincidence.”

  “Sadly, this is just the beginning.” Halavend took a deep breath. “Shristen told me that her son, Glipp Chauster, had been trying to contact his uncle for several cycles. The Mooring records indicate that the young man made more than a dozen visits here in the five cycles before his death. Each time he asked to meet with Prime Isle Chauster, but the Isle or Isless on duty had strict instructions not to let the boy in.”

  “Was the boy considered Settled, like his father?” Lyndel asked.

  “Yes. And that was the Prime Isle’s reasoning for shunning him,” said Halavend. “However, according to the boy’s mother, Glipp was finally invited to see the Prime Isle on very short notice. But not at the Mooring. Prime Isle Chauster wanted to meet his nephew on Pekal.”

  “Pekal?” Lyndel mused. “And now the boy is dead. Taken by the Moonsickness. I assume his uncle was not waiting for him on Pekal?”

  “No, indeed,” said Halavend. “But Chauster had been on the island the week before, preaching Wayfarism to the harbor Regulation. That way, he had a documented visit to Pekal. If anyone found out about the planned meeting with his nephew, it would appear as though Glipp had made an error and come a week too late.”

  “How did Glipp get approval to enter Pekal on such short notice?” Lyndel understood that there was significant paperwork involved to access the island.

  “The Prime Isle provided him with the proper documents,” replied Halavend. “Along with payment for the trip. Such tourist visits to Pekal are not cheap. When Glipp arrived to find his uncle gone, the lad
decided to do one of the lower loop hikes through Pekal. The guide said a storm blew in and young Glipp was lost. Forced to endure a Moon Passing on the island. There are few enough instances of Moonsickness these days, it seemed a terrible coincidence to have the Prime Isle’s nephew contract it under such strange circumstances.”

  Lyndel nodded. “More likely the boy was abandoned on the hike. What of the guide?”

  “She never reported back to work in the new cycle,” Halavend answered. “No one has seen or heard from her since.”

  “It would seem that the Prime Isle wanted his nephew to contract Moonsickness,” said Lyndel.

  “The first stage causes the inflicted to go mute,” said Halavend. “There is no more natural way to silence someone who knows something they shouldn’t.”

  “So, what did Glipp Chauster know?” asked Lyndel.

  “We may never find out for sure,” said Halavend. “Shristen said that lately Glipp had taken an interest in his father’s old ship manifests to Pekal.”

  “Was Domic Chauster a Harvester?” Lyndel asked.

  Halavend nodded. “He signed on only cycles after his brother was made Prime Isle. Domic quickly rose to the rank of Tracer, working for the king’s own Harvesting crew. Quite a prestigious position.”

  “Glipp had apparently spent significant time studying his father’s manifests, and conversing about them with a Trothian neighbor.”

  “What kind of information do these manifests contain?” Lyndel asked.

  “I wondered the same thing, so I procured a copy of every manifest from Domic Chauster’s time.” Halavend ruffled through some documents until he found the one he was looking for. “This is from his last Harvesting expedition, before Domic resigned. It lists everyone and everything that went to Pekal on his ship. As I compared this list to other manifests, I realized that the crew was much smaller than usual. Seventeen Harvesters were employed on that run.” Halavend paused. “All dead now.”

  “Did the crew die on Pekal?” Lyndel asked.

  “None of them, actually,” said Halavend. “But that was the last expedition any of those Harvesters made. And aside from Domic’s demise after the dam breach, all of the Harvesters on that expedition died within a year. Some fell sick with fever. Some were killed in accidents or muggings. Some simply vanished.”

  Lyndel sat forward slowly. He could tell she was beginning to suspect the things he did. A coincidence that strikes with frequency is a warning.

  “But the size of the crew wasn’t the only thing different about this final manifest,” said Halavend. “All previous manifests for the king’s Harvesting crew had been signed by a Gennet Brel. She was an advisor to King Pethredote at the time, and responsible for overseeing his Harvesting crew.”

  “She did not sign Domic Chauster’s last manifest?” Lyndel asked.

  “She did,” said Halavend. “But the king made an addendum in his own hand.”

  “What did he add?”

  Halavend turned to the second page of the manifest and tapped his finger on the spot next to the king’s own signature. “Dried Turroc root and Stigsam resin.”

  “I know Stigsam resin,” said Lyndel. “We call it Bemdep. Trothians use it with charcoal to make a waterproofing pitch.”

  “As do we,” said Halavend. “But twelve barrels? I thought it strange to take unprocessed resin in such large quantities. The same goes for the Turroc root. It’s a staple food, but a thousand panweights of dried root is enough to feed an army, let alone seventeen Harvesters on a single expedition.”

  “What is it like?” Lyndel asked.

  “Turroc root?” said Halavend. “It’s like a potato: bland and starchy. You’ve probably seen it in the Char. The vendors like to fry them and dust them with salt and pepper.”

  “Stoshk?” Lyndel stiffened. “What year did Domic’s Harvesting crew make this expedition?”

  Halavend looked down at the page’s heading. “1208.”

  “And what cycle?”

  He squinted. “The Eighth.” Historically, it was an unremarkable time. It wasn’t until the Ninth Cycle … It suddenly occurred to him. “This ship was the final Harvesting crew to visit Pekal before the plague befell the Bull Dragon Patriarchy.”

  “Turroc and Stigsam,” said Lyndel. “Trothians call them by different names. Stoshk and Bemdep. Don’t you remember? They are spoken of in ‘Izmit’s Drowning.’”

  “Izmit’s Drowning” was an ancient Trothian poem, lengthy, if Halavend remembered correctly, about an Agrodite priestess who died around the year 550. Izmit wandered fifteen years on Pekal before attempting to swim the distance to the Trothian islets. She didn’t survive the feat, but her religious insights on dragons were put to verse so they might be remembered and passed through generations.

  Halavend had transcribed the poem under Lyndel’s dictation several cycles ago. The tale couldn’t have been true, for obvious reasons. Spending one Moon Passing on Pekal was enough to sicken a person, let alone fifteen years. Likely, bits of the story had changed over the centuries of retelling. As an Agrodite legend, Halavend was likely the only Holy Isle familiar with Izmit’s tale. But he hardly knew it well enough to recall the reference Lyndel was making.

  Lyndel was doubled over now, head nearly between her knees, long dark hair falling almost to the floor as she recited something in a low voice. The recitation was in Trothian, and Halavend waited patiently as she raced through her memory.

  After only a moment, Lyndel sat up, her eyes still closed in concentration as she translated the excerpt into Landerian.

  “‘And I settle, wilting. I am as a dragon with a belly of Stoshk and Bemdep. I shall not see another day.’”

  Lyndel opened her pale gray eyes, vibrating fiercely as she looked to Halavend. But he was thoroughly puzzled. “Explain.”

  “At the start of each new year, it is an Agrodite ritual for the priestesses to soak this dried Turroc root in Stigsam resin.”

  “Why?” Halavend asked. Stigsam wasn’t edible, so what would be the purpose of combining it with Turroc?

  Lyndel shook her head. “Tradition,” she said. “You have your Holy Torch, we have Stoshk and Bemdep. When the root absorbs the resin, it undergoes a change. The odor is pungent, and the fumes can induce visions for the priestesses.”

  “But you don’t eat it,” Halavend clarified.

  “That is the very point!” Lyndel cried, rising to her feet. “Stigsam-soaked Turroc root is a powerful poison. ‘As a dragon with a belly of Turroc and Stigsam. I shall not see tomorrow.’”

  Halavend felt the realization settle upon his old shoulders. After all he’d uncovered the last year, this was nearly too much to take in. “Homeland save us,” he whispered. “There was no plague in 1208. The bull dragons were poisoned!”

  He lifted a hand to cover his mouth. King Pethredote had sent the poison to Pekal. He had signed for it himself in a special addendum. He had eliminated the seventeen Harvesters so their dark deed would never be known. Oh, Homeland! The Prime Isle was not alone in his corruption. The crusader monarch was sitting on a throne of lies.

  Lyndel reached out in comfort, her dark hand contrasting on his sea-green robes. “Let us make sense of all this,” she whispered, sitting on the bench once more. “What do we know, in order of events?”

  Halavend lowered his hand and took a deep breath. He needed to be a scholar now, to piece everything together. He thought back to the very start. To the moment when all of this started piling up.

  “Pethredote took the throne in 1204,” Halavend began. “He was the last successful person to detonate Visitant Grit. Two years after becoming king, he selected Chauster to be the next Prime Isle. Then, in 1208, the Bull Dragon Patriarchy perished, beginning the species’ course to extinction. The Islehood’s remaining shell fragments were falsified, and the forger killed by 1210. Lastly, the Egrebel Dam broke in 1218, cleaning up any evidence of the falsified shell.”

  Those were the facts. But the implications surrounding
them were far worse.

  “Does the king always select who will become the Prime Isle?” Lyndel asked.

  Halavend shook his head. “Prime Isless Hin was already old when Pethredote took the throne. She suggested that he choose her successor—someone Pethredote could work well with. Someone young enough that they could serve many years together. He selected Frid Chauster, and Prime Isless Hin departed on the next Wayfarist Voyage.”

  “How did the two know each other?” asked Lyndel.

  Halavend rubbed his head. It was difficult to remember back that far. “I believe Chauster was Pethredote’s Compass—his private spiritual guide. Chauster was brand-new to the Islehood. It was quite a shock to learn that he would be the Prime Isle.” Now he’d been in that position so long, it was hard for Halavend to think of anyone else. “We must assume that both men have been plotting together from the start.”

  “But we have no real proof against either of them,” Lyndel pointed out.

  That was by careful design, of course. Any evidence they might have been able to cobble together would only lead them back to Domic Chauster, the Settled brother. That was why the Prime Isle had publicly denounced him.

  “Why?” Halavend muttered. “Why would they do such things?”

  “To me it seems plain,” said Lyndel. “Your king wanted to eliminate any possibility of a future Paladin Visitant. He wanted to be the last to successfully summon one.”

  Halavend nodded. It certainly seemed that way. “So Prime Isle Chauster eliminated any existing dragon shell, and King Pethredote made sure that there would never be more.”

  “What are we going to do about this?” Lyndel finally asked. “There is truly no one to trust, if your king is guilty of this crime.”

  “Our king,” Halavend corrected. “You agreed to be his subject the moment you stepped foot on Espar.”

  “Pethredote may have opened the way for my people to dwell on your islands, but he will never be my king,” said Lyndel. “You know I only stay in Beripent for our studies. Once this is over, I will return to the Trothian islets.”

  Halavend sighed. He would miss her company. If he even lived long enough to see this finished.