by JDL Rosell
“Right you are. Looks like you’ll need an escort, too. A’Qed curse and blight you all,” the guard suddenly fumed. “All you traders need coddling and leading about town, like you’re traveling princes or the Origin herself! Blight you all, down to the last man…”
The cart creaked and shifted to accept the extra weight, and a moment later the cart jumped into motion. Erik let out a long breath, his muscles loosening and stretching out his wounds with fresh pains all over. Even if an Eye was with them—and the most curmudgeonly one at that—at least they weren’t being searched. For now.
The gate creaking again told him that they were through. Back in Zauhn. Back home. A warm welcome I’d receive if they knew, he thought. The cart bumped up the cobblestone road—Font Street, Erik figured—then took a turn, and another, and another, so that he couldn’t keep track of where they were headed. The racket of the cart stumbling over the rough stone meant any conversation between Wil and the Eye was lost on him as well. There was nothing for it but to wait.
Then, the sounds below them changed—the racket of wood planks under the wheels. The Fost'Fluum Bridge—they were headed to Tar Court. Then the wood ended and they drove over pebbles, fek, and mud. After a few more minutes of potholes and turns, they finally stopped.
This was almost worse. He didn’t know what to expect now that they’d reached their destination. Would they unload the leather and tanned skins, only to find that near-contraband had been the right way to sneak in something after all? If they left the cart, should he try and leave, or was he out in the street, easy for anyone to spot? He waited as the cart creaked quite a bit as the large Wil and the Eye disembarked. Few words were exchanged between the tanner and the dour guard, and Erik heard only the sounds of the asses resisting being tied up, then their departing footsteps. Was there the creak of wood, possibly a door admitting them, or just the leather shifting against his ears?
He waited one minute, two, counting the seconds passing by, but no one returned. It seemed they were held up, at least for the moment, but he didn’t doubt that they would eventually unload. He had to take his chances.
He used his good arm to swim through the leather, moving them off so he could slowly, slowly stick his head out and look around. The day was dreary and misty, with the sun dully lighting the gloom over the houses. He recognized the hovels, including the one the cart was parked in front of—Gunter Tanner’s home. Settling trade agreements, no doubt. Something that would take time, or time enough for him to leave.
His stomach roiled as he crawled from the cart, heedless of the skins he spilled, having enough trouble getting out without being considerate, as the ride had made him stiff as old roots. Sorry, reluctant friend, he thought to Wil. I’ll repay you, if I ever can.
As it was still early morning, most weren’t outside their homes, but they soon would be, which meant he had to move with what haste he could. His body, hobbled and handicapped, shuffled away, knowing the way to go.
He felt a ghost again, now that he’d returned. He moved through the grubby back-alleys he’d played in during his childhood, that he’d carted formulae through as an adult, in which they’d kicked a reedball or he’d snuck out to see Ilyse. They had often been tough times, true enough, but memory had made them sweeter. Sweet enough to ache more than his wounds and burn his eyes. He pulled his cloak tighter about him.
Then his feet stopped, and he looked up. There, rising before him, was the only two-story house in Tar Court, the only one with glass in the windows rather than wood lattice or shutters. It was a house he never thought he’d walk into again, or even want to. It was next to his own, a barren plot of dirt separating the two abodes.
He opened the door to his father’s house and stepped inside.
Nineteen
The door creaked a familiar greeting as he limped inside. A long way from our first home. He remembered when it had just been a hut with dirt floors and a fire pit scooped out in the middle. A long way, but it wasn’t the greatest change that happened in their family.
He shook his head and set to seeking… anything, really, if could give him an edge. His formulaist father likely still slept, and might remain asleep if he stayed quiet. But that proved to be a difficult task. His body was clumsy, his mind spun in a fog, and the details of the rooms blurred together. Still, he saw well enough to know the foyer held little of use, with barely more than a set of drawers and the usual paintings of Vestorian royals lining the walls.
A narrow stairway led up to the study off the hall, but he went to the kitchen first and took a knife. Looking around the familiar room, he gripped the blade as tightly as a drowning man a rope. There was the same lachtrunk counter that Erik had built and preserved with flaxseed oil, the same stone wash basin with a pipe to carry out the used water, and another pipe to bring it in fresh. There was the window above, with rich glass panes fitting neatly together. There was the table Erik had built for him after his first had become moldy and unstable, but he didn’t measure properly, and it had a wobbly leg. Home—he couldn’t help but see it the same, no matter what else had changed.
Clutching the knife, he limped out of the kitchen to the narrow stairs in the hall off of it, head too hot to think.
Thumping up the stairs would wake his father, but the study was the most important room of all. His injuries spurred him on, and long-held emotion smoldered inside, threatening to violently bubble up and burst. He couldn’t stop, couldn’t rest, until he knew the truth.
Reaching the top of the stairs, he looked around the study, the scene blurring and whirling. He breathed in deeply and let it settle for a moment, then searched, starting with the desk. It was the most prominent feature, set against the glass window so as to look out over the whole of Zauhn and view whatever small glory the town held.
As he wound through the room, he nearly fell over books and other articles strewn across the floor, but it was the edge of the desk’s rug that did him in. Stumbling, he reached out his good hand to catch himself, but the knife was in it, and the blade gouged into the hard wood and slipped free and left him to collapse into the desk. A yelp escaped his gritted teeth, and a few curses trailed after it. His ribs were on fire, and his stomach throbbed for release.
He was in such a state of agony that he didn’t immediately hear the creak of the stairs, nor the shuffling footsteps reaching the landing and stopping there. When he looked up, the man standing there seemed to have appeared by magic.
He was a tall man, broad in shoulder, though his fifty years had finally stooped them. His hair was long and straight, streaked with gray, and greasy with recent neglect. His eyes were dark as a shadowed well, and his face was lined in all the places of a man long disappointed with the world.
Erik stared up at his father. He didn’t scream or rush at him, or wave his knife as he thought he might. He didn’t speak harshly, or speak sadly, or speak at all. He said nothing. He thought nothing. But underneath the numbness, Erik felt something still pulsing.
His father looked back, stoic and still as the moon. This man in whose shadow he’d stayed all his life. A shadow that had wilted him. A shadow that had, in the end, killed him.
When he found his voice, Erik said, “Long time, no see.” He wondered why, of all the things he could have said, he spoke that single, inane phrase.
“Not so long, I think.” His father smiled, sad as the melting ice of Mt. Brunnen’s peak in spring.
Erik looked down, trying to swallow back the words suddenly welling up inside him. “Why?” was the only one that would come out.
His father sighed, long and low. “There is much you do not understand, Erik. Much I could not tell you. First, you were too young. Then you lost Ilyse, and I did not think… But know, I did not mean for it to end like this.”
End like this. He felt as if the air had been robbed from his lungs. There was no hope. How had he held on so long, deluded himself for two weeks and thousands of strides, he didn’t know. Deep down he’d always known t
here was no hope. Hope hadn’t been so much a dream as a hallucination.
He wanted to be angry at his father, furious, but he was terribly, terribly tired. And yet a question remained, nagging, not letting him lie down and close his eyes and forget all about it. “Why put me through this chase? Why have me chase after the Rook, when all along…”
“Would you have listened had I told you all I know?” His father shook his head. “Will you listen even now? Yet… that is only part of it.”
“What else?” The black truth must come next.
His father met his eyes. “If I tell you this last, final chance, I will likely lose you, one way or another. And even as you are now, what Vodrun made you, I could not… No matter all these years, all these tiny betrayals, all this preparation, I cannot…”
He sighed again. “You are my blood, Erik. My son. Even more than the hope you still represent for this world, it is this that matters. That causes me to delay. You may not believe me—I would not blame you if you did not—but should I reveal this, I am truly killing you.”
Erik broke out into bitter laughter. “You would be killing me?” He held up his mangled arm with his good one. “There’s little enough left of me to kill.”
His father’s eyes fell to his feet. “I am sorry,” he whispered. Erik had never heard him sound like this, not even when he spoke of his home in Suden, that he’d left behind to wander a strange land. “I am so sorry.” Twin tears, the first he’d ever seen come from his father, beaded down the furrows of his eyes. “I am so, so sorry, my son.”
Erik felt his own eyes burn, and he bowed his head and clutched his ribs as he tried to hold back. He doesn’t deserve it, he thought. He doesn’t deserve it at all. But they welled in his eyes, found their way down his cheeks. He had come so far, suffered so much, and after it all, his father… loved him.
“But why?” He tore each word from his throat. “Why did you do it, Fafa? The elixir, and… You knew Vodrun was planning this. You knew it was coming.”
“I had to do it,” his father whispered. “We of the Tower had to do it. He is coming, Erik. He is coming back, and none of us will survive if we do not stop him.”
Erik raised his head. “Who? Father, who is coming?”
There was no time to answer.
One horn called, then another, and a chorus rose to pierce through the wood and glass and leather-bound books. The horns, which were never to be sounded but in one instance, called long and loud and urgent. Nautded, they called. Nautded.
In that same moment, Erik felt something press down on his mind, heavy and smothering as a pillow weighed down by stones. Vulnerable and caught by surprise, he struggled against it, but he felt himself borne down, unable fight it. And as he sank to the ground, vision dulling, hearing fading, Erik heard a familiar voice, one that had called to him before recently. But this time, what it meant crushed him even more than the thrumming mind that had joined his, and came on stronger, washing over him like the rising tide.
You, I know, whispered the voice of his murderer. The voice of the friend Erik had killed.
You, Erik thought, over and over. It’s been you all along. Chasing, following. Hunting. But I killed you, stabbed you in the heart. How did you survive?
But the Talstalker couldn’t hear him, or wouldn’t. His presence pressed down harder so that Erik could hardly think or feel. Yet he clung to his revelation: That despite his best efforts otherwise, Oslef had lived to become something bestial and strange. That Oslef knew the thrumming power that moved beyond the world they could see, and wielded it. Like Persey. Like—he finally had to admit—himself.
And Oslef was coming for him.
Twenty
Holding onto his fading senses, Erik watched his father stare down at him convulsing on the floor, then bolt from the room. He barely had enough presence of mind to wonder why, or think he’d been abandoned by him once again, before his father returned with something in his hands. Vision fuzzy enough that he could barely see, he didn't at first recognize what it was, but when his father knelt next to him and something slid beneath the skin of his arm, he understood: elixir, pumped into his veins, to sustain him a bit longer.
Then Oslef snarled in his mind. Pain like claws tore into him, and his mind went dark.
Then he was back, the light harsh in his eyes, sounds gratingly loud, the taste of iron and salt filling his mouth. He bolted upright, batting at everything around him, trying to throw off his assailants, but it was just his father, gently pushing down his arms and speaking soft words. “It is all right, Erik. It is fine.”
“No,” he moaned, his presence of mind partially returning. But Oslef was still there, shifting in his mind like a prowling lion, waiting for his moment to strike. And there was another thing. His head hummed in that now familiar, discordant way, like two reed flutes blowing half a step out of tune of each other. It made it hard to think, hard to do anything, but he pushed himself off the ground and stood all the same. A strange strength filled his body, blotting out pain, and power buzzed in his veins. But when he tried to grasp it, it slipped away like mist.
His father stood next to him. “Erik, are you sure you can move?”
“I have to.” His voice sounded faraway, muffled, an insignificant noise to the symphony in his head. “We have to go. Oslef is here.”
A spectrum of emotions shifted across his father’s face, but not the disbelief Erik had expected. He knew. “Yes,” his father agreed, and led the way.
He stumbled after his father, down the stairs and out the door, but his father seemed at a loss outside. Erik himself felt lost in an entirely different way. Outside, senses assaulted him from every different angle: the reek of human and animal fek, the bright, hazy sunlight, the dust layering on his teeth. Overcome, he covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to blot everything out, but his father took him by the elbow.
“Erik, we cannot stay here.” His voice was audible even behind his covered ears. “If this is Oslef—”
“Tanner’s,” Erik managed to say, not opening his eyes or uncovering his ears. Without question, his father immediately set off down the street, leading Erik by the arm.
It was a short way to Gunter’s house, and Erik felt them stumble to a halt. Somewhere in the town, the crystal clear call of a bird sounded, and Erik wondered why it would still sing. Didn’t it know what came?
“The cart?” his father asked, and Erik realized it was the third time he’d asked it. He shook his head, but nothing cleared. The buzzing remained as insistent and loud.
“Yes. Wil… get Wil.”
Then they were moving, stopping, sounds of talking, all indistinct and melded as a campfire soup. “What’d you do, yah blighted bastard?” A familiar voice chastised. Wil’s voice. “What’d you go and do?” Next he knew, he was being bodily hauled up into the air and landing with a heavy thump onto wood. He thought it marvelous the way the wood vibrated with the impact. It was music itself, the wood thrumming, and the leather rustling about like branches in a violent gust.
The cart lurched into motion, but he could only see Oslef, who reappeared in his mind, stepping through the darkness to face him. His face was gaunt, his hair still short but wild, and the rags of his clothes hung about him. But his eyes—they were exactly like a mooneyes, pupil and iris barely detectable through the astral glow.
Oslef bared his teeth in something like a smile and took another step forward with his hand outstretched. From his hand emanated… something. Erik felt it, teasing and twisting his mind, the vibrations in his head both pleasant and painful. The air thrummed like a swarm of hornets, vaguely threatening in how close they came, then they dove, and Erik’s skin lit on fire. He cried out and scratched at them, trying to dislodge them, trying to make the pain go away.
“Erik!” his father called, but Erik couldn’t heed him. Oslef grinned, teeth looking sharp as knives, and came closer, hand still outstretched, nails long and sharp and aimed at him.
But Er
ik remembered something. No! he thought, and slid back, away from Oslef and his sharp nails while the smile slipped from his mouth. “Tara,” he gasped. “Tara and Persey.”
He heard muttering above him. “We will find them, son,” his father said through the fog. “Just hold on.”
But Oslef found him first, and he hardly looked himself anymore. Dark hair had sprouted across his face, and gaunt limbs rippled with sinew. He bent lower to smoothly approach, cat-like in grace and form. He’s becoming a mooneyes, Erik knew, and he could only guess what that meant for him.
“Don’t do it,” he whispered. “Please, don’t kill me. I didn’t mean to— Please—“
As Oslef padded closer, so close Erik could feel the heat of his breath, cool hands moved over his face. “Erik, we’re here,” a woman’s gentle voice said. Tara. “Erik, can you hear me? Persey and I are here. We’re here, and you’re safe.”
But he wasn’t. Oslef was in his mind, almost fully one of the nightstalkers now, and he had him cornered and defenseless. Erik would die. He would be murdered again, in his own mind, by the same man that had killed him the first time.
He meant to stand up, to face his assailant, even if he couldn’t stop him. He wouldn’t die sniveling and clutching his knees. He would fight Oslef, with every last breath, with every bit of his strength.
Oslef leaped at him, snarling, and despite his resolution, Erik fell back, but there was nowhere to run. Claws dug into him, tore into the cracks between memories, and he felt some past self fall away, dead and discarded.
But even as his mind began to unravel, something else filled him, stretching his skin like a water bladder filled too full, almost splitting at the seams. At the next touch of Oslef’s claw, it did. Something snapped, and Erik felt himself move—out. His body wasn’t enough for him. There were too many cracks, too many flaws—he couldn’t be contained. He thought he cried out, but all he could hear was the discordant thrumming, a thousand drums thumping simultaneously within him. He spread out in ripples, in waves, washing over the world around him, and seeping into everything.