Sacred Fire

by Chris Pierson

  “Or a knight’s,” said Tarlo.

  The youngest of the three raised his club. “A Hammer? Gods’ fists! We ain’t seen none o’ them for near six months. I thought they were mostly all dead.”

  “So did I,” agreed Uvar. Then he peered down and laughed, one of the unfriendliest sounds Bron had ever heard. “He must be one, though. Look at how scared he is, Tarlo.”

  The scarred man crouched down, cupped Bron’s cheek with his hand. “Hah! No doubt, Uvar. He’s one of them. Stupid of you to come here, Sir Knight,” he snarled, then let go, and cracked the back of his hand across Bron’s face. Stars exploded.

  “We ain’t dumping him now, are we?” whined the boy.

  The others laughed. “No, lad, we’re not,” said Tarlo.

  “Dumping’s too easy for him,” Uvar agreed. Now he bent down over Bron, his breath reeking. “Hear that, Hammer-lad? You’re gonna be sorry you came here. You’re gonna be sorry you were born.”

  Bron tried to answer, to show defiance, but the only thing that got past his thick lips and bleeding tongue was a stream of bloody drool. Then Uvar’s meaty fist slammed into his eye, and that was all.

  *****

  Later, the pain came rushing back: The peasants had trussed Bron like an animal. Heedless of his broken arm, they’d dragged him all the way back to their village—a squalid, grimy cluster of thatch huts, the charred skeleton of a Mishakite hospice looking down upon it from a hilltop. It was drizzling and cold, but a crowd had gathered anyway, jeering and hissing as the three peasants hauled him into the patch of mud that served as the town square. There was a post in its midst, with a rusty iron hook pounded into the top. Bron guessed its purpose well before they looped a rope through his bonds, then flung the other end up and over.

  He gritted his teeth, but it did no good. He still howled like a babe when they hauled on the rope, hoisting him up off the ground. He vomited, and nearly choked on it as they tied off the top, leaving him swaying fifteen feet above the ground.

  Then the torment began.

  The children were the worst. He could endure the rage of the men, the scorn of the women. He could handle the mud and rotten vegetables they hurled, even the odd stone. He weathered their cries of “God-lover!” and “Thrice-damned Hammer!” But when a little girl—she couldn’t have been more than six summers old—stepped to the front of the mob and lobbed a handful of muck at him, his heart wrenched. That child, and all children from now on, would grow up loathing Istar, the Kingpriest, the Divine Hammer, and the gods. They would never know, never understand, the glories of what had been—what might have been. They would know all of the bad, and none of the good. There was hate in her eyes.

  It lasted all day long. Even when the sun went down, the villagers didn’t disperse; they kept at him by torchlight, hurling abuse and rubbish long into the night. It was past Midwatch when the crowd finally began to thin. By then, there wasn’t a part of him that wasn’t smeared with blood and filth, not a part that didn’t sing with pain. When the last villagers finally departed, his mind turned to the day to come, and what would happen then. Would they kill him? Or would it be like yesterday, more abuse? How long would the punishment go on?

  He prayed for a quick death, and not just because the alternative was more pain and humiliation. Could he really go on in this world, with all he’d ever known and loved vanished or destroyed? Could he stand it any longer, pretending to be a different man from the one he’d been? Could he face the knowledge that Istar would be long remembered as an empire of fools and villains?

  Let it end here, he begged. Let it be soon.

  They left Uvar as a guard. In the ruddy moonlight, Bron couldn’t make out much more. The village was dark, quiet. A half-starved dog rooted through the refuse until the big Dravinishman lobbed a rock and sent it yelping away. In the gloom, neither man saw the shadowed figure until it was standing right in front of the pole.

  Uvar started, reaching for his cudgel, then relaxed. “Oh,” he said, stepping forward. “It’s you. What in the Abyss are you doing up so late? Want a go at him?”

  Bron tried to make out the newcomer’s face, but he couldn’t see anything: just a gray cloak and hood, dark and sodden with rain. Whoever it was walked up to Uvar, saying nothing, and stopped when the two of them were face to face.

  “Go ahead, have at him,” the brute continued cheerily. “You won’t have another chance, come morning. Just grab—” Suddenly, Uvar fell silent. Then he stumbled back, staring dumbly at his chest. The hilt of a dagger was lodged there. He grunted, looking at the stranger with an absurd expression of surprise, then pitched backward into the mud.

  The cloaked newcomer wasted no time. Reaching down, he pulled the knife from the big man’s body, then went to the rope and began to cut through. Bron watched in amazement … then suddenly he was falling, landing in the mud with a splat and a sob of relief and pain. He gasped for breath, got a mouthful of sludge, and gagged while the stranger hurried forward to cut his bonds.

  “Quickly now,” she said—a woman’s voice. “On your feet.”

  Bron groaned. “I don’t think I can walk.”

  “You’d best try. Tarlo will come to check on this one soon.” She kicked Uvar’s body. “We’d best be gone when he does.”

  Bron peered at her, still trying to make out her face. “Who are you?”

  The woman paused, then reached up and pulled off her hood without a word. Bron stared, stunned. The face was familiar, one he’d seen before. It was older now, worn by more than just years. There was fathomless sorrow in her eyes, and her hair was silver-white now. But still, there was no mistaking who she was.

  “I don’t…” he began, then trailed off and tried again. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Wentha MarSevrin, pulling on his unbroken arm. “Just come on.”

  *****

  Bron somehow found a way to haul himself along beside the Weeping Lady, limping and lurching and falling more than once as they fled the village and took to the wilds. Gray, leafless trees loomed around them like bony hands. There was no road, not even a game-trail he could make out, but Wentha made her way through the gloom with quiet certainty, stopping now and then to look behind, in case someone followed them. No one did.

  The eastern sky had brightened to the dull gray of lead by the time they stopped at last, at the remains of some large, stone building. Its walls were crumbled stubs, its roof long gone, but there was a staircase leading down into a cellar. Wentha led the way down, out of the rain. When she reached the bottom, she lit a candle, illuminating her face. Bron slumped to the earthen ground, groaning.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” she said, ripping a strip of cloth from the hem of her cloak. She found a piece of broken wood, and used it to splint his broken wrist. “Tarlo and the others aren’t going to let you get away easily. They know this place, and they’ll be looking here before long. We’ll be moving again in a couple of hours.”

  Bron nodded: he’d expected that much. But that wasn’t foremost on his mind. He looked at the woman in disbelief. “How in the Abyss—”

  “How did I survive?” she asked, and smiled. “I was in Karthay when the burning mountain hit. The city was destroyed, but those of us who fled quickly lived through it. I got out, and after a year or so I found passage back to land. It’s just an island now, Karthay—the same with Lattakay, and a few other places.

  “I’ve been living back there, in Flotsam, ever since. They don’t know me there. Not like they know the Hammer, anyway.” She eyed him grimly. “They were going to press you to death, in case you’re wondering. Pile stones on you until they crushed you.”

  Bron shuddered at that savagery. A shudder ran through him.

  “Now,” Wentha said, “suppose you tell me about this.”

  Reaching beneath her cloak, she pulled out Ebonbane. The candlelight glistened on its blade, reflecting the chips of porcelain on its hilt Bron stared at it.

  “Th
is was my brother’s blade,” she went on. “How did you come by it? Who gave it to you?”

  Bron blinked. No, of course she wouldn’t know. Hardly anyone alive knew the final fate of the Twice-Born. He shut his eyes, moaning … then opened them again when he felt the cold steel of Ebonbane’s edge against his skin. Lady Wentha stood over him, her eyes like stormclouds.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  And he did.

  *****

  Her face was covered with tears by the time he finished. They were both silent for several minutes, afraid to speak. Finally, she drew a hand across her eyes, and took a deep breath. “So you left him there. In Xak Tsaroth.”

  Bron nodded. “For all the good it did. I saw the city disappear. He couldn’t have survived.” She was silent for a long time again. “No” she murmured, “but maybe he wasn’t meant to. He needed to be out on that lake, with the Disks, when the mountain hit. He had a purpose in mind.”

  “But what?” Bron demanded. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  Lady Wentha shook her head. “I don’t know. I doubt we ever will. But be sure of this, Sir Bron … my brother died working the god’s will.”

  “Did he?” Bron shot back, his voice bitter. “And what stories will people tell of Cathan Twice-Born? What songs will they sing?”

  “None,” she answered. “But the forgotten hero is a hero still.”

  Bron shook his head. “I envy your faith.”

  “It is all I have left.”

  They were silent for a time. Rainwater dripped into the cellar.

  “Now you’ve seen the Blood Sea,” she said at length. “Where will you go next?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “Far from here. What about you?”

  Wentha pursed her lips, glancing up the stairs. “I’ve heard Taol survived the Cataclysm. Do you know if it’s true?”

  Bron nodded. “Parts of it. Though the land is much changed, from the tales men tell.”

  “What land isn’t, these days?” she asked. “I will go there, then. Changed or not, I would like to see the land of my birth again.”

  “You’re lucky to be able to ” Bron said. “I was born in Edessa.”

  His home. Gone, lost beneath the red waves.

  “I will go with you,” he offered. “If you will let me.”

  Wentha MarSevrin looked at him gravely for a long moment. Then she smiled, tears in her eyes—but she shook her head at the same time. “No,” she said. “I travel alone. So must you.”

  He should have begged her to reconsider, he told himself in the hard times to come, when he yearned for a companion on the road. But he only returned her smile, and watched as she extended Ebonbane, hilt-first, toward him.

  “I don’t know how to use it, anyway,” she said.

  He took the sword from her hand. “Thank you, Efisa. Palado tas drifas bisat.”

  Paladine guide thy steps.

  “E tas,” Wentha said.

  And thine.

  She bent down, pressed her lips against his forehead. Then, rising, she drew her hood back over her head, turned to the steps, and raced up them, two at a time.

  He never saw her again.