The Last of the Renshai

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

Mar Lon said nothing, grasping the few seconds his silence gained him to normalize his breathing. Now, his lungs felt raw, and he guessed he would be coughing intermittently for some time.

  Carcophan seized on Mar Lon’s hush. “No defense, Mar Lon? Too bad. It seems such a pity to end the line of bards without so much as a whimper.”

  “End?” Mar Lon suppressed a cough, and the effort coarsened his voice and brought tears to his eyes. “What do you mean end?” Finished, he surrendered to the coughing fit.

  Carcophan waited impassively for the paroxysm to finish, then laughed. His long, delicate fingers slid to the surface of the stone. “You tried to foil a prophecy older than all the current Wizards together, one to which I and many before me dedicated our existences.” He glared at Mar Lon, his yellow-green eyes unsettling. His expression indicated that all of Mar Lon’s dedication and effort had accomplished little. Yet Carcophan’s very presence contradicted this. “I don’t like that.”

  Mar Lon coughed again, then swallowed to wet his throat. His thoughts scattered in a thousand different directions, and he felt uncertain of his best approach. It seemed wise to remain deferential, yet the Wizard’s arrogance and the missing youngsters drove him to question. And the knowledge gathered by his ancestors and passed on in song did not fail him. “Your threats may frighten the ignorant, Carcophan, but they won’t work on me. I know the Wizards are bound by more laws than any mortal. Odin forbade you from directly killing any of us.”

  Carcophan leaned against the Rock of Peace. His touch seemed to defile the artifact. “I need only carry you to my champion. I’m certain King Siderin would do the deed gladly.”

  Mar Lon did not bother to argue the point. Clearly, Carcophan could have already done this thing, yet he had chosen only to talk. “What have you done with the peacemakers?” He indicated the area around the stone where he should have found the youngsters.

  “Me?” Carcophan followed Mar Lon’s gesture with his gaze. “I did nothing with them. They were called up to prepare for war. The law states that, when the king calls, they must go. They went. What else did you expect?”

  Mar Lon lapsed into another coughing fit. In truth, he had not expected them to be mustered so suddenly nor en masse. The Eastern and Western lands had been preparing for war for so long it had become meaningless habit. He had expected decades or a lifetime to organize and recruit. By the time his bardic duties called him away, he had hoped to have established a chain of leadership, with actual speakers, perhaps under Abrith. Limited by his family curse, he had not managed to address details. His tone became accusatory. “You got them all called up at once. Didn’t you?”

  Carcophan adopted the wide-eyed innocence of one unjustly accused. “In fact, no. The war is imminent. The army just happened to pass by here, and Siderin took every able-bodied man he could find. Where were you that you missed this?”

  Mar Lon flushed. Thrilled by spring, he had found one of the Eastlands’ rare, surviving pieces of forest and fallen asleep on a bed of leaves, the smell of newborn greenery soothing in his nostrils.

  “And besides, isn’t this what you wanted?”

  Mar Lon stared, certain he must have misunderstood the question. “My cause is peace. Why would I want my followers in war?”

  “Your cause is peace?” Carcophan seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Did you hear otherwise?” Mar Lon was equally shocked.

  “I had attributed to you some of the cleverness of your ancestors. I thought you had set out to accomplish exactly what you managed to do.”

  “Which is?” Mar Lon went rigid, not wholly certain he wanted to know.

  “You weakened a faction of the Eastern army, albeit a small one.” Carcophan drummed his fingers against his parcel. “Your so-called peacemakers have dedicated their attention to things other than winning the war. Distracted, they will surely be the first to die.”

  “No!” Mar Lon shouted, the force of the effort sending him into another bout of coughing. The faces of his followers paraded through his mind, eager children not yet burdened by the world.

  Carcophan waited until Mar Lon’s coughing settled to a volume that did not require him to shout to make himself heard. “That’s why I came to see you, and that’s why I’m upset. I don’t like seeing my followers die because of some foolish devotion to the cause of an angry, young man.” Carcophan considered. “Of course, you weren’t subtle. Siderin knows about the lapse in his ranks, so I’m certain he’ll put your men among the early shock troops. At least that may spare some of my more valuable followers.”

  Tears burned in Mar Lon’s eyes. “You can’t do that!”

  “I’m not doing anything. As you seem to know well, all I can do is advise. I don’t the make the decisions for any mortal; the army is Siderin’s concern.”

  Panic drove Mar Lon to a desperate resolve. “Then I’ll go to Siderin!”

  “A wise decision. One you should have made months ago.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is easy to preach to those who already agree with you, and easier still to close your ears to things you don’t want to know. You united the few ineffectual pawns who already wanted peace. But, Mar Lon, to effect change in a world of order, a world from which Odin banished all dishonor, you have to prove your cause to those with enough power to rewrite the laws. Anything less is a waste of your time. And, in this case, a waste of innocent lives.”

  Thoughts and emotions hammered at Mar Lon until his head ached from the need to separate them. Grief overpowered all else, and he could not avoid the pain of guilt, the belief that he had goaded his followers to a cause that would seal their deaths. “I’ll appeal to Siderin then.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “It’s never too late for peace.”

  Carcophan rolled his parcel from hand to hand on the surface of the Rock of Peace. “For you, Mar Lon, it’s too late. Your father is dead. You’re the bard now. By highest law, you must immediately return to Béarn to guard the king.”

  The revelation, on top of Mar Lon’s other concerns, drove him to an emotional numbness. For several moments, he could not speak. He recalled his father’s strong baritone that had brought joy to so many, the gentle manner and agile fingers of the man who had fed him, loved him, and taught him to play. He tried to imagine a world without Davrin’s quiet reassurances, without the near-magic of his music or the beauty of his voice. Béarn seemed dark, cold, and empty. Tears filled Mar Lon’s eyes, and his vision blurred to watery outlines.

  Carcophan waited in silence for Mar Lon to speak.

  Tears coursed down Mar Lon’s cheeks. “My father dead? How?”

  Carcophan leaned across the stone to face the bard more directly. “Siderin’s messengers paid King Morhane in Béarn to keep the kingdom and its allies out of the war. Davrin made the mistake of playing Western songs of patriotism, trying to convince the king to refuse the alliance.” He grinned. “I’m afraid your father met with an accident.”

  “A purposeful ‘accident’ at the hands of Siderin’s assassins, no doubt.” Crying gruffened Mar Lon’s voice, making his shouted accusation sound like a childish tantrum.

  Carcophan shrugged in reply. “I thought you’d be glad to go home. After all, Béarn will be at peace; Siderin’s gold has seen to that. And note well, Mar Lon. Your own father sanctioned war.”

  “My father sanctioned self-defense.”

  Again Carcophan shrugged. “Same thing. If the West chose not to fight, there would be no war as surely as if the Eastlands never attacked.”

  There was a logic to Carcophan’s claim that Mar Lon could not help but consider. He pictured the fertile West as a wasteland, raped and ravaged by Easterners unable to see past their own self-interest to the futures of their children. He realized that his quest for peace, his driving need to share the light of his knowledge, had made him forget that his mission in the Eastlands was to learn. He had seen much and spoken to many, yet he had missed so much more. He had seen
few women and those only working the fields, swaddled in rags that hid even their faces, as if broken and ashamed of their lot.

  Once Mar Lon had offered to help a teenage girl with a heavy jug. She had run, a look of terror on her face, water sloshing over her dress with every step. In a land where rape was not only legal but encouraged, where infants were slaughtered on whim, and where minor violations of law meant maiming or death, Mar Lon could understand her reaction. He recalled a song written by his great grandmother about a strong-willed Eastern woman who rebelled against the oppression. Each battle gained her a worse punishment until she had lost both arms, both legs, and her tongue to Eastern justice. Even then, undaunted, she had goaded the other women by drawing pictures and words in the dirt with her nose. It was a dirty, ugly song, one which had brought Mar Lon nightmares as a child. Yet, when correctly performed, the intricate interlacing of harmonies and the perfect choice of every word conveyed a message of encouragement that goaded people to stand up for their causes, no matter the consequences, as well as to expose the Eastern women’s lot.

  Mar Lon closed his eyes, pained by circumstances that went way beyond his personal loss. The Western women who did not submit to the Easterners would die a cruel and painful death. The Western men would become beasts, forced to ravish the fields their grandfathers had farmed and nurtured through the centuries. The Western peoples had united before, in times of disease, famine, and war, yet always with the high kingdom in Béarn as their leader. Mar Lon believed that, without Béarn, the Westlands would simply fall, wretched victims crushed by a vicious enemy. Yet the other option, that of war, seemed equally contemptible to Mar Lon. War is always wrong. The bard brought his thoughts full circle and back to the conversation. “If the West does not defend, it will only make it easier for the Eastlands to destroy them.”

  “The sooner it’s done, the fewer lives lost.”

  “If Siderin doesn’t attack, there’re no lives lost.”

  “Lives lost isn’t Siderin’s concern. It’s yours.”

  “It’s everyone’s concern!” Mar Lon screamed. “Am I the only person in the world who believes in the sanctity of life?”

  Carcophan threw up his hands, then let them fall back to the stone. “Mar Lon, don’t be a fool. The more of my followers who remain alive, the stronger my cause. If it makes you deal with the situation better, remember that Odin himself gave my predecessors the prophecy to start this war. The AllFather created this world. Surely you sanction his decisions.”

  “I don’t know anymore.” Mar Lon believed he had confined his doubts to his thoughts, but the horrified look on the Southern Wizard’s ancient features told otherwise.

  “You would challenge the gods?” Carcophan laughed, the sound rich, almost musical, with evil. “Then there’s no need for me to end the line of bards. Odin will do it for me.”

  Mar Lon made a routine gesture of divine supplication. But, turned toward the topic that had bothered him for so long, he opened the tide of his concerns. And once freed, the flow could not be swiftly stopped. “It’s not the gods I challenge, it’s a system based on Wizards and absolutes they created which no longer seems to work.” He called upon the teachings of his forefathers. “A long time ago, when the Eastern mortals rigidly followed evil, the Northern mortals never strayed from good, and the Westerners actively followed neutrality, it made sense. But I have to believe the boundaries between good and evil have blurred when war and peace become equally neutral concepts. Maybe it’s time for change.”

  “You arrogant little nothing!” Carcophan’s fists clenched around his package, his knuckles blanched. “Do you profess to know more than the gods? Do you believe that your meager twenty-five years can gain you the wisdom of Odin’s hundreds of centuries?”

  “Certainly not.” Mar Lon made a longer, brisker religious gesture of apology. He had no wish to offend the gods, but the bards could speak this freely only to the Cardinal Wizards, and Mar Lon had a point he felt a desperate, driving need to make. If it bothered the Evil One, so much the better. “All I know could fit comfortably on Odin’s eyelash. But, in nature, it’s the shortest lived animals, not the longest, who first see the need for change and adapt the most quickly to that need. We beat the insects from our crops, they learn to fly. We trap them with nets, and they learn to burrow beneath the ground. We poison them and, within a month, they hatch a new generation that thrives on our poison. Yet as man whittled its numbers, it took the aristiri decades to become timid and then many more to learn to find one another in the mating season with song.”

  Carcophan’s expression became as serious and still as a mask carved into stone. “Ah, great master of the world’s wisdom, thank you for sharing the knowledge your tiny fraction of mortal life has gained you.” His tone mocked with a perfect, sneering singsong that could only come from centuries of practice. “Now let me share some information that I’ve gleaned in my own time and from the lengthy reigns of my predecessors. Listen closely, bard. This comes of my dealings with demons. In that, my line and myself have far more experience than any other Cardinal Wizard, so I may be the only one who has come upon this information.”

  Despite his sorrow and growing hatred for the Wizard, Mar Lon felt his pulse quicken with excitement. The quest for knowledge still ran like fire in his family’s veins.

  “I believe,” Carcophan said, “that the Ragnarok will not come as a result of evil or the clash between evil and good. All my followers together do not have the power to repel one god, even should I want such a thing to happen. I believe, Mar Lon, that only one force in existence has the power to destroy gods as well as men.” Carcophan paused dramatically.

  “Which is?” Mar Lon prodded.

  “Magic. Demons. Chaos. Whatever you choose to call it. The stuff Odin banished. Its threat is the reason why the gods constrain the world’s only Wizards with rules. But, every once in a while, a tendril of Chaos escapes. And it can drive a man to drop all semblance of honor, to defy the inviolate laws of his culture. When that happens, it must be stopped.” He raised the cloth parcel.

  Mar Lon considered, uncertain where to run with these new thoughts. Chaos rarely appeared in any of his history lessons. It seemed to gain mention only in Northern stories of the world’s creation, as the force that kept the universe formless until Odin cast it out to pave the way for shape, order, and law.

  Carcophan’s features remained grim, but all sarcasm left him. “Mar Lon, you have to believe that the gods have reasons for all they do. Every man and Wizard has his role in this world. My die, and even yours, was cast long before that of any mortal. For you to do anything but return to Béarn and guard the king would open your person to whatever tiny hold Chaos might have in our world. You could become the trigger for the bloodiest, ugliest war in eternity, unless a Wizards’ champion killed you first. If you force my hand, I can guarantee slow agony.” He spoke in a low monotone, all the more brutal for its tonelessness. “It’s not your destiny to fight in the Great War nor, apparently, to champion peace. No doubt you’ll find a cause for that energy. Might I suggest the king of Béarn? It is your lot, an honest one paved by centuries of forefathers.”

  Mar Lon lowered his head. The idea of serving King Morhane, a heartless despot who had murdered his own brother for the throne, offended him. Yet he also knew that if the West won the war, the prophecies claimed that the Western Wizard and a Renshai would bring the old king’s heir back to power. I can’t stop the war, and I have no wish to be a part of it. At least, I can have a hand in returning the king. Still, the idea of abandoning his quest for peace rankled. Mar Lon mulled over his options, while grief and uncertainty fogged his usual clarity.

  The Southern Wizard seemed to read Mar Lon’s mind even though the bard knew the Cardinal Wizards had no power to intrude on men’s thoughts. “Lest you doubt the sincerity of my threat.” He opened the bag he had cradled on the stone since before Mar Lon’s arrival. “One of your so-called peacemakers tried to stand against the order
s of his king. Chaos-touched he was, and so he died.” Carcophan grasped the lower corners of the bag and shook its contents to the Rock of Peace. A severed head rolled free, the blood clotted and the skin shriveled. Abrith’s boyish features were too familiar to Mar Lon.

  “Gods,” Mar Lon whispered. He tried to say more, but the words would not come. His train of thought disappeared, leaving an endless, black void which only grief could fill. His muscles failed him. The lonriset toppled to the ground, and he crumpled into a heap beside it, feeling frameless, as if his bones had fallen to powder in an instant. Again, the tears came, hot with a sorrow that spanned not only the loss of father, friends, and beloved children, but the lives stolen in this and every war, the lands forced to absorb the blood of men, women, and children.

  By the time Mar Lon thought to move, the sun had burned his neck and arms. Resolve coursed through him. Too many men floundered through life, trying to find a way to leave their mark upon the world. Rarely did the gods give any man a specific purpose in life, especially one as important as protecting the high king. And even more rarely did they grant a talent that could affect men as deeply as the bard’s music. Mar Lon rose, dusted grime from his tunic, and picked up his instrument. Never again would he let despair conquer him. There were too many heroes deserving of ballads who would die in the coming war. There were too many soon-to-be widows and orphans who would need the comfort of lullabies to sleep or the release that accompanied humorous ditties. Many would seek hymns to restore their faith in whatever gods they worshiped. And Mar Lon would continue to compose his songs of peace, his contribution to the line of bards. He would pass them to his firstborn who would pass them to his firstborn as the line continued. And, maybe, the generations raised on those songs would learn from them. And Mar Lon’s great-great-grandchildren might live in the peace he had helped to gain them.

  Buoyed by his thoughts, Mar Lon headed toward the Weathered Mountains, the Westlands, and Béarn, grimly aware, thanks to Carcophan’s candor, that the Eastern army and the Great War would beat him home.