Child of Sorrows

by Michaelbrent Collings

  "What is it?" breathed the colonel. "What do you see?"

  Arrow spoke, still on his knees and still looking for the one thing that would tell him beyond any doubt what he already knew. "The people in the barracks were part of a chain."

  Colonel Alya stiffened. "What do you mean?" she asked in a hushed tone.

  Arrow looked away from his investigation for a moment, his features softening. I'm talking about her son.

  "We're all part of a chain, Colonel," he said softly. "Everyone alive is part of many chains. People come together and forge bonds. Some are good, some not so much. But they link us together in chains of events, of moments. And just as with any other chain, if you pull it just right, the rest of the links can be felt. You can follow each chain to its beginning, or its end."

  He looked away from her. Partly to keep looking on the ground nearby, but partly to avoid her eyes. "Your son – everyone in this base – was part of one great chain."

  "The Imperial Army."

  "No. Well, yes. But the chain I'm talking about is the chain of murder that happened here in the last few hours. The arrows in the barracks were fired by three different people. Those three shooters fell, as well."

  "So our soldiers fought back. We sold our lives dearly."

  Arrow grimaced. The dirt around was wetting, turning to mud. All the clues it might hold rapidly falling away. "No."

  "But you said –"

  "I said they fell. I didn't say the soldiers did it. They fell, shot by people outside the barracks. And those people were killed by others, and those by others. A chain of death, unbroken."

  "That is war," said the colonel.

  "No," said Arrow. "Because the chain ran the wrong direction."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It didn't run in the way of one man killing another, then being killed himself in turn." He paused, his eyes widening.

  Oh, no.

  "Then how did it run?"

  Arrow moved to the wall. The clue wasn't in the dirt after all. It was sitting there, under a bit of ripped cloth. He saw what it was, but couldn't find the strength to move the cloth. He didn't want to reveal what it hid, as though refusal to throw it open to the sky might keepit from becoming real.

  No.

  "The chain ran backward," he said, and felt like he was speaking in a dream. "A man killed someone, who then killed someone, who then killed someone else."

  "Wait – you're saying that the people who killed the soldiers here… were already dead?"

  Arrow nodded. "I followed the chain back to here." He gestured at the bloodstain on the wall. "This man was the first. He died. Killed by…." His throat ran dry. He swallowed and started again. "Then, after being killed, he murdered his fellow guard." He pointed at the next splash of red on the wall. "They moved away, and killed others, who killed others, who killed others. Eventually bullets flew into the barracks and killed three bowmen. They fell, then stood again – you can even see one of their bootprints in the center of the carnage as they stand after losing too much blood to live. They shot another man, who wrenched himself off the arrows that impaled him. Then they all continued down the hall to…." He swallowed again. Not wanting to say out loud what had happened to the colonel's son.

  I know what it is to lose my family. Please, Gods, help her through this.

  Help me through this.

  "What could do that?" Colonel Alya's voice finally sounded as dry as Arrow's.

  Arrow finally did what he needed to do. He pulled aside the bit of fabric – cloth torn from the uniform of a dead man – and revealed what lay beneath.

  He had thought he might find a footprint. A large one, maybe, alongside a small one.

  But the footprints were gone.

  And this was much worse.

  Colonel Alya shuddered.

  The doll lay, face up to the rain. Burned and tortured, one eye burned out, the other intact but the wood of the doll's face gouged heavily as though some beast had tried to claw out the glass orb. The hair was torn, shredded. The dress singed and brown. The doll's arms and legs had been meticulously broken, so that two of them were too short and the others faced the wrong direction. A nightmare.

  "What is it?" Ayala asked.

  "A poppet."

  14

  Akiro drove through three more towns. In each, he stopped the auto-car in the plaza or market – whatever seemed to be the center of the town. In the first one, he called as loudly as he could, "Is anyone here? Anyone?"

  He hated how old his voice sounded. How feeble. When he was young he could have shouted loudly enough to be heard in the entire town and well into the farmlands beyond. Now, his voice quivered and quavered and barely carried beyond the open space surrounding the market.

  No one answered. Just silence, and the low whisper of wind over dirt, through empty structures.

  And worse than empty. He felt not as though he were walking through a town whose people had left for a time. Rather, it was as though he walked through a cemetery. A place of the dead, but never hallowed by prayer or blessing. An obscene place, where the dead lay quiet, unmoving, but still somehow alive in angry memory.

  (Look what you did. Look what you failed to do.)

  He wasn't sure if the voice in his mind came from his own thoughts, from the Gods, or from something darker. He – like all the others who knew of what had happened only months ago – worried about what they had done. Knowing they were doing the best they could, but still wondering if that best had been merely to replace a corrupt, evil government with one that was slightly less corrupt, slightly less evil – but still far from the good they had hoped for.

  He had never asked them about it. But he saw it, on all their faces. Especially Sword, who seemed to bear each pain suffered by any in the Empire. Who seemed to feel each injustice as a physical attack, a stab to a heart that had only survived this long because of its greatness.

  Akiro returned to the auto-car, and in the next two towns he did not call out. Because of Cai's face.

  The young boy was curled in the footspace in front of the seat, only his eyes visible above the blanket he had wrapped around him. He was shaking, and tears streamed from his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," Akiro said softly as he got in. He knew instinctively that his shout had terrified the child.

  So much. He's been through so much tonight.

  And may soon see worse.

  In the next two towns, Akiro still got out of the auto-car. But no calls, no shouts. He walked up and down a few of the streets. Tried the doors of the homes and shops he passed.

  No one greeted him. Not too surprising – it was the middle of the night. But when he tried some of the doors, not all were locked. He went into every one that opened to his hand, and found only empty rooms, only beds still made and unslept-in.

  A few of the houses showed signs of struggles. Not much, but a chair knocked over here or food scattered across a table there.

  One house – another that clearly belonged to someone who had trained at the University, full of books and papers – had a message left inside. A paper on a writing desk, with quickly-scrawled words that stood out in dark letters:

  THE GODS

  A thumbprint smudged the last letter – red, the author of the message clearly wounded somehow when he or she wrote the note.

  Akiro stared at the linen paper for a long time. He might have stayed there forever, terror and confusion rooting him to the spot. Only the thought of Cai, shivering in the auto-car, drove him back outside.

  Town past town.

  All empty. Save the ghosts – of whoever had lived there, or (worse) of whatever had happened to them.

  Had lived? Had?

  Akiro realized as he drove that he was already thinking about the people in the towns as dead. Not just gone, but dead.

  Please, Gods, let it be not so.

  The Gods were silent.

  He drove on.

  He thought about returning to the palace.

  And w
hat would that accomplish?

  Going back would take another day, and what would he say? That the people in some small towns were gone? That he had found a boy, but that boy didn't know what had happened?

  The palace would just send out people to find out what had happened – people who would take another day to discover what Akiro already knew.

  Besides, there was something more important at the end of his trip. And it wasn't that he was hoping to find a cure for Malal's affliction at the Great University – though he certainly did hope for that.

  No, what he needed to discover, as quickly as possible, was whether there was anyone at the University. Or if they had all disappeared as well. As impossible-seeming as the disappearance of a few thousand people in several towns in Knowledge might be… if he found the same to be true at the University, it would be a shattering event.

  He realized too late what was happening. That his exhaustion had conspired with his fears to cause him to forget what he was actually doing now.

  A sudden grinding pulled him out of his reverie. The auto-car had been listing to the side, allowed to slowly move off the road under Akiro's inattention. Now it hit a small mound of rocks, stuttered, and slammed suddenly to the other side. Cai, who had ridden silently beside him since before the towns, cried out suddenly.

  The wheel spun under Akiro's hands. The auto-car bounced off the road, over a small incline, and straight at a heavy wall that separated someone's farm from the road.

  He tried to stop the auto-car, the levers that controlled the forward motion had jammed.

  He heard a squeak – the unmistakable sound of the auto-car's passenger door opening. Looked over to see Cai leaning out. He almost shouted, yelled for the boy not to jump. Then realized that Cai might have the right idea. They might break bones if they jumped – probably all of them, in Akiro's case, given his age – but that would be better than flying through the front windshield and flaying the skin from their bones before hitting the wall itself.

  The auto-car ground to a halt.

  Akiro almost bounced off the steering wheel. He looked at the levers in shock: they still showed the auto-car in full forward.

  "Why isn't it…?" He looked to the passenger seat, surprised to see Cai still there.

  Even more surprised to see the boy halfway out the open door. Leaning headfirst toward the ground, his right hand dipped down, below Akiro's sight, his left gripping the metal frame around the open door.

  Akiro realized in that moment that the metal was bent around Cai's fingers. Curved around them like butter.

  "A Strong?"

  Akiro didn't even realize he had said the words out loud until Cai grunted. "Yes. You might want to get out."

  As if to confirm his words, the auto-car lurched forward. Metal shrieked as Cai pulled against it.

  Akiro flung himself out of the vehicle, barely managing to grab his canes before yanking himself bodily to the ground outside. As he fell to the earth, he saw Cai's other hand – buried deep in the ground, with a long furrow trailing behind it. He had used his great strength to create an anchor of himself, pulling against the ground itself until he brought the auto-car to a halt.

  Cai saw him, too, and as soon as he did he rolled out of the auto-car. The instant he let go, the vehicle hurtled forward, barely missing rolling over the boy with its rear wheels as it passed.

  Only a short journey before it found its way to the wall. But long enough that by the time it hit the thick stone barrier, its speed was great enough to utterly crumple the heavy metal vehicle.

  That could have been us.

  Akiro stared at the mess of metal and glass and rock, amazed that he had avoided being mashed to a pulp in the middle of it. He looked at Cai. "Thank you, boy."

  Cai nodded somberly. Got to his feet and brushed off his suit and vest – which Akiro thought was a bit of a wasted effort, given how dirty it all was from the child's stay under the floorboards.

  When the Gods came for his family.

  Cai saved him from thinking further about that. He went to Akiro and held out a hand, then gently but firmly hauled the old man to his feet.

  "Thank you," Akiro said again. He glanced at the auto-car.

  "What happened?" asked Cai.

  "Well, I –"

  "You fell asleep." It wasn't a question.

  "I fell asleep."

  Cai shrugged. "My father always said if you didn't fall asleep at your table, you probably weren't working hard enough."

  Akiro smiled at that. This is a good boy. Please, Gods, let his parents come back to give him more wisdom.

  Cai managed to smile back – a welcome sight, given how terrified he had been through the journey. "What do we do now?" he asked.

  Akiro had already told him they were bound for the Great University. Though he hadn't told the boy all the reasons he wanted to go there. Only that there might be help there, as well as answers.

  Akiro picked up his canes from where they lay nearby. "We walk."

  "Is it far?"

  Akiro shook his head. "We're almost there."

  He began walking. Halfway back to the road, he felt Cai's hands circle his waist. The child was walking behind him, close enough that it was awkward for Akiro to time his gait to the steps of the smaller boy. But he didn't complain, because he immediately felt lighter.

  The boy was carrying him. Or near enough that it made little difference.

  "A Strong," mused Akiro. "Rare."

  People in Knowledge who were either born as or later discovered to be Gifts almost always went as soon as feasible to the Great University for training. That was one of the University's purposes: to teach Gifts how to best use their magic, how to create and build and improve.

  There was also the fact that fewer people turned up as Gifts in Knowledge than in any of the other four States of Ansborn. No one knew why that was – the Academics had been studying it for generations, and none had ever come up with an answer.

  So because few Gifts were found in Knowledge, and the few who were discovered went quickly to the University for training, it was unusual to see anyone with an active Gift in any of the cities or towns. People did things largely without magic in Knowledge – the Great University being an exception – and if you found a Gift it was usually someone passing through. Someone who was either performing a service he or she had been contracted to do, a Gift going to the University for training, or one leaving to make his or her living in one of the other States.

  Cai nodded at Akiro's comment. "Mother wanted me to learn her trade before I left. At least enough to be useful as a man as well as a Gift. Father disagreed, but…." He shrugged, almost embarrassed. "Mother always gets her way." His voice grew restrained. "She always did, anyway."

  Akiro forced a jovial tone. "Don't count her as lost yet, my boy."

  Cai said nothing. Just kept holding Akiro up, bearing him forward.

  They walked for a few hours. Long enough that dawn peeked over the horizon. Akiro's every bone ached, his every muscle shrieked in pain. He said nothing, though. Cai had borne all this pain – and more – and said nothing. He would not disrespect the child's strength by showing his own weakness.

  The University was unlike many of the other major structures in Ansborn. It had not the grandeur of the Imperial Palace. It lacked the sense of grace that any felt when beholding the Grand Cathedral. There was no sense of power or foreboding, as one could feel when walking among the spires that surrounded the Imperial Strongholds.

  The Great University was simply… a place. Buildings, mostly low and compact, that spread along a great plain atop Knowledge. Many were classrooms. Some held archives – books of history, of medicine, of art, of magic. Others contained research areas where the High Academics worked on projects that improved crops, exploited magics to their highest potential, aided the Empire in its quest to survive atop the mountains.

  Cai stopped propelling him forward when he first saw the buildings in the distance. Because they wer
e so small, they were actually quite close: it wasn't like the Grand Cathedral, which was visible for miles.

  Akiro pointed at a cluster of buildings in the center. "There," he said, and again Cai bore his weight, just allowing Akiro to step lightly enough that he could guide himself.

  He realized how mature that was. Surely Cai could have just carried him, as easily as a man carries a baby. And it would have been simpler for the child, as well – easier to simply lift a burden than to walk awkwardly the way they had over the last hours. But Cai had chosen instead to lend his strength while at the same time preserving Akiro's dignity. He helped, but did not steal the old priest's ability to control his own steps, to take his own path.

  Extraordinary boy. And more a man than many I have met.

  They moved forward.

  And Akiro's heart sank. He heard Cai make a strangled noise behind him, as well, and knew the child had seen what he had: nothing.

  The Great University, like the towns they had passed – like Cai's own home – was empty.

  Still, Akiro managed to keep marching forward. Managed to keep his fear in check.

  Until they passed the first small building.

  It was a greeting booth: just a small kiosk with an open window where first-time visitors to the University could stop by and ask questions. Usually housed by students training to be Academics, it was where you went to find out where a specific person was, where you needed to go to discover particular research. The smiling face that represented a place dedicated to learning above all else.

  The kiosk was empty. No smiling young men or women, dressed in their suits and vests and ties, no jaunty fedoras perched atop their heads.

  But though there was no one in the booth, that didn't mean there was no information. Someone had left a note behind. A smeared word, written in the pencils favored by students.

  Akiro saw the word. He felt Cai's arms tighten around his waist and knew the boy had seen it, too.

  "What does it mean?" whispered Cai. "What is happening, Father?"

  "Only the Gods know," said Akiro, and immediately regretted his choice of words. Because that was the word. Black letters, scrawled on the side of a small white building. Easy to read in the brightening morning, but pulling a shade over his heart.