Arman interrupted, “He saved Massada?”
“Yeah,” Brenol breathed.
“Do you know the memory now?”
The image of Colette’s tree blossomed again in his mind. Even the glimpse robbed him of his breath.
“Yes. But I—”
Flash!
Deniel crouched in a tree, concealed within its boughs and leaves. He was fully alert. He could hear every sound, every whisper tickling through the wood, every creeping thing in the night.
I will know. I must. It is my cartess, he thought.
Time passed. Hours. His legs ached, his bones grew cold and stiff. Yet still, he refused to move. My cartess, he thought, willing his muscles to endure without breaking into shivers. The strain grew unbearable, each moment a concerted effort to remain motionless.
Is this the wrong place? Was my information wrong? he wondered. But he remained. He refused to let anxiety steal his hope.
More time passed.
And then, in the hour before dawn, Deniel heard someone approach.
He thinks he hides his walk well, but I hear his pride leagues away, the young man thought.
Ugh. The stink.
Deniel knew it was Jerem simply from that awful scent. It was earthy—a deep down earth, too—but with a heavy spice. The mixture itself was not unpleasant, but it heralded its owner, who was.
I know you’ve done something with her, Deniel thought. I know it. You’ve been too many places at key times. Yes, we’ll see what web the busy spider spins.
It was not long before another approached. A stocky, greasy man shuffled in from the bushes, decked suspiciously in black and fidgeting as only the guilty do.
“Jerem?” he whispered into the darkness.
“Hush. You might as well trumpet your presence to the polina.” Jerem’s voice was dangerous and icy; it would take little to unleash whatever corrupt designs loomed in his heart. “What do you have for me?”
There was movement below, and Deniel could not discern their faces through the greenery, but he heard Jerem’s murmur of pleasure.
“Is there an antidote?” Jerem asked.
“I did not make—you never said to make one,” the shorter man whispered.
Jerem growled triumphantly. “Tell me how it affects the maralane.”
“It is slow—” the man started hesitantly.
“What?” Jerem asked, still distracted by his grasped treasure.
“The poison takes a long time to affect them,” he replied nervously. “It destroys their side gills, but it isn’t a fast process.”
Jerem’s voice was tainted with a controlled fury as he spoke, “How long?”
“Stop!” the stranger squeaked. “Please! I only tested it on the one. Maybe if you had me test another—”
“I will ask you again,” Jerem said slowly. “How long?”
A sudden fear sliced through Deniel’s chest. He is—
The young man tried to look down to see what was occurring, but the branches obscured his sight.
The shorter man moaned below. It was a cry of a man who realizes his peril too late. “I—” he whispered, clearly in pain.
A sharp whisper hissed through the leaves. “You will tell me. And you will tell me quickly. That was just a small cut. This blade can go deeper.”
The stranger groaned again, but words did not come.
“Tell me!” Jerem spat vehemently.
Realizing what was happening, Deniel flung himself down to the earth and belted out a warning cry, hoping the guards would be near enough to react. His cold and stiff ankle rolled with the impact, and an intense pain launched through him. Jerem, not realizing his opponent’s injury, drove his blade into his companion and bolted.
The stranger crumpled into a heap upon the ground.
No!
Gingerly, he scooted toward the fallen man, already in a warm puddle of his own dark crimson. Seeing the stranger’s empty face, he knew he need not check for a pulse. His fate was evident. Deniel cursed.
The guards approached. He yelled directions to them and they dogged their way off swiftly into the wood, leaving him cradling his foot with regret and fury.
After a moment, Deniel returned his attention to the lifeless stranger. A knife protruded from his chest, teased down at an angle from the pectorals into the heart. Deniel pulled it from the bulky flesh, and more blood flowed out like red silk. Deniel examined the still-warm blade. It was curved like a crescent and extraordinarily sharp. The smooth silver sparkled in the light of the fingernail moon.
“I’m sorry, stranger,” Deniel whispered. “I should’ve jumped sooner.” He exhaled gravely and forced his mind to task.
What was Jerem after?
The young man methodically examined the victim’s shirt pockets. He lifted the fabric to peer at the body. The soft pink-white flesh spoke of indulgence.
Nothing.
Deniel painfully crept around the corpse and spied an object partially concealed by a nearby bush. Grimacing, he ducked down and grasped hold of a soft gray pouch that was splattered with fresh blood. He placed it in his own pocket, indifferent to the crimson stains, and moved back to the fallen man. He removed the shoes and found a few freg hidden beneath the stinking feet. Deniel left them. Nothing was in the pockets of the pants.
But the hands. A small article rested in the curved and lifeless hand. He plucked it out and stashed it away with the pouch. Carefully, he re-shod the body and hobbled his way back to the light.
It was some time before the guards returned, crestfallen. An alert was sent out across Colonastra: Tall man, blonde hair. Jerem of Conch, murderer.
Deniel directed them to the stranger’s body and gimped his way to the rooms he had been assigned to for his stay. Bountifully, they were not far.
It was only when he was alone that he pulled the pouch out for closer examination. It contained a journal that soon enough betrayed its owner. As he read, horror etched itself into the creases of his face.
This man is more monstrous than I thought.
Deniel pulled the other item out from his pocket—still sticky from the dead man’s palm. It was a small glass figurine of a maralane, intricately crafted with shimmering green tails and opals for eyes. He had never seen one but knew it regardless: it was a hos, a plaything for a maralane child.
What would this awful man want with a hos? he pondered. And who would have given it to him?
Brenol opened his eyes to the world again. Arman was back in the river, perusing the Genesifin. As the young man sat up, the movement caught the juile’s vision, and he fought his way out of the tugging waters.
“You get to tell first,” Arman said with a small smile.
“I need a drink.” It was only after many drafts of cool river water that the pounding in Brenol’s head lessened enough for his thoughts to regain sense. “I haven’t had a new memory in over an orbit. I’d thought they were done. And the headaches—I got them more when they first began. Ugh.” He cradled his head with the gentleness usually reserved for newborns.
“How long was I asleep?” he asked. But before he heard a response, darkness smothered him, and he fell unconscious again.
~
Brenol awoke to the sound of clicking, although it was not the cause of his jolt into consciousness. A full bladder was. After fumbling into the bushes to relieve himself, he returned to the campfire to find onyx eyes greeting him eagerly. The night was well into its course, and both full and crescent moons glowed in the dark heavens. His head throbbed, but still the beauty did not escape his eye.
“It’s bountiful to have you return.”
“Bountiful indeed,” Brenol groaned. “How—”
“Not long. This is the following night. We met yesterday.”
“Oh.” Somehow, words seemed ineffectual. Or perhaps that was his brain.
Arman ignored his slowness. “The memory. Did you discover anything?” He spoke evenly, but his body was as taut as a fiddle string, and his finge
rs clenched his worn beads.
Brenol nodded, but his mind still reeled. Do I speak? Do I—
“Bren.” Arman’s voice steadied him.
Yes, he will know what to do, he thought. The young man massaged his temples, wishing the pounding would ease, and began. “Jerem was given a poison. He had a poison…”
Massada seemed to wilt around him at the whispered truths. Arman waited, patient now. He loosened his fingers, and his beads fell into transparent sight. They were gray, and orbits of use had smoothed and patterned them until they looked like smeared storm clouds.
“Jerem got it from a man he murdered. I don’t know when.”
“Who was he going to poison?” Arman asked with the confidence of one who has already defeated the enemy, but Brenol knew that four orbits had not distanced them enough from Jerem’s evil. No pleasant image of Colette’s tree would amend the true disaster before them.
Brenol took a breath, and the words spilled out. “The maralane. Jerem wanted to rule over Massada. He feared being stopped—and knew the maralane would be the ones who could do it. He wrote in his journal that he would make the maralane suffer. Oh, Arman, and now he’s killed the world… Killed it.” The last came out muted, as if a secret he whispered to the shadows.
Arman’s pupils constricted. “Tell me. How do you know?”
Brenol relayed the memory: the twisted journal Deniel had read, the knowledge that Jerem had been given unimaginable power. A poison strong enough to destroy so much. And now…and now…the maralane were dying and so were the terrisdans. This could be the only explanation for the lands’ alterations, for why they felt so asleep.
And this must be the reason why I was compelled to pledge gortei. To save the terrisdans from Jerem—dead and alive. Brenol sagged in despair. Colette’s tree? Deniel’s obsession over her queendom? No, I was a fool for thinking of them. The darkness is upon us. And it’s no child’s tale.
Arman did not react. He breathed steadily, his half-visible chest filling and releasing. His frame remained seated and erect. Eventually, he swept his left hand into the folds of his cloak and removed a small wooden pipe—his fentatta. It was a faded and rusty red now, but orbits previously it had likely been a vibrant garnet. Brenol was mesmerized, and not simply from the bizarre apparition of objects that occasionally happened with Arman. Arman raised the piece to his lips and began. He played his instrument masterfully, with the juile movement and rhythm that coursed in his veins. The pipe’s sound merged between a recorder and an oboe, yet the piece was constructed with both holes and slide. It methodically twisted and sang under Arman’s sure fingers. The song, slow and sweet, ended as mysteriously as it had begun, and the same deft hand tucked the instrument away for another unlikely moment.
“I needed to wash my thoughts away,” he explained softly.
“I still do,” Brenol replied, queasy despite the song.
Arman nodded and flicked his index finger in the direction of the river. He rose, and the moons’ light painted his half-present frame an ethereal yellow. Brenol sighed and followed.
Why do I have such reluctance when I know it’ll help?
He let the thought go, removed his footwear, dipped his feet into the numbing cold, and whispered his burdens out, allowing the sweet water to wash everything downstream. The knot untied, the load released.
All felt right again, and he suddenly felt that the nail biting could cease. He stood for several minutes in silence, numb from his calves down, and allowed his mind to settle.
All will be well. Somehow.
Brenol inhaled and stepped gingerly amidst the stones. He plucked up his sandals and looked expectantly at the juile.
“Now, we plan,” Arman said, placing his sturdy hand on Brenol’s shoulder.
It was reassuring to have a friend so capable, so alive, so determined to do right.
“Is this poison what is destroying the maralane?” Brenol asked. “Because Preifest seemed to think it was just the way fate was working.”
“The maralane are keenly observant. There is no possibility that they did not know of the poison, even though they never spoke of it to the upper world.” Arman nodded, as if to attest to the truth of the statement. “Yes, if Preifest did not tell you that the poison was the cause, it is not. There is no reason for him to conceal anything for Jerem… Now, the Genesifin indicates that there has been a spiraling of negative events at work for many orbits. It makes me think that the maralane were passing before, and perhaps Jerem simply accelerated the process. Like a mild sickness touching the elderly. I think there are at least two pieces at work now.”
Brenol gnawed on his lower lip. “Fate and evil?”
“Precisely.”
Arman’s eyes sparked in sudden recollection. “There was a time, shortly after you left, when the fish population seemed to recede. But it was a mere orbit. Then they flushed back and everyone forgot about it.” The juile met Brenol’s gaze unflinchingly. “They must have been hardy enough to endure.”
“How can Jerem have thought the land would not be affected?” Brenol asked. “It seems too great an oversight.”
“Poisons can target certain peoples, if made accordingly. Perhaps he had targeted such a specific aspect of the maralane that he did not even ponder the possibility of the poison affecting the land.”
“Do you think Jerem ever made an antidote?”
Arman’s face was ugly and somber in the darkness. “I doubt he would even consider it. He cared only for himself. And power. The maralane have always been sentinels, watching over Massada and its destiny. They would never have allowed him to rule the world.”
“Arman?”
The juile met the young man’s apprehensive glance.
“Did we kill Massada when we stopped Jerem on the isle? Would we have been able to know of this sooner if we’d somehow kept him alive? Could we have stopped the poison long ago?”
Arman shook his head. His face was severe. “Do not even unwind that string of thought, Bren. He was the one choosing evil, not us.” The juile sliced his hand forcefully through the air. “We are not to be blamed for this.”
Brenol nodded, recognizing the truth in the words.
After a moment, he spoke again. “There are indications in the Genesifin of the land meeting possible demise too. Could this be the same thing you suggest? That the lands were already faltering…and this sped it up?”
Arman nodded, considering the words. “It is very likely.” He shook his head. “I feel something hinting within me that poison is at work in the terrisdans, even if that is the case. So I am not ready to abandon attempts to help our world yet.”
Brenol felt his stomach calm in acceptance. “Can we at least stop one—the death of the maralane or the poisoning of the land?”
The juile frowned, but spoke compassionately. “Bren, I doubt there is anything to be done about the maralane. Yes, I will speak to them and offer help, but I think there is little the people of the land can do. If there is health to be had, they will find it themselves. They are a discerning and skilled people. They know better how to care for their kind than we ever could.” His gaze was strong and clear. “But as for the poison harming the terrisdans? We will try. I have hope that since the poison was not intended for the land we will be able to stop it. We must. Somehow.”
Brenol felt that spinning arrow within twang powerfully as it reached the bull’s-eye. No matter the cost.
CHAPTER 5
Her life will be murky, a path unseen, yet it remains forever engraved upon the fate of the world.
-Genesifin
Brenol flipped open the aurenal with a tiny click and stroked his fingertips across the smooth sides as he waited. Though he was only immersed to his feet, his entire body shook involuntarily from the chill of the river. Her voice, when it came, brought his stomach into his chest, but he calmed himself enough to listen. There were no second chances to hear the aurenal’s messages.
“Thank you, Bren. Thank you for co
ming. I don’t know what you can do, but I know you’ll help.” She choked. “There’s something so wrong with Veronia… Please come quickly.”
And so it begins, he thought. Colette perceives the poison’s effects, even if she doesn’t know what she sees. How long do we have? Can we even save them?
Dawn licked the skies, and the sun jumped up in haste. Brenol frowned at the morning’s alacrity; he felt the sharp pressure of the world nipping at his heels enough already.
Brenol wrenched his feet from the icy bank and began to rub life back into them. “Arman?”
The juile approached. His face was uncharacteristically morose as he deliberated over whether it was right to tell Brenol of his suspicions. The weight of the juile’s conjectures—that the black fever might be something more than a simple epidemic—bore terribly, but he did not want to overburden Brenol given the present dilemma.
No. There is too much here for Bren already, the juile thought decisively. This will have to wait. I will continue to hunt for answers alone.
Arman smoothed his face of worry. “That was Colette?” He pointed to the aurenal in the man’s hand.
“Yeah.”
“Go. I will meet you at the soladrome in Limbartina in ten days, two septspan at most. It will mean you must move hard, but I think you can manage it.” He gave him a calculating look. “Send seal if you cannot. I will meet with the umbus. They have much skill in healing.”
As if reading Brenol’s thoughts, his black eyes met the young man’s, and he spoke, sparing nothing. “We must not lose hope, but yes, this is grave. This is an evil I had not foreseen.”
I have been looking elsewhere, Arman thought sourly.
Brenol nodded, left without speech. Finally, despite his reluctance to part from the juile, he bowed. “It has been bountiful.”
Arman smiled handsomely, his olive features suddenly balancing. “Bountiful indeed.” The juile handed a small wallet to the young man. “Now you can pay your own sealtors,” he added with a teasing grin.
Brenol nodded in thanks, still somber. He pocketed the gift and watched as the juile swept quickly away on limber legs. His gray cloak was soon out of sight.
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