by Carol Berg
Squires did not receive the amber potion or the eyeglim. They would watch the unfolding events of the mission in the flames—the images wavering like reflections in a rippling pond. They would have studied the written transcript of the mission earlier and discussed the points of relevance with their guide. The viewing was to provide visual examples to reinforce the particular strategies or tactics they studied.
For knights and parati, the study was entirely different. The potion, the eyeglim, and the rest of the Archivist’s magic allowed us not just to see, but to experience the unfolding events as if we were the participants, training mind, muscle, and reflexes quite like practice sessions in the arena. The accumulation of these experiences, along with those of his own training at Evanide, were the foundation of a man’s knighthood, remaining with him until he died.
My eyes, already bleary with salt spray and lack of sleep, blinked rapidly. The Archivist tried three times to dispense the eyeglim droplets that would allow me to experience the history our commanders had chosen. His growling annoyance hinted at a temptation to send me away—which would be a boon after six hours on the seaward wall. Alas, he got the drops in.
A blurred movement and a chink meant he’d tossed the relict into the flames. All I truly saw was the brilliant flash of yellow, white, and blue that transported me into another man’s body existing somewhere in the past. . . .
Abitter-cold evening, touched with smoke. No matter that the grapes were barely in—what grapes the corrupted seasons had left in the world. Winter’s onset was no longer a gradual melding of golden fields and fragrant grapes with windblown leaves and frost-touched mornings, but the first blow of a brutal hammer that crushed us for nigh on three quarters of the year. We ran, my brother knight and I, pelting through the vineyard rows, uphill and down as fast as we could while holding complete silence.
I, the paratus known as Greenshank, settled quickly into the knight’s mind and body. At least thrice in a tenday we were sent into these missions from months or years past, living as a knight who had given up this personal memory of one of his missions. It was so strange, near impossible, to think this might be one of Inek’s missions or that of the knight sitting beside me, neither of them able to recognize it as his own. Rumor had it that some knights matched the wounds suffered in a session with their own scars, but they could never be entirely sure; that was part of their sacrifice.
The sessions had been horribly uncomfortable at first, as if two minds wrestled inside my one skull, but I had learned to yield to the magic and open myself to the narrative the knight had provided, as well as his actions and sensory experience.
The pair of us had been diverted from another mission a half day since and set on the trail of a Harrower raiding party bound for a slaughter. The news of an imminent attack had reached the Order late and we were closest. Why this raid of some rich man’s house held more importance than protecting a caravan bringing grain to the smut-blighted villages near Raspor, we weren’t told. I didn’t like it. But a knight trusts his orders, even when they make no sense.
Any opportunity to shed Harrower blood was welcome, of course. I’d seen the carnage they left behind, sometimes, I believed, with my own eyes and not the Archivist’s contrivances.
We’d found the abandoned Harrower encampment near the Earwine ford as we’d been advised. Seven riders. As long as their number didn’t grow too much along the way, we two should be able to take them easily. Harrowers were not combat trained for the most part, and all of them believed magic to be corruption, anathema to their gods. First we had to catch them, though. The camp was two days old at the least.
Counting on our instruction as to the raiders’ destination, we’d not followed their track, but cut through roadless hills. A day and a night we’d pushed our mounts, shorting them on rest in trade for speed. They’d got us most of the way before they’d blown. We turned them loose and ran.
We picked up the raiders’ trail near Pontia. Two new companions on far better horses had joined them. The tracks skirted the walled town and led us into these hills crosshatched with vines.
My legs ached. My back seized in the biting cold. But the smoky air lured me on, as if I might find home fires lit to welcome. Even after so many years vowed, certain scents pull me. Smoke on a cold night is one. The stink of Harrowers another. This night I had both.
As we neared the summit of the hill, we detected living beings near. Flattening ourselves to the ground, we crept upward and took a quick scan over the top. Beyond a scattering of dark outbuildings—stables, from the smell of them—a great, sprawling house blazed with light. Faint music twined with the smoke. In between were . . . horses. Sky Lord’s balls, hundreds of horses. Amongst them lanterns flickered and voices murmured or broke into quiet laughter. Had a Harrower legion joined the nine? Did no one in the house see the host poised to come down on them? What fools to be so careless in these days.
My second slid down from the summit on his back and lay beside me for a moment, staring at the stars. Appalled, no doubt, as I was. No matter our skills and magics, we could not stop such an onslaught. Training said we should leave immediately. A warning would only precipitate what was to happen and cost our lives for naught. And yet . . .
Harrowers did not laugh or show lights as they waited to swarm their prey. I lifted my head and tugged my second forward again. We lay there, chins on the dry grass, watching long enough for the truth to reveal itself. To smell the hay and oats. To hear the quiet slosh of water poured in troughs. To recognize the click of dice near a lantern. Callow laughter mixed with grunts as two bodies wrestled. These were guests’ horses pastured in groups or hobbled. A few grooms and servants worked and loitered among them.
Strong threads of magic wove a confusion about the landscape, impossible to sort out. Defenses? Weapons? More likely spells of fertility, water cleansing, or such usuals found about a grand demesne. Perhaps this wealthy man employed a pureblood or was one himself. Harrowers loathed purebloods. So where were the nine we hunted?
My partner guided my seeing as if I were a tyro. A snuffed lantern. A grunt. A heavy fall. Another light doused farther on. The shadowy figure left a trail of voiceless black through the field. Another thud. A restless horse whinnied and shifted, disturbing a few more. Four threads of death led toward the rear of the great house.
Three mounted men carrying torches patrolled the peripheries of the residence. I readied a blazing arrow and a sirening call to warn them, but before I could launch, flames shot skyward on every side of the house. We had delayed too long.
Never had I seen such a conflagration grown so quickly, save in the Order’s own battles. Harrowers disdained magic . . . or so we believed. Perhaps not this night.
Shouts rose from the burning house, just as flaming arrows arced from the three riders toward the interior courtyards. So many people there must be inside . . . hundreds of souls. God’s mercy, why did they not come out?
“You for the sneakers; me for the cursed horsemen,” I yelled. Without another word, the two of us raced down the hill, bellowing cries of war and vengeance. Stealth would be wasted.
We dodged packs of panicked horses charging toward the fences and others bucking wildly trying to rip out their pickets. All the grooms were dead. I tripped on a headless youth, but gritted my teeth and lurched onward, staying on my feet. A crackling as of lightning from my left marked a firebolt streaking from my second’s hand. A dark-clad figure glowed like sunrise for an instant, then collapsed with a grunt. My knife made sure of him.
“Down, First!” My partner’s call.
I ducked and rolled as a second firebolt struck a man not three paces from me. The Harrower’s sword flew, glittering orange in the firelight, like the scarf round his neck. I bounced to my feet and finished the devil with a thrust, but not before his knife carved its image in my ankle.
When near enough to cast, I spun a net of paralyzi
ng filaments toward the three horsemen. It should have taken all three easily, but half the net flared bright green and shattered into quickly fading sparks. I’d no idea what I’d done wrong.
The remainder of the net snared only the rider farthest from the house. Lacking his firm hand, his mount bucked him off and bolted. I didn’t see if he was trampled, for a wild man ran at me sword in one hand, axe in the other. More practiced than I expected, death lust glowing Harrower-orange in his eyes, he pressed me hard, closer and closer to the burning house.
The roar of flames could not drown the rising chorus of screams from the house. Were they locked in? Sky Lord’s mercy, we needed these lunatics dead so we could open a way inside.
I cast a tangle spell to snare the madman’s feet. This easiest of combat spells shattered in green sparks. Stunned, I scarce countered his thrust, and it caught me in one shoulder.
He laughed and bore down on me again. But he was a fool. I let him dodge and weave and think his tickling touches worried me. Inevitably, he overreached, and I feinted low—my lucky move. When he matched my move, I slashed open his middle, spinning just in time to parry a cut from a second horseman charging past. He immediately dragged his mount into a turn. The bones of his face were knobby and long, his eyes alight with Harrower madness.
“Come on, demon-spawn!” I yelled, doubting if anyone could hear over the hellish din. “I can take you without magic.” But I backed away from the inferno and dodged behind a fountain that splattered over a corpse, forcing my pursuer to turn after me.
The horseman charged and I triggered another net spell. Half of it flared green and shattered; half snared his sword arm and wrenched it out of position. Surely a magical void line was confounding us! The fractured net showed me. Spellwork nearer the fire than a hundred paces more or less failed.
The bony-faced rider galloped past, harmless for the moment, but pulled round again, shifting his angle of approach. His tactic was clear: drive me toward the house. Toward the void line, the boundary where magic failed.
How had Harrower rabble put up such a barrier? And why? They could not be expecting knights of the Order to come rescuing. Which likely meant the barrier was aimed at those inside. The confusing variety of magic around the demesne had suggested this was a pureblood house. And so many horses . . . two hundred sorcerers or more could be trapped where their magic could not work. Where they would burn.
As the horseman raised his sword and charged again, I scrambled uphill and through a gate narrow enough he could not pass. Stumbling between trees, hedges, and stone benches of a walled garden, I sought another gate. In the end, I scrambled over the wall, back to the field of death, for I was desperate to locate my second. He needed to know about the void line. And, great Deunor forgive, even if we failed to save the poor wretches inside, we had to learn how it was done.
Too late. The third horseman herded my partner deliberately toward the blaze. Weaponless, my brave brother laughed and raised his hand. His fingers, outlined against the flame, spread in his favorite pattern. A lightning crackle—
My own firebolt shattered in useless green sparks, as I feared it would—just after his did the same. Just after the rider cleaved his skull.
The rider swung around to find where my bolt had come from. I drew up a veil for long enough to scutter into the night across the paddocks and up the slope. I needed a wider view. There had to be some way to get the people out.
Five dead—the four sneakers and one horseman. The same two horsemen—Magrog stew them in their own blood—yet patrolled the front and stable side of the burning house, as if to ensure no one escaped. That accounted for seven. Where were the other two? Blocking some other entrance? Behind me?
The horses were mostly gone, over the fences, into the fields. Those left were dead or injured or huddled together at the farthest corner of their paddock. Halfway up the hill, a fallen beast grunted his agony at his splintered leg. I relieved him of his distress and wedged myself beside his carcass. My head spun and shivers racked me. My wound had bled buckets down my arm. If I didn’t bind it soon, I’d be wholly useless. And the Order had to hear of this attack.
My hands shook as I pulled a rolled linen from my belt. With teeth and fingers, I bound it tight about my upper arm. Blood doused the pale bandage before I tied it off. Now to salvage what I could.
The fire was demonic in its nature. In an explosive burst, the walls caved in upon themselves, silencing the last agonized wails. When only pulsing embers and bitter stars lit the dreadful ruin, the two Harrower horsemen whooped and rode away.
Only then, as I tried to comprehend the magnitude of such horror, did I glimpse the remaining two riders. A dark-cloaked pair appeared abruptly on the road not a hundred paces from me. Shadows masked their identities. One stood average in height and slender, one shorter and a bit stooped. I named them male from the timbre of murmurs I could not quite decipher—and a pleased laugh.
A lust for vengeance and retribution for all who had died this night pushed me to my feet, sword and knife in hand, and magic at the ready. We were well outside the void line. But I’d swear on my mother’s womb that magelight sprang from their fingers, lighting their way, as they strolled up the road away from the destruction. And in that moment they turned, half of each face remained shadow, half pale. They wore half masks. Purebloods.
“Gods’ mercy . . . gods’ mercy . . . gods’ mercy.”
“Stop dawdling and get out of here, Greenshank.” The Archivist’s rusty voice seemed like a pinpoint of light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel. “I’ve other things to do than tend you like a nursery maid.”
I could not tell him what was wrong. Numb, shaking, dizzy, angry, outraged, appalled . . . I could not possibly speak it all. Even separating mind and body from those of the unknown knight wouldn’t help.
Determined hands pressed a square of linen into one hand and a small glass cup into the other. An astringent smell swept away the remnants of the seeing . . . the memory of life I had just experienced. Of its own choice, my hand brought the cup to one eye. I blinked enough that the infusion of euphrasy could dissolve the eyeglim, repeated the wash on the other eye, and used the linen to blot the dregs. The impatient Archivist snatched the cup away.
“My apologies, Knight Archivist,” I said. Again no excuses. Impossible to come up with one, anyway, save that I’d begun the study overtired and anxious.
The hearth fire was dead. I shuddered and was glad of that. More surprising, the bench was empty. The two knights were walking out together, murmuring softly. Their masks hid their expressions, of course. I hoped mine did, too. Inek had told me to control my responses.
One of my hands, the one that held the linen square, stung fiercely. I stared at it stupidly. The arm of my bench seat was cracked and a great splinter protruded from the heel of my hand. Clutching the damp linen, I touched my forehead in deference and hurried toward the door.
“First!”
The call struck me in the back like a lance tip, and I spun so sharply I almost knocked over the table holding the empty vials and bottles. But it was only Dunlin, my own second, waiting.
“Inek came by to scoop up his clutch of squires. He said tell you we’ll discuss this session later, as he’ll be busy for the rest of the day. You’re to keep to your schedule. No sooner was he out of sight than a summons arrived for you. As soon as you have ‘recovered from this study and had a chance to refresh yourself from your’—ah-hem—‘stalwart service on the seaward wall,’ you’re to report to the Marshal. I’m thinking you have a quarter of an hour until he sends a troop of tyros after you.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
Body and spirit might have been an arrow point made from a sliver of glass. Did I say more, did I allow myself to feel more, the archer would send me flying, and when I came to a stop, I would shatter. So I didn’t do either.
Dun
lin cocked his head. “Are you all right? Did you know your hand is bleeding?”
“It’s nothing.”
I left the Seeing Chamber and hurried down the tower stair, across courtyards and down causeways. My feet moved faster and faster through tunnels and undercrofts, until I was running up the narrow steps to the seaward wall—the only place in the fortress where one was almost assuredly alone. As thunderous waves battered the wall and fog masked the rest of the world, I fell to my knees and vomited over the side, vicious spasms that purged every remnant of bile my body could produce. Every time I thought I was done, it came on me again.
I had no name for the sickness that raged in me. No reason beyond horror that one human, gifted with magic, could do such things to another. But I knew it was more and that it was important and that like the Danae portrait, the scene I had just witnessed had touched a piece of my soul. That piece just wasn’t there anymore.
CHAPTER 8
Though my belly remained empty, I managed to be clean-shaven and wearing dry clothes when I applied for admission to the Knight Marshal’s chambers.
“Proceed directly to the inner chamber, Greenshank,” said Doorward Horatio. “Unmasked, as usual, please.”
Once the thick door closed behind me, I removed my mask and hooked it over my belt. Its absence left me feeling naked nowadays. Especially after Inek’s warning.
I breathed deep and composed my features.
“Come, Greenshank, no need to muster extra courage before joining me.”
My eyes blinked open. The Marshal, enveloped in white, stood in the inner doorway. Polished to brilliance, his silver pendant hung from his neck on a simple black cord. The pendant was inlaid with gold. Its reverse, which I’d glimpsed at my first interview with him, was also gold or brass—perhaps the seal of his office.
“Tell me I’m not so fearsome as all that, especially to a paratus who has served us so well.”