The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition)

by Dusk Peterson

  o—o—o

  The twenty-eighth day of October in the 941st a.g.l.

  Carle and I have finished our training. No one has told us otherwise, so I suppose we are spies now. We're awaiting our first assignment, and in the meantime we're quizzing each other so that we are sure to know our new identities if anyone should ask us.

  Hylas decided in the end that it would be too dangerous to have Carle try to pass as a noble's heir; someone might know the village he came from. Instead, Carle is Calder son of Victor. His father and elder brothers were all killed in a blood feud, so he was heir to his village's barony for a short time when he was seven. But he was so ill after the murders that he went to live with another noble family, and when it became clear that he would not recover from his illness, he gave the King permission to appoint a new baron to his village. Calder stayed with the other noble family until he came of age, but because the village baron was new nobility and his father had been of the old nobility, Calder was unwilling to remain there. Since that time, he has spent his life travelling. As the former heir to a village baron, he is entitled to wear a sword.

  Calder really exists; he came to live with my family when he was seven and I was four. He killed himself, though. I still remember Emlyn's face when he came to tell us that he had found Calder hanging from one of the rafters of our hall.

  It was so shameful an incident that no one knows it happened except my family and the King and Calder's mother, who told everyone that she had given my father guardianship of Calder. As far as anyone else knows, Calder is still alive.

  I'm my cousin Emlyn. Oh, I'm not using his name, but I based my new identity on him: blood brother to one of the old nobility, not important in my own right, but worthy of courtesy and attention. If Carle and I ask questions, the person we're talking with will feel compelled to answer two august persons such as ourselves. At least, I hope that is the case; our mission depends upon it.

  o—o—o

  The thirtieth day of October in the 941st year a.g.l.

  Hylas brought us another letter from Quentin today. It was sealed, but of course Hylas knew what it said, since patrol guards are required to disclose the contents of their personal letters to the messengers who carry them. Hylas said that he heard from another royal messenger that Quentin has been sending out large batches of letters to a wide variety of people in Southern Emor for the past month, and that the letters were all aimed at securing the enclosed.

  We broke the seal and looked at Quentin's message. It was a short note telling us that his grandfather had heard of our present situation and was pleased to offer us a house in his village, as well as jobs on his farm.

  Carle didn't crow this time. Instead, he handed me the letter and walked rapidly out of the tent. I found him an hour later, leaning against the exterior side of the inner palace wall. He was gazing from his hilltop perch at the border mountains as he softly practiced his patrol whistles. I pretended not to notice the wet face-cloth that was thrust under his belt.

  o—o—o

  The fourth day of November in the 941st year a.g.l.

  Carle and I are breaking our night fast in the patrol hut while everyone here eagerly plies us with questions. I think they are trying to make up for our initial reception.

  We arrived at the patrol points just before dawn, and Carle whistle-signalled Quentin, rather than wait for the patrol to sight us, as we knew how duty would require Quentin to capture two men of our supposed status. The lieutenant came down alone, with his sword still in its sheath, and Carle silently handed him the sealed letter from Captain Wystan. By the time Quentin finished reading the letter, he was wearing a broad smile; I don't think I've ever seen him smile before. Then he called down the full patrol. I could see Carle watching as the guards came forward, judging each man by how he reacted to our presence. When Quentin announced our new titles, everyone cheered without hesitation, so Carle is inclined to forgive the guards who avoided looking at us; I won't even record their names here. But as Carle pointed out to me in a whisper, Quentin is the only one we can really trust now.

  We will sleep here with the night patrol today so that we can arrive at the Koretian border after dark. Tomorrow we will change into the Koretian clothes we have brought with us; we will leave our Emorian clothes here. Quentin is also allowing me to leave my journal here. Usually I keep the book in Sewell's tent, which is heavily guarded since it is in the area belonging to the high army officials. But I plan to take some extra pieces of paper with me and write journal entries while I'm in Koretia. I have Wystan's permission to do this, since I will be carrying other incriminating documents in my thigh-pocket anyway. When I return to the patrol hut, I can bind the entries into my journal.

  Carle has Quentin in one corner of the hut now, and from the look on Quentin's face, I take it that Carle is carrying out his promise to tell Quentin what he thinks of him. I hope Quentin recovers from this trauma.

  o—o—o

  The fifth day of November in the 941st year a.g.l.

  Carle was yawning all through our walk last night. He and Quentin stayed up talking almost till dusk. I asked Carle what they discussed, and he said, "Our families, mainly. Quentin told me more about his grandfather. It appears that he is a very loving and solicitous man who has bullied Quentin all his life. The lieutenant as much as said that the only reason he joined the patrol was because his grandfather forced him to do so. Apparently – and again, I'm reading behind the lines here – Quentin's grandfather said that Quentin would dishonor his father's spirit if he didn't become a patrol guard. Quentin despises the work; that much he told me outright."

  "But he's so good at it!" I said. "He's the best guard in the patrol."

  "Possibly one of the best patrol guards of all time," said Carle, wrapping his cloak tighter against the wind that was penetrating the cave we will be sleeping in this morning. "It just goes to show how little correlation there can be between enjoying your duty and doing it well. Quentin says that every time he has to wound a breacher in order to capture him, he just tells himself that his own suffering is bringing good to Emor."

  I wish that I had the courage to talk to the lieutenant about such matters, but I don't think I would ever have the nerve to start such a conversation. And perhaps that's a weakness on my part, because Quentin may have always wanted somebody to talk to. Well, he has Carle now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The twenty-seventh day of November in the 941st year a.g.l.

  Carle and I have been in Blackpass for the past three weeks, in a certain inn I won't name, in case these entries are confiscated from me at a later date. In any case, the inn-keeper knows only the names we gave him when we asked for a room: Calder and his blood brother Adrian.

  We've spent the past week trying to fulfill our assignment, which is to determine what the Jackal is doing and whether he poses any threat to Emor. To fulfill the first part of the assignment, all that we've had to do is sit in the hall of the inn and listen to the rumors whistle endlessly through the room like mountain wind. We haven't even needed to check the rumors, for they all agree: the Jackal is playing tricks.

  "This is absurd!" stormed Carle when we were alone in our room tonight. "Listen to this report: The man who calls himself the Jackal appeared in the hall of the Baron of Blackpass. All of the reports agree on this; there were multiple witnesses. The baron ordered him arrested immediately, without listening to what the masked invader had to say. The Jackal somehow managed to elude arrest – just how, the reports can't agree upon. But then the next night, the Jackal sneaked into the baron's bedroom while he was sleeping and put mud in his boots." Carle looked up at me from the report that he had written for Captain Wystan. "Put mud in his boots? He could have slit the baron's throat! What kind of childish prankster are we dealing with here?"

  I bit my lip; it was not the moment for laughter, but I was still remembering the account by Blackwood's free-servant of how the baron had awoken the next morning and sleepily slipped
his feet into his boots, then howled with such outrage that his entire household had awoken. "The trickster god," I murmured.

  "What?" Carle looked at me blankly.

  I glanced through the cracks in our shuttered window, which looked out upon the courtyard of the inn, empty except for the horses stabled there, under an overhang. Behind us, there was no sound. Carle had carefully chosen an inn which backed straight up against a rocky boulder – one of the boulders flung by the Jackal at his enemies, the old tales said. The inn corridor ends at the room next to ours, which we have also hired, under the excuse that Carle, being a nobleman, requires a separate room from his blood brother. In actual fact, Carle and I have been using that room as a buffer between us and any eavesdroppers; all of our sleep and conversations take place in my room.

  Even so, our conversations have been in Daxion, which Carle has been spending the last few weeks teaching me, since that language is less likely to raise suspicion than if we conversed in Emorian – there are many Daxion bankers living in this town – and is less likely to be understood by the King's spies than if we conversed in Border Koretian or Common Koretian.

  "If my accent is a bit off," Carle had said when we first arrived, "you can blame Fenton. He might have saved me the trouble by tutoring you in Daxion as well."

  Now, three weeks later, I switched over to Border Koretian. "The Jackal is the trickster god. That's what the old tales call him. He played tricks on his enemies."

  "What sort of tricks?" Carle had just come in from a day eavesdropping upon gossip in the marketplace; he laid his sword aside, frowning.

  I thought a moment, then switched back to the Daxion tongue. "The first King of Koretia wanted to take power away from the Jackal, who was High Priest in those days. The King wanted to listen to the confessions of all his subjects, so that he, rather than the priests, could know what secret crimes his subjects had committed. The Jackal did not even bother to argue the matter with the King. Instead, he began appearing in many different guises before the King. On one occasion, he was a boy who had come to confess that he had skinned his little sister's knee. On another occasion, he was a housewife who had burnt her husband's meal. On yet another occasion, he was a soldier who had forgotten to whet his blade. . . . Soon the King had no time left in which to do anything except take confessions on such trivial matters. At last he realized that all these subjects must be the Jackal in disguise, and he understood the message that the Jackal was giving him. And so the King gave back to the Jackal the power to hear confessions and make judgments, so that the King could devote his time to defending his subjects in other ways." I looked over at Carle, who was still frowning, and I smiled. "Yes, I know. It wasn't the best decision the Jackal ever made; if the King had become High Judge, as the Chara is, perhaps Koretia would have developed a true law system rather than the gods' law."

  Carle waved his hand, as though swatting at one of the blood-flies that was darting around the room. "It doesn't matter. It's only a tale. But this Jackal-man – you're saying he's imitating the Jackal of the old tales in order to try to prove that he's a god?"

  "Or to send a message," I suggested. "'Mud-booted soldier' – that's a Koretian phrase for a soldier who acts without thinking; he puts on his boots without checking whether any of his fellow soldiers have smeared mud in them, as a prank. There's an old tale about the Jackal—"

  "All right, I understand. So he's made himself into a trickster. Where does that bring us in understanding his goals? The Jackal in the tales tricked the King; will this new Jackal try to trick the Chara?"

  I flicked away a blood-fly that had been trying to drink my blood. "The old tales never tell of the Jackal bothering the Emorians. The tales never speak of the Emorians at all."

  Carle sighed as he wiped sweat from his forehead. To me, it was a cool autumn day, but Carle still suffers from the heat. "You put a lot of faith in these old tales. What if the new Jackal decides that, being a god, he can do whatever he wants?"

  "But what does he want?" I took up again the pen I had been using to write my own report. "Carle, there must be some pattern to what the Jackal is doing. He wouldn't just be acting at random. Why didn't he attack the priests when he had the chance? And why did he try to speak to the baron, the most powerful of the old nobles? Why didn't he kill Blackwood when the baron was asleep? It's as though the Jackal is trying to draw allies to some great battle – but who is the battle against?"

  "You know," said Carle, cocking his head at me, "you've forgotten the most likely theory of all."

  "Which is?"

  "The Jackal could be a madman." Carle's voice was flat. He frowned down at his report, adding, "We're getting nowhere here. It's time I went looking to the source of all this."

  "You mean 'we,'" I suggested.

  "No, 'I.' You're staying here." His voice was flat again – the voice of a lieutenant issuing orders to his sublieutenant.

  "Yes, sir," I said meekly, and Carle laughed.

  "I'm taking a visit to Borderknoll," he explained.

  "Ah!" Enlightened, I smiled at him in relief. "Thank you. I'd rather not come that close to Mountside."

  And so Carle will set off tomorrow to spy in the village where the Jackal first made his appearance. I'm a bit doubtful, myself, that he will learn anything; villagers tend to be close-mouthed around strangers. But if anyone could pull secrets out of them, it is Carle.

  o—o—o

  The twenty-ninth day of November in the 941st year a.g.l.

  I've had a message from Carle, sent by way of Hylas, who knew from my reports to Wystan where Carle was, and went to Borderknoll out of his own curiosity to learn how Carle was doing.

  Alas, Carle has learned no more than we learned many months ago from Malise, so he has sent word that he will be returning to the inn tomorrow. Hylas, disappointed that he would not be one of the first to learn of the Jackal's secrets, has continued south, promising to deliver our reports when he returns north, as well as any additional reports we may have prepared in the meantime. After this first time, he will no longer make contact with us in person; we will leave our reports in a pre-arranged spot that he will check each time he passes through this town.

  And so Carle and I are now truly alone, for we dare not contact the other spies that the Chara has working in this land. Until Hylas returns from the south in a month's time, no one will know of our fate on this mission.

  In the pre-dawn hour when Carle prepared to leave the inn, I sat in front of the fire in our hearth, which Carle had prepared for my sake, since the evening felt cool to me. He glanced at me as he was packing his bag. "What are you thinking?" he asked.

  "About whether the Jackal knows that you're going alone to Borderknoll," I replied.

  Carle raised his eyebrows. "You think his thieves are that good?" The word "thieves" is the word that people are now using for the Jackal's followers, since the Jackal is the thief god, and since some of the tricks played by the Jackal and his followers have involved thefts.

  I hesitated, but Carle was still watching me, his eyes dark in the dark room. Finally I said, "Fenton had certain talents . . . I'm not saying he was a god. But he knew sometimes what was going to happen to him, before it happened. I've been thinking about that letter he wrote to my cousin Emlyn – it was like a farewell letter, as though he expected to meet Emlyn in the Land Beyond. He couldn't have possibly guessed that the hunter would kill a priest, yet somehow he sensed that some great change would take place in his life." I looked at Carle again, hoping I would not have to explain further.

  "Mm." Carle carefully checked his thigh-dagger before strapping the thigh-pocket back on. "So you think that the Jackal might have . . . special powers? And that this is why he thinks he's a god?" Though he strove to hide it, I could hear the skepticism in Carle's voice.

  "A god-man," I corrected quickly. "All of the reports agree about that: he calls himself a god-man. That's a way of admitting his powers are limited, isn't it? If he were claiming limitless p
owers, he'd simply call himself a god."

  Carle leaned against the wall, gazing upwards, as though staring up at the Chara's throne. "Adrian, you may have something there. If this man has some sort of special talent – a sort of extra-sharp intuition – then he may have convinced himself that he's the embodiment of a god." Carle broke his gaze from the ceiling and shook his head as he turned to close his bag. "That would make him all the more dangerous, to my mind. A deceiver is easier to deal with than a religious fanatic."

  I thought back to the Jackal creeping into the baron's bedchamber, quiet, undetected. "Oh, he's dangerous," I said. "There's no doubt of that."

  Carle saw me shiver; out of kindness, he disguised the cause. "For love of the Chara, Adrian, put your cloak on if you're cold. We managed to keep you alive through a mountain snowstorm; I don't want you dying of chill-fever in the Koretian heat." He slung his sling over his back. "I'll be back at week's end. Try not to get yourself killed before then." His voice was light.