by Jeff Hirsch
The soldier leapt off the horse and forced him to stand.
The prisoner was a boy, black haired and narrow shouldered, not much older than Glenn and Kevin. His shirt was in tatters and stained deeply with blood. His face was covered in red and black bruises and his eyes were nearly swollen shut. The soldier pushed him across the courtyard and in front of Garen Tom, where he collapsed in a heap.
Garen looked across the boy at the villagers who had gathered around. The soldiers had formed a perimeter behind the crowd, their spears and swords out, penning them in.
“Aamon?” Glenn said. “Look.”
Aamon dropped the pack and knelt by Glenn. The boy on the
ground cringed away when Garen leaned over him, but all it got him was a kick in the back from a nearby soldier. Garen thrust out one clawed hand and tore away what remained of the boy’s shirt, revealing something underneath attached to a chain around his neck. Garen snatched it off and held it up. It was a small dagger in a golden sheath.
“We have to go,” Aamon said. “Now.”
“Why? What is that?”
“We don’t have time to discuss it.”
“What’s going to happen?”
As if in answer, Garen Tom’s enormous voice rang out over the crowd and the assembled soldiers.
“This boy was caught doing the work of the traitor Merrin
Farrick!” Garen held the gold dagger high over his head. “You can see he holds his symbol. Farrick, the coward, is now sending children to undo the peace and security of the Magisterium. He would return us to the chaos the Magistra rescued us from!”
“Glenn,” Aamon said. “Kevin. We have to go. Now.”
“But he’s just a kid,” Kevin said. “We have to do something.”
Aamon stared across the yard at the terrified boy. “This isn’t our fight,” he said. “We destroy the bracelet and you go home. That’s it.”
“Glenn?” Kevin said, turning to her.
Outside, the boy was up on his knees, pleading for his life. Garen unsheathed the gold dagger and with one sudden move turned the boy around so he was facing the crowd.
“Aamon …” Glenn began.
“The fate of enemies of the Magistra!”
Garen leaned forward and sunk the blade into the boy’s throat with the businesslike disinterest of a farmer cutting a stalk of corn. The boy’s eyes widened and his hands went to his neck, fumbling for purchase. Blood welled up through his fingers and splattered brightly against the dusty ground. He fell face-first into the dirt, twitching.
The world seemed to collapse around that scene of dust and
blood. And then it was like that night in the forest again. Glenn was lifted from the ground, and the house went flying by her, Kevin screaming at Aamon to stop. There was the creak of a hinge, and then the musty smell of cold earth as Glenn fell through a narrow hole in the floor and landed with a jolt. She rolled out of the way just as Kevin landed beside her, grimacing from the pain of his wound. Aamon came down last and closed off their entryway, a burning lamp in one hand.
He pushed them both ahead of him, his small lamp barely lighting the rough walls that had been carved out of the rock below the village.
“This will take us out beyond the town. But we have to move fast.
Decker will be informing Garen about us by now.”
Aamon set the lamp down and leaned against a stout wooden
beam that ran up one wall. He grunted and pushed until it shifted and a groan filled the tunnel.
“Go!” Aamon shouted. “Now! Run!”
Kevin and Glenn took off running just as the beam fell and that section of the tunnel collapsed in a cloud of choking dust and rubble.
The three of them rushed through the dank tunnels for what seemed like hours.
Glenn couldn’t escape the face of the boy, though. He’d been killed, sliced open like an animal, while all of them stood there doing nothing. But what could we do? Glenn asked herself. She had spent the last sixteen years in the quiet white rooms of her school, or staring up at the artificial sky above her bed. Her life was a narrow hallway leading to 813. She was no hero.
When Aamon finally stopped, Glenn and Kevin collapsed against the tunnel walls, gasping in the cold, dusty air. Kevin’s arms were wrapped tight around his middle, his face creased with pain. Glenn reached out to him, but he batted her hand away.
“We should have done something,” Kevin said.
“What would you have done?” Aamon asked evenly. “Fought
them? Killed them?”
“If I could have.”
Slivers of light filtered down into the tunnel from a hatch overhead. Aamon was flattened against the wall, beyond their reach, deep in shadow.
“It isn’t such an easy thing,” Aamon said. “Killing.”
“What do we do next?” Glenn asked. “Where do we go?”
Aamon looked up at the thin light coming from the hatch. “Garen isn’t stupid,” he said. “He’ll guess that we came through his tunnel.
The main roads will be watched now.”
“Is there another way to Bethany, then? A way Garen won’t be watching?”
Aamon thought a moment and then shook his head. “It’s
dangerous. Maybe even more so than dealing with the soldiers.”
“How?” Kevin asked.
“There are bush trails that lead to Bethany, but they take us near places that are … deeper with Affinity. Chaotic places.”
“Do we have a choice?”
Aamon fell into a brooding silence again. The answer was clear.
“Okay, then,” Glenn said, reaching for the trapdoor above her.
“We go.”
Aamon leapt forward and closed the trap. The light made jagged shadows across his brutal face.
“If we go, you must stay with me. If you see anything outside the path, ignore it. Don’t speak to anyone or anything except me. Do you two understand that?”
He looked to each one until they nodded.
“Good. Now here,” he said, handing them bundles of cloth from the leather pack. “I can’t have you running around in those clothes.”
Glenn drew a rough-hewn set of pants, shirt, and fleece-lined leather coat into her lap. They smelled musty and old.
“Quickly,” Aamon said.
Glenn and Kevin each retreated to a separate corner of the tunnel, and Glenn slipped out of her delicate Colloquium clothes and into the heavier Magisterium ones. They were stiff and scratchy against her skin, and fit poorly. She yanked a leather belt tight around the pants and hoped they’d stay on.
Aamon threw the trapdoor open and Glenn climbed out behind
him, then turned and pulled Kevin up. He swooned when his feet hit solid ground.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said with a grunt. “Fine. Let’s get moving.”
They were surrounded by forest, just off the side of a wide dirt road. Aamon ignored the road, favoring a path that cut into the forest. It was narrow and crooked, sometimes nearly disappearing amongst encroaching roots and weeds. Glenn looked back the way they had come. All she could see were trees and fields, but somewhere beyond all of it sat Haymarket and its bloody square. She saw Garen Tom’s scarred face as he stood there, knife in hand.
He’s after us now.
“Glenn!”
Aamon was standing at the trailhead, waiting for her. Glenn quickly followed with Kevin in the rear.
Every mile or so along the path, there was a marker, an obelisk of moss-covered gray stone that reminded Glenn of the security cairns that sat on street corners back home. But instead of call buttons, a divided-circle rune was carved at the head of each. Aamon was silent as they walked, but whenever he passed one of these, he would touch it lightly and whisper a few words before moving on.
“What are they?” Glenn asked.
Aamon glanced back at her. “Markers,” he said. “For pilgrims.
This path used to go to Marianna. Though
if the temple we saw this morning is any indication, I doubt it remains.”
“That symbol. The circle. It’s about … Kirzal.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s a god?”
“Not a word that’s in any of your books at home, is it?”
“We know what gods are,” Glenn said. “We just don’t need them anymore. And it looks like someone here doesn’t think you need them anymore either.”
“Or someone thinks they’ve taken their place,” Aamon said.
“The Magistra?”
“Who is the Magistra?” Kevin asked.
“She rules here,” Glenn said. “Isn’t that right?”
Aamon nodded. “And let’s pray you never learn more about her than that.”
As the sun peaked and started to fall again, Glenn cursed herself for not being smart enough to wear her thermals under the Magisterium clothes Aamon had given them. The rough wool never stopped itching, and no matter how tightly Glenn pulled her coat around her, she was still cold. Her feet ached with blisters, and the knot in her back was only getting tighter.
But while she may have been uncomfortable, Kevin looked far worse off. Despite the chill in the air, there was a sheen of sweat across his forehead, and his shirt was damp. He lumbered forward, head down, one hand tucked tightly into his side. He nearly stumbled into her when she stopped to join him.
“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”
“Me? I’m great. Good. Just, you know … taking a walk in the park.” He bent over and braced his hands on his thighs, swallowing hard. His skin was pale. “Enjoying the sights.”
Glenn straightened him up and let him lean on her. She pushed aside his jacket and shirt.
“Hands off, Morgan. No time to get fresh.”
Glenn yanked away the cloth. His wound was a livid red,
smeared with a new coating of blood that stained the waist of his pants.
“Aamon!” Glenn called.
“I’m okay. Really. We need to keep moving.”
Aamon appeared. As soon as he saw Kevin, he squinted into the forest, searching through the trees.
“Sun’s going down,” he said. “We need to get off the trail soon anyway.”
“I’m fine!” Kevin insisted.
Glenn leaned over him. “Well, I’m a little tired,” she said.
“Maybe you can carry me the rest of the way?”
Kevin managed to laugh before Glenn threw one of his arms
across her shoulders and eased him off the trail behind Aamon. They settled in a cramped clearing several yards away. Aamon dropped his pack and Glenn set Kevin down against the trunk of a nearby tree. His chest was rising and falling heavily. He looked pale. There was a patch of dark blood on his new shirt.
“Pull your shirt up,” Aamon said.
Kevin grasped for it, but his hand went weak. Glenn did it for him, exposing his wound while Aamon pulled a cloth and a leather skin of water out of his pack and knelt before him. He made Kevin take a long drink of water, then wet the rag and drew it down his side, gently cleaning the wound.
“So,” Kevin began, his voice distant and dreamy. “You grew up here?”
Aamon rung pink water out of the rag. “Farther west,” he said.
“What’s it like there?”
“Flat and hot. A desert. It’s where I was trained for the
Menagerie. The Magistra’s guard.”
“Was Garen Tom there too?” Glenn asked.
Aamon glanced at her, then rinsed the cloth and put it back in the bag. “He was. We trained and fought in that desert as soon as we could stand. Half the little ones we grew up with were dead before they were twelve.”
“How did you survive?”
Aamon opened a small clay jar and dipped his finger in it,
drawing out more of that green paste. “Kizral’s will.”
Glenn sat, watching Aamon work. She had a feeling some god
had very little to do with his survival. What did he have to do? she wondered, and thought again of Garen Tom towering over the boy as he died. Was that what their childhood was meant to make them into?
Killers? Was that who Aamon was deep down?
Aamon closed the jar and lowered Kevin’s shirt. “Better?” he asked.
Kevin nodded and Aamon sat across from him, digging into the pack for a spear of bread and some hard cheese that he passed around, taking only scraps for himself. As Aamon scanned the forest, the failing sunlight caught the white patch at his throat so that it glowed like the center of a streetlight. Glenn saw Hopkins as he was ten years ago, his small wrecked body curled into a mewling ball on their porch, his valiant but shaking stride as he climbed into her bed for the first time. It was almost as if she could see Hopkins’s body trapped within this one. Was he truly there? If he was, Glenn wanted to pull him out, rescue him from this thing that he had become.
“You were hurt when we found you,” she said.
Aamon glanced at her. “So you believe me now?”
Glenn said nothing.
“There was a war,” Aamon said quietly. “I was injured in it.”
“Why did you come to us?”
“An accident,” he said. “I came across the border and there you were. I suppose if I had crossed over farther north I would have ended up sleeping on Kevin’s floor the last ten years.”
“Lucky you didn’t,” Kevin said. “My dad’s allergic to cats.
Would have sent you to the pound.”
Aamon laughed gently.
“What was it like,” Kevin asked, “to change like you did?”
“It was … surprising.”
“I bet it was.”
Aamon’s lips rose in a smile. “I knew Affinity brought us into being, but I never imagined what would happen to me in its absence.”
“Were you still … you?” Glenn asked. “Like, inside?”
“I was there,” Aamon said. “Deep down, like a seed. It was hazy sometimes. As if I was watching it all but experiencing it too. I knew what I was and what I had been once.”
“It must have been terrible,” Glenn said.
Aamon went silent. His eyes, with their dark oval slits, locked on Glenn’s across the space between them.
“No,” Aamon said, his voice gentle. “It wasn’t.”
They sat quietly for a time as the sky darkened. Glenn looked down at her side. Kevin was asleep, breathing fitfully, his head resting on the tree bark.
“How is he really?” Glenn asked.
“It’s not infected,” Aamon said. “But he’s lost a lot of blood. I had counted on being on horseback. The walking is making it impossible for the wound to close.”
“How much farther is it to Bethany?”
“With the time we’re making … two days, maybe more.”
There was no way Kevin could walk another two days. Glenn
looked over Aamon’s head out into the forest.
“You said we’d have to go near dangerous places,” Glenn said.
“What if we go through them instead? Would that make things go faster?”
Aamon’s eyes narrowed on the ground. A growl formed in the
back of his throat, but he nodded that it would.
“I can protect you from something like Garen Tom and his men,”
he said. “But there are things in the deeper places that … change you.
Things I’m powerless against.”
Once again, Glenn trembled at the thought of something that could make Aamon Marta afraid. Beside her, Kevin groaned in his sleep. She brushed the back of her hand along his hot forehead then pulled his coat closer around him. The sun had sunk deep into the forest, about to disappear. What choice did she have?
“We rest here tonight, then continue on the faster road in the morning.”
Aamon grunted his agreement and then he looked beyond her,
out into the darkening woods, and began to pray.
Over the next hour, night gathered around Glenn
slowly,
deepening and pressing in from every side as if it was searching for a weak point, an entryway. There was a rustle of birds’ wings overhead and Glenn imagined a black flock with silver-tipped wings and dark eyes. The leafless trees, shifting in the cold wind, sounded like whispering voices.
In that dark corner of her memory, Glenn saw her mother’s pale skin and her black eyes and then, behind her, the dark body of some massive looming thing.
Across the camp, Aamon sat, a hulking shadow amongst
shadows.
Could he really have just stumbled upon them all those years ago?
And if he had, then why had her mother disappeared so soon after he recovered? Another coincidence? Glenn doubted it. Could her mother have had some part in the war he mentioned? And if she did, was it possible that Aamon knew where she was now?
Glenn rose up onto her elbow, facing Aamon, those and a
hundred other questions poised on her tongue. Each question would open a door. What Glenn had to ask herself was, did she want to step through them to the other side? If Aamon did know something of where her mother was, then what? Would she follow that trail? Even if it led away from home? Away from her father? Away from 813?
Glenn pressed her open hand into the cold ground, relishing the grit of the dirt, the plain simplicity of it. For whatever reason, her mother had abandoned them. Her father had not. He sat in some Colloquium hospital, broken and alone. If Glenn was going to chase after anyone, free anyone, it would be him, not her.
And if that was true, then maybe some questions were simply better left unasked. Some doors best left closed.
Glenn turned away from Aamon and drew the blanket he had
given them over her and Kevin. She found herself inching closer to
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Kevin until their shoulders were a breath from each other. She could feel his chest rising and falling, fast and stilted. She eased her hand across the ground, nestling it underneath his palm. Glenn felt the pulse in his fingertips and imagined funneling her entire self down into that one hand so she could feel surrounded and safe, closed up, locked away.