Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories

by Wells, Martha

  “I’m not sure,” Laodice said from somewhere behind them. She sounded a little ill; Ilias could sympathize. “We went up and down the streets, going into houses at random. It was all like this. We searched again when we were driving the animals out. We called and called, and no one answered.” She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. Ilias looked back and saw Tolyi squeeze Laodice’s shoulder, her face set and still.

  Giliead nodded, biting his lip. “Did you go to the mine?”

  “Five of us went down into it,” Macchus answered. “We thought the bodies might be there. But there was nothing.”

  “That...must not have been easy,” Ilias said. The traders had done things he wasn’t sure most Syprians would have been able to do. He was fairly certain most of the population of Cineth would have sensibly fled in terror at the sight of the empty city, and not searched it diligently for survivors.

  “It’s not very deep. They got most of the gold out of the river.” Macchus shrugged uncomfortably. “We had to look; we knew them.”

  “Show us where you searched,” Giliead said.

  * * *

  The sky was turning dark by the time they finished walking the streets. It was all as Macchus and the others had said: Empty houses, undisturbed except for what dust and wind and small scavengers had done. At the far end of the town, they had gone down the short distance into the mine, and to the river shore where the gold-panning had been done.

  They came back to the plaza finally and Giliead and Ilias stood together, the others moving off a little to give them privacy to talk. Macchus had lit a couple of torches and put them into the holders on the portico of the Taerae house, but it only seemed to emphasize the deep shadows. Giliead let out a long frustrated breath. “There’s nothing here. Not a hint of a curse. It’s as clean of curses as the god’s cave at home.”

  Ilias rubbed his face to conceal his expression, and said, low-voiced, “It’s supposed to be easy. You’re supposed to show up, follow the curses, kill the wizard, and go home. You’re not supposed to have to unravel mysteries that will have poets guessing for generations to come.”

  Giliead was still deep in speculation. “If a wizard had come and cursed them all to follow him, he would have had to take them down the pass into the Uplands or walked straight into the territory of the god of Sareth, and we would have known of it. And one wizard couldn’t take upwards of two hundred people. Some of them would have escaped, or the traders would have found bodies littering the road.”

  “Maybe it was a very powerful wizard. Or two of them working in concert.” Though that was very rare. Wizards usually preferred to kill each other or turn each other into slaves rather than work together. “But that doesn’t explain where they went. Unless they didn’t take the road, and they’re still in these mountains somewhere. There’s a lot of country to get lost in.”

  “I know, but... That doesn’t feel right.” Giliead was staring at the open gates. “Whatever happened, it happened here.”

  It probably should have turned his blood cold, but Ilias just felt relief. Giliead might not be able to see any curses here, but he was sensing something. He kept quiet until Giliead scratched his head, frowning absently, the moment of abstraction over. Ilias asked, “So what do you want to do?”

  “Stay here tonight,” Giliead answered immediately. “Look for shades.”

  * * *

  They camped in the center of the plaza, collecting wood from the stores near the empty houses to build a large fire. The night was clear, so they wouldn’t need the tents the traders had brought, and Ilias found it better to have an unobstructed view of the dark doorways. They had talked over the idea of closing the gates for the night, but Giliead had pointed out, “Anything that’s likely to come at us isn’t going to be stopped by a gate, locked or not.”

  Everyone had nodded glumly, and Laodice had added, “I suppose if we have to run for our lives, it would only slow us down.”

  While Nias and Liad, the other two younger traders, were making a dinner of graincakes and dried travel meat, Giliead and Ilias went to look for shades.

  The best place to look was usually in abandoned houses and out of the way corners, places where the shades might linger without being noticed. If they were noticed, someone would always try to find their remains to do the rites, or send for a Chosen Vessel to lay them. With the town being nothing but abandoned houses, it didn’t narrow the search.

  They decided to start with the most obvious spot, and headed for the rocky flats near the mine and the river, where the Taerae had buried their crematory urns.

  The moon was full enough that they didn’t need a torch, and the firelight would interfere with Giliead’s ability to see curse traces anyway. It was odd, walking through the dark empty town. Ilias was used to dark fields, dark forests, dark beaches, and the limitless sea, but the sensation of walking past houses and wells and stables, without a hint of candlelight or a banked fire under a bread oven, without a murmur of human or animal sound, made his flesh creep in a completely new way. It made him want to talk, though he knew it was foolish. “If there aren’t shades-- never mind.” The people of this town were dead; he shouldn’t imagine they were here to rescue anyone.

  Giliead’s eyes were on the dark windows and doorways. “There are guls here.”

  “Of course there are,” Ilias said under his breath, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  Giliead stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, pointing toward the upper story of a house. “There. See it? It’s making itself look like Irissa.”

  “Motherless bastard.” Sighting along Giliead’s arm, Ilias studied the darkness cloaking the house’s eaves. He couldn’t even tell a window from a shadow at this distance, much less see a figure imitating their older sister. “I can’t see it, but that’s just as well, really.”

  Giliead moved on. “They’re all through here now. They must have crept in at dusk.”

  Ilias shook his head, trying to distract himself from the fact that the empty buildings all around them were full of shapeshifting curseling guls. “At least the traders know you’re really a Chosen Vessel now.”

  “What?” Giliead stopped, staring down at him.

  “Oh, they believed it, they just didn’t--” Ilias wished he hadn’t brought it up. “Tolyi thought we were young, and I think the others did too.”

  He couldn’t see Giliead’s expression, but he sounded incredulous. “We are young.”

  “Too young,” Ilias clarified. “Young enough to be kept at home.”

  “Oh, fine.” Giliead rubbed his forehead, annoyed, and started walking again. “That helps.”

  The street opened up into the flats, and soon they were facing the burial ground. In the dark it was just an empty rocky field, distinguished from waste ground by the lack of scrub. Moving out over it, Ilias’ boots kept knocking against plates and cups set out with offerings to the dead, long ago rotted away. Giliead stood for a moment near the center of the space, then abruptly veered away toward the hill where the ground dropped away toward the distant rush of the river.

  Ilias followed more carefully, wrinkling his nose at the odor as broken crockery and glass grated under his boots. They were drawing near the town’s midden.

  The piles of garbage were just low mounds in the dark, and he could hear the buzz of nightflies. Giliead stopped abruptly and Ilias froze in step with him. After a long moment his eyes found movement among the piles of trash.

  It was a woman, moving with short disjointed steps. She was pale as milk in the shadows, dark hair ragged against her back, her dress hanging loose, dragging in the dust. Something about the way she moved suggested youth, that she was barely old enough not to be called a child. But when she turned her head toward them, the shadows clung to her, hiding her face.

  Giliead paced slowly toward her, his face distant. “She’s looking for her brother,” he said softly.

  Ilias felt his skin prickle with a chill that had nothing to do
with the cool night air. “A child?” he asked.

  Giliead frowned. “Older brother. She says they meant to do the rites for her, but then they were gone.”

  Ilias knew from the Journals that shades weren’t the best sources of coherent information. They knew vaguely about things that had happened while they were alive, and even more vaguely about events afterward, but they were wrapped up in their own memories. They didn’t sit around and watch living people, or understand much of what they saw. Giliead moved sideways, slowly pacing her unsteady progress. He said, “They were travelers, coming up the mountain pass from the other side. They came alone, they were afraid.”

  “They were running from something?” People usually traveled in traders’ caravans for safety, when they couldn’t take a ship along the coastline. The girl and her brother must have had a powerful motivation to cross godless territory without even waiting for the next traders’ trip. “From what took the Taerae?”

  Giliead shook his head slowly. “The Taerae were here, when she reached the city. I think she died before it happened. Whatever it was.” Then he went still, the line of his back conveying a tension that set Ilias’ nerves on edge. Giliead stepped back, shaking his head slowly, and as he turned Ilias saw his face in the moonlight. His brows were knit in confusion. “What?” Ilias asked. “What did she say?”

  Giliead squeezed his shoulder. “She thinks the Taerae killed her brother, because they thought he was a wizard.”

  Ilias stared at the girl’s figure, growing indistinct as she moved further into the midden. He had the sudden sick feeling the girl’s remains hadn’t been overlooked, or that the disaster that had befallen the town hadn’t delayed the rites. “They killed her too, and threw her body in the midden.” In a sick kind of way, it didn’t surprise him. People who used guls as a method of execution were capable of anything.

  “We’ll look for her body tomorrow. I want to get back to the others.” Giliead’s eyes were on the town, the rock that formed the houses touched with silver in the moonlight. “I think I know what happened, now. Or part of it.”

  * * *

  The traders were waiting in the plaza when they returned, sitting in a close group around the fire. Laodice and Macchus were turned to face the dark caverns of the houses, weapons near at hand, while the others ate. It was a relief; the walk had been just long enough for Ilias to imagine what it would be like to reach the plaza and find them missing.

  The traders looked relieved to see them as well, shifting to make room at the fire. “Did you find anything?” Laodice asked, as Nias slid graincakes off the pan for them.

  “Yes. There’s been a wizard here.” Giliead laid his sword across his lap. “As soon as it’s light, I want you to go back down the pass. I don’t know if he’s still here or not, but if he is, we’ve been lucky so far. There’s nothing you can do to help, and being here will just make you targets.”

  Everyone stared, startled. Tolyi exchanged an expression of blank surprise with Laodice, then asked, “Truly? But how--”

  Ilias wrapped the crumbly cake around the dried meat and took a big bite to conceal his expression. The traders might have tried to hide it, but they had really had their doubts. That made it almost a pleasure to deliver this information. Almost.

  Giliead explained, “I found a shade. She was traveling through the pass with her brother; he was a wizard.”

  “I didn’t know wizards had sisters,” Liad said tentatively.

  “They mostly don’t,” Ilias told him, brushing crumbs off his shirt. “They leave their families, or kill them.”

  “This one was young, and running from something.” Giliead’s eyes turned distant as he sorted over the impressions the girl’s shade had given him. “He didn’t have many curses, and hadn’t been taken as an apprentice by another wizard yet. His sister wasn’t certain, but that’s what he told her he was running from.”

  “He didn’t want to learn curses?” Laodice asked, her expression dubious.

  “It’s not so much an apprenticeship as it is an enslavement,” Giliead said. “The younger wizard learns from the elder, but only so he can better do the elder’s bidding. Once he learns too much, the elder usually kills the apprentice. Or tries to.” He added, with a trace of irony, “Many wizards try to avoid it.”

  Ilias kept his expression carefully neutral. What Giliead wasn’t saying was that there were people who could be wizards, but had never learned to curse, or at least never used what few curses they did have for ill. This knowledge was kept only by the Chosen Vessels, passed along only to those who needed to know it. As far as they could tell, the gods didn’t mind the existence of these potential wizards, so the Vessels didn’t intentionally seek them out. As long as they weren’t doing harm or using curses, they could live as they wanted. But explaining this to terrified townspeople wasn’t an easy thing to do, so the Vessels kept it as secret as possible. And those potential wizards were still dangerous, still likely to draw stronger wizards who wanted to take them as slaves for their power.

  “Someone in the town must have realized what he was, the sister wasn’t sure how or why,” Giliead was saying. “They were short of coins and had little to trade, so he may have tried to use a curse to get them food or shelter or a passage down the pass, and been caught at it. When the Taerae attacked them, the girl was killed.” He looked away with a grimace. “I don’t know how. Shades usually don’t remember the moment of their death very well.”

  Laodice was frowning and Tolyi shook her head, her face set in lines of disgust. Tolyi said, “The girl was an innocent.” She looked up, lifting her brows. “At least she would be considered so in my land.”

  “Here too,” Laodice said with a wince. “Families aren’t responsible for the crimes of one member, even a wizard’s crimes. I didn’t realize how...beyond the bounds the Taerae had gone.”

  “They should have kept quiet and summoned a Vessel,” Macchus pointed out practically. “Then they’d still be alive.”

  Giliead nodded grimly. “Exactly. The Taerae brought this on themselves. Unfortunately, they brought it on everyone in the town as well.”

  “But if this young wizard had little experience, how did he kill all the townspeople? And how did one man conceal all those bodies?” Laodice asked, making a helpless gesture.

  “Perhaps he was deceiving the sister about the depth of his knowledge,” Tolyi said thoughtfully.

  “It’s possible,” Ilias said, “but if he was, the Taerae would never have caught him.”

  Giliead took a sharp breath. “Yes. She distinctly remembers that the Taerae discovered him, that he was caught by surprise. An experienced wizard wouldn’t have been.” He shrugged a little. “In trying to save himself, he may have drawn something else.”

  “Something else?” Macchus echoed.

  “Another wizard or a new kind of curseling,” Giliead said. “Something that could destroy the townspeople. Whatever it is, it may still be here. And the young wizard, the girl’s brother, may be up here somewhere as well. She thinks he was killed, but she didn’t seem to have an image of it happening. That’s why I want you to leave at first light.”

  Laodice looked worriedly from Ilias to Giliead. “Your brother will come with us?”

  Ilias snorted. “No.”

  Giliead regarded him a moment, one brow lifted. Ilias stared back steadily. Giliead smiled faintly, and looked at Laodice. “No.”

  * * *

  They spent the night with three people always on watch, but no one got much sleep. Ilias sensed movement at the corners of his eyes every time he turned his head. He knew the guls clung to the shadows and watched them all night.

  Ilias gave up on sleep long before dawn and helped Macchus make breakfast. Then Macchus insisted on dividing up the supplies the traders had brought, leaving Giliead and Ilias enough food for more than twelve days. “I don’t think it’s going to take that long,” Ilias told him. If their limited past experience was any guide, it would either be ove
r very quickly or not happen at all.

  Macchus just grimaced and pushed another packet of grain at him.

  By the time the sky was lightening to gray with dawn, the traders were ready to leave.

  “Be careful,” Laodice said, watching them worriedly. Earlier, she and Tolyi had gently tried to persuade Ilias to leave again. They were so earnestly tactful, it was impossible to be angry. It was possible to be annoyed and resigned, however. She asked, “How long should we wait?”

  She meant, how long should we wait before accepting the fact that you’re dead. Ilias looked at Giliead, lifting his brows. Giliead just smiled faintly and said, “If we’re not back down the pass in three days, send for another Vessel.”

  The others said their grave farewells, and walked away down the road. Ilias gave them one last wave as they reached the bend of the trail. “They think we’re going to die.”

  “Yes. Yes, they do,” Giliead said, rubbing the bridge of his nose wearily. “I was surprised they didn’t insist on doing the rites for us before they left. And they were shocked senseless that I actually found traces of a wizard up here. Even if it might not be the right wizard.”

  “That was a little obvious.” Ilias looked up at him. “I guess we’ll have to wait until dark to lure him out. You want to search the town some more, so if he is here and watching us, he doesn’t suspect that we know about him?”

  Giliead nodded absently, turning to look back at the empty plaza. The wind had piled up floating weeds, making a barricade over a few of the doors. “But let’s take care of the sister’s shade first.”

  Ilias grimaced agreement. He didn’t like to think of her wandering the midden, and if anything happened to them, it might be a long time before another Vessel could get up here. The rites were simple and quick to perform; if a person died near home, you scattered three handfuls of earth on the body. If the death occurred elsewhere, or at sea, or if it was a stranger’s body, you used three locks of hair. It was customary to get three people, but you could also use three locks from your own head if you had to. Even very old shades could be sent to rest this way; it didn’t matter if the body wasn’t intact, even a few bones were enough.