“Give me a name,” said Munroe.
“Akosh. Her name is Akosh.”
“I’ve heard the name before.” Munroe silently moved about the room gathering her belongings.
“We don’t know much about her, only that she’s been working from the shadows for a long time. She’s also the leader of some kind of religious group.”
“I know. I was the one who questioned Grell before he was murdered.”
Munroe stuffed the last of her clothes into her bag then strapped on a bandolier of daggers around her chest.
“Some claim she’s an assassin, but I think she could be a mage.”
“That’s something we have in common then,” said Munroe.
“No matter what I say, it’s not going to make any difference, is it?”
“No,” she replied.
“Then there’s something else you should know. There’s a chance Akosh might not be mortal.”
Munroe glanced around the room, looking for any items she might have missed before briefly sitting down on the edge of her seat. He knew she was going to leave but, hopefully, would still listen to his advice as it could help save her life.
“What does that mean?”
Balfruss wondered how much he should tell her, but in the end he settled for the simplest version of the truth. “In my travels over the years, I’ve met certain … beings. They’re not like you and me. They have much longer lives and enormous power. Not power from the Source. It’s something else that’s hard to explain.”
Munroe cocked her head on one side. “Can they die?”
“I honestly don’t know. I understand so little about them.”
Munroe picked up her bag and moved towards the door. “When I meet this Akosh, I’ll let you know. I will make her pay for what she’s done.”
There was nothing dull or flat in her voice any more. Her eyes burned with hate worse than any he’d ever seen before. He knew Munroe’s thirst for revenge would not be quenched until Akosh lay broken and dying at her feet.
He pitied anyone who stood between Munroe and her target.
CHAPTER 7
Danoph tried to focus on the activity around him but his gaze kept drifting to the west. Something out there was calling to him.
With Wren’s revelation about his ability the nightmares had started to change. Or perhaps it was simpler than that. He knew they were no longer random images from his brain designed to torment him. They were messages that needed to be studied. Even when they were disturbing there was a reason.
By accepting his Talent as a gift, he thrashed about less while asleep, letting the images wash over him as he tried to study them with a critical eye. Many of them were unpleasant and he saw death, disease and murders both foul and disturbing. But there were also images of hope, love, friendship and sacrifice. A young boy pushing an old blind man out of the way of a runaway horse. A pair of lovers covered in sweat, their bodies intertwined in passion. Old friends meeting up after twenty years apart and talking as if no time had passed.
Sometimes the dreams were easy to interpret, such as finding a young person before they were injured by their community, as they’d done with Laila. At other times the flashes were so fast it took him several nights before he saw them clearly. Or they could appear as nothing more than a random series of images that had no apparent connection. Those were the dreams he pondered on the most during the day.
With his new awareness the texture of his dreams changed as well. More often than not they felt as real as if he were awake. Sometimes he saw familiar places and people he knew from his childhood. Other times it was strangers or those he’d only heard about but could recognise them because of the trappings of their office. And yet with all of them he felt as if he could stretch out his hand and touch the people.
Often he saw a tall, blonde Seve woman dressed in a Guardian uniform. Once or twice he recognised a woman who had to be Queen Olivia of Shael. She was a slight woman with a swollen belly, standing beside her broad-shouldered husband from Seveldrom. Three times now Danoph had dreamed of his mother and the village in which he’d grown up, but he didn’t know what any of it meant.
They were just brief moments in time, as if he was standing outside, peering in through a window as the lives of other people unfolded before him. At times he sensed they were glimpses of the future, but there were also images from his past as well.
This was only the beginning. It was something that would take him years to master before he was truly skilled at interpreting his dreams. But at least he was now aware and could start trying to decipher the images.
Danoph had started experiencing unusual sensations when he was awake as well, although he’d not told anyone about those. Wren had good intentions but she was overprotective and already had too much on her mind without him adding to her burdens.
His gaze drifted west again. His instincts were telling him something important was going to happen in that direction. Danoph had a strong compulsion to get on his horse and ride that way.
“Danoph, are you all right?” asked Wren.
He turned back to face her and the others, forcing a smile. “Fine. Just watching for raiders.”
The ruins of another abandoned village lay spread out around him. A gentle breeze rattled the windows and doors, swirling dust around the empty street. The front door of one house repetitively banged open and closed, open and closed. There wasn’t so much as a stray dog running along the streets. Dust lay on every surface and an air of forlorn abandonment filled every house. No one had died here. They had simply walked away before the war arrived as they were no longer safe, leaving behind most of their belongings. He wondered how many of them had found better lives and how many still dreamed of returning here.
Now he and the others had become ghosts, haunting the ruins of someone else’s life, trying to find something they could salvage for their community.
Wren and three others were busy removing several panes of glass from one of the last houses that hadn’t already been stripped of its windows. They’d also gathered up a lot of clothes, a couple of bolts of cloth and more blankets, which would be vital to get them through winter.
Other groups had come to this village before, but there was only so much each could carry on horseback without a cart. Wren had considered asking the blacksmith and others to build one, but then changed her mind. It would be easier for others to track them back to their community and it would be a much slower way to travel. That would normally limit them from carrying heavy objects back home but magic provided them with a way to overcome that restriction.
All of the heavy items, plus several windows padded with blankets, had been laid out on an old sheet. Working together, two of the group created a solid plate of force with their willpower which they slipped under the sheet and then raised off the ground. Maintaining the floating cart bed took considerable effort and concentration, but working in pairs and swapping over after a couple of hours made it easier. Wren was embracing the teaching styles of many magic users and it was starting to pay off. By using it every day the young mages in their community were not only becoming stronger, but also more comfortable and familiar with their magic. It also meant that Talents were starting to emerge, not by hunting for one, but simply by getting involved with a variety of tasks. Their dowser, Helsa, had simply found the water by focusing on their need and following a strong urge. As it turned out her ability didn’t only apply to finding water. Now she was being used to find more wild sheep to increase the size of their flock.
Danoph turned west again and felt a stronger pull. Perhaps this was what it felt like for Helsa. He wheeled his horse around to face in that direction before he realised what he’d done.
“What is it?” asked Wren, but he barely heard her. It was calling to him and he felt a growing sense of urgency. Sensing his need, Danoph’s horse actually took a few steps forward. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s going to be smoke over there,” he said with a vagu
e gesture towards the west. “People are going to be hurt.”
“I don’t see anything,” said Wren, squinting into the distance.
“That’s because I don’t think it’s happened yet,” he said quietly, glancing around to make sure the others hadn’t overheard.
Wren stared at him in silence for a long time. He knew she was considering their options and the potential repercussions of doing nothing versus getting involved. When the others were ready she signalled them to lift the goods off the ground and head towards home. The horses could only move at a walk, reins tied to a horse in front, while their riders focused all of their attention on keeping the burden afloat. Any faster and it became impossible to maintain with two people lifting the weight in unison.
He and Wren followed the group at the rear, keeping an eye out for raiders. With every step they took towards the village Danoph felt a growing sense of panic and unease. His skin became clammy and hot. Bile rose up in the back of his throat and he smelled smoke and tasted fresh blood.
They were too late. It was already happening.
On the horizon a thin strand of grey smoke rose up into the air. Danoph gently pulled on his horse’s reins until it came to a stop. The others had spotted the smoke as well but they kept moving. At his side Wren was watching him and this time she didn’t hesitate.
“We’ll catch up,” she said to the others, turning her horse to the west.
They rode hard but by the time they arrived it was already over. A group of travellers, six carts in all, loaded with all their worldly possessions, had been murdered. The wagons had been torn open, their contents scattered across the ground and ransacked for anything deemed valuable. Musical instruments had been reduced to kindling. Paintings slashed and trinkets trodden into the mud. The horses were all gone but one lay dead by the creek, two arrows in its neck, thick blood turning the water red. And then there were the bodies.
Men, women and children, reduced to ragged, bloody things. Pierced, torn open and left for the gathering flies and circling birds. Three wagons had been set ablaze and were now so far gone the wood was folding in on itself, fuelling its own destruction. The others were smouldering but with just a wave of her hands Wren quenched all the flames. Danoph felt a brief surge of power and it was done. His warm breath frosted on the suddenly icy air. For a little while it hurt to breathe, but slowly the temperature rose as it returned to normal. Even then, staring at the destruction, his chest still hurt.
In the silence that followed the cooling wood cracked and popped as it settled. Wren dismounted and approached the first of the bodies, her hand hovering over the face of the young woman who was about their age. He could see Wren’s lips moving in what he thought was a quiet prayer. Not far away the girl’s parents lay dead, throats and stomachs torn open, ropey red innards strewn across the ground. The anguish stamped on their faces suggested they’d watched their own child die in their final moments.
“What’s the custom in Shael for dealing with the dead?” asked Wren.
Many people followed the Blessed Mother in Shael, but not all of them. Danoph remembered hearing about the pyres during the war where mountains of dead bodies had been burned. Normally the deceased was raised off the ground and the special platform was set alight, so that every part of the person drifted away on the wind. The tradition had somewhat fallen out of fashion these days.
“I think we should bury them,” said Danoph. “The scavengers are already gathering,” he said, gesturing at the birds circling above their heads.
A faint groaning drew their attention and a moment later they were both scrambling towards one of the wagons that had been set on fire. The sides were blackened but more or less intact, holding in the mountain of possessions that had toppled over into one huge mound. Peering in the back of the wagon Danoph saw a hand sticking out of the pile.
Working together they started throwing items aside, clearing debris until they found the arm and then the shoulder of a young woman. When they tried to pull her out the whole pile wobbled, threatening to come crashing down, forcing them to remove items one by one. Eventually they uncovered her head and shoulders and were able to risk dragging her out very slowly.
“My daughter” was the first thing she said. A quick glance at her injuries showed one of her legs was bent at a peculiar angle and she was having some difficulty breathing. Danoph wasn’t an expert and still couldn’t heal, but he didn’t think she was in any immediate danger of dying. He gave her some willow bark to chew which numbed the pain. A short time later her eyelids fluttered closed and she slept. He covered her with some blankets to keep her warm and they returned to the wagon, painstakingly removing objects from the top one at a time. Wren was now stood inside the wagon, passing boxes out to him when he heard her cry out. A moment later she emerged, carrying a small girl in her arms. There was blood on the girl’s face and a cut in her hairline.
“I don’t know if she’s breathing. What do we do?” said Wren, starting to panic.
“Put her down,” said Danoph, spreading out another blanket. He tried to ignore the wet bloodstain on the cloth and focus on the girl. Bending over her chest he listened for a heartbeat and felt for a pulse on her wrist. At the same time an awful creeping sensation started running up and down his arms and legs. A gnawing sense of fear clogged his throat like a fat maggot, making him gag with despair.
This wasn’t supposed to have happened. The girl should have lived. He felt a convergence of possibilities swirling around her. He heard a faint heartbeat but Danoph didn’t think the girl was going to live for much longer and that scared him.
“She’s alive, but we need to heal her,” he said, knowing what he was asking Wren to do.
The girl’s mother was still drifting in and out of consciousness. So she wasn’t aware that they’d found her daughter and that she was still alive. Perhaps that would be a small blessing if this didn’t work.
Danoph knelt down beside the girl but made no attempt to try and help. He had no ability to heal at all. No matter how hard he tried it simply didn’t work. His abilities lay elsewhere and only now was he starting to realise it wasn’t limited to nightmares about the future.
There was a randomness to everything. A swirling sea of choices and thousands of crossroads every hour of every day that defined a life. But some decisions were more likely than others. Some roads seemed free of clutter and at this moment the girl’s future was bleak. He saw only two roads in her future and one of them was quickly fading. This should not have been the end of her story.
“I’ve never been able to do this,” said Wren. “What if I kill her by accident?”
Danoph didn’t want to add to the pressure but if he said nothing Wren might remain frozen and then it would be too late. “If you don’t at least try, the girl will die.”
The finality with which he said it seemed to strike a chord. Wren took the girl’s hand in both of hers and bowed her head. He sensed her embrace the Source and tried to remain perfectly still and silent. He couldn’t see what she was doing but he felt a tightening across the skin on his face and a prickling in his fingertips.
The distant sounds of the crows faded into the background and then disappeared. After a while Danoph could only hear his heartbeat. The rest of the world became insignificant until the only things that mattered were Wren and the dying girl. Time crawled by. The only way he could tell that time was passing was the slow movement of the sun behind hazy clouds.
Wren remained frozen in place, head bowed, hands tightly clutching the girl. He checked that the woman was still alive and found her breathing was slow but steady. Unable to help Wren he moved away from her and started digging a grave for the dead.
Even with his rudimentary control of his magic it seemed to take Danoph a long time to gouge a trench in the earth. Several times he felt his control slip and the Source drifted away from him as if he’d never sensed it. When others embraced the Source they always spoke about a heightening of their senses but he d
idn’t feel that at all. Something was changing within but he didn’t understand why it was happening now or what it was.
With sweat streaming down his face he stubbornly persisted, raking the earth with his magic until he was sure it was deep enough to hold the dozen or so bodies. It would have been easier to lift each body with magic but it seemed inhumane not to physically carry them. In the back of one of the wagons he found a stack of bedsheets, neatly folded and only a hand’s breadth from the owner’s corpse. Wrapping each body in a sheet he carried them one by one before setting them down in the grave.
When he was finished Danoph sat down next to the grave and contemplated what to do with the dead horse. In the end he decided to leave it where it had fallen. The patient birds and other scavengers deserved at least one meal. He didn’t know if the deceased had followed the Blessed Mother or not, but he took the time to say a prayer over them that he’d been taught as a young boy. Just to be safe he muttered a short prayer to the Maker to watch over them and give them peace.
By the time he was done his back ached and he felt weak and a little dizzy.
With a groan of pain and cracking of limbs, Wren came out of her trance, stumbling to her feet. He helped her stand upright and she glanced up at the sky, trying to work out how much time had passed.
“It’s been at least a couple of hours,” he said, helping Wren walk in a circle to restore some circulation to her cramped legs.
“Will she live?” she asked, clutching tightly at his arm. Her skin was pale and there were deep shadows under her eyes that had not been there earlier. She was trembling slightly and he could hear her stomach rumbling. Trying to heal the girl had taken a great toll on her. They walked back around to the girl and Danoph knelt down beside her.
Without really knowing how or what he was doing, he focused on the girl and opened himself to exploring her future. Only one road ran into the distance for a while but then it came to an abrupt halt and there was nothing ahead, only darkness. She would live, but only for a short time unless something more was done. Despite all of Wren’s efforts it had only provided the girl with a short reprieve.
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