The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  “Teth,” Dasen begged. Confusion and fear fought for control of his face. He looked from her to the creatures and back, desperation growing. “I love you, but I need you to come back to me. I need you, Teth. Please!”

  Teth heard his cries, knew he was right, but could not seem to make her body answer. They were going to die, and it was her fault. The Weavers had given their lives so that they could escape, and she could not control her fear long enough to justify their frightful sacrifice. She who had always been too strong to be afraid, who had faced everything the Order could send at her, who had been tempered by the worst the Order could offer – wasn’t that what the old man had just told her. And now that it mattered, she was going to shatter. Not tempered enough, she thought and almost laughed.

  Another sound rose behind them, a low whir that was present even over the sounds of death. A grasshopper landed on Teth. Larger than any grasshopper she had seen in her limited time on these plains, it was as long as her finger. It sat on her arm, tiny feet digging through her shirt. She stared at it, then looked to Dasen, then at the creatures who were just finishing the last of the Weavers. Several of them had turned their eyes on their real targets. Smiles formed on their bloodstained mouths. The whir built until it consumed all the other sounds until it reached almost deafening heights.

  And the grasshoppers hit them. There were millions of them. They were everywhere. They covered everything. Their tiny talons held Teth in a thousand places, their scent enveloped her – the same scent that the Weaver had thrown at her from the bottle. She looked up through the cloud of hopping, flying, swarming shapes and saw nothing but the green and brown expanse of their bodies. The monsters were lost, and with their disappearance, the spell was broken.

  She grabbed Dasen, held him around the waist, felt his arm resting across her neck, and ran. The grasshoppers swarmed around them, hopped over them, clung to them, hid them. Barely able to breathe, unwilling to even open her mouth for fear of what else would end up inside, supporting Dasen, nearly blind, she was shambling, but they did not have far to go. Teth held back the scream that threatened to break from her lips, fought the need to swat at the creatures, ground her teeth against the deafening whir in her ears. In a few strides, they were out of the garden and heading toward the fields. The Weavers’ workshop appeared at their side, provided a short reprieve from the swarm. Teth looked up and saw the grasshoppers in a solid wave above them leaping from the top of the building toward the river. Past them, black shapes circled in a cloud of smoke.

  “Where are we going?” Dasen asked beside her.

  “I have a boat by the river,” Teth just managed before they broke from behind the building and reentered the swarm.

  They ran through it and heard the crackle of fire, felt the heat beyond that of the already furnace breeze. Teth had thought that the smoke was the result of the explosions or the old man’s self-immolation. A prairie fire, she realized now. And everything fit: the lack of rain, the bone-dry heat, the grass as brittle as straw, the lightning. All this had been planned. Just like my entire life. He planned it all. He created a fire to drive the insects before it. He burnt thousands of acres, sacrificed his followers, himself, his commune. And none of it had been necessary. He had done it for no other reason than to show her his power, to show her the length of his reach, to prove that there was no, could never be an, escape.

  I am his puppet. The puppet of a terrible master that will do anything to complete his show, who will burn everything to the ground if that is what is required, who has not a scrap of human compassion or regret, who would do all the terrible things he has already done. They emerged from the fields, started down the hill toward the grove and the boat it held. All of it, she realized. We don’t control anything. He has done it all. My entire life has been nothing but the creation of that cruel, old man. And even in death he pulls the strings.

  Teth’s legs gave out, and they fell, tumbling down the hill. The grasshoppers flowed over them. The flames closed. Teth ended on her back. Dasen was on top of her. Nothing matters. I can never have happiness. I can never have peace. I can’t even have this. I can never have him. It has all been set. The struggle will never end. And only then did she realize the depth of what the Master had said, the expanse of what he had done. The revelation fell on her like a tree, crushed the very life from her. She screamed then screamed again and again.

  Dasen was getting up. “Teth,” he called. “What happened? Are you hurt? We’re almost there.”

  When the screams petered, she just laid on her back, watched the grasshoppers and smoke through her tears. A thousand hardships played before her eyes, every painful moment in a pain-stricken life: her parents, the villagers, the forest masters, the counselor, the solitude, all the bruises, all the abuse. She lived them all again and saw them for what they were. There were no accidents. There was no happenstance, no freewill; there was that old man. And he had taken away the only thing that had made it all seem worthwhile, the only thing that allowed anyone to continue through the pain of life. He had taken away hope. He had denied her any chance of happiness, any hope that someday all the fighting would be rewarded.

  Somewhere, somehow, she was being dragged across the ground.

  Not only, can I never have love. Not only can I never be happy. I can’t even have hope.

  She was being lifted clumsily into the boat. She crashed onto the deck. Her shoulder and head bounced against wood. She did not react.

  Pain and longing. That is all there is. That is all I can ever have.

  She was crying, but she didn’t know why. Tears would not change it. She moaned and sobbed without the energy even to wipe the tears away. Somewhere she knew that she should be doing something, that she should be helping, but she could not make herself care. She could only cry, could only feel the pain in her chest, could only see the old man laughing, could only hear his devastating words.

  The boat moved beneath her, sliding away from the bank. It jerked to a stop. The rope. She should tell Dasen but could not make her body move, she could not make her mouth form words. She watched the flames rise up the trees, embers drifted down around her. She could only think of them as a mercy. She watched them come and silently hoped that they would find her, that they would finally end it all.

  #

  Sparks swarmed around Dasen like fireflies. Fire rained from the trees, leapt from the grass, swirled in the rising breeze. A wall of heat pounded him from behind so that steam rose from him to match the smoke all around. He coughed against the burning in his lungs, blinked away the water that filled his eyes, fought to breath, struggled to see. But he thanked his abusers, welcomed the smoke, the sparks, the heat because they were his only shield against the black shadows circling through the clouds above.

  Head cast down, shoulder pressed against the keel of the boat, he pushed. He watched the bodies of grasshoppers float past. Many of them still struggled, kicking their legs and beating their wings. Many more were cinders, floating along with the film of ash that covered the water, marking its line on boat and pants. The bottom of the river was lost beneath, so Dasen had no idea what he was pushing against, could only pray that the mud would release the boat before the fire behind or the creatures above could claim them.

  He cringed against a cinder that found his neck, screamed, pushed himself beneath the water, and came up dripping. More sparks found him, falling in the hundreds, and were quenched by the water running down his back before they found the skin beneath. But he could imagine them gathering on the ship before him, building, spreading, consuming the one thing that must not be consumed.

  He pushed again. The boat crept slowly, painfully from the bank, felt like it wanted to release, but refused to concede as if held by an unknown force. Cursing, Dasen searched the sky. The fire was climbing the trees, creeping along the branches, bursting through the leaves, and falling down on him, on the ship, on Teth who was comatose on the deck. He pushed again, straining for all he was worth.
/>   The boat lurched into the river. Dasen fell on his face in the water. He found his knees in time to see the remnant of a rope land in the water beside him. It was tied to the side of the boat, had been just out of his view through the smoke. Its end was charred, its length blackened. The fire saved us from itself, Dasen thought as he plunged into the water and clasped the rope. Already, the vessel was caught in the current and drifting. The rope was his only hope of catching it, so he pulled, dragging himself through the water until he reached the boat’s shallow side.

  Weak, exhausted, shaking, he clasped the railing above and tried to pull himself over. His arms failed him. He slumped back down against the side, gasping. “Teth!” he called. “Help!” He waited to see her appear over the railing, waited to see her reach for him, waited to feel her pulling him up. His hands were sore, his fingers burned, his muscles shook, but no help appeared. He called again. Nothing.

  Thunder shook the boat so sudden and so hard that Dasen nearly lost his grip. The first drops of rain dotted the surface of the river. A huge drop struck his head and ran down his neck. It was followed by others building to sheets.

  “Teth!” he screamed a last time but knew that she would not come. He had no idea what had happened on that hill, but it was clear that she was not moving from the place he had somehow dropped her. With a deep breath and all the strength he could muster, he forced a leg up. Straining and pulling with his every fiber, he hooked his foot on the railing. A few seconds later, the rest of him flopped onto the deck.

  At that same moment, the clouds released their fury. The smoke that had hidden them was replaced by sheets of water. Rain fell in waves, drops big enough to hurt. It covered everything, churned the river so that it was indistinguishable from the sky above. Even the lightning seemed unable to penetrate it, even the thunder seemed muted by it. Lying on the deck of the boat, Dasen could barely see his own hand stretched out to his side, could barely make out the outline of Teth a few feet away.

  She was lying exactly as she had landed, in a crumpled pile, shoulder and legs to the side, face to the sky. Somehow, her eyes were open, staring at the rain, barely blinking to clear the water that poured into them. Dasen put himself above her, but her eyes did not seem to see him. Her mouth moved in sobs. Her eyes and nose were red. Her face was hard lines. She was conscious, crying, unmoving, body as limp as a ragdoll.

  Dasen felt her, moving his hands over her back, chest, legs. He did not find any sign of injury – just as he had found nothing on the hill only a few minutes before – and struggled again to understand what had happened. They had seen the boat. Nothing had been in their way. They were going to escape. He had been elated. Then she had collapsed, and they had tumbled down the hill. He had landed on top of her. And before he could gather his sense enough to move, she had looked at him with absolute, breathtaking agony as if her entire world had shattered before her eyes. She had cried out, screaming and screaming, then laid still. Her body formed a ball, and nothing he had said or done had seemed to have any effect on whatever had laid her low. Not knowing what else to do, he had found the power to lift her, had carried her to the boat and dropped her in.

  “Teth!” he called from directly above her. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” He held her head, stared into her eyes, tried to make them see him. Rain poured from him. The deck below ran with water to match the river they rode. Thunder roared through the sky, blast after blast until they were nearly indistinguishable. “Can you walk? We need to move. We need to get out of sight and out of this rain.” Teth did not look at him, did not move. She moaned long and low, like a woman acknowledging the death of her husband after a long illness, the sadness of a terribly certainty realized.

  Dasen tried to check the sky, but it was worthless against the rain. The drops were so big, fell with such force that it was like being pelted by a thousand tiny stones. They needed to get out of this before it turned to hail or, even worse, one of the creatures above.

  He pulled at Teth’s hand to bring her to her feet. Her arm hung limp. She moaned again. Water soaked her clothes, matted her hair. She did nothing to brush it away. Dasen opened his mouth, found himself spitting water before he could form words. Finally, he grabbed Teth’s arms at the wrist and pulled. She did nothing to assist or resist as he dragged her across the boat’s long deck to its first aberration, a square hatch just past the middle. Two paces long and another wide, it sat on the deck like a lid on a pot, fitting over a short wooden border. With some effort, he lifted it and slid it out of the way. Inside was gloom. Dasen could just make out the bottom where it met the end of a steep set of stairs.

  Without knowing what he planned, he maneuvered Teth to the top of the stairs and supported her head on his shoulder as he climbed down, dragging her body behind. Finally, he reached the bottom of the steps just as Teth’s feet caught on the lip above. He tugged, lost his balance and tumbled backward into the hold. Teth landed on top of him, lips nearly touching, legs spread around him, body pressed close through their soaking clothes. Dasen wanted to pull her closer still, to celebrate their escape as they had their reunion in the tower a few infinite minutes before.

  Teth came alive. “Agggghhhh!” she screamed. She struggled to get off of him, brought her knee up suddenly and caught him in the groin. He doubled over. “Aggghhhh!” she screamed again and leapt up. “No. For the Order’s sake, no!” Through bleary eyes, Dasen watched her stumble back. He held himself and gasped. “The Order be damned!” she screamed at the sky above. “I can’t do it anymore. Do you hear me? I can’t!” She fell onto the small bed at her side, curled into a ball facing the planks, and convulsed.

  “What is it?” Dasen finally managed to croak. “Teth, what’s wrong? We’re safe. We’re in the river. The creatures are gone.” He came to his knees, still panting, and looked toward her. Her head was turned, tucked to her chest, hidden by the curve of her spine. He reached out to touch her, to comfort her.

  She screamed, contorted from him as if his hand were a snake. “Stop!” she called. “Don’t touch me!” She looked back at him with the most terrible expression that he had ever seen. It was a look of purest horror and resentment. Prior to that moment, Dasen could not have imagined it on her. Through everything, through all their struggles and strife, she had never looked at him with anything that came close to that malevolence. It froze him in place, made his heart stop, turned his blood to ice. He pulled his hand away and stammered but could manage nothing more against that.

  Teth’s face collapsed. Her fear and anger turned to sorrow, and she curled back toward the wall, pressed into it as if trying to become one with the wood. She moaned and sputtered, and Dasen sat there feeling numb despite the stream of water pouring onto his head from above.

  Not knowing what else to do, he shambled up the ladder and returned the hatch to its place. He slipped back down, hitting each rung with his spine and landing hard on his rear. Silent with pain, he sat in the darkness, ground his teeth, and listened to the rain, the thunder, the river, and Teth moaning, crying, sniffling. What could have brought her to this? Dasen tortured himself in search of an answer. Cold and wet and saved again, he wondered how even their good fortune had turned into misery.

  Chapter 14

  The 23rd Day of Summer

  At a time when Cary normally would have been finding his bed, the sun was just setting beyond the hill, casting a glow on the trees so that the very air seemed to shimmer. It added a sense of otherworldliness to the already miraculous scene below. They had just emerged from the dense northern forests, following their Morg guide between two hills that might have, in other parts of the world, qualified as mountains. From the final ridge, they looked out on a valley. Stretching to the horizon on either side and on to the barely visible frozen tops of the Ice Mountains in the distant north, it was the first open land they had seen since Holden Vale. The fields were grassy but sparse, almost grey rather than the verdant green of the great Liandrin plains. Animals grazed in those fields, bu
t the herds were small and heavily spaced around the smattering of steep hills that rose from the grasslands like bent knees rising from under a sheet. But all of these were mere distractions from the true spectacle: the largest single building in the known world, the oldest and mightiest of all Morg lodges.

  “Tourswak Lodge,” their Morg guide, Ivak, answered the unasked question. It was as many words as he had said since he had told them that they would reach the lodge today. Cary had started to doubt. They had been riding through the rough terrain – the Morg jogging in the lead – since the sun had risen. Here in the far north, in the height of summer, it had been a long day even for Cary, who nearly lived in a saddle. The ambassador that they were escorting – a young and able man for the position, but still an aristocrat to his bones – looked like he might fall from his horse at any moment. Cary remained impressed at how little he had complained. He had seen the way he walked and knew from experience the sores that must have formed on his rear. The same could not be said for the dozen rangers that completed their party. Their groans and grunts were enough to fill the whole of the North.

  “Is this your lodge?” Ambassador Chulters asked the Morg, still trying to squeeze conversation from the man who had accompanied them since the border and with all the success of a man trying to milk a bull.

  “Humph,” the Morg answered. Cary cringed. The tattoo on the Morg’s neck was the head of a wolf. It was too much of a coincidence that it matched the flag that he had seen through the trees as they were guided around Inuvik Lodge. Even Cary knew the pride that Morgs put into their lodges. He could only imagine that suggesting a man belonged to another was like asking a Pindarian merchant if he was from the Empire. Ivak, in true Morg style, said nothing more about it. He jogged down the hill toward the vast buildings in the valley below, seemingly oblivious to the hesitation of the overawed southerners he was leading.