The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  The passage was as clear as advertised. The dining hall was not. Cary ran through it like his hair was on fire and the only water was on the far side. The smell of breakfast foods – bread and sausage and cheese – hit him, but he did not look into the huge room as he passed through it, did not see the men streaming in through the doors at the far end. And they almost missed him as well. He was only a few strides from the far side, only a matter of seconds from disappearing into another empty passage, when the call went up.

  “Guth abadat!” a man yelled. A chorus joined him a second later. “Guth abadat!” they screamed with all the fury the title deserved. Outsider rapist, was there any more effective phrase in all the world to send a group of men into a fury? Certainly, Cary could imagine the mob he would have joined if such a call went up around the barracks in Lianne. But it wasn’t even the rape. It was the outsider. It was the fact that someone from outside had violated the community. That called for mobs and dogs and torches. There would be no trial. There would be the mob and the worst punishments it could possibly imagine. A rape by someone from with the community – if it were believed at all – might bring out the rage in the woman’s husband or kinsmen. But there would be no mobs. There would be a trial, a measured punishment requisite with the Order. And if it happened within a family? Cary knew exactly who was punished then, and it was certainly not the man.

  Heart leaping from his chest, Cary hit the door that led to the baths with his shoulder before he could work the latch. He nearly fell to the ground as he bounced from the surface. His shoulder screamed. He cursed himself as his hand found the latch and fumbled in its shaking anxiety to work the simple mechanism. Already, he could hear the mob forming, could hear their yells, their hatred, as they surged through the dining hall mere seconds behind him.

  The latch clicked. The door flew open, and Cary bolted through. He slammed it behind him, pushed over a bench to block it, and ran.

  The steam of the baths hit him a second later. He sprinted through it, water from the floor splashing to his knees with each step. Cries of frustration told him that the bench had done its job. It would never hold the men for long, but it was enough that Cary released a breath he did not realize he’d been holding. The distraction nearly cost him everything. His foot hit a bucket that was almost perfectly obscured by the fog permeating the room. He lurched forward and splayed across the floor, head stopping mere inches from the side of a tub. Powered by fear, he was back on his feet in seconds. The pain in his knee was an afterthought, but the limp it caused was real as was the sound of a door crashing open behind him.

  By the time Cary made it to the room where they’d left their weapons when they arrived, he knew that he did not have enough time. Even if he beat the men to the outside, what then? Morgs were legendary runners. He was not. They’d be on him before he’d made it a hundred paces – if they didn’t just shoot him in the back with an arrow. Unfortunately, there were no bolts on any of the doors, no mechanisms to bar them, nothing to keep the men from following right behind. A clatter rose from the baths as one of the Morgs had the same encounter with the bucket that Cary had. It gave him a few extra seconds, but not nearly enough as he stood looking at the door that would soon burst open.

  The answer was at the corner of his eye. He could barely lift the great axe, but it was the closest weapon in the small room full of such things. Dragging it the few feet required, he positioned the broad handle against the door latch and stomped down on the butt, driving the blade into the wooden floor. One more stomp was all he managed before the door nearly burst. The latch clicked and a body hit it with enough force to make the racks of weapons clatter in the room to his side, but the door held and the blow drove the axe blade farther into the floor as the stout handle caught and held on the metal latch.

  Praying to the Order that it hold, Cary ran into the cloakroom, the final room before he was out onto the plains. His pack, boots, chaps were exactly where he had left them on the ill-fated day that had started all this. He pulled on his boots, hefted the pack, and left the chaps. The sound from the previous room started to change as Cary ran to the final door. The men were making progress, were driving the axe away, forcing an opening. It wasn’t going to be enough.

  Where he got the strength, Cary would never know, but he somehow managed to push an entire rack the few paces required to block the cloakroom door. With the last of that strength, he toppled it, leaving a ten-foot rack and a hundred fur cloaks to block his escape. Finally, he threw open the final door and ran into the blinding light of the plains.

  Blinking against the sun, Cary nearly went to the ground as the black shape dove toward him. He ducked beneath it, but he had not been its target. He looked back and found what was left of Ambassador Chulters and the rangers. Ten feet off the ground, a dozen naked bodies had been nailed to the wooden beams of the lodge and left to the crows and flies that swarmed them in such a multitude that the bodies were barely visible. Diverting his eyes, Cary tried to keep the contents of his last meal in his stomach. He failed. Vomit spewed from his mouth as he ran, hit his boots and splattered across his pants.

  My fault, he told himself. They didn’t do anything wrong, but they’re dead and I’m alive. How could the Order be so cruel? It wasn’t the Order, Cary knew, at least not any Order he knew. It was Juhn. And even he was now dead. There was no one left to blame but himself. And he would soon be joining them. Even if it took the men an hour to get outside, Cary had no chance of outrunning them. He was already panting. His side felt like a knife had been driven into it. He was limping where he’d fallen on his knee, and his legs were about to give out. He’d never make it to the trees, much less out of the Fells. He was only delaying the inevitable.

  Still, he ran as best he could until he came to the top of a small ridge and looked down at his salvation. Thanking the Order with every stride, he sprinted down the hill so fast that he nearly spooked the waiting horse.

  Chapter 62

  The 48th Day of Summer

  “Dorington has fallen,” Kian announced as he burst into Dasen’s room. He slammed the door behind him and pounded his hand on it.

  “Please, Kian, the Lady Esther is sleeping,” Valati Lareno scolded. “She very nearly died on Teaching Day and borders still on death. She needs quiet to recover.”

  “Are you listening to me?” Kian fumed but lowered his voice. “The courier just arrived, but already word is spreading. Bairn is dead. The Chancellor popped out of nowhere right into the middle of the directorate hall with an army of knights, invaders, and wizards. They massacred everyone then hung Bairn and his entire family all the way to the grandchildren. That’s who we’re dealing with, and now they’re heading here. They pulled every man from the garrison, the border outposts, the patrols. Add in the men from Denton and Aldon and we’ll be swimming in soldiers in a few days.”

  “What?” Dasen managed to ask. “My father is coming here?” Not wearing a scrap of his costume, he had nearly toppled his chair backward when Kian stormed through the door. Now, he nearly fell again as he tried to rise and was struck by what he had just heard. He knew that he should have been more disturbed by the news that his father had led a massacre, that he had hung his rival and his entire family, but his mind had long ago given up on trying to reconcile the father he knew with the man who perpetrated such crimes. They were almost two separate people to him now, as if the Chancellor were somehow holding his father prisoner as he masqueraded as the renowned industrialist. Thus it was that he did not know if the emotion in his question was elation at the possibility of seeing his father or fear at facing the monster his father had become.

  “Calm down, both of you.” Valati Lareno caught Dasen’s arm and steadied him as he came around the small table to face Kian. He had arrived only a few minutes before Kian under the auspices of sitting with Lady Esther as he asked the Order to restore her health.

  Two days ago, when Deena Esther’s latest miracle had been complete, when the last of the lo
aded bags had come through the doors, when enough food had been delivered to feed the city for days, when all those people were in the thrall of a miracle that a precocious ten-year-old should have been able to discredit, Dasen had again fainted right on cue. Though, it was only from standing in the sweltering patch of sunlight, Lareno had declared him on the edge of death, had announced to the entire city that Lady Esther had pushed herself too far in service of the Order, that she was barely breathing, that her heartbeat could barely be found. While the people marveled at the cost of their miracle, the acolytes had loaded Dasen into a wagon and carried him to his room. He had remained there the past two days while his alter ego “bordered on death.”

  “Calm down?” Kian barely kept himself from bellowing. “With all those soldiers here, there will be nothing to stop the governor from rounding up every one of us, including your precious saint. She . . . I mean he . . . will go off to help the invaders, and we’ll get hemp necklaces just like Bairn.”

  “Nothing has changed.” Valati Lareno held out his hands to calm his raging comrade. “All of this has been accounted for. What did you expect? The Chancellor could not allow the largest city in the South to skirt his command. You already knew he would respond, and you knew he would use the Exiles to do it. This was all expected. It changes nothing.”

  “And my father?” Dasen managed to ask. He had given up on trying to rise and just watched the diminutive valati face down the powerful soldier. Kian still wore the uniform of the city garrison, with the bars of a sergeant now sewn above the city crest.

  “The Chancellor is not coming here,” Lareno assured Dasen then Kian. “He has far more to do than accompany soldiers on the march. That is what officers are for, and if nothing else, he has shown that he knows how to delegate responsibility.”

  “Then why is every soldier south of Alyesford coming here?” Kian asked. He seemed unwilling to accept that the events in Dorington were not directly related to their activities in Gorin West.

  Lareno dismissed the concern with the wave of his hand. “You are right that we will be swimming in soldiers in a few days, but it has nothing to do with us. Even if the city were in full revolt, we wouldn’t warrant the treatment that Dorington received. Dorington is a large, important city. Gorin West is only as important as its docks and roads. The only reason an army comes here is because it is on the way to somewhere else.”

  “They’re going to Liandria,” Dasen supplied. He was seeing it all come together now. “The invaders are not content with capturing the Unified Kingdoms. They want to invade Liandria and are forcing the Kingdoms to help. That’s why the revolt works. The army’s going to take Governor Colmar’s men with them. They’ll leave us as defenseless as Dorington.”

  “Yes,” Lareno confirmed. “We just need a catalyst and the proper timing. Armies travel ahead of their supplies. If we time it properly, the soldiers will be gone, but their food and weapons will be ours for the taking.”

  Kian seemed to think about that. He nodded several times as if calculating. “A week, huh? But your saint is near death, and the governor’s expected back tomorrow. He’s not going to fall for your tricks like the common people do. He’s going to put an end to this.”

  “You’re right, my friend, but Colmar is no fool. He sees the same things we do. He knows that Deena Esther is too powerful a figure now. He can’t just get rid of her.”

  “But he’s not going to let this continue. Even his own men are abuzz about what happened on Teaching Day. Most of them think they saw an honest-to-goodness miracle. Much more and the whole city’ll come unglued.”

  “That’s why we had to slow things down. The Teaching Day miracle made Deena Esther a saint not only to those in the camp but to everyone in Gorin West. Far more than the food, people want to be part of history. They want to say that they witnessed the miraculous. We could have shown them the food in the meditation room. As long as someone yelled the word, ‘miracle,’ they’d call it one because that makes them part of it. They’re hooked now, every one of them. They want nothing more than to see it happen again, to tell their grandchildren that they were there. But devotion is the most dangerous thing in the world, so we have to be very careful with how we use it.”

  Dasen gulped. He was seeing all the machinations now, could truly appreciate how the valati had managed every element. “I go back out tomorrow, don’t I?”

  “Yes,” the valati leapt. “Deena Esther will give them one more miracle, but she also knows that the end is near. You will still be resolute, but distant, almost sad. That will give the people a sense of foreboding. The governor will justify that sense. Once he hears how things have escalated, he’ll resolve to put an end to it.”

  “But we need more time,” Kian interrupted. “If he arrests Lady Esther tomorrow, the town will go into full revolt just in time for an army to arrive and crush it. Shouldn’t we keep him up here until we’re ready?”

  “No,” Dasen answered. “We’ll lose too much momentum. The people will feel like their saint has abandoned them. They’ll forget what they felt, why they believed. So what do we do?”

  Lareno sighed but could not hide his smile. “As I said, the governor is savvy. He will want you someplace safe, someplace where he can discover your secret without confronting the mobs in the street. He’ll ask you to dinner.”

  Dasen felt panic rise for the first time. “I can’t . . . he’ll . . . surely . . . .”

  “You will decline the offer most vociferously,” the valati assured. “You will denounce him in front of the common room of the city’s largest inn.”

  “But . . . but that will just . . . .”

  “Give him an excuse to have you arrested? Yes. But he knows better than to lock you in a cell or send you to the camp. He needs you off the street without creating a ruckus about it.”

  “He’ll confine me to my room.”

  “Exactly. But that won’t stop your followers. We’ll go out without you.”

  “And without me there will be no miracle.”

  “No. The miracle will be that the people of Gorin West will truly unite. They will pour from their houses with food – the same food we just gave them. They will fill our wagons every bit as much as the days of your miracles.”

  “I’ve been around Colmar enough to know that he won’t stand for that,” Kian jumped in this time. “He can’t have mobs of people out in the street collecting food when the army arrives.”

  “And he won’t,” Valati Lareno explained. “He will demand that the collections stop. He will lock the city down. No one will be allowed outside expect to report to a work crew. No groups larger than three will be allowed to congregate.”

  “Obviously we won’t be following that,” Kian said.

  “We’ll stir the pot a bit, but as we’ve already established, the real end comes after most of the army has gone. The city will be an angry hive by then. And Lady Esther’s martyrdom will be the bear that shakes it.” He looked at his co-conspirators, but they were both silent. Kian appeared stunned by the complexity of it all while Dasen marveled at its genius. Certainly, there were places for it to go wrong, but the pieces had been so meticulously positioned that the governor had almost no escape.

  “If there are no more questions, I will let the masses know that Lady Esther has just woken. She is still weak but is expected to recover in a few days.”

  “In a few days?” Dasen asked. “What about . . . ?”

  “You’re a miraculous lady.” The valati smiled. “Now, back to work for all of us. May the Order guide and protect you until we see each other again.”

  Dasen was doubting more and more that the Order had anything to do with it.

  Chapter 63

  The 51 – 52nd Day of Summer

  When Valati Lareno had laid out his plan, Dasen had guiltily looked forward to being confined to his room, to being away from the heat and the crowds and his saintly persona. Now, two days in, he could not imagine how he had survived that first week as D
eena Esther, confined to this tiny room with the minutes creeping by like hours. A pile of paper waited on the table to be turned into letters, but he could not concentrate on the words, so he paced instead, back and forth in a circuit of no more than ten steps, stopping every few passes to stare out the window at the empty streets below. Yesterday, there had been a constant crowd outside that window waiting to glimpse the miracle-worker in her confinement. Today, there were only soldiers – the guards posted outside the inn and additional patrols that had been set to enforce the city-wide curfew that had gone into place just as Lareno had predicted.

  To this point, every aspect of the valati’s plan had gone exactly as he’d described it. Following yet another miracle, Deena Esther had not only rejected the governor’s invitation to dine, she had renounced him with a vehemence that Dasen had not realized he possessed. As a consequence, he had been confined to his room with guards posted at the end of the hall to ensure that he stayed there. The next day, nearly the entire city had come out to provide food for the camp, to stand outside the inn, to show their solidarity with the saint and opposition to Governor Colmar. And the governor had responded with a strict new set of rules to keep people off the streets.

  To Dasen’s mind, the plan had gone almost too well. It meant that the end was near, that Lady Esther’s death was close and, with it, the revolts that would deliver the city. And Valati Lareno had told him almost nothing about those plans, which left his imagination to play through every possible scenario. Even more than the prospect of his alter ego’s death, was what would come after when the city was in revolt, the governor was overthrown, and his father appeared here as he had in Dorington. And if he does, will I be able to use my powers to stop him, his knights, and the Exiles under his command? By the good and holy Order, do I even want to use those powers? And against my own father? Even if he has become the monster he seems, he’s still my father. And what about Teth?