by Sam Bowring
He led her out of the room and downwards.
‘Do not see us,’ he told those who crossed their path. ‘Do not remember our passing.’
Out of the castle they went, into the streets, Karrak repeating his mantra to all he saw. As they exited the city via the eastern gate, he heard clinking in the quarry to the south, and grimaced.
A good man would set his slaves free.
Perhaps he would return.
They left the road and set out across flat land dotted by the lights of farmhouses. Karrak put into effect the little trick he’d come up with, to stop Salarkis from tracking him. All night they walked, mostly in silence, and when the sky began to lighten, Karrak knew he had best think about threadwalking. They were far enough from the city now that she could strike out on her own without great risk of running into patrols. Would she try to return to the Plains Kingdom, he wondered? It was still overrun with his soldiers.
‘You should head to Althala,’ he said. ‘It is the safest place in Aorn. Braston does a good job of protecting his people.’
She gave a stiff nod.
‘Go, then,’ he said. ‘You are free.’
‘What? This is some trick, is it?’
He marvelled at her resilience – great rulers had proven easier to manipulate.
‘Go,’ he said, ‘and forget about me.’
He pressed some coin into her hands.
She glanced back once or twice, frowning, and he knew she would be befuddled for a time, perhaps have difficulty orienting herself, or recalling how she came to be alone in the fields. Maybe she would return to the Plains despite his words, and get herself killed trying to free the Plainsfolk, but that was her choice now, for he had no say over what she did with her life, in this one.
Forcing himself to turn away, he felt a strange sensation prickling at his eyes.
It had been cowardly, he supposed later, to vanish without dissembling his empire, or standing up to his cohorts. He had abandoned a cart he should have set fire to, instead leaving Forger to pick up the reins. But he had been in a strange state that night, and the transition to decency had not been instantaneous. He’d wanted to be good, but for selfish reasons, so perhaps in the hurry to reinvent himself, he had actually failed to do it convincingly. To this day, he was not sure if he really cared for the people he helped, or if he’d worn the mask for so long, he had forgotten what he really looked like. He knew the difference between right and wrong, at least, but then again he always had – the Karrak of old had simply chosen to ignore the concepts completely. Maybe he was only acting, trying to fit into the Spell in a normal, mortal way, in hope of one day being rewarded by finding her again. If his persona was a facade, he was masterful at maintaining it – look at me, he thought, on the road to join Braston’s army, because that’s what any honourable warrior would do.
Or perhaps it was the first chance he’d had, in three hundred years, to prove that he’d really changed.
But did it matter either way? Did the Spell even care, if one could attribute care to such an underlying force? Would he ever slip back into its patterns as if he belonged?
And would Braston understand? Would he forgive? Yalenna might, for they had been friends once. Would she remember that?
‘Come on, old statue,’ said Tarzi, startling him as she took his arm. ‘You’re falling behind.’
Rostigan blinked – it was true. The group was growing distant on the road ahead.
‘Sorry, songbird,’ he said.
‘Tired?’
‘Just …’
Well, why not?
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A little tired.’
Her grip tightened. Following her gaze, he saw what she saw: a dappled butterfly flitting along gaily, rising and falling on a gentle breeze – backwards.
OLD FRIENDS
‘Enter,’ said Yalenna to the knock at the door.
She was grateful for the distraction. For some days she had been waiting for Braston to seek her out, ever since he had promised to do so. She would not go to him – he knew where she was, and she understood why he had trouble facing her. She reminded him of his fears, and he was enjoying playing ruler too much to face them.
Still, she could not wait forever. This room, plush and cheerful as it was, with its fat curtains and four-poster bed, was beginning to feel like a cell. She did not like to venture out, she had found – did not like the amazement and worship that greeted her everywhere she went, as she might once have done. The trouble was, the joy she lent people was all a lie. She was here because something had gone very wrong. She hoped, if she cloistered herself, she would limit the damage caused by her never-abating blessings. While the other Wardens ran about the world doing whatever they chose, it seemed.
‘I said enter!’ she repeated, rising from her chair by the window. It wasn’t Braston, for the knock was far too timid.
The door opened to reveal Captain Jandryn. She had commandeered him, in a way, made him promise to report to her every day. Still nervous in her presence, however, he entered clutching his helmet to his chest.
‘Thought you’d set down roots out there,’ she said tersely.
‘Apologies, my lady.’
This wasn’t like her. She should go to Braston and wring his thick neck for making her wait this long. She would have done so already, she told herself, if she hadn’t needed the time to think. What did she want Braston to do, anyway? What was their first step? She did not know, could not appeal to him until she’d figured out what she expected of him.
After what I talked him into, no wonder he doesn’t want to hear my ideas.
It made her stomach turn to think of it.
‘What news?’ she asked.
Jandryn cleared his throat. ‘From Tallahow,’ he said. ‘It seems that Forger has taken back his throne.’
That got her attention.
‘Forger? Oh, that is fine, is it not? Braston and Forger both shifting things about, taking thrones that aren’t theirs … I’m sure it won’t have any affect on the Spell at all.’
She slumped back in her seat. From there she had a view through a window over the city, and the makeshift camp beyond its walls, where multitudes who had answered Braston’s call to arms were being housed and trained.
‘They offered me my old temple back, you know,’ she said, ‘and what did I tell them?’
‘Um …’ said Jandryn.
‘I said no, of course! They already had a Priestess! A rightful one, come to the position by her own path! A rightful path!’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Your oafish ruler had better work up the courage to visit me soon, or I am going to bless his buttocks with my foot!’
In the face of her anger, Jandryn dried up completely.
Yalenna tried to calm herself. She was the serene and peaceful Lady of Blessings, after all.
Eventually Jandryn found his courage. ‘Do you wish me to take a message to the king, my lady? About you wanting to see him?’
‘The king,’ she answered, ‘knows where to find me, and you can wager he hasn’t forgotten I’m here.’
She ran her finger down the spines of piled books, which she’d had brought to her from the castle library. Histories, mythologies, spell books … none containing any hint of what she must do.
‘That will be all,’ she said.
Jandryn mumbled his thanks – for what, she wasn’t sure – and left.
She let her head fall to her hand. Fighting the corrupted Wardens, she and Mergan had pointed Braston in many directions. Perhaps he was simply fed up with her.
Mergan – finding him was something she needed to do, at least that was certain … but even that she could not begin, for where to start looking? She still did not know where he had gone. Surely if he lived again, he would make his way to Althala? Yet there had been no word of him at all.
‘Ah,’ said a voice, and her head jerked up.
Salarkis sat grinning in an armchair opposite, wearing nothing but a belt of daggers round his waist.<
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‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Let me see the one pretty face amongst us all.’
Yalenna’s blood quickened. Was he here to avenge himself? She found herself both afraid, and strangely glad to see him.
Did the blessing she had given him still hold sway?
‘It’s good to see you too, old friend,’ she said, and he chortled in a way that was not at all amiable.
Before his transformation, Salarkis might have been the best of all of them. He had a touch of wanderlust about him, and travelled the land helping people as best he could. A rare sort not driven by personal gain, but by deep-seated kinship with his fellow human beings. It had taken a while for Mergan and Yalenna to track him down, for he preferred the edges of things, where folk were most vulnerable, and souls most lost, but once they found him, it had not taken long to convince him to join them in bringing down Regret.
After the change, scant remained of the Salarkis who had been. Chaos became his entertainment, and he revelled in discovering the names of important people and sending knives to find them. Then, after the deaths of Forger and Despirrow, bodies stuck with his blades had mysteriously ceased to fall. Yalenna and Braston hunted him anyway, for it was not just his crimes he had to answer for. After a year of searching, rumours had brought Yalenna, alone, to a small village on the cusp of Dapplewood. Here she found the people afraid, for though the wood was cheerful and sunny, no one had ventured into its interior for months.
‘Haunted by a black ghost, ma’am,’ said one man. ‘It hates the living – jealous I reckon – so best not to gain its attention.’
Into the wood Yalenna had gone, quietly and carefully, expecting only more dead ends and false trails. Instead she came upon a stout, sturdy hut in a once-cleared area that was growing overshadowed with encroaching canopy. Scattered about were family things – an outdoor table, a high chair, a wooden ball and other toys, all looking as if they’d been left to the elements for some time. Beside the hut was a thick-trunked tree, one branch dangling with a rope that had maybe once been used to swing out over the beautiful, clear pool beside the house. Now the only thing swinging from it was a man’s body, cuts showing in his desiccated flesh, the blood that had spilled from them now dry stains on the tattered rags that had been his clothes. And sitting on a rock at the pool’s edge was a dark figure, his feathered tail swishing in the water.
She moved towards him, bare feet padding across the grass. She did not wish to startle him, yet it became inevitable as she drew closer and still he did not notice her. One of her blessings bounced from him, unable to penetrate his scales, and his head snapped about, his snarl deepening when he saw who it was.
‘Please,’ she said, spreading her palms, ‘can we not speak a moment? We both know you can fade at whim, and I can do nothing to stop you. But I’ll go on searching for you forever if you do not hear me out.’
His eyes slid across the foliage behind her. ‘Where’s Braston?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered truthfully. ‘Looking for you, yes, but not with me. We thought it best to split up to cover more ground.’
‘How enterprising of you. Perhaps, though, you should leave me be. You have already dispatched the others, and I,’ he glanced at the slowly turning corpse, its mouth a yawning O, ‘have lost my claws.’
‘It does not look like that to me.’
‘Why, because of him?’ He gestured at the body. ‘I am not evil for killing this man.’
Yalenna wondered how long ago the deed had been done. Weeks, at least, by the state of decay – so what was Salarkis still doing here, staring into this pool with distant eyes? She dared to hope it was a good sign.
‘Who was he?’ she asked.
‘Nobody. A woodsman. I did not even know his name. Nor did I use magic to kill him. Those wounds I gave him with my own hands, while looking in his eyes.’
‘I see. That’s better, is it?’
‘Yes!’ Salarkis snapped. ‘He was a villain – a small one, compared to some, but how badly he treated his pretty wife and little children. The tyrant of his own pathetic kingdom, and like no father should ever be with his daughters.’
Yalenna frowned. ‘And where are they now, this wife and family?’
‘Gone.’ He gave an idle flick of fingers. ‘Fled. They cried for him, that was the worst thing. But fear of me is stronger than grief, and so, gone.’
‘So, you rescued them?’
‘Don’t go painting me in that fashion. I could have killed the bastard cleanly, but you see the marks, see how many? A slow bleed it was, nothing peaceful. So don’t skip gaily down that path.’
‘I wasn’t about to declare you a paragon of light, Salarkis. However, Forger said something before he died – something about you getting tangled up in the web of your past.’
‘Quiet about that.’
‘Have you started to remember? Please, I only want to help you. We are old friends, aren’t we?’
He turned back to stare into the shimmering water.
‘Has it come back to you?’ she pressed. ‘Your former life? Was this you trying to help somebody? In your own way, in this quiet corner of the world, where no one else could see it? How long have you been sitting here, trying to make sense of this death?’
He did not answer.
‘Regret touched us all,’ she said, ‘but perhaps, for all the ruin he caused, his latent curses did some final good. There are things you should regret, Salarkis.’
He got a look on his face then, which, for just a moment, made him seem like his old self.
‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘These eyes don’t cry, Priestess. This heart is cold.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Despirrow had his moment of Regret, and Stealer too. They saw the lives they would have led, save for the change. Yet the experience passed them by, leaving not a scratch! So why must I endure this torment?’
Yalenna wanted to hug him then, hard in her soft hands – but she dared not.
‘Maybe because you’re better than them,’ she said. ‘The best of all of us, with the farthest to fall.’ She sighed. ‘When Mergan and I asked you to come with us and kill Regret, what was it you were in the middle of doing?’
The scales of his brow kinked.
‘You were helping villagers whose crops were yellowing with disease. You were initially reticent to join us, to save the world from wider evil because you could not differentiate it from what beset those farmers. Pain is pain, and theirs was yours.’
‘Thank the Spell,’ he spat, ‘I am not so afflicted anymore. To go through life feeling every last thing, when there will always be pain, always misery. The moment you heal one hurt, ten more spring up, as if healing actually planted the seed! To think,’ he flung up his hands in disgust, ‘that I believed I could make a difference!’
‘But you do still care. I can see it, sense it.’
‘Your senses do not penetrate me.’
‘I’m not speaking of threads and patterns. I can see you with my eyes, hear the quaver in your voice.’
He looked up at the sky.
‘You see what is happening to the world,’ she said. ‘The newborns with their twisted limbs, the rents in the earth, the strange winds and the scents they carry! You know that all is crumbling – soon it won’t be saved for anybody, whether they be good or evil. You do not want that.’
His shoulders slumped. ‘What can I do?’
Yalenna took a deep breath. ‘Let me bless you.’
He searched her face for a trick. ‘You can’t,’ he said. He reached for one of her little bundles in the air, and it glanced off him. ‘We cannot affect each other – that has always been the nature of our gifts.’
‘Not without assent,’ she said.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Then there’s no harm in letting me try.’
‘What blessing would you bestow, if you could?’
‘Peace,’ she lied. ‘I can give you peace.’
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nbsp; He was hesitant, and yet he wanted what she offered. The chaos he spread had spread inward also. He was a broken thing, a fragmented hybrid of all his selves.
‘You cannot harm me with a blessing,’ he said slowly. ‘Else it would not be as named.’
‘How true.’
‘How do I … let you in?’
‘Just like that.’
‘Just like what?’
‘By deciding to.’
He considered her offer. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Bless me, then. But, if you are deceiving me …’
Yalenna did not wait for him to finish. In that moment of acquiescence, he was open to her powers. The blessing she had moulded for him while they talked, she sent at him. It hit him full in the chest and he jolted as if electrified, as the threads she had fashioned integrated with his pattern. He slid forward off the rock, to his knees on the grass.
‘What … what have you done?’ he gasped. ‘This is not peace!’
‘Empathy,’ she told him. She moved to him, reaching down to set a hand on his stony brow. ‘I have given yours back to you. May you feel what others feel.’
‘No.’ His eyes crinkled. ‘I told you not to trick me! This will not make me the Salarkis of old!’
‘Perhaps not, but at least it’s something.’
‘It’s not a blessing, it’s a curse!’
‘It is not a curse to gain enhanced perception and understanding. Perhaps now you will care about your fellow man disappearing down a sinkhole of Regret’s making.’
Salarkis clutched his chest. ‘All I’ve done … it’s all coming down on me at once.’
Yalenna kneeled before him, shedding tears for both of them.
‘I’m sorry, my friend. It isn’t your fault. You aren’t the person you’ve become. Believe me, for I knew you.’
She did hug him then, and he clutched her, unwittingly crushing her shoulders in his stony hands. She pushed that pain to the back of her mind, thinking instead of what she must do. How she wished she could speak with him further and convince him of it voluntarily. He was right, however – he was not the Salarkis of old, blessing or no. He still enclosed a chaotic centre, and who knew how long until a wild mood took him, until he disappeared from her grasp. The time of the Wardens had to end. She could not take any risks.