"Garrett," Cenick called out as he rode his shaggy little pony up beside him, "Would you care to ride out and do some scouting with me?"
Garrett looked up, sniffing and blinking. "What?"
"We need to scout those trees ahead," Cenick said, "Ride with me."
"Yeah," Garrett said, hoarsely.
"Are you deserting your troops, Captain Cenick?" Max called back in an imperious tone. "Gah!" he added, in his own voice, "When are you ever going to pick a last name? I can't just call you Captain Cenick forever. It shows too much familiarity. Bad for morale, you know."
Cenick scoffed. "I thought I was a general by now?"
"Depends on how much I like you on any given day," Max said, "How do you feel about Corporal?"
Cenick laughed.
"Oh, Max!" Serepheni chided him.
"Who told you to go scouting anyway?" Max demanded.
"Common sense... and boredom," Cenick said, "and anyway, I gave my troops strict orders."
"Which were?" Max asked.
"Walk... straight."
Serepheni giggled.
"Fair enough," Max sighed, "Just don't get into too much fun. Then everyone will want to go scouting."
Cenick grinned and nodded at Garrett, and the two of them rode together toward the distant tree line.
Once they were well away from the others, Cenick slowed his pony to a trot beside Garrett's wolf and asked, "What's bothering you?"
Garrett glanced at him and then looked down at the tall grass that swept past their legs as they rode. "I don't know," he said.
"You're worrying about the future again, aren't you?" Cenick asked.
Garrett tried to laugh. "People worry about the future all the time, don't they?" he asked.
Cenick shrugged. "Doesn't do any good if they do," he said.
Garrett frowned. "Isn't that what we're doing now? I mean riding ahead to check things out, it's because you're worried about what might be up there, right?"
"I'm not the least bit worried about what might lay ahead," Cenick said, "but that doesn't mean I don't have the good sense to be cautious about it."
Garrett shook his head. "What's the difference?"
"Caution is checking to see if there is an ambush waiting for you behind a stand of trees," Cenick said, "Worry is making yourself sick over what you imagine someone else thinks of you. Caution can save your life. Worry drains all the joy from it."
Garrett said nothing. He tried to force the image of Marla and Claude together out of his mind. It kept bubbling back up like a dead bug in the stew.
"Feel better?" Cenick asked.
"No," Garrett said.
Cenick chuckled. "I guess you'll need a different approach," he said.
"What?" Garrett asked.
Cenick smiled. "Distraction."
"How do I do that?"
Cenick looked down, reaching into his saddlebag and pulling out a Chadirian short sword. He had wrapped its red leather belt around the attached scabbard. He reached out, offering the whole bundle to Garrett. "Gear up," he said.
Garrett hesitated.
"What's wrong?" Cenick asked.
"I lost the last knife that you gave me."
"No," Cenick said, "That blade was taken from you. Here is another."
Garrett took the sword and straightened his back to fasten the belt around his waist, swaying a little on Ghausse's back. "I have no idea how to use this," he said.
"You won't learn any younger," Cenick said with a grin.
Garrett drew the sword. The steel gleamed a dull gray to match the clouds above. The fine mist that fell from the sky settled like dew drops on the blade. The sword felt heavy and unbalanced in his hand. "This isn't like the knife you gave me for my birthday," he said.
Cenick grunted. "Neshite blades, like mine, are balanced for throwing," he said, indicating the curved daggers at his belt, "A Chadirian believes that the weapon is an extension of their own body, and they no more care to be separated from it than from their own limbs. The river folk know better than to become too attached to anything that sinks when you drop it in the water."
"Do you miss your homeland?" Garrett asked, cutting the air experimentally with the sword. It made a satisfactory whistling noise when he swung it. Ghausse whined and gave him a nervous look over his shoulder.
Cenick fell silent for a moment. "I don't remember it much now," he admitted, "I always meant to go back someday... I just never got around to it." He laughed then. "I certainly don't miss the slavers."
"Slavers?"
Cenick's lips curled into a sneer. "They took me from my village when I was just a boy. They thought a shaman's son would bring a high price. I hate to think what Uncle had to pay to get me out of that nightmare where he found me."
"What was Uncle Tinjin doing in the jungle?" Garrett asked.
Cenick laughed. "You know, I never asked him. I was so glad to be free of it, and he was so kind to me, I just thought the River Spirit had sent him in answer to my prayers. As time went on, I suppose I didn't want to think about those days. Perhaps I was afraid that, if I thought about it too much, I would wake up from the beautiful dream and still be back in that cage."
"I'm sorry," Garrett said.
Cenick shook his head. "The world is not always a pleasant place, Garrett," he said, "I once blamed the gods for that. I felt they must have abandoned us to the mercy of evil spirits. Perhaps we had offended them, and so they turned their backs on us. I cried out to the River Spirit and asked her to come and cleanse my country of such evil men... That prayer was not answered."
"So, there are no gods?" Garrett asked.
Cenick smiled. "I don't know, Garrett," he said, "I've seen things that make me doubt. I've seen things that make me believe. I believe now that, if they do exist, they do not wish us to know with any certainty that they do."
"That's not very helpful," Garrett said.
Cenick chuckled. "No. It is not. Still, I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter."
"Huh?"
"What matters is what we do with our lives," Cenick said, "If the gods sit in secret judgment of us, then let us give them a show to remember. If there are no gods watching, then the play is for our benefit alone. Let us live our lives without fear of what is to come. Either the gods will welcome us into their home at the end of our days, or we will sleep the dreamless sleep and feel no more the pains of this life."
"What if the gods are bad?" Garrett asked.
"Then they are unworthy of our worship in this life or the next," Cenick said, "Still, I have seen too much beauty in this world to believe that evil reigns supreme."
"Then why don't they help us?" Garrett asked, a little of his weariness finding its way into his voice.
"Who says they haven't?" Cenick said, "Both of us have survived terrible things, against great odds. Perhaps we were not unassisted."
"But Uncle helped us, not the gods."
"If you are in trouble, and I send a servant to help you. I am still the one who has helped you, am I not?" Cenick said.
"Are you saying the gods told Uncle where to find us and made him go to us?" Garrett asked.
"I'm saying that we are born into this world with all the power and will we need to be men like Uncle Tinjin, men who do the gods' work, whether they are told to or not. Where evil thrives, the failure is ours."
As they rode into the first small trees at the edge of the forest, Garrett dried the sword blade on the leg of his trousers and sheathed it. "It makes my head hurt thinking about stuff like that," he said.
"Mine too," Cenick laughed, "Garrett, I..."
He suddenly fell silent as Ghausse let out a snarling growl. The dire wolf's hair bristled, and his muscles tensed as he crouched, staring into the forest ahead. Cenick rose up in his stirrups to look into the shadows between the trees. Then, dropping back into his saddle, he heeled his pony forward, leaving Garrett and the snarling, snapping wolf behind.
"Stay here!" Cenick hissed,
pulling a long knife from his belt as he and his pony disappeared into the shadows.
Garrett opened his mouth to protest, but Ghausse suddenly lunged forward, carrying him after Cenick into the dark forest. Garrett could do no more than lean close to the big wolf's back and dig his fingers into Ghausse's dark fur.
At first, all Garrett could hear were the snapping of branches, the crunch of dead leaves, the thump of pony hooves, and the bellows whoosh of the great wolf's breath. Presently, however, a new sound reached his ears, growing louder by the moment. A sharp crack rang out, again and again, without any rhythm or definite direction. Then, at last, another sound, a dry hiss like paper snakes tangling together and pulling apart.
Garrett felt his skin prickle and a sickly sensation of pressure, like a warm, wet blanket laid across his back.
Ghausse leapt forward, landing beside Cenick's pony at the mouth of a dark gulley where the earth had long ago riven apart between the great twisting roots of the ancient trees. At the far end of the gulley, a woman in stained white robes stood her ground against a half dozen shadowy specters.
Garrett's breath caught in his throat at the sight of the creatures. Taller than a man, but stooped over and made of coiling shadows, the things had only a pale, fleshy blob where their heads should be. Their faces twisted and stretched as though something vast and horrible in some other place was pressing its face against a little patch of fabric, trying to peer through into the world of men. Tendrils of flesh roped and drooped from the polypous heads only to be sucked back again and reformed just as quickly. All around them, long streamers of dark magic hissed and fluttered on some unfelt breeze that drew them toward the woman in white.
The woman stood, weary and wounded, with long, singed streaks across her arms and legs. She wore her auburn hair shorn close to her head with what might have been a white hood fallen over her shoulders. A hopeless defiance burned in her eyes. In her hands she wielded a silvery staff roughly five feet long. The staff shone with an almost radiant luster, and little swirls of steam vapor traced its movement through the air as she spun it defensively around her. She raised it quickly, bringing it into contact with one of the creatures' dark tendrils, and a loud crack shattered the air. A white brilliance dazzled Garrett's eyes, and the end of the black tendril shriveled like a hair in a flame.
Then Garrett noticed a boy, no older than himself, crouched on the ground behind the woman. The boy's brown hair was cropped so close that he seemed almost bald, and his white robes were a ruin of rips and mud stains. He too gripped a staff, though of simple wood, but his eyes held more terror than defiance.
"Fell spirits, desist and depart!" Cenick shouted, struggling to face the specters as his pony neighed and turned from side to side, unwilling to approach any closer.
As one, the creatures turned to face the two necromancers, their lumpy faces contorted in rage. Their black tendrils writhed like angry snakes around their bodies.
Giving up his struggle with the pony, Cenick swung down from her back and stood, facing the specters with a dagger in each hand. His pony thundered away into the forest, back the way they had come.
Ghausse growled and whined but did not flee, though some part of Garrett wished that he would. Garrett yanked the Chadiri sword from its scabbard with a shaking hand.
"Do not interfere, shroud-renders!" the shadowy creatures hissed as one. A hundred different voices seemed to come from them at once, and Garrett could not discern whether they were male or female, or something else altogether.
"Speak your grievance and heed counsel then," Cenick shouted, and Garrett knew him well enough to detect the slight tremor in his voice.
A tittering, hissing laughter spread through the beasts, and their almost-faces seemed to melt and run like warm butter. "We are not some murdered ghost seeking justice from the living," they cried as their faces hardened again, "We are beyond you and the ends of you. We are not to be tested."
"Run, you fools!" the woman in white called out, her voice hoarse from exhaustion, "Run while you still can."
Garrett looked at Cenick.
Cenick lowered his head a little, his eyes still on the roiling shadows as they fanned out across the gulley between him and the woman. "I don't feel like running today!" he growled. He raised his knives to the level of his shoulders, their points toward the enemy, and set his feet in a fighting stance.
Four of the six specters began to drift toward Cenick like leaves in a stream, their putty faces going blank as they advanced on him. The other two resumed their attack on the woman in white.
Cenick moved with surprising speed, sidestepping a grasping tendril of shadow and severing it from its host with a lightning-quick flick of his blade. The tendril floated off, dissipating like smoke, but Garrett saw it reform again, just as quickly, as Cenick's blades moved to other targets.
"Look out!" Garrett shouted, and Cenick ducked low, just as a noose of shadow closed around the place his neck had been a moment earlier. Then the creature seemed to take notice of Garrett and turned its flabby face towards him.
Ghausse yelped and leapt back as a black tentacle brushed against his foreleg, singing away his fur with a puff of acrid smoke. Garrett shouted wordlessly and hacked at a coiling tendril with the Chadiri blade. The tendril wrapped tightly around the steel blade and twisted the sword from his grasp with an irresistible strength.
Garrett screamed in fear and pain as he drew back his bruised fingers. Cenick as well howled in rage as a black loop closed around his leg and burned his flesh before he could slash at it with his dagger.
Garrett's specter drifted forward as Ghausse gave ground, snapping and snarling. Without thinking, Garrett shoved his hand inside his satchel and grasped the cold metal of his essence flask, feeling the comforting weight of the magic within. He pulled it from the bag and held it defensively between himself and the monster.
His mind raced, searching for a spell that might do something against the shadow beasts. As the fingers of black fire reached out for him, Garrett shouted, "Veiarnna te noulleanna!"
A gout of rainbow-colored flame erupted from the essence flask, burning away most of the shadow creature's body and half of its screaming fleshy mask. The other creatures screamed as well, drawing back from the multicolored flames that splashed across the dead leaves of the forest floor, filling the gulley with a merry and dancing light.
Garrett's heart hammered in his chest, but he held the canister above his head. Rainbow flame still licked at the cold metal in his hands. He knew the flask was empty, drained by the simple, yet costly bit of fairy magic.
The creatures, it seemed, would take no chances. Five of them fled, shrieking into the shadows. The one that Garrett had burned tried to flee as well but unraveled as it went, dissipating with a piteous cry and crackle of fairy fire. As it died, the feeling of pressure and wrongness lifted from the forest, and Garrett sucked in a breath of cool, fresh air.
Cenick stared, wide-eyed at Garrett. "That was wild magic," he said.
"Yeah," Garrett gasped, lowering his arm. His hand ached with cold where it touched the flask, and he watched the last of the rainbow flame flicker and fade.
Cenick was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "I guess I owe Max an apology. I thought giving you that book was a terrible idea."
"Good book," Garrett panted, trying to regain his composure, "Just need a real fairy to translate it for you." He grinned.
Cenick laughed. "I'd like to arrange some lessons then, when we make it back."
Garrett slipped down from Ghausse's back and retrieved his Chadiri sword from the dirt. The metal felt cold to the touch and a glistening layer of slime clung to the blade where the thing had touched it. He started to speak again, but a sudden movement at the end of the gulley drew his attention. The woman in white had collapsed.
"Help us, please!" the boy in the tattered white robes cried out.
Cenick rushed to their side and Garrett followed. The boy looked up at them, the fear in his
eyes only a little diminished.
"Don't worry," Cenick said, lifting the woman's face with his hand as he supported her body with his other arm, "We're friends."
"Save the boy," the woman gasped, "My brother... save him."
"We'll save you both," Cenick said, "Your wounds are not grave. Who are you?"
"Peacebringers," she whispered, her eyes fluttering, "We see... we seek... sanctuary."
The woman's eyes closed, and her body slumped in Cenick's arms. The boy in white looked up at Garrett, his dirty cheeks streaked with tears, and Garrett forced a hopeful smile in response.
Chapter Five
"You are a disciple of... Mauravant," the woman in white murmured, her eyes half-opening as Serepheni brushed a soft, wet rag across her forehead.
"My name is Serepheni," she answered, "The Goddess allows me some small measure of service in her cause. Does that offend you?"
The Peacebringer lifted her head from the palette that Cenick had made for her and gave a weak smile. "No... it does not."
"I will admit that I know very little about your order," Serepheni said. She lifted the blanket to survey the wounds on the woman's arms and winced.
"My brother?" the woman asked.
"The boy is all right," Cenick said. He and Garrett knelt, holding open the tent flap to let in the fading gray light of day, "He is having supper now."
"He hasn't eaten in two days," the woman whispered, her voice rasping and weak, "Thank you."
"I'll bring you something to eat as well," Cenick said.
"No," Serepheni said, "Not yet." She tugged open a slash in the woman's sleeve, revealing the burned mark on her skin beneath. Her eyes widened.
"What's wrong?" Garrett asked.
Serepheni looked at Garrett with a trembling smile and then at Cenick. "I think the two of you had better leave," she said, "I'll call for you when... just leave us alone for a while."
Garrett glanced at Cenick. The tattooed necromancer's face looked grim. He looked at the woman in white then at Garrett. "Come on, Garrett," he said, "Let's tend to her brother."
Garrett looked at the woman in white. The auburn-haired woman looked up at Serepheni and chuckled softly. Serepheni looked down at her with a tense smile that did nothing to conceal the fear in her eyes.
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