Emissary

by Thomas Locke

  From behind him, Hyam heard the sound of pounding hooves. He turned in time to see the knight disappear into the woods at the field’s far end.

  There was no time for worry nor logic. He knew with gut-wrenching certainty what he had to do. Hyam raced to the shed, over earth that now compressed eight warriors and their steeds. He hefted his bow and strung it in one fluid motion. He plucked an arrow from his quiver, lifted the bow, and drew it to his chin, aiming it at the point where the knight had vanished among the trees. He released the arrow and yelled the three Milantian words, “Fly! Find! Kill!”

  The arrow flew over the silent field and disappeared into the forest. A moment later, Hyam heard a shout followed by a crash.

  He raced across the field and into the forest. The branches seemed to lean away from him, as though granting him a momentary free passage. Which of course was impossible. But Hyam was too intent upon his fallen prey to give notice. He had always moved easily through the thickest undergrowth.

  He spotted the horse first, standing in trembling fear above its fallen rider. Hyam lashed the horse to a nearby sapling, then examined the knight.

  The arrow had taken him straight through the center of his chest. Blood dappled the indolent mouth as the knight reached up, his eyes and hand pleading since his voice failed him.

  Hyam demanded, “Where is your force?”

  The knight pointed to his left. Hyam searched for some unseen trail, then realized the man was aiming at his horse.

  “How large is your army? When will they arrive?” Hyam asked.

  The man continued to point at his steed, his gaze imploring.

  Then Hyam noticed the chest. A large lockbox banded in iron was lashed tightly to the saddle. Hyam realized, “You want to pay me for a healing.”

  The man’s gaze grew more frantic still.

  “I am no healer.” Hyam leaned over the dying man. Words sprang to his mind, a quotation that had once flamed within his young heart. They came from the first Elven scroll he had ever studied. Now the words came to him unbidden. Hyam spoke in a tongue he knew the knight did not understand. “I am vengeance. I am the protector of my people. I am wrath unleashed.”

  The light in the man’s eyes faded, then vanished altogether. Hyam stood there a moment, then turned and walked to the horse, which whickered softly at his approach. Hyam allowed him to smell his hand and wondered if death carried a scent to such animals, for the horse shied away. Hyam spoke softly and remained there, waiting until the horse allowed him to stroke his nose. He took his time, scratching the spot behind each ear, then trailing his hand down along the horse’s flank. He then moved to the saddle and unlashed the chest. It tumbled heavily to the ground.

  Hyam walked back over and searched the corpse for a key, which he found dangling from the gold chain of station. He slipped it over the inert arm, walked back, and unlocked the chest. And groaned at the sight.

  The chest held a fortune in booty. Each item cried in silent woe. Some of the rings still held fingers.

  Hyam returned and stripped the man of all his finery, the jeweled rings and the bracelets and the heavy coin purse and another chain hidden beneath the leather vest and the sword and the mail. The hat with its bloodstained feather he left on the ground. He lashed the chest back to the saddle and hung the mail and sword from the pommel. He led the horse back toward the field, then returned to stand over the body.

  He had no idea whether the force would work here. Or whether the spade was required. But there was only one way to find out.

  Hyam drew his knife and hesitated a long moment. Then he sensed a power emanating from his oval field, coursing through the earth beneath his feet. Ready. Hyam stabbed the ground and spoke the word again. “Open.”

  The earth ripped and groaned and gave a mighty yawn. The body tumbled in among the roots and shadows.

  Hyam withdrew the knife.

  The earth closed.

  5

  Joelle unsheathed her knives and unrolled her stolen scroll. The last two documents she had slipped from the wizard’s library had proven useless, for they were written in some archaic script she did not understand. This scroll, however, was about something called “cold fire.” She drew in the mage-force, spoke the words, laced her blades with the power, and began her nightly routine. Stabbing the shadows of her windowless room, sweeping down upon foes that were asleep in other areas of the Long Hall. Readying herself for the chance that she vowed would come soon. To fight. To flee. Or die. She no longer cared much either way.

  The memories were hot tonight, as brilliantly clear as the magical force her blades weaved in the still air. Normally she did not indulge in either recollection or regret, for both cost her too much resolve. But tonight marked the beginning of her fourth year, the last she would spend here. She was almost ready. Even if she wasn’t, she was going. And tonight the memories of her arrival swept her away.

  The only part of her former life that the wizards had let her keep was her name. They had even argued over that, but in the end the quarrel had faded into sullen resentfulness. Joelle had still been weak from the ailment that had almost killed her, such that acolytes had carried her on the same stretcher her mother’s kin had used to bring her from their homeland. Nine days they had traveled to arrive at this Long Hall, and not once had they spoken to her or even looked her way.

  As it was, many of the wizards she met in those early fever-stricken days did not want to take her in. Those who opposed her staying in the Long Hall did not actually come out and say what they thought, which was she would be better off dead and all the problems she represented buried with her. Joelle had silently agreed with them, for she had loathed the stone community at first sight. She had just turned fifteen, and she was to be their prisoner for life.

  Her one true friend among the mages was named Trace, and he was the Master who ruled over all the wizards and their community, which was named after the largest structure, a Long Hall.

  “None of this is as it should be,” he told her six weeks after her arrival, when she was finally strong enough to rise from her bed and walk unaided. “But here at least you are safe. The mages and acolytes are forbidden from bothering you in any way.”

  Trace pointed across the stone plaza to the oddest element of the entire Long Hall, the door. There was only one way in or out. Even the fields lay within the high stone wall, even the quarry.

  “Beyond that portal lies only death,” Trace said.

  Joelle liked him and she liked his heart, for Trace was not just kindly but a wizard of passion and feeling. So she told him the truth. “You should have left me in the forest to die.”

  His hand dropped. “That was forbidden to us also.”

  “But why?”

  They were seated by the central fountain. The water sparkled and played a merry tune, mocking her.

  Trace asked, “How much did your parents tell you?”

  “That their marriage was forbidden, but they were in love and my mother was pregnant with me, so they fled into the forest.” She clenched her fists along with her jaw. She had promised herself that she would not shed a single tear in this place. Not ever.

  “And then they died.”

  “Of the fever,” Joelle confirmed.

  “And you were alone.”

  “For almost a year.”

  “Until you caught the same fever. What happened then?”

  Faint images came and went behind her eyes, disjointed glimpses of a different world and a hidden folk who sang their speech and melded with the trees and the sunlight. She recalled a journey beyond time and place, one that ended by her being left in a meadow before a city of white stone. Joelle knew he was not mocking her, but still she could not speak of what she was not entirely certain she had seen at all. She simply replied, “I’m not sure. I was very sick.”

  “Somehow you were brought to your mother’s people. And they brought you to us.”

  “Why did you take me?” When he hesitated, Joelle pres
sed, “Why do you keep me?”

  “Our treaty with your people goes back a thousand years.” Trace spoke slowly, carefully weighing each word. “Almost as long as the edict that forbade your parents’ union. To put it bluntly, we owe them. Your mother’s people ordered us to take you in and keep you here all your life. We had no choice but to agree.”

  She liked how he spoke to her, without guile or any desire to hide even the most painful truths. “Why did my mother’s people heal me? Why not just let me die?”

  Trace spun a finger, swirling magical force into a ribbon of light that rose to join with the sunlight. “To that, I have no answer. They like to think of themselves as compassionate, I suppose.”

  Joelle watched the rainbow ribbon and remembered her mother making the same design, a game to delight a child. She fought for control once more, then replied, “I can think of many ways to describe what they’ve done to me. Compassionate is not one of them.”

  Trace stilled his hands, the magic faded, and he said, “Your mother’s people are known to hold certain abilities.”

  Instantly she understood this was why the Master of the Havering Long Hall was speaking to her. It was not to reassure or to comfort but to know.

  Trace went on, “They can see beyond the reach of physical eyes. Can you do that, Joelle?”

  She hesitated, then decided she would give him the truth. “Ever since I was a child.”

  He nodded, as though he approved of her response. But she was certain Trace found her answer most troubling.

  “Can you sense anything particular about this place?”

  She had perceived it when she first arrived. “A chamber lined in spells. And full of power.”

  “To approach that place is forbidden upon pain of death.” When she did not respond, he continued, “You must be aware that some mages want to cast you out. They do not think you belong any more than you do. These wizards look for a reason to expel you from here. Your mother’s people have vowed to kill you, should you ever emerge.”

  Master Trace gave her a long moment to ponder this, then went on, “Our own acolytes are not told of the hidden chamber or what it holds until they have taken their final vows. If you seek to pierce the forces shielding that room, most likely the protective spells will destroy you. You will not enter, this I can promise you. The spells are as sensitive as they are strong. If you try and survive, you will be sent away. If you leave the Long Hall, you will die.”

  “That holds a certain appeal.”

  “You will die,” he repeated. “Your mother’s people made this very clear.”

  “And if I stay, what then?”

  The Master of Havering Long Hall sighed softly, as though the most difficult part of his day was now behind him. “We train our acolytes in the hidden arts. I will try to have you included among them.”

  “Try? You are the Master.”

  “My opponents in this matter are very strong. But I give you my word, I will try.”

  In the end, though, Trace’s best efforts were not enough. The mages who sought her eviction used her heritage as a reason to keep her from studying with the other acolytes. Even so, Trace remained true to his word and secretly taught her all he could. Joelle suspected that all along the Master assumed she would one day use the spells to break out of the Long Hall and then protect herself from her mother’s kin. But by the time she grew certain of this, Joelle had learned to hide certain mysteries from everyone, even her one true friend.

  Joelle completed her exercises, stowed away her knives and the stolen scroll, and prepared for bed. Her last thought was the same as every night, that this would be her last month of imprisonment. When she awoke, she was thrilled to discover that this was to be one of her special, secret dawns.

  Joelle never knew which mornings would liberate her, or even how they happened. But she reveled in her brief spans of liberty, even when she was not in truth free at all. For on many such occasions, she did not go. Rather, she was taken.

  Such journeys always came at the same moment, at night’s end, as she gradually transitioned to wakefulness. There was a breath like most breaths, and then she escaped. Free from her body, from her cell, from this place.

  There was a tiny crack in the Long Hall’s outer barrier, so small that ants could not pass single file, and yet large enough for her to squeeze through. Once beyond the wall, she was both free and not free. Free, because she could sometimes move as she wished, enter the forest, and dwell there until her body demanded she return and rise and begin another dull day. Not free, because she was often taken where she did not want to go.

  This morning’s travel was not under her control.

  Joelle had been brought to this yellow city a number of times. But she still could not say how she came, or why. Only that an enemy lived here. Such journeys carried a weight, a burden, that filled her soul with foreboding. When they were over, and she was back in her windowless stone cell inside the Long Hall, she wondered if it meant that she was to die in that city. Which filled her with a painful hope, since it meant she would succeed in breaking out and being free for a time, and surviving until she arrived there.

  So she came, but never of her own accord, and always to the same place. From her perch, the yellow city rose on the opposite side of a broad valley. Ridges rose and fell to the end of the world. The desert was all-consuming. Not even time held much sway here. The years this city had endured were beyond count.

  Only this day she was not alone.

  A full army was gathered along her ledge, the men of a type she had never seen before. They were bearded and wild, carrying massive swords and double-bladed axes and spears, and riding horses as fierce as the men. The horsemen were flanked by foot soldiers, and all of them glared across the valley at the city. Their gazes were intense and flinty, the same fury burning on every face. Joelle was very glad indeed she could not be seen.

  It seemed to her that she viewed a different season than the one in which her body dwelled. This had happened a few times before, and on each occasion Joelle had the distinct impression there was a lesson here, or a warning, such as now. The warriors were dressed in furs, with leggings and boots and gloves beneath their mail. Breath steamed silver-white from beast and man alike. Back in the realm where she slept, it was late spring. Joelle had no idea why this was happening, only that she must observe.

  Across the distance, the city gates opened. This was another remarkable component of her journeys, how she could see even remote objects with crystal clarity. She stood on a rock behind the army and watched as a frivolous, chattering mob of knights emerged from the city gates. At their center walked two indolent men with gold chains of royal office looped around their shoulders. One wore a crown, the other a dandy’s cap of black leather with a tall black feather. Both wore jeweled rings over gloves and were clutched at by chattering women. The men accepted the other knights’ cloying attention as their due. The group laughed and caroused and ignored the army on the opposite ridgeline.

  Servants scurried through the gates and set down tables and chairs and two high-backed thrones for their leaders, then lay out silver platters of fruit and poured golden goblets full of wine. A minstrel began playing a lute as a battalion of foot soldiers tromped out and formed up alongside the knights.

  The warrior closest to Joelle’s perch unsheathed his great sword and shouted words she could not understand. It seemed to her that the very earth trembled as the other warriors took up the roar.

  But the knights seated on the valley’s other side remained untouched by the ferocity.

  The warrior pointed his sword, yelled something more, and all the warriors set off down the ridge into the valley.

  At that moment, another figure emerged from the city gates. Though Joelle had never seen him before, still she knew him. The crimson mage carried a scent so fierce she could smell it without her body, a vile stench of all the towns he had burned, all the lives destroyed. The wizard carried a staff, upon which glowed an orb
as red as his robes. He turned to the approaching horde and gestured with his free hand. He spoke words that seared Joelle where she stood. As he uttered his spell, what appeared to be metal insects emerged from his shadowed hood and swarmed about him.

  The minstrel stopped playing then, and most of the knights could no longer pretend to be enjoying themselves. Only the indolent pair at their center remained at ease.

  A putrid mist began spewing from the orb, forming tendrils that slithered down the slope, growing snakelike arms as it raced toward the warriors. The mist was the color of watery blood. It clung to the rocks and the scrub, rising no more than a few inches from the earth.

  The warriors saw it and faltered, but before their leader could sound a retreat, the mist was upon them.

  As soon as the mist touched their feet, the warriors and their steeds were bound in place. They and their mounts screamed and struggled, but to no avail.

  The mist crept up each of the warriors, blanketing them in the vile shade, until only their heads were free. Then the remaining mist melted into the valley floor.

  To the faltering sound of the lute, the indolent knight lifted one hand. Reluctantly the foot soldiers started forward, marching down the ridge, entering the valley. Down to where the army was trapped like screaming pillars.

  Joelle could not depart. She knew this from experience. When she was taken somewhere, she remained until she was hauled back. But she could at least turn her face away. There was nothing, however, that she could do about the screams and sounds of chopping meat and metal striking metal. She had no ears, nor hands to cover them.

  Only when the valley went silent did she turn back. And even then she did not want to, but her attention was pulled around with the same force that had drawn her here. To her astonishment, the valley floor was covered with nothing save a dark grey ash. Of the warriors and horses, the only sign they had ever existed was the line of blood-spattered foot soldiers who tromped up the opposite ridge and passed through the city gates.