by Bill McCurry
“Murderer, one more thing,” Harik said. “I’ve extended my offer to cancel your open-ended debt. You may kill the person you most care for any time within the next week to lift your obligation. The intentional act itself will seal the agreement. Perhaps a good opportunity shall arise.”
I couldn’t prevent it. An image of Ella with my knife sticking out of her chest flashed into my mind. There wasn’t a nasty enough name to call Harik, so I grabbed Desh and drifted back to our world.
No time passes at home while you’re visiting the gods. There’s probably a bad joke in that somewhere. When we returned, I dropped Desh’s hand and yanked out my knife as I sat up. Desh howled as if something was eating his heart while he was still using it.
I yelled, “Hold him tight! Pin him!”
Ella fell across his thighs, and I started cutting. Desh stopped screaming and switched to moaning the moment my knife touched him.
I pulled a green band out of the air and drew it tight around the big artery. Then I started cutting away the ripped-up flesh and bone using the knife in my right hand. At the same time, with my left hand, I pulled green strips out of nothing and wrapped them on the stump I was creating. Some time during the process, Stan and Ralt appeared and helped hold the boy. A little later, Desh stopped moaning, but he kept wriggling, so I knew he wasn’t dead.
Within a few minutes, it was done. “You can let go.”
Ella looked at the smooth pad of flesh at the end of Desh’s leg, and she looked at me with awfully big eyes. I pretended that the stump was in bad need of examination so I wouldn’t have to look at her so soon after planning to kill her.
She grasped the boy’s hand. “You are very brave, Desh. A brave young man.”
“Brave as a drunk telling the rest of the bar how tiny their dicks are,” I said. “He’d appreciate your praise more if he wasn’t so unconscious. You can say it to him again when he wakes up. I bet he won’t mind a little mothering.”
I stood and stumbled only a little, which I felt proud about since I hadn’t healed anybody in a long time. I limped away to look for a less bloody place to sit.
A tender incidental effect of healing somebody is that the healer gets to feel what the sufferer felt, although not as severely. My leg didn’t feel as if it had been smashed off like Desh’s; it just felt like it was being stabbed with short knives all the way around. The pain wouldn’t last too long—maybe a few hours, maybe a day. Sorcerers tend to puff up a little when they’ve saved somebody’s life, so I think this is the gods’ way of telling them not to get too smug.
“Were you wounded as well?” Ella asked.
“No, my foot’s asleep. Don’t pay any attention.”
Nobody commented on the fact that my foot continued to sleep for the next five hours.
Eleven
I have killed more people than I’ve saved in my life. I spent a lot more years saving people than I spent murdering them, but I have pursued murder with greater diligence. I dealt with the Goddess of Mercy in my youth, and I killed only when pushed to it. I was the kind of sorcerer known as a Caller, meaning I healed the ill and injured, brought rain to grow the crops of the virtuous, and brought locusts to eat the crops of the wicked. When I told people what kind of sorcerer I was, they were often disappointed in me, because to them, sorcery was knocking down castles and burning up forests.
Gods like to claim particular sorcerers. It’s sort of like when all the village’s sheep run in one big flock, but every farmer has marked the ones that are his. I had already established myself as a sorcerer when Harik purchased me from the Goddess of Mercy. All of Harik’s bargains are about death and killing. I eventually took on the open-ended debt, by which I owe Harik an unknown number of murders. I don’t know why he wanted me to turn myself into a murderer. I guess he thought it would be funny.
I would take that deal again, though.
Desh lay on the grass in the afternoon sun, sometimes restless and sometimes quiet under his blanket. Ella and I sat near him, and we checked his breathing now and then. I also watched for signs that becoming a sorcerer had driven him mad. It’s not a common reaction, but it happens often enough, and a deranged sorcerer can be a terror. I felt obliged to observe the young man for a day or so and destroy him if he went insane.
Once the fog disappeared, Ralt found and collected the Denzman whose scalp and face I’d sliced open. The man had lost his horse and was bouncing off tree trunks, dizzy and half-blind. Krak knows where Limnad had gotten off to—in the trees somewhere preparing to turn us inside out, or drown us in our own blood, should the opportunity arise.
Ella said, “If you are a sorcerer, why don’t you transform the Denzmen into sand, or turn their spears into storks? Then you could bring the prince to us by incantation, or for that matter, you could transport him back to his own bed!”
“If I could do such things, I would, just to make sure Desh feels like he hasn’t lost his leg for nothing. But I can’t make those things happen.” I shrugged. “Even if I had the ability, I have used up every last scrap of power in my possession.”
Ella pointed at my chest. “Acquire more.”
“It’s not like picking blackberries. Let’s just say that acquiring power is sort of a nuisance, and leave it alone.”
“Then we should continue pursuing Vintan. Stan can stay with Desh and accompany him home when he can travel.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m tired of listening to the man curse and break wind.”
I looked her in the eye. “Desh will be traveling in the morning, I promise.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I can’t remember for sure, but were you anywhere close by when I saved his life?” I looked around as if I were searching for someone. “I saw somebody who might have been you. Nobody else here has yellow hair.”
She whacked me on the arm hard enough to hurt. “Don’t be impertinent. It doesn’t suit a man of your maturity.”
“You saw me heal the boy, so trust me when I say he’ll be up.”
“We’re wasting a great deal of time. Vintan isn’t sitting on the grass waiting for his wounded men to feel better.”
“We’ll make up the time.”
She stared hard at me. She would probably stare just like that at a tree branch to decide whether it was sturdy enough for her to hang me from. “Very well. I will trust you on this, although I shouldn’t. I’m beginning to think I have met bandits and bankers more trustworthy than you, but I fear we may soon need your sword again. You will see to it that we make up the lost time.”
Actually, I had no realistic ideas about how we could make up the time. I just didn’t want to leave Desh out there with nobody but Stan to care for him. I hadn’t known the soldier long, but he gave me the impression that it would be reckless to leave a spiny lizard in his care.
Ella had judged my integrity harshly, but in truth, she was more correct than not. Her zeal had begun winning me over on the idea of rescuing the prince, but only if it wasn’t too much trouble. As long as I had Denzmen to kill, I wouldn’t cry if the prince fell off a cliff and perished.
I left her watching Desh and walked over to Ralt and the prisoner. The wounded man was no boy and hadn’t been for ten or fifteen years. “What’s your name?”
He spat at my face but hit my sleeve instead.
“Hard to aim with just one eye, isn’t it?” I nodded to Ralt. “Stand him up.”
Ella had abandoned Desh to come watch.
I said, “I don’t give a shit about anything you know, and you’d probably tell me lies anyway. I can’t have you following us, though.” I drew my long knife.
“Don’t.” Ella touched my shoulder. “You don’t have to kill him.”
“I think you do,” Ralt said under his breath.
I grabbed the Denzman’s hair on the uninjured side of his head and made him look into my eyes. I didn’t see much fear. A whole lot of contempt, but not much fear. “I can’t have you running off to tell Vintan all about us, eithe
r.” I reached down and sliced the back of his leg above the knee, hard and deep. He groaned and collapsed.
I put the Denzman out of my mind and strolled down the trail about thirty paces, where I found the broken spear that had wounded Desh. I carried it back to the young man’s pallet.
“He’s awake,” Ella said. “I warned him that we must continue in the morning, and he mustn’t feel bad if he’s too weak to accompany us.” She frowned at me as if I had promised Desh would fly in the morning.
Desh looked confused, but his voice was strong when he said, “Bib, thank you for helping me.” He reached under the blanket that was folded beneath his head, but nothing was there.
“You paid for that gift, son. I just unwrapped it for you.”
“I’m missing something.” He flipped back the blanket and looked at his stump.
“I know,” Ella said, holding his hand.
“No… that’s not it.” He looked at me again and raised his eyebrows.
I squatted down beside him. “I know it feels like you’ve lost something, Desh, and you have. You’ve traded away some memories, but you don’t need to worry about it. You’re a sorcerer, and you made that decision. The feeling will go away on its own soon, so put it aside.”
“I don’t see how I can travel with you. I can’t walk. I can’t even ride. I can’t get off the side of this nasty trail.”
I held up my knife and the broken spear. “Do you know what these are?”
Desh peered at them and then at me. “Are they special in some way?”
I raised my voice. “Do you know what they are?”
“A knife… and a spear.”
I dropped the spear beside him and boomed, “This is the weapon that took your leg!” I dropped the knife. “This is a knife still wet with the blood of your enemy!”
He stared at them but didn’t move.
I knelt down and said, “If I were a sorcerer who was handy with things like you are, I’d be carving myself a wooden leg tonight. What’s more, I’d be using that energy I bought from Fingit to make the best damn magical wooden leg that’s ever existed.” I stood. “And you’re a sorcerer, so stop whining. You’ll embarrass me.”
I turned my back so Desh couldn’t see me grinning, and I walked across the trail. Ella joined me a moment later.
“Is this what it’s like to be a sorcerer?”
“Sometimes. I confess that I make it look easy. Not every sorcerer is as masterful as I am.”
“You are forever joking. Why don’t you speak seriously? When you act, you’re serious.”
“Oh, I say make your own fun. The world’s not going to make it for you.”
Ella glanced over at Desh, who was sitting up and examining the broken spear. “Will he really create a magical leg?”
“I think he will. He’s a handy young man. Even if he fails, it’s good to keep his mind occupied right now.”
“Why right now? What are you not telling me?” She grasped the front of my shirt with one hand and led me twenty feet off the trail. “We can’t abide secrets. We are in the land of our enemy. I want to trust you, but…”
I almost told her that a few hours ago, I had just about decided to kill her and had gone on to planning what I’d do when she was dead. I thought about it again and then smothered the impulse to confess. “Desh had to trade the gods for enough power to save himself. I think you called it ‘acquiring’ power a little while ago. He traded away all his memories of his mother.”
Ella jerked her head back. “The gods can do that? Why did he accept such a bargain?”
“It was the best deal he could get, and he was highly motivated to trade. Those memories are the thing he’s looking for. Something’s missing, but he doesn’t know what. That feeling will pass in a day or two.”
Ella looked down and scratched her forehead. “I see why one can’t simply go and acquire power. Bib, I would rather neither of you give up anything more. Magic cannot be worth it.”
“That’s an easy statement to make right now. But I’ll try to hold off.”
“Thank you. And thank you for not killing that helpless Denzman. It was an act of mercy that you should cherish.”
“Well, if you want me to be honest with you, I didn’t spare him on my account. I didn’t spare him on your account either, nor even his.”
“You’re about to make a joke, aren’t you?”
“I let him live to spite that malformed cockroach who is lower than rat spew, the God of Death. And I am not joking about that.”
I walked a couple of minutes up the trail, out of sight of the rest of my traveling companions. I whispered, “Limnad, I want you.”
A few moments later, the river spirit walked out of the tree line as if she’d been waiting there for me. “What do you want? I was busy luxuriating in the anticipation of your death.”
“I’m happy to know you’re not bored.” I had chosen to call Limnad so far down the trail because Ralt and Stan had been gawking at her since we left the river. None of my warnings about offending supernatural beings had deterred them, either. They claimed that not looking at a naked woman was unnatural, and would probably offend her as well, so they were just being polite.
It was time to find out whether binding the spirit had been wise or moronic or perhaps fatal. “I have an idle question to ask you, Limnad. If there were any secret paths or shortcuts around here, would you know about them?”
Limnad tilted her head and smiled. “Are you commanding me to answer, Bib? Yes, I know your name now. Soon, I will charm you with it and force you to tear off your own eyelids and eat them.”
I gave her my most respectful smile. “No, I’m not commanding you to do anything—yet. It’s just that Ella thinks you don’t know this territory from a barrel of pig parts, but I think you know all about these woods and their secret ways.”
Limnad put her hands to her cheeks. “Of course I would be happy to fall for such a juvenile ploy and answer your question for free. Once you disembowel yourself, I will tell you everything I know about such paths.”
I examined a rock beside the trail as I said, “What’s the friction between you and Gorlana?”
“What?” Limnad twitched, dissolved to liquid for a moment, and then reformed.
I had leaped to that unexpected question hoping it would make her forget for a minute how much she hated me. I raised my eyebrows. “You and Gorlana. Did you steal some man she wanted to snog? Did she pee in your river?”
“Hah!” The spirit circled me in just a moment, like a little stream rushing around an oxbow. “I wouldn’t touch any man she desired. She lacks all discernment when it comes to men. As graceless as goats. She would mount anything with a pointy bit.”
I smiled at her with polite interest. “If not men, then what?”
“She is greedier than a filth-smeared infant!” Limnad screamed loud enough for Ella and the others to hear. “She wants all the shiny bangles, and damn who owns them! She’s owed tribute. But she’s not owed someone’s birthright!”
I waited a moment, but she seemed done with that grievance. “She cheated me too, once or twice.”
Limnad glanced at my crotch and then raised an eyebrow at me. “I have no interest in how she defrauded you. If you want to know secret paths, command me. Else, go around the long way.”
“All right. Limnad, when I ask you to, please guide us through the best and shortest path that will catch us up with Vintan’s Denzmen.” The band on her left ankle unwound itself and dissipated.
“As you command, you shambling pile of filth. By the way, how are you going to find this path?”
“I’m sorry?”
“How will you find the path? I am commanded to guide you through it. I am not commanded to help you find where it starts. You grunting pool of slop.”
I had never heard a single story about binding supernatural creatures that turned out well for the binder, but I’d managed to make myself overlook that. “Limnad, O wise and tricky spirit, when
I ask you to, take us to the beginning of the best and shortest path that you will guide us through.” The band on her left hand disentangled itself and faded.
“As you command. Do you want to find your way back to the world of men when you have finished this path?”
“Now you’re just mocking me.”
“Yes, I am. I find it quite gratifying.”
Twelve
I have found there to be five types of people, and I can tell type from type by using the Bucket of Shit Rule. Say we’re standing around with some people, and up above us somebody overturns a bucket of shit. Some people just stand there, and some jump out of the way. Others push people to safety, and some shove people right under the shit. And some people go kill the son of a bitch who turned over the bucket.
My best friends and I have rarely been like one another. Some lacked qualities that I possess, and others made me look like a fool with my fingers up my nose. We might have liked or hated different things, and we might have thought differently about how much honesty is strictly required. But my real friends and I have always been the same type of person, according to the Bucket of Shit Rule.
On the first morning of Desh’s life with his enchanted false leg, he turned out to be the same type of person as Stan and Ralt. It wasn’t obvious at first. By the time sunlight was just letting us see each other’s faces, Desh was walking around on his new leg. Then he hurried along for a bit, and then he jogged. He jumped up and down a few times. Then Stan raced him down the trail to a fallen tree, and Desh nearly won.
At that point, Ralt and Stan adopted Desh into their three-person family, whose crest might have read Fortitude, Profanity, and Grievance. They had recognized him as one of their type.
“Toughest shit-sucker I ever seen,” said Stan. “Leg smashed off one day, sprinting like a hare the next!”
“Wiping your ass with a cactus ain’t in it,” said Ralt, with the first smile I’d seen from him in two days.
“A damn sorcerer, to top it. We got two now, and one of them can’t be killed.”