Was that all?
“What will I do the rest of the afternoon?”
“Your sarcasm only amuses yourself.”
This guy was going to be a lot of fun stuck inside my noggin.
“And how exactly will I manage that?”
“You must internalize what you have seen. Reflect on the memories now in your mind. Incorporate that knowledge and ability into yourself.”
“Yes, but how exactly did this happen?”
“Of that, I am not entirely certain.”
At least he was honest.
“I just placed my hand on you and boom! I was soaking in your life like stale bread slurping up gravy.”
Mmm…bread.
How long had it been since I had eaten?
My stomach offered its opinion on the conversation.
“Has anything like this happened before?”
“Not that I recall.”
Had it?
The world was a magical place, full of wonder and danger in equal measure. How had I survived outside Balde’s fortifications when few dared to venture out after the sun fell?
How had I managed to understand how to harvest plants, which ones were safe to touch and eat, their properties, their relationships to each other, how to grow those that had the most interest to me, all without any formal training or help from others, if I did not take something of their essence and learn from it?
After a moment’s pause, I amended my earlier comment. “Perhaps I do learn something from the essences of the plants I harvest.”
“Hmm… This was the first time the ability manifested itself so strongly?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been near anyone dying or killed anyone before?”
What kind of question was that?
“Of course not! No one will have anything to do with me other than to trade for my medicinal plants and tonics. And more often than not, I don’t bother seeking anyone out to trade.”
“What about animals? Do you hunt for your food?”
“I never intentionally kill anything. My mushrooms give me everything I need. When I do want meat, I trade for it. I would be more likely to hurt myself than whatever it was I would try to hunt, anyway.”
“If you’ve never killed anyone, especially anyone with powerful magics, then you would not know what would happen to you if you had.”
“Meaning?”
“You may be far more than you appear.”
Great!
Riddles.
So, not only do I have someone sharing my thoughts, but he speaks in riddles as well.
“And?”
I was growing impatient.
Considering that was how I’d started, I did not have to grow far.
“I think you may be proof that the Djen’toth are not extinct.”
“Djen’toth?”
His voice was firm and sharp, like the edge of a blade. “Soul stealers.”
Djen’toth
Soul stealer!
How could I be a soul stealer?
Soul stealers were extinct long before the demons threw down the gates of Heaven and raged across Uërth’s surface largely unchecked until humanity began to fight them back with Angel Swords wielded by the Empyrean Guard.
Soul stealers were extinct for a reason.
In many ways, soul stealers were worse than demons. They combined demons’ power and need for more with humanity’s insatiable desire to expand, control, and subjugate.
They were like demons in human guise.
However, there was one principal difference. Soul stealers took the knowledge and power of anyone or anything they killed as their own.
Secrets were not safe before their blades. Empires could unwind with the right kill.
Ancient knowledge could be stolen with a single stroke.
Lore held within the minds of the most secretive mages could be had with but a little blood.
Unimaginable powers could switch from one individual to another without being earned or achieved.
Soul stealers left violence and chaos in their wake.
They also tended to be mad.
Or their psyches were so shattered and overwrought, they were far beyond madness.
Luckily for the rest of humanity, Djen’toth tended to hunt each other in calamitous efforts to gather and consolidate power.
As damaging as they were to society, soul stealers tended to be their own worst enemies.
It was killing the last remaining few that had been the real challenge.
Godlike beings with an insane lust for power and the ability to gain more from whatever the source were not easy targets even with Heavenly intervention.
Though the cost had been terrible, in the end, the Djen’toth had been wiped out, their terrors and atrocities forgotten.
Until I came along.
Lucky me.
So, in sum, I was privileged enough to be quite possibly the last of a rare subgroup of humanity thought long extinct. With this good fortune came the very likely possibility of being hunted and killed for my genetic heritage.
People being who they were, lacking appropriate creative outputs and hobbies, like moss gardening or dragon scale collecting, they would probably take my capture as an opportunity to torture, taunt, and torment me in as many ways as their small minds could imagine. With the appropriate creative outlets and a broader vision—that is to say, in a saner world not degraded by past atrocities and ravaged by throngs of demons—my hypothetical pursuers might even let me be.
However, as the import of Alric’s words sank to the marrow of my soul like a cast iron anchor tethered to a child’s sailboat, I realized the chances of that outcome were none, bordering on statistically impossible.
And I was not any good at math.
Cheered by my deliberations, I was at least reassured that before I was waylaid and dismembered by bloodthirsty savages, I would probably already be insane, my consciousness torn apart by the warring minds and experiences housed within my fragile intelligence.
Taking a deep breath, I decided three things.
First, I would hide who and what I was at all costs. Being as brave and outgoing as I was, such duplicitous subterfuge might be a challenge for my heroic nature, but I thought that I could manage the task.
Second, I would do my best to learn from any experiences I might glean as a result of my abilities as intelligently as possible. Given my intellectual challenges, this might prove an insurmountable task. However, as an outcast stubborn enough to harvest mushrooms and persist on the margins of an already marginal society, I should have enough perseverance to make up for at least a modicum of what I lacked in cognitive faculties.
I hoped.
Third, despite my many shortcomings, foibles, eccentricities, and limitations, I would try to be true to myself, as sad a self as that was, and would be, and do all I could not to lose myself in the lives, knowledge, and power of others. The simplest path to that end was not to kill anyone and avoid anyone dying.
I had managed to not kill anyone for almost two decades until last night.
How hard could it be to avoid killing anyone or anything else?
It was the ‘not dying’ part I was most concerned about.
From Here to There
My mind finally settling from a state of frenzied agitation to my normal background level of mere anxiety, I asked, “How exactly did you get here?”
Getting used to talking to myself was a bit easier than I had anticipated.
Maybe I had eaten too many mushrooms.
“I was hunting an Al’zakara—”
“An Al’zakara?” I interrupted.
“A flesh dancer.”
I nodded to myself, as if that had cleared up everything, when, in fact, it had not. Then I stopped myself on the off chance someone was watching and had noted my odd behavior.
Visions began to dance in my mind, called forth as though they were my own, with Alric’s remembrance. Dark, rain-fille
d days spilled into sleepless nights following the bloody trajectory of an inhuman killer. Mangled bodies, sorcerous attacks, and wrecked homes at first provided a gruesome trail that grew ever fainter as the foul creature fled into the northern wilds.
“The demon took over the body of a powerful wizard. The poor fool had probably invited the thing in, and it had been on a rampage northward ever since.
“Weeks of tracking found me in the northern hinterlands, the demon’s trail grown cold until it sprung a trap on me just outside the walls of your little hamlet.
“Luckily, I stopped it from entering your town’s gates…at least for the time being, but it will be back; of that I am certain. It has not fed to its satisfaction for too long.”
How could he consider himself lucky when he had died?
For that matter, was he really dead now that he lived on in me?
Did his soul still live on elsewhere?
Was that why the Djen’toth were so abhorrent and hated?
Had I stolen his chance at an afterlife?
If I died, could I give it back?
I heard in Alric’s soft response to my unspoken questions a measure of kindness and respect I had not heard before. “I will try to respect the sanctity of your thoughts…but you should not pain yourself on my account. I am at peace. Whether now or later, my soul will be released.
“My soul will not be burned up as it would be if it were subjugated by a demon.”
That was at least one small burden lifted from my conscience.
Now I just needed to try not to speak so loudly within the confines of my head.
Swallowing bravely, far braver than I felt, anticipating his reasoning and motivations, I croaked weakly, “And we have to stop it?”
His voice firm and strong, Alric replied with certainty, “We will stop it.”
Suddenly a life spent harvesting mushrooms did not sound so bad.
Eye-to-Eye with Justice
“May I proclaim my innocence now?”
I stood before the magistrate in the same mud-coated clothes that I had been wearing when I fell face first into the muck.
Fortunately for me, the townsfolk of Balde were used to seeing me at my finest and expected nothing less from the community outcast. In fact, my mud-encrusted clothing mirrored the way my earthen hovel clung to the town’s exterior walls like some fell barnacle refusing to release its purchase.
I loved symmetries.
“You already have, Saedeus. Repeatedly.” The magistrate’s voice carried a certain gravitas and authority that mine lacked.
Magistrate Goodkind was a very woman.
Very fair.
Very stern.
Very smart.
Very thorough.
Very intimidating.
I was very much unlike her.
“We are, in point of fact, here to establish your guilt or innocence in the crime committed outside the city walls.
“Considering you are the only citizen, and I use that term loosely in your case, of our fair town who resides outside the protections of our fortifications, you are in a unique position to relate the events that happened on the night in question.
“Furthermore, as admitted by you and testified to by the noble village guard Jon Longshadow, you were found at the scene of this most inglorious crime with the very blood of the noble Empyrean Knight on your hands.
“Before we get into the particulars of the night’s events, do you have any initial statements to offer in your defense?”
“I do, Magistrate Goodkind.” I cleared my throat in an effort to let the resolute basso of my voice carry across the expectant crowd gathered in the center of the village commons.
I ended up sounding like a loon honking through a beak full of water.
Raising my fearsome thews skyward, I let my dirt-caked sleeves fall to my shoulders, revealing my pasty arms in their full glory.
“Look upon these arms, I ask you.”
Although I cut a rather impressive pose, there were some snickers and catcalls I would rather not repeat.
“Do these arms look like they could cast down one of the realm’s guardians? A noble Knight of the Empyrean Guard? Much less one cloaked in a Sigil Shield, wielding an Angel Sword?”
“You couldn’t cast down dice!”
“Or coin!”
“Or curses!”
“Ya knave!”
I basked proudly in the wisdom and benediction of the gathered populace.
“Very funny,” I muttered.
But they had good points.
Ones I was not arguing with.
Her face remarkably calm, Magistrate Goodkind intoned, “I think you have sufficiently cast reasonable doubt on Master Longshadow’s case against you.
“Tell us then, Saedeus, what exactly happened?”
This was the tricky part. I had to tell the truth…but just enough not to incriminate myself and incite the presently sarcastic mob into a bloodthirsty one.
“Madame Magistrate…” I gave a brief, respectable bow. In so doing, I caused my loose, dirty clothing to conspire to fall over my face and muffle my response until I sorted out the ill-kempt tangle.
I met the respectful chorus of snickers and snorts with a chest puffed full of dignity.
Regathering myself, I continued, “I had just settled into my cot…”
“Ya mean yer rat’s nest!”
Magistrate Goodkind snapped her fingers. Lightning crackled threateningly between her digits. “I will have no more interruptions! Let Saedeus speak or he will not be the only one on the stand.”
The threat of my inflated chest—and to a lesser extent Magistrate Goodkind’s lightning bolts—helped soothe the mob and allow me to continue.
As though no one had interrupted, I said, “When I heard a commotion louder than the rain and thunder threatening to wash my home away.”
Knowing the cleansing of my cottage from Balde’s walls would be about as welcome as my disappearance, I soldiered ahead before the expressions of loving compassion from Balde’s citizenry were no longer cowed by the magistrate’s threats.
“Brave, civic-minded citizen that I am”—miraculously, no one even batted an eye at this remark; Magistrate Goodkind’s threats were apparently the stuff of legend—“I rushed out to investigate defying the storm and the threats of darkness.”
Although they might mock me and belittle my eccentricities and lack of means, the fair citizens of Balde at least understood the risks that came with darkness, for none had ventured out to help or investigate, fearful of the demons that wandered in the night.
Emphasizing this very point while locking Jon Longshadow’s gaze, I added, “When no guard responded to the horrific sounds and detonations of magical forces, I felt it was my duty to investigate.
“Cautiously sneaking up the hill, I spied the noble knight fallen in a pool of his own blood.
“When I sensed no danger, and will venture to attest that all here will testify to my ability to sense and avoid danger, I rushed to the knight’s side to offer what assistance I might.”
Shaking my head sadly, I said, “Alas, I am no healer, and the Empyrean Guard’s wounds were far beyond my skills to treat, so I offered all I could: my hand as a gesture of support and reassurance in his time of need.”
Clearing my throat and wiping my eyes, I pushed through the most difficult part of my tale, the one my narrative hinged on and the one the townsfolk would most likely believe. “As I knelt down and laid my hand on the knight’s shoulder, seeing the ghastly sight before me, I”—gathering myself, I paused for dramatic effect—“fainted and fell down into the mud.
“The next thing I remember is the kind ministrations of our own noble Jon Longshadow as he hauled me off to jail for trial as a potential murderer.”
Before I could add any more or lavish the populace with further embellishments, for they believed I was weak and spineless despite my living for years in conditions they would not brave, Magistrate Goodkind cut in,
her voice firm and disapproving, “And what do you say to this sordid tale, Jon Longshadow?”
Jon slowly cleared his throat, giving weighty consideration to the matter while his brain struggled to string together words in lieu of grunts and wheezes. All bravado from the night’s encounter left him as he mumbled decisively, “It was dark..?”
Magistrate Goodkind patiently stared at Jon for several long seconds as she awaited further elucidation. When none was forthcoming, she prompted most generously, “And?”
“He looked guilty?”
The magistrate shook her head, her dark hair managing to look as dismissive as her gaze. “Is this incompetence what passes for justice in this town?
“Bailiff Landsdown, would you please escort Jon out of my sight. He is suspended until further notice. When he begins to act with some level of competence, you may consider reinstating his position, but only after you have discussed the merits of his case with me personally.
“In Longshadow’s absence, I suggest you organize the town guard and prepare yourselves for the creature that did this to the Empyrean Guard yet lurks beyond our walls.
“It will be back and we must be ready.
“Saedeus, my apologies for your ill treatment.
“You may return home or remain within the confines of the town’s protective walls at the town’s expense until the demon has been dealt with if you so choose.”
After imagining all the ways a noose could hang around my neck, I decided that her offer was most gracious and far better than any I had expected.
“Thank you, Magistrate Goodkind, for your most gracious consideration, but I think I will go home. That will probably be best for everyone concerned.”
The last thing I needed was trouble while confined within the town walls.
And, given the outcome of the trial, I knew there would be trouble.
Lots of trouble.
“You are free to go, Saedeus.”
I bowed, managing to avoid becoming tangled in my clothes once more, and took my leave.
“That was very well done, Saedeus.
“Very clever…
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 3