The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination')

by Terry McGarry

  His pale eyes were looking through her—past her, as if into some other world.

  She turned, her belly going cold.

  They ringed the upland half of the field, silent in their shreds and tatters, sheeted in rain that hardly appeared to touch them. In the gray light of storm, their pale flesh was a glaucous white. They were cadaverous, ineffable.

  Waiting.

  “We’ve got to go,” she said, tying off the bandage around a head wound. “This one’s the last. Help me lift him.”

  Other stragglers and litter-bearers and walking wounded had moved past them, leaving the field nearly empty. The two tall Highland Girdlers were moving their way. Dabrena waved them off. We’ve got this, her gesture said. We’re coming.

  They continued toward her, as if to speak.

  From the direction of Gir Mened, where the bystanders had stood along the road, a woman came running. Mid-height, slim, chestnut-haired, a local, she struggled over the muddy field in a worker’s wooden clogs. Partway in she pulled them off, hopping, hardly slowing. Two men trotted after her, as if to catch her but not trying very hard, their faces grim.

  The Girdlers moved to intercept them. “Clear the field!” the woman called, and the man called, “They’re only here for the dead!”

  The local woman veered away from them, straight at the nearest bonefolk, and flung herself at one of them, and shrieked, “Where is my son?”

  The words sliced through Dabrena’s heart.

  A very calm voice in the back of her mind said, No. That is not the way.

  The men had stopped by another one of the bonefolk and seemed to be questioning the creature. They sieved hold of it, and it flung them off. There was no feeling to the act. It might have brushed off flies, or overeager pups. Their faces looked perpetually sad, but like masks, unreactive.

  The woman was beating at the two nearest of the bonefolk with her alderwood clogs. They took no harm from it. As the Girdlers came up behind her, one creature enfolded her upper arms in its long hands and set her away almost gently.

  “They cannot speak,” Dabrena heard a Girdler say. “They cannot answer you. Let them do what they’ve come here to do. There are [338] friends of ours in that field. Don’t let the crows have them.”

  “They know where he is,” the woman said. The stridency was gone from her voice. It was torn and bitter, weary of weeping, weary of shouting. She only wanted her son back.

  “If they do, they cannot tell you,” the Girdlewoman said, as the man moved to reason with the two local men. “Come away now. Let them take our dead.”

  “Your dead are dead. If my son’s alive, I’ll have him back!”

  “You cannot hurt them. You cannot cut them. Leave it. Come back to town now. ...”

  Dabrena and Adaon had lifted the wounded fighter. He was sodden and heavy and slippery, still wearing his mail, but Adaon’s thick body bore the weight of his shoulders with ease, cradling the wounded head against his chest. Dabrena had him under the knees, standing between them, but she lowered them so she could turn her back on the altercation and walk forward, toward the road, toward the town of Gir Mened, which she did not plan to see again.

  “Don’t do this, Dabrena,” Adaon said.

  “He needs to get out of the rain.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s madness. It can’t work. At least wait and see if she comes back. Some of them came back.”

  Some of the local children had come back. Not all. “It’s the only way,” she said, giving up pretense.

  “There hasn’t been time for further word to come from the Head. They might have returned her by now, and your man there with no way to tell you. Wait and see.”

  “For how long, until it’s still the only way? What better chance will I have than now, in the midst of all these dead?”

  “They may stop if you interrupt them.”

  “I guess I’ll find that out.”

  “You’ll die, Dabrena.” His voice caught. He cleared his throat. “Most likely, you’ll die.”

  She stared ahead, at the road, at the line of bladeless keepers now trying to stop other angry townspeople from rushing the bonefolk. “Then I’ll die,” she said. There would be a not if the keepers did not hold firm, and she’d lose her best chance. “She’s my daughter.”

  “Let me do it.” His words came rushed now. Once they got to that line of keepers and gave their burden into other hands, there would be no more discussion. She would slip away from him, and he knew it. “Say you try this and you die, because you’re tricking them, because you aren’t doing it the way they intend, and then she comes back, delivered safe to her bed in the holding, and you’re gone, never to return to her. What sort of heroism is that? Vain foolish [339] sacrifice that leaves your daughter orphaned. I’ll go. I’ll fetch her back for you.”

  Adaon and his bloody ironclad seeker logic. He’d talk the spines off a hedgehog. “You’re too big. I’m small enough to slip in. I’m faster. You’ll bungle it.”

  “I won’t. Not this. Not for you.”

  They’d reached the line. Arms reached for the wounded fighter, fresh strong arms to take him off to whatever dry place they had prepared to tend the wounded. She tried to turn to Adaon then, but keepers had hold of her, were pushing her toward the crowd. A hand pressed on her head to duck her under the cordon rope they had stretched, more symbol than barrier, between trees where the road gave access to the field from the Gir Mened side. She was hemmed in and couldn’t see Adaon. She couldn’t let them force her in with the others. By the time she came around and regained the field from some other side, the bonefolk would be finished, and it would be too late. She could lurk around the wounded, but it would never be like this, spirits willing there would never be so many dead in one place at one time again. There were at least two nonned dead in that field, and perhaps three dozen bonefolk. Such a massacre had not happened before in memory, if it had ever happened in Eiden Myr at all. There was a chance the bonefolk would have to adapt their methods. There would be no other opportunity like this.

  She resisted the hands. She opened her mouth to summon some imperious objection, just enough to make them hesitate, just enough for her to slip away.

  “Dabrena n’Arilda?”

  She managed to turn, still on the field side of the cordon. Keepers’ hands fell away as the two Girdlers came up, handing the distraught woman off to one of them, the men off to another. Just in time, from the looks of it; the men were regretting their own pliancy and seemed ready to bolt back for another go.

  Somehow Adaon had stayed by her. He was tough as a stump, immovably resistant when he chose to be. It would have been easier if the keepers had parted him from her, and his heartbreaking, inarguable offer with him.

  “Dabrena Mender?” the Girdle woman said again.

  “Yes,” Dabrena said, unable to place her, trying to take in the field, the distance, the bonefolk while seeming to pay attention.

  “I thought it was you I saw. You’re a long way from the Head.”

  “Yes,” Dabrena said again.

  “You might want to have a chat with Verlein n’Tekla.”

  “I have nothing to say to the shielders.”

  [440] “Not even if they’re moving to take your holding again?”

  Bloody spirits. The keepers were herding the townsfolk away, bearing them back with firm words and arms spread wide, clearing the road so the bonefolk would not sense any observers. “Those shielders won’t be taking anything for a long time.”

  “There are other shielders.”

  “Yes,” Dabrena said. “I know.” Let me go, let me go—

  “Dabrena,” Adaon said. “Go back with these folk. Talk sense into Verlein before she gets her breath. Leave the rest to me.”

  From somewhere in the midst of the retreating crowd of townsfolk came a woman’s hoarse, bitter weeping.

  The Girdle woman said, “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you’re here, and word among the shielders is tha
t the Head and the Haunch are next. They await only the command. They don’t like it. Besieging holdings isn’t what they joined the shield to do. You’d have their thanks, if you kicked their leader while she’s down. So long as no one speaks of it afterward.” She held up the cordon rope, an invitation to go back, to leave the bonefolk alone, to find Verlein. In a moment it would no longer be an invitation. Whatever these Girdlers were, fighters or healers, they had comrades on that field.

  “Adaon n’Arai will see to her,” Dabrena said. It hardened into an order as it came out, and continued to him: “You’re my pledge and you speak for me. Work your charm, run your rings around her, threaten her, do whatever you must to save my holding. Send Beadrin to the runners, have them warn Pelkin, then find that blond bladebreaker and—”

  “Mender,” said the Girdleman, gesturing under the rope.

  The bonefolk had moved onto the battlefield and formed a loose, wide circle around the dead. They took no notice of the four humans who stood a dozen threfts away by the road. A greenish mist seemed to gather around their feet. It might have been a phosphorescent glow suffusing the rainspray at ground level.

  Dabrena inclined her head and gestured to the Girdleman: After you.

  Adaon, dark as the day, pale eyes unblinking, gave her one sharp nod. He would follow her orders. I love you, he mouthed, and moved to duck under the rope the Girdlewoman still held up—a distraction, a show of good faith, putting his body between theirs and hers.

  Dabrena turned, and sprang into a run, boot heels cleaving purchase from the rain-soaked ground. The luminescence before her grew, with intensity and proximity. Was it balking surprise that [341] straightened the bonefolk’s bodies, or the beginnings of confusion, or only the motion of throwing their heads back? It looked like ecstasy, or anguish.

  She vaulted between them, and dove into the dead.

  The Menalad Plain

  “Let them take me, Evrael.”

  He did not look up from the hollow his seafolk had lifted Streln into before he’d sent them off. The bonefolk were feeding. He could see the virid glow reflected in the rain and perspiration on Streln’s dark face. “They will not dine on you this night,” he said, and bound long strips of cloth around the poultices he’d packed into the dual blade wounds, front and back. As shipmaster he had practiced healing arts since well before there were menders, and as binder he’d been well acquainted with what became the healer’s tools.

  “But death frees me, Evrael. I see ... clearly, for the first time in ... years.”

  Evrael ground his teeth. He remembered that clarity. It was the clarity mages felt when they cast passage for the dying. That glimpse into the next plane. Evrael had always mistrusted those visions—those shared hallucinations of a dying mind. He did not trust the existence of any plane but the one he inhabited. Such false clarity Streln could do without. He would live, muddled and obscured, and do his best with his limited mortal sight, as did every creature born to earth. He would live.

  “It is ... such joy to look on your face again.” Streln tried to grip him by the shoulders, but his arms had no strength. Evrael told him to be easy, to rest, lest he work more blood out of the wounds.

  “The wounds leach her poisons from me,” Streln said. “Sweet [343] raindrops wash the ... crystal from my mind. I’ll have rest aplenty when this has passed. To sleep free ... of the fetters ...”

  The binding complete, Evrael scanned the area for some shelter from those drops. They had been hot, and now were going cold, and might turn to hail as the weather turned. He must get Streln under cover before the true brunt of the storm hit. He should not have sent his seafolk off. He’d thought he was clearing space for a private farewell, keeping the pale carrionmongers at bay. But there would be no farewell. Streln had not hung on this long, with such grievous wounds, to succumb to them now. He would not permit it.

  They had badgered him to take command of the Khinish forces—what was left of them. The Khinish did not know how to be leaderless. They did not know what to do without a strong figure to follow. With Streln down, they were beheaded. With their weapons destroyed, they were limbless. Evrael had never before felt scorn for the Khinish, much less this cold rage that verged on hatred. He’d barked out a few harsh orders, sent them off to wait in Gir Mened until the wounded were travel-ready and then march seaward to be shipped home. Let them sort out the details, they were capable of that. Streln’s life was the only thing that mattered to him now.

  The man should die, for what he had done. The man should die, for marching on the mainland. The man should die, for not standing down when the fight was lost. The man should die, for all the Khinish he had led to their deaths.

  But he was Streln. He must not die.

  “Lerissa,” Streln said.

  “Fear not,” Evrael replied. “I’ll ship you back to her.”

  Streln laughed, a spray of blood. Not good, not good. There were herbs ... but they did not grow here ... he had none with him ... “Please refrain,” Streln said, an echo of his old, tight-humored self, and then he gasped and said, “A crystal, that traps the eye and thence the mind. Herbal draughts that weaken and enslave. Fear those, Evrael. Kill her, though they banish you for it. Kill her and go home.”

  “Khine is my home.” You are my home. ...

  Streln’s hard features opened into a wondrous joy, then spasmed into focus. “She is stone, Evrael, stone. A mesmeric stone that throws light in hypnotic patterns. Fear it. Save the children. Eldrisil ... It was all I could do. I could not tell you. Her fetters would not permit it. The pain ... I could have borne the pain. But they locked my mind. Then I saw the child. I thought ... I hoped ... you would understand ...”

  Evrael did not want to hear this. Their predicament was grave and growing worse. This was a time for action, not explanation. That [344] could wait until they basked on the slopes of Khine, watching olives ripen, shaping clouds in the image of their dreams, as they had when they were young. ...

  He shook off the sun-drenched vision. Streln was slipping, and pulling him after. “I don’t need to understand,” he said. “I only need you to live.”

  “You must understand. The children ... You must stop it, Evrael. She seeks ... control. She will take them all ... she will twist their souls ... destroy them ... as she did me ...”

  There had been a glamour on his mind. But Evrael had known as much. Whether she cast it with a stone or a drug or her own languid wiles made no difference. But Eldrisil ... he had mentioned Eldrisil ... his man, sacrificed in the holding, the man he’d ordered to hold a child to the blade ...

  In a flash of comprehension very much like the experience of casting passage, it came to him what Streln meant, and what he had done.

  Lerissa n’Rigael had some dark plan for Eiden’s children. Streln had guessed it, or been told, but her powers had kept him from divulging it. So, in front of Evrael, the one man he trusted to see him truly, he had done a thing so heinous that it could only lead to questions. Evrael had been meant to ask those questions. Evrael had been meant to recognize the demonstration for the warning it was. There is a threat to our children. Look into it. Find out what it is. I cannot tell you.

  Evrael had failed him.

  “You understand.” Streln patted him weakly on the hand. “Kill her, Evrael, and the ... children will be returned. They will be our salvation ... not warriors ... not rulers—”

  A gout of blood issued from his mouth, then nearly choked him. The fit of coughing that followed strained the bindings on his wounds, and a bloom of red soaked through the poultice into the cloth.

  This was beyond his skill. He eased Streln back into the turf and made to rise. “The bonefolk have gone. I will retrieve those healers—”

  “No. Stay, Evrael, my brother, my old friend. Stay by me now. It ... is over. I reap ... what I have sown.”

  With a groan, Evrael moved close, seeking to shield him from the elements, warm him—press his own life force into the failing body. He ca
ressed the beloved brow in a gesture the Khinishman would have mocked him for, in a stronger time.

  “Don’t be ... a soft-bellied Headman,” Streln rasped. “Strive with honor, Evrael te Khine.”

  He could not tell whether Streln meant to insult his Head blood [345] or exhort him to courage in meeting his destiny. He would not be headman. He would be no more than he was, shipmaster, landholder, serving beneath and beside a worthy headman—this headman. Streln would recover. Streln would lead. This was an error, now set right. Lerissa’s glamour had cleared from his eyes. He would be again what he had been, the man Evrael had known, the man Evrael had loved, the man Evrael loved still and would have loved if he had cast all Eiden Myr into the abyss. He must recover. He had duties. He must lead the Khinish home. Khine required his service. It would be a grave dishonor to decline. Do not disgrace yourself, Headman. Do not leave your post.

  He was prone on one elbow now, his left hand cradling the dark head. “Streln,” he gritted through clenched teeth, his right fist twisting the iron rings bunched over the Khinish heart, “do not leave me.”

  Streln smiled, looking straight into his eyes. “I loved you always, Evrael,” he said, and died.

  Gir Mened

  There was a tavern. There was always a tavern, or an alehouse, or a public house. The world could be coming to an end and still there would be some aleman or taverner or publican to serve drink.

  And thank all the absent spirits for that, Kazhe thought, striding through the doorway, bloody and bruised and soaked to the skin. The unlit interior was thick with vapor. She drew it deep into her lungs, felt it penetrate through her sinuses, seep into her head. Outside, the storm catching its breath, inhaling for another blast. Inside, the pungent mists of forgetfulness, peace. The world was coming to an end, and there was the taverner, pouring out his wares.