“Where are you—?” I managed to say.
Father cursed, grabbed his staff and a burning brand from the fire, and took after him. I followed.
But as we were running the shadows of the night began to move. I thought it was black smoke at first, rushing silently between the trees, but then I saw that it was an enormous flight of birds rising from the earth. Soon the whole forest shook with the whirring of their wings.
I knew this was a sign, a miracle, for there were millions of them. The very air shuddered with their passage, yet not a single bird cried out. Pine needles and twigs rained down on us. Above, the Moon vanished, like a shiny pebble beneath a dark tide.
“Father!” I shouted.
He dropped his staff and brand, then fell to his knees, covering his face. I think he was weeping. I groped toward him, bent against the mighty wind of countless wings, hundreds of birds colliding with me. I reached out. His hand found mine and I embraced him, and so we remained, he kneeling and I standing hunched against him for what seemed like hours, until at last the night was still. The Moon reappeared. There was no wind. Not a branch rustled. I could hear my father’s heart, and my own, racing.
“Father…Voinos, he—”
“Come!”
Still holding my hand, he leapt to his feet, snatched up his staff, and yanked me along as he ran. We topped the rise and looked down into a hollow, where Voinos stood in the moonlight before a roughly rectangular slab of white marble.
“What have you done?” Father shouted as we approached.
Voinos turned slowly. He spoke with open contempt.
“It’s just an old rock.”
He spat on the altar stone. I let out a sudden cry of “No!” and cringed at the desecration. It was then that my eyes met my brother’s, and I knew that the sign had not been for him. He had seen no flight of birds.
Father demanded again, “What did you do?”
“Nothing. I was looking for gold. I wanted to see if there was any treasure left.” Voinos acted as if it were a commonplace, completely ignoring Father’s mounting rage.
“You didn’t intend to share it.”
“What matter? There’s nothing to share. The Faceless King is dead, if there ever was any Faceless King. He’d have to be a god himself to live so long. It’s just a stupid old story.”
“He is but a man,” Father said, intoning his words as if speaking a doom. “Some say that the mask extends his life, and he lives for many centuries, but in the end, he dies like any man. When he is dying, he summons his successor from out of the world, and someone else becomes the Faceless King. He dies in secret. No one, not his attendants, not his messengers, ever sees his face.”
Voinos laughed, shockingly. “Then how do they know it’s him?”
Even Father was stunned at that.
I merely said, “Huh?”
Voinos turned to me sharply. “Idiot, if they can’t see his face, it could be just anybody.” He leaned over and poked my chest viciously. “Even you.”
Father still held my hand. I felt him tremble.
“The one who wears the mask is the Faceless King. He hears every leaf that falls—”
Voinos mimicked him in sing-song mockery, “He hears every piece of dung plop in every privy in the whole wide world—”
Father let out a terrible cry, almost a scream, shoved me aside, and swung his staff. Voinos rolled out of his way and ran. The unexpended force of the stroke sent Father reeling. He slipped in mud and pine needles, and fell face down before the altar of the Faceless King.
Voinos laughed as he ran, then turned and shouted filthy names, ran again, and was gone.
Strangely, Father made no attempt to pursue him.
He sat up slowly. I crouched down by his side.
“Father…I…saw the Faceless King. So I know you’re telling the truth.”
He grabbed me with both hands and shook me so hard it frightened me.
“When?”
“When the birds…I saw the silver mask in the darkness, coming toward me. The eyes were open. The mouth was about to say something.”
Father began to weep. I stood there, bewildered. I did not even know if I was telling the truth. I wanted it to be true, but my mind was in such a muddle I couldn’t be sure.
But Father believed me.
“No matter where you go or how you live, my son, this night will remain with you, and you will spend all your days uncovering its mysteries. That is the meaning of your going.”
“What about…Voinos?”
“It’s his night too. Already he is searching for the answers.”
* * * *
Voinos kept on running. I did not see him again for many years, although sinister rumors soon reached us of how he had gathered a band of ruffians around himself and had begun to rob travelers. By the time I was fifteen, there were more than rumors, and Voinos was widely feared. The bodies of his victims were always found mutilated—no one knew why—their faces slashed beyond recognition, or even burned until no trace of the features remained.
Mother died that year, more of grief than anything else, and Father placed two wooden skulls above the doorway of our house. He told everyone he had only one son now, and the chief priest—the new one, Hamilcestos, for Decronos had been murdered on a journey—came to exorcise the spirit and memory of Voinos.
But it did little good. The next day, as if to mock us, three faceless corpses were found seated in a neat row against the town’s stockade. Thereafter, whenever I walked anywhere, people would turn and stare, then glance away quickly if they thought I’d noticed them. Sometimes I even overheard a whisper. “There! That’s him! The brother of Voinos the madman.”
People even said that Voinos came to us at night by a secret tunnel, and that we lived better than we should off of our share of his loot.
I followed my father in his profession, and he and the other bards trained me in the ways of the art. I spent long days reciting to myself, chanting all the old stories of our people. And when it came time for me to recite in the marketplace, people listened, perhaps out of respect for the stories, not the teller. But I was never summoned to the halls of the lords, either because I lacked skill, or because I was the brother of a murderer.
At seventeen, I managed to marry, a year and more later than most young men of the town. My wife was called in public merely Evad-ka, the woman of Evad, but I alone called her by the name I had given her, Rael-Hisna, the Flower of the River. She had come from the Great River with traders on a barge from a strange place far upstream, where villages perch on cliffs above steep gorges, and the people do not worship the gentle gods of the fields and forest, but only the terrible Ragun-Temad, who commands eagles from mountaintops above the clouds.
I truly loved my Flower of the River. She was the one great joy in my life, which was otherwise often bitter. Father was growing old more rapidly than his years, weighed down by his sorrows. One winter, his voice left him, and he was reduced to playing the harp while I sang or recited, desperately trying to reconstruct the wonder of his half-remembered performances. He never saw the inside of a lord’s hall again.
Gossips said the gods had cursed him for having sired Voinos, to which he replied hoarsely that such a son was curse enough, and the gods didn’t have to do anything.
Then Rael-Hisna gave birth to a son, my son, and Father was glad again for the first time in a long while.
But that very day Voinos’s band, now hundreds strong, seized nine barges on the river. Faceless corpses floated by our town for a week.
It was a sign. I knew that I had to go into the forest as my father had, in secret, and pray before the altar of the Faceless King, that perhaps the King or even Verunnos-Kemad might look on me and restore some order to my life. I wanted things to be better for my son. When he was grown, I would take him to that altar as I had been taken, and things would work out better at his going. Mine had been such a disaster.
The path seemed longer this time. Perh
aps I strayed from it. I walked all night through the forest. A fog had come in and the needles were wet, so I made no sound as I went. I listened always, but heard nothing, and still I was afraid. The whole countryside was infested with bandits, with wild beasts, or worse. Toward dawn I slept seated against a tree and dreamed that hundreds of armed men stood before me, all of them wearing the silver mask of the Faceless King, like a mirror image endlessly repeated. I cried out, in my dream, and was answered with familiar laughter. The masks came off. Each face was that of my brother. He made to speak, but the only sounds were the crackling of flames, and all those faces burned away like parchment. The rising sparks cried out fragments of words.
I fell forward, suddenly awake. I knew where I was. The familiar, dragon-backed ridge rose before me in the twilight. I ran, looking for some other sign, another flight of birds perhaps, but there was only the mist and the dank smell of the deep forest.
And there was Voinos, waiting for me. He had changed much since we had last been here together, and was now a black-bearded, barrel-chested giant nearly twice my size, who wore jewels in his hair and rings dangling from his ears, and a wildly colorful costume which seemed all bright sashes and pantaloons.
He stood leaning on a hammer, catching his breath. He had been working hard. He had broken the altar of the Faceless King to bits. Now he watched me coldly, as if I were mere prey.
“Are you…still looking for treasure?”
He made no reply.
I spread my hands apart from my body to show that I was not armed, all the while glancing furtively about, certain his men had arrows trained on me every step of the way.
Suddenly a morning bird began to chirp merrily, followed by a chorus of others, announcing the new day.
I stood there, facing my brother, while the sky lightened. A light spray of rain blew in my face.
At last I said, “You’ve changed a lot.”
And with terrifying suddenness he lunged forward and grabbed the front of my jacket with a meaty hand and yanked me off my feet as if I were a rag doll.
“Yes!” he said, holding me inches from his face. His breath stank. “I’ve changed. I’m no longer a child and you still are. You always will be a child, Evad.”
“Why—?”
“Why? I came here to put an end to an old story. How? No magic. I had the town watched. I know you, child-brother. I knew you’d come here eventually. When you set out, that was the signal.”
I barely managed to gasp, “The signal for…what?”
“For a little homecoming.” He shook me, again like a doll or a small child. “I haven’t been back to my town for such a long time. My men are there even now, delivering my regards. When they were done, I’ll go piss in the ashes.”
I struggled against him. He only laughed. It was then that I understood that there were no hidden archers in the bushes. Voinos had only contempt for me. He was certainly not afraid.
“You’re not going back, child-brother. I’ve spared you, just you, because you are my dear brother.”
Suddenly he was pressing the point of a knife under my chin. He pressed harder. I felt it slicing the skin and tried not to breathe. There was a warm trickle of blood.
Then he held the knife up where I could see it. The blade was silver, the handle gold inset with jewels. The sign on it, in relief on the blade, was of the lunar-mask, the emblem of the Faceless King.
“Pretty, isn’t it? In found it inside the altar. There was a secret compartment. Think of it as one last gift from the gods to our loving family. And because we love each other so much, child-brother, you are going to perform a task for me.”
I thought of our family now, Father and my wife and child probably butchered by Voinos’s men, and I said grimly, “Just kill me and get it over with. I’ll do nothing for you.”
Incredibly, he forced the knife into my hand and closed my fingers around the grip. Then he flung me to the ground, hard, and I lay stunned, while he stood astride me.
“Well? You might kill me with that.” He indicated the knife. “But you can’t, can you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can.”
He slammed his foot down on my chest.
“I don’t think so. I am not planning on it. Instead, you will help me carry out my beautiful scheme. Do you remember, dear child-brother, what we talked about when last we, ah, enjoyed each other’s company here?”
“I…remember.” I gasped for breath. His foot was crushing me.
“I reasoned then that if nobody has ever seen the face of the Faceless King, he could be, well, anybody. Remember?”
He leaned harder. There was a sharp pain as ribs cracked. I could only sob hoarsely.
“That is the point, child-brother. The knife is a token from the god. With it, you will journey very far. All men will make way for you. And, if such a person as the Faceless King really exists—you know, I have never made up my mind about that—you will return his token, preferably in the heart. If there is no such King, then you’ll wander forever, which I think will be very funny. But if there is, well, you will use this dagger. Then the face behind the mask will be yours. No one will ever know, will they? Just you and me. A secret between brothers.”
He let up the pressure a little and I whispered, “Why…?”
He shrugged. “I want to pray to you, child-brother. It’s good to have family connections in high places.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“You will. What else can you do?”
With that, he took his foot away, hefted the hammer onto his shoulder, and vanished into the forest on long, relentless strides.
* * * *
It rained all day. Late in the afternoon, I approached the town. The smell of burnt wood carries very far in the rain, so I knew that everything my brother said was true. I believed, too, that he had gone out of his way to piss in the ashes. That would have been just like him.
I was utterly alone, and moreover, incomplete. The pain had not settled yet. I was like a warrior in battle who has just received a terrible wound, but so far has only felt a light blow. He has a little momentum left.
I had a little momentum left as I turned, clutching the sacred dagger Voinos had given me, and walked away from the town and everything I had ever known in my life. I refused to see with my own eyes that my wife and child and everyone else in my world—except Voinos!—were dead. That way there would always be the nagging doubt that I had dreamt it, and eventually the nagging would drive me mad, and in madness there would be some relief.
But the smell of the wood followed after me, and in time I stopped and sat down on a stone and just waited there, shivering, until it was almost evening and the rain ceased. Then I entered the town and saw the blackened logs and the heaps of ashy mud. An occasional corpse lay half-buried. Shadows lengthened as night came on, and I could not tell who any of the dead people were.
The place was very quiet. Here and there smoke rose. Crows cawed in the distance. Above me, the first stars began to appear.
I think I went mad then, for a little while. I screamed and wept and did a strange dance, kicking the heaps of ash and splintered wood, cursing the gods and the Faceless King and even my Father who had, after all, sired Voinos to kill and me to suffer.
And I held up the sacred dagger to the night sky. It gleamed a brilliant silver, like a moonrise. Then I threw it from me, as hard as I could. But I ran after it, and found it glowing where it had fallen. I picked it up, and suddenly the ashes all around me heaved and burst, as if the earth were boiling, and once again there was a miraculous flight of thousands upon thousands of grey and black birds buffeting me, their wings like thunder, rising to fill the sky. I lay huddled there, clutching the knife, and when I closed my eyes I saw the Faceless King clearly this time, sitting on a silver throne in the darkness, behind tapestried curtains woven silver on black. His mask seemed to float in the air like a pale moon. He leaned forward, his robes wrinkling, and I was certain he was about to speak, but then
the birds were gone and the vision passed.
I hated him. I swore that if I ever did find him, I would kill him, not because Voinos wanted me to, but because I wanted to.
But then I walked a little ways in a direction I somehow knew and there on the ground was my father’s harp, coated with ash but whole. It seemed to me then the most precious object in the world. I sat down and placed it on my lap, weeping softly, and my rage passed as I spent hours carefully cleaning the harp and tuning its strings.
* * * *
I wore the sacred dagger of the Faceless King around my neck on a cord, the blade exposed and dangling before me. Wherever I travelled, men recognized it and stood aside to let me pass. Even among the wildest mountain trails, in a countryside filled with robbers, I was not molested.
I was summoned to the halls of the great lords as my father had been in the old days, but my song was not what the lords commanded. It was always the same, though the words changed like the passing waters of the Great River. There was anger in it and I sang of bloody vengeance; and then there was sorrow; and longing; and I sang of memories and my soul was purged. At the end I always sang of the Faceless King, whose ways are ever a mystery, who yet guides each one of us on the pathway of this life.
Men came to me from many lands asking to know the secrets of the Faceless King: when this or that lord would die, how a certain god must be placated, the answer to some ancient riddle. When I told them I did not know, they continued to follow me from place to place, saying, “He is testing us,” or, “We are not yet worthy to know his mind.” When I sang to them, they went away appeased, and yet I myself was not appeased for to me the mysteries remained mysteries, and I could find no reason for all the things that had happened.
I saw the Faceless King often in my dreams, always leaning forward in the darkness behind the curtains, about to speak but never speaking.
I thought this was because I was not worthy to know his mind.
When a youth came to me and said, “Make me your apprentice. Your singing is the most beautiful I have ever heard,” I replied sadly, “You are as I once was. Remain so.”
But he would not go away. He followed me for days. At last I turned to him and said, “You must chose to follow your own path, your own way, wherever it may lead you. I don’t know what you want or need or will ever find. It is a mystery to me.”
The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack: 25 Weird Tales of Fantasy and Horror Page 11