What Was Forgotten

by Tim Mathias

  Zayd exhaled slowly. “I want to be able to help you, if only that my countrymen and I might be free of you. But you must know that what you’re asking is impossible. Not without knowing where it is beforehand.”

  “Someone must know.”

  Zayd shrugged. “Yes, someone must.”

  “Why not take one of their sentries? That is something that you could do. And we could question him.”

  “I’m sure he would give us an answer, though we would not know the truth of it until going back to look for it. There would be no reason for him to know, though, unless he was one of the soldiers that loaded the carriages to begin with, and it is more likely that the soldiers who did are now on the march against the remnants of the Dramandi army and Roh Dun’s Shields.”

  “Someone must know,” she repeated. “Someone who took the Raan Dura out of the chest. Someone compelled by greed.” Of course. Why hadn’t Zayd assumed the obvious answer?

  “Praene,” he said. “My commander turned traitor.”

  “You said he betrayed your king.”

  “Our emperor. He betrayed the emperor.”

  “Does this also not mean he betrayed your man-god?”

  “It does.”

  “Then his greed must not know limits. He would be the one to know. The one to keep every trinket that looks of some value close by.”

  Zayd nodded. “If anyone knew…”

  Sera leaned back. “Then you will go get him.”

  Zayd went alone the first night simply to observe. “They will be more cautious now,” he told her. “I need to see how they have adjusted. Praene is many things, but not a fool.” Sera agreed to let him do so, but for only one night. Zayd had insisted on more time. Why make another attempt when the risk was still so high? Why not let them think we had gone?

  “Every day we follow them is another chance for them to discover us,” she had said. “I want this ended.” Zayd had implored further, but everything he said was rejected outright. One night to watch, and the next night to act.

  And the Ryferians had changed. The number of sentries had doubled and Praene’s command tent was moved to the exact centre of the camp. There was a wider perimeter around it, as well, so that anyone approaching would be more easily spotted in the light thrown by the greater number of torches that had been placed. Praene himself was rarely outside of the command tent once they made camp, and when he was, he was flanked on all sides by his knights. Zayd noticed, with some small satisfaction, Garinus wore a new scar on his face that ran from his left temple down to his jaw, a keepsake from his encounter with Cohvass.

  The smirk on Zayd’s face diminished as he thought again of what he had seen. As with things that defy explanation, he thought of it constantly. He wanted not to think on it, in truth, but there had to be a reason for it. Yet every time he thought he had an answer that seemed to fit, a new question would come from it. He felt like he was trying to catch the wind in a net.

  Sera had said that the evil, whatever it was, had not taken him because it could not; that the sigil in his flesh somehow kept it away. He wanted to believe that was true, but doing so could be dangerous. Out here in the darkness within sight of the gold monolith there could be the spectres of ancient beings even now standing beside him, reaching towards him, about to exert their will over him… If they did, would he even know? Would his soul be expelled from his body or consumed and destroyed? “I am glad I am no mystic,” he whispered to himself. The world he could see and hear was massive and complicated enough without knowing of what existed outside of the sight of normal men.

  He shook the thought away only to have another question appear in its absence; why had it taken Cohvass and not Tascell? Maybe Zayd truly was impervious to malign spirits, but Tascell did not have Zayd’s sigil on him that supposedly provided protection, only those of his own family.

  His mind came back to the present as Praene, fully armoured and visibly sober, came striding from his tent, surrounded by his knights, and proceeded to check the perimeter of the camp. A few minutes later he was back in the tent, once more out of sight. Zayd shifted his legs where he sat. Snatching Praene away would be impossible, even if he had every one of his men involved in the effort. They could not match the knights in a frontal battle. Even if the Tauthri could surprise them –– which they could, in all likelihood – the meager weapons and armour they had would be no match against Praene’s bodyguards. Getting him from inside the tent was probably equally hopeless since they would be sleeping in shifts so one or more of them would always be awake and guarding against intruders.

  He wondered if Sera would insist on making the attempt anyways. Whoever went, he knew, would fail at the very least, and more likely than they, would be killed in the process. All for a trinket that the Dramandi believed to be of divine origin. Zayd realized that they had not even yet told him what the thing looked like, only where it was supposed to be. He nearly laughed at the thought that he may have looked straight at the damned thing and would not even have known its significance.

  He waited for longer until he concluded that Praene would likely not be coming back out of his tent. He could not even hear any idle talk or wine-soaked laughter coming from anywhere in the camp. Zayd was as impressed as he was dismayed. He only returned to Sera when the answer to the puzzle before him finally revealed itself.

  Chapter 16

  “Here he is.” Zayd pushed the man to the ground at Sera’s feet. His hands were tied behind his back and a piece of red-stained cloth in his mouth prevented him from making any noise other than groaning in pain and protest. “Commander Praene, formerly a loyal servant of the Ryferian army.”

  Everyone, Dramandi and Tauthri alike, encircled them and looked down upon the captive commander. Blood that had issued from cuts to his head and from his nostrils had begun to dry. He looked up at the dozens of surrounding faces, seeing only hatred or pity, while his showed only fear and confusion. A current of anticipation ran through the assembled group, but no one felt it as much as Zayd as he waited for Sera to react. Several moments had passed and she looked at the man in front of her without a single change in her demeanour. Zayd watched her intently until he saw the hint of a grin touch her lips, and at that he breathed a sigh of relief that he fought to conceal. He glanced over at Daruthin who stood at the edge of the group. His lieutenant looked at him, furrowed his brow and shook his head once, imperceptibly. Zayd stared back at him. He hoped that Daruthin could read his expression: an explanation would come later.

  “We will begin at sunrise,” Sera said. She looked around at the assembled group. “To rest. We will have answers soon.” The group dispersed, save for those Sera selected to watch over their prize, as well as those who still watched over the Tauthri.

  Tascell and Daruthin walked over to Zayd, both smiling wide. “Glad for your safe return, vahr,” Daruthin said as he and Zayd clasped forearms. Tascell patted him on the shoulder. “Glad for your good fortune. Can you tell me what is going on?”

  “He must have a plan,” Daruthin said, still displaying a false smile. “He just accomplished the impossible, remember? Try to look like it. Perhaps he will tell us how he managed this… impossible feat.”

  Zayd laughed and looked at his feet before he proceeded to tell his men, all the while gesturing with his hands and giving inflection to his voice to give their watchers the impression he was recounting his deeds. “They were keeping him under guard too well. It was clear they did not think that we had left. In fact, it looked more like they expected us to attack again at any moment.”

  “You told us they wanted Praene,” Tascell whispered. “Not some corporal.”

  “Not just a corporal, Tascell. It is corporal Lansdon. Praene’s cousin.”

  Daruthin laughed. “I thought he died when the Dramandi first attacked the column.”

  “He only played dead,” Tascell muttered. “How did you get him?”

  “Praene put him on sentry duty, and I caught him counting stars,” Zayd
said.

  “It looks like he put up a fight,” Daruthin said.

  “It does look that way, doesn’t it?” Zayd smirked and his men laughed quietly. He tried to think back – when was the last time they had laughed together? It must have been before the siege of Yasri. There had been no laughter then. “It also makes it more difficult to tell that he isn’t the man she thinks he is.”

  “So what happens next?” Tascell asked.

  “Well, since none of them speak true-tongue, I’m sure they will ask me to translate while they question him.”

  “What happens when he tries to tell them that he’s not Praene?”

  “What good would that do? Lansdon doesn’t know who they’re after. I just need to give Sera the information she’s after.”

  “But it’s the relic she’s after,” Tascell said, crossing his arms. “What answer are you going to give her?”

  “I’ll tell them… rather, Praene will tell them that the iron chest was empty since they left Yasri, that some Dramandi seer escaped the city with it. That should be enough to set them on a path away from us, and enough for them to set us on a path home.”

  “Home?” Tascell asked. “Or Lycernum?”

  It was a question Zayd hoped would not be asked. He had hoped it had become apparent to them how crucially important their solidarity had become. “It will be whichever you choose,” he said. “I only ask you to think back to when you pledged your loyalty to the emperor, and do not let your disdain of servitude obscure the vision of who you are really fighting for.” His men looked to each other, judging each other’s reactions. Some looked at their feet or to the sky, weighing the words for themselves.

  “Vahr,” Daruthin said, “what if she does not believe you?” Another question he had thought of but dreaded facing the answer.

  “If it comes to that… listen for the kisolark. And run when you hear it.”

  Time was different in the evernight, never quite passing steadily in any one way. Sometimes Sera would be immersed in it for what felt like most of a day, and when she returned to herself, the sun had barely moved in the sky. Other times, the sun would already be setting. Some other seers had mentioned similar occurrences, but they never described what she felt, and she often wondered what the difference was between them.

  She never was certain whether it was an effect the evernight had on her that was unique, or if it was to do with her ability and nothing else. Did she push herself further into that other world? Did it take her longer to find her way back? Cohvass had said that he sometimes could not wake her from the trance for some time. “I have dreams where I am trying to wake you up from the trance, but nothing I do will return you to me,” he once told her. “Those are nightmares. You are right in front of me, yet unreachable all at once. It is difficult to be so close and so far from someone.”

  She had cried the night when she lost him, though she had been careful. She waited until she was sure she would not be heard. Only then did she allow herself to weep, and she wept until the sun was rising. It wasn’t because she loved him. It was because she knew that he had loved her, and yet despite the years they knew each other, the years they spent as closest friends, he had never put himself on his knees before her. He knew that she, as one of the Revered, had chosen not to take a husband; her life was devoted to her people, devoted to her gift of seeing, being able to be the voice through which generations spoke. Many seers abstained from marriage for the sake of their gifts.

  To them, there was no higher calling. Personal love was placed behind the love for Aulvennic, for the sight that he had bestowed to them. Cohvass could have professed his love to her, asked her to be his wife and place him before her gift. But he didn’t. Not even when everything was lost and the light of their very civilization had almost gone out. She might have said yes, but she would have regretted it later. Maybe he knew that, and that was why he never asked. He never lost hope that they would survive, never doubted her, and never asked her to choose. How many had lived because of the strength of him and the strength he gave her? With her eyes stinging with tears, she knew with solid certainty that his devotion to her was stronger than the devotion she held for the gods. If only wars could be won with such fortitude…

  She rarely let her thoughts stray so much while within the trance, but she had walked far within the evernight, leaving her sword-kin and the Tauthri distant in her mind. There were voices. She had prayed every night since she left Yasri, and had prayed a hundred nights before then, but the evil that stirred beneath the temple had either driven away their ancestors…… or it had destroyed them. She had sought them out whenever she could, but this was the first time in months that there were voices. At first she feared they were the phantoms and she was hesitant to get too close to them. She was not sure of their power, but she had felt their unearthly fingertips once, as if trying to pry into her mind. She was not eager to feel that again.

  But the voices she heard now and the presence she felt were kind, not her enemies, and she felt them look towards her with warmth. Sera was sure that her entranced body must be grinning madly. Finally, after months of feeling only emptiness, she finally found them again! All the unanswered questions she had thought of over the past months sprung up in her mind all at once, all of them begging to be asked.

  “We’ve lost the Raan Dura,” she said, her voice reverberating through the ghostly grey. “I need to find it… Please, tell me where it is!” Voices spoke from every direction around her, indistinct. They did not know. “Is Cohvass……. is he here?”

  Silence.

  Perhaps his spirit was closer to Yasri, she thought. He had sworn to defend the city, and though they had failed, perhaps he would find some comfort watching over it.

  “What happened to Cohvass? Did the Tauthri murder him?” Sera heard a something in the voices as they answered…Fear. Panic.

  Enemies, enemies… Nameless. Faceless. Defeat. Defeated.

  “Which enemy?”

  Defeated, defeated. Buried… Yasri. So the Tauthri had told the truth about Cohvass, but the answers were raising more questions. The phantoms had been defeated and buried beneath Yasri… but they had not found any skeletons beneath the temple. Only the monolith. And their written history made no mention of it, or of anything buried there. Besides, if the Dramandi had defeated an enemy, why bury their foe in holy ground?

  “Defeated by who?”

  Silence. Not that it mattered to her. History was only that, and the monolith was being taken. It was now for the Ryferians to enjoy, along with the terrors that came with it. Let their priests and scholars have the privilege of seeing what happened to Cohvass happen to them. Sera wished she could witness that… it would almost be worth being their prisoner again.

  Her thoughts returned to the task she knew would need to be soon undertaken: the interrogation of the nasci commander.

  “The Tauthri leader. Zayd. Can I trust him?”

  The voices spoke in unison. No. No. No.

  It was past midday when Sera came out of her trance. Zayd could almost tell the moment she did; the Dramandi had been talking amongst each other, almost leisurely, as if the forest were their home and not their refuge. But they became silent as soon as she stirred. Lansdon, who had spent his time amongst them tied to a tree, must have known that something was going to happen, if not exactly what. His expression changed from surrendered self-pity to dread.

  Zayd had spent the day attempting to think of every possible question that might be asked and how to answer them in such a way as to appear truthful, yet if the answers were too much in his favour, he did not doubt that she would know what he was doing.

  He felt hands clamp down on his arms and haul him forward. He fought to get to his feet, but the Dramandi pushed him down and kept him on his knees. Suddenly, Sera was standing in front of him. Behind him, the other Tauthri ran towards him, but a number of Dramandi with their weapons drawn encircled them. They froze.

  “I gave you my trust,” Sera s
aid. “All I wanted was your help in exchange for your life. But you took that trust and you spat on it…… threw it in the dirt.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Zayd said. How did she find out? Did she speak Tauthral? Did one of her men? Or was this a gambit meant to make him confess? Perhaps she understood that Zayd could manipulate the answers given by Lansdon and wanted to terrify him into utter obedience.

  The slap stung his cheek. “And now you lie to my face?” Sera shouted. “I know of your deceit. This man does now know where the Raan Dura is!”

  “We won’t know until we ask him,” Zayd said. Sera put her hands around his throat and bent over to look him in the eye.

  “Lie to me again and I will finish what Cohvass started… after I make you watch the same happen to your sword-kin.”

  Zayd wet his lips and prepared to give his men the signal. He knew the Dramandi surrounded them, but perhaps a few of them could escape. If he waited any longer, perhaps none of them would…

  Sera placed her hand over his mouth and looked up at her men, then at the Tauthri. Could she have known? Something was wrong. If she knew that they planned the signal, surely she must know everything he had said the night before. She raised her other hand as she looked to the forest around them. The rest of the Dramandi tensed, waiting for an order. Zayd tried to look, tried to see what she was seeing.

  A shout came from the trees. Zayd shook his head, getting Sera’s hand away from his mouth. “Everyone down!” he shouted in Tauthral, just as the arrows came. One of the Dramandi holding him toppled over with several arrows in his back. Sera pitched forward, an arrow in her back as well.

  Suddenly Zayd was free, and he went for the dead Dramandi’s blade, the closest weapon he could find. He spun around in time to see Ryferian soldiers pouring out of the forest, and the Dramandi rushed to meet them. His own men had heeded his warning; none appeared to have been hit by the volley of arrows. They were all crouching, huddled together and confused. “Time to go!” Zayd shouted to them. “Let’s not become Praene’s captives now. Find a weapon if you –”