by Zoe Chant
Rez spotted Allen’s wares and his eyes lit up. “You are a blacksmith?” he observed. “I am Rez, knight of the realm, defender of the fallen kingdom. I am sorely in need of a sword.”
Allen grinned. “My lord, I had no idea!” He bowed extravagantly. “I am humbly at your service, sir knight. I pray my tools find your favor.”
Rez was already lifting one of the largest swords from the display and sweeping it into the air. “What folly is this?” he demanded.
“Folly?” Allen said, his grin faltering.
Rez stepped through a series of steps and swipes, disappointment blooming in his chest.
A small crowd of people stopped to stare, and when he had executed a particularly fast series of moves, they applauded.
“This is a child’s blade,” Rez said in disgust. “It is poorly forged and too slight to withstand the weakest attack. It is badly balanced and will hold no edge.”
Allen gave Heather a disbelieving look.
Rez took a threatening step towards him. “Are you a charlatan, selling substandard weapons that will risk a man’s life in battle? Do you profit from the failure of your tools?”
“Wait, wait,” Heather said swiftly. “Rez, put the sword down. No, he’s not trying to cheat anyone, those aren’t meant to be used in battle.”
Rez stopped, but did not lower his blade. “What is a sword for, if not for battle?” Every time he started to feel comfortable in this world, it seemed to be more strange than ever.
“It’s just for show,” Heather said, rushing forward to pull Rez away from Allen. “Sorry, Allen, he’s…ah...taking things a little too seriously.”
Allen took the sword back with a scowl, and they parted with suspicious glares at each other as the people watching gradually dispersed.
Heather took Rez to the tent next door and had him help her take down the front wall. There was a spinning wheel and many shelves of both wool and yarn, as well as several examples of woven clothing. Heather showed him to the back of the tent, where a small private area was open to the sweltering sky above.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “Let’s go get some food before the faire actually opens.”
Chapter 14
“You know,” Heather said regretfully, “I probably didn’t pick the best ways to introduce you to my world.” She was nibbling on a roasted turkey leg. Vesta was sitting at her feet, whining occasionally to remind them of how hungry and neglected she was.
Rez, shifting the borrowed tabard on his shoulders, shot her a questioning look. “In what way, lady?”
“This,” Heather said, spreading her fingers to indicate the festive Faire, banners waving over colorful tents. “This isn’t how we really live. This is play-acting. It’s something we do for entertainment. We don’t eat this food or wear these clothes.”
“And yet we are eating this food and wearing these clothes,” Rez pointed out.
“But it’s not normal,” Heather insisted. “I should probably be introducing you to fast food and television and...I don’t know, American sports? You’re seeing kind of a niche group of people obsessing about a really obscure hobby here.”
Rez considered. “It is a little...uneasy,” he admitted. “It is familiar, more familiar than the other things you have shared with me. But it is also different.”
“Uncanny valley,” Heather told him. “When something is similar to something you know, but just the wrong amount of different, you sometimes feel ill at ease. It’s worse than something being really off. We call this the uncanny valley. What’s strangest about things here?”
Rez looked around. “The people are happier, more generous. The food is better. The air is sweeter. But I can see how things here are false, like your friend Allen’s swords. These tents are not designed to withstand much weather or wear. Everyone’s clothing is bright, all of it looks new, unused. Even the people pretending to be poor are fat and clean.”
They were standing near the fighting ring. Two heavily-armored men were sparring with large swords, grunting and shouting insults at each other. A small audience was watching from the stands.
“These warriors seem incompetent,” Rez said disparagingly. “They would not survive long on a real battlefield with that technique.”
Someone beside them laughed and Heather turned to find a familiar face.
“I intended no insult,” Rez said swiftly, clearly taking stock of the new man’s light armor. He frowned at the wooden sword Levi was holding.
“None taken,” Levi said graciously. “They are indeed poor specimens.”
“Hi, Levi,” Heather said. “This is Rez. He’s...from way out of town.”
Rez bowed his head courteously. “It is my pleasure to meet another friend of Heather of Apartment 35’s.”
Levi gave him an appraising look. “You consider yourself a warrior of some skill, I take it?”
“I don’t know, Levi…” Heather started to say.
“I am one of the finest fighters in...in Way Out of Town,” Rez said, beginning to smile. It looked just a little bloodthirsty.
“This is a bad idea,” Heather said firmly.
“I’ll go easy on him,” Levi promised her, though it wasn’t Rez she was actually worried about. “He’s a big guy, but you know what they say about big guys and how they fall.”
“Don’t make me beat the two of you apart with my turkey leg,” Heather said smartly. “A fight between you two is probably the worst idea I’ve heard in a week. And this was a week where I took a guy I just met to dinner with my mother.”
“If you disapprove...” Rez said reluctantly.
“You would let your lady keep you from a proper battle?” Levi teased.
“Of course,” Rez said courteously.
Heather tried to smother her delight in that response.
“Hide behind Lady Heather’s skirts, then,” Levi said, raising his voice. “If you are too much a coward to face me yourself.”
“Oh, Levi,” Heather said pityingly. “You have no idea.”
“I am not a coward,” Rez said darkly.
“No, of course you’re not,” Heather told him kindly, bending to feed Vesta a piece from her turkey leg.
“You’re just a milksop, tied to your lady’s apron strings,” Levi said dismissively.
“Levi,” Heather said warningly.
Vesta came to Rez’s feet, clearly hoping for some of his food, and he knelt to give her the last scrap of his meat, turning his back on Levi.
“You have not even a proper hound,” Levi scoffed as Vesta gulped down the treat greedily. “My Great Dane leaves shits of greater mass and intelligence.”
Stroking Vesta’s tiny head, Rez raised his gaze to Heather.
She sighed.
“Try not to hurt him,” she said warningly.
“If I damage him, I will endeavor to also heal his wounds,” Rez promised, rising to his feet. Heather thought that there was more to the statement than simply promising to bandage him, some deeper meaning.
“Ah!” Levi said, grinning. “Wilt thou meet me on the field, lover of puny canines?” He called the challenge loudly, and Heather realized that the armored knights were leaving the ring and the audience was craning to see if they would be some new entertainment as the announcer declared a winner over the loudspeaker.
“Oh good lord,” Heather said. She tossed the remains of her food into a receptacle and wiped her fingers on a paper napkin before stooping to gather Vesta into her arms.
The booming announcer said, “Do we have a new contender in the field?”
“This man has insulted your knights! Let us find you armor and a weapon, stranger, so that I may school you accordingly!” Levi shouted.
The little audience applauded half-heartedly.
“I need neither,” Rez growled.
Levi looked uncertain for a moment. “We’ve got to meet safety requirements…” he started to say, but Rez strode ahead of him onto the dusty field.
“Not even a sw
ord?” Levi said plaintively, scrambling after him. “What are you going to fight with?”
Heather followed.
“I will take yours,” Rez told him. “What are the rules of your combat and how do you start?”
Levi was clearly reconsidering his bluster as they crossed the field. “A hit with the sword disables a limb, so you can’t use it again. We bow, and the tournament master rings a bell. We battle to a surrender or at the tourney master’s judgement.”
Rez bowed crisply and cracked his knuckles, standing casually with his feet apart.
“Will you take your lady’s favor?” Levi asked for the audience’s benefit.
Heather sighed as Rez looked confused and pulled a rose-colored cloth from her belt. “This is a terrible idea,” she told Levi, and she handed the cloth to Rez. “Kiss it and tuck it into your belt.”
Levi only looked amused as Rez obediently did so.
Heather retreated to the fence, not sure she wanted to watch any of it.
Levi bowed and took a fighting stance, and when the bell rang, sprang forward with his wooden sword.
Rez simply reached up and caught the blow on his forearm, punched forward with his other arm and sent the man staggering backwards with a hit square to his chest.
The audience cheered more enthusiastically and Heather caught her breath.
Rez surged forward, the arm he’d caught the sword on behind him in sporting fashion. He slammed bodily into Levi and reached with his free arm to pluck the sword from Levi’s hands as he swung it uselessly in the close quarters.
Rez gave the sword a few swings before he tossed it, spinning, up in the air. While it fell, he stepped forward, slapped a stunned Levi across the face with his single hand, and then moved back to catch the practice weapon in the same hand. He extended the blade towards the other man’s throat.
Heather wasn’t sure she had breathed once the entire time.
“I concede,” Levi sputtered in astonishment.
The little crowd went wild and the bell from the tower rang out, signaling the end of the bout.
Rez bowed, and offered the sword hilt-first as the announcer hailed the un-armed stranger as the victor, ad-libbing titles for Rez as he went. “The stranger with the air of danger! The fighter with the pants that are tighter!”
Levi, still gasping, gave a shaky bow in return. “Thou has bested me fairly,” he said loudly. He offered a hand and Rez gravely shook it. “You have to show me how to do that,” he said more quietly. “Damn.”
He was rubbing his chest as Rez walked to Heather.
“I would challenge!” Another voice rang out behind him, but Rez continued towards Heather.
“You have defended my dog’s honor,” she said to him breathlessly. “If you wanted to fight more of them, I won’t stop you.”
Rez shook his head. “It is that uncanny valley you spoke of,” he said sadly. “Fighting is not sport where I come from, and wooden swords are for children with no control, not grown men of skill. Battles were not fought for honor, or titles, or tournaments, but to hold the darkness at bay a little longer, and we knew that each one might be our last. Our final failure.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Heather said fiercely. “You cannot blame yourself for the downfall of an entire kingdom. That’s absurd.”
“If I don’t take the responsibility, who does?” Rez asked.
Heather didn’t have an answer for him.
Chapter 15
“I’m doing spinning demonstrations for the rest of the morning,” Heather told him firmly as she released Vesta from her handbag to go curl up in a corner of the tent. “I’m going to need you to stay out of the way and not pick fights with anyone.”
“I shall endeavor to keep the peace,” Rez said reluctantly, lowering himself into one of the lawn chairs behind their tent. He could not quite resist muttering, “Even if Allen was clearly defrauding his buyers…”
After a while, he realized that he could watch Heather through a crack in the back tent wall. She spun her wool and answered questions and walked children through spinning their own short, lumpy pieces of yarn. She talked about dyeing wool and sold skeins of yarn and drop spindles. She was bright and friendly and smart, kind to everyone and never impatient with the questions that even Rez recognized as stupid.
He could watch her forever, he thought. The line of her neck, the soft curls of her hair. The graceful way she moved. The curves of her sweet body laced into the flattering dress that swayed around her. Her hands. The planes of her face.
He would never tire of cataloging her beauty.
“You use a different voice,” Rez observed, when she came back to drink from her flask of metal and make sure that he hadn’t gotten into more trouble.
“I’m attempting a historical accent,” she said. “The whole point of the faire is to pretend that we’re in a different place and time. It’s all part of the illusion.”
“I really am in a different place and time,” Rez said mournfully. “I do not believe it is an illusion any more.”
Heather stepped closer, as if she wanted to comfort him, but before she could speak, there was the sound of angry yelling out in front of the tent.
“Let me make sure there isn’t a problem,” she said swiftly. Rez followed her.
Unfortunately, there was a problem.
Allen was standing in the lane before her tent, a small cluster of people between him and Heather’s tent. He was waving around one of his swords.
“You want to disparage my swords?” Allen roared. “Well, I’ll show you how well they work!” His face was twisted in rage.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Allen look so angry. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone that angry,” Heather observed in astonishment.
“I have,” Rez said grimly.
When Allen went wading in to the little crowd of people, sword flashing, the people around him seemed to think it was some kind of show or act...until the first screams started, and people began staggering away holding real bleeding wounds.
He was flailing wildly, so it was easy for people to get away and he wasn’t focused enough to cause any real harm. Heather fearlessly picked up one of her drop spindles and held it like a weapon.
“Allen, what are you doing?” she demanded, but Rez knew exactly what was happening and moved to stand in front of her.
“He is ridden,” he said solemnly.
“Ridden? Wait, dours?” Heather demanded. “Here??”
“I can purge it,” Rez said furiously, and then he reached down into himself and changed.
He was power and strength, grace and glory, pure in color and heart...and he was eye-to-eye with a very surprised Vesta.
He should be making the earth tremble with every hoofbeat, but when Rez gave an experimental stomp, nothing happened.
He was impossibly small, humiliatingly powerless.
Vesta yipped and danced back in an invitation to play, but no matter his size, Rez had a mission.
He galloped out of the tent, head lowered, sensing the darkness in the milling crowd and trying not to get stepped on. Someone’s long, swinging skirt nearly knocked him over, and he had to gather himself and leap with all his strength to clear a bag of merchandise that someone had dropped.
Then he was beneath Allen, who reeked of dour-darkness.
Allen slashed at him with the sword, nearly taking off his own foot. Rez swiveled on his back legs and dodged the clumsy blow, driving his horn into Allen’s closest boot.
His horn punctured the leather and stabbed into the foot, just barely into the skin. Rez had a bad moment where he thought he could do no good, then the dour dissolved in the face of his power. He could almost hear it scream in defeat as the darkness spread like thinning smoke and vanished.
Allen howled, and then his entire voice seemed to change as he shook his head in confusion, lowering his sword and looking at it as if he was unsure why he had it.
He was simply Allen again
, and he looked down at Rez, stomping near his feet.
“That’s a great costume for Vesta,” he said dreamily, and he turned away as if he hadn’t just sent people running for medical assistance.
There was more confusion—and screams too panicked to be part of an act—at the end of the lane, and Rez lifted his head and charged towards it.
He cursed his alarmingly tiny legs; he should be able to close the distance to the dours he could sense in moments, and instead he galloped full out at a pitiful speed for far too long as the dours did their deadly work.
Chapter 16
Heather lifted her skirts and pelted after the tiny unicorn Rez. He was everything he had been in her brief vision, built like a draft horse, but in perfect miniature and no larger than Vesta herself.
Before she could catch up with him, they were skidding around a corner, and Heather drew up in alarm.
Two men in costume were brawling, and they were fighting in earnest, biting each other and spitting insults as a woman spewing hate and jealous anger was systematically destroying one of the nearby booths. People milled about uncertainly, not sure if this was one of the acts or not.
Rez dashed in to face the combatants, but before he could react, they had tumbled onto him, pinning him helplessly to the ground. Heather gasped, watching him go under the two big men, and could only imagine how they must be crushing him.
Trying not to imagine Rez’s tiny bones breaking, she dashed to haul the combatants apart and off of the little unicorn. “Stop it!” she cried. “Just stop!”
She had one of the men by the arm, and was looking full into his face when she saw it.
It was as if there was a shadow sitting over him, smothering him in darkness, with strands of smoke seeping into every pore.
And that wasn’t all she saw. Beyond him, it was as if a web of strands of light was coming into focus, like trying to see them through a steam-clouded shower door. They were everywhere, thick and thin, glowing tangles, through people, into the ground, up in the air…and the shadow of the dour was avoiding them. Without thinking, Heather reached up and took one in her hand, feeling the electric tingle of it against her skin, and she brought it to touch the man she was holding, just as he raised his other fist to hit her.