The Unremembered

by Peter Orullian

  Seanbea looked at Penit, as if trying to decide whether to go on. He gave the boy a wink. “What you do, what you are, is more an instrument than anything Descant is expecting me to bring. Never you mind the stuff I left behind. It’s covered and will keep. You, my girl, must do neither. The changes that prompt the regent to call Convocation are likely the same that sent me into the land to find and haul these records and rusted items to Recityv. And now that I’ve seen Quiet so deep in the land, I’m almost sure of it. And they almost had you … makes my blood cold.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “What I saw you do to them … You’ve never done it before, have you?”

  “No,” she managed. Dark memories flared in her mind. She wondered if her song would have grown dark enough to steal Penit’s light. “I’m not even sure what happened.”

  “This thing in you, Anais, is a rare music indeed,” Seanbea said. “In my training at Descant, the Maesteri warned me of it.” Seanbea reached down and placed his hand over her forehead. “Having such music is a responsibility you must learn to shoulder. That’s why we’re going to Recityv. Maesteri there can help. You rest. We should be there tomorrow.”

  Wendra looked up at the leaves and sky passing in a mosaic against the failing sun. She could smell the brass and wood of the wonderful instruments Seanbea still carried, the dusty smell of old parchment, too. As the wagon creaked northward, Wendra kept firm hold of Penit’s small hand.

  “Just wait,” the boy said, his smile unfailing. “I’ll take care of you.”

  Wendra placed her other hand over Penit’s sturdy fingers.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  A Quiet Cradle

  If the gods left. If we’re doomed. Or damned. What do we care if the Quiet come?

  —Polemic raised by the Dimnian king during the First Convocation

  Grant motioned to the right and angled his horse in a southeasterly direction. Braethen, Vendanj, and Mira followed. He’d given his wards instructions before coming with the Sheason and his friends. Use the Scar to hide, if it comes to that. You know it better than anyone. They descended a short slope into a featureless plain that ran outward in a pattern of grey and white earth less populated with sage and barren of trees … save one.

  A hundred strides from the base of the hill stood a lone dead tree. The trunk rose in a gentle twist of bleached wood—like bone left in the sun. Thick limbs snaked in every direction, ending in jagged snarls as if snapped off long ago. The bare branches offered no shade from the sun, which rose hot in the morning sky.

  The Cradle of the Scar.

  Grant stopped and slid from his saddle. He crossed to the tree, where a hollow had been carved directly into the trunk. He paused there a moment, looking up at the tree the way another might an old friend. He then looked inside. His heart fell and he let out a slow sigh of anger and frustration, turning to look away.

  Mira and Vendanj dismounted and started toward the tree. Grant held up a hand to stop them. “The cradle is my responsibility.”

  He hardened his heart and reached carefully into the hollow. With a quick snatch, he grabbed and ripped the snake from the hole. It writhed in his hand. A snarl twisted his lip before he simply squeezed the serpent so tightly that it stopped moving. After several moments of death throes, the dead serpent hung limp in his hand.

  The sodalist slipped off his horse and strode to where Mira and Vendanj stood watching. Grant finally dropped the lifeless creature to the ground. Blood coated his fingers. He stared at his hand a moment before turning back to the tree.

  “Oh, no,” he heard Braethen whisper behind him, the sodalist already understanding.

  Tenderly, Grant removed an infant.

  The child’s skin was pale, cold; dark rings circled its eyes and mouth. Grant kneeled on the hard earth beneath the dead tree and cradled the dead babe in his arms.

  None of them moved, observing silent reflection for the passing of a life that never knew a hope. The thought of the baby wriggling its arms in ignorance as the serpent coiled close by seared Grant’s mind. He shut his eyes to the image. He wanted to avenge the child, but the culprit already lay dead close by.

  A horrible feeling of helplessness gripped him.

  The unrealized possibilities of the babe weighed on his mind. And as he did every day in this wide, dry place, he considered the injustice and cruelty of abandoning a child to the Scar. And hated those who had sent him here.

  But he put that away for the moment. This child deserved to be mourned for its own sake.

  Mira went to the snake and knelt to inspect it. She and Vendanj exchanged a knowing look. “Hostaugh,” she said. “Not a serpent from the Scar. You won’t find these south of the Pall … unless someone brought it here.”

  “What are you saying?” Braethen asked.

  “The serpent was placed in the tree by Quiet,” Grant answered.

  Mira stood and kicked the snake away with a flick of her boot.

  Grant turned, catching a glimpse of the sun, low in the eastern sky. “We’re not late. This is the day, the hour. The child is already cold.” He pulled the infant’s blanket around its shoulders.

  “It’s the poison,” Vendanj said. “The hostaugh bite does more than kill. It steals life … like the Velle do when they render.”

  “Why would the Quiet do this?” Braethen asked. “Wouldn’t they have taken the child?”

  “It’s a warning.” Vendanj stared down at the child, his face looking heavy. “Those who left the child would have checked the cradle before placing the child inside. No. The serpent was put there after they left. The child was left to you as a sign.”

  “A sign of what?” There was a hard edge in Grant’s voice.

  Vendanj waited a long moment. “Not to help us.”

  “They’re mistaken if they think I’ll be frightened or discouraged over the death of one.…” Grant looked away into the vastness of the Scar, grief and anger pulling at the creases in his weathered face.

  “It isn’t your care for this one child that they’re threatening,” Vendanj added. “They’ll come after them all.”

  Grant nodded. Before leaving them the night before, he’d given his wards new instruction. Discontinue patrols. Leave the home. Remain together in the safe places deep in the Scar. “I told them what to do. They’ll be all right.”

  Mira climbed to the top of the hill, and checked their backtrail. She returned quickly and shook her head—no one followed them.

  He gave the babe a final look. You went too early, little one. He then gently passed the child to Mira to hold and began digging a grave. Vendanj dropped down beside him to help. Braethen, too. The three men dug together in silence. Beneath the dead tree, they scooped the barren earth that would be the final ground for the infant. The young sodalist drew his sword and began chipping at the baked soil with it. Vendanj seemed to approve of the use.

  Pray the abandoning gods this is the last child I have to put into the Scar.

  * * *

  As the three men worked at the earth to create a grave, Mira looked down at the child in her arms. She cradled it close, feelings maternal and mournful touching her in quiet waves. The face of the babe was pallid but peaceful. And looking at the infant girl, the promise of her future frozen forever in her delicate features … Mira fought a rising wrath that sought escape.

  There would be a time for that.

  For now, she honored this small life with the care and attentiveness she deserved but had never received in life. Mira thought about her own mother—her birth mother—whose face she couldn’t remember. She wondered at providence that had kept her from being like the child in her arms.

  The abandonment of a small life, whatever the cause, ached in Mira’s chest. It made the decision awaiting her beyond Recityv a heavy burden, a decision that might affect the success of the Sheason’s ultimate plans.

  Staring into the unrealized promise of this child galvanized Mira’s need to act, but put her further from understanding which path t
o choose. Only one certainty filled her under the hard sun of the Scar: If she could have given her life to save this little girl, she would have.

  * * *

  Vendanj stared down to where the child lay in its final slumber. The others stood beside him in the stillness.

  Then Grant mounted. “You have until the next child comes to the Scar, Vendanj.” He looked at the Forgotten Cradle. “Then I come back to my tree.” He raced to the east, leaving the others to catch up.

  Mira and Braethen mounted.

  Vendanj lingered a moment. He looked down at the small patch of dirt that humped slightly above the earth around it. In the barrens of this inhospitable place they had laid to rest a life come unnaturally to its end. The hope and path that had lain before this little girl had been stolen. Indignation surged inside him.

  To send a message, a defenseless child …

  In his mind he saw the helpless little girl being struck by the viper. He saw her crying in pain and confusion and the desperate need of comfort. Comfort she deserved in this life … but she’d been abandoned to this tree. This Scar.

  Vendanj fell to his knees and silently wept.

  This was why the Fathers had placed the Whited One and those who followed him inside the Bourne. This was what awaited them if they failed to keep them there.

  Infants …

  He raised his head and screamed into the pale blue sky. With the sound of it still echoing out on the hard, barren waste of the Scar, Vendanj thrust his hands into the grave of the babe and spoke the words of his heart, giving this little plot of land a portion of his spirit.

  And spontaneously from the gravesite came grass and flowers, with their living smells.

  The burn of his grief subsided. He pulled his hands out of the soil. “Good-bye, small one.”

  Vendanj took his knife and found the serpent. He cut off its head and put it in his pouch. He also picked up the fold of the child’s blanket they had torn away before burying her, the bloodstained part.

  He put the tokens in his pouch and left the babe to its rest.

  * * *

  Just after dusk, they passed the boundary of the Scar. Braethen took a deep breath of the cool breeze that blew across green trees and undergrowth. He could smell life. Bark and needles and fallen leaves and moist earth. They stopped near a small brook to rest for the night. Mira left almost immediately, scouting ahead.

  Grant sat staring into their fire, his mind seeming far away.

  Braethen finally had to ask the question that had been on his mind since leaving the man’s Scar home. “Why are you rewriting the Charter?”

  Grant looked up over the flames at him, eyeing the Sodality emblem—the quill dancing over a sword. “How long have you been a sodalist?”

  “Not long,” Braethen said with a bit of reluctance.

  The man smiled, the look of it more appreciative than mocking. “Your swordwork isn’t good, but it’s better than ‘not long.’”

  “All youth in the Hollows are taught basic techniques,” Braethen explained.

  “And your books?” Grant pointed to the satchel Braethen carried.

  “All my life,” he said more confidently. “My father’s an author.”

  “You care more for books than steel,” Grant stated matter-of-factly.

  Braethen wouldn’t argue it. He hated the idea of becoming comfortable enough with a weapon that it came as easily as reading.

  Grant fell silent for a long moment. “And my own feeble efforts at writing … are because I’m tired of fighting,” he said, just above the sound of the fire.

  Braethen recalled the weapons racks at Grant’s home. “Then why teach it to your wards?”

  “Because sooner or later they’ll need it.” He sat on the ground, leaning back against a fallen tree. “They’ll need it because my little charter holds no weight.”

  Braethen understood the need to write things down for one’s own good.

  “A lot of time is what I have, Sodalist,” Grant went on, staring at the flames. “A lot of time to think about the ways a man brings angry hands against you. Days and years to teach my wards that freedom is a myth.”

  “A cynical view,” Braethen countered.

  Grant laughed, the lines in his face creasing. “Maybe. But I teach my wards to keep a promise. The way the Charter meant us to.” He paused. “Maybe I’m just writing down the intentions of the Framers as I understand them. The training, though … that’s because my scribbling has no power to change things. And I won’t send my wards into the world unprepared.”

  “So you teach them—”

  “To anticipate,” Grant finished. “A thousand days I’ve walked through the strokes and counterstrokes of fight after fight. Different weapons, different opponents of varying sizes and ability. I’ve imagined every terrain over which battles might rage, compensated for wounds to myself and my enemy. All up here.” He tapped his temple twice lightly. “And when I could think of no more, I considered them again, and again, seeing the results each time, varying the ability in my enemy and anticipating his next stroke based on a hundred factors. And when I was done, I taught my wards. And we practice. It’s all there is to do in the Scar.”

  “Except draw a new Charter,” Vendanj put in.

  “Well that, too,” Grant conceded, his smile a tad more bitter in the concession.

  “You still haven’t answered why, though,” Braethen pushed.

  Grant’s smiled faded entirely. He turned a hard look on Braethen. “Maybe I want to believe this world has hope, could change. Maybe I want to believe there’s a way to give my words the power to do it.…”

  Like the Language of the Covenant.

  Vendanj frowned but said nothing.

  “… so you see, Sodalist,” Grant finished, “we’re both fools.”

  Braethen shivered. It was the world’s foolish men who made the most sense, and caused the greatest sorrow.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  A Servant’s Tale

  The point of an oath is to direct behavior. Its potency lies in a man’s need for virtue.

  —The Psychology of Oaths, from the personal library of Roth Staned

  Sutter sat in the dark, his wrists and ankles chain-bound, staring across at a troupe of scops.

  My godsdamned luck. I don’t get thieves and murderers. I get troupers.

  His hate helped keep his mind from the beatings, though.

  He stared through one eye, the other swollen shut from where a guard boot had caught him. In the shadows opposite him sat two men and two women shackled to the wall. Their jailer had painted their faces in rough mockery of their profession. From time to time the guard came in and made them dance or prattle out some rhea-fol. Didn’t seem to matter if they did it well or not—the whip came with the same intensity either way. One of the women had lost an eye to that whip.

  Wonder if she left any kids to village farmers.

  Old wounds.

  Far back in the crook of the stair, someone moaned. Someone he hadn’t noticed before. The dark corner fell silent again.

  “Who’s there?” Sutter asked.

  “What does it matter?” a rough voice answered.

  Thank the silent gods, someone to talk to besides a player. “Why are you here?”

  The man remained quiet for a time, then finally said, “I was deemed unfit for my throne.” A sad laugh followed.

  Sutter liked the genuine sound of it. “You’re from Recityv?”

  “Not hardly. You won’t have heard of my homeland: Risill Ond. We’re nestled against the eastern ocean beyond the Wood of Isiliand.”

  “You’re right. Never heard of it. And you’re the king?” Sutter’s skepticism rang in his words.

  Again the easy laugh. “My people put away courts and high politics so many generations ago that we had to consult old books to remember our own sigil.”

  “And what was that?” Sutter found himself grateful for the sudden conversation down in the dark.

&nbs
p; “A scythe,” the man said.

  “Really? A scythe?” Seemed lame to Sutter.

  “We’re farmers.”

  A full silence settled between them.

  “What’s your name?” Sutter finally asked.

  “I’m Thalen Dumal. But I’m no king. Risill Ond lives by the cycles of planting and harvest. Not coronations and military parades. We did once have royalty of a kind, though.” He paused in his dark corner. “I’d rather have stayed with my crops.”

  Sutter could relate. “I’m Sutter. I’m familiar with dirt myself.” He probed at his swollen eye. “Why’d you come, then?”

  “We were obligated. I was obligated. When the Second Promise was issued long ago, we were asked to come. We had no army, so a vote was held. Unmarried men were asked to go. They marched to Recityv, carrying the only weapons they knew, scythes.” The man gave a weak laugh. “Soldiers they fought with started calling them Reapers. They were among the few that honored the Second Promise. And so here I am.”

  “In a dungeon?” Sutter said, confused.

  “We don’t have a ruling class in Risill Ond. My mother stitched our emblem to an old, thin carpet.” There was no shame in Thalen’s voice. “When I arrived, I was taken in by some leagueman and questioned. They didn’t like my answers. Imprisoning me leaves our seat at Convocation unclaimed. The League will claim it, and a civil contingent will come to Risill Ond—something we’ve been able to avoid until now.”

  Sutter glanced over at the troupe, who were listening to Thalen’s story. Then he turned back. “I don’t understand how they can hold you here.”

  Thalen laughed again. “That’s the irony. They looked at my hand-sewn banner and clothes and accused me of being a false applicant to the Seat of Risill Ond.”

  “Godsdamned horses’ asses.” It didn’t help that this fellow accepted what had happened so temperately.