The Hero's Lot

by Patrick W. Carr

  Shal’s head snapped up, and his face closed, went flat and neutral. “You haven’t been excommunicated by the church?”

  The thought made Martin’s stomach clench. “Of course not. I’m a benefice.”

  Shal stepped back and drew his sword, leveled it at Martin’s chest. “I’ll have your weapons, then, Benefice.” The gravity of his tone matched his expression.

  The sword precluded argument. Martin drew his dagger and handed it over along with the strange metal staff he’d brought from the ruins. “Am I under arrest?”

  Shal nodded. “Exile is a death sentence for most of the castoffs the church banishes from Illustra. For the few that make it, our leaders, the council of solis, have declared Haven a sanctuary, a place of peace away from the judgment of the church. But, in truth, for all who enter, it is still exile. None may leave, ever. You are one of us now.”

  Martin swallowed and looked in the direction they had just come. “So will we return to your fellow guards?”

  Shal rubbed a hand to his jaw, considered. “This will only cause Marcus more pain. I will take you to the city myself. I doubt I have much to fear from a fat benefice.” His eyes were as hard as agates. “Your fate is for the council to decide, but if it’s put to hands, I will urge imprisonment for as long as you live.”

  29

  Passage

  MARTIN FOLLOWED SHAL along the banks of the Sprata. For an hour, perhaps more, the shadowlander followed behind him with his sword drawn as if Martin, bruised and battered as he was, presented some kind of threat.

  With a laugh, Martin turned to confront the man’s vigilance. “Tell me, Shal, does one priest present such a threat that you need to keep steel on me the entire way?”

  Shal stared at him, then at his blade, before he sheathed it with a contemptuous thrust. “You should not be here.”

  Martin sighed. “I’m beginning to believe that, but the decision was not wholly mine.”

  A hint of doubt revealed itself in the lines of the lieutenant’s face. “You told me you hadn’t been exiled.”

  “And I told you the truth. There were four of us together on the western side of the mountains. Fire separated us, and I made my way into the shadow lands as you saw, but the choice to use this as our route to Basquon was made by one of the solis.”

  “You lie,” Shal said.

  “I’m a priest.”

  “Priests are not immune to deception. Offer some token of your words.”

  Martin shrugged, disinclined to attempt to open Shal’s closed mind. “I’m a priest, as you say. What token would you accept?”

  Shal walked beside him, still out of arm’s length, hand on his sword’s pommel, staring at the ground as he considered. “Only one in authority would attempt to bring outsiders here. What is this solis’s name?”

  Martin walked in silence. Shal’s face assumed a self-satisfied expression.

  “Please don’t mistake my hesitation as refusal,” Martin said. “I’m grateful for my life, but you’ve drawn steel on me, and I don’t know you. I will not reveal the name of the guide who brought us here, but we traveled with the blessing of two women who held a position of authority or respect with the solis in Illustra.”

  Shal’s eyes grew wide at Martin’s words. “Names?”

  “I knew them as Adele and Radere.”

  The lieutenant choked out his words. “Knew them?”

  “They died not long after we left them.”

  “No.” Shal shook his head in jerks from side to side. “You lie.”

  “I do not. They bought our passage through the theurgists of the Morgols with their lives.”

  Tears coursed down Shal’s face. Martin’s pastoral instincts overcame his caution, and he put a hand on the weeping man’s shoulder. “I owe them my life and more.” Then, because he wanted to offer Shal something more, he continued. “I have been chosen to present the knowledge of Aurae to my kinsmen in the church.”

  Shal’s head snapped up. “You know nothing of Aurae.”

  Martin nodded. “Perhaps not, but I think I have shown enough for you to grant me civil passage to your city. My friends will be waiting.”

  After a pause, Shal gave a reluctant nod. He changed direction, heading straight toward the river. “Come. If your friends came to Haven through the gap, they’ve been met and taken to the city ahead of us. We keep boats docked at the river when the need for haste arises.”

  Martin stared. “And you were planning to take me on the slower, more arduous route?”

  The look he received was filled with apology and a trace of defiance. “I wanted you to feel a bit of the punishment your church has meted out to so many. Not every excommunicate survives their journey to Haven.”

  “I have never sentenced any to such a journey,” Martin said.

  “Yet you are part of the church,” Shal said in tones that said the matter was settled.

  Martin let the conversation die after that. They walked another league to a broad bend in the river where half a dozen broad, shallow-bottomed boats waited, tied to the pier. A pair of guardsmen lounged, looking bored.

  Shal moved in front of Martin and greeted the men with an open hand over his heart. “Greetings, brothers. I and my companion have need of a boat to hasten our return to the city.”

  The two men eyed Martin with a flash of curiosity that faded after the first moment. The older of the two men, a stocky man with sprinkles of gray in his dark hair, stepped forward. “Newcomers are expected to walk the length of their new home, Lieutenant Shal.”

  Shal nodded. “So they are, but this man is not an exile. He was sent here by the heads of the council of nine.”

  The other guard’s eyes widened at this. “You know this?”

  Martin’s conscience impelled him forward. “That is what our solis guide told us, and I believed it to be true.”

  The shorter man’s eyes narrowed.

  “He knew their names,” Shal said. “Adele and Radere told him to follow his guide, who led him here.” He paused. “Our mothers are dead.”

  The two guards dipped their heads. “Death comes to us all,” they intoned together. When they looked at Martin again, certainty showed in their countenance. “Your tale is beyond us to judge. Take the third boat from the end. It leaks less than the others.”

  Shal bowed, adjusted the pack on his shoulder, and moved out along the pier. Martin stepped into the boat, settled himself on one of the gunwales, and watched Shal pole them away from the bank.

  “How long will it take us to reach the city?” Martin asked. Doubt and impatience gnawed at him. He did not know if his companions were safe.

  “Four days, if my strength holds,” Shal replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The current is with us. A journey that would take two weeks or more on foot can be accomplished in four days, but only if I take little sleep.” The boat picked up speed, and Shal laid the pole in the bottom of the boat and sat at the rear with a hand on the rudder.

  Martin watched the grassy banks slip by. Cottages dotted the hillsides a little farther up. They looked deserted.

  “The spawn grow worse,” Shal said in response to his question. “In the last couple of years their attempts to hunt on this side of the mountains have grown in frequency and intensity. The council has pulled people closer to the city until the attacks die down.”

  The windows of the cottage stared back at Martin like the eyes of the dead. He didn’t want to tell Shal the attacks would only grow worse until a new king reigned in Erinon. He didn’t want to admit to himself that a new king would reign only after either Errol or Liam died.

  A few hours later, as the sun passed overhead and prepared to dip behind the hills, Shal broke the silence. “How long did you know the mothers?”

  Martin sighed over the wasted opportunity. He hadn’t really known them at all. “I lived near them for almost five years, though I didn’t know their purpose until recently. I only knew them as herbwomen, h
ealers for the villagers.”

  “A story would make the journey easier,” Shal said.

  Martin’s desire for privacy warred with his compassion for the grieving lieutenant. With another sigh, he told how Adele saved him from poisoning, how Aurae told her what to use to counteract the moritweed.

  Shal nodded. “Aye, they were both skilled.”

  The moon rose over the low-lying hills to the east as the sun’s last rays winked out in the opposite direction. Martin shivered in the cool air. They drifted downstream, the landscape drifting by. They floated past a small town, the river sprinkled with piers and boats. Shal navigated through those still on the water.

  “Do you have any other tales of the mothers?”

  Martin exhaled. “Though I never persecuted them, I made it a habit to avoid herbwomen. Besides, I seldom strayed from my cabin in the hills, and they were busy tending to the hurts and pregnancies of the village. I’ve told you what I know to be true; anything else would be secondhand information.”

  “If you are willing, I would hear it,” Shal said. The strident note no longer filled his voice when he spoke to Martin. Perhaps the knowledge that Martin knew Adele and Radere assuaged his anger. “The trip through the night will be long without a story to break the silence.”

  Martin nodded. A tug in his chest, like the prodding of a friend, told him what to say. “I will tell you a story in which Adele and Radere played a part, though it may seem small to you, but it explains why I’m here in your land. Will that suffice?”

  Shal nodded in the purple hues of the fading light.

  “Well then, let me tell you of Errol Stone.”

  Some hours later, long after the moon had risen and become a silver eye in a star-filled sky, Martin finished. Shal steered the boat without speaking, but his silence conveyed a troubled state of mind. The lieutenant’s subdued movements carried hints of sorrow.

  “This is true?” he asked Martin.

  “Aye, it’s true.”

  “Most men would have made some effort to cast themselves in a more favorable light than you did,” Shal said.

  Martin shrugged. “I made the vow I would tell him everything. Such forthrightness may take some practice. I thought tonight might be a good place to start.”

  “Exile would have been kinder,” Shal said. “We would have made him welcome here.”

  He nodded. “Agreed, but the kingdom has need of him.”

  Shal snorted softly in the dark. “So like a churchman to dismiss suffering by speaking of need.”

  Martin ached to protest the accusation, but he could not. He had told Errol more than once he was expendable. Yet he needed to answer the man’s accusation. “Do you deny that Deas’s hand is upon the boy?”

  A moment passed before Shal answered. “No, not if your tale is true.”

  “Then do not speak to me of dismissal. Errol bears the need of the kingdom.” Martin turned to face Shal in the darkness. “And of the shadow la . . . Haven, as well—or do you think the Morgols, the Merakhi, and the spawn will be content to leave you in peace?”

  They did not speak again for a long time. The moon tracking through the southern part of the sky and the lulling rock of the boat pulled Martin into the depths of sleep, and when he woke, the sun was so far overhead he couldn’t be sure it was still morning.

  “Are you hungry?” Shal piloted the boat, his eyes bleary and smudged with fatigue.

  His words drew an extended rumble from Martin’s midsection. “Yes. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything of substance.”

  Shal smirked without malice. “I thought the clergy made a discipline of fasting.”

  Martin nodded. “There, you have me.” He patted his stomach. “Some regimens suit me more than others.”

  The lieutenant pointed ahead. “There remains three full days’ travel, at least, but the town of Refuge lies just around that bend. I will put in long enough to procure food for the rest of the journey.” He gave an apologetic smile. “It won’t be anything fancy on a guard’s pay.”

  A quarter of an hour later, Shal poled the boat to a pier with a soft thump. After he tied off, he held his hand palm out to Martin. “You should stay here. Refuge can be a rough place. They won’t bother me, but if anyone suspects you’re a priest, and even worse, a benefice, we could find ourselves in the middle of a riot.”

  “Do they hate the church so much here?” Martin asked.

  Shal grimaced and lifted his shoulders. “Many of the people in Haven deserved their judgment, but there are just as many here whose only crime was being the victim of jealousy or ambition.”

  Martin nodded, aching to say it wasn’t true, but he couldn’t. His conscience forbade him.

  He sat in the boat as Shal disappeared down an alley into the city. The existence of so many people in the shadow lands surprised him. The city rose on a hill overlooking the river, walled behind a bulwark of natural limestone. Its size hinted that it could boast twenty thousand people or more.

  An idea bloomed in the depths of Martin’s mind. Erinon needed allies. If the shadow lands could be persuaded to an alliance, any attack by the Morgols could be blunted. The men here wouldn’t need to do more than make a show of military movement. The Morgols would have to divide their army to keep a hostile force from attacking them from behind.

  Martin glanced at the sun. He’d missed his morning prayers. People milled around the docks, paying him little attention. He pulled the emblem of his faith from inside his tunic and knelt in the bottom of the boat, facing as close to east as he could approximate. As soon as his knees touched wood, the liturgy sprang to his lips.

  Once he completed his daily office, he ran down the list he kept in his head of each intercession that needed to be made. It kept growing. So lost he became that he didn’t note the sound of footsteps until they were upon him.

  “Well now, what have we got here?”

  Martin jerked at the nearness of the voice. Beside him, two men, rough and dirty, stood at the edge of the pier. They smelled sour, wearing the sweat of men drinking early or perhaps still drinking from the previous day.

  He nodded toward the two. “Good morning.”

  “What’s good about it, eh?” the first man asked.

  “There’s always something to be thankful for,” Martin answered without thinking.

  The hiss of daggers leaving sheaths raised Martin’s hackles.

  The first man gestured toward Martin with the point of his dagger. “Hulbert, I think this one’s a priest.” He caught Martin’s eye. “I don’t like priests.”

  “Nope, Orace, you don’t,” Hulbert said. “No reason for you to either, after that priest ’ad you excommunicated for messing with the mayor’s twelve-year-old daughter. Nope, no reason you should like priests ’tall.”

  Martin looked left and right. The pier that had seemed so crowded only moments ago now appeared almost deserted. With an evil gap-toothed grin, Orace advanced toward the boat.

  Before he could put foot in the boat, the blade of a sword appeared at his neck. “You know the rules,” Shal said. “Any man who takes a life in Refuge forfeits his own.”

  Orace tried in vain to see the sword blade at the side of his neck without moving. Slowly, he replaced his dagger and lifted his hands. Hulbert copied the move. Shal stepped back but didn’t sheathe his weapon. “I have your names. I think it would be best if I didn’t see you anymore.” At their blank looks, he ground his teeth. “Get out of my sight.”

  Orace gave Martin a flat stare. “If I ever get out of Refuge, I might just look you up, priest.”

  “What were you doing?” Shal asked after they departed.

  “Morning prayers.”

  The lieutenant gave a deep sigh. “Can you do it without looking like a priest?”

  Martin nodded. “Is there something about Refuge that you neglected to tell me?”

  Shal gave a brief shake of his head. “You’re an outsider. Whatever the council deems necessary to tell you abo
ut Haven, they will tell you. Until then, draw no attention to yourself.”

  Shal loaded a pack he’d dropped into the boat and followed it. He cupped a handful of red berries and popped them into his mouth.

  “Do you have any more?” Martin asked. The groaning of his stomach made him less courteous than usual.

  The lieutenant laughed. “Yes, but I don’t think you want any. These are chara berries. We use them to help fight off sleep—effective, but bitter.” He pointed to the pack. There’s cheese, bread, and water in the pack. It should last us the three days to the capital city.”

  After Martin ate, a process that took a considerable time, the boat’s gentle movements lulled him back to sleep. One day, he hoped to sleep in a bed again.

  30

  Blood Rose

  LIGHTS FESTOONED the rolling hills of Count Rula’s estate. In honor of his daughter’s wedding, the count produced barrels of the finest wines his vineyards produced, and a steady stream of the area’s nobles rolled onto the estate by carriage. Men in tight-fitting hose and doublets with boots polished to a high sheen accompanied radiant women in the traditional dress of the region. Each man wore his sword, the thin dueling type, strapped to his waist. Every woman wore a chain of coins around her neck, a white blouse surmounted by a heavily embroidered vest, and a skirt belted with another chain of gold coins. Though each woman’s dress strongly resembled the rest, disparities remained that allowed Errol to perceive differences in wealth or status.

  Rokha and her father emerged from their self-imposed exile to attend. Errol breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed Naaman Ru kept his distance from the count. Rale stepped beside him, resplendent in an all-black outfit Rula provided for the occasion. Each member of the watch in Errol’s company was similarly attired.

  Except for Errol. Rula’s chamberlain had taken charge of Errol’s appearance, showing an attention to detail that Oliver Turing would have admired. Errol strove to keep himself from fidgeting in the finery; he was Rula’s guest, after all. As his host introduced him to each new arrival, he bowed politely. Men squinted at him, tomcats eyeing a rival, while women gave him speculative glances as they smiled and checked his hands.