Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  Then he turned back to the table and sniffed each jar, one after the other, and went on. “Back to my original question. Your stories have a certain style in common. Knights in shining armor. Bigger than life. Fair to look upon. You’re big, I’ll give you that, but I’ve seen bigger. Fair passed you by ten or twelve years ago, I’d say.” He narrowed his eyes under craggy brows and added, “Fifteen, even.”

  “That leaves shining armor,” Idgen Marte pointed out. She opened her mouth to go on, but Torvul beat her to it.

  “Precisely,” he said, snapping a finger. “And no—I can’t enspell your armor. Not like a thaumaturge could. But I can give it style. “ He smiled the devious, knowing smile they had come to know.

  “What good is style? Style, I have often said, gets men killed.”

  “What he means is that he will make you a beacon.” Mol suddenly sidled in, the door shutting almost noiselessly behind her. “Of hope,” the girl added. Water dripped off the cloak she’d thrown on over her robe as she came to the hearth and set the wet outer garment carefully on the stones. She reached up to take one of Allystaire’s huge, swollen-knuckled hands in both of hers. “When he is done, no one who sees you in this armor will have any doubt. Those with call to fear you will know their fear, see it thrown back upon them, and be weakened by it. And those whom we fight for—they’ll be able to look at you and know their own strength.”

  The door opened again, and this time Gideon entered with a spray of rain before coming to the table and peering at the instruments and vials.

  “Awake, finally,” Torvul asked him.

  The boy nodded, and reached for one of the vials, till Torvul grabbed him by the wrist. “Just because you’re the aetherial shapeshifting troll’ o’ the’ hill today, doesn’t mean you get to touch my instruments or my tinctures. Got to do more than defy a god or three to do that.”

  “I wouldn’t have harmed anything. Not sure I could muster the energy to change its composition even if I wanted to,” the boy protested.

  Allystaire walked forward and put a concerned hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Gideon, did you overtax yourself? Expend all—”

  “Not at all,” the boy replied, shaking his head. “I’m just tired. Too tired to focus, except for a small thing.”

  “Good.” He gave the boy’s shoulder a squeeze. “You did well today, lad. Too much longer without rain, folk would have started to get suspicious, fearful. You rewarded their faith, and that is what we are here to do.”

  “Well if we’re done speechifying, let’s get t’work.” The dwarf stopped, thought a moment, and said, “Well, I’ll get t’work. The rest of y’ just stay out of the way. Even you,” he added, glancing at Gideon and shooing him with a playful swat.

  Torvul selected the first vial. Its contents were colorless, but when he lifted its stopper, it released a metallic scent into the air. “To bind,” he nearly chanted. “As the Goddess has bound us.”

  He began carefully pouring the liquid, in tiny droplets, starting at the top down: helm, pauldrons, cuirass, upper and lower cannons of the vambraces, the greaves, and last the gauntlets. But he did not merely pour; he picked up one of the hooks on the rack and began carefully scraping the liquid, which clung viscously to the surface of the armor, spreading it carefully into every crevice. When the hook he had picked did not reach, he selected another, smaller, and yet again another smaller. Then he set down the empty vial and took the second, full of what appeared to be cool liquid silver.

  “To brighten.” Now, Torvul was either into the role, or absorbed in his work, for there was no nearly chanting. He sang in his deep rumble. “So none in this world will miss his coming.”

  Again, he poured with a hand as steady as a mountain, and again he picked up a thin hook and began scraping, teasing the liquid he poured, till every bit of the armor was covered. Allystaire stifled a yawn. Idgen Marte shuffled her feet. Mol and Gideon fidgeted.

  Finally, Torvul finished, set his tool and the empty vial down, interlaced his fingers, and cracked his knuckles. Then he took up the last vial and uncorked it. Its scent filled the room.

  To Allystaire it was the smell of a cold late winter morning in the mountains of his home, when the sun was dauntingly bright and the entire world seemed fresh.

  “To reflect.” Torvul lifted the vial in both hands. He poured.

  The room was suddenly filled with an intense, almost blinding light. Always prepared, Torvul tugged down the thick lenses he’d had stuck over his head, and continued. Allystaire had to shield his eyes in order to watch, as did Idgen Marte.

  Mol and Gideon looked on, apparently untroubled.

  Torvul took an age scraping and brushing. And when he was done, the room glittered with the radiance of the overhead lamps cast back by the armor upon the table.

  Its surface gleamed like a mirror of pure silver, throwing back their reflections in dizzying multiples as they crowded around the table.

  Allystaire leaned forward and brushed a finger against it. Torvul did not stop or scold him. He could feel the scarred and rough surface of his armor, as familiar as his own hand. Yet his fingerprint left no mark upon the bright, perfect surface. “Is it an illusion?” He turned to Torvul, lifted his hand from the armor.

  “Yes and no,” the dwarf said, shrugging.

  “Is it a lie, then? A seeming, only? A glamour, with the truth of my old gear beneath it?”

  “Hope is never a lie,” Mol said, as she stood on her tip-toes to look down upon the table.

  “The girl has the right of it,” Torvul said. “’Course she does. Not known her t’be wrong yet. When I said yes and no, I wasn’t just playin’ games. The armor is what you were, it’s a part of you, and it is ugly and hard. That’s true. Yet you’re a paladin now, the paladin, the Arm of the Mother, and that’s what people will see in this armor—and that is true as well.”

  “We have all been Called,” Allystaire said. “You and Idgen Marte and Mol and Gideon as surely as I.”

  “Not in the way that matters to folk. People will need this, Allystaire. People here, in Thornhurst, will need it, and you know it.” Idgen Marte answered this time. “I’m the Shadow—I am meant not to be seen. Torvul is the Wit; his strength isn’t in arms the same way ours is. No offense,” she added to the dwarf.

  “None taken. Most weapons are just a stick with a blade at one end and an idiot at the other, you ask me.”

  “Fine,” Allystaire said. “Help me gather it up and I will go put it on.”

  “Wait,” Gideon said, coming forward suddenly, his voice halting. He lifted a hand, the fingers and palm outlined in a faint whitish glow. “Could I?”

  Torvul smiled broadly and crookedly. “Go ahead.”

  The boy had to pull a chair to the table and kneel on it in order to press his hand directly onto the center of the breastplate. “Close your eyes,” he said, suddenly, and they did—but the sudden brightness that filled the room turned Allystaire’s vision red behind his eyelids. When he blinked back into clarity, the Golden Sun of the Mother stood in brilliant relief against the silver of the cuirass.

  Gideon stood up and admired his handiwork, then frowned. “Not quite,” he said, and leaned back down, one finger outstretched. He traced a quick outline, then stood back, and gestured towards the cuirass. They crowded around the table to see the small outline of a hammer within the eight-pointed sun.

  “Put it on,” Torvul said. “I’ve improved the fit and shortened how long it’ll take.”

  “I have not got my gambeson,” Allystaire said.

  Torvul smiled and pointed to the curtained-off bedroom. “I took the liberty.”

  Allystaire gathered up the armor with Gideon’s help and marched off, waving the boy with him. “Best you learn how to help me in and out of it,” he said. “I want you next to me till the point of battle.”

  Their voices trailed of
f as they pulled the curtain. There were some muted orders, a thud as some piece hit the floor, some rattling and creaking, and finally Allystaire emerged, helm under his head, glittering in mirror-bright silvered armor.

  “I feel a little ridiculous,” he murmured.

  “Do I really need to remind you that you look as you did in the vision the night we built the altar?” Idgen Marte cocked her head to one side.

  Mol closed in, leaned forward to touch the sun on his chest, the hammer within it, tracing the outline with her short child’s finger. “This is what they might call you one day, Allystaire, a long time from now,” she half-whispered. “Hammer of the Sun.”

  “Might?”

  The girl looked up at him with a sad weight in her eyes. “Nothing is set, and all remains in flux. We may yet be conquered, our light snuffed out. It is not given to us to know how this ends. Not even to me.”

  Allystaire sighed and wrapped his arm around the girl’s shoulder, hugging her, careful of the weight of the armor. “Nothing is being snuffed out. Not today, not ever.” He let the girl go and looked to Torvul. “Have you got polish for it?”

  “Don’t need it,” Torvul said. “It’ll never smear, never stain, never be marred. Damaged, yes, broken, maybe. But give me iron stock and the right earths and I’ll give you steel, and however patched, however mended, that armor will be forever this bright. All the soils and sins of the world will keep from it as if in fear.”

  Allystaire nodded, lifted the helm up to his eyes with both hands, and blinked at the distorted reflection of his own scarred and broken-nosed face in the crown. “We have work to do, to make sure that people remain for us to inspire, aye? Let us be on with it.” He tucked the helm back under an arm.

  The hearth spat, and a flame lifted from a log that suddenly split, flaring brightly in the rain-darkened room. When his armor caught the firelight and reflected it, Allystaire heard the smallest note of the Goddess’s song, and despite himself, his heart swelled.

  * * *

  Hundreds of miles distant, like the firelight reflected in Allystaire’s bright armor, the harbor in Londray was a mirror of dancing flames. And while the city burned, the handful of knights and men-at-arms that had, in the early days of autumn, imprisoned the Baron Delondeur and installed his natural son Chaddin as Baronial Regent, were hunted men.

  Having tossed aside their badges—grey cloths wrapped around the upper arm—three such men alternately elbowed and skulked through the alleys and lanes of the capital city, moving always towards the wall and the gate.

  “I hope the rumors are true,” one murmured quietly, his breath puffing visibly into the air. He was younger, shorter than the other two, cradling a crossbow with a loaded bolt like an infant against his chest, errant blond hairs straying from underneath an iron-banded leather cap.

  “We’ll know when we get clear of the city and make for the rally point,” another replied, his voice smoother and more educated. He wore a sword on one hip and walked with a long-handled axe in one hand, thick spikes at the head and opposite the single blade. He was the tallest, with a well-groomed brown beard and the clank of mail beneath his clothes.

  “If I may ask, sir, why’re we headin’ to some village the other side o’the Thasryach,” the third man asked. He was the oldest, a lined and scarred face with deep-set, wary eyes surrounded by creased and wrinkled flesh. He walked with an unstrung bow standing in for a walking stick, trying and failing to conceal its true purpose, and a shorter, cruder sword on his hip.

  “Because that was Chaddin’s plan,” the second man replied. They stopped at the end of an alley and the youngest one went into a crouch and crept around, his loaded crossbow sweeping side to side. He stopped and waved the others forward. “You two were not present when that knight escaped the dungeons and exposed the Baron. He made quite an impression.”

  “True what they say of ‘im, m’lord?” the younger one asked, turning hopeful eyes towards the knight. “A paladin?”

  “He killed a sorcerer, and he showed the strength of many men,” the knight answered him. He paused, resting for a moment against the wall of a building. “Chaddin…the Baron,” he corrected himself, “he wanted this kept quiet, but the man, the paladin, he was Lord Allystaire Coldbourne.”

  “Out of Oyrwyn? Couldn’t be,” the bowman said, spitting to the side. “A paladin? I seen his handiwork these years.”

  “Lionel Delondeur called the man Coldbourne, and he would know,” the knight said. “At any rate, enough. We can make the wall by dawn and be on our way.”

  “Be lucky to get to the mountains before deep snow,” the bowman muttered.

  They went on in silence, the sounds of violence or a scream occasionally intruding upon the night.

  They turned a corner only to find their way blocked by a semicircle of figures shrouded in darkness. No weapons were evident, but the air of menace was palpable.

  The beardless crossbowman snapped his weapon up and fired his bolt, even as the knight raised his axe and the bowman took his bowstave into his left hand and drew his sword.

  The bolt thunked home in one of the shrouded figures, in the center of the chest. Its barbed head would do untold harm to a man’s vitals. It was, against any target at this distance, a fatal blow.

  The figure did not move or flinch or even cry out. The bolt seemed to hang loosely in folds of clothing.

  The knight shifted his axe to a two-handed grip and advanced half a step before he suddenly stopped, bound in place by invisible chains. His companions found themselves similarly frozen.

  From behind the ring of tall, silent, cloaked figures stepped a smaller one, hooded, with faint, sickly yellow trails of energy emanating from his eyes.

  “Three more volunteers,” he murmured. Though soft, his voice seemed to reach out and caress the three men who were caught, passing across their skin with an air of casual mastery. “You are bound now to great service for your Baron.”

  “We don’t serve that slaving blackguard.” Through gritted teeth, the knight managed to squeeze out a few words. “We’re Lord Chaddin’s men,” he added, grimacing with the pain and the effort.

  “In life, yes,” the hooded figure replied, stepping close so that the knight could see the ruin of his face, the bilious yellow light leaking from his eyes and the corners of his mouth. “But that life has ended. In death you will serve Baron Delondeur more faithfully, more capably, and more fully than you ever could have done before.” He raised one gloved hand and made a sharp gesture. The cloaked figures that had penned them in came forward.

  As two of them closed in on him, the knight had only the time to catch quick impressions: a hand that seemed made of broken bits of metal tied together with ropes of sinew and patches of flesh, a face that was more bone than skin. And then darkness.

  * * *

  The crossing from Keersvast to Londray had been the most miserable time of Evolyn’s life.

  Not because it was late in the year to sail. Not because she shared an open-deck with Islandmen swords-at-hire. A true priest of the Sea Dragon did not fear death at sea, and if the weather had become dangerous, there was power she could bring to bear. And Islandmen were the most devout of Braech’s worshippers; they treated priests of any rank with something akin to awe.

  It was because she had not sailed on the boat with Landen Delondeur, missing the chance to renew a childhood acquaintance and perhaps curry favor with the future ruler of Barony Delondeur, not to mention coordinate strategy for the coming fight.

  But even that was only a small part of what had bothered Evolyn. Namely, it had been the other passengers. She had felt something wrong when she stepped on board to find the captain of the vessel dislodged from his cabin. Her feelings were confirmed when she saw the mysterious mottled yellow and blue light that leaked under its doorway.

  The lights did not go out during the entire crossing.
They flickered, they dimmed, but they were ever-present. After three days she felt them like an ache in her eyes, thought she could scent them like rotting fish at the bottom of a barrel. She knew what they portended. When, steeling herself, she had gone to discuss the conduct of the coming battles with them, she had been laughingly dismissed. They had no need of gods, she was told; only men.

  Which is why, now, with the battle for control of the Dunes quickly won by Landen and two ships worth of swords-at-hire—and the horrible craft of two sorcerers—Evolyn found herself kneeling at an altar of Braech in a small, hidden chapel in the Temple at Londray.

  Have you any honest faith left, Symod? Would the Sea Dragon truly have us make an accord with such as them?

  She stared hard at the sculpture of Braech. Small, crude, less adorned with gemmary than most of the others in this grand Temple, Evolyn had come to it precisely because it promised solitude. During her novitiate she had discovered it while penance-sweeping; the layer of dust over the statue, the chains that held it above the altar, and the altar itself had spoken of long disuse. Since then it had been her private place to pray, to reflect, to seek guidance.

  She stared hard at the Sea Dragon, the dull greened bronze, and willed it to answer her.

  “Father of Waves, Master of Accords, Dragon of the Sea, guide me,” she mouthed, the words barely audible even to her. “This is not our way. Honest battle or cunning bargain, yes. There are loyal servants, holy berzerkers who would go to this battle simply for the asking, others who would do it for plunder or to make their name or their fortune. We would strive against this upstart, strength for strength. Or find the leverage to move him from his heresy.” Though Fortune’s soft glove has already failed. “But to make dark bargains that no one must know of, to pay in promises and whispers to things that were once men and are now, what?” She resisted the urge to spit when she though of them, of the reek of death that she caught when she was forced to talk to them, of the way their whispers had buzzed at her ears like a repulsive serpent’s tongue.