by Brian Fuller
At its base, Errin guessed the Portal spanned nearly thirty feet. They watched as the clerk took the names of the company of the wagons ahead of them, finally coming to their wagon and recording their names in a large book for that purpose. Once done, the Portal Mage, dressed in a brilliant blue robe, walked out of the solitary building and stood near the Portal base, concentrating. The Portal flashed into existence, a brilliant metallic blue, the same color as the Mage’s robe. The clerk waved all three wagons forward.
Errin closed his eyes as they rolled through the Portal. Since both he and Salem had passed through Portals many times before, they were able to control the brief sensation of nausea and dizziness. They turned to their charge to see how he fared, finding him placid as usual in the weak light of the Rhugothian morning.
“We know one thing about him,” Errin said. “He’s been through a Portal before. If he were a Tolnorian peasant, that would be unlikely.”
Salem grunted noncommittally.
The Rhugothian side of the Portal was situated not one hundred feet from the edge of the immense Kingsblood Sea. Errin knew from his studies that before the Shattering there had been immense oceans one could sail on for months and never glimpse land. Since the Shattering, the Kingsblood Sea was the largest body of water yet discovered, though he’d heard rumors of one to rival it on the recently discovered Shroud Lake shard.
Around the Portal, the aptly named city of Portal Gate still slept, the sun’s light barely a stain on the horizon. For several minutes Salem stared longingly at the large ships anchored on the lake, their hulls and masts shrouded in mist.
“We’d best be goin’,” he finally said, as if trying to convince himself. “Five days to Mikmir.” They set off, taking the road west around the lake. The pine-framed road was beautiful to nose and eye, and the cool breeze of the sea refreshed tired eyes, but the time difference between Portals always proved difficult, and Errin found himself slapped roughly awake by Salem more than once.
“You sleep now, you won’t sleep t’night.”
Perhaps due to the time change, the boy stayed awake more frequently in the daytime, sitting erect and watching his surroundings carefully. Still, he said little, and when he did, it was in one of the mysterious languages. His eyes often unfocused into emptiness for long stretches, and—more than once—Errin made out the names ‘Gen,’ ‘Samian,’ ‘Telmerran,’ and ‘Elberen.’ Still, while his impoverished, filthy condition cast a pitiable light upon him, from time to time Errin sensed an intelligence and self-command in their charge that scared him. If there were anything demonic about the young man, it was the cold, utterly controlled countenance that he wore with increasing frequency.
Errin asked Salem who he thought the names the boy repeated might be, and Salem, of course, speculated the worst possible thing, names of the creatures of the underworld currently inhabiting the soul of their passenger. Whatever training Salem had received to become a Pureman, Errin speculated that it didn’t involve a lot of reading or perhaps remembering. All in all, Salem cared little for doctrine or ritual but was quite fond of baseless speculation. If Salem had a motto, Errin thought it would have to be “service before sermons” or “love before learning.”
Three days after the Portal and two days from Mikmir, they crossed the immense West Bridge that spanned the gap between two of the many shards that collectively formed Rhugoth. Again, the boy stood on the edge of the wagon, staring down into the abyss between shards with absolute calm. Errin hated the bridges and locked his eyes straight forward. The young man standing so casually caused the acolyte to feel the vertigo his ward apparently did not. Salem guided the wagon back toward the center of the bridge, and the boy hopped back into the wagon.
As they exited on the other side, their charge shocked them both by leaning forward and asking, “How long until we arrive at Mikmir?” in clear Common. Salem brought the wagon to a dead halt.
“What did you say, boy?” he inquired gruffly.
“Elemerean iownea se Mikmir?”
“Bah! Mikkik-speak again!” Salem turned away, whipping the horse into a trot. “Best get him off our hands as soon as possible!”
“We will be there in two days,” Errin said slowly, holding up two fingers. “What is your name?” Errin watched as he struggled with the question, eyes narrowing and jaw clenching.
“My name is Gen,” he said, emphasizing each word as if to convince himself he was correct. Again, however, his eyes unfocused and he slipped into another stupor for a couple of hours before sleeping until evening.
As the road led through several sizable towns near Mikmir, they lodged in the outbuildings of two large churches for the next two nights. Gen, as Errin believed his real name to be, became the focus of much observation. Puremen and acolytes alike stopped to see the real case of possession that Salem loudly advertised everywhere they went. Unfortunately for them, Gen no longer mumbled, each day his eyes clearing and his stupors afflicting him with decreasing regularity.
By their last night on the road, Errin would swear the boy was fully cognizant. He still stood guard from time to time, but intelligence and keen awareness completely replaced the void in his gaze, and when a group of acolytes stopped to see him, he regarded them so intently with his cold stare that they ran off. Errin tried asking Gen questions, but he answered nothing, and Errin wondered if he couldn’t or wouldn’t respond. He still rejected every entreaty to take a bath, and, after their earlier failed attempts, they gave up trying. They had long since accustomed themselves to his stench.
As they neared Mikmir the next morning, traffic on the road swelled, slowing their pace. The avenue broadened and ran along a river between the Kingsblood Sea and the Kingsblood Lake. Mikmir surrounded the small lake, and, even at a distance, the city seemed to glow in the mounting sunshine.
Once they drove into Mikmir proper, Errin stared wide-eyed at Rhugoth’s sprawling capital, noticing several different architectural styles as they rode along. More recent structures rose several stories in the sky and had an intricate feel to them, leaves chiseled into the stone or decorative artwork painted onto pale plaster. Some buildings even reached the level of art to Errin’s eye, testaments to Rhugoth’s prosperity and thriving culture. Glass windows, a luxurious, expensive rarity everywhere else, were in abundance in Rhugoth, glinting in the sun.
The clean, orderly streets, the performers, merchants, and people inspired Errin to declare Mikmir the finest city he’d ever traveled to—until they neared what Salem told him was the Damned Quarter. New buildings faded to old, and beggars and refuse lined the lane in equal proportions. Buildings here sat squat, crude, and misshapen from long years of abuse from the weather and from half-hearted, under-funded attempts to fix them.
Salem explained how the Damned Quarter divided Mikmir into two, richer parts of the city bracketing the impoverished strip in the middle. The shortest route from one prosperous section to the other was the lane they traveled on. The rich often took ships across the lake to avoid the carriage ride through the slums.
As they trundled along, a fine carriage pulled by four horses sped past them, bouncing about on the cobblestones, heedless of man, woman, or child upon the street.
“Lot’s o’ folks get hit every year on this lane. Rich folks race by like Uyumaak Hunters when they come through here. You haven’t seen the worst of it, yet, tho’.”
Errin didn’t see how worse was possible until Salem turned the cart left off of the main road, heading into the heart of the old, dilapidated city. Errin guessed the first refugees from Lal’Manar had built the quick buildings as a temporary solution until finer buildings like those they left behind could be constructed. Now, the ramshackle homes served as places to discard the poor. It seemed the poverty, illness, and ignorance so evident all about them actually dimmed the sun, casting everything into a hazy, brown shadow.
Heavily tanned men and women dressed in rags shuffled about or sprawled, drunken and insensate, in the street near the mo
st dismal taverns Errin had ever laid eyes on. Yelling, drunken mumbling, and the sounds of all manner of animals coalesced into a steady morass of cacophony that filled Errin with anxiety and even set the more experienced Salem on edge.
Children, bellies protruding unnaturally forward, stared dumbly at them as they passed, some yelling for food or money. Sickness. Disease. Garbage. Errin felt outraged and ill. How could it be that the richest city in the world could permit such a blemish to fester upon its otherwise lovely face?
At last, Bainburrow Cathedral, old and sturdy, slid into view, and beyond it the street dead-ended at a gate built against a wall of rubble. Soldiers, though not sharp or particularly fit-looking ones, stood guard at the gate.
“What is through there?” Errin asked.
“That, my boy, is where our young friend here will go if the Prelate can do nothing for him. An evil place, that one, full of the possessed, diseased, deformed, and marked that could not be healed. I went in once and never wish to enter again. They say the Chalaine enters it from time to time to see what she can heal.”
“The Chalaine comes here?” Errin exclaimed. “Unbelievable! It would be beneath civility to bring an aristocrat here, not to mention dangerous!”
“She’s kinder than any of us, boy,” Salem said as he brought the wagon to a halt outside the Church. “Something ye have ta’ learn, eh Errin? Let’s get ‘im inside to Prelate Shefston.”
Errin hoped Gen would be spared whatever life—if it could be called that—went on behind those gates, but as he rounded the back of the wagon, he found that Gen had fallen into another stupor, though different, his eyes darting about wildly. From time to time he convulsed or yelled something in his strange language.
“Looks like e’s havin’ a fit now,” Salem rumbled. “Likely the demons inside ‘im can’t stand the holy ground of the Church.”
Errin cursed the ill timing. If only they had arrived when he was lucid. Errin prayed that the fit would end before they found the Prelate. Hefting Gen inside the Church took a great deal of effort, and they settled for laying him on the dusty floor at the entrance. The Church, like the neighborhood around it, was rundown and brown, dust lying thick on every flat surface. Only the smell of incense and fragrant oil in the air distinguished it from the wrack of its environs.
“Where’s the Prelate?” Errin asked as they laid Gen down.
“I am here, acolyte.”
Errin looked up. A corpulent man, quite out of character in the midst of so much emaciation, strode down the hall, kerchief to his nose and mouth.
“What did you drag in for me this time, Salem?”
Salem related how they had found him and his opinions of the boy’s condition. Errin tried to contradict his master’s opinions, but a dark look from the Prelate’s deep eyes cut him off in midsentence. Errin could only observe as the Prelate performed a perfunctory and cursory attempt at healing Gen’s mind with an exorcism.
“He’s beyond our reach,” the Prelate concluded. “Conduct him inside the gates and be done with it.”
“Yes, Prelate,” Salem answered sadly.
“But he was getting better with each day!” Errin protested. “I am sure that with a little more time and care, he. . .”
A sharp look from the Prelate brought him up short. “Salem,” he said, face stern, “you teach this acolyte who I am and how to respect his betters. I trust you capable of teaching the lesson?”
“Yes, yer Grace,” Salem said, not meeting the Prelate’s eyes.
The Prelate left the way he had come, leaving them to haul Gen back into the cart. A crowd of wretched poor gathered as they worked, commenting in low voices about Gen, most agape at the scars all over his body—the miserable gawking at those more miserable than themselves.
Perhaps they find some comfort in knowing someone is worse off than they are, Errin thought.
“Prepare yourself, Errin,” Salem said once they climbed back to the cart. “What comes next will be hard for ye.”
They had to stop at the gates for a moment while reinforcements from somewhere nearby were called up to help. As the gates swung inward, Errin saw why. No sooner had daylight peeked between the two doors of the gate than a mad rush of the insane, sickly, and half-clothed nearly overcame the resistance set against them. Only determined, well-placed violence sent them howling back into streets and alleys littered with feces and garbage.
Errin swooned with the smell and horror of it all. Truly, the underworld stood agape before them, and Errin turned to look behind him to make sure the way out still existed. What houses still stood here, sagged, cracked, and mutilated, threatened to collapse with every breeze. Only stronger structures of stone stood firm, though spattered and stained with mud, blood, and fecal matter. But more discomfiting than the smells, the screeches and screams, and the dilapidation of the buildings were the children of every age, most with only a scant rag separating them from nakedness, standing dumbly about the streets.
“We can’t leave him here!” Errin protested, grateful for the guards who marched warily beside them. “Who will feed him? What if he comes out of it?”
“They toss food o’er the walls every night,” Salem explained, face disgusted. “They have water here, though I’d sooner drink lamp oil. Get him out, Captain.”
Salem turned the cart around, and the soldiers roughly dumped Gen onto the ground. Salem wasted no time, driving out quickly as the soldiers again scuffled at the gate with the wretched denizens at the heart of the Damned Quarter. Errin glanced behind him as the gates swung shut. Gen had stood, regarding them coldly as they left. Errin saw sanity dawning there.
“Try not to think of it, boy,” Salem said, clapping him on the back. “I don’t like it, but there’s nothing for it. We did our best. That’s all we can do.”
Errin folded his arms in disgust. “The Prelate certainly didn’t do his best,” the acolyte grumbled, mostly to himself.
Chapter 14 - Brown and White
Gen watched as the soldiers shut the gates behind them, noting the strength of men and the defenses built to keep him in. In vain he swatted at his pants and cloak to get the dust and mud off them. He struggled to remember when he lost his shirt, but couldn’t. The last few days, staring at the sun from the back of the cart, the torrent of memories and voices had subsided, his own mind and will returning to him for increasing amounts of time. He could remember each of the men’s memories, probably better than they remembered them when they had lived, and, while he thought he had them sorted out, he didn’t always feel sure.
The lifetimes of information imprinted upon him made him feel old. Part of the fight for ownership of his mind involved extricating his own memories from the others, a difficult task. Even now, when he remembered Samian kissing his elven wife for the last time, he didn’t remember Samian doing it—Gen experienced it as if he were in Samian’s place. And when he dreamed, he often had nightmares he knew sprang from the fears and desires of the others. But while he dreamed, those nightmares and desires were his own.
Looking outside of himself with his own perception and his own senses awakened him to his predicament. Groups of the insane and sickly eyed him carefully as if looking for anything they might steal. Gen took stock of himself. His shirt, boots, sword, and the Training Stones had all gone missing, and what clothes he had—a shredded cloak and tattered pants—set him equal to the poverty and squalor all around him. Memories of the horrors of war lessened the shock of such depravity, but the faces of the sick, the elderly, and the children, all deeply tanned and completely destitute, still sorrowed him.
The emotion slipped away as Shadan Khairn’s training took hold. The growling of his stomach and his thirst reminded him of his first duty. Survival. The heart of the Damned Quarter was walled away from the rest of the city, though some of the barriers consisted of the steep, jagged ruins of buildings. These provided the easiest apparent exit, though the loose rubble could prove treacherous and noisy to climb. The city guard obviou
sly had several stations and guards around the perimeter, and silence would be the key to escaping without confrontation.
“She is coming,” a nearby child said, coming forward. “Please don’t hurt her. She is the only nice one to come to this place.”
Gen turned his gaze downward. A boy, ten or eleven years old by his height, looked up at him, one eye brilliant blue, the other a milky white. He wore scraps of a shirt and hole-riddled pants. The face, gaunt from undernourishment, was kind, the boy’s demeanor sane and intelligent.
“What is your name, boy?”
“Thepeth.”
“Who is coming, and why would I hurt her?”
“Why, the Chalaine is coming, of course. Can’t you feel her? I thought you, of all people, would be able to feel her coming. I can.”
“The Chalaine coming here? I think you are mistaken. I can’t imagine her guard would take the chance.”
“It is dangerous,” Thepeth replied, “especially with you here. But no one fights when she comes. Please don’t fight when she comes.”
“I certainly would not fight against the Chalaine and her guard. But tell me, Thepeth, why are you here? You don’t seem insane.”
“The orphanmaster sent me here. He said I was touched by Mikkik, that Mikkik gave me this eye to speak his lies. I see the things people want to hide. No one likes me around. But I like the Chalaine. She has nothing to hide, at least nothing important.”
“She has been here before?” Gen asked incredulously.
“Twice since I have been here. You won’t hurt her, will you?”
“Of course not. Why do you think I will?”
“You don’t want to hurt her?”
“Certainly not.”
“That is strange.” Thepeth scratched his head. “I thought you had come to kill her. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?”
“If you think I am here to kill the Chalaine, then perhaps you are crazy, little one.”