by C F Welburn
He had woken alone in a sea of grass. His body and mind had ached. He felt detached from the world. As though he no longer walked in it, but floated through it.
After some stumbling he had found the blackened earth, the place where for so long a fire had burned. He saw evidence of a struggle, although the blue sky and green grasses that waved only heightened the surreality of it all. Had it been a dream? A nightmare?
Other evidence convinced him it had not.
The abandoned, twisted blade that had once belonged to Kolak, the tip of an antler he had seen splintered, a strip of purple cloth torn from a garment. And traces of ash where last throes had been had. That was all that remained of those who had stood with him. As for the lych, that was a mystery in itself. The small man was not to be found. He had evidently returned to Eskareth, a place where Balagir had no desire to go.
He needed to be alone. Alone with his thoughts; with his task.
It had been with great difficulty that he made his way north. With no smoke to warp, and no fires to use, he had journeyed on the celador. He had bypassed Kirfory and, in Kasker, had struggled to find a ship to take him north.
Guards were still on the lookout for ashen, and only by finding an unscrupulous captain whose greed was greater than his superstition had he managed to stow away. An uncomfortable, cramped time which had ended weeks later in Cogtown.
He had traded many of his possessions to secure passage, but there was one he had not—could not part with. The wand. He had found it there, abandoned on the grass amongst the scattered ashes, and at his touch had come the red glow of the kalaqai, trapped once more within. It lay in his pouch now; she would not fly again. Her wings had been clipped. But he was aware of it constantly. It nagged at him like a stone in a shoe.
He shook the reins and carried on.
What had passed that day was done. Kaliga was dead, his work, so nearly complete, scuppered in the final instants. The kraelyn sent back to whatever realm it had been trying to leave. Gone. But not destroyed.
So too were the fires. All gone. At least the ones he had checked in passing. Kirfory, Kasker, Cogtown, Wormford, and Warinkel. All dead circles of ash. He missed the music; thought he heard it playing at times on the wind, tilted his head, strained his ear, but found nothing.
He was certain there was one more fire, however. The one he had been riding towards for months. The one that was just a few miles through the trees.
With the threat passed, so too had the time of the ashen. Kaliga and the askaba were gone, the portals all dead, and the kraelyn banished. They no longer had a purpose. Jakan had all but faded from the world and was the only thing that kept them to their oath. That, and the ember which had almost undone them.
And so slowly, mile by mile, he had become convinced of what he must do.
To quench that final fire. To finish it once and for all. And as he considered this—a way of tying up loose ends, of coming full circle, of freeing those ashen that remained in the tuneless world—so too came the grim realisation of his real motive. To make Jakan pay. For the crimes against them and their forgotten families. To redeem themselves of the monsters he had made them. Greedy, bloodthirsty, selfish immortals. His army against the darkness, yet a ruthless one: bent, driven, slaves.
Yes. This was about revenge now. Closure. And vengeance.
North clip-clopped on. The sun sank into the west. Bluster Chasm passed without incident; his mind wandered and was too distracted to heed any voice on the wind. The trail wound down through the trees, and somewhere far ahead he thought he heard music. Gradually he became convinced of it and slumped in the saddle. North could guide him now. He had done enough. He watched the road pass below.
When the music filled the world, he looked up. Ahead lay the crumbled hiilg temple, and before it, Umbra hub, the first and the last fire. Jakan’s final vestige altered his gaze, never taking his lips from the pipe, but meeting Balagir’s eyes.
Something odd passed between them. Some acknowledgement. Gratitude? Regret? Remorse?
The dhaki knew why he was here. He knew what he had come to do. Of course he did. He knew the ashen better than anyone.
Balagir led North into the firelight and dismounted.
The final fire beckoned him, and he used smoke he did not know he had to heal and revive. Smoke he grimly assumed came from the fallen ashen in the final battle. He nodded respectfully to their memory before entering the haze.
When he emerged, his mind was clearer. He no longer had doubts. He stretched. Felt strong. Felt ready.
He emptied the contents of his pouch before him. What had not been lost, destroyed, or sold each held its own memory. A shard of the mask, the dark Gazer’s eye, Murdak’s spyglass, an old acorn. It was the wand he retrieved however, holding it up to look upon the red glow.
“Era,” he said softly. There was no reply, but he knew she was there. A strange relationship theirs, almost sad to say farewell. But he could never trust her again. Not even with the luck he had imbued her with, which had been lost in the draining. She was self-serving until the end. Yet she had only sought a release. Much as he was here to do now.
He was not certain they would be better off, but the choice had been made. The world hated them now, and their purpose had been fulfilled. They had been used and worn thin as old boots. There was no reason to remain.
He closed his eyes then and listened to the tune for a long while. Imprinting it on his mind, drinking it in as one who bids farewell to someone they know they will not see again.
When he was ready, he opened his eyes and approached.
Jakan sunk to his knees, where he still maintained a greater height than Balagir, never removing the flute or stilling its haunting tune. He nodded once and closed his eyes.
Balagir positioned the wand on his leathery forehead, and made it flare. Smoke rose, black blood steamed and crackled. The tune stuttered, and blood bubbled from the flute until it fell from his lips. Slowly, almost deliberately, Jakan toppled into the fire, sending a shower of sparks up into the night. Balagir placed the wand upon his smouldering back and sat back to watch the flames.
They burnt brightly for some time, until at last they began to diminish.
He felt something odd. A lightness at his waist. He lifted his cloak to feel his belt slide free. He inspected it for a moment and then threw that too on the pyre. He rubbed his eyes but had no way of telling if they were still black. Something uncomfortable made itself known inside him, however. A gnawing hollowness. The hunger he had heard tell of, and a dryness in his throat that must be thirst. Fresh new problems he must deal with. Ones that could become very real this far from civilisation.
The final ember to remain was the kalaqai. For a moment he feared she was doomed to remain, imprisoned in the wand, but when it cracked in the heat, she drifted free. She hovered uncertainly for a while, and then without warning shot off into the starry sky.
Balagir wistfully watched her go. He hadn’t really expected more. They owed each other nothing.
The fire was dead now and he was hungry. North hadn’t wandered far. Not wishing to linger, he mounted and set off west. He had heard a stream a while back. That should sustain him for a time.
He left the clearing without a backward glance. Jakan had gone, the kalaqai had fled, the ashen were done. He had no energy left for emotion. He felt a strange emptiness. Was this what he had hoped to find? He couldn’t recall. He was no longer certain it even mattered. He clicked the reins and left Umbra behind.
Before he reached the stream, before he had experienced the quenching of the first thirst, something else happened. A red spark caught the corner of his eye, flitting high through the trees. The kalaqai had returned. She descended to hang motionless on the path before him. The world was suddenly deathly silent. He had not known how much he would miss the music. Above he saw stars streaking the sky. One descended down through the trees. As it grew near, he saw it was no star, but a chisp. One from Golden Wood, where the w
and had been. Had Era released them too?
He had no further time to ponder, for the chisp plunged into his chest, knocking him back from the saddle to land with a grunt on the forest path. As he stared up, bewildered, images began to flood his mind.
A bright fire, a dark wood, a garden gate, creaking floorboards, the smell of bread, the sound of laughter, children using sticks as swords, a man telling a story, a woman holding his hand, a girl giving him a flower, stealing eggs from a bird’s nest, apple juice running down his chin, the sting of nettles, a woman playing a harp, crockery clinking, a busy kitchen, the smell of cut grass, someone stroking his face, a rocking cradle, an old lullaby…
0
THE WAND OF IHNOBAN
Normal life took some getting used to, Balagir reflected sagely. For one thing, he could not adjust to how people looked at him. Or didn’t look at him, it should more aptly be stated. He would never have sat so centrally in a tavern without drawing the eyes of all who entered. This is what it was to be invisible, he realised. Far less risky than the old shade-band.
The particular tavern in question did happen to be the Broken Spoke in Mudfoot, to be fair, so there were any number of unsavoury yokels to take your pick from. Now that his eyes were a light grey, he blended in as well as any ragamuffin in said establishment.
He sipped the ale. It had tasted foul the first time he had found himself here, and despite a change of owner—the former landlord had mysteriously vanished one morning, so it happened—it had not improved. But the novel sensation of drinking for nourishment distracted from the flavour.
He had almost not gotten this far. When he had woken on that forest floor, North had wandered off and not heeded his call, likely returned to its old grazing steppes. There were some downsides to being a settler, it quickly became apparent.
Gone too was the kalaqai, liberated at last. But to do what? he wondered. Fade out and cease to exist? Or travel on wherever free will took her? Find her other-self, perhaps. He hadn’t been surprised at her absence. They had always at best tolerated each other. In his mind they were equal now. He having released her, she having released the chisps. Surely the more unpleasant aspects of their history could be put aside.
The chisp had gone too, though he suspected that might not be wholly accurate. It was in him. A condensed compendium of stolen memories.
He could not know if the other chisps had returned without going back to Kirfory or Ozgar, last resting places of the surviving ashen.
They had been there all along of course, protecting the wand. The kalaqai had ordered them to guard it, whilst she had waited for an ashen bold or foolish enough to complete her goals. There was still a long period unaccounted for, but he knew how his life had begun, and he would decide how it would end. The lost years must remain in whatever void they had been hidden.
His missing celador had not been the end of it. As he walked, he began to take stock over what else had changed and found himself lacking. His equipment no longer functioned, and although he was still strong, Reaver weighed just that little too much without the strength-band and emitted none of that electricity useful for dispersing crowds. His boots no longer glowed, his cape no longer glided or turned him to shadow.
In spite of this, he had actually fared better through Bluster Chasm than he previously had. His mind now was full of hunger and thirst and the parched delirium that makes one drift and muse. Or perhaps the ghosts were not interested in lone travellers since they could inflict no harm on others.
So, by the time he had arrived in Mudfoot, he knew he needed the old currency once more. Roule still worked in the forge, unchanged since the first time he had come. The smith did not recognise him nor make any comment. Balagir sold him some interesting artefacts that day, ones that gained him both ample coin and many a raised brow.
The parting hurt, but he dared not dally. Had news of the ashen’s extinction gathered wind, half of it would be worthless.
He kept his boots purely for practical reasons and exchanged Reaver for a pragmatic well-crafted blade, knowing enough about the world to not go unarmed.
Since then he had sat on this stool, drinking, filling in the gaps. Occasionally he reached down to check if his belt had indeed gone. It had.
Sitting in so normal a place, looking and feeling so decidedly mundane, it was with great disbelief that the next person who walked through the door was the lych.
Balagir almost spat his beer.
Jerikin still wore the body of Medic Trell, though he had exchanged the customary whites for road garb. And an axe.
“What brings you here?” Balagir asked, shaking the lych’s hand.
“Same as you, I’d imagine,” he said, waving to the innkeep. “I’m thirsty.”
“Then you know?”
“Look at you. You’re almost a normal man,” Jerikin said, appraising him.
“And the others?”
“No idea. I’ve been on your trail for the last month.”
“Why?”
“I left you in the grass to bring aid from Eskareth. Hid you pretty well. You were barely breathing, impossible to rouse. When I got back you were gone… so was the wand.”
Balagir narrowed his eyes.
“Is that why you’ve come? Listen, Jerikin, there’s something strange I recall about those last moments. I thought I saw you—”
“Use the wand? You did.”
“How? You’re not—”
“An ashen? Ha. No, you’re right there.”
“Then how is a lych connected to this?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out,” Jerikin said, accepting his drink with a nod to the new landlord. “Also, I’m no longer a lych. Not anymore.”
“Because of what I did?”
An odd expression darkened his eyes. “Yes. Because of what you did.”
“So now, you’re almost a normal man too?” Balagir said, trying to return the earlier jest but failing to hide an anxiousness from his voice.
“Ha. Far from normal, let me assure you. But yes, now I’m a man. Destined to remain so too, it seems. I’ve also been horlock, vastly too many of them, as you’ll recall. But before that, in the beginning, I was hiilg.”
Balagir shifted on his stool, knocking the table and setting Jerikin’s drink to sloshing.
“You’re Ihnoban?”
Jerikin clapped. “I thought the wand would have given it away.”
“But how did you… Why didn’t you say?”
“I had forgotten.” Balagir’s exasperation had to wait while the—hiilg, was it now?—took a drink. “You know how long I’ve been alive?” he began coldly. “How many lives I’ve lived? How many deaths I’ve died? So many that I forgot myself. Forgot who I truly was. I have been so many.” Balagir recalled Imram’s revelations: that before dying, Ihnoban had passed on his knowledge to the next wand-wielder, so that traditions could be upheld. But it had been more than just knowledge that had been passed on.
“So, you were all of the hiilg kindlers?”
“Every one,” he said. “The ashen weren’t the only ones cursed by Jakan. What he did to me goes beyond. But despite his wisdom, he never foresaw that I would forget. That even I would question. And, as the final wand-wielder, I discarded it in a southern forest. Wedged it in a rock and walked away. The rock you discovered.”
“So that was why you were there.”
He shrugged. “Possibly. I don’t know what to say. I died as a hiilg and passed into a man. Within a score more lives and deaths, I had almost no memory of the wand. But now that I cast my mind back over so many generations, I remember always being drawn to that part of the world. I recall my strange fascination with the ashen. I could never put my finger on it.”
“You knew Planter once too. When he was ashen of course. And Gwindle.”
“That I did. But it seems terribly long ago. I could not explain my attraction to the ashen, just as I knew not what drew me to the lowlands. But when I saw you had the kalaqai,
I knew our paths were linked. It felt like destiny, though I do not hold stock in such notions and could not have said why.”
“So, you came north for me, or for the wand?”
“A bit of both,” he said plainly.
“To stop me?” Balagir asked uneasily.
“To ensure you destroyed it,” the lych said wryly.
Balagir had only to look at his eyes to see why. One death alone was enough to haunt a man; he would not wish to be privy to Jerikin’s nightmares.
The two odd men sat in silence while they finished their drinks and waved for a refill.
“What will you do now?”
Jerikin shrugged. “Head south. Spend my final years drinking wine. If I’d known this was going to be my last body, I would have chosen someone younger.” Balagir laughed.
“That’s the problem with mortality. Only so much time to drink wine. And what will the well-known Medic tell his patients?”
“That he’s seen too much blood. That the only red liquid that now interests him is from vines, not veins. Will you join me? You know you will want for nothing in Ozgar or Eskareth.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready,” Balagir said, all the memories too fresh.
“The ashen are gone, as are the askaba. You will not be persecuted. But the Dunn will know you, and will honour you until the end. I can think of several inns more favourable than this one down there.”
Balagir looked at the beer and grimaced. “You might be right, there.”
“Then you’ll accompany me? It’s a long journey to make alone.”
Balagir considered it, then rolled his eyes. “Why not. But give me some time. There’s something I must do before we leave.”
Jerikin beamed, and they clashed their mugs.
The casual onlooker that day in the Broken Spoke would have observed nothing unusual about the two ordinary men smiling over their beer; perhaps only reserving comment that one of them wore an eccentric pair of boots.