The Broken Man

by Hawkings Austin

  Piju knew that the spirits of the dead needed sacrifice to stay strong. The blood of men and animals contains the essence of life, which the dead desire. Controlling the dead is sorcery, as much slavery as attacking a Bolg village and dragging the women and children back to Ard. Appeasing the dead, setting them to rest, that was simple spirit work.

  The Bolg just laid a spirit to rest, using only the simplest magic with willing spirits. Piju touched his knife, where his father dwelled. As a hunter, Piju had performed a simple ceremony for animal spirits that might not know they had died. Piju couldn’t see the animal spirits, so he had performed the ritual at every successful hunt. The sacrifice for a restless animal spirit was a bit of its own blood, something they would eat, maybe a bit of hair or flesh. There was enough energy in the fresh blood that they would know that they had died. Enough of a binding to show them the way back to the earth.

  On their journey around Pywer, Waylaid had visited many holy sites where the spirits of his ancestors had defended the Fomor from their angry gods. Waylaid had given them small sacrifices, mostly birds, and spoke with the spirits about the gods. Many of those spirits that had defended Pywer for countless years now hated the Fomor as much as the gods they had fought.

  “These are the wages of slavery,” Waylaid had said.

  Does this spirit hate the Fomor? Does it hate the Bolg?

  The courtyard was deserted and dark, but he imagined for a minute there was someone standing there. He blinked, and it was gone. There was an image in his mind, like the afterimage of the sun against his eyelids. The shape was like a fire in the shape of a ball. The afterimage stayed in his mind, but he couldn’t see it with his eyes.

  His skin crawled; he remembered placing his hand into the fire. It was an odd thing to remember just then. He brushed the thought away, thinking of how many times he had burned himself cooking the meat. Weirdly, he remembered putting his hand on the hot coals of a burning log. That had never happened, couldn’t ever happen.

  It was like the weirdest daydream, a daydream of something unpleasant which he couldn’t wish away. It seemed to push itself into his thoughts. He blinked again, clearing his mind. It was like he was falling asleep, but it was so dark, there was little difference between his eyes being open or shut, a faint glow off the clouds and the outline of the Bolg shacks along the wall, the oven, the women’s quarters. He stood suddenly and paced back and forth, swinging his arms.

  There was a man, outlined by fire, standing at the edge of the courtyard. Piju blinked against the light, dim as it was, and walked toward him. The door of the oven slowly opened, its pivot hinge grinding against the stone socket. The fire inside had been banked. It had to be built up during the day to heat the ovens, but flames crawled across the logs in the fresh air.

  Piju walked toward the doorway and found that the inside of the building was well lit, the firelight making the walls glow with a warmth that took the wet chill out of the night. He had gotten cold sitting and stepped to the door of the oven. He could pass inside easily. There was a place to hang meat to be cold smoked, but no one would hang meat here. The smoke and flames had been so uneven that the meat they’d attempted to smoke had been ruined.

  The stone beneath his feet was a veined marble, yellowed with age and use, but clearly an old floor first quarried by a Fomor. His master’s words echoed in his mind.

  “Look for what is new, what is different. Look for what is old, what is unchanging.”

  Piju realized then that this was a very old floor and a very new bakery. The door slammed behind him. The fire did not bank, but continued to grow.

  “Spirit of my father preserve me.” Piju knew he had been too curious and not afraid enough.

  The fire wanted a sacrifice.

  Piju reached for the door.

  “I understand now, I’ll go get you a hen.” He shook the door, but it was latched on the outside. “I’ll get you a boar and hang...” He coughed uncontrollably for a few moments. The smoke was getting into his lungs. He banged on the door, but the door was thick and nothing happened. He had no more air for yelling, and he was dizzy, near to collapse.

  Piju moved over to the fire. The night had been cool, cold even, but the fire brought up the temperature near it very quickly. The door side of the oven wasn’t very hot, but the smoke was unbearable. The fire side had much less smoke because there was a small vent beneath the fire, but the heat was terrible.

  “Spirits who were Men, I call you. I ask for your protection.”

  The fire wanted blood. Piju felt its desire as though he wanted to drink the blood himself. His mouth tasted of copper and smoke.

  Piju knelt before the fire, sipping the thin cool air from the vent, as the fire baked the skin of his head and back.

  “Waylaid, master, save me,” he pleaded.

  The smoke and heat pushed waves of weakness and nausea through him. He could not break down the brick walls of this oven, he could not break down the door. He pulled the stone knife from his belt, his hands fumbling with the leather wrappings of the hilt.

  “Spirit of my father, protect me,” he asked.

  The knife tumbled from his clumsy fingers. He focused on it as it fell toward the vent, and his left hand flashed out, snake fast, snagging it from the air. The pain was slow in coming, but he saw that in his confusion, he had caught the blade and not the hilt. He blinked hard, trying to clear the sudden blur from his eyes.

  The nausea returned, doubled, and he nearly retched into the vent. Crying, he pried the razor sharp edges of the obsidian blade from his left hand. He made a fist, holding the blood from pouring out from the wound, as best he could.

  Nausea and desire pulsed in his head, a soundless throb that overwhelmed him.

  Piju raised his hand above the fire, above the coals of his nightmare daydreams, and the blood dribbled down into the flames.

  The strength poured out of him, and he fell forward, catching himself with his forehead on the edge of an overhang. A small brick bread oven built into the walls, which stuck out over the fire. He shook with weakness and pain, nausea wracking his stomach, his lungs burning.

  “Waylaid,” he said weakly, “save me.”

  He fell, away from the fire, into a pocket of cooler air. The leather was unwrapped from the edge of his knife, revealing the first letters of his adult name. Waylaid had scribed the characters “Pi and maybe Ga” and he laughed weakly. “My adult name is also Piju.”

  The door came away from its hinge pin, snapped in two by a tremendous blow, the pieces falling a pace short of Piju’s head. Broad hands lifted him and dragged him into the night, but he had faded and remembered nothing more of that night.

  CHAPTER 11 THE WAITING

  Evening, Midsummer’s Day, Year Twenty-Seven of King Cail’s Reign

  Any child may hold the moon between his fingers, but no man may shift it. Such is the wisdom of the Good Father.

  - Daen Proverb

  Seth sat a decent distance from the mothers, the other Blessed Folk, the dogs, and all the excitement. He let the pleasant sound of their speaking wash over him, without trying to figure out what they were saying. The mother was crying again, screaming her daughter’s name, over and over again. It was somehow less unpleasant if the painful words were just a collection of sounds.

  I’m thinking in the Blessed Tongue again, after speaking Ruad most of my life. Working with Waylaid is frustrating. He knew the man would never be grateful to him for the quick trip. He knew he would never receive a word of thanks from anyone. Some days, being a low-ranked warrior priest is better than being a Bolg slave, but I haven’t had that day in quite a while.

  The Ruad woman’s friends were leading her away from her house. Seth had heard of the peasant ritual of crying for the dead but had never seen it happen. The Ruad philosophers did not believe in the existence of a soul. Such things were literally unheard in Ard, but the peasants believed in them. Without her daughter’s body, the mother couldn’t call the pieces of her s
hattered spirit back to her.

  Waylaid had made it even worse for Seth. He had said that her spirit wasn’t shattered, but that it was stolen. There might be no purpose to the mother’s ritual mourning at all. Seth didn’t know how effective the rites of the Bolg or Ruad might be; he really didn’t know anything about them but second-hand stories. It just seemed important that the woman’s heartrending cries should be worth something.

  Seth dwelled on his priestly training. Like the cries of the Ruad mother, the Blessed Mother could call a soul back to the earth. She could place it in an unborn child or an animal. That was done as part of her justice, as a reward for good deeds or as a punishment for crimes. The Good Father could take the soul to a place of rest, where it would know the purpose of all things and never hurt again. Few men went to the Father. The Dragon was first created among the angels. He had no call on souls, but sorcerers were said to sell their souls for power. A trip to the Lair was considered the worst of all punishments, as the Dragon would consume the soul, slowly, over many years.

  Murder is well covered under the Law but not the theft of a soul. The Blessed Folk simply assume that it is the gods’ business to care for our souls. There has never been a case before where we were supposed to do anything about it.

  Given Waylaid’s opinion that a sorcerer could destroy a soul, Seth’s faith in the Law was a little shaken. Honestly, after today, Seth’s faith in everything was shaken.

  “Master Driver, sir. Is he really an evil sorcerer?”

  Seth was startled out of his self-indulgent reverie and turned to see the Ruad, a small boy, standing next to him. Seth opened his mouth and closed it again. Lying is a sin, he thought. But, the Ruad boy was standing there. There wasn’t much to him but some scrawny limbs in a dirty wool tunic. Seth didn’t owe him an answer, he just felt like venting aloud to an audience.

  “Hey Boy, what’s your name?”

  “I’m Tal,” the boy said, tilting his head as though to look at a strange bird. He pointed behind Seth. “That’s Galen.”

  Seth turned quickly; the boy had walked up behind him without making a noise. Not bad, he thought. He is young, but he reminds me of a smaller and paler version of Piju.

  “So,” said Galen, “is he?”

  Seth took a deep breath and decided on the tack to take.

  “One, I’m not a master driver, I’m a … well… basically to a Ruad I’d be a journeyman priest and warrior.”

  “Do priests have to believe in gods and stuff?” Tal asked. “That’s what dad says.”

  “They do,” replied Seth, “but just two, and it isn’t as hard as it sounds.”

  The boys frowned at him, trying to decide if he were making fun of them or being serious. Galen didn’t take the diversion for long.

  “He’s an evil sorcerer, isn’t he?”

  Seth frowned at the young man’s perseverance.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I think Waylaid is at least a magician but maybe not an evil sorcerer.” He stopped himself from too much honesty. At least not anymore. The Fir Ruad didn’t need to know what he thought about Waylaid. “I’m not really sure right now, but he is a real magician. I saw him make a woman appear out of thin air.”

  “Wow,” said both boys together. “Can we see her?”

  “No,” Seth replied. “He made her vanish again, but she was pretty.”

  “What did she look like?” asked Galen.

  Seth described her in as much detail as he could remember. The boys were in as much awe as he was of a magician that could make a person appear out of thin air. Seth thought that Waylaid would be the most popular man in Ard if he would do that trick for a few crowds.

  “Did he kill Ella?” Tal asked.

  “He isn’t bad like that,” Seth said with assurance. “He says that there is an evil sorcerer out there.” Seth waved his hands toward the woods. “He is trying to find a way to track him down and kill him.”

  “Can we help?” they asked.

  “Umm,” Seth was at a loss. “I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “You haven’t seen any evil sorcerers in the woods, have you?”

  “No, just the Shadow Man.”

  “You saw him?”

  The boys nodded uncomfortably.

  “We yelled ‘Shadow Man’ and ran away,” Tal said, “but Ella didn’t hear us. She just went and played, and the Shadow Man got her.”

  Galen was crying, bravely, without making a sound.

  “Come on,” said Seth. “Let’s go talk to Waylaid.”

  Seth rose quickly and the hike across the field took almost no time at all. There was no one guarding the small house where Ella had lived.

  Waylaid came out of the bedroom when they knocked, and the children near ran away. Seth pressed his hands to the middle of their backs and pushed them into the room.

  “Master Waylaid,” said Seth. “I’ve brought a gift for you.” He spoke in Ruad, to be kind to the boys. “These children have seen the Shadow Man. I thought you might want to know.”

  “Thank the Good Father,” said Waylaid, his voice as loud and deep as thunder. “I got nothing off of the girl. I was afraid that I would have to wait till the eh…” he trailed off for a moment. “Until the killer returned to try again.”

  Waylaid switched to the language of the Blessed Folk. “And THAT would have meant staying up all night in the fields. Intolerable.”

  “Damned Fomor,” replied Seth, in the same language.

  “Yes, true. Very likely true.” Waylaid nodded in agreement.

  He limped out of the bedroom, the wooden cap on his left foot clomping on the packed earth floor, and settled himself onto a bench meant for half the family. He straightened his back and stretched his legs across half the width of the house. He looked first at Seth, then at each boy. They were even more unsettled by the strangeness of his walk and the hideous nature of his face.

  In the stories the boys later told to their friends, they thought that the turtle shell in the middle of his chest had grown out of the bones of his sternum. The black beard and horrible scar obscured much of Waylaid’s face, leading them to believe that he was half human and half animal. From the way he walked, they believed that he had a hoof on one leg and a normal foot on the other. It was true that his body was covered in the black hair of a sheep. But it wasn’t true that he wore a kilt because of the thick black tail hanging down behind.

  They stared at the center of his chest in rapt fascination. Having never seen a magician before, they imagined any number of possible things from one moment to the next, but the silence stretched long.

  “You call him ‘The Shadow Man,’ huh?”

  His voice rumbled the question, doing as little as he could to frighten the boys, but they still seemed certain that their deaths were imminent. They nodded.

  “Tell me, does he have a shadow like a normal man?”

  They nodded; their eyes wide with fear.

  “Does he have a sun in the middle of his chest?” Waylaid mimed a ball around his turtle shell.

  They shook their heads.

  “He has stars.”

  “Hmm,” said Waylaid, “that is very interesting all by itself.” He thought for a moment. “Is he a big man, like myself?” asked Waylaid.

  They shook their heads again.

  “He’s big like Dada.”

  Waylaid sat there, twiddling ideas like Oren twiddled numbers. The man has a Cloak of Shadows. That sorcery was only taught in the Fomor fortress hidden in the secret mountains. The scholars there didn’t take a new student very often, and Waylaid only knew of two, other than himself, that had travelled to Pywer. The Shadow Man is trained in High Sorcery but is no larger than a Ruad? He thought the words with capital letters. Only Fomor had ever been accepted at the secret fortress.

  Waylaid tested the answers he had gotten from the spirit of the fields.

  “Tell me what color his hair is, would you?”

  The boys shook their heads.

  “He hasn�
�t got a head,” Galen said. Tal pointed to his neck and made a cutting motion.

  “But his shadow has a head?” asked Waylaid.

  They nodded together. “But,” Tal added, as if Waylaid wasn’t very bright, “you can’t tell hair color from a shadow.”

  “I was testing you.”

  “Ahh,” the boys said. They seemed to agree that it was a good test.

  “Boys,” Waylaid said. “The Shadow Man has stolen a piece of little Ella. The dogs can’t track a ghost, but I might be able to. I need a piece of Ella that still has her spirit on it.”

  The boys, and Seth, just looked confused. They couldn’t imagine a piece of themselves with or without their spirit on it.

  “Did she cut her hair, her nails, lose a tooth, cut herself and bleed on something?”

  “She bled on some thorns,” Seth said, “when she was running. I can get them.”

  “That might have to do.”

  Seth got up and stepped out, leaving the two boys standing by the doorway, staring at the floor to avoid looking at Waylaid.

  “I’ll go ask Ella’s Nan,” Tal said, “maybe she knows something.”

  Waylaid started to stop him. “I don’t think her mother …” but Tal was gone.

  It was quiet in the room. Waylaid did not shift or move, waiting as patiently as a statue. Galen stared at him, fidgeting very little.

  “Do ghosts eat deer?” he asked.

  Waylaid looked at him and started to give the obvious answer, but then he paused. He knew that ghosts did not eat, but a headless ghost wouldn’t control himself very well. He might have killed things purely for the joy of killing. Waylaid thought some more, and the quiet stretched long. A headless ghost could only be made of a sorcerer, but someone had to help him make the transition. That someone might have maintained some control over his student and victim. That someone might still be out there, lurking in the dark, somewhere.

  “Sorcerers eat just the same as men,” Waylaid said.

  Waylaid didn’t need further information. Clearly there was someone taking deer near this boy, someone who wasn’t allowed to. The boy would know, would have heard, if it was another family of farmers, so it was someone else. Was there someone, the master sorcerer, camping in the woods near here?