by Evren, S. K.
“Let’s imagine a mountain, not too high mind you, and on top of this mountain is a man. This man is very thirsty, but the only water is at the bottom of the mountain. Now, if you come to this scene, and you know that the man is thirsty, and you know that the water is at the base of the mountain, you know that the man will come down.
“Now, let’s imagine that you don’t know the man is thirsty and that you don’t know the water is at the base of the mountain. You may even not know the man is there at all. The person who knows of the man and the water can potentially tell you what will happen. The person who doesn’t know of either, well, won’t really have that potential.”
“Okay,” Chance said, not quite convinced. “You’re saying we’re heading for water…”
“In a manner of speaking, yes, I suppose so. You see, the thing is, there are many ways for the man to get to the water, and there are many things he can do when he gets to it. He could stumble and fall along the way. He could even decide to stay where he is, to wrestle with his thirst. You’d be surprised how many people prefer to make their way to the water by the hardest path they can find. I’m not sure who they think they’re fighting. They really don’t agitate anyone but themselves.” She shrugged.
“Well,” Chance said, “if you know about the mountain, and we’re the man, and tomorrow—sorry, today—is the water, why don’t you just tell us what is going to happen?”
Kitti sighed. She looked at Chance, her eyes filled with compassion and regret.
“I wish that I could, Sasha, I wish that I could. It really isn’t quite as simple as that. My man, mountain and water were just an example for you. You see, I can see quite a bit farther than you can, and quite a bit more—”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not trying to be insulting, Sasha,” Kitti explained, picking up on Chance’s tone. “Please try to take this in the manner of an explanation, and not as any sort of slight or abuse. Imagine again that you were standing at the base of our mountain looking up. Now, you can see the mountain, and the trees, and perhaps even the man at the top. You can see various paths to the top and various ways the man could climb down.
“Now, imagine that you were smaller, much smaller than you are now. Imagine that you were so small that you were no taller than a caterpillar. Now, what would happen if you were to try to look at the mountain again? It has become so much larger than you, the distances so much greater. You might not even see the mountain. It might be hidden behind a tree or a good-sized rock—”
“Are you saying we’re some kind of worms to you?!” Chance exploded.
“You see!” Vae yelled from her tree. “I told you! I told you!”
Kitti looked sadly at Vae and then at Chance.
“No, you’re not worms to me, Sasha, you’re just different. I didn’t say ‘worm,’ I said ‘caterpillar.’ Don’t forget, caterpillars turn into one of Creation’s most beautiful creatures. It isn’t the form that’s different, Sasha, it’s the perception. We perceive our own truths of the world, and it is from these perceptions that we form the very substance of our reality. I see more and I see further because I perceive differently than you do. This form that you see me in is not truly what I am.”
“What are you then?” Cardalan and Chance asked together.
“I wish I could show you, Dears, but it is your limitation that place me in this form. You see me as your perception allows you.”
“What does that mean?” Chance asked with a hint of exasperation.
“There is more to my form than you see. I’m not hiding it from you, though. As with the rock and the mountain, it’s being obscured by your perception. In this case, what you see of my form is the rock, behind it lies the mountain.”
Everyone stared at her.
As your friend Drothspar saw, I can also change my form slightly—”
“Slightly?” Drothspar interrupted. “You were a cat.”
“Yes,” she smiled at him, “slightly. I am rather good at it though, don’t you think?”
“Rather, yes,” he agreed, smiling his phantom smile.
“Thank you,” she replied. “That’s a very charming smile you have there.”
“You—you saw that? How could you see that?”
“You saw him smile?” Chance asked, a hint of jealousy in her voice.
“Yes,” Kitti nodded. “Like I say, we perceive things in different ways.” She turned to Chance. “There is more to your friend Drothspar than you see.”
Chance stared at Kitti, lost for words.
“Honestly,” Kitti said, “what do you suppose is holding him together? Why do you think I knew that your friend Vae couldn’t hurt him?” She looked at them all, amazed by their lack of comprehension. She faced Drothspar.
“There is more to you, Drothspar, than a collection of bones.” Her voice, which had been lighthearted since they had met her, took on a deep, serious tone. “Remember that.” She looked meaningfully at the finger Petreus had removed from his hand. “I think you’ve experienced some of what I speak.” She lifted her gaze to his face. “I think you are experiencing something of it now. Something is different for you, isn’t it? Something that you thought empty has been filled, something that you thought lost has somehow been found…”
“How did you know?” Drothspar asked in a quiet whisper that chilled even those who were accustomed to his voice. Kitti’s eyes glowed with a sad, longing compassion. Drothspar nodded his head.
“What?” Chance asked in a small voice. “What is it?”
“Li is here,” Drothspar said. “Li is here, in Æostemark.”
Chapter 37 – Written in Rock
While Kitti continued to talk, Drothspar left the campfire and sat alone, away from the others. He had been tied to Li by an unseen bond. He had felt it when they were at the tree-line. Li was in Æostemark.
There was something different about the feeling, something askew. He could feel her, but it felt as if it wasn’t really her. He knew the most logical reason that the feeling was different; although the word “logical” made him want to laugh—and cry. He was dead.
Worse yet, if Li was in Æostemark, she was dead, too.
As small as it had been, as long as he hadn’t known, there had always been hope that Li was still alive. Why wouldn’t she be? Perhaps she’d lost her memory, forgotten who she was and where she was from. He’d heard of people like that. He’d heard of soldiers who had been hit in the head and forgotten everything about themselves.
She was close. She was in Æostemark. Drothspar remembered the ranks of dead around the ruined city. They hadn’t seen a single living person. The truth of it struck him in his phantom stomach—cold, hard, empty. Li was dead.
But he felt her! If he could feel her, he reasoned, she couldn’t be dead as they were supposed to be. She could be like him. Would she be like him? Would she be anything of herself at all?
There were some things he’d have to take care of first. There were things now that he didn’t want to risk, didn’t want to lose. He had lost so much because of his own mistakes seven years earlier. He couldn’t—he wouldn’t—let that happen again. But he would need help.
Sometime later, Drothspar approached Corporal Kelton. He handed the soldier something wrapped in a cloth and spoke to the man seriously. Tears ran down the corporal’s cheeks and he started to protest. Drothspar spoke to him again, softly, soothingly. He squeezed Kelton’s shoulder gently and shook his hand. Drothspar glanced once at Kitti, who was, herself, speaking seriously with Vae. There was a strange look in Vae’s eyes. It was a look that Drothspar had not yet seen there—it was weak, and it was struggling. It was hope.
Kitti paused for a moment and looked across the camp at Drothspar. She nodded her head and raised her hand in a small wave.
“Good luck, Drothspar. May the Maker be with you in all the dark places you must go.”
“Thank you, Kitti,” he thought back. He felt a warm touch in his mind as she heard him say her
name.
“Miss,” Corporal Kelton said to Chance.
“Yes?” she replied to the corporal. She stared at him for a second before her eyes went hard, then wide. “What?” she said quickly, “what is it?”
“Miss, my Lord Drothspar asked me to give you this,” he said, handing her the cloth-wrapped bundle.
“Dear Sasha,” began the letter etched into the stone of his tablet. “I want to thank you, Dear Girl, for all that you’ve done for me, for all the time you’ve spent with me, for everything that I can name and not name. When I was alone, you gave me friendship. When I was outcast and unclean, you gave me your hand. When I was dead, you—you—gave me life.
“I know that you would go with me, Sasha. I know it in my heart and I feel it in my soul. I can’t ask you, and I can’t let you, and I hope you’ll understand. I lost so much in my life, so very much because of my own foolish stupidity. The Sweet, Blessed Maker Above has seen fit to show me kindness and friendship and honor in you, and I could never suffer that loss.
“Sasha, there’s something I have to tell you, something I should probably have said a while ago. I wanted to tell you that your professors were wrong. They weren’t just wrong about spirits, about life after death. They were wrong about love, too. Because Sasha, I tell you now as humbly and as truly as if I were before the Maker, Himself, on my knees—I love you, my Dear, Sweet Chance. I love you beyond measure. And I know that I have no hidden motives—and you should know that, too. You have seen into my heart, my Dear Sasha, and you know that there is nowhere there to hide.
“I’m sorry I have to go like this. Be nice to Kelton. Remember me.
“Love, in and for, always.
“Drothspar.”
Sasha looked at the tablet, at the front and the back. Tears streamed down her face and she dropped the slate. Corporal Kelton caught the tablet before it hit the ground and Sasha looked at him. She tried to walk past him, but Kelton caught her around the waist.
“I’m sorry, Miss,” he said softly, like a loving father. “I can’t let you go.”
She reached for her daggers, but her hands, wet with tears, slipped off the handles. Her fists flew forward and battered Kelton on the face and chest. He took it stoically, letting her hit him over and over. All he said was, “there, there, Miss, it’ll all be okay.”
Kitti came over with the unbound Vae. They took the girl from the battered corporal and held her close. He handed them the tablet and walked away slowly.
Drothspar looked up and saw the pale light of morning piercing through the trees. He had often shied away from weapons since that drunken night so long ago. His mind had shuddered away from the fear that he had, perhaps, killed his own friend in a drunken brawl. He had kept that guilt, that fear, from that moment to this, and he had been reluctant to handle weapons, not out of a fear of the weapons or what he might do, but what he might remember.
He drew the cursed dagger from under his cloak and looked at it. It was rusted, true, but it was surface rust. The blade, itself, did not appear to be deeply pitted. The edge, lined with reddish-brown oxidization, was still keen, even jagged from the rust. He gripped the blade tightly in his hand. He felt the wood of the handle compress in his grip. He opened his hand and saw indentations where his fingers had been.
Kitti had told him that he was more than a collection of bones. She had stressed that point, urged him to remember it. He stepped out of the forest and into the plains around Æostemark. He walked toward the ranks of the dead with purpose. What was it that she wanted him to remember? He looked again at the indentations he had made in the dagger’s handle. It would take a very strong grip to do that. He pushed back the sleeve of his robe. He saw nothing there but bones. There were no muscles to strengthen his grip and yet it had been strong. If his strength wasn’t based on muscles, what was it?
Vae had passed a dagger through his neck. Petreus had pulled the very bones from his hand. He was something more than just those bones; that was certain. What was holding him together? His soul? He had never heard of the soul possessing these sorts of properties, but then, he had never heard of a walking corpse—outside of ghost stories, anyway.
If it wasn’t soul, and it wasn’t flesh, blood, and sinew, what else could there be? The answer came to him as he asked the question. What existed beyond soul, flesh and blood? What existed beyond reason, logic, and emotion?
Faith. Belief. By the Sweet Maker, he thought to himself, I am a creature of Faith!
Something eased in his being at that point, as if an ever-present anxiety had finally fled, allowing him to relax. He neared the outer ranks of the dead with his mind at ease and his body ready. He was going to find Li, and nothing was going to stop him. He had come to an understanding of himself, and he knew his purpose. He said a quick prayer, asking forgiveness for those he would find this day. He asked the Maker to guide him, to let his aim be true. He told the Maker he would be sending souls to Judgment this day. He told himself he might just be joining them.
Drothspar passed through the formations of dead without challenge. He looked at the creatures, each with forms that were variations of his own. A miasma of decay hovered in the air. Though he walked among them, none acknowledged his presence. Their blank or hollow eyes stared in whatever direction they faced, oblivious, it seemed, to all around them. Their sheer number astounded him. He admitted to himself that he was looking for a fight. He thanked the Maker that he didn’t have to wade through hundreds of trapped souls fighting.
A movement several ranks away caught Drothspar’s eye. He froze where he was, waiting, watching. A soldier threaded his way through the dead, heading directly for Drothspar. The man was flesh and blood, but his uniform and armor were tattered, stained with blood and decay. Drothspar wondered why the man chose to wear those clothes, and what the red cloth around his arm signified.
The soldier stopped as he neared the platoon where Drothspar stood. He started inspecting the dead, one by one. He pushed at them, prodded them, and knocked several to the ground. Drothspar remained still as the soldier neared.
The soldier’s behavior was erratic, violent. His eyes, however, were glazed, his expression almost soft. He was two skeletons away when Drothspar noticed the soldier’s pallor. The man’s skin was pale, nearly translucent. His complexion would have better fit a young milk-maid… or the dead! He reached out a hand toward Drothspar, who hit the soldier square in the chest with an open palm.
The soldier staggered back into the rear of another rank of the dead. He ripped his sword from his ragged leather belt and swung. Drothspar, his dagger already in his hand, caught the blow, the steel of their weapons ringing in the morning air. The soldier’s face showed no emotion, but his movements became more erratic, angry. He chopped repeatedly at Drothspar with his sword and Drothspar easily parried each blow.
The bodies surrounding the fight ignored the combatants. They remained standing in ranks as the soldier’s wild blows bit into their bones and both fighters shoved them for room. Drothspar realized that the dead were not going to help the soldier, and he was grateful for that, but the sound was going to draw attention sooner or later.
He dropped his defensive posture and moved to attack. He let his emotions take the bit into their teeth and he unleashed a furious assault on the soldier. The soldier, however, made no move to defend himself. He continued to make wild attempts at striking Drothspar, each of which the skeleton neatly avoided.
Drothspar ran his dagger into the soldier’s chest and wrenched the man to his right. The soldier didn’t scream, didn’t wince, confirming Drothspar’s suspicion that the man had been killed once before. He jerked his dagger free of the strange corpse. The soldier’s face remained expressionless, but the eyes—the eyes revealed a longing, and a hope. Almost as if fighting with itself, the soldier jerkily pulled his own sword to his right side, as if he were about to make an obvious, and clumsy, horizontal swing at Drothspar’s abdomen. Drothspar looked into the man’s eyes and intuitivel
y understood. He spun quickly to his right, bringing the dagger in his left hand around in a wide, incredibly fast arc. The soldier jerked his blade upright at his side in a last warring attempt to defend his body. Drothspar’s blade struck the sword, shattering it and slicing through the man’s neck. The soldier’s head toppled to the ground, his body remaining upright.
The body continued to stand and Drothspar stared at it, amazed. It seemed to him as if the headless corpse were trying to orient itself. It reached its left hand toward him, too accurately to have been a guess. Drothspar looked down at the severed head and realized the eyes were still focused on him. He ducked the outstretched hand and kicked the loose head several feet away. The body swiveled where it stood, as if it had been spun rapidly in circles and let loose dizzy. Drothspar shoved the corpse over and it fell heavily to the ground. Picking up the hilted half of the soldier’s broken sword, Drothspar drove it through the body and several inches into the hard-packed dirt. He stood up, took one last look at where the head had landed, then turned to continue on toward Æostemark.
It took some time for Drothspar to make his way to the breach in the north wall of the city. Though he passed hundreds of dead, he did not encounter any more soldiers like the one he had decapitated. The sky was cloudy, but he watched the progress of the sun as best he could. It seemed to him that it was about an hour before midday as he passed the ruined wall and entered the rubble-strewn streets.
The rank-and-file dead were largely consigned to the fields around Æostemark. Drothspar moved easily through the debris, keeping to the shadows, his cloth-wrapped feet making little noise. He made his way to the northern edge of the town square and looked out over some sort of ceremony.