Calcifer

by E. R. F. Jordan

  “The doctor’s companion.”

  “Yes. She’s a real cutthroat with that sword. Took down two of these militiamen before I could even register what was happening.” He stood up. “I killed the third. To keep my cover, of course.” Bolton didn’t look completely convinced––not remotely––but Morgan didn’t much care. He knew that the captain would seize the lie and run with it––exaggerate it, even. It would deflect the prince’s fury onto the doctor, and that served the both of them just fine. The silhouette of the captain looked down on him, contemplative.

  “You had ample opportunity to deal with the doctor, like we agreed.” He drew his sword, but Morgan stood his ground, observing how the captain’s face contorted with frustration, cataloguing each shade of red. “Why shouldn’t I gut you right here and lay you out with the rest of the peasantry?” He gestured vaguely to the dead officers.

  Morgan let a sly grin pull at his lips, turning his hips effeminately. “Maybe you’re just too fond of me, Captain.”

  He heard the wooden panel of the carriage hit his head before he felt it. One of his knives fell from its holster and clattered to the ground, and before he could reach for the other, his hand was pinned to the carriage as well. He felt the huge man twist at the waist and anticipated his blade, twisting at the shoulder just in time to avoid a rough thrust. Bolton’s blade planted itself in the splintered wood. Morgan yanked down and out of the man’s grip, dodging under his arm and into the open highway.

  “I know where they’re going,” He said, no urgency in his voice. “She told me all about it on the way to your camp. I know where they’re going, and what Saul is after.” The captain whirled around, and Morgan jerked to the side. A rock soared over his shoulder, and, judging from a round of surprised grunts at his back, landed somewhere near the company of soldiers. “You know as well as I do that the moment she hits those woods, she’s as good as invisible. You can’t run full-force into the Boreal; warmongers better than you have tried and paid for it with leagues of frozen corpses. But, for the rest of my commission, I’ll lead you right to them.”

  “You’ll lead me right to them for the fact that I don’t cleave you in half tonight,” Bolton barked, looking furiously from Morgan to his men, who had formed a semi-circle around the pair. Some of them stepped forward, arms ready, but not as many as he might’ve liked. Morgan could see beatings to come in Bolton’s expression. Poor souls.

  “No, but I’ll lead you in circles for half as much. I refuse to go any lower––I have bills to pay.” He was beginning to enjoy this game.

  Bolton glowered, the height of anger, then took his hand deliberately from the hilt of his sword. Morgan knew he was in the clear now. “Half of your remaining pay.”

  “Two-thirds, and I’ll take the rest when her leftovers are at the prince’s feet.”

  “Deal.” Bolton pointed to the horizon, where not a few hours before the doctor faded into the deep blue. “Get moving. We’ll meet a day’s ride north of here, at the Old King’s Crossroads.”

  Morgan nodded, the sultry smile never leaving his face. The soldiers parted as he stepped silently across the cobbled stone, directing him towards the rising moon. While it was true that he didn’t know where they were headed precisely, he had an idea they would never be too far ahead of him; if his aim with a bow was as good as he liked to think, Julius wouldn’t be running for a long time.

  As darkness took him, the hunter began to hum.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MONTHS PASS. THE LONG HAUL.

  Ignoring the dull throb of her leg, July stood perfectly still, breaths shallow, focus whittled to a fine point. Her eyes flitted between the trunks of the trees. About thirty feet away, a spotted deer, antlers blending with the bone-tan branches of the naked forest, grazed at frost-chilled grass. The pickings were slim––a fact both hunter and hunted were aware of.

  She took one deep, quiet breath and eased herself to a knee, careful not to crunch in the blanket of snow. Arrow already in hand, she drew the string of her bow, nocking its wooden shaft gently. She never took her eyes off the deer, counting his antlers as she waited for the right moment. It was in moments like these, where her attention was completely consumed by instinct, that she found a semblance of peace. The stillness of the hunt was one of the few things that could ease her nerves, relax her sore muscles, take her mind off the uncomfortable warmth in her stomach, that anxious hum around her edges whenever she heard her name, felt her hair unexpectedly on the back of her neck, thought too much about–

  She let out a violent breath, unable to hold it any longer. The deer looked up, and they made distant eye contact. She let the arrow fly, but the deer was already bounding away, and the arrow disappeared from sight. She jogged clumsily over, hoping she hadn’t foolishly depleted her already starving supply of arrows.

  Suddenly that anxiety was upon her like white fire, blazing into her nerves, past the cold and her thick hide jacket. Adrenaline flooded into her, convincing her body that a predator lurked nearby, turning its coiled strength against her. She began to run.

  Her gait was uneven, with her left leg aggressively protesting the burst of speed. She didn’t care––she had to keep moving. It would keep her nerves––traitors––behind her. As long as she was running, the adrenaline would burn off, and she wouldn’t have time to think, only react. She hopped over the gnarled root of a dangerously crooked tree, its off-white bark only barely different from the snow. The landing was clumsy but she kept moving––that was the important thing.

  Keep moving. Keep moving. Don’t look back, just keep moving.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Distantly, Mel heard stomping through the snow. She didn’t turn to meet it––only continued poking the fire with a damp, peeling stick. It was a pitiful fire, but it was warmth, something scarce in this frosty air, and she counted herself lucky for it.

  As she suspected, July burst onto the scene a moment later, chest heaving. She practically collapsed on the ground next to her, into a wet patch of snow.

  “You shouldn’t be running on that leg,” Mel said, carefully toneless. July had been flighty lately and she had no intention of inflaming her.

  “Can’t help it,” She panted. “Clears my head.”

  “There are other ways to clear your head. Ones that don’t slow the healing process.”

  “Like?”

  “Meditation?” Mel offered. “I won’t pretend to be religiously inclined, but in times of stress I often find myself meditating for hours.” July didn’t seem comforted by the suggestion, so she continued. “It’s easy. Find something to focus on, like a cloud, or the grass––well, maybe not this grass, but you get my point. Then–”

  “I already got this spiel from Lin,” July cut across, a touch too harshly for Mel’s taste. “I get that far, and then when my head is all empty, its even easier for all this… this stuff to get back in. It just walks right through like it owns the place. Meditation doesn’t work for me.” She lifted her own stick from the edge of the fire, and began stripping the bark away, troubled. Mel sighed. She had such a hard time getting July to open up, and when she was right here, ready to crack, she didn’t know what to say.

  “Is something on your mind?” Mel tried. July looked to her, then back to the fire, tossing the stick in a lazy arc.

  “I don’t know,” She responded. It was clear that her hobbled leg was a source of frustration, but she wondered if that was the only thing bothering her. She was prone to long stretches of quietness, and often Mel had to repeat her name two or three times before it garnered a response. Overall, she was concerned; this was not the headstrong young woman she’d left Little Rock with. “Leg, I guess.”

  Mel nodded. “If we keep on the herbal regimen I’ve worked out, you should be able to walk right by the time we start the journey home.”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  She tried again. “Is there anything else?”

  “No meat to
night,” July mused.

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “I was hunting, and I––when I saw the deer, I started thinking about his antlers, and… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” They lapsed into silence, watching the fire crackle weakly in the dwindling light. There was no time to hunt, or forage––tonight would be leftover scraps, carefully rationed. To her surprise, it was July that broke the silence again.

  “What’s it like? Being a pacifist, I mean.”

  Mel considered the question carefully, as she always did. “Many people have a very hard time with pacifism. They have difficulty restraining their anger, or their violent impulses. I’ve never had this issue––I don’t think anger is a part of my composition.”

  “Are you afraid of being angry?” July poked.

  “Yes,” She replied easily. “I am very afraid of anger. I worry that if I get angry, I’ll do something I regret. So I make an effort to find the peaceful alternative. A peaceful draw is better than a violent victory.” July didn’t respond. Mel hoped that meant she was thinking over what she said, and not that she rejected it entirely.

  “We should eat before this fire goes out,” She said. Mel nodded, and opened her knapsack, worries gnawing at her heart.

  After a night of fitful, chilly rest, they stomped the embers of their fire and continued into the wood, snow falling gently around them. Mel, in spite of the rumbling in her stomach and her fears for July’s wellbeing, felt a small twinkle of hope forming. It had been a month since they passed into the Boreal, and they were bound to be nearing Saint Shina’s Monastery by now.

  July, on the other hand, dragged behind, hands stuffed in the pockets of her heavy jacket. Her only source of amusement was watching her breaths come out in twirling clouds of fog––a relative rarity in the eastern provinces––but this lost its novelty quickly. Crossing Warden had been a hard journey for her, Mel knew, on one leg and an underwhelming supply of painkillers. The climate was wet, and it seeped through her splint and into her bones, making them creak and ache through the nights. And just as she began to walk more properly, the rain turned to snow, weighing down her moods even further. It was clear that cautious optimism was a gift of the healthy alone.

  A series of loud thumps interrupted Mel’s thoughts. July took two fast steps forward, placing herself in front of Mel, and drew her sword, looking rapidly around their surroundings. A second series sounded, quick and urgent. It was close, and high up. In unison they looked up to the trees. Their bare canopy intertwined overhead in a sparse weave, hiding nothing of the cold blue sky behind. Mel saw July’s tense form relax in her periphery, and followed her line of sight, spotting the source of the sound just as the third set of thumps came.

  It was a bird, small with wide, flat wings. Its black feathers were ruffled in the cold, standing out against the pale tree trunk. As they watched, it clung to the bark with its talons and thumped its wings against the wood, drumming out a lively beat.

  “Oh,” Mel breathed. “It’s a knackeral.”

  “He seems awfully excited,” July mumbled, sheathing her sword.

  “They seek out hollow trees and drum against them to scare out the small mammals resting inside. Then it swoops down and impales them.” She recited the facts with academic sureness, although it had been years since she studied woodland creatures.

  “Now you seem awfully excited.”

  “They’re actually quite fascinating,” Mel continued. July surrendered a small smile of exasperation, but kept moving; apparently, she assumed the further they could get from the thumping bird, the faster Mel’s lecture on its dietary habits would end.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Although there was a footprint in the middle of the makeshift fire pit, it belonged to neither of the pairs of boots looking down at it. The black, shiny military boots were much too large; the brown woolen boots, thicker and more luxurious than their partner’s, were short and slender.

  “This one is quite fresh,” Bolton commented. He followed the ashy footsteps through the snow, up and into the wood, but the snowfall muddled the path, and beyond the edge of the trees they disappeared.

  “There’s another set of tracks here,” Morgan added, looking in a different direction. He neglected to mention that they were backwards. In truth, he knew quite well how close the pair were; he could judge the distance of their campfires, which they didn’t even attempt to hide. Hunger must be robbing them of caution, he thought. He turned back to the campfire, and to Bolton. If the titanic man hadn’t been such a lousy tracker to begin with, they would’ve caught up by now; but Morgan was rapidly discovering that tricking Emil Bolton was like tricking a small child with a disappearing coin––easy, so long as you knew where your sleeves were.

  “I doubt they would split up; probably these–” He gestured to the recent tracks, “were a hunting trip. We should follow the others.”

  Bolton favored him with an annoyed look. “We could be moving quicker than this if we added an hour in the mornings and an hour in the evenings.”

  “Patience,” Morgan said. In truth, if they moved any faster, it would be difficult to keep the pair of parties separate. “They’re moving at a reserved pace. But they’re like deer; if they catch even a whiff of us, they’ll take off at breakneck speed, and we’ll see nothing of them for weeks. It’s better to let them tire themselves out.” He put a hand on the man’s shoulder, and, seeing the glare that won him, stepped back towards the wood. “Besides, the sooner we catch them, the less time we get to spend together. You don’t want to rob yourself of that, do you?”

  The captain said nothing, but Morgan heard a frustrated sigh. He chuckled silently and kept on, leading them as wrong as he was able––which was more and more so as time went on. The foundation of his lies was Bolton’s belief that letters had a difficult time reaching them in Warden. This was not strictly true; Morgan had already intercepted three updates, sent to the villages in their path. So long as he fed Bolton choice information and allowed him to send in updates of his own, this information trickle was a lovely way to build up a good poker hand.

  For example, he was already aware that the doctor’s mentor Bachman had broken; he knew quite well that the pair were headed for Saint Shina’s Monastery, and that they sought the alchemist Calcifer, among other things. But he didn’t intend to share all of these things just yet; not until the pupae of his plan began to grow.

  He kneeled, pretending to read a track in the snow for a thoughtful moment, then stood again, setting off to the northeast. It was time to get ahead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SHELTER. REMNANTS OF TIMES GONE BY.

  “I found a better spot to sleep tonight,” July said, repressing a smile in her features. Mel had only been resting for a few moments when she returned from the woods, flushed in the face and panting; evidently, she’d run all the way back.

  “You’re sure?” Mel questioned. Of the spots they had picked so far, this one was quite sheltered, and showed promise at keeping out the wind.

  “Trust me.” She gestured for Mel to follow. They set off in July’s footprints, still fresh. Each time Mel began to protest, she would hold up a hand, then trot forward with renewed energy. Eventually, they reached a clearing in the trees, and Mel immediately understood what she meant.

  In the center of the clearing sat a monolithic building, lordly in all dimensions. Its architecture was opulent, in places geometric and in others flowing and smooth, paneled with worn, ancient stone. It was supported by sculpted pillars and flanked by rows of windows, long since boarded. Where stone was worn away by weather and time, sheets of metal and other materials Mel had no name for peeked through, woven in strange patterns that suggested structure. Its roofs were heavy with snow, and long icicles like teeth hung from their ledges. The building made a grand display of the entrance, where two tall doors beckoned the pair closer.

  “What is it?” July asked.

>   “Good question. A court, or grand hall, maybe. I’m not a historian–”

  “By the way you lecture, I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  “Hush.” Mel shoved July’s shoulder lightly. “I’m not a historian, but the architecture looks Angelish. It’s remarkable this building is still standing at all.” She moved closer to the building, curiosity mixed with caution. Upon further inspection of the front doors, they were missing panels; either they’d been stripped or cracked and carried away on the boreal wind. Mel suspected they were once glass, which frankly struck her as impractical.

  “There’s a plaque here, but it’s so faded I can’t read it,” July said, probing a panel of metal by the entrance. “F––Far––something… worth–tha... thy? I don’t know.” Mel gave it a shot as well, but fared no better, and turned back to the front doors, eager to head inside.

  They passed through an unremarkable lobby area, tiled with stone and ancient wood, a hallway, and another set of doors before discovering the heart of the building. It was an immense room, larger than the ballrooms Mel had visited in the Republic, full of wooden shelves of books. At least, they appeared to be wooden; but they were cold and metallic to the touch. The room was dark; the windows, which mostly resided near the ceiling, were boarded just as the outside set, and so Mel had a hard time judging the depth of the space. It seemed to go on forever.

  “It’s a library,” She breathed. The pair tread the aisles carefully, as if something deep and old slept in the piles of rotting pulp and ink. It didn’t take long to come to an open patch of floor near the entrance, where a few shelves were missing.

  “A good a spot as any,” July quipped. They spent much of the remaining afternoon scrounging their surroundings, with reasonable success; Mel found a box of candles and a stack of rolled-up curtains in an adjacent room; July found a rabbit hole outside, and was confident that within a few hours, her snare would catch stew on four legs. By the time the sunlight neared the forest horizon, they had set up a pleasant nest in which to spend the night, surrounded by gently flickering candles and a single aromatic wax that Mel kept in the smallest pocket of her bag.