The Heresy Within

by Rob J. Hayes

  “She has not been raped,” Thanquil said to the guard.

  “Fuck no.” The guard's voice was quiet, little more than a whisper. “None of us dare go near her. She's... wrong.”

  Sour Face returned with a small lantern and placed it on a sconce on the left wall before retreating from the cell with haste. The light flickered casting mad, jumping shadows around the room. With light the woman looked an even more wretched thing. Her head bobbed a little at the introduction of light but there was no other movement.

  Thanquil studied the woman for a time. A thin drop of spittle leaked from her mouth and dropped onto her chest, soaking into her rags but she made no sign of moving. Thanquil turned back to Broken Nose.

  “She's been like this for weeks.”

  “Aye,” the guard replied. “She's not been fed nor watered nor anything. Nobody comes in 'ere, we jus' make sure she's not gone every day. They say she's been killed twice. She jus' don't die.”

  Thanquil stared at the woman a while longer. She looked to be no more than twenty years of age, treated horribly and broken from the mistreatment but something didn't feel right. She felt almost like a beast playing dead but waiting to strike.

  Thanquil decided to throw caution to the wind and approach the woman. Broken Nose spoke from behind. “Careful, Arbiter. She's... magical.”

  Thanquil glanced back at the guard. He was standing just a couple of paces behind, fear plain on his face. “I'll be fine guardsman.”

  He crouched down in front of the woman, she made no move. He put his hand on her forehead, still no movement. He lifted her head up, the bandage tied around her eyes was dirty with filth and dried blood, more blood had run down her cheeks like red tears. Thanquil took his hand away and the woman's head dropped. Other than her shallow breathing she seemed more corpse than living.

  Thanquil lifted the bandage from around her eyes. The guardsman gasped and Thanquil heard him hit the floor. Pale blue eyes stared unfocused straight ahead towards the floor. The dried blood had come from wounds to her eyes, Thanquil had seen similar before, it looked almost as if...

  “It's not possible,” Broken Nose whispered from behind. Thanquil turned his head to find the guardsman had retreated to the door. Sour face looked in and cursed.

  “Is... Is... S'not right,” Sour Face breathed and then turned and fled. Broken Nose stayed but Thanquil had rarely seen a man look so terrified.

  “Her eyes...” Thanquil prompted.

  “Can't be... she can't...”

  “You took them.” Again he prompted the guard to continue.

  “Not me. Not us. Them,” Broken Nose said in a high voice, his words rushing out, stumbling into each other to form a rapid slur. “When they caught her, second time. They took 'em. Said she could use 'em ta... control a man. They beat her bloody, pinned her down an' scooped 'em right out. They say she didn't even scream. What sort of person don't scream when they have their eyes plucked out?”

  “The sort of person who can grow new eyes,” Thanquil said his voice grave even to his own ears.

  Thanquil turned back to the woman. Her head was still limp, her eyes still unfocused, unseeing. Again he lifted her head so her eyes met his. Behind him he heard Broken Nose gasp but Thanquil paid him no mind. He stared into the woman's pale blue eyes but saw nothing. It was almost as if she just wasn't there. As haunting as her gaze was it was... empty.

  He poked at the leather thong strapped into her mouth. It was pulled so far back it should have been gagging her. The woman's lips were cracked and split and bloody and raw. The thong was moist with spittle.

  “Her mouth,” Thanquil prompted.

  “She were using some sort of spell or something. Chanting it as she killed the guards. They didn't want her using it no more.”

  “Her tongue.”

  Broken Nose paused. “They cut it out, just like her eyes.”

  “Well. Let’s see if that grew back also.”

  “Wait.” Broken Nose started forward, his voice panicky. “What if it has? What if she casts some spell? Took eighteen guards ta bring her down second time an' ten of 'em died.”

  “Feel free to step outside and close the door if you're scared. But I can't very well question her if she can't talk,” Thanquil replied, impatient. Broken Nose backed against the wall but made no move to leave.

  With a gentle care due to caution, Thanquil undid the clasps on the thong and slid the leather out of the woman's mouth. Her head dropped a little further and she swallowed. Signs of life at least. Then she started chanting. Foreign words Thanquil didn't understand issued from her bloody mouth in a croaking voice and she began to strain against the bonds that secured her to the wall.

  “None of that, thank you,” Thanquil said and his right hand slid inside his coat pocket, found the correct charm and slapped the piece of paper onto the woman's forehead.

  The paper stuck and sealed to her skin. The chanting stopped and the woman's eyes rolled back into her head. Then she began to convulse, shaking and straining against her bonds. New trickles of blood leaked from old sores. Thanquil had no time for games.

  He slapped the woman across the face with the back of his hand and she stilled. Her eyelids flickered open and her eyes focused on Thanquil. Two words of some foreign tongue escaped her mouth and then she stopped, unable to remember the spell.

  Thanquil stood up to stretch out his legs. “That charm is powerful magic,” he explained to the woman. “When affixed it blocks magic from memory. Put simply you can't recall the correct words, the correct symbols to draw. While that paper is there you can't use whatever magic it is you know.”

  The woman glared at Thanquil for a moment and then shook her head, thrashing from side to side. The charm remained in place, it could be peeled off but it would never fall off. Then her shaking subsided and her head went limp again, her eyes going back into the strange unfocused non-sight.

  “Let's get started then,” Thanquil said before focusing his attention on the woman. “Who are you?”

  She didn't want to answer, Thanquil could see that, she tried to fight the compulsion but only those trained in its use could deny its effects. The words that spilled from her mouth, however, were not any that Thanquil understood. They sounded a jumbled mess of letters and sounds.

  Thanquil looked at Broken Nose. Broken Nose shook his broken nose. “Any languages other than the common tongue spoken in the wilds,” he prompted the guardsman.

  “No. The southerners, the blacks, they got their own language but that ain't it. I've heard it spoke an' that ain't it.”

  That was the problem with the compulsion. It could force a person to tell the truth but it couldn't force them to say it in the common tongue.

  Thanquil sighed. An immortal witch able to regrow both eyes and tongue and who may or may not speak his language. “Well, we may not be able to find out who you are but there's more than one way to find out what you are.” He drew a short, sharp knife from his belt and advanced upon the chained woman.

  The BladeMaster

  Jezzet's eyes snapped open, she flowed to her feet in one fluid motion and her hand reached for her sword. It wasn't there. Then she saw the bars and remembered.

  Still in gaol, Jez. Still trapped and awaiting execution.

  She knew why she was here, wasn't hard to guess. The guards had known her name, they'd taken her but they hadn't given her to the slavers. A woman like her would fetch a nice price from the slavers if they cleaned her up but there was someone willing to pay a much greater price for her. Jezzet may have been locked up in Chade's gaol but she was in no doubt that she was Constance's prisoner.

  Just waiting for the bitch to arrive. Suppose I could try to kill myself in here, deny her the pleasure of doing it slowly. It wasn't the first time Jezzet had entertained the notion but she knew she'd never do it. As long as she was alive there was a chance, however slim, of escape.

  Days rolled into one but Jezzet could count the time by the light and dark that spilled in
through her single barred window. At first she had complained to the guards, told them she'd done nothing wrong. That had been a mistake, all she'd earned from that was a couple of beatings. Jaxon loved his little wooden cudgel more than he'd ever loved any woman. After that she'd tried to fuck her way out. Jez had thought to seduce the little guard with the face that was permanently turned down, Abel. When Jez was at her best men would jump at the chance to be inside her but Jez was not currently at her best and Abel had spat at her and told her, he'd rather pay a whore than fuck a dung heap. Not the most flattering of compliments she'd ever received but she had no doubt she did smell like a dung heap at the time.

  “So what is she?”

  “You don't need to know.”

  “I'd like to know. Bitch is a worry.”

  Jez recognised one of the voices as Jaxon and backed up against the wall of her cell and sat down on her arse, it was starting to feel very bony; truth was all of her was starting to feel bony. Jezzet almost hoped she'd never get to look in a mirror ever again.

  “I honestly don't care what you'd like.”

  The two men walked into view. One was Jaxon, the one with the boil and broken nose. The other was a shortish man, maybe half a hand taller than Jezzet with short dark hair, short dark stubble and a fancy brown leather coat. He looked to be someone of import. Jaxon seemed a little scared of him anyways. Both men passed her cell at a steady pace; they didn't even look her way.

  “Get me out of here,” Jezzet shouted before her head could decide it was a bad idea.

  “Shut it, you,” Jaxon said waving his cudgel. It was too late though; the other man had already stopped and was looking at Jezzet.

  “Get me out of here and I'll do anything. Anything.” Jezzet hadn't moved, she was still sat, huddled at the back of her cell. Jaxon snorted but Jez ignored him. “I may not look like much right now but I'm pretty enough when clean and I know my way around a sword.”

  The short man in the leather coat smiled. “Literally or figuratively I wonder.”

  “Both,” Jez answered ignoring Jaxon's confused look.

  Idiot probably doesn’t know what either word means.

  She stood up and tried her best seductive walk towards the bars. It was hampered only by the fact that she looked and smelled like shit. Still, she wasn't about to let that put her off a possible escape.

  You've got him, Jez. Now a bit of a throaty whisper.

  She gripped hold of the bars with both hands, stared into his pretty blue eyes and whispered at him. “Anything.”

  “Get back or I'll beat you,” Jaxon warned waving his club from a few paces away. As idle a threat as Jez had ever heard.

  “Try it and I'll take it off you and break your nose all over again,” Jez replied without taking her eyes of the man in the coat.

  The man in the coat smiled. “I have no need for a whore,” he said and started to turn away.

  “What do you need?” Jez asked. He had stopped to look at her which meant he was interested or curious at least, Jez wasn't about to let that go. “Everybody needs something and I can be anything. What do you need?”

  Jaxon looked worried. “Ar...”

  “A guide.” The man in the coat cut the broken nosed guard off. “Someone who knows the wilds, the towns, the people.”

  “I can do that,” Jezzet lied. “I can be a guide and a guard and a friend and anything else you might need if you just get me out of here.”

  The man was still smiling, still staring at her. “You must be some sort of criminal to be locked in gaol I would assume.” His accent was strange, he might have been from Sarth but Jez couldn't be sure.

  “She is...”

  “I'm not. Not here in Chade anyways. Never committed a crime here.” Not recently at least. “They've locked me up cos...”

  “Shut up, bitch.” Jaxon stepped forward, cudgel in hand. Jez was just about to reach out and disarm him when the short man in the fancy coat held up a hand between them. Jaxon backed away with a look of fear.

  “I'm trying to have a conversation with the young lady, guardsman.”

  Lady? Jezzet would have laughed but it felt like her life was on the line here.

  “She's dangerous,” Jaxon said.

  “So was the last one, apparently. You claim she's a criminal, she claims she's not. Who to believe.”

  “I'm innocent,” Jez protested.

  “I doubt it,” the man in the coat replied with a half-smile. “You look like many things but innocent is not one of them.”

  “The guards are keeping me here because a bitch called Constance is paying them to. She likes to give herself the title of warlord these days and she's paying them to hold me here 'til she arrives.”

  “I thought this being a free city the only crimes that mattered were the ones you committed here. That is the way it works, I believe.”

  Jaxon swallowed. Jezzet could see the bump in his skinny neck bobbing up and down. “Special circumstances. She's a murderer.”

  “And worse,” Jez shouted, she could feel her anger rising. “Don't mean you got any right to keep me here.”

  “What sort of price could be put on such a pretty head...” the man in the coat said with that same smile on his lips.

  “You ain't got no right here, Arbiter. No authority. Council said you could talk to the witch, nothing more. This one's ours.”

  Arbiter? Jez had never met a witch hunter before but she'd heard of them, heard of what they did, what they were capable of. Not so sure I want to be saved now.

  The Arbiter fixed Jaxon with a stare. “How much is she worth?”

  Jaxon's eyes went wide. “Fifty gold bits.”

  “Is that all...” The Arbiter turned to look at Jezzet again. “You're cheap.”

  Been called worse.

  “Um...” She looked at Jaxon, the man still looked scared. “He's right. Constance would have given you a lot more for me.”

  “I'll give you fifty gold coins, right now, for her freedom,” the Arbiter announced, reaching into his coat and pulling out a heavy purse with a strange symbol on it. Looked to be an upside down sword and a ray of light.

  Jaxon looked from the Arbiter to Jezzet and back again. “I... I can't. She'd kill me. We already told her we captured the whore.”

  “Who the hell do you think you're calling 'whore'?” Jezzet demanded. She could sense the Arbiter was the one with the power here and she was more than willing to push her luck.

  “I see,” the Arbiter said in a mournful tone. The purse disappeared back inside his coat. “That's a shame but I understand.”

  “Wait. What?” Jezzet pressed herself close to the bars. “You can't let them have me. I can help you. I swear.”

  The Arbiter looked at her and shook his head. “There's nothing I can do. The guardsman is correct, I have no authority here other than that the ruling council of Chade give me. Incidentally I'll be seeing them tomorrow and I'll make sure to tell them that you're locked up here despite having committed no crime.”

  Jaxon gasped. “You can't!”

  “I can.”

  “They'll...”

  “They'll have you with an iron collar around your neck before the day is out. What is your name?”

  “Jaxon,” Jaxon said and then clamped a hand over his mouth.

  “I'll be sure to tell them.” The Arbiter looked at Jezzet again. “I'm sorry but it seems I can't help you.”

  “Wait,” Jaxon shouted.

  The Arbiter stopped smiling. “Your choice is clear, guardsman. Take the gold now and she comes with me and you risk the wrath of this Constance or you'll get no gold and the council will find out about this.”

  Jaxon bit his lip then held out his hand.

  “Good man,” the Arbiter said, depositing the heavy purse into Jaxon's hand.

  Jaxon stepped forward, took an iron ring of keys from his belt and unlocked Jezzet's cell.

  Freedom. Jezzet looked at the Arbiter. Of a sort. She walked out of the cell and stood next
to her new captor.

  The Arbiter stepped towards Jaxon and shook his hand. It was a strange farewell but one Jez had seen before in the Five Kingdoms.

  I hope Arbiters ain't as bad as all the stories he told me. Jezzet thought as she followed the Arbiter out of the building. An old friend of hers had plenty of tales about the witch hunters and their deeds. Liars, murderers, thieves and worse he'd named them all.

  Outside the sun was blinding bright after two weeks of being in a cell and Jezzet was hungry, thirsty, tired and in desperate need of a piss but it felt good all the same. To feel the sun on her face, the breeze on her skin. Even the constant clamour of people sounded something akin to heaven.

  “My name is Arbiter Thanquil Darkheart,” the Arbiter said as he set a quick pace.

  “Jezzet Vel'urn,” she replied as she hurried to keep up.

  “Pleased to meet you Jezzet. Keep moving, quickly.”

  “What? Why?”

  The Arbiter rounded a corner into a different street and slowed his pace just a little. They kept walking in silence for a while. So long it started to feel uncomfortable. He walked a pace ahead of her but never looked back to check she hadn't run off.

  Not quite as talkative as he seemed when I was behind bars.

  When the Arbiter stopped, Jezzet found she was in a market in Oldtown. Shops lined the square offering all manner of goods and stalls occupied the centre with myriad colours and smells and tastes. Jez had never liked markets; they tended to bring out a strange sort of fear in her, all nervous and energetic, jittery. Too long surrounded by merchants and she wanted to scream.

  “You smell like sewage,” the Arbiter said. He was staring at her.

  That was nice.

  “Reckon I look little better,” Jezzet replied smiling. She was fairly sure the smile didn't help but she tried it all the same.

  The Arbiter reached into his coat and pulled out a purse. It looked familiar, exactly like the purse he'd given to Jaxon in fact. He held the purse out to Jezzet. “Buy some new clothes and a sword if you were telling the truth about knowing how to use one.”