Blood of the Land

by Martin Davey

  CHAPTER 9

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

  A voice as soft and quiet as Feren’s had been. But where Feren’s had been the sound of chill winds rolling through barren valleys, the Town Clerk’s voice was full of warmth, of vitality. Of life. Landros recognized the man as soon as he turned, his heart still quivering like a taut string. “I’m sorry,” he found it difficult to share the Clerk’s smile. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

  Ricon Lovelin was of a height with Landros with thin, straight blonde hair that shone like a halo around his head when the sun glowed upon him. His features were neat and orderly…that was the only way to describe them. Ricon Lovelin was a man without fault, without blemish, his features were symmetrical, just the right size for the perfectly shaped face. The teeth when he smiled, as he often did, were white and even, and there wasn’t a hair on his strong chin. But it was the eyes which held, always the eyes. Black as coal; black as the blackest night with no white, no pupil, no iris.

  Ever since Landros had heard he was to meet the Clerk, he had been steeling himself to meet those black eyes. But now the moment had arrived, he realized he couldn’t meet them anymore than he could meet the glare of the sun.

  Lovelin knew how to use his disfigurement, if that’s what it was, to his advantage. However much Landros looked away and tilted his head; he own eyes were like skittish fish caught on the hook of those eyes of night. He remembered once asking Dorian if all Town Clerks had black eyes. “How am I supposed to know?” The Captain had answered, “Have I ever been away from Katrinamal? Have you ever known anybody who has been allowed to travel to the other towns?”

  Lovelin reached out a pale hand and stroked the crest of the Keepers. His nails were carefully trimmed; Landros felt dirty standing next to the man. “It seems you have a talent for attracting violence about yourself, my young Captain.” Every word was measured, precise. He spoke as though there was nothing beyond the walls of the solar, as though time had ceased to pass beyond those four walls. This was a man who talked to the gods, a man who ruled a town of eight thousand souls. By rights he should be ushering Landros away and concerning himself with his duties. Instead he was studying Landros as though he was the single most important person in all of Katrinamal.

  Landros blinked, trying to gather his thoughts, awkward and difficult as bedding on a wind-whipped washing line. Who was the Clerk speaking of? Feren or the rapist at the farm? Or both? It would help if he could read the Clerk’s mood, but finally looking into those black eyes, he might as well be looking into the bottom of a well for all the help he found there.

  He remembered Dorian on the cliffs a lifetime ago, “Don’t lie to the Clerk,” his old friend had said. Landros straightened his back, tried not to fidget with his hands. “I couldn’t find the woman, Master.” He coughed, cleared his throat. “Or, that is, I did find her, but then let her get away. I was more concerned with punishing the man, Gerard.” He cleared his throat again, the black eyes fixed on him. Did the man ever blink? “I shouldn’t have let it happen, Master.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He fell silent.

  The house was quiet as Clerk Lovelin studied him. He made no move to sit down, no move to offer Landros a seat. “Ah yes, the unfortunate Gerard Litan. Quite a bloodied and muddied mess he was, I hear.”

  Landros sucked on his lip, ashamed under the gaze of the Clerk. “What will happen to him?”

  The Clerk studied the back of a smooth, pale hand, the fingers long. “Perhaps the question should be what would you have done with him, Captain.”

  It was difficult under that gaze, to think straight. “I er,” Landros coughed and tried again, “I would put him in the cells.” The cells, dark pits in the cliffs of Katrinamal constantly under assault by the winds of the end of the world. It was said a man could be driven mad by the songs those winds sang without respite.

  The Clerk’s eyes were purest black now, unreadable as coal. “Ah. The cells. And what of your predecessor?” Ricon Lovelin finally took a seat, the very seat Feren had been sitting in only moments before. Landros felt faint.

  “My...you mean Dorian?” The change in subject left him shaken and blinking at the Clerk.

  “You think Dorian Jerad shouldn’t be punished, Captain?” The Clerk held one hand up, elbow resting on the arm of his chair. “Our young friend Gerard, while perhaps a little overenthusiastic in his affections for the widow, was stopped before any real crime was committed. And yet,” the hand dropped back to the Clerk’s stomach. Ricon Lovelin adopted an expression of resigned regret, lips pursed ever so slightly before he continued, “Our friend the former Captain ordered a race to take place when he had no right to be issuing orders of any kind. Unfortunate for him that this race resulted in the death of one of the Keepers’ own Watchmen.”

  A long pause in which the house was still and silent, the bustling, busy kitchen a world away. Landros wondered if he was expected to defend Dorian. Wondered whether he should speak at all. Black eyes met his own. The Clerk didn’t look angry, he looked as though he was measuring him; almost as though he had taken Landros’s soul, examined the good and the bad and weighed each against the other. Landros briefly wondered which way the godly scales would tip. “In all honesty, Clerk Lovelin...”

  Ricon Lovelin lifted a hand to silence Landros. “Yes, yes, Captain. You hadn’t told Dorian of the Dream before he ordered the race.” Seeing Landros’s questioning look, the Clerk sighed. “How did I know of the race? How did I know that it was Dorian Jerad who ordered the race? Really, Captain. You attend my Commune every week; I trust I don’t have to explain the workings of the Keepers to you again?” He didn’t wait for an answer to that; everybody knew that the Keepers existed out of the boundaries of time and space. “No, my point to you, Captain, is that if Dorian hadn’t been acting as Captain when he was no longer Captain, if Dorian hadn’t ordered the race then there would have been no accident and our young Watchman would still be free to watch over the realm of the Keepers. So,” the Clerk raised both hands, two elbows on the arms of his chair. “Who do we punish for Feren’s death? You or Mister Jerad?”

  “It was an accident...”

  “Ah.” Ricon Lovelin rose from his seat and circled round the desk, perched himself on the edge of it before looking at Landros still standing next to the cold fireplace. “An accident. Is there truly such a thing as an accident? Molly Birran said it was an accident last year when she dried her baby next to the fire and then dropped the poor child into the flames. An accident that wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t drunk herself senseless on beer before tending to the unfortunate child. Would our friend Gerard say that he had merely mistaken the signs from the woman? A woman willingly alone with a man out there with nobody else for miles around.” The Clerk leaned closer, his voice taking a dangerous, seductive tone. “Their hands brush together, their eyes meet, they share a little laugh together...”

  Landros flushed. “That isn’t what I saw, Master.” Every time he remembered the scene at the farm, lit under the stark lightning streaking across the churning sky, Landros wished he had the chance to strike Gerard again.

  The Clerk smiled, black eyes brightening as he pushed himself away from the desk and walked silently across to the window, looked out on to the gardens below. “Of course it wasn’t what you saw, Captain. You are young yet but you don’t have the luxury of time. This is your first and only lesson. Keeper Jerohim ordered you to become the Captain of the Watch and your delay in following his order cost your young friend his life. I send you to collect a woman for me and you come back with a snivelling bleating cleric smeared in blood and mud. What will come of your lapse? You will find that out soon enough.” Ricon Lovelin crossed his arms, his face cast half in shadow as a cloud slowly flitted past the first sun. “I sense you think too much, young Landros. Ours is not to think. Ours is to do. You paid a heavy price for your first transgression, perhaps the price for the second may be steeper still.” A white hand waved through
the air. “Or perhaps not. I only hope for your sake and the love you hold for the Keepers that you learn your lessons quickly. Do you wonder why the Keepers chose you, Landros? Chose you to be their Captain of the Watch?”

  Landros caught himself staring into those eyes, deep and dark as a lake in the dead of night. The words had been like a drug; he had never thought, had never had the chance to think about his new station in life, and listening to the Clerk’s words left him wanting to cry out, “Yes! Why? Why was I chosen for this?” Instead he pursed his lips and tried to think. Would the Clerk remove him from his Captaincy if he gave the wrong answer? Would Landros be disappointed?

  Too many questions, too many thoughts were spinning through his mind, as light and airy and difficult to grasp as dandelion puff-balls on a summer breeze. He ran his hand through his hair. “I couldn’t say, Master Lovelin,” he finally conceded. “Perhaps they thought Captain Dorian was getting too old for the position.”

  Lovelin stiffened, his perfect face tightening around black eyes. “Ah. So you think you are completely without merit, then?”

  “What? No…”

  “Really?” The Clerk tilted his head to one side, studying Landros like an inquisitive bird watching a worm writhing through dirt. “What else am I to think when I ask why you have been chosen for such a position and all you can answer is that another man is ageing?” He spread his hands, unmarked by any signs of physical labour. “Or is it that you think the Keepers are defective? Idiots, perhaps? You think they choose us, all of us, Clerks, Commanders, Captains, Guardians, Wardens, Merchants, Admirals, Publicans; you think they choose us all by lottery, by choosing names at random from their censuses?”

  Landros shook his head in something akin to horror. That the Clerk should speak so of the Keepers was close to blasphemy. He had never heard such talk; everybody knew the Keepers heard all and saw all; nobody would ever be so bold as to question the Keepers. “No, not that, Master Lovelin. I’m sure the Keepers, that Keeper Jerohim saw something in me that he thought would make me fit for the position.”

  “False modesty perhaps?” Black eyes regarded him levelly for long moments. With an impatient gesture, the Clerk bade Landros to stand next to him at the window. “Though some find modesty an admirable quality, I personally find it tiresome and time-consuming. See that tree, Captain Landros?”

  Landros looked out of the window and saw an atlas tree, its bark a dirty silver colour, its branches heavy with silvercones, leaning away from the constant winds rolling from the cliffs. “The atlas tree? I see it.”

  “Do you see how it is bent and shaped by the winds that assail us from beyond the boundaries of our world? Do you see how it provides shade next to the bed of gallowblooms, how the sweep of its branches make it impossible to scale the wall of my garden, do you see how the tree is situated so I can view it from this window, from the window of my study upstairs or my dining room downstairs?” Lovelin draped an arm around Landros’s shoulder as though he thought the younger man was about to flee for the door. “Almost as though whoever had planted that tree knew exactly how it would grow; how it would provide shade for pleasant picnics at just such a place, how it would provide another defence to the western wall, how it would provide balm for the soul as I work in my study.”

  Landros still couldn’t make himself look into the Clerk’s eyes; instead he looked out at the dirty-silver atlas tree. “So you’re saying the Clerk who planted the tree could see into the future, see exactly how it would grow?” Landros had always known the Keepers lived outside of time, that they could see what had been and what would be; but the thought that the Clerks could be changed, could be made to see what will be, filled him with fear. The Keepers were gods, sent down from the skies millennia before; they were supposed to see into the future, see into the swirling depths of time itself. They were supposed to look after the children of Men.

  But to change a human? To make him able to see through time? Landros tried and failed to suppress the shiver shuddering down his spine.

  Ricon Lovelin laughed and released his arm from around Landros’s shoulder. “See into the future? Do we have to see into the future to know that the winds sweep across Katrinamal from the Sea? Do we have to see into the future to know how deep the soil is in that part of the grounds, and so determine how high the tree will grow?” For the first time, Ricon Lovelin gave Landros respite from his black eyes, looking out at the gardens. “And so it is with you, Captain Landros. Do the Keepers, do I, have to see into the future to see the depth of your roots, to see the winds that have shaped your character?” The sun was now a blinding glare in the sky, illuminating the solar in a sheath of white light. “Or do I see that the absence of a father, the troubles in your mother’s mind, have created a stubborn, resilient character who questions everything not once or even twice, but over and over, looking for that single lapse of logic, that one fatal flaw? And do I have to see into the future to know that your lack of station in life, the fact that neither of your parents had the Dream; that you use this as an excuse to drift through life, to let others make decisions for you? Do we have to see into the future to hear the mutterings of your skill with a sword, of how you fight like a man possessed, that you had bested Dorian with a blade before your fifteenth summer?” Lovelin turned from the atlas tree and back to Landros, his skin even paler under the sheen of the sun. “These things and more, all reach our ears.

  Landros felt himself stripped naked. He had the feeling that the Clerk wasn’t even scratching the surface of all they knew about him. The mentioning of his mother had him flushing with anger, but then that was swiftly replaced by another emotion…pride, was it? Pride in himself that perhaps he was the right man to lead the Watch, that maybe he would be a fit leader, more suitable even than Dorian. “You have learned all that about me?”

  “The Keepers know all their children, Captain. They know what is in our hearts and in our minds as well as the deeds we do in this garden they have made for us. They know the frailties of man; it was laid bare for them to see when they came upon our world and saw the brutality and horror of a world ruled by men.” Lovelin pulled open a drawer on the writing table, removed a single sheaf of thick white paper and laid it on the table. “The Keepers keep us safe from returning to those dark days of constant warfare and lustful Kings, but they do not do it alone. They need people such as you and I, Landros. We are their tools to keep the world safe. The price we pay to live in a safe world free of war and murder and greed is complete obedience. Something your friend Dorian was wont to forget.”

  He found a quill in the drawer, dipped it carefully in ink and began to write, still speaking, “The Keepers have been in the world for millennia and still they create their garden of Man, and like all gardens, constant work is needed to keep the weeds and the pests at bay. To give the flowers room to breathe. We are the tools, people such as you and I, who keep those weeds and pests away, Landros. We are the tools of the gods.” He finished writing, blew on the ink to help it dry. “Dorian was lax, Landros. He let the Watch become lazy, slothful. He questioned the why. The why! He dared question the reason of the gods!” Lovelin’s eyes were spitting coals in the snow white of his face. “Gods who have lived for millennia, who live outside the confines of time, who saved mankind from the deceptions of the Nameless One. And he dared ask why!” The ink finally dry, Lovelin took the paper in hand and approached Landros, looking at him from black, black eyes. “Will you do as asked, Landros, or will you question the reason of the gods?”

  Landros knew the tale of the Deliverance; everybody knew the tale of the descent of the gods. The world had been riven by petty kingdoms ruled by lustful Kings. Every night for a hundred years the nine gods had come to the dreams of every man, woman and child, offering them peace and prosperity in the new world of the Keepers. Some prostrated themselves before the new gods; but some, unbelievably, challenged the gods, followed Kings, Queens and Princes to war. Which was when the Nameless One first began to appear i
n the texts.

  Was there any greater calling than serving the gods who had saved mankind from the rule of Kings? Saved the world from the Nameless One himself, though the struggle had reduced the Nine to the Five. Landros thought of that beatific, smiling mask and for the first time his heart swelled at the memory. And Dorian had let the Watch become lazy and lax. Hadn’t Landros himself thought as much during that fateful race when he had looked at the dirty vests, the wild hair, the fat horses and the absence of weapons? If the gods wanted the Watch to patrol the cliffs of the Sea, then that was what the Watch would do. Even if they had to do it for the next fifty years and saw nothing but fishermen and berragulls, still the Watch would be there with Landros leading them.

  For the first time, Landros found himself able to meet the Clerk’s black eyes. “I can do as the Keepers ask.”

  “Good. Take this paper to Gaston the tailor on Regent Street. If you are to be agent of the Keepers, you need to tidy yourself up, Captain.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Seven days Ysora had walked. Seven days, and already she could see the distant steeped rooftops of Yerotan, dark under the glare of the rising sun. Living with Rhodry by the Sea, she had always thought of Yerotan as some distant, faraway place as unreachable as Insitur, the realm of the Keepers.

  Only seven days walk away.

  The times she had lain in bed pretending to be asleep while Rhodry’s thick drunken fingers fumbled with his belt. The times she had lain on the floor, broken and bruised as the wind howled and raged and rattled the windows as though it was trying to tear the house apart in fury at Rhodry’s brutality. All times she had thought of Yerotan as some impossible, unimaginable place, more dream than memory.