Blood of the Land

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Blood of the Land Page 17

by Martin Davey


  Landros thought of the boy, a young child, his voice still uneven, his hair thick and brown and his legs slender as a colt’s. “I would think not, Master.” Landros looked back to the door of the solar. It seemed very far away. “If that will be all? I would like to have some words with the lad, if I may?”

  “I thought we had agreed you wouldn’t talk to the boy?” Black eyes watched him, none of the laziness apparent in the Clerk’s bearing now.

  “Well, I...” Landros coughed, wished he knew what to do with his hands as he looked down at the Clerk. Wished he could have a seat himself. The memory of his mother’s breath on his face still made him shudder, still made him want to wipe his cheek. “I hadn’t realized you were requesting that I not question Rion, Master.”

  “Requesting,” the Clerk nodded smiling, more a twitch of the lips. “Words are imperfect things, Landros. Each one open to several different meanings. Each one depending on context and who is speaking to whom.” The Clerk opened the book before him, the pages stiff and yellow and turning slowly, reluctantly. “You know what this is, Landros?”

  “The book, I...no, Master.” Landros felt cold speckle his forehead, he needed to be alone to think of Feren and what he had said. He needed to question the boy to find out what his mother had been saying. She had been speaking, coherent, and Landros would have been there if he hadn’t been mooning over Elian. He shivered against a cold finger tracing down his spine.

  “This book,” the Clerk turned page after page, though Landros could tell Ricon Lovelin had read the book so many times he could probably recite it from memory. “Tells us of a time when the Keepers came from the skies to save our kind. It tells of a time when men chose their own destinies, chose whether to side with the gods or to side with the Kings and the Queens.” The book fell closed. Motes danced in the candlelight. “Are you glad you don’t live in a time when such choices have to be made?”

  “I would think that would be no choice at all, Master.”

  The Clerk smiled, perhaps the first real smile Landros had ever seen from him. His face looked thinner when he smiled like that. Younger. “Quite so, Landros, quite so.” He rose from his chair and walked across the solar to the window, black as his own eyes. He looked down to where the atlas tree would be, whether its silver branches were visible in the blackness of the night, Landros couldn’t say. “I like you, Landros. Love you as the gods, as Keeper Jerohim himself loves you. But we must ask you not to talk to the boy Rion. Even now he and Tiernan are being taken from the kitchens to the cells below.”

  Cold fury welled within Landros, his hands shook behind his back and his eyes felt bright in the candlelight. “Might I ask why, Master?” He hated the way his voice quavered.

  Clerk Lovelin turned away from the atlas tree, something close to surprise showing in his black eyes. “As I said, Landros, we love you. Do you think we would allow your mother to die?” Even though he had held her cold hand, seen her lifeless body in her still chair, it still hurt to hear his mother’s death confirmed aloud. “Remember, I tell you this only because you are my Captain, chosen by Keeper Jerohim himself, but never speak of anything we discuss outside these four walls.” A candle had sputtered out, a thick coil of grey smoke curling lazily to the ceiling. The Clerk retrieved his tinderbox from a dresser draped with a purple cover and lit the candle once more. His expression didn’t change but the way he hurried to relight the candle filled Landros with unease. Clerk Ricon Lovelin was not a man who hurried.

  “These are difficult times we live in, Landros. After the Deliverance, thousands died, tens of thousands, and still more. But the enemies of the gods were men still, men in suits of metal marching under banners that could be seen for miles around.” The Clerk’s eyes moved to the battered leather tome on the table as he spoke before looking back to Landros. “But the enemies we face now move in shadows and speak in whispers. They hide from the gods and kill and taint with their evil.”

  Landros tried not to swallow or cough. A feeling of guilt rippled across the back of his neck like a thousand tiny fingers, but something held him back. “Do not betray your mother, do not betray Feren,” the thing that possessed Feren had said. But Clerk Lovelin had spoken of loving Landros, of the Keepers loving him. “Do you think we would allow your mother to die?” He had said. Now Landros did cough, a nervous clearing of his throat. “And you think that the boy, that Rion is part of these...” Landros suddenly realized he didn’t have the words to name these people the Clerk spoke of. “These shadows?”

  The Clerk was looking again at the atlas tree; dawn couldn’t be far away now, the sky becoming a thick deep blue which seemed to parch the solar of all colour despite the candles and the fire. “Perhaps, perhaps not. But whether he is or he isn’t, he was still the last person to see your mother alive. Which means he was there near the killer, and we need to find out what he saw.”

  “And you think he won’t speak to the Captain of the Watch?” Landros’s anger was under control now, simmering beneath the surface, his voice level.

  “Words.” The Clerk shrugged as he looked out the window, a curiously youthful gesture by the man with the ageless black eyes. “Words are imperfect, Landros. Or perhaps it is we who use the words who are imperfect, using them to lie and deceive when the words were given to us only for clarity and understanding. Words can be twisted and turned until they resemble nothing that we thought.”

  “But you can get to the truth behind the words?” Landros thought of a dark room with his dead mother before him and his dead friend rotting and collapsing in the corner, skin sloughing away to reveal the rot beneath. Could the Clerk determine what Landros had seen just by the words he used?

  A single candle on the mantelpiece sputtered, shivered, almost died and then fought back to life again.

  “As I said,” the Clerk turned away from the window, his steps soft in the thick fur of the grey rug as he moved to stand before Landros, “Words are imperfect, so why use them? Remember the Commune when I showed you the woman?”

  Landros remembered the pain: excruciating, agonizing pain as the Clerk had implanted the image in his mind. He could only nod.

  “So why use words when I can just take what young Rion saw from his mind?”

  The very thought struck Landros with fear. “You can do that?”

  Clerk Lovelin took the tinderbox from the table, held it up before Landros. He hadn’t even noticed the candle on the dresser next to the door had been extinguished. “The Keepers see into the hearts and minds of all men.” The Clerk quoted. “The powers we Clerks have are like scraps from the table of the gods, we dip a finger into the pool of knowledge and watch the murky ripples spread while the gods submerge themselves in the water, swim through the depths of revelation.” A spark from the tinderbox and the candle fluttered back to life. The Clerk didn’t put the tinderbox back down, he kept it in a pale, long-fingered hand. “How does a person hide from such a being? How do they conceal a murder from the gods?”

  Landros had no answer to such questions. “What if I spoke to Rion after you have...” he paused, dealing with Clerks and gods and shadowy creatures lurking in the dark, he felt more like a child thrust into strange, though not wondrous world, where he didn’t have the words to describe what he saw. “Questioned the boy?”

  A long pause from the Clerk as a black branch scratched at the window of the solar. “I will do everything in my power to make it possible, Landros. The gods and I are saddened by your loss, outraged at the murder.” He sighed, an expression of regret that filled Landros with wonder. Regret, sadness, outrage: he had never thought the Clerk to have such emotions, he had always thought the Clerk to be like the gods; all knowing and all powerful. Somehow he felt more at ease with this new, fallible Clerk Lovelin. “My methods are imperfect, Landros. You remember the pain of the vision of the girl? The pain of having a memory removed from the mind is multiplied a thousandfold and there is no guarantee that Rion will be the same person when it is done.”
/>   Landros’s heart lurched as he thought of the boy being taken away with his skinny arms and legs, barely more than a child at all. Did he know what awaited him? “Is this really necessary? I’m thankful you and the Keepers have shown such an interest in my mother’s death, but...”

  “Necessary?” Three candles shivered in an unfelt breeze, shadows dancing on the walls like winter trees on a windswept hillside. “We do love you, my Captain, but we don’t do this for the benefit of you alone, we do it for all our children. If somebody or something can do this unseen by the gods themselves, then what else could they do? The Keepers are concerned for you Landros, which is why they had me speak to you before seeing to the boy, but they are concerned for all those that live in this garden which is why they will have this creature caught now rather than later.”

  “So there is nothing I can do?” Landros wanted to run, to fight, anything to release the aching tension in his shoulders. Anything to take his mind from his mother, from Rion. What did the Clerk mean when he said Rion might not be the same person afterward? Suddenly, thinking of the skinny boy held captive and about to have his memories stolen by the Clerk, the name Rion, great fearsome best of the steppes, seemed like a cruel joke. Landros swallowed and loosened his shoulders.

  “Do?” The Clerk paused in pulling on his jacket. “You can wait here if you want. Read this book on the terrors of the war of Deliverance.” He rested a cool hand on the battered leather book, the pages dry as the pressed flowers Landros’s mother had liked to hang on the walls. “Learn what nightmares the gods have rescued our kind from and then you’ll see why I have to do this, what will become of us all if the rule of the gods is challenged.”

  Ricon Lovelin placed the tinderbox on top of the book. If the flint sparked, Landros thought, the book would burst aflame like a field of grass in the heat of summer, only each blade burning and shrivelling would be a warrior from history, some great Clerk from years past, some old god who fought alongside the Kings and the Queens. Landros moved the tinderbox aside, away from the book.

  “You will do well, Landros,” the Clerk said. “Keeper Jerohim is pleased with you despite your earlier failings with the woman. Remember that if you please the gods, do as you’re told, then there is no reason you can’t rise further in their service.”

  “Thank you, Clerk.” Landros didn’t know what else to say.

  “Thank me by being faithful to me, to Keeper Jerohim.” The Clerk pulled the door open. “I shall tell you what I learn after I’ve seen the boy.”

  Landros watched the door close behind the Clerk. He felt like a maid in a tower left behind as the hero stalks away to battle. Only the Clerk wasn’t going away to battle, he was going to rape the memories of a young boy held captive in his house. And Landros wasn’t any maid, he was the Captain of the Watch.

  Another candle fluttered out, this one on a tall black stand in the corner next to the window which showed Landros’s own reflection. Still smart in his red jacket, his hair brushed to the side, his face serious and his eyes shadowed.

  Something shifted in the window, a sudden movement drawing his eye to it. Was it outside or behind him, showing in the reflection? Landros turned, his hand reaching for the sword that wasn’t there at his hip. No man was allowed to be armed in the presence of the Clerk.

  Nothing behind him.

  Nothing behind him, but three candles had been quenched, thick smoke coiling to the ceiling like lazy worms. The fire in the hearth burned with a dull rumble, the flames low and hesitant when before they had danced and crackled.

  Another movement behind him, more felt than seen and Landros whirled about. “Who’s there?”

  The only answer was the solar falling into darkness, the fire, every candle extinguished as one, the room falling into a smothering blackness. A blackness that swallowed everything in its oily maw, everything but the sweet, cloying smell of death which assaulted Landros’s nose and made him want to retch.

  He backed away, all sense of direction lost to him, white sparks littered the blackness in his vision, the memory of light fighting with the reality of the black. Where had the door been? Before him? Behind him? And then one word stopped him. One word swept all thoughts of doors and directions from his mind like a cold wind sweeping snow from a gravestone.

  “Landrossss.”

  A voice he knew. He reached again for the sword at his hip that wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER 16

  It had been almost ten days before Ysora had found the courage to take to the streets of Yerotan. Ten days in which Cioran had taught her the words of Keeper Martuk, of his love for the world of man, of the sacrifices he had made. Taught her how little she had truly known about her gods.

  And still the dreams haunted her every night, no matter how faithful and devout her days were with Cioran and his books and his prayers.

  In the past ten days, the only people she had spoken to were Cioran and his servant Voroh, a homely man with a fat belly and skinny arms. Every night she had scuttled back to her room at the inn, eyes down and arms crossed against her chest. Today she had finally surrendered to Cioran’s pleas to leave the house in the morning and explore the village. “Have a look around your old home,” the Guardian had said.

  Ysora had followed the Guardian’s advice as she did in all things. She walked through Batter’s Green, her book clasped in her hands, the sun high in the sky, fat white clouds lazy and still.

  Her skirts swung against her shins as she walked, still wearing her mother’s clothes as she had no money and couldn’t impose on Cioran anymore; the man was already paying for her room at the inn. She’d cleaned and cooked for him, but that did little to banish her shame; it meant little more than Cioran having to pay for two servants to do the work of one.

  She stopped, cursing herself. She was doing it again: walking like her mother, the same long, hurried, manly strides, her arms swinging by her sides. Smaller steps. More feminine steps. Hands before her, holding the book to her breast. More graceful. She thought of the dancer in the dream, the pure joy the woman had felt in the movement of her own body, the feel of beauty in her own elegance. A feeling that had been as alien to Ysora as the worship of the bloodthirsty Paramin.

  Only when she saw the inn in the distance, the red window frames bright under the sun, did she realize where her smaller, more feminine steps were taking her. Perhaps they would have some work for her; she could cook in a fashion. And clean. Rhodry had always made sure the house was clean when he got home, and when the house had been clean enough that even the beast couldn’t complain, then the beatings had been for something else, dinner wasn’t what he had ordered, the chickens hadn’t been fed enough, the paint on the gate was peeling, he had seen her smile at another man...

  Ysora cursed, she had started to walk like her mother again, the strides long and manly. Smaller steps, more feminine, more pretty.

  Leap step stoop spin swirl bend.

  She felt cold at the memory of the dream. Ysora hadn’t seen her face, but she would have been beautiful. To feel the joy in her own body like that, even if she had been naked, the dancer wouldn’t have been bothered, still she would have danced with the same confident grace. Ysora shook her head in wonder at the memory.

  “Solphin.”

  Ysora blinked, she hadn’t realized her giant strides had taken her all the way to outside the inn so quickly. Six tables, the wood stained dark brown, sat on a small patch of green grass under the sweeping branches of a weeping willow. Only one table was taken so early in the day, five people sitting around it, all with a tall tankard before them. One of them, she saw, was the dark man she had met when she first arrived in the village. The one Godie had growled at. He was with three other men and a young woman with golden hair. Ysora felt very old and tall looking down at them sitting in the sun, the willow dappling them all in shimmering shadows. “I’m sorry?” she said.

  The man smiled, his beard framing his attractive mouth and white teeth. He smiled at his friends
, the shoulders of his green tunic covered in dancing shadow leaves. “Solphin.” He said again, looking back to Ysora and then down to the book in her hands. “First I find you wandering the streets in dirty clothes with a beast by your side and now I find you wandering the streets in clean clothes and reading Solphin.”

  “Oh.” Ysora looked down at the book in her hands, a slim volume bound in green.

  “I hope you didn’t trade the hound for the book?” The man raised his eyebrows, his smile widening. “A very poor bargain that would be.”

  Ysora took a moment to ponder whether the man was insulting her dog or the poet. “Godie is staying at Guardian Cioran’s,” she said. Strange how Rhodry’s dog had taken to the Guardian. “I hadn’t realized you would still be around otherwise I’d have been sure to bring him with me.” She smiled at the man’s companions, all of them younger than her. One of the men had a book in front of him, the young woman with the yellow hair leaning shoulder to shoulder with him to read, squinting against the glare of the page, bright white in the sunlight.

  “Don’t mind Tiege, my lady,” said one of those seated at the bench, he rose to his feet, his blonde hair cut severely short and his face wide with high cheekbones. His smile was friendly enough, though Ysora wondered if he mocked her by calling her lady. “Tiege likes the sound of his own voice. Unfortunately for those around him he can rarely think of anything worthwhile to say.”

  “And Aaric here can sit in sullen silences for hours on end until he spies a pretty face and comes back to life.” Tiege frowned exaggeratedly before rising to his feet and nudging Aaric away with a gentle elbow. “I’m surprised to see you still in the village. I’d have thought I’d have been sure to have seen you around since, you’re not an easy woman to miss.” Tiege smiled again, a handsome smile, his hair shining black in the sun, a sweeping branch of the weeping willow brushing his shoulder.

 

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