Glyphbinder

by T. Eric Bakutis

  “Well,” Byn said, “there’s a lot of dead people down there who would disagree with you.” His round face remained flushed. “You think their murderers left that banner there to boast?”

  “That’s exactly what I think,” Trell said. “Kara, I need to look at these bodies. We need to determine who killed whom and when.”

  Kara breathed out and stared at the carnage. “All right.”

  Trell adjusted his veil. “If you’re coming with me, pull your veils close. The smell can be debilitating, and the flies can carry disease.”

  Kara swallowed against the fear in her throat and slid off her horse. Every fiber in her body urged her to ride away, to lead her friends to safety, but Elder Halde would never have done that. “I’ll go with you. There could be survivors.”

  “We’ll all go,” Byn said, slamming the butt of his quarterstaff into the ground.

  “No.” Kara squeezed his arm. “We can’t leave our wagon or the horses unprotected. You and Sera should stay here with Jair. We’ll keep in touch on our dyn disc.”

  All five of them had formed the disc just before they left Solyr. Each of them had touched a bloody finger to a ring of bone powder. The enchantment allowed them to talk, in their minds, across short distances, sometimes as great as half a league. Mages called this mindspeak, and Sera was better at it than everyone else.

  “I’m sorry.” Sera walked to the edge of the rise and sat down, retching quietly. “I’m supposed to be stronger. Bloodmenders are stronger.”

  “Hey.” Byn rushed to her side. “Listen. What’s down there is horrible, more horrible than anyone should ever have to see.” He knelt and touched her shoulder. “You’re not failing anyone.”

  Aryn’s hand clenched when Byn touched Sera, and Kara almost punched him. She forced herself to calm down. This place sickened everyone, and they were all dealing however they could.

  “Aryn,” Kara said, “you’re coming with us.”

  His eyes snapped up to meet hers. “What? Of course.”

  “You’ll be okay down there? Among the bodies?” It felt so callous to call them that. They had been people, families.

  “I’ll be fine.” Aryn pulled his veil tight across his face. “I’ll go wherever you need me.”

  Kara turned to the wagon. “Jair, see if you can discover anything from the souls of this place. See if they can tell us who killed them.”

  Jair just nodded, eyes looking far past the devastated hamlet. Kara looked at Trell. His torasel cloak hung open and the hilt of his broadsword shone inside, obvious to anyone. There would be no more hiding his sword. They were beyond that now.

  The descent to the village, on foot, seemed to take no time at all, but only because Kara wanted it to take so much longer. Hordes of crows moved from body to body as they approached, like wake spreading from a boat. Flies were everywhere, and Kara was grateful for her thick cloak. Her eyes burned and her stomach churned.

  Most of the people in Taven’s Hamlet had died fleeing or on their knees. One man’s head was missing. Another woman sheltered two dead children, her skull caved in by a mace. Two men in leather armor marking them as constables had died back to back, all but cut in half by a single massive blade.

  So many dead men, women, and children were at Kara’s feet that she had trouble seeing them as people. People didn’t die like this. She did not allow herself to focus on any one body or face. She could imagine her mother among these bodies, sightless eyes staring.

  Trell knelt by one body among dozens, waving off the flies, and peered down. “This one’s Tellvan.”

  “Can you…” Kara gagged. “Can you tell how he died?”

  “His wounds suggest a pitchfork.”

  Kara now saw the wounds of which Trell spoke; three round, pus-filled craters in the Tellvan man’s chest. Trell put two fingers into them and twisted them around. A sucking sound emerged.

  Aryn pulled away his veil and vomited, falling to his knees and shaking. Kara almost did as well, but she had learned to master her stomach while on tiny vessels rolling in a choppy sea. She felt so sick she wondered if Aryn’s way was better.

  “These wounds came after he died.” Trell rose and brushed at the gunk on his fingers. “No pitchfork killed him. He was already dead when whoever did this drove the fork into his body.”

  Kara measured her breathing inside her veil. Even through the thick cloth, the air smelled horrible. A miasma of rot. “You’re saying someone left his body here after they did this?”

  “It is the only explanation. Tellvan soldiers would not leave a fallen comrade behind. These murderers were not Tellvan.”

  Aryn stood and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his torasel cloak. “Then we were right.” He wrapped his veil tightly across his face. “So who killed them?”

  “Does it even matter?” Trell’s blue eyes narrowed. “How many wars have started over an atrocity one side attributed to the other? This is the reason Tellvan and Mynt are at war.”

  Trell’s theory made perfect sense. Someone wanted to start a war between Mynt and Tellvan, and if they had not succeeded yet, news of Taven’s Hamlet would certainly aid their cause. Kara pulled out the small green stone Halde had given her.

  “That’s an echo stone.” Aryn blinked. “Where did you get it?”

  “Elder Halde gave it to me. In case of an emergency.”

  Trell nodded. “This is certainly the time.”

  Kara sliced her index finger and touched it to the stone. It glowed green. “Elder Halde?”

  Kara held the stone before her face, not certain whether it should be at mouth or eye level. It felt very awkward, talking to a stone. The strangeness of it helped take her mind off the terrible sights around them. The slaughter. The dead people.

  “This is Kara. I must speak with you. Can you hear me?”

  Halde offered no response. The sun had vanished below the horizon as they descended. It left the sky and village tinted as red as the blood that had run through its streets. Kara put no stock in omens, but if she did, that would have been a very bad one.

  Kara, Trell, and Aryn stared at the glowing stone until it grew fully dark. Clouds blew in while they waited, obscuring the stars, and soon the light from the stone was all they had. No reply came. Finally, Byn’s voice spoke inside her mind.

  “Where are you? What’s happening down there?”

  “Trell found a Tellvan,” Kara thought back, “but he’s certain the man was dead before he arrived. We think whoever killed these people killed the soldier, then made it look like they killed each other.”

  “Trell’s not exactly the most unbiased source.”

  Kara felt a rush of frustration. “He wouldn’t lie to us.”

  “Kara, he wouldn’t even remember if he was lying.”

  “Enough of that,” Sera thought to them. Of all their mindspeak, hers was the loudest and cleanest. “You need to come back up here right now. Jair hasn’t moved since you left, and we can’t seem to snap him out of his trance.”

  Aryn’s eyes met hers. “That never happens. I’ve known Jair since he scribed his first Soulmage glyph. Others sometimes got lost when they projected during training, but never Jair. Not once. If he’s not back, something is very wrong.”

  “There’s nothing else to discover here.” Trell looked toward the distant rise. “We can go when you’re ready.”

  “All right. Just let me take one last look around.” Kara took the dream world and drew the glyph of Theotrix, the great falcon. Beastrulers used it to enhance their sight, and it would allow her to view the village as a whole. If people still lived, she would find them.

  White pain flashed inside Kara’s eyes just before she collapsed. She vomited all over the ground. The world spun around her, as did cries she didn’t recognize. Hands were on her, but they felt cold and clammy. Finally, retching in agony, she remembered who she was.

  “Kara!” Trell shouted. “Speak to me!”

  Kara’s guts were twisting in upon themse
lves, her throat burning. She suffered from a sickness that infested her blood, a sickness that should not be possible. “Carrow root,” she croaked.

  “What?” Trell did not understand, but Aryn did. He cursed.

  “Carrow root is a rare plant that grows in the highest peaks of the Ranarok mountain range. The juice pollutes the blood, imbibed in drink or lathered on food.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Trell demanded.

  “We use it to control mages who violate the Tassau Treaties or use their power to threaten the Five Provinces. Once ingested, any attempt to scribe glyphs sickens and weakens the caster.”

  Kara pushed herself up, still trembling. She smacked her lips against the raw taste of orange peels. She could ill afford to be without glyphs at the moment.

  “The root’s effects are temporary,” Kara said. “It can’t hurt you as long as you don’t keep trying to glyph. Where did I ingest it?”

  “One way to find out.” Aryn cut his finger and scribed the Hand of Heat on his quarterstaff. He cried out and collapsed, writhing, as his finger healed over on its own.

  Kara blinked at him. Since when did Aryn risk himself to help others? She dismissed that thought as petty. What was important was he was sick as well. They all were.

  “Byn, Sera, Jair, listen to me very carefully. I think our morning’s meat was tainted with carrow root.”

  Horror filled Sera’s next thought. “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know.” Kara did know that Solyr’s elders controlled access to the root. They stored it in a warded vault in the Solyr Council Chamber that only they could access. The elders had prepared their provisions. An elder at Solyr had betrayed them.

  “Help Aryn up,” Kara ordered. “Whoever’s after me knows we’re not in Solyr. If they aren’t already coming for us, they will be soon.”

  Betrayed. They had been betrayed. Everything — the bodies at the signpost, their detour to Taven’s Hamlet, the slaughter drawing them in — it could all have been a trap. A trap set by her mysterious pursuer. The man who wanted to feed her to the Mavoureen.

  Trell threw Aryn’s arm over his shoulder. Together, the three of them headed back to Sera, Byn, and Jair. Aryn stumbled and retched, but he walked on bravely. Kara respected his strength.

  “Kara! Someone’s coming!” Byn thought from the rise. “I can smell them! There’s at least a dozen!”

  Kara increased their pace and glanced at Trell. “There’s someone coming at the others from beyond the ridge.”

  “Tell them to come down here. Meet us.” Trell quickened his pace. “If we must stand, we’ll do better in a building than on open ground, unless they decide to burn us out.”

  “Unless…” Kara could not believe how calmly he talked about these things. She went back to mindspeak. “Leave the wagon and the horses! Come to us!”

  “Jair won’t wake up!”

  “Then carry him!”

  “Kara?” Trell’s arm blocked her way. “To the right. This house is defensible.” He walked inside with Aryn coughing on his shoulder. Kara waited outside, staring. She couldn’t see Byn anywhere.

  At last, Byn and Sera rushed from the dark night. Byn, hunched over, carried Jair’s slack form on his back and held Jair’s legs in his thick arms. The quickest way to travel with another body. Sera’s eyes were wide and orange.

  “Sera?” Kara felt like she was looking in a mirror. “Why?”

  “They’re looking for a woman with orange eyes.” Sera met her gaze as they confronted each other. “We’re both female and wearing veils. If it comes to a fight, this will at least confuse them.”

  Kara wanted to scream at her. When had Sera taken the time to learn Kara’s eye-changing glyph? Trell stepped outside with his sword in one hand and beckoned. The house had once been two stories, but the upper story had been blasted off by what Kara guessed might have been a Hand of Heat.

  “Don’t argue.” Sera prodded Byn, who grunted and rushed into the house with Jair. “Just get inside.”

  Kara fumed as she followed the others into the house. Trell closed the door and then motioned to Byn. Grunting with effort, the two of them lifted a fallen piece of timber and settled it against the door. Then they settled another.

  A host of howls sounded from outside the house. They sounded like animals, but not like wolves. They were the howls of something else — something angry. Kara could not imagine what would howl like that, but she knew it was coming for her. Coming for them all.

  She turned on Sera and gripped her shoulder. “Change your eyes back, now. This is too dangerous.”

  “That’s not your decision,” Sera said. “Besides, they’re not taking either of us. You’ll see to that, won’t you?”

  Aryn knelt now beside Jair’s silent form, trying to wake him up. The howls sounded again, just outside the door. Kara unslung her quarterstaff, as did the rest of her dyn. They could not use glyphs, but they could use the dream world. Kara took to it that moment.

  The forms outside were orange and living, but taller than humans and difficult to identify. There were six of them. Their auras were almost animal, like wolves, but they had a keen intelligence that implied culture, language, and fury. Kara did not know what they were, but she knew what they wanted. Her.

  The largest of the creatures slammed a massive black club against the door. The door splintered with the impact, and Kara doubted the makeshift barricade would hold for long. That’s when Kara noticed Trell no longer stood with them. His orange form had climbed a ladder to the open second floor.

  “What’s he doing?” Sera thought.

  “Five take me.” Byn’s next thought carried awe. “I think he’s going to drop down on top of them.”

  Trell didn’t. What dropped on the orange forms outside was a huge oak dresser. The dresser crushed the largest form, producing a flash of green that soon faded. Another howled and jerked at its crushed leg. That was when Trell dropped on them.

  No matter how fast these strange beings were, Trell and his broadsword were faster. Byn and Aryn pulled at the timber pile before the door. By the time they got it open, all the forms were dead. Trell turned to them, blade covered in blood with more splattered on his cloak.

  “Clear the door and get out here! That was their raiding party, but they would have left others around the village. We have to break out of this noose.”

  Byn picked up Jair. “Go on. I’ve got our sleeper.”

  They rushed out into darkness as more howls sounded. Taven’s Hamlet was not particularly big, and Kara knew the howls would be on them soon. When she saw the furry, wolf-faced bodies Trell had brought down, she sucked in her breath.

  “Gnarls. They’ve not been seen outside the Unsettled Lands for decades, have they?”

  “Well, they’re here now.” Aryn nudged one with his boot. “Seems inevitable, the way they breed.”

  The sky above Metla Tassau crackled with spectral storms made by Torn, High Protector, after he sealed the gates at Terras. Those storms brought instant death to any human that entered the province, but gnarls were not human. They were far worse.

  Gnarls had spread quickly across Metla Tassau, a mix of wolf and man, and legend said one of the first mages to discover the secrets of glyph magic made them millennia ago. They had tribes and societies and villages. They also raided the Five Provinces.

  “Head to the south side of town,” Byn said, grunting with Jair’s weight. “The horses will meet us there.”

  “Dyn star on Trell,” Kara thought.

  Reacting to the training they had all undergone at Solyr, she, Sera, Byn, and Aryn formed a five-sided star with Trell at their head. Kara chose her steps cautiously, avoiding bodies still strewn in the street. It was easier to think of them as bodies, as obstacles, than the people they had once been. Dead.

  Under normal circumstances, Kara would have led the star, but Byn was carrying Jair and Trell was the only one who had actually been in battle before. He had also just killed six gna
rls. By himself.

  “I sent instructions to the horses before we left,” Byn said, as they picked their way through corpses and crows. “I wasn’t going to leave them to be slaughtered.”

  “I love you, Byn,” Sera said.

  “Love you too, honey.” An axe flew from the darkness and took Byn in the shoulder. He fell with a grunt and dropped Jair.

  “No!” Sera cried.

  Gnarls surrounded them on all sides, obvious in the dream world, and Kara knew they couldn’t win this without Trell’s help. He had no dream world. He couldn’t see the beastmen surrounding them, so she would make sure he could.

  Kara drew a glyph of Flaryen on her wrist pad and attached it to Trell’s dream form. Then, she broadcast mindspeak to her dyn. “Our attackers are gnarls, not human. I know you’ve never killed before, but they’ll kill us if we don’t kill them. I’m scribing Flaryen.”

  The protests of her dyn had only just reached her when she ignited her glyph. The corruption of carrow root slammed into her full force, dropping her to all fours.

  As she gagged and collapsed, she prayed it would be enough.

  Chapter 13

  TRELL DID NOT QUESTION the floating white light that burst into being at his side, drifting like a flower petal in the air. It was magic like all the other magic he had seen. It allowed him to see their attackers, and he would use it like any other tool.

  The floating light revealed the gnarl who had thrown the axe in the shadow of a building just to their right. Three more were creeping toward them in a line with serrated hand axes raised. The beastmen stared at the new light with big black eyes.

  “Kill the one in the alley!” Trell charged those ahead.

  The strange floating light moved with him, bobbing as if leashed to his body. The gnarls spread, but Trell moved too fast for them to flank him. He sidestepped the leader’s swing and sliced its leg off at the knee.

  Trell knew how to fight with a sword. He lived and breathed it. Though his memories were shadows, his training was all instinct. It guided his blade, guided his feet and his muscles as he parried, struck, killed. His attackers seemed slow, clumsy. Amateur.