by Kim Wedlock
He confirmed that himself a moment later as he spoke her name, as well as justifying her caution with the warning tone in his voice. He had sensed the same thing.
Hurriedly, she pulled on her animal skins and descended the pinnacle with both skill and urgency. Rathen was already moving out from between the rocks, cautioning Aria to stay back where she was, but Petra's voice rose from beyond before either of them could reach the sands. But what she said made no sense to either of them.
"Anthis?" Eyila repeated, and all eyes turned quizzically towards the tent they'd all supposed occupied. Aria, who had obediently remained near the fire, tentatively pulled aside the canvas which, it seemed, had barely even been tied. She looked back at them both with wide eyes. It was empty.
The two mages fled, shouting even before they broke into the open for Petra to keep away. It couldn't truly be Anthis - an arcane trick, though by whom or why was anyone's guess. But whatever it was, their shouts were too late. She had already reached the shuffling, limping figure by the time they'd stormed free of the camp.
"He's hurt," she called, and the alarm in her voice made the matter seem even less likely. How could Anthis have disappeared with no one noticing, become infused with magic and seriously injured, all during what couldn't be more than two hours in the lifeless desert?
Garon raced up alongside them as they covered the last distance, his hand already gripping the hilt of his sword. Both mages were equally prepared to loose spells, covering between their natures both defence and attack - but while Petra remained so close beside the mystery figure, not one of them could act. And when the clean, crisp moonlight finally caught the face of her burden, none were sure they should.
"Anthis?" Rathen's bewilderment doubled as the young man was lowered to the ground at Eyila's arrival, who skidded to a stop and immediately set to unwinding the makeshift bandage about his waist. But there was no mistake. On any part. This was Anthis, without a doubt, and there was a definite if diminishing sense of magic radiating from him. "Eyila--"
"Yes," she replied shortly, "I know, but I can't begin to guess how." She spared him only a single glance, quizzical and disturbed, but he could only shake his head in clear and unsettled confusion.
Petra muttered in a panic, ignoring the others' cryptic concerns as he slumped limp in her arms. Whatever energy he'd found to drag himself through the desert in such a state had evaporated at the sight of his rescue. Now he could barely hold his head up. She growled his name again, fighting the urge to shake him to his senses, but though he managed sluggishly to look back at her, somehow he could only smile. Relief, it seemed, had addled him.
Eyila cursed beneath her breath as she peeled away the last of the cloth. The conjured light revealed a gash that sank deep into his side, darkened and made more gruesome by the blood that surrounded it, dried, congealed, and in one corner still leaking. It took Rathen and Eyila each a long moment to understand what they were seeing; Petra and Garon got there a little sooner. It had been a stab wound initially, but the blade had been dragged and twisted to increase its severity. This was no accident. Eyila then spotted the bandage around his arm.
"Dammit, Anthis!" Petra cursed in exasperation as the tribal girl began to unwind that one, too, though it wasn't particularly sodden. "What have you done?! Where did you go?!"
He mumbled something, a single sound that could have been involuntary, but repeated twice before managing to finish: "Bandits..."
"Bandits?" She stared back out over the sands, following his tracks. "The village... They must know we're here; they're seeking us out--" she looked back to him in bafflement. "But what were you doing out there on your own?!"
Rathen watched in silence as the fabric unravelled from his arm.
"Walk," he struggled.
"You should have told us if you were sodding off to clear your head again," she snapped, clearly about ready to add to his injuries out of her own worry. "You're such a fool, Anthis!"
"At least you got away." Eyila began to shape her unfamiliar signs over his bloodied hip, but despite Rathen's interest in her magic, he wasn't watching. He looked instead from the wound on his arm, one which seemed far too recent to be so far healed, to the absence and stupidity in his expression. And he was acutely aware of the moment the arcane taint finally dissipated.
He reeled back a step as realisation hammered its way into his skull. "My god..." His eyes widened in horror, and though all others looked towards him searchingly, Anthis's dreary eyes stared back in dreadful understanding. He made no attempt at all to deny the silent conclusion, even as Rathen searched them desperately for any other explanation. "Eyila, stop. Get away from him."
"What? Why?"
"Just move!" He contorted his fingers faster than anyone thought possible and several shafts of light flashed through the air, piercing Anthis's shivering torso to impale him on the spot.
"What are you doing?!" She bellowed as Petra jumped back in shock, leaving the wounded young man to drop from her knee to the ground with an agonized cry. But Rathen didn't respond. He stormed forwards and grasped the now paralysed arm, closely inspecting the cut's position.
His dark eyes flashed. Unadulterated fury filled him, the greatest he'd felt in a decade. They turned thunderously onto Anthis's hazy green. "Sulyax Dizan," he spat. "Is that what this is?!"
Petra froze, and neither did Garon attempt to move forwards and pull the mage off of him. Eyila looked critically between them, but her tongue remained just as still.
"I know this cut," he growled, leaning menacingly close, "I've seen it before. Tell me right now that I am mistaken."
Anthis didn't reply.
Eyila's frown deepened. "S-sulyak..what? What is that?"
"Sulyax Dizan. It's a myth--"
"It's no myth." Garon's certainty caught Petra's voice before she could continue to deny it. "The Sulyax Dizan is a cult; a group of people who take the lives of others in the belief that they're protecting the world from the Apocalypse." He stared at Anthis, his expression unreadable. "They kill by opening a vein, mixing their blood with their own and reciting some kind of ritual incantation - then they're rewarded in magic."
"It's a story," Petra stressed.
"No," Rathen growled, having not once removed his dagger-like gaze. "Eyila and I definitely felt magic, even before you saw him."
"And I've seen the evidence for myself," Garon added. "One of my earliest tasks was to track down and arrest a cultist in Adin. I saw their 'gift' for myself, at close range." All eyes followed his back to the renowned historian. None of them missed the fact that he hadn't yet tried to refute the accusation.
With a curse, Rathen violently cast the limp arm aside, eliciting another grunt of pain, and searched him just as roughly. It didn't take him long to find two daggers stuffed into his boot. He snarled in satisfaction and threw them out of his reach while Petra stared in disbelief. "You went looking for the bandits, didn't you?" He didn't reply; Rathen barely managed to restrain himself from punching him. Then he wondered why he bothered. His fist met Anthis's cheekbone with a pleasing thump. "What happened? You tried to take them all on at once?"
"They couldn't have gotten the jump on him," Garon assured him.
"No, because you can sense them all, can't you?" He sneered. "No one can sneak up on you, not truly..."
"Only if I'm...looking for them," Anthis rasped. Evidently the punch had shaken free some of his bearings, though his eyes were still disgustingly lascivious. "But she...I hadn't...I was distracted... I could sense her, but I'd...written her off, just...like the others..."
Petra turned her back as a small hiccup tumbled out. Eyila saw her shake, though in shock or rage, she wasn't sure. She, herself, was simply confused - if also a little curious.
Anthis burst into a chest-ripping choke, but his body, still paralysed by Rathen's glowing rods, barely moved. "The magic," he eventually managed, "it's so we can get...get away afterwards...survive... But it doesn't last...depends on...the quality of
--" he retched again. "Higher quality souls--"
"Means a longer high."
"High?"
Rathen glanced towards Eyila. "Look at him."
She did so, and what interest there had been was slowly swept aside by disgust.
"That's what all this has been," Petra mumbled, raising her voice as she turned back around, her usually thoughtful hazel eyes now blazing with a frightening fire. "Not the desert. You've been so venomous all this time because you needed a fix. All this time...oh, Vastal save us, and every time before..."
"And it's been t-torment--"
"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that!" She stormed forwards in a cloud of fury, but an invisible force suddenly blocked her path. She glared down at Rathen, who stared a severe warning to keep back.
"I'm sorry." They struggled to believe him while bliss still lingered around his eyes. "I usually have...chance to deal with it when I'm...alone...it never gets this bad...not normally. I f-factor bounties into my routes--" he howled in pain after another cough ravaged his limp body. "I was desperate!"
"'Desperate'. So if our route hadn't chanced upon those poor bastards, it could have been any one of--"
"No." His rattling voice broke in his attempt at a firm tone. "Never. Absolutely n-not."
Rathen stared viciously back at him. "Why?"
"Des-despite what you're all thinking...I have more in-integrity than th-that. Why else is my bag stuffed...with bounty papers? People like them - killing, r-raping for sport, their souls...are the most valuable. They live free lives, by their own rules - fear no one. Their souls...the best that can be offered and the...worst the w-world has to live with."
"How very noble of you," Petra sneered, but a thoughtful shadow suddenly fell over Rathen's grim face.
"But...children live freely, don't they?" He asked lightly. Too lightly. All tongues stilled at his musing tone. "Children live by their own rules; they're not concerned with right or wrong, what has to be done, nor the rigours of life and survival. They live happily. Ignorantly." He cocked his head dangerously. "Or am I wrong?" Suddenly Anthis didn't seem to want to provide a half-spluttered defence. "And wandering traders, too. People who go wherever they wish, trading goods so they can buy food and keep travelling, see the world, do what they love rather than being tied down to one place. Not like city merchants, worn down by the same day-in day-out monotony, nor the peasants who live in disease and misery, nor even the rich who live their lives dictated by the worry of what people might think of them, or falling from grace and losing everything. No - not the people who live on a tightrope."
Against possibility, the leaded air pressed down even heavier. Rathen's eyes remained fixed menacingly, murderously, on Anthis, while the others looked evaluatingly from one face to the next.
Rathen lived in the wilds. He was banished, but he was exempt from the law and the Order as long as he kept away from it; Petra travelled and made money doing what she loved simply so she could keep doing it; Eyila, too, lived a free and simple life as far as the others were concerned - and Aria, a happy, intelligent child who had grown up knowing nothing but freedom, and who marvelled constantly at the world around her. It seemed that Garon was the only one not at risk, but as he kept himself locked up so tightly, no one could really be sure.
"'Torment'," Petra repeated, looking slowly back to rogue. "Us. That's what you meant. It's been torment travelling with us..."
Rathen suddenly rose and turned dangerously towards the inquisitor. "You knew about my problems. Did you know about this?"
"Of course he didn't--"
Rathen whirled back around. "You! Don't you dare speak!"
"Me?!" Anthis finally erupted, despite his agony. "Every single one of us has darkness in our past! And that you--"
Rathen delivered his face another swift punch, and this time he was rewarded with a crunch. He'd been a little disappointed that the first was so gently received. "I," he said slowly, so there could be no misunderstanding, "am a monster. But you do all of this willingly." He returned to Garon with a single, purposeful gesture towards the old village, then looked towards Petra as he started away. "Stay here. Aria will sneak out - keep her with you, and away from him."
"You're going back out there. What about Eyila? Could she--"
"They're all already dead. She can't help them. Him," he added, casting back a disdainful look, "she can. Should she want to." He headed north with Garon dutifully at his side, and though he'd known that anger filled Petra's eyes, stepping past her, he saw the true depth of the hurt and betrayal. It was deeper, even, than his own. He offered her an apologetic smile. "Try not to beat him to death," he said softly. "Garon probably thinks we still need him."
She didn't smile, but he hadn't expected her to. His own was short-lived.
Neither said a word as they trekked through the sand. Rathen couldn't speak for Garon, but truthfully, he felt completely dazed, addled and dumbstruck. How a man could hide such a secret so well terrified him. It was true what he'd said - Rathen certainly had darkness in his past, as did Aria, and Petra, and though hers he couldn't guess the full extent of, he was confident it was just as unwilling. But this... Part of him was still convinced it was a misunderstanding, or a magical trick. After all, how could Anthis Karth, of all people in the world, be a murderous madman? It was ludicrous. Nothing more.
But there was another part of him that couldn't deny what he'd felt, seen and heard, and though he desperately didn't want to reach the village for fear of what he'd find, he needed to know for certain one way or the other. But...though he wished not to admit it, he also knew he was driven by more than just personal curiosity. There was a sense of responsibility cemented deep within him that wouldn't be silenced, and he cursed his military past for being unable to ignore it. So he walked beside the inquisitor from the Hall of the White Hammer, carrying the weight of law and containment he'd been unable to shed in eleven years, alongside his own need to view the evidence and judge him for himself.
There was no challenge in following Anthis's tracks, deep and clumsy as they were, and they soon arrived at the roadside ruin. The fires still burned, casting a comforting glow against the walls of ancient buildings in a manner that almost leant hope that they had misjudged the extent of his activities. But that hope was shattered the moment they stepped inside. They found two bodies almost immediately, both with throats slit and arms torn, and as they moved from the edge of the village towards the nearest of the fires, they found nine more corpses lying in the flickering light, each with the same inflictions. The ninth, however, was riddled with cuts - a mess of slashes and stab wounds - which revealed her to be the one who had fought back. From the butchering she'd been dealt, it seemed that Anthis had gotten off disappointingly lightly.
They searched the rest of the village in an increasingly defeated and sickened silence, finding close to twenty bodies. There was no trace of anyone having survived and fled. Rathen wasn't sure what was worse - that it was true he'd massacred the entire village and claimed the souls, it seemed, of all but one, or that such a cheerful man had executed so many so tidily...
The bodies were gathered and set upon the fire, where Rathen encouraged its flames to grow and engulf them. They left before the stench of burning flesh could sting their nostrils.
"You're sure we still need him?" Rathen asked, breaking the dense silence.
"We still need him."
He sighed uneasily. 'Perhaps sending Aria away is for the best after all...'
Eyila was kneeling beside Anthis when they returned, clearly uncomfortable though focused intently upon his injuries, just as Rathen had expected her to be. His jaw knotted, but he had no right to stop her. She was an intelligent girl, but she seemed to have that same pesky need to help people which ailed all healers, as well as the inability to silence it even when common sense dictated they should. And he did resent her helping him.
Petra was standing nearby, her furious eyes flicking watchfully between Anthis and Eyila, and the t
wo arrivals. Her sword was drawn in one hand, the point of her blade angled in such a way that it was clear she was ready to pounce at a moment's notice to defend Eyila, despite him still being clearly immobilised, or should the mood simply strike her. Aria's wrist was held tightly in her other, and though her big, blue-grey eyes flickered in relief at her father's return, caution, confusion and disappointment were quick to dull them.
That only worsened Rathen's mood.
He removed the paralysis only once Eyila was finished, after which everyone kept their distance. He was more than prepared to form spells to lock Anthis in his tent, but Garon warned him away from that idea, so instead, he cast spells over his own to keep Anthis out while evading Aria's questions about the night's events with games. He hadn't the heart to tell her. The look in her eyes and slightly higher pitch to her rushed voice revealed she already had ideas, and while he felt no love for the murderous, deceitful man, he found himself curiously disinclined to rob her of a friend. With words, at least. He would make sure she never went near him again.
The camp was silent. Tense and silent. All tents were occupied - Anthis's had been checked - but whether anyone slept was another matter. Garon had stood watch into the small hours, as he often did, but now sought a brief reprieve by the dying fire to chase away the encroaching cold. He was practised enough at operating under little rest - he'd learned even before rising to Inquisitor that work often called for it - and had later been trained, brutally, to withstand it when he had to at the cost of his focus. Fortunately it wasn't his task to think at the moment - he had two other minds for that. He had only to watch.
He knelt beside the flames. They had withered, but they provided enough heat, and so it was no wonder that he didn't immediately notice the lithe figure sitting upon the lowest of the spires. He jolted inwardly when he finally did, several seconds after kneeling, and immediately reached for his sword.