by Greg Curtis
“I see.” But what she saw was that the wizard was in a lot of trouble. And that there was nothing she could do about it. It wasn't even her place to try. She was a rider of the Friends of the Golden Concord, and this was a matter of the Fae.
“Of course he'll return!” A cranky old man called to them from the stairs. “Someone has to get me my lunch!”
“Uh huh!” She groaned. It seemed that Great Uncle Mortimer had returned from his walk, and it hadn’t improved his mood.
“I'll get you your lunch, Mortimer,” she called back, wondering once more why and how she had become the old man's servant. And how the wizard could have so many mad relatives. There surely had to be a limit!
“Not you, Girl,” he snapped. “You don't have time. You have to get the book.”
“What book?” She didn't remember anything about a book. And surely you can find your own own books!
“See!” He turned to one of his invisible friends. “I told you she didn't know.” Then he turned back to her.
“Ingrim's Ancient Bindings of the Reverent. It's got a grey cover and it's somewhere in that junk pile he calls his workshop.”
“Alright Mortimer. I'll find the book for you after lunch. Just go and sit down. You must be tired after your walk.” Though never too tired to annoy her.
“For me?!” He raised his voice. “Why would I want the book, you foolish Girl?!” He stared at her as if she'd said something completely mad.
“But you said –.”
“I said you have to get the book. So you get the book. You give it to that annoying giant woman Nyri Lora. She flies it back to the Glade – Illoria or whatever. The Elders of the Roots of the Great Tree read it. They let Baen go. And he makes me my lunch! Do I have to explain everything to you?!”
“Children!” He complained to his unseen companion. “Do they teach them nothing these days?!” Then he stomped off moodily to his favourite spot at the back of the roof, still complaining.
“I'm sorry about that.” Dariya apologised to J'bel. “He's not usually this bad. It's probably the trees, having to walk around them and step over the roots. It tires him out.” Then she noticed the strange expression on the Fae's face. “J'bel?”
“How does he know that?!” J'bel stared at her. “How can he possibly know any of that?!”
“Know what?”
“About the book!”
“You mean there is a book?” Dariya was surprised. She'd thought he had dreamed it up, like so many other things that came out of his mouth.
“It was in the message. But he can't know that!” The man looked deeply shocked. And then something that might have been understanding flashed across his face. “Who's he talking to?!”
“Ahh … he's not talking to anyone.” She told him. But J'bel really did look shocked. “He doesn't have any magic. You know that.”
“Doesn't he?” J'bel suddenly turned on his heels and headed back to the stairs.
“Where are you going?” She called after him.
“To Baen's workshop of course. We need to find that book!”
“Shite!” Dariya hurried after him, wondering if everyone was losing their minds these days. And then she chased him down the stairs, wondering just how her life had turned into this. Following the deranged babblings of an elderly dotard.
But ten minutes later when the found the grey book among a collection papers and other miscellaneous junk on one of the many benches in the workshop, it did give her pause. But then the answer came to her. He must have been down here, seen the book and overheard the rest, then put it all together in a strange story in his head. Mad people did that – didn't they?
J'bel clearly didn't think so, she gathered when she saw him clutch the book under his arm with the strength of a drowning man clinging to a floating log. And when she watched him hurry out of the store, weaving his way through the streets filled with trees, moving like a panther in a desperate hurry. He really thought this book mattered. And that Great Uncle Mortimer was actually talking to someone!
It occurred to her later though as she was serving the old man his lunch and listening to his endless complaints, that there was another possibility. Just because the old man had no magic and there was nobody there, that didn't mean that someone else with magic wasn't talking to him!
After all he was a Walkerton. Anything was possible!
Chapter Twenty Eight
It was confusing being back at the Glade of Grace. He felt conflicted. He had always wanted to return. Always intended to come back some day. But not like this. Locked in a prison like a criminal of some sort.
Though it probably wouldn't look like a prison to anyone not from G'lorenvale. There were no bars and no walls. Instead he was held here by bonds of magic that were far stronger than mere steel. There was no wall but if he walked too far in any direction he found himself held back by something. His magical items had all been taken away. And while he could still enchant, any spells he'd tried that might get through the invisible wall, failed. It might not be an actual wall but it was particularly effective.
There were also no guards. Wardens came by regularly to give him his meals. But they weren't armed and didn't hold the keys to the spells that held him. The wardens were from the High Branch – the Heriana Fora or what would be the courts of Justice in Grenland. But they weren't the ones who'd arrested him. He'd committed no crime. Instead it was the priests of the Allene Mar Wane – the Roots of the Great Tree – who were holding him. Not because he had committed a crime but because they feared his heart had become contaminated by darkness. He wasn't a criminal, he was a heretic.
But he didn't feel like a heretic. There was no darkness in his heart. That was what he kept telling the priests who came every day. He didn't worship the Reaver. He followed the Lady in as much as he followed any of the gods and goddesses. In truth maybe that was just a holdover from his days as a young man in the family home when all of the family were expected to go to the temple at least once a week. Still, it had stuck with him and he had been faithful. He had given regularly and spoken the prayers. Never once had he flirted with another faith let alone that of the demons!
But the priests and acolytes didn't believe him, and he feared as he sat on the soft grass staring out over the perfect fields to the lake in the centre of the Glade, that they never would. Because he didn't know how to convince them.
Still, at least the view was lovely. And he got to hear the song of the Fae every night – not through an enchanted stone either but from all sides by fresh voices as they gave their prayers of song to the sky. It was truly beautiful. He also got to see Caris and her family too, even if most of what Caris said was an endless apology for drugging him. He forgave her. He had forgiven her a dozen times already. But still she told him of her pain for what she'd done. Yet he knew she'd had no choice. She'd seen the marking, recognised it for the mark of the Reaver, and acted as she had to. It wasn't her fault. Maybe it was his for not knowing what the mark was. At the time though he'd been more concerned with what it could do than where it had come from.
“You!”
A woman yelled at Baen causing him to look around – and then to wish he hadn't. It was Estor, or whatever her name actually was, being walked across the fields by a pair of wardens. Obviously, she'd been released from the infirmary and was now set to join him in prison. And she knew him – he wasn't quite sure how. She knew him and she hated him. That much was clear even from a distance. In fact, the wardens had to hold her back to prevent her from attacking him. He guessed she wanted to do him harm. But thankfully she couldn't. Even if these walls of magic had somehow failed and allowed her to pass through them, she had no magic. And he didn't fear the fists of a middle-aged woman.
“Could you please put her some distance from me,” he called out to the wardens. Even though he didn't fear her he didn't want to have to listen to her either. Whatever she blamed him for – which was most probably from taking her magic from her – he didn't need to hear
it. The woman had a dark soul. She had worked with the Duke. Sent raiders into this land and had them kill and capture her own people.
“You think I won't kill you, you damned bastard?!” She yelled at him as she was walked past his cell. “Think again! I will rip your miserable heart out of your chest and make you eat it!”
He believed her. Not that she could do it, but certainly that she would try. It didn't bother him too greatly. In the end it was still better that she was alive and able to be questioned than a corpse inside that cliff. But it did bother him that they were both in the same prison when he'd done nothing wrong. There was something profoundly unfair about that. Still, he tried to take the situation with as much grace as he could muster. There was no point in screaming and yelling. And in time the woman was taken far enough away that she didn't bother him any longer.
“And how are we today, Master Walkerton?”
Baen looked around to see that Persea and her husband Tariq had arrived. They normally came together, often hand in hand, which he thought was charming in a way. Few people in Grenland would so openly show their affection. It wasn't polite or manly or something. On the other had these were the Fae version of Inquisitors. That wasn't so charming.
“Fine, thank you. But I do worry about what's happening in my absence. It's been three days and I really do need to get back.” He'd told them that many times before, but they had never agreed. He didn't expect them to this time either.
“I'm sure Miss Morningstar is running your store and your … other activities, perfectly well in your absence.”
“I'm not.” He let out a heavy breath. “I only left her with five days’ worth of decrees to replace. If she's still continuing the practice she will soon have to make up her own.”
And the Lady only knew what she might come up with! He'd had a plan. A simple, direct plan. It had three goals. The first was to get those with gifts like him to safety. To protect them. The second was to undermine King Richmond's forces so that if and when he did regain control of his messages, it would still take him months to be able to get his Inquisitors and his armies back in shape. That would delay any hostilities. And the third part was simply to make the King look like a fool. Not only would he make King Richmond's grip on the throne a little more tenuous, it would force him – if the man had any common sense – to start ruling in a more reasonable manner. Every decree he'd sent out in the King's name, had been directed at one of those goals. But he didn't know if Dariya was continuing the practice. She might consider it disloyal. Even when it seemed her cousin was trying to kill her. Sometimes he thought the woman didn't have a normal brain. She had a clockwork creation instead that operated according to strict laws and regulations.
“Wouldn't that be a good thing,” Tariq asked?
“How so?”
“Well if she is one day to become Queen then surely she is gaining practice in issuing decrees as she must.”
Was the man jesting with him, Baen wondered? The pair were friendly enough – for Inquisitors – but he'd never considered them as being particularly light hearted. Or was he actually serious? Did he imagine that this was how a Queen should rule? Through guile and deception instead of the open use of the machines of political power? Baen couldn't decide. In the end the Fae didn't understand his people any better than his people understood them. It was why there had been so many terrible wars. And why peace had only eventually come through desperation and separation.
He took a deep breath. “So, what is it to be today? More singing? Magic? Puzzles?”
The Fae's interrogation technique wasn't anything like what he'd expected. There were no torturers and questions. There were however a seemingly endless number of – mind games – for want of a better word. But then they weren't trying to gain information from him. They were trying to see into his soul. Hunting for the darkness. For all that he didn't like it. Sometimes he could feel their thoughts in his. Feel the way they sifted through his memories. It was the most terrible invasion of his privacy that he could imagine. And they kept bringing up secrets that he'd long forgotten. Little embarrassments. Secret shames. Guilty thoughts. Things that he'd hidden even from himself and hoped would never see light again. He didn't enjoy that at all. It was far worse than merely being naked in public.
“No. I'm sorry, but we have gone as far as we can with the games,” Tariq announced. “Now we have to use more direct means.”
Baen wondered what that meant, but he didn't have time to ask. Before he could get the question out his mind was hit with what felt like an ice pick, smashing into his very thoughts.
He cried out. Then he fell to the ground and lay there cradling his head, screaming in agony. The pain was fay beyond anything he’d ever felt before. So terrible that he wasn't even sure it was pain. It was something else. And even as he screamed the sound was somehow ripped from his throat so that he didn't even know if his screams could be heard. Pain! Fire! Confusion! And fear. Most of all he felt fear. The terror of not knowing who he was. Or what he was. Or even if he was.
He was no longer Baen. Or an enchanter or a book seller. He wasn’t a son or a brother. He wasn’t a man or even human. He had instead been reduced to the essence of loss and pain. Nothing but suffering. He could see those things, somewhere in the distant thoughts. But he couldn't touch them. He was lost and he desperately needed to find a way home.
But there was no way home. There was no shelter. And as he lay there hurting, he could feel himself being torn apart. Little by little. His thoughts were being stripped away like the layers of an onion. His understandings. His feelings. His very soul. All that made him who he was, was being dissected. It was like being an animal on the butcher's table, knowing that it was being cut into pieces.
Baen cried out his suffering soundlessly, begging for release from this torture. Pleading to die – though he didn't actually know if he was alive. All he wanted was for it to end. But there was no one to cry to. No one to hear him. He was alone in the darkness, dying in pieces. And he no longer knew who he was. All he knew was suffering. And the fear that this was forever. Fear that became certainty. The death of all hope.
Time no longer mattered. He wasn't even sure it existed. Or what it actually was. He wasn't sure what anything was. There was only this endless tearing deep inside him as he felt his essence shredded.
At some point it ended. But he didn't know that it had ended. He didn't know anything at all. But eventually something of the outside world came to him. Like the fact that it was cold and dark. That his body was shaking. That he actually had a body. And he could feel something solid underneath him. Grass.
The acrid smell of vomit came to him, and eventually he worked out that it was his. He'd been sick – everywhere. He'd pissed himself too. But he couldn't find the strength to care about such things. Instead it was the simple things that mattered. Like that fact that no one was tearing his mind apart anymore with a crowbar.
In time he became aware of something else – laughter. A woman was laughing at him. He didn't know why. He didn't know who she was. But slowly he understood the words she yelled at him. She was saying that this was only the beginning. That they were going to keep doing this to him again and again until there was nobody left. And that it was what he deserved. She seemed to enjoy telling him that.
But what had he done to deserve this? He was confused and broken, but as his thoughts slowly returned to him, he still couldn't think of anything he'd done that was so bad that he should suffer this fate.
The woman though kept insisting that he had. In between her bouts of laughter. And as he lay there in pain, listening to the woman’s taunts, it came to him that he must have done something terrible. Perhaps he really was truly wicked. But he didn't know.
If only he knew what he'd done. It would make it so much easier.
And it would help if she stopped calling him Baen. Because he didn't know who that was.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Voices came to him as he lay
on the grass. Angry voices. Were they angry with him, he wondered? Not that it mattered anymore. Nothing mattered. But he listened anyway. He heard them talk, even yell. But he didn't care. He just lay there. He smelled the scent of the grass and he gazed upon the green blur that was the world.
“Look at him!” A woman shouted. “Look at what you've done!”
“We've done our job,” a man answered her calmly. “No trace of the darkness remains within him.”
Who were they talking about he wondered? And then it came to him – they were talking about him! But why? And why was there another woman crying? None of it made any sense. But then he wasn't sure it should make any sense. Why should anything make sense? All that mattered was that there was warm sun shining on him. Soft grass underneath him. And nothing tearing through his soul.
“There was never any darkness!” The woman yelled even louder than before. “Look for yourself! It's a binding of darkness spell!” There was a sound of something, a finger maybe, smashing into something hard. He knew that sound. Fingers running across paper, he knew that sound very well. But he didn't care.