Written in Blood

by Span, Ryan A.

  My first order as the ranking military officer was to keep our lantern lit. The cloak of darkness was one thing, but we still had hours of oil to burn and we didn't need another case of mistaken identity. The next time Mudden might not miss. The light would attract anyone who was still wandering around lost. If that meant the enemy, I'd rather stand and fight and die than get lost in the dark again.

  With my second command, I shoved my crossbow into Yazizi's hands and told her to keep it ready. And not to shoot any of our group. For once, she agreed without reluctance, without a quip or even a hint of sarcasm. The whole experience had left her rattled to the core. She looked years younger, frightened and alone.

  “We will find Faro, won't we?” she asked in a tiny, breathless voice. “I... I just...”

  I squeezed her shoulder and forced a sympathetic smile. The one thing I knew about command was that you always had to look confident, as if you knew what you were doing. “We'll do everything we can.”

  She stayed quiet for a long time. I assumed the talk was over, but as I turned away, she blurted out a string of words half in panic, half in grief. “I should've told him! I should have told him so many things, I...” She swallowed. Teardrops carved long trails in the grime caked to her cheeks. “I think I have made a terrible mistake.”

  “Yazizi,” I said gently and smoothed her hair with my hands, “if there's one thing in this world I know for sure, it's that Faro knows how you feel about him.”

  Biting her lip, she nodded. Clutching her new weapon to her chest, she went to do all the things that needed doing around camp.

  I borrowed the lantern and made a long sweep around the room, to get a better sense of it, and to see how we could defend ourselves in here. It was round, a perfect circle, several storeys high and topped with a swirling, spiralling dome which was subdivided into six smaller domes. More great columns supported the ceiling, at least as big as the ones in the temple. A second level, built from crimson-coloured wood, followed the curve of the wall. Delicate frames, ramps and platforms wrapped all the way around it except where parts had collapsed from old age.

  I understood its purpose right away. Evenly spaced around the room, on both levels, were archways like the one where I'd come in. Dozens of passages, a hundred or more, some filled with rubble and others as pristine as the day they were carved. Every inch of every gateway was rich with spiral reliefs and emblems which might've meant something to Aemedd. I found them as impenetrable as ever.

  Last but not least was a dry fountain of staggering proportions in the exact middle of the room. Two stone snakes, each as thick around as an ancient oak, climbed from the bottom of the great bowl and circled each other in a delicate double helix, only to end in great spiral-shaped heads where water had once erupted from their spouts. Neither snake touched the other, supported only by their own masterful craftsmanship. Green stains showed where bronze pipes and plates had once fed and decorated the strangely gorgeous thing.

  “This is it,” I whispered into the yawning silence. “This is the Crossroads. We're here.”

  “It must be,” said a voice from behind me, and I whirled around to see the woman standing there, hands on her hips. She glanced around to assess the place for herself. “If this isn't the Crossroads, I can't imagine what else could be.”

  I nodded. “I think Faro had it right. I'll bet all those passages do lead here, eventually. What was it Racha said?”

  “It is the greatest place in the darkness,” she quoted from memory. “It is the end and also the beginning. At this great forking of paths, that which is grandest will lead you astray. Follow instead the most humble and you shall find what you seek.”

  “Find what we seek, my arse. I wonder what trick Rogald has up his sleeve this time.”

  A new sound stopped our conversation in its tracks. I looked around, straining my ears to figure out where it came from. There were too many passages, too many echoes. I drafted Yazizi and Mudden to help. We figured it out as it got closer. The sound of heavy, jangling footsteps spilled out from one of the tunnel mouths.

  We took up positions around the corner in order to surprise our visitor, muscles tensed to spring. Everyone expected blood.

  A foot crossed the threshold. We fell on him, and stopped just in time.

  Sir Erroll's battered face appeared from the blackness. He looked like he'd fought an epic field battle all on his own. His clothes were torn to ribbons, his maille byrnie scarred and hanging loose in places. Dozens of small, ragged cuts covered his arms. Every part of him was streaked with blood.

  Over his shoulder hung the limp body of Aemedd of Leora.

  Helpful hands tried to relieve the knight of his burden, but he threw it down like a sack of potatoes. We soon saw why. Aemedd's throat was a dark red line from one side to the other. The blood had dried, but it was just as horrific as when it was fresh, barely obscuring the two halves of his windpipe. It looked like a quick death. A single swipe of something big and sharp.

  My eyes flashed to the top of Sir Erroll's head. Aemedd's bronze helm now sat comfortably on the knight's noggin, and unlike the scholar, he didn't make it look lopsided or ungainly. It fit as though it were poured. It belonged on the head of a warrior.

  He noticed my attention and gave me a grim nod.

  “They got him,” he said without inflection. “I did everything I could. He went quickly.”

  The woman's attention lingered on the scholar and the wan, shocked expression on his face. Her ruby lips were pressed tight together, her eyebrows dipped in a tortured frown. “Well that's a pity.”

  She went back to our little camp for something to clean Sir Erroll's wounds. We no longer had much beyond water and rags. How long could we survive without supplies? Not that I was in any hurry to go back for the stuff we'd lost...

  I bent down and closed Aemedd's dry eyes. “We should give him a decent burial.”

  Sir Erroll grunted, “I don't disagree, Byren, but can we really spare the time? We have no idea how close on our heels they are.”

  “He was a prick, but he was one of us. I'd hope you would do the same for me.”

  He conceded the point with good grace. We were civilised men, not cave-dwellers. There were standards of behaviour and human decency to uphold.

  Together we laid the scholar out in the mouth of a collapsed passage, now a shallow alcove, and covered him carefully with stones from the pile of rubble. It felt right. Even if we could have dug into the rock, the ancient gesture of building a cairn seemed more appropriate. We topped the pile with a wooden cross lashed together from scaffold splinters. I scratched his name into it and stood a silent vigil while everyone else drifted away, one by one.

  Glancing at Sir Erroll's retreating back, I wondered. Had the knight really‒

  I didn't even finish the thought. Of course he had.

  “I'll take care of your notes, Professor,” I said when we were alone, patting my heavy pocket. “I'll try not to use too many pages for kindling.”

  I savoured the ghost of a smile and left him spinning in his grave.

  As the hours passed, it became abundantly clear that we couldn't stay here. We had little water and virtually no food. Aemedd was already dead, Descard would be joining him soon, and there was still no sign of Faro or Racha. Their absence weighed heavy on our minds. Everyone had liked the squire, and without our guide we'd be striking out blindly.

  We just couldn't wait any longer.

  The wound was already becoming too much for Descard. He babbled and convulsed in feverish hallucinations. One of us had to keep something clamped over his mouth all the time to stop him from betraying our position. That upset Mudden to no end. Eventually he got so enraged that he broke his self-imposed silence and shouted us all away.

  With odd tenderness, he held his commander down and shoved the big Ranger-knife up between Descard's ribs. There were tears in his eyes. The Baron shuddered one last time.

  A shared silence spread out from Descard's now-pe
aceful body. Full of respect, and sadness, and perhaps a little grief mixed in. I would miss him.

  The woman started to say, “It was a kindness‒”

  “Shut up,” Mudden cut her off with a snarl. He cleaned his knife with an oily rag, although he didn't sheath it again.

  “I beg your pardon?” The woman's eyes narrowed. Her hackles went up immediately at being spoken to like that.

  “You heard me. Sod the lot of you. I'm going back.” He looked at each of us in turn, and I couldn't match his hollow, haunted gaze. “This was the Commander's idea. He's dead now. I owe you nothing, you're all barmy, and I'm going back.”

  He turned on the ball of his foot and marched. Didn't hesitate in his choice of tunnel, though he couldn't have had the slightest idea where it would lead. We didn't lift a finger to stop him. Nothing could've changed Mudden's mind.

  More than half our group was gone. I looked at the woman, Sir Erroll, Yazizi and myself. Everyone looked deflated, beaten down. We still had our bronzes, but it didn't seem to count for much right now.

  “Saints,” the woman whispered. “This couldn't have gone much worse.”

  Sir Erroll slowly let go of his sword hilt, as if he'd expected to come to blows with the departing Ranger. “Milady,” he said, “we don't need him. We should form a search party immediately.”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “Where would we search? How would we even know where to begin? No, Sir. We're going to have to fend for ourselves.”

  “Then... Then we should... get moving, Milady.” Sir Erroll cleared his throat, struggling to get the words out. He wanted to stay here, to look for Faro or die trying. Only his responsibility to the group, to her, kept him here. “We must stay alive, or all this will have been for nothing.”

  Though bitter to swallow, it was sensible advice. We took the time to bury Descard next to the Professor. His things, what little the Ranger carried, we spread around to whomever needed it most. Zayara carried what was left of our baggage while we walked a full circle around the Crossroads. Each and every tunnel was different, in build and in carving, in size and in lavishness. Which one counted as the 'most humble' could've kept a team of scholars debating for the rest of eternity. A few of them were pretty humble indeed.

  “This is impossible,” the knight growled. “One's as good as another. How are we supposed to choose?”

  The woman hushed him. “Patience, Sir. You underestimate Rogald. Everything he wrote was a riddle.” At her command, we began another circuit, paying even closer attention. “Think, and the solution will present itself.”

  Something tugged at my brain. She was right. It was a riddle, and the answer was on the tip of my tongue as I stared into the darkness of the tunnels. We passed a tall, leaf-shaped passage without any markings at all. One was wide with a low arch so that you had to stoop to get through. Another, a rectangle intricately carved with spiral designs, but so narrow it forced people to go single file. A damp cave-mouth barely held up by sagging wooden supports.

  Humble. Humber grinned and nudged me. Come on, Karl. When does a man get his freshest taste of humility?

  Inspiration came in a flash. I stopped, and the corners of my mouth tugged upwards into an involuntary smile. Rogald of the Valley had an awful sense of humour. Maybe his family inherited it from the Brass Men down.

  “Humble,” I repeated. I turned to the low arch, and confirmed that the ceiling on the other side was a perfectly normal height. The others looked at me as if I'd gone mad, until I pointed out the blinding obvious. “You have to bow to go through!”

  Sir Erroll blinked. “It can't be that simple.”

  “I think it is,” whispered the woman. The spark in her eyes, which had been burning low since the business with the Rangers, flickered with hope as she looked up at me. “Karl Byren, somehow you always manage to surprise me.”

  I ended up feeling the grateful one, for the opportunity to restore some of her faith. The look we shared lingered a little too long for Sir Erroll's tastes, because he stepped between us and broke the moment.

  “We're burning oil,” he pointed out and dipped his head under the archway to proud Kassareth.

  Thankfully, the tunnel was long and true, and we walked for hours without seeing a single turning. It was heaven-sent. If we'd hit branchings or, worse, a fork in the way, we would've been hopelessly lost.

  'True' might've been the wrong word to describe it. The passage looped around in great helices, short circles followed by long straights, climbing ever upwards. I'd lost all sense of direction long ago, and while Sir Erroll still had his compass, the needle just spun round and round. Too much iron in the mountains. Maybe if we could see the sun or the stars... I kept my eyes peeled, but didn't spot the faintest trace of another light well.

  I tried not to think of Faro or Racha. There wasn't a damn thing I could do, but abandoning them down here still felt like a terrible betrayal. It preyed on my mind in the quiet solitude of the walk.

  Other people were dwelling on it too. Yazizi stumbled around in a daze of black despair. The soft grinding of Sir Erroll's teeth echoed in my ears; was the sound of bereavement and impotent rage. The loss of his squire had cut him deep. I supposed murderers had feelings too.

  At least I wasn't quite so cold anymore. The furs I inherited from Descard made good replacements for my ruined trousers and gloves. Maybe a little too good. I could feel heat building up in my chest and limbs, and...

  I stopped and took off my hat. My ears and forehead were slick with sweat. It wasn't the clothes. I said, “Has anyone else gotten warmer in the last hour or so?”

  The others began to follow my example, numbly stripping off furs, wiping their faces with whatever came to hand.

  “Our breath doesn't steam anymore,” the woman pointed out, marvelling at such a simple thing.

  Sir Erroll frowned and pulled out his compass again. Still useless and confused. “That doesn't make any sense. Wherever we're going, I'm sure it can't be south.”

  “We're across the Edge of the World, Sir. Who knows what we'll find?”

  This time we set a brisk walking pace up the endless slope. When our lantern started to gutter for lack of oil, we went even faster. The last thing we needed was for it to die on us now. If we missed something important in the dark, we might never get out of here.

  We lost more clothing as we went. All our furs came off, stowed in Zayara's saddlebags. We ate the last of our food and drank the last of our water on the go. Then we came face-to-face with our worst fear.

  At the mouth of a small antechamber, the passage divided into three tunnels of equal size and identical decoration. Two of them canted lightly downward. The other one rose at a steep angle. Without Racha or her instructions, none of us had the foggiest idea which way to take. Sir Erroll looked ready to explode in anger and helpless frustration.

  “If one's as good as the others,” I suggested, “I vote we go up. If we can make it to the surface, we'll stand more of a chance than we do down here, no matter the conditions.”

  The woman listened, and shrugged. She couldn't think of any sensible objection. The knight probably could, but he'd already been outvoted.

  We took the way up and kept our fingers crossed harder than ever before.

  It surprised me, how much I wanted to come back alive. Survival had always been one of my key skills, but things were different now. I was determined to set right some things which had gone very wrong years ago. I didn't know what kind of father I'd make, probably not a very good one, but with the Saints as my witness it should be me. Not Sir Graeme. Not anyone.

  Maybe there is a way, whispered Humber, like a conspirator in the night. Do what you came to do. Get the Armaments. Carry out the mission if you have to. After that, you'll be free of your contract, and no one and nothing will be able to stop you from claiming what's yours.

  “How on God's green earth will that work?” I growled under my breath.

  Faith, my lad. Have faith and hold fast.r />
  Suddenly a hand touched my shoulder and startled me out of my reverie. I found the woman looking at me with an expression of mild concern. “Karl? Who were you talking to?”

  “I... Myself, Milady.” I gave her a sheepish grin. “It's a bad habit. Comes out in trying times.”

  That didn't seem to allay her worries any, but she took her hand away. Before she could think of anything else to say, Yazizi raised a sudden cry, jumping up and down with excitement.

  “Light! Light up ahead!”

  She was right. A faint glow of daylight seeped in from somewhere up ahead, brightening the walls and floor with a tiny suggestion of colour. It was a relief beyond word. I needed open sky above my head right now. Maybe forever.

  We chased those seductive rays as fast as we could, and after the longest time, we found their source. We walked out into the open for the first time in days.

  The tunnel let out into what looked like half of a building. It was a vast hall, hacked neatly out of the mountain and barely supported by several crumbling colonnades. The columns showed deep cracks from the strain of bearing its immense weight. Piles of rubble and ruins littered the ground outside the hall, where all the free-standing masonry had fallen long ago. Pulled down by gnarled vines and trees which now grew to shade the yawning chasm in which we stood.

  The plants could've been from another world. I'd never seen anything like them. Twisted, speckled trunks glistened wetly in the light. Water dripped down the arcs of hanging vines and was instantly absorbed by a thick mat of moss. Many of the leaves were a deep purple, and even the greener ones were coloured so dark that no one could mistake this for the country where I grew up. This was a wild place.

  Stepping out of the shade, a blast of humid heat hit me in the face. The closeness of the air was choking. Sunlight glittered off the moisture in the air and made everything shimmer like magic.

  “A land beyond the Edge of the World,” the woman said reverently. “I never thought we'd find something so beautiful.”