by Gregory Ashe
Chapter Twenty-five
The sharp, cutting smell of the sea filled the air. Erlandr’s blood surged in answer, keeping time with the fathomless pulse of the waves. That swell and surge, drawn out into infinity, had been the timepiece for Erlandr’s soul.
“Home,” Adence said.
The old man’s face was drawn, perhaps from fatigue, perhaps sorrow. Most likely both, Erlandr thought.
“Home,” Erlandr said. “Whatever that means now.”
“It means everything,” Adence said. “What you took from me. What you take from me every day. What you will take from me until I see you dead and this rent closed. My grandchildren are down there, great-grandchildren. My children are dead though, my wife dead.” He paused and said, “Let’s move on. The faster this is over, the better.”
Erlandr urged the horses forward, grateful for the wind along the coast that made conversation difficult. I took everything from him, Erlandr thought. Why? The woman I kill, every night, was his wife. But why do I kill her? The dreams had been worse, more vivid. They came in the day now. He shuddered to think of what he had forgotten, what the dreams had driven from his mind. Perhaps forgetting was better.
The city drew closer, situated at the mouth of the Pentes River, surrounded by its legendary harbor. The shimmering copper roofs, the fire that dashed across the city as heat rippled the air, those were old friends. The river, the sea, though, they were old lovers. That eternal ebb and flow that was older than any god man had imagined, older than the earth itself, powerful and endless and incomprehensible. The sight of it brought back old thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.
“We really aren’t anything, are we?” Erlandr said. “Look at all that water—what does nature care what we do today or tomorrow, or a hundred years from now? It will continue to wear away rock and stone until we all return to the sea.”
He had forgotten Adence’s angry words, and he spoke almost to himself, oblivious to the horses and the wagon.
“Nature might not care,” Adence said. “The gods know that my children do. It mattered to them that neither mother nor father ever came home. It mattered to me.”
“Old complaints,” Erlandr said. He could feel a part of himself coming back, a part long forgotten. Proud and strong and independent. “You make old complaints. The world moves on, and we must grow and change, or we will die.”
“The words of a man with nothing to anchor him,” Adence said.
Adence’s words did not sting. Erlandr remembered his old contempt for the gods, for man’s terror of the here and now, his supreme confidence in his own importance. How could he not remember with the sea before him? The sea—overwhelming, all-consuming. And yet he remembered a woman who had anchored him once to the shore with her love.
“We grow and change, or we die.”
Erlandr cracked the reins, and the wagon picked up speed along the cliffside road. The wind blew harder as they drew close to the city. The road fell to meet the broad plains, checked with farmer’s fields that stretched north and west from Apsia. The smell of the sea grew stronger as the wind whistled in Erlandr’s ears. He breathed it in, the smell of ancient secrets long dead. Home.
A straggled line of men and women passed them where the Fabian Way met the coastal highway and ran north. Farmers, returning after a day at the market, some with handcarts, a precious few in wagons, but most with nothing more than sagging wicker baskets and stained knapsacks. The unbleached wool of shirt and pants was stained with the dark soil of the Telana Peninsula—soil fertilized by numberless deaths.
Erlandr bit his lip as he watched the people on foot file past. Over that endless swell and retreat, he could feel the gnawing abyss at the center of his heart. The void told him that he had little time left before he lost control of himself again. Not like the last time, he thought. Not again, not ever.
“Hungry?” Adence asked. His dark eyes, fixed on the walls ahead, revealed nothing, but Erlandr could hear the anger in his voice. “Is it time to feed again?”
“I’m fine,” Erlandr said, but that fathomless depth inside him threatened to swallow him, reduce him to oblivion. “We’re almost done with this. You can go back to your children, then, and to your grandchildren, until whatever damned rites you Cemilians have cooked up finally fail, and then your grandchildren, or your great-grandchildren, or your great-great-grandchildren, or whatever bloody spawn you still have, will toss your desiccated corpse into the sea like the rest of us.” The words came tumbling out before Erlandr could stop them.
“That’s what bothers you?” Adence asked. “You have clawed out these decades in blood and pain, scrabbling for another day of life, another day of pain. And what does it cost me? Nothing; trace a cheiron, speak the words, and eternity stretches out before me. Is that how you see it?”
Erlandr ground his teeth. He kept his head turned toward the blurred forms of the farmers. A few looked up to watch the cart pass, but most moved on ahead without the slightest interest. Bel take the man, take him and split him down the middle. Eternity, a life without fear, without pain, without death. For that matter, Bel take Cemil the Undying, wherever the old corpse was still tottering around, and burn him to ash.
Eternity. It was not the promise itself that attracted Erlandr any more; life had long since lost its appeal for him. The thought of all he had sacrificed, the lives he had taken to live another day, though, that was a darkness in his heart to rival the rent itself.
I was a good man, once. When I had . . . her. He could not remember her name. High-minded, proud, I heard the eternity of the sea and said I was not afraid to die, that mortality gave life meaning. If there are gods, they must have laughed at me, to see me grasping for another day of life.
“You can enjoy your long life,” Erlandr said. “I’m not afraid to die now.”
“Death is the least you deserve,” Adence said, dark eyes still glittering in the sunlight.
“What happened that night? Why do you hate me so?” The question left his mouth before Erlandr could stop it.
Adence did not answer.
“Do you remember? Truly remember? Or do you just . . . know what happened? Like a story told around a fire? That’s what it’s like for me, you see.”
“The story wakes you screaming every night?”
“No,” Erlandr shivered. “No, the dreams are different. But wrong, too, somehow. If I could only remember what happened.” Bel take me, do I even want to know?
The gate loomed ahead of them, a massive structure of iron and wood that stood open the year round, closed only when enemy armies stood outside. A set of smaller iron barriers stood against the city wall, used to stop traffic at night without closing the massive gate itself. Here wagons and handcarts and pedestrians pressed tight together, their passage slowed by the sheer number of people, as they exited Fisher’s Lane through the Salt Gate.
A guard stopped them as they reached the open gate. “You Apsian?”
Adence leaned back, stretched his back, and brushed aside his stringy hair. “Haven’t been to the city for a while, but I’m Apsian. Can’t say the same for him back there.”
“I lived here a while,” Erlandr said with a frown. “Been a long time, though.”
“Well,” the guard said, scratching at lank brown hair under his helmet, “neither of you has the look of a bloody Jaecan, and you speak like men outta speak. No swords unless you can prove you’re a citizen. Find a quiet place and stay out of trouble.”
Adence tossed the man a coin and the cart moved forward again.
“Where are we going to stay?” Erlandr said. “Don’t suppose one of your granddaughters will take us in? She doesn’t even have to have an extra bed; I can make do.”
A comment unworthy of the man Erlandr had once been, but it was worth it to see the old man’s papery knuckles whiten as he clenched the reins. Erlandr grinned and leaned back in his seat. He let his eyes wander over the crowd. Erlandr jerked forward in his seat. A man disappeared down one of the avenues leading west.
Jaecan coloring, long, wild hair and beard, but dressed finely. Something about his face, though, those dark eyes that seemed too flat for the early afternoon sun.
“Bel burn me,” he said. “I know that man.”
Adence did not respond.
“Jaecan, I think. Where would I know him from?”
Cold silence, masked by the noise of the street.
They made their way east, toward some destination known only to Adence. Then the answer hit Erlandr. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his stomach turned. The dream. Bel burn me, he’s the man from the dream.