by Gregory Ashe
Chapter Thirty-six
“That’s him,” Erlandr shouted. He grabbed Adence’s arm, thin, dried flesh and bone. The older man shifted and pulled away.
“Who?” Adence snapped. “You’re drawing attention. Keep quiet.”
“Him,” Erlandr gestured, but the man was already gone, lost in the crowd of the avenue. The wagon continued forward and the avenue was lost from view. “Bah. Bel take you, you old fool. That was him!”
“You’re raving. Perhaps you should tend to your needs, Erlandr, before you lose control again. It would be a shame to do something you’d regret.” The way he said the last word made it clear that, as far as Adence was concerned, regret was the last thing he feared for Erlandr.
“I’m fine,” Erlandr said, leaning back against the rough wood of the cart. “Quit bringing that up.” He thought briefly of following the man, but already his face was fading from Erlandr’s mind. It was hard to think of what he looked like now, as though the man himself had been a dream.
“Bloody Bel take both of us,” Adence muttered. “Shouting like that, in the middle of Fisher’s Lane, you might as well hang out a sign for every bloody Jaecan to see, not to mention whoever’s hunting us, and the Bel-blessed half of the city that might recognize us.”
“Ha,” Erlandr said. “Recognize us? From what, stories? The way we look? They’re more likely to think that we’re a pair of dug up corpses sent for a spin than the saviors of Apsia.”
“They’d not be far wrong,” Adence said.
“Hey you,” Erlandr called to a dark-haired man limping past them up the hill. “The Bloodless and the Brilliant Flame have returned. Want to meet them?”
Adence shook his head. Erlandr could feel the anger radiating from the man’s bony, hunched shoulders.
The man spat on the ground and kept walking. He did not even turn to look at them.
“See?” Erlandr asked.
“You’re a bloody fool,” Adence said. “Did you forget the eyes and ears that fill this city? A hundred years ago, what was whispered in the mansions on the Tacline at dawn was shouted in the Tipolan by noon.”
Erlandr grimaced and said, “They call it the Tipolae now. The Tipolae Forum.” Adence was right, though. Another sign that Erlandr needed blood to renew the enchantment; he had overlooked something so obvious. Still, nothing to do for it now.
“And what will they say? Two broken-down men in a wagon to match are claiming to be the Brilliant Flame and the Bloodless? Two men without the coin to feed themselves are the same men who, a hundred years ago, turned back Bel’s flame and saved the city? That we are the sorcerers of legend who, undying, watch over Apsian babes and the sick and the weary? The hands of the Sisters?”
“They do not say that,” Adence shouted.
A pair of stout women, arms linked, wearing the loose white dresses of Apsian matrons stopped and gaped up at him. Adence gave them a glare that sent both scurrying up the hill, their flesh rippling underneath the gauzy fabric.
“They do not say that,” Adence said again.
“They might have,” Erlandr said. “Those days are all but forgotten now. What does it matter what they said?”
“No,” Adence said, but now to himself, as though oblivious to Erlandr. “No, they do not say that. But someone else did. Why can’t I remember?”
“Time, my friend,” Erlandr said. “We must change and grow, or die.”
“No,” Adence said. “I remember Naea’s face still, the feel of the blood, so warm, and my hands so cold. Why would that be so clear, after all these years? It is too clear. Too clear by half.”
The old man rambled on, but Erlandr tuned him out. He could remember parts of that night in perfect detail, but most of it was hazy, faded. The dream, though—that did not leave him alone.
“Turn at the next street,” Erlandr said.
Adence did not respond, but when they reached the narrow lane going east, he turned the wagon. The houses here were older, run-down, but had clearly once been inhabited by the wealthy. The streets were built wide, but if carriages had once passed here, they had long since left. Bleached wooden timbers, worn stone, rubbish lining the street—all signs of the inexplicable malaise that had gripped this part of the city and sent the well-to-do in search of more amenable places.
Inexplicable to some, perhaps. Not to Erlandr. He could feel the taint of the rent here, like a breath behind sheer silk, pulsing in time to the void in Erlandr’s heart. Even non-practitioners must feel it, in some way. It was like a draft, a chill that ran up the spine intermittently. Unpleasant.
They made their way toward the eastern wall through abandoned streets. As they turned east again, the wall came into view, and at its base an overgrown garden, a good dozen city blocks in size. The city wall curved out here, a protuberance in the once-round fortification. Stone had melted away here, that night all those years ago. Apsia’s nipple, Erlandr thought with a mocking smile. The old bitch should be grateful to me; she was a flat as a boy before I gave her that.
Trees and bushes grew in long, straggling swirls and curves, patterned by a mind ages gone. Erlandr’s mind. The flower beds, although overgrown and in need of tending, revealed the same outlines of form and intent. Two children, a boy and girl who shared the same olive skin and dark hair, laughed and ran around a tight spiral of slender white pines, the papery bark of the trees fluttering in the afternoon breeze.
Adence stopped the cart at the low stone wall that marked the edge of the garden. He got down and stood for a long moment, one hand resting lightly on the worn gray stones, as though the thought of supporting himself were more necessary than the support itself.
Erlandr, full of bitterness, watched him. The man’s grief was excessive, unreasoning. Erlandr watched Adence and he wanted to know why he, too, did not grieve for the woman who was lost, whose face he saw at night, before the dream came. That was the dark heart of his own bitterness. Not to feel the same loss. To watch, for decades, and not to feel.
Does he do this because he knows it hurts me? Erlandr wondered as he watched Adence’s fallen face. It would not have surprised him; the man’s cruelty ran almost as deep as his hatred. It was a wonder that he and Adence had not killed each other over the long years. Perhaps it was sweeter to drive each other mad, he thought.
“Look familiar?” Erlandr asked, hopping to the ground. His head spun, and he steadied himself against the wagon. The curse was taking its toll. Not now, not this close. Even through the dizziness, though, he could see the look of fury that flashed across Adence’s face. “It’s hardly changed.”
“Everything of this place stinks of Kaj,” Adence said. “I can feel something watching us.”
“Not surprising,” Erlandr said. “I’d imagine the dead in the cemetery are still fluttering about, trying to figure out what happened that night. I opened a cheiron wide enough to rip open every grave in a mile. They’re probably hoping the same thing happens again.”
Adence glanced about, stringing hair stirring in the breeze. “Let’s get started,” he said. “We’ve waited long enough.”
Erlandr leaned up against the low stone wall. His heart pounded and sweat beaded on his palms. Time to throw the dice, he thought. See what this old bastard is capable of.
“Come on,” Adence said. “I’m through with waiting. You’ve taken enough of my life.”
“Well,” Erlandr said. “You took all of mine. It seems you had the better trade.” Adence grimaced and raised one hand, ready to trace a cheiron. “It must be a nightmare,” Erlandr continued, ignoring the faint silver lines that trickled from Adence’s desiccated fingers. There was no way Erlandr could counter whatever Adence conjured, not after the way the curse had drained his abilities. It would not matter, though; Adence would not finish the spell. Too afraid of killing me and releasing the rent.
“It must be a nightmare,” Erlandr repeated, “standing next to me all these years, watching me, where your wife should have been. It must be a nightmare not to be able t
o do anything about it, to watch me to take life after life, and to make yourself accomplice to each of those deaths because you are too afraid, too weak to kill me.” Adence opened his mouth to speak, but Erlandr kept going. “Oh I know, I’ve heard your excuses day after tiring day for years now. Moaning and wringing your hands about what would happen if the rent were opened, the loss of life, the end of the world. What a frail love yours must be if you will not trade a few lives for revenge.”
The words tasted bitter on his tongue, bitter to match the darkness in Erlandr’s heart. He felt foul after speaking them, as though he needed a bath. There was no other way, though; if he could drive the man off long enough, Erlandr could open the rent and, perhaps, finish what he had started all those years ago. He would likely die in the attempt, but it was a better chance than letting this old fool bleed the life out of him.
Adence’s face went pale, his jaw fell slack. He blinked twice and staggered into the garden, disappearing between a sinuous stand of blackberry bushes.
“Coward,” Erlandr screamed after him. He pounded his fists on the low stone wall, barely feeling the twin shocks of pain. “Coward!”
Erlandr sank to his knees, the rough stone scraping his forehead, hating himself. He feared death, feared it beyond reason, and it drove him to this—to torturing a man who, at heart, was good, who had tried to do what was right. His body shook, and he wrapped bruised and bleeding hands around his stomach, but no tears would come. The sound of the children’s laughter floated around him, mocking.
“Blessed Sisters,” he whispered. “I don’t want to die.”
“Come,” Adence said. Erlandr raised his head. He could barely make out the old man’s face in the shadows. Time had passed, but Erlandr had no recollection of it. He had lost his chance at opening the rent without Adence. Grief and self-pity surged within him, but Erlandr pushed it back at the look of frozen pain in Adence’s eyes. “It’s time to do what we came for.”
I do not want to die, Erlandr thought, but he could no longer feel sorry for himself. The anguish in Adence’s face washed out over him, consumed him, until Erlandr could barely draw breath. “All right,” Erlandr said. “All right.”
He pushed himself up, wincing at the pain in his hands. Adence grabbed his hand and helped him up. Erlandr tried to pull away, but he could not do so without falling, and he grimaced at the other man’s touch. The shimmering light of Cemilian sorcery dribbled out from under Adence’s hand, mending Erlandr’s bruised and broken flash and sending silver flashes scurrying through the shadows. Erlandr’s vision cleared as the foreign sorcery pushed back the ravages of the curse. A temporary relief at best.
“We have work to do,” Erlandr said. He could think more clearly now.
“Then let us begin the ritual,” Adence said. “Open the cheiron.”
Erlandr laughed. “I haven’t opened cheiron taul in half a century, my friend. Bloody Bel, I haven’t opened tai-nuzur in a dozen years. Do you think I enjoy filth and want, that I would restrain myself from the cheira through all these years? The curse has taken almost everything.”
“I figured as much,” Adence said. “Although you were a fool not to tell me when it first began. Why did you bring us here then? We should have traveled as far into the wilderness as possible. I would not have thought that even you could be selfish enough to try and take an entire city with you.”
“I may be selfish,” Erlandr said. “But I am not a monster.”
“That little boy would disagree,” Adence said.
“Enough,” Erlandr said. He took a deep breath. Adence’s words cut deeper than Erlandr would have liked, but they strengthened his resolve. “Perhaps I am a monster, then. That does not mean I came here to destroy the city.”
“Then what?”
“Even at my height, I wasn’t strong enough to create a rent on my own. The amount of power that would have taken, it’s unfathomable.” Erlandr shrugged and smiled. “Didn’t you ever wonder how I was able to do it?”
“I wondered,” Adence said.
Erlandr smiled. “But you were too proud to ask. Yes, that seems right. Well, I will tell you, although I almost hate to spoil all those years of wondering. All those years ago, what was my obsession? What did the people mock me for behind my back?”
Adence blinked, dark eyes blank for a moment. He gasped. “The garden. But you were always puttering about, so particular about every little thing . . . you looked an utter fool. Even I thought . . . after she died—”
“She!” Erlandr shouted. He knows! “Who? After who died?”
Adence took a step back. “Who? Why, your wife. Tise.”
Tise. The name knocked the breath from Erlandr’s lungs, and memory rushed in to replace it. Her face, her hair dark as a river down the middle of her back. Olive skin that she worried was too dark so that she tried to cover her forehead with a scarf even in the deep summer, and Erlandr would tug the scarf down and kiss her brow where her hair ended, and the smell of lemon blossoms that filled his nose when he was near her. Her nose, that ridiculously large Apsian nose, wrinkled up as she smiled, and her smile . . .
Blue eyes, Erlandr thought. She had blue eyes, I remember that. As blue as Amala’s Breath, I said, and she laughed and told me the sea was green, not blue, the night we lay under the yews and felt the wind on bare skin. A dog ran through the garden, yelping as another dog chased it, but Erlandr barely noticed. Blue eyes, as blue as the sea.
Erlandr let out a moan. “Tise,” he said. Tears came now, blinding him. “Oh Sisters, Tise. How could I forget?”
Adence was talking to him, but Erlandr could not hear him, he could not hear anything, lost within himself. Tise. He had forgotten her, the love of his life. “How could I forget her?” he mumbled. It did not make any sense, she had been everything to him, life and light and heart. When she died, everything had gone dark, until—
“Oh Bel burn me,” he whispered. “Bloody Bel burn me. I remember.”
Part IV—The Hand of My Heart