- A Fable of Song and Blood, by Hellexa Yoreseer of the Blue Moon Obelisk, translated by Tal Harrenfel
The Man Behind the Name
"They're here? About damned time. Harrenfel! Night's Pyres, you'd best have a good explanation for this!"
At the King's bellow through the doors to his personal chambers, Tal glanced at Aelyn. Though the elven mage swayed where he stood, a smirk curled his lips.
"An odd time for smiling," Tal noted.
"Not when I'm anticipating your head on a pike."
No pithy response came to mind, so he shook his head and entered, the mage keeping pace at his side. The room was opulent and overflowing with even more comfort and riches than the throne room. The audience chamber was only the first of many within the King's personal chambers, with two doors leading off to rooms on either side. Red and orange adorned every surface — crimson carpets, copper tapestries, and a fresco of an enthroned king overhead, perhaps of the first Rexall.
King Aldric Rexall the Fourth, sitting at a table positioned in the middle of the room, was also clad in the Rexall colors, his velvety robe lined with coppery gold buttons as he glared up at them. Despite the late hour, a cup of wine was clutched in his trembling hand.
"What," the King grated in his high-pitched voice, "in Silence's fucking name was that?"
Under the King's fury, Tal found his own anger building. But where Aldric's was fire, Tal's was a cold rage.
"We found your traitor," he said flatly.
"My traitor?" Aldric snorted. "You chased my bard out of the courtyard! And I thought you were friends. If any of you is a traitor, it's that bastard of yours — he stabbed the Warlock of Canturith himself! Though Kaleras must be losing his touch to let that happen."
Tal closed his eyes. Falcon. The man he'd trusted most, the man he'd taken for granted — he, of all others, had been the traitor. Not a traitor, he corrected himself, but a prisoner. All this time, the Extinguished hid behind Falcon's smile.
He felt the King's glare on him and ignored it, thinking over all he'd shared with the man he'd believed his friend. Some part of me knew, he realized with a start. Why else would I conceal what I've been working on for the last five years? He'd kept secrets all his life, but few he'd withheld from the bard. Falcon had been his confidante and healer when he was broken. Through many sleepless nights, he'd stayed up with Tal, chasing the nightmares away with amusing anecdotes of lovers' quarrels and humorous incidents on stage. And after Tal had recovered some peace of mind, he caroused with him, then began first writing the songs celebrating and exaggerating Tal's accomplishments. Falcon had given him a respite, a home among the troupers. A place where Tal was accepted for no more than who he was.
But for all the time since Tal had returned to Halenhol, he'd been a prisoner of the Extinguished. And Tal had buried his head in the dirt.
Tal opened his eyes again to meet the King's gaze. "It's not like you to pretend the fool, Aldric. You know that the Extinguished steal faces. This time, he stole Falcon's. The bouts of madness, the ghouls, the caravan sabotage, Jonn—"
"Jonn," Aldric interrupted. "That's the murdered trouper?"
Tal kept his face carefully composed. "Yes. All that happened before my arrival and since was orchestrated by the one pretending to be your Court Bard."
Slowly, the full implications seemed to dawn on Aldric. "Sunstring... He could have murdered me."
Indeed, Tal thought. A shame he didn't do me the favor.
"But we didn't discover him in time," he said aloud. "He possessed Garin and warded him long enough for the youth to stab Kaleras, then fled. As you no doubt heard."
"Half the castle heard," Aelyn observed with a sharp smile. "And all will know by now."
"Even those damned Sendeshi didn't miss it." The King took a long swallow from his wine, then glared at Tal again. "Well? What are you still doing here? Go clean up your mess!"
Tal watched him for a moment. "You're assuming I know where to go," he said quietly.
Aldric flushed, then took another quick drink of wine before thrusting the goblet toward him, spilling wine on the carpet that no doubt cost the yearly wages of a score of masons. "You'd damned well better, Harrenfel. We made a bargain, you and I. Don't forget its terms."
"Fortunately for both of us, the Extinguished was gracious enough to tell me where he would wait. I'm sure you've heard of it — the Ruins of Erlodan."
The King snorted, his usual blustering attitude recovered. "That haunted old derelict? It's over a week's hard ride away. Best be on your way."
"It's a trap, Aldric. He wouldn't tell me if he didn't want me to come. And he knew I would."
Why? he asked himself. Why lure me out? Simply to kill me? He could have done it a dozen times over if he'd wished to. There was a different game at play here, and he had his suspicions he already knew the players' aims.
Aldric waved a lazy hand. "Either he'll take care of you or I will. At least you'll stand a chance against the Soulstealer."
Only a king would be so bold as to threaten with no protection. Aloud, he said, "I'd stand a better chance if you sent soldiers to accompany us. With the Extinguished expecting us, he'll no doubt summon a welcoming party. A contingent of thirty should be enough to deal with them."
The King was shaking his head before Tal had finished. "Send soldiers on this fool's errand? Do you take me for an imbecile? No, Harrenfel — this is your mess to clean up. And you'll do it without my help."
Tal only stared at him for a long moment. Even knowing Aldric Rexall the Fourth as he did, he hadn't expected this. But I should have. I suspected; now, I know.
He turned away, hoping he'd hidden all that simmered beneath his skin. "Fine. I'll return before the next full moon for the boy's reward."
Aldric laughed at his back. "I look forward to it, Magebutcher!"
"You'd have to be a Night-blinded fool to follow him there," Aelyn commented from his seat, the corner of his mouth twitching.
Tal didn't respond. He lifted his gaze slightly to glance at Garin, who leaned, pale-faced, against the opposite wall. The youth had barely spoken a full sentence since they'd brought Kaleras up to his tower. And who could fault him when he's the cause of the warlock's condition?
He should have seen it coming, all of it, ever since Garin touched the pendant. He'd seen the signs. But neither he nor Aelyn had believed the Night's influence could linger so long after that brief exposure.
Kaleras paid the price of their arrogance.
"He's probably dead anyway," Aelyn continued mercilessly. Despite his fragile state, his mood was buoyant and soaring higher as his companions sunk deeper into misery.
"He's not!" Wren's shout echoed up the tower as she stood, tight-fisted and trembling, before the mage. "My father's alive! And if you're too coward to rescue him, I will!"
"Calm, lass," Tal murmured. "The King's physician attends the warlock above, and I doubt shouting will improve his health." Not that the bastard deserves a peaceful rest. But even as he thought the words, he couldn't put his heart into them.
"Calm? How can I be calm? The Soulstealer took my father's face! All these months, it's been that thing, not him, that I—" She cut off, tears gleaming in her eyes. "I'll kill him. I'll kill him for this."
"He's already dead." The harshness in Tal's voice surprised him, as did the bitter smile that sprang to his lips. "It's time you face that."
"He's not!" Wren snarled back. "You said so yourself that the Extinguished had to keep him alive for the illusion—"
"But he doesn't need him anymore. If he's not dead yet, he will be before long. That Night-damned warlock has him, and we can't recover him." He held her gaze, unable to help his mocking smile. "Better to think him dead already."
"How can you say that?" She glared at him, the tendrils of gold in her swirling furiously. "After all he's done for you?"
His smile slipped away. "Done for me? I'll tell you what he's done for me. He's made me a lie — my entire lif
e, a lie. And all for his own gain."
Before anyone could respond, he crossed the tower room to the door. "I need to clear my head," Tal said, then stepped outside the tower.
As the door closed behind him, Garin exchanged a look with Wren, then Aelyn. No one spoke — and what was there to say?
Without Tal, we can't do this. He knew it was true, and he knew the others knew it, too. Aelyn's lips were twisted in a sour pucker as he stared at the wall, his fingers twitching. Wren began to pace, a scowl written across her pixie features.
It was up to him to fix this, Garin realized. After all, he'd been the one to break everything. He'd stabbed Kaleras. Though it had been the Nightvoice that had commanded his limbs, it had been his hand to do it, his will that had been too weak to stop. And it had been his stubborn insistence on entering the Ruins of Erlodan that had landed him under the Night's influence in the first place. Without it, they might have had another powerful warlock on their side, and Tal might still be there with them.
He watched Wren pace back and forth, back and forth. He'd failed her once; he couldn't fail her again. He had to make this right.
"I'm going after him," he said and turned toward the door.
"Why? What could you say?" Wren shot at his back.
Garin shrugged. "I don't know. But I have to try."
He pulled open the heavy door and slipped through.
Tal stood in the hallway just outside, staring out the windows at the darkness outside. His face could have been carved of stone for all it shifted at Garin's approach.
Stepping up next to him, they stood in silence for a moment. Garin looked anywhere but at Tal. Though he'd known he had to come after his one-time mentor, he didn't know what to say. But Garin had done them all wrong. He couldn't let it fall apart now.
Then a thought struck him.
"Follow me," Garin said softly, then set off down the hall. Glancing back, he found Tal following. Part of him is still with us, he thought, and hoped it would be enough.
Stopping at the window Wren had shown him, he unlocked the lever and swung the glass open. A cold wind blew against his face, chilling his skin. The earlier rain had ceased, but the promise of winter kissed the air.
He turned back to Tal. "Ready to lighten your life with another glorious risk?"
The shadow of a smile touched Tal's lips, but he made no response.
Garin stepped carefully out the window and edged along the ledge. His heart pounded hard in his chest, his stomach turned, and his hands prickled at the sight of all the space below them, all the more frightening from how the moon palely lit it. But he swallowed hard and kept edging along until the ledge widened and he could sit, finally breathing a relieved sigh.
Despite having decades on him, Tal was as graceful as a cat as he padded along the ledge to sit next to him.
They looked out over Halenhol, the howl of the wind the only sound between them. Halenhol was wreathed in a low-hanging fog, and only in noble manors and along the streets did murky lights shine. The distant forested hills were hidden from view, and the moons, both yellow and blue, hid shyly behind the thin clouds.
Garin spoke the first words that came to mind. "I followed you here to Halenhol because I wanted to see more of the World. I knew there was so much to life beyond Hunt's Hollow, beyond hoping for rain and chasing the town's girls in hopes of one day settling down on a farm of my own. My father was a soldier, a captain in the King's army, and had seen his fair share of the Westreach, and the stories he told me and my siblings had always stuck in my mind. And beyond those, I remembered all the tales of Markus Bredley, of Gendil of Candor… of you.
"But the World isn't what I thought it would be. I wished for its glory, its wonder — but there's far more to it than I ever wanted."
"I'm sorry." Tal's murmur was almost lost beneath the wind. "I failed you as well."
Garin turned toward him. "No. You haven't failed me, or you hadn't — not until you said Falcon was dead in the tower."
His wanton mentor didn't meet his gaze, but stared up at Cressalia, the yellow moon.
"When I first learned who you were," Garin continued, "I had trouble seeing Brannen Cairn as Tal Harrenfel. After all, I'd spent the last five years around your farm, watching you chase hens in the yard, roll in the mud with pigs, and live in a hovel that was mean even by Hunt's Hollow standards.
"But then I remembered all I'd seen you do. The bandits on the road, and the quetzals. The ghouls in the castle. And even back in Hunt's Hollow, how the Nightkin attacks had ceased for five blessed years. Then I knew it didn't matter what name you went by — you've always been the same man. The same…" Garin shrugged, trying to find the word, then finally settling for, "The same legend."
Tal snorted. "Legend. Falcon made up that legend, Garin, don't you realize that? At the King's behest, to bolster the flagging spirits of his citizens, the bard aggrandized my few good accomplishments and skirted over all I've done wrong. Falcon called me Devil Killer, but I didn't slay Heyl in Elendol. He claimed I single-handedly held off the Sendeshi army at the Pass of Argothe, but that was the moment I deserted the King's own. No mention is made of my time in the caves of the Dwarven Clans, acting as a mercenary and an assassin. No word was written of the true reasons I slaughtered the Yraldi marauders a whole summer long — not to protect innocents, but only to kill or finally die. And Magebutcher — only those who know the truth call me that thrice-damned name."
Garin found impatience building up in him, but he tempered his words. "I know your legend is a lie, Tal. I'd have to be blind not to know that by now."
His mentor's eyes gleamed in the scant moonlight as he glanced over. "If that's meant to cheer me, it's doing a poor job."
"You're missing my point. What I'm saying is that despite your legend, you are the Tal Harrenfel everyone believes in. Maybe you're not the best duelist in the Westreach, or a slayer of demons. But at your heart, you're a good man, Tal."
A harsh laugh escaped him. "A good man? A good man would never leave his friend behind."
Garin stared at the pale outline of his mentor as Tal again stared up at the moon. After a long stretch of silence, he repressed a sigh and rose. "Just think about it."
He turned away, but Tal's words stopped him. "You were already a man when you left Hunt's Hollow, Garin. But I've never believed it more than now."
Garin didn't turn back. He suspected it wasn't the wind that made his eyes suddenly sting.
He nodded, then skirted along the ledge to slip back inside the castle.
Tal kept an eye on Garin until he was safely across, then leveled his gaze back at the murky face of the yellow moon.
"Cressalia," he muttered. "You damned bitch." She was called the Regretful Sister — which was exactly the kind of company he didn't need right then.
He found himself mulling over the youth's words. He wanted to believe them, desperately wanted to. But they were riddled with holes and flaws. Garin thought he knew him, but he didn't. Tal had kept the worst of his past hidden from him still.
We only ever know the surface of others, he mused. Only see the face they turn toward us. Even of those he professed to love, it was true. After all, didn't he keep faithful to a woman he hadn't seen in two decades, a woman who had bound herself to another man and had a child by him? Didn't he keep faithful even when he hadn't really known or understood her then?
But she'd believed in you. Even then, before all of your deeds good and evil, she'd believed in you. She made you feel understood.
To his surprise, a smile creased his lips. Perhaps that was just it. No one could ever know another fully. But to not know and to believe in them anyway — perhaps that was the secret he'd struggled so long to find, the key to the door that led away from his self-imposed solitude.
He'd never been brave. Regardless of how others saw him, Tal had always been struck with fear at violence. Even with the bandits at the Winegulch Bridge, whom he'd been reasonably sure he and Aelyn could kill, he'
d been afraid. But Garin had given him courage then. He'd known he would never let him down if he could help it.
And neither would he leave Falcon to die alone.
Tal rose and spared one last glance at the moon. "Regrets don't always make you weak," he conceded to her. "Sometimes, they help you remember what makes you strong. But I don't have you to thank for remembering that now."
Smiling wider still, he found his way back inside.
Impervious
Tal pulled open the tower door. As he entered, Wren, Garin, and Aelyn all looked over at him, a mixture of emotions crossing their faces — startlement, fear, anticipation.
"I'm going," he said even before the door closed behind him, the words rushing out before the lingering doubts could stifle them. "I'm going after Falcon, even though I'll likely die. But I have to go." His gaze held Garin's. "It's who I am."
Garin gave him a small smile.
Wren, however, had only a glare for him. "Don't say it unless you mean it."
Tal met her gaze. "I was a coward before. But I mean it now. There's not a man who's done more for me in the whole of the Westreach."
Wren swallowed hard and nodded. "Good. Then it's obvious what we have to do. We have to go to the Ruins of Erlodan."
"We?" Garin pushed away from the wall to stand next to Wren. "What do you mean, we?"
She didn't look at him. "I mean that I'm going."
The youth's eyes looked as if they might fall out of their sockets. "You can't. You heard Tal — you'll get yourself killed."
"I can!" She rounded on Garin. "And no one, not you or anyone else, can stop me!"
A King's Bargain Page 22