by Will Bly
“Takes one to…”
She feined a punch toward him, her fist lingering in the air. “Takes one what? You want to call me evil, is it?” She let her fist drop and opened her hands to him. “Do you see blood? Misery? See anything on my hands, boy? Can you say the same for yourself, you measly little turd? We ran you out once, by gods, we’ll do it again!” She picked up a rock and pegged Irulen with it.
“Ow!” He put his hands in front of him and lifted his knee in defense. “I have news, you horrible lady.” He stood up straight again. “She’s dead.”
Old Ballywick dropped the rock she had picked up. She stared up at Irulen, her mouth agape. A moment passed where it was possible that her face softened, if only by the tiniest bit. She turned from him and climbed the hill. “Yeah, well, she isn’t the only one gone, as you shall see.”
“What do you mean?” he called after her but to no avail. Her gooey form moved up the hill and into her house.
Irulen drew his attention downward as Rany leaned against his legs. Irulen gave the old mut a good pet but found Ballywick’s rogue mucus in the process. “Ugh, gross!” He fished a stick off the ground and scraped the phlegm off his left pant-leg, just below the kneecap, best he could. The dog chased the stick as he threw it. Irulen roared at the dog to stop, but it was too late. Rany brought the item back and dropped it at Irulen’s feet. The mucus-clam was nowhere to be seen.
Shrugging it off, Irulen continued on his way, dog in tow. The hills to the left and right, so tightly packed together, began to spread wider, making way for more bountiful and desirable land. Still, at this time of season, the land looked anything but. Ravaged from the rigors of winter, soaked by recent rains, the earth was both cracked and muddy and tugged at Irulen as he walked. The rocky path began to give way to intrusive puddles and splotches of primordial waste. In the distance, a thick black column of smoke shot straight up into a windless sky. A shiver quaked along Irulen’s spine as if a goblin skittered up his back and peeked over his shoulder.
Irulen’s feet seemed to grow in weight as he walked.
Rany also wobbled, her trot not fluid like a dog’s should be.
Thinking it some subliminal trick of the mind—a result of the day’s fatigue—Irulen soldiered on. Thatched-roof dwellings increased in number as he drew closer to the source of the smoke. Doors and windows hung open, revealing a great deal of vacancy. The people were certainly less willing to come show their disdain for him as Old Ballywick. Indeed, what few people there were shuffled their young away, avoiding him like a plague.
A sharp yelp from Rany stopped the wizard in his tracks.
Irulen turned to find the dog lying on its side, crying out in pain. He crouched down and placed his hand over the dog’s belly. The thing was swollen, and he felt something like a bubbling effect on the inside.
“That dog’s got the blight. Seen it before, seen it often,” said a boy, likely in his teens. He shrugged. “Not much to be done but put ‘em out of its misery. Must’ve ate something tainted.”
“What? No.” Irulen looked down at the dog.
Wasting no time he formed his fingers on his left hand into a makeshift cone and used his right hand to wedge open the dog’s mouth. He held his breath as he plunged his hand into the mutt’s mouth, past its tongue and teeth, and as far into its throat as he could get.
The dog struggled mightily and tried to pull away. The teeth, as if acting on their own volition, clamped down on Irulen’s skin.
“Ah! Damn!” he spat as he moved his hand deeper into the animal’s throat. He gritted his teeth against the pain until he found what he wanted: resistance in the form of emerging bile pressing against his hand. The vomit followed his hand as he pulled it out, and the stuff poured onto the ground.
Rany convulsed and went limp. The dog’s breathing was light and soft. A raspy wheeze alerted Irulen that the fight was far from over. Still, the dog slept, and if it passed now then at least it would happen in a more peaceful manner.
“What’s going on in this place?” Irulen asked as he looked back up.
But the boy was gone.
The savory smell of charred meat filled his nostrils. The plume of smoke wasn’t far off. Grey clouds haunted the town, roaming in mindless patterns. The wind was not strong, hardly existent at all, and so the clouds lingered absent direction. Feeling as if he were being watched, Irulen redoubled his efforts. The smoke rose on the way to his home, and so he decided to investigate the source. It wasn’t uncommon in the village this time of year to use the firepit for communal cooking.
In hindsight, he should have known, but he stifled his suspicions right up to arriving at the fire. It was a communal fire, all right, but it was the community being charred. Blighted corpses cooked, stacked on top of one another other and set alight. The living carried on around the grisly pyre, adding their dead friends and family to the roast. Teams of two grabbed arms and legs, swinging the ravaged dead back and forth until they gained enough force to fling the bodies onto the heap. The fire had not quite caught up with the fuel, arms and legs jutted out, surrounding the dead faces of old and young alike. Mouths hung open between protest and surprise. Disease had come and taken much, if not most, of the village with it.
The survivors appeared almost as sickly as they worked to set the corpses to flame, releasing the spirits of the dead from their ravaged bodies. One team of body-burners failed one of their body-tosses. The smaller of the two lost his grasp too early as they swung a corpse toward the fire. Feet swung awkwardly into the air as the head fell to the earth. Not much of the body made it to the pit. Both workers threw their hands up in disgust and uttered expletives.
They walked away, leaving the dead man looking ridiculous against the pile, feet in the air, shirt fallen over his face. Death is so undignifying.
Irulen stretched his neck and called out to the men, summoning patience and formality. “P’raps you might take more caution with the deceased, friends? That man there was Frederick, uh, I forget the latter part of his name, but he was a good man from what I remember, one of the better ones around here.”
The taller of the two walked away as he dismissed the wizard with a grunt and a wave of the hand. The smaller one turned to the voice, not quite as jaded, hunched his back and squinted as he walked over. There was a familiar look on the man’s face, but Irulen couldn’t quite place it. Almost as if there’s a young face stuck between worn skin and an old soul.
“What do the dead mean to you, Irulen? What do you think this is about? Showing the dead respect? Releasing their souls? No. No—we’re removing the rotting stink from our homes, burning up the blight-ridden meat. It’s the only way to purge our misery. And speaking of misery...” The man’s malnourished hand poked at Irulen’s chest, his breath felt as hot as the fire. “If there were enough of us left, then we’d burn you too! Fool!” The man spat at his feet.
Irulen scrunched his face at the slight. Always with the spitting; damn people are so petty. Instead of verbalizing his internal angst, Irulen kept his composure and spoke low and clear. “I can’t say I did right by this town, but I can say I did wrong by meaning well. I wanted to help someone—I failed her, I failed everyone here, and I failed everyone whose life she touched since. But I came to tell you all she’s dead and...” he paused, “...to see my family.”
The man’s hunchback straightened momentarily as he lifted his mouth to the sky in laughter. “Well, there you have it, that half-wit brother of yours, anyway. He’s ash.”
The words came out so callously and easily that Irulen failed to take umbrage. His brain flooded with sorrow and his heart sank to his stomach. Had his brother been tossed haphazardly onto that pyre, and if so, when? Did I miss him by weeks, days? Could I have helped him?
The crude man continued his blabbering. “And your parents, well, they’ve gone and probably died from the shame of you and that demon whore of yours. I haven’t seen them. Probably gone off and shriveled up and perished somewhere like pois
oned rats.”
Irulen looked at the ground. Blackness crept into the edge of his vision. “Lynette... Her name was Lynette. I came to tell you all she’s... she’s dead.”
The man snorted. “Too little, too late. It’s been years since you made that... abomination! We chased you rotten things out of here, and here you return!”
Irulen shook his head. “It… It wasn’t our fault. No one else would help.”
“Aren’t you the hypocrite, where were you to help when she went on her rampage? I came across her first, after what you did to her by the river. She made me all bloody and broken with her hands alone, though I somehow lived through it. Then what she did to her father...”
“He had it coming.”
“You see, if your parents had just killed that half-wit brother of yours when he came out, like we suggested, maybe they would have had time to raise you proper—”
It came quick and natural; the grip of the hilt, the flash of the steel, and a rattling scream of pain crawling across the sounds of crackling embers. Irulen stood, sword drawn, lording over the hunchback who fell to his knees and grasped at a stump where his left hand was. The hand itself lay between them like a flattened spider. Irulen grew hot as if he absorbed the flames from the burning corpse-pyre. He skewered the hand with his sword and flung it into the fire. He smiled at hearing the distinctive sizzling of fresh flesh. His eyes traced the flames for a long moment, envying their destructive ability. A look down revealed a sniveling man, defeated and terrified, snot running out of his nose and over his lips. The darkness came farther into his vision, like the hands of a shadow reached around from behind his head.
“You—your eyes,” came the man’s wavering voice, “They’re red! Please spare me. Please!” The man gripped his bleeding stump and whimpered.
Irulen threw his hands up to his face and screamed as if being locked in a casket while it filled with water. The darkness receded, and his consciousness reclaimed its clarity. The air sounded quiet except for the weakening pleas of the maimed hunchback. Hugh. I remember his name. “Hugh.”
Hugh cowered like a kicked puppy. He spoke through quivering lips, “Ye—yes? Wh—what do you want? Wh—Why hurt me like this? Are you… a demon? Truly you… must be.”
The man was dying, and though still numb to the situation, Irulen began dragging the man by the armpits. They worked their way slowly toward the fire. All the while he remembered more about Hugh. The last few years must have crippled him fiercely for he was not as old as he looked, not much older than Irulen for that matter. Quiet and reserved, young Hugh had tried courting Lynette, but there would be no competition for her affections.
Of course he hates my guts, jealous bastard. Ugh, forget this.
Irulen dropped his corporeal package onto the ground and walked over to the fire. He fished around for what he was looking for, and then pulled a stick from the fire. It was burning hot at one end, still dry on the other. Perfect.
The mage brought his torch over to the sad sack of man-meat and pointed the business end toward him, who seemed to have fainted. The flame nudged in close to the wounded arm and began to lick at the protruding gore.
Hugh roused in his sleep, grunting with displeasure. His eyeballs rolled under his eyelids, and his head shook from one side to the other. His nostrils flared at a small column of smoke—from his burning flesh—as it crept into his nose. He jumped awake, inhaling a quick breath with eyes wide in confusion.
In one seamless motion, Irulen kneed the man in the chest, pinning him to the ground. He accomplished the feat before Hugh understood what was going on. Irulen’s knee had landed in such a way that Hugh’s breath was knocked out of him, and so Irulen was able to use both arms to finish cauterizing the wound.
“There,” Irulen said, not believing himself in the least. “Right as rain.” He stood and dusted himself off. As much as he suppressed it, the urge to care burnt a hole in his chest. Guilt and self-pity filled the cavity, swirling and whipping each other into a vortex of tar and grit. “I’m sorry,” he said, not expecting much of an answer.
Slumped over and passed out, Hugh was in no condition to answer.
Shame hot on his face, Irulen glanced around nervously for witnesses. There were none to be found, but he knew a good deal of people likely lived in the town still, pestilence or not. Repercussions awaited him, surely, and since his family no longer resided in the area there was only one place for him to go. One more place he wanted to see. A place that wouldn’t leave him.
◆◆◆
As disgusted as he felt, Irulen couldn’t leave the place of his birth without visiting the place of her birth—the river by which he spent his childhood with Lynette. It was there he had sown her curse, the seed of magic that clutched her imperfections and tore them asunder, leaving her spirit shattered and her essence putrid.
The water flowed solemnly today, as if in memorium, as if the river itself was keenly aware of who visited and remembered what had transpired. Irulen felt as if he were being watched and judged.
He shambled along the river, picking his way through nature’s debris, rocks, and stumps from trees felled long ago, passing industrious townsfolk and the occasional beaver, though there were no beaver ponds to be seen. Likely because the industrious townsfolk killed off the industrious beaver.
A particular rock beckoned to him, and Irulen bent to pick it up. The wet earth sucked at Irulen’s effort to peel the rock away but eventually relented. Flipping the rock onto its back exposed its dirty underbelly and next to that a crater of mud and refuse. Irulen laughed inwardly as a salamander skittered away. He then focused on the beetles, earwigs, centipedes and other insectual critters found around the rim.
Here they are, in a kingdom of grime and muck, flourishing. Irulen wondered at the trust that each species must have for one another, being in such a close proximity to different species. Or maybe they just didn’t have a damn choice, and they were forced into daily competitions of murder and cannibalism to get by. Irulen pictured a pillbug curled up, sleeping with one eye open. He then regretted not being able to curl into an armored shell.
He flicked the last thought aside and flipped the rock back to its former place. I wonder how much I just screwed up that little world of theirs. Irulen shrugged and continued his trek until he found the place he seeked. There stood the rock where he and Lynette had spent so much time together; sitting, talking, laughing... kissing, or just being still while listening to the forest.
He sat and listened now, his rear pressed against the boulder, his legs folded inward and cloak draped around him. If Max were above him, he’d have looked like a drop of dried blood. But he isn’t here, just me.
Irulen closed his eyes and listened. Lynette’s voice and laughter echoed through the ancient woods—a forest that would never forget the sound of it all. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he opened his eyes to see her playful figure frolicking around the river’s edge.
If I could only go back to when she asked me to leave here. If I could make that decision again, I would get it right. I’d leave. I’d have her out of here long before she became desperate and bitter. Long before she broke.
A vortex formed in the water’s flow. Rocks and water fell inward, sucking into the ground as a naval opened in the earth. Lynette stopped in her tracks and turned to look Irulen in the eye. His heart seized at the thought of his mind’s creation gaining a sudden form of sentience. The edges of her eyes trembled as fear crept inward.
Behind her, a black hand of darkness and shadows emerged from the whirlpool. The fingers stretched outward and then wrapped around her gently. She started to panic, her arms involuntarily folded against her sides as she wriggled like a fly caught in a spider web. She screamed, and his head rang. The screams continued as the shadow hand dragged her below until it became no more than a memory’s echo.
Irulen blinked, and the river again ran straight, uninhibited and unknowing.
“There you are, my frien
d. I’ve been waiting.”
Irulen turned toward the voice and found a man standing behind him. A strange familiarity about him couldn’t be placed.
“Oh?” The man raised a brow. “You don’t recognize me?”
“I’m sorry to say I’ve had a lot happen lately.”
The stranger stepped around to stand in front of him. “Ha! As if you are the only one?”
“I’m sorr—”
“You already apologized. I have no use for apologies.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I’m here to collect a debt.” He grinded his teeth. “Your life.”
Irulen rubbed his forehead. “Why? And if you wanted to kill me, why didn’t you just do it with my back turned?”
“I have more honor than that.”
Irulen clicked his tongue. “Ah. Comcka from Northforge, huh?”
Comcka bowed in acknowledgement. “I am. I’ve been waiting here for some time. Fledglings always return home. Am I right?”
Chapter 12: Kay’s Honor
The tavern was stuffy and filled with musty folk. Farah fed Max as she fed her indignation. Even the raven, who Farah often considered her best friend of the bunch, failed to take notice of her discontent. Max purred, snatched up a pumpkin seed from her fingers with his talon, and lifted the treat to his beak, grating away with undiscerning delight.
She was always the caretaker—of Max, Merek, Irulen, and of whoever else. She wished she could just not care like these two. Why not just care about myself, or find someone to take care of me?
Merek, seated to her left, rocked in silent rhythm. Across from her, Kay slouched back coolly. Between them both, but leaning strongly in Kay’s direction, Leo acted as suave as he could muster. His aggressive physical stance betrayed the desperation behind his silky incantations. As all men seemed to, he dedicated his efforts toward the sultry slice of mystery that was Kay.
It seemed that Kay, for her part, was either too tired or too apathetic to threaten the scoundrel into silence and subjugation. Farah watched. Or perhaps I’m studying her... just a bit. Farah would never admit jealously. It was all simply a professional curiosity. Everything about Kay seemed to be well-constructed and controlled. The rate at which she licked her lips, even blinked seemed deliberate in their design.