Draken sifted through the unfamiliar terms. “Setia?”
“My companion. She knows the Brînians, as well as the life of half-blood. She will be a friend to you.” Osias’ smile faded and his gaze dropped to Draken’s marked hand. “Why are you in these woods?”
“Do I trespass your land? If so, I’m in your debt.”
“No, no. I’m far from home.”
“Why are you here then? And how did you find me?” Draken gave him a direct look, suspicions flaring. “Answer truthfully, I’ll do likewise.”
“Truth? I was tracking banes.” Osias glanced around himself, and then he turned his remarkable eyes back on Draken. They were blue, Draken decided. Palest sea-gray blue. “And I found one inside you.”
“A bane? But how…” Words failed him. Banes. Spirits from hearth stories told to frighten children. The matter-of-fact way which Osias had spoken of them made it sound almost plausible that a vengeful creature of Brînian legend had possessed him and fed upon his grief. It was certainly easier than believing he’d nearly succumbed to his anguish over losing Lesle.
“The band fled before succumbing to my will.” Osias took on a musing tone. “An unlikely thing. I must warn the Queen of this development, for where there is one bane, more will follow. And you must testify to her, as a witness.”
The Queen…the Akrasian
Queen
? “A witness? No, no. I can’t go to court,” Draken said. “I’m—”
“Monoean. I realize it.” Osias was obviously using his knowledge to his advantage. He eyed Draken closely.
“Then you surely realize what it means. Why I am here.” Draken refrained from looking at the marks burned into his hands… marks Osias could not have helped but notice.
“You have done grave crime and suffered banishment.” Osias rose to walk a tight circle around Draken. His gait was rangy and confident. He stopped and laid his hand on the silvery tree shading them from the moonlight. It shuddered under his touch. “Who is following you?”
Draken felt a chill. “No one.”
“Someone with magic does so.” He shook his head. “I sense Moonling wards but your noble blood will protect you.”
“I’m no noble.”
Osias arched an eyebrow. “Truth?”
Draken looked away. He might carry noble blood, but mixing it with common blood was heresy against the gods.
“Here you are a Brînian nêre. A warrior lord. I will see to it.”
“I’ve never even been to Brîn before.” Draken thrust his branded hands at Osias. “And what of this? I’m a marked murderer.”
Osias stared at him hard. “Are you? A murderer?”
He had killed in the name of war. And his work in the Black Guard had required killing as well—killing that had seemingly earned him powerful enemies. The only explanation for Lesle’s murder and his subsequent framing was that of revenge. The Akrasian magicks used in the murder also suggested this explanation. He had never considered that his past might put his wife in danger. Disregarding this danger had led directly to her death.
“Aren’t we all?”
“But are you a criminal?” Osias said.
Draken lowered his gaze. “No. At least, not in the way they think.”
“Then the marks mean nothing.” Osias took Draken’s hand and studied it. “I’ll see you fed and clothed, and you shall stand witness at court. A better start than your old countrymen gave you, aye?”
Draken held onto his reserve. He needed time to make a judgment on this man. A sorcerer had most certainly killed his wife and he wasn’t about to throw his lot in with one without a great deal of thought. But then, Osias could be his entrance into the world of magicks. He could lead Draken to his wife’s killer.
“Might I see your bow?” he asked instead. It was something of a polite custom to examine others’ weapons in Monoea.
Osias handed the weapon to him. It was as tall as Osias, a beautiful, willowy thing, glowing pale gray. Draken ran his hand along the smooth wood and drew the powerful string back to his cheek. He’d shot recovered Brînian longbows during the Decade War, but he’d never seen one of such quality.
“My bow is—
was
recurve. Smaller, for mounted use,” he said. “Or to deploy from sail riggings.”
“Perhaps we can find you such a weapon in the markets at Auwaer.” Draken’s mind raced at the mention of the capital city, but before he could ask Osias to confirm where exactly they were, a woman materialized from the shadows. “Setia, meet Draken.”
She stood only to the middle of Draken’s chest. Silver locks blended into her curly hair, lending age her face didn’t carry. She shrank back when he looked into her face.
Draken realized with a start that the stippling he’d attributed to the tree-filtered sunlight was part of her coloring. Pale dapples covered her skin. They disappeared down her neck under the edge of her clothing and reappeared on her hands.
At last his manners caught up to his surprise. “Lady,” he said, bowing over her hand. “It is my honor.”
She turned to Osias and spoke to him in another language. Osias responded in the same language, reaching out to rub her arm. He nodded to Draken. “We should move, lest the Moonlings think we brought the bane here.”
“Moonlings?” Draken asked, surprised to hear the word again.
“Aye. Setia is a Moonling half and they appreciate mixed blood less than most,” Osias said. “Come. We’ll arrive at Auwaer before evening and get some food into you before we see the Queen.”
“This isn’t a good idea,” Draken said aloud, while internally he tried to calculate his location. He
had
been put ashore near Khein, just as he had suspected. It’d be a day’s walk or so to Auwaer, if the confiscated maps he’d seen were to scale.
Osias fixed him with his clear-eyed stare again. “This isn’t a request, friend.”
A chill spread from the top of Draken’s head to his toes. Fabric sprang to life around him, and his cloak fluttered around his boots… boots? He looked down. His rags were gone. He wore new clothes; a clean black cloak covered his shoulders, a black tunic bared his throat and half his chest, tight leather trousers tucked into boots to the knee. They felt stiff and new. Real. The stolen knife rested in a new sheath on a belt.
“What is this? What did you do to me?”
“I clad you properly, in the colors of Brîn, your principality.”
“Change me back, sorcerer.”
“You call me sorcerer as if it’s an insult when I only mean to see you fed and treated well at Auwaer.” Osias looked at him pointedly. “In return, you must only report to the Queen about the bane.”
“If I go before this Queen, she will recognize me for what I am and have me killed.”
“If you stay here, the Moonlings will condemn you more surely. I believe they’re following you and I don’t expect they mean well.” Osias gestured to toward the tree and fashioned a cold smile. “Come, Draken. I’m asking for a simple exchange of favors.”
“An exchange which could cost me my life.”
Osias darkened, his skin taking on the hue of tarnished moonwrought. “No. An exchange which will save it.” Ropes snaked around Draken’s body like creeping snakes, squeezing tightly and holding his hand in place before he could reach for his knife. “I am not asking. Come as my friend, or as my prisoner. That is your choice. But you are coming to Auwaer and you are going before the Queen.”
Draken struggled against the ropes while Osias and Setia watched silently. At last he clenched his jaw and looked away. A feeling of hopelessness overcame him. “All right. I’ll go. I put my life in your hands. But I don’t have to like it.”
The ropes snaked away and sizzled to dust at his feet.
Before long, Draken’s initial anger turned to maddening frustration. Given his hunger and exhaustion, the effort of dragging the reluctant mare through the thick woods seemed an endless battle. He hoped a real meal might be in his future, though he was skeptical one would be presented to him upon his arrival in the capital.
While Setia scouted ahead, Osias passed him back a water-skin. Draken drank, staring at the patches of sky visible through the heavy canopy. The morning had brightened into full day, bringing with it a damp heat. He offered Osias the stolen flask in return and slung the glamoured cloak across the horse.
“Thank you for the drink,” Osias said, gesturing with the flask. “Excellent Ocscher-wine. Found it with the green cloak, did you?”
Draken turned to see to his mare, who didn’t need tending, to hide that he didn’t know how to answer. Let Osias think him still angry at being taken captive; it was truth enough. They soon went on, Draken watching Osias as they walked. His hair reflected the light like old glass and he moved with assurance and grace.
“I assure you I’m not so notable among my own kind,” Osias mentioned over his shoulder.
Draken picked a couple of barbs from his tunic. They stuck to his fingertips, burning like tiny insect stings. “How do you know what I’m thinking all the time?”
“I’m sorry,” Osias said. “I’ll pretend not to know.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I am Mance, and I am spared few secrets.”
Draken stopped walking. “I heard you, before. Inside my head. I thought I imagined it.”
Not imagining, friend
.
This was different than the tricksters, buskers, and cultpriests he’d seen at home. Real magicks were dangerous, unstable, and angered the gods. Working them was not only heresy, it was lunacy, as far as most people were concerned. The Monoean Crown decreed a generation ago that a civilized nation had no more need for magicks than it did for state-sanctioned execution.
Osias chuckled, but not unkindly. “Magic isn’t outlawed here, though most can’t work it. I am a hunter of banes and a gatekeeper at Eidola, where we imprison those foul things. I have glamour and other small comforts, but I cannot use objects of power.”
“And you can read minds.”
Osias nodded. “I can enter the minds of mortals, so long as they have been altered by death. And you, friend, have had a long alliance with death.”
Draken pushed aside the thought of his recent murder. Something else was bothering him. A small mystic cult which claimed they could speak to the dead had followed Korde, who dragged the dead to Ma’Vanni’s watery kingdom. The Monoean King had ordered Draken’s squad to eradicate them after the war in his effort to refocus faith on Ma’Vanni, Goddess Mother, and her son Shaim, gods of peace. He’d been glad to do it. The cult had done far more to the dead than just talk to them.
“You follow Korde,” he said.
“He is my patron, aye.”
Draken’s lip curled. “Then you’re a necromancer.”
“A fair term,” Osias said, nodding. He didn’t seem to notice Draken’s distaste with the idea.
Draken took a step back, pressing his shoulder against the mare to turn her away. “This was a mistake, coming with you. Let me go now. I’ll find my own way.”
“Draken,” Osias said. “I need your help, and you need mine.”
Draken put his foot in the stirrup.
“It’s not safe for you alone.” Osias cast his gaze around the thick woods. “This is a dangerous, suspicious place, these woods. The bane still hunts you. And maybe something else, as well.”
Draken felt a chill. Bane or no, he’d nearly dragged a knife through his own throat. Ma’Vanni didn’t accept suicides in her realm. “I don’t know. I—”
“I am your friend, a servant should you need.” Osias took a knee and inclined his head. A ray of sun caught his silver head, blinding Draken like snow on a sunny day.
“No magical ropes this time? You think I don’t see what you’re trying to do? First you insist, and now you beg. Manipulation, mage, is a hated trait in my home country.”
Osias didn’t lift his head. “You
are
home.”
As Draken squinted down at Osias’ bowed head, a sigh filled his lungs and his shoulders fell. His only alternative was to become the criminal Monoea believed him to be. His best hope at survival was to sell his services as a warrior to the highest bidder, to become a mercenary like his rotted father. It was an honest living, if not honorable. Given his past life in service of his King, and his current circumstances, Draken began to doubt such distinctions mattered much. The swim had surely washed the last of his honor away. He was condemned to Akrasia, banished, lost.
And merc work might enable him to track Lesle’s killer.
“Get up,” he said gruffly. “Take me to the Queen. Gods willing, she’ll pay well for what I’ll give her.”
***
Not long after, the foliage gaped to reveal a dirt path stirred by many hoof-prints. Foliage and grasses on either side of the trail had been trampled in places. One of the giant, pearly trees rested in a wide clearing alongside the path. Draken had the sudden insight that Osias’ bow had been honed of wood from such a tree.
Fruits had fallen, stems still intact. Someone on horseback hadn’t been as respectful as the undergrowth; hooves had trampled the fallen fruit, leaving half-moon gouges in the bare soil. Draken knelt to examine the fresh breaks. The fruit oozed a pale yellow juice. The smell reminded him of Lesle’s favorite flower, the quinnex. She’d planted masses of them to bloom every summer. Their scent had mingled with the smell of her blood the day he’d found her.
“That is an Ocscher Tree,” Osias said. “The fruits make the fair wine you shared with me, but the greens are poison.” The tree hung thick with the golden fruits, shining amid the leaves like small suns.
“Someone passed by here recently,” Draken said, indicating the broken fruits. “In a hurry by the looks of it.”
Osias nodded and they pressed on, meeting no one on the path. They walked on in silence as Draken’s stomach complained of hunger, his mind worried, and his limbs aching.
And then, with no warning, the trees and the path ended.
The world ended.
Chapter Four
A
head lay a simple flat darkness, a black as black as Draken had ever seen, as if all light had extinguished and left behind sightless, alien void. The grasses and trees stood in sharp relief against it, brilliant greens and grays and the shining golds of the Ocscher. But when he switched his focus to the blackness, he felt his pupils widen painfully, as if he’d stepped into endless night.