Song of the Sea Spirit: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles) (28 page)

“There you are, Sayeg,” Pharson said. “Turounce wants to see you.”

Boden followed Corporal Pharson through camp, past the dozens of curious eyes of the men who’d somehow gotten wind of the summons. Judging from the wariness in their eyes and in their long faces, they knew as well as he did that this wouldn’t be a pleasant meeting. How much did they know, he wondered as he searched among the faces for his friends, the ones he knew would stand behind him, the ones who knew him well enough to know he, of all people, was dedicated and beholden to his duty? Would they have done differently in his position?

At last, he and Pharson reached the door to the command center. The corporal held it open. Boden tapped his boots on the step to knock off the dirt clinging to his soles and stepped inside.

To the right was the command board, manned by a one-armed soldier, a man who’d chosen to stay and serve in this capacity rather than forfeit his pension to return home before his ten years were up. A decision Boden could respect and admire. To the left, Sergeant Keskinen waited with legs apart and hands clasped behind him.

“Sayeg,” he said. “Come with me.” He led the way down a narrow corridor and into a room on the left. March Commander Turounce was seated at a table, holding a few papers in his hand. When Boden walked in and saluted, Turounce removed his spectacles and set them on the table.

“Do you know what this is, Sayeg?” Turounce asked.

“No, sir.” He’d walked in two seconds earlier. How could he know what the March Commander had been reading? Of course, he wouldn’t ask such a question aloud. It would’ve come off as disrespectful and insubordinate.

“Recommendations from Corporal Pharson and Sergeant Keskinen to spare your life and keep you on in spite of your interference in matters beyond your understanding.” He threw the papers onto his desk to punctuate his annoyance and stood. “I thought I could count on you, Sayeg. I’d hoped you’d inherited some of your father’s intellect, or if not that, then at least his dedication and ability to follow a simple order.”

Boden swallowed. “Sir, I’m unaware that I’ve disobeyed any orders.”

Turounce held up one finger as if to count the first incident of disobedience. “Two weeks ago, did Corporal Pharson instruct you not to speak of the incident concerning those so-called thieves you thought you saw?”

“Yes, sir.” He felt the anger warm his neck. Korlan had sworn not to tell anyone, damn him.

Turounce held up a second finger. “Did Corporal Pharson instruct you to drop the matter?”

“Yes, sir. I dropped it.”

“How the hell does killing two men constitute dropping it in your mind? Killing them and then trying to hide their bodies.” He used his two fingers to poke Boden’s forehead. “What the hell were you thinking, Sayeg? Do you have any idea the problems you’ve caused? The trouble that’s about to come down around us for this screw up?”

“No, sir,” Boden said. “I saw two Mangendans smuggling godfruit, sir, and I stopped them.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done, you idiot,” Turounce hollered.

“The godfruit is ours. If we’re not fighting this war to keep it out of enemy hands, then why are we fighting?”

“How long have you been under my command, Sayeg?”

Boden calculated quickly in his head. “About five weeks, sir.”

“And how many times have I explained the nuances of international relations to you?”

Boden looked at his boots. “None, sir.”

“That’s right, Sayeg. Do you think there’s a possibility that I know more about this war than you do?” When Boden didn’t answer right away, he asked, “Do you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Turounce turned his back to Boden and ran a hand over his shaved head. “Have you eaten the godfruit this morning?”

A cold shiver ran up Boden’s back to his neck, making his arms break into gooseflesh. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice so quiet it was nearly a whisper.

“Are you Relived?”

“No, sir, but I’ve seen it work. I saw Korlen come back.”

“Then you know why we ask our fighters to eat it every morning. Not only for you to get another chance to go home when your tour of duty is up, but to test you. To see how devoted you are to serving Serocia.”

“Yes, sir,” Boden said, unsure where this conversation was going.

“You eat the fruit every morning?”

“Yes, sir. As you instructed.”

Turounce turned around again, his expression more relaxed, his eyes less angry. “Korlan’s account of what happened to him in death didn’t give you second thoughts?”

“He won’t go into detail, sir. He warned me not to eat it, said the moments he was dead were terrifying.”

“And in spite of that, you still eat the godfruit. Every day.”

Boden nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to serve, sir. I want to put in my ten years, do my duty like my father did and his father before him. And because my march commander told me to.”

“What about your wife and child?”

Jora’s face came to mind, and he felt a flush of shame for thinking of her instead of Micah. “Yes, sir. I’d very much like to meet my son and hold my wife again.”

Turounce nodded. “If I can trust you, if you prove yourself to be the kind of fighter, the kind of
man
your father was, then you will. You’ll do all of that. But I have to know I can trust you.”

Boden lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. “You can, sir.”

“Good.” Turounce put one hand on Boden’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Because this is your first test.”

A flash of steel took Boden by surprise as the March Commander plunged a knife into his chest.

The pain blinded him for a moment, and he couldn’t breathe. He staggered to one knee. Turounce’s hands eased him to the floor. The pain dissipated, but he felt weak. Tired. A white film covered his vision, dulling it. Turounce bent over him and said something, but the words were fuzzy and distant.

And then, Boden was falling.

He walked on numb feet along the squishy ground in a darkness he felt and heard as much as saw. Impossible, hideous creatures turned toward him, sizing him up. All he saw were fangs and claws and human eyes that looked both tormented and terrible, skin of wood and scales, and mouths wide enough to swallow small children whole. His nostrils filled with dankness and decay. His lungs filled with fetid air that seeped through him and turned his blood black. The creatures whispered in the twisted tongue of the maniacal, the sounds that only nightmares made.

He tried to run, to get away from them, but his feet could get no purchase. He opened his mouth to scream, but all he could do was suck in that awful air, gasping and gulping as if he were drowning in it.

It felt like something kicked him in the chest. A rush of air filled his lungs—heavenly, cool air. His heart thundered madly as he gasped for breath after breath and then coughed when his lungs could take no more. The metallic tang of blood wet his mouth. He opened his eyes, expecting to find himself on a bloody battlefield or perhaps in the infirmary, recovering after the physician had patched him up. Instead, he saw March Commander Turounce squatting beside him, helping him sit up.

“There you are. Sit up a bit, try to breathe normally.”

“What happened?” he asked. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and it came away bloody. He looked down at himself. His shirt was drenched in blood around a slit in the fabric right in the center of his chest. “I got stabbed?”

Turounce handed Boden a cup of water, his right hand and forearm splattered with blood. “I stabbed you. Do you have no recollection of our meeting?”

Boden drained the cup and handed it back. Fragments of memories were starting to come to him. “You... wanted to know you could trust me.”

“That’s right. I’m disappointed in you, Sayeg. Do you remember why?” He climbed to his feet, picked up a towel, and wiped himself off.

“I... killed the smugglers.”

“That’s right. I had to test you, and you passed. Do you know what this means?”

Boden remembered being questioned about whether he’d eaten the godfruit that morning, whether he’d died once before and been brought back to life. “I’m Relived.”

“That’s right. You’ve got only one death left, Boden. Think about what that means the next time you’re tempted to disobey an order.”

A Truth Sayer walked into the room, his hands folded in front of him. The hood of his green robe shadowed his face, but the dark eyes watched coldly.

Then Boden realized that Korlan hadn’t betrayed him at all. The adept had spied on him, listened to his conversation, and reported it to the commander.

Turounce opened a crate, pulled out a folded shirt, and tossed it to Boden. “Clean yourself up and put this on.” He bent over and offered his hand. When Boden grasped it and stood, the March Commander gripped it harder, boring into Boden’s eyes with his steely gaze. “You’ll say nothing about what happened here. Am I clear?”

“Very clear, sir.”

Boden staggered back to his tent, ignoring the questions from his fellow soldiers about what the commander wanted. He had nothing to say. Not yet, anyway. Would they want to know that their own commander had killed him? That Turounce had betrayed one of his own men?

He collapsed onto his bunk, his strength gone. He lay on his side and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep while he chewed on what had happened.

Betrayed.

His own commander had
killed
him.

And those... things. He couldn’t get the images out of his mind of monsters with human eyes reaching for him, trying to keep him there. And that darkness that sucked at him, that oozed over his skin and made him itch all over, and not only in the center of his chest, where the knife wound was healing.

Was that where everyone went when they died, or just those who ate the godfruit? And what of his next death? Would he return there to spend eternity fighting off those monsters?

Now he understood what had frightened Korlan so much. Now he knew why Korlan thought he was still dead. Maybe he was.

Sleep started to overtake him, and he knew he needed it to heal, to give his body time to replenish his blood, but every dream featured a twisted monster surrounded by inky darkness clawing at him. He gasped to wakefulness time and again, sitting up in bed and searching for the familiar to convince himself it wasn’t real. In the darkest part of the night, his eyes saw only the dark, and he flailed his way out of the blanket that trapped him in his bunk.

“Boden.” A friendly voice. Voster. “Are you all right?”

He touched his arms and legs, feeling his human body. He wasn’t one of those grotesque fiends. The soft, steady sound of breathing told him he was in his tent. Nighttime. His tentmates were sleeping. Somewhere not far away, someone snored. “Uh... yah,” he croaked. Water. He needed water. “Bad dream.”

“All right. Go back to sleep.”

He heard the rustle of cloth, and the creak of a bed frame. By the time he pulled on his boots, the sound of Voster’s breathing had joined the others.

Boden went outside and looked up and down the rows of tents, dark in the dead of night without the moon to light his way, though the black sky was alight with a million stars.

He shuffled to the well pump, grabbed a bucket from the stack nearby, and set it down under the spigot, then lifted the handle and pumped water. The pain in his chest flared, and he clutched at the raw wound with his bare hand while he pumped. At last, a few trickles of water sputtered out, followed by a shot of it with every pump. He gave it a few more and stopped, grimacing in pain. He picked up the bucket, grabbed a cup, and stumbled to the benches nearby. He set the bucket on the bench and sat down, then dipped the cup in and drank long, delicious gulps of cool water.

Momentarily sated, he wiped his mouth and looked to the northwest.

In the distance, he saw the Tree, dark and foreboding against the starry night sky. It stood alone, the only tree on the entire Isle, and Boden felt akin to it. Alone.

He counted off the people who’d betrayed him: Gunnar, Turounce, his tentmates. He’d caught Hadar and Rojyr hunting through his knapsack one day, probably looking for his journal. He was thankful for that false bottom Jora had stitched into it.

Jora. He wondered again how she fared at the Justice Bureau. She was the only one he could trust, and he’d betrayed her by telling Rasmus about her.

Yes, he was alone but for one friend he couldn’t reach. At least he could talk to her, even if he didn’t receive a reply.

He snorted at the similarity to talking to the god Retar. Out here, one could talk, but there was no reply. Out here, there were no god vessels to give Retar a voice, no temples to take one’s money for the privilege of speaking to him through a monkey or parrot. What a farce it all was.

“But not all that humorous.”

Boden scrambled to his feet, spinning around to see who was there. What the hell?

“You complain that you’re alone. Imagine how I feel.” The voice was squeaky, its words sloppily formed.

His heart thundered weakly, renewing the ache in his chest. This couldn’t be happening. Boden checked his eyes with his fingers and found them open. He was stuck in a dream, thinking he was awake. Dreaming with his eyes open.