Authors: Tim Akers
“You’re one to talk,” the knight snapped. “With you sneaking into the woods each night, to break bones and spill blood, we would have ended up in prison… or worse.”
“Or we would have been free!” the feral man answered. “Living on the road, taking what we wanted, sleeping where we wanted, and sleeping well, I wager!” He pointed accusingly at the demon. “None of this gheist’s godsdamned nightmares.” He turned back to the knight. “But that’s worse to you, isn’t it? You never had a feel for freedom. You wanted power, and asses to kiss.”
“You would have us living like a dog.”
“Like a wolf—and wolves live well!”
“Enough,” the demon hissed from the void. “I’ve given you both what you want, and more than you could hope for. You will not tear us apart.”
“This is the priest’s doing,” the feral man whispered. “What did he do to you, demon? Why did you come to heel when he called?” The bloody figure inched forward, his fingers creeping out toward the pit-faced figure. “Whose side are you on?”
“Priests, priests, priests!” the knight said. “I tire of the machinations of priests. I will have no more to do with them.”
“That isn’t up to you,” the demon answered, then he pointed toward Henri. “This is a matter for him.”
“Who is he?” the child asked. The boy’s presence made Volent uncomfortable—even more so than his feral aspect, or the demon.
“He is an older, less obnoxious you,” the knight answered. “But he shouldn’t make the decision—that should be my right.”
“Why should you get a choice?” the demon asked. “You who followed orders your entire life?”
“That is the way of this world,” the knight answered proudly. “I found my place in its order, and it has served me… served
us
well.”
“To what end?” the demon said.
“To this end,” the feral man answered. “To this moment.” He snicked the knives of his fingers together, grinning madly.
“What moment?” Henri asked, but the ghosts ignored him. All but the child who stared at him with large, empty eyes. Angered by their disdain, Henri grabbed the feral man and spun him round. “
What are you talking about?
”
“I wouldn’t…” the demon said, but he was too slow. The feral man took hold of Henri’s shirt, and a good deal of skin with it.
“Opportunity!” the feral man howled. “The priest has given you to us, granting us the opportunity to make things as they ought to be.” He shoved, and Henri stumbled into the center of the circle. “I’ll be
damned
if I let you fuck it up for me!”
“It could be any one of us,” the knight said. “It should be me.”
“What do you mean?” Henri stood, brushing dirt from his face. With a start he felt his fingers on his skin. He looked down at his hand. The spider-growths were gone. He glanced up.
The demon nodded at him.
“Yes,” the demon nodded. “While you are here, you are whole.”
“And wholly
empty
,” the feral man sneered. “Waiting to be plucked.”
“That is for us to do,” the knight agreed. “Go, and take the child with you.” He waved Henri away. “Go play stones, or something.”
“Stones,” the feral man agreed. “Try to not get any blood in the water.”
Henri began to protest, then stopped. He stood silently for a minute, looking from ghost to ghost. He wasn’t getting answers from any of them—perhaps the child would be more… cooperative. As if reading his thoughts, the childlike figure walked over and took his hand, leading him away from the clearing.
The rest were arguing before they were out of earshot.
“Do you know what’s occurring?” Henri asked.
“They argue a lot,” the child said, “especially the red one. We might as well have some fun.” He walked loosely, swinging his arms in wide arcs, almost dancing. They came to a stream quite suddenly. The child bent, took a stone from the bank, and tossed it weakly into the water.
“That’s not what I mean,” Henri said, looking around. “Do you know why I am here?” The forest seemed closer. He peered across the stream. Among the whispering ferns there was a field of tiny banners in brown and gray, each one pinned to a small twig. The wind didn’t move them. “Wherever this is.”
“If you don’t know that, they sure as hells won’t tell you,” the child said, then winced. “Pardon the cursing.”
“Pardoned,” Henri said automatically, echoing the words his father had said to him thoughtlessly, a hundred times. “The priest they’re talking about—who is he? I remember something… bodies, and a tomb?”
“Mm-hm,” the child responded. “Your master died. You’re off the leash.”
“The high inquisitor,” Henri said, mostly to himself. “He tried to kill me.”
“You were trying to kill him, and he needed someone to blame all of those bodies on. So he sent you here to go mad.” The child tilted his head. “Madder, I suppose. No one’s going to be surprised to find you at the end of a trail of bodies.”
“I’ll deny it,” Henri said.
“Not if you’re still in here.”
“Then how do I get out?”
“Maybe you don’t. Maybe one of the others will get to decide.” The child lifted a stone from the water and held it up in both hands. It was sharp on one end, like a teardrop. “Maybe it’ll be me.”
“I don’t understand,” Henri said. The child’s words bothered him deeply, although he couldn’t say why.
“That’s never worried me, not understanding,” the child said. “Can you help me with this?”
“Listen,” Henri said, kneeling beside him. “Can you tell me something?”
The child paused, the heavy rock still in his hand, his eyes narrow.
“If I know the answer,” he said, “and it isn’t naughty.”
“What do you remember of Father?” Henri asked.
The child hesitated, finally lowering the stone back into the stream. The water splashed loudly around his fingers. Finally he shrugged.
“He was big—bigger than me, and those other two. Bigger even than Sir Nasty-Face, and strong.”
“That’s all?”
“He smelled like wood, shaved wood, like from his shop. He made nice things—toys, and chairs, and… mostly toys. Least it’s the toys that I remember best.” The child pulled his hands out of the water and shook them. “Wish I had some of those toys now.”
“To remember him by?”
“To play with,” the child said. “I get bored.” He glanced up and around the forest. “There aren’t any more squirrels out here.”
“Toys…” Henri said, the first hint of a smile on his lips. “I can’t remember even that. Just his face, and his name, and what it sounded like when he died.” The smile went away. “The dreams have taken the rest away.” He paused. The child was looking up at him with sharp, angry eyes. “And Mother? What do you remember about her?”
“I didn’t kill her,” the child said, and there were tears in his eyes. “I
didn’t
. It was the demon. I thought we had escaped him, but he followed. I ran, and ran, but he’s in our skin. Do you know what it’s like, living with that thing? Do you have any idea?”
“Hush, hush,” Henri said. It was difficult, seeing himself like this. “It’s all right.” He didn’t really know what to do.
“No,” the child whimpered. “It’s not all right. It never was.” He spun.
The stone took Henri behind the ear, a weak blow driven by a child’s hand, but enough to surprise him. He slipped and collapsed back into the stream, cold water splashing over his hips. The child rose from the bank, the heavy stone once again in his hands.
There was blood on it.
“When the master goes mad,” the child whispered, “sometimes you have to put down the dog.”
“What?” Henri sputtered.
“You shouldn’t have left me in here,” the child shrilled. “You shouldn’t have left me with them!”
Henri crawled backwards, slipping on smooth stones as he struggled away from the murderous boy. The child came at him, the stone over his head, screaming. Henri turned away, and the stone bounced off his back. The boy fell against him, tiny arms battering his head, his shoulders, young teeth sinking into his neck. Henri could taste the blood and the fear.
He shoved the child away. His younger self fell into the stream, sputtering when his head went under. Henri pushed his head into the water. Young hands tore at his wrists, drawing blood. It was brief, the struggle, as the last moments of Henri’s memories of his father washed into the river.
Try to not get any blood in the water.
Henri stood and returned to the clearing.
* * *
“Lose yourself?” the feral man asked.
“Shut up,” Henri snapped.
“Oh, so now he has a backbone,” the knight responded. “Too bad he can’t keep track of a child.”
“You, too,” Henri said. “I’ve had enough of this—of your accusations, your assumptions.” He drew his sword, which he wasn’t carrying until he reached for it. “The duke may have shaped us, and the church may have guided us, but it’s time I start making my own way.”
“Yes, exactly!” the knight said. “Sense upon sense! All you have to do—” Henri thrust forward, sliding the blade smoothly through the silk and satin into flesh. The knight staggered, sputtered, and died.
“Ho, ho!” the feral man yipped. “I don’t think he saw that coming!”
“I’ve had enough of fitting into someone else’s sense of order,” Henri said. “No more orders, and no more madness.” He spun and brought the blade across the feral man’s crimson neck, opening him up like a butcher’s purse, sending him tumbling to the ground.
Then Henri wheeled on the demon. The pit-faced figure backed slowly away, feeble hands up.
“Be careful what you do here, Henri,” the demon said, his voice slithering through the air. “There’s no need…”
“It was you, wasn’t it? You killed my parents!”
“I don’t know…”
“I thought all of this—my face, my skin… the nightmares… I thought it was a scar in my soul, or a wound that would heal in time. It’s not, is it?” Henri gritted. “It was all you!”
“You were fertile ground,” the demon replied. “I have grown into more than I was.”
“All these years, I’ve hunted the gheist, feared the pagan,” Henri snarled. “You have been inside me since the beginning.” He stepped forward. The demon stepped back.
“Son, wait,” the demon said. He changed, his face swelling, eyes and nose and mouth welling up like water filling a hole. His features were like a dim memory.
Father.
“I am the god of memory, Henri Volent. I preserve the past that was lost.” The demon stepped forward, hand outstretched. “I hold your father, and your mother, as well.”
“The dead are gone,” Henri growled. “Let them sleep.”
“They’re never gone. Not as long as you…”
“No,” Henri said. Then he placed the tip of his sword against his father’s face. The image of Jacque Volent whisked away like smoke. The blade passed through and into the pit of the demon’s face. A thousand voices screamed, his mother’s last of all, but then there was silence, and darkness, and weight.
* * *
He awoke lying among the tombs of the tribe of iron.
Something was burning, thick, black, inky smokey boiling up from the stairwell. That was the direction Sacombre had come from.
Henri stood, and felt tears on his face.
He wondered why that seemed unusual.
I
AN KNELT ON
the bare stone of a lonely hill. He sang the evensong to himself, bidding farewell to the sun, counting down the rites to the moon, binding the wounds in his heart. When he was done he held the silence of a long moment. His knees ached, but he didn’t want to move.
Evening crawled on, and reluctantly he stood and started down the hill. There was a time in his life when he would have been nervous walking the deep forests of Tener, especially this close to the equinox. Fear of the gheists had dominated so much of his youth. With Fianna and her coven so close, however, and after a month of traveling in their company, in the host of their gods, he was no longer afraid.
So he had started observing the evensong again. Ian felt the need to put something between himself and these pagans. He needed to create a space, a sacred distance, and a time when he could feel the old gods again. When he could feel Cinder’s judgment, and Strife’s love.
He found it odd that he had started thinking of the bright lady and gray lord as the “old gods.” Ian worried that he might not be remembering the forms of evensong. At first he had stumbled through them, gaining confidence with each night, but even now he wasn’t certain he had it right. He might be committing heresy without knowing it.
He hoped the gods would understand, or perhaps not even notice.
About halfway down the hill, Ian realized that he was no longer alone. Off to his left, Cahl was walking parallel to him. The shaman slipped quietly between the trees, pointedly ignoring him. Ian slowed, then came to a halt. Cahl circled into the path Ian would have followed, turned, and faced the young Tenerran.
“You are learning to move through the forests, Ian of Houndhallow,” Cahl said. “The time hasn’t long passed that you would have stumbled through the darkness like an avalanche.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice,” Ian said.
“It’s more than that,” Cahl answered. He came closer, looking Ian up and down. “You are weaving the night into your bones. The silence of dreams cloaks you.”
“I think I just got tired of falling on my face,” Ian persisted. “Started looking where I was going.”
“You started
seeing
where you were going,” Cahl corrected. “There is a distinct difference.”
“Are you here to harass me about my prayers?”
“Your prayers will not keep the spirits from your blood,” Cahl said. “They will not keep you holy in this place.”
“If you are trying to frighten me,” Ian said, “it’s not going to happen, and you’re not going to cause me to change.”
Cahl didn’t answer. The big shaman just stood there, breathing slowly, as if he was tasting the air and the earth. Ian could sense the slight haze of everic power dancing around the man’s skin, tangling with the trees and sky and quiet stones of the earth beneath their feet.
“No, you are not the type of man to take fright,” Cahl said. “You are not the type of man to be leashed, either—or led.”
“Fianna leads you,” Ian said.