CHAPTER 14: The Flesh of the Innocent
Aiyan looked at Pitbull with smoldering eyes. “Then try again.”
“I will, I will, but I need to rest first.”
Teodor picked up the figure of a dragon, turning it over in his hand. “Can you approach it from another angle? Is there something you lack — a special regent for instance?”
Pitbull let out a heavy sigh. “No. There’s nothing for it. I just need to be alone for a while.” He gathered the figurines and went back inside his house.
Jazul’s face darkened. “Have we nothing more than sorcery to guide us?” When no one answered he looked at each in turn. “I suppose all of you are witch-warriors of some sort.”
Aiyan said, “Something like that.” Teodor only smiled.
“Do you know who took Prince Eren? Was it the tall man at the dance, the one that Jela pointed out to me — what was his name?”
“Kleon Morae. Yes, it was him.”
“The one who did the kidnapping itself,” Teodor said, “was no man at all. According to Kyric they are called Wirmen.”
“Yes, Kyric,” said Aiyan, “I don’t know this one. Please educate us, young scholar.”
“There’s little to it, only a few dozen lines, but the interpretation is this: For Derndra to create his third and greatest grimoire, he had to write it in an ink of what alchemists call essential mercury or golden mercury, also known as the blood of the Aerth. This magical ink incinerated even the most enchanted parchment, so Derndra divined that the only material which could be imbued with enough power to hold this ink was human skin — skin from the youngest and most innocent.
“Now the War of Mages had already begun, and the people of Aessia had started to suspect that Derndra was not the sage-king he pretended to be. He saw an opportunity to vilify Graifalmia and her allies, convince everyone that they needed his protection, and get the virgin skin he needed. So he created the Wirmen in the deep pits below his palace. He bred them to scent the flesh of children, and made them silent, and gave them the power of sleep. He also trained them to drop a clover leaf, the symbol of Graifalmia’s alliance, in the bed of each taken child. When children began to disappear in the night, many folk believed that Graifalmia’s cohorts had stolen them.
“You know,” Kyric said with a hollow chuckle, “I always thought that was a parable.”
“All I want to know,” said Jazul, “is if they can be killed with a blade.”
The sun climbed to zenith, pouring the heat of high summer over the city, and they all sat under the awning watching the blurry, rippling air rise from the walls, the flagstones, and the cobbled street. Teodor kept shifting in his chair, moving his injured leg from one position to another, never finding a comfortable way to sit. At noontime Pitbull’s wife came out and introduced herself. Aiyan dropped to one knee and hugged her gently. “So good to see you again, Estia.”
She was frail compared to Pitbull, yet all smiles and bursting with light. She served them cold tea, and her twelve-year-old daughter followed with a plateful of dolmas.
After they had eaten some, Rellen approached them saying, “I had to unhitch the donkey and turn him out. Can’t just leave him standing in his harness all day.”
“Of course,” said Aiyan. “Sorry. I kept thinking we would go any minute.”
Aiyan became more and more restless as the afternoon wore on, unable to sit down or stand still. Through all that had happened in the days since Kyric met him, he had never seen Aiyan lose his inner stillness, even when he was angry.
“Aiyan,” said Teodor. “Maybe we should look for another way.”
“No. He will do it. He was born a finder. While he was still a student his master told me that Pitbull had already surpassed his own skill in finding. There is no greater finder than Pitbull.” He turned and went into the house. When he returned a few minutes later he looked sick. “Perhaps the third time will be the charm.”
The day turned sultry as a bank of clouds far out to sea rose into thunderheads. Jazul found a bench that had fallen into shade and laid down there, a rhythmic snore soon rising above the buzz of insects. Aiyan sat at last, and Kyric caught his eye.
“Can I ask you something? How is it that you can move so quickly? I understand that training plays a part, but is there a weird to it, like the way you can sprint through a crowd and not run into anyone?”
“Training is a large part, the rest concerns the warrior essence,” said Aiyan.
Teodor leaned forward. “We do not so much move quickly, as we slow the world down a little.” He smiled like Sister Golla did when she asked a tricky logic question.
“How is that possible? You cannot slow the whole world.”
“You can slow your little part of it,” Aiyan said.
“Everyone,” Teodor said, “has experienced the mutability of time. Hence will folk say ‘Time flies when you’re having fun.’”
Kyric frowned. In the few times he had fun, time slowed for him. Like so many feelings shared among people, his ran backward.
“That’s simply a difference in perception,” he said. “Time can seem slow to me and fast to you, and still the clock will strike the same hour.”
Teodor was suddenly serious. “You think of perception as passive, a helpless sense. Perception can also be a function of will. In other words, you can decide how you will perceive the sensations of the world, particularly the spirit world.
“On the mundane plane, time is a series of moments all strung together. In the realm of power, each moment is whole, complete.”
“Eternal,” said Aiyan.
“How can one moment last forever?”
“It does not,” Teodor said. “Eternity has nothing to do with time.”
“To put it simply,” said Aiyan, “for one whose spirit has been refined to its warrior essence, it is possible to narrow your focus to encompass only the moment. And each moment so seen is truly eternal.”
Kyric looked at both of them. “You two are even weirder than the rune sisters.”
Teodor laughed long and loud at that, and even Aiyan broke a brief smile.
Kyric said, “Let me ask you something else. What is the long game for the Knights of the Dragon’s Blood? Clearly they intend to take control of the government of Aeva, but to what end? If this Master Cauldin has had over two hundred years to accumulate wealth and political power, why here, why now?”
“Master Cauldin has no need of money or influence except as tools,” said Teodor. “There is only one end. He seeks only, and always, what our order seeks as well: To rejoin the two halves of the Pyxidium.”
“And if either of you are successful, what will that mean?”
Aiyan answered him. “No one really knows.”
“What Cauldin seeks is supremacy in the realm of power,” Teodor said. “He would be master of firebird and dragon, the Unknowable Forces and the Designing Powers. The mundane world means nothing to him. He believes that the Pyxidium restored would gather all the Essas and allow him to hold them in his eye.”
“Is it still in the castle on Esaiya?”
Teodor nodded. “No one has touched it since Master Sorrin.”
“You must have some thoughts of what it would mean if the Knights of the Flaming Blade defeat Cauldin and restore the Pyxidium?”
Aiyan glanced sharply at Teodor. Kyric had crossed into a subject not for outsiders.
Teodor smiled thinly. “We believe that certain events would occur.”
They both fell silent, their thoughts turning inward. After a moment Kyric said to Teodor, “You must maintain a strong garrison on Esaiya in case he returns with his minions to take it by force.”
Aiyan grunted. “Excepting masters and candidates, there are rarely more than a dozen knights there at any given time. Esaiya is a home to us, but we cannot answer our calling from behind fortress walls.”
“Then why — “
“Why does he not attack?
” said Teodor. “There is a reef surrounding the island. A reef is a living being, and this one bears the essence of the Unknowable Forces. It has influence over sea and sky, and no one unworthy of standing upon Esaiya can pass that barrier. No one. But even dragons and firebirds are not immortal, and there is nothing made that cannot be unmade.” He looked to Aiyan. “Tell him.”
Aiyan was silent for nearly a minute. “I had been invested in the order for only a few days,” he said at last. “I was still on Esaiya, and we received word from Sir Haflor that Cauldin was living near a leper colony outside the city of Albatas.
“Grexen was grandmaster in that day, and he choose Master Rethan, Sir Bortolamae, and myself to go with him, and we went quick as possible, loading this little ketch we had and sailing straight there across the open sea.
“We found Haflor in Albatas. He didn’t know the situation because he had only been venturing close enough to make sure Cauldin was still there. You see, because we are atoned with the Pyxidium, we can feel his presence from some distance.”
“Fortunately for the order,” Teodor said.
“Would the masters of Esaiya know if he were here in Aeva?” Kyric asked.
“I think Master Zahaias would know,” Aiyan said.
Teodor looked at him. “We would certainly know.”
“So,” said Aiyan, “the lepers were salt miners of a sort, but the local traders told us they hadn’t shipped any salt at the end of the month as they always had. That made Grandmaster Grexen wary. We approached the colony quietly along a wooded defile, thinking that Cauldin would have several of his knights with him, perhaps even a lieutenant, and that they would be on the lookout or patrolling outside the colony. So we were surprised to discover nothing more than a couple of lepers watching the road from a nearby hill.
“We slipped past them and circled around the village, finding a place above the mine where we could hide and observe. The whole colony, maybe five hundred people, were all out and working, working vigorously, as if they suffered no weakness from their leprosy. Not mining salt, but unearthing a ruin. They had uncovered a monolith with writing on it, and were in the process of digging out a nearby wall with the same strange language inscribed on tiles.
“We didn’t see Master Cauldin, or anyone at all except the lepers. But we knew he was there. Each time a new tile was cleared on the wall one of them immediately took a rubbing with charcoal and parchment, and ran it to a stone building beyond the edge of the village.
“Master Rethan had a badly pock-marked face from a childhood disease, and had lost a finger on his left hand in a swordfight. Properly covered, he could pass for a leper in dim light — that’s why Grexen brought him along. After the sun set and all the lepers returned to their homes, Grexen covered him with a peasant robe and led him down to the village. The rest of us followed at a discrete distance.
“Grexen planned to tell the lepers that he had heard about the colony, and that he was there looking for a place his cousin could live. None of them had lesions on their faces. They told him that his cousin must be taken to the Mistress, a healer who had cured them all. When Grexen tried to ask questions about her, he discovered that half the colony had surrounded them, and were pushing in, intent upon carrying them to the Mistress.
“It was either draw swords and cut their way out, or go along with it, so Grexen allowed the lepers to lead them. Dusk had fallen, so we followed closely as we could. The lepers took them to the stone building, which turned out to be part of the ruins, ancient but mostly intact.
“The Mistress had felt their coming and was waiting for them with a pistol in each hand. Yes, she was of the blood, one of Cauldin’s lieutenants — a woman with the warrior essence is not unheard of, but they must have been shocked to find one at Cauldin’s right hand.
“They drew swords and she fired, missing Grexen, but wounding Rethan badly. Outside, we heard the shots. We pushed our way through the lepers, showing them the fire of our swords, but they thought us to be enemies of their mistress and tried to lay hands on us. We struck them and burned them with the flats of our blades, for we saw them as innocent. But there were many, and a fervor rose among them. We had to kill a few.
“We’ll never be sure of what happened inside, but as we neared the structure they all fell to their knees with the grief that comes with the death of their master. She had given all of them the black blood. We think Rethan killed her while Grexen fought with Master Cauldin.”
Kyric stopped him. “Why was it her? Why did Cauldin not give them his own blood?”
“Those who drink his blood are not simply made his willing servants; they are thrust into the realm of power. They gain more than the black blood. They quickly develop abilities that we spend long years learning. Those who are not prepared, who do not have the spirit and insight of the warrior essence, go insane in a short time. Thus he must have the lieutenants and knights of his so-called order, and they rule the devotions of the uninitiated.
“He appeared in the archway that was the entrance to the place. He was dressed as a gentleman farmer, an eye patch concealing the shard of the Pyxidium. His sword, still black with the blood of Aumgraudmal, exuded a freezing mist, a cold mockery of our flaming blades. A deep cut crowned his forehead, one that would have killed any man instantly, and black blood ran down his face. He limped from a wound to his knee. Still, I think he would have tried to kill the three of us, but the lepers were quick to recover from their grief, and it turned to anger and outrage.
“The lepers, eager to get to him, came between us, and he retreated into the building. The lepers ignored us now, but we couldn’t get through them. We circled to look for another entrance, finding it in time to see Cauldin riding away, laden with map cases.
“Grandmaster Grexen was dead, and Master Rethan died that night. The next day Bortolamae found a supply of blank parchment and we took rubbings of the same writings that Cauldin had traced. The monolith was carved in ancient Keltassian on one side, and an unknown cuneiform on the other. The wall held only the cuneiform writing.
“Bortolamae tried to tell the lepers what had happened to them, but they were unsure and melancholy. He convinced a few of them to help us finish digging out the wall. Only one more row of tiles lay below ground, and after we had taken rubbings of them, Bortolamae destroyed them with a hammer.
“The lepers told us that Cauldin and his woman had arrived two months before, camping in the ruins at first. Each day the Mistress would make friendly talk with one of the men, and invite him to come to her that night. Her charms were so great that no man would refuse. After she had seduced him, and he lay in the aftermath of ecstasy, she would give him the black blood, and he would take it willingly. It wasn’t long before the lesions and numbness began to recede in those men, and their vitality returned. When this became known, the lepers told us, they all wanted her blood. She no longer had need for subterfuge.
“We awoke the following morning to shouts and wailing. As the blood faded in them, the leprosy returned. New lesions were forming on their faces. They raged at us for killing the Mistress. In the end, we fled, chased out by a stone-throwing mob.
“I saw Haflor on Esaiya a year later. The leper colony was no longer there, he told us. Some had gone elsewhere, but many of them had killed themselves.”
Kyric’s mouth had gone dry. He took a sip of water and asked, “What were the writings?”
“The words on the monolith were the same on each side, the ancient Keltassian being the translation of the older cuneiform. Of course it took us a few years to find someone who could determine that and fully decipher the writings on the wall. The monolith tells of the founding of Keltassian civilization by the Mage-Kings. The wall records a sporadic war between the Keltassian mages and the firebirds of the far west. Peace came only when the Mage-King Elitass divined a magic so terrible that even the elder firebirds could not stand against it — a song, or a soun
d, that could unmake the essence of the firebirds. That is to say, the Unknowable Forces themselves. It changed them into mindless creatures without power.”
“Do you see?” asked Teodor.
Kyric nodded. “If Cauldin can learn the song, he can destroy the power that protects Esaiya.”
“Yes.”
Kyric let out a long breath he didn’t know he had been holding and took a long drink of water. The sun crossed into the western sky, and Jazul awoke from his nap. “Did I miss anything?” he asked.
“Just idle talk,” said Teodor.
Aiyan suddenly leapt to his feet, hand on the hilt of his sword. Teodor stood nearly as fast using his sword for support, the forked stick forgotten. He glanced all around, then looked to Aiyan.
“I’m not sure,” Aiyan said. “Perhaps it was nothing.”
He walked to the tree beyond the garden and looked up and down the river. Teodor took his makeshift crutch and hobbled to the front street, listening for something he couldn’t quite hear. They returned to the table, shaking their heads absently at one another. The harborside clock tower struck five.
Estia came out with a folded newspaper in her hand. “Orius will be out momentarily. He’s not happy.” She placed the newspaper on the table before them. “The social pages came out this morning,” she said, smiling at Aiyan as she turned to go back inside. “I thought you might find this amusing.”
Aiyan ignored the paper, so Kyric picked it up. The story about the royal reception topped the front page.
“The princess was right. Listen to this,” he said. “Who is Sir Aiyan Dubern? No one knows who added his name to the guest list for the royal reception on Solstice Eve, but we suspect it was Princess Aerlyn herself, for it is certain they were not strangers when she greeted him in the receiving line. There can be no doubt that until now, he had been the best kept secret of the royal court — “
“Would you mind reading that to yourself?” Aiyan said curtly.
While Kyric read, Pitbull wandered out to them and sat down with a heavy sigh. He didn’t look at Aiyan, and Aiyan simply picked at the patina of scratches covering the table.
Jazul sauntered up behind Kyric and peeked over his shoulder. “Am I in the newspaper too?”
Kyric glanced down the page. “Yes, here you are. ‘Weightlifting champion, Jazul Marlez, possibly the strongest man in Jakavia, swept into the reception in a daring lion’s skin cape escorting the lovely Jela Selgar, daughter of humble wine merchant Sedlik Selgar — “
Aiyan bolted upright, stiffening like he had been stabbed in the back. He looked from Teodor to Pitbull. “They wouldn’t read the society page . . . would they?”
Teodor answered him. “I would if I were they.”
“What is wrong?” said Jazul.
“If they connected Jela to Aiyan,” Pitbull said, “If they knew her father’s name and profession, it would be easy to find his house.”
Aiyan flew to his feet, sending his chair skittering across the patio. He tore into a run, and Kyric followed fast on his heels.
“We’ll be along in the wagon,” Pitbull called as they sprinted away.
Aiyan didn’t set a pace this time, and they ran wildly in the street like madmen. When they came to a crowded intersection, Aiyan cut a path through with the fierceness of his charge, and Kyric rode his wake. All of his muscles screamed in rebellion, his lungs burned for more air, and still they ran.
A block from Sedlik’s house, Aiyan pulled up short. “We could be running into an ambush,” he said between breaths. “We must restrain ourselves and go carefully now.”
He looked in all directions before sliding around the corner, hiding behind a man hawking newspapers, stopping and looking again. At the next corner he went to one knee and closed his eyes as if he could banish the cacophony of street noises and hear something far away. When they came to Sedlik’s street they could see that his door stood wide open, and Aiyan pulled Kyric back as he made an involuntary lunge toward it.
“No. We go in the back way.”
All the other doors on the street were closed, all the windows shuttered tightly despite the heat. No one passed in or out. The shadows grew long as they made their way around to the alley.
The back door had been knocked off its hinges. Aiyan signaled Kyric to ready his pistols, and held his locket open as he drew Ivestra across the tiny fire. A blue-white flame ran the length of the cutting edge. Kyric went in one step behind him.
They had seated Jela in a chair at the kitchen table before they killed her. It was the high-backed chair, and they had lashed her wrists together behind it so that she slumped forward only a little, but enough so that her blood ran across the table before spilling to the floor, leaving her house dress unstained.
For a brief instant, Kyric didn’t think it was her. Her rich copper complexion had turned paler than he would have thought possible. They had cut her throat and let her bleed to death.
Aiyan paused but for a second, the flame of his blade flickering weakly, nearly going out before it rose to engulf the sword once again. He moved through the kitchen, swift and silent, and into the rest of the house.
Kyric became dimly aware of a light coming up from the cellar. Holding his pistols at arm’s length, he ran halfway down the stairs in a low crouch, ready to fire. But the only one there was Sedlik, and he lay face down, the back of his skull opened by the single cut of a heavy blade. The door to his vault stood open, the key on the floor next to his hand.
Kyric knew that the book of rudders was gone, but he went to the vault to make sure. Of course it was gone. Nothing else had been taken. When he turned back Aiyan was there, standing over Sedlik. Kyric had not heard him come down the stairs.
“See?” said Aiyan. “You took them straight to it, just like you said you would. No need to get rough; here it is and good riddance.”
The cushion of numbness that Kyric usually felt wasn’t there. His skin prickled hotly, and he was aware of every little sound, the creaking of the house, the sputter of the lantern.
“Why?” he said. “Sedlik gave them what they wanted.”
“They may have killed him out of petty vengeance, but they killed Jela to break my spirit. What Morae doesn’t know is that as long as I carry the essence of the secret fire my spirit cannot be broken. He has only broken my heart.”
“Why did they not wait for us?” said Kyric with a dull, flat voice. “They could have shot us as we came in the door.”
“I don’t know. None of our things are here. Sedlik may have convinced them we were staying elsewhere. Or they may be surrounding the house as we speak. We should go at once.”
“We can’t leave them like this.”
Aiyan began to say something, then stopped himself. He ran upstairs and returned with Jela and two bed-sheets. They had bound her with thin twine, and with it now removed Kyric saw that it had cut into her wrists. She had struggled.
He and Aiyan wrapped them in the sheets and laid them in the cold corner of the cellar. “That’s all the respect we can afford them now,” Aiyan said.
They left by the back door after Aiyan had peeked out windows front and rear. They stepped lightly through the trash-strewn alley, Aiyan’s hand on his sword, ready to draw. Kyric scanned rooftops and windows, hoping to catch someone spying on them. His conversation with one so caught would not be gentle.
They ran into the others at the turnoff to the boulevard, Pitbull driving, a slender machete in his belt. Teodor sat next to him holding Kyric’s longbow, and Jazul crouched in the back of the wagon.
“Turn around quickly,” said Aiyan, climbing in. “Take the roundabout way along the river road.” They were overloaded now, and the donkey strained to get the wagon moving again.
When Aiyan told them of Jela and Sedlik, Pitbull said nothing, but a sharp sound escaped his throat, like the distant whine of a whipped dog. Teodor didn’t blink, he simply drew one of Kyric?
??s arrows and nocked it. Jazul took it hard. He roared like a wounded beast, falling to the floor of the wagon, tearing at his mane of hair and weeping. Kyric envied him. Jazul’s feelings for her were not so strong that he couldn’t let it all out now. He would wake one morning to a sunny sky in a faraway place and not think of Jela or this day.
Kyric huddled against the side of the wagon and watched the cobblestones pass beneath the wheels. The world felt new and strange. He was suddenly aware of details he never noticed before. The woman they passed had a mole over one eye. The man selling newspapers spoke with a Syrolian accent. The Kyric that had danced with Jela was lying in a cold cellar on a narrow side-street, and the Kyric he had become was the one who had been sleeping all these years. And the anger he had felt over taking the black blood now seemed like a child’s toy, something to play with for his amusement.
“Pull over,” Aiyan said to Pitbull when they reached the river. He took a carefully folded handkerchief from his sash, opening it and removing a scrap of paper. It was the corner of the page he had torn from the book of rudders when he first gave it to Sedlik.
He handed it to Pitbull. “Can you find the rest of this book, my friend?”
Pitbull held it to his nose and breathed in sharply, again and again, turning it over and sniffing the other side. He was getting excited, his eyes glazing over into something akin to ecstasy. He suddenly popped it into his mouth, his back arching and his body quivering as he chewed, as if he had taken a powerful drug. He swallowed it and began to giggle.
“Oh yes,” he breathed. “Oh yes, I have it. Oh yes.”
He looked at Aiyan, his eyes sparkling darkly. “I have the scent. I’ve found it. It’s in the city, not far away.”
“Take us there. And let’s hope that Morae has placed both eggs in the same basket.”
Pitbull turned around and drove north along river. They didn’t have to go far. A hundred yards past the jetties where they had hired the boat on Solstice Eve, Pitbull brought the wagon to a halt.
“There,” he said, pointing across the river to an arched opening in the steep embankment. “That’s where we need to go. Into the sewers.”