Trail of Pyres Read online

  Eliles giggled and let go the cluster as she stood. “These are for eating, a poor wine grape I’ve heard.” She turned in a slow circle observing the garden. “I’ll find an answer, my belly depends on it.”

  Seden trotted through a gate, and she turned soon as she saw them. “Eliles! Artus! I found a body.”

  She spun on the woman. “Who’s dead?”

  Seden waved for them to follow her. “I don’t know. A child I think.”

  “There aren’t any children on the island.” The youngest was Wilu’s boy, Kavlin, and he was near twenty.

  Seden gave her a straight-lipped stare before speaking. “That’s what makes it all the more peculiar, ain’t it?”

  She led them to the keep, through its main doors, and into the hall where Kotin died. Eliles held her breath and wiped memories from her mind the best she could as they crossed the maple floor and entered the corridor leading into the great kitchens. Seden didn’t pause a twitch before striding through an open door leading down a steep set of stairs into a cellar.

  The chamber was thirty paces long and twenty wide, with a high arching ceiling. The shelves were barren, and only half a dozen empty barrels and a couple cracked crates sat stacked in a corner.

  Seden said, “I was looking to see what food stores we might’ve missed, any kinda supplies, really. I didn’t find much, but I came across this locked door here under the stair, then I found the key hanging behind the stovepipe in the kitchen.” She turned and pointed at a door half open, but at first all Eliles saw were large bags marked “wheat flour” sitting in a pile of tiny white and tan crystals. Then she noticed a booted foot jutting between two sacks,

  Artus said, “Lord of the Forge. Found just like this?”

  “No, I moved that sack of flour, uncovering the foot.”

  Eliles kneeled, but got no closer. “The body… covered in salt?”

  Artus nabbed a single crystal half the size of his pinkie’s nail. “Aye, there’s an exit from this cellar leadin’ to several towers on the eastern side of the island, salt here’s for melting the paths, come ice in the winter. Ain’t no place I ever seen flour… nor a body.” He lifted the sacks and took a shovel hanging from the wall, hesitating to scoop the salt away. “Should we say a prayer, quick like?”

  Both their eyes landed on her, as if she were a priestess. “Save our prayers for the pyre, seems this soul has been wandering for a while now.”

  Artus shrugged and pointed the shovel, then flipped it and scraped salt away instead of jamming the blade in the heap. First, hair appeared, then the shriveled face of a boy.

  Artus muttered, “Damned to the hells.”

  It took Eliles several flickers before she could put a name to the familiar face. “Joslin.”

  Seden said, “His parents wouldn’t have left without him, not without saying something.” She kissed two fingers and placed them to her forehead.

  Artus exhaled and shook as if chasing off a chill. “I’ve known him since he were a suckling babe, his parents, grandparents…”

  Eliles said, “How?”

  Artus pointed. “Some bastard done broke his neck, I’d wager, by the crook there.”

  “I mean… How do parents leave their child? No one mentioned anyone missing.”

  “Them days were crazy… Maybe he was to travel with the clan while his kin sailed? For all we know they’re did, hidden somewhere else on this island. Hells if I know the truth. No way to tell even how long the boy’s been dead, salted as he is.”

  Seden stood with her back to the body. “Why would anybody kill a child?”

  “Aye, that’s a question, ain’t it? Folks don’t go about killin’ youngins for no damned reason. He saw something. Knew something.”

  “Joslin was in the hall when Kotin was poisoned.” When the words passed from Eliles’ lips they brough a chill deeper than the cellar’s cold.

  Seden’s stare was aghast, and Artus’ cold before he spoke. “They said a boy found Meris’ body the day she jumped, too.”

  Eliles remembered it well, it’d been the first time she met Artus. “Saw her jump, as I recall. What are you suggesting?”

  “Ain’t suggestin’, just observing. A hells kissin’ coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “We need to search the keep and towers, make sure we don’t have more surprises. Seden, you fetch everyone.”

  The woman trotted for the stairs, eager to get out this place.

  Artus eyeballed her. “When Tokodin poisoned Kotin and Rikis… What the hells could the boy have seen that he wouldn’t have told? From what I heard, Pikarn scared the piss right out of the boy, he weren’t keeping nothin’ back.”

  “Did you ever see Joslin after Meris jumped?”

  “Godsdamned hard to be certain. Not once I remember, no how.”

  “Me neither. But we weren’t looking for him. For now, we assume he died because of something he saw at the time Meris jumped.”

  “If she jumped.”

  “If.” She scrunched her nose. “I’ll feel better waiting for the others upstairs.”

  Jinbin and two other men exhumed Joslin’s shriveled body and hauled the child away. Artus handed a horn from the keep’s store to a member of each search group. Artus directed each group to a wing of the keep in addition to outbuildings, hoping to leave no door unopened this time around. “Anyone sees anything, blow the horn, then head for this hall. As we now know, watch for locked doors. You hear a horn, you come back to this hall and we gather up. Be careful, I don’t think there’s a soul outside ourselves on this godsdamned island, but…”

  Jinbin patted a long knife at his belt, and Wilu’s boys both carried axes. It was the first time since their first exploring the island she’d seen folks armed, and she held no doubt they hid other weapons.

  Eliles said, “Anything at all suspicious, don’t keep quiet.” Folks muttered and gathered into their groups, wandering off in all directions. Artus hung tight by her side. She glared with pursed lips. “I don’t need a guard.”

  “Aye, but I just might.” He raised his quivering hands and gave a frightened whimper, then a smirk as she giggled. “How many crooks and crannies of this keep do you know? There’re four levels, including cellars, but not including a dozen towers, and passages I’d wager weren’t walked more than twice a year when folks lived here.”

  “Fine. I’ll protect you.”

  Several candles later, not a horn had blown, and she began to believe she knew what lay through every arch and behind every door in Herald’s Keep. They crisscrossed paths with other groups off and on, until they found themselves walking the stair to the roof of the First Tower, from which Meris leaped to her end. Talking kept her from counting the steps.

  “So, you grew up in these halls?”

  “More ‘r less, aye. When my mother passed she sent me to the Fost, and Olvin patted my head and sent me here.”

  “What haven’t we seen yet?”

  “Aside from the top of this tower, not much.” He scratched an ear. “There is a shrine.”

  Eliles stopped cold in her tracks. “A shrine?”

  “Not to worry girl, I’m just sayin’… When Peneluple died, folks said Kotin sealed the door to some tunnel. A shrine sat carved in the stone, as I heard them say, a shrine to Bontore.”

  The Church built minor shrines across Kaludor, and postulants memorized their locations as part of their education. But the Church kept the Fifth Shrine to Burdenis a secret along with a few other rumored locations. She’d never heard of a shrine to Bontore on Herald’s Watch. “Where?”

  Artus laughed. “Oh, hells if I know. We Choerkin were never the zealot sorts. Rumor, a story, all kinds of horseshit flew after the lady’s death.”

  “I suppose that’s true. Still, we shouldn’t neglect rumors.”

  “We ain’t leavin’ this here island no time soon, so I’ll work my noggin on where it might be.” He grinned and huffed. “Gettin’ old for this climb.”

  Eliles smiled,
she was too used to tunnels and climbs to lose her breath. Still, conversation was a distraction. “What branch of the Choerkin tree are you from?”

  “The wrong-eyed one.” He chortled. “My mother was a cook at the Fost. She bedded Olvin Choerkin one or two, maybe several dozen, cold afternoons, and she were run out of the Fost by the ladies of the clan. Which didn’t keep me from having a full-blooded sister some years later. Olvin knew how to ride a horse as well as a woman, my mother reminded me, when I asked who the father of m’ baby sis was.” He laughed.

  “And they gave you the Choerkin name?”

  “Aye, Othar saw to that, with Kotin’s blessing, on my turning sixteen. Othar were Olvin’s brother and headed Herald’s Watch at the time; he didn’t give no two pisses about who my mother was or weren’t, we were blood. More a father than Olvin, and Kotin like a brother, once Olvin sent him here to prepare for the day he took the Watch. And later, Peneluple? A right sweet woman. She was a special lady.”

  “You were here when she died?”

  “I was at that, though I were at the docks, nowhere nearby when I learned of the sadness.” He reached a landing, unlatched and opened the door, and climbed into the constant bright of her flaming tower.

  The winds were warm, nothing like she imagined Meris must’ve felt the day she made this climb. The view from these heights must’ve been spectacular before fire blocked the world. She wandered the circle, gazing at the city, the harbor, and the rocky crags below. She stopped and leaned to look at the stones and remembered with clarity the spot they’d found the old woman’s body. Flowers still bloomed nearby. “She could’ve jumped from here.”

  “Aye, though the wind maybe… still, close, no matter.”

  Eliles gazed out over the harbor. “She would’ve had a view of the ships with but a tilt of her head.” Her eyes turned to streets below, a high wall, and buildings; the way they were situated she saw their tops but not the nearby streets. Her head cocked. “From where would a child have seen her jump?”

  “Well, High Street down there.” He pointed, then sucked his teeth. Turned. “Maybe… No. Can’t be sure from here.”

  “Seems to me the boy would have to be in a right unusual spot to—”

  “Boys are boys and love climbing rocks. Don’t let yer imagination run too wild. No matter how godsdamned tempting.”

  She meandered to the western edge, facing the city. “You’re right, I suppose. But hard to keep your thoughts in a straight line these days.” Her eye caught a flash of movement on a distant street. She pointed. “You see that?”

  “No, what the hells you talkin’ about?”

  “Someone moving between buildings. Maybe.”

  “Someone coulda left the tow—”

  A shadow skulked across what she figured was Januel’s Way, heading for the Temple and Pyre Rock. A second figure followed.

  Artus snorted. “I’ll be godsdamned.”

  They raced through and slammed shut the door before Artus blew his horn. Twice. The third time, with her ears ringing, she swatted him in the back of his head. “Don’t deafen the both of us!”

  They trotted into the main hall to find Jinbin, Seden, and several others already here. And Artus blew the horn again.

  Jinbin said, “What’d you find?”

  Eliles caught her breath, counted as more folks arrived. Fifteen so far. “We were atop the tower and saw two people in the streets.”

  “Just now? I don’t think a soul has left this tower since we got back. And we searched the whole blessed city after your tower lit.”

  “And we just today found a body we missed. The living hide as well as the dead.”

  Artus said, “Even from your prayers? Feral magic I mean.”

  She admitted to herself he had a point, but: “I didn’t cover every stride of this island, and the Sliver’s power, it’s everywhere. Nothing’s so certain.”

  Jinbin said, “No need to get jittery until everyone shows up.”

  And within a few wicks, everyone who stepped off the Entiyu Emoño with her stood in the great hall. She looked each one in the eye before speaking. “Has anyone been down by Januel’s Way in the last ten wicks?”

  No one answered in the affirmative, and Artus sighed. “Well, Forges be damned. We got company on the Watch, folks.”

  Wilu, a late arrival with her boys, gasped. “Shadows? Taken?”

  Eliles said, “No, they’re the living.”

  Jinbin muttered, “Why the hells stay hidden?”

  Artus said, “Frightened? Shy? Up to no godsdamned good? We gotta find ‘em to ask.”

  Eliles said, “We didn’t find no one but the mules when we trekked the island the last time. We missed a body, and the living; gods only know what else our eyes passed over. But, whoever they are, they haven’t done us no harm. Everyone keep your eyes wide and travel in groups for a time. Otherwise, everything as normal, except Artus and I will sweep the city little by little. Don’t want them knowing we know.”

  Artus said, “Maybe we should all be sleepin’ at the inn, you think?”

  Jinbin groaned. “I brew in the temple.”

  Eliles cast him a sideways glance. “You sleep there too?”

  He shrugged with a grin. “Always share a bed with the love of your life.”

  “Until we know who’s out there, keep your affair to the daylight candles, and not alone.” Eliles cast her eyes around the room. “We all agreed?” It wasn’t the happiest she’d seen folks, but none dissented. “Jinbin, you and Poluk see to Joslin, prepare his body for the pyre. His ignoble end deserves an honorable fire.” Everyone’s gazes cast to the floor, the new worry having driven out the old. Or maybe they’re one and the same. I pray not.

  She preferred boredom and the taste of fish to the island’s new reality.

  10

  Clothed in Dark

  Shorn and torn, broken and never born,

  What life have you to give,

  What gift of life do you have,

  the creation who never wallowed in the womb,

  the creation never given breath, yet speaks

  of memory and sorrows.

  –Tomes of the Touched

  A stick prodded Meliu’s ribs and she bolted before her eyes opened and her mind grasped her situation.

  “Stinking urchin! Stay away!”

  She rounded a corner, a second then third, before slowing. She bent hands to knees, gasping for breath, then smiled through her drowsiness, smiled at being alive and free. The sun rose in a clear sky, peeking over the eastern wall to cast her shadow.

  She rubbed her hands together to fight the early morning chill and stopped: her fingers were cold instead of numb, they didn’t so much as tingle. Most folks were numb and tingling for weeks, months, some never recovered from over channeling the powers of the gods. It was impossible, not even healing prayers… A memory danced on the edge of her consciousness, awaking, a shadow leaning over her in prayer. A prayer to Sol, not some heathen god. No, it must’ve been a dream.

  A hand moved to her head, where bruising and a lump should be, but weren’t. Her shoulder where the blackjack struck, there should’ve been a deep bruise. And where were the aches and pains from a tumble down steps? Ain’t no one who could heal me, not like this. Ulrikt? She didn’t want to believe it.

  She stood and said a prayer to thank Sol for her fortune, whatever its source, and memories drug her mind back to the night before. Regret for whatever harm she’d done was pointless as clothes on a statue, but she should take pointers from the risks she took.

  Dark was dangerous.

  Not just to her targets. She could have lost herself to tremors or the madness and fear of Dark with disturbing ease. The Dark brought a hunger for its power, something she’d never heard before; perhaps it was an effect brought on by combining Light and Dark. Dark ain’t evil, it ain’t. The elements were neutral, it was their use which struck the moral chord. What did that make her?

  It made her dangerous. When sh
e considered the bastard-with-a-broom who’d sold her out, she liked the sound of dangerous. Deadly.

  Her stature and auburn hair made her stand out among Hidreng and Silone alike. If she left Inster this morning, she might never make it through the gates in daylight again. She needed chickens to pay for a dagger, and Dark teased easy retribution for the wrongs she’d endured.

  A rat skittered from a pile of refuse. She prayed for Dark with a mutter and focused on its head. With the exhale of her next breath she released her prayer’s energy. A flash of Dark covered the rat’s face and it squealed as if a hawk’s talons split its ribs, and it ran in terror. The memory of power flooded her consciousness. Her breaths quivered with excitement, and her stomach tensed.

  If she shook the rocks from her boots, there’d be no need to come back.

  She huddled in a patch of warm sun until the limping bastard and his broom unlocked the doors and flipped the shop’s shingle. When he disappeared inside, she rose and trotted until fingers from his heels. She threw back the hood of her cloak so none would mistake who she was.

  Karu stood at the counter and Jile hauled sacks of flour to the kitchen in back. When Meliu stepped into view Karu gave her a glance with an arched brow, unsurprised to see her even so early. The old man, on the other hand, pert near fell over his broom.

  “Ho, morning girl. Her is early.”

  “Street thugs jumped me last night, they tried to take me.”

  The husband said, “What of it, girl?”

  Meliu turned on him. “You sent me there, and it was almost like they knew I was coming.” She judged his face, and it said nothing. Too much nothing.

  “He sent you to Ibar’s, to me, child. Can’t blame the man for thieves.”

  Meliu turned with a smile and a rush of breath with her words, speaking for the first time in Hidreng. “Of course you are right, it’s been a long night. How could I ever suspect this man of trying to sell me for a whore? They’re dead anyhow—” The man’s broom hit the limestone floor and he groaned picking it up. “And then an incident at the house of ladies… Anyhow, I need bread and four chickens, to start earning my coins back.”