Chapter Six

6.

Wilhem awoke in the dark, disoriented and afraid.  Night had crept into the cabin, pouring in through the little windows to flood the room like cold black water.  At some point while he slept he had pulled Cob’s thick sheep’s wool blanket over himself, yet the chill was still sharp and had turned the sheen of sleep sweat that moistened his back near to ice.  

“Cob?” he spoke, tentatively.  The blackness yielded no answer.  He sat up and blinked, but did not speak his father’s name a second time.  It seemed unwise somehow to disturb the silence further, lest he attract the attention of. . .   Of what?  The Dreanalai witch?  He was being childish, he told himself.  Matha was not lurking in the cabin’s shadows, nor were any wraiths or wolverns or blood demons.  The fear was just burden of his dreams still weighing on his mind, tugging at his thoughts like ghostly fingers.  He could not recall exactly what beasts he’d dreamt of, but whatever they were, they had not been pleasant.

Gradually his eyes began to pick out different shapes hulking in the blackness. The table and chairs next to his bed formed a single large blob and the fire bowl next to them another, smaller one.  Beyond those and across a stretch of oozing dark the windows shone with a faint patina of silver moonlight.  He waited a little longer and saw more. . .the rope netting stretching over his head and Cob’s double-handed saw leaning against the wall like a sullen stranger.  Shade by shade the room came dimly into focus, and along with it his memories of the day also returned to him.  Cob and Gabe had gone to Whitestone to warn Jondel Breylock of the Altarians and retrieve Skreeander.  Skreeander, he whispered.  The name carried him back through the day until he saw the face of Lorel Breylock floating over him, kicking him ferociously.  He cringed, reaching for his chest.  His fingers traced the stitches Cob had knit into his flesh and felt clumps of dried blood flaking away at his touch.  The aches that had been nagging at him swelled, breaking through the lingering fog of sleep.  His head hurt fiercely.  He also had to make water so badly it felt like his loins were about to burst.                   

Throwing off Cob’s blanket he tried to stand.  His legs were weak, made dumb by the Vella’s tar.  They would not hold his weight so he sank back to the bed and wriggled his toes until the tingling in them subsided.  The effects of the drug had not worn off completely, otherwise he supposed the pain would have been even more intense.  He could feel the sting of his wounds but the pressure in his abdomen was more urgent.  It was lucky he hadn’t soiled himself during his sleep, he thought, shuffling unsteadily to a bucket in the corner.  Leaning against the damp logs of the wall and undid his breeches, sighing at the relief of it.  

Once his bladder was drained he groped blindly through the dark to the shelf where Gabe had set his satchel down, intending to retrieve his huntsman’s lamp and get a fire lit.  He passed in front of the window on his way and paused when a distant flickering caught his eye.  Off in the woods a yellow bauble of firelight was shuttering in and out of view.  Someone was making their way down The Boot Trail, on horseback by the look of it.  

Cob, Wilhem hoped.  Pressing his forehead to the cool glass he watched the light grow brighter, drawing closer.  It was moving quickly.  Too quickly.  Plenty of men could ride that swiftly through the woods but not Cob; with his bad knee he could not bend his leg and that made it difficult for him to keep his balance at anything more than a walk.  Also Cob and Skreeander would have no need for a lantern since the horse could navigate every twist and turn of the Boot Trail in the darkest night by memory and smell alone.  

The skin on the back of Wilhem’s neck prickled.  The rider was not his father, and something was wrong.  He could not say how he knew it, he just had that telltale feeling, a queasy sensation in his stomach that was growing stronger by the second.  Was it the witch or her Captain, Syros, come to take their retribution for his lie about the cage lift?  If it was the witch he knew he stood little chance of defending himself from her sorcery, but if it was the Captain. . .he would not make the mistake of being captured by the man twice in one cycle of the sun and moon.  He reached for his satchel, looking for his crossbow.  As his hand found the leather he remembered that the bow was gone, taken by Matha.  “Grieves,” he swore, seeing the witch’s penetrating blue stare in his mind’s eye.  He needed to find another weapon, and there was very little time.  The rider would be upon the cabin in another handful of heartbeats.   

Blindly he searched the shelf, knocking over drinking tankards, plates and bowls.  At the end he found what he thought was a dagger amongst a heap of spoons, but when he ran his thumb along the edge the blade was dull.  A bread knife.  He tossed it down in disgust and blundered back to the table.  Frantic now he grabbed at the objects left out upon its surface, finding and rejecting a few of Cob’s tools. . .a hammer. . .a marking wheel. . .a pair of pincers.  At last he picked up an awl, the shaft as long as a finger with a point at least sharp enough to bury in a man’s neck.  It would have to do.  He gripped the wooden handle firmly in his fist, bracing himself to face the rider.  He was stepping to the door when he heard a voice.  What in hell are you doing? You need a sword, not a bloody boot needle.  He squeezed the awl’s handle harder.  Well this is all I’ve got.  He answered back, angrily.  I don’t own a bloody sword.

Oh, but you do, said the voice.  You have a sword finer than any other you’ve ever set eyes on right here in this room.  Stop being a fool and take it!

Wilhem’s heart sank.  He’d been trying not to admit to himself that he’d remembered the the doeskin bundle his father had left for him.  Reluctantly he put down the awl and reached for it.  He found it right where Cob had placed it, on the far end of the table closest to his bed.  The cloth was supple and soft, the object within rigid and unquestionably a sword.  Unraveling the straps that held the bundle tight, he rolled it out flat until he saw a glint of steel.  Though he could not make out much more than that he knew the Phaeon blade was lying there, stubbornly real despite his desire for it not to exist.  He was loathe to touch the thing, as though doing so would somehow set in stone the significance of the story Cob had told him that evening, branding him forevermore an Altarian.  An enemy of his own father and the only land he’d ever known. . .  Who you were born to makes no difference Wilhem, you are what you choose to be.  Take it, now.  Stop wasting time!

Wilhem reached for the sword.  By chance his hand landed on the pommel.  From there he moved it upward, tracing his way to the hilt.  When he felt leather wrapping beneath the pads of his fingers he curled them around the grip.  The instant his nails touched the meat of his palm, completing their circle around the hilt, his breath flew from his lungs in a burst of shock. 

The sword was. . .alive.  With a bard’s tongue he would not have been able to explain what that meant, but the sword lived, that was the only word for it.  The sensation was incredibly strange and yet somehow as familiar as the smell of Skreeander’s sweat or the songs his mother sung to him when he was a child.  Without knowing how he suddenly remembered things he had forgotten.  He knew that the sword would only speak to one of his kind, and that the power that lived in it was a blessing from Lanadara.  The Masterful One.  And he knew that this--the feel of the blade’s handle in his grip--was something he had once taken for granted, something he had been yearning for without realizing it for a very long time.  And his other hand still yearned, for it too had once carried such a blade.  

All of these thoughts came to him at once, passing through his mind in an instant that upended everything he’d ever known.  It was like what he’d always thought was “Wilhem” was just one small part of him, like he’d been living in one room of a fortress without realizing there were hundreds more down the hall. . .and yet for now at least, it changed nothing.  The rider had arrived.  

Wilhem heard the clamor of hooves and then a horse nickering just outside the cabin.  He lifted the blade from the table.  It was very light and exquisitely balanced, as long as his arm by the feel of it.  He held it out, the tip pointing almost straight up.  The blade resisted, the connection between it and his thoughts becoming strained.  A feeling of awkwardness emanated from the hilt, akin to brushing a horse’s coat the wrong way.  The sword did not like being held in that position.  

Sensing what the blade wanted, Wilhem lowered his arm and relaxed his wrist, letting the point drop until it rested halfway between vertical and horizontal.  The sensation of awkwardness ebbed, giving way to calm and. . .  readiness.  That was what it felt like to him--this was where the sword belonged when it was at rest.  Damen, he thought.  The word came unbidden, materializing out of nothing and dragging up more things he had not known he’d forgotten.  Damen. The wary wolf.  That was the name of the position.  He’d stood just like this and mouthed the word, thousands of times before.  Damen.  Kotan.  Ashanka.  Rayen. . .  The names came to him.  When he tried to recall the other poses that accompanied them though they remained frustratingly out of reach.  His mouth went dry.  It frightened him that he could not remember.  There are eleven positions in the Child’s Ring.  One for each of the creatures that roam in Lanadara’s garden.  The words of the lessons were there but their meaning eluded him.  His fear multiplied.  Rothan will punish me for forgetting.  He saw the face of an old man, gaunt and stern with stark white hair and dark, joyless eyes. . . 

“Boy!” came a shout.  Wilhem’s attention jumped back to the cabin.  He knew that queer voice, high-pitched and lilting with an acid edge.  Lorel.  “Come out of there, I’ll have words with you!”  

Fury boiled within Wilhem.  It took over his thoughts, weakening his connection to the Phaeon blade so swiftly and thoroughly that he could not fail to notice it.  He felt smaller, a simple cobbler’s son again.  The sword that kills is calm.  He went to the window, trying to get his emotions under control and the sense of power back, but it was no use.  You are rusted.  Your mind is weak.  You are failing your Phaelynx. The thoughts were his but at the same time did not belong to him.  He could not be what they wanted him to be so he shoved them back down from where they had come and peered out into the night.  The moon had emerged from behind a nest of clouds, its pale radiance intensifying enough to drive back some of the night’s shadows and light the clearing.  

Lorel had emerged from the woods not far from Skreeander’s paddock, a black shape on horseback casting a foreboding reflection in the still black water of the drinking pool.  The blaze of the lantern he held aloft hid his face, but Wilhem recognized the blue of his coat and the slick reddish sheen of his mare.  Another horse trailed behind the chestnut, saddled but riderless.  As the moonlight caught its silver coat Wilhem let out a yelp of surprise.   

“Skreeander!”

Forgetting himself, he rushed to the door, threw it open and ran down the porch steps.  His excitement carried him half the distance to Lorel before caution at last returned slowed his legs.  The lordling had swung from his saddle and stood waiting for him.  He laughed coldly, nodding at Wilhem’s left hand.  

“What in hell is that supposed to be?”  Wilhem followed his gaze and saw the Phaeon blade for the first time by the light of the moon.  It was a strange thing, the steel gleaming in a shade of grey like frozen smoke, the blade very narrow and tapering towards the point in a slight upward curve.  There was almost no guard to speak of, only a small and simple circlet of steel, and a faint pattern was etched down the length that looked like filigree.  He had never seen anything like it, and yet. . .I have, haven’t I?    

He raised his eyes to meet Lorel’s black gaze.  Behind the lordling Skreeander pawed the ground, his eyes rolling skittishly as he struggled against the lead binding him to Lorel’s mare.  

“Answer me, peasant,” Lorel hissed.  “What do you think you are going to do with that blade?”  Wilhem swallowed.

“Nothing, mi’lord.  Now that I know it’s you, I mean.”  He feigned deference. “I didn’t recognize your voice and thought you might be a thief until I saw Skreeander.”  Wilhem made a show of lowering the sword, putting the tip to ground.  The blade protested in his thoughts, the sense of wrongness potent enough to curdle his stomach and set his teeth on edge.  “What brings you here?”  Lorel shrugged.

“What else?”  A slow, sinister smile spread across his over-red mouth.  “I’ve come to right a wrong.  My uncle Jondel wills me return your bloody horse to you.  Here--” he beckoned.  “Take the beast so I can be rid of this stinking swine pit.”  Lorel untied the tether that held Skreeander from his mare’s saddle and held it out to Wilhem.

Wilhem could not believe what he was hearing.  If Lord Jondel had ordered Lorel to return the horse that meant that Cob had succeeded in his petition.  But then why hadn’t he returned with the horse himself?  

“Take it,” said Lorel, waving the rope.  “You’ve won this joust, piss for brains.  I don’t know how but somehow your goat-buggering cobbler of a father managed to convince my uncle to humiliate me on his behalf.”  Could it be?  Wilhem dared to hope, but was not convinced.  “Take your damn horse for now and I’ll return for my vengeance in a year or two when my uncle has forgotten you exist.”  Wilhem ignored the threat.

“Where is my father?” he asked.  Lorel sneered.

“What do I look like, your father’s bloody wet nurse?  Last I saw him he was gloating over a tankard of ale with that fat filthy friend of his.”  Gabe.

“Where?”

“The Tollhouse of course, you dolt.  Ask me another question and you won’t like the answer much, I swear it.”

Wilhem took a step towards the lordling.  It wasn’t impossible to believe.  Cob very well might have lingered to buy a round or two for Gabe as a reward for his help.  And once he’d gotten an ale or two in his belly he could have gotten carried away.  Cob wasn’t a big drinker so when he did indulge he tended to get lost in the cup rather quickly.  

“Ganther’s cock,” Lorel complained.  “Move your arse before I change my mind.”  He jerked his fist, threatening to take back Skreeander’s rein.

“No!” Wilhem protested.  He decided to take his chances.  “Give it here, I’ll take him.”  Closing the distance to the lordling he reached out for the rope.  Lorel let him take hold of it.  Wilhem started to draw the palfrey away to the paddock, and then Lorel’s composure broke, his face writhing into the macabre grimace of fury that was seared into Wilhem’s memory.  

“Like hell you will!” he shouted, smashing his fist into Wilhem’s temple.  “Vellas will lay with pigs in their temples before I ever let you take that fucking horse back!”  The force of the blow upset Wilhem’s footing, but he had not been caught completely unawares this time as he had that afternoon.  He’d dodged as the blow was landing, escaping the worst if it and remaining on his feet.  While he fought for his balance Lorel drew his sword.  Wilhem staggered and held his palm out, warding him off.

“Don’t,” he warned, sounding calmer than he was feeling.  “Lord Jondel will--”    

“Lord Jondel will have my head for this?”  Lorel rolled his eyes.  “Yes, yes, I’ve heard.  Your father said the same thing right before my man Sigmond drove a sword through him.”  He donned a bored frown, waiting for his meaning to take.  The words hit Wilhem far harder than the lordling’s fist had.

“You lie,” he said weakly.  

“Do you know what I told him, peasant boy?  I told him fuck my uncle Jondel!  Fuck him, the coward.  I am the High Seat of Hollow Hill now and all those who disrespect me, noble or common, will pay the price for their insolence!  A lord cannot afford to be soft if he expects to keep order, a rule that my overfed uncle has forgotten while sucking at Selthena’s tet. . .”  Lorel bared his teeth, rat-like.  “I will not be soft.  I will not abide insolence of any kind, especially not from lowborn scum like you and your father who refuse to mind their place.  If my uncle doesn’t like it he can tell it to my bloody army!  You think I’d let a little shit like you get away with defying me?  You think I’d let your crippled old beggar father humiliate me in front of half the province and do nothing about it?  I’d rather turn the rivers from here to Hollow Hill red with the blood of babes than let an insult like that go unanswered.”  He wiped spittle from his lips with the back of his hand, his eyes locked on Wilhem’s.  A trace of humor touched the corners of his mouth.  “I wish you could have seen it, the way I left him, face down in a heap of dung and straw, trampled by your own horse’s hooves. . .”  He cackled.  “It was marvelous.  So very satisfying.”  He raised his sword, lazily.  “And now, to put the apple in the hog’s mouth. . .”  

Wilhem screamed, a wordless, strangled cry.  Acting on nothing but instinct he met the lordling’s blade with his own, swinging it up with both hands.  The two swords crashed together inelegantly, struggling as horn-locked rams.  Through the fever of his rage Wilhem was vaguely conscious of the sickening feeling of the Phaeon blade’s displeasure.  He was forcing it to move  against its will.   He didn’t care.  The sword’s resistance only made him angrier.  Lorel had murdered Cob.  He knew it by the feeling that had been in his heart since he’d awoken in the cabin and by the look on Lorel’s face when he’d told of it.  The deed was in his eyes, their blackness filled with mad exuberance and haunted shadows.        

“I’ll kill you!” Wilhem roared.  “I’ll kill you myself for this, I swear it!’”  He wrested the Phaeon blade free and swung it at Lorel’s head, coming at him wildly and with all his strength.  The fury of his attack brought a glimmer of doubt to the lordling’s eyes; he fell back a pace, struggling to parry Wilhem’s primal, untrained hacking.  Though he was older and had some training his frail build was actually even-matched by Wilhem’s stouter one.  Sensing the lordling’s fear fanned Wilhem’s rage and he struck again and again, each impact more violent than the one that preceded it.  Finally Lorel stumbled, his heel catching a stone as he backpedaled.  One of his knees gave and he sank into a crouch.  

No! A voice warned.  Don’t!  But Wilhem was deaf to it.  The thought of Cob lying dead and trampled at Lorel’s doing had carried him too far beyond reason to go back.  “Die!”  He shrieked, raising his sword overhead like an ax.  “Die!”  The blade fought him fiercely, the sensation of resistance escalating from nausea to outright pain, a feeling like blisters erupting all over his body.  I am dishonoring myself!  This is shameful!  Never meet toad with scorpion, NEVER!  Wilhem howled.  He did not care about the pain or the multitude of voices in his head.  And the sword be damned, he didn’t care about that either.  He wanted to kill Lorel Breylock.  But when it came down to it something in him hesitated, unwilling for just fraction of an instant to deliver the fatal blow.  

Seeing the opportunity, Lorel launched himself into a roll.  Wilhem reacted, swinging the sword down with the force to kill but it was too late, the blade cut through the air striking nothing but dirt and a bit of the stone.  The power of the impact sent up a spray of sparks and ripped the blade from Wilhem’s grip.  Spinning end over end it fell to the ground at Skreeander’s feet, more than five paces away.  Wilhem gazed after it in shock, standing defenseless. 

Lorel did not hesitate.  As Wilhem lunged to retrieve the weapon he leapt to his feet his feet and stuck him, driving the point of his sword firmly into Wilhem’s stomach.  It happened so fast that Wilhem hardly felt the blade.  He glanced down disbelieving and then the pain hit, a pain so deep and wrong that it robbed the fight from him instantly.  There was no protesting it, no chance of beating it back and fighting on.  Lorel’s sword had gone right through him.  He whimpered and his legs buckled, dropping him to his knees.  

Lorel laughed his insane laugh, withdrawing the sword with sadistic deliberateness.  Wilhem clutched at it vainly, beseeching with his eyes for the lordling to stop the agony.  Lorel showed him no mercy.  Once the sword was free he held it over Wilhem’s head and let it shower him in his own blood, dripping from the reddened blade against the backdrop of a bone-white moon.   Wilhem tasted metal on his lips and coughed, his hands dropping to the hole in his belly.  He covered the hole with his palms as best he could, but that did nothing to slow the growth of the stain spreading through his shirt.  

“Don’t die just yet,” Lorel chided, sweeping his lank black hair back off his forehead.  “There’s something I want you to see first.”

He sheathed his sword and walked over to where the Phaeon blade lay in the dirt, between Skreeander and the mare.  Both horses were restless, tossing their heads at the tang of blood in the air.  Skreeander showed his teeth and shied as Lorel approached but the lordling caught the palfrey’s tether and stopped him from bolting.  

“No,” Wilhem moaned, watching Lorel bend to pick up his sword.  “Please, no. . .”  Lorel   grinned wickedly, turning the hilt in his hands and examining the craftsmanship.         

“What an oddity,” he said, peering at the blade.  “These symbols, what are they, Irathi?”  Wilhem had no answer to give him, even had he been willing.  Lorel sighed.  “Must be.  Only an Irathi would go through the trouble of forging good steel and then bend it into such an absurd shape.  I wonder though, do you think it can actually make a decent cut?”  He twirled the sword in his hand, leaning close to Skreeander.  The horse’s eye wobbled anxiously as Lorel patted his neck.   

Wilhem reached out with a trembling, blood covered hand.

“Please,” he begged, “no--”  

Gripping Skreeander’s bridal tight in one hand, Lorel dragged the Phaeon blade across the palfrey’s throat like a bow being drawn over a fiddle.  The horse screamed a horrifying unnatural squeal and a black curtain of blood poured from its neck, as wine dumped from a bucket.  So much fell at once that Wilhem caught the smell of it, potent and sour, before Lorel had even withdrawn the sword.

“Impressive,” said Lorel, eyeing the drenched blade appreciatively, “for Irathi junk anyhow.”  

Wilhem went mute, his mind so overwhelmed that all emotions ceased.  The horse collapsed onto its side, convulsing.  Not a horse, he reminded himself.  Skreeander.  Skreeander who had been with him every day of his life for as far back as he could remember.  Lorel’s chestnut pranced to avoid the palfrey’s spastic thrashing.  The lordling himself held still, watching death take the animal with the kind of rapturous, hungry look on his face that most men reserved for the Tollhouse girls.  He is poison.  You should not have let him live.  He will be a stain on the world.  Wilhem dismissed the voice, uninterested.  It no longer mattered.  Cob. Skreeander.  His mother, whom he barely remembered.  All that he’d ever had in this life he’d lost.  What difference did it make if Lorel turned the whole of Triton into his own personal dungeon?  To hell with this.  To hell with all of this.  

Skreeander’s quivering slowed.  In its final paroxysms the horse’s eye met Wilhem’s and stayed with him until the last of the fight within it faded.  It’s all right, he thought.  It’s all right.  I’ll see you soon.    

He was thirsty, incredibly thirsty.  Clutching his belly he staggered to his feet.  His own life was nearly spent as well, he knew that.  Very soon he would lose consciousness.  It is all right, he told himself, truly.  Unless the monks were all liars he and Skreeander would soon awake in Necartha.  The realm of the dead was said to be dreary and barren, a pale reflection of the world where food had no taste, but at least the two of them would be reunited there, and together they could search for Cob.  And how much more barren could Necartha be, given how little the this world held for him now?  He was no longer terribly afraid.  I am going to have a drink.  He took several steps toward the little pool.  Each one was a horror.  One of his legs was completely numb so he dragged it along, hopping forward with the other.  His blood rained from his mouth as he went, jarred up his throat by the heaving of his ribs.   

Lorel watched his progress without interfering, his mouth set in a sardonic smile.  He let Wilhem make it all the way to the banks of the pool where he dropped to his hands and knees.  Leaning out over the polished black surface of the water he encountered his reflection.  His boy’s face was ghastly pale and his eyes were so glazed and black of pupil that he looked like he’d gone as daft as the Big Idiot.  He cupped his hand and was lowering it when Lorel’s face swam up next to his own.  Wilhem grunted.  I’ve been through this once already today, he thought cynically, almost amused by the dark circles his fate was making. With that girlish face of his Lorel even looked a little like Matha.  Was there meaning in it?  Had the witch’s gods ordained that one way or another he would die this day, no matter what road he traveled?  Or was it all just happenstance, a random jest that had naught to do with anything?  

He watched Lorel raise the Phaeon blade.  The knowledge of what was to come next was more dismaying to him than terrifying.  He was not going to have his drink after all.    

“Forgive me,” Lorel said chidingly.  “But I grow bored of this.”  

He swung his arm and the sword took Wilhem through the back, the point erupting from his chest next to his heart.  His reflection reacted as though it belonged to someone else, the  bloodied mouth falling open in a scream that did not make it past his lips, gurgling awkwardly in his throat.  Lorel gave the sword a twist and let go of the hilt, leaving Wilhem skewered.  Then he dealt a kick to his midsection, toppling him into the pool. 

Wilhem felt no cold.  The water was silent, calm.  The last of his breath left him in a cloud of bubbles and he sank, coming to rest a few feet beneath the surface.  Soft mud cradled him as though he was abed and smooth stones beneath his cheek served as a pillow.  Out of the corner of one eye he gazed up at Lorel’s blurred silhouette and the moon behind.  Both seemed impossibly far away, too far now to be of any significance.  You are weak.  You are bringing shame down upon your Phaelynx. Get up, fight!  Wilhem paid no mind to the voice, unmoved.  Instead he thought about the girl in the cage and the kiss she’d given him.  He’d have liked to have experienced that again, the forceful pressure of her lips and the thrill it had opened up in his gut, vast as the bowl of the night sky.  He still couldn’t believe she’d done that.  The whole day had been like that though, come to think of it.  A tide of changes so peculiar and relentless that he’d been hopelessly unprepared for them, struggling nonstop from the minute he’d seen the girl until this very moment just to keep up.  To hell with it.  There was nothing else he could have done, he decided, nothing more to do.  The stars had taken him down as he’d taken down the doe, ending him while he was stumbling and still trying to figure out what was happening.  To hell with it.  I am nothing next to them.  I could not have won.  He opened his mouth, wide as it would stretch, and drank.