Eulogy Page 11

  That's past us, isn't it? Good.

  More than that, I still remember his lilting smile—as if something dwelled within it, but he couldn't quite grasp what it was. I always go back to that. The image of it doesn't leave, nor will it ever.

  Hah! Smile and smile.

  Yes. It was a mushy gushy mess.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dust covered the table in front of Villeen, puffing like a gritty wave as she flipped a page. No windows allowed daylight through the thick stone walls, yet she didn't need any. Only a single candle lit a study within Abennak's castle, casting a dim glow to her father's book. Words, scrawled and jagged, filled it, but she didn't need the candle anymore.

  She'd memorized the book.

  And riddles bedded riddles, which birthed more of the same.

  The bastard meant it that way.

  Fier sneezed from the far side of the table and rubbed his eyes. He hadn't taken well this past year. His hair had greyed more, and the lines in his face were more pronounced. He chewed on his cheeks as if he could gnaw them from his face, and his lips, ashen but with a hint of crimson at the corners, were now dry and cracked. Was it the result of working in Abennak's castle for so long?

  Mere months remained until Villeen's fortieth birthday.

  Not enough time.

  Not enough—

  They didn't have a choice. They had to find something. Anything.

  And another page flipped. Another cloud of dust puffed.

  "Void forsaken dust," she muttered. "Can't the servants sweep out this bloody study?"

  Her brother managed a weary smirk. They both knew that no servants would come to sweep, for they couldn't afford to leave their work for a day or an hour or a minute. Time ticked away. They'd already lost another year without firm results.

  Their time secluded in the castle, nearly three-hundred and fifty days, had passed with a tense slowness. Villeen awakened in the morning, before any of the king's servants lit the candles, and lit them herself. A splash of water in her face, a cup of tea, and sometimes a chunk of bread from the king's kitchen—then she would read her father's notes yet again.

  She'd needed something to do other than face Abennak.

  The king, now known by many as the Mad King, defined his name. With every passing day, the man had sunk into his insanity like a pebble in a marsh, swallowed by blackened mud and whirling insects. He reveled in it, ever deeper, ever thicker, and no bottom seemed in sight.

  So Villeen and Fier had studied.

  Two men had sat at the heart of their analysis. Their father's notes described the first as the general, and the second as the instrument. The general was supposedly a lean, muscled man, but not skinny, possessing brown hair, a dagger and a longsword.

  Worthless!

  How many men could've been described like that?

  And another day had passed. Another chunk of bread and splash of water, yet what had she discovered? Nothing except wasting muscles and a nagging sore on her ass.

  "Demon-damn," she muttered to herself.

  The instrument, the more important of the two, supposedly worked with woods. The notes said, 'Flecks of sawdust will lay across his shoulders and in his hair. Gristled hands, like that of a man accustomed to work, will turn the oak.'

  Easier, but not much—hundreds of men worked with wood.

  These two men were important, that much was obvious. Their father's notes were riddled with their names, but it gave no indication of where they lived. He'd intended the instrument to be the savior of this world.

  Savior. As if that were possible! Nothing more than a farce. A nothing. A... demon-bloody-damn!

  Villeen dug a nail into a cracked page, pressing it deeper to scar the page. Had her father meant for the general and instrument to band together? Work against one another? These were the things, the tiny, significant details, that had muddled her brain as the candles guttered out.

  Whatever the answer, she and her brother needed to discover it.

  Fier drew his finger down the page of his own book, smudged by countless such motions, and again he dug teeth into cheek. After a moment, he said, "I think I've found something."

  Villeen stopped herself from shaking her head. He couldn't have found something. It simply wasn't possible after so long, not after comparing and discussing and rejecting. They'd already examined every angle. "What?"

  "'And I'll love them. My general will lead them from safety, but I must include something in those moments, something to make it meaningful. Sacrifice without meaning is no sacrifice at all.'"

  Fier released a slow breath. "There's something wrong there."

  Her brother was a better scholar than she, despite her best efforts. These past years had tangled her thoughts into a tidy bundle. Nothing seemed to help. Her brother, however, was never troubled. He'd simply chewed his cheek and read another page.

  "Or is it right?" He leaned closer to the pages, covering his nose to block the dust. "We've got to think he was insane. He was insane, right?"

  They both knew the answer.

  "But if he was insane, then his right may be our wrong," Fier said. "We can't look at this thing from our own perspective. We've got to understand his."

  "So what do you sugge—"

  "What's the opposite of safety?"

  "Danger? Vulnerable?"

  "No, it's something more than that. Something deeper. Why would this particular instance matter to his general?" He slammed the base of his fist into the book, and dust burst from the pages. "Demon-damn! I'm so close, Vill. I can taste it, and it's not like the taste of this place. It's something sweeter, like a hope or a promise."

  "There's nothing sweet about what he's planned," she snapped. "And his promise is for something horrible."

  "I don't mean that." He rubbed his nose. "I'm not sure what I mean."

  Villeen gritted her teeth. Their father wanted a war. He wanted death and destruction, flames to soar high enough to lick the clouds.

  Sometimes Fier couldn't remember that.

  She thrust a thread of gentahl into his mind. In the same heartbeat, she twisted her own thoughts to tear the book from his hands. He yelped, but she ignored it, and instead read the next passage.

  "'After that, I'll cut them. Oh, how I'll love them. How I'll cut them.'"

  "It's not the same, Vill. Those are two completely different passages, and—"

  "It's the same! He was insane, Fier, but you can't twist his words to make them mean something they don't. It just doesn't work that way. We've got to find something that makes sense."

  "It would make sense to him."

  She sighed, allowing her anger to turn to ash. "Keep looking. You'll find it."

  "I can't find clues if you won't listen." He cast his gaze to the floor, annoyance still creasing his face. "I'm telling you—"

  The door creaked open, revealing a sliver of light. One of Abennak's guards—balding, with a large, bulbous nose—stuck his head through the crack.

  His voice trembled as he spoke. "The king wants to see you."

  Villeen and Fier exchanged glances. The king hadn't requested them in weeks. Months. He spent his time lounging in his throne room, rarely leaving, murmering to himself through the long days and nights.

  "About?" she asked.

  The guard shrugged.

  Without a word, they rose from the study, cast a final look to the dust-coated books, and followed the guard. They couldn't ignore their king after what they'd done to him.

  What he'd done to himself.

  Rippon's castle had changed since Abennak lost his wife and children. Kara once made certain the halls remained tidy, but she'd died too long ago. Cobwebs now hung from the corners. Candles burned upon golden hangers, yet the metal was tarnished and dull. Beside the candles, blackened streaks bled upward. Marble floors, once scrubbed until they gleamed, were stained with mud, and the towering, obsidian statues had been overturned by Abennak.

  No one lifted them. No one cleaned
. No one dared suggest it.

  The Mad King wouldn't let them.

  "It's worse than before," Fier murmured.

  She nodded.

  In the Mad King's throne room, stout pillars held the ceiling high. Red and white tapestries, the colors of Rippon, hung on the walls in tatters. A single, wide carpet led to the throne, and the king sat at the end of it.

  Abennak giggled. "Friends old and new. Friends golden blue."

  A spark of anger still glowed within Villeen. This man hadn't told her his secrets. He'd clenched them close, like a dog gnawing its bone. However, her anger couldn't overwhelm what he'd done to himself. No. It couldn't compare to this.

  "What do you need, Abennak?"

  "Step and step to my shoulder. Ah, that's a good girl. What do you see when you look from my eyes?"

  "I see—"

  "Bor—ring,," he said, drawing out the last syllable. "I see a big, nasty hole of boring, and nothing to fill it. What could we shovel inside? Lies? Truth? Ah yes, let's fill it with memories."

  He clapped his hands, and the double-doors screeched open on rusted hinges.

  Two men strode through, and Villeen's throat tightened. They wore rough leather armor, and twin swords swung at their hips. Blank, expressionless faces gazed at her as they shuffled toward the throne. Thin cracks spread around their eyes like spiderwebs, and their skin was whitened—whiter than her own, as if sunlight had never touched them. Yet it must have. These men were soldiers. They traveled for a living.

  What are they?

  She couldn't answer that, as neither she nor Fier had left Rippon's castle for over a year. Did these men, if she could call them that, walk across the entire island? Were they somehow her father's? More riddles to answer, more questions to ponder.

  However, there was something worse.

  A shadow—no other word did it justice—drifted before the two soldiers. Gentahl surrounded the thing, blending it into the stone floor, into the air, into the doors. Shadow Step. Only an outline remained, but it flowed forward like a river—lethal, suffocating, and somehow beautiful.

  "Vill," Fier whispered. "That's... it's—"

  "I know," she said, then snapped her attention to the shadow. "Who are you?"

  Like a crackling flame, the thing spoke. "My name is Wisk. I'm an assassin." It laughed, and the crackling roared. "I'm the best of assassins."

  Abennak giggled.

  Void take me. How did you find a man who can use gentahl, Abennak? What if he's my...? No, it's not possible.

  Villeen gripped her own gentahl to fling it into the room. A year ago she would've half-killed herself to alter so many minds, but today it was simply difficult. She drilled the power into the five men and herself, twisting it with a quick, subtle flick.

  The thing's Shadow Step vanished to reveal an ancient, wizened man. A black cape hung from his back, with two short, thin swords crossed behind each shoulder. Throwing knives lined his belt, and a brace strapped to his jerkin held more of those blades. He wasn't her father. She'd never seen this thing before. But danger—the assassin's confident stance, his grinning-skull smile—it flowed through the room.

  "And now you've seen me. Not many live to that. But you're different, aren't you? You'll live to see it all, but no matter. It's not enough." Wisk smirked. "You're his."

  "What isn't enough?" she said, but he ignored her. "I'm not his!"

  The assassin picked at a tooth with a long, cracked fingernail. "It was cold on the day he created me, colder than you can possibly imagine. He hovered over me, squinting as if to see through me." He spat something to the ground. "Maybe he did see through me."

  Villeen gave a tense nod.

  She remembered something like this, her father hovering over her, watching her as a child. Her father, the Prophet, Kelnak—the man was the same regardless of what she called him—he'd never allowed her from his sight. One day she'd stumbled through the forests, giggling at the squirrels on their high perches. She'd reached up, ever so high, as if to pluck the tiny animals from their branches. It had seemed so natural then, but now bitterness stained the memory.

  Had he seen through her, then?

  She thrust the thought aside. "I don't understand."

  "That's the point of it all, isn't it?"

  "Then what's your purpose?" Fier asked.

  "I don't care if I have a purpose, or what it is. I am what I am."

  "So what—"

  "I kill," the assassin said. "It fills me with something, some type of emotion I can barely describe. Elation? Happiness? Sure, we'll call it those things." He hacked out a laugh. "I need little more than a corpse at my feet."

  Gentahl—an indistinct, grayed whisper of intent—lanced from the man to penetrate Villeen, blurring the assassin's form. Shadows again surrounded him, and he flowed closer with that impossible smoothness to bow before the Mad King.

  "Friends old and new." Abennak laughed and clapped. "Friends golden blue. Ah, and look at that, our hole is filled. Now we've got excitement, sprinkled with a hint of danger. Wisk is our new friend."

  "He's not a friend." Villeen jerked toward the two soldiers. "What are those two things?"

  "They're his, too." Wisk tilted his head. "Just like all of us, but some of us know our purpose. Some of us know what we are. We're strange things, really, and—"

  "Wait," Fier said slowly. "What do you mean, they're his?"

  "He made them, just as he made me."

  My father made them. "That shouldn't be possible," she said. Her brother nodded at her side. "The energy, the concentration required, the mastery of the power—not even our father can do that. We can't create people!"

  "Believe what you want. I couldn't care less."

  "Then why are you here?"

  The shadow waited in silence. She couldn't see an expression, but she could imagine a tweaked eyebrow, a tilted head. At what? He must've come here for a reason, just as she and her brother had.

  She turned to Abennak. "What do you want with him?"

  "I want a friend for Kara and the girls. Someone to laugh in the rain, cry in the sunlight. They want something fun, so I'll give it to them." His expression brightened. "I'll give and give them a tournament."

  "It doesn't explain him."

  "Every tournament needs a champion. But what should we call it? A tournament in honor of charity? Of sacrifice? No, no, those are horrible. They don't define what this is really about."

  What could they say in the face of such madness? Abennak could call his tournament whatever he liked, it didn't change anything. The assassin, a man with knowledge of gentahl, one who called himself a murderer, who claimed to be the product of her father's twisted mind, had changed things. He'd forced them to be darker, more obscure and dangerous.

  She'd known her father had altered the island. He'd lifted the mountains and leveled the plains, placed the cities and villages. However, this was too much to contemplate.

  Her father had managed to give one of his creations gentahl and, with Wisk's power, he could kill as he wished. Nothing could stop him. And those soldiers, with their blank faces and strange, crackling skin, also changed things. How many of them now walked the island? She and her brother needed to return to their study and examine their father's notes yet again.

  "Death?" Wisk offered a gurgled laugh. "You could hold it in honor of that."

  "Simplistic, juvenile, and foolish," Abennak said, and he grinned a wicked grin. "No, I'll hold it in honor of a melon. Kara loves melons."

  Chapter Sixteen

  A year had passed for Irreor, and it had been a slow passage of time. Perfect, he might've thought, and yet an unshakeable anger still burned in his chest.

  He, the merchant Gar Tsi, and the man's wife Teel, had traveled to almost every corner of the island, from the walls of Farren to the docks of Svart Harbor, from there to Alkar's steps, and even far to the north. They'd carried bundles of wool to Vestel, sacks of grain to Marjen Keep, and they'd even been refused access to Rip
pon because of a plague.

  Yet he'd found nothing. No answer, no explanation, no release.

  His father was dead, and a year on the wagon hadn't changed that.

  He'd slept very little the first two months—a splattering here or there, mingled with images of Kipra's scowl. That image was better than the one of his father's smile, and so he'd clutched it tight, refusing to release it.

  After that, sleep had come easier.

  -I'll need to force a change upon him. Make him stronger and meaner.-

  Whatever.

  The voice had also remained the same. Still, for all the things that hadn't changed, he'd discovered a real, tangible friendship with Gar Tsi and Teel. These two weren't Bran or Kipra—Who was?—but their quirks and strangeness livened the travels.

  "Slide into the back with me," Teel said, patting an empty spot in the wagon. Her dress slipped from her shoulder, revealing a patch of flesh. "There's room for both of us."

  Irreor's face heated, but he laughed it off and snapped his reins near the donkey's ear. Even after so long, Gar Tsi's wife found a way to embarrass him. She never stopped, not even for a day, constantly watching him with twinkling eyes, gesturing with delicate arms.

  She promised something he couldn't take.

  At his side, Gar Tsi said, "She's meaning to end your game, boy."

  "It ended the day we met," Irreor said. "She just won't admit she lost."

  Their wagon's wheels rumbled and jerked through a rut, results of a heavy winter's runoff down the Dull Crest Mountains. Through the spring, caravans sank into the muddy roads. However, they hadn't seen rain over the past month, and now the ground was like a stone, smelling of dust and grass. They traveled with aching backs, anticipating the next rut, dreading the next jolt.

  On the horizon, smoke rose from a small village called Skiran Outskirts.

  -My world will begin, but what will I begin with? A jumping, a leaping, a single sheet of parchment, something to instill excitement in the minds of my people. What will they think or say or do? That's a question.-

  Irreor's sword and dagger rattled on the baseboard, close enough to snatch up should he require them. Thankfully, he hadn't needed them these past months. But he would. He felt it: not so much a premonition, but a heavy drumbeat in his chest. A density. A pulsing.