The False Martyr (59 page)

Teth snuffled at his side.
She looked up at the late afternoon sun and blinked back tears.
“Curse you,” she whispered. “Even now. You have to torture us even
now. To the Maelstrom with you.” Her hands clenched before her as
she spoke, then her countenance changed as if struck by a
revelation. She stood to her full height, gave a dark chuckle,
nodded, wiped her tears, took a deep breath, and looked straight
ahead. “Fuck you. I’m not playing anymore. I don’t care about your
plan. I’m done. I’m done with everything.”

Before Dasen could react
to the inexplicable rant, she strode from him and approached one of
the men walking along the side of a cart. “Excuse me, sir.” The
porter did not acknowledge her, but she continued despite the snub.
“Which way to the Temple of the Order?”

“
On the hill,” he said and
gestured with his thumb.

Dasen followed the thumb
and found the squat stone fortress that seemed to float above the
wooden buildings around it.

“
It’s our only option, so
that must be where the Order wants us to go,” Teth told him with
almost all the certainty of the girl he had known in the forest.
“There’s no use fighting it, so we might as well go along.” She
snuffled then took a long shaking breath, which seemed to serve as
the final dismissal of her misery. She looked at him, wiped her
eyes, and even forced a smile.

Dasen gaped. She looked
beyond dreadful, covered in grey dirt that had streaked to black
where her tears and snot had tracked. Her hair was a greasy tangle.
Her face was sunken and hollow. Her entire body was withered to
bones. But through that, there was, at last, a sign of life. Her
eyes were sad, but they were not dead. Her posture was weak, but it
was no longer defeated. Even her limbs seemed not to hang so loose,
her spine seemed not to bow. And the small smile remained despite
every reason for it to fail.

Watching the
transformation, Dasen felt his own tensions ease as the emotional
burden was lifted, and he realized how much weight he had been
carrying. He felt suddenly lighter, despite all the hardships they
faced as if they were inconsequential now that he had Teth back.
Yet, somewhere, something tugged at his memory. He remembered
seeing that smile, that look, and he knew that he should not trust
it. His own smile faltered as it began, but Teth was off, literally
pulling him across the street by his hand, before he could find the
source of his concern.

#

The scene at the Temple of
Order was worse even than Dasen had imagined. The temple was old
and seemed small for the size of the city it served. It was
composed of a large rectangular building three stories in height
with a short tower on each corner. Clumsy stained glass windows
were widely spaced along the heavy block walls. The grey stones
streaked with mildew were crumbling in places, crudely patched in
others. The roof was sharply pitched and formed of moss-covered
terracotta tiles. Dirty, rain pitted
valati
stood guard around the walls,
their countenances and robes set in stone by middling
craftsmen.

Situated on the long
secondary hump below the taller, steeper slope that housed the
fortress at the city’s center, the two structures were separated by
a tiered garden that appeared from its density to be sparsely
maintained. Beyond the garden’s ornamental trees, the windowless
grey walls of the fortress peeked like a predator preparing the
pounce from the grass. The only other structures visible on the
hill were a large shed and the ornate manor that housed the valati,
counselors, and their attendants. Clinging to the slope of the hill
behind the temple, these were closed tight, doors locked and
windows shuttered against the rabble outside.

Rabble like
us
, Dasen thought to himself. And the
rabble was all around. Ragged looking refugees were packed around
the temple in such numbers that Dasen could barely see over them to
the buildings beyond.

He looked to Teth. She had
not shed a tear since they were robbed, had not moaned or whined or
cowered. Her strength seemed to have returned, her spine was
straight, shoulders back, head up as if she had simply come out of
a dream. Yet the sense remained that it was a mask. The truth was
something else, but Dasen could not place it. He knew the look in
her eye, had seen it before, and it told him to be wary.

“
Sir, excuse me? What’s
happening here?” Teth asked a man in front of them. He was probably
only a few years older, but he had his arm around his wife, held
his other protectively on the shoulder of his waist-high son, who
in turn held a slightly younger girl. His wife rocked to comfort
the sleeping babe in her arms.

The man studied them, eyes
roving up and down, disapproval obvious. He was ragged but his face
was clean. His hands were long and nimble, fingers soft, nails
smooth, stained with ink. He had a softness about him. His wife was
plump as were the children. “They open the temple at twilight,” he
explained despite his distaste. He crumpled his nose as if just
noticing the odor. “They have soup until they run out and places to
sleep if you can find one.” He clasped his wife’s shoulder tighter
as she sputtered a sob. The children looked at her, eyes wide. “We
should’ve been here earlier,” he admitted in a whisper as if forced
to justify himself, “but I heard they were looking for bookkeepers
to return to Wildern.” He stopped, looked at his wife, then
swallowed. “They were but not with their families.” His eyes turned
red, and he brought his hand to cover them. “Worst mistake I ever
made, leaving,” he said before his voice broke. He grabbed his
children and held them close as he fought his despair. The children
just stared, seemingly out of tears.

Dasen wanted to join them.
He looked at the crowd and saw that they were organized into a line
that snaked to the door of the temple in the distance. There were
hundreds of people before them, and it was still an hour until the
sun hit the horizon. There was almost no chance that they would get
any of the soup, much less a place to sleep. His stomach rumbled
despite having been filled a few hours before in the duty office.
And now that might be their last meal for a long time. He looked
down at Teth, at her sunken cheeks, hollow eyes. She was already
reduced to bones. How much longer could she last?

She caught his eye, found
his hand, and squeezed. Dasen was transported to the field outside
of Thoren. He saw the creatures closing on them, the soldiers dying
behind them, and Teth. She had looked at him in exactly the same
way then, had squeezed his hand just like that when she said
goodbye, when she had been certain that they would die. His blood
ran cold.
She’s given
up
, he realized.
She’s accepted that she’s going to die. This is not strength,
it’s surrender.

“
Men of these Kingdoms,” a
voice rose over the mutters of the crowd and drew Dasen’s attention
from the terrible realization, “why are you here? Why do you allow
a traitor, a tyrant to steal the bread from the mouths of your
children and give it to his murdering horde?”

The voice broke off. Dasen
looked up and saw a big man ten paces away standing on a bench. He
wore a sword over his shoulder, held a club in his hand, used it to
punctuate his words. The lower half of his face was covered by a
grey cloth, but he had the look of a soldier, broad shoulders,
thick arms, sturdy legs. An old scab marred the line of his hair
healing into a long red scar. Other men with faces hidden pushed in
around him. Like their leader, these were big men, rough, with cold
eyes. They beat clubs into their hands and eyed the crowd as they
cleared a circle.

“
I was in Thoren,” the man
on the bench bellowed. “I saw what the invaders do to cities they
capture. The traitor said we’d be spared if we fought, but it was
only the first of his lies. They burnt Thoren to the ground! They
killed every man that stood against them. They have no mercy. They
are chaos! They are the Exiles!” He paused to let that sink in,
stared at the crowd as if expecting them to rise up and join him at
any moment. Grumbles greeted him instead. “I have seen their
magic!” he screamed, frustration growing. “I have seen the demons
they call to fight for them, have seen them destroy an entire city
for no reason other than as a tribute to that demon Hilaal!” Again
grumbles and indifference answered his claims. But Dasen was
captivated.
He was in
Thoren
.
How did
he get here?

“
Your food, your coins,
your tools, your craftsmen are going to serve the Exiles,” the man
continued. “To serve Chaos!” He screamed the last and glared.
“Governor Colmar, the tyrant’s puppet, has told you that this will
buy you peace. That is a lie, just as it was in Thoren. The Exiles
know no peace. They know only destruction. Sooner or later, you too
will be consumed by their chaos. The only hope is to fight, to
resist the powers of chaos. How can you claim to love Order if you
will not fight the chaos that would destroy it?” The grumbles grew
at this. Many people openly waved the man off or yelled insults of
their own. It was clear that they had heard it all
before.

“
We must fight!” the man
started again. “We must rise up. We must not let them take what is
ours. We are only making our enemies stronger while we grow
weaker.”

“
And the invaders will
destroy this city just like they did Thoren,” yelled a man from the
crowd. “They took Wildern without losing a man, destroyed half the
city. You said it yourself. We can’t fight them.”

“
No, but he can!” the
speaker yelled. He pulled out one of the dreaded flyers and held it
out to the crowd. “This is no ordinary boy! I saw him outside
Thoren.”

“
Not that again,” someone
from the crowd yelled. “We’re tired of your fantasies. Let us
be.”

The man on the bench
seemed only to feed off the dissent. “It was no fantasy. I was
there. I was twenty paces behind him when he turned the demons to
dust. I saw him run into the river. I saw him escape, and I
followed. He saved me on that field more times than I can
count.
He
can
defeat the invaders. And the tyrant knows it. Why else make this
poster, why else set the world against his own son? He knows that
the boy is the only one who can defeat him. And he knows that he is
here! He can save us from these invaders. He can protect us from
their armies and their demons. But first we must show him that we
will fight. That we are worth saving!”

Dasen was so shocked by
the site of a madman brandishing his face and proclaiming him a
messiah that he barely heard the words the man was saying. He could
only look on in shock as the lunatic extolled his powers to the
world, as he revealed his location, as he called his father a
tyrant and claimed that Dasen was there to defeat him. Teth was
pulling on his arm. She was saying something about leaving, but he
did not hear her. He only heard that man’s twisted words spelling
out every fear he had known since that terrible day three weeks
gone when he had broken the laws of Order and sworn to never do so
again.

As Dasen stared in
disbelief, the man’s eyes passed over him. His face transformed,
his eyes grew, and his head shot back. He choked as he tried to get
the air needed to yell. His hand rose to point.

Shouts erupted from the
crowd. Men yelled indistinct commands. Women screamed and babies
cried. Dasen noticed the disturbance at the same time as the man on
the bench. Behind them, a squad of soldiers were forcing their way
through the crowd. “Make way!” one of them yelled. “That man is
under arrest! Stop him!”

The man on the bench
studied Dasen with longing, but his compatriots were already
pulling him from the bench and pushing him through the crowd to
make their escape. Only then did Dasen think to lower his face and
keep it down until the guards had chased the agitators
away.

He looked at the people
around him. They were desperate, faces slack, cheeks stained with
tears. They had come to Gorin looking for safety from the invaders
and had found closed doors and empty bellies. And Dasen had no
reason to expect anything better. He found Teth, remembered the
look she had given him. How long could she last out here without
food or shelter? He needed a way to protect her, to show her that
they still had hope, that they weren’t defeated. But the only hope
the Order seemed to offer was that of a madman. He sighed and said
a prayer, asking the Order for guidance. It was lost among the
thousands of similar pleas being muttered all around
him.

#

The soup ran out long
before Dasen and Teth made it to the doors of the temple. The man
before them, his baby crying, wife snapping, and older children
despondent, took to begging those who’d been lucky enough to get a
bowl. He came away with crusts of bread. The children stuffed them
in their mouths with barely a pause to breathe as their father
fought his tears. His wife started berating him about a place to
sleep, but he could only sag to the ground and hold his children as
their jaws worked the only food they’d see that day.

“
We can’t stay here,”
Dasen told Teth.

They did not have choice.
The crowd let out a cry. The acolytes were closing the doors to the
temple. People clamored to get in, to block the doors from swinging
shut. They screamed and begged and cried and threatened. The
acolytes apologized, differed, ignored, and pushed. It was a
stalemate until the soldiers broke the siege.