Trial of Intentions (77 page)

In the dark, they each whispered of the things they had discovered that day in the garrison city of Ir-Caul. Mira told him about Gear Master Mick. She also told him the things she'd heard in the king's sister's chicken coop. Sutter shared his conversation with Relothian on the rooftop of the castle, as well as everything about the orphanage and the children's “walks” in new shoes.

He began to think he understood the real reason Vendanj had sent them here. But had the Sheason really thought that a rootdigger and a Far who was losing her inheritance could do anything about it? He couldn't answer that. But he knew one thing: Tomorrow the king would answer the question of betraying Sutter's confidence about the sigil.

 

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Placing

In all of Suffering, the most difficult movement to sing may be The Placing. Being brought into a state of sympathy with the countless who were sent away into the Bourne, it's hard to remain on this side of it.

—A customary reminder offered in memorial of Leiholan who succumb to the third movement of Suffering

W
hen Braethen had raised the Blade of Seasons and said
Remember,
the air above the plaza had woven into a vision of the Placing. It had been meant as a reminder of how precarious the balance was between the Eastlands and the world beyond the Pall. It had carried them to the edge of history and shown them real events, shown them races driven into the Bourne.

But for him, it had been more real even than the sounds and smells seen by the throng on the plaza. Braethen … had gone there.

*   *   *

The darkness slowly receded, allowing light to bring the world into focus. Braethen squinted into the distance, the world a patchwork of grey and white under low, menacing clouds. Hilly tracts of land alternated between dimness and swathes of weak sun streaming from cloudbreaks. The smell of rain on dry ground rose, suggesting the dark clouds had stormed recently. And a gentle wind came in occasional fits, leaving stillness in their wake.

Dark shapes in the distance marched in lines or crowds over gently sloping hills, moving north. Braethen's boots ground the dirt as he pivoted and looked to the east, where in the distance other numberless lines of unknown races slogged northward, their heads hung down.

The Placing. Dead gods, I'm in the past.
He was there. He was watching races formed by Maldea being sent away into the Bourne.

The air and land and sky held the feeling of betrayal and uncertainty. It pressed in on him as he breathed the warm air and watched from afar as life was sent to a vast prison. Some were sent because their maker had overreached his calling, others because their makers had no faith in their potential. Far from the lines of the migrants, Braethen unwittingly began to walk north, his own steps loud in his ears.

He needed to see these migrants. To know the faces of those condemned to the Bourne. Lost in thought, Braethen crested the top of a hillock and almost stepped on the body of a slender creature lying dead between two blooming sages. When he drew nearer, he saw that a child sat beside the fallen female. The child's tears were dry on its cheeks. It looked up at him, languid, sad, as though weakened by the unanswered cries that had caused its tears.

Both the mother and child had smooth, dark brown skin. The mother's form was tall and slender, and lean, her muscles giving her a comely appearance. Braethen saw no hair to speak of on the creature, and patterns of branding wove around her middle with lettering he couldn't read. Her breasts were exposed, lying full and firm on her narrow chest. Her long arms ended in fingers tipped with short, sharp talons. And he guessed by the shape of her mouth that he'd find large teeth should he peel back her lips.

But her face in death was peaceful, beautiful even.

The child at her side stared up at him with a quizzical look that wasn't hard to interpret: The girl child wanted him to help rouse her mother. The babe's large eyes pleaded, even as they showed some fear of Braethen.

There was no one to help the child. It would fall victim to predators who would come prowling. He couldn't help but imagine the frightened cries of the babe, who wouldn't understand what was happening, wouldn't understand anything save its fear, wouldn't know why its mother continued to sleep.

The mass exodus from the Eastlands had been only a reader's tale to him, a subject for authors, not historians. It meant something entirely different to see it in the face of a child, even if that child belonged to a race created for the sole purpose of fighting man.

Did it know such things? Was hate rooted inside it from its conception?

The girl child made a pleading noise.

There was a mercy he could extend her. But Braethen hadn't the steel inside him for that. And there was no rescue for the babe. He cursed himself for contriving such a dream, biting his tongue to try and wake himself—an old trick his father used to say helped him escape a nightmare.

Braethen's mouth filled with blood. A very complete nightmare, then, and one he wouldn't escape so easily.

He whisked up the babe and began to move as fast as he could over the long, rolling hills toward the moving masses. The babe emitted a weak mewling sound, raising its arms toward its fallen mother. But soon it stopped even that, unable to sustain the effort. The child laid its head against Braethen's chest.

He passed through patches of sun falling from the heavens in great murky slants over the wide expanses of the world below. Ahead, the distant roll of thunder echoed down from dark clouds.

On he went, alternately running, then slowing to a fast walk, catching his breath, then running again. It struck him that saving the child's life appeased only his conscience, leaving death—a slower, more spiritually rotting death—to the bitter world beyond the Veil. But at least he would have done something. Braethen slowly closed the gap between himself and the nearest emigrants trekking away from the Eastlands.

As he reached the line of creatures, the rain set in again. Mild, slow rain. It gave rise to a low hum, rather than the hiss of a downpour. The child in his arms wrapped its tiny fingers more deeply into Braethen's cloak.

He tried to capture the attention of any of the exiled beings, hoping to convince one of them to take the child from him.

“The child's lost its mother,” he repeated to one after the other.

His words were of no use. Either they couldn't understand his language, or they were too focused on the struggle of their own departure, most carrying children or belongings of their own. Braethen couldn't even draw their attention. Perhaps this was part of the dream. Perhaps they couldn't see or hear him. He was just a silent observer in this vision.

But he kept trying, moving up the line, noting more races he'd never seen before. Some walked on two legs, some on four or eight. Some appeared to have no eyes. Some had coats of thick fur; others were hairless. Some seemed utterly like himself in appearance and potential. And all wore dour expressions, as though their minds were already caught in the Bourne.

He didn't know how far he'd gone or how long he'd been pleading with these banished creatures to take the child, when he came upon horrors of the Placing that had never appeared in any of the books he'd read.

Braethen stopped, exhausted and defeated. He chuffed into the slow fall of rain. He half-turned, looking up the winding column, and saw that many had broken ranks and stepped out of the line. Some lay on the ground already. As Braethen watched, two sat together, holding short, silent looks with each other, before one took a sharp knife and cut deep the throat of the other, who did nothing to stop it.

Mercy killings.

By the dozens, the hundreds … the thousands … hosts of these abandoned races had chosen not to go into the exile of the Bourne. As Braethen looked farther into the distance he saw masses lying dark and motionless beside the trail.

It took his mind some time to acknowledge the last horror that littered the plains and hills on either side of this column of slow-moving exiles. Little ones. Like the one in his arms.

Braethen shut his eyes against the images.

He wrapped his arms protectively around the Quiet child and grieved the failed efforts of the abandoning gods that had brought them to this. It left him feeling weak and powerless and wanting just to sit and let the dream run out, pass him by.

He turned to look away from the column of slow-walking creatures, and saw the same shafts of light slanting in long lines through the rain. Muted prisms over distant hills—bits of color in a world of heavy, dark greys. The scent of wet pine needles. An instant later he began running toward those who were killing one another. As he ran, a thought struck him: Do creatures without conscience fear anything enough to kill themselves? Could the Quiet actually dread the Bourne?

Perhaps they're not what we thought.

The child in his arms began to cry, its weak moan pathetic, just as he reached three creatures standing in quiet companionship, each with a knife in hand. Before they could raise their blades to undo one another, he called out.

“No!”

The forcefulness of his cry drew their attention, and the three creatures turned intelligent, somber eyes on him. Two were clearly female, one like the mother of the child he carried; the other thick in the waist, but just as lean, her breasts and loins cinched about with thick brown leather, long hair braided into a queue. The larger female also had horns curling back from just above her ears, and a heavy jaw. The male walked naked, his genitalia hanging down and beyond his concern. His entire body had been raised in brands of varying shapes and designs and writings. A shaven head, likewise, bore the painful art. And his eyes sat deep beneath a thick brow, so that Braethen could scarcely see them.

He came to a stop a few strides away, holding up one hand. “You don't need to do this.”

“What do you know about it, grub? You have the fair skin of the makers. We should cut you first.” The branded creature drew around to face Braethen squarely, its shoulders impossibly broad.

All he could do was shake his head. “Your own children…”

Whatever reason existed for their creation is lost.

Or was it?

A glimmer of logic rose up in the back of his mind. In the waking world, the Quiet had begun to slip their cage. Braethen found himself wondering: Why? Was it really retribution they sought?

Before he could ask anything in this dreadful dream, he sensed a new presence, and jumped when a soft, authoritative voice spoke. “You don't belong here.”

Braethen turned, still holding the Quiet child, to see a robed figure standing behind him. The man's countenance showed him great scrutiny, and had a look of power unlike anything he'd ever seen, even in Vendanj.

My skies, this is one of the Framers!

Though in a dream from which he would soon wake, Braethen stood in awe of one who had strode the Tabernacle of the Sky, who had walked
innumerable
worlds.

A mere utterance from this founder could unmake him, and yet Braethen wasn't afraid.

“Couldn't you find another way?” Braethen motioned toward the masses moving in dejected unison into the northern and western quarters of the world.

The god didn't follow Braethen's arm or gaze. He simply continued to stare at him.

“Your sympathies are misspent, Sodalist,” the god said. “You will become a danger to those you serve if you cannot discern which side of the line to defend. It might be wise to send you into the Bourne with the others if that's where your heart lies.”

Braethen looked down at the baby he carried. When he looked back into the eyes of the god, he said simply, “I suppose my heart is with any who have no voice of their own.”

The sound that followed felt like autumn's last gentle wind, as the god sighed. “Oh, my boy. That is a war that can never be won. The voiceless are too many. And their stories tend to break the hearts of brave men.”

After careful regard, the god raised a hand toward him. Almost immediately, Braethen's neck began to burn, as though hot coals touched his skin. He could smell charring flesh and struggled to hold the child as the pain grew too intense to bear.

Then it stopped, and he raised his fingers to the spot. He gingerly felt what he recognized without seeing: an incomplete circle; a mark that started thick and strong, but faded as it neared closure at the bottom, never completing the loop. It was a brand like the one given all Quiet being driven into the Bourne.

“You may be their patron, and bear their mark,” the god said, his voice soft and sympathetic, like a father finally apologizing after a bout of wrath. “But beware what mercies you show, and when.” The other pointed to the Blade of Seasons Braethen still carried.

He looked down at the sword, and back up. “When?” A thought sparked far back in his mind, and a new dread filled his belly.

“You don't understand what you hold, do you, Braethen? You think this is a dream. Look around you. You're not simply seeing the Placing. You're
part
of it now. Don't toy with the power of that weapon. Go back to your time, and remember.”

His vision began to rush with images. He dropped to his knees and set the child down. He clung to the Blade of Seasons as darkness wrapped him in its tight embrace and winds tore at his clothes and hair. Winds that carried voices that called after him, entreating him.

It all rose to a deafening scream, howling in his mind. Insecurities he'd once felt when taking hold of this blade were replaced by dreadful knowledge. He hadn't tried to do anything more than remind the people in Recityv of the reality of the Placing, and in a moment he'd traveled there … in time.

Then the screaming winds and voices ceased and darkness slowly receded, allowing light to bring the world into focus.