Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (85 page)

*   *   *

As the three men stabbed at the earth to create a grave, Mira looked down at the child in her arms. She cradled it close, feelings both maternal and mournful touching her in quiet waves. The face of the babe was pallid but peaceful. And looking upon the infant girl, the promise of her future frozen forever in her delicate features … Mira fought a rising wrath that sought escape.

There would be a time for that.

Now, she honored this small life with the care and attentiveness she deserved but had never received in life. Mira thought about her own mother—her birth mother—whose face she couldn’t remember, and wondered what providence had kept her from being like the child in her arms at that very moment.

The abandonment of a small life, whatever the cause, caused an ache in Mira’s chest. It made the decision awaiting her beyond Recityv a heavy burden, a decision that might affect the success of the Sheason’s ultimate plans.

Somehow, staring into the unrealized promise of this little girl galvanized Mira’s need to act, but put her further from understanding which path to choose. Only one certainty filled her under the hard sun of the Scar and the unmoving body of this little one: If she could have given her life to save this babe, she would have.

*   *   *

When the child lay in its final slumber and the earth had been replaced, the four lingered a moment in the stillness. Then Grant mounted. “You have one cycle of my life, Sheason. Then I will be back at this tree. Not one more life will fall because I was not here to receive it.”

Then he raced to the east, leaving the others to catch up. Mira and Braethen mounted. Vendanj lingered a moment.

The Sheason looked down at the small patch of dirt that humped slightly above the earth around it. In the barren confines of this inhospitable place they had laid to rest a life come unnaturally to its end. The hope and path that had lain in store for the child, which had been stolen by malice and cowardice, brought the Sheason’s indignation surging to the surface.

To send a message, a defenseless babe …

Vendanj shook with the need to do something. The foul deed could not go unavenged.

But it would have to wait until next he came upon the Quiet. The helplessness of it, the vision in his mind of a baby struck unwitting by this viper and crying in pain and confusion and desperate need of the comfort it had sought and rightly deserved in coming to this world, this life … Vendanj fell to his knees and wept silently. The bitterness of it stole his strength and will to go on, to even stand.

What lived in the soul of those who served Quietus that they would do such a thing? He could not fathom it. In that moment Vendanj saw a glimpse into the horror that stood in store for the family of man should the veil fall. He now understood, more intimately than ever before, what the histories called the Placing: when the fathers had hidden the Whited One and his abominations from the world.

There could be no chance at greatness, at living to make this world a place worthy of its creation, if the breath of a child were to be snuffed before it could live to know that potential.

The anguish seared through him, and the Sheason raised his head and screamed all the pain in his heart into the pale blue sky. With the sound of it still echoing out on the hard, barren waste of the Scar, Vendanj thrust his hands into the grave of the babe and spoke the words of his heart, and gave unto that plot of land a portion of his spirit forevermore.

Spontaneously from the gravesite came grass and flowers, exuding their scents of life around the vale of the cradle that had been the death of the child.

When the burn of his grief subsided and his great shout had echoed its last, Vendanj drew his hands out of the now fertile soil. “Good-bye, small one,” he said. “Though unknown to us, you go loved into your next life.”

Then Vendanj took his knife and found the serpent. He cut off its head and put it in his pouch. He also reclaimed the fold of the child’s blanket they had torn away before burying her, the portion that bore a small stain of blood.

These tokens he kept, and left the babe to its rest.

*   *   *

At meridian, they passed the boundary of the Scar and felt the cool whisper of breezes among the trees and undergrowth. Braethen had never considered that life was something he might actually smell, but he drew deep breaths of the scent of bark and needles and fallen leaves and moist earth. Mira scouted ahead, leaving Braethen to his two silent companions. Near a brook they stopped and ate a midday meal, speaking no words.

They moved on quickly, and stopped again at twilight, the moon rising fast and large.

Braethen cast his eyes heavenward and thought of Tahn, Sutter, and Wendra. In the Hollows, he would have come to serve as an author. His father A’Posian had taught him certain knowledge from rare texts, and with his education he would have served them.

But not protected them.

He hadn’t been a sodalist then. He knew it now. Hadn’t been a defender of anything except his father’s library.

But now he’d been given a sodalist’s sword, and by a member of the Order of Sheason that the Sodality had been created to serve. The blade upon his sigil, and the quill that danced its length, had been forever only a metaphor to him, though he had read fragments of the histories and stories authors had penned for generations. In the Hollows, the reality of what his crest really meant might never have been known to him.

Braethen dropped a hand to the steel hanging at his hip. The feel of it still caused many emotions in him: pride, willingness to stand, to defend; revulsion at the intention of a sword; despair that each time he hefted its balanced weight, the weapon became more comfortable in his hand.

Braethen stole a look at the backs of the two dark figures who had led him out of the Scar. Vendanj and Grant sat close together, confidential discussion passing between them. Lunar light carved them dully from the black landscape that stretched before them: two equally inscrutable stories sitting side by side. In their mystery, the two men felt to Braethen like a couplet of prophecy. The thought sent a chill over him, because his own story was now inextricably linked to theirs.

Finally, Braethen couldn’t help but ask: “Why are you rewriting the Charter?”

Grant turned in the darkness. “Because I’m tired of fighting.”

Braethen recalled the weapons racks at Grant’s home. “Then why teach that skill to the children who live with you?”

“Because sooner or later, I know they’ll need it. A lot of time to consider is what I have, sodalist. A lot of time to think about the ways that a man brings angry hands against you. Days and years to teach my wards and myself that personal freedom is something to safeguard, even if it involves risking physical harm.” Grant put his dinner aside on a fallen log and nestled down with his back to the wood. “I
anticipate,
my friend. A thousand days I’ve walked through the strokes and counterstrokes of fight after fight. Different weapons, different opponents of varying sizes and ability. I’ve imagined different terrains over which battles might rage, compensated for wounds to myself or my enemy. All up here.” He tapped his temple twice lightly. “And when I could think of no more, I considered them again, and again, seeing the results each time, varying the level of ability in my foe and anticipating his next stroke based on a hundred factors. And when I was done, I taught my striplings. And we practice. It is all there is to do in the Scar.”

“Except drawing a new Charter,” Vendanj put in.

“Well that, too,” Grant conceded, his smile a tad more bitter in the concession.

“You still haven’t answered why, though,” Braethen pushed.

“You. A stripling from the Hollows carrying a glowing sword and brash enough to be ready to hold it against a stranger.” He pointed at Braethen. “And an inquisitive fellow beyond that, always ready with a question, even when words ought to be left alone. The answer is: Maybe I want to believe this world has hope, could be redeemed. Or maybe it’s none of your concern.”

Braethen gave an embarrassed grin. He saw Grant and Vendanj share a genuine smile over the exchange, but their separate thoughts turned their countenances dark soon after, the weight of their ruminations lingering upon them until sleep relieved the tension that puckered their brows. Braethen found it difficult to sleep. He sat up watching the two men and every so often spotting Mira.
What am I doing in such company?
The question followed him down to slumber, where it played upon him in dreams of swords and books, each biting flesh and each answering a call to arms.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

A Servant’s Tale

Sutter sat in the dark, his wrists and ankles bound with chains, staring across at a troupe of scops.

If prison could descend further than its own dank breath, and if Sutter could have imagined something worse than to be caged with thieves and murderers, then being manacled in the company of players was certainly it.

There were reasons. Old reasons. But he would not let himself remember it all. The blind hate was enough. He preferred it to the despair the stone and beatings inspired.

He looked through one eye, the other swollen shut from where a boot had caught him during the first night of his stay in Recityv. He stared across through shadows at two men and two women shackled to the opposite wall. Their jailer had painted their faces in rough, garish mockery of their profession, and from time to time made them stand and dance or prattle out some folliet. Whether their performance was to his liking or not, the whip seemed to come with the same intensity. Sutter saw that whip take the eye of one of the women during a song she’d sung unaccompanied to a simple skit.

But neither did his compassion rise too high.

Old wounds.

So when Sutter discovered another cellmate, it was a welcome relief. He had not seen or heard from this other before. This new cellmate had kept himself hidden far back in the crook of the stair, but was given away finally by a moan in his sleep; no other sound came. Sutter, listening closely, realized this other’s bindings were of rope rather than chain.

“Why are you here?” Sutter asked.

The man remained silent for a time, then finally said, “I was deemed unfit for my throne.” A sad laugh followed. He sounded young.

Sutter liked the genuine sound of it. “You’re from Recityv?”

“Not hardly. You won’t have heard of my homeland: Risill Ond. We’re nestled against the eastern ocean beyond the Wood of Isiliand.”

“You’re right. Never heard of it. And you’re the king?” Sutter’s skepticism rang in his words.

Again the easy laugh. “My people put away courts and high politics so many generations gone that we had to consult our oldest books to remember our own sigil.”

“And what was that?” Sutter found himself grateful for the sudden conversation down in the dark.

“A scythe,” the young man said.

Sutter could feel the honest surprise on his own face. “And why a scythe?”

“We’re farmers.”

A full silence settled between them.

“What is your name?” Sutter finally asked.

“I am Thalen Dumal. But I am no king. All our land has ever known is the peace of planting and harvest. We’ve lived our lives by the cycles of the crop for as long as there’ve been people in Risill Ond. But we did once have royalty of a kind. And when the convocation was called, a very old oath was remembered. My ancestors made those promises when we still had a palace and courtiers. I would rather be with my crops again than have come to Recityv.”

At that, Sutter nodded agreement. “My name is Sutter. I’m familiar with the dirt myself.”

“Then you see the senseless waste of this whole affair.”

“I don’t know. But if you feel that way, why come?” Sutter probed at his swollen eye.

“We were obligated. I was obligated. When the Second Promise was issued long ago and we were asked to answer, my ancestors went. But we had no army, so a vote was held, and our unmarried men who had seen the Change were called upon. They marched to Recityv, bearing the only weapons they knew, scythes. For it, the contingent out of Risill Ond were named the Reapers. They were among the few who went into the fray beside the men from Recityv. And in fulfillment of our oath, we vowed to honor Recityv’s call should it ever come again.

“It came. But because we don’t observe all the traditions of a ruling class in Risill Ond, there were no special vestments to wear or standards to fly. My mother stitched our emblem into an old, thin carpet.” There was no shame in Thalen’s voice. “And when we arrived, I was promptly taken in by some leagueman and questioned. But it was not a mere routine check, or worry over what vices we might observe. They seek to push their influence into Risill Ond. Imprisoning me leaves our lands essentially unclaimed. Which means our seat at the convocation is unclaimed. The League will claim it, and then a
civil
contingent will come to our lands—something we’ve been able to avoid until now.”

“How have you managed that?” Sutter asked.

“I told you. There are no palaces. No royalty. We are small and remote. But then … the Reapers are known for the steadfastness they showed when the Second Promise failed. So we have a seat here by tradition. The League is trying to gain as many votes as it can so that when the convocation convenes, they’ll be able to achieve their own ambitions. The regent…” Thalen’s voice softened. “It will be the end of her when they do.”