Chapter Eighty-Seven. The Beginning and the End, at Once.
Eighty-Seven
The Beginning and the End, at Once.
The rest of the trip is a blur. I do what I can to respond to Merc in a way that’s appropriate, but he’s not stupid.
He knows I’m somewhere far off from him, even as I travel in his wake.
Except I cannot speak any of this to him.
The implications are too epic and awful, and maybe he wouldn’t believe me.
I know I didn’t. I know I still try to mount pathetic, hedging excuses.
But now I know the why of me, and having seen the truth, who I am cannot be buried in my mind once more.
So caught up in my own head am I that I fail to notice that the landscape is becoming familiar, that we’re entering the trees I grew up with, and passing by the plants I foraged for, and crossing the streams I visited back when only my daily life was complicated, not all of Anathos and my legacy, too.
What finally brings me back and grounds me in the present, as the afternoon light tilts well toward the horizon, is the smell of burning wood.
It’s subtle at first, but gathers increasing saturation, until the insides of my nostrils tingle and I sneeze. Through my relentless, crushing introspection, a warning registers, but it’s not before I feel wrapped in the stench that I realize there’s only one thing that could be causing this.
I glance around in a frantic twist, and recognize our precise location.
“Stay sharp,” Merc mutters. “There’s something wrong—”
And that’s when the trees part and the horror is presented.
My village has been burned to the ground.
I release a primal scream and heel Lavante forward, as if I could do anything, as if it weren’t far, far too late.
Plumes of gray and black smoke rise out of the protective wall, as if the whole of it is a chimney.
The bridge is down, but even the great planks of that crossover have been cindered, and indeed, dead, bloated balas, boiled by the heat, float on the fetid surface of the moat, which is much, much lower than it has ever been.
A stew cooked down by an unholy stove.
Lavante balks at my attempt to get him to go across the bridge, so the next thing I know, I’m dismounting and leaving him there, without regard to whether he’ll run off or where Merc is. I stumble down the planks, jumping from solid part to solid, while keeping my eyes on what’s ahead.
Ashes. Ruins. Cinders still smoking.
Bodies.
As I break out into the village proper, I pass the two large SP symbols that have been painted in blood on either side of the archway, and skid to a halt in front of the Gauntlet.
The pub and lodging house is a burned-out shell, and still I step into the charred remains, reconstructing out of the destruction what once was, overlaying the memories of the bar and its crabby tender, and the working girls, and Mr. Lewis holding court at his table up by the door.
I even remember how it stood just as I left, the chairs upturned as I was searched for, Mr. Lewis sitting with a satchel and a box, untouched ale at his elbow and a lantern in front of his drawn, pudgy face.
I cover my mouth to keep from screaming, to keep the stench out, to deny everything that I’m stepping over, the tankards and plates, the silverware and nails, all that remain, but for the biggest of the support beams and the heart of the stairs.
Even though it makes no sense, I shuffle forward, tripping and falling, catching myself until my palms are black from ashes, until I get to where my little home was.
Or about where it was. Some of the second floor has fallen down on the first, so I can’t really get close for the still-smoking ruination.
Tears are flowing down my face, for I know my connection to all of this now—and it’s not as a banished member of this village I grew up in.
My father is coming to find me. That’s why the demons are stalking the night. He’s looking for me.
It seems somehow fitting that this truth resonates as I come to the stairwell that’s collapsed down into a tangle so dense, it couldn’t completely burn, but certainly managed to destroy all of my personal effects. Not that any of that matters.
I have to keep going.
Spilling back out into the lane, like one of the drunks that are no more, I continue on to Mare’s.
The old shoemaker’s shop is utterly disintegrated, and I think of the blankets I stole from the public house for her, and the tea I made her to ease her pains, and how she hated when I made a fuss over her, and loved every moment I spent in her company.
When did this happen, I wonder as I put my hand out and feel the heat still emanating from a metal hinge.
Last night. It happened … last night.
As I continue on, I realize I’m retracing the steps I took the evening I tried to run from the farrier, the evening Merc arrived, and everything started—
“The girls!”
Racing down the lane, I spill out into the village square. The farrier’s shop is destroyed, nothing left except for his forge—
“His death…” I whisper.
When I looked into his eyes, and saw him aflamed, in the throes of his final miseries, I got it wrong. I wasn’t seeing an accident at his work. I was seeing … this.
He was burned, like all the villagers were, good and bad.
What about those girls, I think desperately. Is there any chance the eldest one, who took care of the others, got them out? Had the way she kept them from their father all those years helped her survive when the purifiers came?
I picture those children cowering in that filthy kitchen, with all those chicken bones on the table.
I keep going, although really, what for. The marketplace is obliterated, the stalls the vendors would cycle through nothing but ash, the central gazebo where the mayor would make his pompous announcements just a partial roof and some singed steps.
The SP symbols have been painted on the lane, on what’s left of the shops, on those few row houses which have partially survived—
The sound of hoof falls precedes Merc’s arrival in the village square, and he’s as grim as I’ve ever seen him as he strides over to me, leading both horses along.
Before I think about it, I run to him and he captures me against him, holding me tight.
“I am sorry,” he says into my hair.
I pull back. “It came from Prosperitus. Only the royal court there has enough manpower to do … this.”
Breaking away, I pace around, seeing only details I cannot abide: Part of a burned hand clawing its way out of a cluster of blackened boards, the skeleton of a young child held by the remains of a parent, someone’s shoes kicked off, perhaps as they tried to run from palace soldiers riding fast horses with sharp swords and torches over their shoulders.
“They would have killed the men first,” I say hoarsely. “And then moved to the women and children.”
I cover my eyes. Then rub them. Neither helps get the images out of my mind.
“And then they burned it all to the ground … and left the symbols of salvation drawn in the blood of innocents.”
There’s great evil in the Fulcrum. But at least one can fight that front and center.
Pernicious superstition is a beast made of shadows and smoke.
“They might have lived.” I look at Merc. “If we had fought the Dark King last night, they might have lived—”
“Sorrel—”
“—and they could have stayed here. They could have lived their lives with their children, in their homes, behind the wall—”
“Sorrel.”
The way he says my name gets through to me and I wheel around.
As I look at him, I know that I’m receiving another lifelong memory of the man: The way he stands there, the reins of the horses in one hand, that broadsword handle peeking over his shoulder, his boots planted like certainly, if he had been here, the attack would have gone down differently … is something I will never forget.
At least I’m no longer worried he will leave me. We’re in this together.
Whatever it may be.
Whatever may come.