Chapter 9 #3
I look up, finally, from where I’ve been staring at the ground, and I meet the only set of eyes that seems as aghast as I am. The Vagabond Paladin looks ill. The one person I absolutely can’t afford to be in harmony with is the only one who sees this as I do.
“It’s a dirge,” I say woodenly.
“Yes, it’s really too bad. It should have a happy part,” the High Saint says, and his saccharine smile matches his song.
I close my eyes so that I can try to stop imagining myself with my hands around his throat.
“Isn’t it lovely?” he asks.
“It’s meant to be bittersweet.” My voice is controlled.
“Well, it was only bitter, but I’ve put the sweet in it. Supper?”
My eyes snap open.
He’s offering me an open smile.
After insulting my Aspect of the God.
As if I won’t spill his guts right here.
Get a hold of yourself, Adalbrand.
With all my discipline, I clench my jaw and turn, walking straight to Hefertus’s tent and throwing myself into my bedroll.
It’s early. Too early to sleep, but not too early to lose myself in all the pain I took, and pretend that I’m not so annoyed by a paladin from another order that I want to see how purple I can make his face before I let him breathe again.
Do you think that’s extreme?
Then you don’t understand devotion. You don’t understand what it’s like to give your whole life to a love too great for one heart — to hold your tiny piece of it safe within, to protect it at all costs, to feed that flame with whatever shreds of hope or friendship you have.
If you don’t understand it, then you don’t understand paladins. And you don’t understand me.
And you don’t understand that sometimes we’re angry at one thing because we’re frustrated with another.
I fall asleep wanting to chew rocks.
I wake to what sounds like a muffled sob.
My eyes flick open, alert in an instant, but I freeze.
Hefertus’s deep breathing from his bedroll on the other side of the tent is even. I see his large form faintly in the darkness. Light from the campfire still makes navigation almost possible despite the darkness. I slip from my blankets.
It’s cold outside the tent. It was cold inside the tent, but our combined body heat was enough to keep things just slightly warmer than the air outside. I shiver in the cold, muscles tensing uncomfortably around wounds both real and magical.
The light of the banked fire is stronger here — a dull crimson glow like the inside of the womb.
I scan the semi-circle by its gleam. Beside our tent is the Majester General’s thick canvas. It steams in the night air. He’s inside, then.
To the other side of us is the door to nothing. A heap rolled in blankets lies against the door. I only know it’s the Vagabond because her devil dog is sprawled half over her.
Past her is a filmy white tent that is half hammock, half shelter, like some monstrous cocoon. That can only be the Penitent Paladin. It moves as he turns in his sleep.
I glance up at the moon and reckon it to be midway through the night. It’s shifted again. Moved just a fraction to reveal more land north and east of here.
A heavy leather tent is next, guarded by both golems. Their banked-ember eyes pierce the darkness, watching me like twin demons. I shiver again. I must think on how to keep them above ground. I would not like to be in an enclosed space with one of these hulking creations. I don’t trust them.
The High Saint’s tent is as plain as him. I try not to glare at it.
I skip to the black brocaded tent of the Hand of Justice. It is wonderfully made but worn. From within, snores like cutting birch logs emerge. Hefertus should be glad his only friend wasn’t the renowned former king.
It’s from the last tent that the crying sounds again.
I hurry to the many-layered tent of the Seer.
If she is ill or in pain, it is my duty to ease her troubles.
And I would also be pleased to help. It bothers me how many ills she carries with her already.
I would not see more added to her collection.
“Lady Paladin?” I whisper as I reach her tent. I feel a slight warmth coming from the entrance. She’s in there. The door of the tent flutters like the edges of flayed flesh. “Are you unwell?”
A moan is the only reply.
I clench my jaw. She sounds like she’s in pain, but the first thing you learn as a squire is that pushing your way into another paladin’s tent is a great way to get a sword blade right to the throat.
“I’m coming into your tent to help,” I murmur. “Please, do not kill me.”
I think I hear a grunt, but I’m not sure. I take a deep breath and push my head into her tent.
My eyes are still adjusting to the darkness when a hand snakes out, seizes me by the throat, and I am launched backward through the door with a heap of paladin on top of me.
She’s wrapped in layers of rags so that I don’t know where paladin ends and rags begin.
I hit the ground hard, seeing stars, and then her face is right there, white eyes tinted coral in the firelight. She’s lighter than I expected.
“I’ve looked and looked again,” she says, her breath sawing out of her lungs. It stinks of fear. “At the end of every road is death.”
“And such is true for all of us, sister,” I whisper gently, trying to get a hold of her shoulders so I can ease her weight off my chest. My aching ribs feel like they might give. It’s only a perception. I’ve taken the pain in the ribs but mine are actually undamaged. But perceptions can feel real.
“Every vision is the same no matter the decision. There is no path out.” She bats her hands frantically at my chest. “How can I prevent it? How can I stop it?”
I try to soothe her. “All is in the hands of the God.”
“You don’t listen, boy.” She grabs the front of my jerkin and shakes me. “It all ends in evil. It all ends in death. I see no way forward except through blood.” Her eyes roll back in her head and her jaw clenches as she begins to shudder and shake, seizing right on top of me.
I manage to finally get a grip on her and spin her so that she’s on her back.
My hands find her face and I try to take her pain, her misery — but whatever this is, it is not a thing I can take from her. I drop my hands, stymied, reciting a prayer in a frantic whisper.
When she finally stops shuddering and is still, I lift her and carry her back to her bed. Her breathing slows and evens and I think she is asleep, but I am deeply troubled. What has she seen that has left her in this state?
I can’t go back to my bed. I wait outside the entrance of her tent, pull out the rosary my paladin superior gave me when I ascended, and say prayers as my fingers skim along the teeth that comprise the rosary beads.
“A Poisoned Saint must know two things, Adalbrand,” he’d told me. “Prayer and body. Know the body so you may heal it. Know the prayers that you may know the one who heals. That’s why I give you this string of teeth.”
Now, as I feel them and pray, I wonder what manner of beads might be on the rosary for a Seer. If they pray by the beads, I’ve never seen it. Maybe they string visions together. Maybe hers have been stolen away.
When dawn paints the distant sea, I am drowsy and swaying. But I breathe a sigh of relief when I see the Seer come out of her tent. She is arrayed head to toe in armor, two swords swinging on her hips, a tabard of filmy fabric like the raiments of ghosts flutters over solid steel.
“Are you feeling well now, Lady Paladin?” I ask her.
She says nothing, but her pearly gaze finds my face somehow and she presses a shred of parchment into my palm.
She’s already limping off when I read the ill-formed letters scrawled madly on the scrap.
I saw into the depths and he took my eyes, listened to the future and he took my ears, warned of the cataclysm and he took my tongue.