Mickey Zucker Reichert - By Chaos Cursed (13 page)

Bolverkr’s eyebrows arched, smoothing some of the creases from his features. “Doesn’t matter? But of course it matters, Silme. It’s nature’s way to destroy the weak and see that the strong live on to create a better, more vital and significant world. Food, time, and space are wasted on the weak. The mediocre drag us all under, prevent us from becoming the best we can. Come with me, Silme. We’ll make the nine worlds perfect.”

Bolverkr’s philosophy seemed vaguely familiar to Silme. She followed the memory to its source, the dark-skinned diamond-rank master who had been her half-brother, Bramin. She recalled his wanton destruction and deadly rages, the dragons he called down upon villages on a whim. She remembered the great beasts swooping, gouting fire on innocent townsmen and their cottages, their screams wound through with Bramin’s laughter.

Another image filled Silme’s mind. She thought of the hovel that had served as her only home for ten years, then, later as a blessed vacation from her training at the Dragon-rank school. But her last vision of the cottage pained. Her mother’s broken body sprawled on the floor of the main room, her arms gashed from defending herself from her own son’s knife. The corpse of Silme’s younger brother dangled, decapitated, from the loft stairs. She had found her sister lifeless in her bed, and even the baby was not spared. Silme discovered her youngest sibling chopped in the cooking pot, as if prepared for some hideous stew. Every one had died at Bramin’s hand to fulfill some ghastly, Chaos-inspired vengeance against Silme’s interference, as if the dark sorcerer had forgotten this family had once nurtured him as well.

“Go away!” Silme shrank from Bolverkr. “Don’t you know what Chaos does to people? It robs them of mercy, of kindness and forgiveness.”

Bolverkr dropped his hand. “Chaos brings only vitality and power. You may choose to do as you wish with that power.”

Silme shook her head, aware her arguments would prove fruitless. The Chaos had poisoned Bolverkr beyond retrieval.
And my insistence, in the dream, that he surrender is the cause.
“Go away. I’m not interested in what you offer, and my friends never meant you any harm. Can’t you just leave us alone?”

Bolverkr’s cheeks turned scarlet, and his face lapsed into angry creases. “Your friends destroyed a legacy I spent my life building. They killed my wife and my unborn child, shredded my home, slaughtered every person I loved. That crime can only be paid in blood.”

Silme bit her lip.

Bolverkr’s patient tenderness vanished. “You, my dear Silme, have a choice. You know I can kill your so-called friends any time I choose. You can come with me, share my love and power, or you can die with them. That, my lady, would be a waste and a pity.” Bolverkr turned away. A moment later, his magics crackled through the glade, trailing a wake of gray-white smoke. Bolverkr was gone.

Silme sagged to the ground, feeling spent and queasy, though her aura filled the clearing with a vibrant blue glow. She clutched the fetus to her protectively. Its aura hovered within her, more alert and vigorous than ever before.
It’s so real, so alive. I can’t let it die.
Yet, Silme knew Bolverkr had spoken the truth.
He could kill us at his leisure. Our only hope lies in my using my magic against Bolverkr. Even I’m not powerful enough to stand against him, but if we all work together, it just might be possible.
Silme let the thought trail, afraid to contemplate the possibilities and consequences. It had become her way to compute the odds, to determine even her most spontaneous courses of action by the probability of success and the way that harmed the fewest innocents. It had made her suggestions intelligent and reasonable, the kind that others accepted with due seriousness. Now, she felt muddled and confused, not wanting to assess Bolverkr’s abilities because it might drag her morale deeper into the quagmire.

One course of action permeated Silme’s thoughts.
I could take the Chaos Bolverkr offers, then turn that power against him while it’s still renegade and not yet assimilated to me and the baby.
Logic interceded.
I tried that before, and it didn’t work. Even infused slowly, the Chaos binds too quickly.
Silme recalled the contact she had created with Bolverkr, her intention then to take just enough Chaos to allow her to transport. But the smallest taste of that renegade power had made her crazy for more. Only her last rebelling spark of morality had allowed her to rechannel that Chaos to her rankstone. Its sheer volume had shattered her sapphire irrevocably, returning the Chaos to Bolverkr.
If I accept his gift of Chaos, it will destroy me. Our only chance is to fight with what we have.
Yet the thought of killing her baby seemed more evil and alien than attempting to tap Bolverkr’s Chaos again.

Silme buried her face in her arms.
I can’t tell the others about Bolverkr’s visit. It would destroy them.
Silme justified her silence by recalling the dark atmosphere of depression that seemed to surround her friends since their defeat.
Nothing bad has come of it, no need for them to know.

Deep within her, the Chaos that had become Silme’s supported the decision.

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned!

—Alexander Pope
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady

Taziar Medakan threaded through the forest east of Cullinsberg, attuned to the nearly inaudible rustle of woodland creatures fleeing ahead and the louder sounds of his companions behind him.
They’re right, of course. There’s no need or reason to return to Cullinsberg. Ever.
Sorrow crushed in on him, heavy and densely suffocating. It was the second time he had run from his home city, a bounty on his head and grief filling his heart. Yet, before, he had always harbored a spark of hope that he would return, that the baron would forget the transgressions of one small thief for graver matters in the city of Cullinsberg. Now, a bleak sense of permanency hung over the exodus, like a lead weight dangling from Taziar’s shoulders. It held the dark, unalterable hopelessness accompanying thoughts of death. The city of Taziar’s birth, loves, hopes, and friendships had become a city of deaths, imprisonments, and torture.
It’s over.
Taziar’s perspective had always been one of beginnings, an acceptance of changes and hardships as challenges to be met with enthusiasm. But the baron’s city of Cullinsberg had always remained his single anchoring focus, a place he knew by rote, a home that had outlasted his family.

Taziar pressed through a stand of pine, pausing to let his companions catch up. Silme came first, her mouth in a grim line that revealed thoughts as stormy as his own. Astryd followed, swept into the lengthy silence. Her shoulders sagged, she kept her gaze rolled toward the needle-covered ground, and she carried her garnet-tipped dragonstaff in a carelessly loose grip. Behind her, Larson stopped, drew the sword Taziar had given him, and examined the flat and edges with a scowl that appeared indelibly etched onto his features. It seemed to Taziar as if the elf would spend the rest of his life comparing a weapon Taziar had purchased from a roadside stand to the life-culminating labor of a Japanese swordsmith.

Guilt flickered through Taziar.
Here I am bemoaning the loss of a childhood village while my friends need comforting.
Repeatedly, Taziar’s rallying speeches had kindled his friends to their best efforts, making the impossible seem merely difficult. But Taziar had played all his cards. His friends had grown numb to the reminders of past prowess and successes, and the rout at Bolverkr’s castle cast a pall over every previous accomplishment. This time, even Taziar did not have the answers.
But I have to do something to raise my friends’ spirits.

Taziar considered, shoving aside his own sadness and discomfort for the cause of his friends’ morale. He kept his voice cheerful and his tone optimistic. “You’ll love Mittlerstadt. It’s got the area’s finest blacksmith, and the Thirsty Stallion makes a great meal, not to mention a decent glass of beer ...” Taziar turned and pressed onward, threading through the trees, touting a village he had never visited with half-truths gleaned from friends or outright lies. His companions knew he had spent most of his life in Cullins-berg, yet they had no way of knowing he had never left its walls until after his twenty-first birthday, and then only with the baron’s guardsmen at his heels. Aside from merchants and messengers, few people left the city’s comforts for a cold, lonely ride through desolate woodlands.

Taziar glanced over his shoulder as he detoured around a tight grouping of trees with vine-choked lower branches. “... the typical friendly hospitality of a farm town....” Taziar’s words seemed to have little effect on his companions. Silme shuffled after him mechanically. Larson had sheathed the sword in order to facilitate movement through brush, but he kept his fist clutched to the hilt, as if to memorize it by feel. The flight of each songbird sent him skittering into a tense defense. Astryd kept her hands near her face, hiding her emotions from friends too absorbed with their own concerns to take notice of hers anyway.

The forest grew sparser. Ancient oaks and towering pines gave way to fragile, young locusts and poplars. Gradually, the trees disappeared, replaced by fields of broken, brown stalks and unrecognizable tangles of harvested vines. Taziar quieted, mulling new tactics to bolster confidence. Simple, happy conversation did not seem to be having a noticeable effect. Recently, humor seemed to enrage rather than soothe Silme; yet Taziar considered resorting to gibes and jokes because they seemed to improve Larson’s mood, at least. The Climber had finally settled on a direct, confrontational approach when a subtle change in the patterns of the fields drew his attention.

Taziar discarded his current abstraction to study the area for the source of his discomfort. Behind him, the forest loomed. In front of him, the sun hung over lifeless fields, sprinkling golden highlights amid a flatland of brown earth and vegetation. In the distance, the village of Mittlerstadt huddled, a black spot on the horizon. Smoke twined from the town, the narrow stalks of gray diffusing among the clouds.
Cook fires
, Taziar guessed. His gait grew more cautious as he focused on his other senses. Wind ruffled the standing stalks, and Taziar sorted the shuffles of his companions’ feet from habit. No other sound met his hearing. He would have expected to have disturbed red deer grazing the few dried grains missed at harvest or for some noises to drift over the open fields from the town, but the relative quiet did not seem significant enough to have caught his notice.

Still, Taziar’s sense of alarm grew stronger as he dismissed potential causes, rather than bringing the reassurance he would have expected. He stopped, casting a sideways glance at his companions, not wanting to worry them with vague and nameless concerns. Silme drew up beside him. Astryd remained self-absorbed. Larson walked with stiff caution, eyes slitted and nostrils widened.

Cued by Larson’s manner, Taziar sniffed the air, concentrating on the mingled odors that had grown familiar so gradually he had dismissed them. He discovered an acrid tinge too strong for hearths and a stench beneath it that he recognized as the root of his growing discomfort. He turned to face Larson and Astryd. “Do you smell ... ?” He broke off, not quite certain how to describe it.