The Iron Palace (2 page)

“I don’t know.”

“Better look.”

Toby walked hesitantly to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out. A sodden form lay motionless on the ground. A hand wrapped in filthy bandages still gripped a belled staff. The derelict was dressed in layers of rags and so wrapped with bandages that it was impossible to tell if a man or a woman had collapsed in the mud. “ ’Tis here,” Toby called back to his wife. “Mayhap ’tis dead.”

“Oh nay!” exclaimed the women. “If ’tis dead, then the
curse will pass to us!” She grabbed a broom, opened the door wider, and prodded the still figure with the broom handle. “ ’Tis alive yet!”

“Pah, woman. ’Twas yer proddin’ that made it move.”

Then the couple heard a soft moan. “Get the wheelbarrow,” said the wife. “It hasn’t died yet. Ye can take it to the hermit.”

“But that means I’ll have to touch it!”

“Do ye want yer fingers and toes to rot off?” asked the woman. “ ’Cause ’twill happen if the curse passes to us.”

The man said nothing, but he threw on his cloak and exited the hut, giving the prone figure a wide berth as he did so. Soon he returned with a rickety, wooden wheelbarrow. “Ye’ll have to help me lift the wretch,” he said.

The body had the stature of a man, but when the couple hefted it into the wheelbarrow there seemed little substance beneath the soaked rags. Nonetheless, the body’s putrescent stench made lifting it a trial. They gagged from the odor that evoked disgusting images of what the filthy rags and bandages hid. Those images spurred the old man as he pushed his loathsome load across the field. Upon reaching the muddy road, he headed for the hermit’s abode.
Don’t die
, the peasant pleaded silently.
Don’t die yet
.

Toby’s destination was the ruin that housed a solitary man with a reputation for taking in the unwanted. The hermit, whose name no one knew, had lived there for many winters. A few folk said he was holy, while most claimed he was ill omened and kept their distance. Toby was one of the latter, and he had no qualms over leaving a cursed one at the man’s door.

After passing through fields and woods, the road headed uphill toward the remnant of a castle. The stronghold of some forgotten lord, it had fallen long ago in an equally forgotten battle. Over the intervening generations, most of its stones had been carted away to build humbler structures, but the massive blocks of the keep remained. The hermit
lived among them. By the time Toby reached the jagged-topped hulk, he was breathing hard. To his eyes, the ruin was an impressive sight, the largest building he’d ever seen. It was also an eerie place and haunted by all accounts. The rain and darkness enhanced that impression, and the peasant was anxious to finish his task and depart.

The keep’s gateway was high upon its wall. The gate and the stone ramp leading up to it had disappeared long ago, so that the gateway seemed more like a huge window in the roofless wall than an entrance. A sizable crack in the wall’s base served as the current means to enter. Toby pushed his wheelbarrow through it into the keep’s lowest level. There, the thick walls of the basement storerooms remained, although all the floors above were gone. One of those storerooms had been roofed over to become the hermit’s home.

Toby removed the cursed one’s belled staff from the wheelbarrow before tipping its load in front of the closed door. Then he struck the staff against the flagstones hard and rapidly to jangle its bells. That done, he dropped the staff on the still figure by his feet, grabbed the handles of his wheelbarrow, and fled into the night.

D
AVEN SLEPT
lightly and had wakened when the wheelbarrow’s wooden wheel rumbled over the ruined keep’s stone floor. Nevertheless, he didn’t greet his late-night visitor. The hermit’s residence was the dumping place for sick and dying strangers, and he assumed that whoever was bringing someone to his doorway would prefer not to be seen. The
jangle of bells confirmed his assumption.
Another cursed one
, he thought. Daven waited until his visitor had departed before opening the door.

The hermit didn’t fear the wretch he found there, for he didn’t believe the rotting curse passed to anyone upon death. He had cared for—and buried—nearly a dozen of those so afflicted with no ill effect. Nevertheless, he saw the benefit of the superstition, for it offered the cursed some protection. Likewise, the practice of giving them food to go away gave them a means to survive. It was a miserable existence, and Daven pitied the cursed. Despite their repellent and malodorous bodies, he made it his work to care for them as atonement for a deed that continued to haunt him.

The still form beyond the doorway smelled like a corpse, so Daven felt for a pulse. When he found a faint one, he gently dragged the cursed one into his home to tend him or her. First he lit a fire, then filled a pot with water and set it on the flames to warm. Afterward, he turned his attention to the cursed one’s bandages. The soiled wrappings that the cursed wore served mostly to hide their sores. Seldom changed, they usually did more harm than good. Daven unwrapped a hand first, expecting to find festering stumps where fingers had been.

Instead, the hand was perfectly intact. Daven stared at it for a moment in surprise before exposing the other hand and finding it in the same condition. Then he pulled mud-caked cloth from around a foot. Not a toe was missing. The remaining foot proved equally undamaged. Nevertheless, something was rotting. Daven temporarily ignored the mystery of why someone would bandage healthy limbs and uncovered the face. When its wrapping fell away, he uttered a sharp cry and jerked back.

The face was that of a man. Though gaunt and covered with grizzled stubble, it was whole and without a single sore. Nonetheless, the face was marked, but not by affliction. It bore tattoos that made it appear frozen in a moment of rage.
Dark-blue lightning flashed down a furrowed brow and scowl lines were needled into the sunken cheeks. The closed eyes lay in pools of permanent shadow. In the dim light, the effect was menacing, but that wasn’t why Daven was so startled. His last encounter with a Sarf—for the man’s tattoos marked him as one—had nearly cost him his life. If his pursuer had been able to swim, Daven would have surely perished. He still had nightmares in which the Sarf found him to finish his assault. The man before him was a different Sarf, but for an unsettling moment, Daven thought the wrath needled on the face might be directed toward him.

That moment passed, and Daven calmed. The unconscious man had no sword, neither was he dressed in the customary dark blue. It seemed that the goddess had not sent him in retribution. Although Daven didn’t recognize the face of the unconscious man, he recognized his tattoo. He hadn’t seen it for more than twenty winters, but it was unforgettable.
He was Theodus’s Sarf
, thought Daven. That was all he knew of him; he couldn’t remember the man’s name.

Daven turned his attention to caring for the unconscious Sarf. Thinking the source of the smell might be a festering wound, he began to undress him. When he removed a grime-covered overblouse, he found the decayed carcass of a hare dangling from the Sarf’s neck like a pendant. It was the origin of the disgusting smell. Daven disposed of the carcass outside and burned the clothes tainted by its stench.

The Sarf lay unconscious throughout the process, and he remained so when Daven removed the rest of his clothes to bathe him. The man’s body was almost skeletal. It was also filthy and crisscrossed with old scars. A jagged one that ran from the collarbone past the navel looked as if it should have been fatal. Yet the most remarkable thing about the Sarf’s body was its chill. Usually the extremities of those suffering from exposure were colder than the torso, but the opposite was true with the unconscious man. That suggested
an otherworldly cause.
A spell?
wondered Daven. He might learn the answer if the man revived.

When the water in the pot was warm, Daven gently washed the stranger’s face, limbs, and chest before rolling him over to cleanse his back. He knew that he’d find runes tattooed there, but it didn’t lessen his unease at the sight of them. The text they inscribed was both holy and secret. A Sarf couldn’t read it, and uncovered the tattoos only for his Bearer, the holy one who was his master. Daven hadn’t seen such inscriptions for more than eighteen winters. The runes tattooed on his Sarf—the same Sarf who had tried to kill him—were minimal compared to the extensive text needled on the stranger’s back.

Better than anyone, Daven knew he shouldn’t gaze at the marks. He was no longer a Bearer, and the unconscious man wasn’t his Sarf. Moreover, Daven felt unworthy. He had turned his back on Karm. His Sarf had every right to slay him. Sometimes Daven wished that he had. Yet, worthy or not, the former Bearer felt drawn to the runes, and the impulse to read them quickly became irresistible. With trembling fingers, he reached out and brushed the archaic letters that transcribed an ancient language.

With so much time having passed since Daven had last read such a text, he struggled to decipher it. It didn’t read like a narrative, for the Seers who made such marks wrote puzzles for which life provided the missing pieces. Their guidance wasn’t meant for the Sarf but for his Bearer, and Daven felt like a sneak thief rummaging through another’s most private possessions. He rummaged nevertheless, enthralled by what he discovered.

It was nearly dawn when Daven tore himself away from the runes. He dressed the stranger in a clean tunic and laid him on the mat that served as his bed. By then, he was convinced that Karm had sent the Sarf, not to slay him but to redeem him. His eyes teared at the notion of it.
Karm’s truly the Goddess of Compassion
, he thought. However, the
wonder of his redemption paled compared to a greater marvel. The runes had only hinted at it, yet those hints had stirred Daven to the core. He felt both energized and profoundly anxious.
Light and darkness will soon contend over the world’s fate
. The outcome was far from certain, but the runes said that he had a role in the struggle. Daven resolved to do his utmost to fulfill it. He worried that he might fail, for there was much he didn’t understand, despite numerous readings of the text.

Daven peered outside. The rain had stopped. The day promised to be a fair one, and he strolled out his door to witness its dawn. As Daven watched the eastern sky brighten and turn rosy, his thoughts returned to the enigmatic text on the Sarf’s back. One name was woven throughout, and he didn’t even know if it was that of a man or a woman. His only certainty was that much depended on someone named Yim.

W
HILE
D
AVEN
waited for the sun to rise, Roarc poled his reed boat along a narrow waterway that lay far to the north. The channel’s tea-colored water was hemmed by reeds so tall they could have served as walls in a maze. Having lived his entire life in the Grey Fens, Roarc had spent nearly fifty winters navigating its tangled waters; yet even he got lost sometimes. He was in no danger of that at the moment, for his destination was his home. It was a limestone outcropping that fensfolk call a “hite.” It jutted like a tiny mountaintop from the bog. Though in plain sight, reaching
it by boat required threading a complicated course, which the fensman did with the assurance of long familiarity.

By Roarc’s bare feet lay the night’s takings from the traps, several dozen small fish. Additionally, there was a pair of traps that needed repair. Woven from reeds, they resembled spherical baskets with openings in the shape of inverted cones. Mending and making fish traps was a task for his wife, Rappali. She was skilled at reedwork, while Roarc—who was fifteen winters her senior—had stiffened fingers.

The waterway ended a fair distance from the hite. Roarc pulled his craft onto a sodden bank, took his catch and the fish traps, and followed a path to his home. The well-worn trail was easy to follow, but like the waterway, its route was irregular, for firm ground was rare in the fens. Much of the bog’s lush plant life grew on floating mats of decayed vegetation that gave way when trod upon. A careless step could get one soaked or worse, so Roarc stuck to the path. When he reached the hite, the ground became stony and solid. Soon he was ascending the steep-sided outcropping to reach his home.

From the pathway he had a commanding view of the fens, and Roarc paused to observe the sunrise. To the north, about half a morning’s journey by boat, lay the wide Turgen River. It invaded the fens by a maze of narrow waterways that petered out near Tararc Hite, the home of Roarc and his nearest kin. To the south were the fens proper. From where the fensman stood, it seemed a vast and lush prairie, not a treacherous, reedy bog. Scattered about the fens were thousands of limestone outcroppings. They came in all sizes. Some were no bigger than boulders, while a few looked like little mountains, complete with forests growing on their sides. Many, like Tararc Hite, were inhabited.

Roarc’s home had been chiseled into the southern slope of the hite about halfway to its summit. Ten paces deep, it was sizable by fens standards, for many generations of Roarc’s family had enlarged it. The front of the cavity was walled
off with a stone facade that featured an ancient wooden door and a chimney flanked by two shuttered windows. The homes of Roarc’s younger brothers, which lay elsewhere on the hite, were less grand and more cramped. When Roarc turned the bend, he saw Rappali already at work tilling the terraced field by the dwelling’s entrance. He was pleased to see that. He was less pleased to see a goat tied near his doorway.

Rappali seemed to have anticipated Roarc’s reaction, for she set down her mattock and greeted him with more good cheer than usual. “Good morn, husband. ’Tis a fine night’s catch ya brought.”

Roarc frowned. “I see tha goat girl came.”

“Aye, last eve.”

“That girl lacks sense. All tha way from Far Hite in tha eve. Tha fens will swallow her yet!”

“Yim’s no girl,” replied Rappali, “so why call her one? Her lad’s almost as old as our Telk, ’bout seventeen winters by my reckoning.”

“I name her girl ’cause she looks and acts like one. Raising a lad without a man! ’Tisn’t fitting!”