Well of Sorrows (40 page)

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Authors: Benjamin Tate

BOOK: Well of Sorrows
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Last, he found his parents. Arten, the Armory guardsman, lay a short distance away. Arten had tried to hold the Shadows off as Colin’s parents and a few others fled, but the gesture had been useless. The sukrael had cut him down and sped onward without pausing.
His father lay on his side. He’d stumbled when the sukrael took out his leg, had reached for Colin’s mother as they fell on him. His arm was still outstretched. Colin’s mother had made it another few steps, had crumpled to the ground, half curled, her own arm reaching back, her other hand clutching at Diermani’s tilted cross and the vow beneath her shirt.
Crouching down, Colin laid his hand on his mother’s shoulder. The hard fist of pressure in his chest throbbed once, twice, then stilled.
Closing his eyes, Colin crossed himself—head, chest, shoulder, side—and murmured a half- remembered prayer to Holy Diermani, then kissed the back of her hand.
You’ve never done that before.
Colin hadn’t felt Osserin join him in the past, but he didn’t start in surprise. He didn’t even flinch. Instead, he twisted where he crouched and repeated the gesture and prayer for his father, even though his father hadn’t believed in Diermani as devoutly as his mother had. Then he stood.
Why now?
Osserin asked.
“Because . . .” he began. Fumbling, he said, “Because it felt right. My mother deserved it. My father . . . because of her. And because I’m leaving.”
You’ve never been particularly religious.
Colin smiled, his expression wry. “I wasn’t back then either, to my mother’s dismay.” The smile faded. “But it had its place. It still has its place.”
Osserin said nothing, and after a moment, both of them turned to where the dwarren still fought on the plains before the wagons. The battle had shifted, ranging farther to the south and east, leaving only dead and wounded behind. Carrion birds were already gathering.
The birds reminded Colin of the battle he had yet to investigate in the present.
Always, there are battles on these plains. Always, there is blood.
Colin watched the battle that had trapped the wagon train play out before him. “Why?”
Osserin stirred, shifted forward as if to get a closer look
. We don’t know. It’s been this way for hundreds of years, since the dwarren came. And now, with the introduction of the Alvritshai and of man, it’s become worse. Much worse. You’ve seen them. Alvritshai fighting dwarren. Dwarren fighting men. Men fighting Alvritshai. Even dwarren against dwarren, men against men.
On the plains, the dwarren battle shifted, edging farther from the forest, from the wagons and the Faelehgre.
“It’s senseless. Useless.”
It’s the way of man. And dwarren and, to a lesser extent, Alvritshai. It was the way of the Faelehgre once. It still is.
As Colin turned away, troubled, he caught sight of the swirling black spot on his forearm and shuddered.
Are you finished here
? Osserin asked.
Colin considered, then nodded. “Yes. I’m done.”
And with that, he let the pressure of time still pushing against him carry him forward, felt Osserin traveling with him. The plain blurred, time slipping away so fast he couldn’t distinguish anything in its passage, and then it slowed, settling him back into the present. The wagons had vanished, long gone, the bodies with them, including the bodies of the dwarren and their gaezels. They were replaced with the columns of smoke he’d seen when he first emerged from the forest and the clouds of birds rising and settling like a black fog. The battle itself had played out beyond the nearest ridgeline.
Colin watched the smoke a long moment, frowning, thinking of the dwarren battle in the past, of what Osserin had said.
Always, there is battle on these plains. Always, there is blood.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he said. Without waiting for a response, he trudged forward, through wet grass, the stalks brushing past his knees. By the time he’d reached the top of the hill, his robes were soaked and cumbersome, tangling with his legs.
But the battlefield beyond pushed all of those petty concerns aside.
“Holy Diermani, save us all,” he whispered, and unconsciously crossed himself again.
The field of dead encompassed the breadth of the plains in sight, bodies fallen near and far, horses and gaezels, men and dwarren. Hundreds of them, thousands, impaled on pikes, pierced by spears, riddled with arrows. Armor glinted in the sunlight, much more extensive armor than he remembered any of the Armory guardsmen using in Portstown, heavier, and more protective. The columns of smoke rose from burning supply wagons. Everywhere he looked the carrion birds flocked, their black feathers glistening in the sunlight, their harsh cries echoing across the distance. They hovered close, dozens trying to settle, disturbing those already gorging themselves, others rising as they were shoved out of the way.
And then the wind shifted, blew toward Colin, and the stench of death—of blood and smoke and scorched earth—doubled him over. He gagged, fell to his knees, and retched into the grass, heaving even when there was nothing left to purge.
When it ended, he rose slowly, wiped his mouth as clean as possible with his sleeve and spat to one side. His stomach continued to roil as he climbed back to his feet. Leaning heavily on his staff, he pushed forward, down the edge of the hill. Carrion crows took reluctant flight as he approached, their protests raucous, only to settle back again as he passed, watching him warily. He ignored them all, focused on the bodies, on the death.
He saw men and dwarren both, covered in blood, the earth soaked in it, churned to mud by the passage of the horses and the army. A man with blond hair—his eyes wide and empty, staring up at the sun—lay alone, his chest gaping where a spear had punched into his heart. A few paces beyond, bodies were stacked one on top of the other, thrown there haphazardly, arms and legs askew. An arrow had taken an older man in the throat, one hand still clutching the shaft loosely; another had been slashed as if with a dagger. A few had been trampled into the earth, their faces squashed into the mud, already half buried. Row after row, body after body, arms severed, legs crushed, heads caved in on one side.
And scattered among the men were the bodies of the dwarren. Like the dwarren Colin remembered, they wore long tangled beards, braided with beads in complex patterns. Most had pierced noses and ears with fine chains running from nostril to lobe, a sign of their status in the tribe and their standing in the army. They wore armor, heavier than Colin remembered, like the men, but some of them carried swords and axes; they’d used only spears and arrows when they’d attacked the wagons. He recognized a few of the tribes by the bands of iron around their wrists or farther up on their forearms: Thousand Springs Clan . . . and Silver Grass.
Colin continued deeper into the field, trying to breathe through his mouth, the stench increasing, the bodies growing denser. Horses and gaezels, men and dwarren. They grew thicker, until he was forced to halt because moving forward meant he’d have to step on the dead.
He scanned the near distance, the carrion crows still flocking, their shadow passing over him now, blotting out the sun. “Bold bastards,” he murmured to himself.
Not ten paces away, one dropped from the sky next to another. The one already on the ground flapped its wings and gave a harsh cry of protest, but the other advanced, hopping over the bodies. With a last squawk, the first retreated, taking sudden wing, and the victor settled in to feast. It turned its black gaze on Colin a moment. Then its head darted downward, and after two quick stabs of its beak, it rose, something clutched in its mouth.
An eye.
Colin cried out in outrage, stumbled forward, slipped on the dead and fell as the crow lurched into the sky, wings flapping, its prize held tight. Struggling where he’d fallen, Colin spat a useless curse, his stomach churning again, the taste of vomit still fresh.
And then he looked down.
He’d landed on the bodies of men, their clothes still damp with blood, their flesh soft beneath his hands, the armor chill. But the man he’d fallen on wasn’t really a man. He was just a boy, twelve, with dark hair, a few lighter strands catching the occasional sunlight. His mouth was set in a determined look, gone slack with death, his eyes empty, face rounded. His nose had been broken sometime in the past, but other than that . . .
Other than that, it could have been Colin himself. The Colin he had just seen clutching Karen’s body to his chest.
A shudder passed through Colin’s body, and something gripped his throat. He didn’t lurch upward, didn’t scramble back. The boy’s face, so like his own, held him transfixed, breath caught.
And in that still moment, he realized he’d been asleep, that he’d forced himself into an unnatural slumber in the forest. He’d hidden there from the world, from his parents’ deaths, from Karen’s. He’d willed himself into nonexistence, living off the Well, off the Lifeblood, smothering himself in his grief, just as Osserin and the other Faelehgre had said.
He needed to wake up. If he didn’t, the Lifeblood would claim him. The spot on his wrist would only be the beginning. He’d die, as surely as this boy had died here on the battlefield, a sword lodged in his side. And he realized he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to sleep anymore.
He turned at the sound of a banner flapping in the breeze, the motion startling him out of his paralysis. He glanced once more at the boy’s face, reached to close his eyes and murmur a prayer over him, then climbed carefully to his feet, making certain to place the end of his staff on ground and not flesh. The banner flapped again, a stylized shield on a background divided in half diagonally, one side red, the other yellow, a banner he didn’t recognize. He hadn’t traveled outside dwarren territory on his excursions, had only made it to the Escarpment—what they had once called the Bluff—and the edge of human lands. Frowning, he searched for more banners, looking for the colors on the overshirts and surplices, the sigils stitched into shirts or etched into shields. He found numerous tilted crosses and references to Diermani—clasped hands, fire, white candles—but he didn’t recognize anything else. No Family crests, no stylized symbols from the Court.
When the stench became too great, the feeding of the crows too much, he retreated back to the hill, passing back out through the ranks of dead. He paused, scanned the scope of the death, then returned to where Osserin waited at the edge of the forest, the lantern he’d lit in memory of Karen, his parents, and all the rest still burning in the shepherd’s hook. Dusk had fallen, the few clouds in the sky orange and gold over the sighing of the trees.
What did you find
? Osserin asked.
“A battlefield,” Colin reported, his voice muted. “Hundreds of dead. Thousands. I didn’t recognize any of the humans’ banners except those of the church.”
It has been over sixty years. The world changes.
Colin grunted.
Who fought in the battle?
Colin shrugged, troubled. “Men and dwarren. I didn’t see any of the Alvritshai.”
The Alvritshai are less willing to fight. They live longer, and they do not like to risk their children’s lives. They respect life more because it is so difficult for them to bear children. That is why they halted their expansion southward from their northern mountain reaches and the foothills and forests beneath. The dwarren made the expansion onto the plains too costly for them. But the Alvritshai have fought here before. And they will again.
Colin thought about what he’d just seen, all the faces, all the blood, particularly the face of the boy, and grimaced, sick to his stomach. He could still taste the vomit in his mouth.
He glanced back toward the plains, to where the smoke had thinned to wisps and the black cloud of birds had increased.
After a long moment, Osserin asked,
What will you do? Where will you go
?
“I don’t know. Portstown, I guess.”
Then safe travels.
And Osserin began drifting away.
Colin watched the Faelehgre’s retreating light with mild shock. “Farewell to you too,” he murmured.
You’ll return,
Osserin said before passing out of sight beneath the trees.
Colin snorted, then shifted uncomfortably. He almost glanced down at the black mark on his arm, then realized he didn’t need to. He could
feel
it, a shadow beneath his skin, a taint.
Then he adjusted the satchel and headed away from the forest.
Toward the plains. Toward the Escarpment and the human lands beyond.
12
 
S
IX WEEKS LATER, HE STOOD AT THE EDGE of the main road leading down to Portstown, shocked into immobility.
“How could I have missed all this?” He drew in a deep breath, tears burning at the corners of his eyes, and let it out in a heavy sigh. What lay before him had no resemblance whatsoever to the town that he’d left behind so many years before.

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