What Was Forgotten (32 page)

And there was still hope for Sera. He
knew
there was. If she would be swayed, how many of her people would live? Would the Empire not be stronger for having the Dramandi as vassals instead of merely creating another burial ground for an entire people? She was not a noble, as far as he knew, and not a part of their army, but it was clear that she was loved and respected by her people, and not only because of her status as a Revered. She might even convince the commander of Roh Dun’s Shields to lay down their arms, or rather, to swear those arms to the service of the emperor.

Having had their fill of betting on Tascell and Lesryn, the soldiers dispersed, some still gloating, many still commiserating, and Zayd approached his men, who beamed. Their pride, and likely their egos, were inflated at the show of admiration from the Trueborn.

“Well done,” Zayd said. “Which of you was the victor?” Tascell pointed to Lesryn, who took an exaggerated bow, eliciting a laugh from the others.

“Though he really owes his victory to Daruthin, for conceding the competition,” Tascell said.

“I conceded the
victory
,” Daruthin corrected. “There was no competition.”

“You may have a chance to reclaim it,” Zayd said. “Commander Walrend would like us to remain here.”

“For how long?” Daruthin asked.

“Several weeks, at least. If General Vaetus does not request that we return for the battle against the Dramandi remnants, then it would be indefinite. At least until the war is over.”

Zayd expected more of a pause as his men thought it over, but Daruthin responded right away: “If we are not called back, I would stay here. I’ve had enough of this war.”

“Walrend is very strict. Your tasks will be demanding of you. Every day.”

“It could not be more demanding than what we’ve been through,” Tascell said. “At least Walrend seems even-handed in his toughness. I would stay, too.” Assent soon followed from each of them. Zayd nodded.

“He’ll be happy to know your choice,” Zayd said. “Make sure you are rested tonight; tomorrow we will be treated the same as the others.”

Zayd began to walk back to the barracks. He could feel sleep encroaching on him despite having slept long the night before, as if all of the restful nights he should have had were at last trying to have their time all at once. Tascell fell into step beside him.

“
Vahr
, I wanted to say… I
need
to give you my apologies. The way I acted when we fled that night…… it was shameful. I doubted you.”

Zayd stopped walking and, for a moment, said nothing. He had forgotten about how Tascell had acted then, and what he had said. Such things were made minor when set next to everything that had happened around them. Yet it still clearly held some importance to his lieutenant. “You did doubt me, Tascell, that’s true… but I don’t know if I should fault you for that. I might have done the same. I doubt many could anticipate being in the pit we found ourselves in, and fewer still would have come through it as wholly as we did. And, I should add, you did save my life.”

“Well…” Tascell looked at the ground, “that soldier may not have found you lying there.”

“He would have. Without a doubt.”

“I almost betrayed you,
Vahr.
”

“You could have, but you didn’t. You could have left me there to die; you could have left all of the others behind and tried to save yourself. It would have been the easiest to
right then
, but instead you did the hard thing. Integrity is only seen when the hard choice is taken over the simple one. I said nothing after, but I did wonder if the others would have made the same hard choice.”

“They would have,” Tascell said. “I’m sure they would have. Can I ask… was Turald a hard choice?”

“What? What are you asking me?” Zayd shifted uneasily where he stood. His lieutenant looked him in the eye, though he could tell it was not a question he pursued easily.

“I don’t know exactly what was said. It seemed like they were about to kill Daruthin, then you spoke to them, and they left Daruthin alone and killed Turald instead. It looked like they made you choose which one of us would die.”

“Do the others think this as well?”

“I don’t know… not that I know of. They’ve said nothing of it.”

Unsure of what to say, Zayd balled his fists a few times and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He searched his mind for the words a leader would say, something to placate, but the only words he could grasp formed the simple and ugly truth. “They did make me choose. I tried to dissuade them, but there was no changing their mind. I could even have told them to kill me, and I think that brute would have done it. It rightly
should
have been me – I’m the one who warned Talazz.”

“Why did you choose Turald?”

Zayd hesitated. “I don’t think you want to know this as badly as I don’t want to say.” Tascell did not look away. “It couldn’t have been Daruthin or you; you are too valuable to me as lieutenants and too close to me as kin. And Turald said he had no family. For those two reasons, it had to be him.”

Tascell finally looked away, gazing at something past Zayd, far off in the distance or in memory. “How often do you think like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Reducing your soldiers to a currency... the value of their utility.”

“I really can’t say, Tascell. Not often, but still too much. It’s the worst thing that commanders are forced to do: to look at lives as unequal…… being more or less worthy. It turns you into something else… something monstrous.”

“I’m glad it was you, then. I may have made a hard choice,
vahr
, but I can’t think of one harder than the one you made.”

Chapter 20

The morning brought something familiar. It was not the regimented drills and rigid structure that Zayd had expected. What was familiar was the chaos that the Tauthri had thought they finally escaped; two soldiers had been beaten bloody in the final hours of the night, and it had been Talazz who had done the beating.

Commander Walrend questioned Talazz in the barracks since his officer’s quarters were too small to accommodate the En Kazyr. Walrend hand-picked a few soldiers to remain in the barracks with him, presumably to dissuade the giant from any further belligerence, though a number of soldiers mumbled the obvious truth that it would take a good handful more to send a convincing message.

And even though Walrend had had the barracks emptied before he began questioning Talazz, it was not long before rumors began spreading through the fort by hushed voice to captive ear, rumors which reached Zayd well before the questioning had finished.

“They said that these two men, Bailern and Vard, were lashing horses to the carriage that was brought in… because there is a great slab of gold, taller than a man and three times as wide, just
sitting
there!” the soldier spread out his arms as wide and enthusiastically as he could. “By the Beacon, you were marching along with the damned thing. Did you even know what was there?”

“I knew. We all did.”

“Marinus’ mother… what I would give to see it. Just to
see
.” Zayd tried not to curl his lip; it could have been innocent curiosity, but the soldier’s eagerness could just as easily have been the seed that turned curiosity into mutiny. “But the commander chose Bailern and Vard to stand guard nearby. Not to guard the carriage, mind you. He didn’t tell them what was there.”

“Maybe one of them looked.”

“Not a chance,” the soldier said, shaking his head emphatically. “Them two… loyal as they come. They follow the order to the letter. Add to that, they’re not bright… not enough imagination between the two of them to tell a dirty joke. They wouldn’t have gone looking.”

“And yet… they did?”

The soldier nodded, still staring in the direction of the carriage. “That they did… as if they were going to
take
it somewhere. Where would you even go with something like that? It’s the strangest thing. So… they’re tying up horses, slow as molasses, like they’re drunk or something…… and along comes the giant, who gives them a proper thrashing. The odd thing was, the two of them kept trying. You’d think if you were scheming and all of a sudden you’re about to be found out, you’d try to… I don’t know, get away with it somehow. Not so. They went at the giant, blades drawn, but that big bastard just kept putting them down. And they just kept
getting back up
.”

“What… Bailern and Vard?”

Another emphatic nod. “A blow to the head from that beast would put any man down, I should think. But somehow, these two… someone said Vard was still trying to stand after the giant broke one of his legs.”

Zayd felt his stomach turn. His skin went cold.

Cohvass.

It was exactly what Zayd had seen happen with Cohvass.

“Apparently, they don’t have a single tooth left between the two of them,” the soldier went on. “Hey, where are you off to in such a rush?”

“It’s still happening, Sera.”

The prisoners were kept in a small wooden building originally intended for surplus supplies, but had been altered when the fort had taken on the Dramandi and Praene and his mutineers. It was completely dark inside, which was nothing for Zayd, but his voice startled Sera, who, like the rest of the prisoners, was tied to a wooden post that had been driven a foot deep into the dirt floor.

“Who speaks?” she whispered.

“Zayd. Sera, the phantoms you saw by the gold… and what happened to Cohvass… it’s happening here, too.”

“I told you before that you need to rid yourselves of it. Put it back underground.
Deep
underground.” A few other Dramandi voices whispered to Sera, but she silenced them with a hush.

“I don’t think that will happen. No one would willingly give up such a treasure.”

“Tell whoever commands you. Tell him that this treasure is plagued.”

“It wouldn’t matter; our general has given the order to have them sent to our capital. The commander here does not have the rank to do anything but obey.”

Sera leaned forward as much as she could. “Then what has happened will continue to happen. You
know
that there is something they are after… something they want. But they are beholden to the object, so as long as there is someone close by, they will try to manipulate them, to take control.”

Zayd ran a hand along the smooth side of his head. Beads of sweat had begun to form even though it was a mild day. It was this revelation that caused him to sweat, caused his heart to beat faster… caused his skin to crawl. There had been that feeling the first time he had seen the gold monolith, the dread of looking upon a secret that was too vast and too terrible to fully understand, yet even the glimpse was enough for him to realize that he did not want to know. The vague impression of the thing was still too much to bear.

“Your priests won’t be able to cleanse the gold, either,” Sera continued. “This is what they do, yes? They cleanse the traces of shadows, of spirits. They break the connection so there is no more bridge to this world. What I’ve told you to do is the only thing you
can
do. What happens when one of them takes hold of your giant?”

“It would take thirty men to take him down,” Zayd said. He shuddered at the thought of Talazz enduring the scale of injury that Cohvass had. Would thirty men even be enough?

“Your capital city… is this where your emperor is?”

“Yes.”

Sera said nothing further. She knew he could see her purse her lips as one does when they are holding back dreadful words. Could one of these phantoms take hold of the emperor? Zayd thought not, but failed to assert a reason why. What if one did? Suddenly, the entire Empire would be at the whim of this evil that, even now, rested with its vessel in plain view. Surely then, whatever aim it had, with the resources of the Ryferian Empire at hand, it could carry it out.

Unite the keys...

Take the portal to Velskotahn… Across the ocean.

The cryptic phrases began to align. Was the monolith the portal that was spoken of? And the keys… how were they to
open
it? That must not be possible – it was still a single, solid piece of gold.

“You’re denying it,” Sera said. “Don’t think that because something is unbelievable that it must be impossible.”

“How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”

“Because I know that I would be thinking it, too.”

Then there was only one thing to do, Zayd thought. Walrend had to convince Vaetus to give new orders: to have the monolith buried. And so Zayd must convince Walrend of what he knew, to make him believe the unbelievable.

“Thank you, Sera. I know now what to do.”

“What is to become of us?” Sera asked, just as Zayd stood to leave. He knelt again.

“I don’t know.”