Feast of Souls (41 page)

Then slowly his attention returned to the room, to Sulah and to the boy. For a long moment he said nothing. Then, “Yes. So it would seem.”

“I thought they were all dead. Destroyed in the Dark Ages. Isn’t that what you taught me?”

“No,” he said quietly. “Not destroyed. Gone, yes… but not destroyed.”

Colivar put out a hand slowly, as if to touch the thing. The illusion scattered when he touched it. Of course. Real and unreal could not be combined.

Sulah drew in a sharp breath. “It’s so small…”

“It will grow larger,” Colivar said quietly. “And change again. This is not its final form.”

Sulah looked at him sharply. “You’ve seen one of them. Fully grown.”

Colivar said nothing. After a moment he rose up and turned away from the boy and Sulah both, so that his student could no longer see his face.

At last he said, “The Black Sleep will come here, if this thing has… brothers.”

“It is already here, my teacher.”

“Where?”

“Up north, a day’s travel. This boy’s home, I gather. I’ve gotten it out of him in bits and pieces over the past few weeks… not an easy task. His soul struggles to forget.”

He whispered, “Tell me.”

“The whole town is dead.” Sulah’s voice sounded hollow in his own ears as remembered the boy screaming out details of the event, fevered bits of remembrance interspersed with raw animal terror. “He was away from home for a time, and when he came back… that’s how he found them.”

Colivar turned back to him. “All the people? Or… everything?”

“People, animals… everything alive that was there at the time. Rumor has it a few other inhabitants survived, who were abroad when it happened, but either they can’t be found, or they simply aren’t talking.”

Colivar’s expression had become a terrible thing to behold. “And those who went there after this took place. What did they find?”

Sulah shook his head. “The town has been declared cursed, and no man will go near it. Or at least no man will admit to having gone near it.”

“But you have gone.”

“Yes.” He said it quietly. “I have gone.”

“And?”

“It was as the boy described. A town of death. Where I found bodies undisturbed, it was as if they had simply lay down to sleep and died.” His bright eyes fixed on Colivar. “Like the tales you told me of the Black Sleep, the Devil’s Sleep… only this was more than sleep.”

“The Black Sleep doesn’t kill. Not that many. This is something else. He shook his head; his expression was grim. “It
must
be.”

“You’re going to want to go there yourself, aren’t you?”

It was a moment before he answered. “There is no other choice, is there? I must know what happened.”

“I have horses ready, if you want to ride.”

“Yes.” He thought of his failing consort, and how unpleasant it would be to be caught in Transition while transporting himself. He had made that mistake once before and almost been killed. “Horses will do.”

Sulah reached down to wrap the blanket more tightly around the sleeping boy. It was an oddly human gesture, the sort of casual compassion that most Magisters lost touch with by the end of their first lifetime. An odd quirk of this particular student, which Colivar alternately disdained and marveled at. Magisters who could feel for others rarely survived the ages; sooner or later their natural compassion warred with the necessary inhumanity of their survival, and one or the other lost the battle. Yet Sulah had been through a handful of Transitions successfully, there was no denying that. And the human side of him was still strong enough to surface now and then. It was… interesting.

They climbed up the narrow stairs silently, each lost in his own thoughts. Mother Tally greeted them at the top, chittering about poor manners and how they must forgive her for not having bread ready, or perhaps they would wait? Colivar left it to Sulah to fend off her aggressive hospitality; he was lost in his own thoughts, barely cognizant of the world around them.

After they left the house it was but a short walk to where Sulah’s horses were stabled. And a very short time to get them ready for travel, since Sulah had prepared everything well in advance.

As they led the horses out of the stable and turned them toward the northern road, Sulah finally broke the silence that had reigned since they’d left Mother Tally’s house. “How do you know all these things, from times that even the history books have forgotten? When was the last time there was a living ikata, that you could take its measure?”

Colivar did not look at him, but yanked on one of the buckles holding a worn leather pack in place, to make sure it was tight enough. “You should have asked me that when you were still my student, Sulah. I might have answered you then.”

“Truly?”

“No.” With a practiced motion he slipped his foot into a stirrup and hoisted himself into the saddle. “Now no more questions, until we have seen what there is to see, yes? I am wanting answers myself.”

Sulah nodded shortly as he mounted his own horse, then turned him to lead the way out of town.

He would not forget, he promised himself. Some questions needed to be asked.

It was quiet, in the way that unwholesome things were quiet. Colivar noticed that right away. A place that the beasts of the surrounding forest might visit, but they clearly did not want to remain in.

He reined up his horse at the edge of the small town and sat there for a minute, studying the place. Sulah waited quietly by his side, patting his horse once as the beast snuffled its own discomfort with the unhealthy aura of the place.

“How long has it been?” Colivar asked finally.

“A month, as near as I can tell. The boy has no real sense of time.”

Colivar nodded. Another moment passed in silence, then he dismounted. Sulah followed suit. There was no need to hitch the animals to any tree or man-made contrivance; if they wandered off, two Magisters could call them back easily enough when they were needed.

Slowly, his eyes taking in every detail, Colivar began to walk through the town. Dark things skittered back into the shadows as he did so, save for a few that had courage enough to stand their ground. Rats. One of them stood guard over a prize he was clearly willing to defend against the intruders. A bone of some sort. Human. Colivar looked about and saw other bones in shadows, near doorways, and some just out in the middle of the street. “The beasts of the forest have been here.” he mused, and Sulah nodded. A town full of corpses might seem a fearsome thing to human beings, but to the wild things that inhabited the surrounding woods it was no more nor less than an invitation to a feast.

Sulah remembered what Colivar had taught him about the balance of nature, and wondered about the effect this tragedy would have on local animal populations. Would more meat eaters be born in the time following such bounty, only to be brought into a world that offered no more such feasts? Would they be forced out of the forest by their increased numbers, to brave the towns of men in search of sustenance? Would men die five years down the line in some distant town, not knowing what had prompted the assault?

All these things were related, Colivar had taught him. Nothing changed in the world without fostering changes itself. The difference between the art of the Magisters and the magic worked by witches, he said, was that the former took such things into account, both in the planning and the execution.

As well we must
, Sulah had once mused. A witch might create a sizeable disturbance before she died, but only that. A Magister could, in theory, change the world itself. Though the gods alone knew how many people would have to die to provide the power for such a thing, or what a Magister’s soul would look like after he had done it.

Moderation and restraint are what will keep you human
, Colivar had taught him.
Never forget that
.

Sulah had asked him many times why being “human” was so important, since it seemed to him that many Magisters were not. It was among the many questions his teacher had never answered.

Slowly the two of them walked through the small town, reading its story in the bones that were scattered along the street. Once Colivar stopped and opened the door of a small house, to see what there was in places the beasts could not go. A putrid smell greeted their nostrils, and he bade the breeze sweep it away before they entered.

The bones of those inside were stripped equally clean, but eerily so, as they were still more or less in the posture in which they had died. The discarded husks of maggots lay in thousands upon the floor and crunched underfoot as Colivar inspected the place. A handful of insects buzzed about his head, but most had clearly found their way out by the same means they had come in. And of course there were rat droppings. Always rat droppings.

Sulah was silent while his teacher inspected the place, his expression grim. He had been to the town before, for the same sort of inspection, and knew what would be found.

Finally Colivar nodded for them to leave. The fresh air outside was welcome, with a brisk wind from the north that scoured the town clean of its rotten smells. Colivar took a deep breath of it and said, “What is there in the surrounding area?”

“Woods, mostly. A river down that way.” He pointed.

“No clearings? There should be one somewhere, not far beyond the borders of men.”

“I do not know. I did not think to search for one.”

Colivar nodded. With an almost casual gesture he called up a bit of soulfire and bade it gather before him. A foggy map that seemed to reflect the landscape surrounding the small town appeared. There appeared to be a few places nearby that were bereft of trees, the majority of them cultivated lands, circumscribed by low stone walls built when they were cleared. There was a wilder place farther off, a narrow strip where the earth was not deep enough for trees to take root, but evidently not well suited to farming.

“There,” Colivar whispered. “That will be it.”

“What?” Sulah asked him. “What are you looking for?”

“What I hope not to find,” Colivar said quietly, “but fear that I will.”

He would answer no more questions after that, but called the horses to them and mounted his own in silence, his expression as dark as a stormcloud about to break. And Sulah, who had been his student, knew him well enough not to press for answers.

Wild the land was, in the place surrounding the narrow clearing, and wild things chittered and chirruped in the shadows as Colivar and Sulah made their way through the thick brush at its border into the open.

For a moment then Colivar just stood still, studying the landscape. His aspect reminded Sulah of a wild beast just come into the open, eyeing the surrounding woods for predators… or perhaps prey. But whatever Colivar sought it was not so simple a thing as wolves or deer, that was clear. Sulah had never seen him in such a dark mood as now, and as he watched his elder take the measure of the land, he could almost taste on his lips the aura of foreboding that surrounded him.

The strip of land was a narrow one, but long, that twisted between jutting granite slabs near the rise of a mountain. Some quirk of earthly creation had made its soil shallow enough that trees could not anchor themselves comfortably, and the place was too rocky and irregular to draw human interest, so it had been left for grasses and scraggly low bushes to colonize despite its proximity to the town.

“This is the place,” Colivar said quietly. His expression was grim as he looked about the area, searching for something as yet unseen. “If it is anywhere to be found, it will be here…”

Having learned from the preceding hours that Colivar was not in a mood for answering questions, Sulah followed patiently behind him as he slowly walked the length of the clearing, his sharp black eyes taking in everything. Then suddenly he hissed, and stopped. The sound was sudden enough that Sulah found his hand going for his knife… as if what had killed all the people in that town might be stopped by simple steel.

What had drawn Colivar’s attention was a mound of rocks near one edge of the clearing. All around it the land was barren, stripped even of its sparse grasses. As Sulah looked more closely he could see that the area was scored by what might be claw marks, as if some huge thing had been digging there. In such a context, the mound of rocks at its center seemed distinctly unnatural.

Colivar cursed vividly, and the dialect he used was so foreign—or so ancient—that Sulah could only understand half of it.

“What is it?” he asked.

Colivar did not answer him. He no longer seemed to be aware of Sulah’s existence, or indeed of anything else surrounding him.

With steady steps he moved to the rock pile and began to remove stones from it, one after the other, casting them aside with little concern for where they might fall. Sulah had to dodge one as he scrambled to his side to watch. Now that he was closer to the mound he could see clearly that it was no natural thing; the stones had been placed so as to interlock closely, providing a sound shelter for whatever lay beneath. A burial mound, perhaps? It didn’t seem to him that the size was quite right, unless it was that of a child—

And then Colivar seemed to find whatever he was searching for, and he cursed again, this time in a language Sulah did understand. The nature of that curse made his blood run cold.

“Look,” his teacher commanded.

He leaned forward to look down into the hole that Colivar had made. In its shadows he could see a layer of dried grass that his teacher had broken through, and could just make out beneath that some off-white fragments of something. It took him a moment to identify them.

“Eggshells?”

Colivar nodded, and then resumed his digging. This time Sulah helped him. Now that he had some sense of what they were digging toward he was able to do so without ruining the find, and soon they had laid bare a collection of what appeared to be broken eggs, all gathered neatly in a bowl-shaped depression that had been scraped into the shallow earth.

They would have been large eggs, about the size of a fist, and like nothing Sulah had ever seen before. The outside was a dull white but the inside glistened with color, and as he turned a fragment up to catch the sunlight it flashed a deep blue where something had caught on the shell and stuck there. He pried it loose with his fingernail and held it close to his eye to examine. Reptile skin, it looked like, though of the most unusual color.