Healer's Ruin (4 page)

'Absolutely.'

'Chalos!' Mysa insisted. 'Do not forget, the mysteries of this place can kill you too, as well as all of them! You and the girl who now lives in the secret chamber of your heart. You need my wings, my eyes and my wisdom!'

He wished he could silence her without arousing Jolm's suspicion. But all he could do was keep a straight face and ignore the keening behind his eyes, her incessant voice tugging at his conscience.

'Go back to the column, slinger,' said Jolm. 'I have strategies to formulate.'

'Yes, lieutenant.'

Being alone with the leader of the detachment of Black Talon warriors had been a fire-walking experience and Chalos was relieved to be riding back alone. All around him, through the trees, he could see scouts and members of the force's front line, thinning out and stumbling, ambling down dead ends and up slippery, moss-coated trails. Looking back over his shoulder he realised already that he could no longer see Jolm.

'Why did you lie to him, Chalos?' asked Mysa. 'Do you not think him canny enough to notice?'

Chalos did not answer immediately because he did not know the answer himself.
Why did I lie? Was it to protect Mysa from whatever lurks beneath the arboreal veneer of this place? Or was it to protect myself? Should Mysa be wounded, or killed, somewhere beneath the emerald canopy, I would be alone. She is the only real friend I have. The only being in the entire army, perhaps even including Samine, that doesn't see me as a mere resource. The only creature in the world that actually cares about my well-being.

'Let him see,' said Chalos, sullenly. 'I'm not a soldier, and I shouldn't be here. Neither should you.'

The bird clacked its long, curved beak.

'Unwise not to keep that one on side.'

'He's got enough to worry about with getting this detachment through the Dallian Woodland. I'm of little interest to him.'

'For now,' the bird said, in a sinister tone. 'But as the evils of this land trim his force down and break his spirit blow by blow, he will start to look for enemies where there were none before. And if you are not invaluable to him by then, he will begin to hate you.' She adjusted her grip on his shoulder. 'Men like that are everywhere and they are all the same, from gods to slaves. Their own weakness is invisible to them. They heave it like a yoke from their shoulders and drop it around those of the unfortunates beneath them. Any failure in this mission will be blamed on the weak links, Chalos. Do not find yourself amongst that wretched number. The Krune do not deal with the weak in a manner of which you would approve.'

A grunt was all he could manage by way of response.

When he returned to the central mass of the force Samine found him, touching his arm gently. She had a conspiratorial look on her face and was looking sideways for eavesdroppers as she whispered to him.

'Chalos! I discovered something!'

'Eh?'

'They took prisoners!'

'What?' He thought back to the attack by the Riln archers and swordsmen and shuddered. 'I thought they killed them all.'

'No, just the ones that would bleed out.' She grinned. 'When we strike camp, I think they're going to interrogate them. Who knows what secrets they'll let slip under the iron and the knife?'

'Great,' Chalos replied, trying to sound cheerful. It was good news, he supposed. Any information on what lay ahead would be useful. But he couldn't help feeling that whatever cruelties the Krune would inflict on their captives would simply be in retribution.

'What's the matter?' Samine asked.

'Nothing... I just....' he looked down at his hands which gripped the reins of the shadamar limply. They were pale and they shook like those of an old man. 'You were right, Jolm doesn't know a thing about this place. All he saw on the map was what looked like a forest. He doesn't know the path and he's too proud to send a rider back to the Duke for aid.' He met Samine's wide hazel eyes. 'We're marching deeper into mystery with every step.'

'All the more reason to get the most out of these captives.'

'You think that will help? They'll say anything under torture. And besides, how can anything they say as they die in agony ever be substantiated? They'll use their last shreds of defiance to fill our heads with lies. That will be their final victory, before death claims their grateful souls.'

'You are a miserable one sometimes, Chalos.'

He pulled his cloak tight around him and crooked his neck to enable Mysa to nestle closer. He had never felt so distant from those around him. It was as if he had slipped and fallen into someone else's dream or travelled to a world that was little more than a sandpit for an alien god of utter indifference to play in, its cartoon realm populated by hollow props painted to look like people.

The word spread from rank to rank.
A Sign! The Gilt Plates have left a sign!
Lieutenant Jolm responded to the scout's report with excitement, plunging forward from the heart of the force, shouting for the men ahead to make way. The battalion had parted before him in an orderly ripple, evidence of how well trained the soldiers of the Black Talon were despite their monstrous appearance.

An hour later, the section of the line in which Chalos and Samine were riding passed under the sign. Twenty feet up the trunk of a tree, a Riln soldier had been bound cruciform, head, hands and feet missing and his own sword buried hilt-deep into his exposed gullet. As the Black Talon passed under the grisly totem, the Krune bellowed with delight. Chalos could only manage a groan. He was feeling sick again. Travelling over the flat floor of the Doyu Basin had been bad enough, but he was being tossed about all over the place by his shadamar as it negotiated the uneven terrain of the Woodland. He had to pull his eyes away from the corpse as a wave of nausea hit him. He managed to suppress the sickness with some effort.

'The Gilt Plates!' Samine said. Her expression was one of awe mixed with a little disgust, as if the horror of it thrilled her. 'They're as brutal as the rumours say. Look, Chalos. Look at how they leave a signpost!'

'Uh-hmm,' Chalos replied, unable at that moment to speak.

A little while later they passed the second marker, then the third. Chalos kept his eyes straight ahead, watching the column as it struggled to remain coherent, its serpentine flow split by trees and outcrops. Sometimes, they passed what seemed to be little hovels formed by twisted trees, or bizarre stone mounds that looked like crude skulls with flowers bursting from the eyes. The whole place seemed too strange to be real. But the stench of its fecundity, and the brightness of its foliage, assailed the senses like no dream ever could.

'I don't like this place,' said Mysa.

'Me neither,' Chalos muttered.

'I'm going up.'

'What? No!'

Too late. The bird left his shoulder and burst through the canopy, her course true as an arrow's. For a moment, a beam of clear, clean light cast down and Chalos had to shield his eyes. Then the huge green leaves flapped back into place and he was in the shade again. The accursed murk of the Dallian Woodland.

'Perhaps she's going to get some air,' Samine said, leaning close. 'Sixt is not himself, either.'

'Sixt?'

'Oh, sorry – my Accomplice.' She gestured to the iguana in the saddlebag. A lazy grey-blue head, with glassy eyes, was slumped through the open lip of the leather case. A tongue of bright red flickered out. 'I forgot to introduce you, didn't I?'

'Hello, Sixt,' said Chalos, giving the small thing a wave.

The eyes regarded him without blinking and the tongue flicked again. Then the eyes closed and the creature withdrew into the saddlebag.

'He's usually very talkative but I don't think the kingdom of the Riln agrees with him.'

'The magic is different here,' Chalos said. 'It's why the Riln only have illusionists whilst we have all manner of sorcery. I suppose this difference must affect the Accomplices, since their souls are anchored in the realm of magic.'

'You're smart, Chalos,' Samine said. 'Really smart.'

'Oh, um, thanks.'

She frowned at him, fascinated. His cheeks burned.

A loud squawk, frenzied and harsh to the ears, erupted above their heads. The fracas was extraordinary enough to send a few dozen shadamar reeling, shaking their manes and snorting beneath their bone-helms. Chalos looked up, squinting. Several brightly coloured birds were hurling themselves about, their short, hooked beaks snapping between shrieks.

Mysa!

He stared up, impotent, willing the crow to be all right. There was nothing he could do though. He couldn't even tell what was happening.

But unlike the healer, Samine was not stunned into paralysis. She cried to spur her shadamar and broke from the force, making a claw of her right hand. With another cry she thrust the hand upward. Coruscating violet light blazed, crackling up the trees. Whole branches exploded into flame. Three of the vicious parrots fell. A fourth, fifth and sixth followed, all charred beyond recognition by the time they hit the ground. Then Mysa spiralled down, somehow unharmed by the flames but clearly in distress. Samine cantered forward on her shadamar and caught the bird in her lap.

Chalos charged over in a panic.

'Oh, gods and bones! Mysa!'

Samine looked up from the bird in her lap, her face aghast.

As night began to fall the Black Talon found a bizarre fort-like structure seemingly shaped by trees that had grown to form four walls at right angles with an enormous, prodigiously thick tree sprouting from the north-east corner. They set up watch and threw their bedrolls out upon the earth.

It was warm under the canopy, warmer than it ever had been on the Doyu Basin. The earth, mossy and soft, seemed heated from beneath. Sleep was easy.

But not for Chalos.

He remained awake most of that night, nursing Mysa. She had not regained consciousness since returning from her impromptu scouting mission and with each day that passed her inky black feathers became less lustrous. Her claws were curled up in what looked disturbingly like rigor-mortis.

'Oh, Mysa,' Chalos whispered, stroking the bird's back. He longed for her to spring to wakefulness, peck at his hand and then admonish him for something or other, but she was barely drawing breath.

Every now and then Chalos would glance over at Samine who lay a few feet away with her back to him. He would watch her side rise and fall silently and his mind would wander.

Despair was claiming him, he knew. And one of its primary weapons was fantasy – fantasy that drew the unwary further from the real world and deeper into introspective solitude and eventual misery, a well from which there was no easy escape. The harsh truth was that he didn't care. Having no love of the real world, he could feel the final strands of his emotional and psychological attachments to it fraying and falling away, one by one, but could not mourn their loss.

Eventually he forced himself to fix his attention on the crow.

If Mysa was not a creature of magic I could heal her. But I know nothing of how her soul was bonded to her body, or how her life force flows, so my only hope would be to cram her with healing energy and hope that her innate magical processes did the job themselves... but I'm nowhere near powerful enough. Even a Flint Wizard would struggle to find that sort of energy.
He sighed with resignation as the truth dawned on him.
My only real power cannot help my only real friend.

Fate was mocking him.

He eventually fell into a fitful sleep. When he awoke, he ached from head to toe.

'Up you get, slinger!' a gruff voice said. He opened his eyes, scowling up at a crumpled purple face. The Krune soldier gripped his shoulder in an enormous hand and shook him vigorously. The healer's whole skeleton rattled.

'Alright,' he moaned, trying in vain to bat the hand away.

'The lieutenant wants you now!'

Half rising, half dragged up by the Krune's gauntleted fist, Chalos got to his feet. He scooped up Mysa's cool body and swaddled her in burlap, holding her to him like a newborn. Then he allowed the Krune to haul him away from the camp.

We're on foot, not shadamar,
he noted.
This meeting will be a brief aside, somewhere close.

He was right. Just ten minutes later they were negotiating a fallen tree that traversed a crooked river. Beneath, water trickled over shiny black stones. Bizarrely coloured flowers poked out in clumps on the left hand bank. A frog with sickly yellow eyes blinked and burped before diving in ungainly fashion into the water.

Jolm leaned against a tree up ahead, his back to the two approaching men. The soldier announced the slinger's presence, saluted to the lieutenant's back and then marched back towards camp. Chalos found himself wondering if he could find his way back without help, having not paid much attention to the route they had taken to the meeting. But he was too tired to panic. His pale hands held Mysa snug to his chest.

He heard a crunch. An apple was being chomped by powerful jaws, the core snapping. A moment later the chewed up pulp was swallowed with a satisfied gasp.