Blood of War (33 page)

“
No. Jurel, I want you. We all want you back. We
need
you.”

“Why? Isn't there enough bloodshed in the world already?” he snapped.

She surged to her feet so swiftly that he recoiled, bouncing his head off the bole behind him. Her fists rested on her hips like an angry mother. Her eyes flashed, almost purple now with barely pent rage. Gods, but he loved those eyes.

“Jurel Histane! You know better than that. Or do you? Have we been wrong? Have you learned nothing? There are people who need you, who are counting on you. Would you disappoint them?”

“Disappoint them, or cause their blood to be spilled. Let's see, on one hand we have disappointment and maybe some anger, maybe even—heavens forbid—a sense of betrayal. But they're alive. On the other hand, there's blood, suffering, death, orphans, widows.” He smirked. “Tough choice. Let me think about it.”

Her eyes widened and her lips pinched.

“Look, Tana. I don't know what you want from me. You want me to try but trying brings heartache. For a little while there I really thought that I wasn't trapped in this nightmare. I really thought that things could be different. But then I lead over a thousand men blundering into a slaughter. I know now everyone I would want to get close to can expect that from me.

“I can't do it. I love you, Tana. Every time I look at you it feels like someone's stabbing me. Maybe it's selfish and childish but I can't face it.”

She sank to her knees, trembling. “You think I don't understand? Is that it? Of course I do, you big oaf. You're a
God,
Jurel. A bloody immortal, all powerful
God
. Gods do things that we mere mortals cannot begin to understand, even if that means that some of us have to die. It's not our place to question you. It's our place to do as we're told! Hells and damnation, we've taken vows to that effect!”

She thought
that
would sway him? He thought she knew him better than that.

“And I'm telling you to go. Leave me alone. I'll have no part in any more suffering. I'll have no part in this ridiculous war.”

They glared at each other, a silent battle of wills.

“Do you think the prelacy will just give up? Do you think they'll walk away when they find out you've abandoned us? They'll come for us, Jurel. They'll come for us as they never have before. They'll stamp us out. We need you.”

Try as he might, he could not think of a reasonable response.

“Can't we go back to the way things were before?” She leaned forward hopefully, placing a tentative hand on his forearm. “Can't we put this behind us and try again?”

“You know we can't.”

Each stared sadly into the other's eyes, each unable to avert their eyes as though they were linked by a chain, both knowing they had reached the impasse, the insurmountable hurdle, the bottomless, unbridgeable chasm. He drank her in greedily, guiltily, like an addict. In time, her eyes softened, taking on a light of pleading. It was like an avalanche to him. He had to get away before it buried him under its boiling hot ice.

“I think you should go, Metana,” he said looking away, breaking the chain. If he thought back, if he sifted through his life's memories, he would have found that nothing was harder than uttering those words.

She closed in then. Her expression hardened to stone and with it, he withered, fell further and further in on himself, felt a gathering of darkness in his core.

She rose to her feet. “We need you, Jurel. All of us.” Her voice held an edge that cut him.

“I can't help you, Metana. Good bye.”

He closed his eyes and pulled together the ragged threads of his concentration.

“No. Wait Jurel. Don't-”

When he opened them again, she was gone.

* * *

He awakened some time later. He had no idea how much time—he had not even known he slept. Sourly, he raised himself and stretched. He did not feel the slightest bit refreshed and there was a kink in his back courtesy of a knot in the lilac tree.

His meeting with Metana had left him empty and cold. He stared at the ground, lost in his thoughts, lost in his inky hole of self-pity. Vaguely, somewhere in the back of his head, he was contemptuous of himself but he stomped that feeling away. He had enough to drag him down.

There was one more place he had to go. He was reluctant. He did not want to. He knew that if he went, it would be the final door closing on his past. But he had started his journey. He had to go. While there was even the slightest glimmer of a chance at his old life, he had to try. While there was even the barest chance the he could escape the monster within, he
had
to try.

He sat under his lilac tree tasting the wind as it howled past, feeling it comb his hair, ruffle his tattered clothing. The grasses were sere, piebald patches. His thoughts were dark. He grabbed hold of his courage as if it were a tangible thing, reined it in.

With a sour chuckle, he concentrated and his tattered, wind-blown, sandblasted clothing shimmered, changed, became a black silk shirt covered in a pattern of golden swirls over black linen breeches covered in the same pattern. His ragged boots, the ones Kurin had given him all those months ago in a different life, a past life, back in a small shop in a small town, the soft ones that had shone like polished iron when he had first donned them and now were scuffed and torn almost beyond recognition, became brightly polished again, and butter soft. He rose to his feet and strapped his sword to his new leather belt, not caring when one of the barbs in the hilt caught his hand, drawing a line of blood. He stood for a moment, surveying his place, his sanctuary and his prison.

He concentrated. He disappeared.

Chapter 28

At the edge of a clearing, Metana gazed at the wild rose bush that twined and tangled its way up and around some lilacs. Though the lilacs were out of season, still there remained a few boughs that stubbornly resisted, and held on. Deep red mingled with bright purple in a sort of botanic jewelry. A sweet scent filled the air, a perfume that was as delicate and lovely as the flowers themselves. The kind of perfume that a wealthy gentleman would pay more than a peasant family earned in a year to acquire to woo his chosen lady.

The sun, somewhere far to the west but occluded by the quilt of intertwined branches, illuminated the forest with ephemeral shades of gold and green, created sparks of the motes of dust that hung lazily in the air. The air was warm and soft as it can only be in the waning days of summer after the brutal heat breaks but before the full chill of autumn manages to get a grip. It was a dreamlike scene that spread before her, a spot that bards and mummers spoke of in their stories and acted out in their plays. A perfect idyllic place where, in stories, young couples came to nestle, to trade tokens, to smile and laugh, to make love. That part of the story usually happened right before the tragedy.

She sat and she gazed at the roses that mingled with the lilacs. A solitary tear left a trail on her cheek. She did not feel it.

Big oaf.

She thought it, but there was no strength in it, no force. There was not enough heat left in her for that. There was only an empty place, a place where once there had been light and laughter and, yes, love. She had taken medical courses at the Abbey. It was a requirement for all acolytes to have at least a working knowledge of anatomy and physiology, no matter which god they would ultimately choose as their patron. Old Master Yalman, her teacher, spoke into her thoughts:

...this can happen in the case of a patient who has had a limb amputated. The patient may be fooled into thinking for years after the amputation that the limb remains fixed in place. He may complain of an itch that cannot be relieved, or an ache, dull or sharp, that will not alleviate...

Is this then what a mental amputation felt like? This aching emptiness? This itch that could not,
would
not, be scratched, that threatened to drive her mad? She chuckled—though if anyone heard, they would have called it a pained grunt as if she had stubbed her toe. But it was a chuckle. Not so long ago, she had entirely thrown her heart at Jurel. Why? Because big oaf though he was, he was a good man with a good heart. Or so she had thought. She had never expected him—could never have believed—that he would abandon them to the wolves.

“
Hanging on by a thread,”
her father used to say. And,
“You can't win for losing.”

She had sighed in exasperation when he used to say things like that. Too grim, too pessimistic. His idioms never fit in with her view of the world. Perhaps she should reconsider. Perhaps she would sit down and write him and apologize for all the times she had shown him the sharp side of her tongue. She seemed to recall that he had been different at one time. Before her mother had died in that terrible accident. She seemed to recall that he used to smile at everything, that he had had such a carefree laugh, a laugh that even in her earliest childhood, long before naivete gave way to wisdom, she understood was full, unreserved, complete. Of course when her mother had gotten trampled by the herd, when they had gathered up all they could find of her and buried her, his laughter had ceased. She did not recall him ever truly smiling after that. Or if he did, it was tainted; it never reached his eyes. And then his grim idioms had come. Gods that was a long time ago.

“Metana?”

Metana whirled at the sound of Gaven's voice. He gazed at her with a hang-dog expression from a few paces away. He knew the outcome of her meeting with Jurel. She could see it in his eyes and she wilted.

“You tried Metana. We know you tried.”

She had. But had she tried hard enough? She played back her moments with Jurel in her mind. She had sensed his pain, so powerful it was like a heavy chain dragging him down. He had failed. She would not argue that. He had made a terrible mistake and a lot of good men and women had paid the price. But it had not been entirely his fault. How could he have known that the Gaorlans had anticipated the ambush? Even Mikal, with all his years of experience, with all his incomparable skills, had continued to endorse their plan though there had been enough signs of something being amiss. They had all missed it. They were all responsible.

Had she tried hard enough? Jurel had failed but he was young, new to his position and responsibilities. No one could expect him to be perfect. Why, barely more than a year ago, he had been a farmboy with nothing more important to worry about than an occasional drought.

But that was not the point, now was it? Or, on second thought, maybe it was exactly the point. He had never had to make a decision which caused over a thousand soldiers to die until now. God of War he may be, but he was still Jurel Histane, farmboy, as well. Reconciling one with the other was a monumental task that Metana would not have wished on anyone. Her heart went out to him.

But she had seen something else in those few minutes with Jurel, especially near the end, before he sent her back—and how it irked that he had handled her with all the ease one might have handled a kitten! There had been a hardness to him, a darkness that had frightened her. The glitter in his eyes, the hollow echo of his voice; she did not know what it meant but she was afraid nonetheless.

She closed her eyes, remembering what he had been like when she had first met him. He had been shy, unassuming. He had been ready to smile, earnest in a sweet way, ready to please. There had been pain in his eyes, a natural tightness at the corners which had added to his sweetness, a vulnerability which had drawn her to him as though he was a lost puppy. The man he had considered a father had been brutally murdered a short time before, after all, and he had discovered some very dangerous things about himself in the process.

But now...

Now he was a different person, a different
entity
. Over the last few months, she had begun to notice a weight to him. Power seemed to ooze from him; no one at the Abbey had been immune. Anyone who came near him began to almost unconsciously defer to him. Those who opposed him, like that bloody idiot Andrus, had begun to avoid him; his very presence caused them to question themselves and no one who is so full of pride likes to doubt their own beliefs. Even Goromand had started having difficulty meeting his eyes.

This effect had been more pronounced in the last few weeks, since the army had marched from the Abbey. Jurel had, at times, seemed a mighty creature, a giant among midgets; at times, she had barely recognized him.

And then he had made an error that had killed a large fraction of the forces the Salosians had to tap. She knew he felt his failure keenly; each one was a thorn in his heart.

And now he was in his place, isolated, alone, surrounded by devastation, as darkness blanketed him like a pall. She stared mournfully at Gaven and shook her head slowly.

“Oh, Jurel,” she sighed quietly. “What's happening to you?”

* * *

In a cave so black that even the memory of light did not exist, a cave that echoed with distant sounds of torment and torture, the creature sat at its ease, reclining as best it could in its confinement. It did not feel the heat of its cave for it had chosen the temperature itself. It was as comfortable as it could be, all things considered. In fact, it was more than comfortable. Even with Gixen's failures, it was as close to happy as it had been in...how long had it been here?

It smiled.

It alone saw the image that played before it. It alone watched events unfold upon the square of light that was not light but was more the impression of it, like an unspoken thought. And it liked what it saw.

In the square, almost like a window pane, a tall and young man, splendidly dressed, stood near a body of water, perhaps a small lake or a pond. In the square, the man raked his surroundings with a glare as devastating as a lightning storm. Oh it was wonderful.