Blood of War (65 page)

Some petitioners were priests of the old Salosian Order and they too had their own requests. Requests that Jurel could do nothing about since most were the province of other members of his strange family. He could not help this man speak with his wife who had been dead these past five years. He could not promise a better crop yield the next year. He could not explain why sunlight was so important to life, or how mountains formed. And he most certainly could not explain to the Maoran adherent how time and causality worked. Jurel barely understood the question, let alone the answer.

One petitioner, however, late on the third day, startled him.

As a Valsan departed, downcast that Jurel could not help her and her husband get with child, Jurel's eyes rose to the next in the waning line. Kurin stood before him, ramrod straight, not at all cowed as the others had been by the presence of the God of War.

“
Kurin,” Jurel said, a smile growing. “It's nice to see you.”

Kurin strode forward without answering. Instead of kneeling as all the others had done, he stepped up on the dais and glared silently from the depths of his cowl. Without warning, his hand swung whip-quick and Jurel rocked back in his seat, gasping as stars danced in his vision. His gasp was echoed by hundreds of others. Then the hall went deathly still. Too stunned to speak, Jurel gaped at his one-time mentor as his vision cleared. He raised a hand to the stinging heat in his cheek, not really quite believing yet that Kurin had slapped him.

“
Chaplain,” Goromand remonstrated. Having risen from his seat with more alacrity than his age suggested was possible—and indeed with more alacrity than he had displayed in the past two decades—he stepped quickly to the foot of the dais. Not quite daring to step up on a level with Jurel—Jureya, Jureya; it would take him a while to get used to that—he motioned Kurin to step down. “How dare you strike our lord? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

Without breaking eye contact with Kurin, Jurel waved Goromand back. Uneasy, incensed, Goromand complied, taking his seat in the front row. Gathering himself with a deep breath, Jurel repressed his first instinct. He had too much history with this man to end it
that
way. Besides, as Jurel had said some days before, he only killed in battle. This could hardly be construed as such.

“
What have I done to displease you, Kurin?” he asked quietly. Shuffling and creaks broke the stillness as everyone leaned forward to hear.

Kurin's cowl was like a portal to a deep abyss. His fists were clenched, white-knuckled with alien rage; his shoulders were taut, battle-ready. He trembled with the potency of his fury. “Where did you go?” he hissed.

Taken aback again, Jurel stammered, “Wh-what do you mean?”

“
You abandoned us, Jurel. You left us to die.”

“
I came back. We won.”

“
You left when we needed you most,” Kurin shouted. A few anonymous grumbles of agreement reached his ears. “You ran away from your greatest duty. Your return was not enough to save us. It took the fortuitous arrival of Grayson's men to turn the battle.”

Holding calm to him like a thick cloak on an icy day, Jurel responded with a composure he did not feel. “Would it have made a difference if I had not left? We would still have been outnumbered, we would still have endured the same siege. Perhaps Grayson would still have shown up at the same time. Or maybe he wouldn't have and we would have been overrun.”

With a snort, Kurin waved away the argument with a derisive flick of his hand. “We'll never know now, will we?” he scoffed.

“
What could my being here have done that was not already done by the very capable commanders I left behind?”

“
I don't know!
” Kurin burst out. “Maybe you would have...” His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment as he searched helplessly for the right response. His head turned as if seeking a hunter over his shoulder. “You could have...I don't know. I'm not the bloody god here.”

Jurel's instincts kicked up, sending him an almost premonitory understanding. Vague at first, it began to solidify as he considered his hurt old friend.

“
I could have saved you sooner from Thalor?” he asked, his voice quiet, barely more than a whisper.

Kurin gasped, staggered back as though struck. His breathing came in quick, ragged bursts.

“
He tortured me for weeks,” Kurin rasped at last, his voice cracking. “Every day I hoped you would come. Every day I prayed for it. I deserved that much, didn't I? Weeks, Jurel. He did things to me that you cannot begin to imagine.

“
And when you did not come, when the torture continued and those who were jailed with me began to die, I began to lose hope. I began to believe that I was wrong. About you, about my research, about everything. Within me coiled a feeling of betrayal that I tried to ignore, tried to explain away as nothing more than foolishness. But as the days passed, I could no longer ignore it, Jurel. You left me there for weeks.

“
When you finally did come, I was too far gone in my anger. Anger at Thalor mostly. But you too.”

He raised a fist, his bitterness heartbreaking to see. “And then you went and took away my only outlet by calling your brother to take that monster away. I wanted him. I wanted to watch him suffer and squirm. I wanted to hear his shrieks as he heard mine.”

“
Would it have helped?”

“
Yes
, blast you.
YES!
” But there was a shadow deep within his rage. A single miniscule grain of doubt.

“
Really? Do you think you have it in you to do what he did? Would you become like him to satisfy your desire for revenge?”

“
He deserved it.”

Jurel allowed a small smile to twist the corners of his lips. His eyes remained as hard as granite. “No doubt he did. No doubt too that my brother is doing far worse to his ghost than you could ever imagine.”

Jurel rose and as he did so he called forth into himself. Jagged blue lights rippled along his arms and torso, down his legs, and where they passed his black shirt altered, became his armor. By the time he stood tall, he once again wore the armor of the God of War. Calling forth again, blue energy blazed in his hand, stretched and crackled until he held his sword of light.

Not immune to Jurel's sheer force, Kurin winced.

Jurel reached out gingerly with his thoughts, brushed Kurin's mind. As gently as feather down, he pushed past the dark, roiling cloud of Kurin's bitter rage, past the very recent memories distorted by the foreign hatred that clouded him. He felt a buffeting at his mind: Kurin's attempts to push him out, but it was as a field of grass trying to hold back a herd of bison.

“
I'm not here to hurt you, Kurin,”
Jurel spoke gently into the man's mind.
“I'm here to help you.”

Beyond those most recent memories—he ignored those memories of the last few days and proceeded back until he saw...

Until he saw what Kurin had survived at Thalor's hands.

“
Get out!”
Kurin shrieked silently, the vaults of his mind ringing with frantic outrage.
“Get out of my mind!”

Jurel began to sift through those memories, allowing himself to live them while trying to screen Kurin from them, knowing he could not keep it all out, hoping he could keep enough.

“
I need to know, Kurin. I need to know what happened to you. What I let happen to you.”

What he saw, appalled him, gored him with grief. Thalor had not been gentle with Kurin.

“
No. No, Jurel. Please.”

Numbly, Jurel watched. He watched as a man followed Thalor into the tent where Kurin was bound hand and foot to a rough table of unfinished wood. The man set a large leather bag beside Kurin's head. Clinking tinkled like wind chimes as the man rooted around in the bag.

“
Time to begin,”
Thalor's voice whispered.

The images went black; a hood was drawn over Kurin's head.

Pain. Always in a different place, always from a different source. Sometimes the pain stabbed, sometimes it burned. Sometimes it pummeled like a hammer blow, sometimes it poured like acid. Always, half heard questions punctuated the pain.
“...is he?” “Who...?” “How many...?”

Kurin rarely answered. Not so much because he did not want to—if it would have stopped the agony for even a few moments, Kurin would have told him anything—this too was a source of shame in the proud old man. Had he been able, he would have told Thalor whatever he had to, to stop the pain, stop the hurt; it rankled him that in the secret depths of himself, he knew Thalor had won, that Thalor had broken him. But he did not answer, because he either did not hear the question properly, or he was too busy shrieking his agony.

As if the shame of his being too weak to withstand the monster's atrocities was not enough,
there was always more. Here the memories began to fragment, as the hood was removed. Images skipped, turned blood red, jolted and jerked as though trying to escape capture. In his mind, Kurin was moaning,
“No. No, no, no, no. Please no.”

Disjointed imagery, out of synchronization, played in fits and spurts, cracked and jagged around the edges like a broken mirror. Here the man repacked his bag of implements. Here Thalor rearranged his robe, a flush of color on his cheeks, a cruel smile under ice cold eyes. Here Thalor dumped Kurin from the table and to the floor. Kurin begging for mercy, no please no. Not again. The coarse dirt against his cheek, taste of mud and blood, his blood. Hot tears coursing down his cheeks as he sobbed. His tattered robes being lifted over his head. Thalor. Hot, moist breath in Kurin's ear. Words:
“You will succumb to me. You will give me everything I want.”
Thalor, grunting like a rutting pig, visiting upon Kurin's body the final debasement, the final humiliation which drove Kurin to cower, to hide his face in shame. Which drove Kurin to hate fueled insanity. Kurin crying out in pain and shame as Thalor cried out in ecstasy.

Jurel stumbled as though struck, almost falling into his chair. A tight band constricted his chest. His sword flickered as though hesitant. Tears, squeezed from a part of his soul he had thought locked away for good, streamed from his eyes.

Kurin would not look at him. The old man—he truly did seem old now with his slumped shoulders and a hunch in his back, older than his years—seemed shrouded in darkness.

“
Oh, Kurin,” Jurel said quietly. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

Wretchedly, Kurin met his eye. Trembling, he whispered, “Why? Why did you have to do that?”

“
I needed to know.”

He had caused this. His foolishness, his arrogance. His selfishness. He was the one who had sent the army, who had not foreseen the ambush. Who had killed more than a thousand good men and women. He was the one who ran. He who caused Kurin this pain, the scars of which had bitten deeper, and would last longer, than any wound inflicted by sword or lance.

The old man stood before him, breathing raggedly, but though he lived, Jurel felt the dead void inside him. The chill of it emanated from Kurin like a glacial wind.

Kurin cringed when Jurel laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. Feeling a dagger-sharp pain at this, Jurel quickly retracted his hand.

“
I'm sorry, Kurin,” he said quietly again. “I'm sorry.”

Stepping to Kurin's side, careful not to touch him, Jurel faced his audience.

“
I
am
sorry,” he said. “Not only to Kurin and those who were captured by the former prelate, but to all of you here, and all the injured and the dead.

“
But I am here now.”

He had had some ideas of making an uplifting speech, pull everyone together into one purpose, rally the troops. Begin the process of healing by promising a bright future. He had thought of it. Though he really did hurt to see Kurin brought so low, he could not have thanked the old man more for providing the perfect opening. Until, that was, the great council chamber doors at the far end swung open, cutting Jurel off mid-sentence.

A young acolyte pushed his way through the crowd, earning him shouted reprimands that he did not bother to acknowledge. In his hand, he held what appeared to be a ragged sheet of parchment. In his eyes, there was most definitely terror.

He halted a few steps from Jurel, panting. A wedge of ice lodged itself in Jurel heart.

“
My Lord,” the young man said, going to his knees. “I-”

But his words stopped. He stared in horror at the piece of parchment in his hand as though it was a poisonous snake. It shook with the young man's trembles.

“
What is it?” Jurel demanded.

He snatched the page away. He read. The page was dirty. Jagged crumple lines criss-crossed the primitive, angular writing. As he read, the blood drained from his face. The wedge of ice spread, threatened to engulf him.

Your woman has been invited to an audience with my master. She did not show proper gratitude when the honor was extended. This is unfortunate. We convinced her she must accompany us. Do not worry. My master has demanded that she not be too damaged.

My master invites you too. We suggest, for the continued health of your woman, that you comply.