From Across the Clouded Range (32 page)

When Ipid did not think that he could
take any more, a man interrupted the lesson with a plate of food,
but it was not the meat, cheeses, and bread that caught Ipid’s
attention. The man was as large as any he had ever seen, bigger
even than Elton. He had to hunch to stand in the tent, and his body
seemed to fill the entire space. He was both tall and broad with
hulking arms and chest. His hands were as big as the dinner plate
he carried – proportioned for the pommel of the enormous sword that
was slung across his back. His face was marked by a long mustache
that was braided through with strips of dark leather and ornamented
with red beads. His steel-grey hair was also long, hanging past his
shoulders in another set of small braids that were pulled back into
one tight clump. A long scar ran across the length of his face
disturbing what would have been bold features.

The giant did not look like any man
Ipid had ever seen, and that just added to his confusion. He was
already bewildered as to why a bandit king would kidnap one of the
wealthiest men in the world in order to receive a language lessons.
What’s more, the language that Arin spoke was not only unknown to
Ipid, it was unlike any he had ever heard, and the symbols he wrote
in the book were equally foreign. To this point, Ipid had been too
busy worrying about Arin’s pantomimes to consider these oddities,
but now that he was putting them together, he knew that something
strange was happening in Randor’s Pass. The only reasonable
explanation was that these men were. . . .

A sharp kick in the mid-section
dispelled any thoughts Ipid might have had regarding the raiders’
origin. The blow caught him completely off guard and knocked the
wind out of him so thoroughly that he was turning blue before he
managed a gasping breath.

Ipid lay on the ground, breathing
deeply between retches as Arin ate. When he was finished, he laid
the scraps in front of Ipid’s nose, but despite his suddenly
ravenous hunger, Ipid had not lost his dignity. He turned his nose
up at the scraps. He expected another beating as payment, but it
did not come. The plate was simply removed as if it had never been
offered.

The language lessons continued for
hours after that until Arin was attempting simple sentences. The
young man had an incredible memory that only needed to hear a word
once to store it seemingly forever. Ipid was not so quick, and Arin
reminded him of his shortfalls with a long stick that he had
procured after the meal. He used the stick to whip his teacher
across the arms and back whenever he failed to remember a word or
understand a gesture, and by the end of the night, Ipid was covered
with welts.

Ipid was eventually so sore and tired
that he could no longer think. He was certain that if Arin hit him
one more time he would breakdown – even the thought of the stick
left him on the verge of tears. Arin must have seen the same thing.
In the night’s only act of compassion, he cut off Ipid’s shaking
recitation of the words they had covered. "Stop! Te-adeate Ipid
sleep."

Arin pushed back the flap of the tent
and said a few words to the guard outside. Ipid almost wept in
relief until the man who had brought the food ducked into the tent
and lifted him by the collar of his shirt. The huge guard carried
him easily, but the grip he used caused the shirt to cinch around
his throat like a noose. He tried to bring his legs under him, but
they had been asleep for hours, and he could not hope to make them
function. The huge man mercilessly dragged him gagging and
sputtering across the village to a large sheep pen where the other
villager were housed and haphazardly added him to their
number.

Ipid landed on several motionless
bodies, which burst to life, yelled in pain, and pushed him away.
When they saw who it was, they retracted, looked at him with a mix
of fear and revulsion, eyes blaming him, begging him to leave. He
apologized to those he had disturbed and stumbled off, with his
legs still half-asleep, in search of an open space in the crowded
pen. The crowd retracted from him like a plague carrier then left
him a space near the edge of the pen where only those who were
unable to move remained anywhere near him.

He had just curled into a ball when a
soft hand pressed on his shoulder. He shook in fear that it was the
guard, but when he looked up, cowering, it was Rynn’s tight smile
that greeting him. The boy looked awful. His face was splattered
with grime, his shoulder-length brown hair was tangled and matted,
and his entire body trembled beneath his filthy, but once fine,
clothes. Whatever Ipid had been through, it looked like Rynn had
received worse. Nonetheless, the sight of him brought a small smile
to Ipid’s battered face.

To Ipid’s surprise, Rynn did not speak
immediately. He just sat and looked at him as if he might
disappear. Then, when he finally found his voice, the words were
distant whispers. "Lord Ronigan, sir, it’s . . . it's good to see
that . . . that you’re still alive. I . . . I feared the worst when
I couldn’t find you.” The boy shook violently, and his eyes watched
the guard near the gate of the pen with rabid fear. “One of the
villagers said . . . well . . . that the leader of these animals
went after you. And when that happens, there usually isn't . . .
isn't much left of the person." Rynn laughed nervously. His eyes
shifted. The laugh made Ipid look at the boy twice. It smacked of
madness.

"We’ve been in this pen all night,”
Rynn almost chuckled. “They just crammed us in here and left us . .
. left us with this one guard, but . . . but no one dares to run.
No one's that brave. Not . . . not after what’s happened.” He
paused again and looked at Ipid as if he might question his
courage. Ipid tried to reassure the boy with a tight smile and a
nod. “When they were herding us into the pen, everyone was afraid,
but whenever anyone talked or cried out, they just . . . they just
cut them down. Women and children too, anyone who made the
slightest sound, they cut ‘em down without . . . without even
blinking." Rynn’s face crumbled. He turned from Ipid and shook with
ragged sobs.

Ipid realized that he
might have had the easy part of the day. These people had known
terror far worse than anything he had experienced.
By the Blessed Order, children too?
He had known that they were dealing with a brutal
bunch, but he had not expected anything like that. He put his arms
around Rynn in an attempt to comfort him. The boy tried to escape
the embrace, but Ipid did not let go. He pulled him close and tried
to ignore the pain in his arms where he had been
whipped.

"They just killed people.” Rynn shook.
His words were a mumble in Ipid’s chest. “I was so scared that all
I could do was walk. A woman next to me. They hit her . . . hit her
right in the head with one of those sword. Her head . . . . The
blood hit me . . . all I could do was walk . . . ."

Ipid tightened his arms around Rynn
and stroked his hair. He made quiet noises telling him to stop.
When his sobs eased, he pulled the boy away and looked at him. His
eyes were damp with tears; they looked distant and dead. "Listen to
me, Rynn. I know you saw some terrible things today, and I don't
want you to ever forget those things. Keep those images, those
people with you, but don't let them destroy you. Let them power
you.” He looked at Rynn to be certain he was listening. “These
bastards may treat us like less than animals, but we cannot let
them convince us that they are right. You have to be strong, Rynn.
Put today behind you, but never forget that woman. Don't let her
die in vain. Make her part of you, let her give you
strength."

Some of the distance faded from Rynn's
eyes as Ipid spoke, and his tears began to dry. When he finished,
some rigidity had returned to his body, and a new determination
seemed to take hold of him. Ipid hoped it would be
enough.

He brought Rynn to him in another
embrace then pushed him away. "Now, go. Get some sleep.” He tried
to sound fatherly and sure. “You will need it tomorrow. Go ahead.
Put this terror behind you and sleep."

Rynn looked like he wanted to speak,
but Ipid held up his hand and motioned him away. He did not want
the boy around when these bastards came for him in the morning.
There was a chance they would see the fine cut of his clothes and
realize his value. He was safer as an anonymous villager, so Ipid
sent him away, denied his own desire for companionship. The boy
nodded, stood on shaking legs, and wove through the villagers to
the far side of the pen.

Ipid sat back in the mud feeling the
cold of the night return. He had to remember what he had told Rynn
as well. Now was not a time for tears or regrets, now was a time to
survive, to survive and remember.

Chapter 16

The morning light drifted through the tiny
cracks in the shelter where Dasen and Teth silently slept. The sun
maintained the warmth of summer with only a few high clouds to
break its luster. Despite that heat, birds sang and squirrels
played in the trees. As far as they were concerned, this day was
the same as any other, and it was good to be alive.

The rains of a few days before had left
everything green, lush, alive. In the distance, the water from that
rain ran into a river, which flowed into another and another until
it boiled into the endless seas. Those rivers did not stop on this
day or any other. They did not care who they buried or what they
washed away. The rivers simply were and always would be.

The trees along the banks of those
rivers stood tall and proud sucking in the warmth. One day they
would be covered with winter’s snow, but that day seemed far away.
For the moment, birds sang to them, squirrels played in their
branches, and the sun was never ending. Some of those trees would
die, lost to winds, water, fire, or a thousand other catastrophes,
and when they had gone, new ones would take their places. So the
cycle went: death replaced by life, falling into death again. It
did not stop on this day or any other. It played no favorites, made
no favors. It simply was and always would be.

Those trees stretched on to the west
where they met the mountains whose unyielding power had stood for
thousands of years. They would stand for thousands more as a
barrier to all who dared cross them. They welcomed the challengers
and defeated most, but they did not celebrate their victories or
mourn their defeats. They were cold and solitary, not knowing, not
caring. They too simply were and always would be.

It was the order of the world. Nature
had its ways, its formulas, and those did not change for man. They
did not alter when men killed one another in war or when they
laughed together in peace. Those patterns had been set when the
world was created. Men were a small factor in their outcomes. They
lived with the laws or were run asunder by them. The Order did not
concern itself with them either way.

Thus it was, on that pristine morning,
that Dasen found himself floating above it all. Below him were the
trees, the rivers, the mountains, the whole world stretched out
clear and bright. He floated higher and higher taking in more and
more of the view until he realized that he could understand, could
see all of the patterns for which men had searched from the
beginning of time. They were simply laid out before his unbelieving
eyes. He studied those patterns, began to understand them, and
realized that he was no longer seeing trees, rivers, and mountains;
he saw formulas. A great myriad of formulas covered the whole of
his vision. Incredibly complex, they overlapped, sharing variables
in a great spider’s web of interdependencies. He could not hope to
understand them, but he found that if he concentrated, he could
bring the formulas to him, could even change them.

As an experiment, he concentrated on
the formula for a river. It appeared before him, he changed one of
the coefficients, and the river flowed away from the sea. He
grabbed another formula, made another change, and clouds drew
moisture out of the ground instead of depositing it. Another
formula, and fire radiated cold that froze everything near it. He
soon understood how to read the formulas and control the changes he
was making: men became pregnant, fish came on to the land while
land animals moved below the waves, mountains grew not up but into
gapping valleys. Finally, he found the formula for life itself:
there was no more death, people came back from the dead, new lives
were created, healthy people died for no reason. . . .

He had lost control. The formula was
changing without him, transmuting on its own. He tried to hold it
together, to reverse the changes he had made, but the coefficients
were changing too fast, rattling through a thousand combinations of
life and death. He fought to regain control and discovered that all
of the formulas were changing. The alterations were random and the
more he fought to restore them, the faster they changed. He worked
franticly to repair what he had done, but the damage only got worse
until the formulas flew apart, scattering their
coefficients.

And he was the cause. The very fabric
of the world was rotting in his hands, and the more he tried to
hold it together, the more it crumbled. Searching for an escape, he
looked out and found himself at the center of a vortex of shattered
formulas and errant coefficients. The formulas collapsed on him
then scattered in disarray. He was tearing them apart, destroying
the bonds that held the world together. Where there had been order,
there was chaos, and he was its lord, the eye of the storm, the
pitch of battle, the heart of revolution, the death of
understanding.