What Remains of Heroes (15 page)

10

The Problems at Hand

P
refect Gamghast sat
quietly in his small chambers, focusing for a moment on the drifting dust motes illuminated by the late afternoon sunlight. He’d found concentration was a difficult state to achieve of late. He was often distracted by the mundane or consumed with worry, and in either case unable to set his mind to the problems at hand.
If only our most difficult challenges were set upon us when we still possessed the vigor of youth
.

On the desk before him was a blank sheet of parchment, a quill, and an inkwell. He’d been contemplating the instruments since noon, but had been unable to capture his thoughts with written words. Instead, he’d fussed with the unruly wisps of his white beard, cracked his knuckles, and picked at a chipped corner of his desk.
Is this how I’ll meet my end? Lost in thought and incapable of action?

He seized the quill and dipped the nib into the inkwell, decisively. He held the quill poised over the parchment, the ink dripping and pooling into an ever-widening splotch as he waited for words to coalesce in his head. But, after a time, he realized such gestures would not give shape to his muddled ideations. He returned the quill to the inkwell.

His eyes drifted again to the motes of dust. He watched them float and flutter, shifting with even the slightest movements of air and lacking any purpose or direction.
I will not be thus
. He inhaled sharply and knotted his brow, urging his thoughts to assume some sort of sensible order, some pattern from which he could decipher meaning.

A list
, he insisted.
I shall begin with a list
.

He retrieved again the quill, drawing the excess ink from the tip by wiping it over the mouth of the inkwell. He cleared his throat and pressed the quill to the parchment. “The Necrists,” he wrote at the top of the sheet. He stared at the words, watching the ink soak into the fibers of the parchment until it achieved a dull, deep black.

It was known Yrghul had followers and successors in the same manner as Illienne, and the Necrists were regarded as the Sanctum’s foil. In the years after the gods’ descent to oblivion, the Necrists laid claim to this inheritance from Yrghul, declaring themselves heirs to fell powers and the last practitioners of profane enchantments. But after a time they all but vanished, becoming little more than a dark rumor. In bleaker times, they were a fashionable scapegoat, with charlatans proclaiming that the Necrists were cursing the Kingdom as a measure of revenge for their dead god, Yrghul. In other times, they were almost forgotten. Their practice of secrecy made them a myth.

Yet they’d persisted. The Sanctum’s archives contained accounts of clashes with the Necrists, and descriptions of their foul sorceries. Rumors of stillborn children bearing unnatural marks. Accounts of the possession of souls by vile demons. Rumors of Necric rituals, with the cultists communing with the dead god Yrghul through pools of blood. There were stories that their arts caused their own flesh to rot, and that they practiced grafting to their bones the skins of their sacrifices. But so much of it was only rumor.

Gamghast drummed his fingers on the desk and dipped the quill again into the inkwell. His eyes wandered for an instant to a shelf on his wardrobe where he’d stashed the scullery maid’s note.
Is it possible they’ve operated beneath our noses, and have incited treachery at our very doorstep?

“The chamberlain,” began his next line, “is poisoning the High King. He speaks much with a man whose face is made of stitches.”

A face made of stitches. They graft the skins of their sacrifices to their bones. It must be a Necrist.

He dropped the quill in the inkwell and pushed away from the table. He pulled his cloak about his shoulders, grabbed his staff, and looked wearily out his window.

It seems I must start by stalking the chamberlain
.
To think, a prefect of the Sanctum taking to skullduggery and skulking in shadows. Bale, I trust your investigation is more
dignified
.

Bale braced himself against the railing of
Losander
’s Revenge
and expelled the sour remnants of his lunch. The mess splattered upon the indigo waters below, leaving behind a green flotsam. Bale smacked his lips and spat thickly, thinking this would not be the last time he fell sick at sea.

“Ho there, spooker!” yelled a soldier. “You can’t make sea legs with magic, eh?”

The nearby group of red-sashed soldiers laughed loudly. Bale turned his head from the railing and gave them an angry look. They only laughed louder, pointing fingers and elbowing each other.

“Ah,” Bale said with a level tone, “the easy amusements of stunted minds. Hilarious, I’m sure.” As he spoke, he noticed a long string of spittle and snot dangling from his chin and twisting wildly about in the wind. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his robe, and tried to display his most ferocious scowl.

They continued laughing.

Bale then noticed the string of viscous mucus had anchored itself to his sleeve, and continued its mad dance. It was at least a yard long and sparkled in the afternoon sun. He shook his arm but it would not dislodge.

“A new flag for our ship!” laughed a thick-bearded soldier.

“Run the spooker up the mast!” said a balding one.

How I hate people
. Bale stumbled backward and steadied himself against a tall coil of hempen rope. He gave the soldiers one last glare before walking unsteadily to the companionway and descending below deck.

The voyage across the Sullen Sea had been a rough one. The sea was known for the wicked rocks lurking just beneath its surface, and for the swift storms that whipped at sails and churned the sea’s dark waters. There had been times when
Losander’s Revenge
careened dangerously, nearly capsizing, and others when it groaned and shook while narrowly avoiding the sea’s sharp rocks.

Bale laid in his hammock below deck, squeezing shut his eyes and swallowing frequently in an effort to keep from vomiting. His stomach lurched with every tilt of the ship and shudder of its hull. The rocking hammock only made things worse, for when he opened his eyes it seemed the ship was moving in one direction and he in another.

But at least down in the darkness of the ship’s berth, at this time of day, he was mostly alone. If there was anything that disagreed with him more than travel at sea, it was doing so in the company of soldiers. They taunted and intimidated him. He despised their ilk, and cursed Gamghast for arranging travel aboard a military vessel.
Certainly there are less odious methods of traveling southward
.

He found himself becoming disoriented by the sways of the ship and felt he needed something to subdue his nausea. He stumbled out of the hammock, nearly falling face-first into the floor’s timbers as the hammock tipped. There were a few soldiers sleeping nearby, but to Bale’s relief they did not stir. He could only imagine their derisive jeers if he’d awoken them with his clumsiness.

He found his pack hanging on a hook and carried it to a table near the berth’s only lantern. He thrust his hands inside the pack, identifying its contents by feel, and retrieved a sleeve of leather rolled and bound with a bronze clasp. He undid the clasp and unfurled the sleeve across the table, revealing numerous pockets containing the reagents, powders and herbs he’d secured from the Sanctum’s apothecary. He opened a slender pocket and from it withdrew a sprig of hagsweed. He chewed it, grimacing at the bitter lather it yielded. After a moment, though, his stomach began to settle.

Once indoctrinated in the precepts of the Old Faith, all members of the Sanctum learned the arts of healing. Infections, plagues and rots were anathema to them, for such things marked the work of Yrghul and a corruption of Illienne’s creation. And so, it was their sworn duty to rid bodies of their ills. For centuries they’d been regarded as healers of the highest order, and even now in their decline they were often sought to address maladies of all sorts. Already Bale had been asked by the ship’s captain to test the ship’s casks of drinking water, after a soldier came down with dysentery.

He remembered how the soldiers had regarded him with mocking reverence once he declared the water safe to drink.

Next time I should poison the casks
.

The hagsweed quelled the roil of his stomach. He caught the scent of cooking, and after he’d returned his pack to his hook he wandered into the galley adjacent to the ship’s berth. Therein, a portly crewman attended a kettle filled with a soup of brown broth, carrots and hunks of white fish, and next to it was a basket filled with hardtack bread. The crewman mechanically dipped a wooden mug into the kettle and handed it to Bale without a word.

Bale nodded, grateful for the lack of communication, and grabbed a chunk of the bread. He settled against a table in the galley’s corner and dropped the bread into his soup, remembering how he’d nearly cracked a tooth on the hardtack the night before.

The companionway trembled from the boots of soldiers as a group of them descended into the berth.
Time for supper, and time for me to take my leave
. Bale ducked out of the galley and squeezed past the soldiers with his head down. Once the companionway was clear he pulled himself above deck and found a quiet spot on the ship’s forecastle.

Bale sipped at the mug and chewed the tough, crusty bread. The soup was salty and thin, but the warmth of it made tolerable the chill winds of the sea.
Perhaps the stuff will even stay in my stomach this time
.

The sea before him shimmered beneath the moon and stars, an ever-changing canvas of black and silver. Off to his right, perhaps a league or two distant, was the murky outline of Rune’s coast. There was the occasional firelight of a seaside town and lantern glow of a fishing boat, but otherwise all lay in darkness.

He drained the last of his soup and chewed his remaining bread. As he did, he found his head clearing for the first time in many days. He felt his thoughts were finally freed from his stomach, the soldiers, and the swaying of the ship. He thought of his mission and of the events that had led him to this moment.