The Hero's Lot Read online

Karele took a step toward the guard, his hands at his sides, and responded, his voice framing an unfamiliar mix of words that sounded as if he were trying to swallow his own tongue.

  “Verya?”

  The question in the Morgol’s voice was unmistakable, and he brandished his weapon. Martin gripped his horse’s mane and prayed he would be able to launch himself onto the horse’s back before the guard came too close.

  Karele barked a laugh laced with derision back at the sentry. “Nejisin neighisa ulan, sopt.”

  Martin reiterated desperate prayers as he tried to peer through the darkness where death waited. Spots swam in his vision against the backdrop of night. He’d forgotten to breathe. With the best effort he could muster, he pulled a quiet, shuddering breath into his lungs. When the hammering of his heart subsided, he picked up sounds of the sentry moving off. Karele’s grip on his arm blocked a sob of relief that threatened to tear its way past his lips.

  After another minute the solis’s hand dropped. “Deas is merciful,” he said. “Come, a Morgol guard is as unquestioning as a kingdom soldier, but a chance conversation with another sentry will reveal our deception and bring them down on us.”

  After his vision cleared, Martin drew alongside his guide. “You were brilliant,” he offered. “Had you not been by my side, I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the two of you.”

  Karele’s laughter came to him, soft, breathy, and amused. “It would seem that Deas saw fit to use my extended captivity on the steppes. Who knows? Perhaps this encounter tonight is the very reason he allowed me to be held prisoner for so long.”

  This last comment struck Martin as an overly harsh view of Deas, but Karele’s logic and his own relief precluded argument. “What did you say to him?”

  “He smelled horse and horse liniment. He knew someone was out there with a horse. I simply pointed out to him what he should assume—that only a Morgol with a Morgol horse would be using that salve.”

  “He believed you?”

  Laughter drifted through the cool air. “Yes, after I called him horse-brained. The guard doubtless thought it only slightly unusual to find another Morgol so out of place in the cordon around Berea. Soldiers on duty just want someone to tell them what to do. They’d prefer not to bear the burden of having to think for themselves.” They walked in silence, which Martin filled with thanks to Deas.

  “The Morgols are unmatched in their ferocity on horseback,” Karele said. “But their hierarchy is looser than that of Illustra’s forces.”

  Martin grunted in agreement. “I have heard as much from Cruk. He said their lack of structure was the only thing that saved the kingdom twenty years ago.”

  The soft whicker of a horse a few minutes later heralded their reunion with the rest of their party. Luis’s face appeared, ghosting above his dark cloak like a disembodied head, silver in the light and pinched. “Are you all right, Martin? We nearly started back for you.”

  “I’m fine. I got a bit careless with Karele’s liniment, and it nearly betrayed us. A sentry sniffed us out. Karele managed to bluff us through.”

  Cruk grunted. “Only one? And you didn’t get him close enough to slip a knife between his ribs?”

  The healer’s voice answered the captain in hard, brittle tones, his words clipped. “I prefer not to do that. Images of Deas are not meant to be destroyed.”

  “Huh,” Cruk said. “You left an enemy alive that you could have eliminated. That’s one more we’ll have to kill when Rodran dies. Or do you not remember the damage they did twenty years ago?”

  The moonlight carved Karele’s face into a set of intersecting planes, hard, unyielding. “I think I’m in a position to remember as well as any man. I’ve seen the Morgols. I’ve lived as one. They are like the Merakhi, held captive by their theurgists as the Merakhi are controlled by their hoteps and akhen. Most of them are our combatants, not our enemies. They are images of Deas.”

  “Small difference,” Cruk retorted, “when they’re trying to rip your guts out with those hooked swords.”

  Martin rubbed a hand across his belly, remembering the glint of steel in the moonlight.

  “So you say,” Karele said. “But tell me which is better—to kill an enemy or to redeem him?”

  Cruk growled but didn’t respond. Martin looked away, unwilling to see the accusation in Karele’s face. What would Martin have done? Kill? It was easier and safer. His heart and mind split, his priestly vows warring with his responsibility to the kingdom. Their lives hung on the thread of Rodran’s unstable heart. Could they afford mercy?

  “If it will make you feel better, Captain,” Karele said, “the guard was taken in. And alive he will cause less commotion than if he were gathering blowflies in the dirt. His absence would be noted at first light.”

  The grinding of Cruk’s teeth sounded in the darkness. “Glibly spoken, healer, but whose side are you on?”

  “I am on Deas’s side, Captain—not yours, and not the Morgol’s either.” He swung himself up into his saddle. “And that will never change. Now, since this is your territory, not mine, I think it’s time you lead us out of here.”

  Cruk mounted and snapped the reins as if his horse had somehow offended him. “This way.”

  The tracked road ran from Callowford to Berea. By the time they neared the bridge across the Sprata, the sky had lightened from black to a dark gray, casting the world in uniform hues of drab that sent chills of foreboding down Martin’s neck. This is what defeat would look like. The light gone and the world forever doomed to live under the unrelenting darkness of the Morgol and Merakhi spiritists. With a shake of his head, he castigated himself for such thoughts. No. They would not lose. They must not.

  Cruk held up a hand for a halt. “If it is acceptable, I’d prefer not to alert the entire town to our presence. I doubt the Morgols have bought any eyes and ears in Berea, but I don’t want to take a chance on someone selling us to save his own skin.”

  Martin nodded. The ashen gray of predawn light seeped into his mind. Even his thoughts felt muted. “Agreed. Do as you think best, Captain.”

  Cruk nodded and led them onto the bridge, walking his horse. The captain’s head swiveled from side to side, and he peered ahead into the darkness.

  “What?” Martin prompted.

  “I know the men in Berea, Pater,” he said. “They’re not watchmen, but a few of them fought in the Morgol war. They’re not stupid enough to leave the bridge into the city unguarded or unwatched. Someone should have challenged us by now.”

  Martin’s mouth dried. When he licked his lips, his tongue felt like cloth. “Did the Morgols wipe out the village?”

  Cruk shook his head. “It wouldn’t make sense. Why hold the cordon off Berea if there was no one alive inside it? No, it’s something else.”

  As they neared the far end of the bridge, a whiff of corruption and bowel wafted to Martin on the breeze. Then he heard it—the buzzing of flies.

  The captain held up a hand. Martin was only too happy to comply.

  Cruk pointed. “There.”

  A body, no, two bodies lay face up in the dirt just beyond the bridge. As Cruk went to investigate, Martin covered his mouth and nose with a corner of his cloak. Cruk returned a moment later, his voice flat and hard as stone. His eyes sought Karele. “They’ve been gutted. One of them looks to be a week dead or so, the other a couple of days. For some reason, the Morgols seem intent on keeping the Bereans inside their homes.”

  Martin coughed. A gust filled his nose with the sickly sweet smell of rot. “Deas help us, they wouldn’t even let them bury their dead.”

  “Evidently not. It looks like the second man tried to drag the first one back toward the village.” Cruk impaled Karele with his gaze, or tried to. “What was that you were telling us about the Morgols, healer?”

  Karele shook his head without answering.

  They skirted the village and found the path to Adele’s cabin as the sky moved from charcoal to the hue of doves. The
muted light surrendered colors like a miser parting with his gold. Even so, they looked wrong, as if the cordon had somehow robbed the greens, reds, and yellows of their autumn vitality. Martin fixed his eyes on the road ahead, trying to dismiss the blemished colors as a vain imagination. He could do nothing about them.

  They rounded a corner and stopped. Adele’s cabin squatted among the trees some twenty paces away. The herbwoman stood like a statue on the stoop, her arms crossed in the manner of one whose company is expected and late.

  Karele dismounted and tied his horse to the closest sapling, leading the way on foot. Adele remained in her pose, stern as winter.

  When Karele came within arm’s reach of the old woman, he went to both knees before her, head bowed. “As Aurae bids, so I have come, mother.”

  Adele’s face showed its emotions by various shifts of her wrinkles. Now they tightened into disapproval, though Martin could discern no cause for it either in Karele’s manner or their own.

  “And did Aurae tell you to tarry on the steppes, my son?”

  Karele jerked as if whipped. “I came back, mother, at Aurae’s command.”

  Adele’s face hardened further. “Do not dissemble with me, son. You are many turns of the moon late in obeying the call to return.”

  The healer hung his head. “Yes, mother.”

  “And did your master mean so much to you, son?”

  “He was like a father to me.”

  Adele harrumphed. “An earthly father, you mean.”

  Karele nodded.

  Martin stepped forward. The man’s tardy answer to Aurae’s call explained his odd reluctance, but he had made the journey, if a little late. If the solis worshipped the same Deas as the church, then it was time to prove it. “Stop, Adele. There is grace also, even for those who are slow to answer.”

  The herbwoman’s eyes glinted in the dawn like chips of agate. “Does your church not impose penance on those who are too slow to obey?”

  Martin nodded but refused to yield the point. “Yes, as part of forgiveness.”

  “Well then, priest, since you stand for this reluctant son, this recalcitrant solis, are you willing to share in his amends? I will not speak of penance.” Adele’s eyes, carved from stone, still challenged him.

  “If need be,” Martin answered. “I will not commit to folly in my ignorance. Speak plainly, and I will as well.”

  Karele’s voice croaked from beneath his bowed head. “No, mother, please.”

  His plea might as well have been given to rock; Adele’s face remained graven. “The kingdom rests on a knife’s edge, my son, an edge made keener and narrower by your tardy obedience, and you entreat me to forbear from speaking of it.”

  Karele nodded.

  Something so personal passed between Adele and the figure crouched at her feet that Martin felt as if he eavesdropped on lovers. He wanted nothing so much as to turn away and leave them, but Karele’s pain called to him. It was too familiar, too much like Errol’s, for him to ignore. Blinded by his obsession with keeping Liam safe, he’d done nothing for Errol. His need to expunge his guilt would not let him turn away from Karele now.

  “I will share his amends.”

  Cruk and Luis stared. He didn’t care. If Deas wanted the kingdom saved, then He would find a way to save it.

  Softness seeped into Adele’s face in the lessening of the lines that marked her disdain, and the look she turned on Martin made him straighten his shoulders in preparation to accept the burden of his words. What had he done?

  “As you wish, priest, but if you would share the doom of Karele’s geas, we must find Radere. I do not presume to solely speak for Aurae.”

  What had he done?

  The herbwoman stumped from her porch, past the still-kneeling Karele, past Martin, Cruk, and Luis. She stopped and called back over her shoulder. “Well, bring your horses, noble sirs. I am old. I have no intention of walking to my sister’s when one of you can give me a ride.”

  “I can give you a ride,” Cruk said. The captain eyed Karele with something like satisfaction across the planes of his hard face.

  “Ha!” Adele laughed. “Your horse has enough of a burden.” She stabbed a finger at Luis. “He will carry me.”

  The reader reacted as if she’d speared him in the side. Then he nodded, his head dipping in surrender.

  Martin’s head swam. Unexpected events spun his carefully laid plans out of control each time he tried to dictate the next move. Luis’s reaction betrayed hidden familiarity with the herbwoman and hinted at a relationship previously unknown to him. The revelations washed the foundation of his confidence from beneath his feet.

  As they backtracked the way they’d come, Martin tried to ride close to his friend, hoping to eavesdrop on whatever snippets of conversation he shared with Adele. The herbwoman saw through him with shameful ease.

  “Ride ahead, priest. I would speak with the reader, the secondus of the conclave, alone.” She filled the titles with sarcastic condescension, as if she intended to repudiate their value. Martin looked to his friend, but Luis bowed his head in assent to Adele’s wish and would not meet his gaze.

  He edged his horse forward to ride beside Cruk. The captain of the watch scanned the forest that hemmed in the road as if resenting man’s intrusion. His eyes darted back and forth, occasionally coming to rest on a tree or shadow that required greater attention.

  “Waste of time,” Cruk said. “There could be an entire phalanx of Morgols in these woods and I wouldn’t be able to see them.”

  Martin followed Cruk’s gaze, but his attention slid past the shadows and trees to scrutinize the foliage itself. The plants seemed normal at first glance, but if he looked long enough the colors appeared . . . off, as if the sun withheld a portion of its light. The greens of the laurel and rhododendron that dominated this close to the river held a yellowish tinge that contrasted with the deep, rich green he expected so late in the year.

  Rodran’s doing—curse him. He had no right to die now. Martin caught the train of thought, shunted it aside. The king still lived—however tentative his grip on life had become. Martin reached back with one meaty hand to try and squeeze the tension out of his neck. Rodran wasn’t to blame for his sterility. That consequence had been set into motion by his father, and Rodrick IV lay moldering in the royal mausoleum, entombed beyond all retribution for his folly and pride.

  He tore his gaze from the plants and turned his attention to his companions. Luis and Adele still rode beyond earshot at the rear of the group. The herbwoman noted his attention, and the lines of her face tightened. Cruk continued to submit to his soldier’s training, his head turning in methodical increments. Karele rode on the other side of Cruk, as far from the group as possible, head bowed, eyes hidden. The healer’s pain was palpable.

  The road to Callowford narrowed, forced Karele to bring his horse closer to Cruk and Martin until only a span separated their mounts. Karele’s curled posture, as if he were trying to hide within himself, accentuated his small stature. His loose brown curls merged with his horse’s mane of the same color, giving the appearance the mount and rider had become one.

  The solis’s mare stumbled, startling Karele into awareness. He looked around, his eyes slowly coming into focus to something beyond his thoughts. He addressed Cruk. “You’re wasting your time.”

  Cruk’s disdain for the solis etched itself in the jaw muscles that bunched in his face. “How’s that, healer?”

  If Karele noted the watchman’s contempt, he didn’t bother to acknowledge it. “The Morgol theurgists will not order the soldiers to attack until their divinations are answered.” He jerked his head back toward Luis and Adele. “Mother would not have ordered us to Callowford had not Aurae indicated Deas’s protection.” A ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “The theurgists are doubtless unsure of how to proceed. Their art is blocked. I have seen the Morgol holy men at work. They are unaccustomed to failure. Mother is administering unfamiliar chastisement.”

&nb
sp; Karele’s reverence for the herbwomen struck Martin, and he forced himself to revisit his assumptions regarding them. “Why do you call her mother?”

  The solis hunched his shoulder as if against unseen blows. “Unlike the church, those who are solis are loosely organized. Yet every organization requires authority.” His mouth twisted. “And submission to that authority. Adele and Radere were chosen by Aurae over twenty years ago to lead the solis.”

  The timing caught Martin’s attention. He didn’t believe in coincidence. With a wrench, as if his thoughts had become externalized by some arcane means, he knew the question that needed answering above all others: Why had the Morgols invaded twenty years ago? What goad had driven the nomads over the mountains to attack?

  With a sigh, he put that question aside with the rest. His inability to see more than a small portion of the reasons behind the kingdom’s threat discouraged him. Errol, Liam, the solis, and the Morgol invasion taunted his ignorance as if he were the most naive acolyte of the church.

  Two hours later, with the sun a handspan above the treetops, they approached Callowford. Radere’s cabin lay in their path. Adele’s sister waited on the stoop, her eyes hooded in shadow, but Martin imagined he could see expectation there. Luis’s horse, with Adele aboard, almost like a child in the front part of his saddle, came past Martin and the rest. Luis dismounted first and then, his moves deferential, reached up and lifted Adele down to the hard-packed earth.

  “Well met, sister,” Adele said.

  Radere nodded toward Karele. The healer, out of intent or accident, had positioned his horse behind Cruk’s. “I see you’ve brought him. Does he know of the amends he must make?”

  Adele shrugged her thin shoulders. “He knows he must make them, but I have not shared the specifics.”

  Radere nodded as if she expected no less. “Thank you, sister.” She cast an eye at the rest of the party before coming to rest on Luis. “Have you come here to accept your call, reader?”

  For the briefest of moments, Martin’s closest friend looked pained. Luis shot him a glance that mixed equal parts embarrassment and contrition.