With Their Bones: The Mark of the Dead

Chapter One

I

should have known better.

He thought he could simply steal it. He thought he could control it.

Fool.

The man who wore Joran Kathias’s face opened his eyes.

He could not call it waking, for that spoke to a consciousness, a transcendence from a state of dreams to that of purposeful thought. It meant leaving a passive existence and gaining an active one. Such a thing could not be said for this man. What the frail, stricken body that lay wrapped in linens in the dark, suffocating room was experiencing was not any sort of autonomy.

He was alive, perhaps, but not in the sense of true living. Confined to the bed, imprisoned in the room, he could not move beyond the act of opening his eyes, could not speak or even groan, could not do a single thing to manipulate his environment. He was aware - his sight, smell and hearing all intact. He could feel those that tended to him when they touched him, fed him, washed him and changed him like a child.

They spoke to him as they would a child as well. No! Not a child. Like an enfeebled old man or a mindless invalid. They treated him like a simpleton, explaining that they were washing him or telling him what it was they fed him. It enraged him, burned from the very depth of his being. He wanted nothing more than to break free of whatever these invisible shackles were that held him prisoner in this body. He wanted to show them he was no weakling.

But no force of will, no effort that he expended, could free him. He had tried for so long that he could no longer keep count of the hours and days. Weeks now, or months, he thought, had passed since he had been brought here. Carried from the ruined fortress of Sentry by Cirrin Ravensbourne like any other wounded warrior from a battlefield, he had assumed his enfeebled state would be a temporary one. Cirrin had stayed with him at first, watching over him and believing he would come back to himself as well.

He wondered, for a time, why Cirrin would wish that. They were not friends. Perhaps they had been allies of a sort at one time, but certainly not now. In fact, that Cirrin bothered saving him at all was a mystery for many days. A knife in the heart seemed a more appropriate gesture considering their recent past.

It was only when Aralyn Kathias burst through the door and threw herself on her knees beside him, tears streaming down her face and sobs shaking her that he began to understand. Time and distance were impossible to measure in the immediate aftermath of the battle at Sentry. He had nearly been destroyed, mind, body and spirit. So close to ceasing to exist on all three levels, he did not have his wits about him at the time and failed to grasp what had been done – purposefully or no – to save himself in that desperate heartbeat of instinctive self-preservation. But in that moment, with Aralyn’s hands gripping his bed clothes until her fingers turned white and her words lost in her choking sobs, he understood everything.

He looked - to Cirrin, Aralyn, and all the rest - like Joran Kathias.

That was why they cared for him, why Aralyn grieved. He learned, as time went by, that he was in Haven. There were enough people here with no love for Joran Kathias that he was secreted away in one of the safehouses owned by the Vicar order. Jilien Orthel, the High Elder of the Vicar Council could be thanked for that.The old woman had always favored him, believed in him and advocated on his behalf. Even when the Kathias family found themselves at odds with the Vicars, Jilien was a voice in their favor. Forgiveness for their differences had been swift, it seemed.

That forgiveness would vanish in an instant if any of them discovered the truth of who he was. He might look like Joran Kathias, but that was nothing more than a mask of flesh. The battle at Sentry had been one of magic, a fierce grapple to control power like no other. It was a physical battle on one level, but a battle of wills – of souls – more than anything. Joran Kathias lost that battle.

And Mordoc Tassaren took the body that remained to ensure his own survival.

He struggled to remember how it all happened. Everything devolved to chaos in Sentry. Joran Kathias was nothing but a shadow of a man, his body whole, but nearly devoid of spirit and magic. His son, Jantalus, was alive but broken and fading. Cirrin had come to collect the living, and that was when Mordoc had transferred his consciousness from his dying body to that of Joran. What had become of Jantalus he could not be sure. The last thing he remembered doing before everything descended into darkness was using his magic to warn his children of what had become of him.

He wondered about them.

In all the endless hours he spent staring at the shadows that hid the ceiling above his bed, he mused about what they had done with his warning. Vague was the best it could have been. In the handful of heartbeats between stealing Joran’s body and being found by Cirrin, he warned them as best he had been able, but he could not be sure if he had reached them. There were dozens, some blood, most not. He held no special affection for those who were nor did he count those he did not share blood with as inferior. They were all tools with specific purposes and uses and one never knew what would be needed until the moment came. Any of them would do now.

Dianan should have come. He would have felt her magic if she were near, but he sensed nothing. The youngest of his blood children, she was among the most powerful. She was also the most headstrong and unpredictable. Her affection for the Kathias family was her greatest failing, and he kept her in Haven because of it. She was easier to keep an eye on here, or at least she had been before everything had fallen apart in Sentry. Her instructions were to wait for his return. It seemed Dianan had her own plans. She might be anywhere now.

All Mordoc could depend on now was the final instructions given to his eldest, Shantara. She was to wait for him a specific period of time and then come looking if he did not return. That time had passed many weeks ago. Where, then, was she? When last he saw her, three of his sons and another of his daughters rallied to her. Five strong, they were a match for most and should have escaped any attempt by their enemies to capture or kill them. But, like Dianan, they had not come.

Or had they? He was in Haven, after all. They would be hard pressed to reach him here. Once the promising future of the Vicar order, the children of this era’s most powerful and influential, Shantara and the rest were beloved in Haven not so long ago. They were the guarantee of the continued legacy of the Vicar Council and the keepers of the elemental magic that passed through the generations of those gifted with the power. With Jantalus Kathias and the grandchildren of Addicus Malshere, they stood to inherit the rulership of Haven and, through it, the entire Free Lords’ Alliance.

Until Jantalus Kathias threw it all away.

The door creaked open from the other side of the room. Mordoc strained to see who was coming, but he could not raise his head from the pillow. The best he could manage was to shift his eyes toward the white robed woman who padded toward him. She was tall and willowy, an almost skeletal thing lost in the billowing robe. Her face was gaunt, the cheekbones pronounced and her skin stretched tight. Lines of worry and sorrow framed her green eyes.

A pity, he thought. She had been so beautiful once. The years of struggling in vain to hold her family together and maintain their status and position, both in Haven and on the Council, had all but destroyed Aralyn Kathias. She was weak now, broken down almost to the point of hopelessness. He wanted to despise her as he despised all weaklings, but his own pathetic state left no place in him for that. Instead, he bore the indignity of her washing and feeding and babbling at him in the thin hope that she or another would find a way to make him whole before someone discovered who he really was.

Or I die.

He dwelled on the thought as he often did, preferring the consideration of the possibility over listening to the mindless prattle of the woman who believed him her husband. For some time he had feared that death was his only escape from his near catatonia. That fear had taken a hold of him so fiercely at times that he would panic and drive himself to blackout. Eventually, he forced himself not to panic. The fear evolved to contemplation of the possibility and what it would mean for his children and their lives without him. All that he had hoped to be and create - the new order of Haven and the Free Lords’ Alliance that he had envisioned - would be theirs to work for without him. He doubted their ability despite his efforts to teach them and meld them. Fear of death evolved into a fear of failure.  That alone kept him desperately hoping to be saved somehow. That, too, passed with time.

Now, he did not care if he died. Life or death were two equally enticing ideas. He would take whichever was offered first as long as this unbearable half an existence ended.

Aralyn finished her work of changing and bathing him. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of some thin porridge she fed him and washed it down with a cup of water. She had to wipe his chin when he drooled like a baby and he wondered if she could see the revulsion in his eyes when he stared at her. She never seemed to, doting over him like a dutiful wife. Gentle, patient.

Sickening.

She held his hand and spoke to him for a time, but he tried to drown out her words with his own thoughts. She was always telling him how he would be well again and they would rebuild their lives. Things would be better and they could start again. He liked to think about killing her husband and son while she told him these things. It made it all go by so much faster.

Finally, she had talked herself out of her foolishly optimistic ideas and collected her things, kissed his forehead and left. He stared at the ceiling as the door closed behind her and wondered what other fool would come and stare at him today. Jilien came sometimes, though not as often as when he had first arrived. Perhaps, he decided, she had come to her senses and given up on him.

He sighed inwardly and begged for sleep to take him.  Dreams, at least, might come were he fortunate. He doubted anything would come but darkness, which he was beginning to prefer it to the ceiling. Predictably, sleep eluded him. Instead he hung in the strange state of half-life that was his existence, wanting desperately to scream in frustration and yet barely able to blink.

And, then, he felt it.

It was faint, so faint in fact that he dismissed it at first. A fly had landed on his face or a draft from the window rustled his hair. But, no. This sensation persisted. It was weak, barely able to affect him at all. Were he able to move, to make the slightest bit of noise or movement, he likely would not have even sensed it.

But it was there.

Elation! Someone had come. Some sort of deliverance was it hand be it rescue or death and in the moment he did not care which. At last!

His eyes shifted to the door and he waited. No footsteps sounded on the floor without. No hand worked the latch. No one had come.

And yet the prickling of his skin persisted. It did not increase in strength nor did it wane. It only maintained.

A moment of confusion and indecision stole over him and then vanished as understanding washed it away.

It was one of his own come to him at last.

He closed his eyes and retreated into himself, hoping against all reason to do so that he could manage even the small gesture needed here. He could not work his magic. He could not summon even the slightest hint of power. Would that he could, he would have refused to regardless. Any use of magic would alert his hosts. It would betray who he was as readily as discarding the physical disguise he wore were that in his power.

No, he need not use his magic. He had simply to open himself to the power of another.

Deep within himself, in the blackness of his psyche, the core of his very being, he forced himself to abandon even that magic that protected the center of his essence and lowered the defenses supplied only by instinct.

At first nothing happened and defeat pressed down on him like the whole weight of the world.

And then that world exploded in a flash of white light.

Why this place? he asked her when he opened his eyes again.

They were standing at the edge of a mountain pass, the jagged peaks looming above them and the rubble strewn trail below. Farther up the trail, ascending the mountainside, was a small, walled town manned with soldiers, watch fires burning brightly in iron braziers against the night. He was Mordoc Tassaren here, tall and lean, strong and imposing. His black hair, streaked through with the slightest hints of white, whipped in the mountain breeze. His long cloak swirled about him.

Faylor shrugged. She appeared as she did when last he saw her so many months before, small and slight, a wisp of a girl lost in her oversized cloak. It was as she wished to appear to him, not how he imagined her though. Everything here was of her making.  Everything here was an illusion created by their minds and combined magic. But his power was almost nothing now and hers the stronger.

It made him hate her in that moment.

This, she indicated their surroundings, was the last place I saw them.

Mordoc looked as she gestured. Shantara and Samarus, you mean?

His daughter nodded once. Caleb and Rossin as well. I think they are all dead now. She gave no indication that the thought concerned her.

You think?

She looked back to him, black eyes fixed. I know. I saw.

He understood. Faylor’s gift for magic was not the strongest among his children, but it was, perhaps, the most useful at times. While Shantara and Samarus had commanded the power of brute force, Faylor’s magic was more subtle. She was adept at manipulating the minds of others, communicating as she did now, deceiving when she needed to, or sharing their senses from afar. She had likely watched her siblings die through their own eyes.

Was it Addicus?

Faylor cocked her head at the suggestion. No. Jantalus. He lives and he regains his strength. He confronted the shade of his father and killed Shantara. Addicus was there, but I do not know what became of him.

He shook his head, and dug his nails into his palm as he clenched his fist. How? He was weak, broken. He should have been no match for you all.

She shrugged her slender shoulders. He was not alone. Someone nursed him back to health. And when we cornered him in Ulis he was in the company of two outlanders and a girl.

Mordoc Tassaren’s face contorted in fury. A pair of savages and a woman defeated the five or you and a score of hardened sell-swords? Twenty-five against four and you failed? He spat. Four? Three and an invalid!

Faylor did not react in the face of his anger, calm and unflinching. She had nothing to fear despite his outburst. For all of his imposing figure, everything here was illusion. More to the point, it was her illusion. He was nothing but a waste of a man confined to the room in Haven. He was weak, useless. Her power connected them here. She was in control even if she did not show it.

The outlanders were fearsome men, more than a match for Rossin and Caleb. And the girl? Faylor frowned, the first hint of expression she had shown. She was... she commanded magic. Vast, powerful magic. She was no Vicar, I think, but she used their mastery of the elements – all of them.

Mordoc snorted. Impossible. Not even Jilien Vilcris or Addicus command such power.

She did not look at him, her attention seemingly focused inward. Her name was... She looked up at him. Halonni.

Mordoc started, staggered as if struck. Did you say, Halonni? Halonni Vilcris?

She hesitated. I do not know-.

Mordoc waved her words away. It has to be. She was a child when I knew her, but the Council had her under their collective thumb then. She was dangerous, too dangerous Telena Thel and I felt, to be allowed to live.

And if she has allied herself with Jantalus?

Too much for us if I am bed-ridden and Dianan refuses to aid us. He turned from her and heaved a frustrated sigh.

She paused, studying him, measuring. I sent men after his brother as we planned, But if Jantalus reached him, if he lives, we are undone, Father. I have come to grant you mercy.

A wry smile tugged at the corner of his thin lips. She was more than he had expected. So strong. So bright. Perhaps he had been wrong to have favored the others as much. Faylor, after all, was still alive and they were not.

He faced her, shaking his head slowly. No, my dear. Not yet. It was a foolish plan, the one forming at the corners of his mind and creeping toward the center as he filled in the gaps. Desperate, it might have been called. Bold plans were the best ones in such circumstances. Where is she?

I do not know. After Shantara died, I lost sight of them all. They could be far from Sentry now.

But you first found her in Ulis? He pressed. Perhaps she will return there.

No. The frown crept across her face once more. She had just come to Ulis. We found them because she used her magic to battle Sentinels the previous night.

Sentinels. Mordoc turned from his daughter once more and paced away a few steps. So the Council had been close to discovering Jantalus Kathias before Shantara and the others. They knew something at the time that he had not.

He whirled on her. Where are you now?

Purne.

And does Jantalus know you are there? Does anyone?

No one. She raised her chin confidently.

You remember Orlam Tate?

Elder Tate? I do.

You will speak with him. Look for him in Marcester. He will meet Anadom Zeronis there. Mordoc told her. I will see to it.

But, he sits on the Council. They have sworn to your destruction....

An insidious smile split the lean, weathered face. He will welcome you as the child of an old, bitter foe to whom he made a blood debt he has yet to pay. As much as he might hate us, Orlam Tate – then and now – serves us.

Though what little strength we had been able to muster was slipping from him and sleep closing in rapidly, Mordoc was nonetheless quite certain that Faylor Tassaren was laughing like a jackal.

Chapter Two

I

must have left a trail for them to follow.

Fool.

Not that it mattered in the moment. Not that much of anything did. Jantalus Kathias could debate the wisdom of the decisions of his recent past at another time. For now, walking away from the situation he found himself in instead of being carried away was the priority.

Three days of quiet seclusion with his brother and Martiyana in the tiny village of Halbor might have made him complacent, he mused. Perhaps, after all the running and fighting of the last several weeks, the pain and exhaustion, he let this place make him feel safe. That he could have been so foolish was almost beyond logic.

The half-light of dusk was struggling against the gloom of the gathered clouds, a rising mist blanketing the earth as the rain began to spit cold. The barren spring field just to the west of the little hillock that held his brother’s timber home was already damp from two days of incessant rain and was quickly turning to mud. The wind kicked up off the inky surface of Kynn Lake, rustling his long dark cloak, driving the icy droplets into his cowl to stab his skin. The air smelled of damp earth and the scents of the first flowers of spring wafted past.

It should have been a relaxing walk, even in the rain. But, no.

His solid black eyes stared back into the wind and dark, across the muddy field to the semi-circle of cowled, hunched figures that approached. Naked blades caught dull bits of the fading light. Six. No, eight. They detached themselves from the shadows of small clusters of trees scattered about the area, rose up from the concealment of the sloping edge of the lake. Swift, silent, practiced. These were not men who happened on him by chance.

He might have found a measure of dark humor in the idea that he had come to this place – to Cormac and Martiyana, specifically – to warn against just such an eventuality. He was a hunted man, and those who sought him were the kind to use a man’s family to get to him. Instead of warning his family, it seemed he might have led the hunters quite literally to their door.

He paused in midstride, watching the slow, careful advance of the men. There was a Sentinel among them, a man with the gift of magic, minor but potent nonetheless, specifically selected and honed to make him capable of tracking others who possessed such power. He would be their leader, their hound who directed the hunt.

Or was he?

Jantalus could feel his presence, could identify him as easily as a single candle drew attention in a dark room. No other here possessed magic to mask his or interfere with Jantalus’s own. And yet, this man came on.

He considered the possibility that it was but an elaborate trap, one group of men to lure him away, to draw his attention, while others targeted Cormac and Martiyana. Or, he mused, a Sentinel or even a Vicar hid himself from Jantalus and approached unnoticed.

But that was not the case. He could see all about himself, the field flat and unobstructed save for a few small copses of trees in all directions until it met the house to his left, the lake in front of him and the huge, dark bulk of the forest of Havenwood to his right and behind. None of these four things were so close they could allow someone else to steal up on him.

He cocked his head slightly, focusing on the Sentinel. He was third of the cloaked men who approached, counting from Jantalus’s left. He was dressed no differently than the rest, took no position of authority, neither preceding his men nor trailing behind. In an instant, Jantalus understood why.

These men had no idea who he was.

His fear that Alliance soldiers and Sentinels would come to Halbor seeking his family had just come true. These men were looking for Cormac and Martiyana.

No other explanation made sense. If the single Sentinel he now faced was representative of what the Alliance had to hunt him, one would not be enough to snare him.

His black eyes flickered to the house. The orange glow of the hearth brightened the windows in the front room. Nothing moved within or without. When Jantalus left an hour ago, Cormac and Martiyana were just cleaning up from their supper. A walk through the forest, far away from the fishing village along the other edge of the lake where he would not be disturbed, where the simple people of Halbor would not stumble upon the stranger with the black-eyed mark of the dead, was all he sought. Perhaps, he mused at the time, it would help him sleep.

And now, this.

He sighed and turned back to the men that crept closer, squaring himself to meet them.

I am so damn tired.

Behind the approaching men, huddled against the far shore of the lake, the hazy lights of Halbor cut through the rain and dark, scattered flares of orange on the sea of black. Huts and hovels. Fishermen and farmers. Shepherds and tailors. So simple. Poor, perhaps, those people. Lives of hard work without reward beyond survival and a moment’s joy scattered into days, weeks and years of toil. Doomed to their station by birth with no hope of anything better.

Stay where you are. It was the Sentinel who spoke, though he remained in position in the loose formation the eight men formed before him, stopped some half-dozen yards away.

Jantalus stretched him arms out to his sides, his right hand empty, his left wrapped in a clean white bandage owing to a week old knife wound. The cold rain pelted his exposed skin, trickled down his fingers. He breathed deep of the scents of earth and hickory and spring rain.

Perhaps he had been a fool to expect it to last. Perhaps he had known it was not to be. Another test, another struggle - that was what he faced every day.

There must be an end to it.

The Sentinel took a step forward, a short sword in one hand, a curved knife in the other. Surrender and you will not be harmed. He waited for a response and did not get it. Do you hear me?

Three days. An almost insignificant amount of time to most people in most situations. But for Jantalus? Three days of rest, hot food and comfort were the closest thing to living he had experienced for as long as he could remember. For a man with a fractured mind and shattered memory, a man unable to recall anything with any true sense of clarity before the last few weeks. Not much time, but it represented the totality of his memory in this life, this existence. Those three days provided more than simple rest and peace. Those days introduced him to a forgotten brother, that brother’s wife and their memory of him that he lacked for himself. Their time together helped to fill the holes in his very being, to begin to rebuild himself. And with the rebuilding of his mind and body came the strengthening of the very thing that made him who and what he was.

Magic.

I’ll ask once more, the Sentinel told him. Another step. Another mistake.

I heard you the first time.

The Sentinel straightened a bit. I come by order of the Vicar Council to bring you to Haven. Come of your own will and there will be no need to make this unpleasant. Your wife is free to accompany you if-.

I have no wife.

The other man looked to one of his companions and then back at the sorcerer. Call her what you will. Your woman-.

Jantalus’s hand came up sharply, cutting him off again. Who sends you to me?

The Vicar Council of Haven. I come with their authority and thusly with that of the Free Lords’ Alliance.

Who, specifically, sends you to me?

The Sentinel raised his chin. You are to come with me. I will answer no more questions.

I think you will.

The Sentinel’s sword lifted. Four of my men search your house now. They will have your woman by now. If you value her safety, you will come with us.

Four? Jantalus shook his head slowly. Then your men are dead. He reached up to pull back the cowl. As are you.

The Sentinel took a hurried step back as Jantalus’s black eyes met his. His men nearly tripped over themselves doing the same. He felt the Sentinel’s magic rise, Jantalus’s own burning through his veins in response, pumping like liquid fire through every inch of him.

Small. Weak. This man was nothing next to him. He was no match for Jantalus’s power. In theory, a Sentinel trained himself to harness his own minor gift of magic to use as a block against others, countering theirs so that the thugs they employed could then overwhelm the person they hunted and subdue or kill him. Considering the minor power this Sentinel possessed, Jantalus was absolutely convinced of his earlier determination that these men had no idea who they faced.

Imbeciles.

He turned his black gaze on the men that surrounded the Sentinel. I give you your lives.

They all simply stared. He took a quick step forward.

Run, you fools.

To a man, they obeyed. Without a single glance back they fled, a few dropping their swords, none pausing to consider their leader. The Sentinel tried to join them, but Jantalus’s magic reached out with invisible tendrils and seized him, held him fast and would not let him so much as twitch.

The Sentinel stared at him, wide eyed and sweating profusely, unable to even blink for the magic that snared him. Jantalus crossed the distance between them in a few steps, slow and methodical, watchful for any of his companions that might summon the courage to reconsider his flight.

Nothing moved in the growing darkness, no sound betrayed a brave soul’s return.

Jantalus stopped before the Sentinel, pried open his frozen fingers and tossed away his weapons. The other man watched in impotent panic, his breath quick and labored, his face awash with sweat. Like iron bands, the sorcerer’s magic held him, wrapped so tight the man could barely breathe.

I will tell you nothing, he spat, fighting to raise his chin defiantly and managing little more than a quiver of his bottom lip.

Jantalus stared at him in silence for a heartbeat’s time. Cormac and Martiyana, despite his previous confidence, might well be in danger back at the house. This was no time for foolishness, even had he the patience for such.

And he did not.

His hand shot out without warning, seizing the helpless man’s face. His thumb and third fingers gripped the Sentinel’s temples, his palm flattened the man’s nose against his face.

You will tell me everything.

His magic flared, the darkness about them growing deeper still. The smells of the earth and trees vanished, the touch of the rain and wind disappeared. All that was left was the long, shrill cry of the man he held fast in his good right hand.

Into the blackness of the Sentinel’s mind he plunged. Time and space became meaningless. There were no trees, no sky, no lake. No rain or wind. Nothing remained, not even the ground beneath their feet. This was a place that existed in a realm created purely of thought and magic, insubstantial and unquantifiable.

And Jantalus ruled here.

For a sliver of time so short as to be nearly imperceptible, the Sentinel tried to resist him, a splinter of magic rising in a desperate attempt at defense. An invisible barrier of power that attempted to hold him at bay formed itself around the core of the man’s mind, around his very being and tried to deny him.

Jantalus shattered it like a stone striking glass, sent the shards that remained, the last fragments of the man’s ineffectual magic, spinning away into the nothingness that surrounded them. A single point of substance in the void, a collection of thought and will that resembled the physical form of the Sentinel, stood alone in the midst of the emptiness, watching without hope as Jantalus approached.

There was no distance, of course, no space of any kind. The approach was nothing more than visualization in his mind’s eye of his magic reaching into the Sentinel’s core, digging to the very center of his being.

Spare my life and I will tell you what you wish to know.

The approximation of Jantalus that his imagination and magic formed reached out and locked its hands on the Sentinel’s head. With a surge his magic flared anew, sparking to life in the form of silver-white lightning that raced down his arms to his hands and into the Sentinel’s face.

I will take all I need, Jantalus countered.

The mental projection of the Sentinel stood immobile for a moment, eyes wide and staring, mouth open in a silent scream.

Then, it disintegrated into tiny silver particles that floated about the darkness for an instant before fading into the blackness around them.

They were all his now. Not every memory and thought, not all that the man was, but everything Jantalus needed in the moment. Had he more time, had he the opportunity to be more delicate – more precise – he might have gleaned more. But Cormac and Martiyana needed to be considered here.

With a thought, he willed himself back to his physical form and left the void behind him.

The world of sight and smell, touch and taste, rain and wind returned in an instant. He released the Sentinel with both his hand and his magic and the man collapsed at his feet without a sound. His arms spread wide on the muddy earth, he stared up at the black sky, eyes fixed, his mouth gaping in a scream gone silent.

Jantalus turned from him and stalked toward the house without looking back.

Chapter Three

C

ormac put his brother’s concern to rest before Jantalus reached the stairs to the porch.

The front door opened and the younger Kathias brother stepped out, a pair of small, curved knives gripped in his hands. In the flickering light of the hearth that filtered out from the open door, Jantalus saw dark ichor drip from the steel. Cormac lowered the weapons when he saw his brother and called over his shoulder into the house. A response came from behind, so muffled that Jantalus could make out only that it was Martiyana who spoke.

Cormac said nothing as he waited for his wife, watching Jantalus without even looking at him, taking in everything while seeming to notice nothing at all. It was unnerving, the peculiar way his younger brother had about him that had taken a bit of time for Jantalus to get used to. Cormac never looked at you when he spoke, always seeming to be focused on something behind or beside you. When spoken to, he often looked away, disinterested or distracted by the look of him. It made him seem smaller, less significant than he was. Coupled with his average height and build, his common quality of dress and quiet nature, it allowed him to fade into his surroundings without effort.

Jantalus could imagine his brother was the kind of man another would overlook, would forget was present. Certainly he would be the kind what would walk by you on a crowded street and you would never notice him much less remember seeing him. And that was exactly the point. It made it that much easier for Cormac to get in and out of places quickly. It made it easier to get close to people without raising their suspicions.

It made it easier to kill them.

That, more than anything, was what Cormac was. A hunter, a killer. There had been time, Jantalus learned the preceding days as they did their best to retrace the lost years between them, that Cormac served the Alliance in the same capacity as the men who had come to his door to take him.

It seemed they underestimated their former colleague.

A moment later, Martiyana appeared, her golden hair orange with firelight, a knife not unlike her husband’s in one hand.

You knew. Cormac was not asking.

Eight ambushed me between here and the forest, Jantalus answered.

His brother nodded once. Dead?

One. The rest ran.

Martiyana stepped past her husband to the rail of the porch, staring down the slope of the hill to the village below. Then we must. They will be back. She turned to Jantalus, her angular face hard with anger, the twin scars on the left side raised by the tension. They’ll bring others.

Jantalus drew a breath and let it our slowly. Yes. I’m sorry.

Behind his wife, Cormac shrugged one shoulder. For what?

The sorcerer looked to Martiyana, at the unreadable mask she wore, and then back to his brother. Everything. This is your home-.

Wood and dirt, Cormac said, cutting him off. More of that elsewhere. He gestured with a sweep of his hand. More of that everywhere. We’ll find another place to be. Another place to hide.

Just like that?

It can’t be so easy.

Martiyana snapped her fingers sharply. Just like that. We disappear. Ghosts. We’ve done it before. They won’t find you again.

Or perhaps it is.

Jantalus was shaking his head as Cormac nodded his agreement with her. It’s not about me, though.

She held up a hand to stop him. We can discuss this later. We have to go. The sooner we are gone, the more distance we put between us and whoever eventually comes, the harder we will be to track.

The two of them were back through the door of the house before Jantalus could stop them, their minds set. He hesitated a moment, watching after them in frustrated silence. They did not understand.

Jantalus stomped up the stairs to the front door and stepped inside the house.

A man lay dead immediately within, his throat a torn and bloody mess, his sword still gripped in his hand. A second man lay a few feet away, face down on the wide plank floor. His cloak and tunic were soaked through, stained black under the arms and about the neck. Blood oozed from the saturated fabric to pool on the floor around his head. Neither man, it appeared, managed more a few steps through the door before Cormac killed him.

Across the long narrow room, the rear door of the house stood open. The tangled bodies of two men lay at the threshold, their bodies blocking the entry way, one atop the other. One of the men still had a knife buried in his right eye socket.

Jantalus heard Martiyana and Cormac moving about upstairs, quick but not frantic by the sounds of their footfalls, the conversation between them muffled enough that he could not make out what was being said. A pair of canvas backpacks lay at the foot of the stairs to his left. He could see food and utensils among the items already stuffed inside.

True to their word, they intended to leave this place with barely a moment’s consideration.

He turned in a slow circle, taking in the whole of the place as he did. It was a comfortable place, a place touched by craftsmanship and care. Not simply a house, this was a place his brother had made a home of. And now they were going to walk away from it.

Jantalus would have argued against doing so, but he found no alternative to it. After all, the Alliance soldiers and Sentinels would return, just as Martiyana promised. When the men who fled told of Jantalus, there would be more of each and very likely Vicars as well. Fair or no, leaving this place behind was the only decision to be made.

Martiyana and Cormac returned with yet another backpack filled with clothing. The latter dropped it next to the other two and went to the hearth on the wall opposite the stairs. He pulled back the bear hide rug that covered the floor there and lifted the iron ring from the small notch in the wood. With a jerk, he pulled open the hidden door. On his knees, he reached down into the revealed space and withdrew a long, narrow wooden box, dragging it free by a leather strap at one end and deposited it on the floor before letting the door drop shut again.

He produced a key from chain about his neck and opened the iron lock that held it fast, throwing open the lid. He beckoned Jantalus closer and reached inside, producing a canvas bag which he handed to his brother without comment. He then retrieved a leather belt from which hung a sheathed short sword. Several sheathed knives followed, adding to the pile of weapons Jantalus held.

Finally, Cormac produced another belt from which hung a pair of long, broad-bladed daggers. These he strapped about his slender waist and then took a pair of the knives he had handed Jantalus and slid them into his boots.

He indicated the rest of the items. Marti.

Jantalus nodded in response and rose to take them to her. She accepted them without comment, strapped on the sword and slipped the handful of remaining knives into her boots and belt. The bag she shouldered and then bent to retrieve one of the backpacks which she handed to Jantalus before taking another herself.

Cormac joined them, a sword in hand which he offered to his brother. Jantalus considered it a moment and then shook his head. His magic was a far more potent defense if such were needed and he still had a knife in his belt that Tyris Menion had given him several weeks before.

His hand went to the cold steel of the pommel at the thought, his fingers tracing the etching there. He had left Tyris and Halonni over a week before, distancing himself from them to protect them, or so he had believed at the time. The people who hunted him would not stop and the closer they were to him, the more danger they would be in. It seemed a logical assumption at the time.

Coming to Halbor and finding his family was a similar thought process. At some point, he reasoned at the time, anyone looking for him would try to use Cormac and Martiyana against him to draw him out. Warning them and then leaving them as he had Tyris and Halonni seemed the wisest course of action at first.

He looked back to the twisted heaps of blood and torn flesh that were all that remained of the men who had tried to force themselves into his brother’ s home. But he had been wrong. There was more to this then himself. These men had come for Cormac, not him. That might mean that Tyris and Halonni were not as safe as he believed either.

Jantalus?

He looked up at his brother as he spoke, pulled from his silent reflection.

You all right?

The sorcerer nodded and waved the sword away. He held up his bandaged left hand between them. Wouldn’t do me much good. He shouldered the pack Martiyana had given him. Where were you planning to go?

Cormac glanced at Martiyana and waited for her to nod before responding. South. The lands of the Duke of Turgin would offer the best chance for us to hide. The Alliance would have a harder time sending Sentinels after us.

It was as good an idea as any, but Jantalus was thinking of another.

Marcester was my thought.

Martiyana took a step forward. I thought you intended to stay away?

More than once during the three days they spent gathered around the fire in the hearth, talking long into the night about a past Jantalus could not remember beyond soundless images that he struggled to provide context for, he told them of the last few weeks of his life. Compared to the years Cormac and Martiyana were trying to restore for him, the handful of weeks between the moment he woke in the little town of Marcester not even remembering his own name and his knocking on their front door seemed laughably short, but they were all he had. Most of that time was time spent running, hiding and fighting. There was not much worthwhile to hold onto in those weeks’ worth of memories, but Tyris and Halonni were certainly the two most important things.

Their intention – or perhaps it was Halonni’s and Tyris was too loyal to let her go alone – was to make their way to Marcester where Halonni’s father, Durn, had stayed behind to face Alliance soldiers to give his daughter and Jantalus Kathias time to escape. Tyris insisted when last they spoke that he join them there, despite the sorcerer’s protests. Jantalus agreed to meet them, but the promise was a lie the moment it left his lips. He doubted Tyris believed him then or now. Lest they be caught up in the danger that surrounded the Alliance’s hunt for him, Jantalus had thought it best that he stay away from his friends.

More likely I am a damn fool for thinking we could all be any safer apart than together.

I did, he answered finally. Now I’m thinking that was the worst decision I could have made.

Martiyana shrugged slightly. They tracked you here. Your friends are probably safe for now.

Jantalus shook his head. No. That’s just it, you see. He gestured to one of the dead men behind him. They didn’t come here looking for me. They came for you.

Us? Cormac cocked an eyebrow at him. Why us? Why now? If they knew where I was, it seems awfully coincidental that they waited for you to arrive before moving against me.

The very thought occurred to Jantalus more times than he could count over the last few minutes. For an instant, he considered the idea that he had misread the reaction of the Sentinel he killed and the lot of them had come for him after all. But he knew that was not true. He had made no mistake. Those men were looking for Cormac. They wanted him and they intended to take him alive.

I don’t know why they came, he admitted finally. But obviously they did. They knew where you were and they knew it for some time, I think. These men came from Purne.

Martiyana frowned at him. Purne? That’s four days from here. They would have had to have left-.

The day before I arrived in Halbor, Jantalus finished for her. I know. That’s why I know this has nothing to do with me. Or rather, nothing to do with my arrival.

Cormac lifted the last of the backpacks they had prepared. What else do we need to know?

"I read the Sentinel’s thoughts before I killed him.