10: THE CHOKING OF MEREINA
Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Two days since the Breaking of Gaeshe
Brother Qown closed his journal and set it aside.
Kihrin waited a moment.
Brother Qown picked up his teacup and took a long, luxurious sip.
“So what happened?” Kihrin said. He pointed at the priest. “What happened with the smoke?”
Brother Qown cleared his throat. “I just, uh … perhaps if you might give me a moment. I find this next section emotionally draining.”
“Would you like me to continue?” Janel asked.
Brother Qown breathed in obvious relief. “Would you?”
“Of course.”
Janel’s Turn. Mereina, Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.
I often fight demons, but rarely in the living world. Would it be wrong to admit I enjoyed fighting Kasmodeus? I mean, we’re supposed to seek battle only from necessity. A stallion protects the herd, and to enjoy the fight too much is … hmm … it’s a bit thorra, isn’t it? It’s crass to admit I might have relished leading that beast on a chase, tripping him, tricking him, ripping his head from his shoulders.
Would it be wrong to admit I felt hollow disappointment Kasmodeus had been alone? That I didn’t wish to stop with his slaughter, that I wanted to turn to the next enemy, and the next, and the next after that?
Even though I knew Kasmodeus’s banishment would be temporary, even though I knew no right-thinking person could enjoy such barbarity, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at the end.
Yes, it would be wrong to say such things.1
Forget I mentioned it.
At the end, I remember hearing Brother Qown shouting my name. I turned toward him, intending to lash him for breaking cover. My words died as I saw rolling blue smoke spread out from the baron’s box. The smoke moved as fast as a strong man walked. Nothing about it seemed natural.
Inside the box, the death-pale nurse who had attended the warden gathered up her embroidery basket and a puppy. She directed Tamin’s soldiers to follow her, but I didn’t see Tamin himself.
Neither nurse nor soldiers seemed bothered by the smoke. Each had a strange symbol marking their foreheads. Whatever it meant, it hadn’t been there when I had visited earlier.
Then I saw the blue smoke surround a servant, tendrils invading the man’s nostrils, forcing entry into his mouth. He dropped his drink tray and began choking, hands closing around his throat.
I turned back to the crowds.
“Run!” I roared, but the spectators were already galloping to safer fields. I hurried to the two cages containing bandits and rebels.
There would be no running for them.
“Arasgon, help me!”
He screamed back to let me know he’d heard.
Brother Qown stumbled from the smoke. A yellow glyph shone on his forehead, but otherwise he gave no sign of distress. He saw me, pointed, yelled as he ran forward. His fingertip glowed.
Helmet. He was shouting, “Helmet!”
The screams around me changed in tenor and tone, mixed now with coughing, choking, sobs. I decided the time and place for anonymity was over and pulled the helmet from my head. Brother Qown ran to me and traced his fingertip against my forehead. The air quality changed. I no longer smelled ash or smoke, the rotten scent of stale blood, burning flesh, or the warm-grass scent of horse manure. This air smelled pure, so fresh and sharp it was like being back home, after a day riding in the mountains.
“Hurry,” Qown said, “we have to mark this rune on as many people as possible.”
“Where’s Dorna?” I asked.
“I’m here! I’m here!” My old nurse ran out toward us, tripping once on the churned, muddy ground. She already had a glyph on her forehead, although hers had been inscribed with something wet and red, too dark to be fresh blood.
“Is that … is that chili sauce?” Brother Qown’s tone was incredulous.
“No time,” I said. “I’ll free the others. Mark Arasgon, then Ninavis’s crew.”
Arasgon had already pulled the tarp from a cage, revealing Tanner, Kay Hará, and Vidan. They stood, yelling for attention, but I had none to spare. I broke the lock on the cage door.
“Let Qown draw on your foreheads,” I told them. “His blessing will protect you from the witchcraft.” I moved on to the next cage. I had no time to talk them through explanations I didn’t possess myself. What Qown had done, or its ramifications for our souls, seemed unimportant if we didn’t survive.2
I tore the lock off the second cage, the one holding Gan the Miller’s Daughter, Jem Nakijan, and Dango. Screams grew louder in the distance. I had expected to fight Baron Tamin’s soldiers, but those same soldiers had no interest in the tournament stands or the citizens trapped there. The soldiers had vanished, retreating even as everyone else made their bids to outrun the animate witch-smoke.
Next to me, Arasgon tossed his head. “Look to the castle!”
I did and froze.
The blue smoke rolled out in all directions from its initial starting point. Toward us, toward the town, toward the rest of the fairgrounds. And in a maneuver that would have been impossible, had the phrase black magic not been involved, it moved against the wind toward Mereina Castle.
“Snap out of it.” Arasgon slammed his head against my shoulder.
I shook my head and motioned to Dango. “Find everyone you can. Dorna will show you what to draw on their foreheads.” I assumed she would, anyway. If it had just been Brother Qown, I would have suspected he’d countered the smoke with a spell, but Dorna had no such power. She’d kept herself alive somehow through the clever use of condiments, so there was no reason to think she couldn’t do it again. True, Dango might have to hold people down, before they willingly let a strange old lady draw on their faces with pepper sauce, but I was confident he was the man for the task.
I pulled myself onto Arasgon’s back and offered a hand down to Brother Qown. “Come. We must ride fast if we’ve any chance of reaching the castle in time.”
To his credit, he didn’t shy away. I’d always suspected he was made from harder metal than he pretended.
One didn’t train to exorcise demons without possessing a mighty will.
I didn’t pull him up so much as let him use my arm as a brace. Arasgon tilted himself downward to make it easier for Brother Qown to slide into the saddle behind me. I didn’t have time to teach him how to ride Arasgon; one couldn’t ride a giant fireblood the same way one rode a smaller steed.
“Hold on!” Arasgon yelled.
We galloped toward the castle then, trying to outrace the cloud.
Even though the runes created sweet air around our heads, the blue smoke was worse than the densest fog, obstructing all sight.
“If I trip and break a leg,” Arasgon said, “I’m going to find whoever is responsible for this and bite out their tongue.”
“You have my permission!” I yelled.
“What did he say?” Brother Qown asked. I was surprised he could hear Arasgon over the galloping, over the screams from the town.
“He said he’s not happy!”
“Oh. I’m not either. But don’t talk unless you must!”
I turned in the saddle. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know if this makes the air clean or if we have a limited supply, like breathing from a bag.”3
I took a deep breath on instinct, unable to stop myself. Was my air bubble smaller than it had been before? I couldn’t tell.
In any event, neither Arasgon nor I said another word while we raced toward the castle.
We broke free from the smoke a hundred feet from the gate. The blue tendrils clutched after us like a predator lamenting its prey’s escape, but the fighting ahead was an equal concern. A different sort of smoke ruled the castle, billowing thick and black from the fires burning across multiple fortress sections: the stables, the storerooms, part of the tower.
Sabotage. I’d have bet Ninavis was responsible—if I hadn’t known Kalazan was still loose, with his expert knowledge of the castle’s servant passages.
From the look of things, the guards had tried to close the castle gate against the rolling smoke advancing from the fairgrounds. This happened as several knights—Sir Baramon included—arrived on horseback, hoping to gain entry and safety inside the castle walls. The desperate skirmish that followed was still raging as the witch-smoke arrived on our tails, to end all debates. Sir Baramon fought on the far side, holding off two soldiers, but looking weaker with every step. The other soldiers, though …
“Janel!”
“I see them,” I said.
They were raising the drawbridge.
It wouldn’t help them against the smoke, but it would stop our progress.
“Come on, Arasgon!” I shouted to him.
We galloped.
We jumped.
I reached back and grabbed Brother Qown’s agolé midair, but he held on to me so tightly I imagined I felt his fingernails through my armor. Mid-leap, I saw Sir Baramon take advantage of the defending soldiers’ wide-eyed awe to stab one through the leg before ripping his sword free to hack at a second’s soldier’s thigh. He might have gained some weight, but he hadn’t lost his skill.
We hung in the air forever, time slowing to a crawl. Then the seconds sped up again as Arasgon landed hard on the wooden planking, the impact jolting through his body and reverberating through my bones. Qown let out a surprised yelp.
Then we were galloping again. The soldiers scattered. I didn’t see anyone with the glyph marked on their foreheads. These poor fools had just been trying to protect themselves with wood and stone. And failing, because they had no idea what they faced.
Neither did I, but I knew more than they did.
Arasgon pulled into a trot, calling out a greeting to his brother Talaras.
“Let my man give you his blessing,” I ordered Sir Baramon. “It will protect you when the witch-smoke comes.”
“It’s already here, Count,” Sir Baramon called out.
Which was true. The closed drawbridge bought us a few seconds, but the blue smoke shimmied through cracks and leaked around the edges like a living thing seeking warm bodies and blood.
Brother Qown half fell, half slid off Arasgon’s back and ran forward to mark the rune on Sir Baramon and Talaras. It looked for all the world like he traced their skin with a glowing fingertip, leaving behind a mark the same glowing color.
“We have to find Ninavis!” I shouted.
“Her leg’s still broken,” Brother Qown responded. “I told her to stay in her room and rest.”
“I doubt she listened,” Arasgon said as he pointed his nose across the courtyard. “Someone had to start the fires.”
Across the way, I saw someone in a hooded sallí cloak leading another person with a limp up a staircase from the basement. I couldn’t see their faces, but I recognized Dorna’s second-best riding skirt.
“Ninavis!” I yelled out. “Ninavis, wait!”
The second person looked up.
Ninavis hesitated. Kalazan stiffened, with his arm still around her. I suspected both were thinking about how much simpler their lives might be if they just ran. Of course, they didn’t yet know about the blue smoke. They didn’t understand what horror had just overtaken Barsine Banner. They didn’t understand that all that lay between their freedom and an ugly death was a foreign Blood of Joras they barely knew.
Ninavis pulled back her hood. “Do you have my people?”
Kalazan asked at the same moment, “What happened to Baron Tamin? Did you kill him?”
I ran to her, aware Brother Qown was running too. “Never mind Tamin. Your people are safe. Possibly they are the only ones who are.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I have to mark this blessing on your forehead,” Brother Qown gasped as he caught up with us. “Quickly. The blue smoke kills anyone not wearing this sign.”
Ninavis looked over Qown’s shoulder toward the front gate. She blanched. The witch-smoke was inside now, spreading fast. Already, the sound of choking echoed as the cursed air found new victims. Ironically, the vapor smothered the fires meant as a distraction while Kalazan rescued Ninavis; the flames died as soon as the witch-smoke rushed in and replaced all the air.
“What—?”
“No time,” I said. “Lower your hood, my Kalazan.” I used a possessive I had no right to use. My Kalazan, my loyal man. I had just declared him my vassal, taking up the offer Kalazan had made the night before, when he called me his lord.
He inhaled, but then, perhaps because he saw the smoke rushing at us from across the courtyard, he did as I ordered.
Brother Qown finished the glyph on Ninavis and moved on to Kalazan.
The smoke enveloped us. Kalazan closed his mouth, shut his eyes, pinched closed his nostrils. The smoke tried to force its way inside, but Brother Qown finished the line, connected the last points, completed the glyph. The tendrils snapped back, pushed out by the pocket of clean air around Kalazan’s head.
“Find as many—” I started to order Brother Qown, but he needed no orders to do what came as instinct. He’d already gone to a serving maid on the ground, wide-eyed, choking, gasping for breath. He painted the glyph on her forehead.
But the witch-smoke was in her lungs. She died while we watched, powerless to help her.
They all died.
Kalazan gained his voice first.
And lost his wits first too.
“What just happened? What is this?” He looked at us wide-eyed, crazed. He had the hostile anger of someone who didn’t understand what they’d just witnessed but damn well intended to find someone to blame.
I almost felt sorry for him, but this wasn’t the time for sentimentality.
“You mustn’t use up your air.” I turned to Ninavis. “Calm him. We have much to do and little time in which to do it.”
She looked a bit wide-eyed herself, but she squared her shoulders and put both her hands on Kalazan’s arms. “We’ve come this far. Just come with me a little further.”
“What happened?” He didn’t want to be quiet.
“Witchcraft,” I snapped. “The real kind, and not the stories people use as an excuse to kill old mares with too many warts on their chins. We need to leave, Kalazan. Sooner, not later. Now. I swear to you I will explain all once we’re away from here.”
His face paled from fear or anger or some combination. “The baron did this?”
“No,” Brother Qown said. “I saw the woman who cast this spell. She wouldn’t have left Baron Tamin to die if they were partners.”4
That stopped Kalazan. “He’s dead. Tamin’s dead?”
My heart broke at the hope in his voice, the dread, the … regret. I’d just dropped by Barsine Banner on special occasions, with the periodic tournament as excuse. Kalazan had grown up with Tamin. They had played together, gone exploring together, whispered stories, and dreamed of becoming knights.
“We have no time for that right now. Dorna, I need—” I grimaced as I remembered I’d left Dorna back at the tournament grounds. “Never mind. I’ll gather our belongings. Everyone do the same, but take no more than five minutes. Grab what you can and follow me.”
“I don’t mean to spoil a good plan, but the smoke seems to be killing horses as well as people,” Ninavis said, looking across the courtyard toward the stables.
I cursed. She was right. Our animals weren’t immune.
Sir Baramon raised his head from where he’d been bending over a fallen knight. He’d been holding the dead man’s hand, and just before he stood, he kissed the man on the lips. Tears fell from Sir Baramon’s face as he pulled a striped scarf from the man’s body.
I ground my teeth and looked away. The last thing I needed was a reminder the dead had been people with lives, loved ones, importance. I couldn’t deal with that crushing loss and still function, so I pushed the reminders away and hardened my heart as best I could.
I suspected it was easier for me than the others.
I’d had more practice.
I found myself thankful the blue vapor made it hard to see. The witch-smoke hung in swirling eddies in the air, on the ground, which made it difficult to discern all the dead bodies hidden under the diaphanous fog. I only wished the smoke might have done something to mask the awful stench of that many dead.
Sir Baramon tied the scarf around his arm. “Talaras and Arasgon can do the heavy lifting for a while, if they’re up for it. At least until we establish how large an area the smoke fills. Maybe it didn’t reach the town.”
“Will of the Eight,” I agreed. “Gather what you need. Arasgon, would you be so kind as to let Ninavis use your saddle once more? We’ll meet back at the fairgrounds, and find the others.”
“Gan? Dango? You said they’re all right?” Ninavis asked.
“Unless something else has happened in my absence. But let’s not wait to find out.”
I ran upstairs. We carried all our possessions in a single valise and a few extra packs. There were advantages to being forced to travel light, even if it meant I rarely had anything nice to wear when attending a local noble’s gala soiree.
Parties were the least of my worries at the moment.
Afterward, I lowered the drawbridge so we could leave.
Ninavis rode on Arasgon’s back to take the weight off her leg. Arasgon and I walked together, helping each other navigate through the impenetrable smoke.
I wondered if this resembled traveling through the sandstorms of Khorvesh or the blizzards farther north in Yor. If not for the air pockets around our heads—
Well. I suppose I wouldn’t be in any condition to puzzle over the smoke if not for the fresh air around our heads.
Halfway back to the fairgrounds, I spotted something moving on the main road. Not walking, as one bearing the glyph might, but crawling. Injured. Maybe dying.
“Brother Qown, someone’s over there—” I couldn’t believe someone had survived the cursed smoke for so long. From the way they convulsed and stumbled on their knees, they seemed in pain. Perhaps someone wearing the glyph had also been injured.
I approached and bent down to see the person better. My stomach flipped over while I tasted bile.
“By the Eight,” I whispered.
It was Tamin.
He didn’t have a glyph on his forehead, nor anywhere else as far as I could tell. The white-skinned witch had left him to die. Somehow, he hadn’t.
But he was trying.
Tamin’s face had turned an ugly purple. Blue smoke danced through his open mouth and nostrils. His mouth gaped open as he failed to draw breath, but despite all this, he somehow still lived.
I once heard of a child who had drowned in the river near Tolamer Castle. She fell through thin ice in winter and then found herself unable to surface. By the time the local farmers cracked the ice and brought her to a priest, she’d been without air for ten minutes—and lived. Everyone had agreed, however, that such had been the grace of the Eight and the cold water acting to preserve her.
Tamin had no such benefits, and I was damn sure the Eight were not on his side.
Brother Qown knelt next to me. He didn’t hesitate, as he never hesitated when someone’s life was at risk. He drew the glyph across Tamin’s forehead.
I shook my head. “The smoke is already inside him.”
“I’ll find a way to draw it out,” he said. “Some force is keeping this man alive. His case isn’t like the others. Even an injury healed by magic can’t work if no one draws the sword from the wound.”
I heard Ninavis behind me. “Kalazan, no!”
I had that much warning.
I stood and whirled about in time to see Kalazan running toward me, sword out. I wasn’t his intended target. Kalazan reserved his anger for the baron, who’d ordered Kalazan’s father executed, made Kalazan an outlaw, who would have killed Kalazan and all his companions. For the man who had betrayed their friendship.
Kalazan saw me and checked his progress.
“Get out of my way, my lord.”
“Am I your lord?”
His mouth twisted. Even with the smoke between us, his eyes were bright. “So it would seem.”
“Then lower your sword.”
“But he—” Kalazan pointed. “He was your friend before you ever met me. He betrayed you too.”
“He was our friend,” I corrected. “But our friend is gone. I don’t know what happened to him. Something terrible, I suspect. This creature writhing on the ground behind me? I don’t know him. If you worry I’m going to protect Tamin, rather than see justice done, rest easy.”
“Then let me by—” He started to move and stopped as I held out a hand.
“He’s the one person here who may be able to tell me why today’s events occurred, as well as the identities of those responsible. As a Count of Jorat, I’m obligated by oath to protect this dominion. I have a duty to discover who did this and ensure they will never be in a position to do it again. I care not what happens to the Baron of Barsine—but I need this witness to live until I can ascertain the truth of what transpired here. Do you understand?”
Kalazan licked his lips, his face sullen as a dog denied water.
“Do you understand?” I repeated.
He sheathed his blade. “I’ll carry the feet if you take the head.”
I could carry Tamin by myself, but this allowed Brother Qown a chance to do what he could for the man while we walked. I nodded and lifted Tamin up by the shoulders.
We continued to the fairgrounds. Along the way, I refused to look at the obvious bodies littering the ground. The smoke made this easier, even as it lashed back and forth in anger at our escape.
I didn’t think that was hyperbole. Perhaps the mist was angry. The smoke had acted almost with intelligence. I hoped it was my imagination.5
When we reached the contest grounds, I saw Dango and Tanner, along with a dozen or so others whom we’d saved. They were busy piling bodies next to the large wood pyres. Dorna was helping.
I tried not to lose my temper, not to start screaming at them for being idiots, the worst fools.
They didn’t know as much about demons as I did.
Besides, I couldn’t scream; I didn’t know how long the air would last.
I set down Tamin’s shoulders, motioned for Kalazan to lower the man’s feet. Tamin had quieted some, a product of whatever ministering Brother Qown had provided, but his color remained ghastly. He might live but never be whole or right again.
“What are you about?” I asked Dorna. Calm, I reminded myself. I must stay calm.
“Oh, Dango said we should start a pyre. You know, because—” Dorna made a significant gesture.
“This isn’t the time for funerary rights,” Brother Qown said.
I sighed and resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose or punch someone, anyone, in the face. “We don’t burn our dead in Jorat for religious reasons, Brother Qown. We do it to make sure demons have nothing to possess. You saw what happened to Dedreugh. That potential exists anytime a body’s left to rot.”6
Brother Qown blinked at me. “What?”
I frowned. “Your order are experts on fighting demons. How has Father Zajhera never told you this?”
Brother Qown stared at me. “What?”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
He sputtered. “I saw Dedreugh was possessed, but I assumed black magic summoned the demon…” His voice trailed off as he turned to Ninavis. “Is she serious?”
Ninavis understood our customs. “As metal. Demons have to take possession of a living person to summon more of their kind, but they can possess the dead too. Make ’em walk. Make ’em kill. That’s not how it works where you’re from?”
He started mumbling something under his breath.
My attention focused back on Dango and Dorna. “This leaves me with two questions. First, since the witch-smoke smothers fire, how did you intend to light the wood? Second, are you really planning to burn those bodies using ritually enchanted burning stakes, designed to send souls straight to waiting demons?”
“Oh, dear,” Dorna said.
Dango’s eyes widened with horror. “But…?”
I pointed to the stakes. “You can’t use this wood. You can’t use this wood, and you can’t burn the dead here. You’ll be doing the witch’s work for her.”
Tanner threw down the flint and steel he’d been trying to use to light kindling. “Damn it all, we have to burn the bodies!”
“No,” I corrected. “We want to burn the bodies. But as it happens, we can’t. So stop wasting my time.”
He straightened, glaring at me. “If we don’t burn these, the dead won’t stay dead for long.”
“If we don’t leave here soon, we won’t stay living for long. We don’t know when the smoke will dissipate. Maybe it will still be here when the demons start playing dress-up using our slain. We cannot wait. Do you understand? We cannot stop this.”
“Is that the baron?” A voice I didn’t recognize asked the question. I groaned inside. People might well be eager to blame him for the day’s events.
And they might be right.
A dozen voices raised at once.
Kalazan—Kalazan, of all people—silenced them. “Whoever did this made no effort to protect Tamin. He was a target as much as any of us.”
“Who’s to say you ain’t the one responsible?” someone shouted. “He said you was helping witches. Was this your doing?”
“No!” Kalazan scowled. “Of course not.”
“Be quiet,” I ordered.
They ignored me.
I sighed and inhaled deep. Just before I raised my voice, Arasgon raised his.
“My lord said be quiet. You’re alive because she saved you. Be silent!”
The voices paused.
“Thank you, Arasgon,” I said. “Everyone, grab what you can. We will meet in the town if the smoke hasn’t yet reached it. If it has, keep moving until you find an area free from smoke and wait there.”
“But my husband—”
I raised my voice, despite all my intentions not to. “If he isn’t here, if he hasn’t been blessed by my people, then it is too late to save him. Today, we leave the dead where they fall. Now go!”
“How do we know we can trust you?”
I whirled back to the crowd. They were so few compared to how many there had been just a short time earlier. “Because I’m still here. Trust me or not as your conscience demands. But if you stay here and do nothing, or stay here to burn your dead, you will soon join them. You will only add your corpses to these others. So make your choice. We leave now.”
The gathered crowd scrambled to find their azhocks and possessions. Ninavis and her people had already been parted from their meager possessions some time ago.
Ninavis’s group had gained in size. I recognized the smith who’d left his azhock to stare at us the previous night, as well as the black-skinned, silver-haired girl who had fetched him.
Dorna had done well, rescuing all these plus her own horse, Pocket Biter, and Brother Qown’s sweet gelding, Cloud. Only a few dozen people, in addition to the ones Brother Qown had saved. Thousands had attended the fair.
No. I couldn’t dwell on that.
“Which way to town?” I asked Arasgon.
He tossed his head, pointing into the smoke. For all I could tell, he might as well have been pointing to the castle, but I knew his sense of direction was superior to my own.
I helped Kalazan pick up Tamin, and we walked.