9.

 

As the years progressed, Zaifyr became isolated in Kakar. His companions—once men and women of flesh and blood adorned with charms—became spectral figures, their bodies broken apart by cold light.

He recognized the change but could do nothing to stop it. In the home of his parents, haunts of the merchant and his guards walked through the walls, followed him in his chores and stood over him while he slept, murmuring in a language that he did not understand. Exhausted, he would fall asleep and awaken to their nonsensical whispers, with no beat skipped. They were angry at him, vengeful, but he could say nothing that they would understand. They left him alone only when he approached Meihir. In her lucid moments, she admitted to not knowing why they treated her so, but those moments were fleeting as the seasons changed, increasingly so.

He felt, as he stood apart from the living in the village staring up at the piles of snow around the edges of the houses, that he ought to be able to do more for the dead. He could not explain why he felt that other than a part of him, watching the reflected light pierce through their shambling bodies, felt more than his share of responsibility for what had happened. He had killed only one but had been responsible for the deaths of the others.

He discovered early that the haunts would not follow him out of the village. They were tied to the bodies that had been brought back and buried, or so he theorized. Each haunt had a range, and though it was not consistent, he knew that after a mile or two of travel, he would see none of them. Eager to find solitude, he began keeping to the caves that dotted the bases of the mountains. Lighting torches, he discovered that they were unoccupied, and he began to store dry wood and blankets there so that he could read the limited library that he owned. In the summer, he told himself he would ensure that the library grew in the hope that his intellect would one day equal the position he found himself in. He would have to leave Kakar and learn a new language to do it. Wrapped in his cloak, he felt the limitations of the world he had been born into and experienced both its inadequacies and his own. He could not explain what was happening. As he stared out of the cave and watched the faint, broken shapes of animals picking their way through the snow, he felt overwhelmed by what he was experiencing.

In the evenings, he would return to Kakar where, joined with the haunts of a witch, a merchant and the guards of the latter, that horror continued. From the moment that food was prepared, be it stag, pig, fish or whatever meat was cooked in the blackened pits of the village, he was stalked by the haunt of the beasts. Within a week, he had taken to eating his meals away from the others, pulling what he ate from the gardens that they kept. As Zaifyr trudged through the snow back to the village, he knew that unless he discovered a way soon to control what he saw and retreat to the ignorance he had only a short time ago, he would stop returning every night.

As he continued, the sound of breaking snow soon merged with words. It took a moment for him to recognize that those words were not ones that he recognized—and that they spoke loudly, commands being issued and obeyed. Stopping, he dropped into a crouch and focused, noticing for the first time that the trails of smoke that rose through the winter-stripped trees were thicker, blacker than they were, fueled by a tartness in the air. It took another moment for him to realize what it was that he smelt, and by then he could see the broken forms of those he lived with, around the snow mounds and outlines of huts.

Slowly, he crept forward, a cold dread settling into him. The center of Kakar was dominated by a huge fire reminiscent of the one that they had created for their families that he barely registered the sight of the horses, big, heavy roans covered in leather and snorting white with riders in leather and cloaks of red and gold. Soldiers, a part of him whispered; but another saw only the bodies on the fire, the bodies of his friends. There were soldiers there as well; their victory had not come lightly.

If he could have turned and left then, stalked the soldiers back to their city or run in and attacked to die with those who were his family, Zaifyr never knew. As he rose, he heard behind him a faint crunch of snow, a footstep, and he turned in time to see a dark-haired man without the red cloak leap at him. Caught off guard, he swayed, but the man had the better of him until Zaifyr slammed his head forward, crushing the man’s nose, a blow he returned by jamming his knee into Zaifyr’s groin. Slamming his head forward again, he pushed the man back, punching him as he rose to feel a knife touch lightly against his throat.

Words were said. Words he did not understand.

But the intention was clear, and hours after he had been tied, after he had been thrown into the back of the wagon that had belonged to the merchant, days after he spent a week next to eight bodies wrapped in red cloaks, months after he was kept in a dungeon and years after being kept on display as a savage, a man in charms who did not appear to age, thirteen years before Jae’le walked into the marble palace of the Emperor Kee to claim him, Zaifyr wished that he had not understood enough to surrender.

For thirteen years, he wished that the prophecy of Meihir had been true, and he had died at the age of twenty-nine.