As if a Kai warrior accompanying his entourage was an everyday event, Serovek casually introduced her to his vassal. “This is Anhuset, the Kai regent’s second, what they call a sha, similar to Carov, only with more power and more responsibility. She’s agreed to accompany us to the monastery as a representative of the Kai kingdom.”
Anhuset pushed back her hood so their hosts might have a better look at her and gave a short bow. “I am honored,” she said, careful not to expose too much of her teeth. Usually, she made extra effort to grin at any human she crossed, just for the sport of eliciting a reaction. That had no place here, especially since the lady of the house was twitchier than a rabbit and on the verge of banking off the walls at the merest ripple of her own shadow.
A small meeping noise escaped Lady Cermak, and though her throat visibly worked to exhale breath or words, nothing else escaped her mouth. Her husband had better luck. As pale as his wife and shackled to her by the death grip she had on his elbow, Pluro still managed a polite greeting. “Welcome to Mordrada Farmstead, sha-Anhuset. We appreciate the regent’s acknowledgment of my brother’s service to him.”
More dull pleasantries passed between them until the tea was gone and the food eaten. Anhuset hoped they wouldn’t linger much longer. They’d come for Megiddo, not to while away the day in stilted conversation with his brother. They still had several hours on horseback ahead of them before they stopped for the night at a riverside village Serovek had pointed out on his map the previous evening.
He set his cup down on the table. His men followed suit as did Anhuset. “I thank you for your hospitality, but we’ve a long journey ahead of us. If you’ll take us to where Megiddo rests, we’ll place him in the wagon we brought and be on our way.”
A quick, silent conversation passed between Pluro and his wife, words conveyed only through long looks and fast blinks. Lady Cermak, still mute, still nervous, finally spoke, and only to excuse herself from their company. Anhuset had the impression she’d just abandoned her husband to a fate of which she wanted no part.
Pluro straightened his quilted tunic and flexed his shoulders if he prepared for a confrontation. Serovek’s eyebrows crawled toward his hairline though he said nothing. The vassal motioned to the hall’s entrance. “If you’ll follow me please.”
Whispers of inquiry exchanged between those in Serovek’s escort reached Anhuset as they all trailed the two men out of the manor and back into the cold outdoors. Serovek fell back a step or two until Anhuset came abreast of him. Pluro didn’t wait but strode ahead, skirting a flock of roaming geese and a pair of hay carts parked nearby. Lines of wash flapped in the cutting breeze.
“What do you think?” Serovek asked her, his voice quiet.
She tried not to dwell on the pleasurable warmth that coursed through her at his request for her opinion. “I didn’t expect the monk not to be in his brother’s house.”
“Nor I.” He signaled to the rest of his men. “Wagon,” he said. They saluted and broke away to retrieve the wagon they’d brought transport Megiddo.
When they approached the smallest of the farmstead’s three barns, Serovek’s harsh “Surely, he’s jesting,” echoed her own thoughts. There was no possible way Pluro had stashed his own brother in a barn with the livestock. However, the man never changed directions, and soon they entered the dark, pungent structure.
Occupied by a few head of cattle, two mules, and a small number of sheep, the barn was a little warmer than outside, but their breath still steamed in front of them. Weak sunlight bled through splits in the building’s cladding and flooded the entrance, illuminating the space enough for the two men to see without too much trouble. Anhuset saw everything clearly, including the ominous thunderhead that had descended over Serovek’s countenance.
Pluro led them to the very back of the barn, past the stalls, hay racks and shelves of tack and tools, to another closed door partially covered in an array of webs spun by busy spiders. The webbing spread across the hinges and surrounded the latch and handle, signs that it had been some time since anyone had disturbed their labor by opening the door.
Anhuset and Serovek waited as their host paused to light an oil lamp before brushing away the webs and freeing the latch. Hinges squealed as he pushed the door inward. The newborn flames inside the lamp stretched fingers of light into the ink-dark room. Shadows fled at their encroachment, and soon the flickering illumination spilled onto a bier on which a man lay in peaceful repose.
Anhuset took in the sight with a heart that slowed its beat and breath that hovered in her nostrils. Beside her, Serovek sighed softly, a reverent sound laced with regret. Five men had sacrificed much to battle galla and save a world. One of them had paid an even more terrible price.
Megiddo Cermak breathed but slept the slumber of the dead, his soul trapped in a galla prison while his body, kept alive and protected by ancient Kai magic, waited for his soul’s return. He wore armor similar to Serovek’s but plainer, its only nod to decorative elements a border of runes etched into the steel around the collar of his breastplate.
The bier on which he lay was a simple affair of wooden slats laid adjacent to each other, their ends fastened at either side to rails that ran the length of the platform. Designed for ease of transporting the dead, the bier acted as Megiddo’s transparent coffin as well for now. Kai magic, the last remnants of power Brishen had drawn out of his own people with necromantic spellwork, flitted across the width and length of the bier in tiny blue sparks that faded as fast as they ignited.
A year ago, Anhuset would have sensed Megiddo’s presence even before she reached the barn, felt the pull of sorcery similar to her own, albeit feeble, magic. No longer. Now there was nothing. No twinge or draw, no prickle along her spine. Not even a strip of gooseflesh to signal an awareness of magic.
She’d known the moment it happened, when the desperate Khaskem had stripped every adult Kai of their magic in order to save them from total annihilation. A hollow had opened up inside her and remained. Neither rage, nor grief, nor acceptance of the necessity of Brishen’s devastating act filled it. Anhuset stared at Megiddo—more simulacrum than living man despite the fact he breathed—then looked away.
She focused instead on Serovek whose features had gone so pale, he fairly glowed in the dark. His nostrils flared, reminding her of an angry bull, and his hand clenched on the pommel of his sword as if he were tempted to draw it.
“Why is your brother’s body in one of your barns with the livestock instead of in the house?” He bit out each word from between clenched teeth, his tone quiet but no less menacing for its lack of volume.
Pluro blanched. Anhuset took a quick step back just in case the man’s fright twisted his guts enough that he retched up his stomach’s contents. He crossed his arms, not in confrontation but in defense, as if the pose might somehow save him should Serovek decide to split him from throat to bollocks with his blade. His explanation came out in a long, stuttering string of words sprayed into the cold air.
“It wasn’t always so, Lord Pangion. Megiddo was in the house for a time. We had no choice but to move him here. Strange things happened when we kept him there. Voices whispering when no one was in the room. Odd lights without fire or candle to birth them.” He shivered, and not from the cold. “All of us dreamed terrible dreams, nightmares to wake you in a sweat. Our servants refused to sleep in their rooms any longer, and some refused to work inside. My wife needs the help, so I thought it best to move Megiddo here. I didn’t see the harm. After all, he’s unaware of his surroundings. He wouldn’t know or care. Once I did so, everything returned to normal. No voices, no nightmares, no lights.”
His description sent a splinter of unease down Anhuset’s back. She recalled her conversation with Ildiko about Brishen’s nightmares, had seen herself the shimmer of sorcerous blue that had edged his eye, as if the dark magic that had turned him eidolon still lingered inside him, tied somehow to the deathless warrior lying motionless before her.
What Pluro described wouldn’t have been enough to convince her Megiddo belonged in an isolated barn, forgotten. Unlike the vassal, however, she hadn’t seen the galla firsthand. He had, and from her observations of her own countrymen who’d fled Haradis before the galla horde, the experience left the lingering stain of terror on the soul and the mind. She didn’t approve of his actions, considering them weak, but she didn’t condemn him for them either.
Serovek wasn’t as forgiving. He glared at Pluro so hard, the man should have caught fire. “You deserve a thrashing,” he said in those same quiet, seething tones. “Get out of my sight before I decide to give you one.”
Pluro fled without a word, nearly falling over his own feet to escape the barn. Anhuset watched him go before turning back to Serovek who stared at Megiddo’s still form with an expression both furious and haunted.
“His brother saved him twice, and this is how Pluro repays him,” he said. “Megiddo should have let the galla have him.”
She touched his arm with one claw tip. “Strength isn’t always a gift shared between blood. The gods gifted one man with the courage of two. Your vassal’s failing isn’t that he’s evil; it’s that he’s craven.”
Serovek stared at her for a moment, his flinty expression softening a little. “You never cease to surprise me, Anhuset. You’re far more lenient about this than I am. History has proven more than a few times that evil is often the spawn of cowardice.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be forgiving toward Cermak. Megiddo rode beside you into battle, suffered through the bloodletting required by the ancient spellwork just as you did. You saw firsthand what happened to him. In your place, I might not have held back from carving Pluro into pieces at the knowledge he put Megiddo here.”
His mouth quirked a little. “Saw that, did you?”
“You were hardly subtle.” She moved closer to the bier. “He looks peaceful. You all did once the spell that made you eidolon took hold. Do you think he suffers pain?”