Earth Chapter 7: Fate
Find the rest at https://tinyurl.com/EarthFisk
“Search the grounds!” Korma barked.
His accent still carried the docks in it, but he led like a man who meant to keep his twenty-five men alive. The bite in his voice matched the fire in his eyes.
Sulfur lingered over the remote settlement. Earth tightened the kerchief at his mouth and stepped past the body of a farmer scarcely older than himself.
Not the first.
His sword dragged at his hip as he moved forward, half scavenger, half soldier. The earth beneath his boots lay blistered and black.
The days had fallen into pattern. Burned houses. Ruined fields. Empty roads. East of the Ahrvan River they marched through farmlands stripped bare, their own ranks thinning as the Culling reached farther than their supply lines could hold. Men were left behind to guard what little remained.
Town after town lay charred and silent. No living soul. Every approach had to be swept for wards. They were small, almost nothing to the eye, buried like snakes beneath the soil. More than one patrol had learned that too late. One wrong step was enough.
“Stay in pairs! Watch your feet. No more lost limbs like poor Mikeh. Easy now. Clean sweep. We move before midsun!”
They kept close to the river where they could. Mud betrayed the wards better than dust. Even so, the going was slow.
Earth studied the path into the farmyard ahead, searching for the slightest break in the surface. The only ward he had seen so far had been no larger than a coin-thin box, scarcely half a hand wide.
He did not understand how something so small could tear flesh apart. But he stepped well back all the same as the sniffers eased it from the soil and carried it off, careful as men bearing a newborn viper.
He paused to turn another body with the toe of his boot. An old woman this time.
“What are we even doing here?”
Macrema never missed a chance to complain. Earth would not have chosen him to stand at his back in a charge, yet the man outranked him, so Earth let the grumbling pass as he could.
“I don’t know,” Earth said as they neared a smaller barn, its walls scorched and its thatch long burned away. “There is purpose in it. The Shadowsun wants answers. We don’t even know what we face. No one has seen anything like these madgyics. Someone turned them back once. We need to know how.”
“It’s madness,” Macrema muttered. He paused at a sagging door. “A fool’s errand. We should have gone south. Or to sea. For all we know they’re behind us as much as before us now. And how many? How strong?”
He stooped and slipped through the doorway.
“I’ll be dead before any rummaging in this rot gives me—”
Sulfur drifted on the wind.
Click.
A sharp hiss sliced the silence. Thin. Violent. Like torn air.
Earth did not wait.
He drove his shoulder into Macrema, knocking him clear of the threshold and cast himself aside in the same motion. Then the world split with a CRACK that tore the hearing itself apart.
Earth flung himself against the outer wall. The yard vanished. The sky vanished. There was only the wood at his back and the doorway before him. Breath came shallow and fast. Korma was shouting somewhere beyond the ringing in his skull. Boots pounded across the yard.
Another hiss.
CRACK.
The doorframe beside him burst. Splinters tore free and a spray of dust and chips stung his cheek. His ears rang. A sweet stench tanged the air.
He clawed upright, back to the timber, blade half drawn.
If it was a trap, there was only one way to find out.
He drove through the doorway, blade forward.
A red flare pulsed in the dark. He saw the Madgyi then. Skin stretched tight over bone. Beard matted. Eyes old and feral. The face twisted in a snarl that was more hunger than rage.
The blast struck.
CRACK.
Fire tore through Earth’s chest. The air vanished from his lungs.
There was no time to think about it.
Steel met wood as he knocked the stave aside with an upward thrust and drove the gladius deep beneath the jaw and into the throat of the man.
They fell together.
The world dimmed at the edges. Weight pressed on his chest and eyes.
A voice.
Macrema?
No. Korma.
The smell of smoke was wrong. Not sulfur now. Sweet. Thick.
But not sweet enough to help him breathe.
He did not expect it to be so calm.
***
Earth stirred in darkness.
Incense lingered with the stale scent of canvas. His throat burned, and when he tried to swallow he coughed. Sweat dampened his hair. His stomach was in knots. His limbs hung hollow, weak as after a long fever.
Memory returned in fragments. Flash. Heat. The Madgyi’s stave. The blast that tore through him.
He tried to sit and braced for pain. Bandages pulled tight across his ribs, but none came. Only a restless itching beneath the poultice.
He eased back, breath shallow, listening to the faint hiss of the incense as it dwindled.
The tent flap stirred.
Earth tensed, hand twitching toward a weapon that was not there.
Flint struck. A lamp flared.
A man stepped into the light. Earth recognized him, Colinae, Chief Physician to the Shadowsun. This was not a surgeon who attended to common soldiers.
Colinae set the lamp down and paused over a line of stoppered bottles. Then he approached.
Earth studied the tent more fully in the candlelight. This was not a sicktent. Thick rugs layered the floor. Furs lined the walls. A broad desk stood in the corner, strewn with scrolls and maps.
“Where am I?” he asked, pushing himself upright.
Colinae’s green eyes fixed on him at once, sharp and searching.
“Why do you ask?” the physician said. He set a wrapped bundle on the table, unfolded it, and drew out a small scalpel. “I must examine the poultices. Lie back.”
Earth did so, jaw tight.
As the physician cut the bandages free, Earth turned his head. A tapestry covered one wall. Black-clad soldiers battled robed figures in red, their staves raised mid-strike. The faces were indistinct.
“This is not a sicktent,” Earth said. “That is why I ask.”
“No,” Colinae replied quietly. “It is not.”
The surgeon’s voice thinned. The lines in his brow deepened.
“Yes?” Earth pressed.
“What do you remember?”
“Very little,” Earth said. “It was fast. A face. An odor. It all happened very fast.”
Colinae gave a small nod, but from beyond the tent came the low murmur of voices carried on the wind.
“It tells us nothing,” a husky voice declared. “It could have been an accident. But it smells of a plan. A trap.”
“Whether it was a trap is irrelevant,” said a second voice. Earth recognized the King at once. “This is our first real opportunity. We must seize it. You trained me well enough to know we will never be stronger than we are now.”
“We shall know more when the boy wakes,” said a third voice, smooth as a passing breeze.
“Your Grace, he is conscious,” Colinae announced to the three men as they stepped into the tent. Earth at once recognized them all.
“However,” Colinae continued, “I am uncertain of his condition. His memory is incomplete. Further, something peculiar. The man bears no wounds.”
“What manner of sorcery is this?” General Gaoltea growled, his one eye fixed on Earth, the other hidden behind a massive patch stitched with gold.
“I assure you, my Lord General, there is no sorcery,” Colinae said evenly. “His wounds are gone, as if they never were. I cannot explain it.”
“What in the name of the First Realms does that mean?” The smooth voice drew Earth’s attention. Acis, the King’s Chief Assassin, stood beside the Shadowsun, but the way he moved blended into a room, as though he belonged to shadow more than the light. His long silver hair was drawn back into a tight tail. His midnight-blue eyes held an otherworldly brightness.
Next to him, Gaoltea looked almost haggard, the red-white scar that had taken his eye cutting down his cheek through the streaked beard. Earth stared at them before remembering that it was the King himself who stood between them.
Up close, he looked even younger than Earth recalled, fire-streaked black hair falling loose about a face not yet touched by age. Hiis green eyes carried a weight that Earth knew did not belong to youth.
Colinae’s voice drew Earth back.
“It means that he has no wounds.”
Acis’ hands moved, swift and precise. He examined the cut bandages and the bloodstained yet unbroken flesh beneath with swift fingers.
“Impossible,” he murmured.
Colinae stepped between his patient and the assassin.
“Evidently not.”
The King came forward, leaning over the physician’s shoulder. “The report states his intestines were pierced by the madgyic. That the bleeding could not be stopped. And that was less than twenty hours ago.” He looked to Earth. “You are certain this is the same man?”
“I know my patients,” Colinae said. “Until a few more grains pass through the hourglass and I complete my examination, I can offer no clearer answer.”
“And what of his own words?” Gaoltea’s voice rumbled from the map table, where he stood bent over a parchment.
“I…” Earth faltered. “I remember the farmstead. The Madgyi. I killed him, but he cast something. Beyond that, I do not know. There was pain. Then nothing.”
The Shadowsun’s gaze fixed on him.
“Your platoon carried you back wrapped in blood, nearly gone. Your captain swore you still breathed. You were taken to the sicktent at once, as any soldier would be.” He turned to a shelf and lifted the Madgyi’s staff. “But when your captain placed this in my hands, everything changed.”
Colinae spoke again. “After I tended your wound, I was certain you would not survive. Still, I hoped you might wake before the end. The Shadowsun intended to question you if fortune allowed, so you were brought here. Save for the past hour, I have not left your side. His Highness has remained near as well. You breathed steadily. You slept. Yet I did not expect…”
“He is one of them,” Acis said, voice low. “A worm. He feigned death by madgyic craft to burrow into us. And we have delivered him to the center of our strength.”
Gaoltea laughed, the sound filling the tent. “A clever ploy. The boy has marched with us since Elusa. A patient deception indeed.”
The King’s expression hardened.
“I know the risk, Acis. But I will not discard a possible asset without cause. Earth’s officers speak well of him. If he proves what you suspect, we will answer it.”
The assassin’s silver eyes narrowed.
“Trustworthiness is the finest mask,” he said. “I would know.”
“I do not know this alloy,” he said. “But if I judge correctly, one such as this tore through you. The size would account for the damage.”
He bowed and left the tent.
Gaoltea grunted, bowed to the King, and followed.
“There is a storm brewing between them,” Colinae observed.
“I know it well,” the King answered. Then he faced Earth. “You have endured much, little brother. But your trial has only begun. Colinae will examine your body. I will examine your mind. Be plain with me. The only thing I require for trust is integrity.”
Silence lengthened between them as the King’s gaze bore into Earth.
At last he spoke. “You are not the only one with secrets, Earth. Mine is this. I need your help. Will you give it?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Earth drew a breath. “I will do what I can.”
“Good.” The Shadowsun stepped nearer. “Then we begin, Earth. It is a strong name. Tell me everything you remember of this.”
He lifted the Madgyi’s stave.
“It was dark,” Earth said. “But I knew something was there.”
He told them of the cottage. The sulfur in the air. The flash. The blast. The pain. As he spoke, the King ran his hands along the length of the weapon, tracing its seams.
A sharp metallic click broke the tent’s stillness. A hidden compartment sprang open. Three small spheres dropped to the floor and rolled against the rugs.
All three men drew breath and stilled, bracing for detonation.
When nothing came, Colinae crouched and lifted one of the spheres between thumb and forefinger.
The King lifted one of the spheres and held it near the lamp, turning it slowly. Then he looked back to Earth.
“How long,” he asked, “between the cracks you described? The ones with the red light.”
Earth frowned. “It is hard to say, Your Grace. Everything moved at once, yet it felt suspended. Not more than a moment, I would say.”
“And, how many cracks?”
“Two. No—maybe three,” Earth said. “One when I pushed Macrema clear. One when I entered. The third when I struck the Madgyi.”
“There will be marks,” the King said at once.
He tossed the sphere lightly and caught it again, rising as he did so.
“Another platoon shall return to the farmstead immediately. If what you say is true…”
He looked to Colinae, then back to Earth. He grinned.
“I am not mistaken, am I?”
“Your Grace?” Colinae asked, brow drawn tight. “About what?”
“The holes,” Earth said. “Where the spheres struck. If there were three cracks, there will be two marks in the walls.”
Colinae’s expression sharpened.
“My King,” he said carefully, stepping between them, “about tonight. I do not like this plan.”
“Nor do I,” the King replied. “That is why we convene. You will attend.”
“It is not my place,” Colinae protested. “I am a surgeon. My knowledge does not fit the allowances you are prepared to make.”
“Your place is where I set it,” the Shadowsun said, voice firm though not raised. “Insight is not the property of generals, shadows, or prophets alone. You will report on Earth’s recovery. And you will advise.”
The King smiled, but Colinae’s expression did not soften.
“My friend, do what you can. I will see to the search for the madgyics’ holes.” He lifted the tent flap. Afternoon light poured in. “Our path remains in the hands of the Forgotten. Be he hidden, deaf, or patient, we are not finished yet.”
The flap fell closed behind him.
“He does not listen to me,” Colinae said quietly, looking down at Earth. The strain in his face showed more than fatigue. He took up a damp cloth and began to clean the dried blood from Earth’s chest.
“You were invited to the King’s own council,” Earth said. “You are honored.”
“Yes,” Colinae answered. “And he will summon you as well.” The surgeon crossed to the basin, wrung out the cloth, then returned.
“But what are you?” he went on. “A fortunate farm boy caught in a tide larger than himself? No. The King commands the greatest general of our age. The finest assassin ever to walk these lands. Three scholars steeped in ancient lore.”
He bent his head as he spoke.
“A high priest bound by vows stricter than iron. A treasurer-savant who scarcely speaks yet never errs. His Mastermith at Arms besides. If there is a thought to be had, they will together wring it dry.”
His fingers brushed the smooth, unbroken skin where Earth’s wound had been.
“What can a boy from the sticks do? What can an exhausted physician add?”
The words cut deeper than any blade.
The story of Earth continues…