Gandras, as seen through the eyes of anyone in this world, is a grand city. I mean in scale, not in beauty or the quality of its culture. No, the place is an absolute dump.

But through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy who had never seen a town bigger than Krantz at a measly six or seven thousand people, well, the place was just gods-damned enormous. I remember being able to see the bloody walls almost as soon as we left Krantz, and that was a solid seven miles upriver.

We approached from the north, through the fruit country. The plains around Gandras are said to be some of the most fertile in the world, and I’ll believe it, as there is so much wine and cider produced in the city that the stuff is more common than piss—even the good stuff. Hell, one can pick up an exquisite brandy in the city for less than it costs to pay a beggar boy to shine your shoes!

At any rate, so massive and so famous is Gandras’ fruit production that even the fields outside the city have names, and one can generally tell a wine produced from grapes of Abalni from the wines of Obolon.

As for Gandras itself, an entire district is devoted to wine and cider and brandy production. That would be Arisi.

A word on the city, for posterity of course, as I’m sure any damned fool reading this drivel within a few years of the telling would know the layout of the city and some of its history: Gandras, and more specifically Samye Canton, was a free city until about ninety years ago. When I first arrived in Gandras, Samye had only been under Concord control for less than seventy, and the city bore all the sanitizing marks of an invasion.

Saint Zoran was said to have come from Gandras originally, and, having met with derision for his ideas, had found his way to Pruvykhu only after many years of wandering. It came as little surprise to anyone then that the Concord’s Inquisitors had been especially hard on the city after the conquest, with their renaming of everything remotely pagan being the least of the city’s troubles.

As it was, the seven districts of Gandras were renamed, each for one of the seven faces of the Concord’s faceless god—seven faces that are, of course, taken from the original seven pagan gods to begin with. Ironic how history works.

There’s Mealdesi, named for the Lord of Life, and the headquarters of the Concord’s government in Samye Canton. The Piliakilnis fortress in Mealdesi is probably older than Pruvykhu, but that hasn’t stopped the Concord whitewashing its walls and removing all trace of Samye’s past from its grounds, replacing centuries-old statues and tapestries with freshly sanitized marble images of Saint Zoran. The district, like each of the seven, is entirely walled in, a remnant of the slow expansion of Gandras.

Danguskis, named for the Lord of the Sun, is the northernmost district and also the home of the city’s barracks. It was through the north gate of Danguskis that Damek and I entered the city.

Arisi, as I’ve said, was the center of the city’s wine, cider, and brandy production, and is named for the Lady of Growing Things.

Wundantis, named for the Lord of Waters, is the second oldest district of the city behind Mealdesi. It is also the heart of the city’s religion, with temples to each of the seven faces of god to be found in the district’s Alkankort square. It is also the home of the majority of Samye Canton’s minor secular nobility, as the petty bans all wish to be seen as close to the god of the new religion.

Mijlantis is at the heart of the city, fitting for a district named after the Lady of Love. It is also the home of the Inquisition’s Augandwars fortress, built atop the hill that is Gandras’ highest point. Ironic bastards.

Pannosi is the southernmost district of the seven and named for the Lord of Fire. It is the city’s primary market district and the home of some of the wealthiest bastards in all Samye Canton.

Finally, there is Goliskis, named for the Lady of Death. It is there that all the worst sorts of this world congregate, in the place where only the Lady Golis cares for them. It is interesting to note that the Gurinsikort, the pauper’s region, is located in Goliskis’ western edges, hard up against the Pannosi fat cats. Also of note is the presence of some twelve theatres in Goliskis. Acting is hardly an honorable trade, after all.

And that is the craphole called Gandras, and Damek and I stepped into that turd early in the afternoon of an autumn day that is impressed on my memory like a hot iron on a cow’s arse.

I spent a long time gawking at everything I saw, at the cramped spaces, at the masses of people, at the size of the buildings. Eventually, Damek had to pull me aside down an alleyway and beat some sense into me.

“Focus, you little pisspot,” he growled. “You can’t walk around drawing so much gods damned attention to us. We’re in Danguskis, gods damn it, and if one of those Concord hard-arses pays us any sort of attention, it’s off to the pauper’s prison for us. In this city, the less you stand out, the more you fit in. Get it?”

“What’s that suppo—”

“Do you get it?” Damek snapped, slapping me upside the head. “No more questions until we reach Goliskis. Now, act like a blind man’s aid and lead me proper!”

I took his old, leathery hand and led him back into the busy Danguskis streets. People jostled us, caring little for the fact that Damek was blind and I a small boy. The city, as I was quickly learning, had little regard for the weak and infirm. There was a place for such people, and it was located in a small corner of Goliskis called the Gurinsikort.

It took us nearly half a watch before we managed to find our way to Arisi. As we passed by the large factories and distillation plants, Damek said, “If you ever need to get well and truly pissed, lad, you come here. There are corrupt bastards everywhere who’ll pass you a glass of fine wine for a song. This entire district is controlled by the Concord now. Used to be that the city’s liquor production was a private operation, one of the few truly private industries in the world, but that’s well and truly passed. But the thing is that most of the men and women who work here are the sons and grandsons of the men and women who worked here before the Concord arrived, and they remember what life was like before Saint Zoran’s monsters took over everything. As I said, you’ll find plenty of bastards in here willing to give wine away by the bottle just to screw their new masters.”

“Then why aren’t there more people walking about pissed out of their minds?” I asked, noting the surprising absence of drunkards.

“Just you wait until nightfall,” Damek replied. “There’ll be so many drunks in Arisi that the garrison of Danguskis chooses instead of lock the district gates rather than try to police the damned place.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to see it all in action at some point.” He yanked hard on my arm. “But not now. Now, we have to get going, find us a place to sleep for the night. The sidewalk fills up pretty quickly in Goliskis, and the alleys ain’t safe enough to crap in after dark. But I know just the place for two enterprising bastards such as ourselves.”

“Sounds lovely,” I muttered as I continued to lead Damek through the wine district.

Gandras is a curious place in its layout. There is little that makes sense about it, and that is probably because it was built gradually over a period of many centuries. For example, despite the fact that Goliskis and Arisi share a wall, there is no gate from one district into the other because there was no city gate along that stretch of wall when Arisi, the older district, was originally added to Gandras. Instead, if you want to get from the wine district to the theatres, you have two options: either you enter Wundantis and then cut through Mijlantis—which is an option that appeals only to the clinically insane, given that it takes you directly past the Augandwars—or you can travel the length of Wundantis and then circle through Pannosi, which is the direction we took.

I can’t say much for Pannosi—or won’t for now—but as we passed into Goliskis, it seemed as though we had stepped into a different world altogether. I stumbled to a halt, and Damek tugged his hand free of mine to give me a moment.

“Looks like hell, doesn’t it, boy?” the old man said, his voice tinged with an odd emotion.

I turned my head to look at him. “How do you know?” I said. “You’re blind.”

“But I wasn’t always. I’ve told you as much before, though it’s damned clear you’ve got wool in that head of yours and not a single measure of brains. Damn it, boy! This place has always been a dump. But, gods, if it ain’t home to the best of us!”

“Home?” I asked.

“Spent many a night in these gutters, lad. But tonight, well, tonight I introduce you to the finest establishment in Crapville. Tomorrow will be early enough to begin teaching you how to make a living, as per your mother’s wishes.”

“That bitch!” I said, half angrily, half gratefully. Truth was, I hated her gods damned guts for sending me into a place like the Gurinsikort of Goliskis. “Well, damn,” I muttered moments later. “Let’s get the hell on with the rest of my life.”

“The most sensible thing you’ve said since we met,” Damek replied. “Now, lead me down this main road until we come to the third street on your left. You know which one your left is?”

“Of course,” I snapped. “I’m not a damned idiot.”

“But you do a hell of an impression of one,” Damek replied. “So humor me.”

I took his left hand and said, “This is left.”

“That’s your right, moron.”

“Your left, grandpa.”

My skull ached for a long while after he cracked good me with his walking stick—doing so openly now that we were in the one part of the city that the Inquisition seemed determined to leave alone to rot, the one part of the city where nobody gives a damn about anything. Gods, but I’ve seen rape happen in the middle of the streets of the Gurinsikort and not a single damned soul stopped, no one gave any indication that something untoward was taking place. They’re a hard bunch of bastards in that part of the world, let me tell you.

“Fine,” Damek noted after he’d cracked me one. “You know which left is. Well, you take the third left and then the second right. Our home for the night will be the first door on the right once we round that corner. Think you got that, puss-for-brains?”

“There wouldn’t happen to be a sodding pole or two along the way I could lead you into, would there?” I asked hopefully.

“Keep that up, and you’ll be wearing my stick up your own arse before the night’s through.”

I took him by the hand and proceeded to guide Damek through the streets of Goliskis. Dark faces, furled in shadow, gazed at us from doorways and out of windows. The sun was creeping down into the west with the onset of night, and all sorts of bastards were preparing themselves for an evening of drinking, sin, and crime.

I managed to lead Damek straight to the home he’d mentioned, and the old bastard raised his stick and rapped three times on the solid wooden door. When I say “solid,” I mean the thing was built like a door on a gods-damned fortress. The wood must’ve been eight inches thick if it were an inch, and the lock and hinges looked like they could withstand a right battering.

I asked Damek about it, and he said, “Lady Alzeta has had some trouble in the past with undesirables. Keeps the place bolted up like a citadel to deter any more, and she has faithful friends who’ll knock the crap out of anyone who tries.”

“Sounds like a charming woman,” I said ironically.

“And you’d better damned remember it, too, you mouthy little prick! Lady Alzeta is the best friend you’re likely ever to have in this world—after myself, of course.” He paused, waiting for a response, then repeated, “Of course!”

I cleared my throat. “Of course, of course,” I said quickly, then muttered, “Bastard!” beneath my breath.

“Call me what you like,” Damek said with a smirk on his face, “but I’ve raped you about a hundred times less than any other bastard in my position would have.”

“But you haven’t…oh!” I said slowly.

Just then, a small wooden slat in the door pulled back and a pair of ancient eyes peaked out at us. I saw the eyes widen momentarily, and then the slat slammed shut and the bolt was drawn back.

An ancient crone who could make a cow’s arse look beautiful stood in the doorway, studying the two of us. “Damek, you son of a bitch,” she croaked.

“Right back at you, Lady Alzeta,” Damek exclaimed, throwing open his arms to her.

She cackled as she received his embrace. “Good to see you, you old bastard. Come in, come in. Who’s the runt?”

“This is Rio,” my master replied. “Dumbest bastard in all Samye Canton, but he’s got a pair of eyes, so why the hell should I complain?”

Lady Alzeta ruffled my hair affectionately. “Welcome, little Rio. Doesn’t look half bad,” she said to Damek, as she shut the heavy door behind me.

“Only picked him up a few weeks ago. Mother got chased off by the Inquisition.”

“He’s the one, eh? Poor bastard. Still, adds one more who’ll be there when the revolution finally comes.”

“Like hell it will. Inquisition and the Concord have us clamped tighter than a duck’s backside—”

“And that’s watertight!” I said, finishing off one of Damek’s sayings that I’d heard a thousand times already.

The old man glared at me for the interruption, but Lady Alzeta giggled—or, rather, cackled, as I don’t think her throat was capable of much else—and said, “My, but he’s got a mouth on him and not afraid to speak!”

“Damned annoying if you ask me,” Damek said. “Now, is anyone else in?”

“Not yet,” Lady Alzeta said as she turned and led us deeper into her domain. “Not yet, but Cross-eyed Taras and Rurik Nine-fingers are due back soon. Ban Volos will be in later, as will Crazy Kenya and his boy Mladen, who were out to see about working an angle on some letter they received by mistake.”

“Gods,” Damek said, “but they’re all still together? I thought for certain the bastards would’ve dispersed long before I got back.”

“Not much place to go anymore,” the lady said forlornly. “But Mladen won’t be half pleased to have a mate to keep him company while the bigger boys are out drinking and carousing.”

“I want to drink and carouse too,” I said.

“Now, now,” Damek muttered, “we don’t want a repeat of Krantz. Can’t go about disappointing all the whores of Samye. It’d reflect poorly on me.”

“Still the horny bastard, eh?” Lady Alzeta asked. “Gods, Damek, did you drag this poor sod into one of your dens?”

“Call it an education,” my master replied, “and I sure as hell don’t need a lecture from you on how I train my aids.”

“Gods, no,” she said, holding up her hands, “but if he were my boy, I’d take better care of him. Looks so young and innocent.”

“I’m the biggest and damnedest bastard you’ve ever met,” I declared, puffing out my chest and donning the meanest glare I could.

“Are you now?” asked Lady Alzeta, a glimmer of amusement flickering in her still-sharp eyes. “Well, excuse me, little master.”

Damek grabbed me by the back of my neck. He pressed his lips against my ear and hissed. “What did I say outside about watching your mouth? Piss her off and we sleep on the streets, and you won’t like what happens to little boys on the streets in this part of the city. Apologize and accept the lady’s compliment.”

I shook myself free of Damek’s grasp and looked up to Lady Alzeta’s smiling face. Clearly she’d heard everything the old bastard had muttered in my ear. I looked down at my feet and mustered the most shameful face I could. “Sorry, Lady Alzeta,” I mumbled.

“Gods, you really are a moron, aren’t you?” Damek said. “Cut the amateur dramatics and look the lady in the eye. No one wants to see a whiny pissbody pretend to be remorseful.”

I ground my teeth, met Lady Alzeta’s eyes, and said, “Go to hell, old man. And shove your remorse right up your arse. You’ve been nothing but a boil on my bum since we met!”

Lady Alzeta exploded with laughter, and Damek, who must’ve been about to club me to death with that stick of his, joined her as soon as he saw that I hadn’t in fact angered her.

“Son of a bitch, Damek,” Lady Alzeta said after she regained control. “You really can pick them. The boy eats free tonight for that beauty! Make yourselves at home. There’s a cot or two upstairs that may only be lightly infested with fleas, but I offer no guarantees.”

She turned away and hurried off to busy herself with other matters. As soon as she exited the room, Damek snatched my arm again and squeezed hard.

“Listen, you dumb bastard: don’t ever antagonize that woman again. Do you hear me?”

“Antagonize? Damek, the woman was laughing her arse off louder than she would if she caught sight of that little dangle between your legs.”

“So you think you’re a big shot now, the biggest bastard?” Damek’s grip grew firmer still, and I began to squirm. “You are nothing but a dumb shit, and by the gods, I will throw your arse out on the streets if you make me look bad again.”

“What the hell are you on about?” I asked, though my voice was more whiney than demanding as my arm began to grow numb.

“That woman and this gang are the only thing standing between us and the rest of this damned corrupt district. Do you hear me? Goliskis is not Maluns. There are bastards outside that door who eat little turds like you and spit out the bones.”

“Then why the hell bring me here?”

“Because every man—even me—needs a family. Without a family, even one comprised of that old bitch and the quintet of morons who live with her, you will have no screen against hard times, no screen against the rest of this world.”

“Are you going soft on me?”

Damek hit me hard in the face with his fist, and only his continued firm grip on my arm kept me from hitting the floor.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I spat blood onto Lady Alzeta’s nice, clean floor. “I think, deep down inside, you love me.”

“Bah!” Damek released my arm, and this time I did hit the floor, clattering my head against the wood. “Just try not to screw things up,” he said as he turned and made his way to the stairs.

Constipation is the thief of time; dysentery waits for no man!

Such were the wise words of Damek in the days following our eating of the grapes. It was a saying that he got from his father many years before, and a saying that we both tried the truth of for nearly two whole days.

Damek thought it prudent that we camp in another one of his frequented forest clearings until both our bowels stopped dripping uncontrollably. Despite the vaunted experience of his gut, Damek spent as much time as I did with his britches down around his ankles as he squatted in the bushes.

Out of some malicious instinct that kicked in after we fell foul of those grapes, I said to him, “Seems like the grape picker was the bigger bastard after all, eh? Bastard got us both good, even you, Damek!”

“If my guts weren’t turned to water, boy, I’d crack my walking stick hard across your arse.” He paused to work his way through another fit. “But truth is I’m not so young as I once was.”

“Then why’d you eat the grapes if you knew you’d be hanging your arse in the bushes like me?” I asked.

“Because only an idiot gives up on free food in the life we live. Mark me, boy, take what you can get when you can get it, and always spend the money you’ve got on any sort of pleasure you can afford. Life’s too short and pointless to waste it on hoarding resources.”

After the first day, our bowels were mostly dried up, but we still struggled with the sudden, uncontrolled urge to drop our pants again. We drank plenty of water—at Damek’s insistence—but ate nothing at all, not least because any food would slide right through us the moment we swallowed it.

Damek promised me a grand old party once we were through the worst. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we will walk to Krantz. It’s a nice little place, about seven miles north of Gandras—the last real town of note between us and our destination. We can recuperate there. I’m well known in town, and we are going to need proper food after this.”

A stay in town sounded like an unheard of luxury after the agony of an arse burning to crap but unable to empty an already dried up well. “Is there someplace better than a barn or servant’s quarters we can stay?” I asked. We’d never yet had a proper bed to sleep in—or, at least, I hadn’t, as the few times we’d been given lodging out of charity, my master had ordered I either sleep at his feet or on the floor. Sleeping at his feet always resulted in me sleeping on the floor anyway, as the bastard kicked like a gods damned mule in his sleep.

“We’ve got a few warrins saved,” Damek said. “Remember what I said about hoarding just now? Well, I’ll qualify that by saying sometimes a little bit of saving allows one to splurge at the opportune moment. It just so happens I can get us a good price on a room at the tavern. I’m well known there, as I’ve said. Hell, we can even get you a bath to wash the smell of shit out of you!”

“You do realize that you smell just as gods damned foul as I do,” I said.

“Yes, but I can live with my smell. It’s your bloody stench that I can’t stand.”

We limped into Krantz on the third day after eating the grapes. We must have looked a right pair of wraiths: tired, sore, and little more than skin wrapped over a frame of bones. Hell, I know we looked terrible because we didn’t even bother to beg and people were still throwing favors at us.

I accepted a loaf of bread from the local baker, and Damek received two warrins in coins from passersby.

“We should get the squirts more often,” I said at one point. “Beats the hell out of actually begging for a living.”

Damek didn’t have the energy to raise his stick at me. “There’s no gods damned way I want to go through that again anytime soon, and you shouldn’t either. You’ll be dead long before you get any real pay off. That’s no way to live, and an even worse way to die. Trust me, boy; I’ve seen men and women crap themselves into the afterlife. It ain’t pretty.”

We made our slow, labored way to the tavern, the second largest building in Krantz—after the Inquisitors’ house, of course.

The place had three stories and was constructed from a mixture of stone and wood, with the ground floor providing the solid, stone base and the upper two floors being constructed of the lighter wood materials. On either side of the entryway, the owner had nailed up the enormous skulls of two oxen, and I might have been left in consternation at their function were it not for the fact that a mule was tethered to the horns of one of the skulls.

As we approached, Damek ushered me over towards the skull that was not currently in use. He lifted his hand searchingly for a moment before finding one of the ox’s horns, which he gripped tightly.

“Look at this, boy. Look at this poor bastard who was little more than a slave in life and is now a perpetual slave in death.” He rubbed his palm along the length of the horn, as though in sympathy of the poor creature it had once belonged to. “Such an evil use, a crude use. Few there are who would want to lock horns with you, yet here you sit doing the work of others.”

“What’s that you’re saying, old man?” I asked as his voice drifted into a curious, almost distant tenor.

“Shut up, boy. One of these days, you’ll receive a visit from these horns. You’ll receive an ill reward from it too, and you’d wish rather to have this point rammed up your arse than to be in that place.”

“Your brain must be addled from having the squirts too long, you crazy old bastard,” I said. “How the hell is that dead thing going to do anything to me hung up there like that?”

He reached out and slapped me upside the head. “If you were less of a cocky moron and more willing to take a crazy old bastard’s warning, you might learn something. Instead, you’ll look back on this memory one day and think to yourself: you know what? Old Damek was right. I am a gods damned moron and always will be.”

With that, he released the horn and felt after the door to the tavern. I lingered for a moment, looking at the ox skull on the wall, before shaking my head. “Bastard’s gone mental,” I muttered. “Sodding hell, mother. What have you done to me that you hooked me up with this madman?”

I followed Damek into the tavern, which was dark and smoky and smelled of ale, urine, and vomit, and all that despite the fact it was still only the first watch of the afternoon.

A red-haired woman with breasts the size of my head and a dress that was far too tight and far too revealing turned at the sound of our entrance and approached Damek.

“Damek, you old bastard!” she said in a tone that was halfway between glee and annoyance.

Damek cocked his head as she spoke, and then a wicked grin spread across his face. “Hello, Olena, my dear. It is me, indeed.” He spread his arms wide to her.

She struck him instead.

“Where the hell have you been, you bastard?” she spat, though there was still something of the glee to be caught in her voice.

Damek must have heard that too, for he threw back his head and laughed a laugh I’d never heard from him before. “I’m a wanderer, Olena, my dear. I go here and there—”

“And screw any bitch who’ll spread her legs for you in between,” Olena finished.

“What do you care about it?” Damek asked, his voice dripping with manufactured hurt. “You’re a gods damned prostitute yourself.”

“And yet you keep coming back,” she replied. Then Olena seemed to notice me for the first time and the way I clung closely to Damek’s side. “Who’s the brat? Not yours, I hope, you horny bastard.”

“Gods, no. I’d never sire such a damned moron as this. He’s the son of an old friend—”

“She a whore too?”

“Yes,” Damek said, “but not to me. She took up that profession years after I knew her. Anyhow, brainless little sod is my blind man’s aid.”

“Ah,” Olena said, “the latest in a long line of the little bastards, though this one smells considerably more like a crapper than any of your previous servants.” She waved a hand dramatically. “Though I swear by God’s seven faces that you don’t smell so good yourself.”

“Which is why we need two baths,” Damek declared.

“You got warrins?” Olena asked. “There’s no charity here anymore, I’m afraid. Least of all for you. Old Kuba doesn’t take kindly to us girls giving discounts to favorites.”

“I’m a favorite?” Damek asked. “Gods, you don’t know how much that means to me.”

Kuba, as it turned out, was an enormous bastard—I mean in sheer physical size, not in the quality of his bastardry. He was also the owner the fine establishment that we found ourselves in.

Olena supplied us with two large tubs of steaming hot water and a couple of bars of tallow soap. Damek made me wash all over and then wash all over again. He sniffed at me then declared, “Gods, but you’re the smelliest bastard I’ve ever met. The smell of piss and shit hangs about you like a disease. But, hell, you smell a damned sight better than you did before, let me tell you.”

“Yeah, and you’re a regular bucket of roses,” I said before receiving my accustomed sharp whack to the head for the insult.

“Gods, but it’s good to be clean,” Damek declared. “Now, to find some sustenance.”

Kuba made Damek count out the quarter and half warrins before he provided us with any food or drink. He made Damek count out an advance on a room for two days as well.

“Like I said,” Damek remarked to me afterwards, “I’m well known and well liked in this town. Old Kuba’s a mean spirited bastard, but he has a soft spot for me.”

“He just made you pay for two day’s lodging, watching like a greedy hawk all the time,” I said.

“That’s how I know he likes me,” Damek replied. “Bastard demands three nights’ pay at the least from anyone else. He refunds if you leave before, but he’s had trouble with underpayment in the past. Bastard.”

Olena brought us our meal: two bowls of stew made from the meat of some mystery animal—at least, I could tell the damned stuff wasn’t made of beef, pork, chicken, deer, or any game foul I’d ever tasted before. We used the bread we’d been given earlier to mop up the dregs from our bowls.

“Where’s your sister?” Damek asked of the red-haired whore when we were about finished with our meal.

“Olha’s still here,” Olena said. “Should be down soon. She’s been sleeping off a busy night.”

“Does that mean—”

“Yes, it does, you nosey little bastard,” Damek snapped at me. “Don’t insult the nice lady by reminding her all the time of what she does for a living.”

“It’s all right,” Olena said. She pulled her arms in to her side, causing her considerable bosom to heave outwards, almost escaping the scant confines of her dress. She leaned in towards me. “How old are you, boy?” she asked.

“Twelve,” I said.

Olena batted her eyelids. “Twelve? You talk like a big boy for a twelve-year-old. Are you a big boy?”

I cast a panicked glance at Damek, who was grinning wildly at the confused look taking over my face. I felt a hand grope in between my thighs, and I jumped in my seat. Olena drew back up and sighed. “Alas, no. Still a child.”

Damek could not contain his laughter.

We hung around in the tavern for the next watch. When Olha arrived for work, Damek quickly propositioned her as well.

I would never have picked Olha and Olena for sisters. Olha was blessed with far fewer curves than her sister, and her dark hair was typical of the Samyein, robbing her of the sense of exotic that saw Olena prove so popular with Kuba’s customers. But Damek joked crudely with me that the two of them made an irresistible and stamina-sapping team, and I was forced to forego our nice private room for the cold, hard benches of the common room as the three of them grunted and growled through the night.

Gods, but I was glad we finally left that place four days later. We had not a warrin left to us, but we were at last on the final stretch to Gandras. In the midst of our journey southward, I’d become increasingly certain that my mother had made one almighty cock up in giving me into Damek’s service. I was also growing increasingly determined to break away from the blind man’s company as soon as I could.

But not before I taught the old bastard a lesson.

And that would require more money and wits than I presently had access to.

(Next Chapter)

When I woke the next morning, my mouth was so dry it felt as though I hadn’t had anything to drink in a thousand years. Surprising as it may be, given the home I was raised in, I can’t say that I’d ever drunk as much wine as I had the night before. My tongue grated like sand and my saliva dribbled thickly like a watery dough.

I crawled down through the rushes to the river and slurped greedily at the water, bent over like a dog and not bothering to pay attention to the world around me. I drank so much and so quickly that I began to vomit, and the heaves only added to my thirst as the bile burnt up my throat. Needless to say, being a dimwitted moron in those days and quite unaccustomed to recuperating after a night of too much drink, the cycle of drinking too much water followed by vomiting followed by extreme thirst again proceeded for some time.

Eventually, however, I managed to retain enough water to feel marginally satisfied, though my throat burnt like a whore’s shrieks in the ears. But my immediate needs were filled, which meant I could finally turn my thoughts to other matters.

Like the fact that half the gods damned morning had already passed.

Given that Damek had roused me roughly from sleep before the dawn on our first two nights together, this struck me as an unusual and probably poor turn of events. I stood up from among the rushes at the river’s edge and looked back to where we’d spent the night on the bed of dried reeds.

There I saw old Damek snoring away like a baby hopped up on maigarrin leaves. I approached him warily, not because I thought he might be dead—he was snoring so loudly they must’ve heard him in Gandras—but because I feared some trick. Two days with the old bastard had taught me some form of caution at least.

“Damek,” I called softly.

I’ve never understood why people speak softly to the sleeping when trying to wake them. I mean, you speak softly if you’re trying not to disturb them, but when you’re trying to wake the bastards up from the depth of sleep’s clutches, why the hell not yell? Anyhow, that was wisdom I came by years later, and I was not yet confident enough to put to use Damek’s own wise technique of kicking said sleeping person.

“Damek,” I called again. “Are you awake?”

“No, gods damn it,” he said. “I’m bloody sleeping. Go find a sharp, pointy root to sit on. If you disturb me again, I’ll rape you my gods damned self.”

I leapt back, heart racing. I was not going to be idiot enough to press Damek on the issue. Whatever he might be, the previous day’s business had raised the possibility that his threat might be partway genuine.

As I backed away from him, noting that the sun overhead had likely been up for an entire watch and that Damek would likely beat the crap out of me later for not putting more effort into waking him, I turned my eyes on the canvas sack.

The old man had been using it as a pillow earlier in the night, but it had slipped out from underneath him, allowing me free access to it. I paused and waited until I heard Damek snore again, and then began to creep closer, this time with the intent of rummaging around for some food.

Undoing the drawstring was an agonizingly slow process, as I did not want any of the glass vials and clay pots within to rattle about and so wake the bastard whose head was scant inches from the bag.

I had my tongue pointed out for maximum concentration and my eyes screwed up in anticipation that I was about to get one hell of a beating. With the mouth of canvas bag open, I was free to slip my hand inside and begin feeling around for a crust of bread or something.

“You’d better be searching for a damned pot of rundils salt, boy. If your hand is in that bag for any other gods damned reason, I’ll beat you so hard your brains come out your arse.”

I froze, hand stuck halfway down the bag with no intent at all of searching for a pot of rundils salts, which I recalled vaguely from my mother’s collection was a powder popular with men who drank far too much and far too often.

“Are you ignoring me, you piss pot, runty arsed, cat shagging bastard?”

“No, Damek,” I answered quickly. “No, I’m…I’m…”

“Looking for rundils salts?”

“Yes.”

“Like hell you were, boy. Gods, but my head doesn’t half hurt. I feel like duck shit. No, worse. Like duck shit scraped off a boot that’s trod in cow, mule, and sheep shit on the way.”

He finally managed to turn his face up to look at me, and his milky white blind eyes were shot through with pulsing red veins and framed with marvelous black rings.

“Gods, Damek,” I said. “You look like hell.”

“Well, you’re just a bucket of roses yourself, you cheeky little bastard. Are you looking for those rundils salts already?”

“Uh…no.”

“Then hop to it, you useless cock. Get me something to help with this gods damned hangover or when I’m up, I’ll flog your scrawny arse from here to Gandras and then sell you to a brothel for half a warrin.”

“Oh, come on!” I exclaimed. “I’m worth at least two.”

Somehow, despite his hangover and his blindness, Damek found it in himself to whip his walking stick back over his head and crack me right on the skull. “The salts, boy!” he demanded.

I found the tub of grayish powder, from which Damek took a sizable pinch and dropped it right onto his tongue. His face screwed up and he coughed and sputtered. “Gods, that’s miserable damned stuff,” he exclaimed. “Don’t just stand there, you useless turd! Get me some bloody water to wash this poison down.”

I drew out the water skin from the canvas sack and handed it to an ungrateful Damek. He swallowed down several mouthfuls, though not nearly as greedily as I’d done earlier. He was far more experienced, you see, at recovering from a night of drinking. I for one had not had the wits about me to think of the rundils salts at all.

At any rate, the old bastard was soon on his feet, and we were underway by noon, though without breakfast, the miserly sod cursing me all the way down the road for not waking him sooner, for being a miserable traveling companion, and for being a gods damned wastrel—among other things.

We made it to Wundansads after dark, and Damek set us up in the luxurious accommodations of an old barn, right next to the cows and the mules, who sniffed and farted all through the night such that neither Damek nor I got much in the way of restful sleep.

I won’t go into detail regarding what happened at all our stops on the way down to Gandras. Suffice it to say that we visited each and every town, making an agonizingly slow pace in our journey to the center of Samye Canton. Damek continued to fluctuate between beating the crap out of me for crimes I did not commit and imparting morsels of wisdom that seemed every bit as erudite and—therefore—impractical and stupid as Batur’s Sausawan wisdom had.

Generally, we stayed about three days in each town, though sometimes Damek would hang around longer if he’d found a particularly lucrative cow to milk—and, gods, there were some cows to be milked! Occasionally, though, we’d be run out of town on the first or second day, in which case old Damek would drop his drawers when he felt we’d come a safe distance and wave his wrinkled arse at the townsmen as a sign of his affection.

But through it all, I wondered at the old bastard’s principles. I’m hardly the most principled man myself, and I was the son of a thief and of a whore, but I struggled to define Damek’s boundaries.

My father, for instance, never stole grain from those townsfolk who were regular customers of my mother’s druidic healing practice. I think this was because he didn’t want to risk angering my mother, but it could have been for other reasons also. In the end, my father had a line he would not cross for whatever reason.

Batur was freer with his theft, stealing from anyone and everyone, especially given that my mother was open for all sorts of business when the big Sausawan was among her regulars. But Batur stole with a charitable heart. He never kept his excess grains for himself—and he was big enough that it probably took considerably more than his wages could afford to feed him, such that he could be forgiven for in fact keeping and eating his stolen wages. Instead, he would bring the stolen flour to my mother to help feed her and me, and eventually my sister Senka.

Damek, however, seemed to enjoy scamming people simply to prove to himself that he was the gods damned smartest and biggest bastard around. He seemed willing to say or do anything for and to anyone—prayers, curses, herbs, favors for old widows, and so on.

The incident with Masha in Balunkrants was hardly the sole instance of its kind, and the women only got uglier and older than she. Hell, the old bastard was not above servicing men too, the Concord frowning on any business of that sort as a violation of nature—the very nature its priests teach us we must transcend anyway.

I could drone on and on for hours about Damek’s practices, but I think it is enough for now that he made me feel increasingly uncomfortable. He claimed he never stole, but he would lie blatantly in order to accept donations, and this to him was not theft but merely an act well played. He would spend an evening in the village tavern collecting all the dirt on the townsfolk and then blackmail the poor bastards in exchange for food or warrins. Wherever we went, he found some way to turn every situation to his advantage, and I was still innocent enough of the world to think him a bastard of the worst sort.

At any rate, weeks passed as we continued our slow progress ever southward, Damek collecting a pitiable amount of food at each stop, and me getting thinner and thinner as a result of being denied proper nourishment—mostly because I failed to contribute, so the old bastard said, to his work.

“Why the hell do you keep me around, then?” I asked finally, growing sick and tired of being bullied. “If you’re so gods damned upset with everything I do, and if you think I’m a useless dog turd, why the hell drag me across the sodding countryside?”

“I made a promise to your mother, boy,” he said.

“But what’s that to you? You just told a woman with a sick baby that that deggin leaf will purge the little thing of its fever.”

“What’s your point?”

“We both know that deggin leaf is burnt to clear a home of pests.”

“So you’re a gods damned druid now, are you?” he snapped. “Listen, you little prick: I promised your mother I’d take you to Gandras. It’s what she wanted, and there is a bond between us that your limited little moronic brain cannot wrap itself around. If that means I have to poison a gods damned baby to do it, I’ll bloody well do it.” He paused. “Besides, the deggin leaf won’t harm the child. It has to be burnt, as you said. What it will do is cause the babe to vomit, which will help purge whatever poison is giving it the fever to begin with. Little bastard is close to death anyway, and I don’t have any enaiss root in this magical bag of mine, else I’d have given that women some of it instead.”

We were on the road at that time, about ten miles out of Gandras, and the two of us sulked a good long while. But we were coming to the outskirts of the Gandras fruit and wine district, and our tempers did not last long. For miles about the city, fields are dedicated to growing any and every fruit imaginable. And most of that fruit is destined for the fermentation pots of Gandras’ Arisi district, the center of Samye Canton’s wine, cider, and brandy production.

It was now well into the autumn harvesting season, and everywhere we could look, there were fields of grape vines with workers picking the biggest damned bunches of grapes you’ve ever seen.

“Now, watch this, lad,” Damek said, seating himself down on a stone beside the road. “Keep an eye on the foreman. He’s the bastard in the black.”

“How do you know?”

“Industry standard, boy. These farms are about as close to slavery as the Concord will allow us to come. Men and women are equal, the Czelniks like to tell us, so slavery is an evil. But then they’ll exploit the hell out of every poor sod they cross paths with. We make more money in a morning from begging than any one of these sad bastards makes in a day from slaving away in the hot sun picking fruit. Pay attention, Rio: if you end up in the fields, you’d better know what’s the quickest and easiest way to kill yourself, because you ain’t going to last long.

“Anyhow, keep an eye on the foreman for me. If he comes this way, say something quickly.” I picked out the man in black who was policing the workers as Damek rummaged through his canvas bag, finally drawing out a small loaf of bread that he’d stored away the previous day.

A worker eyed us curiously as he picked grapes. Damek spoke, though he couldn’t know the man was there: “Anyone here interested in making a trade? A bunch of grapes for this bread. Feed your family for a night, and get one over on those bastards you work for. They’re not your grapes after all.”

The curious worker took the bait, glanced across the fields to gauge the location of his foreman, and then dashed our way. “Take the grapes,” he said. “My wife and kids thank you for the bread.”

“Good man,” Damek said, making the exchange. “And we’ll pray the blessings of Mealde and Ari on your household.”

When the man returned to his place in the work line, Damek asked, “How’s that foreman?”

“Hasn’t seen us yet,” I replied.

“Right. Let’s eat these grapes quick like. They’ll turn to mush if I stick them in the bag. A little treat for you today, my boy. Can’t say I don’t take care of you, eh?”

“But that poor bastard’ll get in trouble for this.”

“Not unless his master is so damned neurotic that he’s counted every bloody grape growing in these fields. I’d wager the Grand Czelnik’s own treasury that no bastard is crazy enough to do that. The only problem is in us getting caught.”

“Then shouldn’t we move out of sight?”

“Why? Eating these grapes is an act of rebellion every one of these field hands wants to do themselves but is too damned scared to try. Look around. I’ll bet there’s a good lot of them watching, eager for you and me to screw the man and ready to live vicariously through us.”

“So, how do we do this?” I asked.

“One at a time, boy. Fair’s fair. You’re watching the foreman for me, something I can’t do for myself, so we split the grapes.”

“Really?” I asked with sardonic enthusiasm. “You mean, equal pay for equal work?”

“Don’t get cute, you little prick. Remember, I’m older and meaner than you are. I can muscle you out of the grapes easily enough.”

That said, Damek plucked a single grape and popped it into his mouth. I followed suit and was rewarded with a burst of flavor fresher than any I’d experienced in my short life. There’s nothing quite like eating fruit fresh off the tree.

Anyhow, Damek’s second go at the grapes resulted in him plucking two at once. I opened my mouth to protest but then thought better of it.

Be the bigger bastard, I told myself.

And so I took three grapes.

Which is how it proceeded, both of us going at a mad pace, Damek taking two and me taking three, stuffing our mouths and barely chewing lest we miss out on a single grape apiece.

When the last grape was gone, Damek grinned wildly at me. “You’re a little bastard, do you know it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked defensively. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, you’ve been doing one on me, my little friend. You’ve been taking three grapes at a time, or I’m as brainless a turd as you are.”

“Well, you were taking two at a time,” I accused.

Damek continued to grin. “That’s how I knew you were taking three, boy. I know that I was taking two, but you didn’t once complain, did you? That’s because you were outdoing me.”

“So, I’m the bigger bastard,” I declared, sensing that Damek’s mood was not shifting towards the dangerous sort that preceded a beating.

“Sadly, no,” Damek said. “You see, you’re only the bigger bastard when the other person is fully deceived. I knew what you were doing, and I let you do it. Do you know why?”

“Because you finally felt a change of heart after beating the crap out of me all those times?” I asked.

“No, because those were some bad grapes. Bastard in the field thought he’d trick us, and you’ll have the squirts later for it. My stomach, well, let’s just say it has more experience in these matters.”

(Next Chapter)

It was a long time before Damek would talk to me again. It was only midmorning when we left Balunkrants unexpectedly, and Damek pushed us hard to put as much distance between ourselves and that little town as we possibly could as quickly as we could.

I suspected for a long time that the bastard wasn’t even counting his steps, so as I was rather bored from walking in absolute silence, I did it for him. He rebuffed any and all attempts I made at conversation, but his mind was clearly occupied by the fact that I knew what had happened. And how could I not? I’d lived with a whore of a mother for three years. I knew all the signs and most of the euphemisms people used for that sort of business.

We walked right on past the noonday sun, never stopping to eat any of the leftover bread I’d taken from Maluns and never pausing for a drink of water. The old man’s canvas sack was noticeably heavier, however, though I hadn’t seen Masha give him anything before we left, so he must have pinched the items in question or received them from the lady while I was out running pointlessly after river water.

At any rate, not long after noon, we passed a large party of travelers on the road: two gentlemen travelling by horse with another half dozen riding on a pair of wagons behind. They were also accompanied by twenty mercenaries divided between the vanguard and rearguard.

Damek had heard them coming long before I could see or hear them, and he muttered, “That sounds like a good number of folks. Probably Masha’s husband and whatever business associates he took with him to Gandras.”

After staying on the road for a little while longer ourselves, Damek declared, “Right, time to get to the side of the path. Let’s sit ourselves down and take the time to look properly miserable. Find us a bit of shade at least, Rio.”

The forest was not quite so close to the road on the south side of Balunkrants as it had been north of the town, but about fifty paces back there was a bend in the road where the trees were considerably closer than elsewhere. I led Damek back and seated him in amidst the gnarled roots of an ancient oak. We hid his canvas sack deeper in the roots behind him, lest the travelers think it funny to torment and rob old beggars, or lest they get the idea we actually had food and money and so pass on without laying down a donation for our prayers.

I seated myself on a hard root next to Damek to wait. The oak dug into the meat of my thigh, and I couldn’t help but squirm. In order to pass the time a little with some amusement, Damek said, “Squirm a little bit more and let that knot get into your crack. That way you’ll know some of what it means to be a catamite and so stop trying my patience all the damned time!”

I told him that I didn’t like the sound of that idea. “Then sit still, you fidgety little turd, and try to look more desperate. If those rich bastards coming up the road see you uncomfortable on that root, they might get the idea that you’re more accustomed to padded mattresses than the hard earth.”

“But I’m not comfortable,” I whined.

“Then learn to act like it. Hell, boy, you’re not going to get anywhere as a beggar if people think you have access to a better life. If you sit your arse calmly and with all comfort on that knot and never give a hint that your backside is chafing, those rich men will think to themselves, Oh, that poor little bastard. He has such a hard life that a knot in the arse is a comfort to him. People who think that are easily parted from their warrins, hoping to buy you and me a little bit of comfort for the night. Savvy?”

“So, begging is about faking?”

“I call it acting, lad. It might not be the most honorable profession in the world—acting that is—but it comes with a damned sight more respect than fraud. You and me, we’re performers. Our role is to make the fat bastards of this world feel just a little bit guilty. Too guilty, and they’ll beat the crap out of us and run us out of town so they don’t have to look at us all the time. But a little bit guilty, now there’s a payload in the off. Men and women who feel a little bit guilty feel remarkably soothed when they toss you a warrin. They feel they’ve paid some sort of debt to society. And the best thing is that they’re happy to keep on giving every time that guilt builds up inside.”

“You’re either one crazy bastard, Damek, or some sort of bloody genius,” I said.

“To you, boy, I’m both,” he replied. “Now, can you see them yet?”

I answered that I could and received a sharp command to shut up and start acting comfortable while being raped by the knot on the oak’s root. Given my immense discomfort, this was no mean feat, and the mayor of Balunkrants and his companions took a hell of a long time in drawing level with us.

The mercenaries in the vanguard cast the two of us weary looks, as though they suspected some sort of trick that would lead to an ambush being sprung. I had no idea of such things, but Damek told me later that robbers were fairly common on the road to Gandras. When I asked him whether we should be afraid, he simply told me that the robbers had more to fear than we did—or had I forgotten that my blind master was also a druid?

Anyhow, as soon as the vanguard had passed, Damek began to wail: “Coins for a prayer, masters? Any prayer you like. I know many a good one. Prayers for agues, prayers for sores, prayers for fevers and cramps and snores.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at Damek’s practiced rhyming.

“Prayers for your wives, prayers for your cocks, prayers against hunger and holes in your socks. Anything, masters.”

One of the men on horseback held up a hand to stall the train. He angled his beast in our direction and approached. “No, no,” he said in response to some muttered comment from his companion on horseback. “We’ve met with success in our recent business, so it is only right that we give thanks to Lady Ari, our God’s aspect of agriculture and trade.”

“Old man,” he said as he came to a stop at the edge of the road, “say a prayer of thanks. We have prospered in our business. Direct our gratitude to God on our behalf.” He drew up his purse, made a show of rummaging about in it, and then tossed a coin in Damek’s direction. It landed squarely in the blind man’s lap without him moving.

The man I took for the mayor of Balunkrants looked at me, eyebrow raised. “Is something wrong with your master, boy?”

“Yes, ban,” I answered. “My master is blind.”

“Ah,” he replied, “then take this as well.” He fished out a second coin and tossed it at me this time. “That one is free, lad. No prayers needed, though if your master feels so inclined, he can pray for our safety the rest of the way to Balunkrants, and for my wife also. She has been alone these two weeks, and no doubt misses me terribly. We’ve been trying for a child for months; pray to Mealde too, if you would.”

I managed to hold myself back from making a comment along the lines of She don’t miss you half as much now as you think, or She’s been trying help the process along a bit, but I found some measure of restraint I never knew I possessed and said, “Thank you, ban. We will pray for you three days and three nights.”

As soon as I said that, Damek began a prayer of thanksgiving to Ari. The mayor was satisfied and returned to his companions, waving them onward again. Once the last man of the rearguard had passed us by, Damek ceased his praying and stuck out his hand. “Give me that coin, Rio.”

I hesitated and Damek added, “You want a clubbing from my walking stick?”

“No,” I said and placed the coin—a full warrin—in his outstretched palm.

“Two warrins,” the blind man said, rubbing the silvers together. “And for no work at all. This is half a day’s pay for fieldwork. In the future, lad, don’t go overboard with your offers. I’d hate to build up too many neglected prayers, and offering continuous prayer for three days and three nights is a hell of a lot to shirk.”

“You mean—”

“Hell, boy! Don’t even ask that question. Of course I don’t complete any prayers. As long as those bastards think I’ll be praying for them, all’s well. But the reality is that he probably knows I’ll only pray so long as he can hear me and will stop the moment he’s out of range. Men like that hardly care about spiritual matters, though it certainly behooves them to make a show of it.”

“Because they’re all bastards?” I asked.

“Indeed. Now, help me up. I’d like to cover half our remaining distance to Wundansads before we stop to camp.”

“How far is it?”

“Seven miles from Balunkrants, and we’ve come about two miles since leaving, I think. Maybe more.”

“Seven thousand two hundred steps, or thereabouts,” I said.

“Damn, Rio,” Damek replied. “Initiative? From you?”

“Do I get a crust of bread to chew on while we walk as a reward?” I asked hopefully.

“Ha! Not till pigs crap gold, lad. Now, let’s go.”

When we finally stopped to camp for the night, it was in another clearing along the river like the one where we’d spent the previous night, only this time the riverbank was not nearly as steep and there were rushes growing everywhere. Damek ordered me to pick some to make a poor straw mat for us to sleep on.

As I worked, the blind man opened up again in conversation. “Think about those bastards we passed earlier on the road. Think about the life they have, the wealth they must possess. You and me, Rio, we will never get our hands on that many warrins. But, gods, if it isn’t worth dreaming about. It’d take a hell of a lot of work, let me tell you, and I for one am no friend of hard labor.”

“Damek,” I asked cautiously, “what the hell happened back there in Balunkrants this morning?”

He was silent for a time and I suspected I’d offended him. But then I realized that if I’d offended him, he’d have cursed me or beat me. Instead, he said nothing and did not move, and I began to suspect that he was having difficulty finding the words to explain.

“What did I tell you before we entered Balunkrants?”

I thought back. “You said something about giving people something for their money, even just a prayer, even if it is a poor exchange.” I paused, and when Damek didn’t reply I added, “Does this have something to do with that hand sign you used? I didn’t see you make it when the mayor passed by.”

He sighed. “In a roundabout way, lad. Our dear Masha was hardly the most innocent and helpful maid in the world, let me tell you. Turns out, as her husband said when he passed us by, she ain’t getting pregnant. In exchange for some food and not reporting us to the Inquisition, the lady required a…uh…seed implant.”

I eyed him dubiously for a few moments before what he’d said sunk home. “You have food for us?” I asked.

“Correction,” he said. “I have food for me. And wine.”

“What about me?”

“I didn’t see you do anything to help the lady’s…fever,” Damek snapped.

“Fever? I thought—”

“Oh, just shut the hell up already, you noisome turd. I can’t stand all this whining. ‘Damek, I’m hungry.’ ‘Damek, I’m sore.’ Go play with your cock or something; whatever little pricks like you do.”

He turned his attention to the canvas sack, from which he retrieved a crust of bread that looked like the leftovers of our breakfast at Masha’s. This was followed by a clay jug with a cork stopper in its mouth. Damek wasted no time in pulling the cork and tipping his head back for a long swallow.

I sidled over to him, but the blind man slapped a protective arm down around his wine jug. “No work, no food,” he said.

“But I had to run for water while you performed your seed implant,” I said.

“And did we use that water?”

“No, but that wasn’t my fault.”

“No excuses,” he said. “You failed to contribute, so you don’t get anything to eat. The rules are simple, Rio. If you don’t like them, you can find yourself a rich master and set up shop as his catamite. You’re quite experienced after that root today.” I glowered at him as he set to on the bread.

As he chewed, I eyed his open jug of wine greedily and began to formulate a plan. I searched for an old, dried reed among the pile we were seated on and began rolling it firmly between my fingers. It hollowed out quickly, making a nice long straw. Now for a distraction.

“What’s in Gandras?” I asked. “Why are we going there? Why not someplace else?”

Damek stopped chewing, took a swig of wine from the jug, and set it back down, his arm protectively about it once more. “Gandras,” he said finally, his voice distant, almost longing. “It is a hard place, a place filled with selfish men and unprincipled women. But it’s a prosperous place too. Remember what I said about guilt earlier?”

“Yes,” I replied. As he talked, I moved very slowly to set my hollowed reed into the mouth of the wine jug. I feared Damek’s extraordinary senses would find me out if I so much as twitched, and so I exerted all effort on ensuring the straw didn’t even touch the clay jug.

“Gandras,” Damek was saying, “if you are smart about it, lad, it’s like having a license to mint warrins. There’s money to be made everywhere, and a man hardly has to work for it if he knows what he’s doing.”

“Why don’t you train me to become a druid instead, like you and my mother?”

As he began answering this one with another long-winded explanation, I put my mouth to the straw and sucked.

The wine, while hardly cool, exploded into my mouth and filled me instantly with pleasure—the pleasure of outfoxing the old bastard, the pleasure of, for the first time in my life, being the bigger bastard. In reality, the wine was the cheap, bitter sort that is hardly suitable to be compared to cow piss, let alone be drunk greedily. But I drank, determined to make the blind bastard pay even a little bit for his treatment of me.

“I swore to your mother that I would not train you to be a druid,” Damek was saying as I sucked at the wine. “Your mother did not wish that curse on you. She forbade me, even, as part of our agreement. In time, perhaps, I’ll teach you some things, but we’ll have to see.”

He cocked his head in my direction suddenly, and I ceased sucking on the straw at once. “Are you even listening to me, you wastrel?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied quickly.

Damek sniffed at the air between us, smelling at my breath, and he quickly snatched the wine jug away. Thankfully, I still had hold of my straw and drew it out as he moved it. The blind man took a long drink before swirling the jug around and listening for the slosh within. Then, he clutched it tightly between his legs.

I sighed.

He continued our discussion as though he had not just caught me stealing his wine. Maybe he only suspected, and I think that was really the case, otherwise I would hardly have escaped a beating for my transgression.

“Your mother thought you had it in you to make a living in Gandras.”

“What?” I asked, surprised that my mother would say any such thing. “Like a tradesman or a shop keeper?”

“I said living, boy, not honest living. There’s money to be made off the rich and powerful in Gandras, and your mother thinks you have the gift for it. That’s why she hooked you up with me: I’ve been doing this ever since I was a young man freshly run away from home.”

“So you’re going to teach me to be a thief?”

“It’s remarkable how quickly you fluctuate between being attentive and being completely and irredeemably dense. Gods damn it, Rio, but you must have a bloody empty cavern inside that skull of yours with a walnut sized brain that can only absorb so much.”

He took a swig from the wine jug before returning it to its protective home between his legs. “We’re actors. We don’t break into houses and steal. Hell, that’s risky business. People keep swords and crossbows and all sorts of nasty things to lay waste the bastard who dares breach the sanctity of their home. All you and I will be after is sowing guilt and reaping warrins. And for that, we’ll be all things to all men, which is where the acting comes in.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, genuinely confused by Damek’s simultaneously elaborate and vague explanations of his—our—business.

“Of course, you don’t,” he muttered.

And then he tipped the wine jug back and swallowed every last drop in a single gulp.

(Next Chapter)

Damek roused me from sleep the following morning before the first birds had begun to sing in the trees around us.

“Wake up, you lazy bastard,” he said as he shoved at me with his foot. “Can’t lie abed all the gods damned day when there’s work to be done!”

This was the second morning in a row now that the old man had woken me before the dawn. The previous morning, lying in my mother’s hovel, it had been understandable, as Inquisitor Koldan and the posse were coming to begin their hunt for my mother. This morning, however, the early waking was most unwelcome.

“Gods, Damek,” I said, “but why the hell do we have to get up when it’s still dark. Who are we going to beg from at this gods forsaken time of the morning?”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” he said. I could tell by the blind man’s tone that something was annoying him. That did not bode well for the day. “You forget that we have about a mile of walking to do before we even get to Balunkrants. Plus, people are more willing to hand money out to beggars in the morning, when the prospect of the day’s earnings has yet to be replaced with the cold, hard reality that today—like every other—will end with a thin soup and some stale bread because you’re too gods damned poor to afford anything else despite busting your arse in the fields for three long watches!”

I paused, watching the man closely. We drifted into an awkward silence before I said, “You were—”

“My father,” Damek offered before I even got my question out. “He was a poor man. Now get the hell up and let’s be off. We can’t sit here fart-arsing around all day long!”

“What about breakfast?” I asked.

“Do you see a plate of ham anywhere around you?” Damek snapped.

“Uh…” I looked about on reflex. The fire pit was cold now, the fire having burnt low sometime during the night. There was little evidence that anything so delicious as a slice of ham was lying around waiting for me to devour it. “No,” I said finally.

“Exactly! So let’s move your arse already and get to Balunkrants, where we can find ourselves something to eat.”

“What about the bread from yesterday?”

“Enough questions!”

Damek allowed me only so much time as was needed for me to empty my bowels and bladder before we cut our way through the forest again for the road. As soon as we made the pathway to Balunkrants, the sun only just beginning to grey the horizon by this time, Damek began lecturing me on trust and honesty once more.

“Let’s get one thing straight: we’re heading into civilization again, and this time you will be walking along as my servant. I’ll be trusting you to lead me right. More importantly than that, I’m going to trust you to keep your damned trap shut unless I give you permission to speak. I have a delicate, well-refined method to my begging. Observe, and maybe by the time we reach Gandras, you will have learnt a thing or two.”

I didn’t really give a damn about what he was saying. My stomach grumbled so loudly, and the hunger pains pulled so strongly upon my mind that I couldn’t have focused on what the old bastard was saying even if I’d wanted to.

He rambled on for a good while before he realized I was completely ignoring him. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he asked. “We’re not even five miles away from Maluns and you’re already acting like a bigger moron than you were when I found you.”

“It’s just…” I mumbled. I fell silent until I steeled my nerves against the hard stare coming from Damek’s blind eyes as he waited for a reply. “What are we doing here anyway?”

“We’re here to get food, you dense little twit. Perhaps we’ll even drum up some cash to help finance the next leg of our journey to Gandras. But it doesn’t matter one damned bit why the hell we go anywhere, leastways not to you. I’m your master, and you’d better get used to treating me as such—especially when we’ve got an audience, do you hear?”

I sighed and received a smack to the head with Damek’s walking stick for my troubles. We walked the final mile to Balunkrants in a cold, hateful silence. I don’t know what the hell was going through old Damek’s mind, but I know what went through mine, and they were not happy thoughts. I wanted to kill the gods damned bastard. Failing that, I wanted to lead him into a ditch, beat the crap out of him with that bloody walking stick of his, and then bugger off with the canvas pack he clutched so possessively.

Sadly, I did not get my chance. I was scared, really. Having learnt that the bastard was a druid had put paid to any plans I might’ve had of doing one. But that fear didn’t stop me from daydreaming as we walked.

When we finally came to the outskirts of Balunkrants, the sun was already lighting the world and the signs of business being open for the day were everywhere.

The town was larger than Maluns, though not by too terribly much. It was also a mill town, which contributed to its size, but it was also a bit more important than that. Maluns’ east-west road had ended at the river, at the doorstep of my father’s mill. The same east-west road in Balunkrants ended not at the riverbank, but in distant Pruvykhu. That’s right: there was a bridge, and the first one I’d ever seen in my life. The road across that bridge didn’t exactly run straight to the Arzemene capital, but it led that way at least, and by connecting to other highways and travelling for at least six weeks, you’d get there in the end.

Anyhow, Damek stopped me on the edge of town and held out his hand. “Now, lead me well. Let’s give these people a proper show of the blind man and his aid. And don’t mutter a gods damned word aside from Please, we’re so hungry. You think you can handle that?”

“What do you think I am? Some kind of moron?” I asked.

Damek slapped me upside the head and said, “Also, the number one rule of begging is to always offer something in return. People can’t resist hungry little buggers like yourself, but if I’m going to get anything—blind as I am—I’d better make some sort of trade, even a weak one. So don’t be surprised if you hear me calling out to pray for people. Provincials are all so damned superstitious that we should have plenty of customers lined up by lunchtime.”

“But you’re not a priest,” I said. “The Inquisition won’t like it.”

“There’s no law against offering to pray for people, boy. Hell, if we did bump into an Inquisitor—which is highly unlikely given Koldan’s presence in the area—but if we did, I’d probably get a commendation for my piety. Only, we both know I won’t be praying to Saint Zoran’s faceless god. Which is why you will keep your mouth shut, as I can’t trust you not to go blabbering about the seven and the fact I’m a druid of the old religion.”

“Fine,” I said sulkily. I adopted a whining tone and added, “Please, we’re so hungry.”

“Tone it down a bit, you prima donna,” Damek said, “but that’s the spirit.”

I took his hand as he offered it to me, and together we strolled into town, playing the most pitiful pair ever to grace Balunkrants. For my part, there was little acting involved. I was damned hungry and not above begging for any scrap of food someone might deign to throw at us.

Damek, on the other hand, offered to pray for any malady you could think of. Where he came up with so many different ailments and problems, I don’t know, but the bastard possessed a kind of mental depository for all sorts of random crap.

Anyhow, even more curious was that Damek had hooked his walking stick up beneath his armpit and was flashing some sort of secret sign everywhere we went. Using his right hand (I was holding his left), he touched his forefinger and thumb together to make a circle and then extended his middle, ring, and little fingers out towards the ground, fanning them as far apart as his bones and muscles would let him. He seemed to be gaining few, if any, responses to the signal, but it was clearly intended to advertize something, most likely his true occupation as druid of the old religion.

It took a while before anyone responded to either my pleas for food or Damek’s offers to pray, but eventually a well-dressed woman of the town hurried over to us. She wore a full-length dress after the current fashion, and its blue dye hinted at some wealth on her part. She was not particularly beautiful. In fact, if I were being kind, I’d say she was rather plain. Very kind. But she was clearly distressed.

“Oh, you poor people,” she said, placing her hand to her rather prodigious breasts in a dramatic display of sympathy. “Have you eaten today?”

“No!” I said before the last word had even escaped her mouth. She started at the desperate quickness of my answer, and Damek’s grip on my hand tensed angrily.

“Please, come with me,” the woman offered as soon as she’d recovered.

“What the boy meant to say,” Damek said, “was—”

“That is all right,” the lady interrupted. “A hungry stomach will talk.”

She turned about, motioning for us to follow, but Damek hung back to gain us a moment’s privacy. “Don’t be so damned eager, you little fool,” he growled. “Desperation is the least likely thing to attract us custom. Have some damned self-respect.”

“Says the man who calls himself Damek of the Crap-house,” I replied.

Were it not for the very public setting, I fancy Damek would really have brained me for that one. As it was, the woman who’d offered us food was waiting, and so we followed her dutifully.

She led us into one of the larger houses of Balunkrants, right opposite the home that would serve as the Inquisitor’s residence whenever one of those bastards came through this corner of Samye Canton.

“My name is Masha,” she said as soon as we were indoors. “My husband is the Ban of this dump, so he won’t mind me feeding those in need.” As she spoke, I noticed that Masha flashed the same hand signal Damek had been using in the street earlier.

“We would be honored to pray for you and your household,” the blind man offered.

Masha motioned us into some sort of dining room and then disappeared briefly to find a servant to make us some food.

“Damek,” I said. “That woman showed the same sign with her fingers that you have been making all morning.”

“What are you talking about? What sign?”

“You really think I’m a moron?” I asked. “I may be stupid, but I’m not as gods damned blind as you are. That thing you do with you right hand, the circle and three extended fingers. That sign. She made it.”

“Ah,” he said. “The lady must’ve missed that I was blind, but it’s lucky you spotted that.”

“What is it?”

Masha returned just then, and Damek made a great show of praying for her husband and herself, their prosperity, their future, and so on and so forth.

We ate breakfast, which, while nothing more than a few slices of bread with some sort of fruit spread, was the most delicious thing I’d had in a long time. I devoured my portion hungrily, and so I missed any and all exchanges being made between our hostess and Damek.

When the meal was finally done, the two of them rose and moved towards another room. As I began to follow, Damek said, “No, Rio. You must wait here a moment. The lady has need of certain…druid’s touches. Healing, yes. I will send for you if I need your aid.”

So I waited in the dining room as the dishes were cleared away by another servant. It was not long before Damek reappeared.

“I need you to fetch something for me,” he said. “Go into the kitchen and borrow a pot. Then go to the river and fill it with fresh flowing water for a tea. It must be fresh and running water, nothing that has been standing.”

“But Masha has servants who can do it,” I said lazily.

“I don’t trust any of them,” Damek replied. “And, besides, the lady has errands for them too.”

I looked suspiciously at him, eyebrow raised, wondering at his game. Eventually, as he stood resolutely waiting for some answer, I agreed and left to get his damned water.

It took me some time, and I must have cut quite the comical figure walking through Balunkrants with a pot of water sloshing about, especially as there was a well not a stone’s throw from Masha’s front door. Why the hell Damek needed river water, I couldn’t tell. In all my years with my mother, I’d never once heard her call expressly for river water, and she had spent a good number of years trying to think of all sorts of odd errands to send me on so she could service her male clients.

When I returned to Masha’s home with the water, the lady was seated in the dining room opposite Damek and looking considerably happier than she had before. She was also wearing entirely different clothing, a plainer dress that seemed simply to have been cast on with little thought for how it settled about her body.

“Get that water boiling,” Damek said to me. “I need it good and hot for a poultice.”

“I thought you said it was a tea,” I replied.

“Don’t talk back, you cheeky bastard,” Damek snapped, “and certainly not in front of this poor woman.”

I did as told and set the water to boiling. As I waited for it, I crept back towards the dining room door to eavesdrop, as something simply didn’t seem right to me anymore.

“Do you need us to stay?” Damek was asking. “You might need our care for a few days yet until you are…uh…better.”

“No!” Masha said quickly. “No, Damek. That is very kind, and I appreciate your prayers and…healing touch. But my husband is due to return from a trip to Gandras this afternoon or tomorrow. Poor man has been gone two weeks on business. He can care for me, I think.”

I heard the creak of his chair as Damek rose quickly. I ducked back into the kitchen as I recognized all the signs that a quick exit was in the offing, and I didn’t want to be caught listening in.

“Rio!” the blind man called. “Come, lad. We must be off. I will leave the ingredients for this lady’s balm with the servants. We must go at once. It would be best if we put some daylight between ourselves and Balunkrants before the evening, I think.”

We beat a hasty retreat from Masha’s home just as I was finally catching on to what had happened there that morning. The fact that Damek left absolutely nothing behind with any of the servants had been the final clue.

As I led him away towards the southern road, I said, with a wicked grin that I’m sure came through in my voice, “You know that she was gods damned ugly, Damek?”

“Shut up and walk,” he snapped.

(Next Chapter)

Damek refused to say anything more on the subject of bastardry, and I was left feeling cheated. I was tantalizingly close, I believed, to finally getting some answers from the old blind bastard, but he remained as tight-fisted with his information as ever.

“Come along, Rio,” he said, his voice hard with determination. His blind gaze drifted further up the road, as though he could sense how close we were to our first stop along the road to Gandras. “Come,” he said again. “We must press on. It is still early in the day, but I want us to find some place suitable to camp for the evening. We’ll enter Balunkrants in the morning.”

“But there is still more than a watch left before dusk,” I protested. “Why can’t we go to Balunkrants now, find a room at the tavern to sleep and some hot food to go with that bread I stole this morning but which you’ve yet to give me a damned nibble of?”

Damek fixed his empty stare on me. “You think I’m made of money? You think I crap warrins? That I’m so damned well-to-do that we can stroll into this little town like we own the place?”

“I didn’t say any of that,” I protested.

“No, but you implied it. If I had that kind of money, do you think I’d be dragging your worthless arse around the countryside? Not bloody likely, I assure you. No, until we start making money off the people of Samye Canton, we’ll sleep in the arms of the earth.”

“You mean on the forest floor?” I asked.

Damek grunted and muttered something under his breath. I caught none of it, but the old man did not offer up any more audible answer. Instead, he turned his attention back to the road to Balunkrants and said, “Let’s go. No more talk. There will be time for questions later.”

“Time for questions, yes,” I muttered. “But will there be any gods damned answers to them?”

“What was that?” Damek asked.

“You heard me,” I said.

The old bastard grinned. “Well, well. It seems the mouthy little prick has learnt one lesson after all.”

He set off at his leisurely pace, chuckling to himself, and I was forced to trot after him. I confess that I was quite confused by the easy way he had brushed off that last transgression of mine. I quickly came to realize that Damek was far more unpredictable than I had anticipated. The bastard could be sweet as honey one moment then fiery as a half-warrin whore in want of her pay the next.

I tried to occupy myself as we walked by counting old Damek’s footsteps. He’d been very specific about the number of steps to a mile, and I wanted to test him. I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t just making those numbers up to impress me.

He must have sensed what I was doing, for every hundred steps or so he’d shuffle slightly, throwing in a quick half step and a drag of the foot. At first, I counted those as three normal steps, but the more he did it, the more I became so mesmerized with anticipating the shuffle that I forgot to keep count.

Damek began to chuckle to himself, pausing in his stride and bending over to speak a word in my ear. “A blind man’s boy also needs to be able to keep his concentration up.”

“You knew I was counting?”

“Of course. You were muttering under your breath, and I noticed that you stopped doing so about three hundred steps back. Honestly, boy, at this rate, I might as well brain you with my stick and leave you on the side of the road to whatever wild animals come by—be they man or beast.”

Such was the flatness of his tone that I could not suppress a shudder. “No, please,” I begged. “I don’t want to be a lonely bastard.”

“Hmm,” he said, not convinced. “Well, you’ve won us bread for a day at least, so you can stay for now.”

I thanked him sincerely and he cackled again. “Our campsite is not too far up ahead. Tell me how many of my paces lie between here and there, and I may even reward you with a crust from that bread.”

He set off again without further comment, and I quickly fell into step beside him and resumed counting, sensing some deeper lesson was about to be imparted to me. Damek did everything in his power to throw off my count of his steps, but I held my concentration and when we finally came to a stop, he asked, “Well? How many then?”

“One thousand and seventy-five,” I replied, forcing my voice to sound more confident than I actually felt.

“How do you figure that?”

“I counted those weird shuffle-drags of yours as three steps,” I said, “because you always came out of them on the same foot you entered.”

He stared blindly at my face for several long moments, just long enough for me to begin feeling completely stupid. I was about to apologize for screwing up so badly when he said, “Damned clever of you to notice that. Maybe there is a brain inside that empty head of yours after all. Actual count of steps was one thousand and seventy-eight, but only if I weren’t buggering around myself trying to throw you off.” He pointed with his stick away to our left, into the forest north of Balunkrants. “There’s a clearing in there close to the river. About another thousand steps. Here, take my hand and lead me safely. Let this be your first act as my servant. You’ll be doing a lot of handholding in the future.”

I gripped his hand, feeling its ancient leathery skin against the tenderness of my youthful palm. “How old are you?” I asked on reflex.

“What sort of damned impolite question is that? I’m sixty, or thereabouts, you little piss-ant. You’ll wish you’d look so damned good when you reach my age.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“You should always mean what you say, Rio. World’s full enough of insincere swindlers for it to need another one. Trust me on this, the more honest and sincere you are, the more you’ll get out of life as people will trust you and like you.”

“Is that true?” I asked hopefully.

“No, turd-for-brains! Gods, but you’re bloody gullible. We’re going to have to break that streak in you, and soon!”

I grumbled, careful to keep my mutterings indistinct, and began to lead him into the forest in the direction he’d indicated. Along the way, I paused to direct him around roots or over depressions in the earth. He never once touched his walking stick to the ground but seemed to cast total trust and reliance on me to guide him correctly.

The sound of the Balundan’s waters grew louder and louder, and the clearing to which I’d been directed opened out to look over the river. There was an ash pit in the center of the clearing, an old hole that had been dug into the ground and used for countless fires over the years. The pit was mostly empty, the wind having swept it free of ash in the weeks or months since its last use.

Damek sat himself down close to the pit, eliciting a loud groan that was an invitation for me to help him.

“Tell me one thing,” he said when seated. “Why the hell didn’t you lead me into a hole or tree branch or something?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “You said to be sure I guided you well. Why would I do that? You’d only beat me with your stick if I did make you fall.”

“Fear of punishment is no reason to not do something,” he answered. “By the seven, if all men went around with those thoughts the world would come to a complete standstill.”

“So you want me to lead you into holes and trees?” I asked skeptically.

He turned his head up to stare forlornly at the heavens. “Ruzhena, I sure as hell hope the gods make you pay for this,” he muttered. With a shake of his head, he looked in my direction again. “You are clearly too dense to note the subtleties of what I’m speaking,” he said, “but do try to keep up. I am trying to teach you how to be my servant. Understand one thing and understand it well, Rio, or you will remain utterly and completely useless to me: people think blind folk are easy to scam. And I want people to think that as it makes them so much easier to scam in return.”

“Why would you want to scam people? That doesn’t seem right?”

“Listen, Rio, the Sausawans are wrong when they say there are only two types of people in this world. In reality, there are three: bastards, bigger bastards, and the poor bastards the other two rip off. It’s either scam or be scammed in this world, and I need you to play your part. The more vulnerable I appear, the more power I ultimately have. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“This has something to do with being the bigger bastard, doesn’t it?” I asked.

“Damn right it does!” Damek exclaimed. “Now, sit your arse down and listen.”

“I thought I was going to get to ask questions,” I said.

“You just did and I’m about to answer.”

I furrowed my brow for a moment before realizing I’d done little but ask him questions since we’d arrived in the clearing. It was still some time until dusk began to settle upon the earth, and Damek seemed intent to sit beside the empty fire pit and chat away until then.

“I wasn’t always blind,” he said after a lengthy pause. “And I didn’t become blind because of old age either. It was not the result of a wound or an accident. Listen to me, Rio: I chose to become blind.”

“Why would you choose to become blind?” I asked, slipping back into the questioning mode that seemed my natural disposition towards Damek—as it had been towards Batur before.

“That is an answer I’m not sure you are prepared for,” the blind man replied, “but an answer you probably should hear at any rate. You are likely curious as to how I know your mother. She and I go back a long, long way. We are connected more intimately than ever husband and wife were—and, no, I am not saying she is my daughter. She and I passed through the rites together.”

“The rites?” I asked.

“The rites, boy. The druidic rites.”

“You’re a druid?”

“Are you deaf or is this forest clearing causing an echo in my ears? How the hell do you think I walk through the forest so ably? I can’t possibly just know where all the roots and low-hanging branches are, can I?”

“No, I suppose not,” I said.

“No, I suppose not either. My being a druid has little to do with a lot in my life but it had a hell of a lot to do with me choosing blindness. Do you know what the commune is?”

I shook my head, mesmerized and not a little afraid.

“You are shaking your head, aren’t you?” Damek asked.

I nodded.

He sighed. “Speak to me, boy. I cannot hear movements, not unless they touch upon the rest of the world.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what the commune is.”

“As expected. The commune is the goal of all druidic arts. We seek oneness with nature, with the world around us. That is why the Concord clerics hate us so much. They want transcendence over nature whereas we seek union. The world has a hum, a voice, a subtle sounding that calls to every man. The druid communes with that hum and so makes himself one with the world.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “What if I tell an Inquisitor?”

“You won’t, and let me tell you why: An Inquisitor is trying to kill your mother. One sentenced your father to the march wars, where he died. You hate the Inquisition with more fervor and passion than your childish mind can currently understand. Remember what I said about trust earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there is one thing you can always trust and that is a man’s hate. Love fails. Friendship fades with time. And honesty always proves dishonest. But hatred endures. It feeds the heart, sustains it when all else fails. That is why you will never betray me to the Inquisition. As for why I am telling you this, well, you have spent a day and a half wondering who the hell I am and how I can move about so freely. I just answered your question.”

“So, why did you choose to become blind?” I asked.

“You already know the answer to that question now,” Damek replied. “I have given you all the information you need, so let it be another test of that puny brain of yours to come up with the answer. And while you think about it, go find us some wood for a fire. And take this.” He opened the canvas bag he’d been carrying possessively all day and handed me an empty water skin. “Get us some water too.”

I scurried off to do as ordered and returned some time later with the wood and water.

After I had the wood stacked, Damek produced a small fire using nothing—so far as I could see—but a few whispered words. The wood was dry and crackled nicely in the flames. It was summer, as I’ve said, but the day had been chill and as dusk descended, it grew cooler still, so the fire was a welcome addition to our camp.

“Did you figure it out?” the blind man asked. I looked at him blankly, having long since forgotten the puzzle he’d left me with. He sighed impatiently when I was not forthcoming with an answer. “Did you figure out why I chose blindness?” he said testily.

“I…ah…” I fell silent. Searching my memory very quickly, I came up with an answer that seemed to make sense. “Because our eyes lie to us?”

Damek sat silently for a few drawn out moments before he tossed me a quarter of the bread I’d got that morning. “Good guess,” he said.

“Where’s the rest?” I asked.

“Of the bread? It’s my share.”

“But I stole it!”

“You didn’t steal piss. I know the baker’s wife gave it to you out of pity. There’s no way in hell you were capable of stealing that bread.”

I was confused again. “But why send me then?”

“Because I’m not a complete moron—unlike others in our present company—and made the acquaintance of several townsfolk before heading out to your mother’s home. I knew the woman had reason to show you some pity. Her husband, now, had you run into him, you’d have had a problem, but he was likely going to be out gawking at the flames of your mother’s home, bigoted fool that he is. As for the bread, I’m older and handsomer than you, so I deserve a bigger share. I’m also your gods damned master, so you’ll take whatever the hell I give you. If you want to eat, you’ll produce some evidence that you’re at least listening to what I try to teach you. I won’t have dead weight dragging me back.”

“But I’ll starve,” I protested.

“Then you’d better pray that the gods fill your empty skull with something more substantial than cabbage, hadn’t you.”

(Next Chapter)

I returned to Damek some time later, my britches washed and the stench of my humiliation removed. Despite being late summer, it was a chill day, and my wet pants were making my scrawny arse cold.

“Took your time, boy,” the blind man said as I returned. He was seated beneath a gnarled oak, twirling a twig between his fingers.

“I cleaned up as best I could so you wouldn’t complain about the way I smell,” I replied.

“Ha! Take you a damned sight longer than that to remove the stench that hangs about you.” He rose awkwardly to his feet, groaning as he gathered himself into an upright position. I stood there watching him, not thinking once that as his servant it would be my place to help him up. When he had righted himself on his feet, Damek turned his empty gaze in my direction. “Rio, come here, boy.”

I obeyed and received a sharp whack to the side of my head.

“Your mother gave you into my care so that you could work as my servant, not to gods-damned sit there and gawk at an old bastard trying to get up. Next time, show some bloody initiative and help me.”

“Sorry, ban—er—Damek.”

“Hmm,” he said. He sniffed at the air, and I imagined him to be some sort of human hound looking for a trail, though I had no idea what the hell he was aiming to find. “We’ll have to see you washed again soon. You reek of rotting fish now that the smell of piss is out.”

“I was huddled next to the fishmonger for little while,” I explained. I took a tentative sniff of my own. “It’s not that bad, old man. Hell, I can’t smell a thing.”

“What did I tell you about my senses, boy? You interpret everything in the world around you through your eyes. I have to rely on smell and touch, taste and hearing. I can smell you as though you were a damned rotten herring right under my nose, and I’d dare say the herring would smell a hell of a lot rosier!”

I began to protest but was rewarded with another whack from the walking stick. I rubbed at my throbbing noggin. “Ow! You crazy old bastard! I’m going to be brain dead if you keep clubbing me like that!”

“Correction: your aptitude for utter brainlessness will be greatly reduced. Now, as much as I’d love to hang around all day and chat about the birds and that foul breeze wafting from you to me, we’d better get on the road. Gandras is a long way, and we ain’t going to make it by standing around here in the middle of the forest swapping insults.”

Damek ambled off towards the southern road, angling straight for it as though he knew exactly where its stone path lay. By this stage, his oddities were beginning to surprise me less and less, but I was still more than curious as to how he moved about so freely. He certainly didn’t seem to be relying on that stick of his, and besides, there was no way in hell it was telling him to duck whenever we came across a low-hanging branch.

But I’d seen his eyes on more than one occasion now. They were not the eyes of a man with sight. I’d never seen a blind man before meeting Damek, but I had seen a few blind animals in the forest, and their milky eyes were a match for Damek’s. Of course, those same animals didn’t last very long before being made a meal of, but I had still been surprised to find animals capable of surviving with blindness. Maybe Damek was telling the truth after all, and his senses were compensating. Still, that hardly explained some of what I’d already seen from him, and it went no way towards explaining why he needed me. If he were so damned comfortable with his senses, he had no reason to torture the hell out of some miserable little sod who missed his mother.

I tried to engage him in conversation more than once, but I was rebuffed time and again. We moved slowly, and once we were on the road, with its paved, manmade features beneath our feet, I got the distinct impression that we slowed down our pace. I tried to broach this topic with Damek as well, but he told me to shut the hell up and stop holding him back, despite the fact I had to physically exert effort not to run away from him.

We walked past the noonday sun, but our progression was so slow that my feet felt none the worse for wear, as though I’d done little more than take a leisurely stroll through the forest in search of my mother’s herbs.

It was about mid-afternoon when Damek finally pulled up. He held open his left arm and drew me near to his side. “Come, little Rio, and listen to old Damek for a moment.” His voice sounded almost conspiratorial. “How far do you think we’ve traveled since leaving Maluns?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ve never been this far from home, I don’t think, but we are farther from town than my mother’s home was.”

“A bit further, yes,” he said. “We’ve come about three miles, almost to the very step.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Why the hell do you think I wanted you to keep quiet and stop bothering me with your questions?” he responded.

“You…” I paused, my face screwing up with surprise. “You counted?”

“Damned straight,” he said. “I told you, boy, that a blind man has to use everything that’s left to him. There are three thousand one hundred and twelve of my steps to a mile. We’ve taken nine thousand two hundred since leaving town. And that means we are only one hundred and thirty-six steps shy of three miles—and a little surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” I asked, forgetting for a moment the strangeness of talking about miles and distances I had no real way of gauging.

“Yes. You’ll see. It is something you should know about, a bit about your past and mine, something your mother would have wanted me to show you.”

“How much farther is it to Gandras?” I asked quickly before I was ordered to silence as we moved on again and Damek began counting steps.

“Gandras is fifty miles down this road from Maluns. We’ve a damned long way to go yet, and we sure as hell aren’t going to get there by standing around and wasting time on stupid questions. Honestly, didn’t your mother teach you anything about the world beyond Maluns?”

“No, she didn’t,” I said, somewhat resentfully. “My mother taught me nothing but the names and appearance of a few useless herbs.”

“Now, now, I’ll not have you speaking ill of your mother, or have you forgotten that lesson already? Knowing about herbs is far from useless, only it’s far from useful in our current situation as well. Trust me, Rio, that you will thank the gods many times from now until you die for a mother who could teach you even that little bit.”

He resumed walking and any further attempt at conversation was rebuffed, as the old man had clearly taken up counting off steps in his mind again.

I did not need to be told that we’d reached the one hundred and thirty-sixth step, for my eyes told me what Damek’s memory was clearly telling him. As we rounded a slight curve in the road, the forest cleared back from the path and opened up my view to an ancient, patina-marred bronze statue of a bull.

The beast stood with its right foreleg raised and its head lowered for a charge. It was mounted atop a block of stone that was about five tall—just shorter than Damek’s hunched form. The bull itself must have been six or eight feet high at its shoulder.

“Feast your eyes on history, Rio,” Damek said. His voice was full of reverence, carrying with it a tone I had not expected from the man: he was almost in tears.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You never seen a bull before?”

“I’ve seen bulls,” I said. “I know it’s a bull. I’m not a complete moron, you know? But what the hell is a bull doing in the middle of nowhere. Is there a town around here?”

“No town. Maluns is three miles behind us. Balunkrants is two miles ahead. No, what your young eyes behold is your past, our past. That is the history of Samye, and it’s a damned curiosity that the Concord’s Inquisitors haven’t torn the thing down yet.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“You tell me,” he replied. “Why would the Inquisitors tear down the statue of a bull? Let’s see if your mother taught you that much at least.”

I racked my brains trying to think of a suitable reason. I’d picked up on the fact that the statue had to have some sort of religious connection, otherwise the Concord would not have been so concerned with tearing such things down. Damek had also connected the statue to the history of Samye.

“The gods,” I said.

“Good. Which one?”

I’d hardly been a good religious student, and this may have been the source of some of my mother’s frustration with me. Everything I knew about the old gods and the Concord’s interpretation of those gods as seven faces of one nameless supreme deity was all the sort of incidental knowledge that one picks up after years of repeated hearing. I knew bugger all that could be classed as proper learning.

So I stumbled through the names of the seven. “Not Dangus, not Panno,” I muttered, screwing my eyes shut. “Not Wundan or Mijlan either. Could be Golis, Ari, or Mealde.”

Damek tapped his stick on the ground, its repetitive tock offering a sort of menacing reminder that its hard wooden length would come crashing down on my skull if I got this wrong. “Think, boy,” the blind man said. “You can’t be this gods damned ignorant!”

“Golis is death,” I muttered faster. “Ari…farming…so…no…yes…no! It’s Mealde!” I opened my eyes to find Damek nodding at me. “Mealde,” I repeated, “god of life and fertility.”

“Fertility, indeed,” Damek said. “You see the size of the cock on that thing?”

I could not possibly have missed it. “Is that accurate?” I asked.

“Of course it isn’t! You ever seen any animal with a piece of equipment that large? Thing’s as long as my arm if it’s an inch! That is all the evidence you need to know that this statue stands in honor of the god of life.”

“So why haven’t the Concord torn it down?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know? Do I look like a bloody Inquisitor to you? Now, stop asking asinine questions and come over here.” He walked to the side of the statue’s base, the bull now towering high overhead, and placed his hand against the stone. “This is history, as I said, but it is a secret sort of history. It goes back into time before the Concord and its books. This statue is probably older than Maluns and certainly older than much of Gandras.”

“But there’s no town here,” I said.

“Towns come and go. Cities are born and collapse into dust. Empires rise and fall. The world of men is hardly a stable thing. But this!” He patted the cold stone and then rubbed his hand across its surface as though he were caressing a woman. “This is real. The gods outlast all our petty squabbles. This bull has been here for hundreds of years, and it will be here for hundreds more. That is why the Inquisition hasn’t torn it down.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“The Inquisitors are religious men and women, and so they fear the shadows of the past, as much as they don’t like to admit it. This statue, now, this one is special. The Inquisition must know this, given they study local myths and superstitions as they seek to convert the world to their cause.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“Many statues are just statues, lad. But a very small number are more. They are doorways between this world and the realm of the gods. This statue is probably one of them. The Inquisitors probably think they can keep this statue here and commune with their god. The druids know that they can contact Mealde, god of life and fertility, by coming here.”

“Speak with the gods?” I said, my voice dripping with awe. “How does it work?”

I realize now, looking back on that day, that I should have been more aware of whom I was talking to. I really was a moron, and I deserved everything that was coming to me. Chief of all, I should have asked Damek how the hell he knew all of this, then I might have figured out his game before the way it all ended.

“How does it work?” he echoed. “Well, there are legends.” His voice took on that conspiratorial air again. “The stories that I’ve heard in my travels say that the bull’s ears reach the ears of Mealde, and the bull’s mouth becomes the mouth of the god.”

“So if I whisper a request to the god in the bull’s ears and Mealde hears me, the bull will speak?”

“They’re just stories, Rio. But that is what they say, yes.”

I raised my eyes up to the bronze bull, a plan forming in my head. Taking a few steps back from the stone base, I said, “I’m going to try.” Damek grinned, but I was hardly paying much attention to him anymore.

I dashed towards the base of the statue and used my momentum to jump and climb the stone. As I scrambled up, Damek prodded at my backside with his walking stick in a bid to help me.

I wasted no time in approaching the bull when I was up, and I whispered a prayer in its ear: “Mealde, keep my mother and sister safe, please.”

Slowly, careful not to fall off the stone base, I edged around so I could place my ear next to the bull’s mouth. As I leant in, Damek’s cane came hurtling in to crack against the side of my head. I banged against the bull’s brazen mouth and then toppled off the stone base. I hit the earth with my back, and all the air was driven out of my lungs.

As I began to regain control of my senses, I heard Damek cackling like a madman.

“Gods, you really are a moron,” he said to me. “A dog could outsmart you with the brains that fall out of his arse when he craps!”

“What the hell did you do that for?” I asked. “You could have killed me!”

“Then I’d have been rid of a total and irredeemable fool,” Damek said. “Get your arse off the ground and learn a lesson for a change.”

With a great deal of awkwardness I managed to pick myself up. Every inch of my body hurt, and I was still sucking in breaths like a live fish lying on the side of the road, but at least I hadn’t broken anything. I remembered all too well the feeling of broken bones from my beating a few years back.

Damek was still snickering to himself when I approached him suspiciously. “You need to learn something very important about being a blind man’s aid,” he said. “You need to learn to have your wits about you at all times. Don’t be fooled by fairy stories of gods speaking through statues. The gods don’t give a damn about you or me or the wellbeing of your mother. If they did, do you think the Concord could have come in with their damned heresies about the seven-faced god? Not bloody likely. No, the true gods are out there somewhere, far away from the affairs of men, drinking themselves pissed until the great party that ends the world.”

“But why did you have to hit me like that?” I asked, rubbing at the side of my head that had struck the bull’s mouth.

“Because a child whose hand is placed in the fire learns better than the child who is simply told it will burn that fire is not to be toyed with. Use your head from now on. I don’t want to be dragging some gullible jackass around the countryside with me. You are supposed to be my guide, remember? People will try to cheat a blind man because they think he can’t see to help himself. You know me better than that, but I didn’t get this gods damned crafty by sitting around on my arse all day dreaming of pixies in the bushes. I went out into the world and got the crap beaten out of me and then got some proper sense beaten in to replace it. You listening to me, piss pot?”

“Yes,” I said. “Be the bigger bastard.”

Damek paused, his face giving me the curious impression that he was studying me narrowly for a moment. “That’s Sausawan wisdom, isn’t it?”  he asked.

“Batur taught me that lesson,” I said.

“I don’t know who the hell this Batur is,” Damek replied, “but it seems you’ve been fortunate enough to encounter the wisdom of the ancients, preserved for us through the years of Arzemene occupation by those damned savages of Sausawa.”

“Hasn’t helped me any,” I grumbled.

“That’s just because your Sausawan friend forgot to tell you how to go about being the bigger bastard. But you’re with me now, and there are few bigger bastards than I.”

(Next Chapter)

As I walked alone towards Maluns, I grew simultaneously more cocksure and more terrified.

“Who the hell does the blind bastard think he is?” I muttered to myself. “Sod just strolls in here, says my mother put me in his service, and then starts ordering me about? Who the hell does he think he is, anyway? Thinks I’m so useless I can’t steal a loaf bread?”

My steps faltered at that point. “Steal a loaf of bread. How the hell does the bastard think I’m going to do that? And with the whole of bloody Maluns looking for me? Gods damn my mother for this!”

I have said it many times before, but Maluns was hardly a large town, though it was large enough to possess its own mill. About a thousand people lived in and around the place, but the town center itself was composed of two streets that crossed each other. One was the north-south road that led upriver from Gandras and away north to gods-know-where, and the other began at the mill on the river’s edge and ran eastward, through the grain fields and orchards that Samye is famous for and into the forests beyond.

At the intersection of these two streets lay the heart of Maluns, and there one could find the baker, the butcher, the fishmonger, the fruit and vegetable merchant, and the homes of a few more prominent members of our small society—persons such as Ban Hadeon, the Inquisitor, and the Concord-approved physician, a man who was so useless he couldn’t even tell which end of a leech was up.

The baker was a big man—as most bakers seem to be, at least those that I’ve met, and the reason why I’ve never attempted to pose as one down the years. He went by the name of Gleb. His wife Lara was even more rotund than he, and together the pair would shake the very earth beneath us when they waddled down the street to collect their grains from the mill. My father used to say that the waterwheel driving the mill would become dislodged from the approach of those two long before it ever fell off due to its age and length of service on the water.

But, gods, if the pair of them didn’t possess the beadiest of beady eyes.  Old Gleb’s two blinkers were tiny by comparison to the rest of his head, and they sat so close together that they looked almost to be touching, but the bastard seemed to have a sixth sense about anyone coming into his bakery for reasons other than a purchase. How the hell he spotted so much with so little periphery vision, I don’t know, but he was legendary for it among the youth of Maluns, who tried more often than was healthy to swipe the bastard’s sweet breads while he wasn’t looking.

I reached the edge of the forest with my fears long since outweighing my cocksurety. How the hell was I going to steal a loaf of bread from Gleb the all-seeing? And what about the rest of the townsfolk? Had Koldan returned the night before and told everyone to be on the lookout for the witch’s brat, or was it only the two men left behind to burn my mother’s hovel that would be watching out for me?

I did not think that enough time had passed for the hut to have been safely razed to the ground, and I did not think that the two fools left to do the job would risk leaving the burning home untended, incase it led to a greater forest fire.

It was then that I began to suspect the whole town would be waiting anxiously to gauge the outcome, whether or not they knew what had transpired in the forest the previous afternoon. If the burning of my mother’s house was news to them, they’d all be congregating in town to watch the smoke rising, wondering what was happening. If they knew what Koldan was doing, they’d likely still be gathered in town watching, though they’d be fearing that the two morons left to burn the home would be careless and set the whole damned forest alight.

Armed with the hope of these two probabilities, I retreated back some way into the forest and made a circuit of the town until I could come at it from the north east, at least partly away from the direction where my mother’s burning home would be attracting attention.

There was indeed a crowd of people gathered in the central area of Maluns, some forty or fifty folk, who stood and pointed away above the treetops. I crept out of the shadows of the trees and dashed madly for the shadows of the town buildings. There weren’t much in the way of alleys in Maluns, at least not like there are in the big cities like Gandras, but there were appreciable gaps between homes and shops, and I spent some time lurking between the physician’s home and the fishmonger—a pair of houses that should never have gone side-by-side, let me tell you.

How the hell either of them ever got any custom, I don’t know, but despite the presence of the river right down the road, our fishmonger never had anything in stock that wasn’t already halfway to rotten and stinking out the whole gods-damned town. Perhaps the stench acted as a sort of anesthetic, which was helpful for those poor sops who placed their trust in the doctor.

Anyhow, none of those gathered in the streets seemed intent on returning to their places of business soon, as they all watched the forest with a great deal of apprehension.

“After all this time,” one of them was saying, “with a witch living among us, we will finally be free. Praise God, the Concord, and Saint Zoran’s light for it!”

“Just more evidence that Arzemes has their damned fingers everywhere and in everyone’s business,” said another. He added moments later, his voice suddenly more nervous, “Not that I sympathize with the witch, to be sure.”

“Where’s Gleb?” asked a third voice. “He should see this. He’s been a loud voice for the burning of the witch and her brats ever since old Kostya got sent to the marches for stealing grains.”

“Just one of her brats,” said another. “We’ve still got to keep an eye out for the boy. Inquisitor wants him, and we are all good citizens of the Empire, right?”

“Right,” came a chorus of answers, several more or less enthused than the others.

At any rate, listening to the villagers prattle on answered some of my questions, and I watched as a man detached himself from the group and crossed to Gleb’s bakery, which stood opposite the fishmonger’s, on the southeast corner of the main intersection.

“Gleb!” he called. “Gleb, you cross-eyed bastard! Come take a look at this. The witch’s house is burning!”

I watched anxiously from the shadows for the baker to materialize. Knowing the fat man’s nature, I suspected it would be a hard thing to draw him away from his shop, but my fears were relieved by the distinctive tremors of the ground that preceded Gleb’s appearance.

“What are you on about?” he asked from the doorway. “I’ve got some loaves that need shaping.”

“Let Lara do it,” the townsman said. “Come feast your eyes on the purging!”

Gleb wavered for a moment before exiting his bakery. “Let’s see what’s got you bastards all in a tizzy,” he said. “Some of us have to work. We can’t all be idle.”

I waited for the baker to join up with the rest of the townsfolk before I began a mad dash from the gap between the fishmonger’s and the physician’s. As I burst through the open door of the bakery, my nostrils were grateful for the assault of a new smell that went partway to covering over the stench of rotting fish.

Several fresh loaves rested on a display counter, and I grabbed the one closest to me, a weighty rye bread that was decorated with some sort of braided pattern and smelled absolutely delicious.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I met the eyes of Lara the baker’s wife just as she had come out from one of the rear rooms, where the furnace was no doubt located. She began to waddle awkwardly in my direction, but although she moved about as slowly as a slug through a puddle of glue, and I could have escaped her at a leisurely walking pace, I found my feet transfixed to the floor of the bakery as I stared wide-eyed with terror at her.

She towered over me moments later, glaring down into my terror-stricken eyes. To my great surprise she did not lay a hand on me. “You’re Ruzhena’s boy, aren’t you?” she asked.

I nodded even as I set the rye bread back on the display table, gingerly and with as much reverence as I could muster. Lara hesitated a moment, glanced past me and out the door to where her husband stood gawking at the forest, and then settled her gaze on me again.

“Your mother may have been a whore, but she helped me through an ague once when the damned Concord physician could do nothing about it.” She reached out, plucked up the rye loaf, and shoved it into my hands. “Take it, and get the hell out of town, you little moron. You should’ve been long gone by now. No one will show you any mercy if they catch you.”

I swallowed nervously, nodded thankfully—still not trusting my voice, though at least my bladder had not failed me this time—and turned about to dash out the store again.

My heart was threatening to burst out of my chest, and so rather than head back to the north forest and the direction I’d come from, I ran south and away from the crowd of townsfolk studying the smoke of my mother’s burning home.

“Gods damn me,” I muttered when I paused for breath at the edge of the tree line. “Gods damn me but I’m alive!”

“That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

I screamed and dropped the loaf.

“Rio, Rio, Rio!” Damek muttered with a chuckle. “You can’t go pissing your britches every time someone gives you a fright.”

I groaned, feeling the familiar warmth of urine against my legs as it soaked my pants.

Damek sighed as he stooped to pick up the loaf of bread. “Come, back to the river. We’ve got to wash those pants. I am not walking all the way to Gandras with you smelling like piss, let me tell you!”

“How did you find me so quickly?” I asked.

“Give us some credit, will you?” Damek replied. He was busy shoving the rye bread into the canvas sack he’d taken from my mother’s home that morning. “I may be blind but I’m not an idiot. You think I’m just going to let you walk into town to steal us some bread and not follow you to keep an eye on your proceedings—figure of speech?”

“But you’re blind!” I exclaimed, exasperated now by the many mysteries surrounding this old man. “You haven’t told me how you can move around so easily if you are blind. How did you know where that loaf of bread had landed when I dropped it? You didn’t have to feel around for it.”

“Rio, Rio, Rio,” he said again. “Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I’m missing all my other senses. Folks think anyone with a handicap must be a complete invalid, and I use that to my advantage, but I could hear that loaf drop and pick out it’s location as easily as any man with a pair of eyes could.”

“Very well,” I said, crossing my arms and refusing to move in the direction of the river to wash before I had more satisfactory answers. “That make’s sense, I suppose, but how do you miss trees and roots?”

“What am I carrying in my hand, boy?”

“A stick. So?”

“You think I fill my hand with this piece of wood just for the hell of it? My sense of touch is so acute due to practice that I can sense the slightest crack in the ground through this stick as it slides over the earth.”

“Not at a run, you can’t,” I said.

“Listen, you little prick: I am not going to argue this now. When you are blind and reliant on a stick and your own sense of touch, then we can have this discussion. For now, my sense of smell is telling me that you stink like a gods damned latrine, and as I said, I am not walking from here to Gandras with you smelling like piss.”

“And when do we eat the bread?” I asked.

“When I say so! Now, get your arse down to the river and wash your legs and your pants. I’ll meet you back here and we can get a move on down the road to Gandras. I’d like to put at least two watches’ worth of walking between us and Maluns by sunset.”

(Next Chapter)

“We can stay here for the night,” Damek said. “The Inquisitor won’t be back until the morning, and we will be out of his way by then. Besides, the bastard will be more concerned with hunting down your mother than with the prospect we might be spending the night inside her abandoned forest hovel.”

“I’ll have to chop more wood,” I said. “My mother wanted us to save as much as we could, but we still ran out of wood last night.”

Damek put his hand on my shoulder. “No wood. Too much light. Whatever we have to eat, we’ll have to eat cold as well. We’re staying here for the comfort of a roof over our head and pallets to sleep on, not to flash a beacon to every moron in Maluns who’s out looking for us.”

“But there ain’t no food,” I replied. “That’s why I was sent to town.” This statement was punctuated by a loud rumble from my gut.

“No food, eh?” Damek asked. “Well, get your arse indoors then. I’ll scrounge us something else to eat. And besides, I’ve got to cover over our tracks a little. Old Koldan the Fool might’ve missed the fact we were here, but he had bad light. Morning’ll be different.”

“But it’s too dark to see our tracks,” I said stupidly.

“Are you trying to be a moron, Rio, or are you always this gods damned dense? World’s always dark to me. But that just makes the rest of my senses all the sharper.”

“But how can you find—”

“Enough talk. Get indoors. Lie down or tidy up, or otherwise occupy yourself until I return. Just don’t touch whatever your mother left behind. I know she was a druid, and there’s like to be some pretty nasty stuff sitting on her shelves.”

“Yes, ban,” I replied, shoulders sagging somewhat.

“Come here, Rio.”

I approached apprehensively and was rewarded with a sharp slap to the back of my head as soon as I was within Damek’s reach. “What the hell did I tell you about calling me ban?”

“Don’t,” I repeated.

“Get inside.”

The forest was dense, and the foliage met high up overhead to the point that even in the midst of the clearing in which my mother had built her hut one could look up and not see the stars at night. The walls of the home, however, shut out what little light managed to penetrate to the forest floor through the leaves and branches. It was like finding oneself in a cave deep beneath the earth without so much as a smoldering twig. I’ve been there before, and believe me that even the dungeons of the Piliakilnis in Gandras are sunlit gardens by comparison.

At any rate, I sat in total darkness for a long, long time. Every sound of the night was amplified despite the walls closing me off from the outside world. There are few times when I have ever felt so alone as I did then. I was without my mother and my dear sister, Senka, who at least would have afforded me a modicum of comfort. Damek was hardly any sort of companion to give me much confidence, though the bastard had a curious ability to navigate the world despite his lack of sight. It was almost as though he knew the location of every bush, tree, and protruding root in the forest, though I was certain I had never seen the man before in my life.

I tired of waiting for him to return and eventually laid myself down on my usual sleeping pallet and tried to break the tedium of the night with slumber. It was to no avail. I began to realize how important my mother’s presence had been, for her druidic commune with nature had lent her a limited power over the forest, such that we slept peacefully knowing there was no danger. That was all denied me now.

Eventually, Damek did return, the hut’s door opening and shutting with a terrifying creak. “You awake, Rio?” he asked softly. He knew it had been a damned long time since he’d left me.

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked harshly.

“Finding you dinner, you ungrateful piss pot,” he replied. “Browning your pants with fear of the dark?” he asked a moment later, his smile evident on his voice.

“No!” I said. “I’m just hungry is all.”

“Well, my little companion, I found you a few pieces of edible fruit. Eat up and get some sleep. We have a lot to do in the morning.”

“It took you so long to find this miserable fair?” I moaned after biting into something that felt like an apple in my hand but tasted like rotting beef with the texture of week-old bread.

“You think you can do any better, you mouthy little bastard?” Damek asked. “Gods, we’re going to make a fine pair if all you do is complain at charity. You’re supposed to be helping me, remember? Now, eat your damned supper and get some sleep. No more lip from you, and if I hear you so much as grumble beneath your breath, I’ll send you out there alone. And you know what happens to little boys without guardians?”

“They become catamites,” I said forlornly.

“Indeed.” I could hear him smiling again. “Ruzhena has taught you some things, at least.”

I finished my supper, forcing every bite down and stifling the urge to moan about the cramps the sour fruit were giving me. “Damek,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I’m not complaining but—”

“But what?” His voice was edgy, and I knew I was only a single misplaced word away from becoming Ban Hadeon’s bitch—a thought that motivated me to a great deal more care in what I said than any threat of a beating from my mother ever had.

“My stomach hurts,” I said. “I won’t be able to sleep.”

Damek groaned and began to move about the hut without giving me a reply. Again, he showed a remarkable ability to maneuver past obstacles that I, even having lived there for four years, would have stumbled over in the deep darkness of the night. I heard the sound of clinking bottles followed by the sound of Damek’s nose sniffing.

“Ain’t got no fire or water to make tea,” the blind man said eventually, “but your mother did leave us a few maigarrin leaves. Chew on this.”

He handed me a single large leaf that was still surprisingly moist, as though it had been collected only two or three days before at the most.

“It won’t help the pain,” Damek explained, “but it’ll damned sure put you to sleep so I don’t have to listen to you complain.”

The leaf was chewy without being twiggy, but—gods!—was it bitter. I nearly choked on the stuff. It was one of the herbs that my mother had not entrusted me with picking and probably with good reason. She knew I stuck a bit of everything I picked into my mouth. I called it experimenting. My mother called it damned foolish and likely to get me killed.

Still, I got another glimpse into my mother that night. Had she sent me off to pick maigarrin leaves, I’d probably have been eaten by something in the forest while lying unconscious at the foot of the tree.

The next thing I knew, Damek was shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, Rio,” he hissed in my ear. “Time to get going before the bastards from town show up.”

I peeled open my eyelids—which seemed to be sealed shut with some sort of glue—and blinked up at the dimly visible face of Damek.

“I hope there’s nothing you wanted to keep in here,” the blind man said as he moved away from me, satisfied that I was awake. “We can’t take anything aside from what can fit in this little canvas bag I found, and the Inquisitor is likely to order this shack torched to clear the world of your mother’s stench.”

“Nothing I want,” I replied sleepily.

“Good, because there ain’t no space for any of your crap anyway. Filled the bag with the last bits of your mother’s herbs and roots—too valuable to leave behind. Now, move your arse, boy, and let’s get out before Inquisitor Koldan and his band of merry idiots catches us time wasting!”

We left the hut without further words passing between us, although my bladder was going to need relieving soon if I didn’t want to wet my britches.

“You can piss when it’s convenient,” Damek told me when I paused to relive myself against the wall of the hut.

Exerting all of my willpower on my bladder, I followed him into the undergrowth around the clearing. Damek made me wait for him as he went back to cover our tracks away from the home again. He returned moments later, whispering, “Now we must trust in the gods. Inquisitor comes, and we can’t move in this curst forest without making a great deal of noise. Sit still and shut up!”

Koldan did indeed appear moments later, trailed by twelve townsman from Maluns: the same half-dozen morons who’d failed to keep my mother in, and another half-dozen morons who would join the chase for my mother—a chase Damek had already promised me would prove fruitless.

The Inquisitor made a quick inspection of the clearing, confirming for himself that I had not returned in the night. “Right,” he said once that inspection was completed. “You two, torch this hut and then get back to town and keep looking for the boy. Doesn’t seem as though he returned in the night. The rest of you will head north with me to hunt the witch. Her tracks lead clearly away.”

“If she’s a druid,” asked Darko the blacksmith, “won’t she be able to cover her tracks so’s we can’t find them?”

“You doubt the Inquisition’s ability to spot the signs of a druid’s passage?” Koldan asked menacingly.

I cast a glance at Damek beside me. He was grinning widely as if to say, You fools couldn’t find your arse to crap from!

“No, ban,” Darko replied.

“Good. Then let’s get a move on. She has half a day and a night on us, but she’s carrying a young girl with her and is likely accompanied by the blind man you saw yesterday. She can’t be moving very quickly and will likely be relying on her witch’s tricks to turn pursuit aside.”

Koldan and ten of the townsmen moved away in the direction that my mother had left the previous afternoon, leaving a pair of men from Maluns to burn our hovel to the ground.

“Think the witch’s brat’ll turn up?” one of the men asked the other as they set about lighting a torch with flint.

“He’s a kid. Bastard’s as dumb as stone and can’t hide forever. Inquisitor will be gone for a few days, maybe a week or even a ten-day, so we’ve got plenty of time to search every hidey-hole for him.” The speaker touched the torch to the hut’s thatching and they moved on around the far side of the house so that their speech was too distant for us to hear.

“Let’s go,” Damek said to me as they disappeared. “They’re making so much damned noise that we should be able to get sufficiently far away that we can plan our next move.”

I followed without comment, and Damek led the way deeper into the woods, sidestepping trees, shrubs, and roots so dexterously that I was seriously beginning to doubt his blindness.

Maybe, I thought, maybe he’s a right big bastard. Everyone thinks he’s blind, but he can see clear as day.

The possibility became increasingly certain the more I stumbled despite my own clear and documented ability to see.

When we finally paused, it was just in sight of the River Balundan. “The river will cover any sound we might make while speaking,” Damek said. “Empty your bladder and have a drink, then we can talk.”

Without waiting for me to move off and with little care for privacy or propriety, Damek dropped his britches and began to relieve himself. I moved off, blushing, and turned my back to him, pissing against a random tree.

“You know I can’t see your cock, eh, boy?” Damek asked with a chuckle at my modesty.

“I don’t know that,” I replied. “I don’t know anything. How the hell can a blind man walk through a forest without stumbling when I trip over every damned root the gods see fit to place in my path?”

“Because you’re a gods damned clumsy dumbass,” he said. “Besides, I don’t need my eyes to see. The eyes lie. Remember that, Rio. Let it be the first lesson I impart. If your eyes tell you that you’re seeing something, shut them and let your other senses confirm before you choose how to respond. You’ll save yourself a damned heap of trouble that way.”

“I’ll just trip and land in a ditch,” I replied.

“If you do, it’ll prove to all the world that you’re a moron,” he said. “Now, enough of this banter. We have to decide what to do. Or, rather, I’m going to tell you what we will do, since I’m the master here and you’re my helper. Savvy?”

I nodded.

“Good,” he said.

“How did—”

“How did I know you nodded?” he asked. “Because you’re not idiot enough to try screwing with me just yet, boy. Now, shut up and listen: We can’t hang around Maluns. Bastards will be looking for us. But we can’t head downriver without supplies, and you had bugger all to eat in that hut of yours, so we’re going to have to get food someplace else.”

“We can get fruit from the forest,” I said.

“What, and listen to you bitch like a little girl? Not bloody likely. No, you’re going to steal us something from town. A farewell parting to this midden heap, if you like.”

“But I can’t do that!” I protested.

“Why not? You come from a long line of bastards. Your father was a thief. Your sister’s father was a thief. Your mother was a thieving whore druid. It’s in your blood.” He grinned, and the sight of that expression sent a shiver down my spine. “Besides, if you can’t swipe one simple loaf of bread from that fat sod you call a baker, then you have no business serving me.”

“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Then what?”

“Then we head south, away from Inquisitor Koldan, and towards Gandras.”

“But my mother went the other way.”

“Forget about your mother, Rio. You won’t be seeing her again. I am your mother now, and your father. I am all the family you have, and you’d better get used to the idea. I can teach you things, but I won’t have a student who isn’t willing to learn.”

Despite everything she’d done to me while she was very much a part of my life, I found the prospect of losing my mother forever to be more saddening than expected. Without warning, I found myself weeping for her.

Damek was kind enough to count out a hundred heartbeats before thwacking me on the head with his walking stick. “Enough of that for now. Get us some food or we’ll both be dead of hunger before we can properly miss your mother.”

As I moved off towards Maluns and my first attempt at theft, I swear I heard the old bastard mutter a prayer.

“Dear gods,” he whispered, “keep our sweet Ruzhena safe.”

(Next Chapter)

Inquisitor Varyna set down her quill, leaned back in her seat, and met Ilarion with a hard stare.

“What’s the matter, Inquisitor?” Ilarion asked, a sardonic grin creasing his lips. “Hand cramping already? God’s faces, but we’ve only just got going. My throat isn’t even feeling the effects of that piss you call cider I was forced to drink a while ago.”

Varyna ignored him. “Tell me, Ilarion, do you really expect me to believe all of this sentimental crap you’re telling me?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Every word of that is God’s honest truth. Well, most of it. You know what childhood memories are like. They’re more a mix of impressions and images than of actual facts. But damned if I’m not telling you things exactly as I recall them. With a few minor embellishments, of course, but nothing a clever dear such as yourself couldn’t swiftly edit out.”

The Inquisitor rose from her seat and walked around her desk. She leaned back against its solid frame, crossed her arms, and chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip as she fixed Ilarion with another searching stare.

“Why do I get the feeling you are trying to screw with me?”

“You’ve only got a feeling? Well, I’ll be damned…”

“We both know you are already damned, regardless of what you say or think, so your oaths mean nothing to me. This is a serious matter—”

“Yes, I know. Posterity and all that,” Ilarion said tiredly. “Posterity can kiss my posteriority, if you catch my meaning.”

“I do not,” Varyna replied mirthlessly. “Not in the slightest. Your father and then your mother’s lover both caught for the exact same crime? That oh-so-cute story about your sister and her fear of her Sausawan father? An old blind man capable of giving an Inquisitor the slip? These are fairy stories, Ilarion, not the stuff that makes a worthless bastard such as yourself into the worthless bastard you are.”

“You think too much of your fellow Inquisitors if you think a crafty old bastard like Damek couldn’t outwit a whole college of you lot. Hell, woman, I’ve posed as an Inquisitor on many occasions and done so in the presence of other Inquisitors, who were all none the wiser I might add. I’ve had your ilk falling over themselves to kiss my arse in the hopes of a promotion. You people are hardly the pinnacle of human intellectualism, let alone capable of so much perception as a stewed tomato.”

Varyna sucked in a sharp breath through pursed lips. “I can see that I am wasting my time,” she said. “Clearly the absolution I can offer your soul means little to you. When you have grown up enough to stop offering me tales about men named Damek of the Crap-house, then perhaps we can talk intelligently.”

“God’s faces, Inquisitor, but you really don’t get out much, do you? You’re so damned sanctimonious that you can’t even fathom a man to be capable of that sort of self-deprecating humor.” Ilarion chuckled. “Maybe if you sat there and copied down this story in full instead of breaking in before you’ve heard all there is to hear, you’d actually begin to understand why a man in his position might take on such a name.”

“Humor me, Ilarion, and let me hear some of this now before I waste any more of my ink. Why would any sane man name himself of the Crap-house?”

“A man who wanted your pity would,” Ilarion said. “A man who wanted you to see him as so poor of spirit, so ruined in this life, that his parents couldn’t even bless him with a decent name. Listen to me, Inquisitor: you want to know what goes on in a criminal’s mind, what makes a man stoop to the lows that I have? Then sit back and listen to the tale of the blind man’s game. It’s one hell of a yarn, I promise you.”

Varyna leaned her head back and stared blankly at the ceiling for a few drawn-out moments. Finally, she pinched the bridge of her nose as she brought her head back down. “Waste of time,” she muttered to herself. She followed this declaration up with a sigh of resignation.

“Very well, Ilarion.” She unfolded herself from her perch on the edge of the desk and returned to her seat. “I’ve already invested a great deal of resources into listening to this drivel. We can continue for another half watch—but I am warning you that I will end this charade the moment I get the feeling you are buggering around with me. My time is precious, and there are others I could be interrogating instead of sitting here and listening to you prattle on about all your perceived problems with the Concord. Let us keep this to the facts.”

“And the facts don’t include the very real fact that the Inquisitors are a bunch of half-brained, arse-for-mouths, ignorant bastards?” Ilarion snapped his fingers dramatically. “Oh, right! Sorry, I forgot. This is all for posterity, and we certainly wouldn’t want the generations to come to know the truth about you warthog-faced, piss-for-blood, arrogant pricks.”

Varyna made a sharp motion with her left hand, far faster than Ilarion’s eyes could track. Before his brain had even registered her movements, his ears recorded the thudding sound and his balls fell the tingling vibrations of a small knife imbedding itself in the wood of his chair, not two hairs’ breadth from those same balls.

“Impressive,” Ilarion said around a momentarily nervous swallow. He reached down to work the knife free. “But it’ll take a little more than that to truly frighten me. I know you can aim, Inquisitor.”

“Even the most skilled miss their mark occasionally. I cannot vouch for the next one—should there be a next one.”

Ilarion tapped the side of his nose. “Now you’re talking my language.” He rose to set the knife back on the Inquisitor’s desk, a motion that earned him the raising of Varyna’s good eyebrow. “What?” he asked. “You can’t possibly think I can use that, do you? Barely good enough for picking my teeth! How the hell am I going to walk out of the Augandwars armed with a little toy like that? Come now, Inquisitor. You know me. I know you. We’re old friends already. No more threats, eh? We’re beyond that, I think. Now, take up your little quill there and let me tell my story. I know you’re just going to edit out whatever you don’t like before passing this on to your superiors at any rate, so let’s not pretend like I can’t say whatever I wish.”

“Sit down, Ilarion,” she commanded, taking up her quill and dipping it to draw fresh ink. “Impress me in the next half-watch, and you can have food, drink, and a little bit of rest.”

“Top drawer, Inquisitor. Top drawer.”

(Next Chapter)

I ran all the way through Maluns without allowing myself to be distracted. The sun had progressed overhead to such a point that evening was fast approaching. I didn’t realize I’d been speaking with Inquisitor Koldan for an entire watch, but, then, time flies when one is trying and failing to be a bastard.

I found the forest path in the gathering twilight and was forced to slow my mad dash so that I didn’t trip over any roots or rocks. The last thing I wanted was to fail in delivering my mother a warning that I had screwed up in an even bigger way than I ever had done before. Whatever possessed me to want to confess that I’d told the Inquisitor all those things, well, I doubt I will ever know. All I do know is that I was firmly of the belief that I carried my mother’s last hope. I had no idea how she was going to escape the posse of men keeping her caged, but she was a smart woman. I will give her credit for that. Smart and ruthless.

Having slowed my pace to a fast walk, I was able to pay more attention to my surroundings. Our home was not terribly deep into the forest. About a mile or so, I would say. At any rate, my lessons from Batur began to kick in about halfway down the forest path to home, for I heard the most curious of sounds.

I could hear birdsong.

Having lived in the woods for as long as I had, I’d come to know the particular sound of a forest at peace, when birds would chirp and the smaller forest creatures feel safe enough to emerge from their hiding holes.

The birds were singing as though half a dozen armed men were not in fact surrounding a little forest hut. It was the song of complete tranquility.

It was getting too dark to even think about risking a dash across the final distance home, and so I did the only thing I could: continued at a hurried walk.

As I neared my home, the birdsong died down again. I paused well before reaching the clearing in which our house was located and listened again for the sounds of men.

Only silence greeted me.

Deciding that I needed to be careful rather than show myself to whatever might be going on, I slipped into the foliage and approached the clearing from an angle. Never once did I see any of the townsmen, and there was no light of a lantern or torch. Then I noticed that there was no light coming from within the hut either.

It was that detail which brought me out into the open at last, and as I broke from the dense undergrowth of the forest floor, I saw the first body. There was no mistaking that it was Darko the blacksmith. His massive frame and characteristic black apron—visible in the gloom as a great black mass against the slightly less black of the world around him—marked him out instantly.

I approached the blacksmith slowly, noting that other bodies were lying nearby. It seemed that the posse had converged on a single location, as they all lay between the blacksmith and the front door of the hut.

Darko groaned just before I reached him, and I fell over, my heart racing suddenly. I felt a warm wetness against my leg and swore when I realized I’d just pissed myself with fright.

“Gods, Rion,” I muttered. “Don’t be such a little girl!” I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and found my legs suddenly quite unstable.

I was embarrassed but glad that nobody was there to notice. Satisfied that the townsmen weren’t all dead, I hoped that the same would be true of my mother and sister inside.

“Mama!” I called as loudly as I dared. “Senka!”

There were no replies, but I reasoned that they could simply be unconscious like Darko and the others. I took a step around the big blacksmith, and as I did so, a firm hand clamped down on my shoulder.

I stifled a cry, and moments later I felt something smooth, hard, and cold press against the back of my neck.

“Careful you don’t crap your britches as well,” said a vaguely familiar voice.

My initial fear had been that it was Inquisitor Koldan who’d crept up on me. But it was not. Still, I couldn’t place the voice other than to say that I recognized it.

“Now, not a word from you, boy,” the man at my back said softly. “Danger’s coming. We’d better get out of sight, and quickly. You hear?”

I nodded, and the hard object was withdrawn from my neck. It was only then that I noticed the total absence of birdsong again. As I was spun about, I caught sight of a faint light in the distance drawing near up the forest path to Maluns.

And then I came face-to-face with the old blind man Blazh and I had passed on that same path into town earlier.

“Who—” I began to ask.

“Quiet,” the man hissed. He dropped his hand from my shoulder to my upper arm and pulled me after him as he made for the thick patch of foliage I’d emerged from before. “Inquisitor is coming,” the blind man rasped. “Don’t want him to catch us, oh no!”

Strange as it was that some random old blind sod had shown up on my doorstep at precisely the same moment my mother had seemingly disappeared, I found it stranger still that an old blind man seemed so completely set on not alerting Koldan to our presence—and strangest yet that he maneuvered as nimbly and accurately as though he possessed not only sight but also the night vision of an owl.

“Pity you pissed it up back there,” he said. “It’s gonna take someone with less brains than a turnip to not realize you were here, but that can’t be helped now. Those other bastards pissed and shat themselves pretty good when Ruzhena left, so your moist patch on the ground might go unnoticed. If we’re that lucky.”

“Where—” I tried again.

“Quiet, you little squirt,” the blind man hissed.

The light that had been approaching down the forest path hove clearly into view now. I felt naked before that single lantern even though we were quite well hidden away from easy spotting.

I could tell by his size that it was Inquisitor Koldan bearing the lantern. He was also alone. He paused—as I had done—upon seeing that the clearing around our home was not lit and none of the posse was to be seen.

“What are you fools doing?” he asked into the silent darkness. “You can’t stand watch without light.”

It was then that Koldan must have caught sight of Darko’s prostrate form, for the lantern leap forward and the blind man beside me squeezed down tightly on my arm as I squirmed.

The Inquisitor did not pause as I had beside the blacksmith but continued on into the forest hut.

“Son of a bitch!” he cried from within. This was followed by several more choice words and the sounds of pottery sent flying against the wooden walls.

Koldan reemerged moments later, kicked a few of the fallen townsmen, and finally settled on Darko, who elicited the loudest of the groans. Setting the lantern at his side, Koldan knelt over the blacksmith and began slapping his face.

“Wake up, you useless bastard!” the Inquisitor roared. “Wake up, you damned waste of air!”

Darko’s eyes must have opened because Koldan gripped the front of the man’s apron and pulled him up from the ground just so far until they were nose-to-nose. The Inquisitor’s rage was palpable, and I almost pissed myself a second time, this time for Darko’s sake.

The blind beggar at my side pressed his mouth against my ear and, in the faintest of voices, whispered, “No matter what you see, don’t mutter a gods damned word, or we’ll both be in for it.”

He withdrew his mouth and caught my eye with his milky white orbs, holding my gaze and giving me an eerie sense again that he could in fact see, until I nodded that I understood. As an extra measure of protection, I shoved my fist in between my teeth and clamped down. The blind man must have sensed what I’d done, as he turned away with a nod and settled his attention back on the clearing before us.

“What happened here, blacksmith?” Koldan was asking now. “Where has that curst witch gone? How the hell could you let her escape? Answer me, damn it!”

“B-b-b-an,” came Darko’s pained response. It sounded like he had a mouthful of teeth and his brain was severely addled by whatever had knocked him out.

Koldan slapped the blacksmith across his face. “Speak sense, you useless bastard! Tell me where the bitch has gone!”

“God’s faces,” the poor man muttered. “Faces, faces, faces!”

“You are going to meet your God’s face of Death soon enough, you damned prick, if you don’t start talking!”

The fist in my mouth stifled a squeal as the Inquisitor’s hand clamped down over Darko’s throat and Koldan stood, dragging the blacksmith up with him. He flung Darko at the wall of the hut and moved on to another of the fallen, choosing his next victim by that ever-reliable method of kicking them in the guts and judging who groaned loudest.

I couldn’t make out who the Inquisitor was picking on next, but the scene was much the same as Koldan beat the crap out of him and then discarded the townsman when he muttered nothing more comprehensible than, “God’s faces…faces…faces!”

Finally, Koldan found a man who’d come to sufficiently to be able to answer questions, at least after a fashion.

“Where is the witch?”

“Gone.”

“I know she’s gone, you piss pot. Tell me what happened.”

“Beat us.”

“Yes, I can see she beat the living shit out of you lot. When? Speak to me, damn you!”

“God’s faces,” the man muttered, “but it weren’t long after Blazh came back from town.”

“Blazh?”

“Yeah. Took the boy to buy food and drink.”

“Ah,” Koldan said. “Good. Keep talking. What happened? The bitch must have given you some warning, as you’re all lying around here at her door, a right pile of fools.”

“Don’t know what happened,” the man replied. “Whatever the hell it was, it happened quick. But…” His voice faded, but I could tell that it wasn’t because he’d passed out again. His tone was that of a man recalling some curious anomaly.

“But what?” Koldan asked after a moment.

“There was this blind fellow,” the townsman said. I glanced at the man beside me, but his attention was fully fixed on the scene unfolding before us. I turned my eyes back to the Inquisitor as well, concentrating even harder now to pick up the details of the conversation. I was growing ever more curious to learn who this blind man was, now that his coming had clearly presaged my mother’s escape.

“Showed up right before Blazh got back,” the townsman continued. “Darko turned him round and sent him back to town. Strangest damn thing I ever saw, blind man lost in the woods like that.”

“And you saw nothing else?” Koldan asked. “ Very well. Then tell me about this blind man. What did he look like?”

“Old. But not so old as he couldn’t look after himself. Walked with a stick, of course, slowly and deliberate like in every step he took. But the bastard looked a strong one despite his eyesight. Like he could handle himself in a fight. Hair was still dark; noticed that much. And his face wasn’t so scruffy as you’d think a blind wanderer’s face would be.”

“Wanderer? You mean the bastard isn’t from Maluns?”

“God’s faces,” the townsman swore. “Never seen him before in my life.”

Koldan rose to his feet. “Right. It seems clear what the hell happened here. The bastard is involved. Get the rest of these men up. There’s little we can do here in the dark, so we’re going back to Maluns. In the morning, we’re heading into the countryside to track the blind bastard and the witch.”

The blind man and I watched quietly as the townsman roused his companions from their stupors. Koldan wandered around the clearing, inspecting the ground, but he seemed largely disinterested once he’d identified my mother’s footprints heading away northward.

He did, however, pause beside the pool of my piss that was now just a slight muddy patch on the earth. He made a cursory inspection of the foliage surrounding the clearing, but the blind man had somehow managed to conceal us well enough to avoid detection. This left me even more curious as to the man’s identity.

Eventually, Koldan had the posse on its feet. “Come on, you lot. Back to Maluns. The witch’s little bastard is running around somewhere. He wasn’t here when the witch escaped, so we’re going to spend the evening looking for him in town. He’s most likely gone back to the mill, a familiar and safe place for him, no doubt.”

They made their way down the forest path, and it was not until the Inquisitor’s lantern light was long since visible that the blind man permitted me to speak—though how he could tell that they’d gone, I had no idea.

“Well, well, well,” he said to me. “That was interesting, wasn’t it? The Concord’s standards have slipped somewhat if morons like that can rise to the rank of Inquisitor.”

“Please, ban,” I asked, my voice quavering, “but who are you?”

“Can you read, boy?” he asked by way of an answer.

“A little.”

“Then read this.” He reached into a pocket and produced a piece of heavily folded parchment, which he handed to me.

“It’s too dark to read,” I said.

“So it is,” he replied. “I sometimes forget.” Motioning to his eyes, he added, “It’s always too dark for me to read, savvy?”

I nodded, then realized that he couldn’t see me. “I do,” I said. “What does the parchment say, ban?”

“Firstly, little man, I am not a ban. Don’t they teach you provincials anything? Gods.” He took back his parchment, stuffed it into his pants for safekeeping, and said, “I am your new master.”

“Master?”

“Yes. You see, your mother asked me to look after you. Sent me a letter some time ago already. She’s been planning to leave Maluns for a good while but knew she couldn’t take you with her. So she arranged for you to have a caretaker. Can’t say your mother didn’t love you, eh, lad.”

“If she loved me,” I replied without thinking, “she’d have been a gods damned better mother in the process.”

The blind man gripped my jaw forcefully. “A young man should never speak ill of she who bore him,” he hissed. He released my jaw, ruffled my hair, and chuckled lightly. “It is not such a bad thing she has done for you. You’ll have food and companionship, and I can teach you a lot of things, if you’ve the brains to learn any of it—which your mother claims you do.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but my mother wouldn’t say something like that. She thinks I’m a gods damned moron.”

“What did I just tell you, lad?” he asked.

“Not to speak ill of she who bore me,” I repeated.

“So?”

I sighed. “Sorry, mother, wherever you are,” I said.

“Very good. Now, as you and I are going to be partners from here on out, lets get introductions out of the way and plan for the night.” He glanced around him as though he could actually see to gauge the value of our surroundings. “We can stay here for now, I think. Nobody will be coming by until the morning.” He fixed his blank gaze on me again. “And you are Ilarion Maltuns, I would assume. Of course you are. But you can’t carry that name around anymore. It’ll mark you. Rion, too, is a curse. So we’ll go with Laros.”

“Not that, please,” I said. “It sounds like piss burning holes in the snow!”

“Hmm, you really do have a mouth on you, like Ruzhena said. Very well. Since we have to live with each other, we’ll shorten Rion even further. Just Rio. Meet with your approval, my lord?”

He gave me a mocking bow.

“That’s fine,” I said. “And I’m not a lord.”

“And don’t you bloody forget it, either,” he answered with a jab of his walking stick in my direction. “Now, you can’t carry your father’s name either, and Maluns would mark your point of origin too clearly.”

“What are you called, then?” I asked.

The blind man grinned. “Damek,” he said. “Damek iz Gosenstubb.”

“Damek of the Crap-house?” I asked.

“It’s where I was born, you little turd,” he said. His face took on a distant expression, as of one remembering. “It’s a long story.”

“You were born…” I began to giggle. Damek’s sightless glare was enough to convince me to stop. “All right,” I said. “I was born on the river. It’s a long story too.”

“I know it,” Damek said. “I’ve known your mother a long time, Rio iz Balundan.”

“iz Balundan,” I echoed, trying out the new name on my tongue for the first time.

(Next Chapter)

I remember that Inquisitor well. His face is burned into my memory like a hot brand to a cow’s backside. His name was Koldan, which was fitting, given that the name means sting. Bastard stung Maluns pretty good at that time.

It took him a couple of days to arrive in our town. The Inquisitors are a roving bunch at the best of times, being the Empire’s chief means of enforcing orthodoxy in the rural areas. So it was little surprise that when Batur’s crimes came to light, there was no Inquisitor in Maluns at the time, and the town relied on the minor civil officials to try him rather than on the more authoritative Inquisitor—though his approval would still be needed in order to condemn one to so severe a punishment as the mines of Pruvykhu. As it turns out, and as I’ve already mentioned, Inquisitor Koldan kindly commuted Batur’s sentence and decided to burn the poor bastard instead.

Koldan was a large man, I think the only man I’d seen who was bigger than my father was. His hair was the blond typical of many from Arzemes, and his face showed evidence that he’d been in battle, with scars and a too-oft broken nose the wages of his years laboring for the Empire’s cause in the march areas.

He was also, like all the Inquisitor bastards produced by the Concord, crafty as hell, and I will be relating some of that craftiness in a few moments. Suffice it to say, he was less concerned with Batur’s theft than with the fact he’d produced offspring with a pagan witch, and he was going to use whatever means he could find to tighten the noose about my mother’s neck—metaphorically speaking, of course, as the Inquisition is hardly so kind to witches and druids as to simply hang them.

Anyhow, with all of this action happening in my life, I forget that my mother, sister, and I could not leave our forest hut from the moment Batur got arrested. All we learnt of the happenings in Maluns—the arrest, the trial, and the arrival of the Inquisitor—we learnt from the posse that was charged with keeping the witch and her spawn trapped inside their forest home and secure until she too could be tried.

But the final period of my mother’s existence in my life was now upon me, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Despite everything she did to me on a regular basis, I still felt a sort of emotion towards her that I’ve often heard described as love. It may be the sort of love the tortured feel for their torturers after a time, but we call it love all the same.

We’d been trapped inside that hut for three days—giving you some idea of how quickly things progressed, though those were three of the most uneventful days in my life—and my mother had spent much of that time in one of her trances. She claimed to be thinking of a way to escape our mess, but I thought she was simply tired and afraid and needed to retreat from the inevitable.

At one point, I heard her muttering something along the lines of “Time to be rid of the dead weight.”

She began to come out of her trance at that point, and her eyes immediately sought my face. I was hardly the most brilliant of minds, and so I did not put the two events together until long after.

“Rion,” my mother said, “we are running low on food, but more importantly, we are dangerously low on water. Those bastards have locked us indoors without offering us supplies. I am going to send you to Maluns to buy some bread and to the river to collect water.”

“But the people won’t let me out,” I replied. I thought my mother must have been going a little bit crazy from being cooped up, as the posse had made it abundantly clear that none of us—not even Senka and me, as the spawn of druids were guilty of their parents’ sins by virtue of association—were leaving until the Inquisitor dealt with my mother.

“Are you talking back to me, you little turd?” my mother asked, though her voice was as calm and un-angered as I’ve ever heard it. Still, I did not realize what was happening.

“No, mama,” I replied, being more terrified of this calmness than of her usual fury.

“Then do as you’re told,” she said, rising from her seated position and moving towards the door. I followed her obediently.

She opened the door, and we were greeted by the sight of Darko, the town’s blacksmith, glaring at what he assumed to be an escape attempt. I saw other familiar faces from town, though they hung back from the blacksmith, watching other portions of the hut in case we tried to escape through a window or by breaking out a portion of the rear wall.

“What the hell do you think you are doing, witch?” Darko asked. “Get back inside. Inquisitor ain’t here yet.”

“We are hungry,” my mother replied, “and need water even more than food. We have been denied food and drink for three days.”

“With good reason,” the blacksmith replied. “You lot are finished. Dead already. What need have you of sustenance?”

My mother stepped forward, an act that made Darko flinch and bring up the hammer he’d been carrying as a makeshift weapon. But my mother the witch did not herself flinch. Instead, she dropped her voice so low that only Darko and myself could hear it. “If you do not let my son pass, I will speak a curse that will shrivel your manhood and leave your balls as dry as roasted peanuts. Let the boy get food and water, at least for himself and his sister, who are innocent parties in this matter.”

I looked up sharply at my mother’s final words, for in the last three days she’d never once come close to calling me an innocent party. She had, instead, blamed everything on me from the beginning.

Darko was unimpressed, however. “What need I to fear of a pagan witch? I have the light of Saint Zoran to protect me. Your earthy threats cannot touch one on the path of transcendence.”

“Oh, really,” my mother asked sardonically. “Pimpa lailitwei—”

The blacksmith’s hands clamped down upon his groin as his hammer dropped to the earth and he began to back away. My mother stopped speaking almost at once, glanced around to the other townsfolk, who were all watching closely now, and said, “For the sake of the little ones, let us get water and food.”

“God’s faces, woman,” Darko said, “I’ll let the little bastard go, but he’ll have one of us to accompany him.” Then, in a low voice, “Please reverse your curse. I beg you.”

“When he is safely gone and returned,” my mother replied.

The blacksmith swallowed heavily and nodded. “Blazh, escort the boy to the river to collect water and to town to buy some bread.” Darko reached into his pocket, drew out his purse, and tossed it to the man he’d summoned. “Pay for the food from this.”

The man snatched the purse from the air, looked quizzically at it for a moment, and then nodded. “Come along, boy,” he said to me.

As we trod the forest path from my mother’s hut to the edge of town, we passed an old blind man who was feeling his way through the trees, and Blazh stopped to say to him, “You do not want to go this way, old timer. There’s a pagan druidess living at the end of this path. Better you turn around and head back the other way.”

“A druidess?” the blind man asked. “Is that so? Well, I’d best be done with my crap quickly then and return to civilization.”

The old bastard dropped his drawers immediately, and I sensed that his words had been spoken more in jest at Blazh’s fears than out of any genuine intention to loose his bowels and be gone.

Blazh shook his head, muttered, “Crazy old bastard,” and indicated to me that we should continue to town.

As we came into Maluns proper, we were met by Ban Hadeon. “Good day to you, Ban,” Blazh said respectfully.

“What the hell is this boy doing here?” the Ban asked.

“We came to get food and drink for him and his sister,” Blazh explained. I could see that he was suddenly quite nervous, with beads of sweat forming on his forehead almost instantly.

“God’s faces,” the Ban exclaimed. “Are you lot a pack of morons out there? You were supposed to keep them all inside until sent for. Damned Inquisitor has got us all on edge. Take the boy to him right away and then get the hell back to the forest to watch that witch!”

Blazh muttered his apologies as he hurried on to the large home where the Inquisitor would be staying. The Inquisitors have homes in all the villages and towns of Samye Canton—and, indeed, in every Canton the Empire brings under its fold—and it should come as little surprise that it was the largest house in town.

At any rate, as soon as we entered the house, Blazh retreated into the streets, leaving me alone in Inquisitor Koldan’s presence. “Come here, boy,” he said to me, his eyes scrutinizing me in such a way that I felt naked before him.

As I approached, I caught sight of Batur, bound to the wall behind the Inquisitor. Koldan placed a hand on my shoulder, turned me around to face the Sausawan, and asked, “This is the boy you told me of?”

“It is, your grace,” Batur muttered, his voice so weak and faint that I could hardly believe this was the same man capable of loud, boisterous laughs.

I looked at the Sausawan, recalling his lessons—especially the one about being the bigger bastard. Without realizing what I was saying, I asked my old friend, “I thought you were the bigger bastard?”

“I found out there are bigger bastards than I, little Rion,” he replied. “There are always bigger bastards.”

Inquisitor Koldan looked on with some curiosity before allowing his mouth to break into a wide smile. “You tried to teach this boy, did you not, Sausawan? This sounds strangely like the rubbish you lot call wisdom down south.” Koldan turned me around to face him again. “Well, little Rion, you have met the biggest bastard you are likely ever to meet in your life. I am he, and you are going to help me. Is that clear?”

I nodded slowly, recognizing that he was at least right in one thing: he was the biggest bastard I had ever met before.

“Good,” Koldan said. “Now, you can begin by telling me about your mother. I hear from people in Maluns that she is a healer. That is a very noble thing. Tell me what you know.”

His voice grew friendlier as he spoke to me, and I was sucked into his façade. I sang as loudly and quickly as Batur was reported to have done.

“My mother has healed many people,” I said. “Some she gives teas to, others bits of roots and bark. But there are some that are very sick.”

“And what does she do for them?” Koldan asked.

“She gives them the same things, but she also mutters prayers over them. They are strange prayers, though. I don’t understand a word she is saying.”

“They are not in the common tongue, then?”

“No, ban. They are like a secret language. I’ve heard my mother speak it at other times, though she is mostly alone then.” I made a face. “Alone and naked.”

“Interesting,” Koldan said. He smiled warmly, invitingly. “Why naked?”

“She dances beneath the starlight,” I replied. “I saw her at the midsummer just past. She used to go out at night, and sometimes I would follow. I saw her dance. I saw her meet people wearing white robes, and they all would chant or sing in that strange language. She used it to shrivel old Darko the blacksmith’s balls just now, when I left the hut to get food. Sometimes my mother would even mutter her prayer language to the skulls or bones in our home.”

“Skulls and bones?” the Inquisitor asked. “How very curious. And you never asked your mother what those are for?”

I paused and looked up into Inquisitor Koldan’s eyes searchingly.

“I want to help your mother, lad,” he said quickly. “I am an Inquisitor of the Concord of Saint Zoran. It is my task to help men and women find transcendence. I want to help your mother.”

I glanced past the Inquisitor to look at Batur, but the big Sausawan had hung his head and appeared not to be listening. I looked back at Koldan, thinking, You are the bigger bastard, and you said so yourself. Now, I must be an even bigger bastard than you. You want to hurt my mother. I heard the townsfolk say it.

And so I attempted to put Batur’s Sausawan wisdom to good use and turn Koldan’s bastardry against him.

“My mother got those from sacrificing animals in the forest,” I explained. “She would cut the little animals open and sing to Golis, Lord of the Dead, as she worked. Sometimes she would even turn herself into the animal she had just killed. She’d become a squirrel and run up a tree, or a fox and dash away.

“I saw my mom talking with dead people once, and I think they gave her some of their bones because there are human skulls in my mom’s collection. Hell, Inquisitor, my mom use to do the sorts of things with corpses that she and Batur did when they thought I wasn’t watching. She cut herself too. And the dead bodies after she climbed off them.”

I grinned wildly at first as I made up more and more stuff, not realizing half the time what I was talking about. Some of this I had actually seen, only I’d never seen my mother do it. Some of the boys of Maluns would kill animals in the forest. I saw a couple of boys wearing wolf pelts that they must’ve stolen from someone and running around howling like they were wolves. I even saw one of those bastards who’d beaten me up years before going at it with a corpse the way my mother and Batur used to.

But I made one hell of a mistake without realizing it.

The Inquisitor, instead of thinking I was making all that crap up about my mother, grew increasingly excited. “By God’s seven faces,” he swore (the first, though not the last, time I heard those words issue from an Inquisitor’s mouth in my presence). “It’s been one hell of a long time since I caught one so depraved.”

Batur was looking at me as well, the most curious damned expression I’d ever seen on his face. When I met his eyes, I knew I’d screwed up. Royally.

“Go home, little Rion,” the Inquisitor said. “Go home and see your mother before it’s too late.”

“But I need to get food and water,” I said without thinking, knowing that my mother would be less-than-pleased if I returned without that for which I’d been sent.

“No need for that, boy,” Koldan replied. “No need. I will be there soon enough.”

A shiver ran down my spine, and it entered my head that I had to warn my mother of danger. As I left the house, I heard Batur say, “You know what sort of woman she is.”

I paused, turned back, and attempted to listen, thinking that any information I could take to my mother would help her.

“She will not be taken so easily, though you know the little bastard was lying about most of that,” Batur continued.

“Save it, my Sausawan friend,” Koldan said eagerly. “You have not seen the half of what I have. There are witches and druids in this world who will perform acts so depraved even the degenerate minds of Sausawa cannot imagine the half of them. Do not worry for yourself. Once the witch is dead, your own death will be more effective in purging your soul from her influence. And do not worry for me either. We Inquisitors are trained in many things. I know how to handle a druid, even in the height of their trances.”

I would not risk hanging about longer, but I’d heard enough. Love her or hate her, she was still my mother, the only family I had besides Senka. I turned and fled back to the forest, running as fast as my legs could carry me.

(Next Chapter)

The months following that incident were some of the happiest of my young life. I had a home—something I have not always been privy to—with a family of sorts. Certainly, my mother remained as painful to be around as ever, but Senka made my mother’s presence in my life bearable, as my sister was a happy child and capable of showing me the humor in just about anything.

My association with Batur continued to grow as well, and I began to spend every day with him in the mill, even learning from him—being a reasonably accomplished miller by now—how to properly operate the machinery. We talked and joked together about the poor idiots of Maluns who had been scammed now by two millers on the trot—though I was always forced to hide behind the waterwheel when the actual miller came to inspect Batur’s work and to pay the Sausawan his weekly wage.

“Little Rion,” Batur said to me after one such occasion. “Come closer and I will tell you the real wisdom of Sausawa.”

Being quite captivated by the man at this stage, and ever hankering for a drop of his golden wisdom—which always seemed to work better for him in the telling than for me in the practicing—I drew near to listen to him in a conspiratorial manner.

“There are only two types of people in this world,” he said to me. “There are bastards and there are bigger bastards.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

He grinned wolfishly. “I mean that the biggest bastard always wins.” He nodded to the mill door, through which his boss had left moments earlier. “That man thinks he owns me, little Rion. He thinks that he is the bigger bastard. He thinks that he can come in here, look about, and know what I am doing. He thinks he can tell the difference between good flour and bad. That man cannot tell the difference between his arse and a hole in the ground, let me tell you. And do you know why that is?”

I shook my head obediently, playing the part of the student eager to hear his master’s explication of the world.

“It is because I am the bigger bastard in reality. I let that fool see what he wants to see. I let him think that he owns me. But he does not.”

“Why don’t you leave him, Batur?” I asked. “I mean, if you are the bigger bastard, can’t you just walk away if you like?”

“I could,” he admitted, scratching at his head as though considering the idea for the first time, “but that defeats the point. You see, little Rion, in order to be the bigger bastard, you have to have someone to be bigger than. If I were on my own, what would I be?”

“A lonely bastard?” I asked.

He grinned. “That I would, and lonely bastards are some of the saddest people in this world. No, a lonely bastard cannot be a bigger bastard, and what is the title of today’s lesson?”

“The biggest bastard always wins?” I replied.

“Good lad,” he said, accentuating his praise with a wink. “Make sure you are always attached to someone in some way. Never ever allow yourself to become the lonely bastard. Now, come closer still and I will show you why I am the bigger bastard.”

I drew closer, now pressed right against his great Sausawan frame, and looked up into his face, anxious for the final revelation to come. Batur dropped to his knees at my side and pulled at the something hidden on the dusty floor of the mill. A cutaway from an old canvas sack had been hiding a hole in the ground about the size of a man’s fist and a foot deep. It was halfway filled with corn. I looked up into his eyes as he knelt looking at me, waiting for my response.

“You are the bigger bastard,” I said. “My father would’ve been proud of you.”

Batur grinned. “Indeed. Barrels can be too easily inspected. But a hole in the ground, well, a man has to know it’s there to find it. This one is well hidden. All I need do is carelessly drops grains here and there and then sweep them into my hole. I empty this out two or three times a day, grind it, and trade it for food.”

“But what about the weight difference between the grain and the flour?” I asked. “My father always made sure they were the same.”

“Ah, that is where the true bastardry is born, little Rion. You see, your father was a bastard. The people of Maluns know this. They know that he stuffed their flour full of his grey powder to make up the weight. They know that he did this to fool them. What they do not realize is that I use this knowledge against them.” He covered over his hole, sprinkled fresh dust over it, and rose to his full height again.

“You see, all I have to do is tell the customers that the reason why their flour weighed the same as their grains was that your father cheated them, played on their ignorance. ‘He was a bastard,’ I say. I then tell the people of Maluns that when grain is ground, it creates dust, which takes some of the weight from the final product. Because I do not use a filler like your father, I can show them the flour without any fear that they will notice the difference. In the meantime, they believe what I say because they know your father was lying to them. In this way, because your father was a bastard, I can be an even bigger bastard.”

I grinned at the Sausawan’s enthusiasm. It was contagious to watch that man practice his bastardry with such brazenness—a sort of twisted inspiration, if you will. “Be the biggest bastard,” I said, forcing his lessons to memory.

“Do you understand the lesson, little Rion?”

“I think so,” I replied. “Because my father did something wrong, people don’t trust him. By using that knowledge, you can make people trust you by claiming to be more honest than my father and giving the people evidence, even if that evidence is wrong.”

“You have got it!” he exclaimed, clapping me on the shoulder with a sort of fatherly affection. “I cannot understand why your mother thinks you such a fool. Always look for the opportunity to turn someone else’s misfortune or wrongdoing to your own advantage.” He met my eyes, his expression growing serious. “In this world, little Rion, no one is going to take care of you. You must force a place for yourself in it, between the corrupt officials of the Concord and the even more corrupt bastards on the streets. If you do not, one side or the other will eat you.”

Those happy days of my apprenticeship in bastardry did not last long, however. In the height of summer, when I was eleven years old—this was the Year of the Saint three hundred and thirty—my mother returned home from herb-gathering, my sister in tow, and commenced to beating me with a long stick, gathered (no doubt) just for the occasion.

I was still some distance away from manhood then, and so took the beating as passively as ever, never once dreaming that I had the strength to fight back. My mother might have been a slight woman and my father a bear, but I had somehow inherited all the runtishness of my mother’s line, as I was even slighter of frame than she.

When she finally paused long enough to let me know the reason for my punishment, it was only because the stick finally broke, and the effort required to hurt me with the stub in her hand was not equal to the amount of effort required on her end to inflict it.

“You little turd!” my mother cried, using her favorite insult. “Do you realize what has happened? You’ve really outdone yourself this time, you worthless sodding bastard turd!”

“Mama,” Senka called, tugging at our mother’s dress. “Mama!” There was a fear in my sister’s voice that I noticed in that second cry of hers, and our mother turned about and scooped the little girl up into her arms.

Then, after planting a kick in my side, my mother said, “Batur’s gone and got himself arrested. Damned fool, talking about being cleverer than Kostya. And you put him up to this! I never told the bastard about Kostya’s thieving, so he had to have heard it from somewhere.”

To my mother’s mind, somewhere was always me, especially when it was something bad. It never once entered her head that my father’s shame had been a public thing, that Batur could have heard about the two barrels from anyone in town. Never mind the fact that it had indeed been me to first tell Batur about my father’s crimes, the simple truth was my mother would always have blamed me regardless.

“He will be all right,” I said bravely, finding the words coming faithfully to my lips as I sought to defend Batur as he had once (and so often since) defended me to my mother. “He is the biggest bastard in Maluns.”

“Biggest bastard? What the hell are you on about, idiot boy? Of course he’s the biggest bastard! Why else am I standing here cursing at you while holding your damned sister, the produce of his overactive Sausawan loins!”

“But the biggest bastard always wins,” I said.

“The biggest bastard always wins?” my mother echoed. “Who the hell taught you such rubbish? By the gods, this is going to end badly, and I am going to do what we should have done years ago when your father got caught. We’re getting out of this place and heading south. We can lose ourselves in Gandras.”

As it turns out, we did not anywhere near that far from home. Batur was indeed the biggest bastard, but that meant he began talking almost as soon as he was arrested, and before that conversation with my mother had even begun, a posse of townsfolk was on its way to ensure my mother did not flee the area.

Batur was nowhere near so clever as he had thought himself to be. His ruse with the hole in the ground and his stories about weight differences between grain and flour had served initially, but he had pressed his luck too far. His hole in the mill floor had been accidentally discovered by the miller one evening when he’d simply come in to collect some tool or other to loan to one of his drinking partners.

The miller had then begun asking questions of his customers that very evening, and Batur’s stories soon surfaced, leading to a few spying sessions, during which the Sausawan was observed to be pouring off grain into his secret hole before beginning the grinding process.

There should hardly be any surprise that, given Maluns’ recent history with millers, Batur was held to trial before anyone could even blink. He was convicted—without the need for my testimony this time—and sentenced to the mines of Pruvykhu. Being a Sausawan, nobody trusted him to join the Voivode’s army currently fighting in Sausawa.

Far more important as it concerns my story was that, as I mentioned already, Batur began to sing the moment he was arrested. He claimed he’d been placed under a spell by a pagan witch. This, of course, inevitably brought our little slice of paradise to the attention of an Inquisitor of the Concord.

So quickly did Batur’s trial progress that he was already declared guilty and waiting to be sent to the mines before an Inquisitor could arrive to oversee matters. But then, I don’t think the Inquisitor would have bothered himself with the theft of grains, not when there were much bigger matters to be addressed.

Chiefly, the question this darling of the Concord wanted answered was how the hell a true convert to the Concord’s doctrines could be so easily led astray?

Batur was still being held in Maluns when the Inquisitor arrived, and he sang a loud song to the bastard, probably in the hopes that a story about being seduced by a pagan druid would see him treated leniently. It wasn’t to be, and the Inquisitor declared that the Sausawan would need to burn for the purging of his soul, else his spirit could never achieve transcendence.

More importantly, of course, this all meant that my mother finally came under the scrutiny of the Concord for her lifelong association with the Old Faith.

(Next Chapter)

My mother was a druid and an herbalist, which meant she knew a great many ways to prevent a variety of maladies, and ways to cure others. In short, though my mother was a whore, she knew how to save herself the trouble of falling pregnant to one of her clients. She had herbs and roots and teas that could close the womb of a woman or cause a woman to purge her unborn child.

I knew this because, despite the shift in my mother’s clientele from female to male, she still saw some customers who were in need of healing rather than screwing. Many of these customers were young women who were unmarried and cavorting with some of the young bastards of Maluns, and were thus in need of some womb-closing remedies lest they fall pregnant and be run out of town for shame. Maluns was still a fairly conservative place in those days, despite being the crap bucket of the world.

Long story short, I know for a fact that my mother was taking her own medicines, for I sometimes watched her service those young women and noted that my mother took the same herbal teas herself that she sold to those poor wretches.

However, by some cruel trick of fate, and despite my mother’s best efforts to prevent it, she fell pregnant almost two years after my father had been sent off to war. I remember that day clearly:

“Rion, get your arse in here now, boy!”

I was outside chopping wood for my mother’s continuously burning fire that kept her witch’s kettle bubbling in the hopes that some customer in need of a brew would happen by. I set down the hatchet, knowing that I was about to be blamed for something that I could not possibly have been the cause of. Batur’s lessons in sensing danger had taught me to recognize my mother’s various shrieks, and the pitch of her voice was noticeably different when she planned to apportion blame unfairly as opposed to when I was fully deserving of her ire.

With a sigh, I entered our forest hut.

“What the hell took you so long to obey, you little turd?” she asked. “When I call, you’d better gods-damned hop to an answer.”

“Yes, mother,” I said with practiced alacrity, though if my mother had any skill at reading my tones, she’d know I was really thinking Get on with you, you crazy old bitch!

“I am late with my woman’s issue,” she said. “I should have been bleeding days ago, but my piping’s as dry as your head is empty of brains. Come here when I’m talking to you.”

I approached with tired apprehension. I knew what was coming. I was about to have the crap beaten out of me so my mother could begin to feel better about her own failings. She grabbed my arm as I came in range and pulled me down until we were nose-to-nose with one another.

“I have been servicing pricks because I have my own little prick to feed. How many times have I told you that I could have gone anywhere if it weren’t for you? Now look at what’s happened!” She slapped me across the face, a stinging blow that I was almost instantly numb to as my mind shut itself against the latent pain of a beating.

“I’m pregnant, you gods-damned wastrel, and the gods only know how it happened. You having been cocking up on your herb gathering, haven’t you?”

Her glare was just comical enough for me to be incapable of resisting a chuckle, and this earned me a fist to the side of my head. We both knew that my mother would never entrust the collection of such delicate ingredients to her idiot son. Not when her own womb was being placed on the line day after day.

“I swear by the seven gods that if you weren’t my own flesh and blood, I’d have poisoned your worthless arse years ago. Why I don’t do it now, gods only know. But you are going to start pulling your weight properly around here, do you hear me, Rion? It’s your fault I’ve been in this business, and now that I am going to be unable to service my clients, you are going have to start earning your keep properly.” She shook her head forlornly. “Gods, but the young bitches of this town will never trust my teas again. Not after this.”

She added another few thwacks to the side of my head for good measure before letting me scramble away from her. She rattled off a list of supplies that I would need to fetch, some from the forest, some from the town. “I’m going to get rid of this curse before anyone finds out about it, if it costs me a month lying abed puking my guts out.”

I fled from the hut but did not go straight to town. I was nine, and that just about old enough for me to know what really caused babies— and it was slightly more complicated than little pricks like me in need of feeding! I went straight to Batur in the mill.

“Whoa! Little Rion,” he cried upon seeing me burst in through the door, out of breath and near to collapsing on shaky legs. The red marks on my face must have been clearly visible to him too, despite the relative low light inside the mill. “What is the matter that you burst in on Batur so unexpectedly?”

“My mother is pregnant,” I declared without preamble.

The Sausawan threw his head back and laughed his characteristic laugh, the special one reserved for when I said something without thinking, the one that he saved for moments of triumph. “You have not yet learned to tame your tongue, little Rion, and that was far short of the standard of cleverness required to prevent me understanding what the hell you are saying.” Then, he laughed again. “By God’s seven faces, but I knew my Sausawan seed would be too strong for witches potions. You Samyein lot are weak in the loins, but we of the south—well, let me say only that the mightiest of stallions fall before us in reverence.”

“I don’t understand, Batur,” I said.

“Of course not,” he replied. “Now, take this coin and go buy some bread and whatever cuts of meat you can get from the butcher—don’t let him cheat you! You threaten the bastard with old Batur if he tries to. I have to go stop your mother poisoning my offspring. Your Samyein women are as weak as your men, but she has the spirit to survive the birth of my child, else I would not have chosen her.”

He dashed out of the mill laughing again, leaving his work half-finished and the millstone untended. I hovered indecisively between going to town or finishing the grinding—being, by this time, somewhat familiar with the machinery after long days of observation. Eventually, I decided in favor of my stomach, leaving one of the mill’s customers in a most dissatisfied state when she returned later to collect her flour.

In the fullness of time, my mother gave birth to a baby girl. Batur successfully convinced her to not kill the fetus, as he believed completely that the child must be his. I’m not sure whether that was due to the delusion that he was now my mother’s only client, or whether it was due to the delusion that his seed was stronger than any Samyein’s, but I’m not sure it really matters. At the end of the day, I had to endure nine months of torture at the hands of my mother because of the cock up.

My sister was pale of skin, like my mother, with the characteristic black hair of the Samyein people. Her facial features, however, even in their infantile form, were clearly the result of that stallion-humbling seed of Batur the Sausawan. The girl was simultaneously better looking and even more ugly than her father. Curious, but the damned truth, I’ll tell you.

In short, there was no doubt as to my sister’s heritage, and because of this, my mother named her Senka, which means shadow.

The other result of my half-sister’s birth was that Batur somehow managed to convince my mother to cease her whorish operation and to see only female clients in need of healing or one of her pregnancy herbs. My mother consented only after a lengthy argument, during which Batur convinced her that he could provide the necessary food to support her, the girl, and the idiot son who was the root cause of all her misery. I was present for much of that discussion, and I remember that my mother feared—more than once—that Batur would go the way of my father for what he was doing at the mill.

“No, my Ruzhena,” he always said with great confidence. “That shall not happen. I am too damned clever for the bastards to catch. Your Kostya was a moron compared to me. Ask your son, who is taking lessons in my brilliance.”

“Hmm,” my mother would reply. “Either you are a poor teacher or there is little brilliance in your lessons.”

But, in the end, she was persuaded, and Batur remained my mother’s sole client of that nature, and we did indeed eat well enough in the aftermath of Senka’s birth.

My sister was healthy from the day she was born until the last day that I saw her, never once succumbing to the ailments that plague infants so commonly. Batur credited his powerful Sausawan seed for this blessing, and my mother claimed it was the milk of her breasts, filled with every nourishing herb and tea she could take while nursing Senka. The little girl was walking by eight months, muttering words not long after, and capable of a semi-decent conversation by the time she was two. She was observant, also.

One day, during the wheat harvest, when the mill was usually exceptionally busy and Batur’s visits a rare thing (such that the Sausawan could go upwards of ten days before making an appearance), my sister finally made the observation that my mother and I had been expecting for some time already.

After one of his lengthy absences, Batur came to our forest hut, pushed open the door and stood on the threshold with the setting sun silhouetting him from behind.

“Senka,” he called into the hut, “papa has returned and he has gift for his strong little girl!”

At first, my sister drew forward towards the sound of his voice, but as he stepped into the hut to meet her, my mother’s ever-burning pit fire lit up his face, and in the gathering dark it seemed as though his black skin was alight with a fire of its own.

Senka screamed then and ran for the comfort of my mother’s arms. “It is a demon, mama,” she cried with the genuine terror of a two-year-old.

Batur, far from being offended, laughed heartily. “Many have said so in the past, little Senka,” he said. “But I am your father indeed.”

Senka pulled away from my mother and studied Ruzhena’s face for a few moments. Batur advanced into the full light of the fire, and his visage lost the hellish look it had had in that odd moment when transitioning from the light of the fading sun to the firelight. Senka let go her panicked grasp of our mother’s clothes but did not approach Batur just yet. Instead, she crossed the hut slowly, cautiously, until she came to stand next to me.

Keeping a wary eye on the Sausawan—who continued to chuckle at his daughter’s antics—she ran her eyes up and down my face and arms. She held out her own arm, placing the skin next to mine.

Then, that examination made, she crossed the distance to Batur. She began to rub at his face and his arms, her little face screwing up tightly in confusion. Eventually, she said, “You are dirty, papa, but I can’t clean you.”

At this, the Sausawan threw his head back and guffawed. “That I should live to be insulted by my own daughter,” he said. Senka backed away slowly at his sudden outburst, which made him laugh all the more.

Batur looked my way. “By this you see, little Rion, that all people fear those who look different. Learn the lesson well, and you may use it to your advantage later in life.”

And then he swept my sister up into his arms, and her fear was lost amidst playful giggles.

(Next Chapter)

Batur’s arms were a comfort to my aching body, and the gentle rock of his gait calmed me in a way I had never known. I cannot remember a time when either of my parents ever soothed me, and the big foreigner opened me to a world that I did not know existed.

“Little Rion,” he said to me as he ambled towards my mother’s home, “you realize that your mother calls you an idiot with good reason? Look at the forest around you. Even the smallest of her creatures knows when it is in danger. A man should also be aware of when he is in danger, if he doesn’t want to have his skull bashed in by the bigger and faster of his race.”

I couldn’t move and I could barely think—let alone talk—but I could give the man a meaningful stare. No one had ever let on that there was such a thing as wisdom to be found in the world, and Batur’s calm, reassuring voice was like the voice of one of the gods to me. I pled with him to tell me more, to teach me the wisdom that had seen him survive, despite being made captive in the Concord’s holy wars—this was misconception on my part, as he actually converted and voluntarily joined the invaders of his homeland.

The big Sausawan laughed, and with my head against his breast, it sounded like the deep rumble of far-off thunder. “We are outsiders, you and me. We are the ants little children chase after to stomp on. We are the beggars wealthy merchants piss on. We are the mice cats play with before the kill. But this is not something we must wear with shame. We will always be targets for the ignorant and the small-minded, you and me, but even the frail creatures of this world have their defenses. Do you understand what I am telling you, little Rion?”

I blinked a few times to tell him I did, and he continued, “Your mother is going to be in a hell of a state when she sees you, and you will not be going far from home in the next few days, but when you are able to, you must come see me at the mill. My master leaves me to do the work most days as he goes off to drink his retirement pay away in the town. Come, and I will teach you how to save yourself an arse-kicking like you took today.”

He winked playfully at me and I managed to force a smile to my bleeding lips. Batur looked up suddenly, and said, “Ah, Ruzhena, here is your boy. He is not in a good way.”

“What the hell did the little bastard do to himself this time?” she asked, not the smallest trace of sympathy to be found in her voice. “Forgot the vegetables too, I see.”

“You are too hard on him,” Batur said. “The boy was beaten by the children of Maluns.”

“Probably provoked them to it. Fool doesn’t know when to shut his mouth.”

Batur continued to defend me, though he had no reason to suppose my mother was wrong, and—as I have already related—she was, in fact, quite right that I’d been incapable of keeping my trap shut. Still, I don’t think I’d have escaped a beating that day at any rate, as the bastards were laying in wait for me when I emerged from the woods.

“And what do you expect me to do for you?” my mother asked, her face looming above mine. “Healing you is going to cost a crap load of money that I don’t have, and time gathering herbs and roots that will see me lose even more money.”

“You are too hard on him,” Batur said again. “The boy cannot help that he is a mess. Tell me what you need. I will get it.”

I saw my mother look up sharply at the Sausawan, and I managed to turn my neck enough to examine him as well. I’m not sure who was more surprised by his offer: my mother or me, for surely neither of us would ever have expected a whore’s customer—even a regular one who was somewhat sweet on my mother—to offer his time to care for her offspring.

At length, my mother muttered, “No. I have what I need. Bring him into the home.”

“A man should always be truthful,” Batur intoned as he carried me indoors. “A man should always say what he means and be true.” I got the sense that he was only half speaking to me, and my mother can’t have missed the way he seemed to be talking about himself and what he’d just offered to do for her, setting it in contrast to her blatant lie of moments before.

But he looked down at me as he laid me onto a straw pallet near the fire pit where my mother had a small flame going and water already heating to a boil in preparation for the stew she was supposed to be making. “Little Rion, you did not provoke those boys and girls to beat you, did you?”

I worked my mouth, trying to produce saliva and give the man the audible response I believed he deserved. “No, Ban,” I said respectfully. “They were waiting for me already.”

Batur threw back his head and laughed at my response. “By Mealde’s balls, but you really do have a mouth on you. That was clever, and near death as you are!”

I flicked my eyes towards my mother and saw her glaring at me.

“I do believe you, though,” Batur said. “But do not call me ban. I am a servant. If I were not in a good mood, I would think you were trying to be smart with me. Another lesson for you: do not address a man above his station. You will seem an idiot for it, and the man will take it as an insult and a mockery. But do not address a man below his station. That is an even worse insult, and you will not live long enough afterwards to atone for your mistake.”

He rose to his feet, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. “Ban,” he muttered. “I am a customer in a whore’s home, and he calls me ban.”

Inspired by his lessons, I cleared my throat. To my mother, I said, “The children who beat me said you are a whore, mother.”

She moved so quickly that my injured body could not respond before she was at my throat, ready to throttle me. “You do not repeat such things!” she screamed.

Batur’s hands appeared on her shoulders, pulling her away. “Let him be.”

“No son should call his mother a whore,” she said.

Batur laughed again. “But you are a whore, Ruzhena. Did you not listen to what I was saying just now? Little Rion,” he said, turning his face down to look at me, “another lesson: be wary of womankind. Where a man must be honest, it is the practice of woman to cover up her lies and lead us astray.”

“Bastard!” my mother cried, beating at Batur’s broad chest. The Sausawan laughed good-naturedly as he caught her hands and held her close.

“I speak the truth, but not in insult,” he said. “You Samyein are a touchy lot.” He looked down at me again. “I must go now, for you will need your rest and your mother time to practice her healing arts on you. But remember that you must come visit me when you are better, and I will teach you to look after yourself, little Rion.”

I would rather have preferred him to stay, as my mother set about searing my wounds with stinging ointments and forcing foul-tasting teas down my throat. It was not a pleasant few days after that, as my mother was unable to service her regular clients because I could not be moved from my pallet at the fireside.

And my mother never let me forget what a sacrifice she was making by keeping such a worthless turd as I alive when she’d have been better off alone. Then, at least, she could have found another moron like my father to marry. Now, she was nothing but a cast off, and—thanks to my idiocy in drawing attention to myself—I now knew the only secret my mother had hoped to keep from me, and so the last of her dignity had been utterly and irrevocably stripped away.

It took about ten days before I was well enough to get up and walk the distance to meet Batur at the mill. He’d come to check on me several times since he’d brought me home to my mother, and on each of those occasions he stayed through the night. He was the only one of my mother’s clients that she would permit in her hut while I was recuperating, which signaled, as much as anything, Batur’s changing status. I can’t say whether it was the fact that he’d shown an interest in me, or whether it was his foreignness, insistence, or money, but my mother always seemed happy to have him around.

When I was able to make a visit to the mill, Batur brought me inside, sat me down on a chair, and began teaching me his Sausawan wisdom almost at once. I think he was simply glad to have a pupil—and from what I’ve learnt of the Sausawan people since, I know that every one of them fancies himself a teacher worthy of an entire school of disciples.

“Have you ever worked in here before with your father?” he asked me.

“I did not work, Batur,” I replied, using his first name at his insistence, “but I watched him sometimes. He did not like me around, so I did not come in here often.”

“Probably because you ask too many stupid questions and let your mouth get you into trouble,” he said. He was a strange man. I have never known one to be able to insult you so entirely in such a way that you actually feel complimented. Perhaps that is part of his Sausawan charm, but I later realized that, despite my fond memories of him, Batur was really just as much of a bastard as my father had been. His only failing was in thinking he could teach me to be the same sort of bastard he was.

“Well, I am no miller,” he said, continuing, “but I know how to act like I know what I am doing. In this way, my master keeps me on, his customers are satisfied, and the world continues as it ever has, with Batur skimming some of the cream off the top.”

“My father used to say similar sorts of things,” I said, “though he was really a miller. He used to have these two barrels, though. One had a grey powder, and the other contained the grain he was stealing from the people of Maluns, to be replaced with the powder before grinding.”

Batur looked at me blankly for several long moments as I explained the intricacies of the system. Slowly, his lips curled upward and he began to laugh. “I am glad, for your sake, that your brain stops functioning most of the time when you are in friendly company. But that is a clever trick of your father’s. I could not get away with it, but damned if I won’t try something like it. You remember what I told you the other day, the day you were beaten, about being smart when danger is near?”

I nodded. “An outsider must be wary, you said.”

“I did. But there is another lesson you must learn, and that is how to judge when something is a secret and when something can be shared with others; what things you can be proud to speak of, and what things you must keep to yourself. Think about the birds of the forest. You have lived in the woods a long time now, so you will know what I mean. When there is no danger, the birds sing, do they not? And what happens when a weasel, or a wolf, or some other predator is close by?”

“The birds go quiet,” I said, “though my mother’s ways keep the wild animals far from home.”

“Ai!” he exclaimed. “But this is what I am talking about, little Rion. You must stop talking before you say something you shouldn’t. I know what sort of woman your mother is, but there are others who would not like to hear it. Now, as I was saying, the birds go quiet, and that is because if they keep chirping, they draw attention to themselves.”

“So I am like a bird?” I asked.

“That is so,” he replied. “And so you must think like a little bird. When danger is close by, you must shut the hell up and hold your tongue not matter how hard it rattles against the inside of your teeth to be let out.”

“And how do I know when danger is near?”

“It is always near in this world,” Batur said matter-of-factly. “Always.”

“That means I should always be quiet,” I gasped. “But that’s impossible.”

“Which is why you must practice. Shut your trap, and you will never say something you don’t want another person to know.”

“Is there no other way?” I asked, feeling deflated and all-too-aware of the impossibility of the task he’d laid before me.

“Well, there is one,” he said, “but you are too young to use it well.”

“What is it?” I was pleading now, clutching at the length of straw he was offering too me, tantalizing my curiosity, the malicious bastard.

“You can be so clever that even you don’t understand what the hell you are saying,” he replied.

I grinned. “I like that option better.”

“Of course you do, which is why it is not for you. Trust me, little Rion, if you think you can be that clever, then before you die you will be sitting in a chair, hands bound, answering questions from some ugly-arsed Inquisitor who’s determined to prove you are really an idiot, and you will simply talk yourself deeper into a hole.”

“Oh, please!” I cried with passionate disbelief. “It’ll never happen.”

(Next Chapter)

I turn now to my mother. My father was gone, and I suppose that left me even more vulnerable than I already was. In truth, having a father had benefitted me little, but I soon found that not having one benefitted me even less.

I have mentioned in passing already that my mother was involved with the old religion. The truth is that she was a druid, a priestess of the old gods that the Concord of Saint Zoran stole and forced to fit the seven faces of their nameless One. For the sake of posterity, and because the Inquisitors will soon wipe out all trace of the druids and reduce their name to the ranks of legend, let me talk of what little I know concerning their practices.

In my years of wandering, I had the chance to meet many druids. My mother was the first, and her beliefs still form a vital part of my person. They are why, I suppose, I have so little respect for the Concord. They are why, I suppose also, I am here telling you all of this.

The druids are essentially priests of nature. Before our ancestors worshiped the old gods, they worshiped the very stuff of the world around us, and their studies produced many curious effects. For one, those studies led our people to a knowledge of the seven gods—and that knowledge spawned Zoran, a man originally of Samye, and his heres—uh—doctrines of the seven-faced God.

My mother was also a healer, as I have mentioned, and this was a result of her long years of schooling in the druidic arts. There was, in truth, little magic in her healing other than knowledge, which is anathema to the Concord, and no person in Maluns ever felt the touch of my mother’s deeper skills, so far as I know.

But the druids did have magic. It was born—or is, for no doubt it is still practiced in remote areas where the Concord has yet to completely stamp it out—of nature, and this is my best guess as to why the Inquisitors and Concord clerics hate it so much. In a world where the state religion teaches we must transcend the natural realm, the druids are a direct threat, choosing to focus their energy on the study and harmony of nature, rather than on surpassing it, freeing the soul of the body to which it is bound.

When I was a boy, I would often find my mother seated quietly in our home. She would be utterly unresponsive to anything I did or said—but believe me I would catch hell for it later. That was the druid’s trance, the means by which the old priests would empty themselves of themselves and fill their minds with the world around them. It is a skill I acquired after long years of practice (though I have never mastered it), but one that I have never taken further to its proper conclusion.

For the reason one uses the trance is not merely to relax or to clear the mind of distraction; it is to hear the heartbeat of the earth.

This is where the magic of the druids lies: in becoming one with the world around them, and through that in manipulating the very essence of life and matter. The practice of druidic magic is essentially the worship of the natural world, and when that is achieved, the druids are capable of some rather powerful things. I never saw my mother practice true druidic magic, though I saw many things that might have been the effects of her knowledge.

But I must now move on quickly to the aftermath of my father’s trial and how it changed my mother—and me through her.

My mother quickly fell upon hard times after my father’s disgrace. Within a week of his conviction, he was packed up and sent off to war in the service of Voivode Akilina, as it has never been the Concord’s practice to waste a prisoner—present company not excepted.

We were never the wealthiest of families, as I’ve made clear, and what little my mother and father possessed was quickly sold off to pay the rising debts of maintaining the home they’d lived in all their married life. The mill stood idle for several long weeks, and the people of Maluns were forced to make the ten-mile journey down river to Balunkrants (the closest mill town to ours) to get their grains ground into flour, or to buy their meal from the local merchants, who charged extortionate prices due to the sudden shortages in the town.

I recall that the day of the trial, after my father was found guilty, my mother pulled me home with her hand clasped painfully about my upper arm.

“You little turd-brained moron,” she said to me when we got home. “What the hell possessed you to speak against your father in front of those bastards?”

“They asked me what I’d seen, mama,” I replied, too dim to take her meaning.

“You prick! You’ve ruined everything. Your father may have been a piss-ant of a man, but the fool at least had wits enough to steal food to feed you. Now what the hell am I supposed to do? You think that food grows on trees?”

“The Juris family have apple trees, mama,” I replied. “That’s food, isn’t it?”

My mother hit me, and before I found the floor my face was already red due to the blood gushing from my nose. But I didn’t cry. That was a defining characteristic of my younger years: I had no tears, probably because I knew nothing but misery. If anyone had shown me kindness, I’d probably have cried, thinking they were the ones being cruel.

“Now, you very small bastard, you are going to help me pack up all my things. If one of those sodding Inquisitors decides he needs to pay a visit to the home of the convicted miller, I’m going to have an awful lot of explaining to do. And you will be an orphan. You know what happens to orphans in this world?”

I shook my head, allowing a few drops of fresh blood to spray across the floor.

“Gods, you little moron. Stop that bleeding before the whole floor is covered in your worthless blood! Orphans end up as catamites to wealthy bastards like Ban Hadeon. Do you know what a catamite is?”

“Is it like a cat and a termite mixed?” I asked.

“Idiot boy,” my mother said, before cuffing my ear with the back of her hand. “A catamite is little boy who becomes a rich man’s bitch, and that’s what you’ll be if you don’t help me get this house cleaned up. It’s your fault, after all, that I even have to worry.”

We worked like madmen through the rest of the afternoon and into the night, when my mother made me help her carry off boxes of animal skulls, leaves and herbs, fluid vials, and bead chains. We walked into the woods until my mother felt safe enough to stop and store her druid’s trappings in the hollow of an ancient oak.

She looked down at me, thrust a finger threateningly under my nose, and said, “Let’s get one thing clear, mush-for-brains: you don’t know where the hell we are, and you never went into the woods at night with your mother.”

“But I’m standing right he—”

My head crashed into a nearby tree as my mother backhanded me, and I was seeing stars that were more than just the twinkles of light in the sky overhead. It took me a while to recover and clear my head, but the long and short of the situation was that I immediately forgot everything about the woods.

I was learning.

Ultimately, my mother’s fears proved ungrounded, as the Inquisitor who’d condemned my father moved on rather quickly, leaving behind a miller-less Maluns without any prospect of a replacement to run the mill. As for my mother, by the time news of my father’s death arrived, we were on the point of starvation and were forcibly evicted from our home the moment it became public knowledge that Kostya Maltuns would not, in fact, be returning to his wife and son to take up the mill again. This can’t have been more than three months after my father’s conviction, though I may be wrong by as much as a year.

At any rate, with nowhere to go and with no friends or family in Maluns, my mother was forced to make a hard decision. She led me back out into the woods, to the tree where we had stored all her druid’s equipment weeks previously, and together we set about building a temporary shelter in the forest. It was at that time that I began to realize my mother was more than simply the village healer, as her command over the foliage of the forest floor seemed the equivalent of some kind of telepathic understanding. And never once were we approached by wolves or wild boars either, and the wild flowers and vines never grew inside of the area marked out for our dwelling.

Interestingly, as we became settled in that area of the woods, my mother’s business seemed to pick up again due to the increased privacy of our location, where her clients could come and go without others in Maluns spying them visiting the witch. However, in some ironic twist I could not work out at the time, my mother’s customers quickly went from chiefly female—as they had been before—to chiefly male now. It was not long before we had lumber and nails and tar from her clients to put together a proper shack in the middle of the forest, and the pathway from Maluns to the House of Ruzhena became a relatively well-worn one.

It also did not take long for the mill to become operational again. The new miller was not a local man, however, but a veteran of the wars of Voivode Akilina in the south. He’d earned his retirement and been given the mill of Maluns in Samye as his reward for years of service. I don’t remember the man that much, but I have very clear memories of the servant he brought with him.

Batur was a fellow of Sausawan blood, the nation Akilina was attempting to subdue for the Holy Arzemian Empire. Like the rest of his people, his skin was significantly darker than that of the native Samyein, and his large brow and wide eyes made his face seem simultaneously friendly and inhuman. But he was strong and lithe and a fresh convert to the doctrines of the Concord, and so he received some measure of respect in Maluns, despite being an exotic import that will be remembered in that gods-forsaken place for decades to come.

Batur was taken captive in the same wars that had claimed my father’s life, which was ironic in a way, for the Sausawan soon became one of my mother’s most frequent customers in our forest home. He would often stay for dinner, and sometimes even for the whole night, though what healing he required at the time, I could not figure out.

I did not like him to begin with, though I soon came around when I realized my mother and I had more food to eat whenever he visited. He was strange and foreign, and it was due to him and his frequent visits that I at last came to understand what sort of woman my mother had become. Whenever a client came to our home, my mother found some sort of chore for me to perform that would take me away from the shack. Sometimes it would be to go find some plant or other—she’d taken the time to teach me how to recognize her most commonly used medicinal herbs—and at other times my task would take me into town to purchase supplies.

Always, whenever I visited Maluns, the adults smirked at me, though none of them took the time to explain their sudden humor at my presence.

The children of Maluns, however, were hardly so circumspect about their knowledge.

One day, when Batur was over for a servicing (as my mother called it), I was sent into town to purchase some carrots and potatoes for a stew my mother planned to make from the bit of beef Batur had brought with him as payment.

By this time, my comings and goings from the town had been duly noted—especially that my comings coincided with some man’s goings down the forest path. A group of boys and girls all roughly my own age was waiting for me at the edge of town on that particular day.

“Here comes the whoreson!” one of them shouted gleefully.

“Who are you calling whoreson, bastard?” I called back, not sensing the danger I was in.

“You’re the bastard, whoreson,” said another. “Little Rion doesn’t know who his real daddy is, and neither will the rest of your brother and sisters when your whore mother pops them out.”

“My father died fighting for the Concord, turdface.”

“Your daddy was a crook, and they should have strung him up, like they will your whore mother—after the Inquisitor’s had a go with her.”

I was dense as a boy, but I wasn’t quite an idiot. I soon got the idea that their remarks were actually more literal than figurative. By that time, however, I’d been completely surrounded, and the larger boys were closing in on me quickly.

“Yeah, well, you are all a bunch of catamites,” I said, recalling my mother’s distant threats.

Who knows what children really understand at that age, but I understood well enough that the big kids didn’t like being called catamites. I got absolutely pummeled until my face was hardly recognizable and I could no longer walk. None of my bones were broken, but I was left disregarded and with not a few cracked bones.

It was only the coming of Batur to look for me that spared me further humiliation. The big Sausawan chased off the few kids still interested in planting kicks in my side when the larger boys had gone on to worse mischief elsewhere.

“Your mother is worried, and you look like crap raked over old coals,” he said as he picked me up in his arms.

I mentioned before that I did not like him at first. From that day on, Batur and I became great friends.

(Next Chapter)

I grew up in Maluns without brother or sister. I was the lonely child of a lonely family, for despite being the miller and, therefore, a relatively important member of that small society, my father was very much outcast for the sake of my mother, whose suspect religious affiliations afforded our family few favors with those who wished to be seen as friends of the Concord.

I recall from those early days of my life that our home was not a happy one. My mother never forgave me for not being a daughter, and my father had little patience for or tolerance of young children and their insistent questions and mischief.

But, most of all, my parents slowly grew to despise one another. My father blamed my mother for his continual poverty and ostracism. My mother, by contrast, belittled my father for not standing up to the hypocritical townsfolk who were so willing to come to her when they were sick or hoping to become pregnant but who shunned the family at other times.

I think, in the end, it was for the best that my parents never produced another child together, and the fault of this lies with my father, who was no doubt emasculated by my mother’s incessant pecking, and had he had more standing in Maluns, I do not doubt that he’d have found occasion to sow his seed elsewhere.

As far as specific memories from that time of my life, I have few of them, though several certainly lead into the final disgrace of my father, and so I will recount them now. I was six or seven at the time, a scrap of a boy whose britches were too big for his legs and whose nose dwelt far too often in the affairs of others. Like my mother, I had taken to the woods surrounding the town, drawn by the trees and the sounds of birds. God’s faces, but I was lucky not to have been eaten by something really nasty, as I often strayed away without adult supervision, and who knows what things lurk in the forests of this world.

At any rate, I have it in my mind that I found my way home, covered in mud and decorated with bits of leaves and twigs that I’d picked up in the woods. I could already hear my parents shouting at each other as I came to the edge of the town, and nobody seemed to care. Their fights were a regular thing, and I was hardly scared of them when they commenced to ripping each other’s throats out.

I entered our home, standing in the doorway unnoticed by parents more concerned with themselves than with what I might hear—or anyone else, for that matter.

“Kostya, you crazy bastard, I saw it with my own eyes.”

By the Saint, but my mother was a beautiful woman when she was angry. I have not seen her these twenty years, but I can still remember the way she seemed to grow in size as her anger rose. She was a slight woman, perhaps not even five feet tall, though she seemed a giant to me—being as often infuriated with me as she was with my father.

Kostya Maltuns, by contrast, was a bear of a man, his chest as wide around as a barrel and his arms as strong as the millstone on which he ground people’s grains. They were as mismatched a pair physically as they were in their personalities, but damned if my mother didn’t make him feel small.

“What do you know, woman? And keep your gods damned voice down, or the whole bloody town will hear.”

“Damn it, Kostya, if you don’t stop this, we’ll have the Inquisition on our arses, never mind the thrice-curst town!” She struck him open-palmed across his face. He only shrank further. “You promised me you wouldn’t risk it anymore.”

“Money’s tight,” he said, his voice whining as his great frame was slowly reduced by my mother’s fierce stare. “Besides, the sodding Inquisition will be far more interested in your witch’s shenanigans than my own activities. I’d shut my mouth tighter than a duck’s backside if I were practicing the forbidden arts.”

“The Inquisition can suck my tits! You are going to stop this, Kostya. I provide nothing but healing for these people. I won’t have our lives ruined by your damned thieving fingers, you hear me?”

There was some grumbling and some more cursing—a vocabulary I picked up early and have put to good practice through the years—and finally my father stormed off to the mill. As he passed me by, too wrapped up in his own lack of manhood to notice me, my mother’s eyes laid hold of me next. Zoran’s balls, but that woman knew how to give a good arse-whipping, let me tell you.

“Rion, what the hell are you doing dragging yourself home in such a state?”

She always called me Rion, despite the fact that Laros is the more common nickname for Ilarion. I think it had something to do with her pathological need to be different, to buck trends.

“Are you a witch, mother?” I remember asking.

“Call me that again, and I will cut out your tongue, son or no son of mine. What that coward of a father of yours says about me is never to be repeated. Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

“Good. Now, come here.”

As I recall it, I was incapable of sitting for a week after she got done with me, and she scrubbed me so hard with her fiercest lye that my tanned Samyein skin looked as white as those of the men from the far north. I don’t think I’ve ever been so clean since, and God curse the shrew if I ever have to be again.

After the passage of a few months, I was in the mill with my father, where he largely ignored me. I often think that if I’d got my hand caught on the grindstone, the old bastard would sooner have laughed and told me to be a man than rush over and pull me free. He cared absolutely nothing for me, and I’ll be damned if I have a fond memory of him in return.

Anyhow, I was watching him, the fight with my mother old history, with the intervening months replete with many more, and I noticed that the bugger kept doing a rather curious thing:

He had a barrel in one corner of the mill from which he would frequently fish cupfuls of light grey powder. Next to that barrel, he kept a second one into which he would frequently pour some of his customers’ grains.

It would happen like this: he’d weigh the bags of grain as his customers brought them in, setting the sacks on a pair of balanced scales and recording the weights in the customer’s presence. Then, when the poor dupe had gone, my father would remove and weigh several cups of the grey stuff from his first barrel, adding it to the side of the scale that carried the measuring weights. Afterwards, he’d pour off some of the grain into his second barrel until the scales evened out again. Then, he’d pour the un-ground grain onto the millstone, along with his grey powder, and grind the meal. The end result was that he never had an unsatisfied customer, as the starting and ending weights were exact, and my father happily kept our family supplied with a steady stream of stolen grains.

Of course, I was too dense at the time to recognize what was going on, but my father was brazen enough to not care that his idiot son was watching. Hell, the old crook even went so far as to tell me what he was doing when I asked.

“I call it the secret tax,” he said. “Fair’s fair, and in this world a man’s got to look after himself, for you can be damned sure, boy, that no one else will—not even your wife, should the gods curse you enough to give you one.”

I recall that, before things went sour, one of his favorite topics was the change that had come upon the Samye Canton in the wake of the conquest by Arzemes, which even then was a good fifty years in the past. Hell, we already had a Czelnik in Gandras, the provisionary march government of Voivode Akilina long moved on to Zalskrai in the south.

“When my father was a boy,” my father said to me, “about your age even, men in this part of the world lived in peace, worshiped the true gods—not this bloody seven-faced mystery of the Concord—and could make ends meet by working an honest trade. Since the Holy Arzemian Empire dragged their sanctimonious arses into our country, however, honest men have found themselves starving, war has replaced peace as the standard way of life, and transcendence is the byword on every damned hypocrite’s lips.

“What you see me doing is taxing those turncoats who think that playing with the Concord will buy them some sort of happiness. Contrary to your mother’s suspicions, I never tax one of her loyal customers. Only those who have hopped into bed with the outlanders pay the secret tax. You understand what I’m saying to you, boy?”

“No, ban,” I replied, ban being a term of respect, though the Concord had taken the title and formalized it, making a class of petty landowners subject to the Empire’s religious government, owing their new masters everything, and therefore a worse bunch of traitorous bastards than even my father could imagine them to be.

“And it’s a damned good thing you don’t,” my father replied.

Well, as it was, it wasn’t a damned good thing after all.

Someone accused my father to the Concord, somehow catching wind of what he was doing secretly in the confines of the village mill. The Concord, who never believed in letting the accused man face his accuser, never publicized who had brought the accusation, though my mother swore that it had been the local Ban, a right bastard named Hadeon, though what evidence she had, I do not know.

Regardless, I recall my father’s trial quite vividly, and not the least because I was a partaker in it.

Emboldened by the prospect of losing everything in his life, my father suddenly transformed into the man my mother never believed him capable of being. This happened in the town center in front of the Concord Inquisitor who was the arm the Empire’s justice in the rural areas, and in the presence of that bastard Ban Hadeon—who remains a bastard by virtue of being a Ban even if he was not a bastard by virtue of screwing my family.

Kostya Maltuns stood there, hands flailing about him like a madman, several hundred townsfolk out to view him, and screamed at anyone who would listen: “You’d think that for an organization dedicated to freeing mankind’s souls from this earth that you’d be a bit less concerned with stealing from folks like me and more concerned with showing me the path to transcendence! What bloody good does this sham of a trial do? Who is he that accuses me? No one, and I’ll tell you why: the Concord are a pack of conniving criminals who would rather see the world subjected to their dictatorship than that same world freed of their sins.”

I can’t believe that my father got that far, which leads me to think he said all of that in the privacy of his home rather than in public, but I do remember the beating he took from the Inquisitor for defaming the Concord publicly, so some of that must have come out at his trial.

It was then—probably to humiliate him further—that I was forced to talk about the things I saw my father do in the mill, and I—being a boy who had not yet acquired the sense of a dung beetle—told them about my father’s two special barrels.

“The secret tax,” I said, as though a schoolmaster instructing a class filled with ignoramuses and the clinically deranged, merely repeating what I’d heard my father say countless times, “is levied against all you pricks who betray the motherland. Any bastard who supports the foreigners is charged, whereas those who remain loyal to Samye’s history and to her gods, find recompense hereafter.”

The Inquisitor was actually quite amused by my colorful language, and I think that this, as much as any service I did in convicting my father of stealing, was the reason why I was left alone, along with my mother, for several more years. Everyone assumed I’d got all that from my father, never dreaming that a woman as small, frail, and withdrawn as my mother was the fountainhead of my childish heresies—and not a few of the choicer words I used on that day.

The long and short of it is that by the time I was eight years old, my father was out of my life, disgraced publicly and given little choice but to join Voivode Akilina in her bid to extend Arzemian hegemony southward, into fresh pagan lands.

But my father proved himself a man of honor in the end. A year after his trial, my mother received word from the front that he had died in battle, carrying the Voivode’s personal standard against the pagans, and that he was personally absolved of his crimes by one of the frontline Inquisitors, whose job it would be to forcibly convert the new lands.

And so, despite being a total and irredeemable bastard in life, my father rests easy having come by transcendence of a sort at his death.

(Next Chapter)

After the passage of a watch, Ilarion was jarred awake by a heavy hand jerking his shoulder.

“Wake up,” said the now-familiar voice of one of the many guards assigned to him over the past three days. “The lady says you must eat this.”

He shoved a scalding hot bowl of soup into Ilarion’s hands, and some of the liquid spilled over the side and into his lap.

“Bloody hell!” Ilarion shouted, his mind coming instantly to full alertness from the pain. “What did you do that for?”

“Just drink your soup, guzi, and be thankful the lady has a reason to keep you alive. Don’t know what the hell she wants myself, but you’ll learn soon enough.”

Ilarion held the bowl gingerly between his fingers and lifted his wrists to the guard. “You’ll have to unbind me if you expect me to eat with any ease.”

“You’re not a child, guzi. Just put the bowl to your lips and slurp. You haven’t stolen enough warrins in your career to pay what it would take to convince me it’s a good idea to unbind you. Now, shut up and eat.”

With a resigned sigh, Ilarion lifted the bowl to his lips and took a tentative sip. The soup was little more than a chicken broth, no sign of meat or vegetables to be seen—or that they’d ever existed in the same pot as the liquid he now drank. His stomach growled with renewed enthusiasm at the prospect that it might actually get something like a meal after nearly four days of imprisonment.

He coughed as the hot broth went down his throat, and he had to wait for the inevitable gag reflex to subside before risking another sip. Slowly, he managed to swallow the contents of his bowl, and his stomach, while still far from satisfied, did not seem quite so pathetically empty as it had before.

He held out the bowl to the guard, who took it and handed it to someone standing behind Ilarion. The guard handed him a wine sack next. “Take a drink. Not too much.”

“My, but the quality of service seems to get better and better at this establishment,” Ilarion noted. “I was promised water, but here I get wine.”

He took a sip.

“My mistake. Still, sour cider’s better than nothing.”

“The Concord ain’t wasting the cost of a cheap wine on the likes of you, guzi,” the guard said. “The cider’s a local drink. Stuff’s cheaper than piss in this part of the world.”

“Quite,” Ilarion said, taking another sip.

When he had done, the guard snatched the sack of cider from him quickly. “No more for now. The lady says that once you’ve kept your promise and started to tell her what she wants to hear, then you can have another few mouthfuls to wet your whistle again and keep your voice going strong.”

“God’s faces,” Ilarion cursed. “When is the bit—”

“Leave us,” Varyna said from the doorway.

“Er—when is the lovely Inquisitor planning to join us?” Ilarion amended himself quickly. “At once, it would seem.”

The guard left the room, carrying the cider away, and Inquisitor Varyna shut the door behind him and strode into view. Ilarion flinched slightly at the scars on the left of her face, then forced a smile to his lips to cover his disgust.

“How did you sleep?” Varyna asked. “Do you feel refreshed?”

“Like you care,” Ilarion replied. “Why don’t you get on with this interrogation? My mind was hardly at its sharpest when we spoke earlier, but I do recall you saying you wanted to hear about my mother. Are we really going through all of this for the sake of a woman I last saw twenty years ago?”

“All this and more, I assure you,” Varyna said. “And you mistake me, again. I have no desire to torture you, Ilarion. I have no desire to starve you or to beat you or to make your life any more miserable than it must already be.”

“A fine way you have of showing it, Inquisitor. Damn, if I had your skill for avoiding starving, torturing, and otherwise pissing off my targets, I’d have grown a head shorter a long time ago. As it is, you still haven’t told me what the hell I’m doing here if not to be tortured for the location of the warrins I stole, which I’ve tried to tell you are no longer in my possession. I could tell you how I broke into the Piliakilnis, if you like.”

“You broke in twice, and no, I do not wish to discuss that.”

“Oh, ho!” Ilarion exclaimed. “You know about the second time? Damn, I thought I’d made it in and out without leaving any sign of my…activities.”

The Inquisitor permitted herself a faint smile. “I know much of what you’ve been up to in recent years. However, that is a matter for the Kaznacs to deal with later,” Varyna said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I have no desire to learn the location of your stolen money or how you danced through the tightest security in Samye Canton. What have I, one on the path to transcendence, to do with things so earthly as mint coins and tomfoolery? You mistake me. I am after other information, and if you are ready to begin—as you promised—divulging, we can begin talking like civilized human beings.”

“How very quaint.” Ilarion held up his bound hands. “How about you start by civilizedly untying me? Give us a little bit of our dignity back.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because we both know that you have a means to counter my best efforts at forcing an escape. I don’t know how you managed to stop me in the Piliakilnis dungeon, but you mistake me for a fool if you think I’d try something so obvious again.”

“Hmm,” Varyna said thoughtfully. “It is true that from what I know of you, fool is the epithet least likely to be attached to your name. Very well. But in exchange for this small token, you will cooperate without further unnecessary comments or time wasting. Tell me what I want to know, sharp and quickly, and we can both of us get on with our lives.”

“You mean, you can get back to hunting down innocent Samyein, while I get toosed into the deepest and darkest of your dungeons to rot for all eternity.”

“That is precisely the sort of comment that will do your situation no good, Ilarion.”

“So sorry,” he replied, hands still upraised. “Won’t do it again. Promise.”

With a sigh, Varyna loosed the knot and stepped back, leaving Ilarion to work the ropes free of his wrists. His skin had been rubbed raw after four days bound, and he took a few moments to work the circulation of his blood back into his hands, his fingers tingling as he did so.

The Inquisitor watched him silently all the while, and when he finally looked up, she raised her left eyebrow, accentuating the deadness of the right side of her face. “All better?” she asked. “Good. Now, this is what I want from you, why you are here: I am part of a commission whose task it is to study the minds of the criminal element. There are other Inquisitors like myself who are scouring the far corners of the Empire in search of the famous among thieves, murderers, whoremongers, seditionists, and so on. We want to know what it is that makes a man forsake the light of the Concord and turn to a life of crime—especially when that crime brings him or her into direct conflict with our quest to lead the world to transcendence over the flesh.”

“I can tell you easily enough the reason why so many people in this world hate you lot. You’re the right mixture of bees and ass-turds.”

Varyna smiled thinly, her lips drawing mirthlessly outward. “Are you quite done being juvenile? You fail to recognize what a serious matter this is. With this information, the Inquisition can act more efficiently in tracking down the criminal element that would undermine Saint Zoran’s message and the Concord’s mission to bring transcendence to all humanity. By divulging this information, you will be doing a service to the world, and in the process going some way to atoning for your many sins.”

“It is a tempting thing, to be sure,” Ilarion said.

“And let me remind you,” Varyna continued, ignoring his comment, “that precisely one watch ago, you swore on your mother to tell me everything I wanted to know. The Concord will not be ungracious to you for your service. You will find yourself absolved of many sins in the process, and your path to transcendence significantly shortened.”

She rubbed her hands together eagerly and moved to take her seat behind the desk. “Now, let me go over a few more things: Firstly, leave nothing out that you can remember. I want to hear it all, everything that happened to you from the time you were born until the time you first engaged yourself to steal from the Concord. Secondly, the longer you keep talking to me, the longer I keep supplying you with food and drink. Thirdly, remember that this is for posterity, so please, be honest.”

The Inquisitor opened the blank book that had been sitting on the desk for days. Ilarion watched as she made all her motions with a great deal of ceremony, opening her jar of ink as though the stuff were an expensive incense transported across the expanse of the pagan Sausawa lands to the south. In dipped the end of her quill, her movements precise and oddly reverential.

“You really do believe this to be some sort of holy calling, don’t you?” Ilarion asked.

“All life is either sacred or profane,” Varyna replied, looking up. “There is no middle ground. Men like you live in the natural world, and that is why you travel further and further away from transcending this earth and finding the release of your soul. We who recognize the primacy of the spirit over the body, however, know that it is only in treating all acts as religious acts, and thereby letting the spirit guide, that we will find the right path that Saint Zoran laid down before us.”

“And you see no other means of achieving happiness in life?”

“None. This life is a fleeting shadow, a mist, an illusion even. Now, you’d best get on with the illusion that has been your own life. My pen sits poised. You have tried my patience long enough.”

Ilarion sighed. “What do you want to know? Where do I begin?”

“At the beginning. With your name.”

“And you can write that fast?”

“Don’t worry about me. I am no novice, and we have shorthand for this sort of thing. Talk at your usual pace, and I will keep up well enough.”

Ilarion nodded.

“The first thing you should probably know about me, then, is that I am called Ilarion iz Balundan. I am the son of Kostya Maltun and Ruzhena, his wife, of the town of Maluns, some fifty miles up the Balundan River from Gandras. I was actually born on the river itself, and that is how I got my name.

“It happened like this: Maluns, as you can no doubt tell by its name, is a mill town. It’s not a very big place, or wasn’t when I was young, but as I haven’t been back in nearly two decades, I can’t say for certain what that crap bucket is like now. But in those days, it was a small place, maybe a thousand souls to it, if I’m being generous.

“So it was a mill town, and my father, Kostya, was the miller. He didn’t own the place. He was far too poor for that, and besides, there’s precious little in this world that the Concord hasn’t got its fingers in. The Concord owned the mill of Maluns, as it owned just about every building in the place that had a roof over the top of it, and this was a result of the conquest. I hardly need to tell you that when the Concord comes in, its Inquisitors come in also and confiscate everything in the name of God’s seven faces. Well, Maluns was no different.”

“Get on with it, Ilarion.”

“What? No room for bashing the Concord? I thought you wanted the truth. Posterity and all that.”

“Just tell me how you were born.”

“Don’t rush the story, princess. Now, as I was saying, Maluns was a mill town, my father the miller. When he married my mother, I’m not sure he was fully aware of the sort of woman she was, but I’m convinced her history had something to do with the way things turned out that day, on the thirteenth of the month Lapkrutz—that’s somewhere in the month Ainmin on the liturgical calendar for those of you who are challenged at such things—in the Year of the Saint three hundred and nineteen.

“My father rented a home adjacent to the mill, of course, and it was there that my mother spent most of her time, there and in the surrounding forests, though I shall tell more on that later. But I heard it from her that when she fell pregnant, she began—according to old practices—to immerse herself in the river to help ease the weight of me on her back. I was a large bellyache, it appears.”

“A descriptor that continues to suit you well.”

“A compliment, Inquisitor? From you? God’s faces, but you really do have a soft spot for me after all. Anyhow, the mill was built out over the water so that the river could drive the wheel, and my mother began to join my father at his work on a regular basis, as it provided an easy and convenient means of getting into the river without being swept downstream.

“Well, one night when she was there, she went into labor. My mother had…connections with the druids of the old religion, which explains why she would be hovering over the waters of the river at that time of night. I shall speak more on her affiliations soon, but for now it is worth it to say that I was indeed born on the River Balundan, and that is how I got my name and why, I suppose, I am such a slippery character these days.”

“Very clever.”

“Are you getting all this down, Inquisitor? This is good stuff, sure to give you all sorts of insights into my devious criminal mind. Just take it from me: never trust a man born in a mill…or over water…or anywhere they hold a grudge against Arzemes.”

(Next Chapter)

It was to be three days later when Ilarion finally broke his silence, as Inquisitor Varyna had promised he would. It happened like this:

After Varyna left, she sent in two soldiers and a Kaznac to keep watch over him with strict orders not to allow the prisoner even a moment’s sleep. The Kaznac seated himself behind the desk, propped open a book of his own, and began to read. The two soldiers began their watch by pacing about the room, as though they truly believed this to be the most important duty of their lives.

“Who did you three piss off that you got assigned to babysit me?” Ilarion asked.

None of the men answered. He tried again, but he was rebuffed repeatedly and soon got the message that they were under instructions not to talk to him at all either.

With a sigh, Ilarion closed his eyes deliberately, counting the breaths before someone responded. He did not get so far as two before one of the guards slapped him.

“None of that,” the burly man said. He eyed Ilarion narrowly for a moment, nodded, and then resumed his pacing. A glance at the others revealed they had tensed the instant Ilarion shut his eyes.

Hmm, he thought. I wonder if they’ll be so vigilant after the passage of a watch.

Time dragged on, and several more attempts to engage the three men in conversation passed as unsuccessfully as the first. Every time he tried to shut his eyes for longer than it took him to blink, he was also rewarded with yet another painful slap.

And so he tried to enter the trance with his eyes open. He’d never before attempted such a thing; he’d never had reason to. But he knew it was a difficult skill to master, and one he was not sure he could succeed at quickly. Still, he had time aplenty, and the trance would be his best chance of survival and escape.

At first, as he began to relax his muscles and his mind, none of his guards seemed to notice. He fought desperately to keep his eyes open as his mind receded further and further away from his senses. He did not know how long it took, but he felt that he was just beginning to reach the edges of that mental state he sought when his eyes began ringing and the nerves in his cheeks lit up like fire.

“By the Saint, that was close,” said the Kaznac.

Ilarion shook his head warily, trying to refocus his eyes. Being struck when his mind had receded was never pleasant—his morning’s beating from Varyna was reminder enough of that—but a blow to the head tended to be far worse than one to any other part of his body.

“God’s faces, but how does he do that?” asked one of the guards.

“Pagan druidic heresy,” the Kaznac said. “This won’t do. Leaving him to sit there will mean we have to constantly watch him for the first sign that his breathing changes.”

“We could entertain him.”

“This is a prison, you dolt, not a bloody tavern.”

“You think of something, then. Go on.”

Their voices rattled around inside Ilarion’s head for several long moments, echoing and making his recovery all the more difficult.

“Fine,” the Kaznac said at last, fairly shouting the word at the others. “Get your cards out.”

Ilarion had mostly recovered when he was hoisted to his feet and dropped unceremoniously to the floor. His hands were still bound in front of him, and so he could not use them to help break his fall. He scraped his shoulder against the stones and cursed loudly. “What the hell is wrong with you people?” he asked. “Varyna won’t be pleased if she finds you’ve turned to roughing me up.”

“On the contrary,” said the Kaznac, “she will be more than pleased that we’ve managed to keep you from trying to escape. Now, shut up. We aren’t going to beat you. We’re going to play cards.”

Ilarion furrowed his brow. “Cards? What the hell kind of torture is that?”

“Only the worst sort, I can assure you,” the Kaznac replied accentuating his remark with a heavy sigh. “What’s the game?” he asked of the others.

“Three Pegs?” said the big one.

“Right, you would choose that. I know you’re a bloody cheat,” said the other.

“I wanna see if he’s as good as they say,” he replied.

The three men looked at Ilarion, sprawled on the floor. “He’ll need his hands unbound for that,” the Kaznac said worriedly.

“Not if he’s really that good,” said the guard who’d requested Three Pegs. He held up a deck of cards wrapped in a leather cloth and tossed it down onto Ilarion’s chest. “You know Three Pegs?”

Ilarion glanced down at the cards and nodded slowly.

“Good. Then deal.”

“And not a bloody word from you,” the Kaznac said as the three men seated themselves in the floor around Ilarion. “You can deal and you can play, but if you open your mouth, Kornel here will brain you. Probably the best way to keep you silent as it is. You savvy?”

Ilarion forced himself into a sitting position and nodded slowly again. Kornel, the one who had supplied the cards, said, “Use all the tricks you like, guzi, and may the best cheat win.” He flashed Ilarion a toothy grin, which the thief did not return.

Instead, he took up the cards between his bound hands and slipped them from the leather wrap. As his guards watched, he began to shuffle them, a simple riffle at first, but he soon began to work more elaborate tricks as he sensed his audience grow mesmerized with his finger work. Twice he cut the sixty-card deck with a single hand, palming a card away and bringing the deck around the backside of his wrist as he did so. He was not wearing much clothing that would serve to hide cards, so he made his pant legs work overtime as he continued to stow cards on his person, reducing the sixty-card deck to fifty-four, just enough that it would escape notice by anyone save the most observant.

And then he began to deal, but Kornel clapped a hand down on his wrists, wrenching the cards away from him. The other two looked on quizzically as he did a quick count of them. He began to chuckle.

“Bastard stole six cards amid all that,” he said, “and I’d wager a month’s salary that they are all Pegs or Named. Come on, guzi, hand them back.”

“Six,” Ilarion heard the Kaznac mutter with awe as he produced the requested cards, five from his pants and one from his left palm.

True enough, too, they were the very cards Kornel had claimed they would be.

“And that is why you three will be relieved of your duties at once.”

Inquisitor Varyna’s voice crashed over them, though she sounded more amused to Ilarion’s ears than anything. The Kaznac and two soldiers leapt to their feet, chagrinned.

“Your grace,” the official said, “we were trying to keep him awake. He tried several times to enter that trance you warned us of. We just thought that occupying him another way would be better for keeping him from it.”

“Hmm,” the Inquisitor said. “A novel idea, to be sure, but utterly against the best practices of the Concord when it comes to the interrogation of her enemies. I clearly cannot trust you men to hold your nerves against this one, wherefore I must let you go. Set him back in his seat before you leave.”

Ilarion was dumped back on the hard chair, and Varyna bent down to look in his eyes. “You no doubt think yourself very clever, Ilarion, but I will not be escaped so easily. From now on, you will receive one blow to the face or gut for every count of one hundred. Beginning immediately.”

The woman began to count as two more guards and another Kaznac entered the room to take up their watch of the prisoner.

“…ninety-eight…ninety-nine…one hundred.”

Varyna slapped him hard across the face, the blow snapping his head back and making his ears ring. “Continue,” she said to the guards as she left the room.

And so they did. The story of the ill-fated card game spread throughout the Augandwars, and every guard that was sent in to keep watch over Ilarion did so with the fear that he would receive the lady’s utmost displeasure should he be caught in such a compromising position again.

For his part, Ilarion received some four thousand minor blows to various parts of his body at a steady rate over the next three days. His mouth grew drier and drier as he was denied water to slake his thirst, and after a single painful and pitifully small piss, his bladder shriveled up and his body attempted to reserve as much fluid as possible. Before the first watch of the first night began, his stomach was growling noisily, but though he was denied food, the Kaznac on duty at that time ordered a meal for himself and the guards brought in to heighten the torment.

And so it continued, Varyna checking in every two or three watches to hear whether there was any change. Ilarion, unable to enter the trance that would preserve his energy and offer some hope of escape, grew weaker and weaker, his resolution failing rapidly.

Then came a time, on the morning of his third day in the Augandwars, when he could take no more of it.

“…seventy-seven…seventy-eight…seven—”

“By the seven faces of God,” he croaked.

The guard keeping the count had not heard him, neither did he let up. “—ty-nine…eighty…”

“Hold,” said the Kaznac, rising from his seat at the desk. He crossed to Ilarion’s side, bending down to meet his eyes. “Good heavens. I think you are trying to say something.”

Ilarion nodded faintly.

“You’re actually willing to cooperate?”

Another nod.

The Kaznac looked to the guard on his left. “Your sword at his throat. Now!” Then to the other, “Send for the Inquisitor at once. Promotions all round!” he added jovially.

The sword was merely a precaution against Ilarion trying an escape with one guard out of the room, though he was far too weak and genuinely incapable of standing on his own feet by that stage. Varyna entered moments later, her step betraying her excitement.

She grabbed him by the hair, tilting his face up so she could look into his blood-shot eyes. “You are ready to talk at last?” she asked.

He nodded. In his delirium, his head seemed to float away from his neck as he did so. He worked his lips to speak, but words would not push past his dry throat and died at the back of his mouth. Varyna looked up, nodded, and a servant was soon pouring water in his mouth. It was warm and foul, and it tasted better than anything he’d ever drank in his entire life.

He coughed and sputtered, vomiting up some of the liquid onto his pants, but he felt better for it.

“The warrins,” he said as the wracking coughs died, “I don’t have them, but I can tell you where—”

“I told you already, Ilarion, that I do not care about the money you stole,” Varyna said. “Now, I am going to let you sleep for a watch. When you wake up, you will get some soup and more water. Then we will talk.”

“By the faces of God, we will,” he said. “Anything. Anything you want. I’d sell you my mother if you bastards hadn’t already taken her from me.”

Varyna placed a finger against his lips. “That is precisely the sort of thing I want to hear about. But not now. You are in no state to talk. I must admit that your stubbornness exceeds even your great ego and seemingly unlimited cockiness, and I find myself admiring you in a way for it. Nevertheless, you are useless to me in this state. So rest, and you can tell me all about your mother—and other things—when you wake up.”

Released, finally, of his obligation to remain awake, Ilarion found himself slip uncomfortably into sleep. He had no thoughts of trying to gain his trance. It took far too much energy for such a thing.

(Next Chapter)

When Ilarion came to, the carriage was still moving. He groaned, rolled his neck about, and began dry heaving. Too much excitement for one day, he decided.

“Hey, Idzi, looks like he’s waking up,” Mirche said, a definite note of relief in his voice.

“Yeah, I know. Little sod should be dead, though,” the big man commented.

“And I’m sure he will meet his end, but, God’s faces, you didn’t have to hit him like that. If the Inquisitor finds him unable to speak…”

Idzi growled. Coarse fingers knotted in Ilarion’s hair, lifting his head back so the soldier could look into his eyes. “I know what I’m doing, Mirche,” he said. “I’m calm now. Calm and full of bloody menace.”

Ilarion grinned worriedly into the man’s eyes as they drew close to his own. “You are going to suffer, guzi. I guarantee it. If not now, then in the life to come. Pricks like you don’t go around buggering the fortunes of others, grinning like two-warrin toothless whores and not answer for it.”

“You’re familiar with their kind then?” Ilarion asked, through the words grated past his lips so faintly that they sounded more like the scrape of stone against stone than actual human speech.

“What’s he saying?” Idzi asked.

“I don’t know,” Mirche replied. “You’re right next to him. How the hell should I hear if you can’t? Anyway, leave it alone. We’re here.”

Ilarion’s head bobbled on his shoulders as the carriage turned off one of the city’s main roads and into the walled compound of the Augandwars. The enclosed fortress at the heart of the Gandras’ Mijlantis district was built at the highest point of the city, on a hill rivaled only by the one atop which the Piliakilnis rested, and which was the home for the Offices of the Inquisition in the Samye Canton of the Empire.

His senses rattled, Ilarion took little note of his surroundings, and even Idzi’s forceful hand righting him in his seat felt distant in the midst of his haze.

The carriage doors opened from the outside, and a Kaznac looked in, took in the situation—the red marks on Ilarion’s face and throat and the way his eyes seemed incapable of focusing on anything—and said, “God’s faces, what the hell happened here?”

“I was just—” Idzi began.

“He was just,” Mirche cut in, “quelling an attempted escape. We have a tricky one here.”

“Right,” said Kaznac, unconvinced. “Come on. Get him out. Lady Varyna is eager to begin right away.”

Idzi and Mirche worked cautiously at Ilarion’s chains, the big man keeping constant watch on the prisoner, his fist half curled in preparation of another brain-rattling blow. Ilarion gave them no trouble, however, and not the least because while his brain did in fact still function enough for his tongue to get him into trouble, it no longer had control over any other of his muscles.

“You lot better hope he can still talk,” the Kaznac said. “Attempted escape or no, the lady will be quite displeased if her source of information has suddenly been ripped away from her.”

Ilarion felt his two escorts tense at the threat, and Mirche moved quickly to allay the Kaznac’s fears. “He’ll be alright, soon enough. Idzi just gave him a bit of a tap to shut him up.”

“I thought you said he tried—”

“Right! Tried to trick us into letting him go,” Mirche said quickly. “Which is why he needed the tap. He’ll talk just fine once he comes fully awake again. Besides, we received him in a bit of a mess ourselves.”

The Kaznac nodded dubiously before turning around. “Very well. Let’s deliver him.”

The two soldiers dragged Ilarion along on his useless legs, through the doorway of a stone tower some five stories high and nearly as old as the Holy Arzemian Empire itself.

“The Lady has sequestered a room on the second floor,” the Kaznac was saying. “Once he is delivered, you two will be relieved of your responsibilities to him. The Inquisitor adamantly maintains that she will meet with him alone and be quite safe for it.”

Like hell she will, Ilarion thought lamely. She won’t get the better of me again.

By the time they reached the second floor of the Augandwars, some semblance of strength was beginning to return to Ilarion’s legs. He still could not stand alone, but he was no longer quite such a burden to his escorts.

The halls through which they passed were every bit as uninviting as those of the Piliakilnis. The Concord, aside from being a bunch of warmongering thieving bastards, were a punishingly austere lot, at least when it came to public areas, and the cold, lifeless, bleak hallways were intended to reflect the Concord’s ostensible abhorrence of earthly, temporal things in favor of the pursuit of spiritual transcendence. As it was, Ilarion had seen behind too many closed doors, and he knew the ornate office of the Czelnik at the Piliakilnis was not the only room of its kind in the Empire.

He was hauled through the doorway to a large, sparsely-furnish room and thrust down into an uncomfortable wooden chair. Across from him, a simple desk accompanied by a second chair and topped with an open, blank book, a stack of papers, and a quill and ink provided the room’s only other furniture.

“The Lady must have stepped out momentarily,” the Kaznac said. “We’d best watch him until she returns.”

“I am returned now.” The voice was familiar, and Ilarion recognized it at once for the same Inquisitor who had come to see him in the Piliakilnis dungeons earlier. “You lot took your time. Now, out with you.”

“Yes, your grace,” the Kaznac said. By the time Ilarion managed enough control over his neck to turn his head, the woman in the white cassock was shutting the door behind her, the other three having fled before her command was fully delivered.

“What’s this?” she asked rhetorically, seeing the marks of a beating on Ilarion’s face. “I’m certain those weren’t from me, neither were they there before. Come in for some rough treatment from the guards?”

Ilarion did not respond. He was transfixed by her face, half-turned towards him as it was. The only light in the room came from a half dozen candles in a chandelier hanging overhead, and by that light the woman who studied him must have numbered among the two or three most beautiful he’d ever seen.

He began working his tongue to moisten his mouth, but his voice merely croaked as he tried to speak.

“Yes, I see that they did a real number on you. I’m not surprised. I hear you gave the Czelnik a bit of lip yesterday. Any man deranged enough to do such a thing probably has little idea of when to shut up. Whatever you said to receive such a pummeling on the ride over here was in all likelihood ill advised and your bruises well deserved. Nevertheless, I will have a cup of water brought for you, as you and I have much to talk about.”

She opened the door again, spoke briefly to someone beyond, and a few moments later a servant entered with a small cup of water. As the servant approached Ilarion, the Inquisitor said, “Now, be a good boy and drink it all down. No trying to hold some back to spit in my face. I am wise to you.”

Ilarion allowed his head to be tilted back as the servant dribbled water past his blistered lips. The liquid was an instant balm to his mouth, and he gulped willingly, eagerly, at it.

“Good,” the Inquisitor said with a humorless smile as the servant scurried from the chamber. She shut the door behind him and then turned to face Ilarion once more, keeping her left side towards him. “As you can see, I am not a monster. I am a humanitarian at heart. We will get along quite well if you remember that I do not want to hurt you.”

“What is a woman like you doing serving the Empire as an Inquisitor?” Ilarion asked, forcing the words past his lips.

A puzzled frown crossed her brow momentarily. “I do not take your meaning.”

“I thought only hags entered the clerisy. Such a waste of God’s gifts to mankind.”

“If you are trying to be funny, you are failing miserably. If you seek to provoke me, however, you have clearly not heeded my warning—nor that of your escorts from the Piliakilnis.”

The Inquisitor stepped over to his side and leant down towards him, showing him her full features for the first time. Ilarion flinched at the scar tissue that comprised much of the right side of her face. A burn of some sort had left her disfigured, though the other half of her visage hinted that she truly had been a beautiful woman at one time.

“Gods,” Ilarion exclaimed.

She struck him.

The chair toppled backwards and Ilarion’s head cracked painfully against the stone floor even as the wind was driven from his lungs. The Inquisitor set her foot on the chair’s cross beam and pulled him upright again. “We’ll have none of that pagan blasphemy in my presence. Like I said, I do not wish to hurt you.”

She began to pace, and Ilarion found it nearly impossible to focus on her as she did so. His vision was swimming, his eyes dancing about in his skull like a pair of drunken sailors on a ship in a storm. And as she spoke, her voice seemed to echo like a quarter-warrin in a tin cup.

“Gods…er…faces…God’s faces,” he said, “but this morning has been worse than a hangover.”

“And it will get worse still. But it is time now for us to get acquainted. My name is Varyna. As you can tell, I am an Inquisitor in the ranks of the Concord of Saint Zoran. That makes me a pretty important person.” She stopped in front of him and tapped his chest with her fingers. “That makes me somebody you do not wish to screw with. You are familiar with the hierarchy of this world? Of course you are. You’ve made a living choosing the right targets at the right time. So, you should know that I am more than serious in all that I say, and that I have all the means at my disposal to get what I want from you. And let’s begin with your name. We both know that Laros sta Spilans is a false name. Laros the Player. How pedestrian. For a man as gifted in disguise as yourself, I’d have expected a bit more ingenuity than that.”

Ilarion held his tongue, though he watched her cautiously as she began pacing the room again.

“Not inclined to speak? That will change soon enough. Now, let me see…Laros. According to my understanding of the local dialects of Samye, that is a diminutive, so it’s already a nickname. Lar would be the root…”

“Hell, woman, do you always talk like this? Tell me what do you want so you can shut up,” Ilarion said, cutting into her musings. She spun about on him, eyes wide with anger.

“I want your name for a start,” she said, her voice strained like a rope near its breaking point. “And then I want to talk. You see, you have information of a special kind locked away inside that skull of yours, and I am most interested in hearing it.”

“I told the Czelnik what I’ll tell you now, lady: go to hell. I have no reason to tell you where any of the Concord’s warrins are.”

Varyna let out a short, trilling laugh. “You amuse me, truly. I am not interested in the money—and neither is the Czelnik, God save him.”

“You did not see the glint in his eyes when he tried to get information from me. I am no fool, Inquisitor. I know that the Concord lives to make money first and save souls second.”

“Such comments are ill advised,” Varyna said as she swatted his head in passing, adding yet another stinging blow to the pummeling he’d taken that morning. “But, come now: be a gentleman and at least let me know your name. I tire of speaking around my ignorance.”

Ilarion smirked. “Call me Laros. It is, after all, my real name.”

“Curious,” she said, a half-smile creasing her lips. “Laros, diminutive of Ilarion, is it? See? That wasn’t so difficult, though I do not wish to work so hard for anything else I desire to know.”

“I give you that one for free because you asked so nicely,” Ilarion replied. “Now, like I said, I will remain silent on the warrins, as the truth wouldn’t please you in the slightest.”

“And what makes you think this is about gold, Ilarion? Have you listened to anything I’ve said so far? I am not interested in recovering what you stole. I am after other sorts of information.”

Ilarion studied her with narrowed eyes for several long moments, trying to decide on her sincerity. “And what will I get in exchange for this information?” he asked tentatively.

Varyna grinned, though the expression looked grotesque on her scarred face as once side of her lips barely moved at all. “If you talk to me, I will forestall the hand of death. Talk, and you will have food and drink to live another day. Refuse, and of course these necessities will be withheld.”

“Ah,” Ilarion said knowingly. “Very tempting. Much like the Czelnik’s own offer. Are you sure you don’t, in fact, want to hurt me? Seems a lot more like fun and a lot less a waste of our time.”

“You try my patience, Ilarion.”

“No, you try mine,” he snapped. “God’s faces, but you Arzemians are a tedious bunch. Kill me already, if that’s your plan. Otherwise, sod the hell off and let me recover in peace.”

Varyna stiffened, her face losing what little trace of mirth there had been. “Oh, I can do better than that. That chair is to be your home for the next few days. You will wait in this room, bound to it, without food, without water, without dignity. Piss all over yourself—if you have the water to manage it—and wallow in your stench. And you will not sleep. Neither will you be allowed to take on that trance of yours.”

Ilarion looked up sharply. “You…know?”

“Goodbye, Ilarion,” she said with a wicked smile now playing across her lips. “We Inquisitors know how to break the stubborn. I will be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after. Every day, in fact, until you are willing to be more cooperative.”

And with that, she was gone.

(Next Chapter)

It was indeed a lovely hole into which they tossed Ilarion. Complete with musty stench, old, unwashed slop bucket, and flea-infested pile of straw.

Ilarion counted himself fortunate at this stage to have avoided anything worse than a beating from the Czelnik’s finest guardsmen before being consigned to the cell where he would pretend to be half-dead until he made his escape.

For the first thing he did when the door of his cell had been shut was to settle himself in the center of the room, upon the cold, hard stones, and relax. He was no druid, nor would he ever claim to be one, except when pulling a scheme on some gullible nobleman whose religious orthodoxy was suspect. Druids simply did not walk about in broad daylight anymore, not since the Empire had brought its cursed doctrines to this country.

But Ilarion had known enough druids in his life to learn a thing or two, and the chief among those was patience, and how to calm himself enough to reserve energy and think clearly.

Sitting in his cell, the smells of sickness, pain, and death all around him, he emptied his mind of thoughts, brushed aside his aches, and retreated into his basest senses. He felt his heartbeat slow, his blood flow grow sluggish, and his breathing subside to the barest flutter of air across his lips. And his senses flared.

Moments ceased to be moments but dragged on for the entire duration of a watch, the sun seeming to pass forty-five degrees overhead in less time than it takes for a man to blank. And still Ilarion sat there, his mind lost inside itself, seeking every which way it could for some weakness in his imprisonment that he could exploit. Though he did not know it, the world outside grew dark with the onset of night. He was barely aware, the faintest of his sensory perceptions still working despite the trance, of the change of guards outside his cell, six new soldiers of the Czelnik replacing the half-dozen goons who’d stood watch all afternoon.

The night watches began, and still Ilarion did not stir. The soldiers grew lax, disinterested in the prisoner who said nothing, who did not respond to their jeers. They had no intention of feeding him or of opening his cell before the morning, when he would be brought out, given a ladle of sour water, beaten, and thrust back into his confinement.

And still Ilarion sat, seeing at last that in the moment when his captors thought him weakest, he would in fact be at his strongest. When they believed him incapable of fighting back, he would fight, and he would flee.

Morning dawned, though Ilarion remained oblivious to the outside world. But the guards changed yet again, and the deep recesses of the thief’s mind recognized that it was time. He began to retreat from his trance, but he held on enough so that when they came for him, when they removed him temporarily to administer their special treatment, he would be able to act as one in perfect calm.

The jangle of keys preceded the creak of the cell door opening.

“Get up, guzi,” said a gruff voice.

He did not move, for which he receive a kick to his side that sent him sprawling to the floor.

“I said, get up. You are wanted elsewhere.”

Rough hands reached for him, hauling him to his feet, a position Ilarion maintained unsteadily. He was thrust forward from his cell.

He knew at once that this was not the normal special treatment of the Piliakilnis guards. There were too many men and women surrounding him, and as he allowed more of his trance to slip, he recognized at once what it was.

A woman draped in a white cassock stood before him. Her hair shone golden, reflecting the torchlight behind her, though her face was largely in shadow. Her back was rigid, and she stood tall, looking down her nose at him. Ilarion saw a familiar sight in the way she stared unblinkingly at him, the same thing he’d seen in the Czelnik’s gaze the previous day: curiosity.

“This is him?” the Inquisitor asked. “This is the man?”

“It is, your grace,” said one of those standing by.

Ilarion finally allowed his gaze to stray from her face, examining the guards around him. Not one of them seemed comfortable in the woman’s presence.

This is it, he thought. The moment I have looked for.

With his body still in the grips of his trance, Ilarion acted. To his own mind, his limbs were lethargic, as though wading through water, but to his observers, he knew he moved more rapidly than most of them had ever seen a man move before.

Three strides brought him to the Inquisitor’s side. He reached out for the sword of a nearby guardsman as he acted, pulling its length of steal from its scabbard even as he pirouetted about the Inquisitor’s body to grab at her neck and take her hostage.

Only, he never got that far. A sharp blow to his solar plexus left him stunned. A second blow higher, to his breastbone, and Ilarion was sprawled on the floor before his entranced mind could make sense of anything.

“Bind him,” he heard the woman say. “Deliver him to the Augandwars immediately.”

Still struggling to catch his breath and figure out what had happened to him, Ilarion felt his hands being bound tightly again. He heard the sound of retreating footsteps as the Inquisitor left, followed by her escort.

He was pulled up to his feet. “Cheeky bastard,” one of the remaining soldiers said. Ilarion heard awe in his voice.

“Cheeky? You ever seen anyone move that damned fast, Gleb? God-curst sword was out of my scabbard before my eyes registered he’d even moved. I don’t call that cheeky, not by a long distance.”

“And the way she responded,” said a third voice. “What a woman that is!”

“Keep it in your pants, Iwan. That’s an Inquisitor. There aren’t enough warrins in all of Ramawan to get me to imagine what that cassock of hers might be hiding.”

“Water.”

“Eh, what’s that?”

“The bastard wants water.”

“What for? He drank yesterday. The lady wants him at the Augandwars now. Ain’t no time for water.”

“He’ll probably just try something else anyway. Best to get him the hell away from us.”

They were hauling him outside now, the stench of the dungeons receding as Ilarion’s feet dragged across the floor, his breathing still ragged after the brief pummeling he’d taken from that Inquisitor. The dank air of confined spaces began to freshen as they reached the upper levels of the Piliakilnis.

The soldiers pulled him out into early morning sunlight, which stung his eyes and felt uncomfortably warm on his skin. A large armored carriage stood waiting for him in the fortress courtyard, and his guards wasted no time in tossing him in and shutting the door behind.

Two more soldiers were waiting for him inside, one of them a hulking brute of a man. They laid hands on him, binding him with chains to the walls of the carriage so he could not have opportunity to try an escape.

Ilarion’s mind was still a haze, though it had begun to clear. Taking such a beating in the midst of a trance had been a dangerous thing. Had he been knocked unconscious, he might never have awakened, for his mind, already slowed and looking at himself as though across a distance, would have been locked away, unable to bring him back.

How the hell did she manage to stop me? he pondered as the carriage lurched into motion.

He looked at the two guards seated in the carriage with him. “You Lubosh’s men?” he asked.

They glanced at one another, and the large one, the man sitting to Ilarion’s left, struck him across the jaw. The blow was not designed to break bones. They would know better than that. But it hurt all the same.

“You stole from a lot of people, guzi,” said the guard who had not hit him. “And people have long memories, especially when it comes to those who’ve done us wrong. Idzi here, well, let’s just say he wouldn’t be sitting in this carriage if it weren’t for little pricks like you.”

Ilarion risked a glance at Idzi. The man glared back at him, his hatred more than evident. “Nope. Don’t recognize him,” Ilarion said.

Idzi’s fist slammed into his jaw yet again, this time with considerably more force than before.

“Careful,” the other guard said. “We deliver him broken and unable to talk, and we’ll catch hell for it.”

Idzi cracked his knuckles. “Sorry, Mirche. But by the seven faces of God, I swear I’ll rip the bastard a new one if he speaks out of turn again.”

“Just so,” the one called Mirche said. And to Ilarion, “Do us a favor and shut your gob, eh? Like I said, Idzi has a bit of a grudge. I’m not sure even good sense will keep him from beating the living crap out of you if you antagonize him again. Probably not very smart.”

Ilarion flexed his jaw muscles. “I never claimed to be a smart man. Only clever.”

“Careful, Idzi,” Mirche said, his arm outstretched to forestall what would certainly be a jaw-shattering blow. “How ‘bout you shut up and listen, little man,” he said to Ilarion. “Let us tell you a little tale about the repercussions of your actions.”

“My heart weeps for your hardships,” Ilarion said.

Idzi’s hand shot out, and Ilarion flinched, but it did him no good. But rather than strike his jaw as before, Idzi clamped down on Ilarion’s cheeks, forcing his mouth open. He shoved in a thick wad of cloth.

“You don’t talk!” Idzi screamed hysterically. Ilarion could hear that his rage was only barely being controlled, if at all. “You keep your God-curst smartarse remarks to yourself.”

Ilarion coughed behind the gag, but he dared not spit it out, not until Idzi showed some signs of calming down again.

“Like I said,” Mirche intoned, “Idzi wouldn’t be here if not for you. You claim you don’t know his face? Well, how about a name? Idzi Witinstabs, son of Ban Alojz Witinstabs.”

Ilarion’s eyes widened briefly.

“That’s right,” Mirche said. “You robbed the old bastard good, didn’t you? Thought it was clever, ruining the fortunes of an entire family. Poor Idzi here had to enlist because of it. He’s a Ban without a scrap of land to his name. His father hung himself because of his debt. And all because some clever whoreson thought it a good idea to play on a man’s honor.”

“Where is my family’s money, you bastard?” Idzi asked, his hand straying dangerously towards Ilarion’s throat again.

“Careful, friend,” Mirche said. “The Inquisitor will get it out of him, I warrant. All his secrets will be a spilled before long. The Witinstabs fortune will be a restored.”

Ilarion coughed, working his jaw to try pushing the gag out. “You wish to tell us where it is then?” Mirche asked.

Ilarion nodded.

“Hey, Idzi. Let him speak. Maybe fortune is smiling on you after all.”

Idzi reached in and removed the gag. Ilarion coughed as he gasped in air and worked ineffectively to wet his parched mouth. The guard had his hands about Ilarion’s throat before he had a chance to get a hold of himself. “Where is my family’s money, you bastard?” he demanded a second time.

“Would you believe that I lost it?” Ilarion asked. “Gambled it away so I could work my way up to bigger fish.”

He heard little of what passed between Mirche and Idzi following that statement, for after one blow from Idzi’s fist, he was hanging unconsciously from his chains.

(Next Chapter)

Such a man was Ilarion iz Balundan—Rion stas Ranka, Laros sta Spilans, or any other of a host of names by which he was known. At the age of thirty, his black hair was showing the first signs of gray, a result of the hard life he had lived on the streets of Gandras since his youth. But he did not have the look of a street person anymore, and his face was just nondescript enough to be forgettable, even by those who knew him with some amount of familiarity. He was a man born with the gift of a thousand faces, and he wore each of them well.

The oaken doors of the Piliakilnis’ inner sanctuary were thrust open, and Ilarion’s escort of a dozen Arzeme soldiers were met by a neatly-attired man, his hair slicked back with oil, his eyes staring with disapproval on the prisoner.

“The Czelnik will see him in his offices. I will escort you there,” the Kaznac said. He was one of the myriad city officials through whose hands Ilarion knew he would likely pass in the next few days. Justice in the Holy Arzemian Empire was a slow process, burdened with enough bureaucracy to sink a ship beneath its paperwork.

The man led Ilarion down stone hallways so old that Arzemes had been little more than a savage wilderness when the Piliakilnis was first built. Now, the Arzeme religious and war machines had conquered half the world and men like Ilarion were made fugitives in their own countries, their own cities.

They ascended three flights of stairs, heels clacking noisily on old floors, and all the while Ilarion looked around him. He was not unfamiliar with his environment. He had, in fact, been an uninvited guest in these halls on two separate occasions and had a solid understanding of the fort’s layout. He was merely looking for the opportunity to give his captors the slip. Thirteen was the number of men surrounding him, and thirteen—Ilarion always maintained with great irony—was his lucky number.

But chance did not present itself to him at this time, not that it troubled him too much. He was a patient man. Had to be, in his profession.

They came at last to a solid set of double doors. The Kaznac motioned for the guards to pause while he slipped through into the room beyond, reappearing moments later. “Leave him bound, but send him in alone.”

Ilarion was shoved through the doorway into the Czelnik’s office. This room, too, was not unfamiliar to him, though it had been nearly five years since he’d made its acquaintance. Still, he smiled wryly at the old man seated behind a desk on the far side of the room.

The office was luxuriously appointed, all the trappings befitting the Czelnik of one of the Empires twenty-nine Cantons. Landscapes painted by some of the great artists of the past hung on the cold, lifeless walls of the room. They were hardly out of place, and indeed much of the furniture surpassed those paintings in artistic quality and value. Even the desk behind which Czelnik Lubosh sat, his fingers laced together as he made a study of the man before him, could rightly be classed as a work of fine art: ornate carvings of scenes from Saint Zoran’s life lovingly set into the lacquered oak wood and buffed to such a sheen that it fairly sparkled in the sunlight streaming through a single, large window.

“So,” the Czelnik said slowly, his drawl a foreign feature in Gandras, marking him as a native of Pruvykhu, capital of the Empire. “So, you are the man who has given me all manner of trouble these past few years. The one my best Inquisitors could not catch. The one the Kaznacs claimed never could be caught. Yet here you are.”

Ilarion smirked. “Here I am. Glad to put a face to one of my benefactors at last.”

“Arrogant bastard!” the Czelnik roared, slamming his fist down on the desk. He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. His red cassock rustled noisily as it settled about his aged frame, and Ilarion—a man with an eye for finery—could not help but admire the quality of the robe’s weave. Every bit as fine as the artwork in the room. The Concord of Saint Zoran spared no expense in outfitting its clerics.

The Czelnik walked over to the prisoner, his anger slowly giving way to curiosity once more. “The man with a thousand faces,” he said as he came to a stop in front of Ilarion, running his eyes across his face. “Hiding all this time among actors.”

“Where do you think I got all those costumes and makeup? Not to mention the practice,” Ilarion said, the smirk never leaving his lips, despite the fact he now stood inches from the Czelnik’s own face.

Czelnik Lubosh struck him across the cheek. “You will not speak to me, guzi. I did not ask you a question. The only reason you are still alive is due to my curiosity, and others’.”

Ilarion’s grin widened, but he remained silent. Lubosh raised an eyebrow. “I daresay you find this amusing, though I can’t guess at what you are thinking? You’re far too cocky given your situation.”

“My thoughts are my own, Czelnik,” Ilarion replied, “and I don’t think you’d be too impressed if I were to tell you them anyway.”

The Czelnik snorted, turning his back on Ilarion and retracing his steps back to his chair. As he walked, he spoke over his shoulder. “One thing I can say in your defense, guzi, and that is you have never left bodies behind you.”

“So you feel safe turning your back on me now, thinking my past will dictate my future?”

Lubosh stiffened slightly at the veiled threat, the continued grin on Ilarion’s face quite evident in his voice.

“The past always dictates the future,” the Czelnik said, settling himself into his seat once more. “And no man’s thoughts are his own, either. Saint Zoran taught us this much.”

“Your blessed Saint was—”

“I would not finish that sentence if I were you, guzi,” the Czelnik said, his hand raised to forestall Ilarion’s words. “Do not forget that I am a servant of the Concord, that only Grand Czelnik Filat stands closer than myself to transcendence. I will not have you speak ill of Saint Zoran, at least not until I am ready to kill you. Then you may curse him all you wish and so consign your soul to perdition.”

“Surely, you didn’t bring me here to preach at me,” Ilarion spat. “I’m well past redemption, and we both know it.”

Lubosh pursed his lips. “Quite.” He motioned towards one of the chairs set before his desk. “Take a seat, guzi, and let us talk.”

“I prefer to stand. And you can keep your guzi. I am a man, like yourself, and blessed with a name by my mother.”

“Indeed,” said the Czelnik, leaning forward eagerly, “and what is that name? The Kaznacs have long debated back and forth, and though I dare say it, I am somewhat curious myself. Is it Laros sta Spilans, as your actor friends seem to think? I cannot believe it. You see, guzi, you are every bit the piece of filth I name you, and I see through your masks. You are nothing but a pathetic criminal. And if you do not talk to me, you will talk to the Concord’s Inquisitors.”

“Your Inquisitors do not frighten me, Czelnik. Mine has not been an easy life. I am ready to face the next hardship, if I must.”

“Yes, yes, very brave,” the Czelnik said, a grin of his own playing across his lips. “Well, guzi, if you will not tell me your real name, and if you think to continue refusing my hospitality by standing there in the middle of the floor, then I believe we are done here. I am sure that a few days in the less-than-ideal confines of my dungeon will loosen your tongue. I’ll tell the guards to give you the special treatment reserved for our most distinguished guests.”

“You think to frighten me with these childish threats?” Ilarion asked. “I am hardly a boy. I left childhood a long time ago, longer than you, I’d wager.”

“I am old enough to be your grandfather, guzi,” the Czelnik said, menace flashing in his eyes. “When I was born, this city of yours had only recently been brought into the fold of the Holy Arzemian Empire, given the light of Zoran after centuries of pagan darkness. My ancestors attained transcendence while you Samyein lot were still scratching your arses looking for gold!”

“Whereas you lot in Pruvykhu piss rainbows. I get it. But what becomes of me if I decide to cooperate and answer your questions?” Ilarion asked, returning the conversation to its earlier subject. “It’s hardly fair to ask me to choose between talking and not talking when I don’t know but half the potential outcomes. If I don’t talk, I rot in the dungeons until my tongue or bowels loosen first. If I do talk…”

The Czelnik’s eyes lit up greedily for a moment, betraying the motive behind his desire to know. “If you do talk, I’m sure I can instruct the Kaznacs to go easy on you. I can’t let you out onto the streets again, but we can make your accommodation here less…unbearable.”

“How very kind,” Ilarion said amiably. “So, prison with all its hardships if I seal my lips. Prison with slightly fewer hardships if I unseal them. You really know how to drive a hard bargain, Lubosh.”

“You keep that tone up, guzi, and I will throw you so far down into the ground beneath our feet that only Lord Golis will know where to find your bones at the world’s ending!”

“You do that, Czelnik, and you will never find what you are looking for.”

A moment of panic—sheer, bloody panic—flared and vanished in the Czelnik’s eyes. “I am looking for information. Nothing more,” he lied.

“Right. The countless warrins I’ve stolen have nothing to do with it,” Ilarion replied, his eyes dancing now with mirth.

“You admit it brazenly?”

“Your goons arrested me publicly, Czelnik. We both know I’m guilty. What we don’t both know is where all that money is hiding. And that you won’t know until something a mite more favorable than eternity in one of our lovely Concord’s dungeons is set on the table in exchange. I am a thief, Czelnik, not a saint. I don’t do favors for free.”

Lubosh’s face grew about as red as his cassock. “Insolence!” he roared, slapping his open palm down on the desktop. “This is not some game, guzi. You have pissed off too many men to be allowed anything more than a cell for the rest of your life. Had you confined your actions to the merchants and those pompous asses, the Bans, I might have looked the other way. But you have stolen from the Holy Concord itself. That is an offense of the highest sacrilege, for the Concord guides the souls of men in the world, and its funds make transcendence possible.”

“Her funds make possible rooms like this one while the vast majority of your empire starves,” Ilarion countered with a sweep of his bound hands. “I think the Concord can spare the few thousand warrins I borrowed from her.”

“Enough,” the Czelnik said. “Enough. You are a thief, guzi. A damned good one, I’ll admit, but a criminal nonetheless. You’ve stolen from the very organization that protects the souls of men. And we both know you borrowed substantially more than a few thousand. No, until you are ready to tell me where that pile of money—along with the rest of your ill-gotten gains—is hid, we are done here. Guards!”

The doors at Ilarion’s back opened, and the Kaznac reentered, followed by several of the soldiers who’d first arrested the thief.

“Give him the special treatment,” Czelnik Lubosh said. “Compliments of Arzemes.”

“Of course, your grace,” the Kaznac replied. “Take him away,” he said to the guards. “Set a watch on him of six men at all times. Bastard isn’t going to slip away this time.”

(Next Chapter)

The story (and planned series) is a picaresque, originally a Spanish Renaissance genre that features a protagonist of humble origins forced to make his way in a corrupt world by use of his wits. The hero generally falls foul of his own bad luck as often as he does the corrupt authority figures around him, but the humor of the stories lies in how he overcomes despite it all–though things seldom conclude with traditional happy endings.

The series as a whole (ideas for at least six books should I get that far) will be titled The Interrogation of Ilarion iz Balundan. Using a frame device that sees Ilarion, the hero, forced to talk about his youth and just how he became the criminal he is, the series will recount various stages in the hero’s development from unfortunate eleven-year-old to cocky and self-assured twenty-something master conman. It is a fantasy novel in the vein of Sword and Sorcery, and I have tried some new tricks in the world building this time to give this setting a unique spin that my others don’t have.

As for the first story (titled Ilarion and the Blind Man’s Game), the one that will definitely be serialized here and at Wattpad, a blurb might look something like this:

Ilarion iz Balundan is the greatest confidence trickster of his age, a living legend in the corrupt society of Gandras, a city in the outer reaches of the Holy Arzemian Empire.

Captured by a persistent Inquisitor and forced to talk about his childhood as part of a study on the criminal mind, Ilarion must go back nearly twenty years into his past to tell how it all began.

Born in infamy and left an orphan by the time he is eleven, Ilarion takes up service with an old blind man, who is more than a humble beggar, promising to teach the young lad all the tricks he knows to scam money out of the tight-fisted populace of Gandras.

Ilarion becomes his willing student, though he soon finds that his blind master is as corrupt as anyone in the high places of government, and the boy is forced to turn his master’s tricks against him if he is ever to be rid of the old man.

I will be publishing as I write, and as we stand today, I have over 10K words already composed. Simply put, I wish to remain about five days ahead of schedule, so I will only post on those days when I write. In other words, beginning next week, if I write some of the story on Monday, I will post a chapter on Monday. If I fail to write Tuesday, I will not post on Tuesday–despite the fact that I will have text to post.

The point is that I don’t want to get into a situation where I am forced to write and post immediately, but prefer to have at least a week to fix things that might need to change. For the foreseeable future, I will be able to post every day during the week (and, if you’re lucky, a Saturday too) because I have plenty of time to write, but we’ll see how things develop.

As for the length, I’m shooting for something a little bit short of the length of my novel Hero, which was just over 60K words. I doubt I’ll get quite that many, but 55K is a good target. That means I should hopefully be able to serialize Ilarion and the Blind Man’s Game within six weeks.

I will be making one or two changes to this website this weekend, so there may be some funny stuff happening with viewing the blog, but I’ll try to have that all ironed out quickly.

Otherwise, it remains only for me to say that, given the nature of this project, I would love for anyone who feels so inclined to post comments regarding the story as it develops. We’ll call this an open beta, if you like, as it is essentially the same thing.

Cheers!

Lots to talk about today, so let’s jump right into it!

Eidylon episode 5 went on sale Monday, and as I had previously stated, that will be the last volume to be published in the regular serial format. Currently, the first two volumes are tied up in KDP Select until the beginning of April, but at that point, I will be relabeling all the parts with new titles and shifting the series over to a novella format, marketed as such. In other words, the books will no longer say “serial novel” on the cover or title page, but will be presented as any regular series.

I am working on the sixth episode, but it will be some time ere we see that, as I want to get another project underway. Nevertheless, I do not at present intend to let Eidylon die. I just don’t intend to spend all of my energy on a series that is failing to supply me with enough income each month to afford a Starbucks coffee. If things change, and the series suddenly picks up out of nowhere, I will put my efforts back into it to milk that cash-cow…er…complete the story for those interested.

In the meantime, I have already begun writing another book, and I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do with this one. On the one hand, making money is nice, but on the other, I feel that if I’m not making money, I’d like to at least be read. So I’ve come up with a plan, an experiment, for this one, and it is such an experiment that interested parties will be able to begin reading as soon as next Monday–that’s right, 03/11/2013.

Why that date? Well, here I get a bit sentimental. Monday is my mother’s birthday, and the character at the heart of this next opus is the character I created for my very first attempt at a novel, way back in 2004. While my writing was still very raw at that time, I have always like this character, and always intended to go back to him some day. The time has finally come. He also happens to be–perhaps–my mother’s favourite character from all that I’ve written. (Our dear mommers, eh? Always our first and bestest fans…)

Right, on from the mushy stuff. What I am going to try is a sort-of post-as-I-write scheme, not unlike the way comic strips are published. I’ll be working at about a week ahead of my posting schedule, to have some degree of room to make up for stuff that happens in real life. There will be a few changes at the website here–nothing drastic, and perhaps they’ll largely go unnoticed, but they could cause a few kinks in the first couple of days.

I plan to publish one post every day–or, failing that, three times a week. Basically, there will be a thread on this website that will update with a new chapter very regularly. If you subscribe by email, you will automatically receive those updates, but I am also (as we speak) figuring out how to set up a single RSS subscription feed for the serial itself.

And the other, really experimental thing I’m going to try is to post at the same time over at Wattpad. I am well aware that Wattpad’s largest demographic is teenage girls–and, no, this story doesn’t have vampires, werewolves, or high school romance–but as the protagonist of the story is a boy in his early teens, there may just be some appeal to the website’s largely school-age audience.

But I will have a bit more on this in another post later this week. Really, it’s purely an experiment, and as I said earlier, I’d simply like to be read at this stage, so if 1,000 folks read for free, that’s better to me than ten folks reading at 99c. I do plan to release the thing for sale when it’s completed and fully edited, but for now, I just want to try something different.

As I said, I’ll post later this week with more specific details about the story itself, and about the serializing format.

Until then…Cheers!

Just a brief note to say that Part 5 of Eidylon is coming soon. As I mentioned previously, my wife has been very sick (the doc has had her off work for two-and-a-half weeks now), and I myself have been flirting with illness off and on. But, most importantly, between nursing her and other issues currently, I’ve fallen behind on Eidylon.

For the sake of making a promise I know I can keep, Part 5 will be on Amazon next Monday (3/4/2013).

As per my previous announcement too, this will be the last part of Eidylon to be published at this time. Part 6 is in the works, but as explained, I see no reason to keep banging my head against this particular wall. I will, however, be repackaging the various parts as independent novellas in the not-too-distant future.

Right, that’s it for now. More information will be forthcoming, as well as thoughts on what I’m going to be doing next. I’m planning to try something new–not regarding genre, but regarding distribution. Stay tuned.

Cheers for now!