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Quentin-Andrew was on fire.
He had always feared fire the most. It had taken Randal half a day to realize this before he had taken hold of the brand with a smile – an apologetic smile, because the young torturer had not yet mastered Quentin-Andrew's technique of knowing immediately which instrument the prisoner most dreaded. Quentin-Andrew could feel the marks left by the brand, but that was not the fire that tormented him. This fire was inside: the fire of taut muscles, strained tissues, throbbing blood-tunnels – the fire most of all of a spirit that was stretched as tight as a lathe-reed, about to snap.
Aside from the soft hiss of the cell's fire, Quentin-Andrew could hear nothing. Earlier, as the palace trumpets sounded the midnight call for the final time in Koretia's history, the rumble of fighting had filled the corridor, and at one point soldiers had hammered at the cell door. Randal had done nothing, though, except to place his hand firmly over Quentin-Andrew's mouth. The Northern Army soldiers had gone away, apparently unwilling to take the time to force the iron door. From that time on, all noise had faded until nothing filled the cell now except the sound of fire and iron and screams. Especially fire.
Something cool touched Quentin-Andrew's eyelids: Randal's wet fingers, gently wiping away the blood that gummed his eyes shut. A moment later, Randal pried his eyelids open. It would have taken more strength than Quentin-Andrew possessed to free his eyelids from Randal's tender touch. He stared up at his torturer's face, dim in the growing shadows. A part of Quentin-Andrew that still lived and moved wondered whether the cell's fire was dead but for the coals or whether he was growing blind, as prisoners sometimes did toward the end.
"The seventh weight," said Randal quietly. "You know what that means, Lieutenant. There is still time for you to speak before I destroy your body. For your spirit will break after the weight is added, you know."
Quentin-Andrew did not doubt that Randal was right; he knew the signs himself. Already he could feel the fraying of the fibrous cord that linked his mind to sanity. One more weight . . . No, not even that; the break would come before the weight was ever applied. With detached interest, he watched the fire begin to eat into the slender strand. His body was screaming; his mouth no longer screamed only because he had no power with which to voice his agony. He took a shallow breath and felt a thousand daggers enter his body.
With his last remaining strength, he closed his eyes.
Above him, dimly through the darkness of the approaching madness, he heard Randal sigh. "Oh, Lieutenant," said his torturer softly, "I would so much have liked to have worked with you. Even to have been broken by you would have been a privilege." There was no sound for a moment, and then Quentin-Andrew heard a thump as Randal lifted the weight onto the table. Another moment before it would be attached; another moment before the thread snapped and what was left of Quentin-Andrew plummeted into a darkness so black that his spirit would be utterly destroyed.
Not even the pit of destruction awaited him; only annihilation. The fire began to eat the final strand, and Quentin-Andrew felt his mouth open, felt himself prepare to give Randal the information he wanted.
The words he spoke, though, caused his spirit to vibrate with shock. "Jackal," he whispered, "help me."
Even the fire was gone now. He was entirely in blackness, and he wondered at what point the last portion of his spirit would crumble and he would cease to think. Then he felt something – an awareness, a presence – and he opened his eyes again.
Before him, hovering in the darkness of the cell, was a wild beast: it was snarling at him, its claws tightening in anticipation, its mouth parted in a tooth-bladed smile. Though its fur was blacker than the shadows, a golden glow outlined its form. He could see that it was crouching, ready to pounce.
Then the beast leapt suddenly high in the air, and in the instant before its forepaws landed upon Quentin-Andrew's chest, it flung its head upward, and its shape began to change. In a moment, the four-footed beast had acquired legs and arms; it stood upright, with claws still shining at the end of its hands. Only the beast's face remained the same.
In a soft voice, a voice that thundered like a forest burning, the Jackal said, "How dare you call upon my name, you who lie under my curse."
Quentin-Andrew took a breath and felt the daggers begin to flay his flesh. The fire was now eating his organs. "For the Commander's sake," he whispered. "He is the gods' servant. Help me not to betray him."
The Jackal continued to smile in his deadly manner. All around him, the fire leapt golden. In a soft voice, the voice a torturer uses when his victim is about to break, the Jackal said, "Eight years ago, the Commander murdered the Chara and placed his own wine-friend, the son of Perry-John, into your hands. Since that day, he has been under the gods' curse."
For a moment more, the fire licked at Quentin-Andrew's flesh; he could feel it blackening his heart. Then Quentin-Andrew screamed.
It was a long, hoarse scream that echoed in the far corners of the cell, a cry so deep and reverberant that it drove from Quentin-Andrew all awareness of the killing fire. It was followed by silence. Quentin-Andrew could see nothing and he could feel nothing; he was empty like a husk. In a second, he knew, the fire would return and his spirit would be forever obliterated, but just for the moment he felt only relief.
It was over – all of his last hopes were mercifully gone. The worst torture was ended: the torment he had felt all his life of believing that he could change his fate if only he tried hard enough. Now he knew that he had been right on the day of Gareth's death. There was nothing he could do, no change he could make, that would bring the gods' mercy. From the day of his birth, he had been doomed to destruction.
A light began to grow, and with it came warmth. Quentin-Andrew tensed, waiting for the final inferno. Then he became aware of the glow in front of him: the Jackal, with his hand outstretched. "Come," said the god.
Quentin-Andrew dimly knew the choice he was being offered; it was a choice between two torments. But he did not give himself time to dwell on the balance. As though of its own volition, his hand moved forward. He flinched at the last moment, feeling the approaching heat, and then, with his breath shuddering, he clasped the Jackal's hand.
In an instant, the light exploded silently around him. He could feel its warmth upon his skin. With a moan, he shielded his eyes, like a night animal that has been driven to the surface during the day. Then the light faded, and he found himself in darkness once more, except for a glow which seemed to emanate from no object except himself.
It was a dark glow, a bleak grey against the blackness around him, but it caused him to look down at himself, and he felt his heart jerk.
He could see his hands. He remembered with sickness what his hands had looked like a short time before; now his hands were whole and unmarked. His arms and his legs were as smooth as a babe's skin. The rest of his body he could not see, for it was covered in the uniform he had worn for so long: the undyed cloth of a Northern Army tunic and breeches, the gold honor brooch that the Commander had given him, the thick cloak meant to protect against Marcadian winters, and the hard boots that could travel through ice and snow. Only his thigh-pocket and his blades were missing.
He swung around, the instinctive move of a patrol guard who has become lost in the night. To all sides, he was encased in darkness, but a body's length below his feet he began to see a figure: a man stretched taut upon a table, his eyes wide and unblinking, his naked body mangled and broken. The seventh weight was not yet attached.
Quentin-Andrew turned his face slowly away. At his side, the god of death waited, the fire around him now brighter than before. In a flat voice, knowing the answer but requiring the words to be said, Quentin-Andrew asked, "What happens to the god-cursed after they die?"
"Come and see," said the Jackal. He turned and began walking into the landscape of shadows. For a moment, Quentin-Andrew remained motionless; then he followed the beast's tawny back.
o—o—o
They travelled over a flat land. The ground Quentin-Andrew could not see was hard under his boots. The sound of his steps was loud in the stillness but made no echo. He could not see where the horizon ended and where the sky began – the sky was without moon or stars. But he became aware that beyond the Jackal, hidden by the god's body, a light was beginning to grow. And then the light narrowed; it was a rectangular shape now, and Quentin-Andrew felt as though the darkness was narrowing in on him, squeezing his body. His breath had only a moment to quicken, and then he had passed through the rectangle of light. He found himself in a large chamber.
The chamber was round, like the sun or the moon; it was deep, fringed by tiers of steps; and it was silent, but for the sound of one man speaking. To the south side of the chamber, brown-robed priests sat listening and nodding their heads occasionally. The north side was filled only by the speaker. He was young, and his face was younger still. His voice was almost too low to be heard, but he spoke quickly, and his eyes scanned the audience before him.
". . . And then he sheathed his sword and he took me to the gate, and he told me who he was and told me to come here, to the House of the Unknowable God. He said that you would give me refuge against the Commander. And so I came here, and he must not have told the Commander what he did, because everyone thinks that I'm dead. But I'm alive. I shouldn't be, but I am."
From where he now stood, in the center of the sanctuary, Quentin-Andrew turned to look up at the priests. Their bodies were motionless, and their faces were hard. From his position near the High Priest, Aiken leaned forward and said, "So he tortured you all night – and then spared your life. And you believe that act weighs more heavily than all else that he did during his lifetime."
Dolan, wide-eyed, stared without comprehension at the priests for a moment, his hands crossed behind his back. "You don't understand," he said finally in a high voice. "The Lieutenant told me that the Jackal instructed him to follow the Commander's orders. And the Lieutenant wanted the curse to be lifted from him – he never told me that, but I know he did. I think— I know it sounds mad, but I think the Lieutenant believed that, by disobeying the Commander's order to kill me, he was disobeying the gods. He must have thought that, by helping me, he was losing his last chance to be forgiven by the gods." Dolan's voice grew soft. "He did that for me. He was willing to dwell eternally in the pits of destruction for my sake."
Quentin-Andrew heard the priests begin to murmur amongst themselves, but this time he did not move his gaze from Dolan. The boy – no, the man – was staring down at the stone tier, scuffing the floor with his right sandal. He was unarmed. Quentin-Andrew held his breath, waiting for the warmth to come that had always come, but nothing happened except that something brushed his arm.
It was the High Priest, stepping past him. He was headed toward the eternal flame on the altar, and as he walked forward he said, "We who worship the Unknowable God have never claimed the right to weigh men's deeds and judge men's eternal sentences. That right belongs to the God alone. The only right we have claimed is to ask the God to place a man under his curse if, in our poor judgment, it appears to us that the man has made no effort at all to follow the gods." He gave a wry smile as he dipped his hand into the crystal bowl of water beside the flame. "Never before have we been asked to show a man mercy for doing that which he believed the gods would condemn. Nevertheless, Dolan, your witness matches that which we received today, telling of the manner in which Lieutenant Quentin-Andrew died. And so we must conclude from this that Quentin-Andrew, though filled with darkness which blinded him to the true consequences of his deeds, was indeed willing to make deep sacrifices for the sake of his fellow men, and we know this to be the sign of a god-lover. Therefore, High Judge above all judges, we ask that you take our wishes into consideration in judging Quentin-Andrew son of Quentin-Griffith, and we request that you wipe from his forehead the ashes of cursing that we placed there thirty-seven years ago."
The Jackal, dipping his golden claws into the water held up by the High Priest, replied, "I am the god to whom the son of Quentin-Griffith pledged his loyalty as a child; I speak the words of the Unknowable God above all gods. In the name of that Mystery which none may see but those who dwell eternally in the City of the Land Beyond, I declare that the son of Quentin-Griffith has turned his face toward the gods, and in so doing has become and was and always will be a servant of the God who created him." As he spoke, his claws touched Quentin-Andrew's forehead, and Quentin-Andrew felt the warm water dissolve the grime that lay there.
Silence filled the chamber like a fine mist. Quentin-Andrew stared at the golden eyes of the god, dancing with brightness like fire upon a death-pyre. The god's snarling smile did not change. He gestured with his hand, still sparkling with water. "Come," he said.
Quentin-Andrew turned to follow; then he found himself whirling to look up at the tiered chamber once more. Behind him, the priests were beginning to murmur again. The sound of their feet as they walked down the steps echoed on the other side of the chamber, where young Dolan still stood. Dolan seemed unaware that the trial was over. He was staring at his feet, and the hair falling in front of his face did not obscure the smile on his lips or the dream-look in his eyes.
Warmth touched Quentin-Andrew. He turned his head, and saw that the Jackal was standing beside him, shining like one of the torches upon the wall. The god was waiting. After a long moment, Quentin-Andrew asked, "What will happen to him?"
The god lifted his face, like a dog that has scented its prey. "Does it matter?" he asked in his soft, thunderous voice.
Quentin-Andrew looked back at Dolan. The young man had awoken from his dreamlike state, and he was moving slowly now toward the exit, cautiously, as though he feared that someone would notice him and stop him. He no longer wore the bright-bordered tunic of an army official that the Commander had given him; he was dressed all in brown, like a priest or an orphan-boy.
"Yes," said Quentin-Andrew, his voice faint against the sound of the priests talking. "He is my wine-friend."
The god's voice, though quiet, continued to fill the chamber above all other voices. "He will die, killed by the daggers of war that you helped to whet. Yet because you granted him eight years' respite from his execution, he has had time to pass on his secret to another. And that secret, carried through the long night, will one day be a sheath upon the blade of war and lawlessness. In this way, the gods have accepted and transformed the sacrifice of pain which the son of Perry-John offered to us in the Chara's dungeon."
Dolan, still moving cautiously, had arrived at the bottom of the steps now. He walked slowly forward, past the priests who no longer watched him, until he had nearly reached where Quentin-Andrew stood with the god. He had kept his face bowed till now, but his eyes lifted suddenly and met Quentin-Andrew's. For the moment between lightning and thunder, Quentin-Andrew thought that the eyes held recognition. Then, still smiling, Dolan walked without hesitation into the fiery god.
Light flared, as though someone had thrown tinder upon a bonfire. Quentin-Andrew
thought he heard a sharp cry, but whether it came from Dolan or from himself
he never knew. When his vision cleared, he found himself standing at the
foot of a dark hillside, looking down upon a dry moat.
"Bard of Pain" is part of the Three Lands series. To receive notice of book publications and free online fiction, subscribe to one of Dusk Peterson's e-mail lists or blogs.
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