The Winding Road

“Mages who work on retainer aren’t exactly rare, sure. Pigs who’ve given up on truth.”

Hamel made his distaste plain at once. Pai wasn’t surprised; she knew what he thought of retained mages, and if she hadn’t been confident she could win him over, she would never have come looking for him in the first place.

“People all set store by different things. Truth matters to you, old man, and to them it’s power, money… that sort of thing is where the value lies. Now that I’ve said it out loud, it does sound a little cheap.”

“Exactly!”

“To become a mage of all things, and covet nothing grander than power and money.”

“That’s just what I’m saying!”

Hamel worked himself up and raised his voice, his cheeks flushing as he whipped his head aside. Even at a glance he was a prim, beautiful boy. Though ever since she learned he was a hundred years old underneath that face, the only impression she got was of a pervert.

“I’m different.”

“What?”

“I’m going to give Hamel truth.”

Both of them folded their arms and glared at each other as though ready to kill. But in the end it was Hamel who spoke first. Naturally. His greed for truth had no end.

“Let’s hear what sort of truth you can give, then.”

Good.

Inwardly Pai pumped her fist, and then she spoke.

“A map of the Great Labyrinth.”

“…”

“The map of that Great Labyrinth — the one connected to the Black Forest that faces Heliaria.”

“That map… exists? That place has been sealed off for more than a hundred years.”

“It exists all the same.”

“Where?”

“Right here.”

Pai tapped her own temple with a forefinger. Hamel’s eyes went round.

“It’s in my head.”

“…”

“…”

“Pfft. Bwahahaha, hahahahah!”

Hamel rubbed his belly and howled with laughter. Pai went on talking straight through it, her voice perfectly serious.

“I can prove it. We’ll go to the Great Labyrinth together, that’s all.”

“Kh… heh heh, heh. Hoo…”

Hamel’s laughter died away and he got his breath back by degrees. When he straightened out of his doubled-over crouch his face had gone pink, and he wiped the tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

“It’s a tempting offer, I’ll grant you.”

“I thought as much.”

“And if I refuse?”

She had expected him to probe like that, too.

If he came over all at once, there’d be no fun in it for me either.

Pai reeled off the script she had prepared.

“Demonology is a field the Empire strictly forbids. And I’m sure you know how cruel the Inquisitors’ hands are.”

“You’d hand me over to the Inquisitors?”

“They punish anyone who fails to report it, too, don’t they. If I want to live, I’d have to hand you over, wouldn’t I.”

The unruffled excuse pulled one corner of Hamel’s mouth up into a grin. An acrid wind started up around him.

“I could kill you right here, you know.”

“Oh dear.”

Pai said, admiration flat in her voice.

“Try killing me, then.”

The investiture of a high noble was held in a temple. The Atalan Temple was the largest of the three that stood in the North, and since the North had no Great Temple, Keith Paragon would be invested there as well.

It would begin at eleven o’clock in the morning sharp, so Keith’s party set out from the White Castle at seven, a little early; the two places lay some two hours apart by carriage.

Only two carriages made the journey, and the escort came to a little over twenty men. Drawn from the Frost Rose Knights or not, it was a meager force.

“It’s not as though we’re being packed off into exile, so what’s all thiiis?”

Enri kept his horse pressed close to the carriage, its window open a hand’s span, and prattled without pause.

“Must you get it over and done with like beans roasted on a lightning flash¹? Do it grand, eh? Invite a few ordinary folk along, take the congratulations, say a few words about how you feel — wouldn’t that be splendid?”

“The people of the domain have not yet come out from under the shock of my brother’s passing. In a situation like this, splendor would only be poison.”

The period of mourning was not even over yet. Stamping a new leader on people’s minds could wait; once they had been given time enough to work the grief of losing a benevolent lord out of themselves, it would not be too late for that.

“Even so, I am concerned that too small an escort has been brought along.”

Bishe spoke up calmly from the seat opposite.

“What will you do if that contemptible fellow has been up to something?”

She meant Luigi Husslix. He had been suspiciously quiet all this while, ever since he withdrew from the White Castle making his loud threats.

But Keith only looked out the window and answered with indifference.

“He is a man of mean imagination. I doubt he has contrived anything we have not already foreseen.”

“He’ll turn up shouting ‘This is preposterous!’ and make a scene of himself, that’s all.”

Enri giggled, mimicking Luigi’s voice.

“‘How could a base-born bloodline dare take Elrod’s place!’”

“In any case, if he gives us a pretext, that is something to be thankful for. It means I can grind him down so he never crawls up again. As you know yourself, this is a fight over legitimacy.”

If Luigi did come storming into the temple exactly as described, Keith would gain the pretext to wipe out at a single stroke every voice raised against the investiture.

And he will not disappoint me.

Count Husslix’s overweening nature would be the ruin of him in the end.

“He’ll drag a few of his own private soldiers along and leave it at that, won’t he? Pathetic, the sort who think a head-count is all there is… Kh!”

“Neeeighhh…!”

It was then.

The horses at the head of the column, and Enri’s along with them, began to snort and stamp where they stood.

“Ffrrr, fbrr. Ffrrr…”

“Come now, what’s got into you? Let’s settle down.”

“Enri.”

Keith called to him, his gaze cast far out past the window. They were making their way up a winding, gentle rise, and a pack of beasts had appeared at the top of it.

The wind that gusted over them just then carried a thick smell of blood, and the horses rolled their eyes back and went wild.

“Grrrrr…”

“Kee-gee-gee-gee.”

— Shing.

— Shhhing.

The cry of a beast none of them had ever heard before crossed with the sharp sound of blades leaving their sheaths.

“Kee-gi-gi, grrng…!”

“Wh-what is that thing.”

One of the soldiers muttered it in a voice thick with fear. Anyone could see the thing was no ordinary beast. It was as big in the body as a full-grown snow wolf, and a swarm of living maggots seethed across every inch of it, calling up a revulsion that was purely physical.

Keith, out of the carriage and mounted now, murmured low.

“…They’ve been tainted.”

“Gi-gik, kkeek, grrrrrng!”

The biggest of them kicked off the ground and came down the slope as though rolling. The rest of the pack took that movement for a signal and charged after it. The men who doubled as archers loosed their arrows first.

“Kweeeeeek!”

A hideous death-cry went up, and writhing maggots came pouring out of the beast’s mouth. But the monsters, arrows standing in their bodies, only vomited filth and flung themselves forward all the more frenziedly.

“Daaamn it, I’m passing on the filthy ones!”

Enri grumbled and spurred his horse. Keith shot past him like an arrow, took the lead, and shouted.

“They’re tainted with demonic energy! Do not let your guard down!”

They were a body of elite soldiers, but the beasts came in numbers enough to make a man wonder where on earth such a pack had come from.

Thirty at a rough count.

Keith drove his horse on and sliced through the beasts’ napes as though mowing weeds. Nothing came of it but a spatter of sticky slime; the things only rolled in the mud in what looked like pain, then snorted and went for the party’s horses with their teeth.

“Tch.”

In the end Keith came down from his horse. There was a fair distance still to cover before the temple, and besides, to make certain of the kill he had to drive the sword in at close quarters.

“Koo-weeeeek!”

One of them came at him head-on, an arrow lodged in its face.

“Hoo.”

Keith drew a short breath and set his sword upright. Sword energy redder than blood swallowed the blade in a rush, like flame.

A light step, as though dancing. The instant his blackened, worn boots left the ground, he drew the sword across the beast’s flank faster than the eye could follow.

— Shk! Shhhrrrriiiip…!

With the sound of hide tearing, the beast’s flesh opened, and blood-red parasites came spurting out along with the blood.

“Kkueh…”

— Shhhk!

— …Thud.

The last blow, aimed at the head, cut off even its dying scream.

“…”

Keith swung the sword elegantly and shook the filth from it.

“One down.”