Rodrik Barther (4)

The door of the central tower swung open with a heavy sound, revealing what lay beyond. Rodrik shook his hand to flick away dawn dew that had not yet dried.

“Risha was a maidservant here, helping with the housework.”

Barther was a noble house, so of course it kept hired servants to run the castle. Between the kitchen staff, the stablehands and the guards, the number came to something near fifty, didn’t it?

“She wasn’t formally employed. They took in a child with nowhere to go and put her to work, so she was a kind of housemaid in training.”
“Still, she was lucky to get into the castle.”
“As you’d know yourself, friend, children without parents are everywhere. In Erbern especially, the domain being what it is, there are so many you trip over them. Barther took them inside the castle. Not all of them, but enough that walking the streets, you could plainly feel how many children had gone.”

Barther gathered the orphans in.

And enough of them to work a change across the whole of great Esmartin.

Where did all those children go?

“This castle doesn’t look like it has the room to house them.”
“The cellar. There’s a room down there where the children are put to sleep and fed.”
“Didn’t you say the magic circle that calls in the fog and the undead was underground? There must be more than one room, then.”

Quiet footsteps filled the castle’s dim interior. Rodrik was silent a moment, his eyes narrowed as though something did not sit right with him.

“No. There’s only one room.”

That is plainly strange. Magic on a scale vast enough to blanket an entire domain is not a miracle a handful of mages can work, however hard they strain. And yet the clinging fog and the hateful undead are abroad in Erbern at this very moment, aren’t they?

How is that possible?

The sins of the Barther viscount’s house.

The second of them.

“Those children are the magic circle itself. A circle is carved into every one of their bodies, so that an overload of magical power gets paid off with an overload of life force instead. Managing the circle means drawing the life force out of the children and converting it into magical power. Do you know how many years a child with a circle carved into them is expected to live?”

“…”

“Three years. Five years old or ten, three years after the circle is carved they all die. So of course there are few orphans left on the streets of Esmartin.”

If a child’s lifespan can be turned into magical power, then every orphan dragged into that castle is fuel for the magic circle. And Risha too had once been an orphan who set foot in that castle.

“I met Risha when she’d been here nearly two years. She was fifteen. At my asking, she alone had the circle wiped from her body and became a maidservant, but the years already spent didn’t come back.”
“And after the circle was erased, what was her life expectancy?”
“Twenty years.”

What moved Rodrik was not ambition, and not some long-held wish, but one whispered word of hers, wasn’t it? I could almost picture it. Risha leaning on Rodrik’s shoulder, whispering that this place was hell, that the blood running in him was revolting.

“It was tight. I had twenty years to kill my father and take Erbern in hand. So I left her with the head steward for the time being and went to Siltrein with the people who thought as I did.”

Rodrik had judged that standing against Morten would take the help of another city, and in the end he became the ruler of Siltrein and pulled down the ruler of Esmartin.

“And it took eleven years to come back here. Without you, friend, it might well have taken ten more.”

In an age where tragedy has come to outnumber comedy, is it really all right for me to step into this story? Can I truly be certain this story will not end in tragedy?

“There’s no sign of the head steward.”

It was already too late to ask the question, and too late to arrive at an answer.

“…I haven’t checked the cellar yet.”

There was no one to be seen in the castle, but it did not feel as lifeless as the head steward’s mansion had. Morten’s family and the servants would have been living here until only a few days ago, after all. Tableware and furniture sat exactly as they had been left, as though the people had evaporated, and it all added up to a strangeness I could not place.

“We’d best get ready. The mages that are left will all be down there.”

Rodrik worked his wrist loose and tightened the cloth bound around his left arm. The stairs down were dark and damp, the way they are in any castle.

“There probably won’t be much of a fight. Mother has to guard the fuel for the circle.”

The deeper we went, the thicker the smell of rusted iron grew. On top of it rose a strong smell of blood.

Not the smell of blood long dried and gone hard, but of blood spilled recently enough to still be red.

“…We’ll have to hurry.”

A torch lit in haste wavered. Footsteps treading on long-cast shadows rang on the stairs.

Leaving the sound of Rodrik’s gasping breath behind.

The sound of rusted iron hinges reached us.

Rodrik threw the cellar door open and stood frozen where he was, saying nothing. Only then, over his shoulder, did the cellar come into my sight.

“…”

Children gathered together, one adult, and several corpses.

The woman among the children could not possibly be a mage.

Because a magic circle had been drawn on her too.

“Rodrik…?”

Rodrik’s face was hidden from me, but I can guess at it from the face of the woman looking at him. It must be the look of a man facing his own dying god.

“Risha.”

The fallen torch could not burn long on the floor, and guttered out. Rodrik bit his tongue and spat out saliva mixed with blood.

“When was it carved.”

It is a circle carved into a body with less than ten years of life left in it. If a small child with more than fifty years of life expectancy is cut down to three, how many days does that leave her?

Tears ran down her cheek and wet the floor.

“Rodrik.”
“It isn’t too late. If we wipe the circle off even now, a year, no, half a year at least…”
“No. That’s not it.”

It is a world where tragedy is common. Death is common, sorrow is common, tears are common.

“They said it’s magic that doesn’t stop until the life force runs out.”
“That, a thing like that… there’s no way it could be…”

Rodrik ran to her and passed a hand over the circle, and his face darkened with every passing moment. It was not simply being sustained. It had been set off outright.

To light the fuse and then stop your own breath.

That was the last thrashing of the Barther viscount’s house.

“She knew. Morten Barther’s wife knew already. What you hold most precious, and how to wound you worst.”

Rodrik’s purpose is to break the magic and be rid of the fog and the undead. To do it he has to kill every child the circle is carved into, Risha among them.

This is not a choice.

There is no version of it in which he neither kills Risha nor undoes the magic. The magic has already been set off, and so she dies.

Rodrik can only sit still where he has sunk down and watch his own long-held wish come true.

Who won the war, whether Erbern lived or died, all of it had lost its meaning.

“Rodrik.”

“…”

“You’ve changed since. I thought you’d still have the face you had then, the one that took my hand and pulled me along forever.”

“…”

“You’ve grown into a fine man. The baby fat’s gone, the line of your eyes has grown slender. I wish I could have watched you change.”

“…I’m sorry. For not staying with you.”

“How long do you think I can live?”

“…”

“Tell me.”
“A day at the most.”

“…Tell me a story. How you’ve lived, what you’ve been doing. When you’re done I’ll tell you mine.”

“…Risha.”

Rodrik swallowed his words once.

“The blood and tears of hundreds ran into the river. I ran the head of a family through with a sword, and I sent a child who had lost their parents to the bottom of a black river. This hand of mine that held yours, this hand that swore to make a better world, has given birth to more tragedies than I can count. Tell me, Risha. The way you whispered to me that night, imagining moonlight you couldn’t see.”

“…”

“Am I walking the right road? At the end of this road, does the ideal world you picture, that we picture, really exist?”

Her chin came to rest on his shoulder where he had sunk down. Risha put her arms around Rodrik and went on.

“Rodrik, you’re doubting. You’re doubting your own resolve.”
“Tell me. What I should do.”
“You were a just man. You’ve moved to make a better world, a happier world. Just as you’ve appeared in front of me like this, this very moment.”
“Risha.”
“Do what you want to do, Rodrik. Trust your heart, and trust your own justice.”

Rodrik did not stir.

“Kill these children.”

“…”

“Kill me, and kill the children, and set Erbern free.”

“…The house of Barther has fallen. Even if I kill no one, in three years the circle will burn through its fuel and go out.”

“Is that your justice? Looking after children whose future is already decided, for three years? Is tending these children and keeping Erbern’s curse alive a few years longer really what you want?”

Risha whispered at Rodrik’s ear.

Like smoke rising from a torch gone out.

Like the stench of ash tickling the tip of the nose.

“Rodrik. My Rodrik.”

A follower on the point of waking from a dream.

A god whispering of a deep sleep.

“Do the thing you want to do.”

The war was over.

The Barther viscount’s house had been purged at the hands of a traitor, and a new sun had risen over Erbern. Another morning had come, but the fog was still thick, and out on the plain that sunlight never came through whole.

Every member of Barther but Rodrik was dead, so there was no longer any reason to stay in Erbern. The commission had run only as far as the end of the war in the first place, hadn’t it?

I came out of Esmartin’s central tower first, called Pormel from where he had been waiting nearby, and pushed hard along the road to Siltrein.

No telling how Lilian is getting on.

The woman I had left behind there had been on my mind the whole way.

Whether Siltrein had held, if the force really had gone there as Morten said; whether Lilian was safe.

If a single mage really had been the whole of that force, she would have settled it alone without much trouble, but there is no ruling out the one chance in ten thousand.

Alone, with the undead making nuisances of themselves, it was a distance that would have taken days; thanks to Pormel I cut that down drastically. Afternoon now; at the latest I would reach Siltrein before sundown.

The wind coming against me carried the smell of damp rust. It came off Pormel’s saddle, frayed and worn in places from long neglect.

By the feel of it, three or four hours had passed since I came up out of the central tower’s cellar and walked out through Esmartin’s main gate.

How their story ended, I have no way of knowing. Perhaps it was no ending at all, but the first sign of another story only now beginning to sprout. Only one thing was certain. It was not for me to add a word to it, or to lay a hand on it.

“…”

The damp that had filled my helm thinned little by little.

And a light bright enough to dazzle took its place.

I put out an arm and tried to shade my eyes. Even so the sunlight, falling across the whole of Erbern for the first time in decades, would not relent, and filled my whole field of vision with brightness.

The fog that had tormented Erbern was slowly lifting.