Bruce Blake: Heart of the King

No, he’s not like that.

Lehgan had barely said a word since agreeing to her request, choosing instead to answer her enquiries with grunts and gestures. She understood why he acted this way, understood his reticence at undertaking a trip he didn’t understand, but hoped he’d come out of it soon. She needed him. The idea of facing this alone, admitting the truth she’d tried so hard to avoid, felt overwhelming. She role-played scenarios in her head, envisioning what Khirro’s face would look like when she told him what he may already suspect. She imagined how it would make him feel, how it would make her feel. She didn’t want to hurt him, had never really wanted to.

Emeline shook her head and glanced away from her husband and toward the line of stubby trees bordering their farmland. Beyond it, about four hours ride, lay the town. An hour more and she’d be the farthest away from home she’d ever been. The thought brought a shiver to her spine and the movement made Iana gurgle in her arms. She tried to smile at the baby and found she couldn’t.

If I really didn’t want to hurt Khirro, things would be very different now.

She sighed deeply and urged the mare forward to catch up to her husband.

The trees gave way to scrub brush, the brush to rocky flatland and the flatland finally to farms. They kept off the single-lane dirt track cutting through the area, instead choosing to pick their way through the fields, though the going was slower.

They spoke little while they walked, which gave Khirro time to contemplate the farmland through which they passed, and it quickly became clear to him that something wasn’t right. While some of the fields were cleared and ready for winter, the crops had withered without being harvested in others. Brown leaves and cracked corn stocks carpeted one field while rotted squash and overgrown potato plants turned another into a tangled maze. They didn’t speak of this anomaly; so far, they’d come in contact with no one to question their presence, so remaining quiet seemed their best option to keep it that way.

They hadn’t seen anyone at all until they came to the field of spoiled tomatoes.

The leaves of the tomato plants were dry and brittle, first parched by the sun, then burnt by the cold. A few shrunken tomatoes still clung to the dead vines, but most had fallen to the weed-covered ground. Athryn walked two paces ahead of Khirro, picking his way through the split and desiccated fruit, when he stopped short. Khirro halted beside him and moved his face close to the magician’s ear.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Athryn raised his hand and pointed to a spot ahead of them. Khirro looked but saw nothing unusual at first, just the same twist of dead tomato vines, the same untended soil. He squinted, held his hand to his brow to block sun that wasn’t actually shining in his eyes, and still couldn’t see what caught the magician’s attention. He silently debated whether to ask Athryn what it was and break the silence or trust the magician’s eyes when he spied a swatch of color amongst the brown plants, a dull green that blended into its surroundings.

Khirro stepped forward, felt a hard shape under his foot, and looked down to see he’d trod upon one of the rotten tomatoes. It flexed under his weight, then burst, spilling only dried seeds onto the moist field. He looked at it for a minute and shivered. What happened here to keep the farmer from tending his fields? What man of the earth could bear to allow a crop to spoil so?

He looked away from the dead fruit and took another step. As he got closer, he saw that the patch of green was larger than he first thought. Another step and he recognized it as an abandoned coat. Whoever left it did so before the tomato plants withered-the coat didn’t sit atop the dead vines, they very nearly covered it.

“It’s okay,” he said and strode forward. He hadn’t noticed the magician moving, but he’d come to his side.

“Be careful, Khirro.”

“It’s nothing, just a tunic. It’s-”

Khirro stopped mid-step. Beneath the dull green coat, he saw cloth of another color, a rough-spun brown fabric lost in the tangle of tomato plants until they got closer: breeches to go with the coat.

“Athryn-”

“I see.”

They strode the last five paces together to look down at the corpse. The flesh of the man’s face resembled the dried skin of the tomatoes still clinging to the vine wound around his arm. The bone of his cheek showed through the ashen skin pulled tight across it, his lips were shrunken back from yellowed teeth as empty eye sockets stared skyward, their contents stolen by hungry deathbirds. The body made Khirro think of the scarecrows his father used on their farm to keep the crows from stealing the harvest, though this one had failed miserably at its job.

Athryn knelt beside the dead man, examining him without touching. Khirro stood beside his companion, staring down at the body and suppressing a shudder; he’d seen dead men wielding weapons and so didn’t trust corpses to stay dead.

“Be careful, Athryn.”

Khirro leaned forward, inspecting the corpse over the magician’s shoulder, and noticed a hole the size of the palm of his hand in the dead man’s chest. He presumed the wound to be the cause of the man’s death, but it was an unusual wound, not caused by sword or axe or spear.

What could make a hole that size?

Athryn closed his eyes and held his flattened hand over the dead man’s head, a quiet hum coming from the back of the magician’s throat; Khirro at first mistook it for the buzz of an insect. He didn’t know what his companion attempted; he’d long before given up trying to divine the machinations of a magician, so he skirted the corpse’s feet and crouched at the other side of the body, across from Athryn.

Other than the hole in his chest, everything seemed normal about the man. Average height and build; brown hair, stringy from exposure to the elements; his fingernails grown too long after death. Nor did anything look unnatural about his position-he lay upon the ground as though he’d stopped for a nap while picking tomatoes and his flesh dried onto his bones before he woke. The similarities between the undead soldiers and this inanimate corpse were few, but enough to unnerve Khirro.

The corpse’s chest moved.

Khirro stared at the hole, his breath held for fear the corpse might steal it. When it didn’t move again for a few seconds, he glanced up at Athryn, but his companion showed no sign of having seen the movement.

My imagination.

He released his breath slowly, allowing it to hiss between his teeth.

Stay calm. It’s a corpse, nothing more.

The man’s chest moved again, but it didn’t rise and fall as though the corpse drew breath, instead it gyrated, like a wave cresting beneath the brittle skin. Khirro remembered the way the glowing worms had looked crawling beneath Callan’s flesh and his eyes widened; he opened his mouth to tell Athryn.

“ Screee. ”

The rat burst out of the hole in the man’s chest, teeth bared as it voiced its displeasure at their presence. Startled, Khirro fell back and felt another dehydrated tomato explode under his back side. The rat, halfway emerged from the man’s chest, screeched at him again. Khirro scuttled away, heart pounding against his ribs, and backed into his companion's legs-he hadn’t even seen the magician move. Athryn offered his hand, a smile on his lips. Khirro looked at him, then back at the rat.

“Gods, that thing scared me.”

“I see that,” Athryn said with a chuckle.

Had it been anyone else laughing at his expense, or had this occurred a few months before, Khirro would have felt embarrassed and uncomfortable, but the happenings since that day on the walls of the Isthmus Fortress had changed him. If a rat startled him, so be it-he’d killed men and ferocious beasts, so he saw no reason to prove himself to vermin, and he knew Athryn meant nothing by his laughter.