Ken Scholes - Canticle

His father had been among Windwir’s dead.

And at the end of that work, on the night before Rudolfo and Petronus arrived to escort him to his new home in the Ninefold Forest, Neb had presided over the quiet funeral of the world’s greatest city. The band of diggers that still remained had gathered up on the hill above the east bank of the Second River, and after a song about the light, they had called upon their young captain for a few words.

Here, at this grave today, Neb could not remember a single one of those words. But he’d given them; he’d seen the nods of assent and the tears of grief satisfied. He’d heard every cough and every creak of every boot heel. He could not recall that eulogy, but at the same time, he felt better for having given it. Still, it felt easier then than now though he was not called upon for any role in this present grave-digging. Maybe the vast number of Windwir’s graves made the grief and loss then so much harder to lay hold of.

Maybe it just now settles in, he thought. Or maybe it would settle in slowly, like a large man to a bath, gradually becoming more real with each loss that followed.

Or maybe it is because deep down we know that whatever laid Windwir low has now taken Hanric from this world as well .

The sudden thought ambushed him and he blinked at it. The world had changed on the day of the spell. And it had not recovered. The nations that weren’t locked in civil war were at odds with their neighbors. And now that violence had spilled over into assassinations. The only thriving place in the Named Lands seemed to be the Ninefold Forest, with the construction of its new library and rapid expansion of the town around it. Before Windwir, Rudolfo ruled a resource-rich corner of the New World and led a simple, pleasurable life. Now, the path of change took them in a new direction as the Ninefold Forest Houses emerged as perhaps the strongest nation in the Named Lands.

Another thought struck him: Three of the most prominent leaders from the War of Windwir were in that Great Hall last night. Two were dead. One had not even been scratched.

He looked up as Winters released his hand and stepped forward. As the men continued working their shovels, the others gathered around her and Neb stepped back. She raised her hands and broke into tongues, her eyes fixed upon Hanric’s corpse. The Marshers swayed at her words, and suddenly Neb felt misplaced.

He felt a light touch at his elbow and glanced to his right.

Rudolfo and Aedric had joined them. The Gypsy King and his First Captain looked haggard and worn, though they now wore fresh clothing. Rudolfo held a rolled-up quilt in his hands and handed it somberly to Neb.

This is for Hanric, he signed slowly. Present it on my behalf, Lieutenant. It belonged to my father.

Neb nodded, hesitant to speak and unable to sign. Finally, he risked a whisper. “Yes, General.”

Rudolfo’s brown eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark circles beneath them, offsetting the deep lines of worry on his face. Behind his short beard, his mouth was tight and grim. Rudolfo returned Neb’s nod, cast Aedric a sidelong glance, and the two slipped back into the maze.

As they vanished, Neb looked back to Winters. As she continued speaking, the men continued digging and some of the women began stripping Hanric down, putting his bloodstained clothing to the side in a pile. A bucket of steaming water appeared, and Neb watched as they scrubbed the hairy corpse clean of both the blood and the telltale filth that set Marshers apart from the other residents of the New World. After, they scooped dirt into the bucket and mixed it into mud with their hands. Keening beneath a sky that now shifted into deep, star-specked gray, they smeared the mud over Hanric’s naked form as Winters’s voice rose in pitch.

Her glossolalia passed and she looked out at the small group, her eyes wet. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in shadow is past,” she said, “and he shall walk the Beneath Places in search of Home. How shall he find his way?”

A woman stepped forward with the discarded stub of a candle, bowing deeply, and placing it at Winters’s feet.

Winters returned the bow and continued. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in hunger is past,” she said, “and he shall hunt the Beneath Places in search of food. How shall he strike his prey?”

An older man stepped forward with a handful of smooth stones and an old leather sling, laying it beside the candle with a bow.

Her voice became sorrowful now. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in the sunlight is past and he shall rest in the cold of the Beneath Places. How shall he warm his soul?” Her eyes found Neb and met them. They were wide and there were worlds of grief within them.

On shaking legs, Neb forced himself forward. He took the quilt and laid it at her feet, his eyes never leaving hers. He bowed, sadness pulling again at his heart and eyes.

She nodded to him and he stepped back. As the ritual continued, he tried to pay attention. Other gifts were brought forward; and then, as the diggers finished the grave and the women finished the mudding, songs and stories of Hanric ben Tornus and his shadow-reign upon the Wicker Throne were lifted up to the winter morning. As if paying obeisance of their own, the swollen stars winked out and the sliver of blue-green moon slid from the sky and into the ground.

When it was time, they wrapped Hanric in Lord Jakob’s quilt with the candle in one hand and the sling in the other, and lowered him into the ground with his other gifts. Then, each in turn cast a shovel of dirt upon his sleeping form and let the Beneath Places swallow their friend.

When they were finished, one by one the Marshers drifted off, leaving Neb and Winters beside the new-turned earth. They sat, side by side, on the meditation bench, and finally Winters sighed.

“I know you need to go,” she told him.

He slipped his arm up around her narrow shoulders. “I do. But I do not wish it.”

She chuckled and it almost sounded bitter. “What we wish does not often enter into matters, Nebios ben Hebda. Your lord bids you go.”

He looked over to her. There beside him, she seemed much smaller than when she stood before her people. “But what does my lady bid?”

She smiled. “I bid you take the path you are called to. I bid you find our Home as the dreams have told us you will.”

But what if the dreams are wrong? He did not ask it. He would not ask it. Instead, he made a statement that he willed into a promise. “I will be back within a week,” he said.

She moved closer to him, leaning in, and he felt her shiver. “I will be gone by then.” She paused, shifting uncomfortably. “I fear something dark becomes of my people, though I do not know what it is. My own kind have brought this about. I must know why.”

Word that the assassins were Marshers had spread quietly through the ranks of the scouts, and certainly it was a darkness she needed to plumb. She was the Marsh Queen, with her work awaiting. He was an officer of the Gypsy Scouts-of the Forest Library-with his own.

Neb wanted to protest it. He wanted to strip off the scarf of his rank, take up the bucket of now-cold mud and smear himself with it. He wanted to pledge his knives to her service and follow her back to the Marshlands to hunt down whoever was responsible for last night’s attack.

But I am pledged to the library. Not the library, he thought, but the light of knowledge it represented and the man who would shepherd that light here in the Ninefold Forest, away from the political turmoil of the Named Lands. And if the dreams of her people were true, the Ninefold Forest Houses also guarded the way to the Home he was meant to find them. He sighed and pulled her close again, taking in the earthy scent of her.