Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

The old man nodded, his eyes filled with tears. “Stay for a while,” he said. “Have dinner. Spend the night.”

She shook her head. “I must be on my way. As you said, there are ill folks in Graespeck, and I’d like to get there before nightfall.”

Wilcher clasped her hands and gestured with his head toward the assassin. “This fella here-”

“Safford,” Shiv stated. “He said he’s going to Graespeck, too.”

“Then I shall have company.”

“Her name is Risana,” the Dark Knight commander told Shiv several weeks earlier. The commander and a half-dozen of his esteemed fellows met with the assassin in a closed banquet hall in Telvan.

“She is concentrating her efforts in the Broken Chain Mountains, and has been for much of the past year from what we’ve gleaned. She heals the sick, traveling from village to village, and she touts the glory of the Solamnic Knighthood. She relies on the witless and the grateful to keep her hidden and to feed her. The villagers will not give her up and will not reveal her contacts. Locating her could be difficult.”

“Not for me.”

The commander’s lips edged upward in a sly grin. “That’s why we sought your services.”

Shiv steepled his fingers. “I am, as you’ve acknowledged, your most expert spy and assassin. And the most expensive. But why send me all this way for just one woman?”

The commander let out a laugh, then instantly sobered. “At first we thought her inconsequential,” he said, eyes flitting to Shiv’s, then finding the assassin’s gaze uncomfortable and looking away. “We have done nothing about her for several months-considering her, as you said, just one woman.”

“At first,” Shiv mused.

“At first. But singlehandedly, she appears to be turning the villagers against us.”

“One woman?”

The commander growled. “We’ve had reports of youths in some of the mountain towns leaving Neraka under her direction to join our enemy. Others are talking against us. She is a blight that must be stopped. Her allies and contacts must be found and eliminated.”

“Why not send an army of Dark Knights to deal with this blight?”

“There can be no hint of Dark Knight involvement. The mountain villages embrace this Solamnic, and we cannot afford to make a martyr of her. That would only make matters worse. No clues can point to us.”

Shiv agreed to the job. They offered him more than enough money-despite the weather.

The assassin followed Risana, glancing over his shoulder to see the people of Keth’s Cradle smiling and waving good-bye. In the space of less than twenty-four hours the “blight” had been thoroughly embraced by the village.

“Graespeck isn’t all that far,” he told her after Keth’s Cradle was out of sight, “but all of this snow makes it seem leagues away.”

Shiv had straightened his back and was no longer pretending to have a clubfoot. Walking behind Risana, he didn’t need to keep up the ruse. However, an hour past sunset they neared her new destination, and he adopted his crippled guise again. They plodded into Graespeck, a place only marginally larger than the previous village. Once again, he watched her go to work.

There was a group of young men in this village who were keenly curious about the woman, tales of whom had obviously preceded her arrival. As she moved from home to home, ministering to those who were stricken with the fever and offering kind words to the elderly, the young men followed her, plying her with questions about the Order of the Rose and about life outside of Neraka. A few made it clear they wanted to be Solamnic Knights.

The blight spreads, Shiv mused, noting, however, that she encouraged no one to join her Order. At least not here. Furthermore, it was clear she had no contacts in this village and that she hadn’t known a single soul here before she arrived.

They spent the night in a log home with one family. Following dinner, they helped shore up a shed that was threatening to collapse, then they slept for a few hours and headed out at first light.

For weeks Shiv accompanied Risana, and not once in that time-despite his many questions-did he hear her mention other Solamnic Knights in Neraka or name villagers who might be in league with her. In that time she never asked why, upon reaching Graespeck, he kept going along with her on her healing missions. In truth, he wasn’t quite sure himself.

She simply seemed to accept his company, enjoying it at times between places where they stopped to rest. He regaled her with stories he made up about a boyhood that never happened and a family that never existed.

Gradually, she told him quite a bit about her own youth and, one night, about why she came to Neraka. They were hunkered just inside the entrance to a small cave, watching the snow fall and the evening deepen.

“I was a chirurgeon,” she said, her voice and eyes soft. “The youngest and the most inexperienced of the Solam-nic Knights sent here. I was brought along as an assistant, really, for the two council members, as I am not the most skilled with a sword. Councilman Crandayl suffered from gout. I was there to aid him.” She paused and turned to stare at Shiv, again her eyes seeing something far beyond him and the darkening cave. “I was charging forward into the battle against the Dark Knights when I fell, slipped on the blood already thick on the ground. I struck my head and lost consciousness. When I awoke hours later I discovered that someone had fallen on top of me-Crandayl. He was dead. Everyone was dead. And the Dark Knights had taken me for dead, too. It took me three days to bury my brethren, nearly another day to bury the Dark Knights who had fallen.”

“And you left your armor there?” Sanford asked.

A nod. “I left my oath there, too.”

Shiv waited.

“I’m not a Solamnic Knight any longer. If I was, I wouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A Solamnic Knight would have returned to the Order’s nearest outpost. I would have let them assign me to another unit.”

“Then why…?”

“Am I here? I’d rather wander these mountains helping people live than return to the Order and ride off to kill people. I hate fighting. I hate the regime and the mandates and the notion of always following orders. And maybe I hate the Knighthood because it fosters bloodshed.”

“The villagers think you’re a Solamnic Knight.”

She shrugged. “Better, perhaps, they think that than to know the truth-that I’m a deserter.”

“Maybe you’re still a Solamnic at heart. After all, the pendant…” Shiv gestured to where he knew the charm hung on the gold chain beneath her shirt. “You still wear a symbol of the Order of the Rose.”

“I wear a symbol of my guilt,” she corrected him. She paused and resumed studying the snow. “Get some sleep, Safford. Morning will come too soon.”

Morning did come too soon. Shiv knew Risana well enough by now, better than any of his previous targets. He knew she worked alone, that there had never been any contacts or fellow Knights supporting her cause. She had never encouraged a soul to leave the mountains and join the Solamnic Order. He could kill her and complete his assignment. It would be simple.

They were nearing a branch in the trail that led back to Telvan. There were places nearby to hide her body. A journey of seven or eight days and he could tell the Dark Knight commander that the contract was fulfilled. He could finally collect his pay.

“Aren’t you worried?” Shiv asked her, the fingers of his right hand brushing the handle of a knife. “Rish, aren’t you in the least little bit worried?”

“About…?”

“The Dark Knights. This is their land, after all. Aren’t you worried they’ll be hunting you? If you keep this up, healing people and ending plagues, they might try to do something to stop you.”