Anthology - The Search For Magic

Just as the small community began to wake up, Shiv stepped away from the shadows and moved around to the front of the building. He was dressed differently now, in well-worn clothes he had retrieved from his pack. He no longer stood straight. He adopted a list to his right, rounded his shoulders and turned his left foot so he appeared clubfooted. He shuffled forward and knocked on the door. Several moments later it was answered by the bent man, whose eyes were rimmed by dark circles from lack of sleep.

“Snow’s filled the trail t’ Graespeck,” Shiv said, sounding half out of breath, his voice all craggy. “Too tough t’ walk it right now. Lookin’ for a place f stay until it stops snowin’.” He looked up at the sky for effect, the snow still coming down hard, though the wind had dwindled to almost nothing. He shivered, something easy to do as he was indeed cold, and he thrust his hands into his pockets. “I was wonderin’ if I could…”

“Thanks for your hospitality. Name’s Safford,” Shiv lied as he slipped past.

“Wilcher,” came the reply. “Erl Wilcher. Take care, Mister Safford. We’ve sick folks here, though we’ve got someone busy healing them.”

Shiv shuffled into the main room, heading straight to the fireplace and waving his hands in front of the flames. The heat felt good to his sixty-year-old frame, and he let himself bask in the sensation for several moments before he turned to study Risana.

Her shoulders were slumped. Still, she kept her vigil at the old woman’s side.

The daughters moved between the other three patients-all who were remarkably improved and sitting up on the cots. There were only a few lesions remaining on the boy called Jamie. He no longer coughed, and his mother was clucking her thanks to the young healer.

“Here. Drink up!” One of the sisters thrust a bowl of soup at Risana. “It’s spiced chicken broth.”

Risana declined, until the three improving patients, the sisters, Wilcher, and even the newcomer had some first. Then she took a chipped bowl between her hands, closed her eyes as if in prayer, and drank.

The soft light that streamed in through the windows gave silver highlights to her hair and revealed cuts to her garments that only could have been made by a sword.

“You’re a Knight,” Shiv stated, trying to draw her out into conversation. “A Solamnic.” She didn’t answer. “That charm a pokin’ out from your shirt,” he continued, gesturing with a finger. “That says you’re a Knight of the Rose.”

Risana fingers fluttered to her neck, finding a gold chain and charm that had worked itself free. She was quick to stuff it under her shirt and tabard.

“A wilted rose,” he said wryly, noting that the sisters were upset at his prying. “And one without any armor. Where’s the rest of your unit?” Any information about other Solamnic Knights in Neraka would be worth something to his employers.

“Dead.”

He raised an eyebrow and clamped his teeth together to stifle a yawn. Shiv desperately needed some sleep.

“All of them dead. Dead and buried.”

Shiv cocked his head to the side, a gesture that encouraged her to continue.

“We were directed to Neraka about a year and a half ago, twenty of us ordered to the foothills just north of the Lords of Doom. We were to meet a Dark Knight commander there, escort him safely out of the country.”

“But…?”

“But we learned too late that the commander didn’t intend to defect. He meant merely to lure Solamnic Knights into Neraka. He must have been disappointed that the council sent only twenty. I guess he expected a small army. Still, he had some measure of triumph, as two of our number were from the council itself.”

“What happened?” This came from the child Jamie. “Were you ambushed?”

A nod.

“But you escaped,” Shiv said. “Obviously.”

“I was the only survivor.” She let out a deep breath, the sound like sand being blown by a hot breeze.

One sister came forward and poured her more broth. “Then don’t mind my asking, and don’t believe we’re not grateful-we are-but why are you here?”

She didn’t answer, and so Shiv pressed, “Why didn’t you join another Solamnic outfit? Why aren’t you…?”

Her doe eyes regarded the disguised assassin, cutting off his words. She ran her thumbs around the lip of the bowl and finally replied. “Elsewhere? I’m not needed elsewhere. I’m needed here.”

Shiv really saw her then-selfless, driven, filled with a determination he had never seen before, and perhaps touched by madness. He finished his broth, his eyes never leaving hers.

“You’re tired.” This came from Wilcher, who hovered at Risana’s shoulder.

“A bit” She smiled slightly. It was die first time Shiv had seen her smile-a smile that melted the coldness in her face.

“Rest here, in my home. As long as you like. Please.”

“I will stay with your wife until…”

“I thank you for helping my grandchildren. I know you can’t help her.” There was a deep sadness in the old man’s eyes. “Ill tend to her alone. You don’t have to sit with her.”

“Yes, I do.”

Two hours later, their vigil was over, and Risana allowed herself an all-too-brief rest before getting up. “I am sorry for you loss, Erl Wilcher,” she said, as she reached for her cloak.

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.”