Marina Dyachenko - The Scar

“Well?”

The stranger struck.

Egert saw how the steel edge of the sword swept through the air like the shining blade of a fan. He awaited the blow and death, but instead he felt a sharp pain on his cheek.

Not understanding what had happened, he raised his hand to his face. Warm liquid flowed down his chin. The cuff of his shirt was immediately stained with blood. In passing, Egert gave thanks that he had taken off his coat and thus saved it from being ruined.

He raised his eyes toward the stranger, and saw his back. He was sheathing his sword in its scabbard as he walked leisurely away.

“Hey!” shouted Egert, scrambling to his feet like a fool. “Don’t you have anything else to say, you long-toothed louse?”

But the grizzled boarder of the Noble Sword did not look back. And so he left, without turning around a single time.

Pressing a kerchief to his cheek, he picked up his family sword and tossed his coat over his shoulder. Egert was wholeheartedly grateful that he had come to the duel without Karver. A whipping was a whipping, even if the hoary stranger had been as skilled with a blade as Khars, Protector of Warriors. All the same, he was not Khars. The Protector of Warriors valued tradition; there was no way that he would have ended a duel in such a strange and absurd way.

Dragging himself to the shore of the river, Egert got on all fours and peered into the dark, perpetually rippling mirror of the water. A long, deep gash, reflected in the water, loomed on the cheek of Egert Soll. It ran from his cheekbone to his chin. At the sight of it, the reflection pursed its lips incredulously. A few warm, red drops fell and dissolved into the cold water.

When he returned to town, Egert really did not want to meet any of his acquaintances, which is probably exactly why he found Karver, who was extremely overwrought, at the first intersection.

“That graybeard returned to the inn as whole as a full moon. I was wondering … What’s that on your face?”

“A cat scratched me,” Egert spat through his teeth.

“Ah,” drawled Karver ruefully. “I was thinking about going down to the bridge.”

“What, to consign my cold, dead body to the ground?” Egert tried to stifle his irritation. The deep gash on his cheek had stopped bleeding, but it burned as if it were a red-hot rod resting against his face.

“Well,” drawled Karver equivocally and in the same breath added, lowering his voice. “The old man; he left right away. He already had his horse saddled.”

“What do I care? One less madman in town,” Egert hissed.

“I told you that right away.” Karver shook his head soberly. “A lunatic, you know? You could see it in his eyes. There was something completely deranged in those eyes, did you notice?”

It was obvious that Karver was not at all averse to discussing lunatics in general and the stranger in particular. Of course, he wanted to be privy to the details of the duel, and the next words out of his mouth would almost certainly have been an invitation to the tavern, but for the present, bitter disappointment awaited Karver. Without appeasing his curiosity even the slightest bit, Egert hurriedly, and somewhat dryly, said his good-byes.

The Soll family emblem that graced the iron-bound gates had been created to evoke pride in the family’s friends and terror in their enemies. The belligerent animal that was depicted there did not have a name, but it was furnished with a forked tongue, steel jaws, and two swords held in razor-sharp talons.

Dragging his feet with difficulty, Egert walked up to the high entrance, where a servant stood ready to accept the cloak and sword of the young gentleman, but on that unhappy morning Egert had one but not the other; therefore, the young gentleman simply nodded in answer to the deep, deferential bow of the servant.

Egert’s room, like nearly all the rooms in the Soll family manor, was decorated with tapestries that depicted various species of fighting boars. A few sentimental novels, interspersed with textbooks on hunting, languished on the small bookcase; Egert had never opened either the novels or the textbooks. A portrait hung on the wall between two narrow windows. The portrait was of Egert’s mother when she was young and beautiful; she was holding a curly-haired blond child snuggled in her lap. The artist, who had painted the picture fifteen years ago at the behest of the elder Soll, was nothing more than a fawning toady: Egert’s mother was excessively beautiful, with a beauty that was not her own, and the child was simply the embodiment of all that was good and wholesome. The eyes were too blue, the little cheeks were too sweetly chubby, and the little dimple on the chin was too cutely appealing. It seemed that at any moment this wondrous child might take flight and dissolve into the ether.

Egert approached the mirror that stood on the bureau next to his bed. His eyes were no longer blue; they were gray, like an overcast sky. Egert stretched his lips reluctantly: the dimple was gone as if it had never been, but the wound snaked across his cheek, long, stinging, and bloody.

At his summons the old first maid, who had long ago been entrusted with all the workings of the house, appeared. She groaned, chewed her lips, brought out a jar of ointment, and applied it to the wound. The pain subsided. With the help of another servant, Egert got his boots off, divested himself of his coat, and overcome, fell into his couch. He was exhausted.

It came time for dinner, but Egert did not descend to the dining room; instead, he informed his mother that he had already eaten at the tavern. Truthfully, he did want to go to the tavern; he already regretted the fact that he had not stayed and had a few drinks with Karver. He even stood up, planning to go out, but then he paused and sat down again.

Very soon his head started to spin. Then the blond boy in the portrait, that delightful boy with the clean cheeks, unstained by a sword, nodded his head and smiled meaningfully.

Evening was drawing close; the hour had arrived when the day was not yet dead but the night was not yet born. Beyond the window the sky faded. Shadows crept out of the corners, and the room transformed. Studying the muzzles of the boars on the tapestries, still visible in the twilight, Egert felt a faint, vague uneasiness.

He cautiously paid heed to this awkward, uncomfortable, tenacious feeling. It was as if there was an expectation, an expectation of something that had neither form nor name, something shadowy but inescapable. The boars bared their teeth at him; the fair-haired boy, snuggled in the lap of his mother, smiled; the edge of the valance over the bed quivered sluggishly; and Egert suddenly felt cold in his warm couch.

He stood up, trying to free himself from the unpleasant, uncertain anxiety. He wanted to call for someone, but then he thought better of the idea. He sat down again, agonizingly trying to identify the cause of his anxiety and to determine where the threat was coming from. He sprang up again to go into his drawing room and there, to his joy, was a servant bringing in lighted candles. An ancient, many-armed candelabrum was standing on the table, the room was brightly lit, the twilight had already given way to night, and Egert immediately forgot about the strange sensation that had swept over him at the juncture between day and night.

That night he slept without dreams.

Far from Kavarren, in a room filled with harsh incense, two people talked, their hands resting on a tabletop of polished wood. One set of hands was senile, with long nervous fingers, and the other young, white and strong, with a tattoo on the wrist:

“The mage refused, Your Lordship.”