“How do you feel?” asked Malator.
“How do I look?” I croaked.
Malator’s flashed his familiar grin. “Go to the river.”
I dragged myself to the bank of the river. The water moved quickly, but as I hung my face over it the water suddenly stilled like a mirror. What I saw chilled me.
“Is that me?”
My hair was yellow again. No fading, no gray at all, just the wheaty gold of my youth. I’d lost the lines of age and my skin was tight again. I peered down further, touching my cheeks, feeling the skin with my soft fingertips. Even my teeth seemed straighter, whiter. I was as I’d been when Cassandra loved me, when I’d first met her years before.
“What did you do to me?” I asked. “I’m young again!”
“You are as old as you ever were,” he assured me. “But stronger. More whole.” He reached down toward my face, gently plucking off my eye patch. I jerked back, surprised and annoyed by the intrusion, then realized an eyeball had replaced the dead, white flesh. “Look at the world now, Lukien.”
Around me everything was clear and beautiful. Deep, the way it hadn’t been in years. I stood up, wobbly at first, flexing my fingers and then my arms. I stomped my feet and felt the strong bones inside my legs. Fresh air swelled my chest. I hardly recognized myself! Malator glided over to where the sword stood in the dirt and pulled it free. He returned and handed it to me. I hesitated.
“Do I still need this?” I asked. “Can I not live without it?”
“We are bound, still and always,” said Malator. “Until the day you decide to discard me, we are together.”
“Then I accept you,” I said and sheathed the sword. “Now we make Diriel’s end.”
“And Wrestler’s,” added Malator.
“Oh, yes.” I had a special end in mind for him. “Wrestler will not die a man’s death.”
“There’s an army to fight too, Lukien. You need to be ready. Those men you tried to save-Diriel’s legionnaires-they won’t stop. You’ll have to kill them.”
“They are forfeit,” I declared. “Every mother’s son of ’em.”
I meant to have them all-not just Diriel and Wrestler, but all the filth that followed them. Everyone pledged to that demented cannibal would be slaughtered. They were the ones who made me this way, I told myself. They deserved the coming storm. But first I needed to find them. I went back to where I’d left the horse, the majestic Ganjeese barb that had brought me all this way. He was standing on the other side of the river, watching me, waiting. I hadn’t even tied him. The stallion’s brown eyes noticed the change in me approvingly.
“You are a prince of horses,” I told him. I patted his barrel, feeling his powerful rib cage. “I have never seen your like or equal. Will you ride with me? Battle with me? We’ll see many bloody days.”
Horses understand. They really do. This one knew exactly what I meant and didn’t buck or complain.
“You’ll need a name,” I told him. “I don’t know what Fallon calls you, and I don’t care. I’m going to name you for myself.” I took his muzzle in my hand and looked into his eyes. “From now on you’ll be called Venger.”
I climbed up onto his broad back, feeling like a Royal Charger again. Malator looked up at me with approval, then disappeared into the sword. I took a long moment to say goodbye to Cricket, trotting Venger over to her grave and trying not to weep. It was just a body, I told myself. Her spirit-her soul-had already left it. Realizing that, I glanced around the serene setting that was her death place, knowing that she was here, in this very spot. I just couldn’t see her.
“Goodbye, Lisea,” I whispered. “I’ll kiss Gilwyn’s baby for you.”
Venger turned from the grave, then led me back down and out of the river valley. I wasn’t sure where I was going-maybe south, maybe east. Just for now, I needed to ride. And to think. I needed to plan the bloodiest doom possible for Diriel and his puppets.
26
Southeast was the direction I chose. With Diriel’s army directly south and more of his men probably on the march, I decided to evade them, crossing over the river into Kasse and following one of its many branches south and east toward Drin. The landscape was less dreary here, with fewer mountains and plenty of trees to hide me as I rode. But like all the Bitter Kingdoms, Drin was nearly abandoned now, its people scattered by the threat of war, its farms overgrown or fallow. There were good roads, though, built during more peaceful times, and I moved quickly all that first day. Once I saw some figures watching me from the window of a distant farmhouse, but when I waved they quickly disappeared. I stopped and watered Venger from a trough of rain water, hoping they’d come out to greet me, but they never did.
So I moved on, south and east, sometimes following the river and sometimes following the road, and did my best to forget what I’d seen just hours before. Cricket’s screams were too fresh in my mind to examine head-on; I could only approach them sideways, like a crab, and tell myself I did the best I could. If I’d been faster, or listened more, if I’d taken her to Sky Falls or never taken her with me, she’d still be alive. But none of those things happened, so she was dead. I could only blame myself. And I would, but not today. Not until Diriel and Wrestler both were dead.
As the sun sank behind me I continued on, riding into the sound of crickets. The river reappeared alongside me, fat and sluggish, wider than I’d seen it in some time. Mosquitoes bloomed out of the dusk to feed on me. I thought how strange that was: that Malator had made me nearly immortal, but insects could still abuse me. I had hardly gotten used to having my eye back! Everything seemed clearer to me. I could ride with ease through the darkness. Was this how a hawk felt, I wondered? Or a bat? The night made my senses tingle, tuning them like an instrument. I took a deep breath and smelled the dampness of a coming rain. Looking up revealed clouds gathering around the moon, and when I breathed again I smelled smoke in the air.
“Ho,” I said softly, reining Venger back. He stopped, perking up his ears at the noise ahead.
Voices.
Another camp, I supposed, but I was too far south now to turn around, and my newfound strengths made me brash. I eased Venger forward, guiding him around the bends in the river and weaving in and out of the pine trees. Firelight glowed up ahead. The voices gradually grew louder. When I finally slipped out of the cover I saw what looked like a raft on the river, almost empty and tied to the shore by lines of rope. Scores of men stood on the shore, some of them carrying torches, others holding swords across their chests. I drew back at once, not recognizing the standard that waved above them. From the shadows I spied the boat’s cargo-a man-shaped parcel wrapped in grayish cloth, like one of Anton’s mummies.
“A funeral,” I whispered, bending down to speak in Venger’s ear. “Hold back.”
At least two hundred men stood along the bank. Far behind them hid a village, veiled by trees, composed of modest homes and a single cobblestone avenue. People from the village had gathered with the soldiers, mostly women and children, their faces gaunt with sorrow. The soldiers stood nearly silent as a young man stepped out from among them, wading knee-deep into the water. He dressed as the others dressed, in a long, black leather coat with armored shoulders and brass buttons running down his left breast. Articulated gauntlets rode up his forearms. When he bent to touch the raft, his long hair tickled the water. Then he kissed the edge of the raft and spoke a farewell I couldn’t quite hear. I don’t know what made him turn in my direction, but as he trudged ashore he caught a glimpse of me in the shadows.