He remembered how the youngest of them had committed suicide, unable to face another day of the grotesque undertaking. That afternoon, the rains had come. Keiftal wept with relief at the sight, hoping that the blood would be washed away. And for a while it was.
For a while.
He looked up and saw vultures circling him in the sky and wondered if he had, at last, gone mad with the weight on his soul. “Why won’t the memories leave me in peace?” he cried into the empty air, “Sovereign Host, why can I not sleep one night without hearing the screams of the dead?”
He stood there, weeping bitterly, wheezing between clenched teeth. Tears squeezed out from his tightly shut eyes. One fist beat his breast while the other, seemingly forgotten, firmly held the mule’s tether. He cursed the events of that day and prayed for deliverance.
Then a sensation wormed its way past his grief, a persistent but distant interruption like someone far away calling for his attention. He mastered his emotions and realized that the mule was tugging insistently on its tether. He opened his eyes and looked around, but saw no threats.
He looked at the mule. It was acting a little skittish, but of course most animals avoided the Crying Fields. Keiftal looked up.
“Well, will you look at that?” he mumbled. “The vultures are still there. They’re not visions after all. Come, now,” he said to the mule in a voice suddenly more brassy and cheerful, “let’s go see what they’ve found, shall we? Maybe it will be some good news.”
The mule snorted and shied away.
“Oh, now, don’t give me that. Even this place can hold good news. Sometimes.”
He led the mule over the gentle slopes toward the center of the vultures’ lazy circles. As he crested the last rise, he saw what he hoped to see: a body lying curled almost into a fetal position on the corrupted turf, half-naked, unmoving. Two vultures closed in, walking slowly. Their bright red heads leaned forward, peering hopefully at a potential meal.
Keiftal shuffled toward the body in a geriatric jog, pulling the recalcitrant mule forward. The vultures skipped away, spreading their funereal wings like cloaks and croaking at the intruder.
Keiftal staked the mule’s tether to the ground, then kneeled by the body. “Oh, Teron,” he said, rolling the young monk onto his back, “why do you do this to yourself?”
Teron was pale, his skin covered with the salty residue of dried sweat. A trail of dried blood ran from his nose and down one cheek. Pale bruises covered his arms and torso. As shallow as Teron’s breathing was, Keiftal clearly smelled that he’d thrown up at some point. Teron’s tight muscles held their position as Keiftal rolled him over, and the elderly monk gently stretched Teron’s limbs out into a more relaxed posture. First he unbunched the arms, then he stretched the legs. Once Teron looked comfortably supine, Keiftal tried to unclench the young man’s fists. After a few moments, he gave up. He massaged the young man’s chest and sunken belly until Teron’s breathing became more regular. He tried unsuccessfully to pry Teron’s jaw open, so instead he settled for pouring a trickle of water from his wineskin onto the young man’s bared teeth. He watched the small trickle run down the teeth and behind his cheek, then he saw Teron’s neck move as he reflexively swallowed. He poured a little more water into Teron’s mouth in this fashion, then sat back and surveyed the little vale in which Teron lay.
The grass was beaten down for yards and yards in every direction. In some places, the turf had been worn down right to the dirt. Further up the slope, patches of grass were pockmarked and ashen. Near the top of the rise, one section of turf had been ripped from the ground like the scalp from a skull.
“I’d understand, Teron,” muttered the old monk, “if you had a prayer of changing anything out here. But this isn’t self-purification. This is self-destruction.”
Keiftal gathered his strength. Once steeled to the task, he pulled Teron into a sitting position and then tried to maneuver his own body into a position where he could lift the young man. Eventually he settled for sitting beside Teron and rolling over, pulling Teron over on top of him. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. With more grunting and fussing, he eventually got Teron situated properly across his shoulders. He crawled slowly over to where the mule was staked. Gripping the mule’s leg with one hand to help pull himself up, Keiftal rose first to his knees, then to his feet. He leaned across the back of the mule with his burden, then awkwardly pushed Teron up over his head, getting his monastic robes caught between the unconscious monk and the mule’s saddle blanket. With much tugging and grumbling, he extricated both his robe and the blanket from between Teron and the mule. With a look of exasperation he flipped the blanket carelessly over Teron’s body.
He kicked the stake out of the ground and staggered back toward the monastery, the mule in tow. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said.
He paused, turned, and cuffed Teron across the back of the head. “You should be, too. Do you hear me?”
Teron lay unmoving.
“Bah,” groused Keiftal. “You never listen.”
Praxle watched as the lightning rail pulled into the station at Wroat. It was a huge construction, aesthetically unpleasing and brutal of form, yet beautiful in inspiration and power. The harness coach came first, a large armored carriage with bulges and pipes that made it look like the nose of a boil-infested horse. At the very front of the harness coach was the catch-and-kill, a reinforced bladed spike. Its strength and magically augmented sharpness ensured that no matter what beast might be standing astride the conductor stones when the lightning rail came, the harness coach would be able to plow right through its pieces.
Electric discharges encircled the harness coach, shooting from vents and connecting with each other as well as the conductor stones beneath. The pattern often looked like a harness and only added to the appalling equine image.
Passenger coaches followed behind the harness coach, hooked together into a caravan by linkages and a rather dubious-looking catwalk. They were also constructed of metal, armored against natural disasters or the possibility of raiders. Each coach had conductor stones beneath it, and lightning arced between them and the mated conductor stones laid out in the ground beneath. Despite the haphazard actions of the lightning, the coaches hovered in place, and the ride was as smooth as that offered by a horse-drawn carriage.
Praxle half-turned to the half-orc that towered over him. “Come, Jeffers,” he said. “Let’s find my cabin and get away from these crowds.”
Jeffers picked up Praxle’s copious luggage and followed his master onto the lightning rail. The two moved through the caravan of coaches until they found the luxurious private suite that Praxle had rented. Once inside, Jeffers poured Praxle a snifter of brandy and then proceeded to unpack those things that Praxle might require on the two-day journey to Aundair.
Praxle sat by the window and put his feet up, occasionally taking small sips of his drink. Soon the coach got under way, accelerating slowly but smoothly. They left Wroat and soon were speeding along the vast Brelish countryside.
Jeffers finished arranging the room, then left and fetched some food.
Praxle stared out the window as the lightning rail sped along. He didn’t hear the constant actinic crackling of the magical fields propelling the caravan along the plinths. His eyes did not see the Howling Peaks slowly sailing past his window like great stone galleons of a bygone age. Nor did he smell the savor of the Brelish stew that Jeffers had procured.
“You look pensive, master,” said Jeffers as he refreshed Praxle’s drink. “May I ask what troubles you?”
“The Orb of Xoriat, of course,” he said. “After so many years, I’m on its track at last. Unfortunately, I am not the only one. Caeheras let his lips slip, and somehow the Shadow Fox found out.”