The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

  The bell chimed on the door behind him. Ard whirled around, his hand darting to his Roller once again.

  A hooded figure streaked forward, knocking Ard back before his gun cleared the leather holster. Raek turned away from the false oven, drawing a dagger, but the lithe figure hurled something at the secret entrance.

  A clay Grit pot. It smashed against the oven entrance to Ard’s hideout, throwing an instant blast of hazy Barrier Grit. The detonation cloud filled the fake hearth, blocking any possibility of getting up to the hidden room.

  With a bound, the cowled intruder leapt onto the bakery counter in front of Mearet. The baker cried out, and a Singler appeared in the stout woman’s hand. But the hooded figure was swifter. A gloved hand reached out, a dagger glinting in the morning light. Then the blade plunged into Mearet’s neck. The person kneeling on the counter quickly released the dagger, Mearet falling forward onto the day-old pastries in a red mess.

  Ard rose to his knees, Roller drawn, Slagstone hammer cocked back. He was only feet away from the sudden murderer, an easy shot.

  “Hold your weapons!” the figure shouted, gloved hands coming up to throw back the hood. “It is I, Halavend’s companion, Lyndel.” She turned to face Ard, startled recognition the only thing stopping him from pulling the trigger.

  Ard’s gaze fell back on the murdered baker. “What the blazing sparks, Lyndel?”

  “You wondered about the spy in your group?” Lyndel pointed to Mearet. “There is your answer.”

  “What?” Ard shouted. Mearet? He’d never seen that coming.

  “Ha!” Raek exclaimed, tucking away his knife. “Told you it wasn’t me!”

  “Well, it’s nice to finally have proof,” Ard said. “I was beginning to suspect you again after my breakfast went missing on the Double Take.” He glanced sorrowfully at the dead woman. “You sure it was her?”

  Lyndel nodded. “Information Halavend received directly from the king.”

  Halavend talking to King Pethredote? That didn’t sound like good news. “We need to—” Ard’s sentence was cut off as the upper wall to the hideout exploded in a hailstorm of Roller balls.

  Raek pulled Ard to the floor, rolling to the base of the wall as the upper portion splintered and chipped, spewing dust and broken boards. Lyndel dropped behind Mearet’s dead body on the pastry counter.

  Ard glanced over at the priestess, grateful that her detonation of Barrier Grit kept whoever was shooting from coming down to the bakery shopfront. There was a sudden lull in the gunfire. Ard tried to say something, but Raek clamped a hand over his mouth, ear tilted upward, listening.

  “Gotta move,” Raek whispered. “They’re mixing Blast Grit to blow through the upper wall.”

  “You can tell all that by listening?” Ard interjected, pushing his friend’s hand away.

  “It’s my mixing gear,” answered Raek. “I know that sound like a mother knows her baby’s cry.”

  Lyndel sprinted for the bakery exit, throwing the hood over her head again as Ard and Raek followed close behind. The upper wall was a perforated mess of splintered wood, and Ard could see men in uniforms through the gaps.

  Lyndel kicked open the door with a pleasant chime of the bell. Ard and Raek had barely cleared the shop when an explosion sounded from within the bakery. It was Blast Grit, just as Raek had predicted, and the force shattered every window in that building and the neighboring ones.

  Quarrah met them, her face creased with worry, as they sprinted after the lean Trothian woman. Lyndel led them to an open-top carriage waiting just yards down the street. Leaping onto the driving bench, Lyndel seized the reins as Ard and his two companions clamored aboard.

  Quarrah passed the satchel with the Grit keg back to Ard. He slipped the strap over his shoulder, calling out to Lyndel. “We have the Grit. We need to get to Halavend—”

  “Isle Halavend is dead,” Lyndel said abruptly.

  Ard froze, a hundred questions shooting through his mind like gunfire. “What?” He barely noticed the group of Reggies pouring out of the burning bakery. “Dead?”

  Lyndel snapped the reins and they tore down the street, the two yoked horses pulling them at a faster rate than a typical hired carriage. Raek fired two shots from his Roller, causing the pursuing Regulators to dive for cover. There was little threat of pursuit, since the Reggies didn’t have a horse or carriage, and soon Lyndel had left Humont Street behind.

  “Did she say Halavend is dead?” Quarrah called over the bumping carriage.

  “That’s what she said.” Ard was still trying to process it.

  “So …” Raek replied. “Does this mean we’re not getting paid?”

  Ard felt a spear of despair in his gut. This wasn’t the first job to end in his employer’s death. But this was Isle Halavend! Forget the Ashings, what had happened to the poor old man?

  Raek and Quarrah hadn’t seen Isle Halavend’s face as he pled for him to take the job. That genuine desperation had spurred Ard through it all, with a motive more powerful than money. It was more than a simple feeling.

  The Homeland had been Urging him all along, driving Ard to this moment.

  He had wanted to discuss it with Halavend. He burned for this unknown cause with a fervor. A deep-seated passion.

  An ardor.

  Lyndel slowed the horses, eventually stopping the carriage outside a tall apartment building. As soon as everyone had climbed down, she slapped the horses’ flanks, sending the empty ride bumping down the street.

  “This way.” Lyndel cautiously approached the door to the building.

  “What happened, Lyndel?” Ard asked. “The city’s falling apart! What is going on?”

  Lyndel led them inside, and up a light of narrow stairs. “The king made an announcement at dawn. He has rescinded the Trothian Inclusionary Act,” she said. “And he has placed an expulsion order upon my people. He intends to have us all dead or driven back to the Trothian islets by the end of the cycle.”

  “What?” Quarrah cried. “That’s outrageous! He’s always been an advocate for Trothians in the Greater Chain. Why would he do that?”

  “I will explain everything inside,” she said. They had reached a landing on the fifth floor. The priestess listened through the door before inserting a key and ushering everyone inside.

  The apartment was a single room, dusty and quiet. Heavy drapes hung across the only window, and Ard noticed a straw mattress tucked into one corner with a thick blanket. The room would have been quite unremarkable if it weren’t for the array of parchments, books, and documents spread in an orderly fashion across the wooden floorboards.

  Lyndel locked the door, fitting a cover over the keyhole.

  “Writing a book?” Raek asked sarcastically, turning his big feet sideways so as not to step on any parchment. Indeed, there were so many papers on the floor, it was difficult to find a place to stand.

  “I didn’t think Trothians could read,” Quarrah said.

  “Our eyesight prevents us from seeing text on a page,” answered Lyndel, removing her hood and cloak. Her clothing beneath was plain; a tan tunic and sash, with red fabric wrapping her arms from the elbows to the wrists. “Technically, we are capable of learning to read, but the methods to achieve visible text are highly impractical.”

  Raek pointed at the display on the floor. “Then what’s all this?”

  Lyndel maneuvered to the center of the small room and dropped silently to her knees. “This is evidence—proof that what we are doing will save mankind.”

  Raek tilted his head skeptically. “By the sound of it, you’ve been spending too much time with that old Isle.”

  “Isle Halavend. Yes,” said Lyndel.

  “What happened to him?” Ard asked.

  “There is much to discuss. Seat yourselves.” She gestured at the floor.

  Ard placed his back against the wall and slowly lowered himself to the floorboards as Raek strode to the far corner and plopped down on the small mattress. These must have been Halaven
d’s books. Ard couldn’t imagine how Lyndel had managed to get them out of the Mooring.

  “Isle Halavend was murdered last night,” Lyndel began. “By the hand of King Pethredote.”

  “What?” Ard cried. “In the Mooring?”

  “Prime Isle Chauster brought King Pethredote to the Mooring to question Halavend about the ruse,” Lyndel explained. “The king shot Halavend and escaped, but I arrived at the cove with enough time to kill Chauster.”

  “Blazing flames!” Ard ran his hands through his hair. “You killed the Prime Isle of Wayfarism?”

  “Well, that explains the expulsion order against the Trothians,” Raek said.

  “Yes.” Lyndel seemed frighteningly calm after such an admission. “He knows I am out here with information about his dark secrets. An island-wide assault against my people is the only way he can be sure that I am either killed or driven away.”

  “The Lander citizens won’t go along with it,” Quarrah said, finally seating herself beside Ard. “The king can’t expect people to turn on their neighbors just because he rolls out a new order.”

  “Look outside! It is happening already,” cried Lyndel. “Some of your people have always harbored ill feelings toward my kind—rooted in unfounded fear and centuries of cultural separation. Pethredote has played on that fear and incited the Landers against us. To cover the murder of Halavend, he announced that a Trothian Agrodite priestess broke into the Mooring, shot an old Isle, and stabbed Chauster to death. The king’s expulsion order against my people isn’t just a new law. He’s made it a Wayfarist cause.”

  Ard could almost see the islands falling apart. The chaos in the streets would spread with the king’s new decree. Thousands of Trothians would be uprooted from the lives they had been laboring to build here.

  All because of the ruse. Because Ard had taken on something too big. How many would die because Halavend fell in with criminals and an Agrodite priestess?

  “You think a Paladin Visitant can set this right?” Ard asked.

  “Possibly, one could,” answered Lyndel. “But we must rely on the Visitant Grit for something greater.”

  “People are dying out there!” Quarrah gestured out the window. “Your people.”

  “It is better that some should perish than for us to give up our cause,” said Lyndel. “Did Halavend warn you of the coming Moonsickness?”

  Ard shook his head. “The old Isle didn’t say anything more than he had to. Despite my best efforts.”

  “Halavend kept many secrets that I urged him to share with you,” said Lyndel. “Now he is gone. And I am in charge.”

  “You’re going to tell us what this was all about?” Ard asked.

  “There is a Trothian saying,” replied Lyndel. “The water is as warm as the one who swims in it.”

  “Pretty warm if you’re swimming with Ard after he’s had a lot to drink,” joked Raek.

  “Hey, now,” Ard began. “That’s just—”

  “What does the saying mean?” Quarrah cut in.

  “It means, if I tell you something and you don’t believe me, it will seem false to you. It will seem nonsense.” Lyndel paused. “It means there are certain things you should tell only to those who will believe.”

  “But how do you know if someone will believe unless you tell them?” asked Raek.

  “Therein lies faith,” said the priestess. “What do you know of the Wayfarist Holy Torch?”

  “The Islehood lights it,” Ard answered. “There’s one in every Mooring in the Greater Chain. Keeping the Torch burning through the night of a Passing shields the islands from Moonsickness.”

  “The Holy Torch is not what you think it is,” said Lyndel. “Based on our joint studies, Isle Halavend was able to disprove the doctrine of the Holy Torch.”

  “How?” Quarrah asked.

  “Many cycles back,” Lyndel said, “on the night of a Moon Passing, Isle Halavend was assigned to tend the Holy Torch. But that night, he did not light it.”

  “Sparks!” Ard shouted. Halavend had gambled with everyone’s life! If he’d been wrong about the Wayfarist tradition, everyone on Espar would have contracted Moonsickness. Ard grinned. The old man had mettle, there was no disputing that.

  “How would he do that?” Quarrah asked. “The Mooring is full of people offering prayers to the Homeland on the night of a Moon Passing.”

  Quarrah had a point. Surely, everyone would have noticed that the big torch was dark.

  “Illusion Grit,” Lyndel explained. “Halavend had detonated some in the Torch the cycle before to record the image. When it was his turn to tend, he simply detonated a second cloud, making the Torch appear to be lit without any actual fire. An addition of Heat Grit was enough to convince even those who stood near.”

  Ard slapped his knee, a broad grin on his face. “The old Isle was a blazing ruse artist!” he cried. “He had hundreds of people praying to an illusion!”

  “No one got sick,” Quarrah muttered. “The doctrine of the Holy Torch is false …”

  “Not entirely,” said Lyndel.

  “What do you mean?” asked Ard.

  “The Torch is real,” Lyndel explained. “It protects mankind from the Moonsickness. Only, the Torch is not what Wayfarists think. We discovered the truth. Halavend called it our new doctrine. This was what Prime Isle Chauster refused to hear.”

  “What is it?” Ard asked. “What is the Holy Torch?”

  Lyndel’s voice was soft. “Dragons.”

  What Lyndel was suggesting was beyond blasphemous. It was unfathomable! Ard couldn’t wrap his head around it. How would the dragons protect mankind from Moonsickness?

  “The dragons provide much more than Ashings and Grit,” Lyndel continued. “They act as a buffer between us and the Crimson Moon. The Moon radiates a kind of energy—fire, in the Agrodite doctrine. The dragons high on the mountains of Pekal absorb this energy, preventing it from reaching the rest of the islands and sickening the humans.”

  “But if the dragons are absorbing the Moon fire,” said Quarrah, “then why does a person get sick if they stay on Pekal?”

  “The absorption of the dragons is limited,” explained Lyndel. “What energy the beasts cannot take in spills down the slopes of Pekal.”

  “And the village in southern Espar?” asked Ard. “Rumors say the Moonsickness struck there.”

  “Not rumors,” said Lyndel. “With the number of dragons dwindling, they cannot capture the full rays of the Moon. The dragons’ protective ring is weakening, and the fallout is spreading as the Moon rays touch down in other places. The rays have always fallen upon the distant seas. It is why your Wayfarist Voyages have never succeeded. Those who sail from these islands eventually find themselves beyond the reach of the dragons’ absorption. That reach is diminishing, Moonsickness falling upon the outlying villages of the Greater Chain. And we should expect to see more outbreaks in the coming cycles.”

  “That’s why the dragons never leave Pekal,” Quarrah said. “They’re protecting us.”

  “Dragons need the Moon’s energy,” Lyndel went on. “They are dependent upon it, and we are dependent upon them. If either goes without, the Moonsickness sets in.”

  “Wait,” said Ard. “You’re saying that dragons can get Moonsick?”

  “There have been many humans that have fallen sick to the Moon’s rays while stranded on Pekal,” said Lyndel. “But there has been only one dragon taken out of the mountains.”

  “Grotenisk.”

  Lyndel nodded. “In much the same way that you or I contract Moonsickness by taking in the Moon’s rays, a dragon is sickened by being deprived of them. Grotenisk exhibited all of the signs. Muteness, blindness, irrational violence. Isle Halavend read me the histories. It all seemed quite apparent, though none of your scholars made the connection.”

  “That’s because our scholars don’t believe it,” Raek said. Ard wasn’t sure what to think about it, either. “I’ve read a lot of interesting theories about Moonsickness. But to s
ay that the dragons are a shield against it—”

  “Our doctrines confirm it, when studied together,” continued Lyndel. “Halavend and I united Agrodite poems and Wayfarist scripture. Each helped to clarify the other, revealing the true nature of the dragons on Pekal. Halavend wrote it all down.” Lyndel gestured to the writings on the floor of her apartment. “It is all here for your examination.”

  “Religious texts,” said Raek. “You’re asking us to go on faith. I’m a man of proof.”

  “How can you prove something like that?” Quarrah asked. “You can’t exactly ask the dragons if they’re absorbing deadly Moon fire.”

  “We needed a witness.” Lyndel picked up a cloth-wrapped item. Peeling it back, she revealed a piece of red glass. The edge was wrapped with rawhide, a loop of frayed leather on each side.

  “Moon glass.” Lyndel slipped her hands into the loops and lifted the glass, looking at Ard directly through it.

  “Whoa,” Ard whispered, staring back at Lyndel through the glass. The image he was seeing was so different, he could barely make sense of it.

  Lyndel’s face was glowing. Her skin was still blue, but it radiated. It was almost as if Ard were not looking at her face itself, but rather some kind of energy that her face was emitting. Ard had never seen anything like it.

  “Is this what you see?” he muttered.

  Lyndel panned across the room, letting Raek and Quarrah glimpse through the glass.

  “Halavend supposed that this glass allowed the Lander eye to see as the Trothian sees,” Lyndel said. “But in fact, it is more than that. This is one of three shards of Moon Glass kept by the Agrodite priestesses. It was originally formed by our Trothian ancestors centuries ago, before recorded history. In my religion, the Crimson Moon is the focus of our worship. It is our Homeland. This glass is meant only for the most devoted Agrodites to watch the Moon.”

  “What does it show you?” Ard asked.

  “The glass shows the Moon uncovered,” said Lyndel. “It shows the fire of the Moon, normally hidden, even to the Trothian eye.” Ard must have looked confused, because Lyndel went on. “When I told Halavend of the glass’s power, he didn’t understand, either. But he saw for himself. The glass makes the rays visible. As the Crimson Moon crests the horizon, the fire leaps to the mountains, passing the islands of the Greater Chain, drawn to Pekal like a boat pulled by a strong current. Through the glass, you can see that the Moon’s energy is focused only on Pekal.”