A Discourse in Steel

  “Merelda and Rusilla,” Odrhaal said, as if trying out the names.

  Nix didn’t like the way he spoke their names. It suggested a familiarity the serpent man hadn’t earned.

  Odrhaal helped Rose sit up. She glanced around, as if awakening from a dream.

  “Both of you show considerable strength,” the mindmage said to the sisters. “Rusilla was able to keep herself mostly untangled from the psychic imprint, and what was tangled presented an uncomplicated knot.”

  He cocked his head to the side, as if he’d just heard something interesting. He looked at Mere, at Rusilla, his slit eyes narrowing.

  “You and she are sisters. Both of you born of devils.”

  Mere said nothing, at least nothing Nix could hear, though she and Rose shared a nervous look.

  A blur of motion behind and to the side of Odrhaal drew Nix’s eyes and caused his heart to thump against his ribs. Channis, or whatever Channis had become, bound out of the tree line, his long strides devouring the distance between them. Nix opened his mouth to speak but no sound emerged. He tried to point but his body would not function.

  Channis ran with his mouth open, gulping air, revealing long reptilian fangs. Black scales covered his muscular body and he loped with a silent, terrible grace, a man transformed into an instrument of bloodletting. Nix struggled to make his mouth work, to force words from between his lips. Channis was closing in and no one seemed to notice.

  Mere noticed his pained expression and her voice sounded in his head.

  What is it?

  Behind you! Behind you!

  Odrhaal, Rose, and Mere turned as one to look. Rose gasped, put her hand to her mouth. Mere took a half-step toward Egil. Odrhaal merely stared. Nix expected the mindmage to smite Channis somehow, expected to see blood pour from the former guildmaster’s nose and eyes, but nothing of the kind happened.

  Channis drew closer, closer, and then slowed. Rose and Mere nodded, as if they’d heard something sensible and both visibly relaxed.

  When Channis reached Odrhaal, he bowed his head and sank to one knee, as if he were in audience with a king. Odrhaal put his hand on Channis’s snakelike head and Channis’s nostril ridges flared. Before Nix could ask, Odrhaal said, “I saw what happened to him in your memories, Nix. What you call ‘Blackalley’ was a weapon used in a war fought long ago, the war I showed you. It fed on the energy of those captured.”

  Nix thought of his dream, of the wizard war that had swept Ellerth, that had brought down entire civilizations and remade the face of the world. The pressure in his head suddenly relented, as if a cork had been pulled from him, and he was able to speak. His voice sounded hoarse. “It was your weapon? You made it?”

  “I was involved in its making,” Odrhaal said with a nod of his scaled head. “It’s a psychic drain. It traps weak minds within it, feeds on their energy.”

  Nix disliked the way Odrhaal spoke so casually of making playthings of a person’s emotions and innermost thoughts. He imagined that Odrhaal could empty his mind, strip him of him, tear out everything that mattered and leave him a shell, a veneer of a man. He thought of Channis as he’d been after Blackalley, the vacant look he’d had in his black eyes, now replaced with the eyes of something…else.

  “It fed on regret somehow,” Nix said, meaning Blackalley.

  Odrhaal turned to look down on Nix and under the serpentine gaze Nix once more felt cold fear bubble up from his gut, irrational, profound, overwhelming. He could not keep his head up. He dropped it, ashamed of himself but unable to stop.

  “Nix?” Egil asked.

  And in that moment Nix realized that Odrhaal made and fed on fear the same way Blackalley—or the creatures in it, or Channis or whatever he’d become—fed on regret. Odrhaal fed on fear. Perhaps all mindmages fed on emotion. What did the sisters feed on? Did they even know it?

  “You use fear for fuel,” Nix said.

  “Let him go,” Egil said, clenching his fists and standing.

  “But not your fear,” Odrhaal said. “At least not anymore. As I said, I’m sated.”

  Once more the pressure eased, and the fear subsided to something manageable. Nix spit, stood.

  Odrhaal said, “The weapon, Blackalley, evolved into something else over time, something new. Your Channis let what it had become nest inside him and now…he’s this.”

  Nix looked at the malformed, dark creature on its knee before Odrhaal. “Is he…still alive?”

  “Channis? Barely, and not for very much longer. Soon he’ll be gone altogether. Does that displease you?”

  Nix considered asking if Odrhaal could help Channis as he had Rose, but pushed the thought back down. Channis deserved no consideration. He’d tried to murder Rose and Mere.

  “No,” Nix said.

  You see? Odrhaal’s voice sounded in Nix’s head. Emotions are weapons for you, too.

  Nix did not try to chase down the mindmage’s meaning. He suspected he wouldn’t like what he learned, and he’d already learned too much.

  “Why did he come back to me?” Odrhaal asked, staring down at Channis. “I don’t know. A weapon returning to its maker? A child to its parent? It will be interesting to find out.”

  He made a dismissive gesture at Channis and the creature rose, turned, and sprinted off into the swamp. Watching Channis’s dark form disappear into the brush, surrounded by the ruins of a civilization that had used Blackalley as a weapon, Nix felt…trivial. He wished he hadn’t learned what he’d learned, about the world, about himself.

  “We’re going to leave now,” he said to Odrhaal, and tried not to make it sound like a question.

  He wasn’t quite sure where they’d go, probably New Dineen, but he knew he wanted out of the Deadmire, away from Odrhaal.

  “Are you?” Odrhaal said.

  “We are,” Egil said, the words almost a growl.

  Mere helped Rose to her feet, then said, “I’d ask something, Odrhaal.”

  Odrhaal’s lip ridges curled in a smile. “I know,” he said, and turned from Nix to face Mere.

  “We should just go, Mere,” Egil said, but she didn’t listen to him. She drew herself up and nodded at the two unconscious guild Committeemen. Nix had forgotten they were even there.

  “Make them forget,” Mere said. “Give them false memories so that we can return to Dur Follin.”

  Odrhaal’s tongue flicked and he stared at her a long moment, his snake eyes unblinking. “You request this for your friends.” Not a question.

  “We don’t need it,” Nix said, unwilling to go into debt to the serpent man.

  Mere nodded. “I know you can do it.”

  “I can do it,” Odrhaal said. He regarded the guildsmen. “What would you like them to think happened?”

  The question seemed to take Mere by surprise. She looked to Nix, back to Odrhaal.

  “I’m not certain. I thought—”

  Odrhaal smiled and Nix liked the look of it not at all.

  “We don’t need this,” Egil said, echoing Nix. “Let’s just go. Now.”

  Odrhaal ignored him, as did Mere and Rose.

  “I do have an idea,” the mindmage said. “But since you ask a favor of me, I’d ask one of you.”

  Nix could only imagine what a being like Odrhaal might request. He liked matters less and less with each passing moment. His hand would’ve fallen to the hilt of his falchion but he’d left it at the bottom of the lake.

  Mere stared back at the serpent man. Nix thought she looked braced for a punch. He could see that thoughts were passing between Mere and Odrhaal. And whatever those thoughts were, they caused Mere to pale, her lips to tighten. Rose’s, too. The sisters clasped hands. As one they looked at Egil, at Nix, back at Odrhaal. They seemed to share some kind of communication and both their expressions hardened. They stuck out their chins and nodded.

  Odrhaal let out a slow, satisfied hiss.

  “Say it aloud,” Mere said.

  “So they can hear,” Rose added.

  Odrha
al turned to face Egil and Nix.

  “I agreed to do what she asked if she agreed to become my apprentice.”

  “And I stay if she stays,” said Rose.

  A pit formed in Nix’s stomach. “Mere, no.”

  “No,” Egil said, his word as final as a dirge.

  “Your opinions on this matter are irrelevant,” Odrhaal said.

  Mere looked to them. “This is my choice to make. Our choice, Rose and me.”

  Nix had heard enough about choices in the last day to last him a lifetime. He realized he was sweating.

  “It’s not just yours, Mere. You’re making it for us. That gives us a say.”

  “No it doesn’t,” she said.

  Nix shifted on his feet, antsy, wanting to do something but unable to figure out what.

  “It’s just a town, Mere,” he said. “We can go somewhere else. All four of us.”

  “Aye,” Egil said.

  “New Dineen,” Nix continued. “We can start over. It’ll be good. The guild will never find us. We don’t need…him.”

  Odrhaal’s eyes narrowed but he said nothing, or at least nothing Nix could hear.

  “It’s not just a town,” Mere said, and Nix knew she was right.

  “Mere,” Egil said. “Please don’t…I just…”

  She smiled and her eyes filled with tears. “You don’t have to say it, Egil. I know you can’t. But I know what you want to say. I love you, too, in the way you can’t say. I have for months.”

  Now Egil’s eyes filled with tears. Mere went on: “That’s why I’m doing it, don’t you see? Dur Follin is your home, you and Nix. Without it, you two would be almost as lost as you would without each other.”

  “It’s just a town,” Egil said softly, but there was little fight in his tone. “Just a town.”

  His weakness seemed to give Mere strength. She spoke in a confident tone. “You know it’s not. You saved me and Rose, once. Now I’m going to save you. My choice.”

  “No, Mere,” Egil said, shaking his head. “No.”

  “I’ve been in your head, Egil,” she said. “I know the pain you’re carrying. I don’t know how you bear it, how you manage to be so gentle when you’re…so hurt. But you’re not ready, Egil. You and I…can’t happen, not now. Maybe someday.”

  Egil sniffed and looked up sharply, not at Mere but Odrhaal. He wiped snot and tears and blood from his face with the back of his hand. “Then take it out, Odrhaal. Cut it out of me.”

  “Egil! No!” Mere said.

  Nix was appalled. “Don’t be an idiot!”

  “My choice,” Egil said, turning her own words against her.

  Mere looked as if he’d slapped her.

  “Take it out, snake man. I’ve earned that, at least. Do it.”

  Odrhaal regarded the priest with his unblinking slit eyes.

  Egil stared back, then bowed his head, the eye of Ebenor on Odrhaal.

  “Don’t, Egil,” Nix said, and tears formed in his eyes. “Egil. Don’t.”

  Odrhaal stepped forward, reached up, and put a clawed hand on Egil’s bald pate.

  Nix took a step toward them but Odrhaal’s gaze froze him.

  “Moments, Egil,” Nix said, his hands pleading. “We’re the sum of our past moments. Those are your words. Yours.”

  Odrhaal, clasping Egil’s head, stared down at the priest. Egil’s body began to shake.

  Nix imagined Odrhaal cutting memories out of Egil’s mind, leaving him something other than Nix’s Egil, remaking him into something he was not, making his eyes as vacant as Channis’s.

  “Don’t, Egil! Don’t!”

  He tried to draw his blade but his arm wouldn’t respond. He was sweating, straining, but couldn’t move.

  “Stop, Odrhaal!”

  Mere had a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide and pained. Rose looked away.

  Spit flew from Egil’s mouth, blood from his nose.

  Odrhaal suddenly released his hold, blinking his slit eyes, and Egil sighed and sagged to the ground.

  “Dammit, dammit,” Nix softly cursed.

  Odrhaal released whatever he’d done to hold Nix in place and Nix ran to Egil’s side, shoving Odrhaal out of the way. He kneeled and took his friend in his arms.

  “What have you done?” Nix murmured, not sure if he was talking to Egil or Odrhaal. “What have you done?”

  It was too much. He’d sought out Odrhaal to save Rose and in the process he’d lost both sisters and his best friend. He cursed himself and could not hold back another round of tears.

  “I can take the pain out of you,” Odrhaal said to Nix.

  Nix laid Egil aside and jumped to his feet. He drew a dagger and pointed it at Odrhaal’s throat.

  “Fak you! Fak you, Odrhaal!”

  Odrhaal’s lip ridges curled in a smile. He seemed untroubled by Nix’s weapon. He turned and looked at the two guildsmen, prone on the ground, then at Mere and Rose.

  “Now I’ll honor our agreement. As I said, I keep my promises.”

  The mindmage went to the fallen guildsmen and touched the heads of first one and then the other. Both of them murmured, trembled, sighed, and went slack.

  Odrhaal stood, his own sigh half a hiss.

  “Their names are Rusk and Trelgin,” Odrhaal said, reciting the story he’d planted in the guildsmen’s minds. “The Seventh and Sixth Blades of their guild. They’ve learned that Rusilla and Merelda were witches who enspelled the two of you to protect them. They tracked all four of you to the swamp, where they killed the witches, but not before the witches killed Channis. The death of the witches freed you and Egil of their spell and you requested mercy of these two, Rusk and Trelgin, which they granted in exchange for agreement to compensate the guild in gold for the men you killed. These two are rivals. Their concurrence in this story will make it still more credible. You can return to your city. I’ll see to it these guildsmen get back to their boat. Go now, and go alone.”

  “Fak you,” Nix said. He turned to Rose and Mere. “Are you sure?”

  They nodded.

  He walked past Odrhaal to embrace Rose and Mere. He breathed in the smell of Rose’s hair, the feel of her in his arms.

  “Thank you,” he said, and she hugged him harder.

  Egil rose, his eyes distant. He, too, hugged Rose, then took Mere in his arms and held on to her for a long time. He kissed her gently, the only one they’d ever shared so far as Nix knew.

  “Thank you,” he said to her.

  She touched his cheek and stared into his eyes. Maybe she said something in his mind. Nix hoped so.

  Nix cleared his throat, tapped his temple. “You call if you need us.”

  “We will,” Mere said.

  Egil and Nix turned to face Odrhaal, who regarded them with his reptilian eyes.

  “You hurt them and we’ll come back,” Egil said. “That’s a promise. And I keep mine, too.”

  “And if we come back for that,” Nix said, tapping the hilt of his blade, “there’s no amount of fear or regret or mindmagic shite that will save you from us. I’ll make those pointy-eared fakkers you fought before seem like gentlemen.”

  Odrhaal’s eyes narrowed a bit but he said nothing.

  Nix and Egil took one last look at Rose and Mere, turned, and headed back to the boat, back to Dur Follin.

  —

  Egil rowed them upriver at almost a leisurely pace. Nix sat in the back of the boat, staring at the mountainous back of the priest as he worked the oars. They spoke little. Each lived in his own head for much of the journey.

  “Could be none of that happened,” Nix said. “You know that, right?”

  “Aye,” Egil said.

  “Everything we think we know, Odrhaal could have put there, just as we think he did with the guildsmen.” Nix searched his memory for their names: Rusk and Trelgin.

  “Why bother?” Egil said.

  “Can’t say,” Nix said. “Could be a reason, though. We just wouldn’t know it because whatever it is was replaced with what
we’re meant to think.”

  “I think you should stop,” Egil said over his shoulder. “It happened. Hurts too much to not have happened.”

  “Fair point,” Nix said.

  The river rolled past. Nix had the question on his tongue for a long time before he could finally bring himself to ask it.

  “Assuming everything that happened, happened…Did you do it?”

  Egil’s back muscles tensed. He pulled up the oars for a moment and looked out on the waters of the Meander. For a while Nix didn’t think he’d answer, but finally the priest spoke.

  “Most religions are about expiating transgressions, giving the faithful a way to live with their faults, to forgive themselves for those faults. You know what I mean?”

  “I suppose.”

  “But if you could just”—Egil made a cutting gesture with his hand, and his voice cracked—“cut your failings out, be made to forget they ever happened, then you’d remake yourself as a better you. Wouldn’t you do that if you could, Nix?”

  Nix, with his many and sundry faults and regrets, hesitated only a moment. “No. And I mean that. No.”

  “You’ve never been a religious man, Nix.”

  “No, but I’m around one sometimes.”

  Egil said nothing, so Nix continued: “I think that if you cut it out then you’re not remaking a better you. You cut it out, then you’re not you at all. A priest I know once taught me that over ales.”

  Egil’s body shook with a short chuckle or maybe a shudder. “Maybe you’re more religious than you realize.”

  “Maybe,” Nix said. He stared at the back of his friend’s head. “You didn’t answer my question. Did you do it?”

  Egil inhaled deeply and shook his head. “I didn’t do it. I came close, but I couldn’t leave them again. Hulda and Asa. I can’t leave them ever again.”

  Nix closed his eyes, thanked gods he didn’t believe in, and reached up to put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He left it there for a time, then left Egil to himself.

  The priest took up the oars again and rowed them back upriver to Dur Follin, their city, their home. Nix pretended not to notice when Egil wept.