The Book of Heroes

  “Nothing good’s come to the palace,” the old man said. “That’s for sure. It’s like another war’s started.”

  “Was the palace destroyed?”

  “Can’t say. Can’t say at all. There was a lot of dust, and a lot of smoke. Took my cart with it, it did.” The man trembled so violently that his bag slipped off his back. He staggered.

  “It disappeared, that’s what it did! Just up and disappeared!” a young woman pushing a baby before her in a cart called out in a shrill, high voice. Her face was pale beneath the grime, her eyebrows raised in fear.

  “What, the palace?”

  “That’s right. It’s gone. Gone! Only thing left’s a big hole in the ground.”

  The top of the watchtower had begun to creak ominously and sway to one side. Ash leapt lightly down to the ground below. The tower continued to tilt, so U-ri and Sky jumped as well—the vestments protected her from the fall, and Sky seemed to be able to handle it on his own. In a breath they were swallowed up by the crowd of travelers, jostled this way and that, until Ash reappeared, leading two horses behind him.

  “Where’d you get those?”

  “Don’t ask,” Ash replied. He snatched up U-ri and threw her up into one of the saddles, then handed the reins to Sky. “Ride or walk, I don’t care, just follow. We’re leaving!” Ash straddled the other horse and gave its flank a kick with the heel of his boot.

  “R-right,” Sky replied, his lips pale. Getting one foot in the stirrup, he managed to mount U-ri’s horse behind her. “Hold on tight, Lady U-ri.”

  “You sure you know how to ride one of these things, Sky?” Aju squeaked from U-ri’s collar.

  “I am sure I do not, but I will try.”

  “Try?” U-ri and Aju shouted together, but Sky had already reached around her and grabbed the reins. “Hyup!” he barked, and the horse sped forward.

  The tide of refugees heading in the opposite direction only seemed to swell as they made their way toward whatever was left of the capital. Travelers spilled over the edges of the road, forming lines along the sides. Here and there, a cart had stalled, and men stood around it, arguing. Once, right before U-ri’s eyes, a magnificent dappled black horse reared, threw off its rider, and ran off into the fields. She had caught only a glimpse of the horse’s eyes as it reared, but it had been enough to see the fear in them.

  Thanks to the general confusion, Sky’s horse was able to weave its way against the flow of the crowd, maintaining an even distance behind Ash’s lead. Up ahead, Ash stopped frequently, occasionally to whisper something into his horse’s ear.

  “Ash, is something wrong?” U-ri called out.

  He turned and looked back at her through a cloud of dust. “You can’t hear it?”

  Without waiting for her response, he turned and pointed in the direction the palace should have been—there was nothing but blue sky there now. Just then, a passing man stopped by Ash and tugged upon his cloak.

  “Hey, you’re an undertaker, aren’t you?” the man asked. He was slightly overweight and wore a heavy coat.

  “I am close to the dead,” Ash replied with a nod.

  “Then if you go to the capital, go around to the west gate. The guards there are looking for help.”

  “What of the palace? Is it true that it has disappeared?”

  The man nodded and wiped at the grime on his face. “Looked to me like it was just sucked straight into the ground. Weren’t destroyed, nor did it collapse—just went straight down, with all the people in it.”

  “And the capital guard? What has become of them?”

  “Scattered to the four winds, I suspect. I haven’t seen even a one of them myself,” the man said.

  “Then they probably went down with the palace,” Ash muttered. “Why did you stop me, goodman? By your coat, you are a doctor, no?”

  “I am. Just a local physician from the Midwall Quarter. I was out in front of the victory gate on a call when the palace went down. Saw it from there. The guards on patrol just on the other side of the gate, they turned the moment the palace and the grounds got swallowed.”

  “Turned?”

  “Aye. Into demons. That’d be you undertakers’ department, right? I heard those guards at the west gate putting out a call for every undertaker in the kingdom.”

  “What do they expect us to do?”

  “Put together a search party, er, a vanquishing party to go down under the ground and deal with whatever’s there.” The man glanced at the refugees flowing around them. “That’s why they’re all leaving. They figure that if they hang out around the capital, either they’ll become demons themselves, or they’ll be volunteered to go fight the ones who did.”

  The doctor was right. When they reached the west gate of Elemsgard, there were the same throngs of people on the road, but here there was at least a semblance of the order that had been lacking by the watchtower. Furthermore, it seemed as though the number of people going through the gates toward the town center was greater than those going out.

  The guards set to watch the gate were easy to find. They wore light breastplates and greaves strapped to their legs. All bore swords, and a few had quivers slung across their backs. Large ballistae had been placed inside the walls of the city.

  A guard by one of the gate columns shouted his voice hoarse, his face a grimace as he barked orders to passersby. They left their horses outside the gate, and Ash went straight to the guard, thrusting his papers in the man’s face, and they were let inside.

  “So Elemsgard is a walled city!” Aju squeaked from atop U-ri’s head. “Look at those stones, U-ri!”

  The stone walls encircling the city rose to a height of at least ten stories.

  “The city is arranged on three concentric circles, with the palace in the center,” Ash explained, his eyes watching the people on the road around them. “Outwall, Midwall, and Heartwall, the sections are called. Each is divided by a moat with a single drawbridge crossing it, and everything in the central circle is the property of the royal palace.”

  U-ri wondered what the palace had looked like before today. Looking at the blue sky that hung above the city now felt like looking at a stage after the play had finished and the scenery carried away.

  “There, that tent,” Ash said, pointing toward a canvas tent off to the right of the road. U-ri got Sky’s attention and followed after him.

  There were several tents here, some filled with doctors and their patients, others piled high with supplies or filled with off-duty guardsmen. One seemed to be serving as a local guard post. Several horses were hitched outside.

  This area of the city—Outwall—seemed to be mostly storefronts. It’s like a shopping mall!

  There were still people around, and some of the shops were open (though most of their goods had already been confiscated by the city guard, it seemed). Other shops had their doors shuttered.

  U-ri spotted one family piling their belongings onto a cart outside of the house, faces drawn tight with worry and fear.

  The tent Ash was heading for was a busy one, with a constant stream of people entering and leaving. Some of them were soldiers, but for the most part, they were all dressed exactly like Ash.

  “What are we doing here?” Aju chirped nervously.

  “We have to go underground, to where the palace disappeared, if we’re ever going to find out anything,” Ash replied, matter-of-factly. “And if we’re going underground, we’ll need to check in here first.”

  “We’re going?”

  “If you don’t want to go, you’re welcome to stay,” Ash grumbled, his hand lifting the tent flap. Just then, a large man with a scraggly beard came bursting out of the tent. He nearly ran straight into Ash, and his eyes opened wider than they already were.

  “What’s this? The Man of Ash? When did you get back? I thought you were off in Culuque hunting goblins.”

  “Don’t play the fool, fatty,” Ash said, giving the bearded man a loud slap on his sizable belly. “I don’t believe that the
biggest ears on this continent haven’t heard about the escape yet. What I want to know is what you’ve been up to.”

  The big man thrust his belly out even further and laughed loudly. “That would be a trade secret, that. Same as you, friend. Oh, if you’re here to sign up, you’d best be quick about it. Most of the soldiers here are of a mind to give up looking for survivors altogether and just fill up that gaping hole in the middle of—”

  The man broke off in midsentence, his eyes finding U-ri behind the wolf. He squinted. “Well, well, well, I see you’ve been busy. That girl is marked.”

  “Rude as always, I see,” Ash grumbled, looking back over his shoulder at U-ri. “This is Morgan; he’s in the same line of work as I. He’s a bit of a filthy old lard ball, but I suspect underneath all that is a good man. Or two.”

  “Couldn’t ask for a finer introduction,” Morgan said with a frown. “Don’t you listen to him none, missie with the mark. I’m just one good man who happens to like a hearty meal now and then.”

  U-ri took a step forward and bowed her head. “You, I take it, are a wolf as well?”

  Morgan put a finger to his lips and leaned in close to her. “That’s a secret, that. I’m no warrior like your friend here. Wouldn’t want word getting out and people getting the wrong idea, eh?”

  Ash announced he would sign U-ri and Sky up and disappeared inside the tent. The two men who came out as he entered were carrying lengths of rope and long, spearlike poles. One of them turned as he exited the tent, the butt of his spear accidentally brushing the hem of U-ri’s vestments.

  “Whoa there,” Morgan said, quickly sliding his arms around the girl and lifting her briefly before setting her down a short distance away. “Busy spot, here. No place to be swinging around such long implements of destruction like that.”

  “Who’re you?” Aju squeaked, sticking his head out from the neck of U-ri’s robes. His nose twitched with suspicion. “And what’re you doing picking U-ri up?”

  Morgan didn’t seem particularly startled by the mouse’s sudden appearance, nor the fact that it could talk. He smiled broadly. “Do you mind?” he asked U-ri, then he reached down and picked Aju up by the scruff of his neck.

  “Hey! What’s the big idea? Lemme go!”

  “Isn’t this interesting! This little one your friend, missie?”

  “He’s only a mouse because I wasn’t very good at magic.”

  “I think not,” Morgan said, dangling Aju in the air. “This one was little to begin with.” He lifted Aju higher, inspecting the mouse’s belly. Aju squeaked with rage.

  “A dictionary, I see—an aunkaui dictionary, no less. Been a while since I’ve seen one of these.”

  Aju’s fur bristled. “You take that back!”

  Seeing U-ri’s confused look, Morgan leaned down and whispered in her ear. “An aunkaui dictionary is another way of saying a false dictionary. Lots of misleading passages and blanks, hardly of use to anyone—unless you know how to use it, of course.”

  “That is so not true!” Aju squeaked loud enough to draw glances from surprised passersby.

  U-ri took Aju back from Morgan’s hand, and the little mouse quickly dashed back inside the folds of her vestments. “Well, I don’t know what that means, but Aju is a fine friend of mine.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Morgan said, nodding. “Understand, I’m not belittling your little friend. It is the power of the glyph that determines the value of one’s servants, in any case.”

  Suddenly, the man’s smiling face became tense. He was looking over U-ri’s shoulder at the road behind her. U-ri turned around and saw Sky standing on the other side of the bustling street. He was looking off into the sky, as if he might see the vanished palace, his back to the closed front doors of a shop. Even when a passing soldier collided with him, he merely stumbled and went immediately back to looking up into the sky.

  Morgan gave the nameless devout a long and disapproving look and slowly swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving up and down. Sky didn’t even seem to have noticed him.

  “Is…that your servant as well, missie?”

  “If by ‘that’ you mean Sky, then yes, he is.”

  “What? It has a name? Oh, you must have given it one. That’s a nameless devout, that.”

  The man’s friendly nature had put U-ri at ease for a moment, but now anger rose inside her. “Yes, he is my servant. He’s taken very good care of me, I’ll have you know. So stop calling him ‘that’! Sky is a person.”

  Morgan’s eyebrows—as bristly as his beard—rose, and he frowned. “Now then, no need to get so angry,” he said, shrinking back and wringing his hands together. “I take it the Man of Ash—or simply Ash as you seem to prefer—knows about that, er, the nameless devout?”

  “Of course he does. He’s been with us the whole time.”

  Morgan lowered his voice. “And he didn’t say anything? Well, no, I suppose he wouldn’t.” Morgan nodded, muttering to himself. “And, er, no other people you’ve met on your little excursion had anything strange to say about your servant?”

  Now it was U-ri’s turn to be tightlipped. People had said things, lots of things, but she wasn’t sure what it all meant, and she certainly didn’t want to tell anything to this man whom she found herself liking less and less—but he could already see the truth in her eyes.

  “I see you’ve been wondering about it yourself, then,” he said, a surprising gentleness in his voice that stopped U-ri’s heart for a beat.

  “Ash is always cold to Sky, when he bothers to talk to him at all. And he keeps telling me to not worry about Sky so much.” She glared at the large man’s face. “What about you, Morgan? Are you going to write him off just because he’s a nameless devout?”

  “Write him off? Hardly. He’s a holy man.”

  U-ri’s eyes went wide. “Holy?”

  “That’s right. His is a far purer, far higher existence than ours, and something this world desperately needs. Far more than it needs the Hero, that’s for sure.”

  Morgan was dead serious. He’s not joking. And U-ri thought she detected something else in his eyes: a hint of sadness.

  “But he should not be a servant, let alone yours. He should not be anywhere but the nameless land.”

  “I know, but Sky was cast out—”

  Behind him, Ash emerged from the tent. Morgan left U-ri standing there and jogged over to him, pulling him aside by his cloak. Ash lifted an eyebrow, a bemused expression on his face.

  “What do you think you’re doing? She doesn’t know anything, does she?” Morgan whispered, probably intending for U-ri not to hear, but he was so excited and his voice so reverberant, she caught every word.

  “What do I think I’m doing about what? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about that nameless devout!”

  Ash and Morgan both turned to look at Sky who was still standing across the road, oblivious to everything around him. U-ri walked over to the two men purposefully.

  “What’s so wrong about Sky?” she demanded.

  For a moment, Ash’s brow twitched with anger. Morgan covered his eyes with a large hand.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ash replied coolly. “I have no idea what you mean. Is he feeling unwell? Looks to me like he’s just standing there like some kind of scarecrow.”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about!” U-ri raged.

  “Give it up, missie,” Morgan cut in. “Asking questions won’t get you anywhere with this one. He’s being willfully obtuse.” Morgan clapped a hand on Ash’s broad shoulder. “Look, let me be frank. If you insist on going below, the nameless devout stays here. He can’t go with you.”

  “If I wanted your advice, I’d have asked for it,” Ash said coldly. He turned to U-ri. “It appears that the palace has become something of an underground labyrinth. There’s only one entrance. Some soldiers have gone down looking for survivors, but all they’ve found are demons and worse, and not a single survivor rescued. I
n other words, it’s dangerous.” Ash fixed her with his gaze. “Will you go, Lady Allcaste?”

  “Are you going?” U-ri asked back.

  “Of course I’m going. I’m sure that this is where the Hero has come in search of Kirrick’s remains.”

  U-ri was tense with anger and fear, but she swallowed both. “How can I not go? What could you accomplish without me there with you?”

  Ash grinned. “You’ve still got your spirit, I see. You there, Aju?”

  The mouse poked his nose out from U-ri’s collar. “What do you want?”

  “We’re going to get ourselves some weapons. I want you to find something U-ri can use, a mace, perhaps. Something with malfonde silver in it—even a little is okay. I trust you can tell the difference?”

  Aju reluctantly emerged, and Ash grabbed him with a gloved hand and walked in the direction of yet another tent. “If you want to know about Sky, talk to him yourself,” Ash said over his shoulder to U-ri as he walked away. “If he wants to go down below, we’ll take him. If he doesn’t, he can stay here. Don’t listen to the fat man’s ramblings. And don’t dawdle, we leave immediately.”

  Next to her, Morgan was wringing his fingers together again. “I know my advice is not always welcome—”

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  Morgan shook his head, then responded with a question of his own. “The vessel, he was a relative of yours, missie?”

  “Yes, my brother.”

  “Oh, I see. Didn’t know that. I’m sorry for you. Being an allcaste is always a sorry thing. ’Specially with you being children and all.” Morgan put his hand on U-ri’s shoulder and pushed her in Sky’s direction. “Go have a talk with your friend, then. If you’ve made it this far, I don’t see why you shouldn’t keep on keeping on the way you’ve been going. Yes, Ash has the right of it. He so often does.”

  U-ri sensed that the big man was genuinely concerned for her and Sky. So concerned, U-ri started to get scared again. “Morgan, I…”