Chapter 28:

Chapter Twenty-Four

A Whisper in Scarlet


Torstein led them to the rear of the sepulchre, where he raised a wooden hatch to a narrow stone-lined shaft with a ladder bolted to one side. At the bottom, they traversed a man-made tunnel perhaps a hundred feet. The tunnel was entirely dark but for faint lumenite torches set at intervals on its walls. At the end, the tunnel terminated at an iron door set into stone. Torstein knocked out a rhythm on it, and a few seconds later it snapped open inwards. A man in an arm cast and a rather large head bandage ushered them into a small square room, before shutting and barring the door again behind them.

He looked at Torstein and made a sign with his good hand. Thanks to her relentless usage of it with Master Eujin, seeing another person use Killer’s Cant didn’t even seem strange until she realized he’d done it. She made the signal for Cant, presented as a question. The man nodded, then made the sign for being a Shikari over his good eye with his free hand. She still couldn’t figure out why Shikari signalled their role by using a finger to draw an X over one of their eyes, and Master Eujin had confessed that he honestly wasn’t sure either.

Ven returned the sign, and the man gave a gentle bow.

“Welcome, friends.” He said, before motioning to the door set on the other side of the small room.

Torstein led them through it into a large rectangular chamber that was laid out similar to a mess hall, with a dozen or so long tables in the center, and a makeshift kitchen built into a small room off to the side. A handful of people, all bearing some kind of injury, sat and ate off wooden trays while a few girls and women moved to and fro between the kitchen and the tables bringing fresh meals and refilling drinks. Their entrance drew the attention of everyone at the tables, but at a signal from Torstein they all returned to their food without a second glance.

“What is this place?” Ven asked.

“Every temple of Ferelin-Shei serves as a bastion for the village it occupies. The temple above is designed to be used as a refuge in case of attack, and below each one is a bunker full of beds and supplies to be used in case of an extended siege or rebuild to house the people of the village.” Master Eujin said.

“Huh. We could have used one of these in Renning.” She replied.

“All places need our help.” Torstein said, motioning for them to follow him. “Perhaps one day we will be able to get them to listen.”

They passed from the mess hall into another small stone-lined hallway.

“Is there a hospital ward? I’d like to question some of the other survivors, if that’s not too much trouble.” Master Eujin said above the echoes of their footsteps.

“Already leading you there. There’s a survivor we rescued who it seems was working for the ones responsible for the attack. I suspect he might be of some use to you.” Torstein replied, opening another door.

“Wait, you’re feeding and healing the enemy? But why?” Ven asked.

Torstein glanced over his shoulder with a smile.

“All who need shelter and care are welcome in the Lord’s protection. Even those who make the mistake of finding themselves temporarily on the wrong side of it first.”

The room they entered was the largest one they’d entered yet, and as soon as she stepped through the door into it, Ven’s nose was assaulted by the smells of sweat, blood, and disinfectant, as well as the faint traces of other things less savory. The room was divided by four rows of sick beds. One sat on each wall, and two ran down the middle of the room, the heads of one row of beds pressed up against the heads of the other so that both rows of patients faced the opposite wall from the other. Nearly all of the hundred or more beds had someone in them, and the half a dozen or so nurses flitting from patient to patient seemed woefully inadequate to so large a number of wounded.

Torstein led them down one of the rows, past bodies wrapped in blood-soaked bandages and wooden splints, to a bed set a little ways apart from the others at the far end of the row. The man there was missing a leg, the stump below the knee wrapped tight in padded cloth and elevated by a sling hanging from a small wooden stand next to the bed. He was reading a book with his one good eye, the other shrouded behind a black eyepatch. He glanced up from reading as they approached, and the blood drained from his face as his eye darted around for some means of escape. It took a moment for Ven to realize that she recognized him too.

“You’re looking a little worse for wear these days, Harkam.” Master Eujin said, pulling a nearby chair next to the bed and taking a seat.

Harkam tried to scramble from the bed, dropping the book in his hands to the floor with a thump as he tried and failed to lift his maimed leg from traction.

“Oh lay back, Telishan.” Eujin chuckled. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”

“Like the hells you do! I’m not telling you anything!” Harkam spat. Ven saw now that in addition to a missing limb and eye, he was also missing half a dozen teeth on one side that gave his nasal voice a new lispy quality.

“Ah, so you know each other.” Torstein said, crossing his arms. “I caught this misguided one trying to carry off one of my daughters. As you can tell by the missing leg, I took exception to that.”

Master Eujin smirked, and raised an eyebrow at Harkam.

“There are better ways to find a wife, you know.” He said.

“I saw him doing the same thing to one of the boys from Renning too.” Ven remembered aloud. “He knocked him out and carried him away towards where Sevastian found me.”

She trailed off as the memory of Sevastian’s knife triggered an instinctive ache in her gut. Master Eujin appraised her, then looked at Harkam again.

“What does Sevastian want with children? And why is he destroying entire villages to get them?” He asked.

Harkam looked from Eujin to Torstein to Ven, then shook his head.

“I’m not telling you anything. You know good and well what he’d do to me if I did.” He said.

Master Eujin snorted.

“I’m fairly certain you have far more immediate problems than that, Harkam.” He said, pulling one of his knives from his belt and flipping it between his fingers.

“Hey! You can’t hurt me when I’m in here! Their religion promised me protection!” Harkam blurted.

Master Eujin looked over at Torstein.

“There any times where your Lord grants the right to harm those previously promised safety?” He asked.

“Of course. The most common one being when they refuse to aid or support the temple that took them in in exchange for their protection.” Torstein said.

“And would you say that refusing to tell me what I want to know is refusing to aid and support your temple?”

Torstein smiled, an almost evil glint in his eyes.

Absolutely.

“Well there you have it, Harkam! Either you tell me what I want to know, right now, or I will use this knife of mine to take off your other leg, right now.” Master Eujin said.

“You can’t do this! I was promised safety!” He protested, trying yet again to get free of the sling holding up his leg.

“And now, it appears that safety has been revoked. What a shame.” Eujin said. The smile dropped from his face, and he caught the knife he’d been playing with. “Last chance, Harkam.”

Harkam’s skin went from bloodless to a sickly green, and he looked like he was about to vomit. His eye darted back and forth between the three of them, but not seeing the sympathy he was looking for, he swallowed hard.

“Look, I don’t know why he wants them.” He said. “And I don’t even know what he’s really looking for. The ones he wants are ‘Unawakened’, whatever the swive that means. I’m supposed to help him find which ones those are in the villages we go to, and take them during the attack. Only, he just tortures and kills them after, so I don’t even know why he bothers.”

“Wait, Unawakened? Like Sa’Cari?” Ven asked.

Master Eujin’s face darkened.

“How many has he taken, Harkam?”

“I don’t even know what a Sa’Cari is! He only just started having me help him find and take them! After we attacked Renning, he said none of the ones we took were what he was looking for, and blamed me for it! If he got any before I started helping, I have no idea!” Harkam said.

Ven sat in shocked silence for a long moment, realizations starting to dawn in her mind as she thought back to the night her village had been attacked. She’d been Unawakened then. Sebastian had been hunting Unawakened. She had been one of his targets, and he knew what she was when he went to kill her.

“Is he trying to Awaken them and take their Names?” She asked.

“That seems the most likely possibility.” Master Eujin said grimly. “And if he is controlling what they experience before they die, then he is probably controlling what Names they receive when they Awaken to ensure they’re as useful as possible.”

Ven cursed under her breath. That was bad. Very bad. What if he unlocked the Name of Fire itself by burning them? Or the Name of the Air by smothering them? What could a Sa’Cari do if they could command the fundamental elements of nature? If that was what he was doing, then the possibilities were terrifying. But, something didn’t fully add up. If Sevastian had known what she was, why didn’t he take her too? What was it that he had said to her before he tried to kill her? ‘I now have what I need, and that makes you a liability’? If he needed Sa’Cari to take their Names, why would he kill her rather than take her too? Wouldn’t it be better to have as many as possible? Leaving her behind didn’t make any sense. But then again, she was trying to make logic out of things that would have all seemed patently absurd less than a year ago. Perhaps there was more to it than she was capable of understanding right now. If not, then they were missing something. And that possibility somehow frightened her even more than the alternative.

Master Eujin leaned forward and grabbed Harkam by the front of his tunic, pulling the man within a few inches of his face and eliciting a yelp of pain.

“Listen to me, Harkam. I don’t care what you’ve done to help him, but you have to tell us what he is planning next. He has to be stopped.” He said.

Harkam snorted derisively.

“You think I have any idea where he is now? Last thing he said before he left me to get captured by these crazies is that he had no more use for me. I might as well be dead to him.” He replied.

Master Eujin’s gaze did not soften, and his grip on Harkam’s tunic tightened.

“That’s not good enough, Telishan.” He said. “What is he planning?”

“Swive off. I have nothing left to say to you.” Harkam said.

“We’ll see about that.” Master Eujin said. He flipped the knife in his hand around and buried it point-first into the man’s leg.

Harkam bellowed in pain, setting loose a stream of curses that would have made Ven’s mother’s hair turn grey. He looked up at Torstein.

“You promised me protection! I answered what I was asked!” He wailed.

Torstein just looked around, whistling faintly to himself and refusing to acknowledge what Harkam said. Master Eujin pulled Harkam even closer, his expression hard and cold.

“You’ve known of me a long time, Harkam. I’m sure Sevastian has told you all about how I became who I am. Do I strike you as the kind of man who tolerates being lied to?” He asked.

“But I’m not ly- AAAUUGH!” Harkam started, only to be interrupted by a new wave of pain as Master Eujin twisted the knife in Harkam’s thigh.

“You’re not stupid, Harkam. Nor am I. Now, what is he planning?”

Harkam’s face, twisted as it was now by pain and fear and a host of other things, was almost enough to make Ven feel bad for him. Almost. The man began to blubber noisily, fat tears dropping off his cheeks onto the rapidly expanding pool of blood on his impaled leg.

“I don’t know what the whole plan is! I just know he wants these swiving people taken so he can do horrible things to them. I don’t know where he is going. The only thing I know is that he said something about there being more of them at Ashmark for the Night Solstice. Maybe he’s planning another attack then! I don’t know anymore! I swear it!” He said, beads of sweat building on his forehead.

Master Eujin seemed to consider this for a long moment, then smiled humorlessly.

“There! That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He said, before dropping Harkam unceremoniously back to the bed and pulling his knife free of the man’s leg.

Leaving Harkam to clutch at his wound, Eujin turned to Torstein.

“How far is Ashmark from here?” He asked.

Torstein pursed his lips.

“Nearly a week’s travel on foot.” He said.

Master Eujin cursed.

“That’s longer than we have.”

“You think there’s going to be an attack there on Godsday?”

Eujin nodded.

“I have almost no doubt.” He said, then asked, “Do you have any horses left from the attack here?

“One. Though it’s much less a travel horse than a plow horse, being honest.” Torstein said, scratching the back of his head.

“We need it. How quickly can you have it saddled?” Eujin asked.

“Give me twenty minutes, and I can also have it fitted with supplies.” Torstein replied.

“Done. Is there a temple to Ferelin in Ashmark?”

Torstein nodded.

“One of the biggest.” He said.

“Then make sure we have a writ in the supplies letting them know of the situation, and to be ready for an attack. They’re going to need as much time to be ready as possible.” Eujin said, walking for the door to the infirmary.

“Godsday is less than three days away.” Torstein said. “You really think you can make it there with enough time to warn them?”

“Yes.” Eujin said, stepping out into the hallway. “Because if we can’t, then everyone in that village is going to die.”

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