Ch. 391 - The Tithe Pools
Simon had to go halfway to Abreese before he found a merchant with the tools he was looking for. That was far enough away that he finally broke down and bought a pony for Varten so they could move from destination to destination that much quicker. Walking was good for the lad, but if Simon was going to spend weeks investigating something another knight had supposedly already solved, then he wanted the incident resolved one way or the other before he went back to the Broken Tower to be judged for his actions.
Simon only needed a couple of metalworking chisels, a gemstone of decent size, and a bit of copper or silver. Really, any reasonable soft metal would do, but this world hadn’t invented hardware stores yet, and he wasn’t eager to borrow some blacksmith’s workshop. That would only spread rumors.
He’d half expected that he’d need to go all the way to the port town, but he didn’t really mind that. He’d even get to see his old inn years before it became his, which might be nice. Still, when he found a jeweler who was willing to let some things go for a good price, Simon stopped going south and turned north again, to only a few complaints from his squire.
“Why’d we come this far if we weren’t going to go all the way?” he asked, frustrated. “You said we were going to see the sea.”
“And we will,” Simon agreed, “but first we need to capture a Jinn before it hurts anyone else, don’t you think?”
Varten grudgingly agreed with that, though he did say, “It might not even be there. You told me the other knight thinks he slew it.”
“Well, thinking and knowing are two very different things,” Simon admonished him, before going on to question him about a great many other things about various monsters to change the topic.
Boys in Simon's experience were most bidable when they were fighting with a sword; even his own son had been that way, but Varten had a pension for showing off, and a good memory. Giving him lists of facts to recite about the proper way to purge a goblin warren, kill a zombie, or determine the guilt of a suspect was nearly as effective, so that was how they spent much of their time traveling.
That was doubly true whenever he felt a wave of nostalgia at seeing some familiar place from many lives ago. His squire was good at keeping him anchored in the now during those moments.
With horses, the way back to their destination was quick, but that was just enough time for Simon to sketch out and carve the small circuit he’d planned out. He could have done it in a night, but because he didn’t want any uncomfortable questions, he had to tire Varten out with practice, and then work on his project for an hour or two by firelight.
This amulet wouldn’t be one of the artfully disguised ones he’d made in the past. There would be no mistaking it as an implement of magic to anyone who was knowledgeable, which meant he’d have to stash it before he returned to the Broken Tower, but that was fine. He could leave it in the sands for all he cared. It only needed to work once. Whether it would or not was the question.
Simon had no idea what a Jinn was supposed to be yet. He’d seen ghosts and demons, and read plenty of stories about fae, but Jinn were a new one on him, which almost certainly meant they were a subcategory of one of the other types. Since he could just as easily imagine them being demons as fae, he devised a plan that he thought would work on both. The gemstone was a simple battery that he’d charge manually, but it would power a single three-dimensional ring-shaped barrier of nullification only four or five feet across.
He thought of it as a ghost trap, though he could no longer remember which movie inspired that reference. He could even imagine how he might tune its strength and size with a couple of small knobs if he had a proper workshop. It was a simple thing, but could be made much more complex. He could have even left out the battery, and it would have worked fine, though that would have forced him to stay inside the circle with whatever he caught, and that struck him as a remarkably unhealthy idea.
After that, he made himself a small dowsing rod with a stick that was already most of the way there, in case they needed to do some hunting, and then he felt ready. Well, you’re probably never ready to face a real devil, he corrected himself, but this seemed simple enough. If it were really dangerous, the stories would have been a lot more dramatic than people disappearing under the sand.
The two of them saw the Tithe Pools from a ways off. There was no one camped there, but it was too late in the day to safely approach, so they camped on a rise on the horizon and waited one more day to approach. As they did so, Simon noted the strange ruins and how unlike the other buildings in the area they were.
They were monolithic, and distinctive enough that he felt sure these weren’t the only ruins like this he’d seen; the ruins he’d found that graffiti in so long ago had been similar. He’d been hunting centaurs back then, but orcs that wielded lightning would be something he’d remember for a hundred lifetimes. Some part of him had always thought of those ruins as orcish, even though he knew they were no builders, but who the builders were remained a mystery to him, even after all these years.
That is not the mystery I’m exploring today, he reminded himself, refusing to let himself get distracted. As they tethered the horses at the water’s edge under the noonday sun, Simon said, “Tell me what the plan is, Varten.”
The boy sighed. Simon didn’t blame him for that; he’d only made his squire repeat this half a hundred times in the last couple of days. “I am to wait here unless you call for me,” the boy answered unenthusiastically. “It’s too dangerous for me, and I would only get in the way.”
Even after repeating it, Simon was unconvinced that the boy believed it and would listen to him, which was why this time he added the final detail that would make him feel useful, even if it didn’t prove necessary.
“Correct,” Simon agreed, ignoring his squire’s apathy. “But there’s just one more thing. I’m tying myself to my mount so that if this desert spirit succeeds in pulling me under, I have a chance. Your job is to be ready and use it to pull me back toward the water, in case things go awry. Can you do that?”
That got the boy’s attention instantly, and put enough of a gleam in his eye that Simon had to caution the boy to intervene gently if he needed to. He didn’t need to be drawn and quartered while he was trying to solve this mystery. Still, he was sure that just waiting for that moment would be enough for the boy to stay at the ready.
Unfortunately, they had a long time to wait. Whatever was going to happen wasn’t supposed to happen as long as it was daylight. So, the two waited until sunset and ate a quick cold meal before Simon cautioned the boy one more time as he tied the rope to his waist.
He’d hoped that gesture would make him feel better, but it didn’t. Instead, his sense of unease only grew as he walked out into the sand.
As he moved toward the ruins he looked about. The angular buildings were mostly intact, but there wasn’t enough cover to hide anything too substantial, and there was no obvious danger. He could see no building power or swirling spirits with his sight, either. The scene looked just as it had during the day, save for the darkness.
“Well, it would be pretty funny if Sir Celenger really did solve this problem,” he muttered after walking two dozen feet, nearly half the length of his rope. “If I went all that way for—”
Simon was yanked into the desert sand so quickly that he could scarcely close his mouth before he was submerged in it. That didn’t stop him from getting dirt up his nose or being made completely blind. Fortunately, he kept hold of his amulet, and even as he was dragged somewhere in the gritty dark, he activated it.
That stopped the motion and made something, presumably the Jinn, shriek in rage, but Simon ignored all of that and focused on his own predicament. Despite all the stories, he hadn’t expected the thing to move that fast. When it grabbed him, he expected that it wouldn’t even submerge him to his waist before he activated his device. Obviously, that hadn’t happened, and he was several feet underground.
No, more than that, he said to himself as he reached slowly upward through the soft sand without finding air.
Simon struggled and dug, trying to find direction and purpose, but even as the air in his lungs started to go stale, he felt a firm, tugging pressure from the rope, slowly pulling him to the surface. Thank God for Varten, Simon thought, as surprised by the thought as he was by the fact that the boy was doing what he’d been told to do.
Whatever had grabbed him didn’t let go easily, and for a few seconds, Simon worried he was about to be torn in two. Then, its grip slipped, and he was yanked to the surface in a single motion. He tried to gauge the distance he traveled as he was brought up to the surface, and reckoned it was four or five feet.
When his face broke above the sand, it was with grateful gasping. Even from the surface, though, he could hear the spirit or whatever it was shrieking with incoherent rage beneath the sands. In fact, the noise he was hearing made him think it was more and more likely he was facing a strange monster than anything else.
As Varten dismounted and ran up to him, Simon pulled himself up and examined his legs, looking for blood or claw marks. He hadn’t felt any pain, but even so, he still didn’t expect to find himself unmarked.
“It’s okay,” Simon said as his squire approached where he was sitting in the dirt, trying to understand what had happened. “I’m not hurt. I’m just—”
Simon didn’t finish whatever he was going to say. He was silenced as Varten wrapped him in a desperate hug. It was every bit as shocking and nearly as unexpected as the way he’d been pulled beneath the sands. He was crying, too.
“Don’t… If you die, who will train me to be a brave knight?!” the boy demanded with petulant, tear-streaked fury.
“It’s fine, I was never in any danger,” Simon lied. “This was the plan the whole time, and you did great,” he reassured his squire.
The truth was that was not how he’d thought things would go at all, but in the moment, he hadn’t really minded. One more death wouldn’t be the end of the world. Wouldn’t be the end of the world for me, he thought as he held the boy and reeled from the knowledge that it would be for him.
For once, Simon didn’t know what to say to calm the boy. So, he didn’t say anything at all for a long moment as he embraced his first real connection in lifetimes.
Ch. 392 - Buried Treasure
Eventually, when the moment passed and Vatren’s grip on him slackened, Simon said, “Bring me the shovels. Let’s see what we caught.”
The boy looked at him uncertainly. He clearly thought that was a terrible idea, but he didn’t disobey, and a few minutes later, they were both shoveling away sand from where the screaming was loudest as fast as they could, but Simon’s leg began to ache well before he reached anything interesting.
At first, he thought it was just muscle strain from being pulled in two directions at once, but after a couple of minutes, when the adrenaline faded entirely, his left leg throbbed badly. Even with the shrieking, that was enough to make him stop what he was doing and have his squire help him remove his armor. After that came the pants, which were where they found an ugly burn in the shape of a monstrous hand.
Varten went white at the sight of charred skin and popped blisters, but Simon put him to work fetching bandages and alcohol to keep him from going into shock. It was serious, and it would scar, but as long as it didn’t get infected, he’d be fine. More disturbing was the fact that the Jinn had inflicted it on him in only a second or two.
What would it have done if it had held onto me even longer, he wondered, imagining his muscles cooking, and his bones charing in the fiery grip.
During the long break it took to bandage the wound, the keening never stopped, and eventually, despite his squire’s misgivings, they continued. They only had to go for a few feet before a hand reached for them out of the sand and tried to grab Simon’s shovel. They both stopped then and looked at the strange, grasping limb.
There was obviously a body attached to it. That went without saying, but was it worth digging down to it? After the burn he’d received, he had second thoughts about that. He would have thought it was a ghost save for the fact that the creature glowed red and orange and flickered like flames, and all of that said demonic to Simon, which made him nervous to get too close a second time.
He tried to dig a bit more, more after the creature left glowing claw marks on his shovel that only slowly faded back to the gray of cool metal, but he decided against it. Instead, he wondered how he’d gotten free of the thing without losing one or both legs.
Tired of its screeching, he and his squire returned to their horse, where he retrieved his dowsing rod and used it to try to find this thing’s home. It had been dragging Simon somewhere, and he was about to find out. He confirmed that the thing worked by having it find the Jinn. Then, he had it look for the robes of the silent sister who had died here the month before, because a concrete object he could imagine worked infinitely better than a vague concept of a den.
While he did so, his squire fired off a barrage of questions, but Simon silenced him, telling the boy, “I need to concentrate. I’ll tell you what we’re doing after I’ve found what I’m looking for.”
That kept him silent as they walked toward the ruins. Simon had suspected that would be the case, but even as he advanced, he worried there might be more than one, and other than speaking a word of nullification, he had no other cards to play.
The stories say people are taken one at a time, Simon reminded himself as they walked in silence. If there were a whole nest of these things, no one would be alive to tell stories in the first place.
While that made sense, things often didn’t make sense when it came to magic and monsters. So he kept expecting some freak ambush even after they reached their goal and started digging.
That was when he finally started to answer Varten’s earlier questions. Yes, they’d caught the Jinn. Yes, that meant that Sir Celenger had been wrong. No, he probably wasn’t lying. He’d just been optimistic. Those were the easy questions.
“How do you know where to dig?”
“What’s the stick for?”
“What’s buried here?”
Simon explained that the dousing rod allowed him to focus his sight and find what he sought. “It’s just a stick,” he lied. “As to what we’re looking for…”
There, Simon had a harder time answering the boy. “Its nest,” he said finally. “Or a grave. Maybe a lot of graves.”
Despite such a dire pronunciation, they dug several feet without finding so much as a bone. Other than a break for dinner, they dug most of the night, without finding much. They only stopped because dawn was approaching, and his captive had begun to scream again. This time it sounded less like rage, though, and more like fear.
Simon supposed that the thing could destroy the amulet that was trapping it. If it were intelligent, it would have done that hours before. Instead, it acted like a caged wolf, clawing at a barrier it couldn’t understand. Simon didn’t really understand it either, but as the run rose, and its rays touched the pit, the thing grew louder for a moment, then it was completely silent.
Varten looked at Simon expectantly, so he eventually said, “It’s dead, probably. We’ll know come nightfall, one way or the other.” The two of them took a short nap, then, in the shade of a wall, while it was still cool. Simon had built his amulet to run for two or three days at steady output. If the thing was merely slumbering the day away, they wouldn’t be caught unawares.
Despite Simon’s worsening pain, after noon they started digging again, and Simon noted that his dowsing rod pointed under the building they were digging beside, not deeper. That simplified things; if the direction was just ever downward, he might have given up. It wasn’t safe to go much deeper without scaffolding, but they seemed to be digging toward some long-abandoned cellar. That was intriguing, and for an hour, Simon dreamed that he might find some long-abandoned magic experiment that could teach him a thing or two.
Then they started finding the bones. Most of them were chewed or broken; all of them were charred. Past a certain point, the terrain became more bones than sand, which was grisly, even for Simon. He sent Varten to find more dung for the fire, and leave this part to him. Then he used his dowsing rod to determine exactly where the sister’s remains were; those he’d take back with them. As he dug, though, he found little to make sense of.
There was no intelligence here. There was just enough structure to make him think of ants or termites, but that was it. It was like he was carving his way through a hairball or owl pellet made of the broken bones of a hundred corpses.
Simon did not share that metaphor when it was dinner time. Instead, they ate and waited patiently for their prisoner’s keening wail to resume. When that didn’t happen, he pronounced it dead and went back to digging, determined to get to the center of his charred ossuary.
By the time Simon reached the hollow, cavern-like structure in the middle, he was covered in sand and ash. Still, he pressed deeper with a torch and found a real horror show. It wasn't just the pieces of bodies here that he found disturbing; it was the symbols. They weren't words of power, not quite anyway. They looked like them, though, in places. It reminded him of the marks he'd see in goblin warrens, only there were clawed carving and burn marks instead of shit-smeared images.
Except for the lack of a summoning circle and the scent of sulfur, Simon would have been sure this was some kind of demonic den; likewise, the thing’s fiery nature ruled out some kind of undead wraith, which would have made a great deal of sense otherwise.
“What does that leave?” he asked himself. “Elemental? Fae?”
He was at a loss, and after using a mirror to take a few pictures for later sketches, he limped back to his guttering campfire and sleeping squire with the bones of Sister Elzbin in the shreds of her robes for a night of restless sleep. Simon was fairly sure that besides Helades, there were no gods in this world, but that didn’t stop him from saying a prayer for the poor soul as he tucked her remains into his saddlebags.
His leg spent half the night throbbing, but in the morning, they left at first light, heading back north. Even though Simon’s first priority probably should have been a healer for better herbs and a second look, what he really wanted was a good inn. A few stiff drinks and a decent bath would do more to help him than any medical treatment. He was absolutely filthy on top of everything else. He hoped for a quiet trip back through the desert, but those were rare enough, and he was sure they’d find some other trouble on the way.
Ch. 393 - A Long Road Back
The two of them lingered at the first inn they found, not because it was luxurious, but because Simon’s leg worsened. The healer in town tried to prescribe him a number of herbs that would have cost much, but done little, so Simon did the next best thing, and had the town’s smith melt and hammer a few coins into a small silver disk, which he spent days carving into an amulet of lesser curing.
Healing might have made more sense. In his feverishness, he almost made that mistake when he started the project, but there was no serious wound to be healed, merely a serious infection that had come in through the large and particularly ugly wound.
“Healing too quick would only make people talk,” he mumbled as he worked. Even sending Varten out on errands to keep him busy wouldn’t stop all rumors, and the last thing he wanted when he returned to the Unspoken was to give them another reason to think that he was special.
This amulet he chose to power with light instead of heat or life. So, he tied it to the outside of his bandage like a holy icon, and lay in the sun as often as possible while doing his best to avoid other travelers. His fever was, by turns, suppressing his sight and distorting it, and he had no idea if the things he was seeing in the auras of strangers were real or imagined, so it was best to look away entirely rather than endure that horror show.
For the first few days, all he could do was nap, but after that, he was able to eat and, more importantly, drink a few beers for the pain. Once whatever invader that had been ravaging his body was expelled and he felt somewhat human again, Simon updated his journal with everything that had happened in the last few days, leaving out only primitive artifacts he’d crafted.
Still, while he lay there in feverish purgatory, any number of worries flashed through his mind. What if the Jinn had crawled inside him and was burning him from the inside out? What if everyone had a curing amulet and the light of the world was converted to health instead of heat, and they all froze to death? What if a troupe of Unspoken showed up demanding to know why he was using witchcraft? Why did speaking a word of power obliterate his sight, but using a hunk of metal did not? What was Freya up to right now? How old was she anyway?
Only the questions about the metaphysical nature of magic followed him back into lucidity. How many photons are in a unit of mana? How many amps are in a spell? Simon didn’t really want to invent the entire edifice of magical science himself, but he was pretty sure that eventually he was going to have to do just that. He wasn’t just going to write the book. He was going to have to conduct every experiment to derive every constant and equation.
Just thinking about it was enough to give him a headache. He was in no way smart enough to do all that, but in the long term, it was the only answer he could imagine besides, just-fight-my-way-to-the-end-of-the-Pit-and-do-whatever-Helades-wants-me-to, which wasn’t happening.
Throughout all of that, his squire was obviously worried, but didn’t make himself a bother, at least until Simon’s appetite returned. It was only when things were somewhat back to normal that he asked uncomfortable questions about the amulet that had obviously been key to his recovery.
“It's just a holy symbol,” Simon explained, giving him the same answer he might give anyone, but the persistence and innocence of children made such an answer incomplete at best.
“If it’s so powerful, why don’t you always wear it?” the boy asked. “Can I have one?”
Varten and Simon had a long conversation about how not all prayers were appropriate for all problems, and so not every symbol was appropriate either, on the ride north. Eventually, Simon made him a medal, and scribed a delicate pattern of a dove on it with a patterned border that looked intricate enough that it might contain some secret magic, even though it didn’t. It wasn’t the best use of Simon’s time night after night by the campfire, but it felt good to make something beautiful again after so long, and it would make a good fig leaf if any awkward questions came up when they reached their destination.
They were going back to Broken Tower finally, and though Simon told his squire that much, he didn’t tell him anything else. Like the fact that they might execute you if they decide you’re unworthy. He felt bad about that, but he knew he shouldn’t. He’d already saved Varten’s life twice for this purpose, and things would probably turn out fine.
Instead of worrying the boy unnecessarily, he focused on trying to make him the best squire he could be in their last few weeks. Every night around the campfire, he told him stories of important knights or saints, and every day while they rode, he asked the boy questions about various monsters. How can you tell if a woman is a witch or a man is a warlock? If you find a body on the road, what do you check for to figure out the kind of monster that killed him? It was probably a little much for an eleven-year-old.
Above all, on the way back, Simon kept his eyes open for an opportunity to see the boy blooded. He wasn’t exactly a blade master, yes, but Simon was fairly sure that Varten could trounce a goblin in a one-on-one match, and he was sure that the masters of the order would look well on such a feat.
So Simon bought his charge a real short sword as soon as one became available, and then spent a week wandering back and forth through the countryside looking for a den of any size. “It’s ironic,” Simon joked around the campfire. “The one time I’m actually looking for goblins, I can’t find them.”
Varden didn’t think that was very funny. While he acted brave, he was smart enough to put two and two together, and the fact that Simon was finally letting him practice with a real steel weapon obviously meant that he was going to have to use it soon.
Simon could have used his dousing rod again, but he didn’t want to remind Varten of its existence so close to their return. Children bragged about the weirdest things, and he had no desire to be burned at the stake because his young squire was describing deeds that sounded an awful lot like witchcraft.
Besides, Varten wasn’t used to the weight of his new blade yet. So a few extra nights did him some good. It wasn’t long after that that he heard a farmer complaining in a bar about a few of his sheep going missing three nights running. That was all Simon needed to hear. Outside of the badlands, he would lay ten to one odds that it was goblins; a troll was always possible, too, of course, but beastmen didn’t tend to hang out in lowlands.
So, after a brief conversation with the man, the two of them were on their way, and though Simon immediately spotted the trail, he made Varten go through the painful experience of tracking them back to their source.
The boy tried to give up in exasperation more than once, complaining, “You said there’d be fighting!” but Simon wouldn’t let him take the easy way out. Instead, he just pointed out a well-clawed tree or a small pile of goblin shit to send him the right way again. It didn’t matter, not as long as they made it inside before sunset.
On the way in, they lit several torches and scattered them around the entrance, saving only one for each of them. Then they entered as quietly as they could. Simon could see the fear rippling off of his squire as the first goblin charged from the shadows with a spear, but Simon parried the blow and took its head with one clean motion. After that, the battle was joined.
Simon took point, and any time there was more than one enemy, he took care of them, but each time there was only one, he held back and tried to give Varten a chance. The boy was very reluctant to take charge in those moments, but being charged by a greenskin had a way of putting urgency into you. Simon stayed close to intervene, but he was admittedly distracted by thoughts of Gregor when they’d done this together so long ago.
Can a wretch like Varten grow up to be a man like him? Simon wondered. He supposed that at this rate, he’d find out. However, all he’d find out tonight was whether or not Varten could fight.
Well, Simon knew that he could; it was just a matter of letting his squire find that out for himself. He did, too, first reluctantly, and later with enthusiasm, and battle cries that echoed through the small cave system. After his first kill, he stopped shying away, and after his second, he was energized.
After that, all Simon had to do was keep an eye on their flanks and make sure Varten didn’t get overwhelmed. By the time the last goblin fell and silence returned to the cave, the boy was shaky and splattered in green blood, but he was alive and unharmed, which was better than Simon had managed in his first few attempts. “Great work,” Simon said, making the kid smile sheepishly.
“I… That was the last one?” he asked, looking around.
The dark could have hidden a thousand more greenskins, but Simon didn’t need the torch to see when he was focused now, and he knew there was nothing else in here. It had been a small nest, but that was exactly what he wanted. The smaller the nest, the faster it could be purged.
“That’s it,” Simon agreed, wiping the blood off of his squire’s face with a rag. “Now we just need to let everyone know what a great job you did and get ourselves a bath.”
That was the last real obstacle. Once that was done, Simon only stopped long enough to get his squire cleaned up and buy him a celebratory feast, letting the whole bar toast to his bravery while Varten withered in embarrassment at the attention. After that was done, they made a straight shot for their destination, and after only three more nights under open stars and one miserable evening in a damp tent, they’d finally arrived.
“It doesn’t look like much,” Varten complained as they approached. “Why don’t they fix it?”
“Because if no one knows something important is here, they aren’t going to look at it very hard,” Simon answered. “If you have big, strong walls, you’re only announcing to the world that you have something to hide.”
“But if you’re weak and vulnerable, can’t your enemies just crush you?” he asked. It was a fair question.
“The… order I belong to isn’t weak, but even if it was, you’ve seen the deference that everyone offers them,” Simon answered. “Lords and lowlifes alike. Only the King would attack them, and I don’t believe he would dare.”
“But why?” Varten asked.
“Because we’re the good guys,” Simon answered, flashing the boy a smile. That wasn’t the real reason, but it was good enough for a child. The real reason was probably somewhere between ‘The Unspoken are the power behind the throne,’ and ‘If you go against them, you’ll quickly find yourself denounced as a witch or worse.’
Simon hadn’t yet decided if he was going to have to co-opt or cull the order in some future life. They were helpful at keeping the monsters in check. Comparing the relative safety of Brin to the mountainous wilds of Montain made that clear enough. They helped to keep the Murani at bay, too, but if he really wanted to use magic to change the world, they were going to have to go one way or the other.