26. [Uicha] The Grasslands (Patreon)

King Mudt had chosen his champions. The coward Sulk might have deserted him, but there were other formidable warriors in his army. He first marked the fleet-footed assassin Bello who had singlehandedly reduced the great merchant families from fourteen to thirteen and thus squashed any thoughts of resistance from the bay. Next, Mudt marked the swordsman Carver, renowned for his brutality across the sprawling plains that once belonged to Infinzel. And finally, Mudt chose the man-mountain Grime, whose prodigious bulk had been essential in keeping the trolkin in line.

Yet, when it came time to mark Grime, Mudt found his inkwell dry.

The gods had told Mudt they had chosen one of his champions on his behalf. They even had the audacity to grant her the fifth renown, which meant her Ink matched Mudt’s own.

He had no doubt the gods had chosen Kayenna Vezz and her accursed magic.

 “Where has that sorcerous bitch hidden herself?” Mudt asked.

“Rouchet,” Bello answered, the assassin known for his network of spies. “Abiding by the terms of your banishment. Doing nothing to aid in the war effort.”

“She’s done enough,” said Carver. “I had to kill one of her abominations just this morning.”

In the company of his champions, King Mudt longingly gazed upon the pyramidal city of Infinzel. The walls were quiet, the siege lines still. Mudt had vowed never to leave the front until he could march up to the highest floor of that towering city and throw off the severed head of the fat King Hectore. He would watch the king’s head bounce down each successive level of Infinzel’s tiers and at last feel satisfied.

King Mudt clenched his fists and turned to his three subordinates. “Assemble a battalion for the journey south. I have tolerated that fool woman long enough.”

--Record of the First Granting and Dawning of the Second Age

Lyus Crodd, Scribe of the Dead Kingdom of Orvesis

***

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Uicha de Orak, a young man of no renown or loyalty, finally seeing the world

Sara Free, Paladin of the 10th Renown, The Ministry of Sulk, the impulsive type

30 Hazean, 61 AW

The grasslands between Ambergran and Cruxton

240 days until the next Granting

Uicha led the horses and Sara carried the deer. She had killed the buck that morning—a streak of paralyzing light from her sword that had disoriented the animal long enough for Sara to get close and slash its throat. Now, she walked with the whole bulk of the animal draped across her shoulders, barely hunched by the weight. The tips of her blonde hair were stained red with deer blood. Sweat gathered on her neck beneath the shield symbol of the Ministry of Sulk.

Sara didn't want to needlessly tire the horses. Three weeks since they fled Ambergran and she still kept an eye out for pursuers, although they hadn’t seen any signs of being followed. She had stopped leading them in looping trails across the grasslands and stuck closer to the Green Road. Even so, she hadn’t entirely abandoned caution.

Up ahead, Uicha spotted smoke curling over the next hill.

“I bet that's the tavern,” he said. “Those merchants said it would only be a few more miles.”

Sara grunted. “You want to sleep in a bed tonight?”

“Wouldn't say no to that,” Uicha replied. “It's your money, though.”

“It’s our money,” Sara said, her usual response whenever Uicha tried to demur about their shared finances, which he’d done next to nothing to earn. “I’d like a bath. A bath would be perfect.”

By necessity, they’d encountered fellow travelers on the road northeast and made for a notable paring—a boy with no markings and a Crucifalian-born paladin of Sulk. Anyone asking after them would likely be pointed in the right direction. Uicha wondered if Sara actually wanted a confrontation with the Orvesian Witnesses she imagined dogging their trail. He thought that a part of her had been disappointed that his rescue had been so simple with him just plunging out of the wheat fields and into her arms.

He did not think she would actually want to battle what might be chasing him.

“Why were the Orvesians holding you?” Sara had asked him on their first full day together, back when they only had the one horse and thus Uicha had no choice but to ride pressed into the back of the most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes on.

“Because of my Ink,” Uicha told her. He touched the blank space on his neck, although he was sure Sara had already noticed. “I think they assumed I'd be an easy convert.”

Sara had glanced over her shoulder at him. “That's it?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. Battar Crodd, he…” Uicha paused, taking a moment to think through his fabrication. “He said a lot of religious stuff. It didn't make sense.”

That had seemed to satisfy Sara. In the days to come, Uicha would learn all about her grudge against Crodd, how she had stood against him at the last Granting until he quite literally cut her leg out from under her. The idea that Crodd would be interested in an Inkless but otherwise ordinary boy from Ambergran for his own strange and morbid reasons didn't require further scrutiny from Sara. The mad cult of Orvesian death worshippers were, of course, going to behave in bizarre ways. Mostly, she seemed pleased with herself for dealing her enemy what she thought of as a small injury.

Uicha had not told her about the pursuer that truly concerned him. The archmage Ahmed Roh in his wine-colored suit. Nor had he explained to Sara about the Orvesian spirit living within him. He didn’t think that Sara would deliver him to the Magelab for experimentation, but he decided not to take the risk. She was his only protector and he didn’t want to frighten her away.

In those days after Ambergran, Kayenna Vezz had receded within him once again, leaving no hint of her presence except the lingering cough from the frostbite she'd accidentally inflicted upon Uicha’s lungs. During the dry heat of the days, Uicha felt mostly fine. But at nights, when the humidity set in and the pollen stuck to them, his lungs rattled and his breathing wheezed.

“I'm tired of listening to that,” Sara said on their third night together. They sat opposite each other across a small fire. “Let me do something about it.”

Uicha allowed her to lift up his shirt and press her warm hands against his narrow chest, a healing heat stealing into him. He bit his lip and turned his head as a strand of her hair tickled his cheek. Clearing his throat uncomfortably, he shifted slightly away from her in order to hide his reaction.

“You all right?” Sara asked, a twinge of amusement in her voice.

“It feels better,” Uicha said shakily, his mouth surprisingly dry. “I’ve just never been around someone like you before.”

Luckily, the healing finished quickly and Sara returned to her side of the fire, sinking into the shadows there.

“Don't worry,” she said. “It wears off.”

“I don't see how that can be true,” Uicha mumbled.

They slept in the grass. The weather has so far cooperated, so the ground was soft and dry. Uicha dreamed of Sara’s face leaning over him, filling his vision like the moon, her perfectly shaped mouth opening for him…

“Well, Uicha de Orak, I believe it’s time we settled on a destination,” she said to him the next morning before they mounted up. “Where do you want to go?”

Until that point, Sara had been taking him across the grasslands strictly to put distance between them and Ambergran. But what had initially been an escape now felt aimless. Uicha realized what an impulsive decision this had been for Sara. They had one horse, no supplies, not even a bedroll. Sara proved up to the task of foraging and tracking down streams for water, or else Uicha would've starved.

“The Flamingo Islands, I guess,” Uicha said.

“You have people there?”

“My grandfather,” Uicha said. “But we've never met.”

He thought of the letters he'd found written to his father, lost back in Ambergran along with a small fortune and all his possessions except for his mother's sword. He supposed all that would belong to the Orvesian Witnesses now. At least, he hoped that Petra would end up with the money. Maybe there would be enough for her to make an escape of her own, if she wanted. She could keep growing her hair out. He wasn't sure what was actually in the girl’s heart, but Uicha found that he missed her regardless. He hoped she would take care of Parrot.

“I guess that means we should ride south,” Uicha said.

Sara shook her head. “South would be quickest, but it would mean departing via Ruchet and they’re essentially Orvesians with slightly different Ink. Plus, the waters there are ugly going out, too close to the wastes.”

Uicha listened, realizing how little he actually knew of the world. He could only learn so much from his father’s maps.

“We'll go northeast, to Cruxton, and downriver by boat to Noyega,” Sara decided. “Noyega’s nasty too, but not so bad as Ruchet. We’ll find you a ship bound for the Flamingos there.”

“You don't have to do all that,” Uicha said.

She studied him and Uicha felt embarrassed by how his heart beat faster at such a direct look. “Have you ever been outside Ambergran before?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I can't just leave you out here alone,” Sara said. “The Ministry of Sulk goes where we are called. We are meant to grab hold of just causes and follow where they lead. Right now, I believe that I am called to help you, regardless of how much trouble that gets me in with my Quill when he finds out I've taken leave of my mission.”

Uicha swallowed. A part of him wanted to discourage this woman who seemed like she'd been pulled from a storybook about heroic knights—Uicha was not sure she would think him a just cause if he revealed what lurked inside him. At the same time, he needed her protection, and the thought of being lost in the grasslands without her filled him with dread.

“Thank you,” he said at last.

“Considering what you've doubtless been through with Crodd, I'll spare you any further recruitment,” Sara began, “only to say that should the Flamingo Islands not live up to your expectations, Beacon is a safe harbor. The Ministry and Gadgeteers share it equally and all loyalties are welcome. Even the unmarked.”

“Maybe,” he said noncommittally, although in truth a thrill had gone through him at the mention of the southern city—a thrill he wasn't sure belonged entirely to him.

“I was without Ink myself for a few weeks,” Sara said as she climbed onto her horse.

“You were?”

She offered him a hand up. “In the moment that I stabbed my husband in his chest, the gods stripped my loyalty to Crucifalia but replaced it with nothing,” Sara said, the coldness in her tone surprising Uicha. “They saved my husband’s life, but set me free. I fled north with nothing, not so different from you. Eventually, the Ministry earned my loyalty.”

“Wow,” Uicha said, wincing that he couldn’t muster better.

Sara squeezed the horse into a gentle canter. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Feeling like the gods themselves can’t even sort you.”

Once they had a destination in mind, Sara stopped steering them over the grasslands and instead led them to the Green Road where they encountered more travelers. Sara bartered with everyone they met, until they had what they needed. Otherworldly beauty, it turned out, was a strong opening position for negotiations. She traded her healing skills or freshly hunted game for money and supplies, amassing enough that she bought Uicha his own horse at the first trading post they came across. The new mare wasn’t as gentle a ride as Clipper, but Uicha made do.

 Sometimes, they met travelers who asked to receive the blessing of the Silver Lake, even after Sara told them she wasn't a proper Crucifalian anymore. With dour precision she would recite the incantations—a series of lilting nonsense words that all seemed to have ‘soul’ as a root—while she cupped the penitent's head in her hands. An assurance that their soul would join the gods upon their death. The donations that followed were always generous.

“Feel a bit guilty about that, if I'm being honest,” Sara said after one of these episodes, watching as a pair of fisherwomen they'd encountered trundled away with her blessing fresh upon them. The women had gifted Sara the entirety of their day’s catch as payment.

“They were pretty insistent,” Uicha said.

“I haven't believed in soul unification since I was a child,” Sara said. “We don't all join the gods when we die. Or, maybe some of us do, but only the most twisted bastards. Once you’ve met the gods, you know the truth of that.”

Uicha thought of the shimmering apparition that had appeared in the fields outside of Ambergran. The twinkling amusement the gods had seemed to find in Battar Crodd’s performance. He shuddered at the memory.

There were less pleasant encounters. Some travelers wanted Sara to lay her hands upon them in a different way, and Sara suffered these advances with icy smiles. She only unsheathed her broadsword once, with some louts traveling a bitter road home from Noyega. Their faces paled when the blade itself erupted in white hot fire—the gods would protect them from death, but not the gelding that the paladin promised. Uicha felt more than useless on these occasions, standing by idly with his hand on the hilt of his mother's scimitar.

“Are you any good with that?” Sara asked him one day.

Uicha considered lying only briefly. “No,” he admitted. “It was my mother's. More sentimental than anything.”

“I’d offer to show you a thing or two, but I’m not much for the delicacy of a curved blade,” she said. “Two hands on a hilt. Swinging with all my might. That’s more my thing.”

Uicha tried to picture Sara standing toe-to-toe with Battar Crodd—something she’d done once and promised to do again.

“Am I taking you away from your training?” Uicha asked. “For the Granting, I mean.”

“All experience is a kind of training, isn’t it?” she replied.

“What’s it like?” Uicha asked. “Going to that island…”

“Wasteful,” she said.

Uicha waited for her to say more.

“Sulk believed that the gods had given us a chance to reorient our minds toward the greater good,” Sara continued. “That if we steered our wishes toward collective benefit rather than screwing over our neighbors, we could render the Granting harmless.”

“A bountiful harvest,” Uicha said.

“Right. If all the Quills simply wished for a bountiful harvest, we could spend seven days on the island getting drunk.” Sara sighed. “But there's always some asshole that wants to turn a town to dust.”

Uicha dwelled on her words, thinking back on how Crodd had described the gods—how he’d practically blamed them for giving him the right to annihilate Ambergran. Who, in the end, was responsible for protecting human life? Two months ago, a question like that would’ve never entered Uicha’s mind.

That night, sitting with Sara around their small fire, Uicha had been about to ask her thoughts on the matter when the archmage Ahmed Roh stepped out from the shadows. His beady black eyes bored straight into Uicha, a cruel smile spreading beneath his vulture’s nest of a beard. Roh held a stained handkerchief in his hand, rubbing his thumb across the dried blood.

“Come to me, boy,” Roh said.

Uicha scrambled backward, his heels digging up grass and dirt, but something held him down. It took him a moment to realize that what had him pinned was a blanket. Sara knelt over him, holding him by the shoulders.

“A nightmare, Uicha,” she whispered. “A nightmare.”

He hoped so.

And so, on the last day of Hazean, Uicha and Sara approached the outpost town of Briarbridge, named for the Briarbridge Tavern. The place made Ambergran feel like a metropolis. Besides the tavern—a stooping three-story building that leaned dangerously over the road—the town consisted of a stable, a ramshackle trading post, a few cottages, and a graveyard. A pass-through town, Sara called it. At any given moment, the visitors likely outnumbered the locals.

The innkeeper, who had probably been watching out the window, came outside to meet them. The man wore the symbol of crossed bridges—Cruxton—on his throat. Briarbridge, as a place, hadn’t developed the significance in anyone’s mind to merit its own Ink. Everyone there thought of themselves as from somewhere else.

Sara dumped the deer’s carcass at the man’s feet. “Trade you this fellow for two rooms. Baths and meals included.”

The innkeeper glanced back at his tavern. “Feel like I’m getting the better end of that.”

“You got any rounds on hand?” Sara asked.

She meant the round coins used in Merchant’s Bay and most of the southern continent. In addition to guiding him across the grasslands, Sara had also begun socking away some coin for Uicha to use when they parted ways. The thought of how much he owed this woman made the back of his neck hot.

“I do, but the exchange rate gets worse if you’re heading north,” the innkeeper said. “You’ll want angles.”

“Say fifteen rounds to even the deal and I’ll help you butcher,” Sara said.

“As you say,” the innkeeper said. He finally glanced at Uicha, starting slightly at the blank space on his neck. “You can keep the horses in the stable. I’ll have my boy feed and water them.”

Eager to be passingly useful, Uicha led the horses across the road to the stable. More than half of the dozen stalls were occupied, which meant the Briarbridge likely had others staying there. As he led the horses down the row, a singular black steed caught his eye. Tall and muscular, with a streak of white hair down its neck, the horse’s hide was painted with all manner of runes. The stately horse eyed Uicha like his presence was an offense, then turned away.

Painted on the horse’s side was the open tome symbol of the Magelab. Uicha took a halting step back. What kind of horse had Ahmed been riding…?

“The Orak?”

Uicha flinched at his name, or a slightly butchered version of it. The gravelly voice came from behind him.  He turned, slowly, to see a man in silhouette in the barn’s doorway. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and carried a crossbow rested against his shoulder.

“Uicha the Orak? Is that you, boy?”