Urden walked up to Ezril and Dainty. He rummaged through one of the sacks tied to the horse and pulled out a simple rope of woven fiber. Ezril found a slight disappointment in the normalcy of it as the priest tied one end around the horse’s neck and the other around one of the boar’s hind legs.
Without a command, the horse trotted to one side with Ezril still on top it, and pulled. Its muscles strained and Ezril thought he felt them beneath the saddle. It was uncertain if it was a testimony of the horse’s strength or the boar’s weight.
When Dainty stopped, they had moved a fair distance away from the route they had been following.
Urden squatted before his prey and with a practiced skill and began slicing away at the beast. The blade of his sword separated skin from muscle. Ezril stood beside Urden as he worked not fully aware of when he had climbed down from Dainty, or made the possible six steps from the horse to him.
“Hold this,” Urden instructed.
Ezril held out his hands and Urden dropped an organ in them. Ezril squirmed at the sound of wet plop as it met his hands. Perturbed at the amount of blood that came with the organ, it took him a moment to realize why the blood continued to pool from his hands and onto the dirt. The organ beat in his hand in a gentle rhythm and he realized what he held was the boar’s heart.
He squirmed for a different reason now. The disturbance he felt seemed to slither into his mind with each drop of blood. He parted his hands in an attempt to drop its contents and stopped when he caught Urden watching him. His eyes, black as night, were a sharp contrast to Ezril’s ominous blue. They watched him like a hawk, assessing, perhaps measuring his worth. They reminded him of aunt Teneri’s whenever she put him to a task, but somehow Teneri’s paled in comparison to the priest’s. Where Teneri’s gaze felt like she was assessing Ezril, Urden’s felt like he was looking through him to assess the soul.
Urden didn’t look any older than forty years but his eyes bore an age to them. It was older than forty years, older even than Teneri’s.
Distracted by the weight of Urden’s attention, Ezril missed the man’s words when he spoke.
“Huh?” Ezril asked, feeling stupid for his reaction, but what else was he to do when he had not heard the man.
“I said,” Urden repeated with the same calm, “Titan hearts can beat for thirty minutes after their death. It makes them deadly.”
Urden’s forearm remained digging inside the creature’s torso until something cracked inside it. There was no doubt, it was the corpse’s rib cage.
“Deadly?” Ezril asked, despite the taste of bile in his mouth. “But it’s dead.”
Urden took out his hands and swung them in an arch, letting the blood on them splash against the dirt. The sleeves of his cassock escaped stain from their place drawn up at elbow length.
“Deadly as a Broken,” Urden clarified, before moving to his sword. He took his blade from where he had stuck it in the dirt and it came without a trace of blood.
Broken.
Ezril had heard of them.
Every living thing had a gift from Vayla. When the dead are not buried appropriately, Vayla’s gifts are not returned to her properly so they fester within the body. In time, they rot, bringing the bodies to life, but they were not so alive. It was more accurate to say they were undead, presenting themselves in various forms. Or so Teneri’s stories described them.
The church spoke of burial ceremonies, a requirement for returning Vayla’s gifts back to her, but spoke nothing of the Broken. Up till this moment, Ezril thought them nothing but tales. Tales Teneri told to scare him into behaving.
“You’ll learn of them in the seminary,” Urden said without looking up from his work.
Ezril watched him, waiting for something in his demeanor to change. Anything that would tell him Urden was simply trying to scare him. He found nothing.
After another moment, Urden spoke again.
“You can put that down, now,” he said.
“Where?” Ezril asked, noticing that the heart had stopped beating.
“It doesn’t matter.” Urden pulled out an intestine longer than the beast from its opened stomach. “Before we reach anywhere that can use it, it would have begun to fester.”
Ezril tossed the heart to the ground with no intention to move from his spot. The blood was warm but he knew it would soon cool and leave his hand sticky.
“Where were you before I arrived?” Urden asked. He was skinning the animal now, satisfied with whatever he had been previously doing. Ezril’s brows drew together in surprise, and the priest added without taking his attention from his work. “Where do you usually go during the day?”
“The underbelly,” Ezril answered, wondering why Urden was curious. There was no way this was simply a conversation to get to know him.
“I see…” Urden didn’t sound very interested. “Your aunt told me about that. She also mentioned something about an event that made you lose the few friends you had in the city. Is that the reason you started spending all your time there?”
Ezril nodded timidly, not really wanting to remember what had happened.
“What happened?” Urden asked.
Ezril paused. Hesitated. It was a story no one inside the underbelly knew. Not even Lenaria. Reminding himself he was no longer in Green Horn, and that Urden was a priest Teneri trusted, he spoke.
“There were four of them…” he said quietly.
Ezril could remember the night it had all happened. The beginning of the end. He remembered the faces of all four men as if they stood before him all sick and twisted. After all, they had brought the end along with them.
The memory replayed before him like threads weaving upon themselves once, then twice, then into an infinite loop. And like aging story-tellers who sit hunched at the outskirts of the underbelly for the promise of a few coppers, employing words for their tales and weaving their audience into them, his memory wove a magic of its own.
Soon, it was not a memory remembered but one relived.
…………………………………
Three men had bellowed in laughter, downing each jug of the foul tasting stuff in one gulp as they enjoyed a ruckus in the evening tavern a good while before Ezril’s curfew. It had been brought by outsiders during the winter, coming from the frost bite of the norther peaks, they claimed. The adults had created an uproar when they first drank it. Ambrosia. Nectar of the gods, they had called it.
Ezril didn’t understand how they could have been so ecstatic. He’d snuck a taste once and it tasted like piss and fire, if fire had a taste. He had taken a sip on an early morning, during one of his trips to the underbelly in a time before Lenaria had made her way into the city.
The men who drank now, were outsiders. Not like the men from the peaks. Those were true outsiders. These ones were from outside the city, other parts of the kingdom. Heldrag, to the north, if their accents were anything to go by from the little Ezril knew.
They hassled the girls who came close enough and broke a few jugs. What Ezril had not understood was why Olnic, the owner of the tavern, had let them. The Plank was his child, so he always said. And he had but two rules: you break it, you buy it and, don’t touch the help. These men disobeyed all of them, and Olnic was seated right in front of them.
It was one of those special meetings the old man held very rarely. He held meetings with a lot of people but, it was only for these kinds that he sent all the little ones to their room. Tolin, the first ever friend Ezril had made in the underbelly, the boy who had introduced him to the destitute of the city, worked there very often and slept there, too. Ezril watched the events happening in the tavern from a hole in the ground of the boy’s room situated a floor above the bar.
Ezril doubted the hole was born of aging on the part of the wooden ground. Its place was too precise, settled directly above the tables Olnic held his ‘oh-so’ special meetings. Usually it was him and Tolin who watched the goings-on beneath it. Tonight, however, Tolin was serving. He was the only child allowed to serve during such meetings considering he was going to own the bar someday. At least, that’s what everyone said.
At some point the bar had emptied out, leaving the outsiders and Olnic alone. Unlike every other night, there would be no drunks to wake from the bar floors when morning came. Even as Ezril kept an eye on the gathering from nothing but a sense of curiosity, he remembered Tolin’s strict rule about the hole, whenever they were not using the hole they covered it with a tiny piece of black tarp.
Tolin was often paranoid, always thinking someone was out to get him, even as a child. So Ezril was inclined to obey.
The small piece of black tarp stuck well enough, blending in with the color of the floor. At first Ezril always found it a challenge just to locate the hole when he wanted to use it, but in time it became a knowledge of his body’s, never having to think or search.
Ezril spied alone tonight.
Tolin was not the only child that worked at the bar, serving customers. Some nights there would be more children, willing to work for whatever payment Olnic was willing to give. Tonight, it was only Tolin. This was how it was. Just past his tenth year, Tolin served as the only child on nights of import such as this. Ezril knew the boy heard everything that was said at the meetings but he never spilled the details whenever Ezril asked.
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“… You fucking shite!” one of the outsiders bellowed. Tolin had been offering him a new cup of ambrosia when the man reached for it too quickly and spilled it on himself. “How d’yous plan to pay for me slacks?!”
The man was venting. No one vented at one of Olnic’s kids. Not within The Plank. But Olnic simply shook his head in resignation, before shooing Tolin off to go get a replacement. Ezril would often wonder what could have been if he had understood the look on Olnic’s face that night. Even now, he doubted he ever really found out.
“Like I was saying…” The man who’d vented said, facing Olnic. “This here establishment is nice and all. And you’s have the decency of good drink.” He glanced in Tolin’s direction, “… not so good help, though. You’s a business man, so why don’t’s we talk bujnesh?” He had clearly had one too many cups of Ambrosia.
“I believe what my friend is trying to say is just accept what we offer.” This from a man at the other end of the bench, resting his weight on the wall beside him.
“I’ve already told you fine gentlemen,” Olnic said. “I can’t sell. This right here,” he twirled a finger in the air indicating the entire bar, “is home. And I just can’t sell me home.”
There was nothing fine or gentlemanly about them.
“Whatsh he mean by djat?” the drunk asked.
The man in the middle, quietly sipping away at his mug, decided it was time to speak.
“Olnic, you’re a smart man,” he began. His voice was rough. “You know how it is. You know the business, prolly done it before. Be smart about this.”
Olnic sighed, his age was beginning to weigh down on him, perhaps he was getting too old for this life. “And I’m sure you know enough about me to know I won’t sell, Grit.”
Grit sat up straight, apparently no longer interested in his cup. “She won’t like this, Olnic,” he said. “She won’t like this one bit.”
“I know.” Olnic put his cup to his mouth for the first time that night. “I’d ask you to intercede, but we both know that’ll never happen.”
The drunk was beginning to rise. “Whatshu mean old man. Yoush won’t shell?” His words slurred. He was on his feet now, and he drew a knife from somewhere behind him. “I’ve got meshelf me own barge back home, you shee, and I likes te—”
“Drog…” There was a warning in Grit’s voice.
Drog ignored him. “I’d reckon I take shu back. Shkin yer and flays yer all ‘ver me wallsh, like dje resht of ‘em horshe wankers.”
Now he was hunched over, brandishing his knife in Olnic’s face. It was a fine knife, if Ezril ever did see one, a clean enough steel, clean and polished. Olnic simply shook his head in exhaustion. Ezril knew the reaction. It was the one the old man gave when the children were up and about being stupid, trying to act like they were mature.
Then there was a sudden and quick scuffle.
The bench bumped against the wall beside it. A loud bang erupted from the table, and Drog was on the bar floor. It had happened so fast Ezril had missed it. Drog held his hands to his nose. His knife, now forgotten, lay a few feet away from him. He writhed in pain as he removed a bloody hand to examine it and Ezril winced at the sight. The man had no doubt broken his nose and, by the splotch of red on the table, Ezril had an idea how.
“I truly apologize for that,” Grit said to Olnic, rearranging his shirt. “First we bring you bad news… cos tis good news for any business owner. But for men like you, tis not so much. Then…” he spared a disgusted look at the man on the floor. “He’s nephew to someone at the top, if not, I’d have had him pay for his insult the way he’s meant to…” he sighed now, and he looked his age, around Olnic’s, no older, maybe a little younger. “I mean you no disrespect, Olnic. Consider our offer and get back to me. I’ll be around for maybe a month. You know where to find me.”
Olnic simply nodded.
Grit rose to leave and the third man followed. He gave Olnic one more look, his eyes imploring this time. “Get back to me.”
Olnic took another sip. He let the cup linger a while at his mouth before he dropped it. “You know that’s not gon’ happen.”
Grit said something Ezril did not catch and stepped over the drunk man who was busy spewing profanities slurred by his drunkenness or the blood. Ezril was not sure.
“Get his drunk ass up!” Grit commanded, walking out the door and nearly kicking the man in the process. The other fellow, after a few struggles, managed to wrestle Drog and his knife off the floor and lumbered after him.
When Tolin finally returned, a hint of worry on his face and no tray in his hands, Olnic gave him a sad smile. “Its gon’ be alright. They’ll be gone soon enough, and we won’t have to worry ‘bout their kind ever again.”
For a moment Ezril though the boy would cry but Tolin stifled a sniff and made work of cleaning the table.
Olnic just sat there in silent contemplation.
Ezril made his way back home as night fell. It was the first time he returned home late and Tolin snuck him all the way through the underbelly until they were at its outskirts.
The bridge was where the older children stayed. The Plank was a legitimate business but, in the underbelly, there was no such thing as legitimate businesses. The children who stayed in the bridge carried out most of the less legitimate parts of Olnic’s business. Everyone knew this, after all, they were all residents of the underbelly. Olnic had made a name for himself in the cesspool of vile and infidels.
Rumors had it that in his younger days he had served in the king’s army, though not as a king’s guard. There were no Hallowed in Green Horn and the city had created none that anyone was aware of. He even had children he had helped living comfortable lives within the city. Why he was not living there too, everyone wondered. Some said he was drawn to the chaos of the underbelly. Others said he was a wanted man in the city. But one thing was certain, no one knew why, and sometimes, Ezril wondered if the old man even remembered why.
Ezril had thrown a tantrum of his own when he’d ventured into the underbelly the next day and the information of Tolin’s activity reached him. Ezril knew the bridge was questionable, secluded and away from sight. It worried him to no end that Tolin had been sent there. Worse, Tolin had never been sent to the bridge before, he had never played a part in The Plank’s less reputable ventures.
Bad news came eventually.
The news came in the afternoon of Terstiff, the busiest day in the underbelly. Fat Novil lumbered his up to Ezril where he stood waiting for Tolin where he usually did, and Ezril knew it before the boy announced told him.
Fat Novil’s voice filled the room with the nasal authority it always had before he hunched over to catch his breath.
“Tolin’s dead.”
Only one question slipped from Ezril’s lips. “How do you know?”
“Hunmar said he saw him in the ditch,” Novil replied after a delay from catching his breath.
Ezril wasn’t surprised at where the body had been seen. In the underbelly, anything not wanted made its way into the gutters that interconnected all around the underbelly like a spider’s web. The gutters led into the city proper, and as the water flowed, some of it took a dump into a large ditch in the ground that seemed to serve as a boundary between them and the rest of the city. Often times the bodies rejected by the underbelly ended up there.
That day, it was Tolin’s.
Everyone in the underbelly knew the risks of dumping a body in the gutters, and nobody dared to challenge Olnic’s authority. There were only two kinds of people who would’ve dumped a corpse in the underbelly’s gutters. The first were those who wanted the body to be found, wanted the people to see. The second were those who didn’t know much of the underbelly; those who were not aware than the gutters didn’t follow the will of the streams to the letter. These people would have no idea that the body would float into the open rather than being washed away.
Ezril forced his way into The Plank to find Olnic in a pitiful mood. The old man was sad. He was mourning. The sight of him infuriated Ezril. As far as he was concerned the man was displaying the wrong emotion. It was too early to display sadness, there was no place for sadness tonight. What was to be displayed consumed Ezril where he stood. Rage. Everyone knew who had done it. At least he and Olnic knew. So why wasn’t the man doing anything?
When Olnic met his eyes, there was recognition. Olnic knew enough about Ezril to know who he was and the fact that he was not a child of the underbelly, merely a guest, a perpetual visitor. Ezril saw the moment Olnic recognized his anger for the man had the same rage in him, but his sadness oppressed it.
The sight of Ezril seemed fuel enough to ignite it, though.
Olnic rose from the midst of the other grownups and walked over to him. He picked Ezril clean off the floor by his shirt and hauled him into one of the cellars at the back of the bar, where he locked him up.
“He does not come out till someone can find me his parents in city,” Ezril heard Olnic say from the other side of the door.
Ezril had been wrong about the recognition he had seen in Olnic’s eyes. The realization burned his fury like the purest of oil. It burned like shadow fire. But this time it had no focus. Everyone would suffer for what had been done to Tolin. He swore it with the might of every seven-year-old. He would carve each and every one of them up and offer their entrails to Vayla. And if she would not take them, he would offer them to Truth. By Truth’s blood he swore it, he would make each and every one of them rue the day Tolin died. He would carve a new history into the underbelly, Truth be his witness he would…
“Ezril Al Sorda,” a voice said, and it pulled Ezril from the darkness of his memory.
……………………………………….
Urden’s voice pulled apart the weaves with which Ezril’s mind had locked him in his memories, drawing him back to the present. Ezril discovered he had his hands balled into bloody fists and his nails dug deep into his palms with enough force to break the skin.
Ezril looked up at Urden, puzzled. “Huh?”
“You were going to tell me what made you lose your friends in Green Horn that made you spend more time in the underbelly,” Urden said.
Ezril shook the specter of his memory from his mind. A summary of the story was what the priest wanted, so a summary he would give. “Some men died and everyone thought I had something to do with it because someone found me unconscious there.”
“And your friends?”
“They didn’t believe me.”
“I see,” Urden looked at him properly for the first time since he’d slain the Titan boar. “Did you do it?”
Ezril found the question annoying but it was more than the people of Green Horn had given him before gently easing him into the position of a pariah.
“No,” he answered.
Urden nodded and went back to his work, whatever interest he had, gone. “I thought as much. You couldn’t have.”
Urden retrieved a sack from one of his sacks and Ezril wondered if there was anything the man didn’t have in them. As he returned to the boar, Ezril noticed he had finished skinning the beast, at least a portion of it, and was now putting it in the sack.
“Do you remember how the bodies of the men who died were found?” Urden asked.
Ezril nodded. “Yes.”
The priest picked up another organ, perhaps the kidney. “How?”
“They were cut up and burned. Hunmar said ‘twas shadow fire.”
At the mention of shadow fire, Urden’s eyes narrowed. It seemed he knew something about shadow fire. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Ezril to realize that Urden was done talking. Whatever he knew, he would not share.
All Ezril knew about shadow fire was that it was extremely rare to get. Harder even, to use.
“Show me your hands,” Urden instructed suddenly, holding a canteen over Ezril’s hands.
Ezril showed his hands and Urden turned the contents of the canteen over them. The blood on his hands was sticky and drying quick, making it difficult to wash off with water. Ezril moved his hands closer, knowing he was going to have to scrub. However, when a drop of the canteen’s contents touched his hands, he felt the sting. It wasn’t much like fire but it reminded him of it.
Past the pain he could see the blood sliding down his hands, falling to the ground. If he didn’t know better, he could have sworn they were crawling away from the water. He spared the canteen a quick survey. It was different from the ones he had seen Urden use for water throughout their trips. If anything, it was blacker with cracks running the length of its body.
“It hurts,” Ezril complained, hating how much of a child he sounded like.
Urden didn’t even bother to look at him. “Bear with it.” His tone remained without emotion, as if he reading an uninteresting part of the scripture.
Ezril was willing to contain the pain but made no effort to contain his curiosity. “What is it?”
“Living water.”
Ezril almost reeled back in surprise. The man had spoken like it was something that could be gotten anywhere. But Ezril knew better. Living water was more difficult to attain than shadow fire and was said to be the only one of two things that could quell it. The second was the rain and only while it was falling. Shadow fire was near useless under the rain. But it was not as useless as people thought. Ezril knew this more than most people.
Urden stood beside Dainty when he was done washing Ezril’s hand and waited to hoist Ezril up.
“Time to go, he said”
Ezril looked at his hands, examining the small cuts his nails had made, before joining the priest.
It wasn’t long before they were back on the road, Dainty soaring with hasty gallops.
The sack that held the boar’s parts bounced against Dainty’s rear as they rode. The horse, seemingly oblivious of the discomfort it should have presented, cantered along. They would sell its contents along their journey. Or in better terms, exchange it for whatever amount of coins Urden deemed just.
This was the way priests made their money.