Tarnava — 14 YBB

Now, if you’re quite ready, I’d like to conduct the first physical component of the examination. Yes, you are correct, it is a test of lung capacity.

No, I assure you, it is almost impossible to die doing this.

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Murentam Valley — 15 YBB

Divia had turned slightly away from him, so that Saf couldn’t see her face. But those last two words had been enough. Oh gods. Terrified eyes.

Saf groped uselessly for the words to comfort her. He dreaded hearing what had happened to her. In a way, the uncertainty made it worse. Whatever it is, it’s my fault.

He broke the silence.

“Jamin said to get him when you woke up. Wanted to hear what happened..”

Divia didn’t say anything in response to that. Instead, she turned back towards him, wearing a vacant look. Abruptly, she launched into her story.

“I just went out to get some medicine herbs.. I thought, you know, if I helped out Enna without being asked she might take me on..” A sudden burst of sobbing choked off her voice.

Divia took a deep breath and resumed. “Couldn’t see it come. I was bent down to the ground, trying to get some crosswort from beneath a bush, and the first thing I felt was the cold. I clutched my blouse closer automatically without thinking about it. And the next thing I.. felt was the silence. All the sound was just.. sucked out of the forest. And then it got darker.”

“I turned around and I saw this.. shape. I don’t know how else to describe it really. The flat

side facing me was a hexagon, and it looked like all the other sides were hexagons too.”

Saf suppressed a grunt of surprise. His Marks were inscribed in hexagons as well. But it could just be a coincidence. Divia didn’t notice his reaction.

“But this is the weird thing.. well it’s one of the weird things.. the surface of the floating object just moved. It would peel apart and reform in new hexagons like some sort of folding toy. It looked like someone was constantly tearing it up only to uncover a new copy underneath.”

“This thing.. it just made me forget stuff.. I mean I forgot to be afraid, for one. The shape was sucking up all the light, all the heat, and I forgot to be afraid. And then I forgot what I was doing there. I just looked down at my hands, and couldn’t understand what the herbs were doing there. Then there was a voice in my head. It asked me ‘What is your name?’ and I couldn’t respond. I didn’t know my own name.”

Divia trained her haunted eyes on Saf.

“I think it was looking at me, searching for something. I was just standing there, dumb and mute, while it sort of circled around me. And when it was around my back, it stopped for a while. Whatever it was looking for, I guess it didn’t find it. Because the next thing I remember is it leaving. The darkness went with it.. sort of retreating like a tide.”

“Everything I forgot, all the feelings that the shape had repressed, they came flooding back. Mostly terror. I just remember screaming, that’s all, and then.. I woke up here.”

After a moment Saf responded. “Divia, I’m so sorry. That’s terrifying.”

Divia shuddered. “I know I shouldn’t be like this. No one died, it’s not like what you saw. But somehow.. Saf, I’m scared.”

Instead of speaking, Saf reached out his hand and squeezed Divia’s. Somehow it felt right. They sat for a while in a comfortable silence.

“Saf, can you tell all that to Jamin? I don’t think I can go through it again.”

Saf nodded.

****

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Jamin’s workroom was under the castle, nestled amidst a warren of musty storerooms and dank cellars. Saf descended a set of stone steps into the cool air of the lower levels.

Since hearing Divia’s story, it felt like he was suffocating under stress. A queasy feeling weighed down his stomach. His heart, straining as if in the grip of clamps, squeezed out a worryingly irregular beat. Of all people, why Divia? She was the last person that deserved to suffer from whatever was going on at Murentam. She was the person everyone considered so kind that her name had almost become a byword for sweetness.

And what if.. the possibility was almost too much to examine consciously. What if… but it was a possibility that had been playing at the back of his mind for a while. What if the fellspawn are here because of me? After all, the attacks had started around the time of the appearance of his Marks. It only made sense. For seventeen years of Saf’s life he had never encountered magic of any kind. Now, all of a sudden, it was flying around him. Why shouldn’t it be related?

Maybe the fellspawn were drawn to his Marks like wild animals to fragrant bait. Saf remembered the way the Thin Witch had examined him before — before what? before fleeing? It didn’t quite make sense, like a puzzle with pieces that didn’t fit. But he couldn’t shake the impression that it wasn’t all a coincidence, that everything was connected somehow, and that through some convoluted tangle of cause and effect, he was responsible for the “Shape” that had terrorized Divia.

“Watch it, boy!”

The gruff voice of a guard walking in the opposite direction shook Saf from his reverie. The guard sounded a little tense himself. That was the effect the lower levels had on people. Even if the dungeons hadn’t been used in years, there were dark corridors, treacherous patches of slippery moss, and omnipresent trickles of water seeping from the ceilings. It was more than enough to put anyone on edge.

Saf mumbled his excuses and slipped past the big older man. Where am I going? Saf realized he had been walking absentmindedly. The path to Jamin’s room had seemed clear earlier, but now Saf wasn’t quite sure where he was and which direction was which. Saf didn’t come down to the lower levels much. He shivered.

Back the way Saf came, the guard plodded around a corner out of sight, his torchlight fading slowly behind him. Saf thought about calling to the guard to ask for help, but he couldn’t quite work up the guts to do it after almost colliding with the man.

Fuck. It must be around here somewhere.

The hallway stretched dimly before him. Torches sputtered in their sconces. Ten paces away on the left side of the hall, a torch was dying entirely, reduced to glowing embers.

The first door Saf tried revealed a storeroom. Canvas cloth covered hulking mounds in the darkness. Spilling out from the bottom of one such covered pile, Saf could make out what looked like a bronze plate. He closed the door.

The next room looked like it had once been a dungeon chamber. Iron rods reinforced the heavy wooden door. The inside was empty, save for a small pile of bones in a far corner. A steady tip-tap drip of water counted out the seconds, and a faint rancid odor made Saf return to the hallway quickly.

He paused, listening to the sounds coming from the surrounding underlevels. Behind the chorus of dripping metronomes, Saf picked up a faint scratching, like quill on paper. He followed it down the hall, and was rewarded by a hint of light spilling from the gap beneath one of the doors.

Saf eased the door open. The scratching noise stopped. Inside, Jamin sat bent over an ancient-looking desk. Four or five candles on the desk and the surrounding cabinets lit the room.

“Come in, boy.”

Saf entered the room, standing in front of Jamin’s desk. In front of the commander of the men-at-arms, Saf felt a sudden surge of nervousness. His tongue and brain stopped cooperating.

“Um.. sir.. um.. I’ve come about.. um.. you know.. Divia couldn’t.. didn’t want to..”

Jamin sighed, indicating a chair in the corner.

“Take a seat, son. I have a feeling you have a lot to tell me.”

Slowly, Saf walked the captain through the events Divia had described to him. At certain points, Saf was afraid that Jamin might not believe what he was hearing, but Jamin sat silently through the whole story, leaning forward over the desk, clasped hands supporting his chin. After Saf finished, Jamin eased back into an uncharacteristic slouch. His left hand stroked the stubble on his jaw. Jamin clearly hadn’t shaved in the past few days.

Deep in thought, the old commander’s eyes drifted to a spot on the bare stone wall. Saf squirmed. How can he be so relaxed? Every emotion of anger and fear and confusion churned inside Saf. He couldn’t imagine an apathetic reaction to everything that was happening. He wanted to scream at Jamin, to shake him, to tell him, “can’t you see what’s happening?” It was almost Divia, gods damn it.

Jamin wasn’t watching Saf’s face, or he would have caught the anguished expression. The captain just kept stroking the beginnings of his beard.

Saf tried his best to compose himself when Jamin did slide back into the present moment, eyes returning from the wall to the young man in front of him.

“Well, boy, if that’s all.. you can be on your way.”

Saf couldn’t stop from letting out a last parting attempt to jolt Jamin into the level of agitation that he himself felt.

“Sir, you can’t ignore this, please.. I wasn’t lying about any of this.. I saw one of these things myself.. something has to be done.” His voice came out in a whiny, begging tone.

For a second, Jamin’s face flashed into that of the iron taskmaster, the veteran soldier, the blunt commander. His back straightened.

“I can’t, can I? Son, let me tell you..”

Almost as soon as Jamin had begun his reflexive reprimand to Saf’s insubordinate remark, he stopped, his body slackening again, his face losing its edges.

“..you know what, it’s alright. I know this is a hard time for.. you. And not just you, for everyone. Believe me, boy, I am taking this seriously. ”

He rubbed his forehead with his left hand.

“Very seriously.”

He waved Saf out of the room.

In the hallway outside Jamin’s workroom, Saf ground his teeth in chagrin. He felt embarrassed about having talked back to his superior. It was clear now, it always had been really, that Jamin was taking it seriously. How could anyone not? But it was equally clear, from Jamin’s defeated posture, that the old soldier felt as overwhelmed and incapable as everyone else.

Saf emerged from the lower levels into the ground level vestibule. This time he had managed to find his way relatively easily. After the eerie emptiness of the underground chambers, the everyday sounds of Murentam stood out to him. Servants hustled through hallways. Carts rumbled over uneven hardpack and rough pavement into the courtyard. Girls belted out an indistinct work song in a nearby room.

Everything was as normal. It was incredible how fast Murentam was adjusting to daily horrifying monster attacks.

There’s nothing else to be done.

If Jamin can’t, no one can. Except me. I have to do it. There has to be some way, some way to use my Marks, some way to drive off these fellspawn. For her. For everyone.