16 | Merciful Duty
For a terribly long moment, Eli considers simply turning and walking away.
No good can come of this, not even a speck. But letting himself dwell in ignorance is foolish at best, deadly at worst. There is more going on that he realizes, and if he does not find out soon, what will become of him? My grandchildren? My son?
Not recognizing the shoulders but relying on a gut feeling, he asks, “Marden?”
The man starts, turning to Eli with a stumble. They are not hostile movements, merely confusion. Over the flowers sprouting from the wrinkles in his face and the distortion of it, Eli cannot tell if this is the exuberant shopkeeper he met a few times. Carefully, he tightens his grip on his sickle but keeps it held low. If there is no violence from the man, Eli has no desire to harm him.
For a moment, he believes him too far gone to speak, but the man says, “You’re the old hermit on the mountain.”
His voice is rough, not as Eli remembers other human voices sounding, garbled with something, and Eli considers the things growing from his body and if there are flower roots in his throat. He tugs at his beard, suddenly more unsettled. This poor creature is somewhere between a human and the Unknown creatures, and Eli despises how he doesn’t know the cause of it.
It has always gone after animals—the new Order—but never people. At least, not in this way. It has killed them, certainly, ruined their magic, definitely, but never this.
“Yes,” Eli mumbles. “What has happened here?”
“All gone…we’re all gone…” Turning back, he leans against the wall face-first, and Eli is sick with his own helplessness of the situation. Even Lyra, he believes, would have no help in such a circumstance.
“The others?” Eli begins, not knowing how to continue without further upsetting the poor half-human creature. “Are they…as you are?”
Marden—for Eli believes it is him—shrugs. Petals cascade to the ground. Through a rip in his old shirt, Eli sees not flesh but soil.
“You were wiser than us…” Marden hums. “Hiding away on your mountain. Hiding away…”
Eli does not feel wise, not even a little. “Is this a sickness?”
Marden shakes his head against the wall. “A death.”
“Contagious?”
Another shake of the head. “Inevitable.”
This is of little comfort. Not inevitable to all, or Eli would have met the same fate ages ago, but even had Eli been able to deny the worsening of the magic, he would not be able to now. As it is, he has no desire to deny it. He is not entirely a fool of an old man.
“My grandson was taken,” Eli says, forcing words up from somewhere. “I don’t know where, and I’m trying to find him. Did others like you pass through here within the last day or so?”
“Don’t like the sunlight…” he mumbles. “Burns…”
So they wouldn’t have gone down through the valley. As Eli suspected by the lack of any sign of them here in the village, he and Klia have headed in the wrong direction.
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“No more magic…” Marden hums. “Bad magic…”
“Bad magic,” Eli echoes, more to himself.
“You are too old to be hunting a child stolen by monsters.”
It’s such an unexpectedly sane sentence Eli is taken aback. But he agrees, “Yes, I am. But I may as well die trying.”
“You may as well die,” Marden agrees. Eli cannot fault him for it. “I figured… I figured a long time ago that you were highborn. A warrior… Yes?”
Softly, Eli says, “Yes.”
“Were you there?”
“There?”
“When they broke it all and cursed us all… You were there if you were a high warrior, weren’t you?”
Eli’s chest twists. “Yes, I was there.”
“You cursed us.”
It is not correct in the truest sense of the words, but Eli does not have strength to correct him. Compared to everyone else in these lands, living their innocent lives, uninterested in furthering the Order of the magic past what they were given, Eli is at fault. He was there, after all. With the assistance of hindsight, he should’ve destroyed his son’s work. The work of all the other nobles and the queen herself. Destroyed his son’s love for him in its entirety, and saved the rest of the world.
Though it had frightened him—they’re playing gods with the Order—he had never anticipated anything so awful. Had he known, he would’ve done something. By the time he knew, it was far, far past the simple magic of a warrior, high-ranked or otherwise.
“I failed us,” he agrees. “I will pay my price, I am knowing that I will. First, I need to rescue my grandson. Can you help me?”
“Hate the sunlight…” Marden murmurs and Eli isn’t even certain his words were comprehended.
“Where would you go to hide from the sunlight?” Eli asks. He has remained here, in his shop, but Eli assumes he will eventually be driven mad enough to leave.
“No sunlight…” he says, and Eli forces himself not to swear. He was lucid enough to accuse him, but not to help.
“Do your duty, Bladewielder…” Marden says, turning back for him. “Your queen’s merciful duty.”
Eli knows what he’s saying, and knew it from the moment he stepped past the curtain and saw what the Order has wrecked. But he is startled to hear the title given to him by the new magic, not anything he would’ve had before it was mutated. He sees him through the lens of the new Order, as Eli now sees.
It has not saved him.
Eli wonders if Marden was given titles by the Order before he was corrupted, or if this slow mad death is what unlocked it for him. Even if he were certain he wishes to know the answer, he does not believe this man capable of providing them. There is one thing important here, and that is finding his grandson, whether the boy despises him or not.
“Tell me where to find my grandson, before I pay my own price,” he pleads. In his heart, he knows it is unlikely this man even has answers for what he is asking. He has nothing to give.
“Good magic…” Marden says absently, gaze writing past Eli’s shoulder at the curtain. Does he sense Klia, as the other monsters were drawn to Thistle?
“Do you know where the boy is?” Eli tries once more. “A direction I can begin to take?”
For a moment, his milk-pale eyes focus. “Do your duty.”
Eli approaches carefully, not having discarded the idea he may become violent. Soil drops to the floor from somewhere beneath Marden’s clothing as he shifts his unsteady stance, and Eli stares at it, unable to bring himself to look up.
Pointing up the mountain, Marden says, “Down.”
If his words were to even make sense, Eli isn’t certain he could rely on them.
“Forgive me,” he whispers and ends the misery the Order has wrought upon what once was a good, simple man.
He leaves before Klia can be drawn inside by how long Eli has been absent. To his relief, she is still sitting on the porch, gazing around nervously, no other signs of life in this place.
Leaning against the counter, he bows his head, not for the killing, but for the circumstance of it. Eli has slain many monsters in his time, human or otherwise. This was not the same. He is certain he shall have to do as such again, and this makes it all so much worse.
“What have we done?” he asks, unsure of who he’s speaking to. All of humanity—all men and women who chased more powerful magic past the ways it ever should’ve been.
On the counter, there is a logbook for items in the little shop. Numbly, Eli takes it, ripping out the few pages in the front filled with items and numbers, leaving him with plenty of bound parchment for writing. Digging through the drawers, he finds a handful of grease pencils, only one used, and shoves them into his pack.
When he steps outside, into fresher air, he hands the notebook and sharpened pencil to Klia. “Here. Don’t write too much or too large, I don’t know when I’ll find another.”
Hugging it to herself, she points back upriver, then down, confusion on her face.
“The monsters…” Eli clears his throat. “I don’t think they like the sun, so they would not’ve passed down here into the valley. We must go back up. I don’t know where, but we will find him.”
Klia nods, jumping to her feet. Before they go, Eli pulls out the pair of socks and little boots he found her. They fit well enough, and she momentarily brightens. He can feel her looking back into the shop, and wonders if she is drawn to monsters the way they are drawn to her.