The Wolflord—he calls her Sorrow. She’s not some common grief, not her. She’s deep-rooted, the kind of sorrow you think about when you see a solitary tree out there in the Hills, misshapen by years of wind, worn almost to the ground but still standing, roots clutching the earth.
Vera calls her the ghost, she always has. The Wolflord, he finally tells her not to—superstition perhaps, or maybe he likes the name he gave her best—but I hear the mage lady slip. I correct her once, and Vera—you have to understand Vera. She’s got demons of her own. She just looks at me with these chilling eyes and I hold up my hands. Whoa—didn’t mean anything by it. I like her, but that lady, she could kill you with a look.
I suppose they have her right: haunted and sad. But then Sorrow, she throws me off—laughs right out loud when I make one of my jokes, then looks around like she’s not sure where that came from, as if she’s forgotten what laughter was and didn’t remember until that moment. But, dear gods, when she laughs, that moment her face lights up, I fall in love.
I tell Jolic, and he just shakes his head the way he does when I say something dumb. You don’t even know what that word means, he says.
With her, I know.
He says who could love any woman as ugly as she is? He says it in a whisper, on account of her scars. The Wolflord told everyone not to stare too close at them. Of course it’s hard; there’s not a length of her I can see not covered with them. They look painful, too, which catches your eye for true. Not in some throbbing, skin-peeling way like my friend Erris did after he went back into his burning barn after Rosebud seven summers back. If anything, they look cold. White and hard, ridged almost. Sometimes I think they’re beautiful, the way they weave over her skin. They look almost like snakevine in the right light. Jolic said he thinks someone etched her to match her bow. Gods—that’s a tortured beauty too.
Sometimes I hate the scars. They get under my skin if I see them unprepared, like when she lifted that lamp up suddenly the other night, just after lighting it, and her ruined face came out at me through the dark. I wanted to scratch at my own cheeks, my own arms, just looking at her.
Jolic, he laughs at me when the Wolflord pulls me aside, tells me I’m to go with Sorrow, Piern and Galwine—couriers, you know. To pick up a package down near Jendarth. Jolic bats his eyes—Going to propose to your lady-love?
I punch him good. My love isn’t like that, and besides, Sorrow’s not that kind of lady.
He shakes his head at me, like I’m simple. Going to find us a wineskin, he says. I’ve got courier duty tomorrow too.
With us? I ask.
He shrugs. No, some place upcoast.
I’m leaving Jolic when I hear voices from the Wolflord’s tent. It’s late, and we’re leaving for the Facing Cities tomorrow, and more than that, I’m curious by nature. There’s been a lot of talk that we have a traitor among us. Besides, I don’t know much about our mission—that’s for Galwine and Sorrow. I assume Piern and I are just along for our eyes, scouts the both of us. So anyway I stop to listen, thinking this is the other two getting inside information.
No luck there. I hear Vera’s voice, low and muffled, like she’s got something wrapped around her mouth. I creep closer where I can hear better.
I need you here, Vera, the Wolflord says.
She answers—I don’t think you should send Sorrow. It’s too dangerous. She’s unstable.
Unstable? I think. I dunno about that. She’s pretty even-headed, especially in a fight. I’ve never seen her lose her temper, not once, and I keep a count.
So the Wolflord, he sighs long and I can almost see him shake his head. I trust her, Vera, more than I trust you right now. Is that what this is about? That I’m not sending you?
Vera stops then; I can hear her thinking. No, she says, real quiet.
I would have heard more, but then a hand lands over my mouth—good thing too, or I would have yelled for sure. It’s Jolic, and he thumps me hard and holds up the wineskin.
Well, I wasn’t all that interested in what they were talking about anyway.
In the end, I found out the details the next morning. The Wolflord walks out with us pretty far, well away from the camp before telling us. I wonder if the talk about a traitor might not be true. We usually get orders in his tent, not out away from everyone where we can’t be overheard.
One of our regular envoys is coming through Jendarth right now and is set to rendezvous with us in ten days. Our usual courier has been delayed, he hesitates. His eyes shift a little and I guess delayed probably means dead. I wonder how he figured that so fast, but that’s the Wolflord for you. Always two steps ahead.
There are two possible meeting points, so he has us split up. Piern and Galwine will take the first site on the Jendarthian side, Sorrow and I the second, on our side. He unfolds a map and points to two spots. I study ours closely until I have it for true, and then, because I can, I learn the other one. I’ve been to the Facing Cities before—Sorrow hasn’t, and not many of the other scouts have either—so now I know why he picked me.
Ten days is pretty short timing, so we take horses. Sorrow rides like she was born to it, but me, I can feel my spine rattling somewhere around in my head after two steps. After a bit, she takes pity on me and ponies my horse along. But she can’t do something nice for free, and she gives me this look like my horse pulling me away to chew grass every two steps was my fault.
We split with Galwine and Piern seven days out; there’s a ferry on the river they can take into Jendarth and come to the city from the south so as they don’t have to go through the Ithirian side and over the bridge with all the tradestops. Sorrow’s never real chatty, but she gets all quiet after they leave. I try a couple of jokes, but she doesn’t even break a smile, so I give up real fast. She’s looking around, pretty intense, and finally turns us off the road. I know her well enough not to ask, but even my curiosity is tested when she stops by this slow, muddy creek. She bends over the bank, uncorks a bottle from her vest, and dumps the brown contents into the wet clay. She plays in the mud for a minute, and then starts rubbing the mixture onto herself like she’s found the cure for warts. Finally it hits me what she’s doing. I’m used to the scars, but the guards at the city walls wouldn’t be too keen on them. She’s smart, Sorrow is.
Sure enough, she was right to worry about the guards. I count them: five, three more than the last time I was here. They’re stopping everyone, and my ears ring with the buzz around us. I can tell Sorrow’s listening too. She’s got her cloak up over her face, but there’s this tension to her head that gives her away. I pick through the babble, and what I hear makes me shiver down to my boots.
Plague. Foul, stinking plague. Didn’t catch where, upcoast in Ithiria, some small village. No wonder there are more guards. I wonder for a moment about Jolic, he says upcoast somewhere and it hits me a little in the chest. I glance at Sorrow, but she shakes her head. The Wolflord wouldn’t have told her about Jolic. I know what she’s thinking—they’ll check her for sure.
I’m thinking more about plague in a big city like this. I’ve seen it in villages, half the children dead by the third day, rotting outside the doors where they’ve been cast. No one goes out. In a city, it’d be worse than fire, spreading fast. I get the urge to turn around and walk away, mission or no mission, but then I wonder what Sorrow would think of me then, and I know that would be worse, somehow, than any pestilence I might face.
It’s our turn. No, sir, I haven’t been north, no villages, no sir. Sorrow nods agreement. The guard points to her, grunts. Remove her cloak.
The voice I hear from Sorrow I’ve never heard before. It’s thin, girlish almost. Until that moment, I never thought of her as that kind of a lady.
I’m burned, she says, all tremulous, looking down at the ground. Horribly burned. She lifts her sleeve. The mud has dried and looks cracked and old, skin that’s been through more than years. Pray do not make me show my face, here with so many people around. I’ve no plague, I assure you.
The guard, he looks at her like he’s got a daughter just like her, all soft eyes and sympathy. He nods finally, and in we go. Clever indeed.
I’ve got a vague idea where the meeting point is, some pub called the Dirty Pearl down in the common trade district. I hit a street I know, and I’m off, Sorrow tapping along behind me. We’re a few days early, and Sorrow doesn’t want us haunting the Pearl in case there’s anyone casing it out. She’s as paranoid as the Wolflord, but I’ve grown to like that. After all that business with the League hot on our tails last summer, I do indeed like that kind of caution. Don’t want to bump into any of those mages after dark, I’ll tell you for free.
We find another tavern—this one the Drowned Sailor, down closer to the river. I slip out at night and watch it flow past, muddy and deep, walled on each side. I laugh a little to myself. You can no sooner wall a river than cage a dragon, I say. The city men, they’re fooling themselves, feeling safe within these walls.
Sorrow, she hits the square with me the next morning. Still early, and we’ve nothing better to do. There’s a crowd lined up at the well. The Facing Cities are odd this way. Don’t know how they do it, but each district has its own well. Sweet and cold, even though the river’s right there and you’d expect the wells to run dirty with river water. I say it’s magic, but someone told me once, no, it’s good engineering.
At the time, I pretended to understand the word and just nodded at the man who tried to explain it to me. I know magic when I see it.
I get in line for the well—neither Sorrow nor I liked the look of the Jendarthian klaus they set us this morning, green and thick as porridge. No drink should look like that. Me, I was ready for something cool and long. Sorrow, she gets this funny look on her face, then pulls me out of line. She’s staring at the well like it did something to offend her.
Let’s find some wine, she says. I don’t want to wait.
I stop. I’ve never known Sorrow to hit the cups any earlier than sundown, and even then, not that hard. But she’s got this look on her face that tells me I’d better not argue. We find a quiet, high class inn and Sorrow passes over silver for the best stuff in the house, straight from the bottle. No watered wine for her, I think. I wonder where she got enough silver to waste it on wine, but I don’t ask.
Sorrow looks at me as if she can read my mind—I’ve heard you shouldn’t drink the water with plague around. I can see the smile on her face, like she’s trying to make a joke, but her eyes are dead serious.
Later, I blame her for cursing us, as if by saying the word she conjures it from the air. The news comes around noon. The district closed by quarantine, some edict they read from barriers they assemble out of scrapwood and soldiers.
We’re stuck. Sorrow shrugs, Guess the courier won’t make it in. I hope Galwine and Piern catch up with him.
I tell you, I stare at her for a long second. She sounds so flippant, as if the quarantine were just some delay, that I think she must be mad. I think about what Vera said. Unstable.
And then I catch her eye and I see my fear reflected in them. Which comforts me.
The body in front of us does not comfort me.
I usually avoid dead bodies, bodies dead of plague in particular. But Sorrow, she seems fascinated. I think it must be the first plague victim she’s ever seen, the way she studies it without touching, leaning none too close but close enough in the dusk to see the dark marks on the arms, the way the eyes remain strangely focused on some point beyond us, their pupils small and round.
I shudder and make a warding gesture. I hiss, Let’s go, please Sorrow? And she stands, looks a last time at the old woman hunched into the door frame, then walks away without turning back. Not once.
I turn around a couple of times. I tell myself I’m checking my backtrail, but what I’m really checking is to make sure the body is still there, just where we found it. Call it superstition, but I’ve heard enough tales of the dead walking to feel uncomfortable around any body not firmly nailed inside a coffin.
And then I see him. I know it’s him, I know him as well as anyone: the way he walks with a little hitch every other step on account of an old injury, the funny hunch to his left shoulder, brown hair cut short as moss: Jolic. I don’t have time to call to Sorrow; she’s well ahead of me now, her long steps devouring the ground. No good to shout; the Wolflord always told us never to draw attention to ourselves that way.
I hesitate for just a second, then slip back, away from Sorrow, toward the point where my friend turned the corner.
He’s in a hurry, and he’s trying to keep quiet about it, flitting from shadow to shadow like we’re trained to do. It’s dusk, so he hides easy, but tailing is what I do best. I mimic him, and I’m behind a cart the one time he turns around, nervously casting over his shoulder. He doesn’t see me, and he turns back so quick I don’t have the chance to catch his eye.
How he does it, I’m not sure, but next thing I know, I’ve followed him through a series of walled courtyards, through a gate miraculously unlocked, and down through a narrow alley angling steeply to the river. We emerge underneath one of the bridges and I realize with a start that we’ve left the district. Slipped the quarantine entirely. He jogs along, farther ahead of me now, following the moon-reflected river toward the sea. The Falling River, they call it, cascading down and down from three separate mountain ranges. I’ve seen the root that rests in Purple Hills. You can cross it there with nothing more than a jump, gray and clogged, barely kin to the slow black monster that throbs to my right.
We’re in a narrow, rocky zone between the wall and the water, and I have to watch my step for fear of twisting my ankle on the uneven ground. I almost miss the turn he makes, into what looks like a crack under the next bridge that turns out to be a man-made cleft, cut into the rock. Stairs wind up into darkness. I go mostly by feel, the air thick with moisture. It dumps me into another rank alley. I hear a door shut to my left and slink over cautiously.
I’ve seen a hundred of these buildings in the Facing Cities: tall, wooden, it looks like it could fall over at any minute. The upper stories stretch out across the alley, cutting off most of the stars. I see light from the upper windows. I can’t follow Jolic in, if he’s on courier duty, I could ruin his mission. But you know me, I’m can’t just sit around in this fetid alley waiting for him. So I look around. Wall to ledge—I see my route up and take it.
I have to be careful: the ledge is narrow. I end up facing out toward the alley, legs dangling, hunched right next to the window where I can hear the conversation through the cracked and dirty panes. It’s tough to hear, but I’ve had a lot of practice. My ears open and I close my eyes.
A woman’s voice—Did you deliver it?
Jolic’s, high-pitched as a boy, cocky as ever—Of course.
No one saw you?
No, no one.
A man, Jendarthian by the accent—Good. Their so-called plague should get worse shortly, as we promised the mayor it would, yes, right in the middle of their trade season. They should cave quickly to our demands.
The woman again—Jolic, my sweet, you’ve done well.
The sound of coins.
I can hear my breath, and I concentrate on slowing down my lungs. What kind of stuff does the Wolflord have Jolic working on now? Some plot to blackmail the governor of the city? I never figured him to be mixed up in anything like that.
The woman again—Are you ready for the next phase?
Jolic, still cocky—Of course.
The Jendarthian, with the sound of something moved from the table, something small in a sack: For your, he hesitates—employer, if you will. They must not suspect. We want them all eliminated.
A pause.
The woman—You are up to this, are you not? We’re paying you very well. Of course—the sound of coins clinking—nothing until the job is done, not this time.
Jolic, not as cocky, more quietly—The Wolflord and his brother? All of them?
The Jendarthian, irritated—How hard is it to slip this into the food, the wine? The well was easy enough, wasn’t it?
The woman, like a serpent—You do want this, do you not? I must have your complete loyalty.
Something prickles in my skin, and I know its not just nerves. Magelady, I think.
Jolic—No, I can do it.
The woman again, after another pause—While we’re talking about them, what did you say they’re called? The Wolves, wasn’t it? Tell me, was there a woman with them, scarred all over? Her hair would be white, I think.
Jolic—Sorrow?
The woman—Ah, is that what she calls herself now? Interesting.
I want to scream. I try to think of all the ways Jolic might not be betraying us: he is under some spell, he is working as a double agent to trap the magelady for the Wolflord, he—my mind spins out, and I feel like I am losing my balance. I grip the ledge.
I must have made some noise, because the woman stops, quiet as death, and then the window slams open. The Jendarthian locks eyes with me. I scurry away, but he calls down to guards who appear out of doors below. Wall, then alley, I think, but then a hand reaches out of the dark and drags me, kicking and biting, toward the door.
The lady—I am sure now she is a mage. No candles in this room; it glows softly with light, but I cannot see the source. The man behind me presses down, pinching my neck with his fingers. I sag to the floor, and he pulls my hair so that I look up at her. Black hair, yellow dress with points of jet. I’ve never seen fabric so rich.
She frowns. Your name?
I feel the weight of her words suffocating me. I open my mouth for air, but what comes out is an exhale—Berkis.
He’s one of the Wolves, Jolic offers flatly.
I want to punch him. I want to kick him. I want to wrap my fingers around his neck.
You know him well? The magelady’s voice is sharp.
Jolic looks down—Well enough. He doesn’t catch my eyes.
You’d like me to spare him, she says almost sweetly, with genuine surprise. She raises a gloved hand to Jolic’s cheek. You’d want me to turn him, convince him he should help us?
He nods, then, silent, defeated.
I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with myself. I bite the guard’s hand, but all I get is a cuff that sends me reeling.
She is there, her eyes turning me inside out, staring into my very soul. No—Jolic, I’m sorry. No. He would take too long to turn. Too much loyalty to his kind, wolf pup that he is. She stands, smooths her dress. You have a problem with this?
Jolic does not meet her eyes, or mine. No.
A cup. A pinch out of the bag. No plague, but poison designed to resemble it. I didn’t know magic could work that way. I didn’t know how easy it was to die.
I didn’t know a lot of things.
They take care to dump my body inside the quarantine zone. I follow it dumbly, dazed by the way the pain stopped, the horrible bone-numbing shudders coming to sudden conclusion. I can see the dark welts on my own cheeks spreading like pooled blood. My own eyes frighten me; stare right at me, focused and narrow.
Then after a while, what they’re planning hits me again, and all I can think about is Sorrow.
Jolic is going to kill Sorrow.
Jolic is going to kill the Wolflord, and Vera, and Piern, all the Wolves.
I want to cry, or scream, but my body lies there, stiff as stone, and no one else can hear my words.
I don’t know why. I feel the call and can’t go. The knowledge I have ties me down. I stand there over my body, chewing fingernails that taste like nothing, scuffing my shoes that aren’t shoes any more. Here I am, stupid with death. Some scout.
Just as the eastern sky begins to haze with the first thoughts of dawn, she finds me. I knew she would. Trusted she would the way I trusted her when she shied away from the well and muttered at me that she’d prefer the wine. She knew something even then.
I see her before she sees my body, her bow out, her cheeks drawn. She looks like she’s been searching for me all night. I feel so guilty; I should have told her I was leaving, that I had seen Jolic. Then she would know enough to suspect. For her, I’ll just be another soul dead of the plague, not the warning of treachery I should be.
Her feet tap the alley. She turns over my corpse, wrenches those staring eyes away from me. I’m almost relieved.
Oh no. Berk. Her voice is soft. I could wrap myself in that voice, repeating my name.
Then she does something I never expected. She drops her bow, sags down onto the dirty stone, and cradles my head in her arms. I wish I wasn’t dead, to be held by those arms.
Berk, gods above, why did you drink the water? You knew not to drink it.
But I didn’t drink it, I say, feeling oddly defensive. I don’t want that to be her last impression of me. Not by choice, I add, feeling absurd. A ghost talking to himself.
Her head snaps up. Her mouth sags open. She looks at me. Not at the blank eyes inside the body in her lap, but at me, who should be invisible to her.
Berk? I’ve never heard her sound afraid.
I stumble back, gasp her name. I don’t know what to say.
She closes her eyes, opens them again. She whispers. This isn’t a dream.
You can see me?
Sorrow won’t take her eyes off me now, as if she’s worried that if she closes her eyes again, she’ll lose me. What happened? she asks, her voice shaking.
I tell her. Stumbling through Jolic’s treachery, I tell her. Hissing about the magelady, I tell her. Drowning in the poison, I tell her.
When I’m done, she sets my body down softly on the cobblestones, picks up her bow. Her haunted eyes meet mine. Show me.
I loose her a few times, walking through gates I can’t open for her. Slipping ahead like fog, I have to wait. But looking back, I think she’s faster than I should have expected, and quiet too, real quiet. I warn her as we get close to the leaning building. I’m the perfect scout; I point out each guard. Her bow is almost silent. They die more quickly than I did.
Inside the building, I worry. The light outside brightens, but the second floor seems darker than I remember. I walk through the unopened door. Jolic. The Jendarthian. The magelady—gone.
Sorrow searches too, but I know they’ve left. It’s as if I can feel the curse of the poison pulling farther and farther away from me.
She’s half-mad, tearing the building apart, trying to find them. I come through a wall to see her hurl a chair into splinters. She turns and throws another. It sails right through me. Any other day, I would have been amazed. Today, I just step toward her, defeated.
Finally she stops, breathing hard. She looks at me. They were here, she curses. They were here, the gods give them a thousand deaths. She turns from wall to wall, muttering to herself. A thousand deaths, all of them at my hands. She’s facing south now, toward Jendarth.
I think of the brown-haired traitor I thought was my friend riding in the opposite direction toward the Wolves’ camp. Sorrow—I say—Sorrow, what about Jolic?
Her shoulders sag. The League. That mage, she’s one of the League, I know it.
Sorrow—I implore. I’m getting desperate, thinking of the Wolflord and Vera, all of them.
I know! she almost shouts, and I realize she’s close to tears. She picks up another chair. Her hands are shaking. She sets it down and takes a deep breath, leaning into the wood.
My understanding comes in a rush. Her scars, her magescars. Her hatred of the League. When I put them together, I hear the word vengeance.
Can you guide me to Jolic? Her voice is steadier now, her revenge belayed.
I nod. I think so.
Our mounts are in the quarantine zone, but she has silver. She has gold. She buys the fastest horse she can afford. The guards at the gate aren’t stopping travelers leaving the city. She hits a gallop as she passes beneath the shadow of the wall.
I can fly, but I can’t feel the wind. The sun doesn’t warm me. But I can smell the metallic trail of my death. Wolf pup indeed, I can track the scent of the bag, the murderous bag. The horse she’s riding shies away from me and Sorrow wrenches it’s head around, closes her legs into a shot straight as an arrow. She rides in my wake, her mount’s eyes pale with fear, sweat beading its flanks.
Too late, I understand what Vera meant. All I can see are the whites of Sorrow’s eyes. Her hood flies back, her scars burn with the dawn. The hooves of her horse are a war drum.
Jolic never stood a chance. She comes upon him like a whirlwind, pinning him off his horse’s saddle, riding fast at an angle through the trees. He’s stunned, but alive, leg twisted and broken beneath him. If I didn’t know Sorrow well enough, I would have said her aim was off. But she didn’t want him dead.
Her horse stops, kicking up clods, eyes rolling at my presence. She hits the ground. Her horse spooks away; she ignores it. Her hands catch Jolic’s collar.
Where is it?
He’s gasping. Her arrow twitches in his shoulder with each breath. Sorrow! By the gods, what are you doing?
Berkis, she says, twisting my name into a curse.
He pales. Wh-what happened?
Her hands tighten. I’m not amused. She reaches into his jerkin, fishes for a second before pulling out the sack, triumphant.
How did you know? He is incredulous, as if he can’t believe what’s happening.
You’ll find out soon enough, her words hard, final.
She fumbles for her waterskin, empties the pouch into it. His eyes turn dark with fear.
He tells her everything he knows: the gold, the deal, the location of the building where I died. She knows all of this already. What he can’t tell her are the names of the Jendarthian or the mage. What he can’t tell her is what she wants desperately to know: where to find them, how to hunt them.
How to bring me back, I think.
She pins him with her knee against his throat. His hands scrabble at her boots. He tries not to swallow.
I turn away.
They light a fire for me, say Pashtar’s prayer over my body, throw sweetweed onto the shell that once was me, burning down to ashes.
After she threw what remained of Jolic into the river, I showed Sorrow where to find Galwine and Piern. They helped her smuggle my body out of the city. They never asked how she found out about Jolic, and she never told them about seeing me.
I see the sad eyes they lift to Sorrow as they slip away from the dying fire. Sorrow, she’s true, she stays until the utter end, as the fire sputters into coals. She turns away, finally, drifts down to the creek underneath the trees. I wonder for a moment, but then I see Vera haunting the shadows, almost a ghost herself.
I had thought the conversation I overheard between Vera and the Wolflord was my secret. But then Sorrow looks away from the water, over at the magelady like she’s got something to settle.
You were right, Sorrow says without preamble. You should have gone, not me.
Vera turns to her, all fatigue and regret. I didn’t mean it this way.
Sorrow didn’t even cry over my body. Now her eyes turn bright as she looks down. She whispers low, but I can hear her easily, the way I can hear most anything now.
I’ve seen them, Vera. I keep seeing them. In dreams, mostly, but now—I see him, in waking day.
Berkis?
I jump a little at hearing the magelady say my name. Sorrow nods.
Vera—I thought I had her figured—but then she reaches out and lets Sorrow cry until her shoulder’s damp as the creek.
She never calls Sorrow the ghost, not once after that.
I know. I’ve been counting.
©2005, M. Frost
First published on Quantum Muse, April 2004