The Book of Deacon (2 page)

Myranda may have hated death, but if being
near to a corpse for a few minutes could save her life, she would
not hesitate. She grasped what little of the cloth was visible and
pulled with all of her might, but it was no use. The pack was
frozen to the ground and pinned beneath the heavy shield. If she
wanted to free the pack and its precious contents, she would need
something to pry the metal sheet off of it.

Myranda's eyes swept across the cluttered
campsite. Surely there must be something she could use, but what?
The chest plate from the corpse? It had been partially torn free,
but the thought of tearing the piece of armor from the fallen
soldier's ice-cold body turned her stomach. Not nearly enough,
though, to make her forget how starved she really was. Reluctantly,
she locked her cold-numbed fingers around the frost-covered metal
and threw her weight against it. After three failed attempts, she
kicked the plate in frustration, her other foot slipping on a patch
of loose snow. She lost her balance and tumbled to the ground, her
head striking something far harder than ice.

The impact dizzied her. As she rolled to her
knees, she punched the ground. The food that could keep her alive
for another day was mere inches away and she could not get it. It
was maddening. Myranda rubbed her sore head and looked up with her
blurred vision to see what had delivered the painful blow. The
light of the fire danced on a highly polished, almost mirrored
surface. Even before her eyes had regained their focus, she knew
that this was the object that had led her here.

Standing out of the frozen earth was a sword
that was beyond elegant. The hilt was covered with a myriad of
different jewels. The blade itself, at first seeming to be a
flawless surface, revealed itself to be engraved with an exquisite
design, composed of countless lines as thin and delicate as a
spider's web. It was a weapon unlike any she'd seen before. The
price of a single jewel from the hilt could keep food in the
bellies and clothes on the backs of an entire family for a year.
The sword as a whole could easily provide her with a lifetime of
luxury and leisure far greater than she could ever imagine.

The value of the sword did not concern
her--at least, not at this moment. Regardless of the price it might
fetch in the future, at the moment it represented a far greater
find. It was the means to extract the only thing that mattered to
her right now, the food that would give her the strength to leave
this frozen wasteland. It represented life itself. When her senses
at last returned to her in full, she reached out to the lifesaving
tool.

The very instant she touched her skin to the
ornate handle of the exceptional blade, she felt a crisp, sharp
burning. It originated in her palm and shot straight down her arm.
She hit the ground hard, agonized and trying desperately to pull
her hand from the torturous burning. Her fingers, though, would not
obey her. Instead they locked tightly about the source of the
torment and would not release. The pain grew to the point that
Myranda was certain it would force her into unconsciousness. She
was a heartbeat from blacking out when the pain relented, her
fingers loosened and her hand came free.

Myranda gasped for breath, cradling the
afflicted hand. What was it that had just happened to her? Had she
triggered a booby trap? She turned her watering eyes to her left
hand, fearful of the state she might find it in. Her survival was
unlikely enough without a wound to deal with. Slowly she opened her
fingers. To her great relief, the palm was merely red and tender,
as though she'd scalded it in hot water. A simple bandage would
suffice. Myranda pulled herself back to the fireside to
recover.

"This is why I hate weapons. I find a sword
and it manages to injure me twice without once being held by its
owner," she said, eying the offending tool angrily.

Myranda touched the tender hand to the lump
that had already formed on her head from the first encounter with
the blasted weapon. She cursed the blade over and over again in her
mind, never once thinking about the fact that if her head had found
one of the weapon's cutting edges when she'd fallen, she would not
have lived to suffer. When she was through letting her anger pour
out at the sword, she stared broodingly into the fire and tore a
bit of her inadequate blanket to treat her hand. As she did, light
from the flame danced on the ground around her. Slowly her hungry
eyes drifted to the sword, then to the pack, then back to the sword
. . .

"No! It would take a fool to try to grab that
blade again. I have lasted for days without food. One more day will
not kill me. Besides, that food is probably rancid. It has been out
in the open for at least a number of days. Why risk burning the
other hand to free some spoiled food?" she reasoned aloud.

Her stomach growled loudly.

"Of course, the touch to the sword wasn't
that bad. It did not kill me. After all, it was probably a booby
trap, and how likely is it that it would be set to trigger more
than once? It is cold out, so the food has probably been preserved
fairly well," she reasoned again, this time the hunger getting the
better of her.

She moved carefully toward the weapon and,
extending her bandaged hand to the handle, while keeping the rest
of her body as far from the blade as possible, touched her fingers
to it. She cringed at the expected onslaught, but when none came
she knew it would be safe to use the hand that still had some
strength in it. She wrapped her right fingers around the grip and
pulled, but the icy ground held tightly to the sword, allowing only
the slightest movement. Myranda put her left hand around the grip
as well and pulled as best she could. On a normal day the sword
would have come free quite easily, but hunger had robbed her of
more strength than she knew. Had she not taken the chance tonight
to free the food, the morning would have found her without the
strength to stand.

Finally, the weapon came free. She dragged
the sword across the icy earth and slid its tip beneath the edge of
the huge shield.

"I am very sorry about this, sir," she
grunted to her fallen benefactor. "I do realize how disrespectful
this is." Grunt. "But I am left with very little choice."

Several minutes of prying and apologizing
later, she'd cracked the icy buildup and freed the pack. Eagerly,
she pulled it open. Savior! Salted meat and hard biscuit. By no
means a banquet, but it was more than enough to save her. The food
was well past its prime, but so long as it was still edible, it
would serve its purpose. Aside from the food, she found a small bag
of copper coins and a rock-hard frozen flask of water. There was
also a pan for cooking and something that roused her spirits even
higher. There were two loops of fabric across the top of the pack
that could be only one thing.

"Tent straps! You had a tent, stranger! And
if you had a tent, then I
have
a tent. I just have yet to find it," Myranda
said.

Grabbing the unlit portion of the largest
stick in the fire, Myranda held the makeshift torch, swept it about
near to the ground. Before long, she found what was left of the
tent. It was flat against the ground and crusted with ice, one of
the supports shattered. Myranda set what was left of the tiny tent
near the smoldering fire. The heat slowly filled the half-collapsed
cloth shelter and gave her the first comfort she had felt in
days.

She had only just fastened the tent flap when
a heavy, wet snow began to fall. Myranda put the pan on the coals
and heated some of the food she'd found, smiling to herself about
her accuracy in detecting the coming snow. It was a skill to be
able to read the clouds. The northern lands were shrouded in thick,
gray clouds for most of the year. One could not simply see clouds
on the horizon and predict rain. It was more a feeling, a nearly
imperceptible change in the color of the gray, a new quality to the
wind. Even she wasn't quite sure how she knew, but whether it was
to be rain or snow, hail or sleet, she always knew. It was a
gift.

She nearly burned herself as she snatched the
meat eagerly from the pan. She had stood the hunger this long, but
the smell of the cooking food made the pain a thousand times worse.
Myranda took her first bite of food in days, the first full meal in
more than a week. Her eyes rolled and her jaw tingled at the first
taste of food. When she'd eaten the ration for the day, she slipped
into a sleep few would ever know. If there was one thing she'd
learned in her years of endless travel, it was that starving made
any meal a feast, and exhaustion made any bed fit for a king. She
was warm, full, and happy now, and that was all that mattered.

In a flash, she found herself in the middle
of a sun-drenched field. She was bewildered and disoriented. The
ground was warm against her bare feet. As her eyes adjusted to the
light, they saw the beauty of the field. It was the finest sight
she had ever seen, a vast meadow of lush green grass as far as the
eye could see. She breathed in the freshness of the air and let out
a triumphant sigh of joy. Myranda closed her eyes and began
laughing, sheer happiness spilling out of her.

When she opened her eyes to take in more of
the splendor, they came to rest on a tiny speck of black. It was
the smallest fleck of darkness, but in such a place nothing could
have been more foreign. It floated near to her, then off and way,
almost out of sight. Slowly, it drifted down and touched the
ground. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the ground began to
darken. The life-giving soil turned a charred black color,
spreading outward like a stain across the countryside. The green
grass faded slowly, so slowly that it was barely noticeable. She
stood, helpless, as her paradise blackened. It was as though the
world was being consumed by night from the ground up.

When all of the life had been drawn from the
grass it spread skyward. Night flooded the field in spite of the
sun above. In a grim finale, that too was blocked out by a curtain
of black clouds. Only darkness remained, a darkness stirred by a
frigid wind. Myranda strained her eyes, searching desperately for
some wisp of what had been before. She saw faint, flickering lights
far off in the distance. She rushed toward them, but one by one,
the embers of light winked out, swallowed into the darkness as all
else had.

"No!" Myranda screamed, opening her eyes. A
sliver of light peeked through the flaps of her tent.

It was not real. The horror she had
seen
was
false, a dream. The horror she had
felt,
though, was real. She took several
minutes to catch her breath and steady her pounding heart. Never
before had a dream been so vivid. She shook herself in a vain
attempt to chase the tormenting images from her mind. The only
comforting thought came in the words her mother had spoken to her
long ago. Even with the eternity that had passed since she lost her
mother, the voice still echoed in her ears. Now memories were all
she had left.

"A nightmare is the best kind of dream. The
only one that brings happiness when it ends," she repeated.

The fright had brought her to full
wakefulness instantly, with no hope of returning to sleep. She
smiled as she wiped a drop of sweat from her brow. How long had it
been since she had been too warm? The feeling of sweat trickling
down her back was one she'd not felt in weeks--months, even. Of
course, once the cold hit her when she left the tent, the novelty
would wear thin rather quickly. Carefully, she pulled the flap of
the tent aside. A cascade of snow from the previous night's fall
assured her that it was at least not dangerously cold, or else the
wetness of the snow would have frozen it into a shell of ice. She
crawled out of the dilapidated tent, favoring her stricken left
hand.

With the light of the morning filling the
field where she'd slept, she could finally see the scene she had
stumbled through in darkness the night before. It had all been
blanketed with several inches of dense snow that elsewhere might
have been a terrible storm, but amounted to little more than a
light flurry to the people of the Northern Alliance. She waded into
the ankle-deep snow and surveyed the campsite.

Where she had thought there was a great mound
of rocks the night before could now be seen for what it really was.
Even buried beneath the snow, the mound clearly had the shape of a
beast. The form indicated a dragon, but it was a bit bulkier than
she'd imagined a dragon to be. Of course, she had no interest in
finding out if she was correct, particularly because she would have
to step into the pool of blackish liquid that stained the snow
around the fallen creature. A liquid that was too thin to be pitch,
and too black to be blood.

"Well, you killed it and it killed you,"
Myranda said, looking at the fallen soldier, its form barely
discernible through the snow. She looked to the dragon. "That goes
for you too. But why were the two of you here, I wonder? The dragon
can come and go as it pleases, but this is awfully far from the
front to find a soldier from either side."

She knelt and brushed the snow from the
shield. It was standing nearly straight up after the prying she had
done to free the meal the night before. She expected to find the
crest of the Northern Alliance, or perhaps that of the southern
land of Tressor. Instead she found the same simple crest she'd seen
among other marks on the sword and armor. It resembled a smooth,
curving letter V, with a rounded bottom and downturned ends, or
perhaps a pair of smooth waves with a trough between them. Centered
above them was a single point.

"So, you were not of the north or the south.
That must be why you were in this forsaken place. You fall into the
same lonesome caste as I. Non-supporter of the Perpetual War. You
refused to join either side. You should consider it something of a
triumph that you had managed to be killed by something other than
an angry mob. I know it is no consolation, but the end you came to
here prevented my own. I sincerely thank you for it, and I hope
that whatever powers pass judgment on you in the great beyond will
take that into account. I thank you for the food, the shelter . . .
and the sword."