The False Martyr (130 page)

“
You’ve come from the
Fells,” Jaret supplied as the pieces came together. They had said
something to the creatures about Morgs following them, had thought
that Jaret and his men were those Morgs, but the man on the rock
was certainly no Morg – he might have been shorter even than Jaret
– but the woman . . . ?

“
Lord commander!”
Lieutenant Caspar yelled, interrupting Jaret’s thoughts. “Stay
back. We don’t know if there are more of these things, and we don’t
know who or what those two are. Pax, Val, Kive, Van, Chals, Orem to
the commander. Create a perimeter. Eyes open.”

At the command, six
legionnaires surrounded Jaret. They left several paces on each side
of him with the final two positioning themselves between him and
the couple on the rock. They held their weapons out and scanned the
trees. Lieutenant Caspar joined them, pulling up beside Jaret,
watching the trees to their sides then the couple on the
rock.

“
This was not normal.” He
spoke low nearly in Jaret’s ear but did not take his attention from
the surrounding forest. “We haven’t seen this many of the things
together since right after the battle and never in mixed groups
like this. What’s more, these were looking to kill. Usually, they
try to hurt us, to drag someone off. They almost never go for a
quick kill. We were lucky. We could have lost a lot more men, and I
don’t want to risk that these were just the first of a larger
group. We should get back to the Camp as quickly as we
can.”

“
They were hunting these
two,” Jaret said and, somehow, knew it to be true. “We need to
bring them with us.”

“
I don’t advise that, lord
commander. We’ve seen the creatures use this trick before. Some of
them are very good at making themselves look like
people.”

“
You’ve come from the
Fells?” Jaret repeated, this time as a question. He stepped
forward, ignoring his lieutenant and creating a ripple through the
men that surrounded him.

“
Yes,” the man, Cary,
answered. “We’ve been on the run for weeks. The Morgs . . . the
Morgs were following us. We thought we’d lost them in the mountains
but couldn’t be sure. We had no idea where we were. Then those
things came out of . . . . By the Order, what were those?” The man
looked past the legionnaires to where the creatures lay.

“
You were Liandrin
military?” Jaret ignored the man’s question. The girl had moved
from his lap to hide behind him, peeking out over his shoulder, and
Jaret could now see that the man was wearing a tattered
uniform.

“
Liandrin Royal Couriers,”
the man replied.

“
But the woman, she’s not
Liandrin? Who is she?” Jaret studied the girl over the man’s
shoulder, growing more and more confident in his assessment but
unwilling to accept it without confirmation.

The man looked back at the
girl. He brought her around beside him and wrapped an arm around
her. He whispered in her ear. She nodded but said no words and kept
her mouth covered with her hand. “Her name is Noé,” the man
supplied. “She’s the former Mother of Essehelt Lodge.”

And everything became
clear. Jaret felt his knees weaken as the world spun beneath him.
He suddenly felt like the man on the gallows after the hatch opens
in the split second before gravity takes hold.

“
I was part of the
Liandrin delegation sent to negotiate with the Morgs,” the man
continued. “We were set up. My company was slaughtered. Noé was
exiled. I escaped, but the Morgs have been chasing us ever since. I
. . . .”

“
Liandria failed to hire
the Morgs,” Jaret whispered. “By the good and holy Order, how is
that possible?”

“
We were betrayed,” Cary
answered eagerly. “The Morg di valati sided with the Empire and . .
. .” The man trailed off as he realized where he was and what he’d
just said. He gulped and began searching for an escape.

“
My name is Jaret
Rammeriz,” Jaret supplied. “I was Supreme Imperial Warlord under
Emperor Kristor az’ Pmalatir, but Kristor was assassinated and
replaced by his cousin Nabim. I am leading a rebellion against
Nabim and was hoping that the Morgs would be coming to our aid. We
mean you no harm, but we need to know what happened.”

The man relaxed noticeably
but remained cautious. “The Morgs are allied with the Empire. They
murdered Prince Winslow and stole the gold he brought to negotiate
their hire. Every lodge has sided with the Empire. They’re probably
marching into Liandria as we speak. We . . . the invaders have
won.”

“
So the Fells are not
coming to our aid?” Lieutenant Caspar asked, clearly
dumbfounded.

“
No,” Jaret supplied.
“They’re coming to kill us. We need to get to the Camp. Bring those
two. We’re going to need them.”

Chapter 75

The
62
^st
Day of Summer

“
The surgeon says she’ll
live.” The voice jarred Ipid. His head came up, but his back was
stiff, neck one great knot. He moaned and looked down at his hand
still holding Eia’s – its tiny white shape lost in his thick, hairy
paw like a nut inside a shell. It was cold despite the grip he
maintained on it, and for a second, he thought it was the cold of
death despite what the voice had said. Heart leaping, he looked at
her face with bleary eyes. She could have been dead for the pale
white of her cheeks and lips, but her nostrils still flared, chest
still rose and fell. Relief flooding back and small tears forming,
he found the only thing to disturb the white before him – she was
dressed in a white cotton shirt, in white sheets, in a white room.
The two fingers thick mound of bandages on either side of her
shoulder had transformed to pink.

Ipid felt his heart crash
at the memory of what he had done. And it had been him. Too much
planning, too many risks, too much arrogance. He had known what was
coming. Stully had sent him the warning, had told him what he would
do, and he had ignored it. There had been no reason for this to
happen. He should have left days before. Stully and his men should
have stormed an empty manor, should have taken control of a country
that had already been abandoned. But somewhere, Ipid had found the
arrogance to believe that he could manage his downfall the same way
he had managed the working of a mill. The result had been disaster.
In one singular moment, he had undone everything he had built, had
destroyed any hope of his nation’s recovery, had nearly killed his
lover, had devastated a boy he had promised to protect.

A hand, firm and warm,
rested on his shoulder. He turned and found Belab’s white beard,
scarred face, dark eyes inside the hood of his robe. “It is not
your fault,” the old man said. “They knew . . . .”

“
It was my fault.” Ipid
did not need to be coddled, did not need to be told otherwise. It
was his arrogance that had caused this, and there was nothing he
could do to fix it.

Belab sighed and sat on
the corner of Eia’s bed. “You did what you thought was best for
your country. You did what you thought would give it the best
chance to rebuild.”

“
It was too much risk. Too
much for too little.”

“
Great challenges require
great risks. Your decisions were correct. Your choices were honest.
They were made for the right reasons. The fact that . . . .” Belab
stopped, took a long breath, and seemed to reconsider. “Your
counselors have outlawed gambling, is that correct?”

Ipid nodded
numbly.

“
In our teaching, we
relish games of chance. We use them extensively to teach about the
nature of choice. As you know, Hilaal gave us freewill and his
brother Hileil gave us understanding. Despite what you’ve been
told, we believe both those gifts are precious, that they must be
used together. Freewill allows us to choose, understanding allows
us to evaluate the choices we make.”

Ipid nodded again though
he was barely listening, mind too shattered and shaken to follow
the philosophizing; will too spent to protest or argue.

“
One of the most important
things that our students must learn,” Belab continued, “is that
they cannot always know the consequences of their choices. There
are too many variables. The world is too mysterious. Your church
and my order agree to this point. Beyond it is where we differ.
They would say that you should allow them to make the choice for
you, that they can see the Order and can tell you which decisions
will best align you to Its will.”

“
Yes,” Ipid mumbled. He
had no idea where the old man was going but was somehow comforted
by his smooth voice and even tone.

“
My order, the Odat
Hilaal, says that it is up to the individual to choose, that the
very point of freewill is to use it to make choices.” Ipid opened
his mouth to protest. Belab took the very words from his mouth.
“Why then do so many decisions turn out to be wrong?”

Ipid sighed long and
deep.
Like mine
,
he thought.

“
This is a long and
complex question,” Belab answered his own question. “Great tomes
have been written on it. Was it wrong for you to serve the Darthur?
Some would say yes, but I suspect that you still think it was for
the best. How about killing Lord Bairn and his family? It was
terrible, but it may have saved thousands. How do you weigh that?
Eia would tell you to judge the end not the means, to wait until
all the pieces have fallen into place and look at the end product.
Just as you cannot create without destroying, so you must measure
your decisions not by the destruction but by what rises from it.
And this is a fine interpretation. But . . . .”

“
But what about the
disaster I left in the Kingdoms?” Ipid asked, mind falling into
gloom.
Not only did it all end horribly,
but I did all those terrible things to get there. The means and the
ends were deplorable. I am doubly damned.

“
But that is too
simplistic, is what I was about to say. When do you measure the
ends? How do you measure them? And what of those ends were even the
result of your actions? I ask you, can you control the Order? Do
you have powers over all of the workings of nature as your savior
Valatarian was said to possess?”

Ipid could not help a dark
chuckle at that. “Obviously not.”

“
I did not suspect so.
Though I would have declared you far more dangerous than even your
son if you did.” The reference was a stab in the heart to Ipid. He
flinched. Belab seemed not to notice. “Because you cannot control
everything that happens in this world, you cannot know the ends
that your decisions will create. So we are back to our starting
point. How do we make good decisions? How do we use our freewill
wisely?”

Ipid could only shake his
head.

“
That is where games of
chance come in. Say I have two dice.” Belab reached into a pocket
of his robe and actually produced two small white dice. “Now,
suppose it is the day that Arin put you in command of your country.
He comes to you and says that you may roll these dice. If you roll
a two, he will double all his demands. Otherwise, he will leave
your country untouched. Would you accept this gamble?” Belab
stopped and looked at Ipid as if expecting him to
answer.

It seemed too obvious.
Ipid was sure he was being tricked and refused to fall for
it.

“
Of course you would!”
Belab’s voice rose as loud as Ipid had ever heard. “The odds are in
your favor thirty-five to one. You would be a fool to refuse. But
what if you then roll two ones? Does that make it a bad choice?”
Belab paused but raised his hand to indicate that he did not want
his question answered. “What we try to teach, what is often missed
even by those as elevated as Eia, is that a decision can only be
judged by the factors that went into it at the time it was made.
Was it made for the right reasons and with the reasonable belief
that it was correct? Then it is a good decision, even if it goes
horribly wrong. Just as a bad decision that turns out well is still
a bad decision. If you fire an arrow into a crowd and happen to hit
your dinner instead of your neighbor, does that mean you should do
it again? This is what happened to you. You made the correct
decisions. They were well conceived. The risks were warranted. But
the dice came up as we say ‘the evil eyes.’”

Ipid sighed again and
watched Eia. He understood what Belab was saying. If luck had gone
another way, if only Allard Stully’s escape had not gone wrong, if
only that arrow had gone a little higher, if only Naidi had not
been hurt when the mob turned on them, he would be celebrating now,
would be elated.

“
As I said,” Belab
brightened his tone. “The surgeon says she will live. She has lost
a great deal of blood. It will be some time before she is herself,
but she will live and will recover. She is far stronger than you
know.”

“
And Naidi, Rynn?” Ipid
forced himself to ask. He brought his eyes to Belab, watched his
face fall.

“
Naidi is gone,” the old
man admitted. “His injuries were too . . . too much for the
surgeons to repair.” Ipid felt his heart drop. He had not known the
wizard well but had liked his steady presence, had appreciated
Eia’s admiration and everything he had done for Rynn.