The Keeper's Shadow (18 page)

Roan and Lumpy follow Stinger past a sloped amphitheater. Roan tries not to look at it, but he can't resist scanning the tiered benches. It was here that he spent his last minutes with the brethren. Their mad chanting “Kill, kill, kill!” still echoes in his ears. “Kill, kill, kill!” urging him to behead the two Fandor warriors he'd been told led the assault on Longlight.

Roan had turned his blade on Saint instead. Stinger had told him that action had ensured his acceptance here today. Would he have done it, Roan wonders, if he'd known then what he knows now?

Coming upon several rows of small tents, Roan nudges Lumpy. “That tent on the end is where I used to sleep.”

“Think they're putting us there now?”

“Certainly not,” says Stinger. “You will have Saint's tent.”

Roan stops dead in his tracks.

“You will no doubt wish to consult privately. Conduct interrogations without fear of distraction. The smuggler, for instance, is quite keen to have his business with us concluded. It is the only appropriate place for such endeavors.”

Lumpy sticks his elbow into Roan's ribs.

“Yes. Yes,” Roan stammers, clearing his throat. “Thank you, Brother Stinger.”

Bracing himself, Roan enters the home of his dead mentor. Stinger points out several rooms as they move through the narrow hallway, but Roan's no longer listening.

Lumpy lets out a low whistle when they reach the central tent. Smoke billows up to the high canvas ceiling from a blazing fire in the middle of the vast, richly carpeted room. Roan too had been impressed when he'd first seen it. As he smiles at Lumpy's awed expression, time seems to stop. In that moment, Roan sees an apparition of Saint sitting on the rug behind the fire. The serpents woven into the carpet seem to twist and writhe. Saint the Prophet, as he once was. But as Roan watches, a solitary leech crawls out of Saint's mouth and slowly crosses his cheek. Then, one after another, they erupt from his ears and abdomen until he is nothing but a mass of writhing bloodsuckers, his eyes screaming desperation: the Saint Roan witnessed in hell.

“Your supper is on its way. After breakfast tomorrow, we will bring you the smuggler.” Brother Stinger pulls a pouch out of his pocket. “We found this in Asp's tent.”

As Roan closes his hand over the pouch, he brushes against Stinger and becomes suddenly aware that the scar on his chest feels inflamed. Lifting his head to question the Brother, Roan finds Stinger already gone.

Lumpy, however, is eagerly nudging his hand. “Can I look?”

Opening the pouch, Roan holds it under a candle. The violet material inside glitters faintly in its light.

“I've never seen anything quite like it.”

Roan lets the shimmering dust slowly spill into the fire. “You wouldn't have. It's not completely of this Earth. They quarry it where the great meteor fell.”

“Why would something like that connect people to the Dreamfield?”

“I don't know. But however it does it, it's not good. Maybe the Dirt itself isn't destroying the Dreamfield, but the people who use it are and that says something.”

They freeze at the sound of tapping. Roan reaches for his sword but stops at the sight of the slight young man standing in the entryway.

“Feeder?” Roan says, approaching him. “Is it really you?”

“Did you think I was a ghost?” Feeder holds out a tray of food. “I've brought your supper.”

“Are you alright?” Roan asks, concerned.

Feeder's watery eyes swim in dark circles that discolor his face from brow to cheekbone. He looks emaciated even though he's bundled up in a huge wool scarf and has sand-painting furs on from top to toe.

Feeder grimaces. “What do you mean?”

“Just asking,” Roan shrugs.

“Fine. I'm fine.”

“Feeder was my first friend when I came here,” Roan explains to Lumpy. “When I left—”

“I was to be the sacrifice to the Friend,” Feeder finishes Roan's sentence as he puts some bowls on a low table near the fire. “But Roan flew the coop and things changed. Of course, we don't make those kind of sacrifices anymore, so I'm alive and still in the kitchen.” Uncovering a tureen, he doles out large helpings of stew. “And now you've come back to lead us in victory over the City. I'm proud of you, Brother Roan.”

Suddenly Feeder shakes convulsively, and the ladle flies out of his hand. “Sorry, sorry, my fingers, they…” Head bobbing, muttering apology after apology, he falls to his knees, using the end of his long scarf to mop up the spill. But when Roan touches his arm to help him to his feet, Feeder jerks violently away and the scarf slips from his neck exposing a fist-sized bump, red and raw, bulging behind his ear.

Every hair on Roan's back rises. Two years before, Raven had placed what could only have been an enabler in Feeder's neck. It was how they'd made him compliant and willing to be sacrificed. Now, who knew what influence the device was exerting on him. “Feeder…”

Hastily grabbing at the scarf, Feeder pulls it over the wound, explaining, “The Prophet told Brother Raven…to take it out. But he said he didn't know how. Brother Asp tried...he almost got it, I think, but he stopped because he was afraid of…killing me. He must have broke it, though, 'cause I…lost my good mood and I stopped saying yes to everything. The skin around it's itchy and swollen. And I get dizzy sometimes. But it doesn't hurt much. The Friend is looking after me.” Roan and Lumpy stare speechless as Feeder, twitching uncontrollably, backs his way out of the tent. “Just leave the dishes out by the door. I'll come and fetch them later, Roan of Longlight.” And bowing low, he trips out over the threshold.

“It comes at night, it has a bite, and leaves its stinger in you. You will not cry, you will not die, but one wrong word can kill you.”

Roan looks quizzically at his friend. “What's that?”

“Storyteller lore. Never said the word enabler, but people knew what they were talking about. Still, I've never seen anything like that, not on Clerics—or their victims. Not in anybody we saw in the City.”

“Raven used enablers but he was no doctor. Feeder was a sacrifice; he wasn't meant to survive.”

“You think it's killing him?” Lumpy asks.

“It doesn't look good, does it?”

Saddened and weary, they silently pick at their meal. Throwing down his spoon, Roan mutters in disgust, “The Friend. He thinks the Friend will save him.”

Lumpy looks up from his bowl. “Isn't that better than having no hope at all?”

“Hope?” Roan says in disbelief. “Saint made the Friend up. He borrowed an idea. What good is having hope in that?” Roan bolts up. “You want to see, come on, I'll show you!” He charges down the hallway to the bedroom that once belonged to Saint. It's exactly as Roan remembers, nothing in it but a woolen mattress and a few carpets. Lifting a rug beside the mattress, Roan bares the stone floor. He puts the point of his knife into a crack in the stone and pries it up, revealing a metal box. Opening the lid, he removes the book inside, and places it in Lumpy's eagerly awaiting hands.

“The Religions…of An…Ancient Rome,” reads Lumpy.

Roan opens the book to the chapter on the cult of Mithras, and shows Lumpy the images: the god Mithras being born out of a rock, soldiers sacrificing a bull, two men holding lit torches, one pointing to the sky, the other to the ground. “This is the book that Saint used to create his religion. It all came from the ancient Romans. The Friend is Mithras.”

Lumpy surveys the illustrations. “So they believed in the Friend way back then. That means the Friend is thousands of years old.”

Roan stares at Lumpy. “Are you joking?”

“No. So what if Saint renamed him? What difference does it make that he made his discovery in a book? You've told me that's the whole point of books—to save and share important information. That's why I'm learning to read—so I can make discoveries, find out things I didn't know.”

Trying to calm himself, Roan takes a deep, deep breath, then speaks very slowly. “Just because it's in a book doesn't mean the Friend is real.”

Lumpy scans the chapter on the constellations. “I've never been to the Dreamfield, but you tell me that's real. You've seen dead people there, and animals that can speak to you. Things from there come to you in dreams. What if…ancient gods exist there too? Only you just haven't seen them yet.”

Roan throws himself onto Saint's bed and presses his fingers into his temples.

“Roan? Okay. I'm just gonna say it. Don't be mad but—is this more about Saint having to be wrong and not about what's possible or impossible at all?”

Roan props himself up.
Knowledge is Power
. It was an old saying his father had often repeated when Roan's desire to be out and running overwhelmed his ability to study. He didn't understand it then, but looking into Lumpy's patiently waiting face, he can see it now. Lumpy's instincts have always been good, but since he's learned to read he's been able to use his insight more pointedly—there's no denying he's right on the mark now.

“Okay,” Roan sighs. “Let's say the Friend is real, that all the mythical gods are real. That they exist, somewhere. What difference does it make?”

Lumpy's hand rests protectively on the book cover. “Maybe they can help us. You said you saw the bull in your vision, that its blood healed the—where are you going?”

“I'm sorry, I need to sleep,” says Roan. “To forget about the Friend and Saint and the Brothers and…everything for awhile.”

“Keep your sword close tonight,” Lumpy cautions. “Just in case.”

“I keep it close every night, Lumpy,” Roan says sadly. “I can't remember the last time I didn't.”

The walls seem to close in on Roan as he walks back to the central tent. He feels queasy bending for his pack, his hook-sword almost alive in his hand. He can taste blood, smell it. Every moment of pain and terror he'd experienced in this camp converges on him all at once.

Stumbling into one of the bedrooms, Roan tries to fall on the only piece of furniture there. The dense woolen mattress has not been slept on in awhile; everything has the musty odor of disuse. It seems as if nothing's lived here since Saint died except ghosts. Rat had said Roan's future was tied to the Brothers, or the Friend, or both. Is Roan really only rejecting the Friend's existence because of Saint?

Lumpy had to work hard to survive. He had to lose preconceptions and learn to use everything he could. If Lumpy could do that, then maybe, maybe Roan could overcome his assumptions about everything connected with Saint.

Survival. Of the world he knew and all the life on it. That's what was at stake. His problems with the Brothers and the Friend seem indulgent by comparison. Why has it taken him so long to understand that? Roan wonders, as he lays a hand over his hook-sword and drifts off to sleep.

Roan awakens only seconds before Brother Wolf arrives in the doorway, but he is up off the bed in an instant.

“Ah,” says Wolf, openly appraising Roan. “I am happy to find you awake and alert.” Stepping over to Roan's mattress, he lays out a thick black tunic. “It is time to raise the sun.”

Roan is about to refuse but thinks better of it. “I'll meet you outside.”

Wolf smiles, turns on his heel, and leaves.

Roan throws the tunic over his head, remembering Saint's silhouette, arm drawn back to release a flaming arrow into the predawn sky. It feels odd, running his hands over this coarse fabric, taking Saint's place.

The bells begin to toll, and as Roan snaps out of his reverie, Lumpy stumbles in, rubbing his eyes. “These Brothers are certainly early birds. The sun's not even up yet…hey, new clothes. Impressive.”

“You can sleep some more, breakfast's not for an hour.”

“Then why are we up?”

“Have to raise the sun.”

Lumpy yawns. “Didn't know it needed your help.” He starts to wander back to his room, then stops. “You taking your sword?”

“Not allowed.”

“Then I'm coming.”

“It's alright. All the Brothers will be there. If somebody's going to make a move against me, it'd be a pretty stupid place to do it. Go back to sleep.”

“If you insist,” Lumpy says sleepily, making a beeline for his bed.

Roan heads down the long canvas corridor. Brother Wolf is waiting in the near darkness and together they walk to the rise at the edge of the camp. As they reach the highest clearing, he senses Wolf leaving his side. The frigid air at the edge of the bluffs whips through his robes. Bracing himself against it, he has the illusion that he's growing larger. Large enough, maybe, to face seventy-four brethren, standing in perfect rows, exhaling and inhaling in unison, every eye upon him.

Roan participated in this ceremony every morning for over a year; he needs no script to deliver the words it requires, only resolve. The pressure of the Brothers' expectations, the rhythmic echo of their unified breaths, and the hint of light emerging from the horizon combine to unleash his voice.

“For us He raises the sun!” Roan calls out, holding his fist up to the sky. “For us He brings the dawn!”

Every man is silent. Brother Wolf hands Roan a crossbow, and like Saint before him, Roan fits a cloth-tipped arrow into its groove. Wolf puts a flame to the cloth and Roan releases the burning arrow into the sky. Soaring high over the valley, the blazing dart dips down and plummets out of view.

All watch the horizon in hushed anticipation. Then it comes. The first glimmer of sunlight. Rising where the arrow fell into darkness. Every Brother cheers, the emotion contagious. Finally, Roan raises his hand, commanding silence. He bows low to the sun, then leads the assembly back down to the camp.

Roan joins Lumpy at the breakfast table. Fearing contagion, the Brothers have avoided sitting near his friend, leaving a conspicuous space around him, but it's convenient for their whispered conversation. “I don't know how, but…I just raised the sun.”