Thanquil whipped the gemstone away and shoved it back into his pocket. He backed away a step, lowering his pistol, and tripped over the prone form of Hizo. Before he could catch himself he tumbled backwards, landing on something soft and banging his head against the wooden wall of the room. Shen was there beside him in an instant, attempting to minister to the bump but Thanquil shoved her away. He glanced down to find he had landed on a bed, no doubt Shen’s bed given the close proximity to her study.
“But you used magic,” he said as much to himself as to the healer.
Shen shook her head. “When?”
“You kept commanding me to sleep.”
“You were tired.”
“No… well yes but it was more than that. I could feel the magic at work, sapping my strength.”
“Oh… that.”
He glanced at her. She kept her eyes lowered.
“Shen, tell me.”
“Your shoulder was worse than I let you know,” she said still staring at her feet. “You tore the muscle from the bone. It was unlikely to heal on its own. I didn’t make you sleep. I sped up the healing. It tends to drain the patient.”
Thanquil shook his head. “Magic. But you don’t have the potential. It shouldn’t be possible for you to use magic.”
Shen shrugged. “I don’t know, I just can. I’ve had the ability for a couple of years now. I could… I could probably heal your hand,” she said and placed her own hand on his right. He didn’t pull away.
“No,” Thanquil said. The hand wasn’t crippled, only burned, the skin had never healed right but it served as a reminder to the heresy of the dark Inquisitor. It served as a reminder to what he fought against.
“I should go,” Thanquil said.
“Please don’t,” Shen leaned her left shoulder into his right. “You could stay. Here with me.”
Something about the situation still didn’t seem right to Thanquil, not least of all because he was tempted. “I have a witch to find, Shen.”
“You won’t. Find her, I mean. Not unless she wants to be found.”
He pulled his hand away and narrowed his eyes, set his jaw. His face became stone. “You know more than you’re telling me.”
“I…”
“Do not make me force the truth from you.”
“She arrived a few years ago. Ever since our harvest have been plentiful, people don’t fall ill so much, we’ve less still-borns and the storms don’t touch us no more. She’s done nothing but good for us, for everyone. She’s not a witch, she’s a sorceress.”
Thanquil snorted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me where I can find her.”
Shen shut her mouth, leapt up and ran for the door but Thanquil was quicker. He caught her wrist, span her around and threw her back onto the bed, pressing his own weight down on top of her. She whimpered but her mouth remained closed.
Thanquil resigned himself to asking one last question as he stared down at the healer. “Where is the witch?”
Shen’s eyes widened in fear as she tried to fight the compulsion. Tried and failed. “Fort Talon.”
Thanquil sighed. “Where is Fort Talon?”
“Four days travel west.”
Thanquil could feel the intense pleasure that came from using the compulsion. The ecstasy was a wonderful contrast to the pain in his shoulder. He wanted to ask more questions, needed to ask more. Just one more.
“Who rules Fort Talon?” he asked.
“Prince Naarsk.”
“A Dragon Prince is in league with a witch?”
“Yes.” Shen burst into tears, rivers running down her face into the linen of the bed.
The sight of the healer crying stopped him, shocked him from his addiction. Thanquil pushed himself off the bed and stumbled away, again tripping over the prone body of Hizo, this time hitting the floor as he fell.
He was shaking. His hands, his arms, his legs, even his head. He was shaking all over from the rush of pleasure from using the compulsion. Thanquil didn’t trust himself to speak any more, didn’t trust his own tongue for what it might say. Silently he pushed back to his feet and made for the door.
“Please don’t…” Shen said between sobs. “Please don’t go.”
Thanquil turned once and glanced back at the healer. She wasn’t on the bed any more, she was on the floor, on her knees, begging him not to leave, tears still streaming down her face.
Without a word Thanquil threw open the door and fled.
Thanquil
Thom, probably the most prolific, infamous and apparently immortal thief Thanquil had ever met had once told him he was a brilliant pick-pocket and an accomplished sneak-thief. Of course Thom had accompanied the compliment by stealing the purse from Thanquil’s belt and sending him on his way none the wiser. That being said Thanquil knew a few things, one of them being how to steal from unlocked houses in poor rural villages in the dead of night. So, by the time he left the village of Colmere Thanquil had procured an ill-fitting shirt made from the itchiest fabric known to man and a pair of well-worn boots better suited to the fire than to cover anyone’s feet.
Shen didn’t come after him and nor did she send anyone in her stead. Doubtless she would receive no small amount of grief from the villagers for allowing him to leave as such but she didn’t seem the type of woman to crack under such pressure. Still, Thanquil couldn’t help but remember her on her knees, crying and pleading with him. The memory made him shudder but it was more to do with his own actions than her response. Thanquil had long ago sworn not to give in to the addiction of the compulsion but it was something he had to fight every day; a nagging, gnawing need to dominate other people's will. He was disgusted at himself for allowing even that slight lapse in his intent.
Finding west in the night sky, with no sun to guide him, might have been a real problem but Thanquil soon discovered a small, dirt road, well worn with the sign of hooves, leading out of the village. An old wooden sign with the word
Talon
on it was almost more than he could have hoped. It gave him a direction at least though following the road in his current condition was difficult, but he needed to put some distance between himself and Colmere lest the villagers decide to come looking for him. He doubted Hizo was the type of man to take such a defeat lying down. Come the morning Thanquil would take himself off the path a ways, find a tree to rest under and pray to Volmar that no wild animals mistook him for an easy meal.
It was at times like this he missed Jezzet the most and not just for the protection she provided. The Blademaster could most likely have fought her way out of the small village though, he had to admit, the body count would have been a lot higher. He missed Jezzet for the company. She made him smile and brought out the best in him and, Thanquil liked to think, he returned the boon. Unfortunately Jezzet had a small issue with Thanquil’s profession. It wasn’t that she disagreed with the hunting of witches and heretics, or even to the occasional burning of said heretics. Jezzet disagreed with the entire notion of Thanquil having to report to the Inquisition. She mistrusted the organisation since their exposure and subsequent purging of Inquisitor Heron but, even more than that, she disagreed with their treatment of Thanquil afterwards.
Upon learning of Inquisitor Heron’s heresy Thanquil had not reported to the council of Inquisitors but had instead taken matters into his own hands and dispensed his own, rather fatal, justice. The council had then punished him. They had decreed he would never advance beyond the rank of Arbiter and they had planned to send him somewhere he could never cause trouble again. That was until the God-Emperor had stepped in. The mortal form of Volmar reborn, Emperor Francis had requested Thanquil be sent to the Dragon Empire on matters of his own discretion. The council of Inquisitors could hardly decline their own God’s request but had allowed that Thanquil, while working for the God-Emperor, also carry out his normal duties as an Arbiter, chief among them; reporting to the council.
The resulting political power play between the council and the God-Emperor had left Thanquil in a somewhat untenable position. He was required to report to, and take orders from both parties and owed allegiance to both. While Thanquil himself accepted the situation as an annoyance but ultimately out of his control, Jezzet did not. The arguments since then had, at times, become heated and on one occasion violent. That occasion had seen Thanquil knocked firmly on his arse and forced to submit but then he expected no less from fighting with a Blademaster, even when she wasn’t wielding a blade.
So it was with thoughts of Jezzet Vel’urn and the first rays of the rising sun peeking out through the giant-leafed trees Thanquil wandered off the beaten path and into the forest. He tried his best to ignore the hooting of the nearby monkeys, hoping and praying that none in this region were large enough or bold enough to provide him any real threat. He also hoped that none of the giant cats prowled this area of the forest as any one would be more than a match for him in his current state and many of them hunted in packs.
He trudged across the forest floor, tripping on fallen branches more than once but soldiering on. Not for the first time in his life Thanquil knew he would already be unconscious if not for the sleepless charm still attached to his skin. He tripped again and stumbled into one of the slim trees that stretched up high in the forest canopy. The tree wobbled with his weight and he heard a rustle from above, looking up just in time to see something heavy and hard hit the ground a foot to his left. The near miss shocked him back into focus and upon closer inspection he could see it was one of the hairy fruits that grew on many of the trees. He made a mental note to find a tree to sleep under that did not produce such fruit and then made a second mental note to remember the first just in case.
He eventually stopped underneath a giant of a tree with a trunk that would easily take ten men to encircle. The roots sunk into the earth were beyond massive and, looking up, Thanquil could see it was more or less straight right up into the canopy where it branched off in every direction shading the nearby area with its leaves.
Thanquil sunk down between two of the roots and wrapped his Arbiter coat around him. The air was warm and moist and he would no doubt wake even more sweaty than he was now but the leather would provide him some protection from the biting flies that preyed on any who were fool enough to sleep outside without a net. With a weary hand he reached down and peeled the sleepless charm from his flesh, taking more than a few hairs with it as it went. No sooner was he free from the effects he faded into the blackness behind his eyes.
Thanquil looked up the Arbiter; the man seemed half a giant to an eight-year-old's eyes. He had a strong jaw with a scattering of stubble framed by a mop of dirty blonde hair. The Arbiter’s coat was what fascinated Thanquil most, though. Dirty and scarred, the tough brown leather seemed more a suit of armour than any the boy had ever seen and the buttons glinted in the low afternoon light drawing the eye. Each one had the same engraving on it but Thanquil could not see any clear enough from his position.
The Arbiter kept his left hand on Thanquil’s shoulder, whether to provide support or restraint he did not know. The man glanced down at Thanquil and smiled for a moment.
“Do you know why this has to be done, boy?” the Arbiter asked.
Thanquil wanted to lie. He was good at it, so good even his parents couldn’t tell when he was spinning a tale, but for some reason he couldn’t. He felt the truth bubble up inside of him and burst forth from his own lips.
“No.”
“When addressing your betters you should use their title, boy.”
“Sorry sir.”
Again the Arbiter glanced down at Thanquil but there was no smile this time, only a cold light in his dark eyes. “I am no knight or petty lord, boy. I am an Arbiter of the Inquisition.”
Thanquil refused to look away; he met the Arbiter’s cold stare and sniffed. “Sorry Arbiter.”
Satisfied, the man looked away, pouring his attention back onto the two pyres being hastily erected by the town’s folk in the centre of the square. “Then listen to my words well when I pronounce judgement. Listen and heed them. I would not want to have to decree the same fate to you.”
Thanquil saw Olley and Ten in another section of the crowd. Both of the older boys were staring right at him and making rude gestures. Thanquil knew he had to make a show of not letting them. He’d lose the scrap, after all there were two of them and they were both bigger than him and history had already proven time and time again that he couldn’t take either one of them. Despite all the reasons why he shouldn’t give them the satisfaction of handing him another beating he knew he had to. If he backed down even once they would never stop.
“Ignore them,” the Arbiter said in a soft voice.
Thanquil quit his glaring at the two older boys and instead inflicted it upon the Arbiter. “Can’t. Can’t let ‘em think they won without a fight. Da’ always says…”
“Forget everything that man ever told you, boy.”
Thanquil scuffed the dirt with his feet and swallowed a lump in his throat. “They’re insulting me.”
“People will do that. Learn to ignore them. They’ll soon stop once they realise you don’t care.” The Arbiter turned his head and looked straight at Olley and Ten. Both boys froze mid gesture and then disappeared into the crowd. Like as not Thanquil would get a double dose of beating later for hiding behind the Arbiter. “You’ll have to get used to the insults from now on, boy.”
Thanquil didn’t understand but he wasn’t about to ask the Arbiter what he meant. Instead he stared sulkily at the ground, at the crowd, at the sky; he stared anywhere but at the pyres.
After a while he couldn’t stand the tension any more. “People say you’re a witch hunter,” he said glaring up the man.
Without so much as looking at him the Arbiter cuffed Thanquil on the back of the head. The blow stung like rat bite and sent the boy sprawling into the dust. Folk nearby in the crowd turned away, unwilling to get involved, not wanting to draw the attention of the Arbiter.
Thanquil lurched to his feet and made to run but the Arbiter grabbed hold of him and pulled him close. “Fight me and I’ll add a smaller pyre just for you, boy.”
