Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [1]
“I haven’t got anything,” Papus said.
The woman leaned forward so close that you could smell the death.
“Get out my way.”
The crone muttered something, spit dribbling from her mouth. “Put your spirit in a good place. We sin too much …”
Papus drew a sterkr from her cloak, wafted it before the woman’s eyes.
A subtle, contained crack of purple light, and the woman was forced into stillness.
Damn, that would’ve drawn him to me. Papus left the old woman in her statue-still pose, placed the relic back in her pocket, and continued to walk with purpose through the town. All the time acting as if everything was fine, nothing to worry about here, while wishing she could evanesce into the community.
Street corners became hubs of activity. Young lads in particular gathered, armed with dreams of battlefield fame. Women were here to offer their bodies to soldiers and those few travelers with money. Beautiful enough to make a living, but not enough to marry wealth, their place in the economy was unknown, and they each stood alone with expressionless gazes that said too much. Nearby, wine bladders exchanged hands for a little coin. Even the children were drinking to keep warm, but this was a festival night, and so the people of Folke didn’t mind.
Papus scanned the town cautiously.
Every detail mattered to her. It could be the difference between dying and getting home to Villjamur.
Despite the eddies of locals that crowded her with a dirty intensity, she felt utterly lonely, a sensation that only heightened her fear of being murdered. Nights like this made her question her path in life, question who she was and where she’d come from, and if her life would amount to anything more than power and secrecy, power in secrecy.
—A man through the darkness.
Was that him?
Perhaps her route across Folke was too obvious. It was meant to be hectic here, provide her with some sort of cover. Should she rip through empty space, he’d find her quickly, if he was as good as she thought. He’d sense where she’d left, all right, sense where she’d gone, and he’d be waiting for her, waiting to beat her unconscious. Besides, you couldn’t travel that far in one go, not if you weren’t familiar with the surroundings. For all she knew, she could reappear over the sea and then drown in icy water.
Relics couldn’t get you out of every situation, because life just wasn’t that considerate.
A clamor of armor meant the Jamur soldiers were leaving the town to prepare for their coastal raid. She weaved through thinning tides of locals in their weather-faded clothing, wanting to be lost in their simple throng. As long as people were around her she’d be safe.
She had a relic to get to Villjamur, to show to the rest of the order. He won’t have it, she told herself, a mantra by now, a repetition on the tip of her tongue to convince herself this was more than just a possibility.
Down a thin alleyway between two wooden buildings, then under a clothesline, out behind the town toward the coast, and all the time glancing behind to see if he was tracking her shadow.
In the background could be heard the thunder of the sea.
Captain Brynd Lathraea of the Jamur Second Dragoons squinted through the dark toward the wall of water as it crashed onto the shores of Blortath, way off in the distance. Terns fled the wave, screaming as they scattered uniformly, like seeds thrown from a hand.
This was no natural phenomenon.
A hooded man was crouching in the shallow water, a few feet below, a device in his hands which he dipped rhythmically in and out of the sea. Occasionally he closed his eyes, tilted his head toward the night sky as if to perceive the world on some entirely new level. He was a cultist, from the Order of Natura—a minor sect—and he specialized in using apparatus that could change aspects of nature. Brynd ran a hand through his white hair. With a piece of equipment and a method that the captain could never comprehend, the cultist was throwing freak tides at Blortath