Certainty

by Liane Merciel

Chapter One: The Crusade

There aren't many old paladins.

Mostly we die. Spend year after year fighting everything from boggards to balors, and sooner or later one of them will take off your head. Or you succumb to rice-water fever while wandering in the bowels of a festering swamp. Or that smiling innkeeper with the dirty jokes turns out to be a secret cultist of Norgorber and slits your throat while you snore.

Few of us last ten years.

We don't all die on the battlefield, though. Sometimes it's quieter than that. Sometimes it's as simple as a loss of certainty.

Live in the world long enough, and you lose sight of the lines between good and evil. There aren't many true innocents out there. Maybe none. The maiden you save from a dragon grows into a mean old drunk who harangues her neighbors and kicks her dogs. The merchant you rescue from bandits turns out to be a cheat who's abandoned a dozen bastards around the Inner Sea.

And evil? Evil is no easier. Most criminals are only men, and stupid and frightened ones at that. But they're the easiest to punish; they've done wrong, and know it, and will pay the price.

The great evils trouble me more. Devils are evil. Diabolists, worse: they enable the fiends in our world. But I look at Cheliax—my poor, cursed homeland—and wonder whether grim peace is not, truly, better for the commoners than the civil war they had before, or the perpetually churning bloodshed in Galt. I hear of the Gray Corsairs' raids, and wonder whether it was worth the drowning of three galleys to strike a blow against slavers. The galley rowers were slaves too. Might they not have preferred to live, even if in chains?

I don't know. I haven't known for a long time.

I am not the first of my brethren to succumb to doubt. Ours is a high and narrow road. It's easy to falter, easy to fall. Almost impossible to climb back up.

Most never try.

Some surrender to the emptiness, living out their days in a slow gray mire. Some rebel, blaming the gods for their failures instead of themselves, and seek out new, malevolent masters.

A few join grand crusades, dying in a blaze of glory that might—might—be bright enough to blot out the stain of sin. That's always struck me as the best way. Find the easy choices, the clear lines. Die a hero. Let no one see the doubt.

I joined the grandest crusade of them all.

I went to the Worldwound.

∗ ∗ ∗

It was a snowy, bitter morn when I came to the gates of Kenabres. For the past ten days I had been studying the wardstones in the distance. They shadowed the lines of the road like an endless march of tombstones, commemorating the thousands who had died in Sarkoris and the thousands more that would die trying to save the rest of Avistan from that fate. Commemorating me, maybe.

Behind the wardstones the sky was smudged soot-black, stained by a fire that would roar unsated until it devoured the world. I never saw anything stirring in that poisoned air, but the red-bellied clouds were warning enough. Here lay the end of the world.

I did not come to Kenabres alone. On the road I had fallen in with other desperate, damned souls. Some wanted to confront death on their own terms; others wanted to live, at least for one more day, and had nowhere to do it but here.

During the journey I learned some of their names and some of their reasons. Jelani was a Thuvian sand-dancer who said she was dying of a wasting disease, though I saw no mark of it on her. Her parents lived in poverty on the far side of the Inner Sea, and even after she learned she was ill, she sent her earnings to them rather than paying a healer's fee. She had heard that Queen Galfrey offered free healing to anyone who joined the crusade, and had come in hopes that the rumor was true. Even if it wasn't, she said, better to die for an honorable cause than rot in a sickbed.

Most of my companions were less noble. Robbers, blasphemers, cattle thieves. The best of the lot was a mere debtor, cast in with the others when he borrowed to fuel his gambling and found the dice fickle as ever. All of them had been offered a choice between the gallows and the Worldwound. All had chosen to go north, though few had any training in arms and none had been properly schooled in sword or lance. Not one of them expected to leave Mendev alive.

These were my new comrades-in-arms. They made me glad I had already forsaken my oaths, and bitter that I had fallen so low. In my old life I would have sent them to the hangman or lopped their heads off myself. Now I could only hope they'd prove less dangerous at my back than the demons would be to my face.

The people of Mendev seemed nearly as suspicious of their saviors as I was. We spotted sentries ranging ahead of us a day's walk from the fortress town, and at the gates were greeted by bearded men in hard-used mail. Pots of acrid incense burned in the hollow merlons, draping the walls in curtains of ghostly white smoke. I smelled cedar and clove, and something else, unfamiliar, that tickled my nose and left me light-headed. Magic? If so, it was none I had seen before.

While archers kept arrows trained on us from the walls, a priest wearing Iomedae's radiant sword ordered us to doff our hoods, baring our faces to the cold. I turned my eyes away from the symbol of my old goddess, gritting my teeth at the touch of her magic outside me—always and forever, outside—but the priest didn't seem to notice. He chanted over us, beseeching Iomedae to show the truth of our natures, and only when he was satisfied that we were not demon-touched did the gates open at last.

"You must forgive us," he said. "We have hard troubles here."

No one answered him. What was there to say? We all knew of his nation's troubles. They were why we had come, willingly or not.

Inside the walls I saw more scars from Kenabres' long struggle. It would have been impossible to tell from walking through it that this town held the attackers, not the besieged. There were no cats in its streets, and the alleys held more rat-traps than rodents: the people had eaten their pets and were reduced to snaring vermin for food.

Peddlers crowded every corner, doing a brisk business in amulets and potions that promised protection from demons. I saw few women, and most of those were either painted bawds or Kellid giant-hunters, as wild and dangerous as their men. Mendev's wives and children had been sent to safety long ago. I wondered how many had become widows and orphans since then.

The gate guards shepherded us to a long, low building that served as a barracks. Banners and pennons from a hundred nations, city-states, and petty lordlings hung from its walls in a riot of dusty color. Among them hung stranger, grimmer trophies: weapons and battle-flags taken from vanquished foes in the Worldwound. I spotted a few skeletal claws and carapaces mounted in the corners. No skulls, though. Even dead—even taken as a prize of war—no one wanted those eyes on them as they slept.

A one-armed soldier seated at a battered desk took down our names and skills. His face had been dissolved by acid, perhaps in the same attack that took his arm; his cheeks hung down to his collar in ripples of shiny pink slag, and he looked half demon himself. Only one eye had been spared, but that eye narrowed sharply when I gave my name for his book.

"Ederras." He flicked a glance at my shield, then looked back at me, coolly appraising. "No title? No talents?"

I wondered if he recognized the golden wings painted on the oak, or if it was something else that had betrayed me. Perhaps I should have discarded the shield along with my blessed sword and the helm I was no longer worthy to wear... but the shield held one of the few enchantments that still worked for me, and I was loath to face the Worldwound with no magic.

"No title," I said. "No talents."

He didn't press me, moving on to the next man—Persil, a brewer exiled after his beer sickened and killed a dozen revelers at a Merrymead celebration. He swore it was an accident, and I believed him, but that hadn't saved the stammering youth from the local swordlord's justice.

None of the others admitted to much until the scarred soldier came to Jelani. She gave her name, acknowledged her lack of title, and smiled when he asked for her talents.

"Fire and sand," she said, lifting a hand. A tiny whirlwind spun, sparkling, over her palm. It seemed to be made up of gold motes rather than ordinary dust. Each speck glowed with its own fiery light. That light shone strangely on her face; at that moment she seemed inhuman, her pupils replaced by dark flame, her skin the glossy bronze of a Vudrani idol. She was not speaking loudly, yet her voice filled the barracks and quelled all other sound. "The heat of the desert wind. The blaze of the unfailing sun. Those are the powers I command, Mendevian. Will they do?"

The soldier shrugged with his good arm, drawing a stylized flame next to Jelani's name. "If not, you'll soon find out. Battle magic or builder's?"

Jelani closed her hand. The fire died; that strange light passed. She seemed a harmless girl again. "Battle."

The soldier smiled for the first time since he'd seen us. "Good." He fanned his quill over the ink to dry it, then closed his book. "You'll get your weapons now."

"I have weapons," one of the cattle-thieves protested. He was a shaggy, slope-browed brute of a man, and he carried an axe to match.

The one-armed soldier was unimpressed. "Are they blessed? Cold-forged? No? Not likely to give a demon any trouble, then. You can swing that axe until your beard goes gray, but if you're not wielding cold iron you won't leave a scratch on any of the beasts you're like to face here. The weapons we'll give you aren't fancy. No engravings, no gilt, no pretty little master's mark. But they can make those bastards bleed."

"You'll want holy water, too," said a Kellid woman. Triangles and knotted circles in red ochre covered her shoulders and collarbones, vanishing into the deerskin tunic she wore. "Not little vials like you carry in the south. Skins of it. Some of the demons have acid or stinking slime. Use the water to wash it off. Use the water to kill them, too, if you lose your sword. But don't waste it. Might need to drink it. Other water turns to poison near the Worldwound sometimes. Holy water's safer—as long as it lasts."

"We won't throw you out there like raw meat to wolves," the one-armed soldier said, reading the fear on the faces around him. "I won't lie: our need is desperate, and we're not training Andoren knights here. We don't have time to drill you for ten years in the training field. But we won't be sending you out against balors before you've learned to hold a sword, either. If you've never fought, we'll teach you. Until then, you'll tend animals, help the healers, brew whitesmoke for the pots. The work we do in town is as important as anything that happens on the wardstones.

"If you do know how to fight, however, we'll be sending you out once you're armed." He looked directly at me as he said it. I returned his gaze, impassive. "Our battle never ends. This is like no war you've ever fought."

"I've never fought in any war," Persil mumbled.

"You're in one now." The soldier grinned. "Welcome to the Worldwound."

Coming Next Week: Proof that the only thing more dangerous than a demon is a righteous man, in Chapter Two of "Certainty."

Liane Merciel is the author of The River Kings' Road: A Novel of Ithelas, available now from Gallery. For more information on her writing, visit lianemerciel.com.

Certainty

by Liane Merciel

Chapter Two: Valas’s Gift

A grim silence settled over the recruits after that welcome. When another soldier came to lead them to the armory, they followed quietly, their heads lowered like those of condemned men marching to the gallows.

I rose to go with them, but the scarred soldier waved me down. After the others had gone, and the banners on the walls had stopped flapping in their wake, he leaned back, watching me. "Do you know why they have me greet the new ones?"

"I presume because you can read but can't fight," I said, looking pointedly at the empty sleeve pinned over his shoulder.

The soldier nodded, unoffended by my bluntness. "That's part. The other part's that I look so pretty." He traced his thumb along one ruined cheek, following its acid-eaten sag. His empty eye socket stared at me, a wet red pit. "Shocks 'em. Terrifies 'em. That's good. They need to know what'll happen if they get lazy or drop their guard.

"Every now and then, though... every now and then, we get one who doesn't flinch. One who's seen worse. Dealt worse, maybe." He fixed his good eye on me again. "Like you. Who were you before?"

"No one," I said. My throat felt tight and raspy.

He snorted. "I lost an eye and an arm, not my brain. Don't want to tell me, fine. But you're no novice to command, any idiot can see that. That bedraggled bunch of cast-offs you brought me was already yours, even though you didn't know half their names. Men want to follow you. That's good. We'll use it."

That I could bear. I hadn't come to be questioned, but I had come to serve. "What would you have of me?"

"You'll lead a company up to Valas's Gift tomorrow. I'll give you some new recruits, but most will be Mendevians. They know the lay of the land."

"They'll follow me?"

The soldier's scars twitched as he tried to raise a long-gone eyebrow. The other side of his face stayed immobile, a mask of dead flesh. "They're used to following new blood. Sudden changes of command aren't exactly a novelty around the Worldwound."

"Fair enough. What's in Valas's Gift?"

"That's what you'll be finding out. We don't know. The wardstone nearest the village has been damaged, according to our scryers, but we don't know exactly how. It's bad enough that the Worldwound's taint is interfering with their spells, though, and that means it's bad enough for us to send a scouting party."

I smiled sourly. It was just like every assignment I'd ever been given back in Cheliax: uncertain troops, scant information, and the blithe certainty of my commanding officers that I'd solve the problem or die trying.

Except Iomedae was no longer with me, and that changed everything.

"Who are you?" I asked the scarred man, to distract myself from the fatigue of failure. "You're no simple soldier yourself. Not if you're giving orders so easily."

"We're all soldiers here," he said. "But, as it happens, my name is Colum Norsellen. First Adjutant to General Dyre. Now, it's getting late and you don't want to be a stranger abroad in Kenabres after dark. Best rejoin the others. Unless, of course, you'd care to tell me about that winged shield you're carrying."

"No," I said.

∗ ∗ ∗

Ten of us went to Valas's Gift: six Mendevians, the Kellid woman from the previous night, Jelani, Persil, and myself. I was surprised that Colum assigned Persil to the scouting company, since the youth scarcely knew how to set up a tent, but the adjutant insisted it was no mistake.

"He'll learn by doing," Colum said. "You're going out to scout, not fight. You can keep him safe."

I thought it more likely that the boy would end up as deadweight, if not simply dead, but he was so bright-eyed at the prospect of adventure that I hadn't the heart to say so.

We traveled on foot; the weather was too harsh for horses, and Kenabres had none to spare. Our only beast of burden was the shaggy brown mule carrying our supplies. We said a last prayer with the priest from the walls, swearing our crusaders' oaths and accepting Iomedae's blessing from his palsied hands. Then the gates closed.

That morning was beautiful. There was no snow in the air, only the glassy brightness of new winter. The sun spilled gold over the wardstones, lighting the poisoned sky so that, for a while, I could almost believe that the red clouds were stained only by the sunrise.

But as the day wore on, the illusory promise of dawn faded back into the churning gloom of the storm over the Worldwound. It seemed all the crueler for the change. After that I turned my eyes from the sky and only watched the road.

Three days later we reached Valas's Gift. Fields of frost-kissed stubble ringed its walls, indicating a richer harvest than I would have thought this frigid land could give. I even saw small orchards—stunted by the wind, and bare-branched on winter's eve, but orchards nonetheless.

One of the Mendevians, a cheerful young priest named Adrun, caught me marveling and laughed. "It's blessed soil."

"What?"

He swept a mittened hand out. "It's Valas's blessing that lets anything worth harvesting grow here. Surprised you don't know the story. With that shield, I had you figured for a paladin myself."

"I'm not a paladin." It sounded less bitter than it felt.

"Suppose that's no surprise. We're dreadful short on holiness here. Valas was one of the old breed, and one of the last. He fought in the Second Crusade, the heroes who beat back the Worldwound's demons long enough for casters to build the wardstones that shield us now. They hurt him viciously, but Valas didn't fall until the wardstones were safe. By then he was dying. His squire pulled him back to this little village, where some kind soul gave him water to ease his last moments. In gratitude, Valas blessed the village spring as he died.

"That spring runs red as blood now. It looks frightful, but it keeps this village alive. Fields watered from it are more fertile than they've any right to be. Wounds washed in it don't sicken. The water loses its magic if you try to carry it off, but even so it's precious. Valas's Gift helps put bread on every table in Kenabres."

I nodded, squinting at the village through the lowering dusk.

Valas's Gift looked strangely sunken behind its hard-packed walls. As we drew nearer, I understood why. Most of its sod-roofed homes and granaries slanted into the earth, burying themselves for warmth and to escape the wind. A pall of peat smoke lingered in the dips between them, mingling with the same white incense that flowed from the walls of Kenabres.

Sheep wandered among the buildings, cropping at the withered grass that clung to the rooftop sod. Slatted pens held woolly, dark-faced pigs twice the size of any I'd seen before. We saw no people, however, until we were almost to the gates. Then a lone man scurried out to greet us, his breath puffing white around his shaved head.

He was not an impressive figure, despite the wooden symbol of Iomedae that bounced on his chest. His eyes bulged, and his nose and mouth drooped downward, accentuating the weakness of his chin. Although he wore an ascetic's tonsure, he had not kept it clean; stubble flecked his scalp. Blinking at us, he resembled a surprised and irresolute tadpole.

I thought he looked harmless, if foolish. My companions did not. The Mendevians drew back as if confronted by a spitting cobra; the Kellid woman growled.

"What's wrong?" I asked Adrun.

"He's one of Hulrun's," came the muttered answer. "Look at his symbol."

It was Iomedae's radiant sword... but different from the one I'd worn as her champion. Painted flames licked at the blade's tip, evoking a fresh-lit pyre around a stake.

The village priest's chasuble was unusual as well. Instead of a golden border about the edges, as most of Iomedae's faithful preferred, his was trimmed in fiery orange.

He's a Burner, I thought, so startled that I nearly blurted it aloud. I had heard of the Burners, of course—all Iomedaeans had, usually in tones of stark disapproval—but I had never expected to meet one, even though I knew full well that Kenabres was the center of their heresy.

	"The Burners are a heresy, but understandably popular in a land at war with the Abyss itself."

Following the teachings of Elder Prelate Hulrun, the Burners made it their mission to extirpate any hint of demonic taint, usually by burning the accused at the stake. (Should the victim turn out to actually be a demon, as evidenced by its resistance to flame, additional methods were employed.) I envied their certainty at times, even as I wondered whether such fanaticism could ever truly serve Iomedae's principles. Rumor had it that they were none too scrupulous about verifying accusations of demon-worship, nor about using torture to wrest the truths they wanted to hear from the mouths of the condemned.

They called themselves Inquisitors. Everyone else knew them as Burners. In Cheliax, they were considered heretics and a disgrace to the Inheritor's name. Here, however, they held considerable power. It was because of the Burners that Kenabres had no cats and was filled with rat-traps. The people weren't starving, as I had first assumed. The Burners, claiming demons would spy on them through the eyes of verminous familiars, had killed all the animals they could catch.

They'd kill people just as readily, given provocation.

"What—who are you?" The priest glanced from each of us to the next, rubbing his holy symbol. "What brings you here?"

"My name is Ederras," I said. "I have come on General Dyre's orders to investigate your wardstone. We heard it might be failing."

The priest nodded vigorously. "It is so. The Worldwound's chaos has crept into Valas's Gift. Many of our people have already given in to the demons' lies. They must be purified by flame."

"Naturally," Jelani muttered. "It's always about the burning, isn't it?" The priest, thankfully, didn't hear.

"I will pass judgment on them, not you," I said, drawing on all my Chelish hauteur. If I had still been in Iomedae's graces, I would have outranked this village priest; as it was, I had no real authority over him. I didn't know whether General Dyre held rank over Hulrun, either. If not, I had no right to interfere with the Burner's justice.

But the bluff, and the nine well-armed soldiers behind me, seemed to work. The priest stepped back, clutching at his symbol. "Of course, my lord. I would never stand in the way of the law. Never. But you will see, they are tainted. They have lain with demons and given up their souls, and there is no question what must be done with them. They must go to the flames."

Coming Next Week: Hard choices and cold comfort in Chapter Three of Liane Merciel's "Certainty."

Liane Merciel is the author of The River Kings' Road: A Novel of Ithelas, available now from Gallery. For more information on her writing, visit lianemerciel.com.

Art by KyuShik Shin.

Certainty

by Liane Merciel

Chapter Three: Justice

The first of the Burner's prisoners was a pregnant woman, though I would have thought her long past her childbearing years. She wasn't a day under fifty, and might easily have been ten years older.

Those years were heavy on her, and the short, dirty shift she wore did nothing to conceal them. Her shoulders were soft and spotted brown; her legs were puffed and lumpy as badly kneaded dough. The weight of a lifetime's grief dragged down her mouth. I couldn't imagine her as a young woman, or a smiling one.

She hardly looked like a threat, but that only made me warier. Fiends loved to prey on the vulnerable. Children and dotards were easily deceived, and strong men often hesitated before striking such helpless-seeming foes—a fatal mistake against the possessed.

This woman didn't seem possessed, but without Iomedae's magic I couldn't be sure. The Burner regarded her as if she was, or worse. Naked hatred contorted his face; his lips skinned back in an unconscious snarl.

"A fortnight ago," he said, "this woman ran from the village. We found her lying by the wardstone, naked and covered in blood. There was a dead boar with her, painted with sigils in ash. She'd rutted with it and cut its throat, sacrificing to the demon lords so they'd give her a child. A fortnight ago she was a barren widow. Now she's fat with hellspawn. For the sake of us all, you must give her to the flames."

"Do you have a name?" I asked her.

She looked up slowly. The emptiness in her face receded, and a semblance of life returned—but it was a halting, blasted kind of life. I no longer doubted that she'd seen demons; the question now was why.

"Ledsa," she croaked.

"Ledsa. Why were you out by the wardstone?"

"Have you children?"

"No."

"Then you cannot understand." Pain gave her voice a ragged edge. "Demons took my Yulin. She was six. They took my husbands, too, one by one over the years, but no man's death ever grieved me like my daughter's. I was old when I had her, and too old to bear another when she died. Too old to do anything but mourn.

"I prayed to Iomedae for a crusader to bring her back. When that failed I prayed to Pharasma to show me that her soul was at peace. The gods wouldn't answer. I knew they didn't care. I knew my daughter was in torment.

"I went to the wardstone." A flash of defiance crossed her face under the disheveled gray hair. "Yes, I went. I heard the demons singing. They crooned to me. They said they had her soul... but they could give it back. Bear a child for them, they said, and it would be my daughter clothed in new flesh. Yulin, alive again."

"She admits her guilt!" the Burner said triumphantly. "Put her to the stake."

"Is that necessary?" Adrun asked. "She has admitted to a grievous wrong, and the fiend-blooded are bent toward evil. But I have known some who rose above their blood, and if this woman acted out of love... might she not be able to guide her own child toward goodness? I'm sure the demons' promises were lies; if they had the power to rebirth a human soul, which I doubt, it would have been as a twisted and broken thing. Still... that only proves she was blinded by love. Can we not show mercy?"

The Burner bristled at Adrun. "You're a traitor to your Queen and cause."

"Speak out of turn again and I'll have you whipped," I said. The Burner subsided, and I turned back to Ledsa. "You wanted a child, and you were too old to bear one, that I understand. But why not take in an orphan?" Kenabres had few children, but many of those had lost their parents to the Worldwound's war. Valas's Gift likely had orphans too. Even if it didn't, Kenabres was only a few days away. A woman determined enough to sacrifice to demons could surely have made that journey for a child.

She recoiled as if I'd suggested taking a serpent to her breast. "Why would I want them?"

A short silence fell. Then Adrun sighed. "Why, indeed."

"Hang her," I told the soldiers. "Burn the body."

"I should have known better than to think someone who would risk all Mendev for her grief could be saved," Adrun murmured after the soldiers had gone. "There was no love left in that woman's heart. Only poison. I'm sorry I asked."

"Never be sorry you asked," I said. "If the gods grant you the luxury of time to make sure, take it. Always take it. The grave is in no hurry."

Adrun looked at me strangely, but before he could say whatever was on his mind, the soldiers returned with the next prisoner.

He was mad. Every prisoner brought in after that was mad; Ledsa was the only one who still had her wits. The others giggled, or warbled nonsense songs, or shrieked at monsters only they could see. The village headman, a gaunt-cheeked and humorless old man, patted and cooed to our boots as if they were kittens. His wife plucked the hairs from her head one by one, put them to her lips, and puffed them at each of us with a cackle of delight.

They were all peaceful, even merry. That surprised me until the Burner explained that the prisoners we saw were only a fraction of those afflicted. He'd already burned the violent ones.

"They had succumbed to demons," he said. "It had to be done."

	"There are no easy answers. I know this better than most."

I would have burned him too for that, but I didn't know if he was wrong. None of the afflicted souls could tell us what had befallen them. Adrun and Jelani examined them, and I did the same, but we found no answers. Several were feverish, and some trembled with palsy, but others were cool and steady. The only unifying sign was that all were pained by light. They cringed from the smoky torches indoors; the weak daylight outside made them cover their heads and weep in agony.

"It's the wrong season for accidental poisoning," Adrun said after the last prisoner had been examined. "In spring people might pick devilweed or mitepurse by accident; the plants can be easy to mistake when they're young. But never this late in the year. Anyway, if that were the cause, I'd expect to see people struck down after eating from the same pot. These victims came from all across the village. Some were afflicted in houses where other people were spared."

"I won't say it wasn't demons' work," Jelani said, "but it isn't a spell. There's no enchantment on any of these people."

The mystery was not to be solved that night. I posted a guard to ensure the prisoners didn't hurt themselves or each other, then went out to stand first watch. I walked the walls of Valas's Gift, but other than Jelani, who shared my watch, I saw no one abroad.

The aurora was gone with summer from the Crown of the World, but there was no tranquility in Mendev's night. Past the wardstones, the sky flickered red; lightning stabbed up from the Worldwound into the clouds, as if it meant to attack the heavens as well as us earthbound mortals.

Perhaps it did. I watched it, thinking about human frailty and human folly, until the midnight bell ended my shift. I found no answers in my thoughts.

In the morning, however, we learned the cause.

"It's the grain," Persil told us, red-cheeked from the cold. He'd gone out early to requisition some of the village's wheat for our porridge, hoping to save our own stores for later. While picking through the grain to get rid of loose stones, he saw that several of the kernels were bloated and split, with purplish fungus inside.

He held them out in a trembling palm. "It's gone rotten. Same as the ones I brewed up by accident—the ones that killed all those people back home. I'll never forget it."

"Did those victims show the same symptoms?" Adrun asked.

Persil shrugged uncomfortably. "Might've. I thought they were just silly drunk. Then they started dying, and I got hauled off to the dungeon. Never saw what became of the others."

"There shouldn't be any blight here." Adrun frowned. "Valas's Gift prevents it."

"Maybe not, if the wardstone is failing," I said.

"This village has been blessed since the Second Crusade."

"Blessed or not, its granary has been blighted. Can you purify the grain?"

"Some," Adrun admitted. "I'd have to spend a fortnight to do it all. My prayers are limited, and there's a lot of grain."

"We can't spare you that long." Nor could I leave the granaries to be purified upon our return, since I didn't know if we would return. If we all died out by the Worldwound, the villagers might decide madness was preferable to starvation and eat the rotten grain—or sell it to unsuspecting travelers and use the money to buy themselves safe food. Men, even good men, could easily do such things rather than watch their families starve.

"What about you?" I asked the Burner.

He cast his eyes down uncomfortably. "I have not the privilege of... of magic."

I grunted, unsurprised. There had been a true priest in Valas's Gift, but the other villagers told me that she was among the first victims sent to the Burner's stake. She'd been violently deranged by the poisoned grain, they all agreed, but I wondered whether the Burner hadn't also wanted, in some small corner of his soul, to get rid of the only voice that might have countered his fanaticism. Men's motives were often shaded by such thoughts.

That didn't answer the problem of the grain, though. If neither Adrun nor the Burner could cleanse it, I saw only one solution.

"Burn it," I said. "Adrun, cleanse what you can. We'll fire the rest when we go."

"My lord, are you sure?"

"Yes," I lied.

It was an ugly choice. Valas's Gift was a breadbasket for Kenabres and other settlements, which needed its blessed fertility to make up their own shortfalls. Without it, all those towns would depend entirely on what Queen Galfrey could spare—and, after a hundred years of war with no victory in sight, that wasn't much.

Burning the grain would force the people of Valas's Gift to winter as paupers in Kenabres, where they'd likely be resented for causing the hunger they couldn't help. Still, I saw no better choice. The villagers would have a hard winter, but life by the Worldwound was always hard. They would survive, and in the spring the fields and the blessed font would be waiting for their return.

So I hoped. But I was only human, and fallible. My doubts stayed with me as we marched from the village, a pillar of smoke at our backs.

We traveled without a guide. Past the tree line, northern Mendev was a vast and featureless land, deceptive in its emptiness; a man could easily wander a hundred miles wide of his mark and never realize it until he was dying on the tundra, days from the nearest living person.

But the wardstone of Valas's Gift was its own landmark, and from the moment we left the taiga we could see it stark on the horizon. It slanted slightly; despite the magics that anchored it and its own considerable weight, the constant wind on the tundra had pushed it to one side. In another hundred years, if the war for the Worldwound still wore on, it might topple on its own.

Ten miles from the wardstone, I sent out scouts. Whatever had damaged the wardstone might have left some clues behind, and I wanted to find them before we stumbled blind into danger. Jelani enspelled the scouts to resist the chill, laughing into her scarf as she did.

"I learned this spell for the desert," she said. "Never thought to use it in the cold."

"I don't think any of us ever thought to be here," one of the scouts replied. He shouldered a lighter pack, leaving the bulk of his equipment with us, and trotted off to the west. A moment later, the other split east. The rest of us continued toward the wardstone.

We had scarcely gone two miles before the first scout returned. His eyes were wild with terror above his scarf.

"Come," he said. "I've found something."

Coming Next Week: First steps on the long road to faith in the final chapter of Liane Merciel's "Certainty."

Liane Merciel is the author of The River Kings' Road: A Novel of Ithelas, available now from Gallery. For more information on her writing, visit lianemerciel.com.

Art by KyuShik Shin.

Certainty

by Liane Merciel

Chapter Four: The Stone

"Jelani, Adrun, with me," I said. "The rest of you, keep going." Whatever the scout had found had terrified the man, and I didn't want his panic spreading to the others.

"Found tracks," the scout said when we were out of the others' earshot. "Followed them." He thrust a hand forward, jerkily, as if to hurl the memory away.

I was about to ask how he had spotted tracks on the tundra when I saw them myself: a line of booted prints sunk deep into the ground, as though it were summer's soggy marshland instead of the rock-hard terrain of late fall. The earth was slimy and discolored in those prints; the very dirt and ice seemed to have rotted at the touch of whoever had passed there.

"Seen that kind of thing around the Worldwound," the scout said. "Never on this side."

The bootprints tattooed a dark line back to the wardstone. Nearer us, they went over a low, rocky rise and into a shallow cleft. I followed, uneasy. Adrun and Jelani were watchful at my sides; the scout lagged fearful behind.

In the cleft we found the man who had made those prints. He'd died badly. Deep gouges tore through the back of his sheepskin coat. Green-black rivulets leaked from the wounds; the stench of sickness pervaded the area despite the wind and chill. I could see brown bone under the flapping tatters of the man's coat; the skin and muscle was rotted away entirely.

He'd survived his poisoned wounds long enough to get this far, though, and I didn't think they'd killed him. Blisters covered his mouth in a frozen pink froth. His throat had collapsed, eaten away from the inside; its long red track vanished into his sternum. The soft part of his jaw was gone, too, and a shaggy beard of red ice spilled across his chest.

An empty waterskin lay near his hand. It bore the same mark as the ones we'd received in Kenabres.

"Holy water," Jelani said, reaching the same realization that I had. "He was already dead—or rather, undead. He killed himself by drinking holy water."

"Maybe he thought it could flush out the poison from whatever got him in the back," Adrun said. "Maybe it would have, if the poison hadn't spread."

I left them to their speculations and rummaged through the dead man's kit. He didn't have much. A few blankets, some lamp oil, a good sheepskin hat. Most of it was standard-issue, like ours. He'd been a soldier, or stolen from one—and, like many crusaders, he had a sizable collection of warding amulets. I picked them up as an afterthought. They didn't take much space, and he might have a sweetheart or an orphan back in Kenabres who'd want them.

We returned to the company in silence. The others watched us apprehensively, aware that something had gone wrong without knowing what. A gloomy mood fell over the camp, and it deepened when the other scout failed to come back. No one mentioned it, but I knew no one expected to see him again.

That night, as the others talked or slept, Jelani scratched furrows in the frozen ground and filled them from one of our blessed waterskins.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making spears," she said.

"Of ice? They'll shatter."

She only smiled. In the firelight, that smile was a mystery. "I have seen storms that sent twigs through solid walls. My spears will have their use."

She would tell me no more than that, and I went to my bedroll puzzled.

Morning did nothing to lift our spirits. The tundra stretched on, frozen and lifeless; the wardstone waited, leaning against a stricken sky. Soon after we broke camp, the wind turned, bringing a charnel house stench that defied the cold.

"It's not from the Worldwound," Jelani said, prying sticks of ice up from her furrows. "Wind's blowing the wrong way."

"Weapons ready," I ordered, drawing my own sword. I could hear bones popping and teeth gnashing on the wind. It might have been miles away; I wasn't used to judging how the tundra played with noise. But if it wasn't, I wanted to be armed.

I was right to be cautious. As we crested the next rise, we saw our foes.

They were eating our scout. Eight of them crouched around his corpse, hissing and snapping at one another over the meat. They wore the tatters of soldiers' clothes, but they weren't human anymore.

"Ghouls," Adrun whispered.

"Not quite," I said. They were ghouls—I recognized their quick, jerky movements, the high-pitched feral snarling, the carrion reek of guts rotting in their bloated bellies—but something else blighted them too. Their veins bulged with the same greenish-black filth that had corrupted the dead soldier's wounds. Oozing sores covered their tongues and spotted their backs, dripping the same putrescence.

"Close enough," the priest said. "I'll keep them from noticing us immediately. You've a few minutes before my spell fails."

"Let me," Jelani said, touching her quiver of dirty icicles.

	"Even outside of the desert, Jelani is a formidable ally."

I saw nothing but calm confidence on her bronze face. I nodded, stepping aside.

Jelani laid her ice spears on the barren crest, angling them toward the ghouls. They never looked up. She stripped off her mittens and began a chant, her fingers dancing through the spell's gestures.

A gust of wind circled around the woman, gathering intensity until it whipped her black hair free of its scarf and forced Jelani to squeeze her eyes shut in the cyclone. Then, abruptly, it howled away, hurling the icy lances into the ghouls with spell-driven force.

The spears shattered as they plunged into undead flesh, but the wind-whipped shards were just as deadly. Ice ripped the ghouls' hides apart and pinned their limbs to their bodies. The stink from their ruptured stomachs was overwhelming; two of my men doubled over, vomiting.

Some of the ghouls fell. The survivors' heads snapped up. One's left eye was gone, replaced by a thick splinter of ice; another had two feet of ice through its gut. But the attack had broken Adrun's spell, and the ghouls had seen Jelani. Howling, they rushed at her.

She didn't flinch. Holding her hands out, Jelani called another invocation. Sunlight twinkled on her gold and bronze rings, then ignited in her cupped palms. She threw it, and the spark swelled into a fireball as it flew. It exploded over the ghouls in a rush of translucent, blue-edged flame. They shrieked as they burned—and then they collapsed, spasming, as the ice lances melted in the fireball's heat and spilled holy water through their innards like lye.

"Finish them," I shouted, leading my soldiers into the fray.

Even dying, the ghouls fought viciously. They writhed on the ground, covering it with their own deliquescing corruption, and pulled down soldiers who slipped on the slime. Those who fell were doomed. The Kellid woman lost her footing when she swung too vigorously at a fallen ghoul; she crushed her victim's skull, but went to a knee as she did. Instantly two of them were on her, and by the time we battered them away, nothing was left but the bear claws of her necklace, scattered among red rags of skin and bone.

Another crippled ghoul bit its own arm, filling its mouth with poison, then sank its teeth into Adrun's calf when he ventured into the melee to heal a wounded soldier. The priest screamed, hitting it with his holy symbol in a fist. White light flared, consuming the creature; its skull dropped lifeless onto a bed of ash. But the damage was done. Adrun staggered away, clutching his leg as sickly discoloration seeped through his skin. Two steps from the battle, he fell.

We destroyed the rest.

I took stock of the casualties as Jelani cauterized the survivors' wounds with enchanted flame. The Kellid was dead, as was one of the Mendevians. Adrun was badly injured, but if we could get him to a healer before the ghoul's poison took hold, he might live. I wasn't optimistic, but I was willing to take the chance. If it came to the worst, I'd give him mercy myself.

I touched Jelani's shoulder. "These ghouls carried crusaders' tokens. I think they were the last company of soldiers sent to Valas's Gift. If the wardstone has failed that badly, I don't want to risk the others—but you and I should examine it."

She paled, but she put her mittens back on. "As you will."

I hadn't realized how huge the wardstone was until we reached its foot. Even with its wind-pushed lean, it towered thirty feet above us and measured ten feet across its base.

Chunks of the lichen-stained stone were missing, rupturing the wardstone's rings of runes and leaving a gap large enough for a man to walk through. Peering into the breach, I saw that the wardstone was hollow at its core. Hard-packed silvery dust filled it, or had. The dust had been scraped out as far as a tall man could reach. Where the wardstone had been hollowed, its runes were black and oozing, weeping like cuts in a pine tree's trunk. The ground was spongy with decay where that ichor trickled, as it had been in the dying soldier's bootprints.

"They took the nexavar," Jelani breathed, tracing the ruined sigils. She was careful to avoid their dripping ink. "That's why the wardstone's failing, and why those soldiers turned to ghouls. They were mining out the nexavar. They took too much, though, and they couldn't have known what these runes said, or they wouldn't have broken through this section. They ruptured the ward, and the backlash killed them."

"Why would they take nexavar from a wardstone?" I asked.

She gave me a skeptical look, then laughed. "I forgot. You don't have time for superstitions like the rest of us. You've seen those warding amulets people wear to fend off demons."

"Yes."

"The ones that work use nexavar. It's weak magic, but real. People around the Worldwound will pay a lot of money for that—even, or especially, the crusaders themselves. If you care more about lining your own pockets than protecting the border, a wardstone's better than a diamond mine."

I scowled. If Jelani was right, the dead men had paid for their selfishness, but their deaths didn't end the danger. "Can you fix it?"

Jelani paced around the wardstone, examining its broken runes and hollow core. At length she stepped back, shaking her head. "I'd need enough nexavar to replace what was taken. Without it, my spells would fade in hours, if I even had the strength to hold them that long."

My heart sank. It could take months to requisition that much nexavar and bring it back to the wardstone... or longer, with winter hard upon us. I'd heard the nexavar trade depended on river traffic. If that was true, and the supply was locked on frozen boats, we might have to wait until spring. All the while, the Worldwound's poison would seep through the crack in the wards. I hadn't felt so hopeless since Iomedae turned from me.

And yet that desolation might hold the answer to this one.

I knelt by the ruined wardstone, just beyond the reach of its spoiled earth. I'd come to Mendev expecting a clear-cut war of good men against evil demons. I'd found selfishness, greed, fanaticism, and bitter grief. And grace, sometimes, though it was fragile and fleeting.

But no certainty, not until now. Only now, as I clasped my sword between both hands to hold it up as Iomedae's symbol, did I know with absolute, soul-deep clarity that I was acting on behalf of something right. Healing the wardstone was an absolute good. The people of Mendev weren't saints; neither were the unwilling exiles who had joined their war. But they had the potential for virtue amidst their flaws, and sheltering that potential was an unalloyed good. Valas had seen the same before me, and his gift was proof that the gods agreed.

Iomedae, I prayed, hear me. Grant your unworthy servant this boon. Hold the wardstone's magic a little longer. Protect the people of Mendev from the Worldwound. I ask this for them, not for myself. I will give my life for this, if you ask. I will give my soul. But shield them, I beg you.

I waited, kneeling, for some sign. Light, song, agony. Anything.

Nothing came. The wind wailed on. My knees ached. I heard Jelani pacing back and forth behind me, trying to keep warm as she waited.

Finally, despairing, I opened my eyes.

The ground before me was laced with frost—bright, clean frost, with no sign of the previous decay. The rift in the wardstone's side remained, but a shimmering lattice filled the gap, like a tapestry of starlight stretched over black night. The runes at the base had stopped dripping; the poisoned ichor might have been an ugly dream.

"You did it," Jelani said in wonder. "I don't know what you did, but you did it."

"How long will the magic last?" I asked.

"I don't know. It's... not the magic I know. This is holy work." She raised her eyebrows. "I thought you weren't a paladin."

"I'm not." I'd had so little faith that I hadn't believed Iomedae heard me without a sign.

"Then what—"

"We have a reprieve. The chance to do good. But only a chance."

"Ah." She smiled wearily. "Well, a chance is more than we had before."

"It is," I agreed, and we walked back to our war.

Coming Next Week: Death in the bog in the first chapter of Amber Scott's "Swamp Warden."

Liane Merciel is the author of The River Kings' Road: A Novel of Ithelas, available now from Gallery. For more information on her writing, visit lianemerciel.com.

Art by KyuShik Shin.