The Silent War of the Sour Eye

THE GILDED MARES

Sixteen Years After The Escape

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Ky pulled his hood up against the rain as he stepped over the drunk trimerian in the gutter. He stopped to turn back, looking at her again. Could he let this woman die? Was this person vital? He missed so many lately. Had been given chances to step in at the right time yet all of it slipped away.

Doubt and grief riddled his mind as he stared at the woman bleeding in the street. He gripped the handle of his sword and felt the Sour Eye moving through his body, the familiar fever rushing across his skin. The trembling, the shaking, the ache in his chest. He felt his heart beating frantic and off rhythm and wondered how much longer his heart would hold out. He saw nothing. This woman could die and the world would not miss her. She had no family. Had no dealings with the most important people in the world. He could let this one go.

He turned to walk away and thought of the ring on his finger. Twenty more healing powers waited in that ring for the most important, the most vital. He stopped, thinking of the woman dying in the street and everything from his training so long ago. Everything the knighthood taught him ran through his mind. He wanted so badly to use the ring, but Ky kept walking. He had to choose who lived and died. And this was a death he had to let go. As he walked up the stairs to the door of the pub, a tiny part of his resolve died. He let too many go. When would times like these break the good that remained in his soul? When would every pure thing within him turn to callous cold?

He swung the door open and the sights and smells of the pub hit him in the face. Vomit. Sour ale. Poorly spiced food. Sweat and blood. The Gilded Mares was a hole. He had seen its slow descent over the four hundred years he had been coming here. Had watched it become this. What had been a well-lit place of warmth and revelry was now this rotting shell. Maybe places like this slowly festered because of meetings like the one held here tonight. Maybe it was the Eye.

He stepped over a few puddles of questionable liquids, past the privy and the reek that emanated through the door, and into the main room. He turned left to a hall where the booth waited. He braced himself and pulled back the curtain. Within, glaring up at him, sat Herask in a brown wool robe with a ratted mane. The scar in the hairline Ky had given him three hundred years ago still knotted his dung-colored hair.

Ky locked eyes with his mortal enemy, seeing one smoky with age and one glowing and sickly green, and he felt sick to his stomach from the pure evil radiating off the beast. Herask motioned to the bench across from him and Ky dropped into the seat.

“I still can’t get used to your skin,” Herask said. “It stopped glowing 4,000 years ago. Yet every time I’ve seen you since, it’s been startling. I guess there is an old too old for a trimerian.”

Herask chilled his blood. Ky, no more than five foot six, stared across at his nemesis, who even seated towered over him at seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. The wound Herask received two weeks ago had yet to heal. It still rattled from his forehead to his jawline on the left. It was not being seen to. The wound would scar ragged and horrifying. But after the hundreds of thousands of years of battle and war they had seen, the two of them had begun to stop healing. The body could only fix itself so many times. And three hundred thousand years of jumping time had left their bodies exhausted and worn.

“I ordered for you,” Herask said. “Your meal will be here soon. I thought I owed you that much. Did you bring the wine?”

Ky pulled the flask from his threadbare bag and set the ornate wine bottle on the table between them. Ky pulled a tin mug. He filled it then Herask gripped the bottle and took a long swig.

He swished the wine in his mouth for a while and lifted a thick, graying eyebrow. “The Knighting of Rayph Ivoryfist?” Herask scowled and tipped the bottle back again. “I thought I stopped Ivoryfist from becoming a knight. Thought I forced a self exile?” Herask said. “That dagger was supposed to lock him up for fifty thousand years.” Herask swished the wine in his mouth again. Trimerian wine was named after the greatest event to occur that year. If the connoisseur was talented enough and perfected their palate, they could name that event.

“How did you do it? How did you free Fannalis from the blade?” Herask asked.

Ky longed to speak and gloat of his victory with a sarcastic tongue, but the curse held him fast. Ky had not heard his own voice for 130,587 years. He pulled his enchanted scroll and laid it out in front of Herask. He laid his palm on it and his thoughts scribbled themselves across the page. He turned the scroll to Herask.

“Callden Collective. I nudged Roth Callden toward specializing in magical weapons. Whispered in his ear of the Thorn Brothers,” Ky wrote.

“I hid the short sword and the bastard sword. There was no way you found them,” Herask said.

Ky felt exhausted just thinking of the centuries he spent searching for the weapons. He had been forced to sneak the blades into the Crystal Citadel so none of his old companions could see him. The chore had been nearly impossible, but he won Glimmer’s office, and got back out.

Herask took another long swig of the wine bottle and Ky took a sip from his tin cup. The rich flavor of the grape and slight hint of smoke in the wine tasted like victory.

“You still have no answer for Mending Keep,” Herask said. “The Stain still roam untouched. The city of Hemlock is overrun with vampires, and when Teratrape is awoken, this world will bleed.” Another tip of the bottle. More swishing of the wine.

Ky hoped the vintage tasted like defeat.

A waitress dropped a filthy plate in front of Ky and scowled at him. “Back again?” she said. Her tongue was too big for her mouth and she spat when she spoke. “Every year, you bastards show back up. Every year bad luck follows. When are you going to leave us? When will your dark visits end?”

Ky wanted to answer but knew she couldn’t read. He had no way of warning her of the fate of the pub. No way of warning her what would befall this place in just ten short years. He looked at his pasta with disgust. He wanted to hide his contempt for the meal, but was losing the ability to fake emotions. He could not look up from his plate and could only keep his head down.

“My friend has so much to say,” Herask said. “But he is too kind to speak his mind so I will tell you myself. The quality of your meals keeps rising. Soon the finest of foods will be served here. Just look at the swill you are slopping around now.”

Ky looked at the wilted vegetables and globs of gray meat mixed in with the odd-shaped noodles he knew would be tough, then looked up and tried to smile. The woman pulled back with a grimace. Even his smile was a nightmare now.

The waitress dropped a poorly cooked, over-spiced turkey in front of Herask and he grinned at her. His teeth were black, lips torn. The waitress left. She did not look back and, as Ky watched her go, he saw her limp had gotten worse. He thought of the time they had come four years ago and the stab wound she had taken to the leg. He thought of the ring in his pocket that could have healed her and a cold sensation hit him. He pushed the plate away and Herask grinned.

“Yeah, that’s right. Shove it away. Let yourself get weak. You won’t need your strength,” he said with a chuckle.

Ky sighed and pulled the meal back before him. He looked for utensils but the waitress had not brought any. He took off his gloves and ate with his fingers.

“Septimuut was a nice touch,” Herask said. “Ember had no answer for him. You even tricked me into sending Simon straight to her.” He shoved his fingers in the breast of the turkey and, with a grip and a rip, pulled the meat free. It was still a bit pink but Herask would not die from uncooked food. There was no way Ky’s luck was that strong.

“Kell and Justine do not bother me as much as you think they do,” Ky wrote. “There are other paths to a bastay for Peter than just their child.”

“Well, I invite you to find them, but only a half blood will work. You know that,” Herask said.

“A half blood can be arranged.”

“And love, let’s not forget. The child must be conceived in love,” Herask said. “I have you in this. The Redfist will flail unguided. There is no father who could raise that child better than Kell. I invite you to find one.”

Ky made an obscene gesture, knowing he had yet to find the right man.

Herask gripped a leg and ripped it free from the bird. He bit into the joint, snapping the bone, and chewed. Juice and the faintest amount of blood spurted and ran down his chin. He wiped it with his mitt-like hand and kept chewing.

They ate in silence for awhile before Herask laughed. He pulled something from his hip and dropped it on the table between them. “Wanted to give you this.”

The item was a blackened skull, partially shattered with jagged edges and still wet.

“I’m going to give you this just to watch you squirm,” Herask said.

Ky looked at the object with dread. Whose skull was he looking at? What type of hellish path would this lead him on? Ky touched his hand to his scroll.

“Who does it belong to?”

“Trolava Bentak,” Herask said.

Ky did not know that name. Did not know if this was a chase he should even make. This might very well be a bluff to waste his time, could very well be smoke and mist.

“You don’t know him.” Herask laughed, a deep bellowing sound that filled Ky’s head with hopelessness and caused it to instantly ache.

Ky winced. The last headache he suffered lasted a year and a half. The slow healing of his body would keep this one raging even longer.

“When this is over, I think I will let you live,” Herask said. “I will probably have to by that time. I don’t think the Eye will let us die anymore. It only wishes for us to suffer. When this is over, and you have either saved the world or I have destroyed it, we will find a place on a mountain somewhere to live forever in misery. I think by that time we will be too far into our insanity to ever come back.”

Ky looked at Herask and saw it then. The tremble of the hands. The oily hair. The teeth in Herask’s mouth were smaller from grinding them together.

“You’re having the nightmares, too,” Ky wrote.

Herask dropped the knot of bone at the end of the leg to rattle on the table and looked at the turkey. Ky saw the man had just lost his appetite.

“Do you dream of Her?”

“Mine is a dog, not a woman. But yeah, I am dreaming of a hunter,” Ky said. “Every time I see it, I lose a bit of my mind.”

“She started out beautiful.”

“Mine did, too,” Ky wrote.

“But every time she gets—”

“Angrier.”

Herask’s head dropped on his shoulders. He gripped the second breast. He needed to keep up his strength, too.

More silence descended on them. Ky ate the lumpy pasta and Herask chewed his turkey, bones and all. When finished, Ky licked his fingers clean and Herask wiped his hands on his ratty, woolen robe.

Ky dropped a gold piece on the table and set his tin plate on it. Herask stood and they looked at each other.

“I stopped hating you 70,000 years ago,” Herask said. “Now I wish you would just stop.”

Ky grabbed his scroll off the table and touched it. He held it up to Herask and felt all the exhaustion fall on him again. “If you quit, I will.” Deep in his heart Ky hoped Herask would snarl and stomp off. He thought of the sensation of the time travel as it ripped him to the next tiny battle. He remembered how thrilling it had been at first. He could feel it in his bones now. Chewing and gnashing. The need gripping him to jump again. He knew addiction when he saw it. He just never thought he would feel it.

Herask looked at the scroll for a long time. Ky knew he was feeling it, too. They were trapped by need now. Neither could quit. Herask looked around and smiled.

“No. It all burns,” Herask said. “And one day we will sit on a cliff somewhere looking out at the ash and wait for our death.”

The two enemies walked out of the Gilded Mares and Ky saw children rifling through the pockets of the dead trimerian. One fought to pull her boot off and Herask grinned as they stepped out into the rain.

“Just let her die, huh?” he said. “How many more of those can you handle?”

Ky pulled his hood up and turned to go. Herask walked west up the street and Ky walked east. He got ten steps.

“Hey, Ky,” Herask said.

Ky turned to look back. Herask reached out faster than fast and snatched a man walking by. Ky’s heart stopped as Herask spun the man, gripping him in a headlock and smiling.

Ky pulled his crystal sword, seeing the sickly green glow it had begun to take on about twenty thousand years ago. Herask pulled his demon-steel fist dagger. He stabbed the man in the face six, seven times before the kids ran. The streets cleared as the man in Herask’s arms screamed in horror. His body bent, his hair turning white as his limbs snapped in like the curling legs of a dead spider.

Herask stabbed the man four more times before dropping him to the ground. “Didn’t see that one coming, did you?”

Ky stared in horror, praying that man was not important.

Herask was enveloped in green light. Ky saw a bit of ecstasy on his face before he vanished.

Ky rushed to the dead man’s side and looked down at him. He drove the blade of his crystal sword into the man’s dead body and sobbed at what he saw.

Ky stumbled back and dropped to his knees. He looked at his sword, knowing it would never end. He felt a throb in his cloak, and then another one. He felt a bulge there and pulled the cloak back to see a throbbing, roundish object on his chest under his shirt. He ripped the shirt back and saw a heart fused to his chest covered over with scars and pounding. Ky had a second heart. How he had gotten it or why, he did not know.

But he had to set all that aside. He needed to find Julius Kriss. The vile assassin would be moving through this town twenty-one years ago. Ky had to hire him to kill Reghar the Brawn. There were still vampires in Hemlock. This might fix that.

Ky stumbled down the street feeling a stabbing pain in his leg. He was walking with a limp now. He looked back at the dead man in the street and sighed.

He needed to find out who Trolava Bentak was.

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