All throughout dinner and the following day, Simon kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. He kept waiting for another master or a quorum of knights to ask him more questions and see through his lies, but the only time anyone mentioned it was by clapping him on the back or muttering a few kind words.
While the Unspoken didn’t exactly classify things, it certainly felt like everything to do with this warlock was on a need-to-know basis. Simon found that reaction interesting, but he enjoyed the change of pace; more and more often, he was being met by nods of respect instead of trailing whispered suspicions in his wake.
Still, that praise was always nonspecific. “I heard you struck a terrible blow against the enemy this month,” one of the knights told him. Sir Reginald, or perhaps, Sir Regeneld, Simon wasn’t sure. “You’ll have to let me buy you a drink.”
“I fear if I’m bought too many more drinks I’ll be as dead as the villain I defeated,” Simon answered, to more than a few laughs.
The last time he’d won there’d been endless questions about what he’d found, but this time those questions were more circumspect and general. It was less than the other men of the order were afraid of the answers, and more than they were afraid they might get caught asking the questions. Simon had yet to be assigned penance for any of his actions, but he knew that it did happen, and he expected a man asking too much about things he should not know would be kept on his knees, praying for a long time to come.
The only thing he risked doing was learning the gesture for the word of nullification. He didn’t practice it. He wasn’t that brave, but it was too valuable a weapon not to commit to memory, and every night before bed he reviewed the gestures in the mirror until he knew every twitch. That wasn’t a guarantee he could use it without practice, of course, but it was better to have and not need to than to get his soul ripped out of his body somewhere along the way because he was unprepared.
After a few days, Simon asked Master Harrin for a new mission and news about Varten, but was rebuffed on both fronts. “Write up more details about your most recent encounter instead,” he instructed. “But not specifically. Write it for a young knight; try to explain to him what tipped you off and told you something was amiss.”
Simon bristled at that, not because it wasn't a perfectly reasonable request, but because wheels were turning in the background that he wasn’t privy to. He did as he was told, but somewhere between trying to explain the feeling of dread that had overcome him in the inn and the way the memory of the villages seemed to waver, he ended up writing a page-long poem about the wavering smoke blowing against the wind.
That was the catalyst, whimsical though it was, that finally got Simon to ignore the larger issues and focus on the task. While he wrote pages more on the subject, he drafted three rules that distilled a great deal of other wisdom down to three concise points:
Pay attention to your surroundings; evil is the fruit, but also the tree.
Houses have no aura, but hide their owners completely.
If their neighbors do not know them well, then you should.
They were simple, but pragmatic thoughts, and while Simon thought they’d make good dogma, he also thought he could improve on them later.
A week later, he was finally summoned to the order master who commanded him. “Many were hesitant to believe in any fulfillment of prophecy, you understand. Such things reek of fraud and witchcraft in the best cases.”
Simon nodded in agreement at that. There was exactly one woman in the world whose prophecies he was inclined to believe. He tried asking where this one had come from, but was rebuffed as Master Harrin continued.
“So it was decided that we should test you, especially after what happened at the Tithe Pools. If you could solve one obscure case, then why not more?” the master continued.
“So then you knew that the warlock would be in—” Simon started to ask, but he was quickly overridden.
“If we’d known that monster had squirreled himself away at the edge of nowhere, then we would have sent an army, not our newest recruit,” Master Harrin assured him.
Sent and lost, Simon told himself silently. Magic was a world of cloak and dagger. Knights worked well on criminals and monsters, but a warlock, well, if Jranesh Karell had dragged himself away from his experiments for a pint the night that Simon had come to the village, Simon might never have woken up again. An army would have been wiped out, but there was no way he could explain that to the White Cloaks. They did things one way: the righteous one.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“So is that my fate then?” Simon asked. “To solve unsolved mysteries?”
That made the master smile. “Your mission is whatever I say it is, until I expire, or you advance to the service of some other part of the order, and I say the tasks before you are the same as anyone else. Find evil, purge it, and keep your heart pure in the doing of it.”
Simon was relieved to hear that, but not as relieved as he was to have Varten reassigned to him a few days later. That was both a surprise and a relief, given that no one said a word about the boy until one day he just marched into Simon’s room and told him, “I’m ready to begin our training again.”
Simon had expected more of a ceremony than that. Something with a chapel, and sacred vows said while being anointed with holy oils. None of that happened, though. Instead, Simon’s squire was returned to him, and he was given new orders.
The boy didn’t offer Simon any details about what he’d been up to in the intervening months beyond broad statements like, “They asked me many questions about myself and my family. It was very uncomfortable.”
When they left a few days later on general orders to “Press as far west as the damned Ionians will allow and then return,” the boy was obviously grateful to be gone from the Broken Tower. He didn’t even need to say it. It showed easily enough in the way that he never complained again. However, they’d treated the boy in his absence, it would seem that Varten much preferred Simon’s chores and lessons to the idea of being paired again with someone else, and they walked in silence more than they used to.
It took the boy two days for him to come out with what was bothering him. “Did you know they were going to kill me if I wasn’t, uhm, suitable?”
“I knew you were suitable,” Simon answered swiftly. It was a lie, but a kind one. “Had there been any question, I wouldn’t have brought you back with me.”
In reality, he’d risked Varten’s life because he preferred that loss to the loss of a child that hadn’t wronged him. At the time, it had been a hard-hearted decision, but if he had it to do over again, he might not have.
“What makes you think I’m suitable?” the boy asked. “My father? My bloodline?”
Simon shook his head. Those were the last things that would make him the right choice to be a soldier for good in this never-ending battle. “Because you have fight in you,” Simon answered. “And more than anything, the Unspoken need people who will never give up.”
For a moment, he worried he’d slipped by saying that name out loud, but when the boy didn’t react, he assumed he’d faced his own initiation. Simon tried to bring that up in a roundabout way a few times over the next few days, but the boy always changed the subject, which told Simon he was sworn to secrecy. That didn’t surprise him.
He probably thinks I’m testing him even now, Simon reflected.
Still, after Varten asked the question, it no longer weighed on their trip, and things became more normal. They helped a wagon that had become stuck in the mud the following day, and spent the next two days in a shoddy inn, dodging the storms that lashed the region this time of year.
When Varten asked why the rains were so random and poorly distributed, Simon could only laugh at the boy's indignation. “Crowvar needs this water, and this area already has too much! Everything is mud! Couldn’t they just… move the rainclouds further east?”
Simon gave him the briefest, simplest version of the evaporation cycle he could think of, but when that largely went over his head, he chose a simpler road that fit what he’d probably been taught by his tutors.
“It’s the rule of attraction,” Simon explained. “Like attracts like. Here, there are rivers and lakes, and not so far away to the west and south, the sea surrounds us. That will create many storms, especially in the water months. Crowvar, on the other hand, has a great deal of air and earth, so they get—”
“Nothing but dust,” the boy complained. He immediately disavowed the place, arguing it didn’t matter anymore, but Simon could see that wasn’t true.
The two of them continued west toward Ionia for the next several days. There was no good way overland to Ionia without going all the way south, through Montain to the sea, or north far enough to get to Coramin, but he didn’t think that getting to Ionar was really the point of this exercise. The region worshiped their own gods, showed little interest in magic, and had no tolerance for the Whitecloaks. Sometime before they reached their goal, an outpost or a unit of scouts would turn them around with harsh words or bared weapons. Simon would oblige them in either case, though he'd prefer the former option.
They never got that far, though. Instead, he sighted a traveler with a witchmark and stopped him. “I-I’ve done nothing wrong!” the man claimed, and Simon believed him. He certainly wasn’t getting anything out of the deal. Someone had inflicted him with a word that took Simon a few seconds to puzzle out, Dnarth Farzehl Zyvon Vrazig, which more or less meant distant luck draining and ruination.
The words were clear, but the writing was strange, as if the marks he’d seen from the Charian witches were in a heavy block print and these were in a lighter cursive. The font choice didn’t matter, though. What did was that he’d clearly pissed someone off, and Simon wanted to find out who.
“Let me guess, friend,” Simon said. “You’ve had an unbelievable run of bad luck lately, and you think I’m just the torment you have to suffer through.”
“I don’t have any money left!” the man said, “You can’t even take my dignity. I lost all that and more a few days back.”
“Easy, stay calm,” Simon said, reining up and letting his horse take a couple of steps back. “No one’s hurting or taking anything. You’ll sit by our fire tonight and tell us your tale of woe, and tomorrow we’ll start in the direction you point and see if we can’t address it.”
It was still early to stop yet, but they weren’t in any hurry, and Varten could do with some lessons. The stranger, for his part, conceded immediately. He was on foot and knew he had no chance of running away from a knight on horseback. They could all use a rest, and it would be nice to get the tent up before sunset for once.
