Chapter Forty-Eight: Inert

The forest yawned wide and swallowed him into that infinite darkness. Osmund kept going through the burn in his muscles and the whipping sting of vegetation against his bare legs. If he was caught now, it would all be for nothing. And so he ran, pushing his exhausted body until at last he couldn’t push anymore.

He half-leaned, half-collapsed against a looming conifer tree, gasping as if breaking the surface of a river. In one fist he clenched the sword handle, afraid to relax his grip even for a moment. He was aware of every one of his mortal sounds: every beat of his heart, every effort of his lungs. The surrounding forest was a vacuum, a silence, and Osmund was announcing his location with every breath.

Any second now, the Meskato would be upon him. From his panicked imaginings came an army combing through the woods, hunting for one Tolmish thief. He didn’t know who he was most afraid to face: Bayram, or Cemil.

But as his breathing evened out, only the music of insects filled the night air. Osmund forced in the calm. Though the invisibility spell had long worn off, within these shadows he was as small and insignificant as any of the animals hidden around him in their secret lairs. He was a mouse. Or a cricket.

Alright. He had to think clearly and examine the facts. The facts were these (and here, Osmund imagined he was writing in the journal Sakina had given him):

1. He had the sword.
2. He had no idea how to dispose of it.
3. For his betrayal, Cemil might either forgive him or kill him, and he wasn’t sure which. (At least he would surely make it quick.)

What should I do? he fretted. Stealing a horse was out of the question; they’d expect him at the stables, and there’d be wards. He could try to hitch a ride with a passing merchant, but there was no way to hide that he was carrying a conspicuous sword fit for a prince, at least not while clad in just this dirty oversized shirt.

So to add to that list,

4. He still didn’t have any pants!

Things looked fairly bleak. Osmund pressed his back against the bark, craning his neck to the stars twinkling through the gaps in the forest canopy, the same as those that had shone faithfully over Valcrest castle.

At the very least, I got the sword away from Cemil before it could ruin him, he thought. If only he knew whether it’d be enough to save him.

Snap.

Osmund’s head jerked, trying to hone in on the direction of the snapped twig, but all around him was black. Only a deer, he told himself. Then, snap. Another sound, closer. He felt that other presence. Someone was here in the woods with him.

The vegetation shifted, the clinging arms of plants being helplessly brushed aside. Whoever it was, they were moving right towards him. They saw him. They saw him.

“S-stay back!” Osmund warned in a warbling voice as he brandished the sword in front of him. Sweat beaded on his temples and on his skin beneath the borrowed shirt. “N-not another step! I mean it!”

What were the odds that whoever was stalking him in the dark was intimidated by his stammered threats? Or couldn’t read his bluff? With a held breath, Osmund strained his ears into the silence that followed.

If they come any closer, I can defend myself with the sword’s strength, a rogue thought whispered, calm and seductive. While I’m holding it, I’m not weak and powerless anymore.

Osmund willed the thought away viciously. He wasn’t a total fool! Cemil had resisted the sword’s influence for years, he wasn’t going to let it do him in in a single hour!

“It’s me,” came a voice in the darkness, making him forget his dilemma entirely.

Osmund’s shoulders stiffened. At the same time, his grip relaxed on the blade’s handle. He did know that voice. And unlikely as this situation was, it wouldn’t be the first time the voice’s owner had caught him totally by surprise.

“Emre?” he ventured in disbelief.

Into a sliver of moonlight, a slight figure approached. Osmund recognized his glasses, his distinctive nose, and his short hair, and that was about where the resemblance to the smug mage he knew ended.

“What happened to you?” Osmund asked at the same time that Emre said, “Where are your pants?”

“Nevermind my pants!” Even in the darkness he could make out the other man’s ragged clothes, and his hunched posture like he had a bad stomachache. True, Osmund may look like a man going for a near-naked jog in the woods, but a glance at Emre and one would guess he’d been living out here for a week. Possibly after getting mauled by a bear! “H-how in heavens did you find me?! Again?!”

Emre’s appearances had always been strange. Sensational scenes from remembered novels rose up, clouding Osmund’s head. “Are you…a figment of my imagination?” he asked cautiously.

A sigh. “No.”

“Some sort of…advanced illusion?”

“No.”

Osmund pursed his lip, afraid of his next guess. “Then, are you…a ghost?”

“I’m not a damn ghost!” Emre snapped impatiently. “I felt my own magic nearby and followed the source! And I found you.” His eyes fell on the blade loosely angled at him, and he went still.

Osmund’s grip on the sword hilt tightened again. “I’m not giving it to you,” he announced firmly. “Or the people you associate with. I’m going to find a way to destroy it on my own.”

Such a waste! that little voice crooned, ever-persistent. Why go through all the trouble of destroying it at all?

But Emre wasn’t ready with his usual appeals or threats. “It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled, voice eerily listless. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

Then he motioned for Osmund to follow, cutting off an onslaught of questions. “Let’s go. There’s somewhere better we can talk.”

When one found oneself needing to hide in the woods, it helped to be an illusionist. In the span of a single blink, what had once been a featureless chunk of rock was now a cave. Emre beckoned him inside. It wasn’t much by way of creature comforts, but it had to be better than waiting to be ravaged in your sleep by wild beasts.

Emre spoke. It sounded like Anshan. Light flooded the cave, emanating from a small glass ornament perched on a natural ledge in the stone. An enchanted object! “It won’t carry outside,” he grunted in Tolmish as he fell, rather than sat, on the ground beside his pack and its strewn contents. (Evidently he hadn’t prepared for guests.) “We’re safe here.”

As he settled, his eyes squeezed shut in a pained expression, one hand adjusting his clothes. Then he seemed to sense Osmund hovering over him.

“What?”

“Let me see,” Osmund urged, concerned. “Your injury.”

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t be so stubborn!” Honestly, he was so much like his brother! “You’re hurt, aren’t you? If it’s a cut, I can help you re-dress it.”

With a sullen look, Emre pulled open his shirt, and Osmund’s breath caught. It was much worse than he’d prepared himself for.

There was a makeshift bandage of torn cloth around Emre’s chest and shoulder, but even without seeing the wound directly, anyone could tell it had begun to fester. The bandages were bloody, and a cloying smell filled the air. Osmund bit his lip, unable to utter reassurances.

“Those ‘associates’ of mine didn’t have much use for me once I figured out what they were really after.” Emre seethed with self-reproach. “Turns out you were right all along for not trusting them, or me.”

There would be time for Osmund to parse the rest later. “…It’s infected,” he murmured. Emre just stared at him tiredly, waiting for him to say something less obvious. “Cemil is nearby. Why wouldn’t you go to him? He can heal you. You’re his brother!”

“Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Cemil despises his brothers.”

“He was relieved to hear you were alive!” Osmund argued. “He really cares about you!”

Emre went quiet again. Osmund fidgeted, itching for something to do to fill the space. “Wait here a moment!” he said at last. “I’ll forage nearby, we need to make a new plaster for your—”

“Don’t bother,” came the feeble protest. “It’s not getting any more infected.”

“It literally is! That’s how infections work!”

The other man apparently lost the will to fight. “Fine,” he conceded, uncharacteristically beaten, “but be quick about it.”

Maybe he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts again. Osmund could certainly relate.

He returned to the cave a half hour later, carrying a small collection of herbs in a pouch he’d formed by bunching up the large shirt. (By now his legs were thoroughly bug-bitten, but that grievance could wait.)

Emre was exactly where he’d left him. When he heard Osmund approaching, he jerked awake, having drifted off sometime in his absence.

“It’s not perfect and it’ll hurt,” Osmund was saying, already apologizing as he sat himself down and arranged his meager supplies, “but it’s better than nothing. These should ease the inflammation and pain and keep the wound from drying out. I’ve treated cuts and scrapes on my horses plenty of times.”

“I don’t want your horse medicine,” Emre mumbled, seemingly mostly out of a desire to complain.

“If it’s good enough for a horse, it’s good enough for you!”

“Don’t you have the order confused?!”

At least he had the energy left to argue. Osmund let him gripe as he finished treating the wound, then re-bandaged it with a strip he’d torn from his borrowed garment. Until recently, it was sitting in a prince’s trunk, and was probably the cleanest cloth they had access to. (Cemil wouldn’t be getting this particular shirt back, but that was surely the least of his problems.) “This is only temporary,” Osmund reminded him with a frown. “You really need to see a healer as soon as possible.”

“Got it,” Emre sighed. “I’ll try not to die until then.” It wasn’t much of a joke under the current circumstances.

Now that the urgency had passed, Osmund sat down heavily beneath the evening’s events, which had come flooding back. “What happened?” he finally made himself ask. “W-what’s going on? Who did this to you?”

Emre’s eyes were closed as he spoke. “What’s going on is that we’re fucked.”

In less dire circumstances, no one would fault him for brevity. “This is important!” Osmund pressed, his fear and frustration escaping. “It was someone in Bayram’s camp, wasn’t it? And that was your horse down there, too, I bet!”

“That’s right. I’m the dumbass who decided to actually trust someone who gave his entire life to the empire.” Emre smiled, and through his self-loathing he seemed almost sad. “I believed him when he said he’d counseled the emperor against the Anshan massacres all those years ago. Actually believed him. Believed he was different.”

Osmund paused. “Are you talking about the general?” he guessed. “General Nadir?”

“Said he wanted the empire to become something new,” Emre recounted in a low, bitter breath. “That we were using Bayram for his resources…that we’d offer Cemil our help, once that cursed sword was out of the picture…and now, ha, now they’re going to…”

“What did you mean earlier?” Osmund asked when he trailed off and didn’t finish, bracing himself for whatever new, terrible thing he was about to learn. “All along you kept pestering me about the sword, and now it doesn’t even matter?”

“Turns out Cemil isn’t the only one who decided to play around with cursed magic. His enemies wanted to level the playing field.” Emre’s voice was drained. “But…the things they made…”

“Did it involve those magical creatures?”

Those eyes—green, unlike Cemil’s or his mother’s—cracked open again. “So you know.”

“I’ve been up close with one.” The dreadful memory returned. “It was a long dagger stuck in a dying gryphon, and…I touched it. I barely managed to break free of its spell.”

“That’s impossible.”

The interruption threw him. “That’s what happened,” he insisted, though he felt suddenly unsure.

“No, no way,” Emre repeated. “It would’ve continued absorbing energy until the host creature had nothing left to give. If you made contact with it before the process was complete, your soul would just be extra kindling.”

Osmund didn’t feel like quibbling over details. “Tell me more about these weapons,” he pressed, pivoting. “Are you saying they’re even more dangerous than this one?”

Emre stared down at the cursed sword by Osmund’s hip. He seemed almost entranced, but that was to be expected; the Anshan had a painful connection to the forging of this particular blade. It must be strange to see it up close, lying so inert.

“Cursed weapons absorb life magic from the world around them,” he said at last. “Scholars theorize it’s the souls trapped within, drawing in energy to try and replace the physical matter they’ve lost.”

Osmund shuddered. “I’ve felt it,” he agreed.

“A magical creature, like a gryphon, has natural life energy equivalent to a hundred thousand times that of a human. When someone wields a weapon made with the restless soul of a gryphon, or a wyrm…” Emre let the words hang.

The implications were almost too big to process. “Wait, I don’t understand,” Osmund objected, fumbling. “How could someone even wield a weapon like that and not die? Wouldn’t the sword devour them, too?”

“You’re right. It’s suicide.”

“Well, doesn’t that problem take care of itself then?”

Emre gave a small, mirthless laugh. “Not if the devastation also shreds apart the souls of anyone nearby.”

In spite of the hour, Osmund all but sprang to his feet. His heart was racing. “Bayram challenged Cemil to a duel tomorrow,” he blurted as his mind worked. “Surely that doesn’t mean—?”

“Yes, that’s about what I expected to happen.”

“But…no. If Bayram were to use a weapon like that, he and Cemil both would—”

“And most of their armies, too, I suspect.”

This was…madness! Osmund buried his hands in his disheveled hair and thought of everyone in the company. Cemil, but also Nienos, and Gudrun, and every other innocent soldier or mercenary in either camp!

“But why?!” he went on, bewildered. “If Bayram intended to go through with something so reckless—something that would cost him his own life, too—then why bother with a duel?”

“Because it isn’t his plan.”

The flurry in his mind stopped. “So they’re deceiving him,” he muttered numbly. “General Nadir and whoever else he’s working with…they’re using Bayram to wipe out Cemil, and two imperial armies!” The pieces of the puzzle began shifting around. “If he’s being tricked into using the weapon, that means he doesn’t know what it’s capable of. He probably thinks it’s a sword just like this one, doesn’t he? He might be reasoned with!”

“Good luck with that,” Emre said. He sounded like he didn’t have any hope at all, but some of that might be the infection talking. “Let’s strategize later. I…need to rest my eyes a bit.”

Osmund eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t die,” he warned.

The other man gave him a haggard look in return. “If I die, I’ll send my ghost in my stead,” he vowed. “Now sit down. Just watching you is making me tired.”