Errand of Mercy

Chapter One

He began as nobody, one brown squalling infant among a hundred born that day among his conquered people, the Mar. He was sickly and his mother did not expect him to live long. It was months before his father finally named him Ikavi Garkim. He hoped the boy would make a good carpenter if he survived to his eighth year. His family was tarok, the lowest class of the Mar, and struggled for food and money that the bahrana, the few middle-class Mar, took for granted.

Ikavi survived many illnesses in his family's one-room adobe home, lost in a sprawling slum that spilled around the gray walls of Eldrinpar, the seacoast capital of Doegan. His stubborn survival was not the only thing that made him different, though. His peculiarity became clear as soon as he could speak. He acted before orders were given him; he mouthed secret thoughts without knowing their meaning.

At first everyone thought this was marvelous, but in the end no one could tolerate it. No thought was safe near him. Relatives and friends ceased to visit the tiny home. Ikavi's parents punished him for speaking their thoughts aloud; later, to gain privacy, they simply sent him away, or else filled their heads with mindless chants, songs, or prayers when he was near. Ikavi frowned when they did this, which unnerved them.

Other children found Ikavi's mind-reading annoying. They threw stones at him until he ran back to his home or hid. Ikavi usually played by himself in the hot, dusty streets of his neighborhood: a packed maze of low, baked-mud homes, filled with the cries of children and the shouts of adults. He stole food to survive, like every other tarok child, but his style of theft grew from his mind-reading abilities. As he became better at understanding the thoughts of those around him, he simply picked up things-a piece of fruit, a silver coin, a top, a folding knife-when no one was paying attention. He learned carpentry by reading his father's thoughts, and he helped his sire carve toys and idols or repair broken furniture on the dusty steps of their home.

Then on a hot summer afternoon a tanned, drunken soldier, one of the sharp-nosed conquerors called the Ffolk, staggered down Ikavi's home street after taking a wrong turn on the way back to his barracks. The poverty-stricken Mar fled before him, fearing the soldier would cut them down or otherwise abuse them. He could do this with impunity. No Mar had the rights of a Ffolk.

Ikavi's father was away at the market selling items they had carved the previous day. Ikavi himself sat on the steps of his home, a folding knife and a wooden figurine in his dirty hands. The soldier saw him, pointed, and shouted an order. Out of habit, Ikavi peered into the man's mind, intrigued by unfamiliar words and images. The man spoke and thought in the harsh consonants of the invaders' Thorass, not the liquid Mar an tongue Ikavi knew.

Perhaps the soldier sensed this psychic intrusion and resented it, or perhaps Ikavi did not obey his orders quickly enough. The man drew his sword and lunged at the child. Ikavi's mother saw and rushed between them to block the blow. The angry soldier shoved the shrieking woman aside and turned to the disrespectful boy.

But the boy was already upon him, enraged that a soldier would lay hands on his mother. With the speed of a leopard, Ikavi stabbed the soldier in the heart before the drunken man could dodge the blow.

Ikavi, no one's fool, would have gotten away if the dying soldier's comrades had not appeared just at that moment, looking for their inebriated companion. With little trouble, they chased and caught the Mar boy.

One soldier had an axe. In those days, it was the practice to immediately execute tarok troublemakers of any age without trial. The enraged soldiers forced Ikavi against the steps of his own home and bent down his head. His family looked on from a distance and screamed.

"Stop."

The word, spoken in Thorass, came out of thin air. Startled, the soldier lifting the axe drew back. The others looked up from their struggle to hold Ikavi down, searching the street for the speaker.

"Bring the boy alive to the palace, now," continued the voice. It was neither soft nor-loud. It held neither emotion nor humanity. It reached into every hidden place up and down the street. The soldiers froze like frightened rabbits. They knew the voice well. The man with the axe dropped the weapon and hid his hands.

Wrestling the youth to his feet, three soldiers finally forced Ikavi to go with them, arms pinned behind his back. The last two soldiers picked up the axe and the body and sword of their comrade, then marched off to the palace behind the others.

Ikavi's hysterical family bewailed their loss. They knew Ikavi would die at the hands of the hated Ffolk. They mouthed empty words of revenge and fell asleep in their tears and sorrow.

Yet on the following morning there he was, right at the door of their home, not only alive but wearing the silk clothing of a Ffolk noble child. He had with him a retinue of palace guards and a nervous Ffolk healer who cured his mother's bruises. Ikavi said little, only that the mage-king himself had ordered that he stay at the palace from now on. His family would not be punished. His mother hugged him briefly, but let him go. Everyone else in his family was too stunned to react.

Ikavi went away. In the evenings he could be seen standing in the high windows of the palace's lone tower, looking down at the countless poor dwellings beyond the city walls. He had been saved by the mage-king of Doegan, Aetheric III, the unseen master of Doegan's great bloodforge- but saved for what? No one knew at first. The haughty Ffolk of the palace hated the child's presence, especially as he'd slain a Ffolk soldier, but they dared not challenge the mage-king's decree.

After his arrival at the palace, Ikavi was regularly brought into the mage-king's meeting halls. It soon became clear that he was being trained for some purpose. The Ffolk soon feared little Ikavi almost as much as they feared their mage-king, for the boy's telepathic ability was combined with a great knowledge of the kingdom and its people, and many secrets beyond. Military officers and priests were ordered to teach him all they knew. Ikavi was given political and military powers, which were gradually increased and sharpened.

In time, Ikavi Garkim was acknowledged to be the mage-king's personal agent in Doegan. He was loyal and patriotic, educated and well-spoken, determined and ruthless. At last the mage-king sent his voice to the Chamber of Councilors and announced that Lord Ikavi Garkim was one of them. Doegan, said the mage-king, was infested with unseen forces that would bring it low unless they were stopped. Only Lord Garkim-a small, brown, flat-nosed outsider in a sea of white, sharp-nosed faces-could detect those unseen forces, and he had been given almost unlimited authority to root out such evil wherever he found it.

The other lords took to Ikavi as they would to a serpent in their beds, but they, too, knew a bit about the unseen forces arrayed against Doegan, and they felt their lives were better with the serpent at their sides than not. Left with no other choice, they smiled in his presence.

Ikavi Garkim had been nobody and was now the mage-king's right hand. But whether he was better off than before was a question not even Ikavi could answer.

Lord Ikavi Garkim, Councilor of Internal Investigations, returned to his old neighborhood an hour before dawn, twenty-six years after he had left. Twenty hand-picked soldiers were at his back and a hacking machete was in his right hand. No one noticed him or his soldiers as they walked down the deserted street in the half-light. They were invisible, covered by magic so that even a wizard would be hard pressed to find them, their boots wrapped in cloth to muffle their steps. The sky glowed pink in the east, the sun still low behind the distant mountains. The wind at their backs was cool, a breeze blowing from the shores of the Great Sea. A sparrow chirped from a rooftop.

Lord Garkim recognized the doorway where he had once sat and carved wooden toys at his father's side. He had steeled himself for this moment, but it still hurt. His fingers tightened on the thick leather grip of his machete.

Prepare yourselves, he ordered, sending his thoughts behind him to his soldiers. He sensed their excitement and fear. He took a breath, unaware that he was walking faster, then leaned forward into a dead run for the open doorway. Now! he signaled.

He went through the doorway with his left arm up, covering his face. The edge of the doorway suddenly blazed with red glyphs as he went through. Trap A roar of flame burned his skin from all sides. The pain, even muffled by his protective magic, was terrific. Instinctively he shut his eyes, saving them from being scorched along with his clothing and hair. He ran into someone and had the presence of mind to shove hard with his left hand, then hack down with his right. The razor-sharp machete slashed through flesh and bone. Stumbling over a carpet, Garkim and his screaming victim fell to the floor.

Garkim shoved himself up, keeping his eyes shut to boost his awareness of the thoughts around him. He could hardly have seen anything in the unlit house anyway. He hacked a second time at the struggling figure beneath him, then sensed more people around him and lashed out at the closest one. They were ragged figures who moments before had been eating their morning meal. Garkim sensed their alarm, read their sudden fears, knew their plans to escape.

And smelled their meal. His nose was filled with the stomach-churning odor. He nearly vomited then, but redoubled his wild attacks and fought down his nausea. Blows landed on his arms, whether from fists or clubs he couldn't tell. He got up to strike at a man trying to get behind him. Someone else, a woman, grabbed one of his legs and clumsily tried to force him down. The air stank of fresh blood and burnt meat. Garkim gripped his machete with both hands and fought like a crazed man, the screams and curses of those whom he wounded ringing through the cramped room.

As Garkim killed the ragged people, he read their minds. Accursed names and unspeakable deeds blew by him in a typhoon wind. This one had cut the throat of a girl who knew his secret. That one, who spied on soldiers, was going to run to a house across the street where he would hide in a cellar. The woman biting into his left thigh had sacrificed her baby to join this group. Garkim knocked her away, then killed her with a blow to the head.

No one was left standing near him. He opened his eyes. The last ragged one alive was running for the doorway, but suddenly stopped and ran back toward him. The man must have seen what had happened to the others who had fled into the street. Garkim read his mind. It was the man Garkim wanted most.

Garkim threw his machete hard at the man's legs. The man cried out and stumbled when the blade hit. He crashed into a low table and fell, knocking several baskets down over him. Garkim was on him in an instant. His fingers caught the man's filthy hair and pulled his head back as far as it would go without breaking his neck.

"Your master!" Garkim shouted in Maran, one knee planted in the man's back. "Name your master!"

But there was no master in the man's thoughts. He had never seen his master, the high priest of the Fallen Temple. His dreams had told him what to do, only his dreams. The injured man's thoughts spilled out in a flood. Garkim read flickering images, listened to scattered words, and found nothing more of interest. For three decades he had studied the worst secrets imaginable and had seen horrors to fill ten lifetimes. The horrors present in this mind were no different.

Garkim picked up his machete and, with one movement, cut his prisoner's throat.

The victim's struggles quickly ceased. Garkim let go of the man's head and sat back on the floor, his right hand splashed with dripping warmth. All his energy had left him. His breath came in gasps. He tried to stand up, but nausea got to him and he fell, vomiting. His head was pounding. A sergeant helped him outside. Garkim was sick and sat, his head buried in his arms. He did not see the blanket-draped things from the one-room house that the rest of his soldiers dragged out into the street. The troops laid the blood-soaked bundles before the astonished eyes of the neighborhood tarok, who hung back from the stony-faced soldiers and what they brought into the morning light. Garkim merely sat in the street beside the wall of his childhood home, trembling as from a fever.

"My lord," said the sergeant later. "All is ready."

Garkim coughed, then slowly got to his feet. It was already dawn. His soldiers had finished cleaning out the house. A large pile of blanket-covered debris and a row of limp, ragged bodies occupied the center of the street.

Lord Garkim looked down at his uniform. He was as filthy and bloody as the bodies in the street. It did not matter. Nothing like that mattered to him most days now.

He nodded to the sergeant, who stepped back and faced the frightened crowd. "Citizens of the Imperial Reaches of Doegan!" the sergeant shouted in Maran. "Listen to the words of Lord Garkim!" He said "DOH kun" as some of the Mar did, instead of "DOH eh gen" with a hard g, as did the Ffolk. He then turned and nodded to Garkim, who was ready.

"These people you see dead before you were your neighbors!" Garkim cried in Maran, both arms raised the way Mar tribal elders did at clan meetings. "Look at them! Look at their faces! They lived among you, spoke with you, shared food with you! Now look at them! You ask yourself, why did we do this? Why did we kill them?"

He swiftly strode over to one of the blankets covering things pulled from the one-room house. He seized a corner and whipped the blanket back. He knew what lay beneath it. "See this! Look at what they ate this morning, as they prayed to the monsters that lead their Fallen Temple!"

Women and children looked down and shrieked; some fainted or ran. Grown men choked and drew back, swallowing. Hundreds of dark eyes rimmed with white stared down at the half-eaten meal that lay in the dust of the street. The soldiers glanced at it, then turned away with grim faces. They already knew who it had been.

Garkim flipped the blanket back down. Hundreds of wide eyes looked up at him. "You know me!" he shouted, his voice carrying easily over the crowd. "You remember that I was a boy here! I am one of you! I tell you that this"-his hand swept down to the blanket and the thing it covered on the street-"this is the work of evil, the work of monsters, not the work of my people! It is not your work! You must fight with me against the wickedness of the Fallen Temple! We must throw it down! If you go this way, you will lose your soul! You will not be Mar, nor even human! Be on guard against this evil, and help me destroy it!"

He felt exhaustion settle over him with chains of iron. His headache, ever present in the depths of his consciousness, grew in intensity. He wiped his face with his arm and noticed that his skin stung as if he were sunburned. He'd forgotten already about the fire runes. He waved to the sergeant, who pulled a small bottle from a pouch on his belt, unsealed the stopper, and walked down the row of ragged dead, emptying the contents of the bottle on them. Smoke billowed out where the liquid touched the bodies. Moments later, the dead burst into flames that consumed rags, hair, blood, and flesh alike. The soldiers and tarok stepped back from the pyre as oily black-smoke rose over the street and into the dawn's bright light, carrying its stench across the awakening city and all within it.

Lord Garkim turned to leave. He stepped on a bit of debris brought out by his soldiers from the den of death. He looked down, then bent to pick it up.

It was the head of a broken hammer.

Garkim nodded and took it with him.

Lord Garkim was bathed and dressed in time to attend the regular midmorning councilors' meeting at the ministry building, adjacent to the palace. Word of his morning activities had preceded him. The other councilors were eager for any news he bore.

"You say that you and your men entered the house-" said the gray-bearded Lord Erling, Thorass as precise as ever.

"I went in alone," Lord Garkim corrected. "My men stayed outside to catch those who fled and to locate other escape routes, of which there were two. They later apprehended a man living across the street, another cultist who hid fugitives in his cellar."

"Did you use that improved form of invisibility on yourself and your men during your approach, the spell I recommended?" Lady Hetharn leaned forward, eyes bright with interest. A rivulet of sweat trickled from the corner of her brightly painted lips and coursed down over the first of her chins.

"Let Lord Garkim finish his story," said the Council General with a sigh. "We can save technical questions for a bit."

Lord Garkim cleared his throat. "As I entered, I accidentally triggered the trap-nines on the doorframe, which admitted only other cultists. None of the group were wizards, so they somehow have access to such magic. The protective devices I had on loan from the armory shielded me from the flames, for the most part. Thereafter I was able to drive out some of the cultists and disable the others. The bodies were burned to prevent reanimation. We used a bottle of liko agnar, the liquid fire that Lady Hetharn's laboratory kindly provided for our department." He nodded to the lady, who smiled back with unconcealed pride.

"Disable?" Lord Erling said, confused. "You disabled them? I had thought you said you… well, that you-"

"I killed them, yes," said Lord Garkim readily. "However, because these cultists often animate their dead, it is as if killing them does not really kill them. I sometimes think I am merely disabling them until we can burn the bodies and truly destroy them. Then, and only then, are they dead and gone."

The short silence was broken by a subdued Lady Hetharn. "I am glad that your family was moved into different quarters last year, so that they were not there when… when those of the Fallen Temple-"

"Yes, and I share your relief, believe me," Garkim said with feeling. "I am sorry, however, that we could not save our Captain Taergen from the fate visited upon him after he was kidnapped.

My men and I will see to his proper burial tomorrow with full honors in the Field of Heroes. You are all, of course, invited to attend."

The other lords at the table nodded assent. Some swallowed and looked ill. Others stared in tight-lipped silence at the head of the broken hammer on the tabletop before Lord Garkim. All tried to imagine what sort of people would chop up a man and eat him for their morning meal.

Another sigh escaped from the Council General. "Let us move along," he said quickly. "We have eight dead cultists, one in custody, and no leaders or clues to their plots. Lady Hetharn advises me that we cannot connect any of them to the killing of the soldier and mail-rider outside Eldrinpar's walls the other day-yes, Lady Hetharn?"

"That was most likely the work of aerial monsters." Lady Hetharn spoke quickly and knowl-edgeably, back in her element. "There were no tracks beyond the immediate area, and the prints and claw marks we found suggest that giant eagles or griffons were the cause. They must have been attracted by the scent of the horses. We still need to perform certain divinations to-"

"Lord Garkim." The voice out of thin air killed all conversation on the spot.

"Yes, Your Majesty," said Lord Garkim, sitting back in his chair. He forced himself to relax, or at least to appear so.

"Go into the Vault of the Stone Arch, and prepare to greet those who arrive there. Bring them to the palace and ensure their comfort."

"Yes, Your Majesty," said Lord Garkim crisply. After a pause to make sure there were no other commands, he pushed back his chair and got to his feet. "My ladies and lords," he said to the others, bowing swiftly, then left the Chamber of Councilors, striding down the corridor for the stairs.

He shrugged as he went. The gods only knew who he was supposed to meet at the vault. The mage-king never explained himself, and it was useless to try to read his mind; his thoughts could not be read by anyone. No doubt this was a byproduct of his long use of the bloodforge. Lord Garkim frowned as he descended the steps to the main hall of the ministry building. The people at the vault were doubtless just another "official complaints" delegation from the Free Cities or Edenvale. But why did he have to greet them? Garkim reflected. What was it that the emperor had actually said about this trip? Go into the Vault of the Stone Arch, and Garkim stumbled on the stairs, nearly falling in his shock. He saw the truth: Go into the vault, the mage-king had said! No visitor could get into that building without proper authorization, which meant the visitors were… they had to be…

Near panic, Lord Garkim ran down the remaining steps, then raced for the great hall's doors leading out to the bright morning street. The visitors were coming through the Stone Arch. The gate to Undermountain was opening!

Garkim ran outside, shouting for the startled grooms by the royal stables next to the ministry. A saddled horse was brought for him in just half a minute, though Garkim cursed every second of the delay. He snatched the reins, vaulted into the saddle, and with a shout was off at a gallop. Pedestrians scattered from his path as he bolted through the crowd, urging his mount toward his destination.

The gate in the Stone Arch had not been activated in decades. The visitors were coming from that buried horror of horrors, Undermountain, far to the northwest. Doegan had known little contact with the old lands of the north, but the howling depths of Undermountain, the cavern of horrors, were legendary everywhere.

Still, the mage-king had asked Lord Garkim to greet the visitors and ensure their comfort, which implied they would be friendly. As he rode for the vault, Lord Garkim sincerely hoped this was the case. Anyone coming from Undermountain would be a formidable opponent. To let such a being roam the city freely would be worse than allowing a thousand serpents into one's bed.