As I had anticipated, my nephew's head was his main problem after the race. So we spent three days at the bend of the river, letting him recover. I spoke with him several times, trying to get him to accept the defeat, without admitting to the same mistake myself. It was not working. Norbanus was a bundle of nerves, and yet had his sense of humor in grim evidence during those days. I tried not to remember the one bet I had hoped to collect, but now had to forfeit. At last, I went to the packs, and pulled out the bag of tea, pouch of henbane, and my jar of honey, and made my way to his tent.
He guided me in, and had me sit, while I handed over some of the fruits of my shopping in town. As he drank his tea plain, and never smoked, I had no clue what he intended to do with the spoils of my last bet. He sat, and waited patiently for my confession.
“Okay, it was a bad idea. But it went really well until he sat up.” I admitted in a chastened tone.
Norbanus laughed a short while, then dropped his other shoe. “Your father will disown you, Pilvus bites. All of Eurus‘ offspring do. Drinius gulled you.” And with that great news, I left him to his well deserved laughter, and sought out, with Ringelius' guidance, my nephew. He was sitting out amid the rocks, staring, as I had after my loss, at the gates. Sulking, as he was wont to do.
I told Ringelius to return to camp, and took a seat carefully amid the rocks. My kin had checked for blood cobras as I approached, but there were other deadly and painful creatures in this desert as well, scorpions, spiders with deadly bites, and ants whose bites were like the burn of hot iron to the likes of us. I said nothing, just contemplating my own feelings on the race. Finally, to break the ice, I began.
“The gates were a terrible idea. I never should have thought of them.”
Furius started at the words. I had never told him of my days in Pelori, and for me to speak of them, even if not talking of the Paths, surprised him. “Your idea? You thought of having those bars that low?”
I let his question float in the air around us for a bit. This was not really all that easy for me either. “Yes,” I spoke, as time enough to settle his aura down had passed. “I had noticed that many races that were close were decided when one rider let up to celebrate before the line. I figured that the crossbars, and the cage feel would ensure riders staying in the race to the end, rather than just trying to slow down as they crossed the line.”
“Norbanus did not tell me that you designed this...contraption.” He spat that last word. I was amazed he had yet to cuss about it to me.
“Yes, I came up with the idea, some engineer built it for me, and refined the idea, like the guide in fences and corrals. Did Norbanus tell you anything about my racing days?” I had to ask, to know if this was a setup, to make me start behaving like a man crippled by his disability again.
My nephew turned away, a thing I could tell by the change in how well his voice came to me “Just that the one who designed it..” His voice trailed off
I finished the thought for him. “Fell victim to it. Its first victim, in fact. And that is why the various peoples in Pelori respect the line of Eurus over my onageri. Not that they are wrong to, but due to the foolishness of the one who breeds them.” I let it set a bit, then stood. “The headache will go away. The shame will too, if you don’t put it on an altar and worship it.” I started to tediously work my way out of the boulders, only to find Furius at my side, guiding my steps.
“So, its a family tradition then?” He said. I sputtered a moment, as he laughed. Then I joined him, in laughing, and leaving a foolish idea behind. He would race again, I was sure. And he would be wiser for this loss. We walked slowly back to the stockade, speaking in soft words of the races we had run, and our mounts. At last, the boy was becoming a man. I found myself growing a bit too. As my nephew was calling it a family tradition, I guessed my urges to burn the gates to the ground would have to be set aside.
Norbanus broke camp that afternoon, and we started to the river, still several stade to the south. As we got closer, forests of cactus pressed in around the road, which started down a steep slope of loose sands and gravels. This was a place even the engineers of the old days had not been able to create a road. The lower we went, the more things changed, as memory of this place came back to me. It would become more shady, moister, and most importantly, vegetation would be everywhere.
By mid afternoon, we were out of the desert, and headed down the broad valley of the Seranarum River, as it wound out of the Grey Desert, to empty into the Bay of Gems. It was now beyond the start of summer. There was little time left if I was to take the same route out. The spring snows had started early in the Last Mountains. Early and heavy, as the bands of moisture that marked the lifting airs of the storm band that circled the world rose north with summer’s warmth, following the sun as it climbed the sky. I may not be able to see those great cloud shrouded mountains anymore, but the sheer weight of them spoke to my mind.
Snow and rain would hound us unmercifully, from the sounds of my companions. Drinius had sent a rider with us, one I trusted only as far as he had recommended trusting, but still it was just the thirty we had left. The fourteen caligarium that we had not thinned out at Pelori for some lack of cause or proof of loyalty, nine more taken from the legion there, about whom we had only the word of the commander of that body which was passing through towards the east from home on a normal rotation of troops. That and the opinions of the Optio, my companions, Drinius agent and I.
The river was running wide, deep and swift, but would shallow out at the wide band of rocks and gravels near its bend back to the west. The Seranarum was a vital river, it and the Greyflow were the southern margin of the desert, and ran along the foothills at the base of these mighty ramparts. The next part of the journey would be dangerous, but less so than what would come later. The valley of that river is expansive, miles wider than most cuts through a range as mighty as the Last Mountains Made by the Gods. It flowed west along nearly half the chains length, then cut south for many leagues, as the homani measure distances, before turning west to find the fingers of the Bay of Gems.
It was a wilderness now, but once had been a bustling route of trade and rich farmlands, in the days well before my time, when the Rabahavi had been a province of the Old North Empire of the homani, and the Kordel still a land mostly held by my folk. This valley held many ruins, now used by bandits as hiding places, numerous lost mines of gems and metals in the hills ringing it, and many more such up in the mountains, most now the lairs of drakonis and other beasts who liked high places to live.
As the others stared at those mighty heights, I observed them, trying to see more details in their auras, to give us some clues as to whom we could trust, and whom we could not. The female who spied on me so often still rankled my nerves. Something about her aura disturbed me, though I could not pick out the details enough. She maintained a goodly distance from me this leg, but always seemed to know where I was at all times. Norbanus had his own doubts about her, even saying he mistrusted the name she gave, but had not the skill of reading folk to pick out any lies. In this day and age, leaving behind your gens to separate oneself from kin who were less than trustworthy was a common thing. Drinius himself had postulated that he might renounce his gens, just to get clear of the coming civil war fever.
For many of those with us, this was their first sight of these mountains up close, and the peaks, some of which towered beyond the level which it was easy to breath, were daunting. Just by being, they challenged some to try reaching their tops, only to take every life that tried. Among my folk, the climbing of mountains is a sport, and it seemed we had a few enthusiasts of that kind with us, by the words that reached me from a cluster of caligarium before me. Those rocky crags with their snowy mantles did grab the imagination, as I remembered from working in their shadows, so long ago. And that was at their lower, eastern terminus.
This was the rampart of the world, the true reason for the Grey Desert being dry, as their spine and ribs, nearly as tall as the central heights, wrung out all the moisture from the sea beyond them. On the other side were places beyond the dreams of we who dwelt in the arid desert and steppes of the Upper Lands. There were vast tangles of plants and broad green savannahs. They were well watered, and the streams only ran dry after decades of drought, not mere weeks.
In the mountains though, blizzards raged all year, and even the Karleekie feared to mine more than the fringes of these spires. Only on the drier, northern side when they did. South was deadly, including the land holding the last ancestors of the drakonis. To hear them see the sun’s setting rays on those peaks, turning the whites and grays to starkly contrasting glowing oranges and golds against violet and black granites, was something that made me miss my eyes more than before.
We camped that night at the West Bend, the one where the river turned to carve its passage between the thin line of the last stretches of the Angry Red Mountains and the shattered arms of the Northern Reach, a rugged and still high series of parallel ridges that just suddenly died into foothills, then the broken lines of rocky areas that scarred the gorge‘s floor before fading into the ridges of foothills before the coastal range. Norbanus had Didius and Cethegor guarding me in alternation, with Ringelius and Furius working with them both on some rotation. At night, Furius would pretend to sleep in the new tent Drinius had found us. One of the great round ones I preferred. Didius and Cethegor were staying in it as well, but that was more due to the fact that it takes up more space in the packs on the animals than the security arrangements. It was also much warmer, something those older members of the group appreciated.
Norbanus was being extra cautious this encampment. He had guards out on the perimeter, and Ringelius and Cethegor standing watch outside my tent. Given what we had been through so far, to gain that trust of the optio and the Triari as a sign of this one's integrity.
The road was clear for a change. The only signs of bandits we encountered in the valley were the burnt remains of wagons and some animal carcasses rotting in the hot sun, more often covered by the scavenger birds of this land. We made good time on the westward run, until we reached the large bowl of savannahs where the river turned south, between the round mass of the Ruby Mountains to our west, and the ramparts of the Last, still on the left side as we headed south.
This stretch of road was well used, as it was joined by the land route from the Lorsan Coastal states to the north. We moved swiftly along it, the onageri able to set a quick pace, following that mighty river south, deeper into its broad valley. The worst events we had were the crossings of the river, and a tributary from the east later. That was mostly due to my being blind. I found those holes in the fords, and took a swim. Twice.
Leave it, please. I would prefer not to say anymore about that. It was embarrassing.
***
We spent ten days from that last “bath”, as Ringelius had teased me for taking, winding westward along the narrow line of hills that lined the southern coast of the Glacier Bay, the cold arms of the Bay of Gems that spread east and west against the slowly lowering Last Mountains. Then we found the road to the pass, and Norbanus called a five day halt. We all needed rest, to repair gear, and wash our clothing. Unlike all our previous camps, this one was disorderly. All due to the spread of our gear, not the lack of discipline among the caligarium.
After that respite, we turned south and began to move towards those still intimidating heights to our south. We walked beside the onageri on the steepest climbs, and rode when we could. Rain fell several times in those days, and the last one was ugly, as we got our first snow, of the soft kind that is like a pile of the seed parachutes released by the soft gossypina trees, deep and yet little moisture in it. The northern edge of these mountains are cold, the lower parts shadowed from the sun by the spires and ridges of sharp rocky cliffs above, and never really warming. But the scent of pines was thick in the air, a difference from my last transits of this pass. I guess years passing would allow the trees destroyed in fires set by the Queen of Flames to return.
Halfway up the passes we encountered the worst thing so far. As we rounded a bend I felt a familiar illness strike me. Death is something that we who see auras can feel, for years after it occurs, especially violent and horrid deaths. We are also sensitive to the bindings of souls and animae to their bones, to prevent a being from moving on to the afterlife. And as we came to that turning of the canyon we climbed up to the pass in, my senses screamed out at both foul things. Someone had been killed here, recently. It had been done with necromancy, the dark arts that ate or bound the anima, animating flesh that was dead and rotting, rather than moving on to the next life.
Everyone was on edge, not just me. When the others caught sight of what was there, they became enraged, even the ones I suspected of being agents of the Decemviri. Furius was spitting his rage, while most were silent. Ringelius alone had the calmness to tell me what was before us.
“Consorbrinus, there are many skeletons, impaled. Of our kindred who were bound by dark magics. Its ugly. Very ugly.” His voice was choked in sorrow and anger both. Sorrow for the deaths, and anger at what had been done.
It is said that once upon a time, all my folk saw as I do now, and that was what had made our magics so great in the eldest of days. Our magics then had been subtle things, less flashy, more craftsman-like in their workings. We had striven in those days to make our magics not only to be lasting, but done so few but the most sensitive to the flows of magic could detect them and break them.
But this was not such a thing. The spells were well crafted, but blatantly so. I could see the black and gray bands of evil that fettered the spirits to their remains, woven as if they were the tendons of a new being onto the skeletons that still glowed with the echoes of life now gone from them. And the poles they were impaled upon radiated the evil done unto these poor folks. Evil so foul it had clung to the earth around them. Evil that made what was left of their souls, as the hung upon the bones that had been their flesh, relive their agonies of death.
I wanted to vomit, my stomach could not take what was washing over me. My guts knotted, as I felt the leaking pieces of the pain they had suffered. Pain that still radiated from the remains. As did images of the tortures they had suffered. It is disconcerting, to see through the eyes of the dead. It made me slide off Gerrae, shaking in fear and disgust.
Norbanus was no longer silent. I heard his cursing, and had a pretty good idea of what had happened here now. Furius was sobbing. despite his many forays with me outside the borders of our land, he had never experienced the aftermath of a necromancer’s brutality. I was sure, beyond a doubt, that he had recognized some bits of the victims to be so moved.
It was not just a display of callousness. There was a warning in it, to me. I recognized the sender’s school, if not his or her signature. Not the thick, hasty and slipshod flows of power many followers of the dark arts used. No, this was something fouler and more delicate. As I said, it bore the hallmark of old foes. The strands of the spells bindings were soft grey cobwebs, with only the bulky black bindings upon the joints, to animate them upon the trigger this rogue mage had set. Cobwebs, spidery script within the flows, and impalement. Our foul cousins were behind this, some member of the underworld elves from the distant northeast.
One who had some knowledge of me, or worked for one who did. Perhaps he had come to claim the spirits as payment for some practitioner of the dark arts I had slain or sent to the gallows in my days in the ranks of the Custodi. I cared not at that moment. I forced myself to push aside the waves of death, agony and evil, that echoed even from the trees and rocks around us, gazing with intent upon this scene of foulness.
I was both glad and disgusted that I had. Under those tainted and tortured animae, there lay a horrid web of energy on the ground. A web that screamed trap to my mind, a trap my companions were about to step blithely upon to undo what they thought was just a display of hatred for our race.
“Norbanus, stop. All of you, go no closer. Its a necromancer’s trap!” But my weak voice was neither loud enough or fast enough. Nor would Furius have stopped anyway. He was outraged, and looking for his cousin. As I would have looked for any of mine in a similar situation at his age. His foot trod onto the web of power, not able to sense what I had, triggering the disgusting trap.
The skeletons of our kinsmen, as one, moved. I knew what the motions were, only because I had seen it once when I had eyes. Every detail of that meeting had stuck in my brain. I heard the motions of dry bones rasping together, that eerie sound that made one’s spine shiver in fear of death, or in this case, undeath. Then came the rattle of the wooden spikes they were impaled upon being drawn from the ground and unwoven from their skeletal cages. I could feel the ground web spreading, desperately trying to remember how to set undead to rest, as I had been taught at the temples to do.
Norbanus began to bark commands, as the caligarium spread out before us to make a wall between me and the dead that now walked. I held my staff before me, focusing as I softly began to sing the songs of unbinding. I was hoping this orison that had long echoed in my mind, due to brooding on being blind and relegated to the temples as being imprisoned, would work. I chanted its rhythms and cadences as best I could remember, knowing I was not perfect, but in the situation, I prayed the gods were merciful.
The spells shivered, but did not weaken. That made me notice the strands radiating away from the gruesome display, to places I was sure more corpses had been stored, also with the souls and spirits of their former lives bound onto them just as foully. I watched that web, noting the strands that anchored it to similar webs around us, every single strand of those tainted power flows pulsed slowly. That dry, sick rattle came from all around us, as more bodies were activated, following the strands to fresh prey.
I hate the undead, and those who create them. It is anathema in our faith to do so, among our kind. To torture a soul so, to make it suffer even after death, just for the joy the suffering gives you, it is truly the darkest of evils. Whoever did this was irritating me. Ringelius alone retained his calm, but at the rattle of bones from a source behind us, we discovered the size of the noose. He turned, back against mine to guard me. I could sense at least six groups this trap was linked to. Even if they were less numerous than the band we faced, we would be hard pressed to get by.
Again, I tried the prayer of banishment, to send the souls and spirits away. But who ever had cast these spells had more power to waste than I could counter alone. I could hear the sounds of battle all around me. Furius was trying not to damage the remains of what must assuredly be friends and, I knew in my own despair, family. Concentrating further, trying now to banish the mind of the foul sorcerer who had cast these incantementum, was tiring me. This time I actually could feel something in the Aether and Astral Realms that pushed back.
Yes, of course, I thought, its no fun unless you see the destruction spread. It would not surprise me to find he made my kindred's remains his channels when he added crafted this foulness.
The pass echoed with Ringelius' warcry, mixed with the sounds of bones being broken. Broken, but held together by the dark energies that surely would suck at her life each time she struck them. And the lives of everyone else too. I thought hard, rewarded with an idea this time. The only reason he had been able to bind my folks spirits is he had acted before they could be sung on to their next life. I wondered if they could be freed by the Nenia.
The grim battle flowed and ebbed, but none of the weapons here could break the bonds on undead. With every finger of sand that fell from one bell of glass to the other, more of the bones cursed to walk after death arrived. And the smaller the circle around me was becoming. We were losing, unless we could do something to break the spell. If we died here, we would be added as yet another cluster of undead linked to the spell to gather more power for this necromancer to feed off of.
At that moment I heard the cry of one of the grim lupus that haunted these hills. The lupus were the beasts our legends said were the protectors of our people in the past. Even though they hunted us in these days, to thin our folk of evil ones.
For a moment, the bones stopped moving, which gave me a chance. We had none of the homani with us, so I could try my one last hope. I started not with the prayer of dismissal I had tried earlier, but now gave voice to an old prayer, the call to mercy and forgiveness. The prayer to Befana, to ask for her mercy on these poor trapped beings, to grant us the power to free their animae, and let them find rest or rebirth.
The Nenia is old, but still used by many gens as the opening of the Nenia, the songs we sing to help release the dead as we burn their bodies. Many of our caligarium, and we of the plains, were of those gens. Didius raised his voice with me, singing one of the songs of loss and mourning, as the temporary halt of the enemy’s pawns ended. He struck out only to block blows for now, singing mournfully, even as his voice became ragged with exertion.
I waded in, adding my flame weakened voice to the song, trying to make up in the power I poured into it for the volume and smoothness I lacked now. Slowly the others joined in. It was a weird sound we made. None of us tried for the volume or notes we normally would have hit. We could not have achieved such under the stress of having to fight the very corpses and skeletons we sought to release the bound spirits from.
At last after several songs, and discovering that it seemed not to have worked, I pulled the cutler, that knife dedicated to Tushna, just to have the comfort of chablys in my hand again. That was when I noticed something in the bonds, they suddenly had weakened. From where Ringelius stood now away from me, I heard him give a cry of joy, as there was a clatter of bones. I began to mentally kick myself, as the saying goes. In order to repel or release the undead, you must hold the emblem or symbol of the gods you beseech. The cutler, designed to open the bellies of animals to gain access to their entrails for reading, was the symbol of Tushna, the father of the Parcae I served, and source of all prophecy.
I stepped into a sudden gap I felt before me, holding the knife out, blade upright before me, as I moved. I was ashamed to have forgotten such a basic fact, to have made this battle go on, allowing these spirits and souls to be tortured longer than they needed to have been. But the gods appreciated shame, for it makes us humble, and that is the core of humility. I began again the orison of banishment, focusing now on the necromancer’s will that drove the skeletons to serve the enchantments he had woven. I pushed out with my mind, to create a psychic wind to free the bones of the bonds they were held together by.
It started slowly, just a few more clatters of bones collapsing into inanimate heaps, as they should have stayed in the first place. I could sense the animae riding that push I was giving to shed their bonds and escape their torture. I kept repeating the orison, chanting that prayer of release to banish what I could of the foul wizard’s will that had guided these poor victims of his hatred of all that lives. I did not have to wait long for a countering attack, as I felt a powerful cyclone in the Astral Realm, that plane of the mind. I had never truly faced an opponent in this type of combat, but I had no choice. We needed to survive, and the poor souls who had died here deserved rest.
It took but few swift beatings of my heart to find my foe, noting that only his projection was here. It made sense. Necromancers, despite hating life, still cling to it, tenaciously, rarely risking their own precious skin, at least not until they have mastered the arts of the phylactery, that allow one to live on beyond death. This one was no different. He inhabited one of the first sets of bones we had found, one of ours. Ones that had echoes of memories that were all to familiar to me engrained into them. This was my sister’s husband, or his remains, that were being desecrated.
I tried not to let my rage rise up, though I could not detach much of my own will to strangle its rise. I needed all my will to hold against the spinning vortex of the caelestis media, the heavenly medium, that was forming around that part of me that exists not just in this realm, but the one of spirit. I was buffeted, swaying wildly. I knew this by the bodies of my closely packed companions I was bumping into on the realworld. Still I tried to stand against that wind, to avoid having my animae sucked from my flesh to be bound or consumed by this foul mage whose apparition I faced. I kept up the chant, hoping that if I freed enough of the souls and spirits he had bound here, he would have to leave, lest they attack him for revenge.
It was not working. My inner vision could see the flames of those I had freed, all six of them, swirling around us all, but not trying to free others, or even looking for one to attack. It was as if they were disoriented, having no clue what was happening, or that they were dead. It was the wandering of the psychically traumatized, such as one saw after a disaster among the survivors. The stunned meandering that marked them as not all there.
Outside we again heard that howl. The call of the wild patron beast of my gods. I wished that I could smile again, that the scars of my burns had not made my face too scarred for a grin, so I could try to unnerve my foe. My rage fell away, as I spread my feet shoulder width, set my staff before me and brought the cutler to join it, blade still upright, along the staff. I called out again the orison I was chanting, rewarded by more noise from the real world, as I entered the realm of minds, to join serious combat with my opponent.
The transition to the Astral Realms is disorienting to most folks, which is why so many who try to enter it get lost, leaving behind an empty husk that their spirit and mind never return to. As you cross in, there is a moment of sensory overload. For me it was more than that, even. For in the Astral Realm, the orbs that I lost in the physical world still exist in my skull.
I had been to this realm several times, all but one accompanied by some teacher of the mental doni that let one enter it of their own free will. That other time, the last one, I had faced one of my kind who had gone wrong in a battle of wills. I had survived, but not won, but I was still not comfortable at being here. I focused hard suddenly upon accepting myself as I was, not what I once was, or could have been. One of my teachers had always spoken of that being the most crucial thing, to know who you were at the moment you entered that foggy realm of possibilities. He had said those who were lost here were looking not for who they were, but who they wanted to be, when they returned. That had led them away from their true self, and left their flesh to sit empty of guidance until it died from the lack of an inner flame.
My foe had chosen to show me only what he wished, he had crafted his image to be a skeleton with an outsized skull, wreathed in flames and smoke. Those flames were red and a violet so dark as to be nearly black. Those flames were slow burning, measured in their flickers and flows. He was confident, as I was not. To him, this was just a formality, before he tried to eat my mind and anima. A part of the rituals he had developed over his years to make this into a more powerful spell.
If he wanted ceremonies, then I would give him one in return. He had chosen to try and hide his real self from me, but as a flamen, or more specifically, an augur, I had resources he did not. Resources with more power. There was one of the Parcae who could help. Or at least I hoped so, as she was of the Parcae, she could be fickle. I chanted the orison of teaching, the call to have Devera, the Scourge of the Fates, the one who takes the broom of ritual cleansing to floors and high places, and uses it to chastise we mortals. Yet she was also the keeper and teacher of the rites we had. It was her that had come among us, to teach us of the roads to redemption, the orisons, songs and ways to cleanse our bodies and spirits. It was she who came to gather in with her broom the seers, augurs, and prophets to the gods’ will.
Needless to say, I did not have a good, close, personal relationship with this goddess, even though she was one of those I served. I could only hope that Befana could temper the anger she was notorious for, and guide her broom softly around me. As I chanted the call to learn, I felt the presence, so easily attracted here in the Realms between those of reality and the gods’ home. My foe started his own ritual, a twisted perversion of one central to the beliefs of my people’s worship. By that, I knew his gens, and origins, if not his true self.
Aranae, those who had left the land to follow the gods of the spiders, those false weavers of fates, whom my mistresses despised for the ruin to their own tapestries of destiny they had caused. Someone was about to get a rude awakening. I pitied my foe, suddenly. Not much, but a little. He came here looking for a fight. He was going to leave with a broom to his buttocks. I heard that whisking noise, of straw across the stone floors of the temples, that daily sweeping that some member of the order did three times each and every day. Realization struck me, I had gleaned some small piece of information about this foul mage, I knew his sex. I wondered what else would be revealed to me before we left this realm.
The arrogance of the mage made him unaware of his danger, until those giant bound straws rushed out of the mists, and caught him up in their movements, sweeping him away. One thing I knew more than any other, getting knocked out of the psychic realm would make his control over his incantementum weaken, letting the blessings of the gods free the souls he had enslaved.
Before I could depart, there was a woman beside me. Or more accurately a goddess. I started to kneel, and she stopped me. “We have no time for such things, kneel twice as long at your next prayers. No, make that three times as long, and do it in a temple, one properly cleansed. Now, listen, seer, for I have words for you. I have cleaned this mess only because the ones we sent to do it were to slow in acting. You will get no help from my sisters, for they have been won over by the false blandishments of those fools of the pure bloods. Know this. I cannot act until my own father allows me to. But when I do, I will cleanse the temples, the forum, all of it. It will be swept away. You may not like all that happens then.” She sighed, as if I had misunderstood her, and she knew it by my visage. “Go and set at ease the animae that this fool had bound, take their last words and warnings, then make them safe from such sacrilege forever. All will be swept clean, remember that.” She touched me with the handle of her broom, and I was back in the fight.
Normally there is a transition back to reality. Gods and goddesses can send one back more swiftly, if they choose. I got that kind of transition. I went from seeing the world, with eyes that had not been ruined, back to blindness. It was the closest I have come to irrational fear since we had set out. I nearly panicked, until I felt the Optio’s hand on my shoulder.
“Billenius. It is over, all but one collapsed. That one stands in the road still, but it seems to be waiting.” He waited a moment, the spoke very softly. “By its accoutrements, it is the body of the ambassador.”
In other words, this whole trap was here for a reason, and I was the target. I sighed. “Have everyone gather the bones, gear, weapons, everything. Build a pyre. See if you can find soulwood.” My instructions were terse. At first I feared Norbanus would argue. His hand tightened on my shoulder, then released before he walked away.
I went to the last skeleton, but what Isaid I keep to myself. It was, and still is, a family matter. I made the promises one makes normally to those dying. I would send word to our gens, ensure the safety of his son, Rufinio, and do the mission he had regarding a treaty of peace between Rahab and our land. One that included trade conditions that the Decuria would have killed him for. Or perhaps, as I still knew not the truth here, they had.
As we bore the torches to the pyres, a rider from Drinius' post service came north down the pass. We had needed five fires, even though the remains were skeletal, for as we spread out to find any other traps sites, the count of dead had risen. At least a double hundred skulls we had found. I prayed Drinius would send priests or a traveling vicar of some faith, to ensure I had not missed any who still were locked in the agony of undeath.
The rider, seeing what had come about, dismounted, took torch, and joined us. As the sun set that night, I opened the Nenia, as the only flamen, the priests of my folk, may sing the Cantare ab Animae, the song that opens the singing on of the spirits to their next life. A singing that lasted until we could no longer feel the spirits in the bones, and they had been reduced to ashes and taken up by the winds.
It snowed twice in the next hebdoma, as we crossed the pass. Then we entered the broad dry Rabahavi Plains, which in truth are a savannah. Trees dot those gently sloped plains thinly, save in a few groves planted by men to harvest as wood or for their fruits. We found the old road from the days of the fallen empires. It took only seven days to reach the environs of the city of al-Wadi, then another three to weave among the caravans and farm wagons between there and Rahab. I just hoped we could get my normal spot outside of town to camp at.
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