Death After Death

Chapter 390 - Crossroad Tales

After three months on the road, wandering around southern Brin with Varten, and nearly six months in total since he’d left the Broken Tower, Simon still hadn’t run into any grave supernatural mysteries. His warlock count was still one, and he had yet to find a ghost, witch, or demon worth the name.

A few of the places he’d visited had claimed that the supernatural was at work amongst their flocks or their neighbors. He continued to add to all his other running tallies in his little journal. So far, he’d killed eighteen bandits, twenty-two centaurs, eleven orcs, three dozen beastmen, forty-two goblins, and close to fifty gnolls. He’d also purged eight gnoll burrows and one small goblin den. Those were just a list of the monsters he’d killed in battle.

He’d also adjudicated nearly fifty disagreements and hung almost two dozen criminals. He still only had one innocent man he’d saved and one grimoire he’d confiscated, but he was hoping to up those numbers.

Most importantly, he’d finally gotten Varten to say please and thank you in nearly all of his interactions. Even when they celebrated his eleventh birthday the week before, he didn’t lose his temper when the innkeeper informed him that they had no sweet cakes available. Moments like that made it hard to see the man who would have grown up to mark all his guards and servants with scars as a sign of his power over them.

Really, Varten was downright squeamish at times. When Simon had purged the goblin lair, he’d brought out a greenskin corpse with very little damage and proceeded to give the boy an anatomy lesson to appease his constant pestering for where to stab monsters. He even let the boy try stabbing it a few times to get a feel for the force that was necessary.

Before doing it, Simon had worried that his squire might go into another one of his maniacal frenzies like he still sometimes did during practice, but the result was just the opposite. Not only did he almost lose his lunch, but he didn’t ask Simon for any tips on monster slaying for a good long time after that.

For the first couple of weeks, things had been rough, and defiant outbursts were commonplace, but Varten needed no reminders that he had no home to go to anymore, and after a few months he looked and acted so differently that Simon was tempted to bring him back to Crowvar, just to see if anyone recognized him.

He didn’t, of course, because that would have been cruel. Instead, they moved southward, edging into the desert at times. Though this area was technically part of Brin, the desert nomads he encountered had no more respect or fear for the white cloak than they did for the king in Leipzen. Still, other than one oasis trip here, Simon had little experience in this place, and unless he went far enough west to reach the ruined city where the basilisk dwelled, he was unlikely to run into danger more serious than dehydration.

Strangely enough, it was at one of those oases where he ran into another Whitecloak for the first time in months. Simon wasn’t familiar with Sir Celenger or his young squire Robin, but they were friendly enough, and the only barb that the other knight offered Simon when he introduced himself was, “Ah, the prodigy, so we finally meet.”

He studied Simon’s aura with a faraway gaze on and off throughout the night but offered no comment as to what he saw, one way or the other. Instead, they exchanged stories by a campfire somewhat removed from the other nomads for hours after their charges fell asleep.

Simon told him about the death of the Baron, and how he smuggled out the man’s surviving son after a warlock tried to kill him in his sleep, and Sir Celenger told Simon about his encounter with a Jinn. Both found the other’s tale more interesting than their own. For Simon, dealing with Crowvar had gone from painful to nostalgic to dull over the course of many lives, but the other knight seemed impressed by his choice of a squire.

“The Masters will be pleased by such a find,” Sir Celenger assured him. Even after Simon expressed his doubts, the man disagreed. “No one really knows who will grow up to possess the sight. These are intermittent things, and children are always in flux. Even if they decide he’ll never be a knight, they might use him to control the Barony at a later time. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve used a noble heir to be the power behind the throne.”

Simon didn’t like that answer at all, but he would ponder it later. He refused to let the other Whitecloak get out of telling him a story that involved genies.

“There’s not much to tell,” he said. “I came south because travelers reported an evil place where caravans sheltered from time to time, only to find some of their members had gone missing. Not whole caravans, mind you, just one or two people from each one. Apparently, the place is well known among the locals. They just don’t like to speak of it, so it took time for word to reach us.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“If the place is so evil, then why would anyone visit it at all?” Simon asked, dumfounded.

“The same reason they visit anywhere else in this region,” Sir Celenger answered. “Water and shade.”

Simon grimaced at that. It was true, but it was still awful. Surely there were other oases in the region. Note to self, he decided then and there, adding one more page to the future tome he would eventually construct. Make a map of oases so people don’t have to kill each other over them.

“So what did you find?” Simon asked, refocusing on the conversation.

“Nothing conclusive. There were strange lights that night, but no real cause that I could see, and when we hunted them back to the source, the sands tried to swallow all of us whole. For a moment, both my squire and I were almost sucked beneath the sands,” the other knight sighed. “We came looking for a trickster spirit, and we lost a Whisperer to the sands. I was able to dig myself free and pull Robin out before he suffocated, but poor Elzbin was lost to the depths.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Simon answered truthfully. It annoyed him that the man hadn’t so much as mentioned the poor woman until the end of the tale. She was an afterthought, even though she was the only reason the man had lived. That attitude made him seethe; the Unspoken treated the Whisperers as if they were halfway to witches, and he hated it.

“Don’t be,” Sir Celenger said, raising Simon’s hackles with his callowness. “She died in the service of the Unspoken, and though she lost her life, she ultimately banished the spirit. Thanks to her sacrifice, it will never harm another soul again.”

“But how can you be sure?” Simon demanded loud enough that he had to lower his voice. “It might have just eaten her and lay in wait until you were gone.”

“Even if that were true, and the foul thing managed to elude my gaze, what evil spirit could hope to stand up to one of the silent sisters?” the other white cloak asked, irritated. “They are anathema to magic. No ghost or demon could survive their presence.”

Unless she had a mouth full of sand and couldn’t speak the words of nullification, Simon thought in irritation. He didn’t ask the location of this place, because he knew the knight was too proud to give it to him. Instead, he switched the topic to something lighter, and then in the morning, when they went their separate ways he asked one of the caravans that lingered to water their horses where he could find it.

“The Tithe Pools?” the man answered suspiciously. “You don’t want to go there. Certainly not by yourself. No one will ever find your body.”

“Well, I’ll be going with my squire, but I’m not afraid,” Simon corrected the man. “I aim to purge the evil there.”

The trader eyed the boy where he stood a hundred yards away, grooming Simon’s horse, then said, “Cruel bait, but I suppose it will work as well as any.” Simon wanted to correct the man and explain that Varten wasn’t bait. Before he could, though, the merchant continued. “You head west for three days, and veer north around the black rocks. There’s an oasis not half a day's ride before that. It’s not the one you’re looking for. The Tithe Pools are past that. You’ll see them when you lose the black rocks behind you. Approach them only by the light of the noonday sun.”

“Is that when it’s safe then?” Simon asked, making mental notes of the man’s directions.

“Safest, but not safe,” the trader corrected him. “Near the water is safe enough all the time, but if you wander into the ruins, or even the empty sands when the sun gets low in the sky, you’re taking your life in your hands, and after dark, well, someone isn’t coming back. You can bet as much as you like on that.”

Simon thanked the man for the time, and once he’d rejoined his protege, they started off in that direction. He was in no hurry, though. He wanted a second and third opinion, and made a point of taking the long way, asking traders that he crossed paths with about the place. No one was eager to talk about it, especially not with someone who wasn’t native to the area. However, after Simon mentioned that he planned to purge the place, they spoke freely enough.

To his ears, most of what they said sounded like ghost stories more than witness accounts, and if he hadn’t heard Sir Celenger’s story, he would have been liable to ignore all of them, but the theme was clear enough. Whether someone told him about the ghost caravan or Canrago, or the crying lady, they all ended the same way: people vanished. Usually, one, in some terribly ironic way. Sometimes more if they tried to save the one that went missing.

Each disappearance happened in the same way, though. In the blink of an eye, someone far from the group was sucked beneath the sand. That was the last anyone ever saw of them. A couple of the first caravans to water there dug for their missing members, but found nothing, even after ten feet.

These days, merchant captains were more pragmatic. If they absolutely needed to go that way, they brought along a cheap slave who was old, sick, or dying and then set them free at sunset. Caravans that acted so cruelly could expect to spend the night entirely unmolested.

To Simon, it was barbaric, but more than that, it was a mystery, and he was eager to solve it. He hadn’t had a truly interesting supernatural encounter in a while, and it was hard to believe that this was anything but. First, though, he’d have to make some preparations.