The Legend of Broken

stahla.

“Armor,” Keera says, as if unable to quite believe it. “He wears the armor of Broken. And very fine armor it is …”

“And, therefore, warrants further inspection by us,” Caliphestros answers with a nod, his manner suddenly fretful. “But be careful, Keera — you must touch neither the body, nor any of the other carnage, here, no matter how great your pity and sympathy. It is enough that we even walk through this scene — for the very air may be full of pestilence, for all we know or can tell …” Glancing at the water that flows through the stone channel beneath them, which is some eight feet across and again as deep, Caliphestros judges, “Stasi can leap to the other side, with my scant weight on her back. I can then send her for you—”

“There is no need, my lord.” Keera has been searching the surrounding trees, and has found what she desires — a length of thick climbing vine, which hangs from one especially stout limb of a high, spreading oak on the opposite bank. Taking up a long, notched branch that lies among a scattering of dead wood on the rocky surface, she grabs hold of the vine with it, and has swung across the spillway even before Stasi’s broad paws have leapt from the south to touch the northern side. The hardest part of their passage to the ash stand on the far side is, however, yet to come: Keera must exert all her will to keep from looking into the eyes of the now-close collection of dying animals — for there is, in the wide, dark eyes of each surviving thing, not only a terrible, bewildered fear, but a pitiable plea begging relief of any living thing that might pass by. It is not long before Keera must look away altogether, and hurry to keep pace with Stasi and Caliphestros. The panther’s mind is fixed most determinedly on the man suspended from the trees, a man who reeks with the scent of those deadly and despicable men of Broken …

When Keera does reach her comrades, she finds them both deep in contemplation of the scene of ritual mutilation: Stasi’s nose moves from spot to spot upon the ground, able, apparently, to pick up a scent trail. Caliphestros, in the meantime, twists and turns his head as Stasi roots through the undergrowth of the forest floor, keeping his eyes — which have gone from an expression of worry to one of recognition and shock — fixed on the hanging dead man. Deeply creased skin interrupts the victim’s grey and white beard and surrounds the eye sockets (the latter emptied by scavenging birds, some of them, perhaps, the very ravens that are now among the dying that ring the pool), all of which betray a man of advanced years.

“Korsar …” Caliphestros pronounces, lifting a trembling hand to indicate the lifeless half-figure. “But I knew this man …” He stares deep into the famed soldier’s eye sockets as if searching for the light of mutual recognition, and finding only the gleam of putrid gore.

“Yantek Korsar?” Keera asks, herself shocked, now.

“Aye, Keera,” Caliphestros answers. “Once, the famed and honored commander of all of Broken’s legions. Yet now …”

Keera glances at Caliphestros, to take the measure of his sentiment; but she finds an expression impossible to interpret, and so looks again at the sadly mutilated body. “Was he one of those who denounced you?” she asks at length.

“Denounced me?” Caliphestros answers, his face and voice ambiguity itself. “No. Neither did he speak for me, but — Herwald Korsar was a good man. A tragic man, in many ways. But no …” And at that moment, as his characteristically certain voice trails away again, an aspect enters his features that surprises Keera, perhaps more than the sight of the mutilated body. For the first time during his alliance with the Bane foragers, this master of sorcery, or of science, or of whatever art it is that usually enables him to speak with such authority about so many strange and wondrous subjects, appears uncertain. “I had expected some such horror as this, when news came of Broken’s plan to invade the Wood and attack your tribe,” he says. “But to see it …” He glances at the tracker. “I should hate any such torment to be the fate of you or your children, Keera—”

Keera thinks to ask where such “news” could have come from, to one alone in the Wood; but the strangely discomfiting moment is shattered by a sudden scream of pain and terror from one of the stray and dying shag cattle that lie in the small inlet on the pool’s north shore. As if magically, the beast, a once- imposing steer, rises suddenly from the carcasses around it, stands awkwardly upon strangely misshapen hooves, and begins to buck wildly. Caliphestros and Keera both watch warily as the steer’s mad eyes — out of which seep small trails of blood — catch sight of Stasi’s brilliant green orbs, which must appear to it as a signal fire in the morning mist; and a clearly malicious intent abruptly taints the steer’s every breath and movement. Stasi growls in return, the massive muscles of her shoulders and haunches readying for combat; but, just as Keera prepares to lift Caliphestros’s scant weight from the panther’s back, in order to allow Stasi freedom for battle, the old man stays the tracker’s arm.

“No, Keera!” he cries, locking one arm as tightly as he can about the panther’s thick, straining neck, and using the other to cover Stasi’s eyes. “She must not tear the flesh of the diseased beast, nor allow herself to be even scratched — your bow, quickly, drop the animal as it charges!”

Keera asks no questions, but lifts bow from shoulder and arrow from quiver, each with one arm and in a practiced set of motions, as she steps out in front of her new friends. She nocks her shaft at once, and then — with the shag steer now bearing down on them in feverish madness, charging through bank, mud, water, and finally over stone — she takes careful aim and lets fly. The arrow finds its way to the animal’s breast, through scant meat and between bone, and finally into the heart. The steer collapses and slides along the stone upon which Keera, Stasi, and Caliphestros stand, its body made slick by its own sweat, blood, and spittle, so that it comes to a halt all too near the brave Bane tracker. When the creature does stop, Keera finally draws breath once more, and for the first time allows herself to realize what has occurred.

“Impossible,” she mutters, as the last rattle of death shakes the pitiable beast before her. “Could the pestilence drive it so very mad?”

“Not the pestilence that you have described to me as afflicting your people,” Caliphestros answers, as he and Stasi come up beside Keera. He nods in acknowledgment of the skill of her shot, then says, “But another pestilence altogether was plain to be seen, as soon as the poor creature rose. Observe the ears, Keera, and then the hooves …”

Keera takes a few steps toward the beast, and sees that its ears have been badly mauled by some sort of combat; but then she realizes the truth, murmuring, “Nay — they have rotted away …!” And so, she then sees, have the hooves, whole parts of which are missing, revealing sickly flesh beneath.

“Oh, great Moon,” Keera whispers, going down upon one knee before the steer, but careful not to touch it. “What can this harmless animal have done to warrant your fire?”

Caliphestros’s head cocks at these words, as Stasi begins to shift to and fro, knowing now that the steer is a mass of disease and anxious to be away from it. But Caliphestros strokes her muzzle and neck calmingly, and asks the tracker, “What say you, Keera—’fire?’ You know of it?”

Keera’s head slowly nods. “Moonfire,” she says. “The fever that maddens and rots …”

“Yes,” Caliphestros says. “Of course that is what you would call it. Moonfire — the fire of Saint Anthony, Ignis Sacer—the Holy Fire …”

Keera stands and approaches the old man, who has again retreated into a world of unsettling thought. “My lord? What are these things of which you speak?”

“All names that are one, in their essence.” Caliphestros sighs deeply, and then glances back up at the decaying body of Yantek Korsar. “So we are doubly cursed — doubly plagued …”

And then, strangest of all, the old man cradles his forehead in one hand — and quietly weeps. It lasts a mere moment, but the moment is enough: “Lord Caliphestros,” Keera says, not at all reassured at the sound of even quiet tears. “Do you not have the skill to face the presence of two pestilences in this place — and perhaps in Okot?”

But Caliphestros, his tears gone, only answers in a tongue that is strange to Keera, and which further disturbs her: “Ther is moore broke in Brokynne …”

“My lord,” the tracker insists, sternly calling him to the moment and its perils. “Has the fire taken your reason, as well, then?”

Holding up a delicate, wrinkled hand, the old man steadies himself and says, “Forgive me, Keera. It was a saying, a small jest, with which the monk in whose company I first came to the great city — Winfred, or Boniface, of whom we have spoken — was wont to ease our cares, in his own tongue, when we came to realize the true nature of the place: ‘Ther is moore broke in Brokynne, thanne ever was knouen so.’† It meant