Death After Death

For a moment, all was chaos. He heard no hooves, but there were raised voices, drawn blades, and once, a crossbow twanging off into the night. Simon quickly outrode the shouts and caught up to the bulk of his strange caravan. Even after the distant fires faded, though, and he couldn’t hear anything over the sound of hooves, he still didn’t relax.

They might have a dozen horses left inside the walls, he told himself, or a group might have returned just as we were leaving.

A knight or two he might face down with confidence, but a dozen? Simon’s only choice would be magic, and that would be counterproductive. Not only would he scare off the very women he was trying to save if he wasn’t careful, but he would destroy what remained of his sight.

His sight. He shook his head. He wouldn’t have believed it, but he missed it more than he missed his left hand right now. He could see the luminescent auras of the women spread out across the plains in front of him, but they were faint balls of light that had more in common with will-o'-whisps than with the humans he was used to.

Simon was used to seeing tomorrow’s weather on the breeze and the secret subtext on the face of everyone he talked to. Now, he felt crippled by it.

So, the idea of worsening that, and striking himself completely blind in a magical sense, hurt him more than he would have expected after dulling it so much already. He was months, or perhaps even a year, from fixing it as things stood now with real dedication, and he was determined not to push that back even farther.

Note to self, don’t use magic wands for hours on end to cut through a wall, he told himself. A storage gemstone would have blunted the impact immensely, but sadly, he didn’t have one on hand.

It was only when they were another hour down the trail, with no signs of pursuit, that Simon relaxed enough for his next problem to come into focus. Where was he going to take so many women? Where would they be able to go such that they wouldn’t be able to be found? While that was something he’d considered before this moment, it hadn’t taken center stage until now.

Up until this point, he’d had plenty of ideas. He knew a few welcoming villages, and the idea of spending a decade or two helping to build a secret convent appealed to him. Still, if he tried to do that anywhere in Brin, they would probably eventually be found.

The Whitecloaks had been hurt by Simon’s efforts, but it wasn’t a mortal wound. They would be back, and for better or worse, he’d just painted a target on the back of everyone he’d rescued from their magical slavery. Even now, they were probably coming up with crazy theories to tie the two events together.

“No doubt a latent witch, or something like that,” he mumbled to himself. He had no doubt they’d find a way to make the Grandmaster’s death the fault of a woman rather than his own black deeds.

It was close to dawn before one of the women worked up the courage to inquire about where they were going. “Has the divinity that guides you told us where we will be safe?” she asked, before instantly apologizing for her presumptuousness. “It’s not that I doubt you, of course. No one does after tonight. Many thought escape was impossible, but you found a door where—”

“Soon,” Simon promised her. “First, we focus on finding some cover to make the lives of trackers that much harder, and then we worry about what comes next.”

That was almost true. He’d intentionally picked a southerly direction to start, to throw whoever came after off the trail. As to whether they went east or west after that, he couldn’t say. He planned to send the women off in a single file line, though, and then continue on his own with his tiny herd before doubling back. That would give the sisters he shepherded a head start from any pursuers, but a head start to where?

That night, Simon didn’t worry about it. He asked for volunteers to keep watch, though this time it wasn’t monsters he feared, and then he drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep. In the morning, he still didn’t have an answer, but no one else needed to know that, and he kept everyone moving as if he had a plan.

It wasn’t until that evening when he looked at the simmering cauldron of soup burbling away above the red coals that he had an answer. Hepollyon. It came to him in an instant as a flash of inspiration. One second, he was looking at dinner, and the next, he was looking at the caldera he’d spent so much time at.

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The Oracle’s volcano city could absorb fifty women easily, but would she take them? They didn’t even speak the same language. Simon thought about it for a few minutes and decided that she almost certainly would, if only for their sob stories. Dozens of women who’d had their clarity stolen and forced to wield magic? That seemed right up her alley.

Am I doing this because it's the right choice, though, or because I want to see Zoa again? he asked himself.

When Simon searched his feelings, he found only apprehension at the idea of a reunion, which reassured him. That realization brushed away the anxiety that had been building since the start of this, but he didn’t reveal the plan to the women right away. In fact, when he told the matrons who had found themselves more or less in charge of the group, they practically mutinied.

“You can’t just abandon us!” the withered Sister Annilese told him. “Who will protect us?”

“This is protecting you,” he insisted. “We will all be safer if those who pursue us are thrown off the scent entirely.”

“And if you don’t return?” another woman asked. Simon was pretty sure that her name was Jarlane. “We don’t even know where we’re supposed to go. You haven’t told us where we’ll be safe.”

“Nor will I now,” Simon answered immediately. Still, it was a fair point. He’d done everything he could to protect them, but he’d broken them free, so they were his responsibility. He couldn’t go wandering off and get himself killed.

It’s not like he’d leave them defenseless, regardless. He’d procured and distributed knives and spears to the younger women; none of them had any skill with weapons. While that put the onus on him in combat, it also meant that they needed to do their very best to avoid combat wherever possible. He tried to explain that to them, but wasn’t entirely successful, and when word of his decision spread throughout camp, it caused a minor panic.

In the end, Simon was forced to delegate his plan to another woman, Chesera, who seemed to be an accomplished rider. He spent a few hours showing her what he wanted the following day, going back and forth over the trailing tracks of their caravan before releasing her when they found a likely fork in the road to part ways.

Simon drew a crude map for her that showed where she should meet them by the alignment of distant landmarks and other mountains. Then he sent her on her way with instructions to release the extra horses after a day or so and rejoin them.

“48 hours, no more,” he told her. “We have limited supplies and won’t be able to wait for you.”

“I’ll keep one good horse as a spare and meet you in 36,” she said with a wink. He’d chosen her for that confidence as much as for her riding skill. She was without a doubt the best whisperer of the group for the task, but even as she set off into the distance, he had a sinking feeling that this would end poorly.

Simon tried to ignore that knot in his stomach as his caravan turned west toward Ionar. You’re just used to taking the risks yourself, he reminded himself. You don’t delegate enough, and it shows.

Right or wrong, though, Chesera never rejoined them. Simon went to the spot he’d drawn on the map. He even kept the women there half a day longer than planned while he rode to a distant rise and surveyed the scene. From there, the view was scarcely better than it had been by the brook they’d camped at. Even standing in his stirrups on the rise, he saw only tall grasses and scattered copses. There was no evidence of his rider or any stray horses, and they were forced to move on without them, which caused Simon several sleepless nights.

He tried to tell himself it would have been far worse for the remaining woman if they’d lost their shepherd than for him to lose a single member of his flock, as he buried his oilcloth-wrapped books under a large flat stone, but it did no good, and Simon berated himself for a long time.

If only my sight was still strong, I could follow her thread of fate right to her. If only I’d made a better plan. If only. If only. The words haunted him, and he blamed himself even if no one else seemed to.

“To save even one is all that can be asked,” Sister Annilese told him, citing a well-worn parable from the holy books. “To save everyone is impossible.”

It was a line that he’d heard before, but in that moment, it wasn’t the elderly sister telling him that. It was Helades and his doppelganger. It was the lesson that everyone tried to teach him, but he resisted. You can’t save everyone. That might have been true for someone with one life to live, but it wasn’t true for Simon.

He could live a thousand lives, no, a million lives if needed, until he did everything right. He could save everyone. And he noted as many of the particulars down on his mirror about the day and the place as he could so that one life he could be out there waiting to save Chesera from whatever fate he’d consigned her to.

“I will save everyone,” he told himself that night, curled up in his bedroll. “I’ll save the whole damn world, no matter how many lives it takes.”