“Of all Choirs, beware of Mercy

The hand so patient and kindly

Of any sacrament, it is the last

And ever the most harshly cast.”

– Extract from the ‘Hymn of Hymns’, Atalantian sacred text (declared heresy in Procer and Callow)

Levante had swelled thick with death, birthing an unending parade of horrors.

For six months now the red plague had tormented the city, spreading through every nook and cranny. It took the young and the old, rode those it did not kill only to rise again the moment it was believed to have been ended. There had been rumours it was an Ashuran ship that first brought it to the capital, though that kind of talk was harshly stamped out by what remained of the city guard. The Dominion was too deeply in the debt of the Thalassocracy to be able to afford the squabble that would come of such an accusation. Debts of gold, debts of protection, debts of knowledge – some days it felt like the true rulers of Levant lived across the sea, assembled in some hidden committee. Tariq Isbili was too deeply exhausted to resent the Ashurans for it, and what little disgust he had left he reserved for his own kin. Even as the people of Levante died in droves the old city had remained closed, healers obsessively scrutinizing even the bushels of wheat that passed the walls. Yet his Honoured Mother, the Holy Seljun of Levant, was no fool. She knew it would look ill for the Blood of the Pilgrim to remain hidden in such dire time, and so she had chosen some of her issue to venture into the jaws of death. There had been five children to the Honoured Mother, when the decision made.

Three now remained, Tariq second eldest among them. His elder sister Yasa, as Honoured Daughter and heiress presumptive, had been spared. So had his distinguished younger brother Bakri, as his exploits in the Brocelian Forest brought much-needed luster to the Blood. Tariq himself had been commanded to remain, but left without reply out of sheer contempt for the order. Of all his siblings he was the only one to have learned sacraments and the lesser ways of healing. Honoured Mother, he knew, wished to preserve him in the hope he would one day join the ranks of the Lanterns and provide useful ties to their lodges. A petty desire. Tariq would not hide behind tall walls when his people were dying like animals mere street corners away. Five months had passed, since that rebellion, and over their span the stench and wailing of the dying had become as old friends. He had gone from charnel yard to charnel yard, wielding cleansing Light until his vision swam and his hands trembled. The other healers had handled him with care, at first, trying to keep him away from the worst of it. He’d ignored their attempts and headed where the plague struck hardest, and as the weeks passed the attempts became rarer and rarer until they ended entirely.

They looked to him for instructions, now, for most the men and women who had given these had since died to the sickness. His two younger brothers had been lost as well, even if they’d been relegated to safer duties like commanding the city guard and overseeing the city’s quarantine. Idhari has survived a riot of the plague-ridden only to take sick himself, and after the plague sunk deep into him no amount of Light was enough to save his life. Tariq himself had nearly died pouring all he could in his brother’s feverish body, weeping as he held his Idhari’s corpse. Just a boy, he’d thought. He was just a boy. Sanja had escaped the red plague but not the knife. As overseer of the quarantine he’d been taking bribes in exchange for allowing wealthy individuals to flee the city. Word of it had reached their Honoured Mother, and secret decree come down. Sanja had ‘heroically died’ attempting to prevent his greedy right hand from breaking quarantine in exchange for bribes, slain when he confronted the desperate man. Those who knew better would hold their tongues, for one did not lightly lay accusations as the feet of the Grey Pilgrim’s own bloodline. Tariq dug the grave himself and wept for the man his brother could have become, if not for the one he had turned out to be.

But he had wiped away the tears, and returned to his duty. Wading in a sea of death, putting out the last embers of the disease. Six months from the first known red death, and finally the calamity came to an end. The healers kept vigil another fortnight, for they had been fooled before, but no flare followed. Tariq walked through empty streets, a ghost among a city of ghosts, and nearly retched at the lingering scent of the pyres. His silver robes, the privilege of holiest of bloodlines, had darkened with grime and ash. He felt like a carrion bird looking upon the corpse of a once thriving city, some wicked omen of death. Eventually his steps took him to the docks, and there he stood in the sea breeze watching an Ashuran trading ship make shore. Disaster had passed, he thought, and now their allies to east returned. First the merchants, to look upon the destruction, but soon enough some committee would send envoys. Quiet offers of loans and restitutions would be made. The world would keep on spinning like nothing had happened at all. He was still watching when they found him. Armed guard, their breastplates inlaid with silver: the Holy Seljun’ own guard.

“Honoured Son,” the sole captain among them said. “You are recalled to the old city. The gates have been opened.”

Honoured Son. An angry shiver went down his spine at the words. He knew very well the meaning of them and his wroth only grew for it. Tariq mastered the sentiment, for these guards did not deserve his anger. They were only messengers. He followed them in silence, until his threadbare sandals were treading the palace grounds. He was ushered into a cleasing room, large bowls of lukewarm water awaiting for him to clean himself up. Yasa awaited him there, her young face unreadable. We are all children, he thought. His only sister eldest among them, and barely twenty. She wore the long ornate braid of a woman married, though it did not suit her features. The custom was half-abandoned, nowadays, but Yasa was not one to abandon tradition for the sake of vanity.

“Honoured Brother,” she said, her smile rueful.

Tariq strode forward to wash his hands clean of grime, and only after shook his head.

“Honoured Sister,” he replied, denying it.

“There is no point in fighting it, Tariq,” his sister said. “The entire city sings your praises, and Mother prizes reputation most of all.”

“She sent us to die, Yasa,” he replied quietly. “Sanja’s end was of his own making, perhaps, but Idhari? Gods, Idhari…”

His voice broke.

“You were not there to see him pass,” Tariq whispered. “A shadow of himself. Terrified, his mind wandering. I do not care what she wants.”

Yasa’s hands were shaking, he saw. She’d been closer to him than any of them.

“Honour to the Blood,” she got out. “Though unworthy of Bestowal, he passed a true heir to the Grey Pilgrim.”

“Fuck the Blood,” Tariq hissed. “They were our brothers, Yasa, and she threw them away for what – appearances? Neither was ready for the duty. It should have been us from the start.”

“You cannot speak like that anymore, little brother,” she cautioned. “Honoured Mother has expressed her intent to name you custodian of the rolls.”

He almost spat. The rolls were almost as holy as the Book of All Things itself, in Levant. The sprawling genealogies of the Bestowed, beginning with the founding heroes of the Dominion. It had since grown to encompass the bloodlines and issue of every Bestowed in the history of their nation, all tracked along with great deeds across the myriad pages. To keep the rolls was the duty of the Holy Seljun, but the granting of custody over them was now often used to informally name an heir.

“You have prepared to rule your entire life, Yasa,” he said. “This is not only unjust, it is absurd. I have not the learning nor the inclination.”

“It’ll be all right, Tariq,” his sister reassured him. “I will stay at your side. We are not Arlesites, to sunder kinship over titles.”

He looked at Yasa’s face, then, the hurt in her eyes she was setting aside for the sake of their people. The unflattering braid serving as reminder of the marriage she had embraced early to ensure the Blood would have lawful issue while her younh brothers – even Tariq himself, as it now shamed him to admit – had spent their nights enjoying the attention that came from belonging to the holiest bloodline of the Dominion. While he escaped the old city to confer with priests and philosophers, to laugh with wandering poets and drink with sailors, his sister had studied the classics. Learned the intricate ways of trade, forged ties with the heiresses and lords of the ancient lines of Blood that now ruled over Levant. A lifetime of steadfast labour, and now she was to be robbed of her due because he had gained some acclaim. Because her marriage bed has not borne fruit, he suspected as well. Tariq wiped his hands clean and knelt at his sister’s feet.

“You cannot,” she whispered. “You can’t kneel to me anymore. To anyone but Mother. I know you mean well-”

Gently, he kissed her brow.

“Rule well, Yasa,” he said.

Her eyes flickered with confusion.

“Brother-”

“Am I not of the Pilgrim’s own blood?” Tariq smiled. “Who could deny my right to a pilgrimage of my own?”

“Tariq, she would be furious,” Yasa urgently said. “She’s already approached the Majilis for confirmation, if you leave she’ll be humiliated in front of every great bloodline in Levant. She might actually strike you from the rolls.”

From Tariq Isbili to simply Tariq, he thought. It stung that he could be denied his heritage in the eyes of all the Dominion, but it was not too great a price to pay for this. He met his sister’s eyes squarely.

“You will be better,” he said. “You have to be, for all of us.”

He kissed Yasa’s brow once more and rose to his feet. Tariq Isbili walked out of the old city, then of Levante itself, and kept walking. Before a sennight had passed the Holy Seljun of Levant had cast him out of the Grey Pilgrim’s line in the eyes of Gods and men. Within the year, there was not a single written mention of him left in the entire Dominion.

Tariq was eighteen years old.

—

“Healer, you do me dishonour,” the man insisted.

Tariq shook his head, smiling to take away the sting of it, and refused to close his fingers around the handful of silver coins. He pressed them back into the older man’s palm.

“I have taken vow of poverty,” Tariq lied. “I cannot, my friend. That you have provided me with roof and meal is already more than enough.”

The man – Olivar, his name was – hesitated but did not press any further. Such vows were rare among mere healers, but common among those who would seek admission into the Lanterns. The warrior-priests of Levant disdained all earthly possessions save glory itself, and none could enter their ranks without discarding all riches. Truth be told, Tariq could have used the silver. What little food he had left in his satchel was growing stale, and it would be a long walk to Alava. The hills were treacherous, especially at night, and full of prowling creatures of which wolves were the least dangerous. The village he’d stumbled into three days ago was too small to warrant mention on any map he’d ever seen, barely three hundred souls, but it was close to the most common path into the crags. Tariq had hoped to hitch a ride on a trader’s cart, but none had passed through. Without coin to offer the chances were slim any would accept him even if one did come, he knew, but he could not find it in him to take what was likely the only coins the older man possessed. If there was a lean month, come winter, they could make the difference between survival and starvation. Still, he could not linger here any longer. He had helped those he could, it was time to move on.

“Your mother must not exert herself for a full moon’s turn,” he reminded Olivar. “The Light can only do so much to ease the passage of time, and if she returns to the fields her joints will swell anew.”

“I will do what I can,” the man promised with a grimace.

“Would you not avail yourself of our hospitality one more night, healer?” another voice suggested.

Tariq cleared his throat awkwardly, eyes moving against his will to take in the shapely silhouette of his host’s daughter. Dalevi. Lovely as a summer night, and the invitation in her dark eyes had only grown more pointed the longer he remained here. It would have been dishonourable, for him to lie with Olivar’s daughter while staying under his roof. Very dishonourable, no matter what the Hidden Poets famously implied about lively Alavan girls in their more suggestive works. He’d mastered himself so far, but Tariq was no saint and the temptation was beginning to strain his principles. Especially when she smiled as slyly as she now did.

“Alas,” he croaked out. “I cannot delay any longer.”

She pouted rather distractingly, and it was a relief when her father spoke up.

“I know you are headed north on pilgrimage, healer,” Olivar said. “But it might be best for you to go around the hills and take the eastern path. There have been rumours of a creature attacking villages.”

Tariq’s eyes narrowed.

“Not bandits?” he asked.

Alavans had resisted the Proceran occupation most stubbornly, it was said, preferring to burn their own city and flee into the hills rather than live in their own homes under foreign yoke. But the habits of those years had not been entirely discarded after the liberation, many of them turning to banditry or the kind of mercenary work that was essentially that. The many lines of the Champion’s Blood had made a point of never stamping it out entirely, preferring to use the persisting peril as crucible for their young instead. Olivar shook his head.

“Some say it is a chimera, but every old fool this side of the Brocelian will blame trouble on chimeras,” the man scathingly said. “Some old barrow spirit gone mad, I’d say.”

Tariq grimaced. The restless things born of defiled sacred grounds were no implacable threat, but they were near-impossible to kill through mundane means. Perhaps the Light might put one to flight but it might also kill it and the notion of hurting a spirit cursed through no act of its own sat ill with him.

“I will be careful,” he promised. “And thank you for the advice.”

He made his farewells promptly, doing his best to ignore Olivar’s hard stare when lovely Dalevi lingered a little too close to whisper into his ear the kind of reception she’d grant him should he return, and escaped without shaming himself. He made good pace, sleeping under the stars when it grew too dark to continue, and found his way unhindered until the fourth afternoon. He saw the horses before he saw the warriors, tied to trees near a neatly-made camp. It was empty when he came upon it a little off the road, but there was no need to wonder where the occupants had gone: in the distance bellows and laughter sounded, interrupted by reptilian screams. It was not his business, Tariq knew. It would be wisest to press on. Yet he found his feet taking him towards the commotion anyway. Sliding clumsily off a rocky slope, he came across a mere half dozen young warriors in well-forged mail. They were loosely surrounding a creature, Tariq saw. A great winged lizard of dusty-coloured scales, with a long stinger-tipped tail trailing behind it. Wyvern, he thought. One of the warriors had put a spear through its left wing, he saw, and so it could not flee. They were exhausting the creature with harassment before going in for the kill. The sound of his descent was enough to alert one of the armoured youths.

“Close enough, stranger,” a dark-haired woman called out. “The hunt has been claimed.”

A sword was casually pointed in his direction, and to Tariq raised his palms in appeasement. Slowly he took off his satchel bag, dropping it to the ground.

“I mean no insult,” he said. “I was drawn by the screams.”

“Get him out of here, Sintra,” another youth called out, darting forward to threaten the wyvern with a raised spear before retreating when it struck out. “We don’t want unknowns in the middle of this.”

The dark-haired woman – Sintra, it seemed – left the ring as another warrior smoothly closed the gap. Two long tresses flowed down her back through an opening in her helm, swinging as she moved closer. The sword was not sheathed, but at least she ceased pointing it at him.

“Consider your curiosity sated, traveller,” she said. “This is dangerous work, and would be made more dangerous still by a watcher.”

Tariq cheerfully ignored the implied warning and order to walk away.

“Would this be the creature that has been troubling villages, then?” he asked.

Sintra looked amused.

“A well-informed traveller, I see,” she said. “Though not so learned as to recognize the symbols on my tabard.”

Tariq’s eyes dipped to the jerkin in question, finding it marked with red lion cradling a sword. He took in a sharp breath.

“Sintra Marave,” he said. “Of the Champion’s Blood.”

She had to be of the main line, to bear the heraldry, though where in it she fit he had no real notion. Yasa had been the one to rub elbows with such hallowed personages when the Majilis was convened, not him.

“Of some Blood yourself, to recognize it so swiftly,” Sintra noted with a raised eyebrow. “You do not have the looks of an Alavan. Your name?”

“Unimportant,” Tariq replied. “Have you learned why the wyvern attacked villages? They usually avoid such places.”

“Unimportant,” Sintra echoed. “It slew some and wounded many. A hunt is warranted.”

“You would kill in ignorance?” he replied, genuinely surprised. “Its eggs could have been stolen. They sell for a fortune.”

The creatures tended to take sick in other lands, but the eggs themselves were a delicacy. And it was said in Levante that the faraway Praesi would pay a king’s ransom for one unbroken, though that kind of trade was frowned upon.

“It has killed children of the Heavens,” Sintra said. “I know all I need to.”

“There is no honour in this,” Tariq insisted.

Their conversation was interrupted by a pained cry. One of the youths had struck the wyvern’s muzzle and drawn blood, retreating behind his shield as the winged lizard struck out with its stinger.

“There is honour in the very act of slaying,” Sintra flatly replied. “What business is this of yours, stranger of no name?”

She was not wrong, he thought. Hunts such as this were commonplace in all of Levant, and often with weaker reason than this. Those that wandered into the Brocelian to seek glory at the end of a blade could not claim to be avenging anything. Yet Tariq looked at the creature, the pierced wing clutched around its body, the dark blood dripping down on the earth, and he felt restless. Perhaps if it had been cleaner he could have made his peace with it, but there was something wrong about… this. It reminded him of children tormenting a cat.

“I dislike,” Tariq eventually said, “unnecessary suffering.”

“This is no land for the faint of heart,” Sintra replied, a hint of contempt in her tone.

“Let me try,” someone said, and to Tariq’s surprise the fool had the same voice as him.

Oh, he realized. It had been him. Fool and speaker both. The dark-haired woman stared at him in surprise, then laughed.

“You?” she said. “You do not even have a blade. It’ll gobble you in a moment.”

“Then you may use my death as a distraction,” Tariq drily replied.

Sintra eyed him anew, this time without the contempt.

“No coward, at least,” she said. “And it might save us an hour.”

She turned towards the others, raising her voice.

“Our friend wants to have a turn at it,” Sintra called out. “Make room in the ring.”

The youth who’d spoken earlier turned in surprise, backing away from the wyvern.

“You can’t be serious,” he said. “Sintra-”

“You are not so grown I cannot put you over my knee, Ishaq,” she interrupted flatly. “Move.”

They others obeyed without backtalk, after that, and slowly the ring parted to allow for passage. Sintra glanced at him expectantly and Tariq wondered if it was too late to change his mind. Not even six months away from Levante and he was already going to get himself killed. Bakri was right, he should have petitioned the Hidden Poets to join their ranks. His verses were no treasure, but it would hardly be the first time one of the Pilgrim’s line crawled into a sinecure and disappeared from the writ of history. Tariq warily advanced until he’d passed the ring, and slowed when the wyvern turned its bloodshot eyes on him. The stinger rose fluidly, of a height with his head.

“Easy now,” he said, raising his palms to show he bore no arms.

Carefully, he took a step forward.

“I mean no harm,” Tariq said. “Are you hurt, old one? I am a healer.”

The stinger drew back and he stopped.

“No harm,” Tariq repeated in a soothing tone.

The stinger drooped, and he took a step forward. The wyvern struck without warning, but he threw himself into a roll and the stinger missed him by mere inches. Behind him he could hear Sintra ordering her warriors to hold, but he had no time to spare for it. He called on the Light, let the gentle glow fill him, and shaped a simple wreath of it around his hand.

“I am here to help,” he said, and the stinger stopped an inch away from his forehead.

The wyvern stared at the Light, as if hypnotized, and let out a plaintive scream. Tariq laid a light hand on the tail and nudged it aside, advancing carefully with the Light ahead of him. Another four steps and suddenly the creature was on him, enfolding him inside its wings, and he was faced with rows of dagger-like teeth. He breathed out, ignoring his heartbeat going wild. Fear would only get him killed. Too-clever eyes considered him, and the wyvern let out another cry. It made his ears ring but he worked through it.

“You’re hurt,” Tariq quietly said. “Show me where.”

It sniffed, but then it lowered its head. It was easy enough to find the wound: right behind the crest there was an almost hand-sized thorn biting into the soft space between scales and flesh. The young healer touched it and the wyvern screamed. He withdrew his hand, studying the thorn instead. The flesh around it had begun to rot, turning black, and even the closest scales were falling out. No, not rot. This was poison, corrupting the flesh.

“This is from a barrow-tree, isn’t it?” he said. “That which is rooted in the grave bears its fruits.”

The wyvern did not reply, patiently waiting with its held lowered. Tariq had studied healing, though not as deeply as one who intended to make it their vocation would, and he knew there was no brew or spell that would cure such a wound. Not certainly, anyway: no two barrow-trees were the same, as no two barrows were. Some caused violent madness if the bark was partaken of, others a deathlike sleep should the fruits be eaten and the leaves of others were said to preserve flesh from the ravages of time, if made into paste and applied, though at the cost of a deathly pallor. This one had borne poisonous thorns, it seemed, and the wyvern been imprudent enough to be stung. Perhaps it’d been lured by the prospect of eating a barrow spirit. Legends said great wisdom could be gained from such a thing, fanciful tales of creatures growing into dragons form the consumption abounding. He suspected, regardless, that it was the pain of the spreading poison that had driven it to attack villages. Tariq pressed his hand slightly to the side of the wound, pouring Light into the flesh. The poison was thinned, though not entirely dispersed, and the flesh purged the rot some. What was left behind still looked sickly but the wyvern let out a soft cry of relief. The pain was, for now, being kept at bay. This time when Tariq’s fingers closed around the thorn the wyvern did not protest. The Light was calming it, almost putting into a daze.

“I am sorry, old one,” he murmured. “I cannot cure you. The poison will have spread into your blood by now, the pain will resume as soon as the Light ends.”

He breathed out raggedly.

“Peace to you, my friend,” Tariq sadly said, and suddenly pushed the thorn all the way into its brain.

The wyvern screamed, wings batting wildly, but the poison was a violent one. It drew back, trashing around, and after a mere ten heartbeats it fell over dead. He’d been thrown to the ground and his arm was likely strained, but he rose to his feet. Kneeling before the wyvern’s head, he gently closed its eyes. A shadow was cast on him, Sintra standing by his side.

“I thought you were going to heal it,” she said.

He felt it then. The answer this begged. Like a whisper in his ear, a comforting hand on his back. The first step on a journey he did not yet understand.

“I could not,” Tariq said. “And I dislike unnecessary suffering.”