Page 31 of Turncloak

Levan balked. “They imprisoned him? At eleven years old?”

A grave nod. “Unfortunately for them, he had amassed quite a following by this point. His worshippers orchestrated a jailbreak and led him into hiding on the isle of Nomaden. There, the Disciples of Halant were born.”

“So Nomaden is crawling with the Risen?” Levan asked, equal parts horrified and fascinated. Nomaden was a famously lawless land with little in the way of government, let alone extradition treaties. “How long ago was this? How old is Halant now?”

Miret pushed his wonky glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I couldn’t say with any degree of certainty. Everything I’ve just told you was learned through hearsay. It’s likely little more than folklore.”

Levan sipped at his appalling ambertea. The lutist struck up a surprisingly beautiful rendition of the Bone Queen’s Lament. “What if it wasn’t?”

Miret raised a hooded brow.

“Killoran and I walked past this tavern a few weeks ago. I’ve been learning the languages of the Eastern Republics, and two mages were sitting outside, drinking and jabbering—I caught snippets of rapid-fire Tarsan. They were discussing what they might next offer Halant in exchange for resurrection. Neither of them had yet offered him something he deemed valuable enough to trade. Which implies they have direct contact with the necromancer—that he is more than peasant folklore.”

“We’re here in anticipation of stumbling upon those mages once more?”

Levan nodded in the direction of two bickering Enchanters sitting by the fogged-glass window. On their table sat a silver chain with a pearlescent pendant emitting a high-pitched, bone-rattling frequency. “Do you have any idea what that pocketwatch is for?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Perhaps we should satisfy your academic curiosity.”

Miret sighed as Levan stood. “No unnecessary bloodshed, child.”

“I’m no child,” Levan replied, although rather than bristling against the word, he felt oddly soothed by it.

Their eyes met, and the moment deepened, swelled. The lutist’s lament reached a sweet crescendo. When Miret spoke, his throat sounded thick. “I wish I’d known you when you were. Someone should’ve protected you.”

At the mention of his childhood, Levan’s internal guards slammed up, but not fast enough. A series of images flitted through his mind’s eye like a deck of cards shuffling: Porrol Vogolan’s twisted face as he uttered sen doloran; the wet patches on Levan’s bedsheets each morning; the spot of black mold on the ceiling of the shack, where he always fixed his gaze in the moments before the torture curse was cast. The pain, the pain.

He tapped out a rhythm on his knuckles, counting in time with his quickening heartbeat. “It is what it is,” he said emptily. “It was what it was.”

Miret’s eyes softened. “Are you sure you want this? To bring them back, after all they did to you?”

“My mother never hurt me.”

Tap-tap-tap on his clenched knuckles, up and down an imaginary scale with each opposing finger, like playing a piano.

“There are many different ways to hurt a person. The torture curse is only one of them.”

“She was good.”

Levan had the sudden intense desire to press a blade into his flesh, to peel away the discomfort like the skin of an apple, physical pain to distract him from emotional hurt.

“Without your parents’ shackles, you could be one of the finest Healers this land has ever seen. I’ve seen the way you talk about Tålun’s work.” Miret gestured to Levan’s golden prosthetic. “You could be his equal, his peer.”

Something soared in Levan’s chest for the slenderest of moments before crashing downward. “No. I’m too far gone.”

And besides, he was fairly sure the brand’s magic worked in such a way that if he abandoned the Bloodmoons, it would constitute an act of betrayal.

He turned his back on the conversation and thought only of forward.

“Ter õhtu,” Levan greeted the Disciples at the window table, sharp edges of the Tarsan language forming clumsily on his tongue.

One of the mages looked up, swayed drunkenly, and shrieked.

“Çarlak rädma! Çarlak rädma! Çarlak rädma!”

Scarlet rot.