The Earth-stepper's Bargain: A Short Story Read online

  ***

  “This is a bad idea,” Hew told him on their way back home. “This is a really bad idea.”

  “Then stay here. I’ve been waiting two years for that bastard to show himself. I won’t let him slip away again. Geilya deserves justice. Besides, he’s nothing more than a coward. He should have faced me at Nar Taigar.”

  “He didn’t need to. You were enough of your own enemy that day.”

  “I did what was necessary.”

  “You went far beyond necessity.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Cal said dismissively.

  “You brought it up,” Hew pointed out.

  “It was my home, and he knew it,” Cal said, too irritated to heed his own words. “He killed my people and took my land – tainted everything I loved because I came after him for Geilya. He should pay.”

  “It wasn’t your land. It wasn’t your right. You should have waited for Roland to decide.”

  “It wasn’t Ashrad’s right, either,” Cal shot back. “And yet he planted his tribe there as a mockery. The Sepami are our enemies, and I have no regrets about ridding the place of the lot of them. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same.”

  “I wouldn’t have killed women and children,” Hew said, his voice rising as his temper flared. “They were innocent settlers and you slaughtered the lot of them.”

  Cal stopped walking, his shoulders sagging as the guilt of the memory washed over him. “I didn’t mean to,” he said quietly. “I didn’t.”

  Hewryn shook his head. “You can blame the bloody sword all you want, Cal, but it’s still your hand wielding it. I don’t know why you don’t just get rid of it. It was a foolish bargain that hasn’t panned out. Its curse has brought you more ill than its promise has brought good. You’re not the same man you were.”

  “That’s not because of the sword.”

  “Yes, it is. You’ve become what it wants you to be. Your sorrow drives your rage, which gives it the food it craves. You’ll never be rid of it if you keep going like this. You need to give it up.”

  “And then who would carry it? Someone who will have even less power over it than I do? It would be my responsibility if the next man to wield it turned out to be another Branor Turani. I can’t take that risk – it’s my burden to bear, and I will bear it. I slipped up once. Only once, and I won’t do it again. I won’t end up like him, or the dozen other men who have yielded to it. I won’t.”

  “They all said that.”

  “They weren’t me.”

  “You will become its slave, Cal. Just like the rest of them. You’re half way there, even though you won’t admit it. And for what? So you can hear yourself talked about in taverns? So you can kill a man to appease the father of a woman who’s beyond caring about such things?”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’ll say what I please,” Hew said heatedly. “It will drive you to the brink and over the edge,” he added, softening his tone when he saw the dangerous but miserable look in Cal’s eyes.

  “In which case I give you full permission to chop off my head. I mean that.”

  Hew frowned. “I wish you’d throw it in the ocean.”

  “It would find its way back.”

  “But not to us.”