Book I - The Magician's Boy (Chapter 6)

Erich spent the next couple of days in a funk, unable to think straight and for the most part lost in a sea of confusion. His head ached with the strain of being awake and his limbs felt sluggishly out of control. What was happening to him? It wasn’t the effects of hunger, he decided. He’d starved before, gone more than a week without more than a scrap of food, and his stomach wasn’t ailing him all that much. It was his head. Something in his head was pounding, knocking around in there and making him essentially useless. He knew enough to stay out of the alleys now, and a street or two beyond the Market Fair, and for the most part he sat still, puzzling at the way his head spun. Remorse clung to him as well, even though he had not intended to do what he’d done to the boys who’d been assailing him. He’d only meant to scatter them, break them up a little so that he’d be able to fight back. It seemed he’d scattered them to the winds. His face did not feel as bad as it should have, and oddly it seemed like his nose was no longer broken, as it stood out from his cheeks as it should have and didn’t hurt much anymore. His other wounds, gashes on his arms and chest, healed similarly, fading until there was hardly a trace they were ever there. And yet, he wondered if he was going crazy. He felt hardly a part of himself, an uninterested observer in a tower overlooking his body. Erich had a hard time functioning, struggled even dropping his excrement. He found he wanted only warmth, somewhere to crawl into and stop moving for a while, stop thinking. Maybe his head would feel better then. But Erich had never stopped thinking, and to want such a thing made him feel strangely suicidal. How else, if not to die?

Still, he could not deny himself his needs, and he got up from his sitting place and began to wander throughout the streets looking like many of the men he’d seen leaving beeries. His mind wandered, he found himself thinking of his mother, and felt a distant sadness when he realised he could no longer produce an image of her face in his mind. He’d betrayed her memory, he felt that, and at the same time he was dully angered at the man he’d seen die in front of him. Krutt, who’d stolen him, who’d known about his power and had drained it all his life. Leaving him alone to discover the way it killed, the way it put a madness into his mind.

He passed men asleep on the ground, and envied them. They put their lives on hold, their worries at length. They drank themselves into a stupor, and then crumpled contentedly against a stone wall and sank to the ground to congratulate themselves on a wasted evening. Sleeping while he walked, a boy with a mark on his head, a boy with a deadly power in his belly, sleeping with a selfishness that made them ignorant of their surroundings.

Erich had forgotten his purpose, his intention on this long walk. Erich had as well almost forgotten his name, but still some bits of identity clung to him. Warmth. He had been searching for a warm place to lie down, and…and what? Stop. No more thinking, no more feeling. His head spun, and he found it between his legs, his mouth open to let out the endless stream of guilt, pain, and confusion. He pushed himself away from the vomit and staggered again to his feet, moving them with all the stubborn devotion his barely conscious self demanded.

After some time he sank to the ground outside a baker’s window, pulling his arm over his face to cover the brand that cut him off from the people in this kingdom. The warm air from opened ovens lulled him, and for a while his head felt a little better. Everything was getting duller, dimmer.

Then the hallucinations began.

He was alone, walking the rolling green hills of Meil. No, he wasn’t alone. Krutt was behind him, he could feel the magician there, could feel his eyes on him. He turned, seeing his slaver running toward him, weilding an ax.

“I always keep my promises, boy!”

Erich struggled to get his legs moving, to get himself running. He had to stay ahead of Krutt, ahead of the ax that wanted his head. But his legs were sluggish, and though he poured all of his strength into them, trying to make them piston faster, they wouldn’t. The icy hand of fear clutched at his throat, and mixed with his desperation to survive became panic. Krutt and his ax were closer now, he could hear the man’s footfalls on the grassy hillocks. If he didn’t stay ahead, didn’t run, (but where?) he would die just as those four boys had…those four boys. He tried in vain to use his power against Krutt, but nothing happened. The magician kept coming, the ax head seemed to grow larger the more he gained. Erich was going to die, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Then the hallucination changed, and he was no longer in the green fields of Meil. He was running through the alleys of Hatha, and his panic did not lessen. Krutt was no longer behind him, taunting him with an ax. Instead, countless gang members and juveniles bore down on him, screaming for his blood.

“No,” he panted, as no matter how fast he ran they were faster. “No no no no.”

Someone kicked him in the side. Erich opened his eyes. He struggled to focus them, and when he did he saw a well-dressed man staring down at him past crossed arms that seemed as muscular as a knight’s. His hat stood on his head oddly, sloping against the man’s bare skull in a way that made Erich think it was falling off. And yet it stayed.

“Don’t care if you sleep, kid. Just don’t do it in front of my store. I got business to do, and customers is skittish when they see slave boys sleepin’ out front o’ my bakery.”

Erich looked at him with blank eyes. Sleep? He thought I’d been sleeping?

The man, taking his moment of silence as indecision, knelt down. Erich looked into his eyes. There was kindness there, something he rarely saw.

“Look. I know you plopped down there because of the warmth. And slave boys got the same right to exist and sleep as any other kind. You didn’t get the best end of the stick, and it would be wrong of me to shoo you off just because of that brand on your cheek. Why don’t you walk on back behind my building. It’s real warm back there; can’t promise others like you won’t already be there, but it’s what I can do. Now, I have customers I need to attract.”

Erich nodded at the man, unsure of what to say. He got up and slinked off into the alley. There were indeed already quite a few people sleeping behind the big man’s bakery, but none of them paid him any mind and he lay down in an area where only two old men slept. His eyes wanted to close, his head felt fuzzy. It was warm here, and soon his breathing became deep and regular.

There were no nightmares this time.

He awoke feeling much more himself, although he was confused as to why he was lying here, among gutter-dwellers. It was almost full dark, which meant that he’d lost track of time. And his eyes were crusty, hard to open. He yawned.

So that was it. He’d stumbled into this alley and fallen asleep. How odd, to know such a thing, when he had never experienced sleep. At least not in his memory. Erich knew it had to do with his freedom, and the deaths of the boys who had tried to kill him. A change; others would come, he’d have to get used to them.

After he’d killed those boys, he’d been so confused, so anguished, that he hadn’t thought to retrieve his money, or his tent. He’d ran, just picked a direction and went, and when his adrenaline ran out and he was running purely on his own steam he slowed down and rested against a stone building that looked like every other one on the block. He’d sobbed, as much for his own misfortunes as for those whose deaths he’d caused. He sobbed for his mother, who smuggled him into this country only to have him stolen from her by a travelling magician. She’d never get to see him grow up, and after that night Erich hadn’t been so sure that he would grow up. Yeah, the boys who’d robbed him had been a significant setback (he hadn’t thought he’d survive, let alone win the fight), but the ones trying to kill him wouldn’t be stupid enough to let him know where they were before they struck. He would have no chance to use his power. Fear had dug into his mind, like an itch in the back of his head. He’d left the stone wall with dryer eyes and a diminished sense of reality. That’s when he had dropped into the funk that acted like a bag over his head.

And now he had slept. How would he know if it was a one time thing or if he’d need to do it at regular intervals? He’d be completely vulnerable, and whoever wanted to kill him would only need to know where he was, and then a moment to complete the act. Erich would never know. He had to leave Hatha, he knew that now. It was a magnificent kingdom, and he wished he fit in. But the truth was that no one wanted him here, no one but the secret organization Breyda had told Erich he belonged to. And even then, Breyda had only been adamant that the boy know he had a target on his head. If he’d wanted Erich to stay, Breyda would have offered the boy refuge. He was in a bad situation here, being a slave with no master. If he stayed, he’d have to live on the streets, steal his food, and watch his back constantly.

He would leave immediately. Travel the countryside and go…where? Where would he be safe from the ones who wanted to kill him? If there truly was a plot to tag every Mer’kan to enter Meil so they could be killed, it wouldn’t be only based in Hatha. There would be agents everywhere, in every kingdom in Meil. He’d never be safe. Unless…

Unless he went somewhere they couldn’t follow. To a place where he wouldn’t be turned away. He’d been born there, Breyda had told him that.

Erich’s whole face transformed, molding itself into a grin. He pushed himself to his feet and left the warm alley where the old men slept, and started in the direction that would eventually lead him out of Hatha.

He was going to Mer'ka.