Dead Water by C. A. Fletcher

Author:C. A. Fletcher [FLETCHER, C. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2022-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Part 4

THE WALKING WATER

VARANGIAN: THE WELLS’ VENGEANCE

They have not killed him.

Each step he takes on the long road North to the Bosphorus hurts so much he curses them for that.

But that is their vengeance.

Making him bear the pain and shoulder his shame at still breathing after what they have done to him.

Making him carry his own curse.

Not the many that spill from his lips with each step he takes on the long, sun-baked road to the Bosphorus.

The one they have carved and inked into his own skin. The skin they have flayed from his chest and folded into a square for him to show his shield-brethren and the ruler they serve.

He does not think that he will survive the journey, even though they have done him the cruel compassion of binding his flayed torso with honey and silk and some sharp-smelling unguent.

They told him it would heal.

That he would not die.

That the strength of the curse and the art of their medicine would keep him walking.

That is what they carved on the now-folded square of his skin.

A true curse.

He asked if what they have written across his face is also a curse.

They told him no. That was a blessing.

It told any who met him to help him, on pain of death.

It said he was who he was now.

Poisoner of wells? he said. Lower than vermin?

No, they said.

He is now The Well’s Vengeance.

To be fed and watered. But only to be given water that animals had fouled.

Carrying a dark curse that would blight the life and lands of any that gave him clean water ever again.

A curse that would first poison the oath breakers and the liars like him, they said, and which would then turn those deceivers into an even more terrible vengeance against the innocent amongst his own people. The deaths he had brought to their kin would be repaid tenfold as the walking water itself would rise up against them.

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