Hollis

Hollis was twenty-two, three years in, no record of disorder. He went into Shadowglade Forest under Lieutenant Ryder's first command as one of three on a short eastern patrol, and he did not come back with the other two. They had not heard him fall. They had not heard him cry out. They had simply, at some unmarked point, looked behind themselves and noticed that he was no longer there.

They found him within a quarter of an hour. He was standing upright in a small open space between four old trees. He was breathing. His hands hung loose at his sides. His weapon was where it should have been, undrawn. His eyes were open. He did not look up at his own name. There was a body, and there was breath, and there was a steady pulse — and there was no one driving the body.

It was not death. It was not unconsciousness. It was not any of the standard forms of mental injury Ryder had seen. It was absence. Hollis had been emptied not of strength or skill but of the part of a person that decides to look up when it hears its name. He came back to camp on the elbows of two soldiers, and he ate when food was put in his mouth, and he answered to nothing.

On the third night in the medical tent his lungs and lips, untenanted, made the shape of a single word. Return. Whatever had asked the body to say it had asked once, and had been satisfied. Hollis is the prototype the warlock is studying, and he is still breathing.

The walk west, and the unmaking (S10–S16)

Through S10c2 he walked west together with Ferrin in the measured even pace of the empty, down a path to the village of Hartheld. At the well at the centre of the village he turned his head a fraction and spoke a single word — now — through a borrowed mouth. The village gathered at the well in a slow loose ring. Then they returned to their work. The empty had been welcomed by being unnoticed. That was the front line.

In S16c4, on the eastern downs, Phaeren the Burned met the Drek column that had been driven by Maelis's training. The two empty at the front of the column — the dead front rank — were unmade by Phaeren's hand. He raised the hand the way a man raises a hand at the edge of a hearth to warm it. Hollis was unmade gently — not destroyed, but put down, his service ended; the body permitted at last to be a body that had lived once. The order called this the kindest act Phaeren had performed on Celesterra. The chronicle agreed.

The walk west, and the unmaking (S10–S16)

Through S10c2 he walked west together with Ferrin in the measured even pace of the empty, down a path to the village of Hartheld. At the well at the centre of the village he turned his head a fraction and spoke a single word — now — through a borrowed mouth. The village gathered at the well in a slow loose ring. Then they returned to their work. The empty had been welcomed by being unnoticed. That was the front line.

In S16c4, on the eastern downs, Phaeren the Burned met the Drek column that had been driven by Maelis's training. The two empty at the front of the column — the dead front rank — were unmade by Phaeren's hand. He raised the hand the way a man raises a hand at the edge of a hearth to warm it. Hollis was unmade gently — not destroyed, but put down, his service ended; the body permitted at last to be a body that had lived once. The order called this the kindest act Phaeren had performed on Celesterra. The chronicle agreed.

The walk west, and the unmaking (S10–S16)

Through S10c2 he walked west together with Ferrin in the measured even pace of the empty, down a path to the village of Hartheld. At the well at the centre of the village he turned his head a fraction and spoke a single word — now — through a borrowed mouth. The village gathered at the well in a slow loose ring. Then they returned to their work. The empty had been welcomed by being unnoticed. That was the front line.

In S16c4, on the eastern downs, Phaeren the Burned met the Drek column that had been driven by Maelis's training. The two empty at the front of the column — the dead front rank — were unmade by Phaeren's hand. He raised the hand the way a man raises a hand at the edge of a hearth to warm it. Hollis was unmade gently — not destroyed, but put down, his service ended; the body permitted at last to be a body that had lived once. The order called this the kindest act Phaeren had performed on Celesterra. The chronicle agreed.