by Jeff Inlo
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When Linda recommended they take a walk outside Burbon’s walls, she thought the open air would lift Ryson’s spirits. Instead, it only seemed to take his focus further away. As they walked about, Ryson often turned from her and stared out into the distance. She grew tired of looking at his back and so she walked around in front of him and looked him in the eye.
“Alright, enough of this. You’ve been like this for days now. What’s bothering you?” she demanded in a caring yet serious tone.
“It’s hard to explain really.”
“Try.”
“I guess I’m worried about Lief. I’m sure he’s reached the Lacobian by now. I can’t help thinking something might have happened to him.”
“That’s not all of it and I know it,” Linda pressed. “I know you’ve been worried about Lief since you got back. I understand that and we’ve already talked about it a lot. You know you can’t stop him from doing what he wants to do. You even talked to Holli and she thinks he won’t do anything too risky. You agreed that now that he knows this Tabris is with Sazar, he’s going to be extra careful. That seemed to make you feel better for about half a day, but then you went right back to moping around again. That has me completely confused, because as far as I can tell, you’ve accepted the situation as it stands, but something is still eating at you and I want to know what it is.”
“The whole thing is eating at me,” Ryson offered as if hoping that a general statement of concern would suffice.
Linda would not let it stand that way.
“That’s not a big help to either of us. Look, I’m going to keep badgering you until you finally admit it, so you might as well save us both a good deal of aggravation and start talking about it to me instead of keeping it bottled up inside.”
Ryson kicked at the dirt. Part of him wanted to take off in a flash and not deal with what was on his mind, but he knew Linda would simply wait for him to return and she’d be back at it again. She was persistent and so he began to explain.
“For the most part, you’re right. I’m worried about Lief, but it’s not like I really have a choice about stopping him. He made that perfectly clear.”
“So what is it then?”
“It’s about why he said he was going to the Lacobian,” Ryson finally offered. “I’ve been thinking about what Lief said to me. What he’s doing is dangerous, there’s no doubt about that, so there has to be a reason for it. I really think part of why he’s doing it has a great deal to do with his anger over his own camp. But he didn’t explain it that way to me. He gave me some solid reasons for going after Sazar. The thing is that when I think about those reasons, I start wondering.”
He paused and looked over to the southwest. He grew quiet again as his expression turned more sullen.
“Don’t stop now,” Linda insisted. “What is it you’re wondering about?”
“What bothers me most is that he might be right,” Ryson admitted. “Sazar had a lot of people killed in what’s left of Pinesway. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that. He needs to be punished. That’s not all he’s done, either. He threatened our town, looted the dwarf city, and who knows what else. Still, because he’s not on our doorstep right now, we seem to just stop worrying about him. Like it’s not our problem. Something seems very wrong with that.”
Ryson went even further with his analysis of the situation. “Maybe what Lief is doing is something we all should be doing. If a member of this town did what Sazar did, he wouldn’t be allowed to walk around free. Even if he left town, Sy would send out a party of his men looking for him. If he got away, they would make notices of the man’s name and a description of him and send them with other mail to towns all across the region. We don’t let people that commit crimes just walk away, so why are we letting Sazar get away with what he’s done?”
“So you think you should go out and join Lief and hunt this Sazar down?”
“No, that doesn’t sound right to me, either,” Ryson said with a shake of his head. “Lief is going too far, taking too much responsibility for what’s going on and doing far more than is necessary. He’s out on some kind of mission, thinking he should kill every dark creature in the land. What Lief is doing didn’t start with Sazar and it’s not going to end with Sazar. He’s on some kind of crusade. I’m not ready to go that far, but then again something should be done about that serp.”
“Well, what do you think should be done exactly?” Linda asked.
“Like I said, he should be punished for what he did in Pinesway. He can’t be allowed to get away with that.”
“You’re setting yourself in a circle, you know,” Linda pointed out. “You think Sazar has to be punished, but in order to punish him you would have to capture him. Lief is going out to capture him, but you’re not sure if that’s a good idea.”
“He’s not going out to capture him. He’s going out to kill him.”
“Well if you think Sazar is captured, do you think he should be executed?”
Ryson didn’t answer.
“Don’t go silent on me again. You need to get this out. What do you think should be done with Sazar?”
“I guess if I had my way he’d be taken to the dwarf town of Dunop and thrown in the dungeon that I was in under the palace. He looted their city and that’s where he should pay for his crimes. Let him rot there until he dies.”
“In my mind, that’s the same as executing him. It’s just a longer duration. The serp would probably prefer being killed.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be the one that had to swing an axe down on his neck and so I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it. The dungeon sounds like a good alternative.”
It was now Linda’s turn to look out in the distance to the southwest, in the direction she thought the Lacobian desert to be.
“So I guess the problem is that Sazar is out there and not here in chains.”
“That’s certainly part of the problem,” Ryson agreed, “and now he’s tied in with Tabris who is powerful enough not only to protect him but to make him more of a threat. I’m still not sure if Lief is right in trying to hunt Sazar down on his own, but if he does somehow put an arrow in the serp, I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over it.”
Linda thought for a moment on what Ryson said and then questioned him on one part of it. “You said that you aren’t sure if Lief is right in trying to hunt Sazar down on his own. You also said that if someone here in town committed the same crimes that Sy would send a party of men out to capture him. What’s the difference?”
“I guess because Sy is captain of the guard and it’s his responsibility to protect the town.”
“Lief is an elf,” Linda countered. “Maybe his job is to protect all of the land or at least protect Dark Spruce. Much of what Sazar has done has been in or near the forest. Why doesn’t that give him the right to exact justice?”
“I’m not sure that it doesn’t,” Ryson admitted. “Like I said, I don’t know what to think of this thing. In a lot of ways, I think Lief is right. At the same time, I don’t like what I think is motivating him, but I’m not sure if I should try to look at it that way. If you look at just the basics of this mess, Lief is actually justified. I’m not even sure it would be wrong for any one of us in this town to go hunt the serp down. We have the right to defend ourselves. Sazar brought this on himself.”
Ryson then turned and nodded back to the town. “The truth of it is I wish Enin would do something about it. That’s another reason I went to talk to Holli. I wanted to make sure Enin knew about what Lief was up to. I thought maybe it might get him thinking like I’m thinking. If it did, he could stop this whole thing in an instant, but he just keeps on talking about balance and not interfering in people’s choices. It’s frustrating.”
Linda considered that point for a moment and wondered how she would have felt if Enin turned down her request to warn Tabris not to hurt Ryson.
“I see what you’re saying,” Linda offered. “We have this wiz
ard here that’s like a god. When he helps us, we know we’re blessed. When he doesn’t, we wonder why he won’t.”
“Especially when we’re dealing with magic,” Ryson continued. “If it was just Sazar out there, I think I would have wished Lief luck and figured that would be all we’d have to worry about the serp. The fact that Tabris is now involved changes everything. We don’t know what she’s done, if she’s done anything at all that warrants basically calling an assassin out on her. I’m not sure if Lief can actually kill her, but that’s his basic intention.”
“If she joined with Sazar, then she’s an accomplice to whatever he does.”
“At this point, we don’t know what they’re up to, and we don’t know why she joined Sazar in the first place.”
“You told me that it was Enin’s belief that she had now turned evil.”
“Exactly, and I have no reason to doubt him. He knows things that will happen before they actually do, I can tell that much. He won’t say it, but I can see it. I don’t know if he reads the future, has some kind of visions, or what, but I definitely know that he has some idea of how things are going to play out.”
Linda remembered how certain Enin was that Tabris would not be able to harm Ryson. She did not feel that his guarantees were enough at that time. Listening to Ryson talk about the wizard’s power made her think that maybe his assurances should have relieved her more than they did. Suddenly, she started feeling much more secure about the future.
“Maybe that’s how you should look at it,” Linda said with renewed optimism. “You admit that Enin is powerful and has abilities we really can’t understand. Don’t you think that if his assistance was truly necessary, he would give it freely?”
“But it is needed.”
“Is it? How do we know?”
“We don’t know, but there’s certainly enough going on to make us realize we might need some help.”
“Need help or want help?” Linda asked. “There’s a big difference. Just because we want something or ask for something, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best thing for us. Maybe we can’t always have some higher power help us out. Maybe sometimes we have to figure things out on our own. I don’t know if that’s balance, but that might be what he’s talking about when he goes on about our choices we have to make.”
“So we just go out and do what we can and hope for the best?” Ryson asked.
Linda smiled reassuringly. “Maybe that’s all we can do.”