“You … you were following me?”
“Sky, no,” said Albern. “But you have been seen, and many remarked on it as something strange. The rumor of you reached my ears, and I determined to find you tonight. The constable? He helped me. When Tunsha signaled to the tavern with his ring, he was also telling the constable that all was well and his job was done.”
“Then you tricked me,” said Sun. “You led me along on a scheme.”
“I did,” said Albern. “I think you needed me to. But it is done now. And if I was wrong, then you can go. You can return to your family, whom you despise, and go along with their plots, which you disdain.”
Sun was standing again. She had no more memory of rising than she had had of sitting down. “Or?”
Albern cocked an eyebrow. “Or what?”
“You make it sound as though I have another choice. I could go home. Or …?”
“Or you could come with me, and I could tell you another story.”
She looked away from him. “Where are you going?”
“Lan Shui.”
“The town where—”
Albern nodded. “The town from the tale, yes.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I am visiting a friend,” said Albern. “And then I am taking care of some business. It is somewhat akin to our business tonight, but until I have your answer, I do not think I will tell you any more.”
“How do you mean to fight another monster like that one if I do not come with you?” said Sun.
Albern smiled at her again. “You were here, in the right place at the right time, tonight. But if you had not come, someone else would have. And if no one shows up, I can hunt someone down. But tonight it was you, and I am glad. You may believe whatever you wish, Sun, but I told you. I no longer believe in chance as I did when I was your age.”
“I … I still do not understand,” said Sun.
“What?” said Albern, spreading his arm wide. “Ask me anything you wish, and I shall do my best to explain.”
A thousand questions whirled in her mind, but none of them seemed like the right one. She tossed them aside one by one, until at last she had the question she truly wanted to ask—the only one, really, she could ask.
“Should we go after it?” she said, looking Albern in the eye. “If it escapes, we may regret it.”
“Well, we may,” said Albern, suddenly cagey. “But we may regret it even more deeply if we pursue it in the woods by moonslight. We do not have a warrior like Mag at our side, and I have my doubts about battling the beast twice in one night.”
“Oh, but once was fine,” said Sun, shaking her head.
“For a young one like that, yes,” said Albern. When she gave him a look, he nodded. “Yes, very young. I would not have brought you out here to fight a creature like the ones Mag and I faced. They were old, very old, nearly as old as the bones of the hills whence they came. I doubt the one we saw tonight is much older than I am.”
“That is quite old,” said Sun.
Albern’s mouth twisted. “Always ready with a barb. I admire that. In any case, you said you wanted to do good things more than you wanted accolades. Well, you have done a very good thing tonight, though I doubt anyone shall ever hear of it. Return to your family if you wish.”
So saying, he strode to her and took his bow from the ground. In an instant, he had unstrung it and stowed the string in a pouch at his belt, and then he set off through the trees towards the place where he had left his horse. Sun, for the second time that night, found herself staring after the old bowyer, dumbstruck. Just before he vanished from sight, she ran after him.
“Wait!” she cried. “What if I do want to come with you?”
Albern stopped and looked back at her, squinting in the moonslight. “You seemed quite angry, and so I gave the cause up for lost.”
“I am quite angry.”
He shrugged. “Well, then. You can find your way back to town, can you not? You know where the road is—just there. I do not think you will meet any more dangers in the forest tonight, but I could give you my sword, if you wish. Morled should still be there, if you hurry, and I do not doubt that she would be glad to see you.”
Sun looked off through the trees. There, far in the distance, she could just make out the lights of the town: a soft, fiery glow over the top of a hill, that poured through the trees in little shafts.
It had been a long time. Half the night. Her retainers would be nearly frantic, and Mother and Father would have been alerted that she was missing by this point.
But she could still go to them. She could go on through the rest of their tour of Dorsea, and then return home to Dulmun. She could carry on with only the memory of this one little adventure.
She looked at Albern instead.
“I want to come with you.”
With one hand on his saddle, Albern regarded her. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Sun lifted her chin. “Is my company unwelcome?”
“You will have a hard time turning back if you go on with me tonight,” said Albern. “So I would like you to be very sure of your choice before you make it.”
“I do not hate my family,” she said. “Yet for a long time, I have not been able to say that I love them, either, and I think their feelings are the same towards me. In my kingdom, parents adopt children often, and those children are treated just the same as if the parents had bedded to make them. You need not share your family’s blood to love them—yet neither must you love them simply because you share blood. I am not desperate to escape them, and I would not die if I remained. Yet I need a better purpose in my life than that. I need something more to pull me through each day than the thought that things could be worse.”
She took another step towards Albern, and now they were eye-to-eye. “You are a trickster. I do not like that. I do not like being led along a path I cannot see beneath my feet. But tonight, you and I did a good thing. I want to come with you, if you can promise that we will do more good in the nine kingdoms. I want to come with you, if you promise not to trick me into doing the right thing, but trust me to make the right decision.”
Albern gave her a long, careful look before answering. “I can promise both those things,” he said quietly. “One last time. Are you sure?”
“I am sure,” said Sun, and she realized it was true. She did not want to go home. The whole time she had been in this strange, foreign kingdom, she had been looking for some escape—some way to leave, and never have to return. Now that she had found such a chance, she would not turn her back on it.
“I am sure,” she said again. “The beginning of the story has been good. I want to hear the rest of it.”
Albern smiled his widest grin yet. “And I would be happy to tell it to you. Come on, then. Let us get moving. The road is long, and it always grows darker before revealing at last the sun.”
“As you say,” said Sun. “But as we go, please, carry on.”
Slowly, Albern nodded. “Until the tale’s true end.”
You did not think I forgot about Kaita, did you?
She was there, in Lan Shui, observing the three of us as we rode forth on horseback, Oku trotting beside us.
Kaita still mourned the deaths of Dellek and the other Shades. And for the sake of petty revenge, she wished the vampires had claimed more lives before Mag and I had destroyed them. But she had realized that we would never ride north for Calentin until the threat to Lan Shui had been ended, and so she had let it happen without interfering. And now, things were mostly going according to her plan again.
All except the old man. “Dryleaf,” he called himself. Kaita had not predicted him, and she feared there might be more to him than there appeared. So she had taken the form of a few of the folk of Lan Shui, and she had gone poking about, trying to see if the old man had some hidden agenda that had caused him to take up with us.
She had discovered nothing. It seemed he had
joined up with us by sheer luck (if you believe in luck). Ever since he had arrived in Lan Shui, he had taken no interest whatsoever in the great events of Underrealm. He was a fixture of the town, an elder who gave advice when he could and sang songs when he could not.
Indeed, the only thing Kaita had managed to learn was that he had not always been known as Dryleaf. Long ago, when he first came to Lan Shui, he had gone by another name, though the old one sounded just as nonsensical to Kaita.
After all, who ever heard of an old peddler named Bracken?
A warm sun rose, its crisp rays bathing Sun’s face, and with it came an unpleasant truth.
It is the day after I left my family.
It was hard to believe that only a scant few hours ago, she had fought a vampire. It was even harder to believe that she had won. Since then, she had had a few hours’ sleep before Albern had woken her to take the second watch. But despite having slept and woken already, she could not shake the thought that this had to be a dream. She was sure that soon she would wake again, the way she sometimes did in dreams, rising through layers of illusion before finally emerging into the waking world. Any moment now, she would find herself in the luxurious tent her parents’ servants had built for her, and hear Mother commanding her to get ready for another day’s ride with the caravan.
Yet here she remained, sitting against a tree just inside the edge of an unknown forest in western Dorsea. The dew beneath her felt real enough, as did the rough bark of the tree against which her head rested. A chill wind blew across her face, the last of the night’s cold wisping away with the coming of the day. It was almost too vivid to be real.
Had she made a mistake? Never had she entertained the thought of running away from her kin, except as the most passing flight of fancy. When the opportunity had presented itself, it had felt like the right thing to do, but now she was filled with doubt.
Albern stirred in his bedroll.
Sun looked over at him, watching his stubbled chin as it waggled, the old man murmuring as sleep began to creep away from him. Albern of the family Telfer, a figure of legend in his own right, and longtime companion of the mightiest warrior Underrealm had ever seen—if you believed the stories. And Sun found she did believe them, no matter how outlandish Albern’s claims seemed. Not only that, she wanted to hear the tale go on.
In the end, that might be all that matters, she told herself. You may have your doubts, but ask yourself: do you regret your decision?
She could not bring herself to say that she did.
Albern’s eyes opened. He lifted his head slightly, looking around as if disoriented. When he spotted Sun sitting by the edge of their campsite, he seemed to focus at last, and he gave her a little smile.
“Good morn,” he said, his voice a frog’s croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Good morn. No sign of danger while I slept?”
“There were many,” said Sun. “A pack of wolves arrived not an hour ago. I told them how old and bony you were, and they slunk away in search of better game.”
“No respect for your elders,” said Albern, grinning as he sat up nimbly despite his missing arm. “Then again, I had none myself at your age. We shall have a bite to eat and then head off to Lan Shui.”
“And what are we doing there?” said Sun.
“I mean to visit a woman there.”
Sun arched an eyebrow. “A woman?”
Albern laughed. “Not a lover, if that is what you are implying. Though I would not have you think I am incapable of such things, despite my age. I can still—”
“Sky above, stop talking,” said Sun. She went to his pack to fetch some meat and bread, then thought better of it and found some twigs to stoke their fire. It had dwindled down to coals. The forest turf sank pleasantly beneath each footstep, soaking in the morning moisture.
“Noble children,” scoffed Albern, pulling his blanket closer around his shoulders.
With a short while’s work, the fire sprang to life again, and Sun laid sturdier branches across it to help it grow. She went for the food, then, handing some of it over to Albern. The old man tore at the meat with teeth that looked surprisingly healthy, if somewhat stained with age.
“I have a question,” said Sun.
“You may or may not get an answer,” said Albern.
“I thought so, but I have to try. Is this … is this what you do now?”
Albern frowned at her, then glanced around as if expecting to see someone else there. “Now, just what do you mean by ‘this?’”
“Not this. I mean last night. Hunting vampires. Is that your … your trade?”
That made him smile. “No. I am not a monster hunter, except when I need to be. And when I am, it is not only vampires I seek. I have fought all sorts of creatures. After all, you do know something of how I lost my arm, do you not?”
Sun’s jaw clenched. She had begged him for that story already, but the man was maddeningly reticent. “Something, but not as much as I would like.”
Albern chuckled. “You shall have to suffer under what I am sure is the crushing weight of your disappointment, at least for a while longer.”
It was impossible to be too angry at the old man when his attitude was so genial and friendly, but that did not stop Sun from trying—nor from trying to hear the story she had wanted him to tell in the first place. “Now that I have agreed to go with you, will you not, please, tell me—”
“I will not,” said Albern. “Our arrangement remains the same. I will keep telling you stories, as long as you want to hear them—but I will choose them. Can you accept that?”
“I suppose so,” grumbled Sun. “I thought that would be your answer, in any case. But I have my own condition. You are a storyteller, and if you say you must tell your stories in a certain order, I will believe you. But we are also traveling companions, and in that, I do not call you master. I do not want to follow along at your heels, chasing you like the wolfhound from your tales. If we are to ride together, I want to be treated as your equal. A partner, not a lackey.”
Albern looked mildly surprised. But then his gentle smile grew into a wide grin, and he clapped his hand on his knee. “Why, I could not agree more—and I apologize for making you feel that you were ever anything less. We are traveling companions, and neither lord of the other. I vow I will not forget it. What more can I do?”
“Tell me of this woman in Lan Shui, for one thing,” said Sun.
“Ah, gladly,” said Albern. “She is a medica, and I am seeking her services.”
Sun’s heart seemed to pause for a moment. “I—are you ill?” A sudden fear clutched at her heart, that the man she had just befriended might be in peril, about to be ripped away from her just as she had begun to value his company. And another, smaller part of her—a part she was somewhat ashamed of—wondered if she was about to be cast out alone upon the road, just as she was wondering if she had made the right choice in the first place.
“Oh, sky no,” said Albern, and his easy smile dispelled her terror in an instant. “Do not worry yourself in the slightest. It is simply that old bodies need a little more care than ones your age. My friend in Lan Shui makes sure I stay healthy.”
“Ah, I think I see,” said Sun. “Because you are ander?”
“Well, yes and no,” said Albern. “That plays a part—but age catches up with all of us, and it causes quite a bit more problems than a wending ever has.”
Sun let a little sigh of relief escape her. “Well, I am glad to hear it. At the risk of imitating Mag, I have to say: if you were to die before telling me the tale I wish to hear, I would have to kill you.”
Albern laughed loud and long at that, and the sound rang hearty and cheerful among the dark trunks that surrounded them. A bird chirped indignantly as it leaped into the air from a branch above him.
“I shall endeavor not to earn your wrath,” he said. “In any case, after I have seen the medica, I have other business. There is something near Lan Shui that needs looking into.”
“Another vampire?” said Sun, trying not to quail visibly.
“I should certainly hope not,” said Albern. “It seems to be a more mundane sort of evil. Banditry, mayhap, but we shall see. These are the errands I mean to take care of in Lan Shui. After I have seen to them—with your help, if you are willing to give it—we shall plan where to go next. Together. Is that acceptable?”
“Of course it is,” said Sun. “You could have simply told me so in the first place.”
She had meant no insult by it, and she thought she spoke the words lightly. Yet Albern’s smile faltered. When he spoke, it was in a subdued, almost mournful tone.
“I am sorry, child,” he said. “You are right, of course. It is only that as I tell you these tales, I cannot help but think of the times I traveled with Mag. And when I rode by her side … well, the two of us were so close, you see. We almost knew each other’s minds. Many things passed between us, plans and decisions, that never needed to be spoken aloud.”
He fixed Sun with a gaze that was suddenly clouded. She shifted where she sat. Her meat was in her lap, untouched and now forgotten.
“I hope this causes you no discomfort,” said Albern, his voice scarcely above a murmur. “But you remind me of her in many ways. I suppose I fell into old habits. But that was a different time, and I must always remind myself to see the world around me—as it is, not as I remember it. I should know better by now. Can you forgive me?”
“Of course,” said Sun, answering a bit too quickly.
“Thank you.” The old man’s smile grew. “But I must also ask a boon. I reserve the right to surprise you with some things. Any good tale must have a few twists and turns, after all, lest we grow bored of it. But I promise that the next part of this story should be very interesting to you—especially considering what you have told me about your family.”
Sun could not help herself—she smiled like a girl whose parents had just promised her a treat. “I cannot wait.”
The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) Page 28