The World of Samar Box Set 3

by M. L. Hamilton

  Kendrick folded his hands before him on the table. “Do you think Cambia’s as bad as he thinks?”

  “I don’t know, but if the outskirts have been reduced this low, can the town be any better off?” Jarrett’s eyes made the circuit of the small kitchen again. “And if it’s true, what does that mean about Adishian and...”

  Kendrick lifted his hand to silence him. “Adishian’s the capital, life’s usually very different in the capital, and even so, I refuse to believe, find it hard to believe, that the castle has met with such abject misery. In fact, it probably has fared quite well at the expense of people like this poor soul.”

  Davo turned at that point and surveyed his guests, then went to a cabinet beside the fireplace and removed a jug. He placed the jug and three glasses on the table, and took a seat.

  He filled each glass, then passed one each to his guests. Jarrett lifted his own and took a sniff, recognizing the woodsy smell of ale. He started to take a sip, but Davo was ready now for a brief speech and while holding the glass up in his hand, he took a breath and cleared his throat to begin. “I rarely take a drink nowadays,” he said, smiling in Kendrick’s direction. “But this is a sort of celebration and worth a little ale. I’m happy to say I haven’t died before I saw a real Stravad.”

  Kendrick tapped the old man’s glass with his own and both men took sips of the ale. Jarrett had to control his urge to gulp the entire glass. He was surprised to find the ale quite good, well-aged and full of body. He savored its rich taste on his tongue and in the back of his throat. And he wished suddenly that Davo hadn’t been daft, but was really hiding a wealth of booze.

  Kendrick settled his glass on the table and pushed it away. Jarrett found the motion both pretentious and wholly Nazarien. He fought an urge to throw a sarcastic remark at his companion. What was it about Kendrick’s apathetic attitude that bothered him?

  Deliberately ignoring the Nazarien, he turned to the old man. “Tell me, Davo, what do you know about King Tarnow?”

  The old man sat gazing into the depths of his glass with intense interest, but after a moment, he raised his head and focused his attention on Jarrett.

  “Your eyes are blue,” he said.

  Jarrett drew a deep breath and glanced down. He felt Kendrick’s gaze shift to him. “What do you know about the King, Davo?” he asked again, trying to steer the conversation away from his eyes.

  “Lord Tarnow?” said the old man and his brow wrinkled. “Very little, I guess. He came to Cambia once that I remember...surely he must be nearly as old as I am now. That was only a few years ago.”

  “What was?”

  “When he came to Cambia, after his marriage to the Queen.”

  Kendrick and Jarrett exchanged glances.

  Kendrick leaned toward the old man. “Did his Queen come too?”

  Davo nodded. “She’s come often – well, used to come. Not anymore though, not since the Lawries started. Tarnow forbade her to come then, too dangerous.” Davo fell to shaking his head in silence.

  “What are the Lawries?” asked Kendrick.

  “The Lawries are the bad people in Cambia, the night people,” said Davo, taking another sip.

  “Did you see the Queen when she came?”

  “I tried to go to market each time she came. She was so kind to the people, brought food and gave it away. She gave my Enna a piece of gabardine once. I buried her in it – Enna would have liked it that way.”

  “Why did she come so often?”

  “She felt it was her duty or some of the folks seemed to think. She visited every city in Adishian and brought food.” He had grown a bit more focused and talkative as he drank. “She’s beautiful,” he said, smiling at Kendrick.

  Kendrick nodded in return. “What does she look like?”

  Davo fell into deep thought. “I don’t think I ever saw her.”

  “But you just said she was beautiful?” prompted Jarrett.

  Davo looked at him in surprise. “She is. All the townspeople say it. And she was. Skin flawless, eyes green like emeralds, hair black as night. The townspeople said Adishian had the most beautiful Queen in all of Nevaisser. Although I guess Loden has more beautiful women.” He addressed this last remark to Kendrick.

  Jarrett threw his head back and drained his glass, closing his eyes and realizing suddenly that he was tired. He’d had enough of Davo’s confounding conversation for one night.

  “Do you know how the Queen came to Adishian?” asked Kendrick.

  Davo fingered the long gashes in the table, then sighed. “She was a gift to Tarnow from the Lord of Sarkisian. Now what is his name?”

  “A gift?” said Kendrick. “You mean she acted to bind the treaty between Sarkisian and Adishian after the war?”

  “Yes,” said Davo, “he gave her to our King to bind the two kingdoms together.”

  “Betrothed her,” corrected the Nazarien.

  Jarrett narrowed his eyes on his companion. What difference did it make? She had to be young enough to be Tarnow’s daughter, not his bride.

  Davo shook his head. “She was a gift. Poor little thing. She had no choice in the matter.”

  “But that isn’t true. When the second siege began ten years ago, she was betrothed to Tarnow to bind Adishian to Sarkisian,” insisted Kendrick.

  Jarrett frowned. “What does it matter?”

  “A lot. He makes it sound like she was a commodity.”

  “She was.”

  The Nazarien shook his head. “She was legally wed to the King, not a boughten concubine.”

  Jarrett stared at him in confusion. Nazarien didn’t believe in marriage. What difference could it make to Kendrick if the Queen was wedded, traded or sold? She’d gone to Adishian against her will.

  “How old could she have possibly been ten years ago?” he asked the Nazarien.

  Davo looked between the two men and Jarrett could see the play of intelligence in the old eyes.

  “She was just a child,” he said. “Just a child. Such a bride for my own son she would have been.” And again he slipped back into his stupor.

  Jarrett had had enough. He stretched, then rose to his feet. “I’m tired. I’m going to get some sleep – I guess the barn’s as good a place as any.” He glanced about the kitchen, at the dirty walls, the mildew in the ceiling corners and the greasy, blackened grate of the fireplace, and added, “But surely you’ll wish to stay in the house, your lordship.”

  Kendrick’s eyes narrowed into a glare, but he declined any answer to the remark. Being Nazarien, he wouldn’t respond, but Jarrett had never been sure whether it was because he chose not to do so, or because he was forbidden.

  * * *

  Davo started when he heard the outer door slam and he turned once more to Kendrick. “Have you been to Loden?”

  Kendrick shook his head. “No, but I may be going soon.”

  Davo scratched his beard and yawned loudly. “I thought that since you’re Stravad, you might have been to that place, what’s its name, in Loden, where all your people live?”

  “No,” said Kendrick, “you mean Temeron, but I haven’t been there. My people are scattered all over Samar, in fact I was born and raised in...” Kendrick paused. He remembered how Davo reacted to any mention of the Nazarien and he didn’t want to upset him anymore.

  Davo didn’t even realize Kendrick had halted. “I’ve always wanted to go to that place and see the Stravad, but I’m too old now and I couldn’t get through if I wanted to. The Lawries have hit every city in Adishian, they say.”

  Again Kendrick wondered about the capital. Was he right, had they kept the Lawries, as Davo called them, from the capital by subjugating the lower masses or was the capital in as poor straits as the outlying lands? If only Davo knew more about the other cities in Adishian, more about the war and siege.

  Kendrick felt tired and wished he might slip away to get some sleep too, but he didn’t know where to go. Davo yawned again, almost as if he’d read the Stravad’s mind, and looked
about the kitchen.

  “Where did the other one go?”

  “He went to the barn to get some sleep.”

  “Oh, well, I guess it’s time.” Davo lifted the jug and rose stiffly to his feet, replacing it in the cabinet again. “You can sleep in my son’s room at the top of the stairs.” He removed the candle from the middle of the table, shuffling into a hallway that led to the back of the house.

  Kendrick sat in the dark and watched the retreating candle light until he couldn’t see it anymore, then he felt his way through the dark with his pack over his shoulder, and after much groping, found what he believed to be Davo’s son’s room.

  * * *

  Jarrett started awake. He sat up and listened. The horses moved in the stalls and the rusted hinge of the barn door groaned against the wind. He could see through a rend in the barn door that the yard was quiet except for the scuttle of leaves across the hard, dry ground.

  It was still night.

  He lay back down in the hay and drew his blanket close about him, but he couldn’t shut his eyes just yet or shake the sensation of fear that had bolted him awake so suddenly.

  He felt comforted by the nicker of one of the horses and the distinct, pungent smell of the stale barn. He heard a rat scuttle by overhead and listened to the wind whistle through the open latticework of the loft. It blew the fresh scent of winter to him with a promise of rain. He flexed the muscles in his legs and rubbed his eyes, rolling to his side for comfort. Then he heard it again – the shrill scream of a woman followed by the raucous laughter of men.

  Jarrett was on his feet in the next instant, sword in hand. He moved swiftly and silently to the barn door and peered out into the night.

  The moon cast its pale glow on the yard and as Jarrett’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he could make out the figures of people ambling down the road. The wind carried their riotous laughter to him and he could see them lift and pass something heavy between them.

  He could now make out the woman, walking between the men, her skirts pulled up about her knees, her hair hanging in matted locks down her back. She threw back her head and shattered the night with her blood-curdling scream. The laughter broke across the yard immediately after, and Jarrett realized it was all done deliberately.

  Then one of the men hurtled a jug toward Davo’s farm and the well-aimed shot sent a section of the rotted fence into splinters. Again the laughter was an echo behind. Jarrett’s brow furrowed. These must be the Lawries. He glanced at the farmhouse. Kendrick’s profile was visible in one of the upper windows, but the drunken revellers didn’t notice, carrying their celebration and insane laughter down the road.

  He waited until they were out of sight, then returned to his bed in the hay, but sleep was not to find him again that night. As he worried the problem of the Lawries, his thoughts turned to Adishian and the Queen. Why was he so absorbed by thoughts of a woman he knew nothing about, thoughts of a woman who belonged to the King of Adishian? He focused his eyes on the barn door and waited for sunlight to brighten the yard, his mind awash in make-believe images of her.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jarrett led his horse from the barn and tied him to the porch, close to the trough of water. Walking across the yard, he went to inspect the damage from the previous night. The jug lay in a bed of weeds, surprisingly still intact, but the fence had splintered badly. Not that it hadn’t been a sorry affair to begin with anyway.

  Rolling the jug over, Jarrett looked down the road to Cambia. Anxiety of the previous night curled tight in his belly. Even though his unit wasn’t as rigid as Kendrick’s, he’d spent a good number of years learning discipline and order. Seeing the chaos and the tempestuous nature of the Lawries brought back difficult memories of a time when he’d had no control over his life. He hated the thought of being thrust back into such pandemonium, even if he was only passing through.

  The wind was cold this morning -- nagging claws of winter fingered his back and whipped his dark hair against his face. He lifted his eyes to the clouds and then lowered them to the horizon, which stretched on and on in all four directions. Adishian was painfully flat, except in Kazden, which was nestled in a valley against the ocean. Kazden was the only city between the Nevaisser/Loden border -- Nevaisser being predominantly flat and barren with deserts, while Loden was choked with towering mountains and verdant valleys, or so Jarrett had heard.

  His thoughts turned to Loden. What possibility was there that they might actually make a journey to the homeland of Eldon? The idea made him anxious -- the journey to Loden depended solely on what they might find in Adishian, and after seeing the outskirts of Cambia, Jarrett felt prospects of finding anything worthwhile were slim.

  He leaned against the fence and allowed the bitter wind to whip against his body. Since he had been a child, he’d heard of Loden, of its beauty and plenitude. Jarrett had once believed the rivers ran with wine and that the mountains were covered with thick, frothy cream. And Jarrett had secretly wanted to see Stravad, true Stravad of pure blood as Talar Eldralin had been. The only true Stravad Jarrett had seen were the intensive, rigid Nazarien who had come often to see the Terrian leader, but he wanted to see happy, easy going Stravad that worried little about life and flourished under this.

  His thoughts turned again to the Queen of Adishian. He tried to imagine her as a bitter, boring woman who thought only of her needs and desires at the expense of her people, but his other fantasy of her plagued him.

  Jarrett imagined the Queen of Adishian as a ravishing beauty who was, as Davo had said, kind, generous and gentle. He dreamed that she was intelligent and learned, having the wealth of two kingdoms at her intellectual command. Each quality that he had associated with Stravad, he gave to his fantasy woman and spent hours dwelling over daydreams about her.

  It was for her that he’d come all this way, left the comfort of his home to travel in the company of a Nazarien he couldn’t agree with, through war-torn, siege ravished lands, hostile to both Nazarien and Terrian. For her, he’d braved hunger and cold, the approach of winter and battle; for her, he’d endured years of training and schooling, dedicated his life to her cause, to the cause of her people. All for a woman that had only existed to him for a few months – a woman who would probably disdain to speak with him, who would view him as only a servant – no more.

  Jarrett forced thoughts of the Adishian Queen from his mind and turned his gaze on Davo’s broken, decrepit house. No matter how hard he looked at it, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it reminded him of the house he grew up in, although his house had never been so racked by age and neglect and poverty. Yet it had been a house that rang often with the voice of its unhappy owner and with the sound of fear. The emotion of fear always represented a sound to Jarrett, either the loud, horrifying sound of screaming, or the more muffled sound of a whimper, but most often the quiet, silent sound of fear, the sound that made one want to hide and become very small, nearly invisible.

  Suddenly the wind whined over the leafless trees and Jarrett lifted his eyes to the sky. A storm was brewing. They must get on the road soon if they wanted to make any ground that day.

  He headed toward the house after Kendrick. Patting his horse’s flank, he bounded up the creaking stairs and reached for the door, pushing it open. Kendrick was seated at the table, sipping tea with Davo. The Nazarien raised his eyes as Jarrett walked in and motioned to the chair beside him. Jarrett shook his head and went instead to the hearth to pour himself a cup of the thick, dark brew.

  “I wish I could leave you with some money, Davo,” he heard Kendrick say, and Jarrett turned once more to face the table, his back to the warmth of the fire.

  “Kendrick,” he replied in warning, but the Nazarien motioned him off with a wave of his hand. Jarrett choked down his own irritation and lifted the teacup, taking a long, deep swallow. He was edgy enough this morning, and he didn’t need to lock horns with the Nazarien.

  “Unfortunately, we haven’t much money, and we’ve a long
way to go,” Kendrick added.

  Davo smiled and rubbed his hands together. “The ointment is payment enough,” he said, “I haven’t slept as well as I did last night in years.”

  “I’m glad of that, but the ointment won’t cure all the problems that may arise for you,” said the Nazarien, leaning forward. “In fact, after last night I find it hard to leave you here alone at the mercy of the Lawries.”

  Jarrett angrily set his cup down on the sink board and started forward. “Have you forgotten the purpose of our mission, Nazarien?” he said, and he couldn’t hide the edge in his voice.

  Davo’s head shot up at the name and his eyes darted fearfully towards the door. Kendrick turned slowly in his chair and his gaze held a silent warning.

  Jarrett lowered his voice and moved closer to his companion. “After seeing the condition of Cambia’s outlying lands, I don’t think we’ll have any cause to go to Adishian if we wait much longer to help a senile, old man.”

  Kendrick rose to his feet and his eyes flashed angrily. “I know my duty better than you do, it seems. I haven’t forgotten the purpose of my mission, but I’ve also not forgotten the training of my order. If I can do anything to help this old man, then that is my primary function, and whatever we may find at Adishian will have to wait.”

  “I won’t wait. You stay, stay here for the entire winter, which you may do if this storm breaks on us. Stay here and rot for all I care, but I accepted this mission in the name of Talar Eldralin and in his name I intend to complete it as ordered.”

  Kendrick faltered – only for a moment, but Jarrett saw it. He knew Talar’s name would goad the Stravad and he’d used it for just such an effect. He waited no longer, but left the house, allowing the outer door to slam at his back, then he went to his horse.