Evil Within

by Richard S. Tuttle

  "Is he Jared's father?" asked the Salacian tracker.

  "He is," nodded Gunnar. "See what you can find on the bodies. I am afraid to let go of our friend for fear he will run again."

  "If you are truly Jared's friends," the old man said, "you will just let me go."

  "We do not plan to harm you," Gunnar said calmly, "but you will not be allowed to leave until you have answered some questions to my satisfaction. Who are you?"

  "I will answer nothing," the old man said defiantly.

  Kenra approached holding two pieces of paper he held them out so that only Gunnar could see them. One was the image of the Arin prince, and the other was an old drawing that looked quite similar to the old man they were holding prisoner. Gunnar nodded that he had seen the pictures and Kenra folded them up and put them in his pouch.

  "There was little else on the bodies," the Salacian prince said.

  "The men were bounty hunters," Gunnar replied. "I heard these two talking. They have been after this old man for years."

  "I can believe that," nodded Kenra as he wiped the dirt off his clothes. "This old man is a tracker's nightmare. I have learned quite a few tricks today following his trail. I particularly like the rope in the tree at the top of the cliff. That is one that I will always remember."

  "I was in a hurry," shrugged the old man, "or you would never have found me."

  "These other men found you," Gunnar pointed out. "I followed their track, and they knew exactly where they were going. They split quite a ways back to be in position on both ends of your tunnel."

  "I have done this for too many years," sighed the old man. "Good tricks should only be used once, not over and over again."

  "I do not know what you have done, Zalman," Gunnar said, "but I can protect you if you are innocent."

  "So you know who I am," sighed the old man. "Just kill me and be done with it. I am too tired to continue any longer."

  "Don't you even care about Jared any more?" scowled Gunnar.

  "How could I not care about my son?" snapped Zalman. "What kind of question is that? I love my son dearly, but I will not have him suffer because of me. He is far better off if I am dead. Why did you have to come looking for me and spoil his ignorance?"

  "Let's take him back to the camp," suggested Kenra. "Maybe Jared can get him to talk."

  "No," shouted Zalman. "Tell him that I am dead."

  "I cannot lie to him," Gunnar shook his head.

  "Then kill me and then tell him that I am dead," retorted Zalman. "I beg of you, do not destroy his life."

  Chapter 29 - Memories

  Memories

  Gunnar and Kenra took Jared's father to where the Arin prince had left the horses. They sat in a small clearing away from the trail as the sky began to darken.

  "I do not understand you," the Arin prince said to Jared's father. "What is it about your life that endangers Jared?"

  "I am Zalman," sighed the old man. "Does that name mean nothing to you?"

  "Nothing," shrugged Gunnar. "Is it supposed to?"

  "It must," scowled Zalman. "You knew my name when you seized me. Why do you lie?"

  "I did not know your name," Gunnar corrected the man. "It was on the poster my friend took off the bodies. Show him what you showed me, Kenra."

  The Salacian prince retrieved the two drawings from his pouch and passed one to the old man. Zalman stared at it and nodded. He handed it back.

  "I was mistaken," admitted Zalman. "What is the other drawing?"

  "It doesn't matter right now," Gunnar shook his head.

  "I would like to know who else they hunted," replied Zalman.

  Kenra looked at Gunnar, and the Arin prince shook his head. Zalman watched everything with keen eyes and his lips pressed tightly together.

  "I feel responsible for Jared," Gunnar continued after the distraction. "I need to know what trouble to be expecting. Why won't you simply explain to me what is going on? I already said that we would not harm you."

  "I don't trust you," Zalman said sharply. "In fact, I don't trust anyone."

  "Why don't you trust me?" Gunnar sighed in frustration. "We saved your life today."

  "Yet you hide what is on the other poster?" retorted Zalman. "What is there to trust? I am used to people deceiving other people. I lived with it for my whole life. I am going to tell you nothing. Get that through your thick head. You have only two choices. Either kill me, or let me go. I really don't care which you do."

  "I think he is crazy," commented Kenra. "I say we tie him up and find out what this reward is all about."

  Zalman leaped to his feet and tried to race into the woods. Kenra had been expecting exactly that reaction, and he easily snared the old man. He dragged Zalman back to the clearing and sat him down on the ground.

  "Now we know what he fears most," grinned Kenra.

  "No," Gunnar shook his head. "As much as he fears being turned over to Borunda, there is something he fears even more."

  Zalman had been glaring at the Salacian prince, but Gunnar's words caught his attention. He looked at Gunnar apprehensively.

  "You fear having to confront Jared," declared Gunnar. "Don't you? You tricked your own son into thinking you were dead so he would leave, and he would no longer be a burden to you. The boy loves you dearly, Zalman. He speaks of you reverently whenever he speaks, and you fear having to look into his eyes after he finds out that you merely discarded him because he no longer pleased you."

  "Stop it!" shouted Zalman. "You don't know what you are talking about. I would gladly die for that boy, and that is what I wanted to do. I sent him away so I could kill myself, but I could not find the courage to do it. Please," the old man whimpered, "don't torture me. Slay me, and do both of us a favor. Take my body to Borunda and claim your gold, but swear that you will never tell Jared that you found me. Promise me that."

  Zalman started crying, and Gunnar felt terrible goading the old man, but he had to get Zalman to open up to him. He walked over to Zalman and sat beside him. He put his arm around the old man and comforted him. Zalman lifted his head and stared at Gunnar's face with confusion in his eyes.

  "Who are you, and why are you doing this to me?" asked Zalman. "Have you no pity in your soul?"

  "I am a wanted man much like yourself, Zalman," Gunnar replied softly, "and the pity I feel towards you now is so strong that it hurts me dearly, but I cannot spare your feelings any more than I can spare my own. The Land of the Nine Kingdoms is soon to be at war, and your son is going to be part of it. Don't ask me how I know this, because I am incapable of telling you. I do not mean that I refuse to; I am incapable. I don't know who Jared is, but I know that his life is important. There is a bond between him and me, a magical bond of some sort. I do not understand it any more than he does, but we will discover it together. What I seek from you is the knowledge that was denied to your son. He doesn't know who he is, and that lack of understanding may kill him."

  Zalman's eyes grew wider and wider with each passing word. He stopped sniveling and wiped his eyes.

  "You wield the Talent?" Zalman asked in a broken voice.

  "No," Gunnar answered. "I am filled with the Talent, but its power is not for my use. I can find no one to explain what is happening to me; no one knows."

  "That makes no sense to me," frowned Zalman. "One either has the Talent, or one does not."

  "That is the way I always understood it," agreed the Arin prince, "but that is no longer true. I have spoken to wispers, and they have tried peering into my mind, but they do not understand what the Talent is doing within me. I cannot wield it."

  "You either have the Talent or you do not," Zalman stubbornly replied. "There is no in between. The wispers that you have spoken to are poor in their knowledge because you are a lowly bandit from Capri. You must travel to one of the large cities and seek their help. They have wispers who understand the Talent."

  "I have been to the greatest wispers in Anatar," answered the prince as he slipped on his ring and held hi
s hand so that Zalman could inspect it. "None of them can tell me what the Talent is doing within me."

  Zalman stared at the ring and shook his head. "You are a prince? You said that you are a wanted man before. Which am I to believe?"

  "Both," replied Gunnar as he signaled Kenra to show Zalman the other poster. "My name will not be on the drawing because Borunda could not openly call for the death of a foreign prince, at least not yet. I am Prince Antion of Arin."

  Zalman stared at the drawing closely and then examined Prince Antion's face. He nodded with recognition.

  "Why are you not hidden behind the walls of Anatar?" asked Zalman. "Why is your nation not rising up to confront such treachery?"

  "Arin is ill-equipped to defend against an attack from Borunda," explained the prince. "Perhaps in time, we will be ready, but we are not yet prepared. As for hiding in Anatar, many think that is exactly where I should be, but whatever is inside me is driving me in different directions. Right now, it is driving me to discover the truth about Jared. You must tell me all that you can, Zalman. I have told you secrets that could cost me my life. Even Jared and most of the group I travel with do not know that I am a prince. Certainly you must know that I am sincere by now. I must know why there is a bond between your son and me."

  "How do you know there is a bond?" Zalman asked skeptically.

  "I can feel it," answered Prince Antion. "Whenever we touch I can feel an energy pass between us. He can feel it too. What is it? What does it mean?"

  "I don't know," sighed Zalman. "I truly don't know, but I now believe all that you have said. I never thought the Talent would cause troubles for Jared. In fact, I hoped that he would never discover the curse within him. I can see that was but the wishes of a fool."

  "He told me that you called the Talent a curse," nodded Prince Antion, "and I feared that he would kill himself when he found out he had the Talent within him, but he used it the other night to save a man's life."

  "He used it?" gasped Zalman.

  "He used it," nodded Prince Antion. "There was an old merchant who traveled with us. Bandits in Goodland nearly beat him to death the other night. He crawled all night to our campsite. We thought for sure that he would die, but Jared healed him. I watched the wounds heal, and I was thankful that your son was alive to help."

  "The Talent can do wonderful things," smiled Zalman. The old man's smile lasted for only a second, and a frown appeared to replace it. "More often it destroys than heals," he spat. "We would all be better off if the Talent never existed."

  "Perhaps," nodded Prince Antion, "but that is not possible, is it? Be thankful that Jared is one who only wants to heal. If such power must exist, let it be in people like him."

  "You don't know what you are saying," Zalman shook his head. "The Talent consumes people. It destroys them."

  "The Talent is hereditary," interjected Kenra, "Is that not true?"

  "It is," nodded Zalman. "The curse is passed down from one generation to the next."

  "Do you have the Talent?" the Salacian prince asked.

  "Me?" balked Zalman. "Of course not. That would just be one more reason to kill myself. I would never live with that inside me."

  "Then your wife was a wisper?" asked the Arin prince.

  Zalman's eyes clouded over, and his head drooped to his chest. For several minutes no one spoke. Eventually, Zalman composed himself and raised his head. He looked Prince Antion in the eye and nodded.

  "My wife was a wisper," admitted Zalman. "She was also a princess. One night sixteen years ago, my sweet Orenda gave birth to two baby boys. It was a long night, and the boys were fussy, but neither of us minded. We were thrilled to have sons. We were all in bed together when Zinan got fussy. Sweet Orenda did not want to disturb Jared and me, so she took Zinan onto the beach to nurse him and quiet him down. Suddenly the whole front of the house burst into flames. I leaped out of bed and wrapped my first-born in my arms, but the roof collapsed around me. I could not get near the front door, and burning beams blocked my path to the back door."

  Zalman started sobbing. The princes remained silent and let him compose himself.

  "Like an angel she arrived," Zalman continued. "The back door of the house opened, and she stepped inside. I knew that she would use her power to save us, but then I noticed that Zinan was missing from her arms. My eyes swept past her, and I saw the witch standing on the beach holding my other son. She sent a wave of fire into the back of my beloved. I could see Orenda's skin peeling off her body, but there was nothing that I could do. Orenda knew that she was going to die, but she refused to let us die in there with her. She used the Talent to blast a hole in the side of the house so that Jared and I could escape. I ran," whimpered the old man. "I took Jared and ran away, and my sweet Orenda perished in my place. It should have been me that died that night, not my beloved Orenda."

  Tears flooded down the old man's cheeks, and he pounded his fists against his legs. Gunnar wrapped his arms around Zalman as much to stop him from hurting himself as to comfort him. It took a long time for Zalman to calm down, and when he did, he appeared exhausted. Gunnar lowered Zalman's head to the ground, and Kenra covered him with a blanket. The two princes took turns guarding the makeshift camp until morning.

  When the sun lightened the sky, Kenra built a fire and started a pot of tea. Zalman awoke and smelled the tea. He pushed the blanket aside and helped himself to a cup. He looked briefly around the campsite and saw Kenra and Gunnar watching him. He walked over and sat next to the Arin prince. Zalman appeared quite composed.

  "Now you know all there is to know," the old man said. "What are you going to do with me?"

  "Who was the witch?" asked Gunnar.

  "Naveena," answered Zalman. "Naveena who ended up with my second son. Naveena who destroyed my wife and baby."

  "But Zinan survived," Gunnar frowned in confusion.

  "Aye," nodded Zalman, "he survived, but it would have been far better if he had not. I tried several times over the years to get the boy out of the palace in Tarent, but I was never able to. I watched as he turned into something so evil that Orenda would not have recognized him if she were still alive. He used the Talent to torture animals at first, and then people, but he was a prince, and he was allowed to do anything he wanted. Naveena saw to that. She trained him in the dark ways. He is no longer my son. The Talent has consumed him."

  "And you fear that will happened to Jared?" asked Prince Antion.

  "I do fear it," nodded Zalman. "I never truly understood the Talent, but Orenda was powerful in it. When we married, her brother, the king, was livid because I was beneath her station. He banned me from the palace in the hope that Orenda would abandon me, but we were in love. Instead, she left the palace, and we moved to Vineland. She worked as a lowly wisper in the small towns along the coast up there. The people could never afford to pay us, but we didn't care. That is where I saw the good side of the Talent. She used it every day to heal broken bones and deliver babies. I once commented on what a wonderful thing the Talent was, and that is when Orenda told me the truth."

  "The truth?" question Prince Antion.

  "Aye," nodded Zalman. "The Talent is a two-edged sword. You can use it a thousand times to do good, and it will have no effect on you, but use it just once for evil, and you become a changed person. I don't mean to say that you become an animal like Naveena from one bad use, but you do change. You change each and every time you use it for evil. You can never undo it. There is no going back. Do you understand what I am saying?"

  "I am not sure," admitted the Arin prince. "If you use it for evil, can you still do good with it?"

  "Up to a point," nodded Zalman, "up to a point. From what I understand, and this is only what I have heard mind you, you can continue to do good until you have done so much evil that it prohibits you from doing any more good. At least I think that is what Audric said."

  "Who is Audric?' asked Prince Antion.

  "Audric is a wise sage," answered Zalman. "When we first
moved to Vineland, Orenda searched for a teacher so that she might learn the proper ways to use the Talent. Wispers usually learn from their parents who were also wispers, but Orenda did not have that option, so she sought one who would teach her. She found a wisper, but the woman said that Orenda's Talent was much too powerful for her to teach, so she sent us on to Audric."

  "Does this Audric still live?" Prince Antion asked with interest.

  "I do not know," answered Zalman. "I have not seen him in over sixteen years. He was a good deal older than I was at the time, but he was not ancient. He may still live. Why are you asking?"

  "Two reasons," answered the Arin prince. "One is to find out exactly what is inside me and what is to be done about it, and the other is to get instruction for Jared."

  "His instruction did not save Orenda," spat Zalman.

  "No," the prince smiled tautly, "but it did save you and Jared. I do not think the Talent consumes all who use it, Zalman. If that were so, no nation would allow wispers to live. If Jared must have the Talent inside him, and there is certainly no option of getting rid of it that I know of, then he should be trained by the best teacher I can find. It is more dangerous for him to stumble around with such power inside him and not know what to do with it. He might inadvertently use it for evil, and that can never be reversed, as you said before. He must understand these things. How else can we expect him to use it wisely?"

  Zalman began nodding as the prince spoke, and by the end of the speech, he was nodding vigorously.

  "Of course," Zalman responded with fervor. "I have been a fool. I have shielded the lad from the Talent in the hope that he would not know what it was, and he would ignore it. The fact that he used it the other night shows what a foolish notion that was. He must be trained. Already you have proven to be a better father than I have been."

  "Not a father," grinned the Arin Prince. "Jared looks upon me as his big brother. I am quite happy with that position."

  "A brother then," smiled Zalman. "You still have not answered my first question. What are you going to do with me?"