As he walked down the street, Batos had a stocky stability about him that brought to mind a stout coffin, and his face had a tough, leathery quality (from years of exposure to wind and sand) out of which grew a spiky beard that was almost sea urchin-like. When Lawrence shook Batos’s right hand in greeting, it felt nothing like the hand of an easygoing merchant who passed the days carrying nothing heavier than his cart horses reins; it was rough and strong enough, telling that this was a man who did heavy lifting year-round.
Yet despite Batos’s appearance, he was neither stubborn nor ill-mannered; the words he spoke had a priestly serenity to them.
“I daresay merchants who travel across many provinces, like yourself, Mr. Lawrence, are more numerous these days. Traveling to and fro between the same places, selling the same things as I do, gets quite boring.”
“Ah, but the town peddlers and craftsmen would surely be angry if they heard you say so.”
“Ha-ha-ha! Right you are. There are plenty of men who’ve spent fifty years selling naught but leather rope. No doubt I’d get an earful if I claimed to be tired of it,” Batos said with a laugh.
He told of how he was a trader of precious metals from the mines of Hyoram and that he’d spent nigh thirty years going back and forth between those rugged mountains and the town of Kumersun.
Any man who could carry those heavy loads through the mountains of Hyoram – where the wind was strong and the trees were few – was a man to be reckoned with.
“Still, I must say you’re a curious fellow, Mr. Lawrence.”
“Oh?”
“I refer to your search for a chronicler to learn the ancient tales of the northlands. Or has it something to do with a business prospect?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. It’s just something of a whim, I suppose.”
“Ha-ha-ha! You’ve got good taste for one so young. I’ve only recently become interested in the old tales. Originally I intended to make a business of it, but I’m afraid they’ve quite become my master rather than the other way around!”
Lawrence couldn’t quite imagine what Batos meant by making a business of the old tales, but the man’s talk was intriguing, so he kept his mouth shut and listened.
“It came to me after so many years of going back and forth between the same places. The world I knew was very small, you see. But even there, people had been coming and going for hundreds of years, and I knew nothing about those times at all.”
Lawrence had an inkling of what Batos meant.
The more he traveled around, the more the world seemed to spread out before him infinitely.
If that was the breadth of the world, in a sense, then what Batos felt was the world’s depth.
“I’m old, you see, and I’ve not the vigor to go journeying afar. Neither can I travel back in time. So even if it’s only by stories, I came to want to visit the places I’ve never been able to see in person and to travel back to those ages that God in his capriciousness has prevented me from experiencing. When I was a young man with nothing on my mind but profit, such things would never have occurred to me, but now I often wonder if I’d had the chance to consider them, my life would have turned out quite differently. So I must admit I’m a bit envious of you, Mr. Lawrence. Hah, I must sound quite ancient.” Batos laughed at his own folly, but his words left a deep impression on Lawrence.
It was true that the old tales and legends allowed one to know of things that were impossible to experience directly.
He felt a new weight behind the words Holo had said to him not so very many days after they had first met.
“The worlds we live in, you and I, are very different.”
For the greater part of the time Holo had lived, the people from her own era had been long since dead, the era itself lost to time.
And Holo was not human, but wolf.
Thinking on it, Lawrence saw that Holo’s very existence began to seem special in more ways than one.
What had she seen and heard? Where had she traveled?
He began to want to ask her about her travels – perhaps when he returned to the inn.
“But when the Church looks at the old tales and legends, all they see are superstitions and pagan stories. Where the Church’s eye falls, tales become hard to collect. Hyoram is a mountainous region and had many fascinating stories, but the Church was there, too. Kumersun is quite nice in that regard.”
Ploania was a country where both pagans and the Church existed side by side, but it was precisely because of that coexistence that the Church was much stricter in those towns and regions where it held power.
Pagan towns that resisted Church control had to be constantly prepared for battle. Kumersun was unique in Ploania for its peaceful avoidance of those problems.
Even in Kumersun, it was not the case that there was a complete lack of conflict.
Lawrence and Batos headed to the north district of Kumersun in order to meet with the chronicler.
The town had been built with expansion in mind, so the city walls were constructed of wood that could be easily disassembled and the streets and buildings were spacious.
Yet even within this town, there existed a high stone wall.
The wall encircled the district housing those who had fled to Ploania because of Church persecution.
The very fact that the district was walled off with stone proved that the people of the town considered the presence of the persecuted a burden. While they were not considered criminals in Kumersun, in Ruvinheigen – for example – they would have been beheaded as a matter of course.
Upon reflection, Lawrence changed his mind.
The wall did not exist simply to isolate these people; it was probably necessary for their protection.
“Is that… sulfur?” Lawrence asked.
“Aha, so you’ve handled medicinal stones as well, have you?”
Hyoram boasted a variety of very productive mines, and while Batos may have been used to the distinctive odors of the region, Lawrence couldn’t help but make a face.
The smell reached his nose as soon as they passed through the door in the stone wall, and he immediately knew what sort of people lived here.
The Church’s greatest enemy – alchemists.
“No, I’ve knowledge of it is all.”
“Knowledge is a merchant’s greatest weapon. You’re good at your job.”
“… It’s kind of you to say so.”
The area within the walls was several steps lower than the outside ground.
The spaces between the buildings in the district were narrow, and although they called to mind alleys Lawrence had seen in other towns, there were some strange differences.
For one, many of the alleys they walked in were scattered with bird feathers.
“One can’t always smell the poison wind. People keep small birds – and if the bird suddenly dies, they know to be careful.”
Lawrence knew of the practice as it was used in mines, but having come to a place where it was actually employed sent a shiver up his spine.
The phrase poison wind was certainly descriptive, but for Lawrence’s part, he felt the Church’s phrase – the hand of death – to be more apt. Apparently it came from the fact that no sooner did one notice a strangely cold wind than one was paralyzed, unable to move.
Lawrence wondered if the cats that he saw here and there as they walked down the street were kept for the same purpose as the birds or if they instead gathered to prey on those birds.
In either case, it was eerie.
“Mr. Batos–”
It had been some time since Lawrence had found walking in silence to be so difficult.
The street was dim and strange, the silence punctuated by the meowing of cats and the flutter of birds; mysterious metallic sounds rang out occasionally, and the smell of sulfur was constant. Lawrence couldn’t help raising his voice.
“How many alchemists are in this district, would you say?”
“Hmm… counting apprentices perhaps t
wenty, give or take. But in any case, accidents are common, so it is hard to know for sure.”
In other words, there were a lot of fatalities.
Regretting having asked the question, Lawrence shifted to more mercantile concerns.
“Do you find that trading with alchemists makes good business? I would think it would bring significant danger.”
“Mm…” said Batos slowly, stepping around a barrel that had held some green substance that Lawrence didn’t want to look at too long. “There’s a lot of profit to be had in trading with alchemists that have nobility backing them up. They buy a lot of iron, lead, quicksilver, and tin – to say nothing of copper, silver, and gold.”
They were all quite normal commodities; Lawrence was surprised.
He had been expecting something much weirder – five-legged frogs, perhaps.
“Ha-ha-ha, are you surprised? Even here in the north, there are people who think alchemists are basically sorcerers. In truth, they’re not so very different from metal smiths. They heat metals or melt them down with acids. Of course…”
They turned right at a narrow intersection.
“… In reality, there are some who research sorcery.” Batos looked behind them and then twisted his lip in a feral grin.
Lawrence faltered and stopped walking for a moment, at which Batos immediately smiled, apologetic.
“But I’ve only heard rumors of them, and I don’t believe any of the alchemists in this district have met any such people. And incidentally, everyone living in this area is basically a good person.”
This was the first time Lawrence had heard alchemists – who practiced their arts without any fear of God – described as “good people.”
Whenever the subject came up, alchemists were spoken of in fearful, incurious tones, as though they had committed some unspeakable corruption.
“They’re my bread and butter, after all, so I can’t very well accuse them of being bad people now, can I?”
A slightly relieved Lawrence smiled at Batos very merchant-like statement.
Shortly thereafter, Batos stopped before the door of one of the buildings.
The street received no sunlight and was riddled with holes and dark puddles of water.
The stone wall facing the alley had a wooden window that was cracked open, and the entire two-story building seemed to lean to one side.
It could have been a building from any slum in the world, but there was one important difference.
The area was completely silent; no peals of childish laughter sounded.
“Come now, you needn’t be so nervous. They really are fine people here.”
No matter how many times Batos tried to reassure him, Lawrence could only give an uncertain smile in return.
It was impossible for him not to be nervous – this was, after all, a place where people lived who had been branded criminals of the most serious sort by an authority that brooked no opposition.
“Excuse us – is anybody home?” Batos called out casually, knocking upon the door without any such fear.
The ancient door seemed like it had gone years without being opened.
Lawrence could hear a cat’s quiet meow from somewhere.
A monk accused of heresy, chased out of a monastery – what kind of person would that be?
A shriveled old frog of a man appeared briefly in Lawrence’s mind, clad in a tattered robe.
This was no world for a traveling merchant.
The door slowly opened.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Batos!”
The moment was so anticlimactic that Lawrence very nearly collapsed.
“It’s been a while. You seem well!”
“I could say the same of you! Spending all your time in the mountains of Hyoram. God must favor you indeed.”
It was a tall, blue-eyed woman who had opened the thin wooden door. She seemed a few years older than Lawrence, but the fashionable robe draped comfortably around her body gave her a nonetheless fascinating aura.
Her speech was lively and pleasant – she was indisputably beautiful.
But in that instant, Lawrence thought of that which all alchemists sought – the power of immortality.
Witch.
The word appeared in his mind just as the woman looked at him.
“You’re quite a handsome man, but you think me a witch – I can see it in your eyes.”
The woman had seen right through him; Batos spoke quickly to smooth things over.
“In that case, perhaps that’s how I should introduce you?”
“Don’t be absurd – this place is already quite tedious enough. And in any case, is any witch as pretty as I am?”
“I hear many women are exposed as witches because of their beauty.”
“You never change, Mr. Batos. No doubt you’ve hideaways all over Hyoram.”
Lawrence had no idea what was going on, so he abandoned his attempts to grasp the situation and concentrated instead on calming himself.
He took one and a half deep breaths.
Then he straightened himself and became Lawrence the traveling merchant.
“So, m’dear. It’s not me that has business with you today, but Lawrence here.”
Batos seemed to have noticed Lawrence regain his composure; at his well-timed statement, Lawrence took a step forward, put on his best merchant’s smile, and greeted the woman.
“Please excuse my rudeness. I am Kraft Lawrence, a traveling merchant. I’ve come to call upon one Dian Rubens. Might he be in the house?”
Lawrence rarely spoke so formally.
The woman stood with her hand on the door, silent for a moment, before smiling, amused. “What, did Batos not tell you?”
“Oh–” Batos lightly smacked his head with his hand as if to punish his own carelessness, and then he looked to Lawrence apologetically. “Mr. Lawrence, this is Miss Dian Rubens.”
“Dian Rubens at your service. It’s quite a masculine name, is it not? Please call me Diana,” said the woman, her manner suddenly very elegant as she smiled. It was enough to make Lawrence feel that she must have been attached to a very well-to-do monastery indeed.
“Well, enough of that. Please, come in. I don’t bite,” said Diana with a mischievous smile as she gestured into the house.
The inside of Diana’s home was not so very different from the outside – it called to mind the captains quarters in a battered vessel that had been through a bad storm.
Wooden chests reinforced with iron bands were everywhere, piled in every corner of the room, their drawers left sloppily open, and there were sturdy, expensive-looking chairs mostly buried under clothes or books.
Also within the room were countless quill pens, as if some great bird had done its grooming in the room.
The only places in the room that seemed even marginally free from the chaos were the bookshelves and the large desk where Diana plied her trade.
“So, what might your business be?” asked Diana, pulling a chair out from under her desk, on which by some miracle of planning sunlight fell. She neither put hot water on nor gestured for her guests to sit down.
Tea or not, just as Lawrence was wondering if she wouldn’t do something about a place to sit, Batos took the liberty of removing items from one of the chairs turned into storage and gestured for Lawrence to sit.
Even the most arrogant nobleman would invite his guests to sit.
Lawrence felt no special malice behind Diana’s eccentricity; it seemed part of her strange charm.
“First, I should apologize for my sudden intrusion,” Lawrence said.
Diana smiled and nodded at the standard pleasantry.
Lawrence cleared his throat and continued, “Actually, Miss Rubens, I was–”
“Diana, please,” she corrected him immediately, her expression serious.
Lawrence concealed his perturbation. “Excuse me,” he said, and Diana’s face resumed its soft smile.
“Yes, as I was saying, I have heard that you are quite k
nowledgeable about the old tales of the northlands. I was hoping you would share some of that knowledge with me.”
“The north?”
“Yes.”
Diana’s countenance became thoughtful, and she looked at Batos. “And here I thought he’d want to talk business.”
“You jest. Had he spoken of business you’d have had him out on his ear.”
Diana laughed at Batos’s words, but Lawrence got the sense that it was probably true.
“But you don’t even know if I know the tale you seek.”
“That might mean the tale I heard was made up from whole cloth,” said Lawrence.
“Well then, it appears you will have to tell me this tale, and I shall do the listening.”
Lawrence had to look away from Diana’s kind smile as he cleared his throat again.
He was grateful Holo was not there.
“In that case, the story I wish to hear of concerns a village called Yoitsu.”
“Ah, the one said to have been destroyed by the Moon-Hunting Bear.”
Diana seemed to have immediately opened the drawers of her memory.
Given how quickly the subject of the town’s destruction had come up, Lawrence again felt that leaving Holo behind was the right choice. It looked as though Yoitsu really had been destroyed. His head hurt when he thought of how he would have to break this news to Holo.
As Lawrence thought this over, Diana stood slowly and approached the room’s strangely well-ordered bookshelves, taking down a single volume from a neat row of large tomes.
“I seem to recall… Ah, here it is. The Moon-Hunting Bear, also known as Irawa Weir Muheddhunde, and Yoitsu, the village it destroyed. There are many stories of this bear. All quite old, though,” said Diana smoothly as she scanned the pages. She had a callus on her index finger from writing, and it was swollen, making it seem quite possible that she had written all of these books.
How many pagan tales and superstitions were contained in those pages?
Something suddenly occurred to Lawrence. Batos had said he was thinking of making a business out of the old tales – no doubt he meant selling Diana’s books to the Church.
With the stories in the books, the Church leaders would be able to instantly ascertain which heretical beliefs had penetrated which lands; they would do nearly anything for such information.
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