by Henry Thomas
They rode on together at a long trot in single file along the trails and switchbacks all the day, fording small brooks and leaping over streams one after the other, Bellan looking back with a grin as though he were offering them riding challenges whenever an obstacle or an adventure that required some skill on horseback to negotiate presented itself. They climbed their way through the rolling hills and valleys of the land, always within the trees and never truly being able to reckon how near or far the road lay.
Joth fell to wondering about what the mage could possibly stand to gain by telling him one thing and then laying a trap to have him done away with and Eilyth held as his captive. Besides the obvious, he thought grimly. He shook his head and spat onto the damp trail beside him, into the gathering leaves that lay scattered there.
The dish-faced bay was called Gwyrno, which meant something like “White Eye,” and Joth had been reminded of what a fine horse he was upon taking to the trail and feeling him move along smoothly, ambling over the low rises stoically, stretching out and leaping the brooks at Joth’s urging. The horse was happy to be doing something. Joth could sense that the horse was excited for the change from trudging along the roads, holding his head high with his ears perked forward, at his ease but full of life, his heart beating, blood coursing, his powerful legs picking their way through the rough terrain like a dancer steps across a floor.
Joth could feel himself stepping with the horse, moving with him and the strange sensation of stepping with four legs and the vast lungs breathing and heaving, so strong, so fast; he lost himself for a moment, and he was inside the horse’s world. He labored easily under the weight of his rider. How strange it was to see through the horse’s eyes, to have the flood of scents rush through you with every breath, the pounding strength of your chest…Joth shook himself in the saddle and came back to his senses.
Eilyth threw a look back to him.
What had just happened to him he wondered? Perhaps he had drifted off to sleep for a moment? Bloody fool, Joth, even you can’t sleep at a long trot, he chided himself. Gwyrno had craned his neck around and was regarding him strangely out of his pale right eye. Joth blinked a few times and gently pulled the horse’s head around with a slight touch of his left rein. Joth came to the realization that maybe Bellan was not the only person that he should stop second-guessing. What Eilyth had done to him in the pass had awoken more than just his awareness; it had awoken an ability in him that allowed him to sense others’ feelings and perceptions as well. He had been lying to himself and denying every instinct he had, only to have it rear up and almost cause him to topple out of his saddle along the wild trails to Torlucksford. He knew he had to speak to Eilyth about it, she of all people would know what to say to him to help him get a grasp on how to handle this ability, this strange perception. She was looking at him again then, her eyes full of unreadable mystery. Her face was just a touch curious as she regarded him and Joth wondered if she sensed the fear in him, for that is what it was, he had decided; it was a fear of this new awareness, an inability to control or understand it fully. These were the things that drove the fear in his mind when he felt himself fully embracing it.
Joth was afraid of knowing things outside of his own head. It felt unwieldy and alien to him, as though he were somehow exposed and vulnerable or as if he were sitting too close to a stranger at mess without enough bench between them to allow for space. He felt naked and fearful in the face of it. There, he thought, I’ve admitted it to myself at least, at last. It did scare him, but it thrilled him as well. It thrilled him now to think of how he had felt as he experienced running like a horse runs just moments before. He could sense other space, other perception. It was vast and limitless, how he imagined the ocean to be. It was all hanging out there before him when he was least expecting it, dangling like a prize he was afraid of grasping. Then it would be gone as he was distracted or telling himself to stop daydreaming. Whenever he attempted to find it again, he would be left exasperated.
He wished that he had been blessed by a moment of keen insight and extra-sensory perception when Mage Alchemist Norden had been shaking his hand politely, a dagger hidden behind his back. Joth was at odds as to why the man would want him dead. Why not reassign him back to the garrison at Immerdale and be done with it bloodlessly? No, the man had been too curious as to whether other outriders were sent, too curious as to whether or not word of Uhlmet’s capture had reached other ears. Lord Uhlmet was famously disliked and had a reputation for being a rather haughty and dislikable sort of a man, and a man like Norden may well stand to benefit from his staying gone for a long, perhaps indefinite, time. Joth and Eilyth were the only souls who knew of Uhlmet’s capture, so perhaps Norden had dreamt up this plan to contain the knowledge of Uhlmet’s dire predicament? It seemed far-fetched, especially going off of the word of an errant stable-boy and nothing else, but Joth could see the logic behind a plan such as that having some merit in the mind of a man like Norden.
It was obvious that the man held Uhlmet with contempt. He had said as much by saying nothing, let alone by telling Joth that Uhlmet had been unfit for command. The pity was that Joth agreed with the man. He thought Norden was right in his thinking and his observations on the character of Lord Uhlmet. He would be happy to say as much to a council should he be brought up on charges, but he wished now that he had kept his head up and his eyes ahead and gone about his business without any more excitement or intrigue than necessary.
Joth leaned out to avoid a limb and squeezed Gwyrno into a slow canter to catch up to the others. They had all been pacing well and the horses were lathered and blowing hard as they came over a low rise between two larger wood-covered slopes and a trio of hawks soared and cried out overhead. Joth regarded Eilyth as she noted it well.
She offered a half-smile before looking away.
Bellan pulled them up at the other side of the pass. “There’s a stream here, Master, lady. Should we wish to bed down for the evening, this right here’s most likely the best place we’ll come across afore we make it to Torlucksford, if you take my meaning.”
Joth looked at the sky. “It is barely late afternoon, Bell. Surely we have two, maybe three hours left to ride?”
The youth reddened. “Yes, master. I was just accounting for the lady, in case she were tired and whatnot, or having lady problems with the stream nearby and all.”
“What?” Eilyth asked him.
Joth raised an eyebrow. “Lady problems? Bellan, I think perhaps—”
“Well what do I know?” Bellan kept talking. “I sometimes like to have a cool dip in a stream after I been riding a long ways, don’t you? She ain’t sitting no lady’s saddle, how am I to know what that might do to a lady’s, you know, a lady’s—”
Eilyth spoke up. “My people are born to horse riding. We do not tire easily, I assure you. I have outridden everyone here, or soon shall.”
Joth felt his cheeks flush.
“We shall water the horses here at the stream you speak of. Let us eat something, as well.”
Bellan’s ears were glowing. “Of course, lady.”
She made a clicking noise with her tongue and Aila picked up into a trot down the hill toward a copse of willows growing on either side of the banks of a stream. “What did I say?” The youth seemed to be asking himself. Joth could only shake his head and squeeze his horse into a slow canter after Eilyth and her gray mare.
They watered the horses and decided to risk a small fire, as it was still somewhat overcast, and from what Bellan claimed the road lay somewhere between ten to twenty miles to the south of them as it circumnavigated the hilly lands entirely and led into the city from the south east, while his route brought them in from the south west. They managed to find some relatively dry wood and to get a fire going on the damp ground in short order. Eilyth gathered water into the small pot as she had done so many times before on their way into Oesteria from the lands of the People. She
cut root vegetables with a small knife and added the strange dried leaves from the sea into a broth with her other ingredients and smiled at them as she went about her work, as though she were pleased to be able to be about it once again—as though it gave her great pride and pleasure.
Indeed, Joth thought that it did give her those things. Eilyth delighted in the simple things of life, the small moments and the tiny incremental things that made up a moment. He understood this about her now, after weeks of witnessing her greet each day with wonder and an expectant curiosity. Eilyth enjoyed adventure. She loved her horse, and she liked to cook her strange soup that seemed to be the staple of her diet and the cornerstone of good health and physical and mental fitness, at least according to her. She knelt there in the small clearing, her gray cloak wrapped about the garish airship costume she wore as she stirred her soup.
The witch and her cauldron, thought Joth. If she were a witch then he was enchanted with her and there was no need for a spell. He had put all of his meager faith in her, he had decided. His disenchantment with the First Army of the Magistry had run fairly deep with the tyranny of Mage Imperator Rhael Lord Uhlmet and his ill-conducted survey, a routine and ordinary outing, sometimes referred to as a “long march” due to most mage imperators’ practice of avoiding contact with the tribesmen altogether and using it instead as an experience to understand the logistics of supply and campaigning should they ever be called to war in order to defend the Magistry.
Now, with Mage Alchemist Norden a potential enemy and threat to his and Eilyth’s safety, his loyalty was even more aligned with her; he had given his word to see her safe and let no harm befall her, but had he not also given his word to serve the First Army of the Magistry and all his comrades in his now fallen company? He could not simply follow after the lad’s word on the matter, that much he knew for certain. He had to be sure, and surely he knew of only one way of knowing. Knowing that may help decide many things, Joth mused.
Eilyth presented two bowls, but Joth gave her his bowl when he saw that she was about to eat from the still hot cooking pot and he picked it up instead with the edge of his cloak and sat down upon a large rock, one of many that littered the ground they had chosen to make a temporary camp upon. The pot was steaming hot, and the smell was distinctive. Immediately it brought him back to the first time he had smelled it on the road away from the village where he had learned so much about the People, about himself, the world, everything. He wondered at that and about how fast the change in everything he thought he had known had been wrought. A change that he still had not accepted, and he knew it was because he still had a foot in both worlds. Joth was straddling the fence between his old world and his new. He was decided in his heart but his mind was still waging a battle. After a long moment of thought, he reached inside his scrip bag and removed the folded writ with the mage’s seal: the mortar and pestle and owl of the Mage Alchemists Order embossed on purple wax with a gray silk ribbon folded intricately beneath it and fixed with the seal. He studied it a long while before holding it over the top of his steaming pot of broth and subjecting it to a gentle flood of steam.
Bellan looked on alarmedly and quit his incessant flattery of Lady Eilyth’s soup.
“You mustn’t do that! That’s a high crime to tamper with a seal!” he cried.
“Riddle me this. If a man tells you to deliver a letter for him, then you find out he’s going to have you killed and the lady you’re charged with protecting subjected to who bloody knows what, don’t you think it’s worth having a peek at what’s written in that letter he gave you to begin with?”
The lad looked at him then down at the ground. “I’m just warning you is all. I deliver post all over these parts and the first thing they says to you is ‘Tampering with a seal is a high crime.’ So, just warning you.”
“Thanks for your warning, Bell.” Joth gave him a curt nod and went back to testing the seal. He had worked with beeswax a lot during his apprenticeship and he knew how much heat it could and could not take. He had made huge vats of melted beeswax for his master’s special rosin used both in his treatment of the bows and more especially the strings. He tested the envelope and held it back to the steam.
“It’s a high crime, which means they can kill you for it. Hang you, most likely. I mean to say, that’s a Magistry seal there, master.” He shrugged at Eilyth like he was speaking to a stupid person who could not understand him.
“You let me worry about the particulars, Bell. You can eat your soup.”
Bellan nodded and did just that.
Joth felt Eilyth watching him intently as he used his belt knife to gently pry the softened wax seal from the dampened parchment and unfold the Mage Alchemist Norden’s writ; the sealed writ given to Joth on explicit orders of delivering it to the captain of the town guard at Torlucksford. He opened it and turned to capture the best of the fading light to ease his reading. Once he began to read it his deepest misgivings were fully realized. The boy was to be trusted, Joth decided, for the mage had set Joth and Eilyth up so completely that Joth was shaking his head in disbelief.
“What does it say, Joth?” she asked him.
“It says in short to arrest us on sight as quietly and quickly as possible and hold us until Norden or one of his agents can take custody of us. He set us up from the start! Why?” Joth threw the writ down and stood up.
“Joth,” she said, “this is not the way for us to solve the problem.”
“I know, but it angers me! Here we are, speeding along on our way quite easily and all set for Twinton, and this bloody weasel of a mage heaps nothing but trouble on our plates. It’s not our bloody fault that Uhlmet is a fool!”
Eilyth stepped over and picked the parchment up from the ground and read it.
“Who’s Uhlmet?” Bellan asked tentatively.
“Never you mind, boy. You’re better off not knowing anything about him, because it’s all bad.”
The lad gulped again.
“He has killed you twice today, if not more. Here he names you as a deserter, is that not a death sentence?” Eilyth said it as calmly as though she were discussing the price of figs at the market.
“Yes, indeed! The bloody man would have me hand over my own death warrant thinking he was true to his word! How dare he do something like that? I’ve done my duty is all, I followed my orders even if I didn’t agree with them.”
“When the three children were dragged away?”
“Lady?”
“Where were you when the children were dragged away?”
“I was in the ranks, lady. Believe me, none of us soldiers liked that. Wat, he even —”
“Yet you allowed it to happen.” She looked at him evenly, unwavering.
“There were some children that got dragged somehow?” Bellan chimed in.
“We were just foll—. Yes, I allowed it to happen. I was afraid of disobeying orders. Lord Uhlmet was strict, and he punished even the slightest offenses harshly. I was afraid of him. I was afraid of disobeying him. He made Wat and me string a poor lad up because he made a joke! Seven bells, we had to murder somebody for him just because he told us to do it and we couldn’t bloody break protocol! We liked the lad, even. His name was Tylner, and we had to bloody string him up. Mage was there watching us or we’d have let him go and told him to run for it. We were all of us scared of him, and that’s no excuse, but none of us thought he was going to kill them kids, if that’s what he done. That’s not what any of the lads signed on for, lady. I assure you, it is not what I signed on for.”
“That is most certainly what he did, Joth.” Eilyth fixed him with her strange eyes. “And he made you a party to it. We are all of us responsible for their cruel demise now.”
“I’m not. I don’t even have a hair’s-breadth of an idea what you’re speaking of,” Bellan muttered.
“Lady—” Joth began.
“No, it is true. We
are all of us sharing a responsibility in their deaths because of this malformed creature and his wicked acts upon the People and their lands. We too shrank from his authority, this authority of men called the Magistry. We cowed and urged our folk to accommodate the Oestmen, to treat them with hospitality. We made excuses for him before we learned he was a monster, and I know that you were subject to his authority, but we must never let that happen again. I do not blame you for their deaths. You did not know, and I see that in your eyes. Now, I must know where your loyalties lie.” She smiled softly at him a moment, and he felt as though a sack full of sand he had been burdened with had been lifted from his shoulders.
“My loyalty is with you, lady. It is with you and the People.” Joth surprised himself when he said it.
Eilyth held his eyes.
Bellan looked between the two of them several times before the silence grew too untenable for him. “I’m not even sure what all of this talk is about, but I’m going to take a leap here and say I’d like to sign up as well. I am not sure if I can make an oath or anything quite yet until I get a clear view as to who and what and why, mind you.”
“Now is not the time, Bell,” Eilyth admonished him lightly. The boy reddened. “If you prove yourself to me in getting us to Torlucksford, then I shall consider your pledge.”
Bellan’s eyes went a bit far away for a split second before he nodded once determinedly and set back to his soup.
The boy hung on every bloody word she said and she knew it, Joth figured. As for himself, what else should he have said? Joth enjoyed the thought of never setting eyes on Oesteria again and grabbing Eilyth’s hand and setting off west for the mountains; for the village by the river and its peaceful rhythms. He also realized that he could not simply retreat into his peaceful dreams, for lady Eilyth’s life was at stake; all of their lives were in jeopardy, even Bellan now that he had conspired against the mage by warning them of his plot. Here they were now in a copse of trees far from any place he was familiar with. The people spoke with a funny lilt to their speech, especially country folk like Bellan. Joth looked at Eilyth and saw that she was looking at him, waiting for him to say something.