The Path of the Sword
Page 59
“There, lad. It's all right. You're safe,” Mikal crooned and Jurel felt a wide, calloused hand pat his back.
Jurel wept and he could not stop the great wracking sobs that shook him, that threatened to tear him apart as more memories rose all unbidden to his mind: quiet talks by a warm fire sipping brandy, a cuff upside the head for some silly act or other, a smile and a fiercely warm gaze.
I love you son.
He wept with the pain of emotions scraped raw, as raw as flesh scoured by a flail, bright and stinging and sour all at once. He wept until he felt something press against his lips. A cup. Something entered his mouth, a bitter liquid that burned like acid but he barely felt that pain.
I love you son.
“Drink Jurel. Drink this,” Kurin's kind voice said softly. “It will help.”
And he did. And in time, the pain melted, the memories turned from stone solidity to ephemeral phantoms, the light of the day darkened, and color washed away to leave everything gray and lifeless, and he closed his eyes.
I love you too father.
And he gratefully fell into empty darkness.
* * *
It was night and the velvet vault of the sky shone with stars as though someone—his father?—had pricked the darkness with a pin a million times over to let what was beyond glimmer through. The air was cool but not so cool that it was uncomfortable. Rather, it was the cool that told of spring finally quickening, rising up, taking command of the world as winter slinked away like a beaten dog to lick its wounds for the next two seasons.
When Jurel woke, he was still sore. So achingly miserable that he groaned with every movement. Even blinking seemed to bring its own kind of agony. He raised himself and felt a fire warm him, saw the golden light dancing merrily in its prison of stones.
“Good evening sleepyhead,” Kurin said from his seat on the other side of their campfire.
He had shadows under his eyes and he was wan, truly emaciated now, but when he smiled, Jurel saw some of the old sparkle there. It was almost hidden, cloaked by the memory of another place and another darkness but it was there and Jurel was gladdened.
“Where are we?” asked Jurel.
“Nearly back to Merris.”
Mikal materialized from the shadows beyond the firelight and sat with his usual fluid grace near Jurel's side.
“Merris? Already? How long have I been asleep?”
“Near a week.”
He gasped. “A week?”
With a laugh, Kurin regarded him and his amusement seemed to increase. “It's been quite a journey.”
A week. He had slept for a week. He could barely wrap his mind around it. It was hard enough to believe they had gotten away from Threimes, that they had managed to get away from that fat priest—what was his name? Calen. Though in retrospect, Jurel imagined it was pretty easy to understand how they had eluded Calen's grasp. He remembered very clearly the feeling of shattering bone, of ripping flesh. There was a shocking amount of blood in the human body. It covered a huge area when allowed out of its flesh confinement. He shuddered, shying away from the memory.
“Aye, some journey,” Mikal growled though his own eyes twinkled in the firelight. “If it's all the same to you, you can feed your own self from now on. And you can take care of your own...emptying needs, if you catch my meaning.”
Gaven's voice drifted out of the darkness, from the other side of the fire, “You're a heavy bastard, you know that?”
Jurel laughed sheepishly. A week. And his friends had cared for him, kept him clean and dry and fed. A blossoming of warmth in his chest brightened the sadness, mitigating it at least a little. But there was something he needed to know and the sorrow rallied and came back with a vengeance.
“Can I ask something?” Jurel asked and when the men nodded, said, “How did my father come to be there? How did he...?”
“It was me,” Mikal said quietly. “After I took that injury, I knew I needed some help. You told us he was a soldier, remember? You said he brought you out of the siege at Killhern. He was the closest ally I knew I could find and trust. So I went and found him in that midden heap of a town—what's it called?”
“Tack town?” Jurel supplied.
“Aye. Tack.”
“What was he doing there?” Jurel asked.
“He left the farm. Not long after you actually. He said he almost finished the job you started on the new owner. I didn't know what that meant but I figured it was better for him that he avoided it. He took a job in town at the sawmill.”
Jurel chuckled. Lucky for Valik.
They spoke for a while about Daved, Jurel recounting tales from his childhood and Mikal telling of his journey to Threimes, and by the time the sky began to lighten, he found the pain had lessened. Oh, it was still there and he knew it would be there for the rest of his life, like a scar, but perhaps he could live with it. He would carry it with him, and cherish it. He would never let the memory of his father fade. He replayed moments from his life in his mind's eye, trying to fix them forever, to imprint them permanently so that whenever he wished, he could take a moment and think back on the man who was not his true father, but was most definitely his Pa.
But there were other considerations. There were other matters that pressed, that needed attention in the here and now.
“What do we do now?”
Kurin stretched, grunting lightly as he pondered. “Well, first thing is to get you to the Abbey. There's a lot you need to learn yet and I think that would be the best place to start.”
The Abbey. So that's where they were going. The seat of power for the Salosian Order, Kurin's heretical brotherhood.
“Will you finally tell me where it is?” Jurel asked and he tried to hide the exasperation in his voice. How many times had he asked as they had traveled there? How many times had the answer been, “Just a little farther.”
“It's just a little farther. Haven't I said that?” Kurin said mildly.
Jurel could have screamed.
“Will you at least tell me what it's like there?”
Kurin leaned back and his eyes glossed over, lit by fond memory. “It's a quiet place. A place of solace and peace-”
“What he means to say,” Mikal broke in, “is that it's as boring as a stone in a rocky field.”
“-and a place of learning.” Kurin glared at Mikal but the swordmaster ignored it with a wink at Jurel.
As the light broadened, as the sun peeked its fiery gaze over the horizon, they ate their fill of bread and dried beef and wrinkled apples that Mikal had purchased at the last tiny spit of a village they had passed through. When their bellies were satisfied, they stowed their belongings in their saddlebags, and climbed into their saddles. It was a long journey. There was much to do, much to learn.
And as Jurel turned his horse southward onto the broad caravan route that connected the great western ocean to the City of Killhern, and Threimes to Grayson City, and continued into a far off kingdom that Jurel only knew from stories told in a cozy warm cabin he had shared with a man he would love for all time, sitting before a pot bellied stove, his heart lifted. There was a long journey ahead, and he was certain that the Abbey was only the first step. And somehow, he was glad.
Epilogue
Stars in all their glory sparkled in the velvet vault above the chamber. Under, clouds like a thick fog. The chamber was immobile but for all the world appeared as though it floated in the nothingness between. The strangeness of it made sense in a way, for the chamber itself, if viewed by the average person would have been seen as more than strange. Truly, it would have driven most mad.
The walls were soundless waterfalls, the floor, a flat pond in whose depths could be seen kelp floating, and multicolored fish that did not exist anywhere in the world swimming. Prismic colors danced on the mirror flat surface of the pond like gems in sunlight. That too made sense, for this place that was not of the world. It was between worlds, in the void where worlds met and rubbed against each other.
In the chair sat a man, or at least he looked like a man: Two legs, two arms, a head, two eyes, a nose, a mouth...
But to gaze upon him was to know that this was no mere man. His eyes, as blue as a clear sky at noon, were as the very portals of time itself. His face was as craggy as a mountain, and as beautiful and majestic. There was a stoop to his back but it was not the stoop of frailty; it was as though he carried the weight of a universe on his shoulders.
In front of him, three figures stood. They were as disparate as anything could ever be. A woman with skin the color of pale emerald, with wheat gold hair, with features and a slender figure that had made many men fall to their knees, gibbering. A balding man wearing a leather vest over a pristinely white shirt, bespectacled, with an ink stain on his chin, and carrying a massive tome whose title was visible but indecipherable. A figure—Man? Woman? Impossible to tell for it was shrouded in a cloak so black that not even the rainbow light could touch it.
The four stared into a great bowl made of filigreed gold on the floor, a bowl that seemed at turns filled with nothing more than water, and with images of people and places. One image was seen more than most: a tall, powerfully built, blue eyed man with golden hair.
“It is done,” grated Shomra and the cowl of the cloak dipped as though the being hidden inside bowed.
“The choice has been made,” Gaorla confirmed.
“Is it the right one?” Valsa asked. She turned to Maora. If anyone knew, it would be him. But his response was not heartening.
“We must wait and see,” he said with a rare look of doubt crossing his sharp features as he rearranged his grip on the heavy volume in his hands.
Gaorla nodded. “We must wait. We must wait and we must hope.”
“He seems a good choice,” Valsa hedged.
Gaorla leaned back in his chair and nodded pensively. “Yes, he seems a good choice. But so did the last one.”
“That one failed his trials.”
“Not all of them.”
“No. Only the most important one.”
Gaorla rose then, and stepped down from the dais and faced his children. His face was solemn almost to the point of harshness. “Jurel has passed the first trial. He has discovered who he is. He has two trials remaining. I have high hopes for him. He will succeed. He must.”
“If not,” Shomra muttered, “then all is lost.”
The four exchanged looks, the question unspoken for it was plain to all of them: would he, could he, succeed? And it was followed by the next unspoken question: if he did not succeed, could they stop him as they had his predecessor?
“I hope you're right father,” Valsa murmured.
At that, Gaorla smiled, and though it was meant to be a supremely confident smile, his children had known him a long, long time and they all noted the tremulous quality of it.
The four fell silent and they gazed into the bowl between them, and into the shimmering blue eyes of their newest family member.
The God of War lived again.
Here ends The Path of the Sword,
book one of The Rites of Ascension.
In book two, The Blood of War,
Jurel continues his quest to
fulfill his destiny.