Westin nodded his head in agreement. His eyes held a faraway gaze. “I felt it as well. Was it her?”
“I told ya before, that girl is the Creator made flesh. Ya had a nice laugh bout it, remember? Now ya see what I’m talking bout.” Cano felt a measure of satisfaction. He clearly remembered Westin’s reaction two nights before when he’d made the same pronouncement. This time they all looked at him, but none could raise his voice to object. They had all experienced the same inexplicable peace and joy that he had felt. “I know she said that she wasn’t the Creator, and I’ll take her at her word, but what if it’s something else?”
“Like what?” Jerron asked.
“She is something else,” Yennit stated flatly. “She is a Harven. One of two left of a race that was made extinct a thousand years ago. She is not the Creator, but her purpose is divine. For the last thousand years the balance of light and dark has been tilted in favor of evil. Maehril and her brother are the only ones capable of extinguishing that darkness. We may have only seen a fraction of the power she is capable of wielding. But that does not mean that she is not without weakness. Maehril is powerful, but she is also fragile. She will need help and guidance.”
“And she will have it,” Jerron said with overflowing exuberance. “I will fight at her side.”
“You’re coming home with me!” Westin bellowed with forced authority.
Cano wondered if Jerron had ever openly defied his father’s wishes prior to his decision to follow him out to the shrael’s cave. He watched the way each man tried to force his will at the other through an iron-wrought stare. As a father who had lost a child, Cano could understand Westin’s perspective, but Jerron was grown. He needed to find his own path.
“I will go home with you to see Ma, but my place is with Maehril now.” Jerron tried very hard to match the intensity of his father’s tone.
Westin’s face began to flush as Jerron openly defied him in front of the others. Suddenly Westin turned the path of his ire toward Cano. He shook a chubby finger across the table at him. “This is all your fault, Fishman!” he shouted. “You’ve corrupted my boy. He was a good boy. Obedient. This is all your doing.”
Cano threw his hands up defensively. “Don’t go blaming me fer everything. He’s a grown man. I haven’t done anything to him.”
“Enough of this foolish bickering,” Yennit cut in. His face glowered with severe admonishments. “You act like a bunch of children.” He fixed a sharp glare at his foreman. “No-one wants to see their child in danger, Westin, but Cano is right. He’s young, but he’s still a grown man capable of making his own decisions. For the love of light, Westin, he bested a family of shraels. That is no small feat.” Westin’s expression looked injured. He looked down at his empty plate, trying to compose himself as Yennit swung his attention to Jerron. “And you Jerron, you did well out there against those shraels, but let’s not get ahead of yourself. You’ve spent your whole life working on a farm. For all of your brazen confidence, you are still oblivious to the path you have chosen. If you stand by the girl’s side until her destiny is met, it is likely you will die. In time, Desirmor will uncover her importance. When he does, she will never be safe. She will never know a good night’s rest until he is defeated. The man has lived for a thousand years. Do not doubt his appetite for immortality. He will search for her and destroy any who stand in his way.”
Jerron matched Yennit’s look with a confidence that suggested maturity beyond his years. “I don’t fear death. Do you know nothing of my people? When Desirmor came with his armies to destroy the Massoniel, did they turn and run? Did they hide in the mountains? No. They stood their ground and fought for what they believed in even when they knew it meant certain death.” Jerron looked around the table, reserving a deep sigh of regret for his father. “My people may be lost, but their strength runs deeply within my blood. I don’t know what I saw out there tonight, but my life has been changed. I know with absolute certainty that I belong at her side. To step away from that destiny, whether it’s real or imagined, would diminish me. It would be a betrayal to every one of my murdered kinsman.”
The fierceness of Jerron’s words hung in the air like smoke as no-one said a word. No rebuttals, no objections. Cano felt the same as Jerron. He couldn’t explain why he was so certain that his destiny was to stand at Maehril’s side, but he knew it with a certainty that was as vast and real as the deep blue ocean. While Jerron was motivated by the debt he felt he owed to his people, Cano’s own impetus was driven by the memories of his wife and daughter. Maehril offered a path to vindication. Perhaps by serving at her side, he could one day learn to completely let go of the failures of his past. In a way, he felt as though the Creator was giving him this chance.
With dinner finished and each man given over to his own thoughts, they decided to call it a night. Harriet led Yennit away to his quarters to turn in for the night. Westin and Jerron took a walk outside to have a private conversation together. Cano saw Mueller pull a finely carved pipe from his pocket and head for the front door. A good smoke sounded like a perfect idea, so he ran upstairs to the room Yennit had made up for him and grabbed his pipe. Then he headed back down to find Mueller. He wasn’t so much interested in talking to the man, but despite his years of loneliness out on the ocean, Cano had always enjoyed having company when he smoked.
Mueller was seated on the ground with his back leaning up against the gray stone wall that made up the front of Yennit's manor. Cano took a seat next to him, nodding to the man as he set the tobacco in his pipe. Mueller nodded back and lent Cano his flint. Once he got his pipe lit, Cano leaned back against the building and took a long, grateful drag of the sweet tobacco. It sure felt good to have a smoke. He let the sweet smoke fill his lungs, feeling the familiar calm wash over him. The sky above was clear with both moons visible and casting a soft light down around them.
“So what’s with the gills?” Mueller asked casually.
“Couldn’t tell ya. I just woke up one day, many years ago, and they were there.”
Mueller nodded offhandedly. If sitting next to a man with gills was jarring, he didn’t show it. “I think I might like to stay close to her, if you don’t mind?”
Cano exhaled a slow relaxing puff of smoke and studied the man in the faint moonlight. Mueller had short graying hair and hard brown eyes. Scars on his neck and hands, and another on his forehead just below his hairline, all spoke of a hardened soldier. Cano knew that Yennit trusted the man implicitly, but his own accrued dislike for army men twisted his discord. Could he allow a man with so much uncertainty to be around Maehril?
“Tell me bout yerself, Mueller. I’ve heard that ya served in the Infantry,” Cano said.
Mueller blew out a long line of smoke. His tobacco smelled bitter, much more severe than Cano’s choice of smoke. “I grew up here in Merrame, not far from Solocca. My father was a blacksmith. Most of his work was with farm equipment -- tillers, horse shoes, things like that.” He stopped to take a smoke, smiling with the faraway fondness of recollection. “When I was young I thought Solocca was the most depressing place. I wanted to see the world. Get away from that boring life my father had. So I joined the Infantry. Did tours in all kinds of places. At first everything was perfect. I was going to all of these exotic places, meeting women, having fun, doing my job and living my life. Then it started to change. We were in Chrunesta. It’s a little town in Dessantia. This noble out there had been skimming the taxes, lining his own pockets. Instead of just taking care of the man, Desirmor ordered us to kill everyone who worked for him. That turned out to be half the town. And it wasn’t just the men and women. Desirmor wanted the families killed as well. We had to murder kids. The sick part of it was that the other men in my unit didn’t care. They raped the women like it was a bonus. I saw fathers, just innocent men who hadn’t done anything wrong, beg for mercy, as they watched their families being slaughtered. You see, for Desirmor, killing the noble wasn’t enough. He had to set an example to every othe
r noble who might have considered skimming the taxes.”
Mueller took another smoke and composed himself as he recanted memories that had left scars in him as clear and damaging as the ones on his hands and neck. “I saw too much of that over my time in the Infantry, but I accepted it because, what alternative did I have? What else was I going to do with my life? For years I turned a blind eye to the senseless violence. Then my father ran into some trouble. He got sick, couldn’t work. He owed people money. People he owed brought the local nobleman down to pass judgment. My father lay there in bed unable to stand from his illness, and still they ordered him into slavery. They actually ordered a man dying from his illness to work in a man’s fields to pay off his debt. One of Desirmor’s nine laws. Nothing anyone could do. He died the first day. A slave-master actually stood in the field whipping him all day until he just fell to the ground and died. That was it. I had turned my head long enough. I couldn’t stay in the Infantry and fight for Desirmor’s side. Unfortunately, there is no other side, so I couldn’t exactly join an army that fights against him. So I came here. You see, Desirmor had Yennit’s son-in-law killed over some dispute a long time back. That’s how I knew Yennit was the right man to work for.”
“So yer a man with a past, then?” Cano asked quietly. Mueller puffed a long draft of his bitter tobacco and nodded. “Well I suppose ya can follow along then.” They sat quietly, smoking their pipes for some time before Cano spoke again. “Something bout that girl. She just attracts broken men, I think.”
“I suppose she does,” Mueller said with a short laugh. He paused as he took a puff. “You think we should take her out to that lake house or stay here?”
Cano shook his head. “My friend, I’ve got a bad feeling that it’s not going to matter what we choose. Trouble follows that girl. Whatever we end up deciding, something will come along that we can’t expect. Ya mark me on that.”
Mueller nodded in agreement. For a long time they sat in silence watching the stars shimmering in the night sky above. Between the cave in the ocean, the shraels, and the rovers, Cano was getting tired of having his life threatened. It had been another long, tiring day. When he went to bed that night, he sent a prayer up to the Creator that the next trial be less exhausting. “Maybe ya could let us have jest one day where I don’t have to fight fer my life?” he asked the darkness of his room. Then he fell asleep with the terrallium dagger hidden safely under his pillow.
*********************************************************************
“Now I’ll admit, it sounds like you handled yourself fairly well against those shraels, but this is different. Heaven knows what you might face. You’ve no battle training and there’s no time for you to learn anything useful. Please, son, give up on all this foolishness and stay here with me and your mother.”
Jerron listened to his father while he grudgingly shoved another bite of his mother’s delicious roasted fowl into his mouth. Hollise sat beside him, encouraging him to continually force food down his gullet. How could he let her down? She had broken into an unending fit of tears when he appeared in the doorway with his father after their late night trip home from the manor house. He thought she might suffocate him when she nearly tackled him in her excitement, showering his face with kisses and joyful sobs. She took such delight in watching him eat. What a disappointment it would be to her if he pushed the plate away and told her the truth. He was so full, he might burst.
Ever since they had arrived, Hollise had been serving them, hovering over their shoulders as though if she turned around they might disappear. Westin ate as though his stomach had no bottom, shoveling forkful after forkful into his mouth while he set about trying to convince Jerron that he had to stay at the farm. Hollise occasionally nodded in agreement with her husband, but mostly she gazed upon her son with an almost reverent adulation.
“I’ve made up my mind, Pa,” Jerron managed to say between bites. He noticed his mother’s frown and quickly forced another potato into his mouth. She brightened up immediately.
“Jerron, please listen to reason,” Westin implored him, as a stray bit of chewed up meat fell from his mouth. His father was not one to worry about propriety when he ate. Grease dripped wetly from the corners of his mouth and fingers. As he chewed, he continued to debate his point. “It’s possible that you are the last born of our kind. Our people scarcely left the country. There may be another out there, but what if there isn’t?”
“Yes Jerron,” Hollise took over the debate. Westin took the opportunity to nod vigorously as she spoke while he devoured the rest of his meal. “You need to settle down right here. Find a nice girl. Start a family.”
“The bloodline has to live on,” Westin nearly choked on a bite of fowl. He punched his chest roughly twice then coughed, grunted, and kept eating as though nothing had happened.
“What about Sueria’s daughter, Leissel?” Hollise asked, looking to her husband for confirmation of the name. Westin shrugged. “She’s nice. You should talk to her.”
Jerron thought about Leissel. He had tried to talk to her once. Just once. It had been the summer before. He used to see her everyday walking her mother home from the dairy barn. Jerron knew he wasn’t a very handsome man, and Leissel wasn’t a very attractive girl. She was heavy through the middle, with a nearly epidemic case of acne and a set of yellow crooked teeth. That’s why he was able to build up the courage to talk to her. He figured she wasn’t inundated with attention from would-be suitors just as he wasn’t exactly running away from the throng of available females. “You look like a shaved cow’s backside!” she’d shouted at him, as she laughed and walked away. For weeks afterward, Jerron could tell that all of the girls his age were looking at him and snickering behind his back. It was a wound that still stung. He really wanted to meet a girl, but what if it never happened? If an ugly girl like Leissel could be so mean, what chance did he have?
“Leissel doesn’t like me,” he told his parents.
“What do you mean she doesn’t like you?” Hollise said with a mother’s disbelief that anyone could think less of her perfect boy.
“She doesn’t like me. That’s it. What do you want me to say?”
“Well how do you know? You’ve got to try talking to them if you want them to like you,” Westin pointed out.
“Look, can we just drop it?” Jerron pleaded. He was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. The last thing he wanted to do was discuss his problems with the fairer sex with his parents.
“We just want you to be happy,” Hollise explained.
“Happy? You want me to be happy?” Jerron exclaimed. Westin and Hollise nodded in unison. “Then just let me be. For the love of heaven, just let me make my own choices and support them.”
“We do support you. It’s just that you’re young and young boys make rash decisions,” Hollise tried to calm him.
Jerron pursed his lips and shook his head. It was like arguing with a rock. His parents would never understand what had happened to him these last few days. How could he explain something that he didn’t even fully understand? Meeting Maehril and Cano had changed something within him. He had a calling now, a purpose, an indefinable need. He could never turn away until that destiny was fulfilled.
“What if I stayed here, at the farm? What then? I meet a girl? We build a little house somewhere nearby, work on Yennit’s estate, have a few kids, everything is just the way you want it. That’s what you want for me, right?” His parents smiled as if he was finally making some sense. “How does that carry on the blood line? Those kids won’t really be Massoniel. You said so yourself. I might be the only one left. It’s not like I’m going to run into a nice girl around here who happens to be one of us.” Jerron sighed and looked down at his half eaten plate sadly. “Years will pass. I will grow old here, living as I always have, but I will always have this regret. There will always be a question hanging over my head. What if? What if I’d followed my heart and chosen to stand besid
e Maehril? What if she goes on and brings an end to Desirmor? I’ll hear about it in stories that come through on the lips of travelers and traders, the girl and her friends that stopped Desirmor and brought freedom and light back into the world. How will I feel then? How will I feel knowing that I passed up on that chance to be a part of history? To have my name remembered for generations.” Westin and Hollise watched him with a sick taste in their mouths. “In the morning I’m going back out to Yennit’s. From there my path lies with Maehril. I love you both, and I’d rather leave with your blessing, but I’m going with your support or without it.”
With that, Jerron stood up. He walked over and lightly kissed his mother’s cheek. Westin looked away, unable to meet his son's eyes. Jerron left it at that and went to bed.
When he first lay down, he was certain he would never be able to sleep, but in no time at all his eyes became heavy, and he slipped into a world of dreams. The dream was the same the entire night. He ran down a thin stone stairway, twisting toward an unknown depth. The way was lit by sconces burning with low green flames that filled his heart with despair. At the end of the passage, always beyond his reach, a voice called to him. Was it a warning or an assurance?
He awoke the next morning, feeling tired and haunted. Though he had slept through the night, he felt as if he had experienced the recurring dream, and its affects lingered on his mind and body.
He wasted no time gathering his things and heading off to Yennit’s. He stopped long enough to kiss his mother goodbye, though his father was nowhere to be found. When he finally made it to Yennit’s, after pushing his horse much faster than he should have, he saw Cano sitting outside the kitchen door with Mueller smoking pipes. Cano looked up at him as he approached. Jerron was as nervous and excited as he had ever been in his whole life. The wide smile that split Cano’s thin leathery face was all the confirmation Jerron needed. Maehril was awake.
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