Foundations Broken and Built

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Jade nodded. “You’re a good person Silas, I know. I’ve seen you do so much good from the bottom of your heart. You’ll be good to her, won’t you?”

  Silas knew there was a meaning and a purpose to the comments Jade made, and he started to ask what she was hinting at, about him or about Mata, but then stopped, not sure if he wanted to know. He had made up his mind that he would go to the girl and tell her what he had to do yet, and offer to return to her and live the life she wanted as a family afterwards.

  “I’ll be good; I just want what’s right for her,” he answered.

  “She’s moved from her old home, and lives in the servants’ quarters near the laundry, over by the boxwood garden,” Jade said. “The garden where you helped us escape from the palace,” she added helpfully, as Silas’s expression remained neutral.

  Silas nodded his head; the description helped him understand where he must go. He hugged Jade good bye, then walked with his cane at a slow pace through the palace, people staring in frank amazement at his injury with the empty pant leg that the morning maid had thoughtfully pinned up so that it wouldn’t drag along the ground.

  He made the slow journey to the outdoors ground level, and stumped along towards the place where he had fought multiple battles. He thought of those battles, and he thought of the times he had been forced to hide his face so that his strangely colored eyes wouldn’t give away his identity.

  At least he had reached a time and a place where he didn’t have to hide his eyes any more, he thought to himself with dark humor. Even if there had been anyone hunting for the Abomination with the purple and gold eyes, he wouldn’t have needed to hide them, because everyone he saw stared first at his missing foot, then stared away in embarrassment without ever looking at his eyes.

  He reached the gardens and turned back to the palace. He entered a side door, and heard the sounds of water sloshing and people talking loudly. He followed the sounds to the humid set of rooms where the laundry of the palace was being washed.

  The laundry workers were all working and talking, until one by one, they saw him standing in the doorway, and they one by one grew silent. The tide of silence picked up steam as more people joined it, and the room soon became still.

  “I’m looking for the servants’ quarters near here,” he said loudly, feeling inexplicably nervous as all pairs of eyes turned to look at him.

  “Three cheers for the champion of Amenozume!” an unknown worker in the room called out.

  “Three cheers!” another voice chimed in agreement, and the room erupted in a slightly uncoordinated set of cheers for Silas.

  “Go get ‘em, golden eyes!” someone spoke after the cheers ceased, and the room roared in laughter.

  Silas felt his eyes start to well up with emotional tears. He’d never expected to be seen as a hero by the ordinary people of Amenozume. He felt better about his decision to live on the island with Mata. He’d be better received than he had expected.

  “Thank you,” he managed to stutter. “Can you tell me about the quarters?” he asked again.

  “I’ll take you there,” a stout man put his handfuls of material back in a soapy pot of water, and walked forward.

  “Follow me,” the man told Silas, as they left the steamy doorway.

  “It’s a shame about your foot, my lord,” the man offered condolences.

  “Thank you, but it’s okay. It’ll grow back,” Silas consoled the man.

  “Are you dogging me?” the man asked incredulously, turning to stare at Silas as he walked forward. “You’re even more different from us regular folks than I thought.”

  “Lookout!” Silas warned, just in time to prevent the man from running into a wall.

  They took a turn, then stopped at a wide double door.

  “The servants’ quarters here are down this lane and the next,” the man advised. “Can I help you anymore?”

  “No, this is all I needed,” Silas thanked the man and patted him on back, then watched the man walk away.

  He pressed the heavy double doors open and stepped inside.

  He immediately saw why the man had called the hallway a lane; it was a very wide hall, wide enough for carts to travel through, the ceiling was double high as well, and natural sunlight came down through periodic openings in the ceiling, as well as spilling in from the windows of the apartments that lined the hall.

  Silas started walking along, listening for voices, trying to casually peek through open windows and doors, looking for Mata, or Tagg, if the Tracker still happened to be attending to Mata.

  He walked halfway down the hall without success, then stopped. He wasn’t going to find her through such a simple method, he concluded. He decided he’d call to her, and see if she responded. That in itself would be a worthy test that might help him understand something about their potential future relationship.

  “Mata, this is Silas. Mata, I’m Silas, calling to you,” he spoke in an intimate Voice, one pitched only for her, his tone altered to appeal to her peculiar and personal mix of traits and characteristics that he knew so well – her sense of humor, her earthiness, her self-deprecating manners, her kindness and respect for the lives of others.

  “Mata, I’m in the hall of the quarters near the laundry. If I’m close to you, would you look out in the hall and let me see where you are?” he asked.

  There was a squeal in a room just four doors away. Silas looked in that direction intently, waiting to see if it was Mata reacting to his call.

  A moment later the door opened, and the very pregnant girl stepped out, her eyes wide in astonishment.

  “You’re back in Amenozume? I thought you had run away forever!” she exclaimed.

  “I’m back,” Silas answered with a smile. The two of them laughed as they slowly approached each other, then embraced in an unsteady hug.

  “Come in, come in, come in,” she repeated. She curled herself around to act as his crutch, and they awkwardly entered the doorway sideways, Mata leading the way into the front room. When Silas entered, he found a surprised-looking Tagg standing awkwardly in a corner, watching him.

  “Silas, it’s good to see you alive. Are you okay?” the Tracker asked with sincere concern in his voice as he looked at Silas’s missing foot. “Here, have a seat, be comfortable,” Tagg immediately directed before Silas could even answer. “Mata, you sit down too and rest,” he further sought to make the others in the room feel better.

  “I’ll go get some water to drink,” he said, and he disappeared down a hall.

  Silas and Mata took seats in chairs besides each other.

  “Are you back for good? Have you won all the battles?” Mata asked the question sincerely, without sarcasm.

  “I’m almost back for good,” Silas answered. “We won some big, big battles. There are just a few more to go to make the victory complete.

  “I saw Riesta,” he added. “She helped save my life. She saved Queen Preeanne’s life in Ivaric,” he said.

  “Riesta? And Queen Preeanne? In Ivaric? I thought they never left Faralag,” Mata lowered her voice as she spoke of the mysterious southern nation.

  “They did for this battle. Fighting against Ivaric was so important they came out and joined the battle,” Silas affirmed.

  They were both silent for a moment, remembering their experiences in Faralag.

  “Can I talk to you in private?” Silas asked suddenly. He wanted to tell Mata what he had decided, and he didn’t want to say it in front of Tagg.

  “Tagg, stay back there a while. I’ll call you when we’re ready,” Mata turned her head to shout down the hallway.

  “He’ll respect our privacy,” she assured Silas.

  Silas took a deep breath.

  “A lot has happened since I left Amenozume, since I left you and sent that message,” he began.

  “I appreciated hearing what you said; it was thoughtful and honest,” Mata immediately interjected. She placed her hand on top of his fondly.

  “I’ve fought a lot
of battles, and been to a lot of places, and had time to think about all that I was meant to do – the things the gods picked me to do,” he said.

  “I’m almost done now,” he told her. “Ivaric is pretty well beat. I have to go back and tear down L’Anvien’s temple, and there may be a few other things the gods want me to do – one more long mission, but it probably isn’t a lot, compared to what I’ve been through. And I know I have allies I can call upon now,” he said.

  “You were right to understand that my life wasn’t the right one for trying to raise a family,” he told her. “I understand that now, more than ever.

  “I’ll be done with all my wars and travels soon, after the last trip to fight L’Anvien over in Rolemica, and I’ll be ready to settle down with you after that, if that’s what you want,” he told her. “I’ve come back to you, here in Amenozume.”

  Mata stared at him with pursed lips, and Silas waited for her to speak, to react.

  “Tagg, you can come back out now,” she unexpectedly shouted.

  “Tagg?” Silas asked with raised eyebrows.

  “He ought to hear this as well as you,” she answered, as they heard Tagg’s feet approach.

  “Thank you,” they each murmured as Tagg nervously delivered cups of water to them each, then took a seat, looking at them both anxiously.

  “Silas, once upon a time, back in the very, very beginning of our journey together, you suggested that we could run to safety in your village in the mountains, Brigamme, as a place where the people who were hunting us would never find us,” Mata began, and Silas remembered his suggestion from long before.

  “I said ‘no’, I wanted to be close to the sea,” she said.

  “And during these past few months, while you’ve been out doing great things – Tagg, you should hear about all that Silas has done,” she said as an aside, “during that time, the palace has been generous to me and given me a home and safety and food. Jade has made sure of that, and would have given me better if I had let her. She’s come to see me over and over again to check on me.

  “But Tagg has been with me every day, and obviously not for the reasons some people might think a man would stay with a woman,” she gestured toward her large belly.

  “Tagg and I love each other Silas. We want to be together. We want to raise a family,” she surprised him by saying.

  “And we want to go do it in Brigamme,” she floored Silas with her pronouncement.

  “We want to raise the kids to be Trackers!” Tagg exclaimed. “Your child with Mata, and the ones she and I might have someday,” he looked at Mata with adoring eyes.

  “I see,” Silas said faintly.

  “I don’t want to stand in the way, though,” Tagg suddenly interjected. “If you two had decided you want to be a couple again, I know you’re two of the best people in the world, and I don’t want to prevent that,” Tagg spoke apologetically, a worried look on his face.

  “Silas’s purple eyes have a certain appeal,” Mata spoke, paused for a second, then laughed. “Tagg, you’re such an idiot! I just said what I said right here in front of you and Silas both. He knows I don’t want to marry him, and I know he doesn’t want to marry me; he’s in love with someone else.

  “Tagg, when this child is born, and when Silas tells us it’s safe to travel,” she looked at the surprised Silas, “then we’ll pack up and move to Brigamme, and you can settle us into a cabin in the mountains, then go off on your Tracking jobs to support our family,” Mata prophesized.

  “You’ll have the continent safe for travel pretty soon, won’t you, Silas?” she asked archly.

  “I hope to sooner rather than later,” he weakly answered, still stunned by the turn of the conversation.

  “I’ve learned what I came for, and it’s a good decision, the right one,” he put the cup of water down, leaned hard on his cane, and stood up. “I’ll leave the two of you alone now; I have to go treat my injury,” he fortuitously remembered a viable excuse to use, as he gestured towards the missing foot. “It’s almost past time.”

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” Tagg asked earnestly as he sprang to his feet.

  “No,” Silas was anxious to leave. He was dazed, and wanted to find a breath of fresh air and contemplate what had happened. He hugged each of them farewell, then left the apartment and stumped down the hallway, aware of the two sets of eyes that watched his unsteady progress down the lane. He worked his way to an exterior door and found himself exiting across from the charred remains of the old tree that L’Anvien had struck with lightning while hunting for Silas. Silas stumped his way past the tree and through the bushes, into the Boxwood garden, where he found a bench and sat down on it, then closed his eyes and exhaled.

  Events and circumstances had stunned him. Mata had firmly rejected him. He had come back from an unwinnable war, victorious, the hero of men and gods, and been rejected. He didn’t feel hurt, just surprised. And puzzled. He sat on the bench and stared vacantly at the shrubbery around him. Once upon a time he had imagined that the shrubbery provided privacy strictly for lovers who wanted to be alone, but he realized in his instance he wanted privacy to allow him to consider the fact that he wasn’t a lover, not for Mata, not anymore.

  Sitting in the fresh air was good, he decided after a while, but he could and should do more. He had messages to send out, at least a day or two worth of messages – a few that Lumene wanted him to send, and many that he wanted to send himself. He wanted to address Jimes and Forna and Gwen, and many, many more. He wanted to be busy and stop thinking about Mata’s decision.

  He rose and began walking through the garden, then eventually found his way back to the palace section of personal suites, where a number of servants anxiously descended upon him, appalled to realize that the injured hero had been out and wandering about without assistance.

  Once up in his room, he poured part of a skin of healing water into a pot, then set his leg stump into the water while he mentally composed the first message he wanted to send. He oriented himself in the proper direction to Speak to a listener in Avaleen, then he began.

  “This is Silas calling Forna, Silas the Abomination, calling his cousin Forna the mighty Tracker,” he grinned to himself as he began. “I bring you good news, my cousin. Jarvis and Derith are dead, and the high priest of L’Anvien is dead as well. Not everything possible has yet been done to destroy the evil on our continent, but a great deal has, enough to make me believe it’s only a matter of time until we finish the task. I’m safely back in Amenozume now, and so is the Princess Lumene, who was at the battle in Ivaric with me.

  “I hope Carlton is having success bringing peace to Avaleen. Have your Speaker in the city there send a message to me in Amenozume if my help is needed. I’ll look forward to seeing you again soon, Forna – you have been a good companion for me,” he spoke from the heart.

  “I hope you will come back to Amenozume again,” he added, then paused. His own future, he suddenly realized, suddenly put together the pieces of the past day, seemed likely to be spent in Amenozume, in whole or in part. He could go to Lumene and tell her that his expected future with Mata was not going to take place as expected.

  He shivered with realization, then gently laughed at himself. Among the messages he needed to send, perhaps one was a message to the princess herself.

  He sent one last sentence to Forna, to formally end the message, then sent his next message, a gleeful report of success that he sent to Jimes at Heathrin, letting Jimes and the others at the Speakers Guild know of the massive defeat inflicted upon Ivaric.

  He followed that with a message to Gwen, the Princess’s own bodyguard, who had undertaken her mission to lead forces to assist Silas, and was somewhere in Avaleen, left behind by Silas’s steady advance towards Ivaric.

  After that, Silas wanted to send a message to Queen Preeanne on behalf of Lumene and himself, but puzzled over where to send it. The Queen was likely to be with her fleet, somewhere at sea and a day or so away from Ivaric�
��s harbor; Silas would have to guess at the fleet’s location, and send the message two or three times to try to deliver it correctly. But there was also the possibility that the Queen might have asked the sprites to carry her back to her own capital city far to the south.

  And Silas had no idea where to direct messages to Prima, Minnie, Ruten, and Riesta, the heroic members of the caravan that had made the timely appearance in the middle of the perilous battle at the Ivaric waterfront. The caravan crew might still be in Ivaric, or might have evacuated to the fleet, or might have fled by land away from the shaken northern city – anything seemed possible.

  He sent a few of the messages that required multiple transmissions to reach multiple potential locations, then paused. He had many more messages to send to people whose locations he did know, he thought. He wanted to Speak to Vertuco, to provide information to the Barnesnob leaders who had supported him, and he thought of Cover, his instructor from the Mover Guild in Faralag, who he sent an affectionate note to thank for his instruction in the arts of becoming a Mover.

  And that made him suddenly realize the extraordinary length he had gone to in his last act of the battle. He had combined his Mover ability and his Speaker ability, and he had actually affected not an object, but a person’s spirit – he had motivated a person to take an action, rather than making the action happen himself. It had been a slight and subtle – and yet extraordinary – approach on his part, and in retrospect, it seemed desperate. But it had worked.

  “Don’t grow comfortable with such a success,” he heard Krusima growl. “You came perilously close to intruding upon the powers of the gods. Only we are allowed to touch and change the hearts of our followers. It is not a task that humans are permitted to achieve with powers.”

  “Oh Silas,” Kai’s gentle voice broke in upon the stern lecture, “don’t let him fool you! We’re so proud of your ability to find the right answer! You did what only you could!

  “We’ll grant you this great ability, and expect you to use it very sparingly – only in circumstances of life or death. Krusima is right, humans are not meant to have the power to change the hearts of one another through such means,” Kai explained.