Like the woman in my bed last night, like nearly every woman I’ve taken to my bed on this endless journey, this creature is the spitting image of Illavia. As if the cruel artist captured our last moment together before the gods tore us apart and now seeks to throw lost happiness in my face like so much sand.
It stings, and I think my eyes have started to water.
And it was cruel of me to hurt her, yes, and as I’ve confessed I do not allow guilt to touch me for it is pointless, but there is something in me I cannot deny. I feel something for this poor young woman who captured a moment with me I do not recall.
I meant something to her. In some small way, I suppose she even loved me, but what was I to do?
I hardly knew her, I’m sure. We spent a scant few days in one another’s company, watching the sun rises from the cool comfort of a straw-stuffed mattress, wrapped in each other’s arms, whispering lies and promises that were never meant to be kept.
How could I have stayed?
Why would I?
And the real answer is not because I’m heartless, as you’ve no doubt surmised by this point, but because I feel too much.
And so I pose the question once again: How could I have ever stayed? What kind of masochistic fool would I have been to stand by and watch time’s heartless touch alter the delicate beauty of her face and nibble away at her body, her mind and her senses?
Time would have turned her into something that shattered me at my very core, and again perhaps you’ll think me cruel, but I never watched Illavia die. I could have, and for some time from great distance I watched as she grew old, but I refused to watch her die.
The lessons learned while watching her age are etched upon the canvas of my soul, written in ink that never washes or fades away, and so never again will stand by and watch these women, who likeness to her image force me to call upon her memory and her face, wither and fade from this world.
I have seen enough darkness and pain along the road I walk, haunted by a thousand-thousand memories and scars time will never heal.
Why would I ever torment myself so?
And so it seems it is I who’ve become tormentor. The cruel strand wrapped tight around a heart, strangling until its last beat is so muted final breath cannot be heard gusting through the rising wind.
“My mother tracked him down when I was just a boy.” Rusten invades my tortured mind, his voice wavering with rage I cannot begin to comprehend, nor would I want to. “I don’t even remember how old I was when I met him that one and only time, seven, maybe eight, but he passed that image onto me and told me a tale so unbelievable only a madman could have thought it up. His sob story, the tale of a father cursed to wander because his father wandered before him.
“After my mother spirited me away, regretting the efforts she put into finding him, she told me he was tainted in the head, crazy like his father was before him, but now that taint has passed onto me, see. And all I want is to go home again, to leave my boots beside the door, sit down to supper with my woman and rest my head upon her breast so I can hear her heart beating in her chest.”
There’s no mistaking the crack of emotion in his tone, the hitch of a strangled sob he wants so desperately to hide, but can’t disguise no matter how he tries.
He’s desperate, an emotion I know all too well.
“But I can’t go home and I suspect you already know the cause. Now that I have found her, now that my heart beats for her and my son grows in her belly… now that I want to hold her in my arms, I can’t go back.”
One would think a bard of my experience and caliper would know better than to speak when no words are necessary, but I profess my innocence to him again, realizing only after the words are spoken that I should have said nothing at all.
Rusten turns to face me again, moonlight glinting on the blade he’s drawn from somewhere inside his leather.
It’s only a dagger, but perhaps you recall my previous confession. I have seen a lot of fighting. I’ve been on the sidelines of a thousand battles, maybe more.
I’ve seen men lose their courage, seen the gleam in their eyes seconds before dragon fire burns their bodies to a husk of smoldering ash the smell of which invades the senses for days after.
I’ve witnessed men standing face to face with blades drawn and watched them cut one another to ribbons. I’ve seen them stab one another in the back and I have seen murder in men’s eyes.
And I know that is exactly what he’s followed me out here to do; I see it clearly now, shining like madness in the deep green of his wild stare.
“So you see this has everything to do with you, master bard.”
He hasn’t taken a step toward me, but he’s shifting weight from one foot to the other, rocking on his heels and weighting that dagger in his palm.
I realize, as I look at him in the rising light, he is not as roguish as I first assumed. The hesitation tells me he is not a killer. That he’s wrestled with himself, all the while searching for me to see if some insane ramblings he heard his father speak when he was just a child might possibly be true.
Rusted Memory: A Wanderer's Tale Page 5