by Thomas Locke
The leader called the Assembly to order and addressed Hyam in arched formality. “It is good to know that you survived the assault.”
Hyam located the Seer far back in the multitude, hiding away, or trying to. “No thanks to you.”
The leader coughed discreetly. “You have a report to make?”
He had intended to discuss the attack, but as he started to speak, he felt a rising compunction. “Actually, I must deliver two statements. The first is out of order but is quickest. The Elves are aware of the threat. They wish you to know that they stand ready to join with you, if help is required.”
The consternation at his arrival was nothing compared to what erupted now. The leader had to actually shout for silence. Hyam gave the briefest of accounts, then said, “More will have to wait for another time.”
“I have questions.”
“I’m sure you do. So do I. But we will both have to be patient. The other portion of my message is too vital.” Swiftly he related his experience at the attack. And his sighting of the crimson rider, first in the company of the king’s own brother, then before the Ashanta raised their ghoulish army.
When he finished, the appalled Assembly met him with silence. Finally, the leader said hoarsely, “You have had time to ponder this.”
“I have.”
“What is your assessment?”
“The attack was a feint,” Hyam replied. “The army was always intended to perish at your hands.”
The leader wanted to argue. Hyam was certain of this. But he merely said, “The purpose of this feint?”
“Perhaps there was some political intent behind the prince’s demise. But I think the real reason was for the crimson rider to gauge your strength. See if you still possessed the power to wreak havoc among your foes.”
“Though I despair of saying it, I agree with your conclusion. They sought to test our mettle. See if the legends still lived.” The leader lifted his gaze. “Discussion? Anyone?”
“We were duped,” a voice replied. “We were forced to show our hand.”
“We acted rightly,” another said. “Our treaty lands were invaded.”
“That has nothing to do with our discussion.”
“It has everything to do with all of this.”
The leader remained untouched by the swirl of emotions and words. Hyam waited with him. Finally silence was restored, restive, anxious, and the leader said, “Your conclusion?”
“The wizard showed his own hand in the process,” Hyam replied. “The crimson mage revealed himself. And the orb.”
“He did not expect you to survive,” the leader realized.
“He must have known this was a risk. He acted anyway.”
“Which means . . .”
“This was only the beginning,” Hyam said. “He is planning something far greater.”
A collective shudder raced through the Assembly when the leader replied, “Again, I concur.”
“I have an idea,” Hyam said. “But to succeed, I need three things. First, we must locate the crimson rider.”
“Orbs are hidden and always have been. How, we do not know. But this is part of their power. Word will be sent throughout the realm.”
“Today,” Hyam said. “Immediately.”
“It will be done. Next?”
“I need gold.”
“That we have.”
“I will need so much you will feel its loss,” Hyam warned. “More.”
The leader showed a moment’s genuine concern. “It is so important?”
“Vital,” Hyam replied.
“Tell us why.”
He did so as swiftly as possible. When he was done, the leader lifted his gaze and asked the Assembly, “Objections?” There were none. “It will be done. And your third request?”
In response, Hyam turned around and demanded, “Where is the Seer who promised I would remain safe during and after the attack?”
The ancient crone’s voice quaked out, “Here.”
“You vowed to protect me!” Hyam roared with remembered fear and agony. “You broke your vow!”
“I did not know a mage rode with them! You heard our leader. I am unable to detect an orb. Their power is masked!”
“You are a Seer! It is your business to know!”
“You are right. I failed. I apolo—”
“I do not want your apology. I reject it. A vow is a vow!”
“Yes . . . Yes.”
“Say it!”
“A vow is a vow.”
Hyam turned back to the leader on the high podium. “What happens when a vow is broken?”
The leader showed uncertainty but replied, “Compensation is determined by the one disabused.”
Which was precisely what Hyam had hoped. “In that case, here is my demand.” He extended back to where Joelle cowered beyond the boundary stones. “This one is to be made welcome.”
A horrified roar rose from the Assembly. “No!”
He shouted louder still. “She will take her place among you!”
“It is forbidden!”
In reply he called, “Joelle! Come now!” When she backed away, he gripped her with a clutch so powerful she had no choice but to obey, though she fought him every inch of the way.
When they were inside the hall, he took yet another great heaving breath from the underground force, then shouted, “I am the emissary! I have been wronged! This is my demand!”
The power of his outburst shattered one of the high windows. A shower of glass fell upon the hall, the sound almost musical in the stunned silence.
Instantly he was flooded with shame. As soon as the final shards clinked upon the tiles, Hyam remade the window. It was hard to tell what shocked the Assembly more. His ability to destroy a window or restore it.
When he was done, and the murmuring died with the fragile veins of light that knit the glass together, the leader allowed, “We will discuss this.”
“No.” Hyam knew he had to convince them, else they would take their revenge on her when he was gone. “No. You will decide. You will do so now.” When the leader looked ready to argue, Hyam stopped him with, “Have you learned nothing from the past? Must you always be forced by outside events to do the right thing?”
“We do not know this is right.”
“You do. And I suspect you always have. You just refuse to accept it. Instead, you pretended the issue was gone. You hid her away in a Long Hall and played as though she did not exist. As a result—” He had to stop and breathe away his rage, pushing it down, clamping a fierce hold over the recollection of the woman’s endless weeping. “You threatened a beautiful life. You consigned an innocent to imprisonment.”
“But the blood of this one—”
The leader’s response was cut off by Joelle declaring, “I don’t want to stay here.”
Hyam turned to her. “This is your home.”
“My home?” Her bitter laugh echoed through him. “If they don’t want me, I would only be trading one prison for another.”
“We may accept you,” the leader said. “Though it will mean breaking a vow we made to ourselves over fifteen centuries ago and has lasted for as long as we have had contact with humans.”
“You will do so reluctantly. Many will resent my presence. I have had my fill of such welcomes.” She drew closer to Hyam. “Can’t I stay with you?”
“I have no home,” he said, shamed by the hundred thousand listening ears. “No place. No one.”
“Then we will wander alone, together,” she replied. “If you agree.”
31
It was well past noon when Hyam and Joelle rose from their pallets. His back ached from lumps in the mossy earth that he had not noticed when settling down. His head thundered. His body felt pummeled. He helped Joelle to her feet and then staggered about. Some unnamed component of his body felt assaulted by his expedition to the Ashanta.
The mage said nothing as they brewed tea and ate a cold meal and saddled up and set off. Joelle insi
sted that she wanted to walk, and Hyam did not object, for he was glad to let the horse walk for him. Even so, the saddle fit uncomfortably between his legs and the rocking motions disagreed with his bruised state. He finally gave up and walked alongside the horse. Joelle looked a bit better than he felt, but not much. After a time, she climbed into the empty saddle.
The mage could not have appeared more different. He took delight in the road and the day. “I have not slept so fine in years!”
Hyam winced. “Quieter, please. You are in the company of the ill-treated.”
Master Trace responded by taking in a massive breath of the steamy air. “Joelle is not the only one who has felt captured by the Long Hall. I cannot recall the last time I was not woken by one crisis or another. No clanging bells, no moaning elders. How they droned! An old wizard loves nothing more than the sound of his own voice!”
“You are a wizard,” Hyam pointed out. “And you are old.”
“There are always exceptions,” Trace replied breezily. “When I awoke this morning, I thought I was still dreaming. No stone, no cell, no door! No bevy of acolytes clutching at the hem of my robe, begging for another book, another lesson. My only company was a young couple who were still as death.”
They traversed the forested ridgeline, a trivial lump compared to the crests Hyam had crossed in the Galwyn Hills. Even so, it was enough to settle him wearily onto a stump. He panted and drank and panted some more. In the distance shimmered a ribbon of water, falling, falling, down into a glistening pool. “You say there is a cavern?”
“It is a well-known resting place for the folk who visit us in festival season.”
“We’ll stop there.” The decision was enough to straighten Joelle’s shoulders and lift him to his feet. They began the descent, and Matu’s steady plodding carried the horse ahead of them. Hyam sent the dog on to lope alongside the destrier.
Master Trace stepped off the trail and disappeared into the undergrowth. He returned carrying a narrow branch that served him as a staff. He offered it to Hyam. “This might assist.”
“Keep it. I could use my bow. But it wouldn’t help.” Hyam gestured to the small burlap sack strung over the mage’s shoulder. “You travel light.”
“It is how the mages depart for their year in the outer world. Stripped of comfort and safety, carrying a few coins, a single change of clothes, a bit of food and water. They must forage, they must work, they must join in the tumult and chaos of daily life.”
“What did you do?”
“I worked as a nobleman’s private secretary. The count is now disgraced, I fear, as he was loyal to House Oberon. Which is a pity, for he was a good man, one of the finest I ever knew. It was a pleasure to work in his service. I came from such a family, the younger son of a minor squire. I wanted to see the life I had forsaken.” He walked on for a time, then confessed, “When my year was over, I did not want to return to Long Hall.”
“Why did you?”
“I almost remained. The count offered me a permanent position. I liked him, I liked his family. There was a young lass . . .” He smiled and let his gaze drift away. “Eh. She’s old and fat and shrewish by now. I don’t even remember her name.”
“Yes you do.”
“Well, perhaps.” The mage cast Hyam a shrewd glance. “Might a simple traveler ask a question of his own?”
“I suppose.”
“Do you know why I chose not to approach the two of you, even when I feared you had been captured by some forbidden spell work that had robbed you of breath and life both? I shall tell you why. Because the sack beneath your head was glowing.”
Hyam shook his head. “Some questions you must not ask.”
“The most brilliant purple, that light,” Master Trace persisted. “And so fierce it shone through the canvas and illuminated each thread hole.”
“Don’t.”
“What must I do for you to trust me?” When Hyam did not reply, he went on, “A mage who becomes Master of a Long Hall takes vows that bind him for all his life. I forsook those oaths, lad. For you. And do you know why?”
Hyam continued walking. Slowly. Down the descending trail.
“I am here because of the news you carried and the power you revealed. These defy a thousand years of Long Hall wisdom! How can we burrow down in our safe little huts and hide away from these facts?”
“So you believed what I said about the crimson mage.”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you why. First, because for some time now, shadowy tidings have reached my ears. Of dark forces moving in secret through our realm. And second, because the other night our refuge was attacked. By what, I can’t say. I suspect our young companion might know something, but I need to gain her trust as well. So I begged and pleaded and implored my fellow elders until they finally released me from my vows and sent me on my way. With you.” He sputtered a moment, then added at a shout, “At my age! Doesn’t that count for something?”
Hyam spotted the pool up ahead, the green waters shimmering through the last line of trees. “I don’t know what to tell you, except that I must rest.”
The cavern’s mouth was just high enough to permit Hyam to enter without bending down. Inside, the ceiling rose to an immense height. The cave contained three great chambers. The third held a pool, fed from a stream that fell through an opening in the roof. The light turned the pool a milky white. They took turns bathing in the cool waters, then gathered in the front chamber and ate the rest of their provisions, sharing what little they had with the dog. Hyam tethered the horse so it could crop the grass growing around the lake’s perimeter. The second chamber was floored in a loamy soil that felt cool and welcoming when Hyam lay down.
He slept well and woke up refreshed. He rolled over and looked out the wide opening that separated them from the front chamber. The light spilling through the cavern’s mouth was angled from the east. Which meant he had slept through the afternoon and evening and night.
Joelle lay on the cavern’s far side, but he had the impression she was both awake and watching him. When he rose, she sat up and looked at him. The mage was nowhere to be seen.
He walked over and squatted down beside her. “How did you sleep?”
She responded by merely sitting there. Waiting. Her eyes looked huge in the dim light. Bold and luminescent and inviting.
A fleck of earth had become attached to her cheek. He reached over to brush it off. She caught his hand and held it. The invitation was there in her gaze and her grip.
When he made no move, she spoke in a rasping whisper, almost a moan. “Why do you make me say it?”
Hyam had no idea how to respond. Or why this woman was so capable of robbing him of speech.
“Don’t you want me?”
“So much,” he managed.
“Then why?”
“Because.” He knew it was not enough. But the words came with such a struggle he needed half a dozen breaths to go on. “You are sad.”
She jerked slightly, the motion enough to rock their bodies together. Her heat was electric. “What does that have to do with this?”
He rose to his feet. He had no choice. If he remained, he would be lost. Lost.
He staggered into the first cavern and discovered the mage seated on a rock by the entry, feeding branches to a merry fire.
He heard Joelle rush up behind him. But he did not turn around. Not even when she cried, “Don’t I even deserve an answer? Tell me why!”
But it was the mage who answered, “That’s simple enough, lass. He doesn’t want you.”
Hyam sank onto a rock by the entrance and sat staring at the fire.
“But he said . . .”
“He doesn’t want you,” the wizard repeated. His voice held the gentle cadence of a tutor instructing a favorite child. “Not as all the others have wanted and lusted and pressed and threatened. It’s not enough for this one to take you. He’s not after a momentary possession.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“No, and you won’t until and unless you take the time to discover who you are, and what you want.”
“I know what I want!”
“No, lass, you don’t. You think you must offer yourself in order to, what, pay for your keep? Ensure your safety? Make him promise to let you stay?” Trace used a stick to push hot coals atop the flat stones surrounding the fire pit. “He gives all this to you freely. Is that not so, lad.”
Hyam took up a second branch, cracked it across his knee, and began scooping out more coals. Heating the stones.
“The two of you will make a powerful union.” The mage pointed his burning stick at her. “But only if you first give yourself time to heal. And trust him to wait until you are ready. But in the meantime, you mustn’t tempt him anymore. He is, after all, only human.”
She stood there, her silent tension radiating over them. Then she turned and stomped back into the cavern’s depths.
Trace murmured, “Give her time, lad. She’ll come around.”
By the time Joelle finally rejoined them, Trace had caught five large trout. He used nothing but his hands and his voice, and cackled each time he drew a wiggling fish from the waters. He cleaned the fish and set the fillets on the hot stones, then surrounded them with roots and leaves he had found in the neighboring woods. The mage let Hyam do nothing but feed the fire.
When Joelle returned, her hair still damp from the pool, the mage greeted her with a delighted, “Just in time! You look divine, my dear, and for that you earn the first portion.”
Her voice carried a sullen edge. “I’m not hungry.”
“Nonsense. We have a big day ahead of us, I warrant. A big day! And for that you must be fed as well as washed and rested!” He covered the strain with a merry chatter as he ladled the grilled trout onto broad leaves. They ate with their fingers.
When they were done, and they had washed their hands and faces in the pool and drunk their fill from the waterfall, Joelle had still not looked in Hyam’s direction. He felt the loss as keenly as a wound to his flesh, but he was powerless to do anything more than say, “We should be going.”