“I would have you embrace the mark on your soul. Live as a complete person. I think you are running from one half of who you are.”
Now she looked sharply at him. “My husband once said something to me very much like that – about my human side.”
“And so to please him, you went too far the other way?”
She smiled abashedly. “Maybe.”
“How has a pregnant mother traveled on foot for so many miles from Rordan to the Great Desert?”
She looked at him in astonishment, resting her hand instinctively on her belly. “What do you mean?”
“Only that you seem in very good health.”
She was trying to understand the connection of this observation with the other one. “My back aches, and my ankles are constantly swollen. I have suffered.”
“Yes, my dear,” he shook his head. “But how much more suffering there’d have been were you all human. You would not have made it this far.”
She blushed. “Why do you say this?”
“Because I speak the truth. And because you cannot get away from who you are, even if you try to ignore it. It runs through the blood of your children too, you know.”
She hung her head. She had tried not to think about that before.
“I can help you, Dryad woman. As Gladier once did.” He rose up and stood over her. “We must never waste the gifts of Fate.”
Adlena stared at him a long moment. To open this box would be to air out all her fears and she did not want to bring them into the light of day. This long journey had taxed her body, the separation from Trinian drained her soul each day, and she did not think she had the strength to fight anymore. But the thought of Trinian stilled her.
She saw him alone in Drian, facing gorgans and counselors and solitude. She hoped and prayed that he had the strength to face those alone, and she hoped he knew how she believed in him from afar. That she gave him strength, even from a distance, and she realized she had to return the favor - she would lean on him, even in his absence. Reluctantly, she nodded. She owed it to Trinian that she return to him a better person than when she left; it was the one thing she could do for him.
79
Conviction
It was on the tenth day, in the evening, when they were gathered around the fire for dinner, that Garrity finally emerged. Lavendier had stepped away from the orange glow of the fire to get a dish, and he materialized beside her. In the darkness, only she could see him, and the voices of the others concealed their whispers.
“You have returned.”
“I have returned.”
“I’m glad.” He smelled of horses, and she realized he must have been staying in the stables. She had never gone to visit the animals.
“We are leaving tomorrow.”
Dismay sank deep into her heart. “So soon?” she looked involuntarily at her family, roasting chicken on a spit over the fire, and toasting carrots and potatoes, and she turned to him beseechingly. “Must we? Is this not what we were looking for? A safe place to hide? Can we not stop here?”
His head fell. “I wish I could say yes. These past few days I have done nothing but try to convince myself that we should. But something is pulling me toward the mountains.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is like the force that pulled me away from loving my mother. There is something there, something calling to us. I have never known anything like it; I had a dream last night…” his voice trailed off.
“What dream? What about?”
“I do not know. But it was silver.”
“Garrity, what are you talking about? You seem so certain, but I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Cila told me that Asbult said, right before he died, that we would find sanctuary. I have to trust him.”
“Why? He was just a man, he had no more knowledge than you. I do not want to leave.” She glanced wistfully over the beautiful arched doorways and open roof of the courtyard where the stars shone brilliantly above. “They are all so happy here. What if we find misery when we go?”
Garrity was silent. He had needed time away from the ladies for clarity and reflection, but now that he was with Lavendier, he wondered how he had stayed away so long. Despite her arguments and pain, he did not perceive anything petty in her begging to stay. With new ears, he heard only her open, honest, loving heart, and he smiled at her in the darkness.
“Will you be miserable if we leave?”
She shook her head. “No, not if they are safe. That is what matters.”
“They will be. When we reach the other side of the Yellow Mountains. Do you trust me?”
She looked up into his brown eyes and was surprised by the depths of calm she saw there: she had never seen him so calm, certain, and content, and she unconsciously drew nearer. “With all my heart.”
Viol’s voice cut across Garrity’s next words, calling out to Laven that her dinner was ready. When she returned accompanied by Garrity everyone exclaimed for joy, and Viol, with the difficult but exuberant assistance of Jacian, immediately prepared him dinner.
Adlena gazed hard at him in the red, flickering light. Though her second sight was still limited, she could make out enough of a rough sketch of a person. Noting the color, shape, and design of her sisters’ souls to try and understand the differences, she had been growing more in the craft each day. Some of her understandings were innate, such as the heir-to-the-throne mark she saw on Jacian, which was only slightly different from the one she saw on Trinian; and some she had to study, such as Lavendier’s varied and changing marks, which seemed scarred and brilliant, and blinded her with their intensity. She had been so ecstatic, though hardly surprised, to see how Lavendier’s soul had changed from the dark gray mass it had once been.
Since she had begun practicing, Adlena had been eager to study Garrity, to see what an ordinary man’s soul might look like, but now she was astonished to see, suddenly and innately, that he was no ordinary man. The grandeur of his nature left her speechless, and she stared at him for a long, silent moment.
“Garrity says we must leave tomorrow,” Lavendier told them.
“No, I don’t want to go!” cried Jacian, who had been throwing pieces of bread into the fire and watching it curl up into cinders in the coals. “I want to stay here with Habas.”
Garrity sighed and stroked the boy’s head. “I’m sorry, my prince. But this is not the place for us.”
“Why can’t we stay? Why can’t we! I don’t want to go.”
“We have to listen to Garrity,” said Adlena suddenly, still gazing intently at him. “We must obey him.”
There was a strangeness in her voice that made Garrity frown. And when he met her sight, he realized that she was in awe of him: the same awe that had come over Lavendier in the monster’s cave. Somehow, he realized with a dismayed shock, Adlena knew who he was.
“Alright then,” he said uncomfortably. “We pack our things and leave tomorrow at dusk.”
As they all went somberly to bed, Garrity stepped close to Lavendier, and her heart beat loud in her chest. She flushed with pleasure, and told herself, strictly, to listen to him.
“Did you say something to the Queen?” demanded Garrity, his voice harsher than he meant it. “About who I am?”
Lavendier’s eyes widened in surprise. “No. Of course not!”
His brows glowered at her. “That was a very quick defense.”
“Well, it’s very quick for you to assume I betrayed your secret. I gave you my word!”
“Considering your rebellious history, I think it’s not that ridiculous.” He could have bitten his tongue as soon as he said it, knowing it was the most unfair thing he could say to her. But he could not unsay it.
Lavendier filled so completely with shame that she hardly knew what she said in response, but it was exactly the wrong thing. “Considering your mother, you have got a lot of gall to pretend you are anything other than a hating child!”
He flushed fierce
ly and his fist flew to his waist. “How dare you!” he cried, his hands trembling. “How dare you?” he whispered. Then he whirled on his heel and departed.
XII
JUSTICE
“Were they not satisfied where they were?” asked the little prince.
“No one is ever satisfied with where he is,” said the switchman.
- Antoine de St. Exupery, The Little Prince; Translated by Katherine Woods
80
Bandit and King
Sitting on horseback at the foot of Mount Kara, Trinian and his men gazed up at the precipice before them. The peaks of the mountain were robin’s egg blue from mineral deposits and the city was built from the same stone. It was the largest city they had visited since leaving Drian; built between two peaks of the western mountains, it was a great metropolis that numbered one thousand citizens. The only city in Minecerva that could compete with Drian’s five thousand.
The walls and buildings could have blended effortlessly with the blue stone surrounding them, an invisible speck from the distance, had the builders wished for obscurity; but that had clearly not been their intention. The high blue wall that stretched between the peaks was crowned with a bright yellow stripe, and cone-shaped towers that sprouted above it sported roofs of playful red: it looked like a child’s wonderful toy castle.
The band urged their horses onto the winding road carved into the steep sides of the mountain, and after a two-hour climb, Trinian and his squadron were thick in the forest that bordered the city’s exterior.
When they were about half-way ascended, a faceless voice suddenly accosted them. “Halt! Who treads the forests of DiKara?”
Trinian pulled up and searched all around, but he saw no one. “Who addresses me?”
“You look,” continued the bodiless voice, “to be strong men who value your lives. Speak, if you fear to lose them.”
“I am Trinian, king of Drian and emperor of Minecerva, and it would serve you well to reveal yourself, stranger.”
A green clad figured dropped from the branches above and straddled the ground with wide-apart legs, just as a confident horsemen his steed. He looked the king brazenly up and down.
“Why are you here, Emperor of Minecerva?”
“Are you an emissary of the king of Kara or a bandit? I do not intend to tell my business to a wayfarer.”
The confident man, who was young and light of foot, laughed easily and leaned against a tree. “Such distinctions reveal your naiveté, Emperor of Minecerva. Don’t you know that every king is a bandit and every bandit a king? This is lawless country in the west.”
Trinian was silent a moment and gazed at the young man. No one, unless he was an idiot, would stand singly against a retinue of soldiers without surety of protection. Trinian did not doubt there was a band of forest men with bows trained upon them nesting in the trees. Yet that did not concern him. He was far more intrigued by the youth, who spoke with abandon, yet had an air of breeding and education about him. He may live in the woods, but he had not been born there.
“I want to speak with the king of Kara.”
The youth grinned. “Well then, speak. He’s listening. I am King Denin.”
Trinian raised a dubious eyebrow. “What is a king doing in the woods instead of his city?”
King Denin whistled and fourteen men dropped from the branches, all clad in green and all wielding bows and arrows. “What is a king doing,” countered the young man, “traveling the countryside instead of protecting his citadel? Come to our hall and we shall hear all about each other.”
* * *
Denin and his men sprinted and gamboled as they came to their clearing in the woods, as if free from all law and order. An air of defiance hung over their every twitch of the eye or fling of their arm as they laid out dinner for the travelers. They were all young, some not even pushing stubble through their chins, and though they kept their voices low and stepped so light they made no sound, they seemed not to care for anyone who could catch them. More and more convinced that these lads were bandits, Trinian could not help observing the easy nobility of their leader, and it intrigued him. And even if they should turn out to be scoundrels against the law – despite his words, Trinian had already made himself willing to strike pacts with such men.
“Sit down,” declared the self-announced king, “and join us for supper.”
Trinian and Gorj seated themselves beside Denin and one of his men, a figure maybe thirty years old – elderly compared to the rest of the band. Kett, quietly and without asking permission, sat behind the king.
“This is my head man, Krong. I guess this is your head man?” Denin pointed a finger at Gorj, who raised an eyebrow at it, but the pointing man only handed the soldier a chunk of bread with a smile.
“This is Gorj, the captain of my army.”
Denin whistled. “Woah, army. That’s a fancy name for a group of twenty men. More power to you!”
Trinian felt Gorj bristle beside him, and though he too felt some annoyance, he was more amused by the other’s irreverence than put off by it. “This is not my army,” he answered calmly. “Only a contingent. Our army is two thousand strong, and we are preparing to defend the west against the invading god of Karaka.”
This news floored Denin. He sat leaning to one side with one hand splayed across the ground for support, and the other raised midway in the air flaunting a wine flasket. His eyes were riveted on Trinian.
“So many? In Drian?”
Trinian nodded. “We used to be more, before the enemy came.”
“But, I thought Kara was the largest city in the world – I can’t even imagine so many. Surely, with that number, you can hold a grand defense.”
“On the contrary, we do not stand a chance. You cannot even imagine the numbers the enemy has at his disposal.”
In his travels, Trinian had met many people with different ideas of the situation in the west. Some had heard of the devastation, whether in South Drian, Mestraff, Kelta, or in the capitol itself, but none had heard the correct story, and the differing versions would have been amusing, if they were not so dangerously incorrect. Some thought Drian and South Drian had gone to war against each other because South Drian did not like to take orders from the out-dated capitol. Some believed the gods had descended to earth to take up residence in Drian, eradicating all the human population therein. The most outlandish was that Rordan had risen from his banks, drowned all three countries, and repopulated it with his own mer-children. When the town under this particular delusion met Trinian, it took all of three days for him to convince them he was a mere mortal like themselves, and not there to test their devotion to the gods. At which realization, they drove him out from their city and barred the gates against him, declaring that they would not welcome anyone who was not sent by the gods.
On account of these wild and abounding rumors, Trinian had chosen to speak the truth as it was wherever he went and await the reaction to it before speaking his request. Depending on the response, he knew how to proceed.
Now Denin wrinkled his forehead and studied the king as a hound would inspect a new but suspicious toy: sniffing it out to see if it was really the wonder it professed to be, or if it was a trap, waiting to catch him unawares. Mostly, the young man was puzzled with the uncertainty of youth. If he had had more years, he might have been more straightforward; but as it was, he wanted to appear capable, and so pretended to understand more than he did.
“The enemy plans to attack you?” he flung out the inquiry in hopes that it would give him direction in the discourse.
“Yes.”
“He’s from Karaka?”
“Yes.”
This did not help much.
“He’s been gathering forces for some time?”
“Hundreds of years, as far as I and my wizard can tell.”
Denin blinked and his fingers twitched as he played with the hem of his shirt. He did not know what to say. “So you’re…trying to catch up then.” It was the
question he had planned to ask, but as he said it, he realized just how idiotic it was, given the ‘hundreds of years’ Drian would need to catch up.
Trinian frowned and Gorj, trying not to smile, coughed into his heavy fist and looked out into the forest.
“No,” said Trinian, “we are only trying to contain the damage. It is gods against men, and we may not have much chance of success, but if we do not fight, we will surely die.” No matter how much diplomacy he practiced, Trinian would never be a diplomat, and the boy’s bumbling questions irritated him.
At last, Denin awoke from his casual stance and sat straight, the kingly bearing Trinian had noted before shining in all its power now. With a leveling of his shoulders he put aside his embarrassment. “You had better start from the beginning. Who is this enemy, and what is the situation in the west?”
* * *
Denin sighed when the tale was done, but the melancholy lasted only a moment. He was youth and he was full of fight. Leaping to his feet, he paced the forest floor, his chin clenched in his hand, his head thrust forward, his eyes shifting without seeing. It was late now, and his and Trinian’s men had long since retired. Only they five were still awake in the forest.
“Of course we must help you to defend the east,” he said. “Once they break through Drian they will only travel further until the entire world is at their command. Did you say there are those who refused to join you? The ignorance! The arrogance! They will suffer for their stupidity… they will face their reckoning.” He stopped still beside a large tree trunk. His profile was toward them and caught the flicker of the candle, his image seeming to grow gaunt and ancient in the shadows, and Trinian suddenly hoped the boy would live long enough to reach such an age.
“You can promise the aid of all of Kara?”
Denin whirled to look at him and the recesses of his eyes were hollow darkness where the candlelight did not penetrate. “I cannot.” He came closer. “I only wish I could. I would give my life’s blood for my people, and every man here would do the same for his family and friends. We are a responsible people, a good people, not afraid of a fight. If I could rally them, they would be by your side in a moment! Never doubt it! But I cannot.
Trinian Page 37