Yeah, and I love you too, he replied as he jogged away.
“He has . . . never reacted to me this way,” she said.
“Really? So this was your first argument?” Hilt said with a low chuckle.
“We have disagreed in the past,” she said. “But this feels different.”
“I don’t blame him for being angry,” Hilt said, then shook his head. “What am I saying? I’m angry with you, too.”
“With me?” she asked.
“Yes, with you! Can’t you see that I’ve been quite literally sticking my neck out for you? I’ve been doing everything I can to prepare Xedrion to meet Edge and now I find out that you haven’t been doing your part?” He threw his hands up in disgust.
“I have been waiting for him to be ready,” Jhonate explained. “He has taken longer than I expected.”
“Ready how? You don’t think he can handle your culture? What are you afraid of?”
“You misunderstand me,” Jhonate said. “There are some things he must learn on his own. Yntri Yni told me this himself the first time he met Justan. The more I tell him about the grove, the more chance there is that I could disrupt his bond with our tree.”
Hilt folded his arms. “Are you saying there’s something wrong with his bond to the bow? I thought those bonds were permanent.”
“They are, but they must be done in a certain manner,” she said. “Justan did things out of order. He bonded with his bow, but he never communed with his tree.”
“And why does that matter?” Hilt said
“It matters because his bond with our tree is incomplete. I can feel it whenever he talks to me through the rings we wear. There is a discordance.” She had been speaking to her tree each night, begging her to reach out to him, but the tree had not responded. Perhaps the distance was too far.
“Alright.” Hilt rubbed his forehead. “So Edge needs to ‘commune’ with the tree his bow came from, but Yntri says you can’t tell him about it.”
“Yes.”
“So you take this to mean that you can’t discuss your family or culture with him?” Hilt asked incredulously. “I don’t see how those two things are related.”
She frowned at him as if his mind were slow. “My people guard the grove. Any questions about our culture leads to questions about the trees. Besides, you know how my father is. Telling others too much about my people is treasonous in his mind.”
“I think your logic is faulty here, Jhonate. Edge is your betrothed.”
“I am acting upon the information Yntri Yni has given me,” she explained. “Justan needs to seek out our tree on his own. Father will not accept him as a Jharro wielder until this happens.”
Hilt sighed. “Look, I’ll try to give him as much time as I can. We’ll take the southern route. Just promise me that you’ll get together with Yntri. Find out exactly what Edge can and can’t be told. You need to realize that Edge is a smart kid. We have a long trip ahead of us and if he can’t get information out of you, he’ll go to your brothers.”
“I understand,” she said.
“Good,” he said and looked out the warehouse doors at the slowly brightening sky. “I’m going to go get some breakfast. Then I’ll head over to the quartermaster and procure the supplies we need for the journey. I’m supposed to meet with the two academy students we’re bringing back with us as well.”
“I will think on what you have said,” she replied.
Hilt nodded and walked out of the warehouse. As she watched him go, Jhonate felt very tired. The tangled web created by all her different loyalties was hard to navigate. The task ahead of her was going to be a difficult one indeed.
Chapter Four
Willum Odd Blade stepped out of the door to his small house and took a deep breath of the frosty air. He forced a smile. Coal’s Keep was home. He could smell it in the air even in the dead of winter. Why then was he feeling so unsettled?
He turned down the keep’s central road and walked towards the tall log gates. He passed the lodge where the workers were eating breakfast. The scent of fresh bread and sausages wafted through the air towards him, but he didn’t find the idea of joining everyone for breakfast very appealing.
Willum paused and looked at the lodge doors. Why was that? The morning meal at Becca’s table was usually one of the highlights of the day. He could hear the men laughing. For some reason the sound soured his stomach. He shuddered and turned back towards the gates.
Morning, Willum, said Tolivar through the bond. He was inside the lodge eating. Willum could faintly taste the eggs. You going to come in and eat?
The veteran warrior’s thoughts were strong, almost too loud. So different from Coal’s. He’d been given Willum’s bond almost a year ago and Willum still wasn’t used to it yet.
No. I’m not hungry right now. I’ll come back and eat after my patrol is over, he replied, knowing that Tolivar would sense that there was more to it. He also knew that Tolivar wouldn’t press him on the matter. That was another thing different from him and Coal. Tolivar was more laid back. He cared for Willum, but was willing to give him his space. Coal would have prodded the truth of the matter from him.
What’s your plan for the day after your patrolling is done? Tolivar asked.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see if Lenny or Bettie need my help.
You could do that if you don’t mind losing your hearing, Tolivar replied. He had a point. Between the clang of the forge, Bettie and Lenny’s shouting, and the baby’s constant squalling, most folk stayed away. I’m hoping to do some training later. You want to spar?
That was yet another way in which Willum’s new bonding wizard was different. Before the Bowl of Souls had named him as a wizard, Tolivar had been Tamboor the Fearless, one of the most well respected warriors ever to come out of the Battle Academy. He was ex-head of the berserker guild and one of the most famous swordsmen in the kingdom. The man was a legend. This also meant that their sparring sessions could get a little embarrassing.
Sure, probably, Willum said.
Tolivar sent Willum a mental chuckle. You’re getting much better, you know.
Yeah, I know, Willum replied. And he was. Tolivar was a bit distant, but he was a good teacher. In the time since the war had ended, Willum had made great improvements with his strange two-handed style, though he still hadn’t been able to beat Tolivar.
Alright. I’ll see you later, then.
Later, Willum replied and headed out the gate.
Once outside the keep’s protective walls, the wind hit Willum with a chilling blast. The winters here weren’t as cold as the ones he had been through at the academy, but he still stopped for a moment to wrap his scarf around his neck and tighten the laces on the front of his sheepskin coat. He was wearing it over a chainmail vest and the metal would grow cold quickly if he didn’t keep the coat tightly sealed.
He continued down the road and passed through the short stretch of forest between the keep and the farmlands. His patrol route would take him along the eastern perimeter of the farms, a stretch of many miles. It would take up a big chunk of the day, but he’d also have time to think.
Willum had been volunteering for patrol duty most mornings lately. The keep still kept to Coal’s rules, which meant that everybody did a full day’s work to pay for their food and lodging. There were only so many jobs to do around the place and Willum found most of them monotonous. Not that patrolling was much better but it was a quiet job. Not much happened here. The king’s men watched the roads leading to the farms and word had got out that the people here were protected. There hadn’t been a bandit raid in years and with the training Benjo had been putting the workers through the past year, most of the people could defend themselves if need be.
Willum reminded himself that was a good thing. The farmers should be able to live in peace without fear of danger coming in. Wasn’t that what good people wanted? That’s what Willum wanted, wasn’t it? And what better place to do it than under the protection of Coal’s K
eep?
After all, he had lived here most of his life. Master Coal had bonded with him and brought him back there to live with him when Willum was only four. His real parents were dead, executed by the other Dremaldrian nobility, but to Willum, Coal became his real father and Coal’s wife, Becca, his mother. With Coal’s other bonded added in, he’d had a family. Sure, Bettie the half-orc blacksmith and Samson the rogue horse centaur made for an odd brother and sister, but nonetheless he’d had a good strong family.
Willum had spent his childhood learning to mold the land. Coal pushed them hard. Till the earth. Plant your crops. Weed them. Water them. Protect them from pests. Then after a long and hard summer, reap your rewards. Those had been good years.
Then when Willum got a bit older, some of the men had taught him to fight. He’d taken to it right away, impressing everyone enough that when he had turned sixteen, he’d been encouraged to travel to Dremaldria and enter the academy. That had been five years ago. In that time he’d seen so much; so many horrible things. He’d been through war. He’d seen friends die all around him. He was only twenty one, but he felt much older.
That was it, he told himself. That’s why he needed Coal’s Keep. He walked out of the forest and the wide expanse of the farms opened up in front of him. Miles of fenced pasture and cultivated farmland. It was a good place. A wonderful place to be. To live. Coal had the right idea. This was the kind of life he could live forever.
“Are you trying to be content again?” asked Theodore, the imp that lived in Willum’s axe.
“What are you talking about? I was just remembering how much I love this place,” Willum said. He had been wondering when it would speak up. The demon had been uncharacteristically quiet all morning.
“Ho-ho. I don’t think so, Willy,” it replied. The imp’s voice sounded different in Willum’s mind than Tolivar’s. He could hear it in his ears as if the imp was standing right next to him. “You might have been trying to convince yourself of that, but you don’t love it here.”
“You don’t know what I was thinking.” His statement was technically true. Their connection wasn’t as strong as the bond he had with Tolivar. The imp could feel his emotions but it couldn’t hear his thoughts unless he wanted it to.
“Tsk! I don’t need to know your exact thoughts! Ho, your feelings shout out to me. You are as tired of this place as I am.”
“What are you talking about?” Willum gestured at the sprawling brown and white vista before him and forced a smile. “How could I not love it here?”
“It’s boring, Willy,” grumbled the imp.
Willum’s smile slid. “It might look that way now, but you should see it in the spring when the crops are sprouting and the grass has grown. This place comes to life, Theodore.”
“Does it? Ho! Probably smells like manure.”
Willum frowned. He was right about that part. “I wasn’t talking about the smell.”
“Ho, then, the sights! Green fields! Green trees! Green flies. Workers who had too much to drink the night before green-faced after smelling the green cow pies. Once you’ve seen one stretch of human farmland, you’ve seen them all.”
“It sounds to me like you’d be bored anywhere,” Willum said grumpily. The imps constant prodding was not helping his mood. “I tell you I enjoy farm life.”
“Pfft! Farm life. Willy, if it’s farms you want, you should visit the elf homelands.”
Willum stopped walking as the imp pushed a vision into his mind, a tantalizing glimpse of a forest scene so lush it took his breath away.
“See it? Ho! Sprawling orchards of fruit bearing trees tended by proud elves who lovingly urinate on them every day so that each fruit thrums with magic power.” The scene in Willum’s mind shifted to a place dark and full of mystery. “Or there’s the Kobald mushroom farms. Deep underground they are. Vast caverns of glowing funguses, Willy. Each variety has different flavors and textures and effects on one’s senses.”
“I get it,” Willum said.
The imp shifted the scene again. “Or there’s the man-farm in Khalpany. It’s an orcish city where humans are raised for amusement. Ho-ho, the finest brothels are there, Willy, along with enormous arenas for blood sport and marketplaces with food vendors that sell man flesh cooked in every way imaginable-.”
“Ugh, Theodore. Stop there,” Willum said, grimacing in distaste.
Reluctantly, the imp let the vision dissipate. “The point is, Willy, there is a whole world to visit and explore. Ho, why spend your short human life stuck in this one place?”
With a frown, Willum started walking again. “Don’t flood my head with visions, alright? When you were doing that I couldn’t see or hear anything else. I was just standing here in the middle of the road. What if a wagon ran me down? What if I were attacked?”
“Willy, Willy, Willy,” the imp laughed. “You might not be able to see, but I can. I was watching the road and fields all around you. I wouldn’t let you get killed, no matter how funny a story it would make.”
Willum snorted. “That doesn’t keep every worker and farm hand in the fields from seeing me standing here in the middle of the road, vacant-eyed and drooling like a fool.”
“Ho-ho! Why so selfish, Willy?” the imp said disapprovingly. “Those men need to find their amusement somewhere in their manure-laden lives, don’t you think? I mean, they already look at you funny for talking to yourself, but give them something extra to laugh about around their bowls of dirt stew or whatever it is these dullards eat.”
“Why must you be so cruel?” Willum asked.
“Ho-ho, am I not an imp?” Theodore asked and Willum could picture the portly demon grinning and rubbing his hands devilishly.
“You may be an imp, but you’re not evil,” Willum said. “I respect these farmers and you should too. They work hard to provide for their families and the fruits of their labor provide food for countless people.”
The imp groaned. “The point I am making, oh so noble Willy, is that the life these men lead is not for you. You aren’t some common man. You’re Willum Vriil. You are meant for bigger things. A life of excitement and adventure!”
“Don’t call me that,” Willum said. “You know that’s not something I’m proud of.”
“Is that so? Funny how you’ve never mentioned it before,” said the imp, his voice laden with sarcasm. “But why should you be ashamed of being a Vriil? Ho, the Vrill bloodline is laden with power. This goes back to the days before there was a Dremaldria. Long before they were nobility, the name Vriil brought a shiver to men.”
Willum frowned. The imp had never told him that before. “How do you know this?”
“Ho-ho! I have been around a long time. A very long time, Willy! And in that time I have heard the name Vriil often. You come from a long line of wizards and warriors.”
“Hmm.” The imp had definitely piqued his interest. What else did it know of his heritage? Willum nearly asked Theodore that question, but then the awful visage of Ewzad Vrill rose in his mind as it had on the day of the great battle at the Mage School. With a shudder, he thrust his interest aside. “I want nothing to do with my foul ancestors.”
“Oh, Willy-Willy, don’t blind yourself to the past,” said the imp. “Your heritage wasn’t always foul. No, your ancestors were known for good as well as evil. Granted, the good ones were few and far between, but ho-ho, they were there and some of them were truly great. World changers, even.”
“I don’t want to change the world, Theodore. I just want to-.”
“Do what, Willy? Ho, some weeding perhaps? Ho-ho! Muck out the barn for the rest of your life? Let your proud heritage fade to dust while you accomplish nothing of meaning?”
“Oh, shut up,” Willum said, rolling his eyes. He reached the first fork in the road and headed east, passing the frosted fields owned by Coal’s wife Becca. Several men were out mending fence lines. A few of them waved to him. “What do you want me to do? You told me you didn’t like the idea of me accepting Lord
Commander Demetrius’ invitation.”
With Ewzad Vriil dead, Willum was the last of the Vriil bloodline. Demetrius wanted Willum to come and take control of the Vriil lands and holdings. If he didn’t claim them, they would be given to one of the other noble houses. He had given Willum until the end of winter to decide.
“Ugh, no, Willy,” said the imp. “Noble life is almost as boring as farm life. You just don’t have to wipe your own hind end. Although . . . now that I think of it, there are some funny tricks that you could play on the other nobles.”
“This is all about your amusement, isn’t it? You don’t really care about what would make me happy,” Willum griped. “Not that I should be surprised.”
“Of course I want to be amused. I’m stuck in this axe and your life is the only one I get to experience,” the imp said, sounding offended. “This, however, doesn’t mean I don’t care. Ho! I wasn’t wrong when I said you would be bored here.”
“Do you want to know the biggest advantage I have from being bonded at the age of four?” Willum asked.
The imp sighed. “Here it comes.”
“I know how to tune you out,” Willum said, closing off his connection to the axe. He smiled in satisfaction. The imp could still monitor him, but it couldn’t interrupt his thoughts.
“Hey! Willum!” called out a voice to his left and Willum turned to see a man loping across the frozen pasture towards him, a long spear held in one hand.
“Morning, Benjo,” Willum replied with a smile.
Benjo was a big man. Not fat, but solid. Years of working on the farm and in the forge had molded him into an impressive physical specimen. He was Becca’s son from her first marriage and was a couple years older than Willum. He’d been the closest thing Willum had to a playmate growing up.
“Oh! Sorry,” Benjo said. He hopped over the fence and came to a stop at Willum’s side. He had a goofy-looking grin on his face. “I guess it’s ‘Lord Willum’ now.”
Willum put a hand to his forehead. The big man had been teasing him like this ever since he arrived back at the farms. “Come on, Benjo. Give me a break. We’re brothers.”
Protector Of The Grove (Book 2) Page 6