by Joseph Burgo
And then he was moving swiftly away from them, across the great hall toward the immense wooden doors.
At one time, Nical had felt certain that Lukah harbored feelings for Silvana. Watching them together, he had believed she returned them. Then something must have happened, some rupture or disagreement, for they dealt with each other now at a cold distance.
Silvana looked unsettled for only a moment.
“Rumor has it that a stranger has arrived at the castle,” she said, “and you are to have entertainment. You might have let me know. Your Highness," she added, almost as an afterthought.
"I only just learned of his arrival myself. How did you find out so quickly? But I am forgetting my manners – pray seat yourself." He gestured toward one of the tattered hide chairs opposite the throne and she settled instead onto the edge of the dais, at his feet, her back to him. With a long elegant hand, she smoothed the white fur trimming of her robe.
"You can't keep a secret here in our town," she said. "You know that yourself. Word travels fast in Sudana."
"Indeed," he said, peering down at the top of her head. "People do so like to gossip."
Nical knew she had spies inside the castle, of course. Her intelligence about goings-on in the kingdom was nearly as fresh as his own. What he didn't understand was why she cared so much. What was she after? Once again, he felt overcome with wariness. Not for the first time, he wondered whether he ought to give up foria.
The sea panther abruptly awoke from her drowsy contented state and snarled, baring her sharp teeth at Silvana. From the moment Tavi first brought the animal to live within Castle Inario, these two females had hated each other. Silvana looked over at Tavi and his exotic beast with an expression that mingled fear with contempt.
"I will never understand why you allow that monster in the great hall." She stood up and instinctively backed away a few steps.
Nical laughed and felt relieved. It gave him pleasure to hear the fear in her voice.
"She brings my brother peace, you know that. You remember what he was like before."
"I can think of a more lasting kind of peace ... for both of them. For all of us."
"He is my brother."
"I don't understand your objection. You are king. You may do as you like."
Without a qualm, Silvana could easily have ordered anyone put to death, even a brother if she had one. Nical had no doubt on that score.
"I can have the beast chained," he told her, "if it will ease your mind."
With a small shrug, she dismissed the idea: she obviously didn't want to show how uncomfortable the sea panther made her feel. Looking at the hide-covered chair as if she'd never seen it before, she settled down into it.
“About the entertainment …?” she asked.
"A man showed up at the gates," Nical told her, "and he says he’s a 'bard.' Have you ever heard that word before? Do you know what it means to be a bard?"
"I’m told there are men who travel throughout the far kingdoms in Messano, but I’ve never heard of one in Estneva. From what I hear, they have no trade or skill but journey from place to place, telling stories in exchange for lodging."
Told by whom? How did she come by her information?
"According to my guard,” he said, “this man offered to tell us tales of a 'time before.' What do you suppose that means?"
"I’m sure they’re only made-up stories. But probably not boring. At least I hope not."
"Perhaps he can tell us something about the long ago people who knew how to make iron swords and suits of armor," he said. "And glass. And how to weave." He looked around him at the great hall – the high windows with many broken glass panes replaced by wood; the tapestries so decayed their scenes were impossible to understand; the rusted suit of armor in the corner there, no longer of use to anyone. Someone had to have made these things.
"What difference does it make?” she said. “And what good are those things, anyway? They only fall apart, like everything else. I don't believe the past was any better than today."
He didn't understand why she was pretending to hold this opinion, but he knew she didn’t believe what she was saying. All of Estneva seemed suddenly full of people harboring evil intentions toward him.
A stooped old man with a baldhead came through the doors, supporting his weight with a cane of gnarled wood, though he did not seem frail. He walked with an almost spritely gait; his limbs appeared robust. He must have bathed because he was wearing trousers and a tunic like the ones worn by Nical's servants.
Behind him came one of the slave girls, carrying a canvas bag. The old man's possessions?
The bard briefly bowed his head in courtesy as he approached the throne. "Hail to thee, King Nical of Estneva!" It was not an old man's voice, but one deep and resonant with authority. "I am Savino, a wandering bard charged by my order to spread knowledge throughout Messano. I bring you our memories of the Golden Age before the coming of the Blight ... if you will listen."
At the sound of the old man's commanding voice, as his message penetrated, a strange new feeling came over Nical, as if his awareness were expanding outward. His openness to the world increased a thousand-fold, like sudden light spreading into dark reaches of the unknown.
It frightened him.
Chapter Four
Savino heard men among the pine trees before he could see them, but he knew they weren’t far off. He distinguished the sound of four or five different voices – not a large pack but too much for an old man alone, with nothing for his defense but a gnarled walking stick. From their cries of glee, he knew they must already have spotted him. He sighed with resignation, stopping along his path in the midst of a clearing to wait for them.
During his apprenticeship at the Refuge, Savino had been taught that a solitary bard must be forever on guard against self-pity, the first of the False Comforts, and over his many years wandering alone throughout Messano, he had found this to be true. Waiting for yet another pack of barbarians to descend upon him, he refused to feel sorry for himself. How many times had he been waylaid like this? He’d lost count.
Within his canvas pack, he carried nothing of value, but this was no protection. Sometimes the disappointed men would kick and beat him when they turned out the contents and found only a wooden mug, a worthless stone blade, and a tattered change of clothing nobody would want. Some of them had threatened to kill him out of spite, but he had survived thus far. Perhaps he would meet his death today. He faced that prospect with a serene sense of acceptance.
The pack of five at last broke into the clearing. Their howls and whoops died away when they realized Savino was not in flight. It lessened their pleasure. Even from this distance, he could feel the violent chaos of their emotions – rage and malice, a pervasive hunger for much more than food, the underlying grief that could not be borne. As they came near, he walled off those feelings the way his mentors had taught him to do. If he wasn’t on guard, a Promultan could easily be overwhelmed by the feelings of others.
He soon found himself surrounded by four scrawny young men with thin beards, dressed in rags no better than his own, a stench of sweat and excrement coming off their bodies. They carried wooden spears with stone tips and crude swords hacked from hardwood, little more than sharpened sticks. One of the men – their leader, from the way the others looked to him – came closer and pointed his sword at Savino’s throat. Though still a young man, his teeth were cracked and yellow, his breath was foul.
“What have you got in the sack, old man?” he said.
“Little enough,” Savino told him, “but you are welcome to it.” He handed it over.
Lowering his wooden sword, the leader peered inside and snorted his disgust. He tossed the sack aside. Even with his mental guard up, Savino felt the man’s rage and despair, the unbridled urge to destroy something, anything, when life once again served up bitter disappointment. He felt sure this man had never known anything of human warmth or kindness.
The leader once agai
n raised his sharp stick to Savino’s throat. “And food? How do you eat? Have you anything concealed on your body?”
“Pray search me, if you will. I forage for whatever I can find, as I imagine you do.” Savino warmed his voice with compassion but it had no effect. “I am as hungry as you.”
“Hungry, yes,” he sneered, “but not for long. Soon our bellies will be full, right boys?”
The other young men snickered. With a hot spike of panic along his back, Savino realized they intended to eat him. He’d heard rumors along his way, that the eating of human flesh had taken hold in some of the most ravaged places, but he had never yet met a cannibal.
Perhaps this was how his life was to end – as a meal for these desperate young men. With deep measured breaths, he stilled the black terror spreading throughout his body. He fought down contempt, the second of the False Comforts. Living without companionship, confronted every day with beings more like beasts than people, it would be easy to take refuge in contempt.
“Not much meat to you,” the leader said, leaning close, “but enough to take the edge off.” The stench of his breath made Savino’s stomach churn. “The rest of you start gathering wood for a fire. I’ll skewer the old man.”
At that moment, he heard a high whistling sound. An arrow from out of nowhere pierced the leader’s throat directly below his chin. As he toppled to the ground, the other men shrieked in fear. Like terrified rabbits – the hunted now and no longer the hunters – they bolted in all directions and disappeared into the woods.
Savino stood alone in the clearing. Not today. It seemed he was not to die today.
Gauging from its trajectory, the arrow must have come from … over there, where a small rivulet from the woods entered the clearing. As he watched, a figure slowly came forward from the trees. A slight young man clad in rough clothes: gray woolen trousers and a tunic, bow in hand and a quiver slung over his shoulder. As the figure came closer, something about the way he moved … no, not a young man but a young woman wearing a man’s clothes. Her brown hair had been roughly chopped off at shoulder-length.
She approached cautiously, glancing from side to side – the barbarians might return once they realized she was alone. Stopping a short distance away, she called out to him, her voice surprisingly deep. “Have they hurt you?”
“Nay, I am unharmed. Come closer – I want to thank you.” She kept her distance. “You have nothing to fear – I’m a harmless old man.”
At last she came closer but stopped a few yards away. She propped her bow on the ground, gripping it with one hand. Broad shoulders for a young woman. She wouldn’t meet his gaze but kept glancing about her, on the lookout for the men who had attacked him.
“I am Savino, a bard of the wandering order. How are you called?”
“Devianna.”
“Are you all alone, Devianna?” he asked.
“I am.”
“Your village must be nearby. Would you take me there? I’m on my way to Castle Inario but in need of food and rest.”
“I have no village.” The bitterness in her voice surprised him. She startled as he moved closer and eyed him with distrust.
“Don’t worry, I mean you no harm.”
Her knuckles had gone white from holding so tightly onto her bow. Very large hands for a woman. And there was something mannish, too, about her jawline – thick and square.
Vacillian!
A hot thoughtless fear surged through his body. He felt a nearly overpowering urge to run.
As he calmed himself with careful breathing, he regained control and knew he had nothing to fear. It was only her otherness that had briefly terrified him, the instinctive animal response to what he did not know or understand.
Once Savino had calmed himself, he opened wide to her with fellow feeling – “other-light” as they called it within the order. When their eyes met, her anguish flooded into him.
Such pain!
He felt her ache in his chest. Her tears, long held back, welled up in his eyes. Because it had tapped into his own, her acute loneliness touched him most deeply. The depth of suffering must have shown on his face because she asked, “Are you unwell?”
He took a few deep breaths, mastering these emotions. “A sharp pain in my chest,” he told her, “nothing more. It has passed now.”
I have no village.
She must be in flight from her own people, just like that other Vacillian he’d met at the beginning of his journeys, also in mid-shift. He had known too little to save that poor boy-girl from long ago, but perhaps he could help this one.
“Do you live alone in these woods?”
“For now.”
She clearly had no plan. She must have left her people only recently, just before the shift would have exposed her. He thought it best to speak plainly: he could hear the wildmen in the distance, their voices growing stronger and less fearful.
“And after the shift is complete,” he asked, “what then?”
Her eyes grew wide and she backed away. Her had moved toward the quiver on her back.
“I would like to help,” he said, “if you will let me.”
“I don’t need your help. I don’t want it.”
“Have you thought what you will do? Where will you go once you are fully a man?”
She lowered the bow and propped it once again on the ground. “I will do what other men do, the ones who have no village.”
“Then you will become a wildman such as these? You will prey upon the weak and raid their villages. You will force yourself upon women who are as you once were.”
“I can see no other way.”
“That is no life for you.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, old man. You don’t know what it’s like. Nobody knows.”
“Just because I am not Vacillian, that doesn’t mean I don’t know what it’s like to feel lonely and outcast. The life of a wildman is not for you.”
The voices in the woods were growing louder, drawing nearer.
“What then?” she said, her voice hard and bitter. “Where should I go? What else can I do?”
“There is a place. There are people who will accept you as you are.”
She eyed him skeptically though hope flickered in her gaze.
“Where?”
“Do you know of the Orsallins? Have you heard of Nido, their abode?”
She shook her head.
“They would take you in.”
“How do you know this?”
“I visited Nido once, many years ago.”
“And were there others like me at this place, this Nido? Were their other Vacillians?”
“Not to my knowledge, but …”
She snorted. “So you don’t really know anything.” He could feel her disappointment.
“I do know. You must trust me.”
Devianna gave him a scornful look. “I trust no one. I am alone.”
Just then, her attention was caught by motion at the edge of the clearing. She reached back to her quiver, took out an arrow, and swiftly fitted it to her bowstring. She stood ready, arrow pulled back, the string taut. Savino studied her face, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Head west until you reach the mountains,” he told her, “then take the north road that runs along the foothills. It will lead you to Nido. A journey of three weeks, all told.”
Devianna was intently focused on the distance. Was she listening?
“You will find shelter there,” he told her. “You will be safe.”
As she let the arrow fly, the string sang out. One moment later, a high shriek of pain pierced the clearing.
“Run, old man,” she said. “Conceal yourself and don’t look for me to save you the next time.”
“Nido,” he repeated. “The Orsallins. Take the northern road.”
She settled the bow over her shoulder. “Farewell,” she said. She gave him a brief parting glance. “I will think of what you have told me.”
* * *
As
the castle guard escorted him down the corridor and away from the gate, Savino passed an ancient crone moving slowly toward him from the opposite direction. She emerged from darkness into the glow of a wall-mounted oil lamp, one of a line of lamps receding into the distance. With her wizened face and straggly sparse hair, the old woman had a depleted look. So insubstantial was her body that she barely filled out her long tattered dress.
Just as they were passing, she caught his eye. She placed one hand upon her chest, briefly, and then raised it higher, brushing one fingertip against her lips. It was a signal, known to and recognized only by members of his order.
I am Promultan.
She’d probably served as Placekeeper to the last king’s children when they were young. Savino gave the counter-sign of recognition, pulling on his earlobe, and passed the old woman by.
He had no memory of having met her before. Given her age, she’d probably left the Refuge before he arrived.
A moment after she had passed, he felt worry take hold. He recognized the signs when he came upon them – this Promultan had succumbed to self-sacrifice, the third of the False Comforts. He might still be of help to her if it wasn’t too late. He would remind her of the lessons. Surely she would find time to speak to him in private during his visit.
It stirred emotion to know that another member of his order dwelled at Castle Inario. Even if they were strangers to one another, they would no doubt discover some recollections in common – of places and mentors and Elders on the Council. If he spoke to her of his loneliness, she would understand exactly how he felt. Though her particular mission had kept her in one place and his had sent him wandering alone throughout Messano, she was Promultan. By nature, she could not help but feel his pain.
Savino followed the guard down the corridor from one pool of illumination to the next, the chill of dark stone growing deeper the further they penetrated into Castle Inario. The guard was drunk and stumbled a few times along the way. Without explanation, he left Savino in a small chamber that held a wooden tub filled with water. Along one wall, there was also a garderobe, the reek of human waste rising from its hole, and a change of clothes on its bench: a brown leather tunic and woolen trousers.