by Donovan, Rob
The third person to leave left far less conspicuously. He did not pack any belongings other than basic rations. If the mayor’s horses were grand and a sight to behold, Maxhunt’s horse was a ragged animal, its skeleton showing through its body and clumps of its mane missing. He had watched Kiana and her family leave earlier in the morning and had followed shortly after, skulking through the gates, barely acknowledging the town’s guards. They were the only ones to see him go and they certainly didn’t miss him.
Chapter 12
It had been four days since Rhact had come to see Marybeth. She admired him in that he had integrity, a man willing to do anything to protect his family. In a way, he reminded her of her own father.
She absentmindedly fingered the pendant around her neck. She found the cold metal reassuring. It was the only physical possession Marybeth still had of her father’s. In truth it had been her mother’s, but as she had never met her mother and her father had always worn it in her memory, Marybeth considered the necklace a memory of him.
Marybeth had been very young when she had learned her mother’s fate. Her father told her through teary eyes that she had died giving birth to her. He had always been brutally honest with Marybeth, which she had appreciated. Other parents often tried to shield their children from such knowledge they deemed inappropriate. Marybeth’s father had never done that, subscribing to the belief that the sooner Marybeth become aware of the horrors in the world, the sooner she would learn to deal with them.
She remembered the overwhelming feeling of guilt that had swept over her. Her eyes instantly filled with tears. She was sad she had killed her mother and frightened that her father blamed her for it at the same time. Her father had been confused by her discomfort and asked her what was wrong. When she explained, he laughed in a good natured way and reassured her that her mother would have been more than happy to give her life up to make way for her beautiful baby girl.
“That is what she called you, right from when she knew she was pregnant, you were her ‘beautiful baby girl.’ When I asked her how she knew we were having a girl, she just smiled at me, rubbed her belly and said, ‘you’ll see, you’ll see.’”
She felt a sudden pang of sadness. Her father had been everything to her. He loved her and wasn’t afraid to show it. Her childhood, although tough, had been a happy one. Even when they were struggling for food, her father made sure Marybeth had been happy.
He was a carpenter but did not have anything as grand as his own shop. Instead, he did odd jobs for people, accepting whatever payment the customer could afford. Sometimes this meant he would end up with items such as fur hides they didn’t particularly need or on one occasion a cotton wheel they didn’t know how to use.
They had travelled a lot. Marybeth got to see the majority of Frindoth. Initially, the small towns and villages each held a unique mystical feel to them. The people had subtle differences in their appearances and ways, such as the tall, proud folk of Leweston, Luciana, who slapped their elbows as a way of greeting each other or the disgusting bearded villagers (yes, even the women) of Goperty in Shangon. Each time they moved on, she could not wait to see who they would meet next.
As she grew older, though, Marybeth learned that despite the physical appearances and customs, the villages and towns were largely the same. They all had the same characters, the same hierarchies. After a while, she stopped trying to make new friends. She knew they would be moving on soon and so could not see the point. This concerned her father and he tried to persuade her that you could never have too many friends. Marybeth would nod but still did not make any more effort.
She did not blame her father for the nomadic existence. If it was not for her father, she would never have enjoyed her youth. She simply loved being with him. He seemed to know so much and always had time to teach her. His attention to Marybeth fulfilled the absence of childhood friends.
They finally stopped travelling around the time of her eleventh year. They had settled in a small isolated village in Nalendar. It was here that her father first met and worked for Iskandar.
Marybeth remembered the moment clearly. She had been sitting on a large stone chatting away to her father about the pointlessness of butterflies. Her father was constructing a new front door for an elderly couple, his first job in Nalendar.
He had spotted the dilapidated old door as soon as they had arrived in the village and had wasted little time in offering his services. She had always marvelled at how easily he had found work; he offered his services but was never intrusive. He had a way of talking to folk that was both calming but also exuded confidence.
“I mean, what do they do? Bees I understand, but butterflies do nothing,” she had said.
Her father had paused from shaving the edge of the door and straightened up, his back cracked as he pushed his palms into his spine. He wiped the sweat from his brow.
“They look pretty,” he said.
“That is not a useful role to have. Just looking pretty.”
“Why not? They bring me pleasure to look at them, all those different colours, fluttering by in jerky motions. I like to watch them.”
“That’s stupid. Their purpose in life can’t be just to look pretty for other people who may or may not look at them.”
Her father had gone back to planing the wood.
“Well, what is your purpose in life, my sweet girl? What do you do?” he said without looking up.
“What do you mean? I am a girl.”
“Does that make you any better than the butterfly?” he asked.
“Of course it does, potentially I can do anything, even rule Frindoth.”
“Ah, such lofty ambitions. Potentially you can and maybe you will. But what is your role in life? In the great scheme of things, is you ruling Frindoth any more significant than the butterfly flittering about from plant to plant?” When she did not reply, he continued. “So, I ask you again, what is your role?”
Marybeth watched as his skilled hands shaved the wood off the door frame. The action was so smooth and effortless for him. She considered the answer for some time.
“To look pretty too,” she had said with a grin.
Her father had laughed at this, really laughed. He had stood up and ruffled her hair, the one time it didn’t annoy her.
A tall silhouette formed over the nearly finished door.
“Looks like you know what you are doing,” a voice said.
Marybeth looked up at the figure that had appeared so suddenly. The sun was directly in her eyes, so that she had to shield them with her hand. She still couldn’t make out much, other than a tall man, dressed in a long purple cloak.
“I like to think I do,” her father replied, barely acknowledging the man.
“If you are looking for work, I need a place renovated. Should be a good couple of months labour involved. I can pay you handsomely on a daily basis,” the man said.
Marybeth’s heart leapt. Her father had never received an offer like that before. Her hopes were soon dashed though.
“Thank you, but we never stay anywhere that long,” he said. “Besides, we have no place to stay.”
“Well I can solve that problem too. You can stay in the house whilst you work on it. When it is done you can be on your way. The quicker you work, the sooner you can move on, only with a nice bit of gold in your pocket,” the stranger had said.
Her father stopped what he was doing and stood to face the man. He seemed to be weighing him up. If the man seemed uncomfortable with this, he did not show it. Marybeth had willed him to agree to the job. She had yearned to be in the same location even for a little while, just enough for her to make friends and not feel as if she was going to desert them the next week.
Looking back, she now recognised her father’s instincts had been to decline the proposal. Instead he had seemed to sense her desperation. She must have looked pathetic, as she tried to signal her preference by smiling and making her eyes big. She was not sure how this was meant to simulate her
intentions, but it worked. Her father had returned her smile and then agreed to the man’s offer, much to his delight.
That was how Marybeth and her father first met Iskandar. If she had known how it would change their lives and what would happen next, she would have done everything possible to discourage her father from taking that job.
She pushed all thoughts of her father aside as she found Ucking Jhon kneeling by a stream splashing his face and attempting to scrub off the dried vomit that adorned his shirt. He hadn’t been hard to find, she just followed the discarded trail of bottles from his home.
As promised by the mysterious face changer, Jaegal appeared to be having difficulty with one of his stoneholders. He had sent her a message via one of his crows that asked her to keep an eye on the other two stone recipients. The fact that the two she had to keep an eye on also possessed two of the three stones she needed, was further reassurance that for now she had an ally in her quest to thwart the Gloom.
She watched Ucking Jhon for a little while from the cover of the trees. He really was a disgusting excuse for a man. Drinking himself into oblivion. At least he still had a sense of duty, which in a way Marybeth had to admire. Even in his drunken haze he was still making his way to Lilyon. She was here to test that sense of duty now.
“Fucking vomit,” he muttered. “Pissing shirt.”
“One would have to question, why, if you cared so little for yourself to waste your life away in the bottom of a bottle, you would care about going to Lilyon,” she said.
“Wha fuck. Who the fuck is there?” he said, stumbling to his feet quickly and then immediately holding his head to soothe the searing pain.
“Calm yourself. I’m here to help you.”
“Oh yeah? Well fucking show yourself then, you stupid bitch. Never met any whore who offered to help me from the shadows. They’ve taken my money.”
Marybeth stepped out from her cover. Ucking Jhon’s eyes widened as his gaze fell upon the emblem on her cloak.
“Fuck me, you’re that witch,” he said.
“I prefer the term lady, but I take no offence.”
Ucking Jhon shrugged and turned back to the stream and cleaning his shirt.
“What do you want? I’m a marked man now, got no reason to fucking fear you.”
“It is precisely about that I wanted to talk to you.”
Ucking Jhon stopped what he was doing and sat down and groaned. He shut his eyes and pressed his palm into his forehead as if it would ease his headache.
“Unless you got something to deal with these needles sticking into the back of my eyes, I ain’t interested, crone,” he said.
Marybeth sighed. She returned to her wagon and rummaged in one of the chests. Finally she found some red leaves belonging to a rare plant native to Lyretia. She placed the leaves into a mortar along with a few drops of a viscous purple liquid from a vial. She then returned to the stream and filled the rest of the mortar up with water.
Ucking Jhon watched through squinting eyes as she ground the leaves in with the liquid. She dabbed one of her fingers in the concoction and tasted it. Satisfied, she handed the drink to him.
He took it without question and swallowed it within three quick gulps. She watched as a look of disbelief washed over his face.
“Fuck me, my headache’s completely gone. I could do with one of them every morning,” he said bewildered. “What the fuck was that?”
“One of my own recipes. I will give you five bottles of the stuff, plus ten barrels of ale if you don’t take the stone you are carrying to Lilyon,” she said. This was it, if she had assessed him correctly and she thought she had, as Ucking Jhon was hardly the most complex person in the world, then he would accept her offer.
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously; a lock of his hair fell across his face. He raised a finger and prodded her chest, “What are you planning, crone?”
She grabbed his finger instinctively and twisted it. Ucking Jhon to his credit did not yelp but his face showed he was in pain.
“Do you really care?” she said. His reply was instant.
“Not in the fucking least. It’s a deal.”
* * *
It had taken another day to track down Mira. She had been a little trickier to convince to part with the stone. Unlike Ucking Jhon, Mira had not left an easy trail to follow and Marybeth had resorted to asking local farmers and villagers if a family matching their description had passed through their land. After several blank stares or in some cases, enduring people running from the sight of her, she eventually tracked the family to an inn just inside the town of Buxley.
The Grizzly Bear Inn consisted of no more than three long tables and a few armchairs that had seen better days. All of which were empty. There were only four candles scattered about the room giving the Inn a dim, depressing air that matched the furniture. A rickety staircase stood in one corner and a bar stretched along the back wall.
Barrels of ale lay in manufactured holes along the stone wall only interrupted by a small doorway leading to a dark room. The length of the bar was actually quite comical given the absence of clients. Marybeth had travelled all over Frindoth and doubted that she had ever entered such an unwelcoming Inn as this one.
“A room is two gold pieces a night, one silver,” a deep voice said from the shadows.
Marybeth started at the voice. A man stood in the doorway cleaning a glass with a dirty dishcloth. A contradiction, Marybeth thought, if ever there was one.
“How much to tell me what room the family with the young girl is staying in,” she said.
“Three gold pieces,” the man said, emerging from the shadows with a hideous grin on his face.
Marybeth contemplated maiming the greedy man. She was sure Mira and her parents would be the only ones staying in the grotty excuse of an Inn and would not be hard to find.
“That is quite extortionate,” she said.
“Yeah, well, someone has to pay for the upkeep of this place.”
“But of course, you need the money to pay for the tremendous extravagance you afford your guests.”
The man frowned, unsure, it seemed, whether or not she was being sarcastic.
“I’ll have a cider whilst I think about it,” she said.
The man shrugged and fetched a glass that did not look any cleaner than the one he had been rubbing down. He spat in it and wiped it around using the same dirty dishcloth before pouring her drink. He offered it to her, a smug grin spreading across his face.
Marybeth took it without saying a word and then poured it on the floor. Before the man could object, she smashed the glass over his head, sending him to the floor.
“Don’t come after me,” she said as she walked towards the stairs.
She found Mira and her parents all huddled together under a blanket in the corner of the room. She had to suppress a smile as she looked upon the three pairs of frightened eyes that peered above the blanket.
The décor in the room made downstairs look like a palace. There was no bed, but three piles of straw and three blankets. She was not sure how the Inn survived on a daily basis.
“You have nothing to worry about with us. W … w … w … we are on our way to Lilyon,” Mira’s Father squeaked. “Y … y … y … you just be on your way now, and leave us alone … please.” The “please” was added as an afterthought, as if he had suddenly realised who he was talking to and had been too forward.
Marybeth entered the room and kicked some of the straw together to form a large pile before sitting on it.
“I do not doubt your integrity. I am here to help you,” she said. Mira’s father lowered the blanket to reveal his podgy face. He regarded her suspiciously.
“Help us how?” he said.
“I’ve come to take the stone off Mira,” Marybeth said, looking directly at the young girl.
Mira looked at her father hopefully. He went to speak but then stopped himself, unsure what he actually wanted to say. His mouth paused in a perfect “o” shape that po
rtrayed his confusion. It was Mira’s mother that spoke.
“That’s impossible.”
There was an annoyance to her tone. Marybeth did not answer but instead picked up a stalk of straw and began to clean the dirt out from under her fingernails. Finally curiosity got the better of the mother.
“Help us how?” she said.
“Let’s just say I am conducting an experiment. I have reason to believe I can defeat the Gloom,” Marybeth said without looking up, pretending her fingernails were more important that the stone.
“An experiment?” Mira’s mother scoffed. “You are willing to base the fate of Frindoth on an experiment? If any of the twelve stoneholders fail to attend the Ritual, the wrath of the Gloom will be devastating. Trees will—”
“DO NOT QUOTE THE TEXT TO ME!” Marybeth said, jumping to her feet, her eyes blazing.
The three of them immediately pulled the blanket up over their heads. They looked pathetic trembling underneath the thin material. I don’t have time for this, she thought. She whipped the blanket off of their heads, causing Mira to scream and wrap her arms even tighter around her mother.
“Make her go away, Father!” she sobbed.
The father looked up at Marybeth, he was sweating and when he spoke there was a tremble in his voice.
“Please understand our position, good lady. If we give you the stone, you may save Frindoth or you may not. If we take the stone to Lilyon, there is an eleven in twelve chance our daughter will live. That is the better option for our Mira. On one side we must rely on your say so, and on the other we are dealing with definite facts. I’m sorry but I cannot give you the stone,” he said.
Marybeth watched the man tremble. She noticed he focussed on the chances of living rather than dying and admired him for protecting his daughter. Still, she could not afford to be sentimental.
“Well how about this for my say so. Your daughter will die if she does not give me the stone.”
The colour drained from all three of their faces.
“Your daughter is experiencing her first blood right now. Did it not occur to you that she is rather young for this to happen?” she said.