by M. L. Brown
“As a stuffed fish.”
We sat without speaking for a long time. When I could cry no more, I sipped my blackroot and found it was cold. Deciding cold blackroot was better than no blackroot, I poured it down my throat and gagged. It is not wise to drink blackroot on an empty stomach.
Tsurugi came into the room. “Where did you go?” he asked, looking at me with vacant eyes.
“A pub,” I said. “Drank myself to sleep. Sorry to worry you.”
Regis wiped his eyes. “What now? Faurum is gone. I can’t go home. I don’t want to wander anymore. I want to stay someplace.”
“Come with us,” I said.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
Tsurugi sat down on his bed. “The Resistance was based in Faurum. Now that the city is destroyed, the Resistance is ended.”
I hadn’t thought I could feel any worse, but Tsurugi’s words proved me absolutely wrong.
“So the kingdom is doomed,” I said. “We’re all dead.”
“No,” he said.
I stared at him.
“There are members of the Resistance all over Rovenia. General Shoukan told them to assemble in Valdelaus if the Resistance failed. That way the capital would be secure even if the rest of the kingdom fell. If we can gather the stray members in Valdelaus, we can re-form the Resistance.”
“How can you think about the Resistance?” I asked. “Here we are, drowning in tears, and you’re matter-of-factly planning our next move. Hang it, Tsurugi, aren’t you even the tiniest bit affected by this tragedy? How stonehearted are you?”
“We don’t have time for grief,” he replied, looking at the floor. “People died. More will die if we don’t do something. There will be time for tears, but this isn’t it. That’s the folly of tears. They blind you to everything else.”
There was a long silence.
“Do what you will,” said Tsurugi. “I’m going to Valdelaus.”
My friend, never in my wildest dreams did I think I would volunteer to take part in a rebellion. Up to that point, I had (for the most part) acted with level-headed sense. My adventure was exciting, but I tried not to get swept away in it. I wanted to return to Terra alive.
My life lost its meaning the moment I heard Maia was dead. With no other reason to live, I didn’t hesitate to throw it away on the first quixotic idea that came my way.
“I’m going with you,” I announced. “I haven’t got anything else to do. I doubt Rovenia needs a literary critic.”
“I’ll go too,” said Regis. “I’ll find a job or something in Valdelaus. Maybe I’ll join your Resistance. I don’t know, old boy. I just don’t know.”
“What’s the name of the king?” I asked as Tsurugi blew life into the fire. “The usurper who killed Victor Bonroi and grabbed the throne?”
“Senshu,” he said.
“Can’t we organize a coup and overthrow him? Without him, we could take control of the military and fight to keep Rovenia safe.”
“General Shoukan refused to overthrow Senshu. He was convinced a coup would end in bloodshed. But we have no choice. We’ll have to try. We can’t run the Resistance from the king’s own city without his notice.”
“The Darkness!” I exclaimed, and swore. “I had forgotten about it. Tsurugi, what are we going to do about the Darkness?”
“What’s the Darkness?” asked Regis.
Tsurugi briefly described the dark horror creeping over Rovenia from the east.
“I hadn’t any idea,” said Regis with a shudder. “The Darkness makes the Nomen seem like no threat at all.”
“We’ve also got the Tyrians to worry about, and the dratted pirates,” I said, adding a few words that are better left unrecorded.
To be honest, my friend, I had hardly given these dangers any thought since leaving Faurum. I was so intent on returning to Oxford that I had almost forgotten the perils pressing in on Rovenia from every side. Now that I was stuck in Gea, it was an awful shock to realize I was in the same dreadful situation as everyone else.
“Things look grim, old boy,” said Regis. I had never seen him so dejected. “What are we going to do?”
“We make for the capital,” said Tsurugi.
“Then it’s settled,” I said, getting up and shoving what was left of my valores into a pocket. “We’ll go to Valdelaus together, dethrone the king and make a stand before the Nomen or Darkness or Tyrians kill us all. Tsurugi, have you bought hunds and supplies?”
He nodded.
“Where did you get the money?”
He gave no answer.
“Hang it, Tsurugi, where did you get the money?”
“The plunder cart at the Noman camp.”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now get things ready to go. I’ll meet you downstairs in two hours.”
“Where are you going?” asked Regis.
“The pub,” I replied. “It’s my intention to get abominably drunk.”
Why is it those with sorrow turn to drink? Speaking from experience, my friend, I can tell you that alcohol neither erases your sorrows nor renders them bearable by making them seem noble or heroic. No, the appeal of alcohol is that it makes you numb until you can’t feel your sorrows anymore. This would be a fine arrangement, except for one flaw: when the numbness is gone, your sorrows are not.
Two and a half hours later, somewhat besotted, I met Regis and Tsurugi in the lobby of the inn. Tsurugi led me to my hund, which I mounted with assistance from Regis. I swayed in the saddle as my companions mounted their hunds, and felt a wave of nausea as we began to move.
“We’re going to say goodbye to Miles,” said Regis.
“Fine,” I mumbled. “Lead the way.”
Our goodbyes were brief. Vito took us to the room where Miles was resting, propped up in bed. He looked much better. “I’m glad to see you,” he said.
As Vito stepped out of the room, I began to cry. Struggling with tears, Regis told Miles of our tragedy. Miles wept. Even Tsurugi looked human for a moment. We finished crying and wiped our eyes.
Tsurugi was the first to leave. As he was turning toward the door, Miles reached out and took his hand.
“El is with you, Tsurugi. Be well, and thanks.”
Tsurugi swallowed as Miles released his hand. “Farewell,” he said, and left the room.
“Take care of yourself, old boy,” said Regis.
“You’ve been so kind,” said Miles. “I’ll never forget it.”
Regis left, leaving me alone with Miles.
“Well,” I said, feeling a lump in my throat, “I should go.”
“Comfort the others, will you?”
“How in blazes do you expect me to comfort them? What the deuce am I supposed to say?”
“Sometimes you don’t have to say anything. Just being there is enough, don’t you know.”
I said goodbye to Miles and then joined the others downstairs. We bade Ana and Vito farewell and departed, taking a northward road out of Ventus. It was an hour or so before noon, and the sunshine mocked us.
When a person suffers depression for a prolonged period of time, my friend, it is sometimes called a Dark Night of the Soul. I personally don’t mind nighttime. When night falls, no matter how bleak things may seem, I can go to bed and awake to a new day.
What I can’t stand are Thursday afternoons.
By the time Thursday rolls around, my enthusiasm for living is exhausted. I feel tired and discouraged. Then Friday dawns, bringing a hopeful surge of energy that carries me to the weekend and the renewal of my strength. My good spirits last until Thursday, when the cycle begins anew. Thursday afternoons are the lowest point of my existence.
So perhaps you will understand, my friend, when I tell you that our departure from Ventus marked the beginning of an epoch in my life that I call my Thursday Afternoon of the Soul.
12
LANCE ELIOT MEETS SEVERAL INTERESTING PERSONS
IT TOOK US ABOUT a month to reach Valdelaus.
I won’t recount the journey in great detail for two reasons. First, recording every memory would take a long time, and I haven’t much time left. Second, it was a hellish month.
Excruciating trials lay before me. In the course of my adventures in Gea over the years, I was to be imprisoned, tortured, sealed inside a mountain, pursued by wild beasts, enslaved, captured by pirates, shipwrecked and wholly deprived of coffee, yet the worst part of all my adventures—indeed, the worst part of my life—was that journey to Valdelaus and the weeks that followed.
I was alone.
Regis and Tsurugi traveled with me, but they were too grieved to be any comfort. Regis often wept. Tsurugi acted more withdrawn than ever before. I burst into anger at the slightest provocation. I couldn’t console my companions, and they couldn’t console me. As though our personal grief were not enough to bear, the doom of Rovenia hung over us like the sword of Damocles, suspended by a hair. We were men without hope.
There was another problem. For years I had drunk alcohol without becoming dependent on it. My Thursday Afternoon of the Soul tipped me over the brink into full-fledged alcoholism. I frequented the pubs in every town we visited. After we reached the Broad Road, a trade route connecting the Tetrapolis with Valdelaus, we passed through towns more frequently. My store of valores dwindled, and along with it my will to live. Only my paralyzing fear of death kept me from suicide. My experience at the bridge had broken my courage.
There were three incidents on the long road to Valdelaus that stand out to me. They are all significant, so I will recount them.
The first occurred two or three days after leaving Ventus. We had ridden along a mountain road, making camp in sheltered nooks in the mountainside. Tsurugi had purchased an abundance of supplies: a tent, blankets, provisions, everything we needed. He ate little, leaving as much as he could for us. Regis made one or two feeble attempts to persuade him to eat more, but he refused.
I awoke one morning to find Tsurugi tending the fire and Regis gone.
“Where is Regis?” I asked.
“Gone,” said Tsurugi.
Panic gripped me. “You mean dead—or lost—or run away?”
“Gone for a walk.”
I went to find him. Leaving Tsurugi to tend to the camp, I walked along the edge of a cliff. It was a bright, clear morning. Far beneath me, a white carpet of mist, broken only by three hilltops, stretched to the eastern horizon. The mist shone beautifully in the sunlight.
I found Regis standing at the edge of a precipice like a lonesome gargoyle on a church parapet.
“I’m giving up gambling,” he said as I drew near.
I stared at him. “You’re doing what?”
“It was the last thing Kana ever asked of me. It’s the last thing he’ll ever ask of me. I can do one last thing for him.”
“What will you do for a living?”
“I don’t know.” He pulled his cards from his pocket. “El will provide, I’m sure. May he forgive me for being a rebellious fool of a son.”
He threw the cards over the cliff. We watched them flutter like autumn leaves into the mist, and then rejoined Tsurugi at the camp.
The second incident was much more exciting. You would think that by this time I would be ready for anything. I wasn’t. About a week after Regis cast away his cards, we descended from the mountains into pine-covered hills. As my companions made camp, I slipped away into the woods. I had to relieve myself and naturally wanted privacy.
To make a long story short, I met a dragon.
I wasn’t aware dragons existed. I thought they were confined to novels and fairy tales and such. I certainly wasn’t expecting to meet one as I walked beneath the pines. The dragon wasn’t terribly large, perhaps fifteen feet long and five or six broad, but quite large enough to be terrifying. It had greenish scales, a spiked tail and a long, toothy maw. On the whole, it looked rather like an odd cross between a lizard and a crocodile.
I gaped at it, making noises like a choking duck, and it strolled over to inspect me. As it came nearer I turned and ran, dodging trees, cursing fluently and hoping it wasn’t about to bite off a piece of me. When I stopped, I had lost the dragon. I had also lost my way. After relieving myself, I wandered through the woods in search of Regis and Tsurugi.
Night fell. It began to snow. At last, after a long time, I spied the glow of a fire in a glade beneath me. It was our camp.
“There you are,” exclaimed Regis. “Tsurugi is looking for you. You seem to be an expert at getting yourself lost.”
“Shut up,” I snapped. My temper had not been improved by the dragon, the darkness or the snow. “Drat you, Regis, why didn’t you tell me there are dragons in Gea?”
“You never asked, old boy. You didn’t meet a dragon, did you?”
I crouched to warm my hands over the fire and told him about the dragon. “I was just waiting for it to burn me to a cinder,” I whimpered, staring through my fingers at the glowing coals.
“I doubt it was a fire-breathing dragon,” he said, patting my arm. “Only the really big dragons breathe fire.”
“Really big dragons? How much bigger do they get?”
“About fifty feet, depending on the species.”
“Where does the fire come from?”
Regis shrugged. “It’s a chemical reaction, I think. Dragons have glands and things that produce flammable fluids. I don’t remember exactly. I wasn’t a very good student, as you know. Biology never interested me.”
Dragons. Real dragons.
I was staggered.
“Regis, I’m staggered. I never dreamed there might be mythological creatures in Gea. What others are there?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, old boy. What’s mythological about dragons?”
For half an hour I asked question after question, trying to determine what sorts of monsters I had to share Gea with.
“Sea serpents?”
“Yes.”
“Sprites?”
“No.”
“Vampires?”
“No.”
“Thank God. Golems?”
“I’ve heard stories about golems, but I don’t think they exist.”
“Leprechauns?”
“What are they?”
“Never mind,” I said. “So in this world, maybe in this kingdom, there are dragons, yetis, sea serpents, kitsune, trolls, werewolves, rocs and possibly golems.”
“That’s right, old boy.”
“Incredible,” I said, putting a hand to my forehead. “It’s like a blasted fairytale. I’m stuck in another world—another ruddy world—and Maia is dead, and now I have deuced dragons to worry about. How the devil can things get any worse?”
“You’ve forgotten the Darkness.”
I cursed and went to bed.
The third incident concerns the Darkness. Some time after I met the dragon, we were caught in another blizzard. Tsurugi pitched our tent in a dense pine thicket that kept out the snow. We huddled together in our blankets, listening to the roar of the wind. I shivered in the cold. Regis was having one of what he called his “wet evenings,” sobbing quietly and soaking his sleeves with tears. Tsurugi lay perfectly still, like a dead man.
When the blizzard ended, we found that the Broad Road, which we were following, was blocked with dozens of carts that were stuck in the deep snow. Rather than struggle through the traffic, we took an eastward route that curved northward to rejoin the Broad Road some leagues farther on. Our road took us up a ridge, and we paused at the summit to have a meal.
It was Regis who noticed the smudge on the horizon. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing. We all looked. It was a line of solid black, as stark against the snow as these words against this page.
“The Darkness,” said Tsurugi.
I swore.
“How close is it?” asked Regis.
“Close enough,” said Tsurugi.
“How quickly is it spreading?”
“Too quickly.”
None of us wanted to l
inger in that place, so we finished eating and resumed our northward ride. We had only glimpsed the Darkness, but it was enough to fill us with dread. Our situation was hopeless.
My friend, imagine that by some miracle we were able to overthrow Senshu, repel the Nomen, defeat the pirates and prevent Tyria from invading Rovenia. What then? What could be done about the Darkness? We were fighting a losing battle, and we knew it.
After four weeks of wretchedness, it was a relief to come over the top of a low hill and see the great city of Valdelaus stretched out before us.
Faurum had been an impressive city, but Valdelaus was still more magnificent. Two great hills rose before us. At the pinnacle of the western hill stood a palace. The Rovenian standard flew from every tower, and the windows sparkled in the sunshine like jewels in a crown. The palace was breathtaking. It was, however, hardly worth comparing with the temple that stood atop the eastern hill. Built of white marble and inlaid with precious metals, the temple was a dazzling sight.
Spanned by bridges of white stone, a wide river ran from north to south between the two hills, dividing the city in two. Market squares were bright with colored carpets and tapestries. Parks were scattered across the city, and almost every street was lined with trees. Winter had stripped much of the beauty from the city—the trees were bare and the streets overflowed with mud-stained snow—yet it was a splendid sight. I felt just a little lighter as we approached the city gate.
A guard met us at the gate. “What’re you doing here?” he demanded, scowling at us from behind a thick black beard. “What’s your business?”
“We’ve come to visit a friend,” said Tsurugi.
“Where’re you from?”
“Ventus.”
“Who’re you here to visit?”
Tsurugi’s hand shot to the hilt of his katana, and for a terrifying instant I thought he was going to cut down the guard. I let out my breath as he extended his sword to the guard hilt-first.
“I’m a legionary,” said Tsurugi. “We’ve come to see General Fox.”
The guard laughed. “That old coot? Well, if you want to waste your time on the Toothless Fox, I won’t stop you.”