The Narrowing Path: The Complete Trilogy (The Narrowing Path Series Book 4)

by David J Normoyle

  “What?” Bowe looked down, saw a jumble of long hairy legs, and leaped to his feet, flicking it away. “Bloody insects,” he said when he had made certain that it was gone.

  Iyra was laughing at him. “Such a city boy.”

  “What happened?” Bowe dusted his shoulders and arms to make sure he had no other unwelcome guests on his person. “Did you meet your contact in the village?”

  “I did.” She scowled, remembering. “It was difficult to persuade him to help you.”

  “Did he want to kill me at first?” Bowe asked.

  Iyra snorted. “How did you know?”

  “These days every new person I meet wants to kill me at first.”

  “At first? This one still wants to kill you.”

  “Did you not tell him Coensaw wanted to help me? Was that not enough?”

  “Not everyone follows Coensaw’s word like it’s law. Especially not this far away from his base of power.”

  Someone inside the Guild who is powerful disagreed with Coensaw and wasn’t afraid to go his own way, Bowe thought. He wondered if there were many such in the Guild or if the one who went behind Coensaw’s back in supporting the invasion was the same one who Iyra was now asking for help from. “But you persuaded him to help me?” Bowe looked around. “Or is he hiding somewhere around here, planning to jump out and kill me?”

  “Luckily enough, he owes me a favor.” Iyra pulled the small backpack off her shoulder and threw it to the ground. This was a different one than her travel pack that she had left in the camp with Bowe.

  Owes a favor for putting him in contact with Washima, perhaps, Bowe thought. “What do you have there?”

  “A new uniform for you, plus a letter of recommendation. You can write, I presume?”

  Bowe picked up the uniform from the ground. A gray cloak with the distinctive wide, circular collar of a scribe. He smiled. “You expect me to wear this. Next thing, you’ll want to put me into a servant’s uniform.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m a Guardian—I can’t work as a scribe.”

  Iyra roughly grabbed the uniform back off Bowe and stuffed it back in the bag. “I don’t know why I try to help you.”

  “What are you doing?” Bowe reached down to stop her. “You haven’t told me the plan yet.”

  “Are you willing to dress up as a scribe?” Iyra asked.

  Bowe remembered his nightmare where he was wearing the face of the escay. Was it coming true? Bowe might have been born an escay—he knew that from Coensaw—was he now going to live and die as one? Was the universe correcting its mistake? “For how long?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have a better plan? Would you prefer to be taken by the marshals than spend your days as an escay?”

  Bowe hesitated. When he’d been younger, he’d hated his life as the outcast Bellanger boy and envied the other boys who were all part of the Raine family. One of his condolences during dark moments was realizing that things weren’t as bad as they could have been, for at least he wasn’t one of the escay. He’d often thought he’d rather be dead than be an escay. He shuddered. But that was then. Now...now he understood there wasn’t much difference between escay and ascor, didn’t he? Just an accident of birth.

  “I knew it. I knew I couldn’t trust you. Look at you shuddering in disgust at the thought of being an escay. That’s exactly what you were like three years ago. You haven’t changed a bit.” She picked up the backpack with the uniform in it and stalked away. As she did so, a letter fell out of the pack and onto the ground.

  “Wait, you don’t understand.” Bowe picked up the letter and ran after her. He stood in front of her. “Three years ago I wouldn’t have dressed up as an escay because the idea disgusted me. My reasons are different now.”

  Iyra pushed Bowe out of the way and kept walking. Bowe ran around to stand in front of her again. “I have no objection to dressing up as an escay. To being an escay, even. You remember I told you how I dressed up as a beggar to fool those marshals and escape their cordon? The problem with this plan of yours is that I would be giving up by doing it. How could I return to being a Guardian again if the other ascor knew I had hidden as an escay? That I was in servitude to marshals or other escay? Whom am I supposed to serve anyway?” He looked at the name on the letter of recommendation. It was addressed to a marshal called Jakelin. “The other ascor would never respect me. It would mean giving up hope on regaining my family back in Arcandis. I’d be giving up on Sindar and Thrace. On Sorrin and Zofila.” Curse their cheating hides, Bowe thought to himself. “It would meaning giving up hope of finding places in the Refuge for all the escay and marshals who have become part of the family over the past three years.”

  “You say the other ascor would never accept you after you pretend to be a scribe? How is this different from pretending to be a beggar?”

  “That was just for a short while. And it was solely for a successful deception.” Then a thought struck Bowe. He looked back at the letter in his hand. The name Jakelin seemed familiar.

  “Who’s this Jakelin person anyway?”

  “He’s some blind marshal from Belldeem.”

  “Is he a member of the village council?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “No difference,” he said, while thinking it could make every difference. If Bowe was remembering correctly, this Jakelin had been an important marshal around here, even back in Bellanger times. A few documents had passed Bowe’s desk that had mentioned him. “You’re right, Iyra. I will become a scribe. I’m sorry, I was just being an idiot.”

  Iyra squinted at him. “You’re not just saying that.”

  “I’m not.” Bowe had realized that in the ascorim, anything that worked was generally accepted. He wouldn’t be able to explain being an escay scribe and go back to being Guardian unless he spun it as part of a deeper plan to regain his position. Bowe hadn’t figured out if there was a possible master plan that involved regaining the Bellanger fortune here in Belldeem, but if there was, it surely involved the old marshal who used to be in charge of Bellanger affairs.

  “So you’re admitting you were an idiot? A mush-for-brains?”

  Iyra wasn’t letting him get away with his earlier attitude too easily. “Yes, I’m a mush-for-brains. Yes, it’s a brilliant plan hiding me in plain sight as an escay in the middle of the village—no one looking for a Guardian would take a second look at a scribe.”

  Iyra took the scribe’s clothes out of the bag again. The wide circular collar looked even more hideous now that Bowe knew he had to wear it. “Well, then. Go on,” she said. “Put them on. I want to see what you look like as an escay.”

  Bowe’s attempt to smile was more like a grimace as he reached for the clothes. He recalled the nightmare about the escay who stole his face. He didn’t remember what that escay wore, but if Bowe ever dreamed of him again, Bowe was sure he’d be wearing a wide circular collar.

  * * *

  “Good day, Marshal,” Bowe said.

  “What do you want? You’re not from around here.” Jakelin’s eyes didn’t look any different, but his stare was slightly off. As if he were looking straight through Bowe at something behind him. “You better not be selling anything, or you’ll feel the knotted end of this.” Before Bowe had a chance to deny he was selling anything, Jakelin whipped the stick across Bowe’s shoulder. Bowe winced, grabbed his shoulder, and stepped back just in time to avoid a second blow. Jakelin almost unbalanced in his effort to hit Bowe.

  Jakelin’s head was totally bald, and some of the skin on the dome of his head was a mottled brown. His beard was thin and straggly and very white. From his appearance, Jakelin was as old as Kesirran—maybe even older, as hard as that was for Bowe to believe. Bowe had been sure that Kesirran was the oldest man in Arcandis, because the Infernam wasn’t very tolerant to those who were old. Or, at least, those who let people into the Refuge weren’t very tolerant. But Coensaw couldn’t walk, and he’d survived the last Infernam. A
nd Bowe had met a community of bandits who managed to bribe their way into the Refuge every sexennium. So perhaps the lesson was that Bowe should realize he didn’t know as much as he thought.

  “I’m not selling anything,” Bowe said. “I come from Arcandis City. I was told you needed someone to read and write letters for you. I have a letter of recommendation.” Bowe reached forward tentatively with the letter, ready to spring back if the old man tried to hit him again. He touched the tip of the letter against the old man’s hand.

  Jakelin took the letter from Bowe. He put the letter up to his nose. “Smells of grass and dirt. Did you dig it out of the ground?”

  “No. It fell.”

  “And you probably thought that it wouldn’t matter, right? Blind man isn’t going to notice any stains, just give him the dirty old thing anyway. What good is a letter of recommendation, I ask you? I have to get you to read it to me, don’t I? And you’ll say that you are an excellent scribe who’ll prove of great use, whatever the words on the paper say. It could say that you’ve come to murder me in my bed, and I’d have to welcome you inside. What do you say about that?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Not likely to be useful, is what you’re not.” Jakelin scowled. “I didn’t ask for a new scribe. That son of mine thinks I’m a fool and can’t do anything for myself.”

  “Maybe your son just thinks you’re blind,” Bowe said.

  “Oh, a young fellow who thinks he’s smart. Just what I need.” Jakelin took a step forward and slashed his stick at Bowe’s midriff. Bowe jumped backward and just avoided it. “Of course, that’s who my son would send.” He scowled again, the wrinkles on his face bunching up around his mouth like a squeezed lemon, and then he seemed to make a decision. “You better come in, then.” He went back inside, leaving the door open.

  Bowe hesitated, then cautiously entered, making sure that the old man wasn’t lurking behind the door waiting to try to hit him again.

  Jakelin shuffled across the room to a desk in the corner. “Close the door. Get a chair. I might as well make use of you while you’re here. You probably won’t last long. Most of them don’t.”

  Bowe grabbed a large chair from near the door and began to drag it toward the desk.

  “No, not that one. Put it back.”

  Bowe stopped in confusion. “Which one, then?”

  Jakelin came back across the room, moving fast for an old man. He ran straight into the chair that Bowe had just moved. The chair upended and crashed to the floor, accompanied by curses from the old man.

  Jakelin leaned down and felt along the ground until his fingers found the back of the chair. He lifted it and returned it to its original place. “Never move anything in my house.”

  “But you said—” Bowe jumped back as Jakelin used the sound of his voice to aim a swipe. The stick swooshed through the air in front of his chest.

  “Now.” Jakelin went to the far wall and picked up a stool from where it hung up on the wall and placed it in front of his desk. “Sit here. And no more of your smart replies.”

  Bowe was about to protest when he realized that anything he said would likely only be used to locate him for another swipe of the stick.

  Bowe waited until the old man had returned to the other side of the table and put his stick on the floor before he sat down on his stool.

  “Now. Start reading,” Jakelin demanded, indicating a big stack of papers in the middle of the large desk. “It’s been several weeks since the last scribe left, so I’m behind.”

  Bowe looked around the dim room, looking for lanterns. “It’s too dark to read.”

  “Open the shutters, then. There’s a window over there.” Jakelin gestured to his left. “Think for yourself. You can’t expect a blind man to determine how bright a place is.”

  Bowe bit his tongue on a retort and opened the shutters. Jakelin’s house was a lot more welcoming once the sun was allowed to enter. Though it did reveal that it hadn’t had a proper clean in a while and that the corners had been claimed by the dust and the spiders.

  “And don’t move anything else beside the shutters.”

  Bowe sat on the stool again, picked up the document from the top of the pile, and opened his mouth to start reading.

  “Wait, not the top document. What kind of imbecile did my son send? That’s the latest correspondence I’ve received. It won’t make sense unless I’ve heard the earlier news first.”

  Bowe thought about protesting that the more recent the news, the more valuable it was, but the stick wasn’t too far from Jakelin’s hand.

  He returned that document to the top of the pile and carefully slid the bottom one out and began to read. Jakelin stared into the far corner of the room, but his reactions made it clear he was listening to every syllable. His mouth twitched, his eyebrows went up down and even sideways, depending on what he was listening to. At one point, his hand hovered over his stick as if he wanted to give the writer of the report a good thumping, and at another point he growled in the back of his throat. Bowe read through the pile one after the other. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the treasure trove of valuable information that Bowe had been hoping for. Nothing about how an outcast Bellanger could miraculously become the true Guardian again.

  Most of it was about the minutiae of farming and the lives of the farmers. Still, Bowe concentrated on what he was reading, knowing that he was gradually learning more about the lives of the people who lived in Belldeem and the countryside around, and that one small thing could be the spark that he was looking for. But however much it seemed to animate Jakelin, to Bowe, everything he read was as uninteresting as servant chatter.

  Toward the end, his voice broke several times. He could have done with a drink of water, but Jakelin didn’t offer. Bowe couldn’t remember the last time he spoke for so long without a break. Most likely never.

  When he’d finished, Jakelin continued to stare into the corner. He was so still and did it for so long that Bowe wondered if he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open. Before Bowe had decided whether he should try to wake him, though, Jakelin came back to himself; he must have just lost himself in thought.

  “Why did my son hire you now?” Jakelin asked. “This exact day? It can’t be a coincidence.”

  Bowe didn’t reply, as Jakelin didn’t seem to expect a response. Bowe thought back over what he’d read, trying to figure out if there’d been anything mentioned to indicate that today was special.

  “What time is it?”

  Bowe shrugged then remembered that Jakelin couldn’t see him. He looked out the window. “Early afternoon. I’m not good at exact times.”

  Jakelin shook his head. “I don’t understand how people who can see the sun all day can’t keep track of time.”

  “We’re inside,” Bowe protested. “I can barely see the angle of the sun from here.”

  “And it wasn’t so long ago that you were outside. My only metric for telling the time is that I wake up at the same time every day. But even then I have a better idea of the time than you. Learning to keep track of time without seeing the sun is harder than learning to walk around your own house without clattering into everything.” Jakelin stood up. “Put those papers you’ve read in the correct box in that storeroom—check the date to figure out which one.” Jakelin pointed at a small door. “I can reply later. Right now it’s time to interrupt a meeting that we weren’t invited to.”

  Bowe carried the sheaf of papers to the door that Jakelin pointed out. The musty smell of old paper leaked out as Bowe pushed the door open. The reason for that was quickly obvious. The entire room was filled with boxes piled up on top of boxes, each box full of documents and marked with a date. On the floor before him was a half-full box with a recent date, and Bowe added the latest papers to that. He then ran his fingers along the outside of the stacked boxes, marveling at how far back some of the dates went. This would be Oamir’s definition of paradise. It was possibly a treasure trove of information—only it could take years of digging.


  “What are you doing in there? It’s a storeroom, not a nap room,” came Jakelin’s voice. “We’re already late.”

  Bowe sighed and returned to the main room. He had prepared himself for the necessity of taking orders from an inferior, he just didn’t expect quite so many of them. Or that they’d be all delivered in such a crotchety way.

  “Come stand beside me and hold out your arm.”

  Bowe did as instructed. Jakelin’s bony fingers wrapped around Bowe’s forearm and Bowe sucked in a breath. His nails were long and sharp.

  “Now lead the way.”

  Bowe walked outside.

  “Not so fast, you fool. We’re not all as young as we’d like to be.”

  Bowe slowed his pace down and led the old man through the village of Belldeem, following Jakelin’s directions. There was nothing remarkable about the village itself; Bowe had already passed through it on the way in. It was perhaps a hundred wooden houses separated by several dusty streets. But what was remarkable was the reaction to Jakelin. Everyone they passed stopped what they were doing, and offered him a greeting and a nod. Jakelin nodded his head in return, offering a half-smile, half-scowl. Even the boys playing in the middle of the street stopped their game and stood respectfully to the side until Bowe and Jakelin had passed.

  Jakelin led them to a large house on the edge of the village and he used his stick to thump on the door.

  A maid answered.

  “Take me to them,” he demanded before she had a chance to speak.

  “Marshal Jakelin,” she said. “I don’t think they were expecting you. The meeting has already begun.”

  “I said, take me to them.” Jakelin whacked his stick against the doorframe.

  The maid nodded and backed away, leading them past the main stairs and down a small corridor. She opened the door at the end and moved aside to let them in. Bowe followed Jakelin into a spacious room with a wooden floor and a large round table. Papers were strewn across the table, and sitting at it were a dozen or so men who seemed to be in the middle of an argument. It instantly stopped when they became aware of Jakelin’s presence.