The Wanderer's Tale: Esmor

by Rex Foote

  ***

  The dawn’s fiery rays had just broken over a nearby hill when the trio set out, following Mul’s lead as she tracked the scent of the Pale Hulk. It was only after they had left that the figure emerged from the trees deeper in the wood. Vulmer smiled as the group crested a hill and disappeared from sight. He had been following them ever since they left Caladaria, his magic proving far too good to allow detection from either the mage or the Ohruin. He had heard the entirety of their conversation last night and was now curious, so curious that he did not immediately set off after them, but instead walked deeper into the woods until he came to the corpse of the Pale Hulk. He stared down at the thing, his greatly enhanced vision picking out all the disturbing details that others missed when looking at any creature from the Skittering Dark. This was the source of his curiosity; how had the pair managed to kill this thing? However, unlike the adventurers, he had a way to find out.

  He planted his staff, made from a branch of an Okryd ree, firmly on the earth and took hold of it in both hands. For the spell he intended to cast, he would need assistance with the Drawing and the Shaping, both things the Okryd trees could help with, and the staff would be the conduit between him and them. With the staff in place, he reached through it with his mind and was answered by the vast presence of the trees. With a connection established, he Drew upon his own reserves and those of the tree. Once he had the energy he needed, he attuned his mind with that of the one assisting him and together they Shaped the spell, envisaging the ethereal forms of Esme, Hark, and the Pale Hulk as they re-enacted the events that led to the Hulk’s death. A click echoed clearly in his mind as the spell was cast, and moments later ghostly forms filled the old camp and the events of that morning played out once more. He broke the connection as he watched, the nodules on the vines that crisscrossed his face showing him everything; every hidden emotion and every tick and twitch was revealed to him. He saw Esme freeze and Hark fight off the urge to do the same; he saw Hark’s desperate attack and the moment when Esme snapped out of her stupor and showed just how good of a mage she really was. But what he saw more clearly than anything else was that when either of them was in danger, the other would go above and beyond what they normally would do to keep the other safe. As the spell ended, he nodded to himself; so long as these two were together, nothing could stop them. And then he smiled at the sudden thought that the adventurers were in for a far harder time than any of them thought. Chuckling, he started to walk out of the woods and follow the painfully obvious path that Kellan and his band had taken, safe in the assumption that the trio would find Hark and Esme soon enough.

  Chapter Fourteen

  15th Day of Daaris. The Season of Light. Year 250

  The next twenty one days proved to Esme that she didn’t hate all forms of study and learning. Bula was a kind teacher, willing to repeat herself and go slowly whenever Esme struggled with a skill or concept.

  The first day they spent together, Bula led her away from the tribe and into a small hollow in a nearby hill, then turned to her and without warning said, “Take off your clothes.”

  This startled Esme, who only managed an expression of open-mouthed shock at the command. Sighing, Bula placed her hands on her hips and continued, “I need to see what shape your body is in and if we need to spend time building your endurance. Much of our lives is spent on the move, and you will need to be fit to take full advantage of what I am about to teach you.”

  Shyly, Esme undressed. For her part, Bula was nothing but considerate in her examination, touching only rarely and doing assessing with her eyes. Esme just stood there while all this was going on, arms by her sides and reassuring herself that she wasn’t as bad as she had been before leaving Caladaria. After a few minutes, Bula signalled that Esme should dress.

  When she was clothed again, Bula said, “Well, we will have to do something about that.” At Esme’s crestfallen expression, she gave a brief chuckle. “It’s not that bad, but you do need to lose weight and exercise more. Running is the main way we travel, and the less weight on your body, the easier that is. It won’t be anything major; you will accompany me on my morning and evening patrols.”

  Though this didn’t sound like much, it turned out that “evening and morning patrols” meant rising before the sun was up and jogging with the Ohruin on an hour-long patrol of the area around the camp, and doing the same just before going to sleep at night. Despite this, the patrols did have some advantages. Bula was able to teach Esme about navigation using the sun and stars, as well as pointing out ways to spot hidden terrain from how the surrounding land was shaped. Bula also taught her about the various types of wildlife that inhabited the plains of Esmor, like the reptilian wyrms that were divided into groups based on where they lived, or the horses that ran free over the land. When they weren’t on patrol, Bula would take her far out from camp, teach her a skill like setting a snare, building a shelter, or a similar skill, then get her to practice what was learned right then and there, with her on hand to help Esme if she became stuck.

  Survival and physical training weren’t the only benefits of living among the Ohruin. Esme also learned about the Ohruin as a people from conversations with Bula. She came to understand their nomadic way of life and how they followed the seasons as best they could by roaming the lands of Unith, regardless of what the lands were called or who claimed ownership over them. She was fascinated by their deep love of nature and shared the respect they felt for the land and the creatures that inhabited it. When she brought up the subject of magic, Bula explained how each tribe was led by an Ohruin with the gift of magic, called a shaman, who used that gift to communicate with the god of the Ohruins. They called this god the World Spirit, and believed it was the guiding and protecting force of all things that walked the surface of the earth.

  One evening, just before she returned from patrol, she decided to seek out Yatur. Bula had spoken to her about Ohruin, magic, and the World Spirit as she taught her, and this had left Esme full of questions that Bula had had to concede she could not answer—but she’d told her that Yatur could. She found the shaman out near the edge of the camp, looking over the plains as the sun’s light bathed the land in a blood-red hue; she passed the shaman’s guards with a friendly nod and sat beside the old Ohruin.

  “I did not think,” he began, “that you were so forward.” She blushed and tried to hide it, to which he only gave a wry chuckle. “You Humans are so eager to stand on ceremony. Come, I do not mind the company.”

  They sat together and watched the sunset for a while before Esme said, “I know about Ohruin and magic; Bula told me. What I don’t understand is the World Spirit. Is it like one of the Human and Sarven gods?”

  Yatur was silent for a long time. It almost got to the point where Esme was afraid she had offended the shaman when he turned to her and said, “As a mage, have you ever linked your spells with others?”

  Esme nodded. It had been a practice exercise at the Guild.

  “Did you feel part of something larger than yourself when you linked?”

  “Yes,” she said, recalling the moment when all four apprentice mages linked with one another as well as Dornvus, who had led them. At the moment, she had felt something, a feeling of union with her fellow mages that she had never felt before, that had come with a sense of shared power and mental ability.

  “That is a small part of what it feels like to commune with the World Spirit; it is part of everyone and everything that lives, grows, or thrives in this world. If ever you find yourself standing before nature and feel a sense of oneness, then you have felt its touch upon your soul.”

  Esme frowned, stuck on something Yatur had said. “How does the Skittering Dark fit into this? I mean, that thing we faced seemed anything but natural.”

  “Such a question is natural for one who is not an Ohruin.” At Esme’s embarrassed expression, Yatur gave her a warm smile. “Feel no shame, Esme Lane, for your question is asked with the intent to learn and to understand; no
shame can come from that. The World Spirit opposes the creatures of Skittering Dark; they are anathema to it. You will recall when you first came to us I mentioned that the fact you ran into the Pale Hulk twice was cause for concern. Usually whenever something comes out of the Skittering Dark, an Ohruin tribe will soon arrive to hunt and kill it, their shaman having been alerted by the World Spirit to the creature’s presence. The fact that this didn’t happen is worrying. It could be no tribes were nearby, or it could be something else, something worse.”

  She felt a chill travel up her spine and quickly changed the subject. “You mentioned it communicating with the shamans before; how does it do that?”

  Yatur turned his gaze back to the sun, now a low blood-red orb touching the far horizon.

  “Through mediation. We disconnect ourselves from the physical world and either allow it to contact us or go in search of it. Either way, reaching it is the most amazing experience I have ever felt; the peace and serenity brought with its touch is pure bliss.”

  “Could I try to reach out to it?” she asked tentatively.

  Yatur gave a laugh of genuine affection.

  “You truly are the most unusual Human I have ever met. Your willingness to explore your world in every way is admirable, but only a shaman can have such a connection.”

  Esme was silent for a few moments, before asking the question that she had wanted to ask the moment she first saw Yatur. “Why doesn’t your skin change colour, and why doesn’t their”—at this, she twisted around to gesture at the guards standing a few paces behind them—“skin go orange to reflect the sunset?”

  “Both are good questions, and ones I do not have the answers to,” Yatur said.

  “The World Spirit’s gift works to help mask us in the land it would have us watch over. Maybe it has something to do with how brief dawn and dusk are.” The old shaman shrugged, as if to say who knew. “As for my skin, it never changed colour, and that is how we can tell who will become a shaman at a young age. Those to whom the World Spirit has gifted magic have skin that stays green, thought as you can see it does darken over time. It allows us to be taught the ways of magic from a very early age.”

  Esme could see the sense in this, and she found herself impressed by this World Spirit. Of course, she believed in the gods, but there was something about the way the World Spirit treated with the Ohruin; it had a certain elegance to it that she had yet to see in the actions of her own gods.

  The pair sat there for some time after this, Esme dwelling on what she had learned and Yatur gazing out towards the blood-red horizon.

  ***

  For Hark, the next month wasn’t quite so peaceful. Orgha clearly had decided that the Elreni knew nothing about surviving in the wilderness and proceeded to teach Hark as if he were a child. At first, Hark was able to stand this treatment with only mild internal grumblings, but after one day when Orgha had taught Hark to use a bow as if he had never touched one, he finally lost his temper.

  “Roots take you. I know how to look after a bow,” Hark snapped in frustration after the Ohruin had finished instructing him on how to care for the weapon. They were out in a small, wooded grove about an hour from the tribe, hunting an animal for the tribe’s stores. Orgha’s only response was to lean against a tree and give Hark an amused grin.

  “Oh really? Just like how you knew how to navigate through a swamp?”

  Hark simultaneously scowled and blushed at this. Orgha used only the most pointed examples to demonstrate the dangers of acting on false assumptions, and this one cut deep, though Hark knew why he did it. He hoped that if he kept on hammering home his point using those examples that Hark would learn, though Hark thought he had already learned the lesson of that particular mistake. Taking amusement in his discomfort, Orgha pushed on.

  “You decided to stay with us and to learn our ways because you were shown to be utterly ignorant about living out here, right?”

  Hark nodded reluctantly at this and Orgha carried on.

  “Then how about you assume you know nothing and treat everything I am saying as something new? That way if you are lacking in some area, you will learn something new. That won’t work if you keep on resisting me.”

  Through gritted teeth, he acknowledged that the Ohruin had a point. They did manage to catch a deer that day and, either as punishment or from a desire to improve Hark’s stamina, he made the young Elreni run back to camp with the animal over his shoulders.

  No matter what the pair did during the day, they always ended up together during the evening meal. In the beginning, it was Esme doing most of the talking, as Hark was still somewhat quiet after his conversation with Yatur. But then, either from Esme’s infectious enthusiasm or because Hark actually started to enjoy the time he spent with Orgha, he would join in as well and the pair would spend the evening talking about things they had seen or had learned during the day, until Esme would leave for her evening patrol. Often when she returned, she would find Hark waiting up for her, and he would rest beside his friend as she slumped into a restful sleep.

  Esme didn’t just receive an education in how to survive in the wilderness. Yatur, perhaps knowing from first glance that she was a mage, instructed Bula to ensure that she practiced casting spells at least once a day lest her skills dull. To make things easier, Bula would instruct her to use her magic to aid in her survival training, getting her to do things like forming the various parts of a shelter into one using magic to move the pieces, or using magic to fish, hunt, and track things. This constant practice, combined with Bula’s twice-daily patrols and the diet of meat and herbs, helped to shape Esme’s body from the soft, rounded form of someone who had known too many good meals into a leaner, tougher, and fitter frame, one more suited to the life she was resolved to lead. Despite all this, her face remained soft and round, a curious holdover that Bula, Yatur, Orgha, and the other Ohruin she spoke to about merely dismissed as just a part of life. When she asked Hark about it, he just gave her a warm smile and told her that it reminded him of the time they had spent together in Caladaria before all this, and because of that he would never have it change.

  ***

  On the last day of their time with the Ohruin, Esme woke to find to her surprise that it was sun’s peak. After twenty-nine days of being woken before dawn to join Bula on patrol, this unnerved her and somewhat disappointed her. The tribe had been on the move ever since they had first joined, and a few days before they had camped on a hill with a sheer cliff face that overlooked a sprawling wood and river. Esme had wanted to see that wood in the dawn’s light, but ever since they’d got here, the mornings had been misty, foggy things. Grumbling, she rose to find Hark just sitting and relaxing. After a brief greeting, he told her that Bula and Orgha had decided to give them the day off, seeing as it was the last they would spend here before leaving for Mymt. While she was grateful for the rest, Esme was still annoyed about not seeing the forest at dawn, and said as much to Bula when she returned from patrol. The Ohruin’s response was to wink at her and tell her that she had something to show her at night before she went to sleep. Intrigued, Esme spent the whole day looking forward to that evening, wondering what it was Bula had to show her. Finally, evening came, and after dinner was done she came and got Esme. Confused by all this, she followed her friend as she led her through the camp to its edge. She then carried on past the camp’s perimeter to the edge of the hill. When she reached the hill’s edge, she stopped and turned to Esme.

  “You are upset because you missed a beautiful moment, yes? Earlier today?”

  “Yes,” Esme replied, a confused look on her face.

  “Tell me,” Bula replied, “what do you see?”

  She stepped back from the hills edge and gave Esme a clear view of the land below them and the sky above. What she saw took her breath away. The moon was full in the sky, a glowing silver orb that illuminated the landscape in silver light and gave the night sky a silky shine. The parts of the vast forest below that were illuminated by the moon se
emed to ripple and sway in the slight breeze like the surface of a river. Far away, she could see the towering forms of vast clouds ringing the horizon; their faces, too, were bathed in moonlight, highlighting the jutting peaks and casting the clefts, valleys, and depressions into darkness, all of which gave them a more majestic look. Esme was struck dumb by what she saw, amazed at the beauty that had lain just outside the firelight. A moment later, Bula gave voice to her thoughts.

  “Beauty is all around you, Esme Lane. You may miss one moment of it only to find yourself steps away from other just as beautiful sights. Never forget that.”

  The pair returned to camp where Esme took her regular place by Hark’s side. Noting her silence Hark turned a worried face towards her and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Putting an arm around his shoulder, she just replied, “Nothing at all.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  6th Day of Jiva. The Season of Light. Year 250

  The sun had only just crested the eastern horizon when the small group composed of Yatur, Orgha, Bula, Esme, and Hark made its way to the edge of the camp. A few yards from the camp’s edge, Yatur halted them and, flanked by Bula and Orgha, turned to face the pair.

  “Well, this is the end of our time together, my friends,” he said, giving each of them a warm smile as he did so. “You are changed from when you first came to us. In your eyes, there is confidence where uncertainty once lingered. I see now you understand the land which you wish to cross, and with that understanding comes respect. And once you respect the land, it will pose no threat to you.”

  Esme glanced out of the corner of her eye at Hark, who stood beaming in the dawn light. She knew her own expression was similar; before, they had been stumbling blind and hoping to get through each day on luck alone, but now they could travel this land and rely on their own skills and knowledge to survive.