By the time spring rolled around, Hardt and Edwarg fearing they would have to bodily restrain her from leaving at the first thaw, she had built and was adding the finishing touches to the most decadent, roomy, well-organized private burrow of tunnels ever built. She wouldn’t have noticed spring if not for the extra brightness of the glowbugs mating in their recessed nests high on the burrow walls. For the first time she was happy when four dTelfur announced their decision to remain behind. The woodworker, Kel, recognizing Janen’s renewed interest in life as the joy of a skilled artisan, had begun coaxing the low branches of the trees near the clearing to grow in directions which would create the kind of living chairs which had been so prized in the dTelfur bowers. He was loath to leave the work so scarcely begun and he stayed with three others who hadn’t found lander interaction much to their liking.
Less than half the original contingent of the diaspora gathered their belongings and trekked out over the burntbos plaine for the final leg of their journey. Precisely one moon after leaving the woodland burrow, Hardt found himself facing the old tree stump at Center with Mobious standing quietly, respectfully at his side.
He had tried to leave the encampment by himself, thinking he would approach Hundred and privately offer their labor instead of marching in to center with seventeen homeless people with unidentifiable accents. Even in Stray, some kind of explanation would be expected. But as he made his way out of the swamp where he’d had the dTelfur set up camp, he’d come upon a particular arrangement of willows under which Vyck had loved to rest. The memory was too much for him and overcome with emotion, he crouched in the cradle of the trees and sobbed until an arm had wrapped around him and Mobious had helped him to his feet.
Together they walked through the new cottages and homesteads to Center. Together they endured the curious gazes of familiar strangers. And together they waited as Stagree, son of the woman who had saved Hardt’s life and foster son to Getek and Vyck, approached from the extremely tall and unfamiliar tor standing where Ladamé used to drum out the stars.
Six
∞
A storm of memories raged through Hardt’s mind and heart as he stood in Center supported by a boy he would not know had he never risked abandoning this home. Each place he settled his eyes called to him the tales of his childhood. Just beyond Mobious grew the aras tree where Calien was hit by a stone during guarde training. Behind him, neatly trimmed, flourished the oaken archway which led off to Vyck’s cottage. Ladamé had attempted to teach him to dance here, in the dirt directly in front of him, swinging him up onto the stump so he could reach over her head when she spun around. Heigna and Frair had kissed for the first time by a festival bonfire set in the blackened pit of ground still waiting for a pyre of wood to his right. Even the unfamiliar tower of stone fed him the picture of Sophie’s screwed up face watching over Jaythree’s birth to Hundred Mytree at the edge of the burntbos a mere thirty-five season before.
It took some moments before Hardt again saw the living people moving about Center on their business and looked for someone to direct them to the Lord of Stray. As it turned out Sirte’s son, Stagree approached them first.
“Hardt?”
“Yes.” The old man blinked his eyes, trying to figure out who this middle-aged stranger was.
“What are you doing here? Is the dragon with you?”
“No. The dragons are gone. For now.” It occurred to Hardt that he should have mentioned he and Sophie’s secret and ill-ended rendezvous with the Stray folk to Mobious and the others before they’d arrived at the shale, but let the regret pass. “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize you.”
The stranger, whose eyes still goggled in surprise closed his mouth and apologized. “Of course not. I’m Stagree. We met…” Stagree’s words trailed off as his eyes suddenly darted about the center. “Look, I’m sorry, it’s not safe to talk about this here. Let me take you back to the cottage.”
“I was hoping to see Hundred.”
“She’s on the way.” Putting an insistent arm under Hardt's elbow, he turned the pair around and led them through the oaken arch. Much of the path that Hardt had worn into the forest floor had been paved with wood or stone now and new homes and gardens flourished nearly all the way along it. Sights which were familiar to him he pointed out to Mobious who had introduced himself to Stagree with just his name whereas Hardt had eventually introduced Stagree to Mobious by way of his relationship as a foster son to Vyck and Getek.
He was recounting Sirte’s part in the snakecat incident when they approached a clearing in the woods before the willowcreek. Hardt had to look twice to identify the compound of buildings standing in the clearing. In the front of four or five connected buildings was Trin and Kilalee’s old cottage, though it was barely recognizable. Many levels had been added and improvements made. Stagree led them to an intricately carved doorway opening into a beautiful arboreal archway which led to the old entrance to the cottage as Hardt remembered it. As they passed through, Stagree reached up and polished a blooming rose on the newly carved lintel with his sleeve. Then he wiped his feet on a wellworn old rug made from the skin of a snakecat. Hardt stared at the rug.
“I hope you don’t mind.” Stagree smiled at him, “Vyck gave it to me when my mother died. As a reminder.”
Hardt looked up into his eyes and nodded, “It’s a fitting tribute.” Then he wiped his feet and stepped through the door.
The inside of the old cottage, which Hardt had never been invited to inspect, was pitch black, a result of heavy curtains hung over each window.
“Hello? Anybody here?”
The dead silence which they had walked into was shattered as some unidentifiable figure leapt up from an overly cushioned bench in the far corner and tore the blankets, for so they were, from the windows. Three more figures burst ungracefully through a small doorway at the back of the large room and tumbled over to Stagree, all speaking at once of various matters of desperate importance.
“Hush! Can’t you see Venoah was sleeping?” Stagree strode into the room to help the figure from the couch, a woman of roughly forty frseason, fold the blankets she’d removed from the walls. The three ruffians grabbed another blanket and following suit Hardt and Mobious folded a third.
“Tienta has been wheezing since the wittenroods bloomed last week so I’ve been sleeping out here and the sun rises far too early. Thank you.” Venoah added as she took the blanket from Mobious.
Mobious began to raise his arms in a winged greeting but caught himself and folded his arms behind him. “Sorry to wake you.”
“Oh don’t worry, these monsters were about to come and dump water on my face anyway.” She smiled knowingly at the children.
Screeching protestations came from the kids who attempted to dash from the room. One child, possibly a girl, made it but the other two were caught by Stagree and Venoah. Stagree whispered in his captive’s ear and released him towards the back doorway. Venoah crouched down and tickled her prisoner into hysterics.
As she was torturing the little girl, Stagree said to Hardt, “Venoah is Hundred’s fourth child second daughter and Tienta is her only child.”
Venoah looked up from the girl. “Do you know my mother?”
Hardt nodded but added quietly, “I knew your uncle better.”
“Which one?” Venoah chuckled, finally releasing the child and standing. Her smile, extending from the natural upturn of her lips, was the only feature she hadn’t gotten from Noah. In all other ways Hardt was struck dumb by the resemblance.
Mobious answered the question. “Noah. He knew Noah best.”
“Ah. I never knew him at all. He died before I was born.” She peered closer into Hardt’s eyes. “They say I look like him.”
“Overwhelmingly.” Hardt managed.
“Hello.” An older woman with Noah’s eyes gracefully stepped out of the doorway the children had earlier dashed through. “My father told me stories about you.”
“You know me?”
&nb
sp; Her face showed no emotion. “Venoah there is as struck with your resemblance to your aunt as you are by hers to my father.”
“You’re also wearing bare arms.” Venoah added quietly.
Hardt brought his arms out in front of himself, confused as to why that should make a difference, and the tiny girl still standing at Venoah’s legs pointed.
“Dragon scar.”
The deformity of Hardt’s right arm reached from just above the elbow down to the back of his hand. The gashes at the back of his wrist turned cold and ached in bad weather, but otherwise, Hardt hadn’t considered the scar in decades. Not since he and Sophie had explained it to Mobious sometime around his twentieth shedding.
“Why do you call it that?” He asked the girl.
“My cousin has a dragon scar from when he fell down in the stone hut.”
“All wounds which heal badly, not taken care of, are called dragon scars in our family. It’s from all the stories Vyck told about you.” The older woman in the doorway clarified.
“So you know me.” Hardt stepped back to put an arm on his atchs’ shoulder. “This is my friend, Mobious.”
The boy grinned up at Hardt and then turned to smile at the others. “I’m his foster son.”
Before Hardt could react, the older woman stepped forward, holding out a hand, palm down, to Mobious in greeting. “I’m Wray Mytree, Noah’s first child and this is my grandchild, Sophie.”
Stagree was ready with a hand on Hardt’s back to steady him, but it was Mobious who nearly fell over, caught only by Venoah’s quick reaction.
A low voice, wavering with age, caused all eyes to turn to the back doorway. “That wasn’t very diplomatic, Wray. Hardt has traveled a long way to return to us. You must be more gentle with him.”
“Why? Because he’s come crawling back now that his murdering friends are all dead?”
In the stunned silence that followed Wray’s words, the single click of a stone-tipped cane on the bare slate floor resounded like thunder. Wray turned from the fierce disapproval of the glaring old man and the cane-wielding woman in the doorway and said coldly to Hardt, “I apologize.” Then she brushed by Stagree and exited brusquely out through the arbor.
For a moment, the embarrassment froze everyone in the room but Mobious whom Hardt had to restrain from following Wray, and then Stagree and Venoah were both pulling out the chairs and piling them with pillows for all the elders in the room.
Mobious found himself in a seat beside Hardt, watching as the cane-wielder was helped to her chair by the old man and Venoah. Even though she looked as though a light dTur breath could blow her a megg, her legs would not hold her weight without the cane on one side and an arm on the other. She seemed accustomed to the assistance but determined to use it as little as possible, her knuckles white on the cane head. Her skin was dry and small purple lines traced a crosswork on her face and neck like those Mobious had often seen on the older telf’s legs. As he examined her face he realized that her half-closed eyes were covered with a white film and wondered if she could see at all. As soon as she was seated and arranged with pillows in the chair, the old man took what looked like a thin box of dirt and placed it into grooves on the chair arms so that it sat in front of her, but not on her lap. She immediately felt around the box, picked up a stylus from one edge and started scratching patterns into the dirt with it. The man sat on the edge of the chair Stagree dragged over beside hers and watched as she drew.
“She says hello, Hardt and who is this?’”
Stagree, standing over the woman’s other shoulder laughed even as she turned her blind eyes to the old man and raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s not what she’s written.”
“I am to apologize.” The old man ammended. “The last time we met, I shot at you. I’m sorry.”
Mobious noticed the slight stiffening of Hardt’s spine which signaled to him that his atchs didn’t share this man’s amused regard of the apology. It was such a slight shift in posture that Mobious wondered if he’d mistaken the reaction until Hardt finally took a breath and responded. “Though I suspect Hundred’s condition may cause you guilt and I hate to add to such a weight on your shoulders, I have to tell you that you make your apology too lightly, Ker.”
Mobious watched Hardt swallow back the emotions clearly raising bile in his throat. The little girl so curiously named had been standing beside Mobious’ chair, staring at the guests. Now, scared by the tension in the air, she climbed up into the dTelfur’s lap. Surprised, he gathered her into his arms as he would dTella when Konifer had lectured with violent passion in their lessons.
“I don’t know how much you want your daughter to know,” Hardt continued, “or your grand-niece, but I was not alone that day, ‘the last time we met,’ and my friend too was weakened by your poisons.”
Ker interrupted with a defense he’d clearly had to declare many times before. “My arrows were not poisoned,” he insisted. “You were gone, Hardt, but I too was raised by Vyck to respect the animals we hunt.”
“Someone’s arrows were poisoned. And you did shoot us – you and Brower and the others, yes?”
Ker realized he had chosen the wrong moment to make his petty defense and bowed to Hardt’s icy truth. “Yes.”
“It would be imprecise to say you killed her.” Hardt continued after letting Ker’s answer settle. “But she didn’t live long. She saved your bond. She saved your child. I…” he paused for a deep breath and looked at Mobious to include him, “We lost her. Not grinning through your apology is the definition of the least you can do.”
The old man sobered. He began haltingly “I wasn’t thinking… in the excitement of your arrival… it was so very long ago…”
He was interrupted by the old woman’s sudden intense scratching. Stagree, reading over her shoulder, responded to her writing rather than interpreting it for the others.
“Sophie is fine, Hundred. She’s in Mobious’ lap.”
“No, Stagree,” Hardt interrupted his comforting gestures, “Sophie is dead.”
A strangled sound escaped Hundred’s lips. It wasn’t so much a cry but chilled Mobious to the bone and his patience for the slowly unfolding mystery collapsed.
“Hardt. How do they know Sophie?”
The girl in his lap squirmed about to identify herself but instead found herself scooped up by her great aunt Venoah. “They don’t mean you, sweetling. Let’s go find your Gramma and keep her from talking to anyone.” The last bit was directed at Ker who nodded his head in approval. She held a hand out to Hardt before she left and looked into his eyes with honest regret. “I’m sorry; for the way Wray acted, for my father’s mistakes, and for your friends.”
After she’d disappeared down the arborway with little Sophie, Hardt turned to Mobious and explained. “Thirty-five sheddings ago, when Sophie and I went on that long trip to dTserra’s final bower, we ran into Hundred giving birth alone at the edge of the burntbos. After the baby was born, Sophie sent me off to find Stray help while she protected the mother and child. I found Stagree and Getek and they helped protect Hunny and Jaythree while Ker and others, thinking Sophie was dangerous, shot arrows and spears and stones at us. We got away but Sophie was too injured to fly far and I was too weak to help her much until Nahni found us taking short hops back towards the village. The arrows which hit us had been poisoned. That’s why we both succumbed so easily to the smoke at Pace.”
Ker nearly fell out of his chair in leaping to his feet. “You set the fire at Pace!” He shouted, pointing.
It was Mobious who shouted back, “We extinguished it! Sophie died trying to save you stupid landers!”
The boy immediately regretted his rash words as tears started pouring from Hundred’s unseeing eyes. She wrote furiously, Stagree translating until he put his hands on hers to stop the words.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault, Hundred.” Hardt awkwardly rose from his chair and knelt by her knees. “
Mobious knows that.”
The old woman nodded, taking Hardt’s offered hand in both of hers after writing, “She told me all about Mobious.”
Stagree gently chided her. “She couldn’t have, Hunny. Mobious has only about twelve frseason.”
“Actually, Mobious has over sixty frseason. The dTelfur live just a bit longer than we do.”
The reaction to Hardt’s words was not immediate. But after exactly one heartbeat Hunny reached a hand out to Mobious and started crying again, Ker leapt from his chair backing away, and Stagree stammered out, “I thought they were all dead.”
Mobious remained in his seat as still as if he’d been spotted with a drawnback sling of dragontooth spearlettes by the pack and dam of his prey. He tried to slow his breathing and quiet his heartbeats as Hardt painfully got to his feet and returned to his side.
“Not all.”
Ker’s concern was as immediate and certain as his fear had been. As far as he had backed up, he came forward now. “He’s not safe. The Stray Tor leaders would kill him.”
Stagree translated Hunny’s rapid scratching, “Brower took the power from me. They wouldn’t listen when Calien tried to convince them the poison wasn’t affecting my mind.”
Ker took up her thread when her hand got weak, “But she was unconscious too long. Vyck couldn’t even convince me that the dragon was harmless. Your presence didn’t help, Hardt. Stray took insult when it became clear that you deliberately ignored the Kimoet’s summons which would have brought us honor and attention.”
Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 32