by JD Byrne
The old man chuckled as he slowly sat on the ground a few feet away from her. Rurek took up his usual position on the opposite side of the fire. “Yes, young lady, I am,” Marek said as he hit the ground with a grunt. “I appreciate your concern, but I am quite used to it.”
“It’s unusual for people to wander about out here by themselves, you know,” Rurek said.
“Unusual,” the old man nodded, “but not unheard of. Besides, I am hardly wandering, young friend. I know precisely where I am going and where I am going after that.”
“Do you?” Rurek asked. His skepticism was evident.
“Of course,” Marek said, then turned to Rurek. “Why? Are you out wandering about aimlessly, young friend? I would not advise it.”
“No,” Rurek said, too forcefully for the point he should have been making. He shifted attention away from himself. “So where is it that you’re going?”
“I am on a route I have traveled since before either of you were born,” the old man said. “I start in Felandala early in the year, then go south from city to city until I reach the Water Road. Then I turn back north and make my way to Nevskondala. Next year, I will do it all again.”
“That’s a long way to go on foot,” Strefer said, impressed if the old man’s tale was true. “You do it carrying that thing?” she asked, pointing to the sack that now rested on the ground beside him.
“Yes, although usually by this time it is not so full,” Marek said. “I am afraid that this has not been a particularly good year for business.”
“And what business would that be?” Rurek asked.
The old man turned, fussed about in his sack, and pulled out a small figurine, of about three to four inches in height. He handed it to Rurek.
“What’s this?” he asked, examining the figure.
“Why, that’s you, isn’t it?” the old man said with a laugh.
“Let me see that,” Strefer said, reaching around the fire to snatch it from Rurek. She laughed when she saw it. There, in miniature, was a Sentinel. Down to the uniform and the pikti, it looked very much like Rurek, although the face looked completely different. “Not a bad likeness,” she said regardless. She handed it back to Marek.
“You’re a junk peddler,” Rurek said, none too impressed.
“I, my young friend, am a peddler of petty novelties,” the old man said with a great flourish.
“Petty novelties?” Strefer asked.
“Knickknacks. Curiosities. In addition to the Sentinel figurines, I also have ones depicting Neldathi warriors, some with two or more fighting each other,” Marek continued.
“And people actually buy this stuff?” Strefer prodded.
“Not so much these days,” he said. “It is my brother who makes them. I simply carry them about the Arbor. Things were much more lucrative before the Great Awakening. The real money was in religious petty novelties. Small idols of the gods, that sort of thing. Believers will buy most anything that makes them look holy.”
“So sorry to hear you’ve been on hard times for so long,” Strefer said.
Marek shrugged. “I get by.” He put the Sentinel figurine back in his pack, rooted around some more, and pulled out a long metal tin, well weathered and beaten. He prodded the top off and extended it to Strefer. “Jerky?”
Without looking to Rurek for approval, she took a strip. “Thank you,” she said, ripping into the dry meat. “Beef?”
“Goat,” the old man said, extending the tin towards Rurek. He took two. “Not much room for cattle in the Arbor, young lady. Goats are a little easier to manage.” He took a strip for himself and they sat, for a moment, in silence, munching. “So, my friends,” he said after a while, “I have told you how I came to be here on this night. What brings you to this place in the middle of the Arbor?”
Rurek said nothing, but shot Strefer a look reinforcing his earlier gestures. It told her not to give away too much to the old man.
“We are on our way,” Strefer said, pausing for a moment, “somewhere.”
Marek chuckled. “Aren’t we all, young friend?” He waved away the question. “You have no need to tell me where you are going. It is of no matter to me, after all. I am curious as to why you are here, however.”
Strefer decided the old man was harmless. “I have something,” she stopped and corrected herself, “we have something. A story that needs to be told. We are looking for people who might help us tell it.”
The old man nodded thoughtfully. “Fiction? If so, this is an awfully hard road to go.”
“Not fiction, no,” Strefer said, glancing at Rurek. He was sulking and gnawing on jerky. “But it’s a story that only a very few people know. Only three people, in fact, so far as I know.”
“Ah, so it is a secret,” he said.
“I suppose it is,” Strefer conceded.
“And it is your intention to spread this secret about?” Marek asked. “To make it no longer a secret?”
“Strefer,” Rurek said, glowering at her.
She ignored him. “That’s right.”
Marek shook his head. “I would think very long and hard about doing such a thing, young lady.”
“What makes you think we haven’t?” Strefer asked, a bit offended. “Besides, this is something that needs to be heard. People need to know about it.”
“I cannot argue with you on the merits,” Marek said. “I do not know the extent of this secret, nor do I wish to know. I am simply pointing out that sometimes revealing the truth can be worse than keeping the secret.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Strefer said, “but we have thought about this. Would we be here in the middle of these godsforsaken woods if we hadn’t?”
“A fair point,” Marek said. He seemed ready to drop the point, but then asked, “Could I tell you a brief story?”
“I certainly won’t stop you,” Strefer said, looking to Rurek for his opinion. He rolled his eyes but said nothing. “Go on.”
“Many years ago, near Maladondala, there was a town called Thorne, named after the family who founded it,” Marek said. “Or so that was the tale. It went that a Thorne from several generations back had been expelled from Maladondala. He was a pious and honest man, who had been falsely accused by his rivals of causing some sort of disaster or another. All he need do to preserve his station in the city, maintain his role in its daily life, was to admit to the heinous allegation. He did not, choosing instead to leave the city with his honor and dignity intact.”
“Now this sounds like fiction,” Rurek offered.
Marek smiled at him. “And indeed it was, young friend. But, nevertheless, that was the story. And the story provided the basis for the Thorne family’s dominion over their town.”
“You’re not going to argue that political legitimacy based on lies is a good thing, are you?” Strefer asked.
Marek shook his head slowly. “I am not arguing anything, young lady. Merely telling a story. May I continue?”
“Of course,” Strefer said.
“For generations Thorne was ruled by the eldest of the clan of that name. And in that time, the town flourished. It was never going to become another walled city like Maladondala, or even a famous outpost like Oberton,” he said.
Strefer panicked just a bit at the mention of their destination and glanced at Rurek. His lack of concern helped calm her.
“But it was a prosperous and good city,” Marek continued. “The people were happy. The members of the Thorne clan who ruled them were just and wise. All was well. Until one of the Thornes, who could not rule because of her place in the order of birth, decided to write an extensive history of the town, from its founding to the present day. She talked to all the people that she could, reviewed all the parchments in the town archives. And, one day, she went to Maladondala, to look at the records of the city in the time of the first Thorne, the one who left them rather than submit.”
“And?” Strefer asked. She knew what was coming.
“And this woman, your a
ncestor in spirit if not in line, made a startling discovery,” the old man continued. “For one thing, Thorne was not the name of the man who left the city, but the name of his slave. For another, the man did not leave voluntarily, in order to maintain his dignity. He was cast out, exiled, after plotting to murder one of the city’s highest figures.”
“That’s embarrassing for the city,” Strefer said.
“More than embarrassing,” Marek said. “Thorne was a city that took great pride in its history and heritage. The ruling family was seen as legitimate because of its role in the founding.” He paused for a moment to return to the story itself after responding to Strefer’s commentary. “Once this woman had this information, she returned to Thorne and began to write her book. She let her uncle, who was regarded as one of the wisest men in the city, see the first draft. After he read it, he went to her and begged her to take the portion about Thorne’s true identity and what really happened in Maladondala and remove them. She said she would not. After all, it was the truth, it was the real history of Thorne, and wasn’t that what this book she was writing supposed to be about?”
Strefer nodded in agreement.
“Her uncle asked her to think about what good would come of the story becoming widely known,” Marek continued. “None of the people involved in the incident had been alive for scores of years, nor were any of the town’s original settlers still living. The entire conception of the town, what bound it together, was this myth of its founding. If that myth was taken away, he told her, it might bring chaos and dissention to the city. She told him that she wrote in service to the truth and would not avoid unpleasant topics simply because they might inflame passions. Besides, she told him, since no one involved was still alive, why would the townspeople care so much as to ruin their fair city?”
“Did the uncle stop her from writing the book?” Rurek asked, taking a bit more interest in the conversation.
“No,” Marek said. “He was wise, but he was also kind and gentle, perhaps too much so. He thought that, given enough time to think about it, she would come around and see things his way. She agreed to wait a month before making a decision. But when she did, she decided to publish the book in its entirety.”
“And?” Strefer asked.
“And nothing, at first,” Marek said. “The book was published and the people read it. Those who could not read had the story told to them. Before long, the entire shared history of Thorne had been wiped away. There were no outbursts, no riots, nor anything else so dramatic. But there was a slow undoing of the fabric of the city. Some skilled artisans and thinkers, who would otherwise have moved to Maladondala for its greater resources and markets, had remained in Thorne because of what they thought the town stood for. Now that it no longer held that meaning, some left. Not all, mind you, but enough. And now that the Thorne family were no longer seen as an unbroken chain back to a glorious founding, some grew suspicious of them.”
“So what happened to Thorne?” Rurek asked. “I grew up in the Arbor and, I admit, I have never heard of it before this night.”
“Precisely,” Marek said. “What had been a growing, thriving town, slowly shriveled. It could no longer hold its best and brightest young citizens. The government broke down into the kind of petty political maneuvering that marks so many other places. It ceased to be special, unique, and, perhaps, blessed. Then it simply ceased to be.” With that, the old man stood up slowly and walked over to the stream to take a drink.
“And what does that mean, after all that?” Strefer asked.
“It means nothing in particular, young lady,” he said between slurps from the stream. “It is just a story about a time when someone thought that the truth of history was more important than the truth of the present. Take it for what it is and no more.” He returned to his seat beside the fire.
They sat for a long time, not saying anything, looking at the fire, listening to its cracks and pops before sleep fell upon them.
~~~~~
When they woke Marek was gone. Neither Strefer nor Rurek heard him depart. Strefer was certain he was there just before dawn when she rolled over, but had to admit that in the near darkness she could have been mistaken. It was not that she wanted the old peddler to continue with them to Oberton. He had business elsewhere, or so he said. She just thought it odd for him to be off so early and without so much as a thank you to them for the hospitality. Rurek just shrugged it off as the habit of the elderly to rise in the early hours.
The morning had dawned clear and beautiful, the bright sun bouncing off a few white clouds that dotted the sky above the canopy of trees. None of that mattered to Strefer, who felt like she was carrying a hunk of lead in her belly. What they had eaten for dinner last night did not agree with her. She blamed Rurek, though, for no good reason aside from the fact that he seemed not to be affected by it. For Strefer, it slowed her down and made her feel every footfall along the trail they were navigating.
After what seemed like dozens of miles, but had likely been much less, Strefer had to stop. “Can we rest here for a few minutes?” she asked, breathing heavily, when they reached a small clearing.
Rurek looked around. “Right now? Right here? This is a little exposed for my taste.”
“I know, I know,” Strefer said, doubling over, hands on knees. “But I feel awful. I can’t walk any more right now. Just give me a few minutes.”
“All right,” he said, hovering over her.
Strefer walked off to the side of the trail, to a small patch of green grass, and sat down. Rurek followed. “You don’t have to do that, you know,” she said. “You’re blocking the light.”
“Sorry,” Rurek said.
He turned and started to walk away when Strefer heard a barely audible “thwip” and heard him cry out in pain. She looked up to see Rurek slumped on the ground, an arrow buried deep into his left thigh. Before she could move, four men were deployed around the clearing, blocking all visible lines of escape. Two held swords. Old, dull, tarnished swords, well past usefulness for the military, but still deadly in their own way. One held a spear. The other, at least so far as Strefer could tell, carried a simple club.
“You will notice that your light is no longer blocked, good lady,” came a voice from behind her.
Strefer turned and found herself face to face with a tall, lean man, dressed in various shades of green, such that it blended with his complexion as well as it did with the surroundings. It looked as if he had materialized out of the trees themselves. In his hand was a fine longbow, possibly of Neldathi origin. A quiver was strapped to his left leg. She suppressed her first instinct, which was to lash out at him in some fashion. Instead, she stood her ground. “Who are you and why did you just shoot my friend?”
The man in green walked slowly around her, surveying her. “In these woods, I am known by many names, my dear,” he said in a singsong voice. “But today, you may call me,” he paused for a moment in a parody of deep thought. “Spider. Yes. Spider, I think, is my name today. Isn’t it, lads?” he asked the others.
“Spider!” they all answered in ragged fashion.
Spider slung the bow across his back and knelt over Rurek, who could do no more than grumble in pain. “As for your friend here, I put an arrow in him because he was a threat, nothing more. He would have stood in the way of my goal, based on what I’ve seen over the past few days.” Rurek’s pikti had fallen on the ground beside him. Spider kicked it out of easy reach.
“A few days?” Strefer asked.
“Of course, my lady. One should never spring into action without knowing one’s adversaries. Do not worry yourself, however. I bear you no ill will, nor do I towards your companion here. His wound will be treated. It will heal. Whether he can rejoin his brotherhood afterwards is not my concern.” Spider stood back up and faced Strefer.
“What do you want with us?” she asked.
“Us?” Spider said, feigning confusion. “I want nothing of him, dear lady,” he said, poking Rurek in the s
houlder with the toe of one green boot. “You are my only real concern.”
“Why in the world…do I know you? Have I done something…” Strefer said, stammering and trying her best to seem shocked.
Spider cut her off with a great booming voice. “Oh, my boys, she does not seem that bright!”
The others roared in laughter at her expense.
“I’m confused,” Strefer said, feeling a need to defend herself, “not stupid.”
Spider walked over to one of his two minions with swords. “Give me that paper,” he said. The minion reached around his back and pulled out a yellowed piece of paper that had been, at various points, mercilessly folded and rolled up. Strefer recognized it as the kind printers used for cheap handbills. Spider unfurled it, cleared his throat in a mock official gesture, and began to read. “Wanted! Reward! Capture, not kill!” he shouted, striding around the clearing as if he owned it. “Strefer Quants of the Guild of Writers! Female! Aged twenty-seven years! Of slight build,” he paused and glanced at her, “and pleasant features!” Another pause. “Well, at least the gender is right,” he said, drawing more laughs from his underlings. “Believed to be traveling in the company of a rogue Sentinel! Return to Tolenor! Large cash reward!”
“Shit,” Strefer said under her breath.
“Do you now understand, young lady?” Spider asked, closing in on her. “Or, should I say, Strefer Quants? You are the one we have been looking for, aren’t you? I certainly hope so. It makes my wounding of your Sentinel friend a bit of a mistake on my part if not, doesn’t it? So tell me, are you Strefer?”
Her first instinct was to deny it, but just as quickly she wondered if it would make any difference. Were Spider and his goons just going to take her word for it? How many women from the Guildlands were traveling the Arbor in the company of a Sentinel, anyway? She asked herself if she would trust a source if he tried to sell her the same denial. Of course she wouldn’t. She also worried that any stonewalling on her part would keep Rurek from getting his leg taken care of. The only thing she had going in her favor was that Spider had not yet mentioned the red notebook, which told her he did not know it even existed.