by J. K. Barber
“Let me get my things and we can head into the city,” Jared told Katya.
“You want me to go with you?” the young woman asked, surprise evident in her voice.
“Unless you had other plans,” Jared replied.
“No, it’s just that.”
“You’d prefer to just stand around on the ship all day?’ the woodsman asked, gently teasing the sorceress.
“No,” she stated definitively.
“Great. One of the sailors told me about a good herbalist’s shop that’s a little off the main streets and I could use your help finding it.” Jared saw mild shock and confusion on Katya’s face. Jared smiled. “It’s no great secret that I don’t do well in large cities,” Jared waved his arm to indicate the multitude of buildings that awaited them. “And I know Valshet isn’t as big as Aeirsga by any stretch, but it’s still much larger than what I’m used to. I thought you might also like to visit the shop.” Jared paused a moment before continuing. “Besides, I would appreciate the company.”
Katya spent several moments considering the offer. The woodsman still felt a little bad about their brusque encounter in the King’s garden and hoped a trip into Valshet together would help smooth things over. Jared could see the young sorceress weighing her options and consequences in her mind. The woodsman did the same. There was something happening between him and Katya’s sister Sasha, even he realized that, and he didn’t want to ruin whatever it was before it had a chance to run its course. However, he couldn’t help but notice Katya. There was a love of nature in the young sorceress that Jared found attractive. It was one of many things the woodsman found attractive about the dark-haired woman.
“I have an idea,” Jared said, interrupting Katya’s thoughts and stopping his own before they took him down a path he was not sure he should travel. “I’ll head down below, wash up a little, gather my gear and come back. Once we’re fully docked, if you want to go with me, you come. If you want to stay, that’s fine as well.” Jared turned away from Katya and took a step towards the door leading down below the Peregrine’s decks. Now it was his turn to be stopped by Katya’s hand on his arm.
“I’ll go,” she said quietly at first, but then repeating it in a more confident manner. “I’ll go.” Turning to one of the crows on her shoulder she cupped her hand and whispered to it for several moments. The bird nodded her head a couple times and then flew up into the rigging of the ship to perch. “Chyla will let Sasha know where we’ve gone.” The dark haired sorceress smiled warmly. “Get your things.”
As Katya walked along the streets of Valshet, she found herself comparing the seaport town to her home in Snowhaven. In many ways, physically at least, the towns were very similar. All the streets were laid out in an orderly fashion, straight as an arrow leading away from the port with intersecting streets running east to west to the Sea of Twylight. However, the streets of Valshet were paved with cobblestones and had a distinct slant, running from the north end of town southward towards the docks.
“Lucky for them too,” Jared had explained. “This area of the country gets a lot of rain in the spring and fall. If not for the paved streets and natural slope of the land, the roads would turn into stagnant pools of mud and muck.” Katya could relate. There had been that one unusually warm summer in Snowhaven when all the snow in the mountains had melted. The root cellar in her home had flooded and it had taken most of the season before it had dried out completely.
Katya’s footsteps faltered at her thoughts of home. She pictured a hulking beast of a creature, with hairy blue-tinged skin, rummaging through her things. She envisioned huge clawed fists smashing the beautiful mirror her mother had given her for her birthday, its ivory handle tossed aside casually as the ice orc continued to ransack her room in search of something that it considered valuable. Someday soon, she swore. We’ll take our home back from those things. She looked down to see that her right hand had unconsciously strayed across her body and seemed to be searching for something on her opposite hip but there was nothing there.
Before she could think on her action for more than a moment, Jared distracted her by pointing out a stall on the side of the road that was selling some strange food she had never seen before. Small cubes of meat on a thin stick, with pieces of vegetable similarly skewered and interspaced between the beef.
“They’re called kabobs,” the hunter explained as he handed her one, having purchased a pair. Niko sniffed the aroma coming from the morsel and then turned up his black beak in a gesture of distaste. Juice ran down the stick and onto her hand as Katya took a tentative bite. The smell was wonderful but she was unprepared for the spices used in the meat’s preparation. She immediately opened her mouth and began sucking in and blowing out large gulps of air in a vain effort to cool her tongue.
Jared, on the other hand, had no such problem with the spices apparently. He had already used his teeth to tear off a full chunk of the meat and some of the green vegetable next in line. The hunter was relishing the food, a satisfied smile plain on his face.
Katya looked plaintively at Jared. “Haw… haw… haw…”
Seeing her distress, the hunter held the rest of the kabob in his mouth as he quickly unslung his pack and pulled out a waterskin. Handing the skin to Katya, he pulled the meat and vegetable laden stick from his mouth and did his best to apologize around a mouth full of food. Niko chortled quietly from her shoulder, the sound strange in his avian form. Jared shot the amused Nhyme a scathing look for laughing at the young sorceress’ distress.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking a large swallow before continuing. “They may be a bit spicier than you’re used to. They’re a treat from my… from the Eastern Kingdoms.” Jared faltered a bit over the origin of the food, but recovered before speaking further. “I haven’t had one in quite a few years. I apologize for not warning you.”
Katya took a quick sip from Jared’s skin that contained water flavored with a hint of honey, swished a mouthful around to wash away the remainder of the burning sensation and then swallowed it. Wiping away the tears at the edge of her eyes with the sleeve of her robe she spoke between panting breaths. “Just a little spicier than I was expecting. But very… flavorful,” she added.
Apologizing again, Jared spoke to the stall owner and procured another kabob for the young sorceress, promising that this one would be much milder than the first one. The hunter, still unperturbed by the spicy Eastern treat, devoured his kabob and then slowly finished Katya’s original one as well. The pair continued their journey through Valshet.
Most of the buildings they passed were of similar construction. The first floor of each house was made of stone with no windows. Higher stories, if there were any, were constructed from thick wooden beams and plastered walls with tall slender windows containing ironbound glass. Every so often though, Katya would pass a building of differing construction. While the foundation of the building was made from the same rock as the others around it, some of the structures only had stone walls half way up the first floor. Also, these unusual edifices had many wide windows on all the floors, and while the first floor windows had stout wooden shutters, thrown open in the heat of the day, the windows on the higher floors were covered only in long flowing curtains of a lightweight material. As Jared and Katya moved farther away from the docks, these unusual buildings became slightly more common, though easily dominated by the normal buildings in number. As Katya raised her eyes, she could see wealthier looking houses on the hills to the north of the city.
When Katya asked Jared about the unusual buildings with the wider windows, the woodsman explained that their design was probably influenced by the population of Easterners in Valshet. Though still the minority in the seaport town, there were a large number of people from the Eastern Kingdoms living there. For most of them, Valshet was the first city they saw in Illyander, being the usual trading point between Illyander and the lands to the east. Of those that did immigrate the majority chose to stay in Valshet.
“But
why is that?” Katya inquired.
“Let me ask you a question.” Jared replied. “How many Easterners have you seen in Snowhaven in your entire life?”
Katya thought about it for a moment before realizing the answer. “None.”
“How many did you see in Aeirsga while we were there?”
“Only a few.”
“And where did you see them?”
The young sorceress searched her memories briefly for an answer. “In the merchant’s district,” she said, “or on the docks.”
“Easterners, in Illyander,” Jared explained, with what Katya thought was a slight flavor of anger to his voice. “Do not get the same treatment in other parts of Illyander as they do here. In Valshet, Easterners have been here long enough that they are no longer thought of as ‘strange’ or ‘foreign.’ It’s not the same in other parts of the country.”
“But the Queen,” Katya protested. “She’s an Easterner.”
“And she’s the Queen,” Jared replied, with what Katya considered an unfair amount of condescension in his voice. “No one would dare to treat her any differently.”
“But King Morgan…” Katya began in retort.
“Married a noble from a different country,” Jared interrupted. “Even I know that’s not unusual.” The woodsman continued before Katya could protest again. “Yes, in Aeirsga, Easterners are treated better, but I would wager you wouldn’t be able to find one who lived anywhere near the Palace, much less on the inner island with the nobles and wealthy.” Jared altered his voice in a surprisingly good impersonation of Magus Lucian. “It’s simply not done,” the hunter said, his voice full of mock distain.
“So you think King Morgan married Queen Xavia for political gain?” Having grown up in a home where the love between her mother and father was an almost tangible entity in their small house, the concept of marrying someone you didn’t love was an alien concept to Katya.
“Maybe,” Jared replied. “At first, it was probably an arranged marriage. From what I understand such things are very common in the Eastern Kingdoms.” The woodsman took a breath before continuing in a gentler tone. “Though I’m sure now that they have genuine affection for one another. Regardless, while the King may treat the Queen as an equal, his subjects do not. Easterners are often looked upon with distrust just because they look and act differently than Illyanders.” Katya heard the heat return to Jared’s voice as he spoke of the treatment of people from the Eastern Kingdoms.
Katya thought back on how visitors in Snowhaven were often treated with suspicion and mistrust and felt a moderate amount of embarrassment. “But that’s just human nature,” she offered, realizing how weak the excuse sounded even as she said it.
“Exactly,” Jared said, his voice becoming more tinged with resentment. “People treat anyone who is different like they’re unnatural just because they’re not like them.”
Katya looked at Jared strangely. Why is he so upset over this? She asked herself. Why is he taking how these people are treated so… personally? Katya looked at the furrow in the hunter’s brow. His skin was darker than hers, but then again most people’s was. She had always assumed that Jared’s skin had been darkened simply due to all the time he had spent in the sun, but now she wondered. Looking at him more closely, she began to question other assumptions she had made about the woodsman. His eyes were narrower with heavy lids, giving them the appearance of a very slight slant. They were nowhere near as narrow or almond shaped as the Easterners she had seen though. I wonder. She thought to herself. Where does…?
But the young sorceress was unable to complete her thought. They had arrived at the herbalist shop and as Jared opened the door for Katya her attention was overwhelmed by the myriad smells that wafted out of the open door. Inside, there was every type of herb, plant, powder and infusion she could think of, and quite a few that she had never heard of before. They were hanging from the ceiling, laid across drying racks or in labeled jars, neatly lined up on rows and rows of shelves. The sorceress found herself slowly walking into the herbalist’s shop, as though drawn forward by some unseen force.
Katya looked to Jared and saw him smiling at her expression. “I thought you might like this place.” The hunter called out a greeting to the Elderly Eastern woman behind the counter in a language the sorceress did not understand, and then he bowed deeply from the hip. The older woman returned the gesture, intoned her own greeting in the same unknown language and smiled broadly.
“Welcome to my humble shop,” the woman said, her voice heavily laden with what Katya now knew to be an Eastern accent. “My name is Mau. How may I be of service to you today?” Jared ushered Katya further into the store and closed the door behind them, the sound of a small bell filling the room as the door closed against its frame.
Katya lifted a glass jar off one of the shelves trying to puzzle out what the contents were. It was filled with a green tinted liquid of some type, within which were suspended tiny white orbs of some kind. There was a small white label on the front of the jar, but instead of words, the label only held what appeared to be small hand painted symbols in the language of the Eastern Kingdoms. Katya turned and held the jar up to Jared asking him if he knew what it said.
“Sorry, I don’t know what it says,” the hunter replied. Katya thought she heard a tiny note of regret in Jared’s tone.
“It says they’re horned toad eggs in swamp water,” Katya said.
Jared’s eyebrows shot up, the surprise evident in his widened eyes. “You know the Eastern language?” the hunter asked. “Well aren’t you just full of surprises?”
Katya blushed a little as a wry grin spread across her mouth. “Not really,” the young sorceress said as she turned the container around, showing the label on the back of the jar to Jared. A label she had only seen because she had been showing the Eastern symbols on the front to the hunter. The contents were clearly identified in neatly hand-lettered Illyander on the other label.
Jared shook his head, snorted derisively and went back to examining other jars on the free standing shelves opposite the one that Katya had been looking through. He picked up a few jars and turned them around, finding labels in Eastern on one side and Illyander on the other. Chuckling softly to himself, the hunter walked down to the end of the aisle, around the end of the shelf, and began walking up the next aisle. As he passed out of sight of Katya, he heard the bell over the shop’s door tinkle softly.
Jared knew little of the dangers they would be facing in the Frozen March north of the World’s Edge Mountains, other than cold that was severe even at the height of summer. As the hunter perused the labels of the various jars of poultices, infusions and other concoctions, he tried to imagine scenarios where the substances would be needed. He picked up small bags of various herbs as he walked between the tall shelves, keeping some, discarding others after considering their usefulness. He knew they would have to carry everything they needed on their backs, horses and wagons being useless in the snowy terrain, so weight would need to be kept to a minimum. Travelling light was nothing new to the hunter, but he had little experience in such extreme conditions and he wanted to be prepared. He chose several different kinds of herbs useful for treating cuts and abrasions and fighting off the infections that may set in afterwards. The hunter knew that often the illness and fever that emerged after a wound was more dangerous than the injury itself. He also grabbed a jar of powder that could be added to a drink that would help keep a person warm in cold weather.
Jared had almost reached the end of the aisle when Katya came around the corner. “Katya, do you think we’ll need…,” Jared began, only to be shoved aside by the sorceress’ right hand as she extended her left, leveling her staff over the hunter’s shoulder. Jared began to protest, but was cut off by Katya’s harsh whisper. The hunter didn’t understand the words the young sorceress was saying, but as he looked back over his shoulder to where Katya was looking the target was obvious. A man in a loose fitting brown shirt and dark leather pants st
ood a handful of steps down the aisle from them, a long curved dagger in his hand. Katya swiftly pulled her staff back towards her and Jared heard the knife wielding man exhale violently, as though someone had punched him in the stomach, though there was no sound of impact. Jared quickly drew a dagger from his belt, adopting a fighting posture between Katya and the stranger. However, the hunter need not have bothered.
Within moments, Jared realized what Katya had done. Their assailant’s left hand went to his throat and his eyes began rolling back in his head, showing disturbingly large amounts of white as his eyelids flickered. Equally as disquieting was that no sound came from the man’s lips though he was clearly in distress. The hunter looked to Katya. She was still concentrating on her efforts, her staff held rigidly upright, next to her body, her knuckles beginning to whiten from their grip on the length of wood. She, like the choking man was eerily silent, though her silence was obviously from concentration. Katya pointed with her right hand back down the aisle, her eyes wide with concern and Jared’s attention followed the gesture. The man had raised his knife across his body, but not in a defensive gesture. He was intending to smash the glass jars around him with the pommel of his blade. Jared rushed forward, quickly dropping the dagger from his right hand to his left. Jared reached out with his right hand, grabbed the man’s right wrist, and twisted the hand wielding the dagger around behind the man’s back. At the same time, Jared slipped around behind the man, wrapping his left arm around the man’s chest pinning the stranger’s left arm to his body. Jared’s opponent attempted once to plant his feet and push backwards against the hunter, but it was too late. The man struggled weakly for a few seconds and then hung limp in Jared’s arms. The hunter gently laid the man on the floor, taking the dagger from his hand. Slipping the curved blade into his belt, Jared placed his hand over the man’s mouth. There was no breath. The man was dead.