Now, if things went well with Droman, then it was possible he still had Rachel and Alban as a team.
None of this really made sense. He didn’t know what Alban and Rachel expected. First, it was going to seem strange to Droman that Alban and Rachel were that far south at all. Then, it would seem highly suspicious that they chanced upon Droman in the middle of the plains.
He couldn’t think about this right now, even though that was what he needed to think about. His body was tired. His mind was tired. It was early in the afternoon, but he suspected the moment his head hit the pillow he’d be out until morning.
That was fine by him.
Strakfield wasn’t at all what Nate expected. There were a few buildings here and there, but the settlement was mostly made of large white tents as if the whole place could be picked up and moved at a moment’s notice.
As he rode through the middle of it, no one seemed to notice him. It was busy enough that people didn’t seem to care that a man they’d never seen was riding through.
The first thing Nate noticed was that it wasn’t specifically a place for any one race. To his left, he spotted a couple of men whittling a pair of walking sticks, maybe preparing for a journey, or perhaps just doing it for the conversation. A few others were selling goods like leather hides and horse blankets. A few strides ahead he spotted a wood elf who looked an awful lot like Jesse, shoveling horse dung in one of the many stables scattered throughout the settlement. Then Nate saw something he wasn’t expecting. Here he had to rely completely on Alban’s descriptions, but if he was correct, a gnome and a dwarf stood together in the middle of the street, arguing about something Nate couldn’t quite hear.
With a sharp eye, Nate pegged the dwarf to be about a foot shorter than himself, and the gnome probably came up to the dwarf’s shoulder. The similarities between the two had only to do with their stature. The gnome was bald on top, his white beard trimmed and short. His body and limbs were thin and lanky. What the gnomes lacked in brawn, Alban had told Nate once, they made up for in brains.
The dwarf was wide in the shoulders and thick in the chest. Nate got the impression that if he wanted to end their little argument, all the dwarf would have to do was pick up the little gnome and chuck him across the street with a heave. The dwarf’s beard was scraggly and spread out wide like the bottom half of a daisy. But there was nothing flowery about the dwarf. He wore a scowl on his face so grim Nate thought twice about being on the same street as him. As he passed by, no violence occurred, and Nate thought he heard the dwarf suggest they resolve the conflict over a mug of ale. The gnome seemed to agree.
It wasn’t long until Nate found the first, and quite possibly the only hotel and saloon. He was thankful to see that it was one of the few buildings in Strakfield and not one of the tents. He suspected there would be an awful draft running through one of those and he didn’t envy the people who had to sleep out in them. He guessed they were all used to it by now, however, and had figured out ways to keep themselves warm through the harsh winter.
Nate dismounted in front of the hotel and strapped his horse to a post. Looking around, it didn’t seem like there would be any apprehension about him carrying his weapons around. It seemed that everyone around here was armed. They weren’t all guns either. Some wore swords attached to their backs or hips. Others carried a combination of both. Nate wasn’t sure what he’d ever do with a sword. He guessed if he ever ran out of bullets it would be better than nothing.
He walked up to the porch and stood in front of the swinging doors to the saloon and hotel. To keep out the cold, a set of curtains had been hung up rather than simply installing a set of sturdy doors. He pushed through them gently and was immediately assaulted with a cloud of thick smoke. He suppressed a cough, but the thick air had been unexpected.
There were tables set up all through the large room and Nate was surprised to see that it looked a lot like the saloons he’d been in back in Texas. The smoke came from the twenty or so people who puffed away at thick cigars or curved wooden pipes as they played cards with each other, saloon girls flirting with them, tempting them. No one even looked up when Nate walked in. No one took an interest at all. Nate was pleased with this.
To the right was the bar, behind it a bartender and a saloon girl wiping the bar clean. A wall of liquor bottles spread out behind them, beckoning Nate with their warmth and comfort.
The bar was a little shorter than Nate had seen at other places, and on the right side of it was a set of small steps and a platform. Atop the platform was a gnome who leaned over his drink like any man of a normal height would. The saloon, as Strakfield itself, was diverse and accommodating. The only thing Nate hadn’t seen here yet were gray elves, despite how close Strakfield was to Gray Elf Country. But Nate knew the stories. They weren’t really accepted anywhere outside of their own borders. He supposed that went for Strakfield as well.
Nate moved to the left of the bar and set an arm on top. He winked at the saloon girl who smiled back at him. She had fire-red hair tied up into a messy bun, and white makeup that almost made her seem like a ghost.
“What are you having?” she asked with a bright smile.
“You smile like that to all your customers?” Nate asked.
“Only the good-looking ones,” she said.
“And that ain’t all of them?”
“It’s most of them,” she said. “Drink?”
“I need a room,” he said. “And a hot meal. And a bath.” He reached into his coat pocket and slapped the coin on the bar. “Will this get me all that?”
“That’ll get you a room, a hot meal, and a couple of drinks,” she said. “You’ll have to go to the bath house down the street for that. ’Course, there’s a creek not too far from here. Might be a little nippy though.”
Nate shook his head. “I don’t need the drinks. I’d take some extra food for it, I guess.”
The saloon girl took the coin and slipped it in a pocket and set a shot glass in front of Nate. She then reached under the counter and produced a brown bottle of something stout and filled it. “Drink’s on me, sweetie.”
Nate smiled at her and looked down at the glass. He hadn’t had a stiff drink in over a month and he didn’t particularly want to start now. He waited until her back was turned and looked around to see if anybody was watching before he poured the drink on the floor at his feet. Seemed crazy to him to just let that good stuff go to waste. He really didn’t know what he was thinking doing such a thing. It was only one drink and didn’t matter that much. Still, there was something deep within telling him if he had just one, he’d find a way to have another. And another.
He set the glass back on the bar and when the saloon girl turned around she smiled again. “You like it?”
“It was real nice, miss, thank you.”
Nate got a hot meal, and the saloon girl made sure he got extra helpings. He didn’t know if she was just trying to sweeten him up or if she was always nice to newcomers, but Nate liked it.
He also didn’t mind the room. It was small and a little dirty, but what did that matter? He’d been sleeping on the ground for the last month or so.
There was still sunlight outside when he took off his clothes and crawled into the bed, and he was asleep in seconds.
If there was one thing Nate hated more than anything else, it was being abducted while still in his long johns. Thinking about it, it wasn’t so much that his outer clothes provided a particular advantage so much as he just felt exposed. Not to mention it was cold outside, his bare toes turning to ice in the freezing night air.
He never got to see what happened. First, he was asleep. Next thing he knew, someone had already gagged him and shoved a black hood over his head. By the time he started to struggle, his hands were tied behind his back and his feet were strapped at the ankles.
He tried to scream out or to ask what was happening to him, but only muffled noises went through the cloth in his mouth. He knew there were at least three men, maybe m
ore. A couple of them carried him and another whispered out orders. Before he knew it, his body was thrown onto the back of a horse and they were galloping away.
It was difficult to hear anything the men were saying with his head bobbing up and down on the charging horse. He thought his ribs were about to break about ten minutes into the ride. Eventually, Nate lost track of time. It could have been anywhere from thirty minutes, to an hour, to two hours before they finally stopped.
What made Nate angrier than anything else was that these men had disturbed his night of restful sleep—the best sleep he’d had in a long time. He knew it was a dumb thing to be thinking about in this moment, but it was what it was.
The rider shoved Nate off the back of the horse and Nate almost caught himself with his feet, but without the ability to spread his legs, he fell hard onto his back.
He screamed out unintelligible curses through the gag at his abductors, but it only resulted in a sharp kick to his ribs. Nate coiled up into the fetal position and tried to catch the breath that had been knocked out of him.
Finally, when he was still, someone reached for the bag over his head and jerked it away. Everything seemed a little blurry at first, but as his eyes adjusted, he could see that he was in a camp. A fire blazed off to his right, and there were a few small canvas tents set off to the side.
The man who stood above him was no man at all. With sharp features, dark, coal-like hair that fell past his shoulders, and a menacing stare with his purple eyes, Nate figured out whose camp this was.
Word must have gotten out about Nate. He guessed Alban and Rachel’s conversation hadn’t gone so well.
He was in Droman’s camp now.
Gwen
Winter, 903 A.O.M.
Gwen wasn’t sure how many nights it had been since her group split from Nate and the others. She had been so weakened during the first couple of days that she barely remembered traveling them. She couldn’t remember pulling out her bedroll, she couldn’t remember eating. She would sleep, wake up, travel. Sleep, wake up, travel.
She remembered one time when Jesse was looking over her, he asked her if she was all right. She didn’t remember answering.
Sleep, wake up, travel. Sleep, wake up, travel.
By what she thought was the third day, her mind starting coming back to her. Only Elise could fathom the kind of energy it took to do what Gwen had done in such a short amount of time. Entering a person’s mind was complex. Seeing and making sense of their thoughts even more so. She hoped more than anything she had gotten it right. There was a possibility that she had seen the thoughts and had gotten them confused. She saw Kellen giving Droman the book. She saw them meeting near Strakfield. But it was possible that the image of Droman was from a different thought. That Strakfield was a place Kellen once met a friend. That the book he carried was not of the Ancient sort.
Gwen doubted herself, but she knew she had to remain steadfast. This was no time to question herself. It was too late, and if she was wrong, she was wrong. They would figure it out.
After a while, she decided she shouldn’t have been second-guessing herself. She had practiced the magic for hundreds of years—had become a master of it. There was no one better than she at putting together the puzzle of thoughts.
The hardest part was separating memories from plans. They acted the same way. They felt the same. They looked the same. But there was a way to tell a difference. It was subtle, but a practiced use of the magic could reveal that memories had more concrete details than intentions. Intentions were thoughts created by the individual, while memories were real events. Sure, people could remember things differently than what was true, but not everything would be false. It was imagination versus history, anticipation versus experience.
Kellen’s thoughts had been hazy in every way. In fact, Gwen was sure he’d never even been near Strakfield before. The details were so limited that it suggested Kellen was not overly sure of himself—that there was some debate in his mind, though she couldn’t pinpoint it. Maybe he doubted this whole scenario. Maybe he didn’t like what he was doing. Gwen could only speculate.
Now, as they neared Lorne, Gwen hesitated to use her magical abilities to seek Kellen out. She had just gathered her strength and to use more of her magic seemed reckless. She already knew where he was heading. She already knew his plans. They just had to get there as quickly as possible.
The three made camp for the night as they were exhausted from constant travel. The plains did that to people, especially in the winter. How long did one have to travel without seeing any sign of life, any deviation in the landscape? Only the nights gave them reprieve from the drudgingly dull days.
They sat together on the ground and Elise reached out her hand toward the middle of them. She closed her eyes tightly and a brilliant ball of orange appeared. The ball then floated downward until it reached the ground and the group had a perfect campfire for the evening. Elise had done this for them every night. It provided them warmth which was all they really needed, and Jesse liked to heat his dried meat before eating it.
“I feel bad for the others,” he said. “There’s no wood on these plains to make a fire. Their trip will probably be harder than ours.”
“But ours is more dangerous,” Elise said.
It wasn’t necessarily true. There was a chance they would never catch up with Kellen. Splitting up had made their travel faster, but perhaps not fast enough. Before, Gwen had hopes of catching him on the plains, but now it seemed that if they caught up to him at all, it would only be in the nick of time and somewhere in Lorne.
Normally, this would have inspired her to chase him through the night, but her energy was gone. All of their energy was gone. Even the horses seemed to beg for a rest. It would do them no good to catch up with Kellen if they passed out the moment they reached him.
Gwen ate her food in silence, her thoughts dwelling on Nathaniel and the others. She hoped desperately that they wouldn’t try and make contact with Droman. The gray elf was dangerous and would not hesitate to kill Nathaniel. She knew that the future was not certain. She knew that no matter what had happened in the past, all could be changed. Well, she thought she knew. Deep down, it was a guess. The magic of time was and would remain a mystery for all eternity—with eternity being the biggest mystery of all.
When she finished eating, she lay down and closed her eyes. Jesse and Elise stayed awake a little while longer as they usually did. Last night they waited until they thought she was asleep before they started talking, though they didn’t say much. They kept it light, not dwelling on their past together.
Gwen felt guilty eavesdropping, but it wasn’t her fault they talked so close to her. It wasn’t as if they checked to make sure she was asleep.
Tonight was much of the same. They waited an hour or so, and decided they could speak in hushed tones. Gwen understood why they wanted to speak alone. She understood probably better than anyone. They had a bittersweet relationship, though it seemed they had forgotten the bitterness. Or perhaps they had never spoken of it.
“What kind of repercussions do you think this will have?” Jesse asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Going after another Sentinel,” he said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“This is a unique situation,” Elise whispered. “Sentinel Gwen is certain of Nathaniel Cole, though she has never really given me the details.”
“What do you think about all this?”
Elise didn’t answer for a few moments. Gwen wondered if she might be looking in her direction to see if she was truly asleep. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know. I think it’s all going a bit fast. But we can’t forget that Kellen sent guards after us. After Nathaniel. He just heard that there was a Sojourner going after The Ancient Books and he took off after The Book of Life. It was as if he’d been waiting for such a day.”
“Well,” Jesse whispered, “we all know Sentinel Gwen has the best wisdom and judgment.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything.”
“Just because I was picked and you weren’t doesn’t mean she was wrong.”
“Her picking you wasn’t the problem,” Jesse came back. “It was…” He stopped, probably fearing that Gwen was listening. Still, he went ahead. “It’s that you and I had agreed to stay together. You were happy with that agreement before the Derylleth Stone glowed for you as well. I was willing to give it up for you, and you were willing to let me. But when your chance came, you weren’t willing to give it up for me.”
“I know what happened, Jesse,” she said. “Do you really think this is the time to discuss it?”
“You’ve been avoiding me for three years,” he said. “This is the first chance I’ve gotten to see you alone. Do you think it was easy to become a Sentinel guard?”
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” she said. “You should have either accepted your place as a Sentinel or stayed home.”
“You loved me once,” he said through his teeth as though it would make him quieter.
“Yes, I did,” she said solemnly. “But what would you have me do now? Drop everything and move away with you?”
“That’s an option, yes.”
If they had been talking in front of anyone but Sentinel Gwen, Jesse would have been immediately discharged from the Guard and Elise would be thoroughly chastised. But despite the rules and how things normally worked, Gwen didn’t want to admonish them. Partly because she felt this was all her fault, partly because she knew what it was like to be in their situation.
Still, she felt if she let the conversation go on much longer, she might end up without an apprentice and no one to replace her when her time in this world was done.
She sat up hastily and turned toward them. Both elf and woman sat with alarmed expressions, wondering frantically if Gwen had heard them.
The Outlaw's Quest (Keeper of the Books, Book 2) Page 15