by Greg James
“How are we faring, Mistress Ruth?” asked Sula. “You know the country around here better than I.”
Sarah could see Mistress Ruth holding a hand over her eyes to ease the pounding of rain into her face, blinking until she could see clearly. Sarah recognised a cluster of cottages ahead as belonging to some of the Saltwines. They were as dark as every other building they had passed so far. This is no longer a land where the living dwell in peace, she thought, this is a land of dead things and old shadows.
“We’ll be there by dawn, I think,” Mistress Ruth said.
Chapter Seven
As morning broke, they came in sight of an inn on the roadside. The wooden two-storey building was painted a deep, inviting green and they could hear horses neighing and snuffling contentedly in the stables beside it. The sign, dripping with the night’s rainwater, named the inn as The Everlong Road Inn.
“No Fellspawn are about here, not if the animals are happy enough,” said Mistress Ruth, “which is very good because it means old Berace must still be here.”
Sarah and Sula followed her as she bustled through the inn’s door and a bold voice cried out from within.
“Mistress Ruth! It’s been too long a time! And who are these here friends you bring to Old Berace’s home?”
The inn’s barroom was quiet but clean and Sarah was taken aback by the extraordinarily strong smell of flowers and blossoms. Then, as she looked, she saw that flowers and plants were actually growing from the wooden tables, chairs, the bar and the greybeard beams that were holding the inn together. Their roots and stalks twined through the natural grain of the wood like ivy before erupting into colour and fragrance. She recognised night roses, willow tears, frost bonnets and blue anias among the clusters and curls. The man who had spoken when they entered was as broad-chested as he was tall, and he exuded a strong odour of freshly-turned earth and dewy, fallen autumn leaves. He strode from behind the bar, and Sarah took in his auburn beard, which trailed almost to the ground and seemed constantly in danger of tripping him up where it twined around his polished, buckled boots. He was completely bald, and his eyes seemed to shift in colour as they caught the sunlight through the inn’s windows, but never so much that they lost the hues of spring, summer, and autumn. None of the cold, dark shades of winter resided in his eyes. He hooked his thumbs into the red braces he wore over a threadbare shirt that was patterned more with coal dust and grime than with natural dyes. Its original colour might have been a mossy green, but Sarah wasn’t sure.
Before she could think anymore on the man, his arms were around her and he swept her off her feet in a bear hug. His face split into one of the most surprising and unexpected things Sarah had seen since her return to Seythe: a genuine smile—one full of warmth, gentleness, and care.
Sarah surprised herself by returning it, although she was biting back tears at the same time, not knowing why. She held onto the man for what felt like an age, breathing in the rich odours of the forest that arose from him like a heat haze from hot earth on a summer’s day.
He put Sarah down and continued to grin, although he only shook Sula’s lean, limpid hand before making Mistress Ruth shriek and laugh as he swept her up in a similar hug. When he was done, he turned back to Sarah. “Old Berace is my name, and I know you well, Old Flame.”
“Don’t you mean, O Flame?”
“Ha! No, not at all. We knew each other well enough and better in one of your former lives, Old Flame. You are young in body, but those bejewelled eyes of yours are old—too old to be anyone else’s. You are welcome here, Sarah Bean.”
“How’d you know my name?”
“I knew your name, Old Flame, as soon as you set foot in the Wood Beneath the Worlds. I heard it whispered in sorrow by Gorra when he had to let you go. I heard it burning in the night when the White Rider came stampeding by my locked doors. You are more well known than you think, Sarah Bean. And I tell you to watch the shadows as much as the sun for that reason alone.”
A silence fell over the inn as Old Berace and Sarah gazed deep into one another’s eyes, and she felt sure that she knew him somehow, even though she could not remember how. Old Berace broke the silence with a stamp of his boots. “Enough talk. I have beds for you, and salves and balms to heal your wounds. And, of course, meat and mead to wet your tongues and broaden your bellies.” He slapped at his own, producing a low thunderclap and then made the air shake some more with a bout of raucous laughter.
~ ~ ~
Old Berace was like a gentle father to Sarah. He carried her to the inn’s bathing room, where he unpeeled the tacking tatters of her breeches from her wounded leg. He washed the wound and then rubbed in a salve that smelled of crushed berries and rich, dark honey. When Sarah winced at his touch, he withdrew his fingers and waited for her pain to subside. He brought her basins of warm water scented with lemon and parsley to wash herself before he set about bandaging the wound with strips of soft linen. Afterwards, he helped her dress in fresh clothes: a tunic, breeches, boots and a leather belt, all patterned with finely woven scenes depicting the flora and fauna of the forest.
“Now, how does that feel, Old Flame?”
“It feels good, Old Berace. Very good. Thank you.”
His smile split his face again and he swept her up and kissed her on each cheek. “Ah, Child of Fire, Daughter of Flame, how I have missed thee from this world.”
He set her back on her feet, and Sarah looked at him with serious eyes.
“Berace, you knew others like me? Before, I mean?”
“Aye, I did. There were more than a few like you back then, in the ages that have passed. Some came along all at the same time. So much fire and life in the world then. Everything was so new and freshly grown.”
“So why is there only me this time?”
Old Berace let out a long sigh. It was a heavy, tired sound that circled the bathing room and came to rest in the corners amid the dust and cobwebs.
“The worlds turn like a great wheel, Old Flame. And as they turn, times passes, the present becomes past, which becomes memories that are lost. And we grow old. Even the oldest of the old things age, although few are sharp enough to see it these days. And so there is less fire and less life. And there is more rot and more decay. More shadows for us to fear … and the greatest shadow of all.”
“His Shadow?”
Old Berace looked down at her with a grandfather’s smile. “No, Old Flame. The Shadow. The only one that truly matters to us ageing, ancient folk. Death. The Shadow that comes for us all in the end. The one foe more ferocious than Time itself.”
“I don’t want you to die, Old Berace. There’s been too much death already since I came here. And you’ve been kind to me.”
“There has been much death in this world before your coming, Sarah Bean, and there will be much after as well, I fear. Maybe more. That is the way of things. Life and death, both are with us, in abundance and in absence. Now, go on with you, downstairs there is a feast waiting, and the dining table is no place to speak of such morbid things. They are for times and places other than this day’s afternoon and evening.”
Sarah smiled and let him take her by the hand and lead her downstairs.
~ ~ ~
Mistress Ruth and Sula were waiting for them at a majestic oak table that had not been there before. It was heaving with steaming ox steaks, sage chicken, lamb cutlets in a raspberry vinegar preserve, and spiced sausages. Each of the three travellers was handed a brimming flagon of mead to sup from throughout the hearty meal. There was little talk as they ate and drank and listened to Old Berace recounting stories of the ages he had lived through. After the meal was done, Old Berace took a quaint stringed instrument from behind the bar and began to stroke the strings to produce high yet melancholy tones. He began to sing in a rolling bass-baritone. Sarah knew the songs: Woran had taught them to her during the evenings they had spent together in his little house on the hill.
First, Old Berace sang the lilting “Weep On, Ye Eyes
of Morning,” then the jauntier “Way Down to River, Way on Down By,” and the elegiac “Up upon Ye Young Hill, Under Ye Olde Mountain,” before he handed the lyre over to Sarah.
“Come, Old Flame, as old as the hills. Teach us young things a song or two.”
Sarah blushed the colour of beetroot. “No ... I can’t ... I’m no good ...”
“Ah, but you are, and you can be,” said Old Berace. “Just for me. Please.”
A smile crept across her face and she took the proffered lyre with a shaking hand. She gnawed at her lip, hoping the Flame would help her make a sound that wasn’t ear-rending, as she began to stroke the light, thin strings of the lyre. She felt the Flame flowing through her and into her fingers, guiding them smoothly and effortlessly as she sang a song from the world she had left behind, one that her mom had sung to her when she was in her cradle.
A song about a land that, like Seythe, was lost somewhere over the rainbow.
~ ~ ~
That night, Sarah slept, and in her dreams she came face-to-face with herself, only the other Sarah was burning. Every line of her, every hair, was alight, and her eyes were portals into brilliance.
“Who are you?”
“You know me, Sarah. I am A’aron. The scion of Flame inside you.”
“How can you be speaking to me?”
“I am not. This is a dream and the one place where our souls might meet. I am here to teach you.”
“Why are you here now? Why couldn’t you have taught me earlier? Before people died because of me.”
“Because it was not the right time.”
“How dare you decide? Ossen died. Jedda died. I lost friends. That was the right time—when I could have saved them.”
“Your sorrow runs deep, Sarah. Do not let it turn your heart into a stone.”
“Don’t tell me what to do or how to feel. You’re not my mom.”
“But still I care for you as a mother might, Sarah. You are my daughter.”
“Shut up! You, shut! Up! My mom is sick and dying back home, and she is the only reason I am back here on Seythe. I don’t need to be a goddess. I don’t want to be a saviour for a whole damn world.” Her voice started to crack. “I just want my mom, and I want to go home.”
“And you will have your mother, Sarah. You will see her again. Just not in the way that you hope.”
“Stop. Just stop talking about my mom, okay? You are something else. You’re not me.”
“I am you. I am the shadow of what you will become. I am the ghost cast back in time and memory by what is soon to pass.”
“Then what do you have to teach me? What can you tell me that will help me?”
“Nothing more than a few words of warning.”
“Words of warning? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me after waiting all this time to show yourself.”
“Yes, Daughter of my Flame. Watch for the shadows ...”
“Yeah, great, thanks. That’s a great help. Like I didn’t know that already.”
“Watch for the shadows, and watch for the rings they leave under sleepless eyes.”
Then, the ghost and the flames were gone.
Chapter Eight
They stayed at the inn for a week, until the wound on Sarah’s leg was healed. An ugly, knotted scar there matched the one on her shoulder left by the blade of a Fallen-born, and Old Berace sighed that it would not go no matter how long he treated it.
“Nightland steel and iron are poison to the flesh,” he said, “and sadly there’s nothing that can cure you of their touch entirely.”
“Are they why I get the bad dreams?”
“It could well be so,” said Old Berace. “The Black Lord Under the Mountain is a king to such things. I wouldn’t doubt that his poison lingers on, as nightmares are wont to do. But still, you are safe here. His Shadow doesn’t fall here, not by Old Berace’s hearth, nor over the guests of his house. It is safe for you to rest and heal that there leg of yours. You have a long walk ahead of you, Sarah Bean, and Old Berace means to see you are at least fit to go along it.”
As he went on, Sarah noticed a hardness she had not seen before come into his voice and face, and she could imagine, for a moment, that Old Berace had once been a rock that crowned a mountain or the greatest, hardiest oak tree in all of the forest.
“You brought something with you across the threshold of my inn, Sarah.”
“What? I brought nothing, only the hilt of the Sword.”
“I never said it was a thing you carried. I will say only this: I’ll thank you to take it with you on the morning that you leave. I can’t be doing with bad things like that in my place. Sanctuary should always be sanctuary, a place away from and unconcerned with the troubles of the world.”
His eyes took on their usual kindly cast again, and this time they were blue and bright, shot through with shimmers of garden green.
“Take care of yourself, Old Flame. Something of His Shadow is with you. At your heels or at your side, I am not sure. But it has the scent of your blood and I would not see its vile thirst satisfied.”
“Then, come with me, Old Berace.”
He smiled at her with warmth and sadness. “I cannot, Sarah Bean. Old Berace is his sanctuary, and were he to abandon it for the outside world, then it would fall into ruin. I am bound by certain laws. Thee may cross Old Berace’s threshold, but his threshold may not be crossed by he.”
“Why?”
“Because ... I grow old, and there is no place in this world for me. Once, it was my garden, but it has turned so fallow that I would grow sick as soon as I felt the taint that touches the earth and sky outside these walls.”
Sarah reached out and took his hand. “I’ll come back and visit you.”
“I may not be here then,” said Old Berace. “Old Berace and his inn, they are seen sometimes here, sometimes there. And as the blight spreads and the shadow darkens all things, so it may be that we leave this world behind and go on to another. There are twelve more still to see, and who knows which may still be in bloom and know the meaning of spring?”
“I’ll miss you, Berace.”
“And I you, Old Flame.”
They embraced and held each other for a long time.
“Who are you, Berace? Really?”
“I was old when the first of the Wayfarers was young, and my hearth had burned for many a year before there was such a thing as war. I have seen the ages come and go, empires rise and fall, and still, here I am, waiting by the roadside for those that need me and my help along their way.”
“But why are you here? Where do you come from?”
“It’s no business of mine to ask, or to know, and more to the point, I don’t want to. Knowing can be a bad thing as much as a good thing. Some things should just be accepted as they are and the questions about them left unasked and unanswered.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“That’s because you’re still young, younger than Old Berace ever was or will be again. You’ll learn a little of what Berace knows in your time of life. You’ll know when you do, because then you’ll understand what Berace has been talking about. You’ll think of me then, and you’ll understand a bit but no more’n that. Too much knowing turns a mind to strange ways and dark places, and that’s where His Shadow waits for the unwary.”
Sarah nodded slightly.
As Mistress Ruth and Sula came downstairs, Berace went on in his fashion and began to bustle about behind the bar, reordering the shelves of herbs and dried flower cuttings. Then he dragged a stool out and readjusted the animal heads mounted on the inn walls before taking a cloth to the windows, which he spat on at regular intervals, making Sarah wince.
“Where’re you bound after you leave Old Berace’s place then?”
“The Norn Valley,” said Mistress Ruth, “and then on to Yrsyllor.”
“Ah well,” he said, jumping down from the stool with a thump, “then Old Berace must prepare you a kingly breakfast before you leave.”
~ ~ ~
They left Old Berace’s inn as morning turned to afternoon, with their bellies full of bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, and toasted bread. Each of them carried a bag bulging with jerky, apples, oranges, and brown bread. He stood in the door, almost filling its frame, and waved them off with a hearty grin and a stamp of his boots.
Sarah could walk again, and although her leg was still stiff and sore, she was sure she could run if she had to.
Who am I kidding? she thought. I know I’ll have to before long.
As they began to walk along the road, Sarah’s mind turned to Old Berace’s words. There was something with them. If it were pursuing them, then it might be that shadow-shape she remembered seeing after they left Highmount. But he had also said it might be something at her side. Or, someone.
Sarah looked at Mistress Ruth and Sula. Could either of them be ready to betray her? Could they have fallen into His Shadow, just like Jedda did?
Please tell me I won’t have to kill a friend again, she thought.
But there was no answer to that, and she knew it.
I wish the Flame had never come to me.
It’s a curse, not a gift.
Chapter Nine
There it was, at last.
After a long day of walking, they came to the hill that Sarah had once called home. Were Woran and Barra still safe within or had they been burned out too? Word must have gotten around about what had happened to the Taproots. And she knew that there was no love lost between herself and the matriarchs of the valley families. What kind of revenge had they brought down on the old man?
“We must be quick,” said Sula. “We cannot stay for long here, not now the Fallen One knows we have passed through Valedown.”