By Ways Unseen

by Daniel Dydek

  “Below, you’ll find a dock with some boats tied up,” he said. “There are three guards as well; take the boats down river, and after two miles you’ll see a small gravel beach. I’ll be there waiting for you, and we can talk.” He glanced back toward the castle. “I have to make sure Kaoleyn doesn’t kill herself taking down Dubril.” He turned back to his companions and pointed down the hill. “Now go!”

  Before they could protest, he ran back up to the rocky file and disappeared around a bend. Haydren turned back to his companions; Sarah finished helping Geoffrey belt on his sword. Haydren drew a deep breath.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Haydren,” Geoffrey said, and his voice stopped Haydren in his tracks and turned him around. “I will not be able to fight with only one arm; you know that, as a swordsman. But I have an idea…”

  After relating his plan, they made their way quietly down the hill; near the bottom, the trees thinned, and they could see the dock. Though the soldiers below glanced frequently up the hill as the crashes of rock against rock echoed down toward them, they remained seated near the boats.

  “A distraction may be out,” Geoffrey said, watching the actions of the guards. “We might just attack…”

  “Uh huh,” Haydren agreed with a nod. “Well, let’s get as close as we can; I’m sure the three of us can take three guards. Actually, Geoffrey,” he added suddenly. “Let’s try our best to just frighten them off, okay? Stick to your first plan.”

  Geoffrey glanced between Sarah and Haydren and shrugged.

  As Geoffrey strode boldly down the path, making sure his sword and scabbard were clearly visible, Haydren and Sarah swung wide off the path and trod quietly toward the river whose rapids drowned out their own footfalls.

  The guards looked up as he approached; the one nearest to him stood and studied him.

  “Tu therek til kamapa ta?” he asked.

  Haydren froze for an instant; of course they wouldn’t speak Cariste or Rinc Nain – these men would be pure Endolin. As he stole forward once more, taking advantage of the guards’ distraction, he vowed that after defeating Lasserain he would move to a country where only one language was spoken.

  Geoffrey said nothing, keeping his head bowed. The guard took another step forward as Geoffrey approached the dock. “Ke!” he said more loudly, looking closer at Geoffrey. “Duwa tan til kiaka teik…?”

  Just then, Geoffrey drew his sword and stabbed forward in one swift motion. The other guards shouted in surprise, rising to their feet and grasping at their belts. Haydren charged out of the woods, Aerithion gleaming overhead. The guards turned as their scrabbling hands found and finally freed their swords; but as they took a step toward this new threat, Sarah stepped out from the woods in the other direction with her mace upraised.

  Turning back to Geoffrey, whose Follus sword was already dancing through the air, both guards dropped their weapons and dove headlong into the rushing Kaoleyn River. Watching them go, Geoffrey solemnly sheathed his sword.

  “See?” he said as Haydren approached. “Just because it’s Follus. Though,” he added, “I would have thought they would be more accustomed to it.”

  “Apparently not,” Haydren muttered as Geoffrey went to one of the boats and began to untie it. Sarah walked up, then, and all three clambered into the boat as Geoffrey cast the rope into the bottom of it. Sarah and Haydren grabbed the oars and pushed it into the current, allowing the river to take them swiftly downstream.

  As they rushed along, the mountains rose beside them and they soon found themselves floating along a deep canyon with sheer granite faces on either side. Then, as they rounded a bend, they could see the gravel landing Pladt had told them about. Indeed, Pladt himself was on the shore, standing beside a crackling fire with fish already on a spit suspended over the flames. He looked toward them and waved them over. Grasping the oars once more, they guided the boat across the river and ground it against the shore.

  “Welcome to my fire,” Pladt said with a smile. “Have a seat, and let me tell you how I came to free you.”

  “And how you got onto this shore without passing us on the river,” Haydren said, looking at the high granite walls around them. “There’s no other access except by river.”

  “All will be explained,” Pladt said reassuringly. “Enjoy some fish while I tell you my story.”

  After they had seated themselves, he began: “When the kobolds surrounded me, back there in Jyunta, they didn’t kill me, only knocked me out,” he said as he began to serve his friends. “When I woke up, I was tied in a cart, surrounded by goblins, hellhounds, kobolds – all yapping, snarling, growling…they had surrounded me before, but I could defend myself then. Now I was at their mercy. I had never known terror like I did then; at any time they could have killed me.” He paused for a moment, then said quietly: “Better if they had.”

  The companions sat quietly, and not one had touched the meat on their plate. Pladt continued: “They carried me in the cart to Dubril; occasionally a kobold fed me; what it was, I shudder to think, but as starved as I was…” He drew a breath. “When I arrived, soldiers carried me to the dungeons below; one took a hammer and smashed my legs and arms. Each night he came back and re-broke them, to keep me from escaping. I could hear his footsteps coming down the corridor toward my cell each night; he would tap the hammer against the cell doors as he approached, to make sure I knew it was him. I couldn’t move, couldn’t try to crawl away, but there was nowhere to go anyway. I lied on my back and waited for him to come, and for it to be over with.”

  A tear from Sarah’s eye dropped onto her plate, and the men’s eyes glistened too. “Eventually, they started taking me to see the Duke; they would drag me through the halls, ignoring my – I thought my skin would rip and tear my arms off at any moment. When they let me go, I could feel bone cutting into my flesh. Then the Duke would begin to work with his tools; he poked and sliced and bent – always Earl Jgei was there asking me about you: why you killed Paolound, why you were in Jyunta in the first place, what Earl Durdamon had planned—”

  “You should have told him,” Haydren interjected in a whisper, unable to look up into Pladt’s eyes.

  Pladt smiled and shook his head. “Your mission was too important, Haydren. My suffering was minimal compared to what Burieng has endured. And honestly Haydren? I wasn’t sure what to tell him, because I wasn’t sure what you had chosen.”

  “As if I had a choice,” Haydren replied, his whisper now bitter.

  Pladt let the comment pass as he continued: “But one day, the Duke slipped; it was a comparatively small pain, but I lost control of my body. My muscles went entirely limp, and I couldn’t even draw a breath. Darkness closed in, and I felt almost as if I was falling.

  “But when I landed!” he said, his smile broadening. “I woke up in a fragrant field, in a soft bed of grasses. All the pain was gone, though I still couldn’t move. A man came up to me and extended his hand, but I couldn’t reach up and grab it. He said: ‘Your time is not yet finished; arise, be well.’ Instantly, I reached up and grasped his hand, and rose to my feet.”

  “Who was it?” Sarah asked breathlessly.

  “I don’t know,” Pladt said, his eyes clouding over. “But he gave me the ability to return to you, and to help you. I can appear where and when I wish; I learned the hidden pathways of Dubril, knowing, somehow, you would be coming that way. When you were captured, I stole Kaoleyn’s eggs and told her the Knights in Dubril had done it. She reacted as I suspected, though certainly with more violence than I anticipated.”

  “And our weapons?” Haydren asked.

  “I had them with me – sort of, inside me,” Pladt admitted. “I knew healing Geoffrey had raised too many questions already, and I didn’t want to start pulling weapons from my body to give to you. That would have just been…weird,” he finished with a grin.

  A smile flashed across Haydren’s face, but quickly disappeared. “So now I have lost a friend twice,” he said quietly. />
  “But if you had not lost me the first time,” Pladt replied; “you wouldn’t have lost me the second time, and you would be still in Dubril – if you would not be dead too.”

  “Is that how it is justified?” Haydren asked. “Does that make your sacrifice worth it?”

  “Does it?” Pladt asked, his gaze lowering as if considering the thought for the first time. “It doesn’t feel like it; but I was too close to it, I suppose.” He looked into Haydren’s eyes once more. “I simply became caught up in the consequences of other people’s choices, Haydren, as have countless others across Burieng – and that only after I chose to leave Werine. The world is too complex to blame one thing, Haydren, or to simply look for balancing scales.”

  “Perhaps,” Haydren agreed. “But the scales must be balanced for the loss of my parents.”

  “You have done much to complete that already,” Pladt said. When Haydren glanced quizzically at him, he smiled. “Remember the man in Werine, who reacted so strangely to your sword? It was because he had seen it before; he was the one specifically tasked to retrieve the sword in the first place. He killed your parents looking for it, but by then you had already escaped. And the bandit in Devil’s Thumb, the one who had your dagger? He was the captain, all those years ago; didn’t you recognize the dagger in your memory? He found it on the field when all was finished. Both of them were killed by you – or, at least because of you.”

  “Was all that the manipulations of the Triumvirate?” Haydren asked, letting slip a sneer.

  “I know what you want, Haydren,” Pladt said, his smile faltering a little. “You have choices; you always do. But confidence comes only from trust. You could have trusted Geoffrey. You could have trusted me. You could have trusted the God of All, even. By choosing not to, you gave up the confidence offered to you. The Triumvirate aided you in dispensing justice against those two men.”

  “Is that the only choice? To kill? Is that the only justice?”

  “Asks the man on his way to kill another,” Pladt said, regarding Haydren closely. When Haydren remained silent, Pladt glanced away. “They all chose a dangerous life. Death did not surprise them, and only death would have stopped them.”

  “It surprised one of them,” Haydren said, recalling still vividly the regret in the soldier’s eyes in the grove.

  “The timing surprised him,” Pladt said. “He had not reached the position he aspired to, and he had been offered the choice to stay back in the grove or go to the road; that was his regret, not the death you brought.”

  “How do you know this?” Haydren asked breathlessly.

  “I don’t know,” Pladt replied quietly. “Have you never forgotten how you learned something? But you did not choose their death, Haydren. By continuing until death stopped them, they did; do you think any of them did not accept that they just might end up that way?”

  “No one thinks they’re going to die.”

  “You do.”

  Haydren glanced up sharply; Pladt’s eyes were deep, fathomless green as they gazed back at him. “That is your choice, Haydren; to do what you believe you must, even if it means death by doing it. Those bandits did the same, and Lasserain does the same. The only difference is that you don’t believe Lasserain does what is right.”

  “He can’t be doing what’s right, can he?” Haydren asked, suddenly confused.

  “He believes he must, and so he believes it is right.”

  “How could you possibly think such things must be done?”

  “Maybe that’s what you should ask him,” Pladt said with a smile. “Still, that choice is yet to come. The time is growing late, and you must be on your way; the river will take you to Galessern. Lasserain is reeling from the loss of Earl Jgei; the Earl was Lasserain’s first real test of Life magic, and the Earl’s spirit was tied to his castle. With Dubril gone, Jgei died as well. His Knights will be in disarray, and Lasserain must be concerned for his northern border. Your journey to Mount Travistone should be unhindered.”

  Though the companions had never touched their fish, they felt refreshed. They remained a little while, talking to Pladt and saying their final good-byes. Sarah was first in the boat; after several moments, Geoffrey joined her.

  Haydren remained on the beach, gazing at Pladt, seemingly unable to make himself leave.

  “Your friends are waiting, Haydren,” Pladt said gently.

  “Yet I cannot seem to go,” Haydren replied, trying unsuccessfully to smile. “You were the best friend and traveling companion I could have had. The first time, you left without giving me a choice. Must I choose to leave you now, knowing this time I will not see you again?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Pladt said, quietly yet firmly.

  “How can I do that?” Haydren gasped, suddenly at a loss for breath. “I wanted so desperately to get you back to your father, back to lands you knew. I could have done it. Can you not come with us now?”

  “Haydren, you speak as if my life was in your hands,” Pladt said with a smile. “It is not now, nor was it ever. You cling only to the emotion in your heart. However you may have perceived it, I have only ever been under the care of the God of All – regardless of whether He allowed you, or Geoffrey, or even Sarah to accomplish that. The world, and my fate, is not in your hands, Haydren. Don’t complicate life by thinking otherwise.”

  Haydren swallowed and took a calming breath. His smile came this time, though still with difficulty. Pladt glanced again at the boat and said: “Your friends are waiting.”

  Haydren nodded, and turned to the boat. He climbed in, pushing it off the beach and into the current. The companions gave a few powerful strokes to start them downstream, then turned and watched as the beach – and Pladt – slid away behind them. Pladt held his hand out in farewell until they rounded a bend, and he was lost to their sight forever.

  The river sped them swiftly along, and the land began to lower around them. By nightfall, they were able to find a suitable landing where they set up camp and slept that night. By Noon the next day, the river was winding its way through wooded foothills, and gradually onto a broad plain with the mountains towering behind them. On the fourth day since escaping from Dubril, Mount Travistone rose before them, with Galessern like a granite crown at its peak. Below, the river turned right around the mountain, flowing toward the Salmean Sea to the south. The Kaoleyn River Road ran to their right and up the mountain, and it was toward this bank they now steered their boat.

  They were able to tuck the boat under a bank of rushes, and stole quickly to the road. There was no traffic either way as far distant as they could see.

  “Do we have any idea how we’re getting into that fortress?” Sarah asked as they sat watching the road.

  “Potentially,” Haydren answered. “Though I hoped to see more wagons traveling toward it by now. The bandits have been sending supplies for a long time; surely one will come along soon enough.”

  “And then what?” Sarah asked.

  “I was thinking we’d do something like what Geoffrey did at the dock,” Haydren said. “We’ll dress him in the wagon driver’s clothing, with his sword and everything, and we would hide in the back.”

  “And what if they search the wagon?”

  Haydren shrugged. “Then we’ll think of something else,” he said.

  “Listen!” Geoffrey hissed. Faintly on the wind, they could hear the clattering of wooden wheels. After a few moments, a wagon appeared coming down through the woods. It was alone, and its cargo bulged against a tarp.

  As it drew near, Haydren and Geoffrey crept near the road, swords drawn. Just as it passed, Haydren leapt out and quickly struck the driver with the pommel of his sword, knocking him unconscious.

  Geoffrey grabbed the reins and stopped the horses before they entered the broad plain, where they might be seen from the castle. “What’s in it?” he asked as Haydren peered under the tarp.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Haydren said, holding his nose. “Why would they be bringing
bodies to Galessern?” He pulled back the tarp and allowed Geoffrey to see the corpses stacked like cordwood in the back before pulling it snug again.

  “I don’t imagine they’ll be inspecting this cargo too closely,” Geoffrey muttered waving his hand in front of his nose. “That question is answered, at least.”

  “Sarah’s going to love this,” Haydren said with a grin as she approached.

  “I am not riding in the back of that,” she said resolutely as soon as Haydren told her.

  “Sarah, if you were worried about them inspecting the back of this thing, you don’t have to be now,” he replied.

  “Instead, I have to worry about smelling like a dead body for a month,” she retorted. “Why are they bringing bodies to Galessern anyway? Who are they?”

  Haydren shrugged. “They’re not saying who they are,” he replied with a grin. “Now can we go? We need to get inside the castle.”

  “You owe me the means to get about fifteen baths, after this,” Sarah said before leaping up into the back of the wagon. “Oh, they’re cold,” she complained.

  Geoffrey quickly threw the driver’s cloak over his own. “You know,” he said. “I can’t speak their language, if they should ask me anything.”

  Haydren drew a deep breath and shrugged. “I know,” he said.

  Geoffrey adjusted the cloak with a shrug of one shoulder. “Get in,” he said.

  Haydren leapt in and nestled down among the bodies as Geoffrey snapped the reins on the horses’ backs. They lurched forward, and were soon climbing the long road to the top of Mount Travistone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  DECISIONS

  “Actors in a play follow a script.”

  “These actors do not know the script.”

  “Then successful completion of the play?”

  “Knowing what the playwright seeks to say.”

  21 Halmfurtung 1320 – Autumn