by Jeff Wilson
Eithne paid him no heed, either distracted by her burden, or more probably making a deliberate effort to ignore him as she disappeared inside without any comment, leaving Edryd to believe that she was annoyed with his failure to offer help. Alone once more, and feeling the uninhibited freedom that came with such solitude, Edryd stood up and went through a series of unhurried motions. It was a type of mock combat exercise, designed to develop efficient transitions between attack and defense. In this instance he was not training, for he needed no practice in these skills. His intent was to test the extent of his recovering energy reserves and to measure what strength remained in his body. His movements and his timing were good, but he could feel that his strength and his stamina were compromised. Even so, Edryd found himself wishing that he had a good solid sword. He couldn’t truly test his conditioning without the heavy weight of a finely balanced weapon in his hands.
Edryd spotted a long-handled axe resting head down against the wood pile. It was no suitable stand-in for an actual sword, but it would test his strength and start the process of reconditioning his disused muscles. A considerable supply of fuel had been piled up, ready to be cut into smaller pieces. It was work begging to be done. Edryd was discouraged to discover that he could not raise the axe head without difficulty, and worried that this would tire him out before he could accomplish much, but he worked out a technique quickly enough. Lifting the axe above his head, he let the weight of the tool do much of the work, bringing the force stored in his muscles to bear on the task only after the axe wedge began to descend.
It was only a short while before he had to stop and rest, tired and drenched in sweat, but he had managed to produce a reasonable pile of split logs. His exposed hands ached both from gripping the axe and from the cold air. He stuck them inside his coat for warmth before standing up straight to take a look around in an effort to get his bearings. The roadway he had travelled on that first night in An Innis was just north of the cottage. He was far enough away that he could not see the town, but the palace atop the peak was plainly visible. It was an isolated location, near enough to but also a healthy distance away from the settlement at the western edge of the island.
Realization struck Edryd in a moment of clarity. Fumbling through a pocket in his coat, he confirmed that it was still there. The coin Logaeir had left behind with his message glimmered in the morning light. The piercing in the coin matched the location of this cottage perfectly. Irial’s home was an Ascomanni safe house. Random pieces of information were now connecting together. Irial and Logaeir had been exchanging information from the beginning. She knew exactly who he was. He had any number of immediate questions, but there was no one there to answer them. Eithne wouldn’t know much—and he didn’t like the idea of trying to make her to reveal what little she might—but lacking another means to learn anything useful, Edryd collected an armful of wood and headed back inside the cottage.
Inside, Eithne was busy trying to appear as if she had not noticed his entrance. A small crack of an opening between the shutters and a dent in a cushion on the bench beneath the window near the front door, exposed Eithne’s demeanor for what it was, a transparent attempt to conceal that she had spent the last half hour watching him.
“Should I put these beside the fire?” Edryd asked, tilting his head towards the bundle of firewood cradled in his arm.
Eithne’s eyes tightened in the way that they did when she wanted him to believe she was angry with him.
“What have I done?” he asked as he deposited the wood atop a dwindling pile beside the fire. When she didn’t respond, Edryd walked over to the small table and dropped eagerly into one of the chairs. “I’m sorry I didn’t help with the goats,” he apologized, guessing at the source of her irritation.
“I wouldn’t have let you,” Eithne declared firmly. “And who told you to cut wood for the fire?”
“I just thought…” Edryd began.
“If you get sick again, I will be blamed for it,” she said, cutting his defense short. Pouring Edryd a cup full of milk, she brought it over and planted it on the table. “Irial says you need to drink more milk. It’s what will help you the most.”
Edryd gladly accepted the cup and consumed its contents without complaint. Eithne refilled the cup and he drained that quickly too. The milk tasted better this time. It was fresher and he was also becoming more accustomed to it. Eithne seemed to relax upon seeing Edryd demonstrate an improved appetite.
“I promise not to do any more work without permission,” he said, easing Eithne’s demeanor even further. Sensing an opportunity, Edryd took the coin out of his coat pocket and placed it on the tablecloth. “Have you ever seen one of these?” he asked.
“That’s from Uncle Logaeir!” she said excitedly.
“Uncle Logaeir?”
“Well he isn’t my Uncle,” Eithne clarified. “I don’t think he is anyone’s Uncle really, that’s just what I call him.”
“How do you and Irial know him?” Edryd asked.
“He is one of the Ash Men!” she boasted conspiratorially.
Despite his desire to get Eithne to provide more information, Edryd cautioned her against it. “Are you sure you should be telling me this?” he asked.
A look of fear and panic spread across Eithne’s young face. “But, you have his token, and Irial said that you know him,” she said with startled worry.
“Its fine,” Edryd said, trying to calm her down, “the two of us are old friends.”
Color returned to her face as she began to breathe normally again. “That was mean,” Eithne sniffed, “you made me think I did something wrong.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Edryd apologized, “I just didn’t think that the two of you knew him.”
“Irial and Logaeir are friends too,” Eithne explained. “They knew each other when they were kids. He left An Innis when he wasn’t very old, but he came back.”
Eithne might have thought she was explaining all there was to know, and the intelligence that she had provided did suggest a reason for Logaeir’s obsession with conquering An Innis, but it did not fully explain how he knew Irial or how they were connected to each other. For some reason, Edryd wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted a more detailed account. “I’m sure Logaeir and I will have the chance to catch up with each other later,” he said, trying to reassure her again that she hadn’t said too much.
“He’ll be here tonight,” Eithne volunteered. “He is coming to talk with you and Irial.”
Still amazed at how forthcoming Eithne was, Edryd pressed for more. “To talk about what?” he wondered.
“Something about the Red Prince,” Eithne answered.
Apparently Eithne knew pieces, perhaps just things she had overheard and not fully understood. Edryd had no desire to let her know that he was the man they were calling the Red Prince, and he very much preferred it if she never did. She already knew more than was safe.
“What would you know about the Red Prince?” he asked innocently.
“He joined the Ascomanni. They are all following him now, and he is going to help Uncle Logaeir take back An Innis.”
This was surprising news to Edryd of course, but he couldn’t very well explain to Eithne why it was also all very impossible.
“You’re sure?” he asked with a bit of an edge to his voice, unable to completely disguise the surge of anger he felt at hearing that he had supposedly become the leader of the Ascomanni.
Ignoring his tone, or perhaps simply failing to notice it, Eithne nodded her head in confirmation. She was quite certain. “Everyone in town knows he is here,” she insisted. “He has a ship with red sails, and the Ascomanni have been attacking ships under the banner of the Red Prince for weeks now.”
“And you say the Red Prince is going to attack An Innis?”
“Well, I heard Uncle Logaeir say that he had to use the Red Prince in order to make it all work,” Eithne explained. “Irial got mad, but he said there wasn’t any other way.”
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�She isn’t the only one that’s angry,” Edryd responded before he could catch himself. Seeing a nervous uncertain look on Eithne’s face, he quickly gave a vague explanation for his comment, “Logaeir is playing a very dangerous game. I am worried he won’t like some of the consequences.”
He had meant to soften his tone and sound concerned for Logaeir, but what had come out was a thinly veiled and none too subtle threat directed at the Ascomanni strategist. Eithne didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t worry about Uncle Logaeir, he will have thought everything through already,” she said with complete confidence. “He is always five steps ahead of everyone, you’ll see,” she added, obviously repeating something she had heard others say.
“Maybe,” Edryd said, managing to bring his anger under better control. If Logaeir was really going to be here tonight, it was going to make for an interesting evening. For a second time this morning, Edryd keenly felt the absence of a good sharpened blade. It made him feel… incomplete. He wondered if there might be something stored somewhere on the property, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask Eithne. He also knew he was not strong enough yet to be thinking about such things.
Edryd thought about Eithne’s observation that Irial had been angry with Logaeir. It was comforting to learn that she was actively against whatever strategy Logaeir had settled on and was not participating in it, but he would need to determine exactly what her relationship was with this scheming and duplicitous would-be conqueror of An Innis. Irial had provided him with useful information about Aed Seoras. Hopefully she would be prepared do the same with respect to Logaeir.
As the day progressed, Eithne spent most of afternoon outside. She had demanded that he remain indoors, as she was only too willing to fully enforce Irial’s orders that he should be resting. There really were an unending number of things that needed to be done about the property on a daily basis, and Eithne was staying well on top of them. While she worked, Edryd passed the time by going through all of the books he could find in the house. One was an extensive collection of information on medicinal herbs. It seemed to have been used a great deal by Irial. Another gave instructions on animal husbandry.
He found others that were more along his lines of interest, including a philosophical treatise on the nature of reality. He liked to consider himself reasonably educated, and by Nar Edor standards, where he was from, he would most certainly have qualified as extremely well-read. But distracted as he was by Logaeir’s misappropriation and misuse of his name, Edryd didn’t have the concentration needed to properly absorb and interpret the concepts described by the author, who argued that all existence was a malleable manifestation of our imperfect perception of a deeper and simpler underlying frame. Edryd seemed to be able to tease any meaning he wanted out of that asseveration, which as he thought about it, was perhaps a small part of the point that was being made.
Several frustrating and unproductive hours later, which had been spent entirely on reading through this baffling text, Edryd realized that the entire day had passed him by, becoming aware of the late hour only after he noticed that it had become too dark to read. Eithne brought more milk and a lantern, and reminded him that Irial wanted him to drink as much as he could.
“I like that one,” Eithne said. She peered across the table at the open book with interest while he finished his milk.
Edryd, irritated by his inability to digest the material, wasn’t about to believe that Eithne could possibly have read the book, let alone understood it. “Don’t go and spoil the ending,” he said.
Eithne’s eyes narrowed in her signature and peculiar way, in what was at this point a much overused expression of disapproval. “It isn’t a story book,” she lectured. “It doesn’t have an ending.”
“A book… with no ending?” Edryd teased, pretending to be simple.
“It says that nothing is real,” she explained, ignoring his remark and summarizing the books contents as simply as she could for Edryd’s benefit.
“I understood that much,” Edryd said. Apparently Eithne did know something about the book.
“I don’t think that’s right though,” she continued. “I know I’m real. The table is real. I’m pretty sure you’re real too.”
“I’m glad I’m not some figment of your imagination,” Edryd said with mock relief, “but I can’t say that I know how I should feel about ranking as possibly being less real than the table.” Whatever her understanding of the book, it was without any real depth. He was impressed nonetheless that she understood it at all.
“Well I have known this table for as long as I can remember,” Eithne laughed, “I’ve only known you for about a month.”
If there had been any reason to doubt it, it was becoming ever more evident that Eithne was unusually smart. Perhaps she did understand the book better than he did. He found himself laughing at her joke. Doing so lifted him out of the disgruntled mood he had been in, and made Eithne beam happily with confident satisfaction.
The moment was interrupted by a sound coming from the locked room. Edryd was startled, but Eithne ran to the door without the least hint of concern. Before Edryd could react or recover from his surprise, the door to the room swung inward, and out walked Logaeir with a foolish grin on his face. Eithne held out her arms expectantly and Logaeir grabbed her up in a big bear hug.
“You are getting too big and fat to be picked up like that,” he said as he dropped her back to the ground, pretending he had hurt his back.
Eithne kicked him as hard as she could in the shin, which wasn’t very hard, and he collapsed backward onto a bench, grabbing his leg in exaggerated distress. “That was mean and it wasn’t funny,” she said with a smile that suggested that she had thought it was at least a little bit funny. If nothing else, she had enjoyed the opportunity it had given her to kick him.
Edryd would have laughed at this spectacle, if he hadn’t wanted at that moment to kick Logaeir a good deal harder than Eithne had just done.
“Were you in there all along?” Edryd asked in amazement.
Logaeir looked around, confused by the question. “What… in the room?” he said, requesting clarification. “No, not in the room, no,” he said answering his own question, realizing that to Edryd it must have seemed like he had miraculously appeared from nowhere at all.
“Then how?” Edryd asked. “I thought that was some sort of makeshift prison.”
“Wouldn’t make much of a prison,” Logaeir laughed. “Lock someone in there and it would barely be five minutes before he found the escape hatch in the floor and was out the other end of the tunnel.”
“Why is there a tunnel?” Edryd asked, still a little confused.
“Wouldn’t be so good for the girls if they were seen letting an Ascomanni in the front door,” Logaeir responded. “When I visit, I take care to keep it a secret.”
The bolts on this side of the door made more sense now.
“You look good for a dead man,” Logaeir said. “Wasn’t sure it was true when I heard you had rejoined the living.”
Edryd’s face curled into a scowl, but he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t figure out where to begin.
“Back from the brink like that, you have more of a claim to the title of Ash Man than any of the rest of us,” Logaeir said, more to himself than to Edryd.
“I am not one of your Ash Men,” Edryd said, “even if you have thought it your privilege to make me one.”
Feeling the anger behind Edryd’s words, Logaeir turned his attention for a moment to Eithne, who stood a few feet away unobtrusively taking in every word exchanged by the two men. “Could you go up to the road and wait for Irial, she should be on her way soon,” he said to Eithne. “I need to talk privately with Master Edryd for a little while.”
Edryd thought she would protest being sent off, but Eithne obediently left without complaint. He could not help noticing the marked contrast between the judgmental disregard he was typically subjected to, and the unreserved respect she was showing to Logaeir. He wasn’t in
a competition to impress anyone, but the disparity did not make him like Logaeir any better.
“You linked my name to a group of murderous thieves,” Edryd said to Logaeir, laying out the accusation only once Eithne was well away from the cottage.
“And what name is that?” Logaeir asked rhetorically. “Aisen? When we last met you did not answer to it. You were anxious to be rid of the name. If you mean instead the title Blood Prince, I didn’t think you liked that one either. I believe you insisted your name was Edryd.”
Logaeir had a point, the accuracy of which was unassailable, but the observation was too clever by half. It justified none of what Logaeir had done, and in no sense, did it lessen the injury done to Edryd in consequence of falsely representing him as having a direct affiliation with the Ascomanni. Logaeir’s response, with all of its sharp sardonic wit, had ratcheted the affront to a new level.
“I would be in the right if I were to beat you senseless for what you have done,” Edryd warned, thinking that what he really wanted to do was to kill this cavalier little annoyance of a man.
“Do you think that you could?” Logaeir asked.
At first Edryd thought Logaeir was making fun of him. Logaeir though, was being serious.
“Were you in a better state, no doubt you could do it, but you were dead, or nearly so until only a day ago, and I am not so easy to catch as you might think,” Logaeir continued, unaffected by the threat which had been directed towards him. “Are you capable of recovering from such a long and deep illness so quickly?” He asked, seeming to believe Edryd capable of magically healing himself.