The Road To Vanador

by Terry Mancour

  Compared to Azar, I suppose, Dad must have seen me as a far more compassionate and reasonable warrior. Azar would have ordered Tudry burned the first time, perhaps out of spite or a sense of power. He’d actually burned one of the Tudry burghers to death with magical fire in the middle of a council – the man had difficulty with subtlety. In comparison, my approach to war was more complex but less efficient.

  It also seemed far more humane than Azar’s. That, I believe, restored some of Dad’s opinion of me and my career. No matter how brutal his son’s life and the decisions I made had been, I could have turned out a callous and bloodthirsty bastard, like Azar. I suppose that gave him some consolation.

  Dad never mentioned his misgivings, after Tudry, and I respected that. I’m certain that it was a difficult thing for him to navigate. In all honesty, my concern wasn’t about his opinion of me, as you might think . . . but for his peace of mind. No father wants to ever think ‘my gods, what kind of monster have I unleashed on the world’? Seeing Azar, and the realistic possibilities of my profession, I think he took a lot of solace that I turned out as well as I did, under the circumstances.

  All I know is that the next day he got out his guitar and played, while we continued north. And sang. Brother Bryte complained bitterly about it, and kept drinking spirits until he was drunk enough to join in. Brother Bryte’s voice isn’t nearly as bad as my dad’s. Still, the experience was jarring.

  We taught Dad The Road to Barrowbell, and then I taught them both the Road to Sevendor, and we repeated both until we could all hash out a disturbing rendition. I suppose we could have been attracting bandits and goblins, and should have been more careful, but I was . . . I was in my own lands, I realized, as we topped a rise north of Megelin. This was the Magelaw. I owned it, now.

  Or it owned me. As I had quickly learned in Sevendor, having title to lands is far more about your responsibility to them than it is your possession of them. It wasn’t that all of these rustic vales and quaint hilltop settlements now owed me tribute; it was that it was now my sworn duty to secure, protect, and provide for them.

  As I sang a jaunty tune and we rolled the wagon down the next long slope, the stiff, cold north wind picked up in our faces, challenging us to project our voices into the wilderness. I glanced at Dad, who was strumming and smiling as he belted out the refrain, and he gave me a quick wink. Brother Bryte was doing a passable job with the tune, but his timing was abysmal, and got worse with every swig from his bottle. He was about three choruses from passing out cold, I realized.

  I had a lot of work ahead of me: castles to build, armies to raise, a city to construct, plots to hatch, and grand inquiries into thaumaturgy to begin. The fate of the world was literally upon my shoulders. The decisions I would have to make, and the actions I would have to take, would make the resolution of Tudry seem like an afterthought, a minor part of a much, much larger story. The very gods were compelling me to step forward and challenge the foes of humanity. They had arranged an unrivaled opportunity to do so, and I had to seize that chance as resolutely as anything I’d ever done.

  But spending a few weeks on the road and in a boat with my dad was a glorious way to begin the endless task ahead. I knew we would arrive in Vanador soon, and this brief interlude would be over. I would have to be the Spellmonger again, and he would eventually return to his home in Talry, and his simple, comfortable life. Our time would be over, and I doubted we’d ever have another like it. Such experiences happen in the cracks of our existence between more important events. They aren’t planned, as such, and they cannot be arranged. They happen of their own accord.

  If they happen to us at all.

  I grew to know the man who sired me more on that journey than I’d had in the thirty years before. I got to know him as a man, not just as my father – a man who farts, belches, swears, and has low, unpopular opinions. A man who loved his wife and children, and their children, and was devoted to protecting them at all costs. A man who valued wisdom over status, friends over riches, honest work over clever schemes. Dad had proven to be a man of simple tastes and stubborn resolve. I’d learned he liked to fish and play guitar and sing, and that he didn’t like his sheets too slick or his pillow too soft.

  It’s not often you get to know a man like that. Herus was correct: you do get to know a man’s true self on the road. There was something sacred about sharing such an intimate journey, and doing so with the man who father you, and then was forced to give you up, was a rare opportunity to discover the secrets of the universe, through his eyes. How he saw the gods, his community, and his dearest kin defined the man in ways a simple profession of faith did not. You saw who a man was by what he did when he was a stranger in a strange country, performing a mission that took him outside of his own world. I’d watched dad put aside fear, regret, worry and his own sense of propriety to get me from one side of the kingdom to the other in the middle of winter.

  But while I knew he was eager to return to the sunny, green river country he’d built his life in, I also knew he appreciated this time as much as I did. He said as much, in that wink. And he needn’t say another word about it for me to understand the sincerity and depth of his feeling. My dad loved me, and was proud of the man I’d become, despite his misgivings. And he trusted me to do the right thing.

  That was worth more than a pyramid of gold or a mountain of magical rock, to me. Indeed, it was what made the entire hopeless enterprise ahead of me worthwhile.

  “Y’know,” Brother Bryce said, slurring his words already, “They should really make a song called ‘The Road To Vanador,’ now,” he proposed.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” I agreed, taking my pipe out of my pouch. “Shall we begin?”

  The End

  Be on the lookout for the next book in the Spellmonger Series, Book 11: Thaumaturge! Due out early 2019!

  As always, you may contact the author at tmancour@gmail.com