Game of Destiny, Book I: Willow

by J Seab

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  Everam rode into the village of Meldon. Snow loped about, flitting from one spot to another, eagerly checking out every tuft of grass, rock, fence post, and wall along the way, happy to be free of the stench permeating the Lamont farm.

  Everam dismounted before the inn where he had quickly stashed his belongings before heading out to the farm. Little Hartly rushed out to take the reins just as a scattering of tiny snowflakes began to drift down from a lowering sky.

  Snow bounded over, her tail wagging furiously.

  “Hi, Servitor. You’re back,” Hartly exclaimed, trying to reach up to stroke Moon Shadow’s muzzle and pet Snow at the same time.

  “Indeed.” Everam resisted the urge to ruffle his hair, the simple joys of the boy brightening his mood. “Is this your Thirty-Day Practical?”

  “Oh, yes, my second this year. I love horses,” Hartly beamed, reaching up both hands to stroke Moon Shadow, “and dogs,” he continued, patting Snow’s head, “and cats, and alpacas, and cows, and squirrels, and, and, all animals,” he finished with a whoosh, whirling around with his arms outstretched.

  “Who is your mentor for this Thirty-Day?”

  “Nicholas. He’s the animal caregiver. Comes over to help me but I’ve already learned a lot! I can do most everything by myself. Except when the horse is mean. Then I have to get Nicholas. He’s strong!”

  “You’re doing fine work, Hartly. Moon Shadow said she likes you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Everam responded with a smile.

  “Next year,” Hartly gushed on, “Servitor Holloway says I can start learning basic caregiving. He says next spring I can do a Thirty-Day on a farm, help with birthing and rearing,” he said, bouncing like a coiled spring. “He said I have to study hard this winter so I’ll be ready.”

  “I’m certain you’ll be an excellent caregiver too.”

  “I will, I will,” he said, vacillating between petting Moon Shadow and Snow.

  “What has Pap brewed up for lunch?”

  “Nutty burgers, I think.”

  “Mmm, sounds good.”

  “Better than zucchini, anyway,” Hartly said, bending in front of Snow and rubbing her behind the ears. Snow sat, her neck stretched, oblivious to the rest of the world.

  “Don’t like zucchini?”

  “It’s fine, I guess, but everybody grew zucchini this summer. We had zucchini burgers, zucchini soup, zucchini bread, zucchini pasta, zucchini pie, zucchini...well...zucchini everything,” he said, giving Snow a parting hug and stretching up to stroke Moon Shadow’s neck. “Hi, Moon Shadow. You’re such a nice horse.” He glanced at Everam. “Can I ride her?”

  “Maybe later, Hartly. Looks like we’re due for some snow,” he said, squinting off into the west at the deepening gloom. “Best get Moon Shadow in the barn and brushed.”

  “Later, then,” he said, disappointed. “You hear that, Moon Shadow? You and I can go for a ride later. Would you like that, Moon Shadow?” he asked, his small hand working rhythmically.

  Moon Shadow nodded her head. It almost looked like she was smiling, too.

  Everam decided to let the two get better acquainted. Moon Shadow pawed at the ground in amusement while Hartly continued to stroke her neck. He was barely tall enough to reach. It didn’t seem that Moon Shadow objected to all the extra attention.

  Everam’s thoughts turned grim again as he watched the two. Alicia had probably been about the same age. Time to get this process started. It could happen again, had happened before. There was something ominous stirring in the land. Everam needed to find out what, and soon.

  He entered the inn, leaving Hartly to tend to Snow. She also needed a bit of extra attention after this morning.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adapt to the darker interior. The air was laden with the smell of roasting almonds and fresh bread. Most of the tables were occupied, the patrons eagerly spooning watercress soup from big bowls and biting into sandwiches thick with tomato, avocado, lettuce, and grilled almond patties; probably cleaning up the last of the fresh produce stores. Somehow, they managed to carry on lively conversations between bites.

  Everam, his thoughts on what he must do, had no appetite.

  He spotted Pap entering the kitchen through a wide, swinging door. He followed.

  “Everam.” Pap greeted him with a buoyant smile that quickly faded when he noted Everam’s dour expression. He set the dirty dishes he was carrying into the sink. “Give me a moment, we can talk in my office,” he said in a subdued voice as he gestured to a small alcove with a desk.

  Everam sank into the chair next to the desk, struggling to find reason within the events he had constructed in his mind. He couldn’t come up with a rational explanation.

  Pap shuffled over, drying his hands on a towel. He tossed it onto the desk and dropped into the chair behind it. In addition to innkeeper, cook, and dishwasher, Pap served as Meldon’s mayor and chief administrator. It was a small community, only a few hundred residents. Everybody helped as needed. Pap’s primary role was to keep things running smoothly and to coordinate the community’s various functions. “Tell me what you learned,” he said, sounding as if he didn’t really want to hear the answer.

  Everam told him all that had happened.

  Pap’s face was covered by his hands, elbows propped against the desktop, by the time Everam finished. He mumbled through his hands, “How certain are you that it was a band of crazed rogues, not a pack of rabid wolves or something else?”

  “I am positive beyond any doubt that this wasn’t an animal attack.”

  Pap sat back, palms flat against the desktop, eyes red, his rounded face stretched into a look of haunted despair. His words came out uneven, broken. “Wolves are one thing; we can accept that, after a fashion.” He wiped at his face with one hand as if attempting to cleanse it of the gruesome reality of the Lamont slaughter. “But I don’t know how to handle this. Alicia was so young, not even as old as Hartly; and Ann, her sister, blooming into adulthood, so much promise…gone. This, this, this is…”

  “This is a tragedy beyond justification, beyond reason,” Everam said, his heart heavy. “It is a tragedy that will mark each of us for the rest of our lives.” Everam’s voice hardened. “But we shall deal with it, learn from it, and move ahead.” He continued after a pause, more softly again, “We are a community strengthened by our unity of purpose and our compassion and zest for the peace and beauty of life. The Lamonts gave us much of that—those are the memories we will cherish. These are strengths that can’t be torn from us, by any means.”

  Pap said nothing, his eyes staring into the distance.

  Everam sat quietly with him, the hubbub from the common room providing a backdrop of normality as his own thoughts shifted without form, trying to adjust to this menace thrust into their midst, one that threatened the foundations of their society. Despite his assurances to Pap, despair scratched at the edges of his thoughts, a fear that their trials were just beginning, that the menace would grow much worse. Not only was there this new threat of overt violence and the question of how to stop it, but there was also the more insidious threat seeping into North Greelys Folly and, now, Stonybruk. In many ways, that disturbed him more than the violence at the Lamont farm.

  Furthermore, what of Mel’s oddment? Was it, as Targo suggested, merely the blathering of an ancient, self-delusional sect intent on promoting its own agenda in an era of suffering and chaos? Everam’s every sense battled against such a simplistic diagnosis. The commitment of the Bathus Pod argued against it. It was easy to compose a tale of prophesy when it was written afterward using the pen of hindsight. Nonetheless, how reasonable was it to assume a human-dolfina collusion that extended back for millennia?

  The words Willow had recited from the Mysteries of Bathus drifted into his mind:

  …the echoes of the future wail through our minds of a time yet to be when humankind stands poised on the threshold of final failure—a failure from which we
cannot recover. Once again a miasma will reach across the earth, fueled by the thick, sweet blood of greed and the dark deceits of lust and power that smolder in the rubble of the past. Man-creatures will shove aside the ingrained lessons of horror in a frenzy of ignorance and egoism bent once again on inundating the earth with their excrement. The earth shall cry out her agony, her message of never again sharp and clear.

  Was this prophesy, the scrying of a predetermined future? Or was it a forecast, a reading of consequence from known causes? Everam shuddered. Prophesy or forecast, the storyteller’s words seemed to be coming true. They were entering another cycle of chaos. Unlike our ancestors, can we find the wisdom to avert humanity’s attempted suicide?

  Pap stirred and then stood, his voice turning confident. “You’re right, Everam, we must learn from this and deal with it. We can only move forward from this point. We will not change the past by moping or wishful thinking. We can, however, change the future.” His voice grew more determined with each word. “And that is what we shall do.”

  Everam smiled, hope pushing aside some of his anxiety.

  “First,” Pap announced, “I’ll call together the village. They need to be informed, need to help us package a plan of action.” Rising, he pushed through the kitchen door, all traces of his shocked lassitude gone, calling for Hartly. Everam followed. Pap instructed Hartly to run through the village, tell everyone he encountered that there would be an emergency community Gather at the Doma this evening and to make sure that the outlying farm centers were notified. He turned to the remaining patrons, lifting his voice. “Everyone understand?” He gestured at Everam. “Servitor Everam has been out to the Lamont home. His findings are gruesome and disturbing. There are things we must do to protect ourselves. We’ll decide what this evening.” Waving off several inquiries, he told them to wait until this evening and then turned to Everam. “You’ll stay, attend our Gather?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Anything else I need do in the meantime?”

  “Have you a good trekker in the village?”

  “One of the best, Old Bently. Did most of the surveying around here early on. Knows these lands backward and forward.”

  “Might be a good idea to see if he can follow these rogues’ back trail?”

  “Might be at that,” Pap said, “although I don’t much like the looks of this weather.” He glanced out the windows. “It’s early for snow.”

  “We might also want to call the Doma at Hosberg, get them in the loop, since they’re your sponsoring town.”

  “Good point. I’ll take care of that too.” Pap turned to leave, heading to the Doma to use the comdev but paused at the door, hand on the knob. “Almost forgot, Everam. There’s a fellow here by the name of Fillip.” He hesitated a moment. “Seems a weaselly sort to me; he’s asking after you. Says he’s a senior correspondent from North Greelys Folly. Wants to talk to you about the Lamonts.” Pap raised a brow. “He’s got a room upstairs, a private room. Came back shortly after you left, stuffed himself, and went upstairs. Said he was worn out, needed a nap. Expect you’ll see him before you go.”

  Everam frowned. “Correspondent, the Greely’s Gazette?”

  “Don’t recall, exactly. I don’t know anything about a gazette.”

  “Thanks, Pap.”

  “Oh, and by the way,” Pap said, “he keeps asking after someone, a helper, I think, a big guy, asks if he has arrived yet.” He shrugged. “I don’t know who he is, haven’t seen him, either.”

  “Sure, thanks for the information. I’ll see you again this evening.”

  Chapter 18