by L. S. Kyles
Chapter 2
Many leagues north of the Southern Sway, somewhere between the sprouts and stalks that comprised Arn’s Promise, Brine Denbauk was standing in the muddy ditch that had once been the Leresh and trying to imagine what his face must look like.
It was bad, he knew—real, real bad—but without a mirror in his pack or a pool of water nearby (not to mention, both eyes pasted shut with river mud), he could only imagine the degree of badness.
But it was bad last time, he grumbled. Why would it be any different this time?
He dragged his fingers through the alcoves of both eyes and the flat of his mouth (a wad of soupy muck building on his fingers), and then flung it at the ground. He scraped at his face a few more times, doing so until he could blink open his lashes, and stared down at the thick mess caked to his palms and robes.
Oh, yeah. It was just as bad as the last time; Maybe worse.
He slung his hands at the creek bed and made a face no good Amian should ever make. The truly irritating part about this was that he’d tried to avoid such a confrontation.
The night Iman had distributed the missions and he’d seen his name on the Leresh decree—somewhere beneath the name of Counselor Sneel and the thirty or so Lathians they planned to recruit—he’d decided right then and there to greet each name on the list.
I’ll go make friendly with them, he’d said. I’ll get acquainted with them, he’d said. I’ll get to know them as soon as they arrive and then things won’t be so awkward on the trial.
Now, however (as he pressed his palms to his forehead and ran them over his head, listening to the sound of muck as it sloughed from his hair and plopped into the mud), he wondered if he hadn’t missed the mark.
Things aren’t awkward now, are they? Oh, no. They’re not awkward at all. My new friends are just having a series of accidents, that’s all. Three accidents, to be exact. Three accidents in the same da—No, no, no. Not the same day. The same morning! It’s only morning! At this rate, it’ll work out to be five or six accidents by the time we go to bed!
From deep inside his belly, the fire-voice said, No one’s that clumsy, Rugs.
Oh? Brine answered, sarcastically. You don’t think I know that?
The fire voice said, Not even bumbling Godfry’s that clumsy.
At this, Brine remembered his former teacher and stopped slinging his hands like a crazy person. There was always the chance that Godfry had experienced his own nasty accident and, as a consequence, wouldn’t mind a little extra mud on his robes, but since the old man had remained exempt from the first accidents, Brine erred on the side of caution and directed the muddy excess on his hands at the soupy creek bed between his ankles.
Better safe than sorry, he thought, sliding his hands over his ears and discovering he could hear the old man back there, the sound of slow and irregular footfalls struggling through the mire, the sound of desperate breaths being sucked down a windpipe.
But he’ll still try and talk, Brine thought, smirking to himself. God love him, he could be breathing his last and he’d still try to talk.
“…hel…hello…,” Godfry panted. “…hello there…”
Brine stopped dragging his fingertips through the grooves of his face and frowned. He wondered why Godfry would be telling him hello. It was possible that the old man had forgotten who he was again—My, oh my, that never got old—but it was equally possible the old man was speaking to someone else, someone coming up hard on their right.
From behind Godfry, in sharp contrast to the old man’s weak and meandering footsteps through the mire, there came the sound of something heavy stomping through the riverbed, the sound of tree trunk legs churning up the sprawling trail of slop.
Had they been in the Sway to the south, Brine would have guessed he was listening to the passage of a bull or stallion stamping through the pasture, but since they were here in the fields of Arn’s Promise, he guessed it was the adult male of another species. He did not, however, need to guess what the creature was up to.
In the same panicked movement, Brine went scrambling out of the way and turned to face the oncoming footfalls, glancing up just in time to spy a barrel-chested man charging towards him from the eastern bank. The man was wearing knee-high boots, baggy trousers, and a sleeveless vest that allowed Brine to see the spidery thatch of armpit hair exploding from between his massive chest and his meat-slab arms.
Leaning heavily on his stick, sandals clutched loosely in one hand, Godfry said, in a series of panting half-breaths, “…and how…how are you…today…good si—?”
“I’m very well,” Brine said, taking his teacher by the arm and drawing him very gently out of the way.
“…not…not you…,” Godfry protested, giving him a weary, yet quizzical look. “…I was… speaking to…to this…this gentleman…”
“Oh,” Brine said, making no indication that he saw the other man, save for the quick series of high-steps he made to get clear of him. “I’m sorry. I, uh…I didn’t see him there.”
“…he’s…right…there…,” Godfry explained, nodding at the man with his bushy head of cottony hair.
Continuing to avoid eye contact with the violent escort, Brine kept his gaze on the man’s torso, making a show of comparing the man’s bristling armpit hair with his frothing chest hair, and said, “Well, if you’re interested, I can tell you that I’m not doing so—”
Turning away from Brine and towards the man behind them, Godfry said, “…love…lovely weather…eh?”
Forgetting himself for the moment, Brine’s gaze left the mercenary’s forest of chest hair and made contact with his eyes. He watched as the man’s curly black beard split in the conniving grin of a weasel, a grin Brine had been seeing all morning long: bruised and lumpy gums, bent and yellowed teeth—missing teeth—flecks of black here and there (from the vine).
Letting the grin linger, the man tipped Brine a nod, hoicked his pack higher on his back, and turned his head back to the western bank. He never once glanced at the old man in the bright yellow robes.
Brine dropped his gaze from the big man’s face and let it droop like a violet on a cloudy day. He marked the man’s passage by the wet plopping of his boots.
“…there…,” Godfry muttered, adjusting his foot in the mud, “…did you see that…Sam’s boy…did you see…that man didn’t see me either…”
Brine paused in his sludge-removal and glanced sideways at his former teacher. It was possible, he supposed, that the mud had finally sucked the bright yellow robes from the old man’s body, but such was not the case. When he glanced to the left, he saw the same canary-yellow garb Godfry had been wearing earlier that day, the same assortment of, what appeared to be, lime-green monkey arms sown into the fabric.
Shaking his head, Brine doubted strongly that anyone with two working eyes could miss this esthetic abomination, but he kept that to himself. Over the past few days, he had learned the hard way that there was no reasoning with his former teacher. For that matter, there was no arguing with him either.
It seemed that somehow, over the last ten ages of his estrangement, his childhood mentor had finally succeeded in saturating his mind. He’d grabbed for one too many books, he’d entertained one too many thoughts, and his mind had finally reached maximum occupancy.
This would explain why previously acquired information was now seeping out, such as Brine’s identity. It would also explain why new information wasn’t seeping in, like all the reasons Brine had given for not wearing a banana-tinted outfit or, better yet, not going to the Harriun in the first place. Brine wasn’t the only one, either.
The council had given the old codger ample reason for refraining from these missions—the fact that he was an old codger ranking high among them—but the old codger simply refused to listen. As soon as Godfry realized that everyone else’s name was printed on one of the four decrees and that his was the only name omitted, the council might as well have stuck their heads out the n
earest window and argued with the ravens on the parapets or the ants in the mortar.
Stay and oversee the castle, Mums had urged him. A common point of reference for the other missions is just as important as participating in a mission. To which Godfry had said, Now, which one are you going on, Mums? And after this, Reets had hobbled forward and said, Godfry, yeh ole goat, why don’tcha stay an’ do some’a that readin yeh like so much. Cain’t never get too much’a that readin, huh? To which Godfry had turned and said, And when does your trip leave, Reets?
In the end, Godfry had simply worn them down, resisting their sagacious advice like a very old and obtuse pillar of hair. When it was clear that he was about to accompany the royal healer on what was likely the second most dangerous mission of the four—Fair’s fair, now. Poor Kowin’s taking his vacation all by his lonesome—Mums had grudgingly allowed the eldest adviser to accompany Balthus Sneel into the Harriun.
Some of the other advisers had balked at this, Godfry among them, but once the titan had explained that it would be the safest of the missions (no other mission had thirty hired men-at-arms as acting escorts) the remaining advisers rescinded their objections.
Except for Godfry, that was. He took slightly longer to convince than the others, one more example of his oversaturated mind. It was not until he was informed that Brine was going along that he changed his tune.
Sam’s boy’s going? he had cheered. Oh, good. I haven’t seen Sam’s boy in ages!
Sam’s boy, on the other hand, was not so happy. He’d been happy that first night in the castle, back when he thought his childhood idol still had a clue, but now…well, not so much.
If he wasn’t pulling Godfry’s feet out of the river mud, he was detangling his walking stick from the bean sprouts or unhooking his satchel from the corn stalks. If it wasn’t a physical ailment requiring his attention, it was one of a cognitive nature. In fact, the vast majority of the issues were cognitive in nature.
In no particular order, there was Godfry’s delusion that none of the other mercenaries could see him, his unshakable belief that they were all on holiday in the back of the royal gardens, his undying conviction that someone had stolen all the books from his pack, and last but not least his reoccurring certitude that the Forn River—the source of the Leresh and their intended destination in the north—was just over the next rise.
So no, there was no changing the thoughts in Godfry’s head (at least not without a sharp stick and a hammer). Brine could either ignore the old man or he could march back to the City of Onador and give up.
Sloughing off the muck from his arms, one arm at a time, Brine said, “I wonder what that’s about, them not seeing you.”
“…I…I don’t know…,” Godfry confessed, his head nodding, “…it’s like…it’s like I’m… invisible…Sam’s boy.”
“That’s horrible,” Brine said, scraping at the layer of scum on his belly. “I wish there was something we could do about that.”
“…indeed…,” Godfry said, staring at the embankment without shame, “…they seem to…to notice you just fine…”
Brine made a sideways glance at the western bank and caught a blurry glimpse of their Lathian escorts. They were jeering and pointing and, general speaking, having a hardy laugh at his expense.
Forgive and forget, he told himself.
You got that right, the belly-fire agreed. Because if they’re still acting like that after everything you and the old man have done, then there’s no help for them. Unless you want to go over and apologize for not getting out of their way? Is that what you want? Go over and tell them how sorry you are for getting knocked down? Maybe open the conversation by apologizing for all the air you’ve been breathing and all the space you’ve been taking up?
He gave a weak chuckled at this, the only chuckle he’d had that day, and decided to forgive and forget. He wasn’t ready to give up on the Leresh Mission (or on fixing his kingdom and restoring the Temples of Owndiah) and the Lathians weren’t interested in making friendly, so forgive-and-forget was his only option.
As for the most recent set of slurping noises he heard closing in from behind…
Very gently, Brine took his teacher by the arm, guided him away from the sounds, and spun to face his attacker. The hulking man in the river mud—the one who’d been drifting steadily towards him as he cut across the Leresh—quickly straightened his path into something resembling a line. He parted his lips at Brine and offered another ugly, vine-speckled grin.
Some might have interpreted this gesture as a sheepish concession that the man had momentarily forgotten the rule about straight lines and the quickest routes between them, but Brine did not. Brine saw it for what it was…another bitter concession that the man’s mischief had been revealed.
Tha’s one fer you, boy-o, those yellowed teeth declared. Tha’s one fer you, but let’s jus wait an’ see bout next time, huh?
Oblivious to the look, Godfry released his walking stick and raised an old and age-spotted hand. “Hello there,” he called, giving a palsied, little wave. “Nice day, today.”
The Lathian mercenary crashed past the old man without so much as a cordial nod or a wink of acknowledgement, his menacing gaze never straying from the disciple.
Godfry’s fatigued face sagged with consternation. “Did you hear me, Sam’s boy?”
Brine ran his fingers down his sides and flipped the excess at the ground. “Yes,” he said, pulling the back of his robes around (the clean side) and wiping off his hands.
His teacher lowered his bushy brows and brooded over this, staring at the wet of the riverbed as he constructed his next question. He seemed to have one forming, as indicated by the slight quivering in the vicinity of his lips, but before the inquiry could come the old man placed his free hand to the walking stick and seeming to collapse upon it.
“Are we close?” he asked.
Scraping his only slightly-cleaner hands across his forehead and cheeks, Brine said, “Close to what?”
“To stopping.”
Brine’s hand froze at his chin. He could feel his frustration with the Lathians trying to tear itself free and go after the old man. Now, now, now, he chided himself, taking a deep breath and praying a little prayer.
When he was calmer, he said, “We’re still a long way from stopping, Godfry, but if you need a break…,” he held his hands at his sides, palms up, “…then we’ll break.”
“We will?” Godfry asked, frowning. “Won’t we fall behind?”
That’s the plan, Brine thought, staring at the blurry idiots on the riverbank. To the old man, he said, “A little.”
“A little?” Clearly bothered by the idea, Godfry lowered his white caterpillar brows, seemed to stare straight through the slop in which he stood—as though he were wading through crystal streams and counting the minnows—then quickly jerked his gaze to Brine and said, “Maybe Bal could slow the pace?”
Brine stopped grooming himself and shot a look at Godfry, the sort of look that should have prompted his aged companion to start shaking his head or lowering his eyes or saying things like, Oh, well. Never mind. Or, It was just a thought. Or, You know what, let’s do something else, something entirely different.
But Godfry did none of those things. He went right on starting at him, as patient as the mud around their feet.
Brine peeled the straps of his pack away from his shoulders. “I don’t think so,” he said, speaking flatly.
Godfry made a baffled expression. “Come again, now?”
Brine shook his head. “It wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “He won’t listen.”
“Won’t listen, you say?” Godfry’s expression worsened. He was slowly coming to grips with the fact that he had understood the first time and that the problem was not with his ears, but with his young companion’s mouth. “And why’s that, Sam’s boy?”
Oh, let’s see, Brine thought, there was the previous evening when we tried to introduce ourselves at the Shun
gate and they all streamed past our smiling faces and outstretched arms—Balthus included—then, of course, there was this morning, when I asked Sladge—our huge Lathain guide—a few questions about my map and the route we were taking and he just turned his back and walked away. And now, apparently, there’s this steady flow of men marching around us—ostensibly checking our back trail—and not one of them has managed to say Hi, Hello, or Kiss my backside?
Retrieving his sandals from the muck (he’d been carrying them in his hands when he was struck from behind) Brine grabbed Godfry by the sleeve and began dragging him towards the western bank.
“It’s just a feeling,” he said.
Shambling along behind, looking more and more confused every moment, Godfry said, “Has something happened, Sam’s boy?”
Brine turned to the western bank and narrowed his ruined eyes until he was able to pick out a particularly large figure amidst the mob. Upon finding the giant of a man—his shaggy animal hide tunic pressing back the hoard, his thin rawhide bandana holding back the skeins of greasy black hair—he shifted his gaze to the hunched figure hovering at the man’s side. He stared for a very long time, the muscles in his face hardening like the mud on his robes.
If he hoped to convince Godfry of the Lathians’ degenerate nature, he needed to put away hints and winks and proverbial nudges to the old man’s ribs. If he was going to make this work, he needed to pull out the wagon-sized canvas and start painting pictures with the use of bright, self-evident words.
He also needed to be careful.
Counselor Dowell—as well as the other counselors of the roundtable, it seemed—did not view Balthus with the same level of reptilian loathing that Brine did. Brine didn’t know how it was possible, but it was true. Over the ages, the royal advisers had simply acclimated to the hunchback’s disturbing peculiarities.
That, he wondered, or the vile little creature has used magic to cloud their perception.
Brine thought back to the preternatural event he’d experienced in the king’s anteroom on that first night back from Valley Rock. He remembered the way his eyes had locked with those of Balthus, the way his body had drained of strength, the way the room had rushed past as though he were gliding across it.
At the time, he’d shrugged the episode off as a bad case of the nerves. He certainly had plenty of those to go around, what with the prospect of entering his father’s bedchamber and watching the old man die; it wasn’t like you did that on a regular basis.
But now, after giving the event careful consideration, he thought the numbness in his limbs might have been more than the effects of travel fatigue. He thought, as well, that the sensation of movement through the room might have been more than the dizzying effects of fear.
Still staring at Balthus as he went creeping along the western bank, Brine said, “Do you remember when we were crossing the riverbed? The second time across?”
Beside him, Godfry said nothing.
“You remember when I…,” Brine’s face tightened, “…when I fell?”
Again, his befuddled colleague said nothing, the epitome of senility.
“Well, I did fall,” Brine said, holding up his muck-crusted hands as evidence, “and it wasn’t an accident, either,” he added, checking behind the old man for more roaming attackers.
Finding none, he fixed Godfry with a look and said, “I was pushed.”
Godfry had begun to pant again, but he did manage an airy, but skeptical, “Pushed?”
“Yes,” Brine said. “Pushed.”
“By Balthus?”
“No, not by…,” Brine bit his tongue and filled his lungs with an inhalation of warm, wet air. “It was one of the others, his hired hands.”
A silence followed, one in which Brine could almost hear the old man’s mind struggling to catch up, then Godfry said, “So we can’t speak with Bal because…,” his voice trailed off, his mind getting away from him, “…let me see if I have this…because some other fellow…pushed you down?”
“They work for him, Godfry,” Brine hissed. “Think about it.”
“Right, right, right,” Godfry agreed, “but Bal didn’t actually—”
“I’m not speaking with him.”
“Right, right, but—”
“It’s not an issue!” Brine snapped, turning on the old man and pointing a trembling finger in his whiskered face. “It is not an issue! There’s no way we can lose them—No way!—not even if we gouged out or eyes and cut off our feet! Not even then!”
There was a moment where Brine could actually feel the glowing white layer of his hatred and wrath baking off the arm he had thrust into his teacher’s face. After that, the layer quickly dissipated and he felt nothing but stupidity and cold and not a little bit of shame. His mouth was open and he closed it. He took notice of the filthy finger he’d shoved in the old man’s face and drew it away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning to the western bank that stood only a few strides away. He made his way onto the firmer ground bordering the corn stalks and reached back for his teacher’s arm, helping him up the slope. “That wasn’t very Amian of me. I’m…I’m, uh…,” his words failed him and he stood there feeling like there was something more he should say and finding there was not. “I’m sorry,” he said, finishing lamely.
Shambling onto the bank, stamping his sloppy feet against the ground, Godfry said, “Sorry for what now?”
Brine had to look away, he just had to. And a moment later, after he’d taken one or two deep breaths and spent time staring into Glory, he still couldn’t look at the old man. He reached over blindly, took Godfry by the arm, and began leading him to the north.
With his other hand, he pointed a grimy nail at the ground and said, “We can’t lose them.”
Beside him, Godfry followed the fingertip to the riverbank beneath them, squinting at churned mud and trampled corn stalks.
I’m going to have to show him, Brine thought. I’m going to have to get down on my hands and knees and show him what I’m—
Godfry’s eyes opened and his face spread wide in a classic ah-ha expression. “A trail!” he exclaimed.
Brine lifted his gaze to the blue sky of Glory, uttered a silent prayer of gratitude to the Great Amontus, then lowered his eyes to the tiny figures in the north and said, “Would you like to stop and rest?”
Godfry groaned with delight. “Oh…yes…,” he said, and with that he slumped hard against his walking stick and let his head droop from between his shoulders. He stayed like that for a long time, staring down at the green fronds and shattered stalks, the mangled ground and innumerable boot tracks, then said, “Do you, by chance, have a book?”
Brine, who’d been watching their back trail and searching the river bed for more clandestine pushers, gave the old man a look.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“Ah, good, good…good…,” and just in case Brine had missed it, “…good.”
Brine nodded slowly, waiting for Godfry to continue. “It is good, actually,” he said, hoping this might help.
Still leaning on his stick, still staring aimlessly at the puddles of water that had formed in the Lathians’ boot prints, Godfry said, “Mind if I have a look?”
“I…” Brine started, a flood of pride coating his insides. “Well, no. Not at all.” He pulled his pack around and untied the draw sting. The Wogol was right there on top, right where he’d left it. He pulled it out and handed it over. “Have you read it before?”
“More than likely,” Godfry said, holding the book at arms-length and squinting his eyes at the cover. “I’m a voracious reader, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Brine said, pulling the book from his teacher’s hands and flipping it around to the front…then pointing a finger to where the title was sown into the cover…then lowering his voice to a whisper and saying, “That says, Wogol.”
Godfry glanced up at his student, then down at the book. “Wogol,” he said, sounding los
t. He flipped open the cover and went thumbing through the pages.
Wincing at the blank expression on his teacher’s face, as well as the flippant nature of his browsing, Brine said, “You’ll be careful with it, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” Godfry assured him, flipping to the last few chapters. “I, of all people, know the value of a good book.”
Brine’s wince didn’t go away. “Well, it’s more than a book,” he said. “It’s the manual for how I live my life.”
“Mm-hmm,” Godfry said, turning to the back page and trying to read the script.
“The title,” Brine said, “Wogol,” he clarified, “that stands for Words of Good Living.”
Godfry was frowning heavily at last page. “Oh, yes. Yes, of course,” he said, his voice absent of confidence. “Now, who was it who authored this work?”
Brine’s wince deepened. “It was dictated by Owndiah,” he said, “but I suppose the author would be his prophet, Amontus. Amontus did the actual scribing.”
Flipping back to the front, his brows practically lying on his nose, Godfry said, “Did he, now.”
“Yes,” Brine said flatly. He sounded as though he were coming down with food poising. “Do you think you’ll like it?”
“Oh, very much so,” Godfry said, glancing up long enough to give his student a smile. “Fiction is my favorite.”
Brine stood there with his mouth open, looking for all the world like one of the dead fish in the river bed behind him. He’d intended to tell Godfry about all his favorite passages, about the prophets of old foretelling God’s miracles, about Amontus (the Great Prophet) ministering to his people’s needs, about the lowly fishermen and street-sweepers finding God’s purpose in their lives…
Somewhere beside him, Godfry was saying, “Don’t suppose you could make a loan of this, do you?”
Brine turned his stunned expression to the old man, just stifling the sneer that tried to form on his lips. He didn’t really want his teacher holding the book, let along carrying it, especially after that last remark.
“Well, I would,” he said, “but it’s like I said. The Wogol is very dear to me. I’d hate for something to happen to it.” He pretended to consider the idea. “Hey, here’s a thought. Why don’t I…,” he gestured amiably to himself, or as amiably as he could considering that fiction comment, “…why don’t I read it to you?” He extended his hand for the book.
Godfry wrinkled his nose, then gave his bushy head a violent shake. “Oh, that doesn’t work—Listening doesn’t work. I need to read the words. That’s the only way I can keep sharp.” He smiled warmly and tapped the side of one temple. “I’ll take good care, though.” He pulled his satchel from his hip, lifted the flap, and dropped the tome inside. “Don’t you fret.”
Brine scratched at his head, then heard himself say, “Okay.” He scratched his head again and wondered if he wasn’t going crazy. Surely, he must be. Otherwise, his former teacher had just insulted one of his most treasure possessions, had asked to borrow it with the very next breath, and had stowed it away in his pack as Brine decline the request.
“Well, I have my wind back,” Godfry said, pulling his sandals from his shoulder and dropping them to the ground. He had only a moment’s trouble as his left foot—thick with muck and reeds—refused to slide into its straps, but after a bit of harsh stomping and curious hmming, the sloppy foot slid home and off he went, shambling after their Lathian guides.
Brine stared after him, his numb lips still mouthing the word, okay, as he dropped his own sandals on the ground and slipped them on his feet.
