An Elegy of Heroes

by K. S. Villoso

  “She’s smart enough. She could have easily walked out any time she wanted to.”

  Burg laughed. “You keep telling yourself that, Ylir. I’m amazed you can still sleep at night.” He stepped out of the room. Ylir looked away and struggled against the reflex to run his hands over his eyes.

  “Easy enough to say, Burg,” he murmured, staring out over the window and into the sea. What was that she’d told him, about drowning in land, miles away from the sound of the ocean? He shook his head. He was becoming sentimental. He couldn’t afford that kind of inconvenience. A man like Kefier, perhaps, could live his whole life at the beck and call of his emotions, but he needed to be infallible. That decision in Al-ir was final. Burg couldn’t possibly understand.

  But Burg was gone, now. He really didn’t think he would do it, but when he went back out to ask the men, they said he had grabbed his bag and left.

  Morning came and went. He replied to Jarche, signed papers, paid an extra month’s docking fee for the Aina’s Breath. Then he saddled his horse and took the long, lonely road back to Al-ir. He hadn’t changed his mind, of course, but he could see her off. He could at least make sure she saw one familiar face during the ceremony. She would probably hate him, but sometimes people needed to make certain decisions even if they didn’t always agree with them. His father would’ve been proud. Angry, too, which would’ve been an interesting sentiment. It wasn’t exactly the worst thing he had ever done.

  ACT THREE

  “And when Watu the Blind felt the boy’s face, he said, ‘There will be much greatness in you, my boy, and also much sadness.’

  And Agartes said, ‘I do not care.’”

  -The Ballad of Agartes Allaicras, Dalon y’n Cavalli version

  Chapter One

  “Start from the beginning, Bannal.”

  “That was the beginning. You weren’t paying attention. And since when did you stop calling me lord?”

  “When you started wanting to get me killed, idiot. You knew we were bound home. You could’ve sent us word, could’ve let us know that things are more...dire than we’ve been led to believe. Instead you keep silent until we almost get roasted alive. If they ever write stories about this hundreds of years from now they’ll be laughing at the sheer scale of your incompetence.”

  “I had counted on your ability to keep yourself alive. And here you are. Loud, complaining, and alive. So.”

  Kefier opened his eyes and found himself on his knees, tied to a post in the middle of an enormous hall. A surge of panic ran through him. He began to strain against the rope. Someone came up to him and touched him on the shoulder, and he lashed out, striking the man’s elbow with his skull. The man fell back, cursing.

  Another man, tall, with a trimmed beard and a hooked nose that was neither Jinsein nor Gasparian, came up to him. He was holding a staff. “Sapphire didn’t tell me you were going to be difficult.” His robes were a pale green and there was an emerald bracelet around one wrist.

  “He wasn’t, but then you knocked him around and treated him like a prisoner.” Sapphire’s familiar drawl woke him up from his stupor. He turned to see her seated at a round table, her elbows drawn up. “Let the man go.”

  “You’re giving me orders?”

  “Please let the man go. My lord.”

  The man shook his head before pulling out a small knife. Kefier tensed, but he said nothing as the man quickly cut through his bonds. “Accept our hospitality,” the man said, indicating the table. Kefier stared at him for a moment before nodding and following him.

  One of the mages rose to give him a seat. Kefier slumped down. He felt like the morning after a hard night’s drinking and struggled to keep his vision clear. Sapphire offered him a mug of warmed wine. “Perhaps it’s time to explain everything to me, now,” he said. What he really wanted to do was punch the man, but even with his head spinning he knew better. Knew better now, at least.

  The man took the seat across him. “I don’t know if we’re acquainted enough for that yet. If you’re just a hire, then all I need to do to set this right is give you your pay, lend you a boat, and send you on your merry way. But you’re still here.”

  “So I am.”

  “Sapphire hasn’t told us all she knows.” He glanced at the woman, who glowered back at him.

  “I thought it best you keep him alive so he could tell you himself,” she snorted. “Since you’re so wise, and all.”

  “Your insubordination vexes me to my core,” the man grumbled.

  “Does it? Good.” Sapphire made a nonchalant gesture. “He’s met Yn Garr. Or a man fitting that description.”

  “Have you, now?” Bannal looked curious.

  “I’ve told Sapphire about that already,” Kefier said, getting annoyed. An interrogation was the last thing he wanted at that moment. “He was in Gorent years ago. I don’t know him, personally, never spoke with him. That’s all I can give you.”

  “No.” Bannal’s eyes started glowing and Kefier found himself frozen to his seat. “Not all. Look at me.” By habit, he resisted as soon as he heard those words, but it was useless. His chin began to turn.

  “Sapphire—” he managed to groan.

  “Don’t fight it!” She didn’t seem alarmed, which was distressing all the more. “He just wants to look into what you remember. So that we know you’re not lying.”

  “No,” he said. “No!” He tried to fling his arm to break the man’s gaze and noticed, too late, that Sapphire was holding him back. He nearly turned on her, wanting to smash her jaw with his palm, but suddenly he felt a twinge along his left temple. Bannal’s irises were blue, and so deep he thought he saw the swelling of the sea.

  He was standing, so it seemed, along a rocky shore, marred by sea-grass and long strands of amber-coloured bull kelp. A tiny crab was crawling along the loose strap of his sandal.

  “So this is Gorent,” Bannal said behind him. He stepped over a swollen kelp pod and cringed at the resounding crack. “It’s almost—interesting. A little bland, but—”

  “What have you done?” Kefier asked. Moments ago he had wanted to tear Bannal’s head off his shoulders, but now—now, all the hate had gone. He was gazing at the row of small islands on the horizon. He knew that there was no possible way he could be home, and yet here he was. Except that only moments ago he was in Bannal’s dining hall in Lake Enji, everything else felt right. The scent, the sound, the feel of pebbles under his sandals, the wind...

  “I’ve tapped into the spaces in your brain that can never forget,” Bannal said.

  Kefier couldn’t make sense of that. “This isn’t how I remember things at all. This is real.”

  “It isn’t,” Bannal reassured. “We’re just better at remembering things than we think we are.”

  Kefier ignored him and stepped across the sand, where the sea turned it into mud. He sat down and felt water seep through the bottom of his trousers. He plunged his hand to the side and felt, through the cold wetness, a broken piece of shell. He pulled it out and held it against the sun’s glare.

  “You’re getting distracted,” Bannal said, appearing beside him again. “I need you to think about Yn Garr.”

  “I don’t know him,” Kefier murmured absently. “Don’t really know. Don’t really care.”

  “You have to care. There are important things at stake here. We need to know exactly what Yn Garr had done, and what he’s planning.”

  Kefier shrugged. “What’s more important than this?”

  “What?” Bannal looked irritated. Kefier glanced at the horizon.

  “I don’t know what you did. Maybe you’re right. But this is my home, everything about this is right, and I haven’t been back in years. I didn’t think I would ever be back even though I’ve wanted nothing else in the world.” He smirked. “The tide’s just so high, and the water feels—it must be mid-summer, by now. That’s the best time to gather oysters. If you don’t bother me, I’ll get you a nice, fat one.”

  “Focus, lad. This
is more than just a random snippet.”

  “Yes, we’re just at the right spot. Look at that.” He pointed to a rough path between two boulders. “The village is ten minutes’ walk from here. I wonder what Hilkiah had done since he became chief. That old man had the most ridiculous ideas. He was a priest, too, if you can believe it.”

  “We’re not there, Kefier,” Bannal said. He grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back. “Mid-summer. There’s a reason you remember that. Don’t you see where we are?”

  “We’re home.”

  “Kefier—”

  “We’re...”

  It was the silhouette in the distance that stopped him in his tracks. Two silhouettes, actually—boys laughing in the sand. He almost rushed to them, wanting to ask who they were, where everyone he knew was, but then Bannal’s words came back to him and he realized that the voices—at least one of the boys’ voices—was familiar. He walked four steps towards them before stopping. That was close enough for him to see their faces, to hear what they had to say.

  They were oblivious of him. “This is amazing,” the taller boy was saying, leaning against a staff made of driftwood. He was browner, the beginnings of a fuzz were already on his lips. “I can’t believe no one else found this spot. Our basket’s already full and we’re still finding clams.”

  “You know that rumour about sea urchins in the sand?” the smaller, younger boy asked.

  The older boy laughed. “No! You spread that around? But you acted all innocent when Gadir told us!”

  “You have to, if you want it to stick! And besides, it’s not like it’s a complete lie. I’ve stepped on them around these parts way too often that it could be true. Here’s a nice, fat one.” He pulled something out of the sand and added it to a large basket beside him. “What do you think? Roast ‘em, or stew, or...”

  Their conversation was interrupted by an unusually strong wind. The smaller boy got up and pointed in the distance. “I see sails.”

  “None of the fishermen are out there right now,” his brother said.

  “And none have those sails. Enosh, that’s a foreign vessel out there.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Can you tell where she’s from? You’re the one who’s been reading all those books.”

  Enosh shook his head. “What I can tell is that she’s in trouble. Help me get the boat out—the size of her, I think she’s about to tip soon. Quickly.”

  Kefier didn’t follow them. He remained sitting on the sand, cold beads of sweat dripping over his face. “You don’t want to see if they make it?” Bannal offered. “That’s a storm brewing out there.”

  “Don’t need to. I know they did.” He knew, too, that it had been a stupid decision, that even if their flat, green dinghy was designed for those waters, there was no guarantee that the sailing boat wouldn’t drag it along as it went under. For it was already sinking, even before they could push the dinghy into the sea. Probably ran aground on some corals. They would find debris along the shore for weeks.

  Kefier and Bannal stared at the horizon in silence. Nothing was happening, and even the foreseen storm had stopped. Bannal cleared his throat. “So what happened?”

  “Enosh saved him. The only survivor,” Kefier said, without looking. “He was like that. Didn’t even think. Got hero blood pumping through his veins.” He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, they were sitting on a low bench in a village, nestled among small, reed huts and tall pine trees. Several children, dressed in thick furs, were kicking a leather ball around. Bannal glanced around and took a deep breath. “It’s winter, now,” he said.

  “Late fall,” Kefier corrected him. He was almost afraid to breathe again, but he did, and the scent of rain and pine-needles filled his senses. He approached one of the trees and laid his palm against the bark.

  “So he stayed that long,” Bannal said.

  Kefier nodded. “He stayed two years.”

  A boy was walking out of the hut. The same boy from earlier, but taller now, the strands of hair getting darker on his upper lip. The other boy followed him. “You can’t be serious. We need you for the hunt.”

  “Gorrhen says he wants me to help him translate some scrolls he’d found,” Enosh said. He was angry, but it was obvious that he was struggling not to yell. “You know I can’t miss this opportunity.”

  “The Segedo tribe are laughing at us, do you know that? They say our chief would rather spend time lounging around the city than back in his island, helping, where he should be.”

  “Since when did you start caring about politics?” A note of humour. “Maybe if the island chiefs spent more time in Sen’senal, learning about our ancestors, we wouldn’t have half as many spats as we do now. Tell Emong he’s chief for the next week or so.”

  “The hunt, Enosh—”

  “You know more about hunting than I do. What’s the problem?”

  He stared at him, dumbfounded. Then he stepped back and Enosh went on his way.

  “Sen’senal is our only city in Gorent,” Kefier said, watching him walk away. “It’s not much after you’ve been to Jin-Sayeng or even Cairntown.” He laughed a little. “But compared to the rest of the villages, it’s something. Enosh wanted to be more than a chief, you understand. More than a clan leader.”

  “You never went with him to this city? To visit Yn Garr?”

  Kefier didn’t reply immediately. He was looking at his surroundings, drinking in every detail. If this was his memory, he thought, where had it been all these long years? He could still recall shutting his eyes back in that Dageian ship, trying to be where he was now and failing miserably. He needed it then.

  “Once,” he finally told Bannal. “I went with him. I needed to buy good rope to fix the fence.”

  “Show me.”

  He hesitated again. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with anything.”

  “I’ll tell you when I find what I’m looking for. Come. Sen’senal. They have a dock there, don’t they?”

  “They—” and then he was there, standing close to the small marketplace the Gorenten used to trade amongst themselves. Baskets of fish and fresh meat were strewn across the sand or hung from makeshift stalls. Gazing out to the distance, Kefier noticed huge, empty blots, as if somebody had deliberately spilled ink over the memory.

  “I never liked it here.” He glanced at two men arguing over a small sack of mushrooms. “When faced with other tribes, people grew more—I don’t know what the word is in Kag. They pretended to be better than they were. Father noticed that, didn’t like it. He brought us here more often when he was alive. We needed to learn to read and to speak Dageian.”

  “Dageian?” Bannal looked surprised.

  “Not the mainland talk. We trade with the northern colonies sometimes.” They reached a small building, made of stone. Bannal’s eyes flickered slightly. “Our people find little use for scrolls and books, but when they find them, they bring them here. This is where he lived—that Baidh man.”

  “Yn Garr.” Bannal stepped in front of the door and gestured. “Open it for me.”

  “Couldn’t you—”

  “It’s your memory, Kefier. I am merely an intrusion. Open it.”

  He turned the knob and stepped inside. The building was tiny, no more than a small house. He didn’t know who’d built it—foreigners, most likely, and so long ago that it probably didn’t matter. He remembered how his father used to bring men here before the rains started so they could patch up the roof and other things.

  Enosh was sitting on a desk, head bent over a book. An old man stood at the furthest corner, also reading. A strange look came over Bannal’s face. He stepped towards the old man and placed his hands over his shoulders. The old man continued reading, oblivious of him.

  “You son of a bitch,” Bannal said. “Even like this, I never thought I’d catch you. What’s that in your hands?” He tried to jerk the book away, but it slipped from his fingers. He bent down to take a look and swore. “Th
ere’s no text on this. You don’t pay much attention, do you?”

  Kefier said nothing. He glanced out of the window and saw himself, at twelve years old, peering from the outside. “Enosh,” he was saying listlessly. “Can’t you take a break and get some food with me? One of the Bedar tribe is selling venison stew. He’s put quail eggs in it.”

  “Leave me be, Kef, can’t you see we’re busy? I’m trying to decode something. Gorrhen’s getting close to finding this—well, you wouldn’t understand.”

  He flicked his fingers. “Of course I wouldn’t. You never explain.”

  Enosh’s eyebrows furrowed, but he didn’t even look up.

  “Should I at least buy you a bowl?”

  “I don’t have time to eat. Go away, Kef. Go!”

  Their surroundings faded. They were standing along Sen’senal’s shores again. Bannal swore a second time. “You remember quail eggs but not what Yn Garr and your brother were reading. This is just—”

  “Oh, shut up. That’s all I have for you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Kefier felt a warm touch on his arm and opened his eyes. He was back in Enji with a tremendous ache running along the back of his head. Moon was sitting beside him. She looked concerned. “They shouldn’t have done that.”

  Bannal, too, had just awoken. “The insubordination,” he growled.

  “You could have killed him,” she replied. “He wasn’t prepared. I can’t believe you let him do this, Sapphire! Is chasing after Yn Garr so important you would risk a life?”

  “Yes,” Bannal said without hesitation while stirring a cup of coffee. “Despite what my student implies, you’re still alive, aren’t you?”

  Kefier bit back the string of remarks building at the tip of his tongue. “You said you’ll talk to me.”

  Bannal looked annoyed. “Right. Yn Garr.” He fell silent. Kefier caught a note of discontent by a twitching along the muscles of his jaw. The man wasn’t even considering his question. He was thinking about that scene, in Sen’senal, whatever that implied. Kefier’s presence there was a mere inconvenience. He knew this because it was exactly the same way Yn Garr used to look at him.