The Mirror After the Cavern

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Chapter 16

  “They don’t really need me with this group of traders, not since Moochie was banished from the caravan; he stirred up more than half the trouble I had to deal with,” Ruten explained why he had been assigned to leave the caravan to take a ride with Silas until the wayward wagon re-connected with the main body of the caravan.

  “So, Minnie had a number of tale tales to tell about you,” Ruten said after they unloaded his mule’s supplies into the wagon and settled into their seats on the bench, both mules hitched to the wagon while the horse walked placidly alongside. “I believe Prima might have grown a bit tired of hearing your name trip from her lips so often and so glowingly.

  “And her nonsense about your eyes is true I see,” Ruten said as he looked at Silas’s face. “It’s an unusual look, but it might not be so bad once you get used to it. Might do you some good with the lasses in the taverns late at night after a few tankards of ale,” he laughed and slapped Silas’s knee. “Mayhaps that’s part of why Minneota went on-and-on about you,” he amused himself.

  “And you used this knife to bring down a turkey?” Ruten asked. “I’ve seen good hunters throw five knives and miss every time.”

  “I killed the turkey, and a jackal, and a pheasant,” Silas defended his reputation. “The knife’s pretty smart,” he confessed. “I think it knows what to do better than I do.”

  Ruten gave him a sideways glance, not sure how to take the comment.

  “I’m sure the knife will take good care of you if you take good care of it,” he decided to noncommittally answer.

  “How long until we reunite with the rest of the caravan?” Silas asked.

  “I estimate that we won’t tie up with them for a couple more days; from what I remember of this route, the high road stays in the mountains quite a bit longer before it descends,” Ruten hazarded a guess.

  “Let’s stop early tonight while there’s still sunlight. I want to inspect your cargo – I assume you haven’t done so?” the guard checked.

  Silas shook his head.

  “Prima gave me an inventory of what you were carrying, and we need to check. Some of these orders came directly from the palace in Ivaric,” Ruten explained.

  That afternoon, they stopped in a grove of cedar trees, where they removed all the tightly wrapped canvas covers and wooden containers. Ruten compared the cargo against a list on a thin wooden board, while Silas looked in curiosity at the variety of mirrors that were stacked in the bed of the wagon. They all were highly reflective, with no apparent flaws in the reflective surfaces. The sizes and the frames varied greatly. The most outstanding mirror was the largest one in the wagon, taller than Silas, and contained in the most elaborate frame in the wagon, a brightly gold structure that was large and deep and ornate with carved features that included weapons and ferocious animals and skulls.

  Next to the mirror with the warlike frame was the broken frame of a matching piece, holding several broken shards of a matching companion. The rest of the mirror laid in shiny pieces on the canvas wrapping that lay on the floor of the wagon. Silas listened as Ruten mumbled to himself while ticking off the mirrors on his inventory list.

  “Well, given everything you and this wagon have gone through, it’s amazing that you only have one broken piece; everything else looks in good shape, excepting the odd scratch here and there on the frames, and we can buff those away. But the one broken mirror is part of a set ordered by the palace in Ivaric, so there may be some unpleasantness to withstand.

  “Prima gets paid for all of this, so we ‘ll let him handle that end of the bargain,” Ruten shrugged, and then the pair carefully repadded and wrapped the fragile cargo back into shipping containers. They settled into their campsite, put their animals out to pasture, and caught fish in the river, which Ruten filleted and prepared for their dinner.

  Two days later, the movement towards rejoining the caravan became tangible.

  “There’s the caravan road,” Ruten pointed to a visible break in the mountainside greenery above them. Silas could clearly see the open air where the road was carved along the terrain of the overhead slope, and the road was much lower, closer to their riverside trail than it had previously been.

  “There’s no telling where exactly on the road the caravan is – they may be ahead of us or behind us. If we don’t see them by tomorrow, and if there’s a passage to connect the two roads, I’ll go scouting for them. This trip is getting boring!” Ruten told Silas.

  During the middle of the following afternoon, a narrow game path appeared to lead upward along the mountainside, and Ruten decided to follow it.

  “I expect I’ll be back in a day or so,” he told Silas. “You won’t have any problems out here on your own, that’s obvious!”

  Once he rode away, Silas sat in silence. He felt comfortable. He knew that the caravan was aware of him, and had plans for him to rejoin – the knowledge was a weight off his shoulders, a liberating sense of feeling that there was someplace he belonged. He actually thought of the caravan as home almost as much as he considered the Wind Word Speaker Academy at Heathrin home, or even the Tracker village of Brigamme, where he’d grown up. And he’d only been with the caravan a few days, but he felt that he’d been accepted by the likes of Prima and Ruten and Minneota. They’d treated him well; he hadn’t been looked down upon as someone who couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to succeed. Though of course, in the case of the two villages, his dreams had been for spectacular and unique successes, achievements and status far beyond what he would enjoy while with the caravan.

  He was supposed to return to Heathrin someday and resume his studies, but a moment of clarity told him that the delay in his studies would set him further behind in age, behind the others his age who were already entering their practice of the arts of the Speakers.

  Or perhaps, he wistfully told himself, somehow, he would miraculously achieve some other unexpected form of greatness; Krusima had told him as much.

  He rode on behind Hron and the mule that Ruten had delivered until night fell, then he made camp and spent the night sleeping underneath the wagon load of expensive and elaborate mirrors. Looking through the cargo with Ruten had intrigued him, and had awakened something in him, an interest in the extraordinary ability of the sheets of glass to so perfectly reflect back the way the world looked.

  When he woke up in the morning, the interest in the mirrors remained foremost on his mind. He opened the packaging around the broken mirror and carefully pulled out a shard of the sharp-edged glass at the bottom, a fragment that was large enough for him to see himself in the reflection, or to be used to see what was behind him.

  He played with the reflective ornament throughout his morning’s ride, until the sounds of a horse’s hooves revealed the approach of another person. He quickly stuffed the mirror piece in his pack while he looked at the distant horse, trying to discern who was riding it towards him. The figure was unusually thin, too thin to be Ruten, and seemingly too thin to be Minneota even.

  After a few more yards of travel narrowed the gap further, he realized with a shock that the new visitor was unexpectedly Sareen, one of the loveliest girls of the caravan crew, and someone who Silas would have never imagined having a reason to visit. He’d spoken to the beauty a time or two in the caravan, but never with confidence, and never for long.

  “Well, are you going to say hello, or do you want me to go all the way back to the other wagons?” she demanded forthrightly when she was within hailing range. “I expected at least a ‘hello’.”

  “Hello. Hello, hi, Sareen,” Silas stumbled over himself to respond. “I wasn’t expecting you to visit me down here. It’s great to see you,” he told her with rising enthusiasm that brought a warmer smile to her face in response.

  “Why are you here?” his mouth involuntarily blurted out the question on his mind.

  The woman rode her horse up next to the wagon, then turned to begin riding in the same direction as Silas.

  “I came to se
e you. If you’d prefer I not accompany you, I’ll leave,” she immediately confronted him.

  “No, please don’t leave! It’s great that you’re here. I’m happy you’re here. Would you like to ride on the wagon bench with me?” he asked in a torrent of words that he hoped would ease her dismay.

  “Stop the wagon and I’ll climb on,” she agreed. Minutes later, after she’d dismounted, then climbed onto the wagon bench – and left Silas to the task of affixing her horse to the wagon – they set back in motion.

  “Let me look at your eyes,” she told him peremptorily, and as he turned to face her, she placed a finger and a thumb above and below one eye, then pulled them wide, stretching his eye open for her close scrutiny.

  “It’s very pretty,” she said after completing her examination and releasing her manipulation of his face. “But I think I would have chosen other colors; the gold is nice, but I’d choose something else besides purple, I think. But it looks good on you,” she tried to soften her implied criticism.

  “I’m sure any color would look good for you,” Silas said bashfully. “But I didn’t have a choice. It’s the colors of the gasses in the caves – I think that’s where the colors came from. I’ve got them on my chest too, for a wound that healed after the knife fight with Moochie,” he had exaggerated the encounter by calling it a knife fight, but it was only a small detail, one that he hoped made him seem more desirable.

  “You fought Moochie? Minnie said so, but I didn’t believe it. He was a bad man; I made sure I was never alone with him,” Sareen recounted.

  “Here, this is the scar from our fight,” Silas offered, pulling the neckline of his shirt to the side to reveal the colorful line across his shoulder.

  “It’s pretty there,” Sareen murmured as she placed a pair of fingers against his skin. Her fingers felt soft and warm, making Silas blush at the touch. “Maybe the colors on your eyes aren’t so bad.”

  They lapsed into silence, until Silas, desperate for a topic to discuss, asked Sareen what colors she would choose for her eyes.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” she responded immediately, and proceeded to spend the next several miles of their journey discussing the colors that would complement her hair color and complexion best.

  “How long will it be until we reach the rest of the caravan?” Silas asked after a momentary pause in the long soliloquy.

  “We should see them sometime later this afternoon. Ruten says the two roads come together at a bridge,” the girl answered after a moment’s pause, as she re-oriented her thoughts to the new topic.

  The conversation lagged afterwards, and Silas felt doubly glad an hour later, when the trail grew much wider and opened up before merging into another, larger road at the beginning of a stone retaining wall that fenced in the bridge over the unnamed river Silas had followed for so many days.

  Ruten was sitting astride his horse at the junction, waiting for the arrival of Silas’s wagon.

  “Behold the return of the wild child!” he exclaimed. “And Silas too,” he added, causing Sareen to stick her tongue out at him.

  “The caravan passed through here about twenty minutes ago; it shouldn’t be any time at all to catch up. Or would you two rather linger behind everyone else?” the guard asked.

  “I am desperate to see other people!” Silas announced.

  “Well then, by all means, let’s proceed to find the others,” Ruten turned his horse and began to lead the way across the bridge.

  As they rode along, Ruten pulled his horse alongside the wagon. “We’re going to be entering Ivaric’s lands this evening, and we’ll be in Eric, the capital city in three days. It’s a different kind of land; have either of you ever been here before?” he asked.

  Both shook their heads in the negative.

  “The ruler here is Derith, who titles himself the ‘Father of the Land.’ He fancies himself to be brilliant and aggressive and ruthless. He is definitely ruthless and aggressive. He’s bright, but not as bright as he thinks; he doesn’t allow temples or the worship of the gods.”

  “Why would he do that?” Silas asked in shock.

  “Because he expects his people to worship him above all others, and to follow his orders. He’s a ruthless bully. We’re here on business. We aren’t going to enjoy this city the way we do most others. We keep our heads down, don’t get involved in anything going on around us, keep our mouths shut, and stick to ourselves. It’s the only way to be safe here,” Ruten spoke emphatically. “Derith has patrols and snitches everywhere in the city, and if they claim they heard you say something bad about the ruler or his family, you’ll be punished.

  “Do you understand?” he sought their affirmative answers.

  “I want you both to promise me you’ll stay out of trouble. Don’t wander away from the wagons,” he insisted.

  Silas took the message to heart. He’d heard similarly critical comments about Ivaric when he’d lived with the trackers of Brigamme, people who traveled to all the lands of the continent and beyond.

  His reunion with the rest of the caravan occurred that evening, when his wagon caught up with the others before sunset, just as they were preparing to camp for the night. Silas found himself to be the center of attention at dinner that night, as the others in the caravan asked multiple questions and examined the proofs of his adventure.

  The next morning, Prima himself abandoned his spot in the front of the caravan to ride with Silas and learn about the episode.

  “I can actually believe that Moochie would follow our caravan for days to get revenge; he was always motivated by envy more than achievement,” Prima began. “I’m sorry you were the target of his attack.”

  “I’m the one who spotted the smuggling spaces,” Silas pointed out.

  Silas proceeded to tell the story of the fight and the earthquake and the plummet to the floor of the deep cavern. Prima listened intently, and took every word of Silas’s story as truth, questioning but accepting the incredible details that the boy offered, and giving Silas confidence to reveal more and more of his tale.

  “Krusima told me to go on,” the boy confided, as he gave a sideways glance at Prima to see how the caravan master took the statement.

  “Are you sure it was the god? How do you know?” Prima didn’t cast immediate doubt on Silas’s assertion.

  Encouraged by the lack of scorn in the man’s voice, Silas explained about his visit to Krusima’s temple in Heathrin, and the voice of the god he had heard there, the same voice he had heard in the cave.

  “Krusima’s a good-hearted fellow; he gets a bad reputation for being grouchy, but it’s not the whole story,” Prima opined. “But more importantly, if you have a god looking over you, there must be something particular about you. We’re lucky to have you, and I’ll keep even more of an eye on you,” Prima said, a statement that seemed peculiar to Silas.

  “I should be talking to you about our arrival in Ivaric,” Prima went on. “Under the terms of our agreement with your Speaker Guild, this could be the first opportunity for us to hire a new mule-handler for the wagon, which would let us set you free to return to the academy at Heathrin and resume your studies.

  “I can do that for you if you want, but I don’t think you should,” Prima’s voice settled into a deeper, more personal note. “Silas, if the gods are treating you as they are, I think they mean for you to be a part of this caravan.”

  Silas listened carefully to the sentence. It rang true; he’d had similar thoughts. But he found it hard to give up the belief that he could go back to the Academy; if he did so at that moment, he wouldn’t really miss as much academic time as he had feared – he might be able to continue with his studies in a timely manner after all.

  “We’re not an ordinary caravan,” Prima intrigued him by saying. “I can’t reveal a great deal more than that for now, but you wouldn’t be just part of a typical mercenary trading party,” the leader revealed. “That may be the whole purpose for you being with us now; the gods may
have intended you to join us.”

  Silas looked at the man inquisitively. The hint of a secret was compelling, and Silas wanted to know more.

  Hron was hungry, Silas suddenly realized. He pulled the wagon onto the verge of the road, then stopped, allowing Hron and the other mule to begin to eat.

  “What’s going on?” Prima asked in surprise.

  “Oh, Hron is hungry, and I guess we just got used to eating at random times when we were traveling on our own,” Silas realized that the stop wasn’t consistent with the caravan’s traveling pattern. “I’ll let him have five more bites, and then we’ll go.”

  “How did you know he was hungry?” Prima asked.

  “I, just, know,” the words came slowly. Silas tried to understand how it was that he could tell the needs of his mule. He didn’t have any understanding of the moods of the other mule that Ruten had left with him.

  “Interesting,” Prima said noncommittally. Silas shook the reins, and Hron lifted his head, then tugged, causing the other mule to cease eating and resume pulling the wagon.

  “I’ll stay with your caravan for now,” Silas decided. “When will be the next chance to make a choice about returning to the Guild?”

  “After Ivaric, we’ll go to Avaleen, and you could consider it then.” Prima made it seem easy to wait until the next opportunity.

  “I’ll stay with the caravan for a while more,” Silas immediately decided. He knew that his heart wasn’t full of desire to return to the Academy and Botton’s reign of cruelty.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Prima said thoughtfully. “I think it’s meant to be. You’ll not enjoy visiting Ivaric, but once we get past this pile of dung, you’ll get to see the world and enjoy some cities that have reputations that will warm a young man’s heart! We don’t usually have to ride through leagues of empty wilderness as we did on this portion of our circulation.