The Mansions of Idumea (Book 3 Forest at the Edge series)

by Trish Mercer

  “But they rarely do! Only once in a while does one erupt. And only once in a while does a house go down in one when the crust breaks. Not that many people die each year.”

  “Isn’t just one death enough to discourage people?” Hogal said. “And if there’s land away from the danger, why play so close to the edge of it? I knew of a man that wanted to drive carriages along the cliffs in Coast to give people views of the sea,” he said thoughtfully. “He told the carriage owner he could get very close to the edge without sliding off and into the sea. He didn’t get the job. The carriage owner wanted someone who could drive the farthest away from the edge, away from danger.”

  Perrin rolled his eyes. “I’ve heard that story before. It’s even older than you, so it wasn’t your friend. You just made that part up.”

  But Hogal was undaunted. “It’s like teasing a poisonous snake. You may avoid getting hit for a while, but your chances of escaping unharmed decrease the longer you taunt it. My thinking? Live a long life by avoiding the snakes altogether.”

  Every night Perrin was exposed to a little more Hogal Densal thinking, and every day as he baled the never-ending hay he thought of ways to argue against the old man. At dinner he’d challenge an idea from the night before, and the old rector always seemed to have a way to counter his arguments.

  When Perrin discovered that Hogal was using ideas from The Writings, that’s when he started to study them too, just to find ways to anticipate his arguments and punch holes into his thinking.

  But Perrin had fallen into Hogal’s trap. Studying so intently didn’t give him weapons against Rector Densal, but destroyed his Idumean theories instead. He felt his arguments weakening, his ideas changing, his heart softening.

  He didn’t fully notice it until it was almost time to go. One week before he was to return to Idumea he nearly finished the baling. In the late afternoon the widow came out of her house to point Perrin down the road. A large herd of cattle was making its way down the quiet dirt road to her corral.

  “My brother has been keeping them for me until I could take them again. My husband’s herd. And now I can feed them all Raining Season with what you’ve put away. I’m going to survive, thanks to you. You’ve saved me!” and she kissed his cheek.

  That night after dinner, which he ate quietly still thinking about what the woman said to him, Hogal cracked his knuckles and said, “What are we to argue tonight, my boy?”

  “I don’t feel like arguing.”

  “Because it’s useless? Because you keep losing to me?”

  “Because I’m tired,” Perrin said evasively, “and I’m thinking of other things.”

  “Because you’re finally thinking there’s more to life than just getting what you want, isn’t there?” Hogal said. “Life is about taking care of others, not yourself. When you finally feel that in your heart, Perrin, you will be a great leader. Not a leader the king would be proud of, but one the Creator would be proud of.”

  The forty-three-year-old Perrin held his head again and rubbed his temples. “Hogal, Hogal,” he muttered. “I am taking care of others. I’m trying to find the source of all of this. I’m trying to make a safer world for the woman you tricked me into debating, and the children we have. I am serving them and all of Idumea!”

  No, you’re not, my boy.

  Perrin heard the words distinctly as they were announced in his mind.

  You’re serving your rage and anger. I haven’t seen that pride in you in years. Come now, Perrin. Let it go. Come back to Edge.

  “Just give me some time. Hogal, I can get to the root of this. I can solve it! Just a few weeks—”

  Why play with the danger, Perrin? If you insist on staying, they will get you. Snakes, cats—I know you hate them all. So why mess with them?

  “But my parents—”

  Don’t want you here, my boy! Are you doing it for them or for yourself? Staying here will end in death—yours. Don’t leave another widow in Edge. There’s another plan for you, my boy. You’ve changed your path before, now do it again. Don’t take the wrong path.

  Perrin lay down on the bed, weary from the wrestling in his mind.

  He remembered when he went home to Idumea after that season. Hogal had given him a copy of The Writings and Tabbit had given him a huge pie that turned to a messy but delicious sludge in his pack on the horse. He licked it all clean.

  But before he left, he spent most of that last night confessing to Rector Densal all that he’d ever done, and to whom—well, as many of the poor girls as he could remember. His great uncle listened carefully, never interrupting. When Perrin finally finished all the torrid details, Hogal said, “The past is behind you, my boy, and the world is before you. Now, head out on the right path.”

  Remember how we talked about the Refuser? He hated you then, and he held you securely in his grip. But you escaped him, my boy. With the Creator, we freed you that night.

  That night the self-indulgent boy vanished, and what returned to Idumea was a refocused young man. Suddenly realizing he wasn’t the center of the cosmos changed the way he viewed everything. Gone was his desire to conquer hapless, hopeless females, but instead to conquer himself. Relf Shin thought his son had grown three inches taller while he was away, but Perrin knew he’d actually learned how to walk with a better purpose.

  The Refuser hates you even more now, and he wants to destroy you. If you stay, you’ll give him ample opportunities. Perrin, go home.

  Back in Idumea he occasionally ran into some of those girls from his past, still optimistic despite his treating them like cheap paper that he used once and tossed away. He usually met them at the wretched dances his mother forced him to attend. But he’d use those few minutes on the dance floor with his past victims to tell them he was sorry for his treatment of them, and then he’d sneak out of the building when his mother wasn’t looking. The closeness of the young women nearly drove him from his resolve to have no contact with females, and he knew there were many more girls he missed apologizing to.

  That was another reason he dreaded returning to Idumea; he wasn’t sure if someone’s wife or a woman he politely tipped his cap to along the busy roads in the past few weeks wasn’t someone he once took advantage of. On more than one occasion he felt a female’s eyes on him longer than was necessary, and he worried that it may have been someone still justifiably harboring a grudge, or worse, lingering feelings. The last thing he wanted was an uncomfortable meeting in front of his unsuspecting wife and innocent children.

  The only encounter, though, was running into Versula. She probably was still clinging to her adolescent feelings for him, unless Idumea had a new custom to express sympathy by attacking the bereaved with one’s lips.

  Never had Perrin been so happy to have his wife by his side as he was when Versula approached them at The Dinner. Not only because he used Mahrree as a buffer, but because the comparison between what he used to want and what he had now was so extreme. Deciding to have no relationships with women for ten years had purged his soul and taught him what he really wanted in a companion.

  Little wonder, then, that when he finally met Mahrree at age twenty-eight he had no idea how to properly court her. Not only was he rusty in talking with women, the kinds of conversations he’d had as a teenager were all focused solely on achieving one selfish result. He didn’t know then how to tell a woman he wanted to give her his soul. Fortunately Mahrree figured it out.

  And still she loved him, in spite of himself. He’d told her everything that night after The Dinner. He’d already explained a bit as to why he’d been in Edge as an eighteen-year-old, but that night he felt the need to explain a few things more. Even though Hogal had told him his past was forgiven and gone, and reminded him just before he married that he needn’t burden Mahrree about the boy he used to be, Perrin had always felt a bit dishonest. And now, with his past crowding him on every side, he decided Mahrree needed to know why he grew more anxious each day.

  So he spilled everything: ab
out Versula, their past, and why he didn’t want her over for dinner, about the rest of the innocent girls, his shameful roguishness . . .

  He’d wrapped himself around her in their bed that night, partly so that he could feel her responses to his confession, but more so because he feared that once she learned what kind of a young man he had been, she’d never allow his arms around her again.

  She had laid there, patient and motionless, listening to the stories of his sordid youth, and when he finished, she remained quiet for several minutes. He’d squeezed his eyes shut in the dark bedroom, waiting anxiously for her verdict.

  Eventually she startled him by kissing his lips, returning his embrace, and confiding that somehow she always knew he had a past, but also knew he wasn’t that man anymore. He didn’t try to mask the tears of relief that slid down his face onto hers, and concluded that only a woman from Edge could love him so intensely and forgive him of so much.

  Only a few short hours later came that cold snowy morning, then the frantic ride back to Edge . . .

  It wasn’t hard to understand why he loved Edge so deeply. The little village had grown on him, and now Edge had grown up before him. Even his old hay field had been recently taken over by the Edge of Idumea housing development, but he would make it a point of riding by frequently just to remember what he’d been and what he was now.

  And now that he was an officer with a beautiful and trusting daughter, he hated what he’d been even more—

  —That was it.

  It slapped him, clear and cold.

  Suddenly he understood as stared up at the ceiling.

  He didn’t hate Idumea as much as he hated who Perrin Shin was in Idumea.

  That’s right, my boy. So don’t take the wrong path again. Come back home to Edge.

  “Message received, Hogal,” Perrin whispered to the darkening room. Edge was where he found his purpose, his soul, his family, and even forgiveness.

  But even though he understood, it didn’t mean it was easy to let go. The pang in his chest demanded he get to the bottom of all this, to find out who sits in that filthy pit and spews out the orders that killed his parents while they slept. Shem claimed they were happy in Paradise, but how could that be enough?

  Perrin couldn’t imagine how he could ever sleep that night, but somehow he did.

  And then he was sitting, and a small child—a boy, maybe five years old—was leaning against his knee intent on telling him something. It was amusing. Perrin laughed.

  He saw other children and people, lots of them, listening and laughing. The child smiled at him, unsure of what he said that was funny, but enjoying the attention.

  There was something familiar about the children. Or rather, something that would be familiar about them.

  Perrin took control of the dream. If he could just turn his head to see what was behind him, if there were a structure of some kind, a house of weathered gray wood with window boxes filled with herb plants . . .

  Perrin could tell he was awake, but he didn’t bother to open his eyes. The scent of rain filled the morning air, and for a few glorious moments he wasn’t sure where he was as he let the heavy humidity weigh him down on the bed. He concentrated on that little boy, trying to remember the details of his face that were already blurring away—

  But then everything came back to him.

  The guest quarters, the garrison, the burial.

  Something dark and twisting and bitter spread through his chest, but just as suddenly as it rose, another feeling overcame him, curiously warm.

  And then it grew.

  It grew until it glowed hot like a fire on a cold rainy night, fully engulfing the dark. The heat dissolved the sorrow and filled his entire body until there was nothing left but a new and unexpected feeling.

  Joy. Pure joy.

  In the space above his heart he felt the pressure from the evening before, as if two warm hands pressed past his flesh to touch his soul.

  He knew he was smiling. His face hadn’t been in that position for so long it felt almost unnatural.

  A memory came to him as clear as if it was happening at that moment. He was a little boy, not yet old enough for school, lying in bed listening to a thunderstorm tearing through the night. He ran to his parents’ room, not because he was scared, he’d told himself, but because he needed to make sure his parents were all right. Besides, their bed was always warmer.

  He had crawled over his sleeping father to slip under the blankets between his parents. His father placed a warm, heavy hand on his chest.

  “I appreciate your concern, son, but the storm can’t touch me here,” Relf had told him groggily.

  Joriana had kissed his head and placed her warm hand on his chest as well, interlacing her fingers with her husband’s. “But you can stay with us until morning, Perrin, just to make sure we’re all right.”

  And he had.

  Perrin didn’t know he even had any more tears as he laid there with eyes still shut. But these tears came for a different reason. As they slid down his face they released the last of a weighty burden that had sat on his shoulders all night like coffins. Light filled the room that Perrin could discern even through his closed eyelids. The warm pressure on his chest expanded his lungs fully for the first time in days, willing him to go on.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” he whispered to the presence that surrounded him, “and that nothing can touch you now. I’ll be fine, too, eventually. And I’m going home to Edge.”

  The pressure pushed tenderly into his chest and straight into his soul. The presence filled him so completely he was sure he would feel some of it for the rest of his life.

  He knew it was morning. He knew it was time to get up. He knew it was time to leave. He hated to break the moment, but he also knew the moment was his forever. He opened his eyes to greet the light.

  Outside the dark, heavy clouds continued to rain, and there was no fire lit yet in the guest quarters, but Perrin’s room was inexplicably bright and warm.

  ---

  In the next room, Shem woke with a start in his narrow bed to see Perrin standing over him like a great black shadow.

  “Up, Zenos! We have Administrators to face. Then, we go home.” His voice sounded like the man Shem always knew.

  Shem grinned and sat up as Perrin plopped down next to him, his eyes remarkably soft.

  “You saw them, didn’t you?” Shem said reverently.

  Perrin shook his head but smiled. “Better. I felt them.” He put an arm around Shem. “I told you recently that you missed your calling, that you should’ve been a builder. I’ve changed my mind. Shem, you should’ve been a Guide.” Impulsively he kissed him on the forehead. “Come on, little brother. We have scary old men to face, then we go home to Edge.”

  Shem sighed in relief. “Good, because Perrin, I have to say this, and I hope you don’t take it the wrong way: I know this is your home and everything, but I’m so glad we’re leaving. I have to admit, I really hate Idumea.”

  For the first time in days, Perrin laughed.

  ---

  They’d looked for Gadiman everywhere in Idumea. But he wasn’t in his office, not at his usual inn taking his usual meal—boiled beef, one fried potato, one slice of black bread with onion, without fail—and he wasn’t at home.

  His housekeeper, a woman with a pinched face and a scowl likely acquired from working for the Administrator of Loyalty for so many years, told Doctor Brisack that morning, “He went out last night for the burial, and never came back. What he does is his own business. Now, unless you want something else, I have a gathering room to sweep.”

  Doctor Brisack went back to the Headquarters early that morning, baffled.

  “Nicko,” he reported to the Chairman, “he’s simply vanished! He was seen at the burial last night, but then he gave me the slip again. I sent out ten men searching last night, and all reported back this morning they found nothing. He never went home last night.”

  Mal considered this. “He
’d know we wanted him for the hearing this morning. I’m sure someone got him the message. You’d think this is precisely the kind of thing he’d be eager to show his face for. I don’t get it.”

  The doctor sat in his chair and sighed. “Must have done something out of the ordinary.”

  “Maybe the weasel went out to celebrate at a tavern for the first time and didn’t know how to hold his mead,” Mal guessed. “He’s likely under some filthy table wondering why his hair is stuck to the floor.”

  The men chuckled.

  “Ah, well. We can proceed without him,” Brisack decided. “I’ll make some excuse for him. In the meantime is everything ready?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mal nodded. “Perrin’s not going to know what hit him, nor will he know what to do with his new little buddy. His father spoke to him last night, and I imagine he still hasn’t stopped salivating.”

  “He’s untested, though,” worried Brisack. “We haven’t even started his training. That was supposed to begin after graduation—”

  “We don’t need to train him,” Mal said simply. “All we need to tell him is that he’s going in as the new captain.”

  Brisack squinted. “Nothing more? He’ll be useless to us.”

  “Oh, he’ll become useful,” Mal assured him. “As you pointed out, we haven’t trained him sufficiently for the task. But there’s someone very close to the situation who can train him for us, and I suspect that after all he’s witnessed here, he’ll be most willing.”

  Mal clasped his hands on his lap.

  “The Quiet Man is about to receive his first direct assignment, after all of these years. It’s almost become too easy, my good doctor. Too easy.”

  ---

  There’s something soothing about plunging one’s hands into soapy water, even if it’s to scrub the mud out of work clothes for the second time that day.