by Alec Hutson
“So how long will you stay?” his father asked gruffly after clearing his throat. “You’re welcome to our old house, for as long as you need it. Or you could sleep here,” his father said quickly, gesturing wide with his arms, “though we don’t have enough space for your friends as well.”
“Like we said, I’ve come back for a reason.” Keilan paused, still hesitant to bring up what they needed to speak about. “I need to know more about my mother.”
His father rocked back in his chair, surprised. “Your mother?”
“Yes. Where she came from. Her family.”
Keilan’s father slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, lad. Your mother never spoke of her life before I rescued her from the sea. I pushed her a few times, of course. Tried to get her to talk. Once or twice I think she even came close to telling me something. But then she’d get this look, almost like she was scared, and she’d go quiet as a rabbit. I’d say you know just as much as me.”
Keilan ran a hand through his hair, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Truly? You were wed for more than ten years. There were no secrets told… ”
His father shrugged helplessly. “Nothing. It was like she’d been a gift from the Deep Ones. She used to joke with me that she was just sent here to bring you into the world.”
Silence fell in the hut. Had this whole journey been for nothing? Was there nothing here that could give them a direction?
“I… ” Mam Bellas began softly, before her voice faded away. Then she swallowed hard and stood up straighter. “I know something.”
All eyes turned to Mam Bellas in surprise, and she seemed to wilt under the attention. She blushed furiously, twisting a handful of her dress until her knuckles whitened.
His father’s surprise was plain. “You do?”
She nodded quickly. “I think so. I might. Or perhaps it’s nothing. I don’t want to raise your hopes… ”
“Please tell us,” Keilan said gently.
A strand of her long hair had fallen across her face, and she tucked it behind her ear. “You know I’m not much of a gossip,” she began, speaking to Ferris in an almost apologetic tone, “but your wife –” She glanced at Keilan. “– your mother, Vera, was always a topic in the village. I thought it mostly jealousy—the women wanted her pale skin and beautiful hair, and I’d wager the men secretly wished they’d been the one to pull her from the sea. Not that they’d ever admit to that,” she added quickly, showing a small rueful smile. “Anyway, you were probably too young to remember,” she said to Keilan, “but your mother caught a terrible sickness one summer. She went white and cold, yet the sweat was just dripping from her.”
His father made a face that showed he remembered. “There were a few deaths that year from that sickness, and I thought she was going to be another.”
“You took her to Mam Ru,” Mam Bellas said, and his father nodded.
“Aye. She’s good with herbs and treatments, and she never showed any hate towards Vera.”
“Well, Mam Ru called on me to bring over some elderleaf and ginseng. When I got to her house, your mother looked like she was just about to swim down to meet the Deep Ones. Her shining hair was just sticking to her, all limp and faded. And her skin was as white as the midwinter sky. But her eyes were open, and she was talking. Not to anyone there in the room, though. She kept saying a name, over and over again. Apologizing, asking for help.”
“What was the name?” Keilan asked, leaning forward.
Mam Bellas scrunched her face, trying to dredge up the distant past. “I… I don’t remember. It was something foreign. Not anyone in the village, I’m certain.”
Keilan slumped back, disappointed. “Well, did anyone else hear what she was saying?”
Mam Bellas smiled. “Oh, yes. Mam Ru told me she’d been listening to your mother going on for days. And that canny old cat has a memory like the sea itself. She’ll know it, I’m sure.”
They downed the last of the bitter root tea and hurriedly departed Mam Bellas’s hut, making for the listing hovel of mud and moss where Mam Ru had resided for as far back as anyone in the village could remember. Before Keilan’s mother had come, she’d been the one whispered about as being a witch, and Keilan had always thought that perhaps her kindly disposition towards Vera was a way of expressing gratefulness that she no longer had to suffer sly looks and dark mutterings. Outside of his family’s own home, Keilan had probably spent the most time with Mam Ru, listening to her stories about the sea and forests, helping her to gather herbs and flowers, and devouring whatever delicious stew she had bubbling in her cookpot. The thought that she knew something about his mother—but had never confided in him—did bother him, a little. But perhaps by not sharing these secrets she’d been trying to protect him.
As they skirted the edge of the Speaker’s Square, Keilan caught a glimpse of movement from the road leading north to Chale. His breath caught in his throat. Had it been? He stopped, peering through the blood-red foliage veiling the road, hoping he was right.
“What is it, Keilan?” asked Nel, craning her head to try and see what it was he was looking for.
“I thought I saw… ”
A pair of tired-looking nags crested a small rise, and seated behind them on a rickety old wagon was an old man in a patched broad-brimmed hat.
“Pelos!” Keilan cried and started running towards the wagon waving. The old fishmonger gaped when he saw Keilan, the stalk of straw he’d been chewing on falling from his open mouth.
“Pelos, I’m back!”
The fishmonger couldn’t even muster a reply—the astonishment in his face made Keilan want to laugh, and his wagon had lurched to a halt because the reins had fallen from his slack fingers.
Then he was climbing down from the wagon with surprising spryness and wrapping Keilan in a crushing hug, tears streaking his face. “Oh, lad! You’re alive!” He pushed Keilan away, looking him up and down. “Grown a bit and wearing such fancy clothes. And that sword! The eyes of that bird—are those gems real? Must be worth a fortune!”
“It was given to me by a woman who makes the archons of Lyr tremble,” Keilan said, feeling like his smile might split his face.
The old man wiped at his face with a sleeve. “Lad, lad. Archons? Lyr? I knew it, I knew it. Remember I told you once you didn’t belong here? I was right. Oh, if only your mother could see you. She’d be so proud, I know that as well.”
Pelos looked past Keilan, and surprise shivered his face again. “Lad,” he said, swallowing. “That’s the Pure who took you, isn’t it?”
Keilan turned towards where his companions and his father had gathered a respectful distance away. “It is, Pelos. But he’s a… he’s a friend now. We are on a quest together.”
“A quest?” the old man said, shaking his head in disbelief. “On what sort of quest does a paladin ally himself with… ” He glanced at Keilan, a hint of embarrassment appearing in his eyes.
“A sorcerer,” Keilan finished for him. “Yes, that’s what I am. Or I could learn to be one.” He paused for a moment, searching for the right words. “There is something terrible coming. To an old fisherman like yourself, I’d say the horizon has gone black and the sea’s starting to get choppy. However dangerous Senacus thinks I am, it’s nothing compared to the storm that’s about to break.”
Pelos took off his broad-brimmed hat and scratched his balding scalp. “Lad, I think I get the bones of it. You’ve come back here because you need something.”
“I do. It’s important I find out where my mother came from. Do you know anything? Did she ever confide in you?”
“Your mother?” Pelos sucked on his teeth, shaking his head. “She was closed up tight as a clam about her past. Never let slip anything, that I could remember. And I would—I was mighty intrigued about where she’d come from. In my youth I sailed all over the Broken Sea, even ventured up the coast to t
he Cities once, and I never saw anyone with her hair. Damned beautiful it was.”
Keilan set aside this small disappointment. “No matter. Mam Ru might know something. We were on our way to see her just now.”
“I’ll join you,” Pelos said, flashing a gap-toothed grin and clapping Keilan on the shoulder. “Maybe the old buzzard has some fresh cockles to share… and lad, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
The old fishmonger slipped his nags from their halters and led them over to a grassy patch off the road to graze.
“You don’t need to tie them up?” Keilan asked, stroking the blotchy flank of one of the old horses.
Pelos chuckled. “They know where their oats come from,” he said, and the nag closest to him snorted and cast a sidelong glance at the old fishmonger.
Pelos leaned in closer to Keilan. “They know that word. Oats. Damn clever beasts,” he whispered.
“I’ve missed you,” Keilan said as they turned away from the cropping horses and began walking back to where the others waited.
“I’ve missed you too, lad,” Pelos replied, squeezing his shoulder. “To be honest, ever since you left I’ve felt an emptiness inside me. And guilt that maybe I could have done something, gotten you away before the paladin arrived. I’d hoped they never would come… but I had suspected they might.”
Keilan patted the old man’s gnarled fingers, which still clutched him as if he was afraid if he let go Keilan might blow away like smoke in the wind. “In the end, it was all for the best. I’ve seen incredible things, Pelos. Wonders I never could have imagined.”
Finally, the old man let his hand drop. “You’ll have to tell me about it, lad.”
Something occurred to Keilan, and he glanced up at the darkening sky. “You’re coming in late, aren’t you? The fishing boats must have returned several watches ago. I saw Davin and several of the other fisherfolk earlier.”
Pelos chuckled. “Would have liked to have seen their faces. No, lad, the last few months I’ve stopped going down to the beach. I was angry about how they treated you and making them carry their catch back to the village to sell it was just a bit of pettiness on my part. Your uncle made his fat son struggle back laboring under the weight of a long pole hung with fish. Always made me smile when I saw it.”
Keilan imagined Malik arriving in the village red-faced and panting, dead fish swinging back and forth as he stumbled along. The thought made him smile as well.
Mam Ru’s hut was set back from the rest of the village, teetering dangerously on the edge of a small pond encrusted with green scum. The trees grew thicker and taller here, and only a thin trickle of light filtered through the lattice of branches. The flayed remains of some unrecognizable animal had been left to dangle from beneath the ancient wooden eaves of Mam Ru’s hut, and as Keilan approached the door a swarm of flies rose in buzzing indignation from their feasting.
“Mam Ru!” Keilan called, loudly because he knew her hearing was failing. “We wish to speak with you!”
A thump and a crash from inside, and a moment later the door scraped open. A tiny old woman wrapped in a gray shawl blinked up at him with eyes like chips of black ice. “Keilan Ferrisorn!” She peered past him. “And Ferris himself. Pelos, you old rascal. A girl dressed like a boy. And a paladin of Ama.” She clucked her tongue. “Hm. Is this when you ask me if I want to go on an adventure?”
“Ah, no. We just –”
“Good! Because I’m too old. Hm.” She spoke past Keilan, directing her words at the others. “I’d invite you all inside, but there’s too many of you and you’d probably break something.”
“We just wanted to ask –”
The old woman’s eyes narrowed to black slits. “Wait. You left the village. Broke the heart of little Sella. She moped around for weeks.” Mam Ru poked him in the chest with a black-nailed finger. “What do you have to say for yourself, hm?”
“I didn’t want to go!” Keilan protested, gesturing at Senacus. “He took me away!”
“And now he’s brought you back. Strange, very strange.” She peered suspiciously at the paladin. “What is this all about?”
“My mother.”
Mam Ru’s face fell. “Hm. Terrible, that. She was a good woman. Brought me fish and salt in the bad months.”
“You cared for her once when she was very sick.”
“Aye. She got the Wilting. I thought she was destined for the Deep, but she was strong.”
“We spoke with Mam Bellas, and she said there was a name she kept repeating in her fever dreams. Something foreign.”
Mam Ru glared at him shrewdly. “Hm. Sometimes the past is best left buried, Keilan. She was running from something, something terrible enough that she never so much as stepped outside this village in all her time here, far as I know.”
“It’s very important. Please, Mam Ru.”
The old woman gave a raspy sigh. “Chalissian. When she was down in the depths, fightin’ her way back, that’s who she was speaking to. Apologizing and begging and thanking.”
“Chalissian?” Nel murmured thoughtfully. “I know that name, but I’m not sure from where.”
“Chalissian ri Kvin,” Pelos said, confusion deepening the lines on his face. “That’s the only Chalissian I’m familiar with. The Bravo of the Broken Sea. Captain of the Last Lament.”
Mam Ru tapped her cheek with a long nail. “Ri Kvin. Might be I heard her say something like that, as well.”
Pelos shook his head. “But that’s impossible. Chalissian was one of the pirate lords who formed the Pelioti Compact near forty years past, back when I still traded and fished. He left just before the Shan navy smashed the Compact at the Bloody Shoals, otherwise the Lament would be down there with your Deep Ones. I’d heard he’d retired to Ven Ibras, but that was decades ago. He’d be an old man now, and not someone your mother would have crossed paths with.”
“Ven Ibras?” Senacus asked, his face showing his frustration with the avalanche of names.
“A good-sized town on an island east of the Whispering Isles. With favorable winds it’s a two-day sail from Chale. Used to be somewhat of a hub for the pirates roaming the Broken Sea; now, it’s likely fallen on hard times. Nothing much there except forest, rocks, guano and old pirates who were smart enough to abandon the game before they lost everything.”
“Your mother was sailing from somewhere when her ship foundered,” mused Nel. “Maybe it was this Ven Ibras.”
“It’s as good a trail as I think we could have hoped for,” Keilan said. “Thank you, Mam Ru.”
The old woman sniffed. “Hm. I suppose you’ll be running off again now?”
Keilan glanced down the path that led to the village. “Everyone’s scared. It’s best if I leave soon, I think.”
“Any messages to pass along to your little friend when she comes around? She’s going to be mighty upset she missed you here.”
“Tell her I’m sorry, Mam Ru. I wish she’d been here. Tell her I always think about our time together.”
Mam Ru frowned. “Hm. You’re lucky you won’t have to deal with her.” She made a shooing gesture with her hands. “Now go. I have frogs to catch for dinner so there’s no time to stand around jawing.”
After everyone had said their goodbyes they trudged back across the village to Mam Bellas’s hut. The setting sun had gilded the clouds in gold and bronze, but no smoke from cookfires trickled from any of the houses around the square; it was like the village was holding its breath, waiting to see what Keilan would do. His heart grew heavier as he watched his father stump along on his splinted leg, beckoning them to follow and regaling them with the feast Mam Bellas would prepare tonight. She was probably plucking a chicken at this moment, and she made the most delicious apple tarts they’d ever tasted…
“Da,” Keilan said as they walked up the path to Mam Bellas’s hut. His father paused in his
recitation of the delicacies they’d enjoy later and turned to him, the lines around his eyes crinkling in happiness. “Da, we can’t sleep in the village tonight.”
His father’s face instantly collapsed. “Lad, if you’re worried about Davin… ”
Keilan shook his head. “I’m not.”
“I’m worried he will set our hut on fire during the night,” Nel ventured, but Keilan ignored her.
He gestured back towards the silent, empty village. “They’re terrified. Hiding in their huts or in the woods. Most of them, I know, are good people, and their fear and hate are born of ignorance, not evil.”
His father opened his mouth to say something, but Keilan forestalled him with a raised hand. “The longer we stay the more disruption we bring to their lives. If they know we’re still in the village a lot of children will be unable to fall asleep, afraid of what the evil sorcerer will do to them in the night.”
“Why do you care about them?” his father said softly. “They killed your mother.”
“And I hate the ones who did that,” he said, reaching out to take his father’s calloused hand, “but that was only a few. Many of the others were kind to me.” Something occurred to Keilan. “Do you want to stay here, Da?”
His father glanced away, and Keilan could see his conflict. His shoulders slumped as he let out a long sigh. “I was born in the village. Lived here my whole life. Married your mother, fished the waters, had you. After they took her, I felt like there was this poison in the air, seeping into me. Making it harder to breathe. But I had to keep going for you. And then you were taken as well. I gave up, after that. If Bellas hadn’t thrown me a rope, I would have died.” He tugged at his beard, watching the last shreds of the day vanish beyond the horizon. “But now I have her. And anyway, where would we go?”
Keilan pulled forth the pouch containing his share of the money given to them by Lady Numil. “Hold out your hands,” he told his father, and when he did Keilan poured a stream of Lyrish coins into his cupped palms. His father’s eyes widened when he saw how much of the pile glinted gold and silver.
