The Bowl of Souls: Book 01.5 - Hilt's Pride

by Trevor H. Cooley

  “All this time, I thought I was escorting a poor housewife, and now I find out that you are a wealthy mage? Couldn’t a little magic have helped us somewhere along the way?”

  “I’m not finished yet,” Beth reminded him. “When I first got to the Mage School, I was amazed by the place. The grounds were beautiful and the teachers amazing. Then they tested my power levels and I was so disappointed. All my elements were pretty low. My strengths were air and fire, but even those were minimal. I soon discovered that my only true strength was in runework. I didn’t have much magic of my own, but I had a knack for manipulating magic that was already there.”

  Yntri clicked and Hilt translated, “He says that is one of the prime qualities of a great archer. Wait, I don’t get that Yntri. What does archery have to do with magic?”

  The ancient elf explained, using broad gestures with his hands as he spoke.

  “Huh,” Hilt said. “This is a bit hard to translate, but he says that the best swordsmen are creators at heart, while the best archers are shapers. Did I explain that right, Yntri?”

  The elf shrugged and waggled one hand to show that it was close to what he meant.

  Beth paused in her stitching. “I don’t know that I quite follow, but I think it’s a good way to describe me. I was a shaper. I got better at it the longer I was there. A few years later I became an apprentice. My master was a stern woman, but kind and very enthusiastic about my potential.

  “Then one day not long after I turned twenty, I was put on a new project. The council had decided to add another wing to the testing center at the school. I was one of the students adding runework to the new walls to strengthen them. One day while I was working, someone tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned around, I about died. It was Coulton.

  “He had heard where I was and had hired on with the laborers brought in to help. At first I was furious at him for disappearing on me, but it turned out that it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Your father?” Hilt asked. “My father did that to my brother once. He got too fond of one of our scullery maids and father had her shipped off to another nobleman.”

  “My mother,” Beth said. “But worse. She had him jailed. They never even told him why. He sat in the dungeons for a year before they let him out. He came looking for me, but my parents had moved to another part of Dremald. Eventually he found out what had happened to me and spent a long time searching for a way to see me. The Mage School limits visitors to family members and even that’s a rarity, so it wasn’t possible.”

  “He couldn’t have sent you a message?” Hilt asked.

  “He didn’t know how to write,” Beth said. “At any rate, the building project only lasted three weeks. We saw each other as much as we could, but when it came time for him to leave, I didn’t want him to go. When I told him so, he told me he loved me. He told me he was willing to wait for me until I left the school. But that would take too long. It would be years until I would have the freedom to leave.

  “I couldn’t stand being away from him again. I went to my master and asked her to plead my case before the council, but their rules were firm. Coulton could not stay at the school and they would not allow me to leave. There was only one choice left to me . . .”

  Hilts jaw tightened in understanding. “They quelled you.”

  “It was my decision,” she said. “Their rules, but my decision.”

  Students in the Mage School were not allowed to leave until they had at least become mages, fully aware of their abilities and the responsibilities that came with them. If a student wanted to leave before they were deemed ready, there was only one option; to voluntarily have their magical abilities ripped from them. It was offered as a merciful option, but Quelling was permanent and only used otherwise as a punishment to dangerous wizards gone mad with power. The rule had existed from the beginning of the Mage School and perhaps of all the rules, this was the most controversial.

  Yntri clicked a question.

  “He wants to know if it hurt,” Hilt said.

  Beth nodded, biting her lip. “They warn you all about it before they let you make the decision. The pain was bad, but perhaps the cruelest part is that even after being quelled, your mage sight still works. M-my magic is gone, but I can still see the magic in the world around me. I can see it but I can’t touch it. Imagine this, Sir Hilt. What if your ability to fight was taken away? What if you could see your swords, but whenever the time came to use them, you had no way to pick them up? That’s what it’s like.”

  “I am sorry,” Hilt said, meeting her gaze with genuine sadness in his eyes.

  Beth felt tears beginning to well up at his kind sentiment and it made her angry. How dare he make her cry? She swallowed the tears away. Why cry for this? This was old news. Worse things had happened since.

  “Oh, it’s all right. I was stupid and stubborn and I paid for it. I spent a day recuperating and then they released me. Coulton and I left the Mage School and got married in Sampo. After that, we traveled for a while. I took up the bow again. It felt good to have that skill with something. For a while we used it to make money. We’d come upon a group of tough men with bows and Coulton had this line he’d use.” She smiled at the memory. “He’d say, ‘You don’t look so great. Even my wife could beat you.’ Most fools couldn’t resist that. They’d accept the challenge and I’d win.”

  “That must have made them angry,” Hilt said.

  “Oh yes. They would usually pay up at first, if just to save face with their friends, but sometimes they would come after us later. We got very good at running and hiding.” She sighed. “But it didn’t last. We tried it one too many times and word got out. After a few very close calls and after Coulton took one severe beating, I put down my bow. He got a job with a carpenter in Pinewood and that’s where we stayed.”

  “And your parents?” Hilt asked.

  “I heard they were looking for me for a while, but I didn’t want to see them. Not after what they did to Coulton. Last I knew they were still in Dremald, rich as ever, still scheming for nobility. Ridiculous!”

  She finished the last stitch on the inseam of the garment and tied it off. “There, done! Oh, I wish I had some scissors to shorten the legs a bit but this will have to do. Now turn around for a minute you two while I put this on.”

  Once the men had dutifully obeyed, she unwrapped the blanket from around her and shivered in the cold air as she put her creation on. “Okay, I’m finished. It really isn’t made for this, but I stitched it pretty well. It should stay together I think.”

  “I am quite impressed, actually,” Hilt said with an appreciative nod. “I daresay that outfit could be the start of a new fashion trend.”

  Beth snorted and tied one leather strip around the bottom of each leg, gathering the material together to avoid another snag. “Oh, sure. First, sleep under the leaves for a few days. Second step, fall down a mountain. Then all you have to do is cut your dress in half and sew it back together. This will spread like wild fire.”

  Hilt chucked, “Say what you will, I think you look charming.”

  “Charming . . .? You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all.” He smiled at her for a moment, but then his expression turned serious. “Beth, what happened to your husband?”

  Beth draped the gauzy blanket back around her shoulders and stared into the fire. “That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Here I’ve gone and told you my whole life story just to put off this part . . .”

  Hilt folded his arms and gazed into the fire with her. “You don’t really have to tell us if you don’t want to, Beth. Yntri and I are going to help you finish climbing this mountain tomorrow whether you tell us or not.”

  Beth blinked and looked at him questioningly. She hadn’t expected him to say that. Suddenly it seemed to her as if this was an important moment. She gazed back into the flames and the fire flared. She saw two pathways stretching before her. On one path she stopped her story there and finished her quest
the next day, burying her past behind her. That path ended rather abruptly. On the second path, she opened up and told Hilt the rest, reliving the entire horrible truth of it. That path was hazy and had a variety of possible endings she could not see. She waffled back and forth, but finally closed her eyes, cutting off the vision.

  “You are risking your lives to help me. You deserve to know the rest.” She took a shuddering breath. “Coulton died almost a year ago.”

  Hilt nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was, um . . . an odd month. His father had come to town. Just out of the blue, Coulton’s father that had left him when he was just a child showed up and wanted to see him. He told us that he was dying and he wanted to reconcile with his son. Coulton listened to his story and hugged that ragged little man.

  “Coulton told me that he wanted to let his father stay with us. He wanted to care for him until he died. I didn’t know how to react. I was both repulsed by the idea and more in love with him than ever. If my father had come to me with the same story, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.” She sighed. “So it was just the three of us for a while.”

  “Just three of you? What about-.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “We weren’t able to have children. Quelling does that sometimes to a woman. It doesn’t work that way with men, but . . . they warned me about that too, before I made my decision, so I only have myself to blame.”

  Yntri frowned and clicked at her as he shook a disapproving finger.

  “He says you are blaming yourself too much,” Hilt said. “And I agree with him. Quelling is a barbaric tradition. I can’t believe they still do it today.”

  “But it is also necessary,” Beth said. “You may not have seen all the things these students could do, how out of control they were. If the Mage School didn’t teach them to control their magic and just let them go . . . No, this was my decision. My consequences. If I hadn’t been so unwilling to wait a few years, I would still have my magic. I could have had children. I would have made more than enough money as a Mage for us to live differently. Then again, maybe Coulton wouldn’t have waited for me. He might have found another woman and had a different life. Either way, he would still be alive. No, this is my fault. Mine! Don’t you try to take away my guilt!”

  “Beth-.” Hilt said, reaching out to her.

  “Shut up and let me finish my story!” She snapped. He let his arm fall back to his side and Beth looked back at the fire.

  “Things were actually okay with Coulton’s father around. His name was Robert, but he told us to call him Old Bob. Old Bob was a sweet man after a fashion. Coulton built him a bed and though it was a tight fit in our little house, we made do.

  “Then one evening Coulton didn’t come home from work. I went to see his boss and he said that Coulton had gone into the woods looking for some trees to harvest. The next morning we went looking for him and, um . . .” Her voice slipped and her lip quivered. She brought one shaking hand up to wipe her eyes.

  “He had been torn apart. Eaten by moonrats. Th-they had been getting more numerous for a while and bolder. More of them had been seen on our side of the road’s protective barriers. People had been attacked before, but this was the first time that a Pinewood man had been . . .”

  Beth didn’t see Hilt approach, but she felt his comforting hand on her shoulder. She let him leave it there. It actually helped. She cleared her throat.

  “I, uh, had nothing left to do. I had no one but Old Bob and I barely knew him. The people of Pinewood were kind to me and helped out as they could. Old Bob’s condition got worse until he couldn’t get out of bed anymore. He was the only part of Coulton I had left, so I-I stayed by him until the end. The day we buried Old Bob next to Coulton’s grave, I left. I just walked into the forest.”

  “Where were you going?” Hilt asked.

  “To die most likely. I headed towards the deepest part of the forest. The darkest part. I went to see if the rumors were true; if the moonrats did have a mother there. If she did exist, I intended to strangle her to death with my bare hands.”

  “And if she didn’t exist?” Hilt asked.

  “Then I would start strangling moonrats. The beasts hadn’t attacked me in the past, but maybe this time they would. If I died, I would be with Coulton again. If not, I would just keep killing them until there were no moonrats left.” She raised one hand to her shoulder and rested it on Hilt’s. “But I found the prophet instead. I walked through the forest until I came upon the Mage School’s warded road and he was standing there as if waiting for me.”

  “What did he say?” Hilt asked.

  Though her memory of the prophet’s appearance was fuzzy, Beth could still recall every word of their conversation as if it was burned into her mind. “He said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘That way.’ He said, ‘Hello, my name is John.’ I had no patience left for pleasantries and said, ‘Goodbye, John.’ He said, ‘That’s not where you need to go.’ I frowned at him and said, ‘How do you know where I need to go?’ He said, ‘You are looking for answers, but the way you are heading has no answers, only death.’ I said, ‘What if death is the answer I’m looking for?’ He said, ‘You don’t even know the question yet.’”

  “He is annoying that way,” Hilt said. “The way he talks in riddles. He’s even worse than Yntri.” The elf had been nodding in agreement, but stopped and frowned.

  “I found him . . . interesting,” Beth said with a shrug. “And at that point I hadn’t found anyone interesting in a long while. I asked him why I should listen to him and he said, ‘I am the prophet.’ For some reason I believed him right away. I had no reason to, but I had no reason not to either. I said, ‘Where do I go, then?’ He said, ‘Walk to the east. On the far side of the woods is a mountain. Climb to the top and you will find the answer you seek.’ I said, ‘When do I leave?’ He said, ‘Go now.’ and . . .”

  She stopped and looked back at Hilt. “I think I already told you the rest.”

  Yntri clicked a question.

  “He asks what gave you so much faith in the prophet that you would blindly follow such a vague and ridiculous request?” Hilt said. “Actually I added the word ridiculous.”

  “Faith?” Beth furrowed her brow as if thinking about the word for the first time. Finally she shrugged. “I guess at that point faith was all I had left.”

  No one said anything for a moment. Beth felt a strange sense of peace come over her and it was as if some of the weight she had been carrying was lifted from her shoulders. She had told her story and neither of them had turned away from her or looked at her in disgust. They hadn’t pitied her either. They were just . . . supportive. Beth yawned. Telling the story had taken a lot out of her.

  “I’m tired,” she said.

  “Yes, I suppose we should get some sleep,” Hilt agreed. “Tomorrow could be a long day.”

  Yntri stood and clicked at her for a while before heading to the edge of the campsite. He picked up the sapling he had brought with him earlier and started hacking off the branches.

  “What did he say?” Beth asked.

  “He said that you are a brave woman,” Hilt told her.

  “Surely he said more than that.” Beth said. The elf had talked for a while.

  “If it helps at all, I agree with him,” Hilt added, not answering her question.

  She looked at him, trying to decide whether to push the subject. Then she saw Yntri drag the sapling over to one of the trees. The elf climbed up into the tree, taking the sapling up with him.

  “What is he doing?” she asked.

  “He’s taking watch,” Hilt said. “He likes taking a perch up in the trees because it gives him a good view of the area all around.”

  “But those are fir trees and . . . he’s practically naked,” she said with a shiver. “That can’t be comfortable.”

  “It doesn’t seem to bother him.” Hilt shrugged. “I’m not sure why that is. Cold, heat, brambles, whatever, he goes on wearing what he we
ars. I’ve often wondered how he does it. The other elves I’ve met aren’t like that. Just Yntri and the other ancient ones that tend the Jharro grove.”

  “I see,” Actually she didn’t quite see. It was strange. She had been through so much, she had felt she’d seen it all, but Beth was realizing that there was a lot she hadn’t seen. “So if he’s taking the first watch, who is taking the second?”

  “There’s no need. He’ll be taking all the watches. Yntri rarely sleeps. He tells me that it’s because as you get older, you don’t need as much sleep.” The elf clicked from his perch up in the trees and Hilt nodded in amusement. “He adds that by the time you get to two thousand years old, sleep is a sign of laziness.”

  “Two thousand?” she looked up into the tree but all she could see was the end of the sapling shaking. That elf had a weird sense of humor.

  They each found a place to bed down. Beth chose a flat piece of ground near the base of the rock that was free from pebbles and pine needles. Hilt chose a spot to her left, not far away. He sat next to the rock and pulled his knees up close, wrapping his coat around his legs as best he could and resting his head on his arms.