Wildmane

by Todd Fahnestock

  “I gave him two for the favor.”

  “I find it hard to believe he would simply loan you a gold piece.”

  “He didn’t know he was loaning it.” She smiled.

  “And you put it back with another. You realize he probably knows exactly how many gold pieces he has.”

  “Won’t that be happily frustrating for him when he discovers he’s a gold piece richer for no reason?”

  “And it is real gold?”

  “As real as the merchant’s gold.” She shrugged. “We had no money, and I have not yet paid them for the room or the food.”

  “Impressive, Mirolah.”

  She stood up and gave a mock curtsey in her nightgown. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “We should leave today,” he said.

  “Tomorrow morning,” she countered. “You’re healing. That’s a good thing.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but shut it without saying anything. Just the thought of travel wearied him. What good would it do to start running if he would collapse within a day?

  “Very well. Tomorrow,” he said.

  They spent the rest of the day and the evening talking and eating the delicious food that the innkeeper’s wife made, never leaving the room. Medophae knew practically nothing of Mirolah’s life in Rith. She told him of the town circle and of being a scribe. She talked of her adopted sisters and of Lawdon and Tiffienne.

  Medophae told her of Calsinac at its height, of the threadweavers who came to call, the great trade caravans that crossed the Red Desert. He talked of the few benefits of being a king and its many burdens. He told her about when he finally abdicated the throne of Calsinac to someone better suited.

  They stayed up late into the night, and he found himself talking about events he had not spoken of in centuries, things he hadn’t told Orem or Tyndiria. Ever before, recounting the memories of Calsinac, of Bands, had been painful. But somehow, he wanted to tell Mirolah. It was as though she’d lanced a wound with her words yesterday, and tonight he wanted to push out all the poison.

  Finally, he came to the story of how he lost Bands, how Ethiel had trapped not just a dragon but Tarithalius, the god of humans. Medophae still could not understand how she’d done it.

  Tears came to Mirolah’s eyes when he told her of his one-hundred-and-thirty-one-year pilgrimage, searching for the threadweaver or god who could free Bands. Only Saraphazia, goddess of the True Ocean, seemed to know something, but she said she couldn’t undo the spell without killing Bands and Tarithalius. She told him the riddle was the key, and she said no more. Then Harleath capped the Fountain, and Medophae fell into despair. He didn’t remember exactly when he gave up. He didn’t remember most of the last three hundred years. There were entire decades from which he could remember nothing at all.

  She didn’t ask any more questions after that, and his desire to talk faded. But he felt better, as though the painful memories had been poison, and his blood was now cleaner somehow. Again, that hopeful feeling filled him.

  “You are...” he started, then stopped.

  “I’m what?”

  “You’re...unexpected.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Well said,” she said wryly, pursing her lips. “Eloquent.”

  He laughed. “I mean, with what you told me. It’s... I just...”

  “I’m glad,” she interrupted his fumbling, holding his gaze. Crickets chirped outside, and the scant moonlight from the window flickered across the empty goblets and soup bowls as clouds passed. He finally broke the gaze and stood up.

  “I’ll sleep on the pallet tonight,” he said. “You take the bed.”

  “Okay.”

  “First thing tomorrow,” he said. “We leave before the sunrise.”

  “Our last night here together,” she said. She took the single candle from the table and brought it to the nightstand, but she watched him the whole time.

  Slowly, deliberately, she unhooked her belt and let it drop to the floor, freeing her newly purchased tunic. She pulled it over her head. The candlelight caught the curves of her breasts and her smooth stomach. She undid the laces on her breeches, pushed them over her hips, down her legs and stood naked in front of him. Her eyes searched his.

  She leaned over the candle. He watched the muscles in her thighs tighten, watched her breasts shift as she blew out the light. He heard the blankets ruffling as she slid into the bed.

  The moonlight illuminated the air between the arched window and the wooden floor. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was watching him. She was a threadweaver; she didn’t need the light to see in the dark.

  He wanted to tell her that he was still broken, that he loved Bands, that the pain was still there, would probably always be there, all the things he had told Tyndiria. It was the truth, but the truth sounded worn and tired to him. He noticed the silver in the moonlight, the pleasant chill in the air. He’d found himself holding his breath as Mirolah disrobed for him, spellbound as she invited him with her body.

  This was what it was like to be pierced by the sharp edges of the world, to be caressed by its softness, to feel the tight fear of knowing it was all transient. To feel meaning. He’d forgotten this.

  He went to her, stood over the bed. He could barely see her in the dark, propped up on her elbows, watching him.

  “I am broken,” he repeated.

  “You’re human.” She opened the covers for him. She seemed about to say something more, but he leaned down and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him to her.

  66

  Medophae

  Medophae woke as the sun rose, light trickling into the little room, and Mirolah was already up. She stood naked at the open window, watching the quiet street below as though she was listening to someone playing music. He struggled with the warmth he felt looking at her, the thrill of the unknown and the following thrill of wanting to know those things, to know more about her. He wanted to go to her, put his arms around her, make her part of himself. He’d felt that compulsion only once before, and guilt rose within him.

  She’d just been a girl. Just another mortal he only saw from the outside, only saw in terms of what he needed to do for her. He was Wildmane, after all, and humans were fragile, vulnerable. His role was not that of an adventurer. It couldn’t be. He did not get to choose his own path. His role was to protect her, to help Orem, to shield Tyndiria, to find Bands, to help the lands.

  Old decisions. He had made them a hundred times before.

  But he felt no truth in those decisions now, not after what she had said. Every decision he’d made for as long as he could remember was made from guilt, or duty, or anger.

  But not last night. Last night had been…reckless. That decision had been made without knowing the outcome.

  Mirolah was no girl anymore. The fountain had changed her, as profoundly as Zilok had changed Medophae. She’d seen right through him, seen what he had been blind to for too long. She had given back something precious, something forgotten, something he had left behind. She had given him back the self he always wanted to be.

  I wanted to be an adventurer. A hero. I always wanted it. And I have been a very poor hero lately.

  With kind ministrations and harsh words, she had gotten to him, gotten inside him. Last night, she brought life-giving rain to his desert heart, made the ground fertile again, and suddenly he had once more felt like the person he’d always wanted to be.

  Mirolah’s fingertips touched the window lightly, as though she needed contact to better hear the world outside.

  Looking at her thrilled him. He hadn’t felt this since his first days with Bands, far away on the isle of Dandere. He felt that same impossible rush, gazing upon someone magnificent and strange, someone you could barely fathom, and yet still someone who understood you. Bands had been all those things back then. She had represented adventure, the power of the unknown, while Medophae had been a stumbling colt.

  And now Mirolah stood in that role. She had given him a flick
er of light in the darkness. She was certain while he was the vulnerable one.

  Death stands at my door. I mourn for Bands. I am wrapped in a fog of uncertainty, and yet there she is… And I am in love. By all the gods… I am a fool.

  Unbidden, Mirolah’s words of the previous day came to him: That’s where we will live... Let’s be fools like that…

  Despite the maelstrom of conflicting emotions inside him, he actually felt good. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he had hope. And she had given him that.

  “You’re magnificent,” he said softly.

  She turned her head, smiling, and he saw her lovely profile backlit by the light from the rising sun. “I was about to wake you,” she said. “Did you sleep okay?”

  “Through the night,” he replied. He never used to sleep all night.

  Yesterday, he’d been chomping at the bit to leave Gnedrin’s Post. But now he wanted—selfishly, recklessly—to spend a day in this room with her, staying small and cozy, and shut out the world. To die with her, here, didn’t seem a horrible fate. If it was going to end, why not here? Why not now?

  Reluctantly, though, he rose.

  “We need to leave,” she said, voicing his thoughts.

  “South. Back to Denema’s Valley.”

  She turned, a curious look on her face. “Really? Shouldn’t we go some place Zilok wouldn’t suspect?”

  “I want to put distance between him and us. A lot of distance. Running to the next village won’t work. Not for long. We go to Calsinac.”

  “Calsinac? How? Isn’t it a thousand miles away?”

  “There’s a portal near Denema’s Valley, a holdover from the Age of Ascendance, that goes directly to Calsinac. With the GodSpill returned... Well, it might be working again.”

  “Might be working? If we go and it’s not, and he’s waiting for us... Well, it seems like a big chance.”

  Medophae laughed and bowed his head. “Every step we take is going to be a risk. But if we just run scared, he’ll find us. This way, if we succeed, he can spend the next few months looking for us in the north, and we’ll be, as you mentioned, a thousand miles south of here.

  She nodded. “Well, all right then.” She moved gracefully from the window and picked her clothes up from where she’d dropped them last night. He watched her.

  “Let’s get moving, Sir Risky. Stop staring and get your clothes on,” she said, smiling.

  He did as ordered.

  Thanks to Mirolah’s gold, they had plenty of money to pay for their room and to prepare for their journey. They loaded satchels with the food and fire-making supplies that Medophae thought necessary.

  Gnedrin’s Post was a silver mining village, as small as a settlement could get and still be called a village, but the mines in the foothills of the Spine Mountains were productive, and the Dragon River flowing through the town gave it not only a plentiful amount of water, irrigation for some small crops nearby, and power to turn the miller’s wheel at the center of town, but it also made trips down to the Inland Ocean swift on flat boats. With Mirolah’s gold, they purchased one of the boats at a high price and let the river carry them southward much faster than they could have walked.

  As they both avoided rapids using long poles to guide the boat, Medophae wondered how Zilok Morth would start his search. Mirolah had gotten lucky taking Medophae to Gnedrin’s Post. The mining village had not existed during the Age of Ascendance, and in all likelihood, Zilok would not know it existed. The spirit would probably assume Medophae would turn toward the ruins of Belshra, as far to the southeast as Gnedrin’s Post was to the southwest. If Zilok was searching those ruins for them, it could account for their luck so far.

  Still, he watched the wooded shores on either side of them with growing apprehension, looking for animals or birds that came to the shore, that seemed unafraid, that paused too long to watch their boat. So far, he hadn’t seen any.

  They ate bread and cheese at lunchtime, drinking from the river and continuing their float downstream. Medophae didn’t want to go onto the shore except in case of an emergency. Every moment was precious, and he wouldn’t feel safe until they made it through the portal in Denema’s Valley. If they could get to Calsinac, that would secure some time to figure out their next steps.

  The day passed in silence, and neither of them talked much. Not about Zilok. Not about the previous night. Medophae expected every moment to explode into action as Zilok discovered them, and he waited for it tensely. Mirolah had picked up on the mood and stayed alert, perhaps preoccupied studying the threads of the lands, trying to sense if Zilok was there. They spoke if they needed to discuss navigation of rapids or a twist in the river, but otherwise they stayed quiet.

  As the sun began to set, the cliffs of the Spine Mountains hove into view, a marker that they were near Denema’s Valley.

  “We’re close,” Mirolah said. “I used to swim near here. I remember the shape of those mountains.”

  “We should get off the river. Zilok would have assumed we’d go to Belshra first. He’d think Denema’s Valley second. We need to be very careful.”

  She had already begun to pole for the shore. He helped, and soon they splashed quietly into the shallows and hauled the boat onto the sandy bank.

  “Should we let it go?” She looked at the boat.

  He was tempted. If Zilok found a boat near the river, it would be a sure signal to him to search the entire area.

  “Let’s pull it into the trees,” Medophae said. “If the portal doesn’t work, then our next best bet will be riding the river to the Inland Ocean.

  “I can talk to the trees—”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t threadweave. Not until we reach the portal. If he’s close, he might be able to sense you using GodSpill. We can’t. Not yet.”

  “Okay.”

  They hauled the boat up and camouflaged it with fallen branches inside the nearby forest.

  “Let’s go,” Medophae said, moving into the trees slowly.

  They hadn’t been walking for more than ten minutes when Mirolah said, “I recognize this part.” She slipped under tree branches and through thick, tall grasses. He followed close behind, and they emerged into the meadow where she had practiced her threadweaving. The light was fading, and she walked through the tall grass to the giant stone table that had once been a boulder. She ran her hand along its edge.

  “It seems a lifetime ago,” she murmured. “The last time we were here, Orem and Stavark were alive.” She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the city of Denema’s Valley. “I’m afraid to go down there,” she said. “I’m afraid of what we’ll find.”

  He glanced at the small path that led into the trees and eventually to the streets of Denema’s Valley. Somewhere on those streets were Orem’s and Stavark’s corpses.

  “We should go straight to the portal,” he said.

  “I...” She hesitated.

  “You need to see them.”

  “I’m sorry, Medophae.”

  His pulse quickened. It wasn’t the smart thing to do. But it was the right thing. “Well, let’s be quick about it.”

  She headed for the trail, and he fell in behind her.

  In the distance, he thought he heard something, like a clacking wind chime. He’d been paranoid all day long, so he stopped, listened. A warm breeze ruffled through the trees. He strained his ears, but there was nothing there.

  She stopped a distance down the trail. Had the sound been a trick of the wind? He started walking again.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just jumpy. Let’s be quick.”

  Soon, they reached the streets of Denema’s Valley and picked their way between the buildings to where the battle with the darklings had taken place. A dozen of the foul creatures lay scattered across the stones, slowly decaying. It was hard to see in the failing light, but after a quick inspection, they could find no sign of Orem’s body or Stavark’s.

  “What does that mea
n?” Mirolah asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would the darklings devour them?”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he doubted it. The darkling’s lair in Teni’sia had been filled with bodies, but none of them had been picked clean. “There would at least be bones.”

  He thought back to the battle and stood where he had before. Dead darklings surrounded that spot, but off to the side, two others had fallen. He had not killed those. The corpses were beginning to decompose, but he could deduce that those two had been slain by multiple sword cuts. Many sword cuts. Stavark.

  He went to that spot. “Stavark fought valiantly here.”

  “Could he be alive? Gods, Medophae. Could Orem?”

  “I would dare to say yes,” he murmured. “But I cannot think of how. They were outmatched, and there were more that night than there are lying here. How could they have...” He left off as his gaze fell upon the door of one of the nearby shops. An open door with writing scrawled on it.

  He jogged across the street and leapt onto the landing. What he had thought was crude writing was actually a scattering of small, bloody handprints smeared across the wood. The blood was long since dried, seeming like red ink. Stavark’s handprints.

  “Stavark?” he called out as he entered the dark shop, hoping against hope. She followed behind him.

  “This was an herb shop,” he said, squinting at the dark shelves.

  “I don’t sense anyone,” she said. “Nothing living in here.”

  “Stavark?” he called out again, uselessly.

  “He was alive,” she said. “He made it through the battle somehow. He came here looking for something.”

  “A healing herb, probably. The question is: Did it save him?”

  She smiled, and she did a girlish little jump up and down. “He’s alive. I know it. We have to find him!”

  “We can’t,” he said. “We’re being hunted, and we could be found at any second. If Stavark was here, and if he survived, he has gone elsewhere. He’s a quicksilver. The woods are home to him. If we went searching for him, not only might we get caught, but we might bring more trouble down on him, too. If he’s alive, he’s probably safer without us.”