by Remi Michaud
His attention turned to the plump woman sitting hunched over at her desk. She raised her gaze from the scatter of parchments to focus owlishly on him. Salena was a reflection of her room: her hair, disheveled as always, sprayed out in all directions with only a loose bun tied in a futile attempt at keeping it out of her eyes. Her brown robe, though spotless and made of the highest quality linen, was rumpled, and did not seem to fit her quite properly as though she had slept in someone else's clothes. If this room was a country home, then this room's occupant was a farmer's wife.
“Jorge, what a pleasant surprise. I didn't even hear you knock,” she said, scratching her face and leaving a smudge of ink on her cheek.
“Salena, my dear, we have some things to discuss,” Jorge said, taking a chair from the table and sitting across from her.
She eyed him briefly, her brows furrowed, but she remained silent, waiting for him to continue.
“I've spoken with Kurin. He found him, Salena. He found him.”
Salena leaned back with a smirk.
“Has he, now? How many times has Kurin found his prize now, hmmm? Six? Seven? No, it most surely is more.” Her eyes hardened. It was an incongruous expression on such a soft face so used to vacant smiling. Jorge had to constantly remind himself that behind the eccentric veneer was a woman of unparalleled intellect and shrewdness.
“Oh come now, Salena,” he scoffed. “Besides me, you've been his staunchest supporter.”
“He has proven himself unreliable. He makes his promises and he always ends up empty-handed. I have no more patience for it.” She sniffed, looking back to her paperwork. “If that is all you came to say...”
“No Salena. This time it is different. He's described to me this young man. He's reported some remarkable feats. I think you should listen.”
With a sigh, Salena lifted her head once again and impatiently motioned for Jorge to continue. He began to speak, trying to recall every detail of his conversations with Kurin, becoming more animated with every word until, without conscious thought, he rose and paced. His hands were alive, waving through the air of their own volition to stress various parts of his story. As he spoke, Salena's eyes began to widen, her lips pinched until they were no more than a white line, and by the time Jorge trailed off into silence, she was standing with her fists resting on her desk, and she trembled.
“Are you certain?” she whispered. Her face was pale, her eyes haunted by Jorge's report.
“It is what Kurin has told me. I have no reason to doubt it. He may have been wrong in the past, but he has always been honest. You know that.”
Salena stood still, shock rooting her in place. Jorge cleared his throat, tried to work moisture into his mouth before stepping to the side table where he saw bottles. He was not entirely sure that, given the need to keep his wits, wine was a good idea but he was absolutely certain that, given what he knew, wine was a necessity. He poured two goblets and handed one to Salena. She stared at the glass in his hand like it was something alien, before she took it and downed it in a single swallow. Sinking back into her chair, she dropped her head into her hands. Jorge could hear deep breaths; she was trying her level best to keep from weeping.
“Oh gods help us,” she prayed, her voice muffled by her hands. “Gods on high, please protect your foolish children.”
Somehow, her words had the effect of breaking his resolve. The strength ran out of his legs and he slumped into his own chair.
“We must make preparations, Salena. Kurin is bringing the young man here. They are weeks away yet, but we need to be ready.”
“Ready?” Salena shrieked. “Ready for what? War? Famine? Destruction?” She was trembling as she stared horrified at Jorge. “Do you understand what this means?”
“Of course I do,” Jorge said, wiping a hand over his face, too weary to be angry. “And yet we must prepare. What choice do we have?”
Stepping to her fireplace, she stared at the myriad figurines until one caught her eye. Her back was to Jorge so he did not see which one she picked up but she cradled it in her hands, her head bowed. Interest piqued, Jorge rose and stepped to her side where he could get a view. When he did, he closed his eyes. In her hand was a statue, maybe six inches tall, of a man with broad, powerful shoulders clad in black armor gilt in gold, standing proud with hands resting on the pommel of a broadsword. Though just a statue, it exuded an air of dangerous purpose, reminding Jorge of a lion in deep grass.
Salena turned to face him, and he saw tears streaking her face.
“What are we going to do, Jorge?” she whispered.
“What we must, my dear. What we must.”
Chapter 31
His head thundered. His body ached. Opening his eyes, he blinked, cringing from the light of the sun that seemed to spear into the deepest nooks of his skull. He lay still, realizing by the rocking clatter under him, that he must be in a cart of some sort. Why was he not in his bed? Where was he? Gingerly, he sat up, dislodging the mound of blankets that were piled over top of him, and he felt the bite of cold air sting his bare arms. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog that covered his mind, and he groaned when the sudden motion sent a stab of pain through his skull and pins of light sparked across his vision.
“Good afternoon, Jurel,” a pleasant voice said behind him, and Jurel turned to see a familiar old man driving the cart. He studied the old man, who was smiling gently down at him, trying to remember, feeling something skulk across the back of his consciousness. He knew this old man. He...
Kurin.
Jurel gasped as the pain in his head intensified and a discordant clanging jangle filled his ears. He gripped his head in his hands, gritted his teeth while memory flooded back, a tidal wave that broke at his mental shores, eroding thought, trying to claim his sanity as its prize, its price for returning his past, trying to carry it out to a sea of oblivion. A mad chase. A rabid animal with a sword. Soldiers falling with great tears in their armor. Blood. The tidal wave carried these memories in, depositing them like flotsam, teasing him with glimpses of the foundered ship that was his memory, and carried bits of him back out. One last jangle, the worst one, deafened him and he cried out, his memory coalescing back into one terrifyingly intact sequence. With a roar, the wave tried one last time for its prize. He reached out desperately, gripped strands, gossamer thin and held on, until the sea receded, leaving him spent, gasping for breath, but whole.
“Jurel?” Kurin called. “Jurel, are you all right?”
Jurel opened his eyes again. The cart was no longer bouncing. He turned slowly, saw Kurin, features etched with concern, watching him. He tried to smile, but he could only manage a grimace, a thin twist of his lips that was no more than a parody, like the smile of a father being comforted by well-wishers at his child's funeral. His head still roared and the sun still dug at him, but he found it tolerable. More tolerable, at least, than his recovered memory anyway.
“Water?” his voice croaked over a tongue that felt like sandpaper.
“Of course. The waterskin is under my seat.”
The first swallow of cold water stung his dry, sandy throat, but his urge was great and he drank on, gulping down great mouthfuls. When he had nearly emptied the heavy bladder, he pulled it away and heaved a great sigh.
“How about some food?” Kurin asked. “There's still some provisions in the bag. Take what you like.”
In response, Jurel's gut heaved a great gurgle: hunger or its opposite? He fished out two rolls, and piled them high with cheese and ham. The first roll was gone in three massive bites, followed immediately by a slightly wrinkled apple. He moaned with pleasure; it was simple fare, but he felt like he had not eaten in days. Taking his time with the second roll, he studied his surroundings, noting that they were still surrounded by farmland and trees.
“Where are we?”
“Oh I would say that we're maybe two or three hours away from Merris Town,” Kurin said, studying the countryside with squinted eyes.
“Two o
r thr—how long was I out?” Jurel gasped. Two or three hours? That meant that—
“You've been asleep for two days,” Kurin responded gravely. “I was able to rouse you just enough so you wouldn't soil yourself but you were never really awake until now. I was getting worried.”
Satisfied that Jurel had recovered enough, Kurin clicked, flicked the reins slightly.
On their way again, Kurin turned back, pleased to see that Jurel had finished his second roll and was searching the packs for more food.
“I take it you're feeling a little better, then?”
“Hmmm?” Jurel, distracted by the prospect of more food, did not look up. “Oh. Yes, I suppose.”
He paused, his brow drawn together. Did he feel better? He ate and he drank. That was a good sign. But, in retrospect, he ate and drank only to fill a physical need; his body demanded nourishment so he complied. His mind was not so easily appeased. Once again, he found himself in a position where he was forced to look back in horror, seeing himself do things that he could not come to terms with. Black with guilt, he tallied his score: he beat Valik bloody, that's one; he left Merlit unconscious and bloody in the snow, two points; he killed Shenk, driving the man's own dagger into his belly, he's on a roll, folks!; and finally, two more, two Soldiers of God—men that he had never even met, had fallen to his unstoppable rages, four points for the bumpkin with the sword. Was there no end to his depravity? Did he have to kill everyone who pissed him off?
He turned away from the stores of food, no longer hungry, striving in fact, to keep down what he had already eaten.
“You didn't do anything wrong Jurel,” Kurin said.
Jurel jumped at Kurin's unexpected words, not sure how the old man knew what he was thinking.
“It's pretty obvious,” Kurin said with a smirk. “You think the same thing every time you have to do something terrible. It shows that you've still got a good heart.”
“A good heart? Are you crazy? In three weeks, I've left two men disabled and killed three more. That doesn't sound like a man with a good heart. It sounds more like a ravening fiend,” Jurel said, bitterly punching himself in the leg.
“Then why did you do it? Were you and Valik sitting at a fire discussing farm business when you suddenly decided he needed a good beating? And what about Shenk? Were you walking along together, the best of friends when you decided it might be fun to stick him? I'm thinking not. As for the two soldiers, well, I was the one that told you they were going to torture and kill us. I, myself, killed one. I'm not proud of it, but I did it knowing that it was do or die. Do you regret what you've done?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then there you are.” His tone was maddeningly reasonable. “You still have a good heart. Given the options and the alternatives, you did what you had to do. Sometimes good people must do bad things. That they must do bad things does not speak to the kind of person they are. That they bitterly regret those acts does.”
“That doesn't make any sense, Kurin. I can kill indiscriminately as long as I feel bad about it after? Why would killing someone ever be acceptable?” Jurel scoffed, annoyed that the old man lectured him, kept prodding at his open wounds.
“A mother defends her child, a husband protects his wife, a soldier protects his comrade: Do these people have justification? What about a man defending himself against his murderer?”
As his father had so often said, it was not wrong to defend himself. When Valik had tried to beat him, he had responded with a beating. When Shenk had tried to stab him, he had stabbed first. He had simply met force with comparable force. He had simply defended himself. His instincts resisted the idea, though his mind nodded in understanding; he had spent most of his life firmly believing that violence was anathema to good, yet more and more, that belief seemed no more than the simplistic idealism of an overly sheltered boy. It did not completely allay his guilt, but he felt a little better.
“You begin to understand. Good. I'm tired of having this conversation. You've a thick skull and I think I'm developing a hernia from beating sense into you.”
“So what happened then? To the Soldiers?”
“It took some effort, but I was able to pull them into the woods out of sight. By now, the snow we had yesterday will have covered up the blood and our tracks so any other pursuit will have to work for their dinner. After I got rid of them, I put you in the cart—you're a heavy bastard, you know that?—and then I set out. Haven't stopped since.”
It was then that Jurel noticed the shadows under Kurin's eyes, the tension in the set of his mouth, and the limpness of the man's posture. Kurin had not slept for two days.
“Oh don't look at me like that. I'm not so old that I can't get by without a little sleep. Besides, we're almost there. I didn't want to stop.”
Turning away Jurel sat back and worked at Kurin's words as they rode on.
Chapter 32
“There it is,” Kurin said with a grand gesture. “The grand town of Merris. The jewel of nothing, the crown of crap.”
At that distance, all Jurel could make out was a brown smudge on the landscape with a hundred strings of smoke rising from various points into the clear afternoon sky like unruly hair tufting upward. Beyond, he could just begin to see docks reaching out into the sparkling blue strip that was the Sharong river. As they drew nearer, buildings began to distinguish themselves, first as entire blocks of variable colors—red buildings mixed with blue and green and yellow in a dizzying rainbow that seemed designed to make a watcher nauseous, with vein-thin gaps denoting streets and alleys cutting between them—then as individual structures, some as tall as three stories though most were no more than a single level. Nearer still, and Jurel began to understand just how big this town was.
They approached the first buildings, no more than ramshackle little cottages, each one nearly identical to every other, except for color, reminding Jurel of the wooden building blocks he used to scatter across his bedroom floor when he was very young. There were filthy children wearing little more than rags in the bitterly cold air out playing, laughing and calling to each other, like birds flitting from branch to branch. They tossed string balls or beat each other with wooden “swords”, some of which still bore dead leaves. There were two boys off to his left tugging on a dog's tail eliciting an indignant yelp from the mangy mutt, and up ahead, several others ran across the street playing some game or other. Mothers chatted amongst themselves while occupied with the more serious tasks of keeping their homes running smoothly. Some carried laundry to or from the river, and others carried baskets to or from market. Women swept front stoops and women swatted rambunctious children away, hollering in stern voices that they watch out or they'll be in for it. There were few men yet; only elderly men, those who were no longer capable of pulling their weight in the fields or the mills were to be seen at that time of the afternoon.
The cart trundled on, barely earning a glance from the folk going about their business, and they passed from the ragged outskirts and into a shopper's district. On either side of the muddy road, a wooden promenade was built, extending perhaps ten feet from the base of the structures fronting the street. Doors, painted brown, black, or deep red, seemed to be yawning maws against the bright hues of the walls that rose unevenly into the sky, and just as in Tack Town, signs hung over each one depicting the purpose of each shop. There were very few windows to break the screaming colors and Jurel found his headache increasing.
It did not help that the entire city seemed to buzz with an underlying hum like a million bees just out of sight. That hum put him on edge, caused him to grit his teeth and he had to stifle the urge to clamp his hands over his ears. People walked the promenade, so densely packed in spots that they overflowed into the muddy street. He heard the familiar clang of smith's hammers, the sound of horses hooves, hawker's proclaiming their wares were the best in town—and Jurel doubted some of their claims when he saw or smelled what they were selling. It was all very similar to Tack Town, garish colors
notwithstanding, but on a scale that boggled Jurel's mind. He remembered thinking the first time his father had taken him to Tack Town how amazing it was for so many people to be congregated in one place at one time. Comparing the two, Jurel realized that Tack Town was barely more than a village, a little spit in the road with no other use but that a few dozen farmers from the surrounding countryside had a place to trade their goods.
“Does everything have to be so bright?” he demanded crossly, rubbing at his temples and Kurin barked a laugh.
“This town sits on the East Caravan Route. Traders pass through on their way to or from Threimes City and the cities to the south. There are huge opportunities for trade here and I presume that the townsfolk believe that the brighter their shops are, the more visible they are. They haven't yet figured out that if all their buildings are bright then none will stick out.” Kurin chuckled. “Gaudy, isn't it?”
“I think my eyes are going to pop out,” grumbled Jurel and Kurin nodded knowingly.
“You'll find that this coloration is only found on the main roads. Once you wander into the smaller streets and back alleys, everything reverts back to a more comfortable shade of humdrum.”
They pushed on through the crowded streets, toward the town's center, avoiding wagons and scampering children playing in the middle of the road who seemed oblivious to the passing carts laden to various degrees with pelts and produce and meat, jars containing who knew what, bland linens, rainbows of silks (which made him wonder if some enterprising individual had figured out how to peel the top layer from the surrounding shops and roll them up, intent on pawning them off to colorblind shopkeepers), tools for smithies and apothecaries, tools for millers and bakers, and a thousand other items that traders and merchants hoped to sell off at a ridiculous profit.
