Minnie took a deep breath. “Ruten and Riesta came up to the front wagon to talk about the fleets approaching Ivaric, and Ruten explained that he had revealed that he and Riesta were lovers in the past. I thought it may have hurt your heart.”
“Not my heart,” Silas answered earnestly.
Minnie paused. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but if you do, my ears are all yours.”
“Riesta and I aren’t like that!” Silas exclaimed. “She’s beautiful and powerful and good-hearted, but the two of us haven’t meant anything to one another except as companions,” Silas insisted.
“Actually, she said the same thing,” Minnie answered thoughtfully. “But Ruten was sure that you had given your heart to the girl.”
“Well,” Silas felt a slight sense of annoyance mixed with humor, “that’s not the case. I’m surprised the two of them ever knew each other before this caravan, but I’m not surprised they were in love with each other. They’re both wonderful people.”
“They are wonderful people,” Minnie agreed.
“Why did they break apart?” Silas asked, curious about the relationship. “How did they meet in the first place?”
Minnie gave a contemplative smile. “They met in Faralag, obviously. Ruten was quite celebrated as a swordsman and a member of the Queen’s guard before he joined the caravan with Prima and me,” Minnie explained. “It was perhaps completely natural that a young girl like Riesta would hero-worship him and fall in love. Fortunately for her, and true to his nature, he took her affections seriously and did not have an idle dalliance with her.
”But when the time came for him to adapt to the new role and travel in the caravan, he didn’t want to moor her heart to his wandering way of life, so he ended the relationship,” Minnie said. “And I’ve never seen him do more than a touch of idle flirting a time or two on the road with us. I’d say his heart still belongs to her.
“Which is why, if your heart is not given to her, he may not be able to resist trying to renew the relationship, especially now that the end of his service to the caravan appears to be close,” Minnie spoke speculatively.
“What do you mean?” Silas asked, astonished by the conversation. “He’s going to leave the caravan?”
“Well, in all probability, yes,” Minnie glanced at Silas from the corner of her eye. “I hadn’t anticipated that this conversation would reveal so much, but it seems best to say it all openly now. This caravan had in essence been formed and operated in recent years with one purpose in mind, and that wasn’t to make money – though Prima is such a perfectionist it has managed to do that too, of course.
“As I told you before, this caravan is a project of Faralag, a way to learn about what was happening in the rest of the continent as Ivaric’s evil power began to rise, and L’Anvien introduced himself to the people of Ivaric,” Minnie began to explain. “Our Queen is very wise, and has abilities that would astonish you if you knew them all. She put together Prima and Ruten and me and told us to go forth and learn about all the machinations of Ivaric, and to help prepare Faralag to lead the battle against evil when the time came.”
“Yes, you told me that,” he admitted. “And maybe I sensed it; the trading partners you had in the various cities seemed to know and do a lot more than just trade goods, and seemed to have some relationship with Prima, but at the time I never knew Faralag was behind it all!”
“You shouldn’t have! We’ve gone to great lengths to hide our origins,” Minnie replied.
“But you said Ruten is going to leave the caravan now?” Silas asked.
“No, I said his service may end. We are approaching this apocalyptic battle between you and L’Anvien in Ivaric. When that battle is over, it is very likely that the purpose for the caravan will be ended, or the caravan itself will be ended. Either you will win, and L’Anvien will retreat as Ivaric’s dynasty falls, or you will lose, and we will all lose our lives with you, in all likelihood,” Minnie stated matter-of-factly. “In either case, Ruten will not be needed as a caravan guard any longer.”
Silas felt suddenly ill, as the import of his upcoming battle was starkly explained. He had to win against a demigod in order to protect his friends in the caravan, as well as his friends at sea. The meaning of the battle was suddenly much more real, and not just the abstract purpose of defeating an evil power.
“Are you alright?” Minnie asked, compassion warming her voice. “You don’t look well; I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“I’m not the right person to do this,” Silas felt suddenly inadequate to the challenge of protecting so many lives that so completely depended on him.
“You are the person chosen by the gods,” Minnie said gently. She laid a hand on his lap and patted his thigh comfortingly. “You must trust them.”
The wagon moved forward in silence for several minutes, as Silas tried to digest the stunning cascade of revelations.
“How do you and Riesta know so much about what is going on, about things like the fleet sailing from Faralag?” Silas asked a question as he tried to make sense of all that he had learned.
“I am a Speaker,” Minnie replied with a glint of humor in her eye, “and so is the Queen. We communicate regularly.”
“How can that be?!” Silas was once again astonished beyond comprehension.
“The gasses in the caves of Mount Inegalee do more that create Movers,” Minnie replied. “In a few rare instances, they create Speaker powers instead. The Queen and I are the only two of the past two generations who have had such powers conferred. The Queen concluded that my ability was most needed in service to this caravan, and so I was assigned to accompany Prima, as Ruten was.
“It allows her and I to stay in close communications and exchange information whenever needed,” the woman explained. “In addition to the reports that Prima’s agents send.”
Silas thought of the first time he had met Minnie, when she’d been trying to move a stubborn, ill mule out of the way in Heathrin. He couldn’t imagine any of the Speakers from the Guild stooping to such a menial task.
“I thought you and Prima were truly a couple,” Silas blurted out.
Minnie smiled. “We are, now,” she assured him. “But not so in the beginning. At first, it was simply an assignment, but we came to appreciate one another, and our life together these past few years has been good. I would not trade it for any other!” She looked over at him and smiled broadly.
“And someday, when this is all over, you’ll find the right woman to make you enjoy such a love as well,” she reassured him.
Silas considered her comment as he looked ahead. The sky was darkening, and the caravan was pulling off the road, into a pasture. Silas saw Riesta hopping down from Prima’s wagon in the front, as Ruten rode beside.
“How,” he remembered to ask one more question. “How does Riesta find things out, like the news about the fleet. Is she a Speaker too?” he asked. She would be an even more formidable companion than he had realized if she was a Speaker – swordsman, Mover, and Speaker. He hadn’t appreciated her enough, perhaps.
“No, she isn’t a Speaker. She has her own means of receiving news from the queen,” Minnie answered cryptically. “You’ll have to ask her.”
Silas tended to Hron’s needs after the wagon was parked, and ate his dinner apart from the others while he tried to digest all the news Minnie had imparted. He returned to his wagon, and when he got there and pulled the bedroll of blankets out from underneath the bench, he found a silent Riesta had come to join him.
“Silas,” she spoke softly, and rested a hand on his forearm. “Would you mind if I slept somewhere else tonight?”
“You should sleep wherever your heart tells you to,” he answered quickly, sincerely. The story of her former romance with Ruten had struck a chord in his heart. “I’ll be fine here.”
She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, gave a shy smile, and then quickly walked away from the wagon, disappearing into the darkness, leav
ing Silas happy for her in the process.
He lay down in his blankets, and wondered who he would want to share his sleeping spot with if he could choose anyone at all. He thought of Mata, and he thought of Lumene, then he recollected Saleen, and he even thought of Lexy, imagining the girl’s gruff good humor if she were still alive. But though Lumene’s face appeared most often, he couldn’t settle on any one woman’s face that held steady in his imagination before he fell asleep, and slumbered dreamlessly throughout the night.
The next day, Riesta arrived at the wagon early, and cheerfully climbed up next to Silas on the bench after he had fetched Hron and his other mule. The girl was whistling an offkey tune cheerfully, which made Silas grin and shake his head.
“I’m allowed to wake up in a good mood,” she scolded him, but smiled while she did so.
“I am glad to see that such miracles do happen,” Silas replied.
At the end of the day’s ride, Ruten rode back to the wagon at the end of the line. “We’re going to stop in a village tonight. Don’t try to sell anything to the people here; the Ivaric guards are stretched thin, but they’ll still pounce on you if you try to bargain too sharply,” he told every wagon in the line that entered the village.
“And Silas, it goes without saying,” Ruten told the two passengers in the last wagon, “you are not to be seen. Keep those eyes of yours out of sight!”
“Don’t be so rough on my poor Abomination,” Riesta struck a falsely protective tone. “How often will he have the opportunity to sample the elegant charms of visiting an Ivaric farming village?”
The village was anything but charming. Silas kept his head down as his wagon rolled past ramshackle shop fronts in the small retail section of the village, and he stayed in his wagon, parked away from the others, when some wagons offered to sell goods to the local residents in the early evening, while some others went into the village to see if they wanted to buy any supplies from any shops that might still open their doors.
After dinner, Silas sat with the caravan workers around a fire and listened to the subdued chatter. It was different from his first time as part of the caravan, when everything had seemed new and lively and wildly more adventuresome than his life at the Guild academy. When he left the fireside gathering and returned to his wagon, he lay in his blankets and tried to imagine what his life might have been like if L’Anvien had never come to Ellan Sheeant.
He wouldn’t have been likely to have been dropped into Krusima’s cave, and he wouldn’t have received all the energies and powers he’d come to hold. He might not have even been evicted from the Guild academy in Heathrin in the first place, he speculated. He might have been left to muddle through the school and suffer the harassment of Botton. Before perhaps graduating and become a Speaker, or perhaps not.
Silas would have never met Mata or Lumene or the extraordinary hidden spies of the roving caravan. He never would have seen the wonders of Faralag, or the sprites and imps.
“Silas, this is Preeanne of Faralag. Queen Preeanne is speaking to Silas the Abomination, a name I’m told he oddly relishes,” Silas was startled to hear the voice of the Queen of Faralag riding the Wind Word airs to reach his ears.
“I know you are not surprised to hear my voice, now that you’ve learned more of Faralag’s secrets,” the Queen’s voice spoke.
“You are doing well. We are coming to help you. My fleet will arrive in Ivaric in less than two days. Time your attack to take advantage of the confusion I will cause with my fleet,” the Queen advised.
“The entire continent is awaiting your success, and I know you can do this, my young friend. You are the champion of freedom for our land! May the gods continue to bless you, and bring you complete success.
“I expect to see you victorious in Ivaric soon. Take care Silas; Preeanne, finishing her message,” the woman’s warm voice sounded in his ears for the last time.
Silas sat up and considered the message. Minnie must have managed to communicate with the queen, if Preeanne knew where to locate Silas and send a message to him, he mused, then realized that how the queen had spoken to him was unimportant. What was important was the information that she had sent.
She was close, very close, to landing her invasion, and she intended it to be a diversion of Ivaric’s attention, so that Silas could stealthily approach the heart of the evil in the nation. She was prepared to sacrifice her fleet, her sailors, and her army, all for the sake of helping him. And that was what Lumene seemed intent on doing as well.
They didn’t need to make sacrifices though, Silas thought to himself. He could carry out the attack on his own, without the misdirection, as long as he could sneak into the capital city and get close enough to Jarvis and Derith, and most importantly, L’Anvien’s temple. The advice of Krusima, to look at the foundations that were underneath, supporting the institutions of evil, had proven to be good advice, a way to spring an unexpected attack upon his foes, and he intended to use it.
He could be successful, he was sure. And there was no need to sacrifice others.
He crawled out of his blankets beneath the wagon and stood up, with an idea of how he could minimize the loss of lives among his allies. He rolled the blankets up and slung them over his shoulder, then buckled his sword and his knife onto his hips, and he quietly strolled forward to the commissary wagon, where he covertly grabbed handfuls of food, which he stuffed in his blankets. He only needed three days’ worth of food to see him through – three days at most.
“Silas, what are you doing?” Riesta’s voice was right behind him.
“I’m getting ready,” he answered as he turned to face the girl.
“Ready for what? You’ve got blankets and food? What are you doing?” a note of concern crept into her voice.
He didn’t want to tell her; he could count on her to pass the message along to Preeanne, and he didn’t want that. He didn’t want the Queen to hurry her fleet. But Riesta was right there, with him, and she knew what he was about to do.
“It’s time for me to go,” he said. He searched Riesta’s face one last time. Ruten was fortunate to have renewed his relationship with the young woman – Riesta was attractive, bright, full of scruples, and more. She was what Ruten deserved for having accepted the thankless job of traveling with the caravan.
“Tell everyone I love you all,” Silas grinned at Riesta.
Silas? Wait!” the Mover replied, but before she finished pronounced the two short words, Silas engaged his powers, and lifted himself far into the night sky, immediately lost from sight as he launched the final phase of his own one-man campaign against Ivaric.
Chapter 25
Silas flew east with his first long stride through the air, then took another step and another, going east and north, trying to put himself as nearly as he could at the further possible point away from both the caravan and the fleets at sea. He took stride after stride, for nearly an hour, until he was sure he was safely separate from his friends.
He stopped when he was in a hilly, forested area. As his vast steps through the sky lifted him above the land, he saw a dim white line in the trees beneath him, and he maneuvered to land on the narrow road surface.
He felt tired from the extended use of his energy; he’d focused as much as he could on extending each flight through the air to maximize his distance from the caravan. He didn’t want to pull any of Ivaric’s forces in the direction of Prima’s band of travelers. He wondered for a moment what Prima would choose to do after Silas’s departure. Since the caravan no longer had to deliver Silas to the heart of the evil land, Prima could rightfully turn around and head to safer locales, though Silas was sure that such a strategy would not ever enter the Faralag agent’s mind.
Silas unrolled his blankets underneath a bush several yards away from the road, then settled down to rest. He needed to wait until the sun rose and the people in Jarvis’s castle had arisen. Silas planned to issue his challenges and threats, and he wanted everyone to be awake and aware of where Sil
as was. He found that sleep came surprisingly easily.
When he opened his eyes the next morning, the sun was already risen above the horizon, and yellow rays slanted through the trees to the soil below. He heard sounds on the road, and observed a farmer leading an oxen-pulled cart going west.
He sat up and let the cart move out of his field of vision, while he ate a hard roll of bread that he had taken from the caravan the night before. When he felt ready, he stood up and oriented himself to face towards the west, towards Ivaric city, then began his Wind Words pronouncement, using a voice that he expected would be audible to most of the people who were present in the evil capital.
“This is the Abomination, the scourge of L’Anvien and Ivaric. I tell you as a kindness that I am coming to defeat you. Already I am in the eastern villages of your land, and I declare these lands are now my own,” it was a completely false and idle boast, he knew, but it would help to tell Ivaric where to direct its armed forces.
“I am coming to get you. Watch your eastern flanks and fear the day that will soon come, when you will feel defeat at my hands,” he warned.
“Ivaric is weak. I have beaten you before, and I am about to do it again. L’Anvien is weak. I have also defeated the evil spirit before, and I will do so again soon.
“Bid your lives and your powers good bye, at the hands of the Abomination,” Silas finished the message, and relaxed his energies. The words would travel across the land, and in an hour, or perhaps less, the message would sound in the ears of the citizens of the palace, who would look to their leaders to see how they would react.
And in the meantime, Silas would walk across Ivaric, letting himself and his unusual eyes be seen and recognized as the threat that the palace would need to face, drawing attention away from the western seas where so many lives were at risk because of him.
He proceeded to walk across the country. Two hours later, Silas entered a small village. He made sure to stop at a small grocer and purchased a piece of fruit from a woman who stared at his eyes with astonished wonder as he paid for the apple and walked away. Minutes later, on his way out of town, he saw a horse rider galloping through distant fields, parallel to the road Silas was on. It was presumably a messenger bearing the report of Silas’s appearance.
Foundations Broken and Built Page 22
