Final Passage (The Prisoner and the Sun #3)

by Brad Magnarella

  The man clung to Iliff’s arm for a moment before pushing back the hood from his head. He was not a Garott at all, Iliff saw, but a Fythe. Wisps of white hair framed a longish face crinkled with age and uncertainty. He stared into the dark, then looked on Iliff, his eyes wide and pale. When he spoke again, he seemed to be beseeching him. Once again, Iliff felt the strange familiarity.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Iliff said. “I’m not understanding you.”

  “He says his days are few.”

  The cool voice was Skye’s. Iliff had not heard her come up behind him. The man’s eyes searched toward her like a pair of outstretched hands, and Iliff realized that he was blind, or nearly so. He shuffled nearer to Iliff, taking his arm again.

  “He asks that he be able to die a Fythe.”

  “Does he have a name?” Iliff asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “His name is Depar.”

  Chapter 7

  “Many of you are too young to remember him,” Skye said. “But surely you remember the story, for it has been often told. It was the reason for our flight from the old Kingdom, the reason for our settlement here. It was why many of you knew only a mother or a father, but not both, and in some cases neither.”

  Iliff watched the faces around the circular bench, all of them dim and solemn. Over the years, the Assembly had grown from its original twelve members to twenty-four, in order to represent the increased specialization of labor as well as the township’s growing population of Garott. A larger bench had been built, and with the Keep no more, the Assembly now met in a hall that fronted the marketplace.

  “He has come all the way from the Hinterlands,” Skye went on, “so that he may be prepared for his Final Passage in the Fythe tradition. He would like to journey to the land of his forebears and rest among them.”

  “Why should we grant it?” the head boat builder called, a burly man named Filo.

  “That is for the Assembly to decide,” Skye said. “That is why I have called you.”

  “Well, what does he say in his defense?” Filo asked.

  “We spoke with him this morning,” Stype answered from beside his sister. “He claims that he was deceived. He says that his brothers—since done in by their own greed—told him that the Garott were planning to violate the truce and attack. They told him that by weakening the walls, they could lure the enemy into chokepoints and destroy them. He was not to breathe a word of their plan, for his brothers assured him there were spies among the King’s Guard and advisors. They had already spoken with those who could be trusted, they told him, and he needed only to weaken the walls at three points for the trap to be set. Depar claims to have been as horrified as anyone about what happened. He still carries the horror in his heart.”

  “And yet he remained among them all these years,” called Filo.

  As Iliff listened to the dim murmurs of Fythe around him, he recalled glimpsing Depar in the days leading up to the Great Battle. He had appeared a small, fair figure among a dark tide. Iliff looked at the Garott members of the Assembly now, who sat silently, their faces stern.

  “Depar makes no excuses for this,” Stype said. “It was for shame that he did not return to us, he says, and cowardice that he remained among the Garott, for he could not bear the thought of being without community.”

  “And it is cowardice that sends him running back to us when he is on his last breath,” Filo muttered. “Forgive me what I’m about to say,” he told the Garott members beside him before turning to the rest of the Assembly, “but it seems that since he chose his lot with the Garott in life, he should be made to do the same in death. Let him go to the fiery lands to the south.”

  “Is that the feeling of all here?” Skye asked, her eyes following the curve of the bench.

  A representative for the Garott cleared his throat and stood. “Because of the divisive nature of the question and because it concerns Fythe traditions, we, the Garott members of the Assembly, have decided to leave the vote to the rest of you. With your permission, we recuse ourselves.”

  The Fythe members spoke their assent, and Iliff watched the Garott stand and file from the room.

  “They are right,” Skye said, turning back to the Assembly. “The threat of division is very real—between Fythe and Garott, but just as much between Fythe and Fythe. Already opinions gather in the township. They will soon gain strength and run as rivers. The decision of the Assembly should be swift. If even one of us so desires it, Depar’s wish will be granted, and there will be no further debate.”

  The Assembly nodded and spoke among themselves. Iliff could not help but feel their emotions. The Fythe were a fair and judicious people, but they were also strongly communal; and though their memories seemed short at times, and though they were quick to forgive personal grievances, they did not easily forgive offenses committed against the entire community. Especially when perpetrated by one of their own. He felt Skye’s conflict most of all.

  But when at last the Assembly voted, their decision was consensual. Iliff’s was the lone abstention.

  “Then it is decided,” Skye said. “Depar’s request for Final Passage is denied.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, Iliff and Skye set out on a walk beneath a sky that hung low with the promise of colder days. They wandered west from the township through a barren orchard, soon finding themselves on a pathway that led into the King’s Preserve. The trees that rose around them were all saplings now. One of the first projects undertaken following the Great Battle was to replant the ruined wood.

  “He is so frail,” Skye said. “I hardly recognize him as the man who used to set me on his shoulder.”

  “Do you believe him?” Iliff asked. “What he told you?”

  “I don’t know.” Skye shook her head. “Whether for his intention or simply old age, he is hard to read. He is repentant, I sense that much. But I also sense that there is more to what happened than he lets on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When he told Stype about his brothers’ deception, I sensed that he wanted to believe them. Not only because they were his brothers, Iliff, but because the idea of allowing a breach in the same walls that he had made so formidable excited him.”

  Iliff nodded, recalling his final days as a prison troweler.

  “I cannot help thinking what might have become of my people had my mother been allowed to live,” Skye said. “Would we still be here, I wonder, clinging to this world, clinging to one another, whether in longing or prejudice as though it is all there is? As though it is all we are?”

  “Depar could not have foreseen the consequences of what he did,” Iliff said.

  Skye remained silent as they continued walking. The path led them downhill and past a field of graying stumps.

  “Look there,” Iliff said.

  He walked over to an especially large stump. Before it, vines erupted from the earth, most of them long since severed by Garott axes, but some of them green with recent growth. A couple of the vines explored what remained of the tree, while others wandered away beneath the leaf litter.

  “Is this the tree I showed you?” Skye asked with a touch of sadness. She walked around it one time, then rejoined Iliff, taking his arm again. “If only everything had been as clear to me then.”

  “How so?”

  “I was naïve, Iliff. I believed that once our races were reconciled, the way to the Sun would be evident. That it would only be a matter of feeling it and setting out. I overestimated my powers. I held to the faith that if the way had been revealed to my mother, it would be revealed to me as well.” She pressed her lips together, her eyes moving out along the vines’ many courses.

  “You are too hard on yourself.”

  “A part of me wants to speak up for Depar. There is no good reason to deny his wish—whether he go north or south, he will simply sleep like everyone before him. But another part of me…” She shook her head. “I never thought I would feel this kind of bitterness toward another, much less
act on it.”

  Iliff led her from the stump and back onto the path.

  “This may or may not merit mention,” he said, “but the night I helped Depar from his horse, I felt something.” He tucked a lock of silver hair behind his ear and considered what he was about to say. “It was as though in coming here he was not just coming for himself, but for our sake, somehow.”

  Skye watched the ground as they walked.

  “It was not something he had reasoned out, I don’t believe, or even fully understood,” Iliff continued. “It was more that he was holding to this notion, this feeling, that by returning here, something would be put right.”

  “I fail to see what,” Skye said.

  “Well, me too, to be honest.”

  Following the Assembly meeting, Iliff had accompanied Stype and Skye to the infirmary where Depar lay. The old man clung to the coverlet as he listened to their decision. When at last he blinked, tears slid from the edges of his parchment-thin eyelids. Now Iliff felt a stirring in his chest and knew he was not alone in his pity. He looked to Skye.

  “It’s getting late,” she said.

  “Yes, we should head home.”

  They reached the verge of the King’s Preserve where a taller, thicker wood rose, and soon encountered another path to return by. When at last they emerged, dusk had nearly fallen, and the lights of the township twinkled above the harvested fields. Iliff smelled wood-smoke from the chimneys and raised his face to the low clouds.

  The snows would be coming soon.

  Chapter 8

  A week following Depar’s return, the first snow fell. It began in the early morning as a light, lingering dusting that swirled and collected on the panes, but left few traces on the ground. Iliff watched it through the kitchen window as he sipped his lenk. It grayed the dark rooftops and fallow fields, making everything appear aged. The cottage sat quiet around him. Tradd had already left for the boatyard, and Skye remained in their bedroom, sleeping.

  Iliff fed the stove another thick log, then stole from the cottage, securing his coat against the wind and cold. The snow that blew against his face beaded over it like perspiration. He thread his way along side lanes in the direction of the bluff, nodding at the few people he passed. Soon the workshops hummed and murmured around him. He walked past their open doors, through light and heat, and ascended the ramp, until at last he was stepping between the twin pillars of the Fythe. His breaths fogged the air as he looked around the bluff, its lone tree leafless and bereft. The snow was falling harder now.

  Iliff climbed the steps of the dais and stood at the bluff’s highest point, the very place where he and Skye had wed. For a moment, his gaze touched on the gold circle that traced the perimeter of the dais. The gold was his remaining treasures from the mine—the same treasures Troll had carried through forest and swamp—since melted and poured into the stone groove he had chiseled years before to honor his former companion.

  From the center of the circle, Iliff closed his eyes and cast out his awareness. He felt it blow past the six pillars of the bluff, felt it blow through the wintry air, north, south, east, and west. His awareness swelled larger than ever before, but the lands they encompassed were all familiar. Iliff clenched his fists as he willed himself outward in shorter and shorter huffs. But what he saw, what he felt, remained well-known to him. They were realms he and Skye had covered, both on horseback and by feeling. Iliff managed one final push, then relented. His awareness rushed back inside him.

  He knelt on the dais, panting in the cold air, the tunic beneath his coat soaked through. It took a long moment before he realized that the pillar he stared upon through the whisking snow was the lone pillar on the north end of the bluff, the pillar that stood for the fallen Fythe.

  Iliff wiped his eyes with the back of his fist and walked heavily from the dais.

  Returning down the ramp, he could just make out their cottage, where the smoke from their chimney appeared as one of many whispers against the falling snow. He did not want to be returning like this, without some insight into the wall Adramina had spoken of, without some sense, however small, of the direction they should journey. In the desolate sky around him, Iliff saw his wife’s colors. She had so little hope anymore.

  Back in the township, he wandered through the marketplace where most of the vendors were already beginning to cover their goods with tarps. Several stalls had never even opened, Iliff saw. He stopped before a booth where an elderly Garott woman stirred a large steaming pot.

  “Tole?” she asked.

  “Please,” Iliff said. Tole was a food the Garott had brought with them from the east, a porridge-like meal that was thin enough to drink. Iliff watched the old woman dip a wooden bowl into her pot. She then poured the tole from the wooden bowl to another, back and forth in a gurgling cascade, so that the first sips would not burn the tongue.

  Iliff thanked her as she held out the bowl for him. It hadn’t much flavor, tole, but it was warm and filling. He drank and looked out into the marketplace where an occasional townsperson hustled through. Iliff imagined that most of the township would spend the day indoors, beside their fires. He turned his gaze to the lane that led home and lifted the bowl back to his lips.

  The woman took her own bowl that she had set beside the pot and walked around to the front of the stall to join him. She wore a dark blanket over her shoulders, which she held closed with a weathered hand.

  “Did you have snow in the east?” Iliff asked. “In the Hinterlands.”

  “Only when the west winds blew,” she said, “and then only a little. Ours was a dry land.”

  Iliff nodded. He looked over the woman’s face where thick, dark skin drew tight across her cheekbones and made hollows of her eyes. While the Garott assumed an arid appearance with age, the Fythe became almost watery, Iliff noted, as though one were anticipating their funeral pyre and the other, their passage over the Sea.

  “Depar,” Iliff said suddenly. “Did you know him?”

  The old woman shook her head.

  Iliff looked back to the empty marketplace, disappointment lingering in his throat. He had hoped that the woman could give him some insight into the man during his time among them, even though it was unlikely that someone of her station would have had much contact with the Garott leadership. He took another sip of tole, still wondering whether the Fythe had been right to deny Depar his request, right to deny his Final Passage.

  “He won’t live through the night,” the woman said.

  When Iliff turned, he saw that her eyes were raised to the gray sky from where snow continued to fall.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “There are some things I’ve always known,” she said. “Death is one.”

  Her eyes did not move, and the aging maker of tole suddenly became mysterious to Iliff and filled with power. Iliff knew he should finish his bowl and be on his way, but though he tried, he could not compel himself to leave. He cleared his throat.

  “My wife,” he said, “Skye…” He lamented the words as they left his lips, but he could not stop now.

  The woman’s eyes turned toward him.

  “Is… is there anything you can tell me about her?”

  The woman gave no sign for a moment, her gaze as gray as the curtain of snowfall around them. She gyrated the wrist that held her bowl, swirling the tole in circles. Steam snaked past her face. And then slowly, almost regretfully, it seemed, she nodded her head.

  “Winter is falling upon her, too,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  By the time Iliff returned to their cottage, the snow was covering the lane in dusty ribbons. He was almost to their door when he saw that the snow before the front stoop had been pressed flat. There were boot prints, too large to be Skye’s and too small for Tradd. As Iliff followed the prints, disquiet stirred inside him. The prints left the stoop and proceeded south, ending at a post where a set of hard crescent prints replaced them. Iliff followed with his awareness. Horse and
rider had entered the wood and were descending toward the lake. He could not feel the rider’s thoughts, but he sensed the man was Garott.

  Iliff opened the door to their cottage and stepped from the blowing snow. The interior of the cottage was still and dim.

  “Skye,” he called.

  Water spotted the anteroom where the rider had tramped snow.

  “Skye!” he called again.

  “In here,” Skye spoke from the kitchen. Her voice was small, almost beneath Iliff’s hearing.

  When he entered the kitchen, he found her slumped forward at the table, her hair falling over hands that held the sides of her head. Iliff rushed and knelt beside her. Her back felt cold to his touch. The stove had gone out.

  “What is it, Skye? Who was that?”

  “A messenger,” she said.

  “What did he want?”

  “He came to say that Ogden had kept his word. He had the remains of my mother found and delivered to the Sea last month.”

  Relief deepened Iliff’s breathing. “Does that not cheer you?” he asked.

  When she looked up, her face appeared more careworn to Iliff than ever. “She joins my father, yes, and that does salve my heart. But she will only sleep like him, like all those before her.” She closed her eyes, then appeared to will them back open, as though fighting sleep herself.

  Iliff looked over his wife, remembering the old woman’s words from the market.

  “Here,” he said, taking his coat and fixing it over her back. “The stove’s gone cold. I’ll go and fetch more wood.” He stopped, the wood box hanging from his hand, and looked once more to Skye, who peered back at him with pale lips. “We should stay in today,” he said.

  Outside, Iliff brushed snow from the top of the woodpile and began filling the box. The flakes that fell from the sky were larger now, padding the space and sounds around him. He picked out the thickest pieces of wood, ones that would burn slowly and warm the cottage well into night. Two boxes should do, he thought. He looked at the sky, hoping the snow would pass that day, the air grow warm again. But he knew it was not to be. Winter had come. He leaned against the woodpile, fighting the grief that threatened his composure, that threatened everything.