He was on the slope of a mountain, and there were large trees and weathered outcroppings of rock all around. The sun was lost in the heavy cloud cover overhead, and the only sounds were the sounds of raindrops striking the early leaves that were starting to bud out on the small trees of the forest understory, as well as the sound of water in a nearby stream rushing over rocks.
Theus assumed the direction he was facing was the direction he had intended to travel – to the east. Given the clouds, there was no way to tell from the position of the sun. The direction he concluded he needed to go was straight down the slope of the mountain, and offered a challenging course amidst the wet and slippery conditions. He attempted the challenge, and was soon covered in mud from the falls and slides he suffered on his way. He followed the banks of a broad stream as it flowed south, hoping to find a way to cross and resume his eastern trip. The watercourse turned and twisted before he crossed, and the gulley he tried to climb twisted and turned as he struggled up, so that by the time he was atop the next ridge, he had no idea which direction was which. He knew which way the rain was slanting from the breeze that blew it across the land, but that was the limit of his knowledge.
“Voice, which way do I go?” Theus asked.
“East, then north,” the Voice responded.
“Which way is that?” Theus asked in exasperation.
“To your left,” the Voice told him.
Theus stumbled forward, and found a game trail that seemed to weave its path in the appropriate direction. When the path began to switchback along a descending slope, and when it carried a heavy stream of runoff with it, Theus decided he’d had enough of the unpleasant weather.
“I’m leaving this,” he muttered to himself as he wiped rain from his eyes, while more water streamed down from his unprotected hair.
He triggered his magical powers, and stepped forward, into a farmyard, where his sudden appearance made a flock of chickens squawk loudly. He stumbled to the dirt in exhaustion.
“What in the name of Trinte?!” a woman exclaimed, and a motherly figure emerged from the nearby barn.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my hen yard?” she asked angrily. “And why are you dripping wet?”
“I’ve been traveling through the mountains, and I was in a rain storm,” Theus tried to explain as he gasped for breath. He’d taken his third step of the day; it hadn’t been a full step, a complete grasp of his energy. It had been far enough to get him out of the weather. And it had been far enough to exhaust him.
He looked around, hoping to find the mountains he had left behind, to gesture towards them. He was in a place that was dry, with tattered clouds exposing occasional patches of blue sky. The ground was dry beneath his feet.
The mountains were visible, just a few miles away. But the landscape around him was uniformly flat, in a way that made no sense.
“Rain in the mountains? Maybe down south,” the woman answered scornfully. Theus quickly deduced that he had traveled in the wrong direction.
“What’s wrong with you? Get up, and get out of my farm,” the woman reached into the barn, and grabbed something out of sight, then produced a hoe.
“A moment, please,” Theus pleaded. He breathed heavily.
“Are you drunk?” the woman asked without sympathy.
Theus pushed himself upright, then tottered over to the low wooden fence that enclosed the chickens, and he rolled across the top of the fence, landing in a sitting position on the ground.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked again, with less hostility than before.
“I’ll be fine,” Theus groaned as he rose to all fours, then caught his breath. He pushed himself upward and staggered forward.
“The road’s out that way,” the woman shouted. Theus stopped, looked at her, and saw her pointing in the opposite direction. He was exhausted, but he managed to wobble in a half circle and plod forward, down a lane and out of the farmstead vicinity.
He was no longer in the rain at least, he told himself.
And then he fell into a ditch, too worn out to keep moving.
“Are you dying?” a voice asked a minute later. He opened his eyes and saw that the farm wife was standing over him, looking down.
“No, I’m just worn,” he answered slowly.
“Can you get up?” she asked.
“I will. Let me be. I’ll be gone when I can,” he promised her.
“No,” he felt her tugging on his arm. “You can come with me. I’ve got room for you in one of the stalls in the barn. I don’t need a traveler dying in front of my farm,” she complained.
“Better that I should die out of sight in the barn?” Theus tried to joke.
He acceded to her efforts and slowly rose to a sitting position.
“You don’t have to help me,” he told her as he sat with his head hung tiredly.
“Come on,” she told him, giving him another tug that encouraged him to rise. Then, leaning on her heavily, he walked back to her barn and lay down in the dim interior, atop a layer of straw. He felt her spread a blanket over him, and he gave a half smile.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“I’m already nurse maid to one, besides running a farm. I might as well take on one more,” she spoke to herself. Then she was gone, and Theus was fast asleep.
He slept all night in his wet clothes, and when he awoke in the morning as dawn spread light into the barn interior, he sneezed violently. He sat up, feeling stronger, but shivering with a mild fever.
He sneezed again.
“Well, I can tell you’re alive still,” the farm woman told him as she entered the barn. She passed by him to sit on a stool and start milking a cow across the aisle.
“Thank you for letting me sleep here,” Theus told her. He picked up his lent blanket as he stood, and folded it, then laid it across a wooden plank.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked. “Do you have someone else who is ill? Can I help?” he offered.
“My husband is wasting away,” the woman answered without looking. “I’ve got to run the farm all on my own.”
“Is he in the house? Can I go look at him? I know some cures and remedies,” Theus explained, as the rhythmic sound of the squirts of milk struck the bottom of the pail the woman used.
“Give me a minute and we’ll go to the house together. There’s nothing you can do for Martle, but I can give you some breakfast before you go,” she told him.
When the cow was finished giving milk, the woman led Theus towards the small farm house.
“What’s your name?” Theus asked her.
“Gretki,” she answered. “Gretki the farmer. And what’s your own name?” she asked him in return as they stepped onto a shallow porch and then directly into the kitchen and dining room.
It reminded Theus of his own family farmstead. He recognized the signs of too little – too little money to buy things, too little material to repair things, too little time to decorate things.
“My name is Theus,” he answered.
“Martle is in the bedroom,” she nodded her head to the back as she placed the pail on a table.
Theus followed the direction and opened a door that showed a small room almost entirely taken up with a straw mattress on a rope frame.
The room smelled bad. It reeked of illness. There was a thin figure of a man lying on the bed, with open sores, a pale complexion, and clumps of loose hair on the pillow beneath his bed.
“Throw out that milk,” Theus told the woman, speaking over his shoulder. “Have you drunk any of it?” he asked.
“I get indigestion when I drink milk,” Gretki replied. “I haven’t had any in several years.”
“It’s killing your husband. The cows are eating weeds that are noxious; the milk is like poison,” Theus told her authoritatively.
“Do you have lavender and vinegar and sharenstone and rose hips?” he asked, knowing the answer in advance. His own poor farm family had never been able to afford to keep ra
re or seldom-used items in the pantry.
“What are you talking about?” Gretki was puzzled, and perhaps annoyed. “We don’t have any of that.”
“How far are we from Greenfalls?” Theus asked.
“You are just full of nonsensical questions,” the woman was clearly annoyed by the inexplicable questions Theus was pestering her with.
“I used to work in a shop in Great Forks. I know some remedies. I know how to help Martle. I’ll have to go to the markets in Greenfalls to get the things he needs,” Theus explained.
“Greenfalls is a day’s walk south of here. The river is a couple of miles east of here, and the river road runs along it, right down to the city. Martle and I went there a time or two, when we were young. There are too many people there for his tastes,” Gretki calmed down as Theus explained.
“I’ll go there to get some ingredients for his cure and be back,” Theus promised. “He’ll be okay.” Theus edged into the room and opened the window in one wall, helping to air the room out.
“I won’t hold my breath waiting for you,” Gretki said skeptically.
“You just wait and see,” Theus sneezed again, then left the house. He oriented on the rising sun in the east, turned towards the south, and then used his white magic once again.
He found himself on a roof top in a city. The sounds of the life in the streets of the city floated up around him – mules braying, people talking, wheels turning over pavement, a dog barking somewhere. He stood and gasped for breath, turning his head to look around. The rooftop was flat, with a laundry line full of dark clothes fluttering in the mild breeze on one side of him. On the other side he saw the top of a ladder extending above the lip of the roof, and he trudged over to the ladder. Below was an alley, where children were playing with a puppy.
Although his legs were shaky, Theus climbed down the ladder.
“Hey, what were you doing on my roof?” a man called from a window as Theus reached the alley.
Theus decided to ignore him and started to walk away.
“I asked about you on my roof,” the man came out of a doorway and blocked the alley. One of the children picked up the puppy, and all of the children melted away from the scene.
Theus gaged his energy levels. He’d made one trip with white magic, and had little left in the way of reserves. But he thought he had enough. He closed his eyes, and became invisible.
“What in Maurienne’s name!” the man exclaimed. Theus cautiously edged towards the wall on his right, and backed along it, avoiding the befuddled man.
“What just happened? It’s black magic!” the man exclaimed. “More black magic right here in the city!”
Theus passed the man, feeling the effects of the incremental power usage draining away from his body. He turned a corner onto a street, and then released his invisibility.
“Where did you come from?” a woman on a horse asked him after she controlled her horse, which reared up from the sudden appearance of Theus in the animal’s path.
He would never use his magic to try to step into a city again, Theus told himself in exasperation.
“Sorry, my lady,” he grunted an apology, then stepped past the rider and the horse, and walked slowly down the street.
He needed to find a market.
He didn’t know the city, Theus realized. He didn’t know where the markets were located, or how to reach them. “Can you help me?” he asked the first person he passed, a man dressed in rags, pushing a can on wheels, with a shovel and a broom held on the side by loops of leather.
The dustman provided directions to a market that was just five minutes’ walk away. Theus walked slowly, letting his body gradually recoup from the white magic process that had transported him to Greenfalls in the first place.
When he reached the market, he was able to buy the supplies he needed within ten minutes, and he bought additional items to make a treatment for his own developing head cold. Then, for good measure, he bought several vegetables and a pair of chicken carcasses, and bundled all his goods together in a piece of cloth he bought as well.
He asked for directions to leave the city by walking north along the river, and then followed the directions. He spotted the roof of the temple to Currense, the goddess of waters, and he thought of Alsman the priest who had been so kind to him when he had wandered into Greenfalls for the first time, after he had fallen off a bridge and lost contact with his caravan of friends.
Theus promised himself he would return to the temple to thank the priest and the goddess when he finished helping Martle and Gretki on their farmstead. And he would walk from the farmstead back to the city, he told himself wryly, to avoid landing on anyone’s roof, or even inside a home. He passed through the city, one where he was completely anonymous, but stopped at a pawn shop near the city gates, where he impulsively purchased a sword and a knife, further depleting the funds that Lord Warrell had given him a lifetime earlier, it seemed.
He promised himself he’d acquire a staff soon, to complete the arsenal he wanted and needed. The staff would be useful in the mountains when he ventured north to find Limber.
The young adventurer continued on his way. He passed through a gate in the city walls, very near the river, and he was absorbed in watching the barge and boat traffic on the river as he walked on the road parallel to the Landwide. He thought of his crew mates on the Swaigg, and wondered if they all still sailed the river together.
Two hours later he grew tired of watching the traffic around him, and decided to take a short magical step forward to draw closer to his destination. He would return, fix the medicine he had in mind and administer it, then hope to sleep in the barn for another night, and walk back to Greenfalls the following day. He could afford to spend the day taking care of his hosts; there was no deadline for his arrival in Greenfalls or Limber.
“I won’t miss anything if I wait a day, will I Voice?” he casually asked.
“Time is a luxury, young acolyte. Make prudent choices in how you spend it,” the Voice rumbled.
Theus was surprised by the cryptic answer.
“I’m not wasting time; I’m helping people with troubles,” he stoutly defended his decision.
“Yes, I understand and agree. Just beware that there can be unexpected scenarios that arise,” the Voice counseled. “I am calling you to Limber for reasons related to power, politics, society, and magic. But there is a weapon involved as well. You will need to recover the weapon, and I expect that you will need to use it in your campaign against evil.
“Do not dawdle too long, or complications may arise,” the Voice warned.
“What complications?” Theus asked, surprised, interested, and worried by the information the Voice had revealed.
“There is a darkness moving across the land. I cannot tell what it is, but it moves in our direction. I fear there may be complications if it interferes with you,” the Voice answered.
“But you’ll help me, won’t you?” Theus asked. Darkness meant one thing to him. When the Voice spoke of darkness, it meant Donal and his black magic.
“As best I am able. And hopefully, you will increase my abilities through your actions,” his guide spoke. “But that is neither here nor there,” it added, as if to dismiss the topic.
“I didn’t know that I was doing this for you,” Theus blurted out.
“Only to the extent that it is good for you, and good for all, will you do good for me,” the Voice dismissed the comment. “Now, do not worry. Do your duty to your hostess, then begin your journey into the mountains. You will find the remains of lost Limber on the eastern slope of the range, facing the rising sun and the beginning of every day’s good news.”
There was nothing else added by the Voice, though Theus waited several minutes. The other travelers on the highway were looking at him with trepidation; he had been carrying on an extended one-sided conversation as he walked along the road, he realized.
He had enough energy to make a fractional step forward. He looked at th
e wide valley the road cut through. The distance from the river and the road to the mountains on the western edge of the valley was several miles of flat farmland. He judged that Martle and Gretki’s farm was closer to the mountains, and several miles further north. He pointed his stride in the direction he guessed was best, then grasped his energy, and he disappeared from the road, leaving a wondering cluster of travelers shrieking and gasping in surprise.
He landed on an empty farm lane, next to a stone wall that he leaned against while he caught his breath.
There was a young farm boy driving a herd of sheep through the field on the other side of the fence.
“Do you know where the farm is that belongs to Martle and Gretki?” Theus called loudly.
“They’re over that way,” the boy pointed north.
Theus waved thanks, and slowly began cruising along the wall, propping himself up every so often as he walked slowly, his back bowed. Half an hour later, he came to the end of the stone fence. He stopped at the corner and rested, then examined the road ahead. The second farm down appeared to be a ramshackle, rundown stead, leaving Theus to guess and hope that it was his destination, at a distance not too far from where he stood.
He inhaled deeply, wished he had a staff to use as a walking stick, then left the security of the fence and began to move down the road, growing steadier as he progressed.
The house and barn he had seen were Gretki’s, and he walked straight to the house and into the kitchen, where he dumped his cloth of belongings on the floor, then sat down next to them.
“What are you doing back here?” the farming wife asked as she stood in the doorway. “I thought you were either going to Greenfalls or running away.”
“I went to Greenfalls. I got what I needed. I came back,” Theus said succinctly. “And I got some extra things too. Can you cook a chicken stew with these?” he held up a chicken carcass and some carrots.
“You did not go to Greenfalls and get back here in half a day’s time,” Gretki answered. She took the chicken carcass from him. “This is a nice bird – where’d you get it?” she asked.
Unpredictable Fortunes (The Memory Stone Series Book 3) Page 11
