The Exiled Heir (Autumn's Fall Saga)

by Jonathan French

  Fae-friend. Piskie kissed.

  Padric did not care for himself, but he did care for his family. He would not let his selfish fury destroy them as well. But more than that, he would not make the villagers right. He would not be remembered as a killer, a madman, and the doom marked son that brought ill luck to his kin just as everyone said he would from the day he was born. Dead or alive, Padric could not bear their hearthside prophesies to come true by his own hand.

  Padric emerged from his brooding and found his eyes staring straight at a discarded coin lying in the mud. He stooped and pinched it from the mire, careful to keep his skinned knuckles from touching the muck. It was one of the tin pieces used to pay the garrison of the fort. All but worthless to them, but a welcome find for Padric. He had seen only a few coins in his life and held fewer still. He gave it a halfhearted rub on his jerkin to clean it and held it up to his nostrils, breathing deeply. Padric knew the scent of tin from the village foundry and from his father’s tools. It was strange that this small piece of the same metal would smell so differently. It was repulsive and comforting, alluring and venomous. Just like her.

  He made for the cider house.

  The pungent heat of the turf fire packed around his head as he pushed through the door, making his nose run. All the clinging smells of the fort gathered closely together in the gloom of the wretched place. Padric coughed once and swallowed hard. A drunken minstrel performed for a few apathetic wastrels, his voice high and scraping. No one paid Padric any mind. He was just a dirt covered farm boy and they were well into their cups. The ciderwife was tapping a keg in the corner, her strokes clumsy, her hair free and lank. Padric approached, the maul now propped on his shoulder, his head slightly bent in the low room. The woman did not look up.

  “The girl Eirwen. Do you know her?” he asked the top of her greasy head.

  The ciderwife stopped, tossing the bung mallet contemptuously on top of the barrel. She looked up with swimming eyes, took a sneering breath to answer and stopped short.

  Fear. It was always first.

  Her moist face hardened into a sickening scowl and she retrieved her mallet, resumed her labor, did not answer.

  Hate. It always followed.

  Padric flicked the coin onto the barrel just as the mallet was coming down. The ciderwife jerked and the mallet head smashed into the wood, caving in the top of the barrel. The sweet, cloying scent of fresh cider cooled the air around them.

  “That is for her. When she comes in tonight. As many cups as it is worth. See that she gets them.”

  She always delighted in calling him names, feigning her affection as if he was some sorcerer king of legend, to be feared and worshipped. Mocking him, in truth. He remembered her favorite. He smiled then. Smiled at their memory. Smiled at her foolishness. At his own.

  “Tell her to drink deeply. Compliments of Padric the Black.”

  The bees were angry and that made Rosheen laugh. Little buzzing bastards. They chased her as far as their tiny minds allowed, then dutifully turned back to the hive as soon as they forgot why they had left. Rosheen took her prize to the lowest branch of an old edad and settled in to wait. Still all orange and gold, friend. She missed the green.

  Her arms were sticky to the elbow, as was her breast, where she had been clutching the honeycomb, which now called to her. She broke off a fistful of the dripping comb and began munching while she waited, licking her fingers once the morsel was gone. The rest of the comb lay in her lap and the honey oozed its way over one knee, snaking its way down to her toes. Rosheen watched it drip down to the dense golden carpet below and listened for the soft tap of each droplet as it struck the fallen leaves. She thought about eating some more, but decided to save it for Padric. He won’t want any. But she saved it anyway.

  The honey trail on her leg had hardened by the time he came tromping into the grove, his every step dashing yellow leaves out in front of him. She giggled. He thinks he’s changed. He looked up at the sound of her laughter and frowned.

  “You have not changed,” she said to his amusing face.

  “Quiet, you,” Padric said half-heartedly.

  Rosheen considered that a moment. “Are we leaving now?” she asked.

  Padric did not answer. He stood looking across the grove, his eyes focused on nothing. Brooding. Like always. Rosheen wondered if Padric was happiest when tormented. His moods had grown so dark of late, so different from the gleeful child he had been an eye blink ago. She had laughed when he took his first steps, for he was already taller than she. Now, she barely reached his knee. And even at twenty he is still such a child. Try as she might, she never saw him as anything else and probably never would. He knew it, too. He was clever. For a mortal. It bothered him that she saw him thus and he was forever out to prove otherwise. Mostly it just made her smile.

  She scooted off the branch and let herself glide down onto his shoulder. She sat there for a minute staring at his temple, silently daring him to turn her way. This always works. The tension built up quickly as he continued to stubbornly keep his head averted. Rosheen had to bite her lip to keep from laughing when she saw his jaw muscles begin clenching. She fluttered her wings so that they brushed ever so slightly against the back of his ear. He hates this. A frustrated inhalation of the mouth was immediately followed by a defeated exhalation of the nostrils. He turned his head and looked at her, still frowning.

  Rosheen held the honeycomb out in both hands. “Want some?”

  “No.” he said, followed by an off-put growl. “You are all sticky!” He gave a small leap to the side, forcing her to take flight. She let her laughter escape as he made his way over to the base of the edad and sat down.

  “Stickier down there.” she told him, still hovering. He looked up and gave her a confused twitch of the mouth. “It dripped.” she finished and pointed above him at the branch she had been sitting on.

  “Aaawwwwhh!” issued from Padric as he rolled back to standing. “Hhhhrrr!” followed the discovery of the leaves sticking to his rear end. Rosheen tried to contain herself, but failed when Padric proceeded to try and dust the leaves off his backside, only to have them stick to his hands instead. Her laughter drowned his curses as he scrubbed his palms on the bark of the tree.

  “I hate this place,” he mumbled, stooping to fetch some damp leaves from the ground to clean his hands further.

  “Then leave,” she said. “And this time, do not return.” She threw a little force behind the last word, knowing it would aggravate him further, but unwilling to let the point go by unmentioned.

  “It is not that simple,” he said, tossing the leaves back to the earth.

  Yes it is. “Why?” If I must play this game.

  “I am needed here.” He attempted some conviction, but failed.

  “That has never been true.”

  He turned swiftly towards her, his eyes burning. “You know nothing of it!”

  “I know what you have told me and what I have observed and that is all. That is enough.”

  Padric’s eyes went dead, his shoulders slumped slightly and his skin went ashy grey. Do not give up, damn you! Rosheen knew that his anger was the only thing with enough momentum to send him from this place. He needs to go.

  “People hate me because of you,” he said. There was no malice in his voice, just resignation. “Eirwen hates me because of you.”

  She loves you. Hates me. And herself. “She is foolish. A feckless cow. And nothing but a child.”

  “We’re all children to you, Rosheen.” He walked wearily a few paces away and slumped to the ground, his back against a rotting log. She flew over slowly and landed a few feet away from his outstretched legs. His head rested on the water swollen wood, his eyes staring up into the branches overhead, but not to the sky beyond. He looked beaten, petulant and ill. Lost in his own miserable little life. Worthless to the world. Worth even less to himself. They waste so much on this foolishness.

  She went over and hopped up onto his knee, began walking up
his leg, then his stomach until she reached his chest. Here she sat, munching her honeycomb, and looked him full in the face.

  “What do you want from here?” she asked.

  His eyes flicked down towards her. Rosheen rode the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed deeply.

  She pressed on. “To jump the jug with that strumpet? To remain here, a farmer of little skill? Distrusted by your neighbors? Your father and mother…”

  “Enough.” Padric snapped. “I know all of this.”

  “Then catch up with that metal-peddling dwarf before it is too late. Get back on the road where you were at least content.”

  “I was never content. I have no gift as a peddler.”

  “And you are a capable smith? A fine warrior? Skilled minstrel?” she shook her head. “Stop looking for what you are best at and start living with what you are capable. Out there traveling, at the very least, you have not the time to whinge about. And you are never in one place long enough for your simple-minded people to cast their suspicions at your feet. Go to the places where being dubbed a Fae-friend is not a slight nor a cause to fear.”

  “I made my choice to return,” Padric said. “To leave again would seem like weakness.”

  “Returning was weakness. Fafnir asked you to stay and help him.” She watched his jaw clench again. “Who here asked you to return?”

  A smirk cracked his frown. “Certainly not you, you flippant piskie.”

  “I did not need to. I knew you would be back.” She leaned forward. “Now eat this. I am tired of holding it,” she said, stuffing the honeycomb past his lips.

  Padric tested the edge of the seax with his thumb and frowned. It could use some attention from a whetstone, but there was no time. He wanted to be gone before the sun set. It was dangerous sleeping out in the wilds, but Padric feared finding himself still in the village come the dawn more than he did anything that may wait out in the dark. He had made up his mind to leave and somehow it was easier to depart with the dying light. Mornings were too stark, too real and tempting with false promises of fresh intentions. It was better to leave now. Let the night swallow this place as he turned his back on it forever.

  He had slept out before on herd watches and sometimes with Rosheen for no reason at all. It was not a comfortable way to spend a night, for certain, and the prospect filled Padric with a healthy dose of caution. He turned the big knife over in his hand, relieved that it would be with him. Padric had worked with tools all his life, but the seax was the first he had ever possessed that was not meant to turn soil, cut turf, or break stone. It was a stout fighting knife, wide bladed and well balanced. From blade tip to pommel, the weapon was longer than his forearm and hand combined. And it was steel. Not the crude, heavy, black iron that the warriors from the fort wielded, no, this metal was smoke colored and light, seeming to shine with an inner fire.

  Padric had worn the blade for close to a month so that he might better protect Fafnir’s goods and grown used to the weight of it on his belt. Secretly he had nursed the hope that he could one day barter it from Fafnir. Padric remembered his surprise when the dwarf had insisted he keep the knife after their journey had ended. After all, he had refused the peddler’s offer to journey further and such generosity made Padric feel shameful. Fafnir simply told him he would need it if he was to journey home alone and went back to tightening the bags on Ingot’s back. It had only made Padric feel worse about his choice.

  He pushed the seax back in its sheath. He was going to reverse that choice and prove his worthiness of the gift. He pulled his heavy woolen coat over his head and belted it at the waist, the weight of the knife close and reassuring across the small of his back. He checked his pouch for the fourth time to ensure his flint, hook and line were still there, then rolled a candle in his blanket and tied it into a bundle. He grabbed his mantle and hood from the peg on the wall, wrapped them about his body and secured them with a brooch. He stopped and squinted hard at the floor, willing it to tell him if he had forgotten anything.

  “If you are looking for your axe, I put it in here.”

  Padric blinked out of his mental inventory to find his mother standing in the doorway holding a large, round object. There was a smile on her face that did not reach her eyes and a hesitance in the way she held the object out to him.

  “I covered one of our apple baskets in goat hide and then with otter pelts. It should keep most of the wet out. These straps…so you can carry it across your back.”

  He took the pack from her and looked it over. Solid. Elegantly simple. Brilliant. Just like she was. He took his time inspecting it, afraid to look up again. She was the one thing he would miss from this suffocating place and he felt sick that he had to turn his back on her along with the rest. The last time he left was not difficult for him. Maybe he knew he would come back. Maybe he did not know what he was leaving. He did now.

  He was her son and a walking curse. A shadow she bore from her own body. He was given names that tainted them all. The ridicule had turned him sour at an early age and often he turned his spite on those who fed him, clothed him, held him when the loneliness was too much to bear. He feared she blamed herself for his lot in life. Her own life would improve with him gone. In a short time, the hamlet would no longer be able to lay their sorrows at her door; the door behind which slept the black head of her ill-luck offspring. He would go for good this time and things would be better. And it would almost break her, again. It did not matter what others said of him. He was her son. And it would pain her to see him go, but she would bear that just as she bore the disdain of her community, for him.

  “This is grand, mother. Thank you.” His voice was thick, the words choked out. He glanced up briefly and had to immediately look down again when he saw her face.

  Her voice quavered. “There is food in there. Some eggs and bread. A flask of milk. You eat, hear me.”

  “Yes, mum,” was all he could get out and they embraced to save each other from their own selfish tears. She seemed so little.

  Over her shoulder, Padric saw his father. Waiting, awkward and strong. Padric felt embarrassed, but he did not let his mother go. He would wait for her to be ready. She deserved that. At last, her arms relaxed slightly, but she hooked her hand in his arm and stood by him, wiping her tears with her free hand while his father approached. Padric set his jaw and swallowed hard.

  “Take this.” his father said, handing over a sizable coil of thick rope. “Many things can be solved if you have good rope.” And then he held out his hand. Padric clasped it and could not help but smile as his thin fingers and narrow palms were enveloped by the strong grip of his father’s large hand.

  Sun is already down. Late leaving. Rosheen sat on the roof of the house and watched as Padric shouldered his pack and began walking away from his parents. Three times. He will stop and wave three times. She sniggered when he turned and raised his arm for the fourth time. Padric’s father had turned and headed off behind the house to tend the goats at the second wave. His mother stood for all of them. She continued to stand there watching once he disappeared into the woodlands.

  “Take care of one another,” she said, without turning.

  “We will,” Rosheen told her and flew off after him.

  TWO

  “…no business, behind a wretched plow. Swing a sword, push a plow, oh it is all the same! Phfaw! Follow some dumb beast across a field when you have no more sense than the animal! Have the same horns, might as well have the same brain! Which is to say none at all! Why listen to me, though? Oh no, would never think to do that! What for? Stubborn fool! Have to be noble and bull headed, help wherever there is need. People need to fend for themselves, only way they will learn. Go around pulling them out of trouble and look what happens! By my oath, if I can get him to…Damn you, Bulge-Eye! Stop crushing the flowers!”

  Deglan pitched a clod of dirt at the great toad, which fell quite short. Bulge-Eye did not so much as twitch. Other than the constant swelling and deflating of his
throat sack and the occasional blink, he had not moved for hours. And he was nowhere near the flowers. Deglan continued to glare at him for a moment, but it was impossible to win a staring contest with a toad. Deglan sat back on his heels with a frustrated blow from the nostrils and returned to the plant in front of him.

  It had taken him most of the morning to find this patch of vervain and it was almost too late. Deglan cast a calculating eye at the sun and then turned his scowl back to the dense purple blooms. This was the best of the lot, he was sure, but he needed to wait a few more moments until the sun was at its most high. He hated waiting, but patience was always needed when time was of the essence. He slung his herb satchel off his shoulder and threw the flap back, removing a roll of fine linen and his water skin. He reached for his small trowel, but paused before his hand grasped the handle.

  “Better to do this by hand.”

  Deglan leaned carefully forward until his forearms rested on the ground, surrounding the vervain protectively and then slowly stretched his legs out behind him. He lay belly down on the cool ground, his nose almost touching the petals. The sun warmed the bald spot on the back of his head, but he paid it no mind. His eyes were fixed, the right one narrowing and opening convulsively. His nostrils flared as the aroma of the vervain grew with the ascending sun. Deglan’s stubby middle fingers pressed gently into the soil and traced a shallow furrow around the base of the plant. Slowly, he settled the heels of his hands into the furrow and began kneading the dirt. His eyes closed as the deft movements worked his hands deeper into the Earth and he opened his mind to its embrace. There was a moment’s resistance, but Deglan pressed his need, bluntly and humbly. The roots loosened, straightened and slid out of the soil as he cradled the vervain in his cupped hands.