Son of Avonar tbod-1

by Carol Berg

  “Ah, my sorrowing land…” Tears filled the almond eyes and rolled down his cheeks. He dashed them aside unashamedly. “The foul Zhid have done this!”

  “Tell me who you are,” I said, more gently this time, hoping not to fluster him into complete incoherence. “And who is your friend? Truly, I wish him no harm.”

  “My name is Baglos. And you are correct. I was never meant to wear the dress of nobles.” He wrestled off his brocade vest and threw it into the dirt. “And I was never meant to be the Guide. I was meant to cook: to braise succulent fish, to baste roasting quail, to mix and blend and season. But the one who was designated as his madrisse was wounded. When it was decided that D’Natheil must make the crossing immediately, the Zhid attacked, and all was chaos. It’s why we became separated, not just that I am inept, though that is true. I thought my duties were ended before they had begun, and that our last hope was dead because only Baglos was available to guide.” He sank into a melancholy silence, leaving me at a loss.

  “Please. You must explain a little more. I’ve understood none of this except that your name is Baglos and that you’re a cook. Is that right?”

  “Unfortunately true.”

  “And you have been made Aeren’s ”guide“… because someone else was wounded?”

  “Aeren?” His head popped up from where it rested heavily on his fist. “Who is Aeren?”

  “Your friend. He heard the cry of the gray falcon that we call an aeren, and he indicated to me that such was his name. Is that not true?”

  For the first time, Baglos smiled. “D’Natheil means falcon. D’Natheil is his name. The Zhid have not taken his name. That is good, very good. Thank you for telling me.”

  I was glad to hear there was something good about the confusing mess. But the fellow’s enemies had me worried; I’d never heard of “Zhid.” And there was the matter of his talent…

  “There was an afternoon when Aeren—D’Natheil— became quite afraid, but he couldn’t tell me why.” I hesitated, then forged ahead. “The light was… very odd… that day. It smelled wrong. Felt wrong.”

  I expected ridicule at this or at least puzzled curiosity. But Baglos jumped to his feet as if stung by a scorpion. “We must go to him. Please. The Seeking of the cursed Zhid is already touching him. And they are here, so close.”

  “The three priests—the men you ran away from—are they these Zhid? Your enemies?”

  “Zhid are the warriors of Zhev’Na, the enemies of all who breathe, of all who live unfettered. They’ll find him if we don’t hurry. Such danger stalking him, more than you know if they find him too soon. Please, woman. He is our last hope.”

  Though I was no closer to understanding his words, I believed Baglos. There was no pretense in his quivering anxiety, no deception in his concern for the young man. And he didn’t seem very threatening, though the memory of the silver dagger embedded in solid rock could not but leave me wary of both Aeren and his friends.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Baglos was not happy at the idea of my returning to the inn before leaving Grenatte, and I myself had more than a few sharp words ready for Graeme Rowan and his self-righteous snooping. But if I failed to meet the sheriff, I had no doubt the man would be sitting on my doorstep with Aeren under arrest by the time I could walk back to Dunfarrie.

  The fading moon was setting and the sky was gray with approaching dawn when I left Baglos and Paulo at the edge of town. The streets near the marketplace were already busy, and the smells of hot bread and sizzling bacon from Bartolome’s kitchen reminded me that I was ravenous. I was crossing the innyard, ready to wheedle an early breakfast from the good innkeeper, when I spied two men shaking hands close by the entrance to the stable—two men who should be in no wise so friendly. Dismayed, I slipped around the outside of the innyard into an alleyway separated from the stable only by a wooden wall. Though I could no longer see the two, I could hear very well.

  “You’ll not forget our agreement,” said one. “We’re relying on your utmost discretion. It has come highly recommended.”

  “I am a servant of the law and take my duties seriously. I was surprised to see you here. You told me yesterday that you knew where to find him.”

  My eyes had not lied to me. One voice was Rowan’s, and the other belonged to Giano, the pale-eyed priest of Annadis.

  Giano laughed. “We expect to have the business done within the day. You’ll be rewarded handsomely.”

  “My reward will be in seeing a scoundrel brought to justice.”

  “One item of information we yet require…” The voices faded away. The two men must have stepped inside the stables.

  I was furious, more at myself than Rowan. Trusting one who wore Evard’s badge, giving credence, even for a moment, to his words of higher motives, justice, unclean murder—I should have known better. He’d been working with the priests all the time. Were these Zhid naught but sheriffs, wearing a holy disguise as they went about their despicable work? They must have had a good laugh at my performance, thought themselves quite clever. Well, I would provide no more entertainments.

  My appetite soured, I sat in the common room brooding until a grim Rowan burst through the door. “There you are!”

  Tempting to spit at the devil’s lackey. “Did you think I’d left Grenatte without you, Cousin?” I said.

  “The thought occurred to me. I think we should take some air this morning. A walk would be ideal.” He took me firmly by the elbow and escorted me into the lane without so much as asking me if I was willing. He propelled me between a wagon load of squawking chickens and a knot of people gawking at a merchant beating his bondsman, and into a narrow alley well away from the door of the Green Lion. “And so, my lady, do you know where they are?”

  I wrenched my arm away. “Do sheriffs not breakfast before interrogations? Bartolome can take rightful pride in his fare, and it is always such a pleasure to spend time with you.”

  Though he didn’t touch me, the sheriff backed me into the soot-stained wall, propping one hand against the wall on either side of my head. “I ask you again. Do you know where they are?”

  “They?”

  “Either of them. The one you came here to find or the one that seems to have the whole countryside in pursuit of him—the weak-minded servant.”

  “A servant? How could I know anything of servants? And why would I care? I despise weak-minded people… and devious ones.” I ducked under Rowan’s arm and proceeded down the alley at a brisk pace until I emerged in another busy street.

  The sheriff was close at my shoulder. “What of the other one, the small, dark, odd-looking man? You remember, the one who’s looking for his prized horse, but can tell me nothing but that the horse is white; he’s also disappeared. But then you know that already. Bartolome says he was in his common room last night and rushed out shortly before I arrived, only moments before I met you hurrying out the same door. You told me it was the priests that frightened you. Did they frighten him also?”

  “This has nothing to do with me.”

  Rowan was forced to let a well-guarded flock of geese pass by and then shove his way through its trailing mob of anxious buyers to catch up with me again. “This has everything to do with you,” he said, anger snapping like sparks on a frosty night. I had never seen him display such intensity of feeling. “I learned also of the messenger that came here yesterday, asking after the man who sought his stolen horse. The messenger was a freckled boy who limped. I’m no idiot, madam, despite what you think, and I don’t forget that Jacopo would be the only person in Dunfarrie I told of the strange little man who didn’t fit his impersonation.”

  I threaded my way through the crowd that was rapidly filling the streets, and stepped around a shapeless beggar who had crawled into the muck-filled ruts and had the lack of consideration to die there. “Coincidence,” I said. “If you must know, I’m here to see if the local dyeshops will buy some of my plants. Several of
them grow only on Poacher’s Ridge.” A glimpse over my shoulder twisted a knot in my stomach; the dead beggar was a woman, her thin face an artwork of bruises and sores, sculpted by starvation and the brutal world. She might have been twenty or seventy. Wasted life. Useless death. I wrenched my attention back to my companion. “As you’ve so often noted, I’m accustomed to living better than I do at the moment.”

  Rowan did not yield. He stepped in front of me and halted, forcing me to look him in the face. “In no measure would this be coincidence, and in no way do I believe a word of your story. I’ve learned enough in these ten years gone to know when you tell the truth. You’ve said yourself these priests are not what they claim. That I do believe. Who is this man they seek? It’s someone you know, isn’t it?”

  He knew… curse the man forever, he knew that Aeren was a sorcerer. A fiery heat that had nothing to do with the growing sunlight coursed through my veins. “Why ever would I tell you? And how dare you judge my truth? I think you know very little of truth.”

  “I will find out, you know—or someone will who’s even less to your liking. There have been other inquiries about this ‘groom.”“

  “I’ve no need of your concern.”

  Our voices had risen through the conversation, but Rowan’s next words were spoken quietly. Only their edges were hard. “Ah, but others might. Jacopo and Paulo have no noble relations to protect them from the consequences of their actions. If you have any feeling for them—if you are capable of feeling—you should consider your course carefully.”

  As the threat hung in the air like smoke from summer grassfires, the sheriff took my arm again, and steered me down the road to a stable where his horse stood saddled and waiting. “Time to go home, ”Cousin,“ ” he said, gesturing me toward his horse. “No more foolish playacting and no more sneaking about Grenatte. You will take yourself and your young accomplice back to Dunfarrie, and you will remain there until I return.”

  “You’re not planning to drag me back yourself? What if I, in my fiendish perversity, dare to disobey?”

  “No, you go alone. I’ve business in Grenatte today. You’ll swear to me that you’ll do as I say, and I’ll believe you. But of course if I should find out you’ve disobeyed me, you’ll spend the rest of the week in the gaol.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “You’ve told me many times that your rank has made no difference in your punishment. I live by your words.” Rowan unslipped the reins from the tether rail and stuffed them in my hand. “Take Thunder. He’ll carry both you and Paulo. I’d rather not have to dig any more graves in During Forest tomorrow, and mounted travelers are at less risk. Tell Paulo to bring Thunder back to me first thing tomorrow morning and I might not whack him for tormenting his gram.”

  I wanted to refuse any gift tainted by Rowan’s hand, but simple reason curbed my tongue. Amid all the confusion of the sheriff’s motives, one thing was certain. Aeren and his friend must be long gone before Rowan’s return. If riding the cursed sheriff’s horse helped that happen, then, by holy Annadis’s sword, I would ride.

  We made good time on our return journey. Baglos had his own mount and rode skillfully. I was unable to question him along the route as I had planned, for he raced north along the dusty road as if the doom of the world were indeed riding with him.

  When we turned onto the narrow track that led up to the meadow, we had to slow, for the track was all dry gouges and ruts, left from some long-ago year of harsh rains. “Is it much farther, woman?” asked Baglos, his voice reflecting my own anxiety.

  “No. Just over that rise.”

  “Is it a safe place? A large city, a village? This village I have visited before?”

  “It’s only a cottage. Dunfarrie is an hour’s walk.”

  “Are there trees, then?”

  I thought the question curious. “A whole forest of them. Aeren—D’Natheil—sleeps under the trees. And when the light was so strange, he took us into the wood, but we never saw anyone.”

  Baglos brightened considerably. “So he knows to go to the trees. Perhaps he’s not forgotten as much as you think.”

  The drought-starved meadow was just as I had left it the previous day, an ocean of limp gray-green rippled by the hot breeze, cheered here and there by a clump of stareye or stately stalks of pink and silver lupine. The cottage sat squat and peaceful in the middle of it.

  Paulo gave a whoop and let Thunder race the last distance across the meadow. Jacopo came out of the house to meet us and steadied me as I slipped from the saddle. “So Paulo has brought you home riding, eh? He’s quite a boy, wouldn’t you say?”

  Paulo grinned and led the horses off toward the copse and the spring.

  “Where’s Aeren?” I said.

  “He’s been poking about the woodpile all morning. A strange one, he is. Never know whether he’s going to break your neck or shake your hand.” Jaco peered over my shoulder at my companion, who was straightening his tunic and straining his eyes about the meadow. “Looks like you’ve been successful in your business.”

  “Yes, this is Baglos, a friend of Aeren’s. Baglos, this is my friend Jacopo…”

  Aeren strolled around the corner of the cottage carrying a forearm-sized piece of wood. At the sight of us, he increased his pace straightaway. Giving Baglos not so much as a passing glance, he planted himself just in front of me and, with unpleasant grunts and most explicit gestures, expressed his displeasure at my long absence.

  Before I could respond, Baglos crowded in between us. He dropped to his knees, grabbed the young man’s hand, and kissed it. Aeren growled and jerked his hand away, waving the kneeling Baglos aside. When a confused Baglos failed to move, Aeren snarled and raised the piece of wood over the man’s dark head.

  “Ce’na davonet, Gire D’Arnath! Detan eto.” As he cried out, Baglos raised his arms to shield himself.

  Aeren paused and dropped his hand, flicking his fingers toward his own ears and then toward the smaller man’s mouth, as if he’d heard something in the exclamation that interested him.

  Baglos showered Aeren with words in a flowing musical language, most of them shaped as questions. Aeren understood the words, which seemed to soothe his dangerous irritation, but I saw no light of recognition in his eyes, and to none of Baglos’ questions did he answer other than in the negative.

  After a goodly time of this, Aeren pointed to his mouth and then to his head with a most humorously eloquent gesture, telling Baglos that the two appendages were equally useless. Aeren’s changing humors were as spring on the northern moors, a continual race between sunlight and storm. Baglos bowed and backed away, gazing sorrowfully on the young man who sat down in the grass and turned his attention to his limb of birchwood, peeling off the bark as if he were expecting to find something underneath, but wasn’t quite sure what it might be.

  “Ah, woman, I did not believe it possible that D’Natheil could have truly forgotten himself,” said Baglos, holding his clasped hands to his chest, the color of his complexion gone sallow. “But your surmise is entirely correct. He recognizes nothing I speak of. We are lost if he cannot remember. And I cannot guide if he has forgotten the words to command me.” He tugged at his disheveled tunic, straightened his shoulders resolutely, and bowed to me. “But this is not your burden. I will take him away now, and we will trouble you no more.”

  “No!” I blurted out the word more forcefully than I intended. “You can’t take him away yet. We should eat something before you go. He’s been ill…”

  “He does not belong in this place. He has duties. In the name of the Dar’Nethi Preceptorate, I thank you for your kindness.” The forlorn Baglos cast his eyes down and walked back to Aeren, bowing once again. “Ce’na, D’Natheil” — Aeren’s head popped up as he spoke—“ven’t‘sar —”

  “Baglos, look,” I said. “He recognizes his name.”

  Baglos had already noticed and dropped to his knees beside the young man, chattering rapidly. An exasperated Aeren soon clamped h
is hand over the smaller man’s mouth and toppled him over backwards.

  “Give him time,” I said, helping Baglos sit up and brush the grass and dirt from his shirt. “Take it more slowly.”

  But the little man waved off my help. “Foolish woman. There is no time. Everything is prepared… waiting… This was not part of the plan. The Zhid have done this—I felt their icy breath at the crossing—and I’ve not the skill to reverse it. Everything depends on me, but with this… I don’t know what to do.” Such profound distress surely had origins somewhere far beyond irritable masters and momentary confusion. Our last hope, he had said.

  “He understands your language. Perhaps if you were to tell me more of him, then, between the two of us, we could make him remember what he needs to know.”

  The little man sighed and rubbed his brow with his fist. “If only remembering were enough. Since the ruinous attempt to send him, he has not been capable—” Baglos glanced over at Aeren, dropping his voice though the young man was preoccupied with his wood-shaping. “He never regained even the small skills he had as a boy. You would not understand the importance of these skills, as they are not abilities your people possess.”

  “Skills?” I approached with caution. “What kind of skills? He seems to be a talented warrior and very intelligent.”

  “I speak of what a mundane would call magic. Sorcery.” Baglos spoke as casually as one might mention a gift for poetry or painting or baking.

  I breathed a prayer that my instincts were correct. “He has done magic here.”

  Baglos sat paralyzed, eyes stretched almost round. “How is that possible? And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wasn’t sure if you knew he could. It’s not a thing to mention lightly. The law of the Four Realms… surely you know that.” I told him of the knife and the plants and the fire.

  “What knife is this?” He sprang from the ground like a new-vented geyser.

  “We found it on the hilltop and believed it had some connection to Aeren because of the symbol on it. It’s the one he uses even now.” Aeren had pulled out the dagger and was diligently scraping his piece of birch.