The recitation paused for a moment, but Kelder and Asha waited without protest this time.
“We were together a little over a year, I think,” Ezdral said, resuming his tale. “I was nineteen, maybe twenty, by then. I started to think about maybe settling down somewhere, maybe having children someday. And one day I woke up and Irith wasn’t there. We’d been at her favorite inn in Shan on the Desert, a place called the Crystal Skull, and I still was, but she wasn’t.”
Kelder glanced down at Asha; she was sitting rapt, taking this all in. “Why did she leave?” the child asked.
Ezdral turned up an empty palm. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe she just got bored with me.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I waited, at first — I waited a month, to see if she would come back. When she didn’t, I went out looking for her, going up and down the Great Highway and around to all the places we’d gone together, but I didn’t find her. I’d hear about her now and then — how she had flown over Angarossa Castle shouting insults, or been seen playing with the Queen of Ophera’s cats — but I never caught up to her, never saw her myself. And after a time I sort of drifted back to Shan, doing odd jobs or begging, and I stayed there and waited for her.”
“Why didn’t you just forget about her?” Kelder asked. “Find yourself another girl?”
“Because I couldn’t, damn it!” Ezdral shouted, in the first display of temper Kelder had seen from him. “I couldn’t! Don’t you think I tried? But I couldn’t go to sleep at night without thinking about her, couldn’t look at another woman without thinking that Irith was prettier... I was in love with her, so damnably in love — and I still am, damn it all to the Nether Void!” He pounded a fist on the sand, and then went on more calmly, “I started drinking to try and forget her, I just drank all the time, whenever I could get money, and it was even starting to work, a little, after twenty years or so — and then last night I looked up and there she was, I saw her walking past me, as big as life, looking just as she always had. And at first I thought I was dreaming, or that the wine was giving me visions, though I hadn’t drunk that much, and then I thought I was dead and had died and this was her ghost, and I could see her because I was a ghost, and then I finally realized it was real, she’d come back, and I called to her.”
He fell silent for a moment, and Kelder remembered the previous night’s events, not with satisfaction, but with a growing dismay, like a weight in his belly.
“I called to her,” Ezdral repeated, “and she said she didn’t know me, she ran away screaming, and then you hit me, and I fell down.”
“I’m sorry,” Kelder whispered.
“You didn’t know,” Ezdral said, waving it aside. “I knew, though. I knew she had been deliberately avoiding me all these years, that that was why she hadn’t come back to Shan, and I knew she’d leave again now that she knew I was there, but I had to talk to her, I had to tell her that I loved her, so I went to the gate and waited, and I hoped she wouldn’t just fly over the wall. And she didn’t, but you were with her, and I didn’t want a fight, so I followed, trying to think of what I could say, what I could do that would make her talk to me, make her stay with me.” He let his breath out in a long, shuddering sigh.
Asha didn’t know what to say. Kelder couldn’t say anything at all, and Ezdral had finished. For a time they all sat silently on the sand, thinking their own thoughts.
Chapter Eighteen
“Maybe it was her mother,” Asha suggested, “or her grandmother.”
Ezdral shook his head.
“But Irith is only fifteen,” Kelder pointed out. The thought that his intended bride was not just a Tintallionese runaway who had visited Shan as a child was deeply disturbing; the idea of his own Irith roaming the Small Kingdoms with another man, before Kelder had even been born, was intolerable, and he was groping for a way to deny it.
“Oh, yes,” Ezdral agreed, “she’s always been fifteen.”
Kelder sat back and considered that, and considered Ezdral, as well.
He looked every day of his claimed sixty-two years, and then some — his hair and beard were long, white, thinning, and uncombed; his face was rough and lined, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. His lips were a pale, unhealthy color, his skin yellowish. He wore a tunic that hung loose on his sunken chest; the garment had once been brown, but was now blotched, stained, and faded, so that it was black here, grey there, and a washed-out tan elsewhere. His breeches were tanned leather, with large shiny patches on the knees — and probably, Kelder guessed, on the backside as well. They ended in tatters just below the knee, and from there down, his legs and feet were bare.
His hands were thin and bony, and stayed curled and claw-like at all times, apparently involuntarily; the nails were cracked and blackened, the hairs on the back white and wirelike. When he lifted a hand to gesture, it shook. His wrists were bone and tendon and loose skin, with no fat at all, no muscle tone. He wore no ornaments of any kind, and his garments had no trim or embroidery and were of the plainest possible cut — not only were they decrepit, they hadn’t been much to start with. His belt was a twisted strip of rawhide, with a single pouch hung on it, a drawstring bag about the size of Asha’s head.
It was very hard to imagine him as a strong young man, adventuring with Irith.
On the other hand, why would he have made up such a tale? And he spoke with an unquestionable sincerity.
But it couldn’t be the same Irith as the one Kelder meant to wed. “Her grandmother, it must have been,” he said.
Ezdral shook his head. “I don’t think so. She’s magic, remember?”
“She’s only fifteen,” Kelder repeated.
Even as he said it, though, he was remembering all the puzzles and peculiarities about Irith — how she claimed to have done so much since leaving her apprenticeship, even though that couldn’t be more than a year or two; how she remembered an inn in Shan that had obviously been abandoned for years; all the other references to times and places and doings that she could scarcely have fit into fifteen years. The Tintallionese theory didn’t explain it all; in fact, it hardly explained any of it, really.
If she were actually sixty or seventy years old, her youth and beauty magically preserved, that would explain it.
But it wouldn’t explain her, Kelder thought. It wouldn’t explain the person that Irith was.
Kelder liked to think of himself as grown up, not a kid any more; compared to a few years ago, he was grown up. Realistically, though, he knew he was hardly a mature adult. It wasn’t a matter of size or strength, of gray hair or wrinkles — adults acted differently, presumably because they had learned better, had been changed by experience.
But Irith didn’t.
Irith acted like a girl of fifteen. And it wasn’t just acting, like players in the annual pageant taking the roles of ancient heroes — she was a girl of fifteen.
But how could she be?
It didn’t make sense. There was all this evidence that she was far older than she looked — her own stories about what she’d done, and everything Ezdral said, and the fact that she was known to people all along the Great Highway — and then there was an equal amount of evidence, in her appearance and behavior, that she was just what she claimed to be, a girl of fifteen.
Kelder couldn’t make the two possibilities resolve themselves.
Irith would be able to settle the matter, of course — if she ever came back, or when he found her again. He looked up at the southern sky, but could see no trace of her.
He knew he would marry her anyway, but this — this changed things, somehow.
“I guess I believe you,” Kelder said. “Maybe it is the same girl. But it doesn’t really matter, since she’s gone now.” He knew he would find her again, but there was no reason to think Ezdral or Asha would.
Ezdral looked up, and said hopefully, “She might come back, though — she likes you, I saw that she likes you.”
Kelder shook his head. “I don’t
think so,” he said. “At least, not while you’re here. She’s scared of you.”
“But I’m nothing to be afraid of!” Ezdral wailed.
Kelder shrugged.
“You do look scary,” Asha said. “Your beard goes all over, and your hands look nasty, and you’re all dirty, and you smell of wine, or oushka, or something.”
Ezdral looked down at himself.
“I suppose you’re right,” he admitted. He looked up again, first at Kelder, then at Asha. “Are you two going to wait here for her to come back? Maybe I could get cleaned up, and then come back here and meet you?..”
“No, no,” Kelder said quickly. “We can’t stay. We’ve got a very important errand to run, back in Angarossa — we need to hold a funeral for Asha’s brother.”
“Oh,” Ezdral said.
“We should get going,” Asha suggested, with a meaningful glance at Kelder.
Kelder knew what she meant — that they should get away from this crazy old man as quickly as possible. He felt something of the same urge himself.
For one thing, he wanted Irith back, and as he had just told Ezdral, she wouldn’t be coming back while the old man was there.
“You’re right,” he said, getting to his feet and picking up his pack. “Come on.” He turned to Ezdral and said, “Have a safe journey back to Shan, and I hope you find your Irith someday.”
As long, he thought, as Ezdral’s Irith was not Kelder’s Irith.
Ezdral leaned forward on his hands, struggling to rise. “I’m not going back to Shan,” he said. “She’s not going to go to Shan again for years, after this. I’ll have to go looking for her elsewhere.”
“Oh,” Kelder said, a bit disconcerted. “Well, good luck, then.” He took Asha by the hand and started walking, southward across the trackless sands, toward the cliffs that he knew lay just below the horizon.
A moment later he realized that Ezdral was following them. He started to turn and protest, and then stopped.
What could he say? After all, the man had a right to walk on the same sand as everybody else. As long as he stayed out of reach, what harm could he do? And what could Kelder do to stop him?
“You know,” Ezdral called out, “I’d love to talk to you two about Irith. What have you done together with her? Where have you been? Do you have any idea where she might be?”
At first Kelder ignored this, but as they walked on Ezdral kept up an intermittent barrage of questions, shouted across the intervening five-yard distance.
“Come on,” Kelder told Asha, “hurry up; if we move fast enough he won’t be able to keep up, he’s a sick old man.”
Asha nodded, and hurried, but it did no good. Kelder by himself could easily have outdistanced Ezdral, but Asha was only nine, and small for her age — she didn’t have the long legs or the stamina to keep up with Kelder’s pace when he hurried.
And Ezdral, decrepit as he was, could keep up with Asha’s best pace.
If Kelder left Asha behind, he could easily get away from Ezdral — but what sort of champion of the lost and forlorn would he be then? Reluctantly, he gave in and slowed down again, and the three of them proceeded, two in front, and the old man a few paces behind.
By the time they reached the escarpment that marked the end of the Great Eastern Desert and the beginning of the Small Kingdoms, Kelder had yielded to the inevitable — the three were walking side by side, chatting companionably.
Ezdral was sadly unaware of recent events — he hadn’t heard about the Angarossan king’s support of banditry, or the use of demonologists as caravan guards, or the rumors about someone named Vond the Warlock building an empire in the south. He didn’t even know what a warlock was, though he did remember all the disturbances on the Night of Madness, twenty years ago.
“That was when the Crystal Skull got wrecked,” he said.
Kelder was not pleased to hear that. It might be that the old drunk was running two different memories together, or simply fantasizing, but it did seem to make sense, and if it were true it would completely destroy any possibility that Irith was really only fifteen.
Unless she had somehow acquired the memories of someone older? She seemed too certain of things to have simply been told about the Crystal Skull, but what if those memories had been magically transferred to her, somehow? Kelder had heard of witches doing that sort of thing, so maybe wizards could, too.
Or what if she had been simply gone somewhere for forty-odd years? Suppose that wizard she’d duelled with had turned her to stone, and then she had finally been turned back just recently — wouldn’t that account for everything?
Kelder thought it would; he rather liked the theory, in fact. It still meant that his Irith had once wandered the Small Kingdoms with someone else, with the young Ezdral who had deteriorated into this drunken wreck in the intervening years, but at least she really would have only lived fifteen years or so, not sixty or more. Somehow, the thought of her being an unchanging fifteen for all that time was far more discomfiting than any knowledge of a previous boyfriend.
He didn’t mention the theory to Asha or Ezdral, though. He told himself that he wanted to work out the details a little more, first, but the truth was he was afraid they would find enough flaws in the idea to unravel it completely.
Of course, if that was what had happened, then Irith might not have deserted Ezdral at all, she might have been kidnapped from his side — and while knowing that might comfort the old man, Kelder decided that he didn’t want to discuss that possibility.
What if it were wrong, he asked himself, why get the old man’s hopes up?
Even as he thought that, though, he knew he wasn’t really as concerned with Ezdral’s feelings as his own.
When they reached the escarpment they had missed the road completely; studying the sky and the landscape, Kelder finally decided they had arrived somewhere to the east of their intended destination, so with a shrug he turned right and led the party along the foot of the cliff.
It was midafternoon when they finally found the road again, and by the time they reached the top and were back on the relatively level ground of Dwerra the sun was almost on the western horizon.
Ezdral looked about at the patchy grass and weeds and remarked, “Been a long time since I was up here, and saw things growing out of the ground like that.”
Asha gazed around, and then up at Ezdral, wonderingly. The idea of going for years without seeing greenery was very strange to her, indeed.
Kelder remarked, “Maybe you should go on to Amramion, then, and see the forests.”
“Maybe I will,” Ezdral agreed, “if my feet hold out. I’m getting tired, though. Isn’t it about time we found an inn, or at least something to eat?”
Kelder grimaced. “If you want anything to eat,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to beg for it. That’s what we’ll be doing. And I guess we’ll just have to sleep by the roadside. We don’t have any money.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” Kelder snarled, “we don’t. I spent all mine, and Asha never had any, and Irith was paying our way back in Shan, before you frightened her off. I’m just glad we had full canteens when we left!” A thought struck him. “Do you have any money?”
“A little,” Ezdral admitted. “A few bits. Not enough for an inn, but I can get us all some bread.”
“You can?” Asha looked up at him, surprised and grateful.
He nodded. He looked at the road ahead, curving gracefully around the Castle of Dhwerra, and at the scattered buildings along its length. “Which inn is best?”
Asha looked at Kelder, and Kelder looked at Asha.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just pick one.”
With a shrug, Ezdral picked one.
Chapter Nineteen
The bread was rough and a bit stale, but it was filling, and the innkeeper had had leftover cabbage that she had thrown in free; the three had hardly dined well, but at least their bellies were relatively full when they settled onto a hillock at
the roadside for the night.
Kelder had two blankets, one for himself and one for Asha; Ezdral claimed he was fine without one.
“I’ve got this to keep me warm,” he said, pulling a squat black bottle out of his belt-pouch. “Been saving it.”
“What is it?” Asha asked.
“Oushka,” Ezdral replied, grinning. “The very best oushka, Adrean’s Pure Barley Liquor, from Sardiron of the Waters. It fell off a caravan wagon last month, and I picked it out of the mud.” He displayed the label.
Asha turned away; Kelder nodded politely, but showed no further interest.
“Been saving it,” Ezdral repeated to himself as he pried the cork out.
As he huddled under his blanket Kelder wondered whether he should have asked for a drink. Something warming might be nice, and he had no philosophical objection to oushka. He had tasted it on occasion, back home in Shulara, for various special events.
Asha, though, with her drunken, malevolent father, wanted nothing to do with any sort of alcohol, and Ezdral, even after he had cleaned himself up a little for dinner, was scarcely an advertisement in favor of strong drink.
“Are you sure you don’t want some, Kelder?” Ezdral said, his voice already starting to slur. “It’s good stuff, and one hates to drink alone.”
Kelder curled himself up more tightly, pretending to be asleep, and decided that he would never drink oushka again.
“It’s your loss, if you don’t,” Ezdral said, shrugging. He gulped noisily, pouring the liquor down his throat, and Kelder shuddered.
A moment later the bottle clinked against a stone as Ezdral dropped it; a heavy thud followed as the old man fell back against the ground. Kelder lay still, huddled and waiting, finding now that he was not really all that sleepy yet.
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