The Narrowing Path: The Complete Trilogy (The Narrowing Path Series Book 4)

by David J Normoyle

  Bowe walked toward the cliff. The calls of the seagulls followed him, and if he concentrated, he could understand them. He paused and tilted his head to listen. Mother killer, mother killer, they screeched. Bowe shivered. He knew it was probably just the fever, but that didn’t make the accusations any easier to take.

  The last time Bowe had been seriously sick was when he’d been poisoned by Jeniano. He could hardly remember it at all, but he’d heard the stories afterward and knew he’d acted childlike and happy. These last few days of fever had been nothing like that. They had been a nightmare from which he couldn’t wake.

  Mother killer, mother killer, the seagulls screeched and Bowe stumbled away from the tower toward the cliff tops. There had to be some trail down to the shore and Bowe meant to find it. His right hand was filthy and disgusting and it needed to be cleaned.

  He scrambled along the cliff face, looking down. The wind tore at him, trying to pull him away, wanting to throw him down onto the rocks. Bowe didn’t let it take him. The wind tried to talk to him too, but he wouldn’t listen. He knew it would want to say the same as the seagulls. He covered his ears with his wrists and moved on, keeping his gaze averted from his right side.

  A hundred paces from the tower, he found a trail and began to clamber down. The wind died as soon as he descended a few paces so he lowered his hands and stopped for a short rest, sitting down on a large rock. He leaned over, panting heavily. He didn’t want to keep going, but the seagulls continued to circle and screech, screech and circle, and his hand needed cleaning. He had to keep moving.

  He stood, but his foot slipped and he started to fall. His stomach lurched and his head and lower body leaned way out over the edge, and the rocky shore far below filled his vision. The sea and the rocks below looked like the mouth and teeth of a giant beast wanting to devour him. He managed to hook his left hand around a rock in time to stop his fall and he pulled himself back onto the trail. After he’d given his heart time to calm down, he noticed that his left hand was bleeding. Great—that had been his good hand.

  He followed the trail as it wound down the cliff face. He lowered himself onto his backside and crept down backward in places where it got steep. He tried to avoid using his hands, keeping them in reserve for another emergency. The state of his right hand was still an unknown quantity; blood trickled from his good hand, though, and it began to throb in pain.

  It felt like he achieved a great feat when he reached the gravelly shore. He walked out against the tide. The wind picked up again once he was out of the shelter of the cliff. The sea was gray and murky, and white waves tumbled in one after the other. The water was cold but he didn’t care. Bowe walked in until the water came up to his shins, then he sank to his knees and lowered his hands into the water. His palms screamed out in agony, but he ignored their complaints, holding them under. They needed to be cleaned. A large wave crashed into his chest, drenching him in cold water, but the cold didn’t quench the fire in his hands.

  He stayed there while the tide came in, holding his palms in the water. Then he finally braved a look at his right hand. The entire palm was brown and swollen, and the gash through the center of it was raw and mangled flesh. Around the edge of the palm was red and puffy. Several veins running through his hand had turned black. The sight of it made Bowe want to retch. He shoved it back into the churning water—he needed the sea to clean it much better than that. It was cold, but the cold turned into numbness, which wasn’t too bad. After a while, the waves were crashing over his head, so Bowe stood up, still holding his palms down. His teeth chattered, and the tumbling waves reached his neck.

  “Bowe,” said a voice.

  Bowe wasn’t sure if it was the seagulls or the wind this time. Or perhaps the waves. Then he felt a hand grab his jerkin and pull him around. Iyra stood before him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked her. “I thought you weren’t coming back.” It was difficult to get the words out between his chattering teeth.

  “Of course I was coming back,” she said. A wave crashed against the back of Bowe’s neck and over her head and she was lost to sight for a moment. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” she said once the wave had passed.

  Bowe held up his right hand. “I have to get this clean.”

  “I’ve got some medicine from Belldeem that will help. Come back to the tower,” she said. She pulled him toward shore. His feet dragged but he allowed himself to be guided out of the water. When he was fully out of the water, the wet clothes felt heavy and the wind cut through him with an icy chill. He wrapped his arms around himself but he couldn’t stop the shivering.

  “Come on,” Iyra said. “We have to get you back to the watchtower.”

  She made Bowe go first up the path. Every time he stopped and wanted to rest, she coaxed him upward. The ascent was easier than the descent, which was just as well since he continued to shiver and his hands were blocks of ice—they wouldn’t be able to save him if he fell. But Iyra was behind him, so he wasn’t worried about falling. She had saved him so many times, and she would do it again if she needed to.

  It took a special effort to climb the last few paces, because the wind made a last massive effort to push him off the cliff. But Iyra wrapped a hand around his back and helped him to the top and then on toward the watchtower.

  “What happened to the bodies?” Bowe asked as they passed over the bloodstained grass. “Did the seagulls eat them?”

  Iyra looked at him strangely. “I dragged them into a storeroom inside the tower. Though the seagulls did some damage first. They weren’t a pretty sight.”

  Strangely, the stairs inside the tower was the hardest part of the climb. Bowe’s legs seemed to have given up. His calf muscles quivered and his knees buckled several times. Iyra, beside him, gave him support whenever he threatened to fall.

  “Dulnato, too,” Bowe asked, seeing the bloodstain on the floor where the ascor had fallen. “You put him in the storeroom.”

  “I did,” Iyra said. “Now strip off all of your clothes. Quickly.”

  Bowe tried. He gripped his shirt between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, but couldn’t get it to stop shaking. If his left hand had worked poorly before, it didn’t work at all now.

  “Stop,” Iyra grabbed his shirt. “I’ll do it. Can you raise your arms?”

  Bowe managed to raise his arms to head height and duck his head so that she could pull off his top. She then pulled down his pants and underwear and ordered him to step out of him.

  Bowe did so. A distant part of him felt embarrassed, but most of him was too cold to care. She wrapped a spare blanket around him and used it to roughly dry him, then ordered him into the bedroll. He wrapped the blanket around him, continuing to shiver. He watched Iyra move around the room, lighting torches and placing them in a circle around him; she was still in her wet clothes. She took out a pot of salve and pulled out Bowe’s right hand and smeared the ointment on it. The salve smelled of burnt eggs.

  When she was finished, she asked, “Are you going to regain your body heat naturally?”

  Bowe’s only reply was the chattering of his teeth.

  She sighed and stripped off her clothes and dried herself off with the spare blanket. Bowe knew he should be excited at seeing her naked, but his brain didn’t seem to be working properly. His mind was as frozen as his body. Iyra climbed into the blankets behind Bowe. She pushed herself against him and wrapped her arms around him. Her nipples pushed against his back.

  Bowe continued to shiver for a while after that, but gradually he began to thaw out. Her body heat was stronger and hotter than he would have thought. She was like sitting near an open fire. First the skin on his back warmed up, and then gradually the heat flowed to his core. Neither of them spoke, and at some point Bowe fell asleep.

  Chapter 15

  Day 31

  Bowe woke to find Iyra smoothing the same ointment over his right hand.

  “I hope this stuff actually works and the doctor who so
ld it to me wasn’t some charlatan,” she said when she noticed Bowe was awake.

  “Me, too,” Bowe said. “I don’t want that awful-smelling stuff on my hand for no reason.” Though the ointment was more pleasant than the underlying smell.

  “How are you feeling?” Iyra asked. She touched his forehead. “You’re too hot, but that’s better than being as cold as you were yesterday. Maybe the ointment has already started working.”

  “How long have I been sleeping?” Bowe was looking at her and suddenly pictured her naked, remembering her from the night before. He flushed and tried to put the picture out of his mind. Then he remembered that he’d stood naked in front of her and his cheeks burned hotter.

  “Nearly a full day,” Iyra said. “Are you well enough for me to get mad at you?”

  Bowe thought about that. “I’m going to go with no.”

  Iyra shook her head. “It’s too ridiculous to get mad at. I go to Belldeem to get medicine for you and come back to find you’ve left the watchtower. A search reveals no sign of you until I notice one of the rocks in the sea moving about. So I go down to find you almost frozen to death in the sea and possibly close to drowning. Care to explain?”

  Bowe held up his right hand. “I thought the salt water might clean up the infection.” That seemed a reasonable explanation, at least. More reasonable than most of the other things he had thought and seen. Had he heard the seagulls and wind talking to him? “I might not have been thinking straight due to a fever.”

  Iyra raised her eyebrows, which made Bowe laugh. “I guess that’s an understatement,” he said.

  Iyra indicated his hand. “Not sure that either the sea or the ointment will be able to cure that. You do seem better, though. No sign of fever.”

  “I feel like I can think properly,” Bowe said. “Is there anything more we can do to cure my hand? Should we bandage it again?” he asked.

  “You need to see a doctor,” Iyra said. “That was one of the reasons I risked leaving you. I wanted to see if it was safe for you to return to the village. But news from Belldeem isn’t good.”

  “What has happened?”

  “You cause mayhem wherever you go, don’t you?” Iyra let out an exasperated sigh. “It isn’t easy to keep you safe.”

  “I’ve been up here in the tower for the last few days. I can’t possibly have caused any trouble.”

  “Belldeem is in an uproar. The village council has declared that because of the return of the Bellanger family, they are no longer under Grenier control. They are parading some legal document around. They say they’ll pay taxes only to the Bellangers now. You wouldn’t know anything about that, now would you?”

  Bowe stared at Iyra in shock. Bowe had figured that Jakelin and the council would use the threat of the Bellangers as a bargaining tool, and perhaps in time the Bellanger family could begin to regain their influence. He never imagined that the council would act so quickly. “That isn’t totally my fault,” he told Iyra.

  “But you were behind it in some way. Everyone’s in a fever of speculation trying to figure out how you did it. Massive searches to find you have been organized inside the village. That Dulnato and several of his marshals have gone missing has only added to the confusion. Your legend is growing. Newsbards have started to retell the stories of what you did on the Green Path, with significant embellishments. It was bad enough hearing those tall tales the first time.”

  “Tall tales? Most of them were true.”

  “No, they weren’t. You got lucky,” Iyra said. “What would have happened if the Guild hadn’t helped you? You just blundered your way through most of it.”

  “I made the best of my opportunities,” Bowe said, though he wasn’t sure he could deny the heart of Iyra’s statement. He grinned. “Tell me about these embellishments.”

  “You’re actually happy about this? Don’t you realize what it means? How can I secretly get you to a doctor when half the village is looking to buy you a drink and the other half wants to burn you in a bonfire?”

  “They were looking for me before. I’ll hide in plain sight, like before. Can’t I go back to being a scribe?”

  “Then it was just Dulnato and some of the marshals looking for you. No one outside the city really cared. Now there isn’t a tavern in Arcandis where you aren’t the main topic of conversation. And some people are beginning to put two and two together about Jakelin’s scribe appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing just before Jakelin made his declaration.”

  “So what’s the solution?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who turned the Green Path on its head. And brought the Guardians of ascor to their knees, to repeat some of what I heard yesterday.”

  “I wouldn’t believe everything the newsbards say.”

  Iyra sat down beside Bowe. “Joking aside, what are we to do?”

  Bowe wrapped his left arm around her and she leaned into him. Bowe didn’t know how it happened that the gesture seemed so natural. “Perhaps the ointment will work,” he said. “It’s been less than a day since you first applied it.”

  “Perhaps,” Iyra said. “But no more adventures in the sea.” She leaned her head against his shoulder.

  * * *

  Bowe pushed the blanket off of him and sat up. He wasn’t sure how he’d fallen asleep again after he slept for so long the day before. He touched his own forehead. That was hotter than it should have been, and a quick glance at his right hand showed no improvement. Luckily he still felt lucid. Outside was dark, and the torches on the walls were burning low. Iyra slept by the far wall.

  Bowe stood and moved to the window, hoping that the fresh air would cool him down. He gasped at what he saw outside. Thousands of lights speckled the shore.

  “Iyra,” Bowe called out in a whisper. “Iyra, quickly, come here.”

  Iyra woke, and joined him by the window. “The invasion,” she said with wonder in her voice. “It’s here already.”

  “It has to be,” Bowe agreed. “We have to get out of here. This place will be swarming with soldiers soon.”

  “We should stay here. We’re more likely to be killed blundering around in the dark.”

  “Iyra, we’re in a watchtower. These soldiers are probably going to attack the coastal watchtowers first to prevent news of their arrival from spreading. This place should be manned by Grenier marshals. The Jarindor soldiers will shoot first and figure out that we’re harmless afterward.”

  “No. Washima and those from Jarind are coming to free us, not kill us. They’ll allow us to surrender and treat us well.”

  “Whatever Washima said or thinks, that’s not how war works.”

  “I have an idea. We’ll make it clear that we’re not a threat. Come and help me—we have to be quick.”

  Bowe watched as Iyra took down some of the torches and started painting fresh pitch on them. He didn’t know what she was planning, but any plan was better than doing nothing so he ran to help her. He grabbed the torch from the nearest wall, but he’d forgotten that his left hand still didn’t work properly. The torch fell, and Bowe stepped back, cursing, as the falling flames singed the back of his hand.

  “Stop messing,” Iyra said without looking up.

  Bowe crushed an urge to strangle her and carefully picked up the torch between his thumb and forefinger. He brought the torch over to Iyra and went to retrieve the rest of them.

  Iyra painted fresh pitch on all of them, then brought two downstairs. Bowe followed, carrying one torch. Iyra dug the point of each torch into the ground outside, showed Bowe where to put his, and then went back for the other torches. When she was finished, she’d arranged the torches in a wide semicircle in front of the watchtower.

  “What do we do now?” Bowe asked her.

  “We wait here.” She stood in the center of the semicircle.

  Bowe joined her. “Is this where you cast the magic spell to move us to a different dimension? Go ahead, reveal your powers, demon woman.”

  Iyra smiled. “I told
you that the Jarindors are the good guys. Once they see that there are only two of us and we’re unarmed, they won’t attack.”

  “So what do we do? Just stand here and...?”

  She shrugged. “Look nonthreatening, I guess.”

  “We look like idiots, is that close enough?” They were probably visible to others from hundreds of paces away, yet someone could be a few paces outside the circle and Bowe and Iyra wouldn’t see them. “Easy meat here,” Bowe hollered, mimicking a marketplace seller. “Get your target practice in. Plenty of light to make sure you won’t lose any arrows even if you miss.”

  Iyra punched him in the shoulder. “This is serious.”

  “I find that when things are at their most serious, that’s the most important time for humor.”

  “That’s because you’re a fool.”

  “I thought I was a mush-for-brains.”

  “That too.”

  The heat from the torches around them made Bowe’s face feel warm. He glanced across at Iyra. And then he leaned toward her, used his forefinger to tilt her chin toward him, and kissed her on the lips. Iyra’s lips responded against his, then she pulled back.

  Their faces were close together as they stared at each other.

  “This is the part where you shove me away and start ranting and raving about how I’m an escay and corrupting your ascor purity,” Iyra told him.

  “That was three years ago.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I just want to keep kissing you.” Their lips met again, and they kissed for a longer time. Bowe’s hand cupped the back of her neck and Iyra clasped her arms around Bowe’s back.

  When they finally broke off, Iyra asked, “Is this another one of the side effects of your fever? Standing in the freezing sea until you’re near death, and now this.”