He took hold of Jole’s reins and rushed up the muddy street toward the inn. It rose up like a square mountain, hemmed in by large, overhanging cedars. The stone structure looked palatial in the Hollows, where most homes were fashioned from the planks produced by the mill to the south on the Huber River. Gables protruded at even intervals along the top floor over the chamber windows. The roofing had been quarried from a red sandstone pit somewhere near the low steppes of the High Plains of Sedagin, or so Hambley said. He also claimed the Fieldstone to be the first edifice built in the Hollows after the High Season of the Great Fathers. But most folks in the Hollows felt sure he made that claim to attract customers. Still, the stones were smooth, washed and worn by countless cycles of the sun and winter’s chill.
Tahn went through the stable yard to the rear outbuildings reserved for guest mounts. He stabled Jole, but left the saddle on in the event he needed to leave in a hurry.
He had just emerged from the stable when something hit him from behind, knocking the wind out of him and driving him off his feet and into the mud. He took a mouthful of sludge as he went down. Someone straddled him, pinning his arms to the ground. A strong hand pushed his head deeper into the mud, and his nostrils filled with muck. Panic seized his chest. Had the Velle gotten here so fast?
Then, vaguely, he could hear familiar laughter. Tahn twisted his head free and looked up to face his attacker. The grinning mug of Sutter Te Polis hovered above him.
“I’ll bury you ’neath the Hollows!” Tahn cried, spitting out the mud, a smile of relief on his lips.
“I see. Well, my esteemed hunter friend, you seem to be the one half buried in the mud and,” Sutter said as he picked up a bit of horse mulch, “the rich stuff.” He smeared the dung over Tahn’s face, barking laughter. Tahn began to writhe, struggling to get up, but Sutter simply rode him like a horse master taming a willful mount.
Tahn spat the foulness from his teeth and kicked up with his hips propelling Sutter over him and into a pool of rainwater. He jumped to his feet and untied his muddied cloak. Sutter splashed to his feet and whirled around to face Tahn. Hambley came to the kitchen side doorway to check on the commotion, retiring inside again after mumbling something about “that foolish Sutter boy.”
“If I win, we leave the Hollows tonight, go find ourselves some maidens in the Outlands. I’ll be done with harvesting roots and you’ll be done with the woods,” Sutter said, circling. “Maybe we’ll settle for something a little less than maidens.” He smiled knowingly. “How’s that strike you, Woodchuck?”
Tahn spat again, the horse dung still pungent on his lips. Another time, he would have taunted Sutter that the Outlands had forbidden dullards from traveling abroad. Today, he didn’t have time for their usual games.
Sutter whooped and feinted toward Tahn’s belly. Tahn wasn’t fooled by the old Sutter move. He dropped into the mud, swept his leg out in a wide circle, and upended Sutter. His friend splashed again into the large puddle. Before Sutter could right himself, Tahn jumped on him.
“Enough! Listen to me. I’ve just seen a Velle!”
Sutter stared up, confused. “What? Is this a new game?”
“No game!” Tahn blared. “I was down the south road and out east hunting. I laid up in a draw for a herd of elk.” He stopped, still amazed at what he’d seen. “And a dark, hooded figure stepped out of the trees, raised its hands, and whipped the rain into a funnel to beat a bull elk to death.”
“A dream,” Sutter offered. “You fell asleep waiting on the herd.”
“Then it looked at me,” Tahn said, ignoring Sutter’s remark. “I think … it knew me. And it chased me through the wood. I got away, but I heard the crack of lightning at my heels more than once.” He looked at his friend, fear again seizing his gut. “It was trying to kill me.”
Tahn relaxed his grip and stood up, letting Sutter free. He went to Jole for his waterskin, took a mouthful and washed out the foulness, spilling yet more water over his face and ears. “Has the reader come yet?”
“Not yet.” Sutter took the waterskin and washed himself off before drinking deeply. He now looked a bit more like himself, his shoulder-length hair again the color of harvest just before it’s taken in nearly matching his brown eyes. This, and an angular face make him look older than Tahn, whose own hair was again black, and whose blue eyes were bright in a lean face tanned from much sun. They both stood a little more than two strides tall, and had each gotten what they called “outdoor strong” from their respective occupations over nearly eighteen cycles.
“It’s got to have something to do with the Velle.” Tahn turned to his friend. “In the Hollows, Sutter … a Velle in the Hollows.”
Tahn reached into one of the pouches on his saddle and took out a flake of salt. He dropped it onto his tongue as he tried to think of what to do. His heart still raced at the images in his head of the cowled creature smiling and a helpless animal beaten into a watery grave.
Sutter kept an uncustomary silence.
They stood together in the high doorway of the stable and looked up the road. Since the break in the rain, people had begun filling the streets. The clouds remained a complete canopy over the land, except to the east where small blue patches could be seen near the horizon over the Jedgwick Ridge.
“I thought the readers had some kind of special protection.…” Sutter cocked his head back and assumed an orator’s pose, gazing into the distance—his humor had returned. “Riding from village to village, city to city, telling the old stories, stewards of the histories of the peoples of the land, even those in the Shadow of the Hand, and those … harbored deep within the Bourne.” Sutter held his pose, glancing sideways at Tahn.
Today, the jokes wouldn’t help his mood.
“I suspect you’ll be a reader yourself someday, root-digger, you’re so horribly poetic.” Tahn tossed a salt flake at him, which Sutter caught and bit in two.
“And why not? There’s certainly not much to listen to around here these days. Even the gossip is old.” Sutter put the other half of the salt flake on his protruding tongue and coiled it back into this mouth with a flourish. Any moment he would return to his only topic of conversation: leaving the Hollows. Sutter wanted to leave digging roots behind, visit other cities, meet other races.
Tahn had just met one—today, as it happened, and Quietgiven no less. He had no appetite for more. He’d always been satisfied with the slow, easy way of life in the Hollows. Usually, just breathing Hollows air filled him with a sense of comfort. Now, his encounter in the woods had shattered his sense of safety and peace.
Panic again tightened his chest. “Let’s get in to Hambley’s fire. We need to tell him what I saw.” He strode quickly, forcing Sutter to hurry to keep up.
They paused at the main door (Hambley didn’t allow anyone but staff through the kitchen entrance) and scraped the mud from their boots on the last stone step before entering the inn. Already, Tahn could smell the fragrant scents of fresh bread and roasting duck, and the sour tang of ale hops. Muted conversation wafted from behind the door. Sutter pushed Tahn aside. “Let a man lead the way, Woodchuck.”
Sutter shoved the heavy cedar door open so hard that it slammed against the inner wall, resounding with a loud crack. Talk lulled as guests turned to regard Sutter, who stood arms akimbo, chest out as he received their stares. Spying the root farmer, people went back to their conversations. Tahn shook his head and followed his friend inside, quietly drawing the door closed behind them.
The open area on the main floor of the Fieldstone extended several strides to the left, where a hallway serviced the kitchen, and twice that distance to the right where a hearth the height of a man blazed with fires fed by logs that were two strides long. Tables dominated the area, mostly filled today with Northsun travelers biding their time until the reader arrived.
People came from the farthest reaches of the Hollow Wood to hear the reader. Tahn thought the men from Liosh overly quiet and modest, while Evin’s Creek reside
nts seemed only able to bark. Mull Haven men wore double-breasted tunics, their women adorned in high-collar dresses; the latter always seemed to look up from a bowed head.
Hambley had set out makeshift cots in the rear hallways to accommodate the swelled crowds. Travelers, many of whom came three days’ journey or more to be at the Fieldstone when the sun rose in its northernmost passage (signaling a complete cycle), hadn’t abandoned hope that the reader might yet show. Though the sun hadn’t been seen for days, Northsun was deep in the bosom of the people of the Hollows. Regardless of the rain, people knew when Northsun arrived. And despite the lateness of the reader, it appeared the tradition of his mule ride through town and ascent to the Fieldstone rooftop outweighed the inconvenience.
No one knew where the reader came from, but his bulging satchels thrilled the town. They were filled with stories passed down from ages past, hundreds of generations old, that became new again on the lips of Ogea the reader: Stories of the shaping of the Land, of the wars to save men from the Quiet and shadows from the Bourne. Tahn hoped he would be seeing Ogea soon, that the man didn’t lie dead from a funnel of water rendered by the hand of the Velle he’d seen. Before today, he had wanted to ask the reader if he could tell them all something about the incessant inclemency and the desertion of the herds. The current age had no name and was now a season of storms. Today, Tahn wanted to ask just one question of the reader: What did it mean that a Velle had come so far south, and seemed to know him … personally? But he felt little hope that the reader would come this year.
The thought grieved him, and not simply for his own sake. He still remembered the first time he’d heard Ogea speak. The reader had never referred to his book, but held it to his chest with one arm while he gestured grandly with the other and projected a loud, resonant voice from his small, elderly frame.
The stories he painted with words had captured Tahn’s heart. For hours Ogea spoke, sometimes singing passages of tales in a broken but energetic strain. When night came on full, torches were lit, lending the reader a formidable, eternal look as firelight caught his eyes and his flailing arm cast large shadows on the Fieldstone’s upper floors. When he was done, no voices rose in appreciation, no cheers. A peaceful silence simply settled over the listeners as Ogea descended the ladder and quietly walked into the inn to sit beside the fire and sip a cup of warmed cinnamon tea.
Tahn hoped the reader lived to take his cup at the fireside again.
The lingering smells of nut-bread, berry wines, and sharp cheese drew him from his reverie. The tables were nearly full, so Sutter led them to the half circle of leather chairs closest to the fire—where Ogea always sat. Tahn hung his cloak from a peg beside the fire to dry and took a seat next to Sutter. The hearth passed through to the chamber and private dining room the Hollows townsmen used to hold their meetings; the fire heated both rooms. A door beside the hearth led into that adjacent chamber. Through the hearth, Tahn could see a pair of legs and dark boots.
His attention was shortly drawn away from the unknown person as Hambley came bustling toward them. The innkeep managed to carry a carafe of bitter and a plate of warm bread and cheese with one hand, and a meat cleaver with the other. Drawing near, Hambley put down the food and drink, keeping hold of his cleaver, and extended his long, thin hand to clasp Tahn’s—it was always so with the man.
Tahn took Hambley’s hand. The proprietor returned an iron grip. Tahn had once seen the Fieldstone owner bathing in the Huber, and had been able to count the ribs in the man’s back. Still, his wiry frame had thrown men twice his weight out upon their tails when the ale had made them foolish. His place was clean, and Hambley never let a man or woman step inside without putting something hot down in front of them.
“We’re almost out of meat,” he said, pouring two glasses of Fieldstone bitter for Tahn and Sutter. “Did you have a successful hunt?”
Tahn shook his head. “We need to talk. Can you sit with us?”
Hambley seemed to sense the urgency. “I’ll be back with some meat to join you.” Important matters for Hambley required food.
Sutter piped in, “Yes, yes, that should do just fine, my good man. Have off with you now, and make a good job of it.”
The innkeeper shook his head in bemusement and retreated down the far hallway toward the kitchen. Another great hearth burned there, one so large that Hambley boasted he could roast an entire bull in it. Tahn’s mouth watered with the thought of food from Hambley’s oven—he hadn’t eaten all day.
But it wasn’t the oven that made Tahn’s mouth water. As he often supplied Hambley with his meat stores, he’d seen the secret of the Fieldstone’s savory food. The inn owner fed his oven with only the most fragrant wood. And the cooks—Hambley’s wife and sister—dropped wet sage, thrush cloves, pepper corn, and piñon bark into the fire, causing a sweet smoke to fill the oven and spice the foods they cooked there.
Hambley returned shortly, weaving through the crowd. As he sat, he put a plate of duck on the table beside the bread. “I have guests that are here twelve days since. The reader has not shown yet, and the older folks won’t leave until he does.”
“Have the townsmen sent anyone to search for him?” Tahn asked. He half expected Hambley to tell him someone else had spotted the Velle.
“No one will go out in the rain … except you, I guess. Northsun came and went and nary an eye has seen the reader. Ogea is old, but he is always here by Northsun. Even before I grew to my Change that old fellow was coming into the Hollows with plenty of time to dine on roast duck and gossip with the women folk. His absence puts me ill at ease,” Hambley finished.
Tahn and Sutter shared a knowing look.
Then Tahn steeled himself for what he was about to say. It still felt like a nightmare from which he’d just awakened. Whispering low, he leaned close to the innkeep. “Hambley, today I saw a Velle in the Hollow Wood.”
The proprietor’s eyes darted to Sutter, where he surely expected to see a telling grin to reveal the sport they made of him, but the root-digger held an uncustomary gravity in his countenance. Hambley looked back at Tahn, who simply nodded, finding what he’d seen somehow more real as it lay reflected in the fear on the innkeeper’s face. The three of them sat staring at one another.
After several moments, Hambley managed only, “You’re mistaken.”
“It doesn’t mean the reader has been the Velle’s victim.” Sutter went right past Hambley’s thin denial. “So, perhaps I’ll go and find him myself.”
Neither Tahn or Hambley responded, ignoring Sutter’s bluster.
No one wanted to be taken seriously more than Sutter. Tahn suspected that was why his friend wanted to leave the Hollows. Turning soil to harvest the ground fruits would never be enough for him; it hadn’t the respect or romance he sought. And while any other day his proclamation would be something to laugh at, today Tahn thought his friend might just be serious.
At the end of the first full moon cycle following Northsun both Tahn and Sutter would have their Standing—a rite of passage that, in the Hollows, was usually held in the townsmen’s chamber in the Fieldstone. After that, their actions would be judged more severely. Consequences would be theirs to bear, unlike striplings who—for the most part—got away with everything. He wished his father, Balatin, could have been there to act as First Steward, but he’d died three winters past. Hambley would accept the honor in Balatin’s place. But while Tahn looked forward to his own Standing, Sutter craved the Change more keenly if only for the way folks listened more thoughtfully to a man once he stood on the other side of his eighteenth year.
“Does Ogea come by way of the south road?” Tahn asked, breaking the silence and redirecting the conversation.
“Sometimes. I don’t think he has a place to call home. Always traveling, always another village to visit.” Hambley paused a moment. “Tahn, did your father ever speak of such things coming to the Hollows?”
“Balatin?”
Tahn had not spoken his father’s name
in a long time. The taste of it on his tongue was like grape-root, sweet but earthen. Men from far outside the Hollows had come to his father’s burial. Some wore brightly colored cloaks bearing insignias Tahn had never seen. Others came quietly, saying nothing and sharing secretive looks with one another. Yet even before Balatin’s funeral, Tahn had sensed that his father was more than he’d shared with either him or Wendra. But whatever it might have been, no one in the Hollows would talk about it—if they knew at all.
Sutter sat forward, his brow taut. “We’d know if this had happened before. What we need to decide is what to do now. Because if this is true … we may all be a few breaths closer to our last.”
Tahn nodded, but could not shake the restlessness and panic in his chest that thrust his reason into chaos. His mind returned to the dark figure who commanded the elements and burned wet soil.
Unwittingly, he traced the hammer-shaped scar that marked him, which no one had ever really asked him about, and which Balatin had dismissed as a birthmark. Touching the scar, though, Tahn found words.
“We must spread the news. Now. People must be warned before—”
“Careful how you share such knowledge,” a deep voice interrupted. “And keep your voice low to do it.” Before Tahn even looked up, he saw beside him the dark boots that belonged to the man who’d been sitting in the chamber on the other side of the fire.
CHAPTER TWO
Strangers in the Hollows
Tahn sat, his plate of food forgotten in his lap. Raising his gaze to the face of the stranger, he saw sunken eyes ringed by dark circles. The man wore a closely trimmed beard with faint touches of dark red running through black. His hair was not as long as Tahn’s own, but fell in long waves just past his shoulders. A black cloak hung from his shoulders, only the touch of firelight showing the deepest blue in its folds. At his neck, the man wore a short necklace drawn tight. The chain resembled a very thin, black rope woven from long thin strips of wood or leaves. From the chain hung a pendant in the hollow of the man’s throat: three rings, each one inside the next, but all joined on one side. The pendant shone as dark as its chain. But the man’s eyes communicated the most about him; a clear walnut color and edged by deep lines, they seemed to both worry and reassure in the same moment. He did not move, but stared down, appraising Tahn, as though he could see everything about him with a look.
Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered Page 3
