The Humbled (The Lost Words: Volume 4)

by Igor Ljubuncic

  Sometimes, men and women alike would raise their eyes from the withered cabbage and brownish weed and stare at her, squinting their pale eyes against the harsh sun, their skin red and sweating, their bodies lean from too little food. They would look at her and probably wonder who she was and why she got to watch them laboring in the heat. Nigella couldn’t mistake their silent glare of accusation, as if all this was her fault.

  So she never went down into Marlheim. She almost wanted to. Not so much as to meet the Naum people, not really. But to see up close the reality her lover was carving for her. She felt braver since Rob’s death, and the strange new nation intrigued her as much as it frightened her. But those looks stayed her feet far from the lower slopes, far from the misused parcels of onion and carrot, far from the debris and graves and slow ruin. She would not risk it.

  Nigella plucked another flower and placed it one of the nine bags hanging from her waist. There were all kinds of insects crawling through the grass, lively, busy, just like the humans. Not far away, Sheldon was fencing against an invisible foe with a dried branch. In his left hand, he was cradling that present from Calemore. Sunlight would often catch in its clear depth, then shine out in a dazzling array of colors. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, and Nigella had no idea what it was. But she had allowed her boy to keep it, for now.

  As far as the future was concerned, The Book of Lost Words was quite skimpy on advice.

  She had probably reached the middle of the text, not that she believed there was any chronology to the riddles written throughout the book. But her understanding of the words depended on reading every single line, and her progress was slow.

  Sheldon was making sounds, the ooh and aah of valiant swordsmanship. Two of the Naum soldiers were looking at him, grinning. If you ignored their clothing, you might mistake them for an ordinary pair of Caytorean private guards. It was disconcerting, she thought, that people bent on so much destruction could be so similar to everyone else.

  Her lower back hurt, so she straightened, massaging her kidneys, spreading the tingling sensation around. Then, she bent over again, inspecting the flowers. She always chose undamaged specimens, with whole leaves and without ants and flies burrowing through the petals and heads. When she dried them, she wanted the crushed extracts to be pure.

  The vivid story of flickering images from the previous night’s reading still flashed in the back of her mind. She couldn’t put words to the sensation, but again, it wasn’t a pleasant one. Once, she had read for Calemore, ending up confused. Then, she had begun trying to figure out the truth for herself. But now, she believed their two destinies were entwined, and she couldn’t tell her own future from that of her lover’s. Whatever the book had to tell, it wove a tale of two people. And that made her work doubly hard.

  She thought she had seen an empty alley in a big city, with large gray buildings growing to the side of it, windows empty like black eye sockets in an old skull, the sky boiling with purple and silver and skimming past faster than it should. Yet, there was no wind down below, no leaves blowing across the cobbles. Nothing moved in the street.

  Then, a figure was there, standing against the raging backdrop of a silent storm, and his cape did billow. She thought she had seen Calemore, but it didn’t feel like him. Still, reading through the passage had heightened her sense of urgency, her unease. As if that man didn’t belong there. Or rather, the world around him didn’t belong where he was.

  The sky turned brilliant, too bright to look, and then, the city wasn’t there anymore. She just couldn’t see it. She remembered reading, words unrelated to the story unraveling inside her head, and the memory of that place was like a vaguely remembered dream, a nagging emptiness. Only later, after she had put the book away and lay dozing in the bed, Sheldon cradled in her arms, did the images float back to her, reassembling into a message. A warning.

  That much she was certain of. It was a warning.

  She had known Calemore would bring pain to the realms. She had never read anything that would indicate hope or healing on his behalf. The Book of Lost Words had always given her discomfort, deep and primitive. But now, it was different. Worse somehow. As if he was going to make the world something else. Change it. Make it less than what it was. As if…

  “Mom, Mom!” Sheldon called.

  Nigella blinked. She realized she had stood up, staring west. She shook her head and knelt back onto the slope, picking fresh flowers. “What is it, Shel?”

  “I defeated the evil wizard,” he said, cheerful, unconcerned. The two warriors were still watching him and grinning. One said something in his foreign tongue, and the other gave a gruff chuckle.

  Nigella frowned. “Sheldon, come here.”

  He shambled over, stepping over rocks with goatlike ease. “Yes, Mom?”

  She pointed at the soldiers with her nose. “Stay away from those men. Do not encourage them.”

  The boy shrugged. “But why, Mom?”

  She sighed, wiping sweat off her brow. Working on all fours was a very exhausting task. “Because they are soldiers, Shel, and they are dangerous men. They work for Calemore, and you must keep away from them.”

  “But Uncle Calemore protects us,” he objected.

  She felt her blood chill. Uncle? “He is not your uncle, Shel.”

  Sheldon shrugged again, apparently disagreeing with her. “But they protect us.”

  Nigella swept a burdock from his shirt. “Just do as I say.”

  “They don’t mean us any harm, Mom,” the boy insisted. “They told me.”

  Told you? Nigella felt her blood turn to ice. “What do you mean, dear?”

  He pointed back at the grinning pair, without shame or fear. “I heard them talk. They asked me what I was going to do with my sword, and I told them I was going to defeat the evil wizard. So they asked me to show them.”

  Must be the boy’s imagination, was her first thought. Or he may have really talked to them, came the second, more sinister one. How?

  Keeping her dread and curiosity at bay, Nigella stabbed a glance at the soldiers. But they missed the venom in her soul. She was angry, mostly at herself, for not paying attention to her son. Bringing him here was a risk, but she had not dared leave him all alone in the cottage. Here, though, there were other temptations, other problems. Unlike her, Sheldon craved companionship. He did not fully understand this war, this madness, and being exiled to the cabin, locked in with his mother, was a confusing punishment for him. She could not really blame him for wanting some attention or new friends. But not these men.

  I must have daydreamed, thinking about prophecies, she wondered, trying to keep her anxiety down. She was such a fool. How could she have let that happen?

  “I forbid you to talk to them,” she snapped, perhaps too harshly.

  Sheldon looked hurt. “Why, Mom?”

  Nigella plucked a flower with too much force, crushing it. “Do not argue with me, Shel.” The other thought crept back into her mind. How did Sheldon understand the soldiers? Children learned languages much faster than adults, for certain, but he had barely spent time around the Naum men.

  How?

  She wanted to ask her son, to probe, but she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to hear his answers.

  In that instant, Nigella wanted to pack her things and head back home, right then, but somehow, she found herself kneeling in the same spot, wondering. Maybe Sheldon had a knack for languages, and maybe he had learned a little of their tongue. That was a huge advantage, if she dared exploit it. Through her son, she could learn more about Naum, more about their intentions, their orders, their desires. She could learn what these men wanted, how they lived.

  Only did she really dare do that? Did she dare commit herself? Her boy?

  Knowing this strange nation could help her understand Calemore’s reality much better. She might steal a glimpse into his world, into the great vision he had for the realms, for the people of the land. She might use that knowledge to complement the confusion and om
ens that the book offered her. Only that meant endangering Sheldon.

  She would never do that.

  Sheldon was sitting nearby, shoulders slouched, head bowed in that forced sadness that children used to let their elders know they were hurting. He was deliberately avoiding looking at her, but he was waiting for her to soften, just so he could act proud and defiant. Nigella wished she could indulge him—he deserved it after all the hardship she had put him through—but she couldn’t let her emotions best her now. Emotions for her son, or Calemore, for that matter.

  Nigella flicked an ant climbing on her thigh and moved uphill, toward a new clump of flowers. She bent low, knees and elbows deep in the prickly, smelly grass, carefully examining the petals, the stalks, the leaves.

  Her son squirmed, but she ignored him. He patted the ground, but she pretended not to have noticed. Bored and defeated, he rose, still holding that sword stick of his, but it was a forlorn gesture of misplaced manipulation.

  One of the two Naum men said something. The other made a rumbling noise of agreement, a man’s signature expression worldwide. She stole a quick glance toward Sheldon. Yes, he was watching them, and his big eyes were lit with clarity. He fully understood what they were saying. She ought to be proud of her child, but all she could summon was fear and worry.

  Enough, Nigella thought, rubbing her back again. She had collected a fair share of herbs. After she dried them, she would have enough to last her through the winter. Still, maybe she would visit the countryside a few more times before the autumn set in.

  Rising, dusting herself off, she spared another glance at Marlheim, a living, breathing scar on the face of Caytor, a reminder of what her lover was doing. She wanted to feel disgusted, repulsed, and terrified by his heartless actions, she wanted to feel sympathy for her fellow citizens, but she could not summon anything of that sort. Her heart was empty of sorrow and her cheeks dry of tears for people who had never quite treated her as an equal. The fact Calemore planned to reshape the realms did not really bother her. Not as such…

  What did was her role in the scheme. What would become of her?

  She still tried to wrap her mind around the unease left from the last reading. Calemore would change the land forever. He would carve a new reality. And she would have to find her place in it. That was a part she still couldn’t fathom. Her future was a dark shadow, a vague swirl of shapes that hinted at bad things to come. She wanted to hope, to believe they would end up together as a couple, chained by love and understanding, sharing passion and ideals. She knew that Calemore was cruel and vain and treated humans worse than insects under his boots, but he also had a soft, gentle side. He could be considerate when he wanted to. He had shown her appreciation, and he was genuinely interested in her. Unlike all the others. No one had ever done her any favors. Maybe he was a wild, violent man, but how was he any different from any other male out there? And he had never lied to her. Of that much she was certain.

  Perhaps she didn’t deserve a prince from ancient tales. Perhaps she needed a brutal, hard man to complete her. That was her burden, her ordeal, her destiny. She could flee, like she had always done before, slink away from danger, challenge, and confrontation, take the easy way out. Or she could toughen up and face the ordeal. The price of love. No one said it would be simple. Then, no one had ever told her the life of a mongrel in a magic-hating country would be easy. Not after Rob had left her with a child, not after James had broken his promises, never.

  It would be fatally romantic, she thought, almost misty-eyed. It would be like no other story told before. There was only one problem.

  From everything she had read in the book so far, it seemed her future might never come to be as she imagined. Instead, she would get a more sinister version. One without regard for her love and dreams. Now that was the price of love, it seemed. The more she read, the worse it became. The message, ever elusive, cryptic, but unmistakably dark and troubling.

  What will become of me, she wondered.

  She had to figure it out, for herself. She had to.

  Pouches bulging with herbs and flowers, Nigella retreated to her cabin. Sheldon looked at his stick, tossed it away, and followed after his mother.

  CHAPTER 20

  Stephan entered the bank. He had not entered a bank in years. Once you got sufficiently rich, money sort of started gravitating your way, like lumps of rock cascading down a cliff into a lake, a lake that was your wealth. With hardly a splash, the surface swallowed it all.

  Moreover, influential people had cronies to take care of their business, from secretaries, lawyers, and diligent clerks to mercenaries, all of whom had a role in making your money reservoir more efficient, more lucrative. At a certain point, you even became redundant, but the idea of your wealth kept thriving on its own, sustaining itself like a living organism.

  Today, though, his visit had nothing to do with money.

  A polite clerk in spotless livery led him upstairs to the personal office of one Lord Malcolm.

  Father to one Lady Rheanna.

  Guild masters would sometimes wait in the lavish foyer outside the man’s opulent office. Merchants, traders, shipmasters, and awfully rich businessmen would sometimes wait for weeks before their appointment could be granted. Even then, they might end up being declined at the last moment. Lord Malcolm could afford to disappoint his customers now and then. His institution had enough funds to patron a few slapped wrists and a handful of wasted hours.

  Stephan was spared the ceremony of lounging in leather sofas and sipping expensive wine in the waiting room. He was ushered without a word into the den of wealth.

  Rheanna’s father was standing near a huge floor-to-ceiling window, staring toward the docks. The panes were clear save for an odd gull dropping plastered against the wrought-iron frame. Stephan could see the slight resemblance to his daughter, the same nose, the shame sharp features.

  “Where is my daughter?” the man said as a matter of greeting.

  Stephan stopped and waited for the clerk to click the doors shut behind him. The moment they were alone, he eased himself into an impressive chair, the expensive leather creaking ominously. He waited for the man to turn and regard him fully.

  “I thought you could tell me that,” he told the lord when he slowly spun around.

  The man snorted. “Councillor, my time is precious. I have postponed several highly important matters to accommodate your visit, with a firm belief you had valuable information to share. If you intend to banter needlessly in rhetoric, we can end this meeting right now.”

  Stephan grimaced. “I want to help you.” I want you to help me.

  Grudgingly, Malcolm sat down behind his huge desk. It was empty, and it only served to create an impressive distance between himself and whoever sat on the opposite side. “How so?”

  “Well, we both want your daughter found. Safe. Protected. And we want to make sure that her interests in the High Council are not compromised.”

  “I can guarantee that myself,” the lord snapped.

  “Perhaps. But it would not hurt if you had staunch allies among the councillors.”

  Lord Malcolm made a weary face. “I see no point in all this drama. We have worked together before, and we know each other’s tricks all too well. What do you want?”

  Stephan had hoped to draw out the meeting a while longer before making his proposal, but then, sometimes, the other party dictated the pace of negotiations. “I must ask you, do you know what your daughter had in mind when she married Emperor James? Do you know what she intended to achieve?”

  Malcolm tapped the polished tabletop. “Not quite, I must admit. She had kept her affairs rather private, even from her father. But that is understandable. I would not expect her to chat about her designs until it was all well under way, or complete.” He looked away, toward a ceremonial bookcase on the left side of the vast chamber. “My daughter is a skilled businesswoman,” he added.

  Stephan leaned on one of the armrests, but his elbow slipp
ed, and his body bobbed awkwardly. He straightened himself. “I think she meant to get Athesia united with Caytor. First through marriage. Then, maybe as a commonwealth. Finally, as one realm. Once again.”

  “If anyone can do it, it’s my daughter,” Malcolm announced proudly.

  Stephan nodded. “I want to help Lady Rheanna achieve that goal.”

  The lord was silent for a moment, watching him, thinking. “That would be satisfactory. But then, I would assume the High Council would fully support my daughter’s endeavors. Is that not the case?”

  Stephan looked at the empty desk. He imagined a glass of some other expensive wine would be there, waiting to be tasted. But the banker didn’t seem to get it. Or pretended not to. “If the council really knew what it wanted, our choices would be much easier.”

  “So you’re telling me the councillors might be split in their decision to support Rheanna? Some might decide to favor Amalia, is that it?”

  “There are many possibilities,” Stephan said carefully. “We cannot possibly control all of them. Or even predict them. Therefore, we should focus on the one we desire and make sure it happens. In this regard, I believe our common interests are fully aligned.”

  Malcolm smiled, a dry, perfunctory expression with a fixed rate. “You still haven’t told me what you want, Councillor.”

  Some people really didn’t have the flair for negotiations, Stephan mused, slightly disappointed. But trying to wheedle something out of someone like this slick banker was not going to work. “Your daughter is a widow. A beautiful, intelligent, powerful, highly desirable widow. Technically, she is eligible to the Athesian throne, which means Caytor gains access back to its lost territories. Well, to an extent. Some might say Empress Amalia has a much better claim.” He waved generously. “Going down that route will lead to bloodshed. We will never win a war where Caytorean troops have to fight over Parusite land,” he emphasized. “All Empress Amalia has to do to defeat us is to bow knee to King Sergei. However, we could perhaps convince Amalia she is better off with Caytor behind her, rather than those religious southerners.”