The Flight from Kar (The Emperor's Library

by Frederick Kirchhoff

“Don’t be discouraged,” he told Jon. “When I was your age I was almost as clumsy as you. Still, I can see why my grandson took an interest in you. You have potential.”

  Jon was unable to resist the opening.

  “What did John say about me?” he asked.

  “Not much. He told me where he’d met you and he told Zoë to look for you—you know all about that—and he told me that if you came I might want to get to know you. And so, you see, I have. John also said you’d be a good addition to our family, and I think he was right.”

  “But I haven’t told you anything about myself.”

  “You didn’t have to. I’ve been watching you learn, and that’s the best way to discover the strengths and weaknesses of a person.”

  “You seem to have had a lot of experience with people.”

  “I see what you’re getting at. A man who leads a life like mine may know the forest but little else. But when I was younger, I had the opportunity to see more of the world.”

  “Did you ever go to Kar?”

  “Oh yes, to Kar and a lot of other places. I thought about going all the way to Tarnak, but Kar was as far as I got, and there’s enough in Kar to keep you busy for a lifetime. I wasn’t much older than you then—I couldn’t have been more than twenty.”

  “I’ve only just turned seventeen,” Jon pointed out.

  “Seventeen? That makes you the same age as Zoë, although, from what I know about the Valley of Women, her birthday must come five months before yours; and that makes you four years younger than my grandson John. For you, that probably sounds like a long time, but, when you’re old as I am, a four-year difference in age means nothing.”

  “You went to Kar by yourself?” Jon asked, trying to keep the subject on Kar.

  Peter paused before he replied.

  “It’s not something I talk about—with the rest of the family, you know. They think I went on Forester business, and I’ve never said anything to dispute that. But it was different—entirely different, if the truth be known. I went with a friend. Three full months it was, just getting there, and three more on the way back. Half a year altogether. Of course we were on foot most of the time, and we lingered here and there, often for days. Just the two of us on the River Road, taking our time and discovering one new thing after another.”

  “You must have been great friends.”

  “More than friends, if you understand what I mean. It was a woman, you see.”

  “Was it Helen and Ethel’s mother?”

  Peter looked at him in a funny way. Perhaps Jon shouldn’t have asked such a personal question.

  “No, it was another woman. I told Helen about it later. Not the Helen you know, but her mother. My daughter Helen is named for her mother—I should have explained that. Before she and I were married, I told my wife everything, and she understood. But I’ve never said anything about it to the children. I don’t know why, but after so many years it seems odd to tell them, and young people don’t always enjoy hearing about the romances of their grandparents. You’re a new person, so that makes it different. Perhaps it’s easier to open yourself up to a stranger. But I’d appreciate your saying nothing to the rest of the family. Not that I’m ashamed of anything—but I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I hadn’t been totally honest. They know about my journey to Kar, naturally, but not the full circumstances, and it’s hard to imagine changing that.”

  To journey to Kar with someone you loved—it was beyond Jon’s imagination.

  “Who was she—the woman you went with?”

  “An incredible woman. Wise—tough—funny. She had it all. And I should add she had looks as well. Not one of those pale, pretty women some men moon over, but a woman with blood in her veins. And she saw things I wouldn’t have noticed on my own in a million years—a clump of flowers by the roadside, the face of a child. She was always pointing out something new. In her company, the world became a larger, grander place. We Foresters like to think our lives are necessary for the well-being of the planet; but she taught me that the opposite is true. It’s the planet that makes it possible for us to live the way we do—almost as if it were made on purpose for us.”

  Peter looked off into the distance.

  “I’ll never forget her,” he said, as much to himself as to Jon. “Not that I didn’t love the woman I married a few years later. But you can love more than one person, you know. Our hearts aren’t such feeble things that we can care about one woman only. Or one man.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Peter looked down and spoke slowly.

  “I’ve never been able to figure it out—although she gave me due warning. From the first, she told me that our time together wouldn’t last forever. She said she’d have to get back to her people. And when the day came, she bid me farewell and was gone.”

  “Was it difficult?”

  “The most difficult thing in my whole life. She’d made me promise I wouldn’t let it cause me pain—as if you could decide whether or not to have feelings! Still, I did what she said and in time I met another woman, and I loved her, too. It’s strange to think of loving two such different women, but that’s the way we are. Still, she left me as well. She died when Helen was only two, and that hurt as much as the first pain—although the second loss was easier to bear, because I’d learned how to do it.”

  “And you had your two daughters.”

  “Indeed I did—and that made all the difference.”

  “But it must have been hard—a man by himself raising two children.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t alone. My own parents were still living then, and my brother and sister and my sister’s husband and their children—the Forest House wasn’t so empty those days. I also had two aunts—my father’s sisters—and their husbands as well.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “My sister’s children are still living. My nephew married a woman from one of the other families and went to live with them. I see him every winter. You’ll meet him, too—if you come to the Mountain House with us. His sister Flossie married a man from Hexam and lives there now. Everyone else is long dead. I was the youngest in the family; it stands to reason I’ll be the last one to go—although of course you never know.”

  Jon wanted to ask Peter the name of the woman with whom he had journeyed to Kar, but he sensed that Peter had omitted it on purpose, so, instead, he pressed the old man for details about the journey itself, and Peter was glad to provide them.

  “Did you see the Emperor?” Jon asked.

  “Yes—does that surprise you? But of course it was only at a distance. He used to hold public audiences on a balcony overlooking the palace square, and men and women would come to him with petitions. You couldn’t speak to him directly—that goes without saying—but officials passed through the crowd, gathering messages to take to the Emperor, and he’d respond to some of them. You couldn’t make out what he was saying, but word would come of his answers to questions.

  “One of the officials recognized my clothing and pointed me out, because the Emperor turned toward me and spoke. He looked right at me. And later a messenger brought me a gold coin.

  “‘The Emperor thanks you and your people for their loyalty,’ he told me. ‘Because of you, he has nothing to fear at his southern border.’ I’ll never forget that moment.”

  “So that’s what you do?” Jon asked. “You and your family protect the southern border?”

  Peter ran his hand through his hair.

  “Protect is a strong word. It would be more accurate to say that we watch. That was the charge we were given—to watch the South. It was as if we were to be his eyes in the region. We were seven families then, although now we’ve dwindled to five—but we still report what we see to the Emperor’s Prefect. Every summer, he comes to Bridgetown; and in return for our report, he gives us twenty-one gold ducats, three for each of the original families.

  “You’re thinking we should have told him that there are only five of us now, and given
back six of the ducats. But we’re doing the same job, aren’t we? It stands to reason we deserve the same pay. If it was worth twenty-one ducats three hundred years ago, it must be worth twenty-one ducats today. We’ve discussed the matter, you understand. No man would take the Emperor’s money if he hadn’t performed the service the Emperor expected. That goes without saying.”

  Jon wasn’t sure it went without saying, but he nodded in agreement.

  “But last year, no Prefect appeared, and that’s complicated the problem. We waited for him, but he never arrived. And now my grandsons are in Bridgetown again, ready to make our report, but we fear that the Prefect won’t appear this year either. Something has happened—I wish I knew what. Last year, the people of the first settlement on the road spoke of marauders. They’d even begun to build a wall around their village—Pex, they call the place, whatever that means. Sounds like pox. Do you know what the pox is?”

  “No.”

  Peter laughed.

  “Well it’s nothing worth knowing. Anyway, the good people of Pex may have finished their wall by now. My grandsons will tell us when they return.

  “Do you know where we are now?” Peter suddenly asked.

  Jon looked around; then, realizing he was hopelessly lost, shook his head no.

  “Go stand next to that tree and see if you can answer my question.”

  Jon went and stood next to the tree. To his surprise, they were only a hundred yards from the Forest House.

  ▲

  Midsummer came, and a hot North Wind swept the central valley. Late each day, thunderclouds formed in the mountains, but they seldom brought rain. Instead, dry lightening illuminated the night sky. Back home, the Brotherhood must have come for the boys. Jon hated to think what that had meant for Alf.

  On nights like this when sleep was difficult, he’d sit on the edge of the porch, listening to the rise-and-fall drone of the cicadas. Zoë sometimes joined him in the darkness, slipping beside him soundlessly. At these moments he had a sense that she wanted to tell him something, but she’d sit without speaking, leaving it to Jon to break the silence.

  “When do you think your brothers will return?”

  “Soon. It’s bound to be soon. I expected them weeks ago. They’ve never been gone this long before.”

  “From what your grandfather said, there may be danger on the road to Bridgetown.”

  “Of course there’s danger. But they had to go there. What else could they have done? It’s the reason we’re here, isn’t it?—to serve the Emperor. Didn’t Grandfather explain that?”

  “Yes. He said the Foresters make a report to the Prefect every year and in return he gives them money.”

  “We don’t do it for money,” she lashed out.

  Why did she always jump on him this way? He’d only been repeating what Peter had told him. Her reaction took him back to the Valley of Women, where you had to watch every word you said.

  “I didn’t say you did it for money. I said the Prefect gives you money. You watch the South, and every year the Emperor’s Prefect presents you with twenty-one gold ducats. But it’s not clear to me what you’re supposed to be watching for.”

  Zoë sighed loudly.

  “I’ll try to make it simple. Before it reaches the pass through what you call the Boundary Mountain, a spur from the River Road branches off to the East. Years ago, John told me, lots of travelers used that route. John says it goes all the way to Gort on the other side of the continent, so you can imagine the strange people who might have entered the Empire that way. That’s why one of the Emperors put us here to watch the road and the land around it, but then, when his successor granted their valley to the Women and the highlands east of the river to the Brotherhood, we were commissioned to keep an eye on both territories and report what we saw. The Emperor wanted the two groups to work things out for themselves—I think he must have been curious about how the two settlements would evolve. But, whatever his purpose, we took his orders to mean that we should observe them but interfere as little as possible with either the men or the women, so that’s been our rule.”

  “But John made contact with me in the Valley of Women.”

  “He had no choice. You found him, didn’t you? He couldn’t very well pretend not to be there. But he had to convince you not to tell the women that you’d seen him. Fortunately, John is good at things like that. He can be very persuasive.”

  So that was the story John had told his family! His version of the events made John himself look foolish—at least to the Foresters, who prided themselves on their stealth—but it saved him the awkward question of why, catching sight of Jon, he’d broken the rules and spoken to him when he could have remained unnoticed.

  “Your encounter was an accident—brought about by his carelessness,” Zoë continued. “But avoiding the Brotherhood is a different matter. They don’t stay put like the women, and that’s led to problems. The Brotherhood call us spies, so there’s been ill will between us for a long time. Of course a Forester could take out one of the Brotherhood any day, but there are more of them than there are of us—especially now, when men appear to be coming from the North to join them—so we avoid trouble when we can.”

  “Your grandfather said there were originally seven families of Foresters, but now there are only five.”

  “Yes, the land we were assigned to watch was divided into six regions, called quadrants.”

  “How could they be quadrants if there were six of them? A quadrant is a fourth of something.”

  Zoë gave out another sigh.

  “They were called quadrants—that’s all I know. Maybe the word meant something different in those days. Anyway, there are four of them now, so that should satisfy you. Two of the families grew too small to patrol their quadrants, so their territory was reassigned to their neighbors, which is why our territory now includes the two smaller valleys to the North.

  “It’s the opposite across the river. The southeast family lives near the northern border of their territory, so they don’t spend as much time in the South as they should. At least that’s what Karl says.”

  “So there were once three quadrants on each side of the river?”

  “Didn’t I say that? They must not have taught you anything in the Valley of Women.”

  “Boys weren’t supposed to know much.”

  “That goal shouldn’t have been difficult to achieve.”

  “How long have the Foresters been here?” Jon asked, ignoring the insult.

  “A long time—at least two or three hundred years and maybe even longer. You can ask John when he gets back. He’s the one for history.”

  “But you don’t know when he’s coming.”

  “I told you we thought they’d be back by now.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Yes.”

  That was an unanticipated response. Jon wanted to hear what she’d say next.

  “You know,” she said, “since my brothers left, none of my family has patrolled even as far as the River Road. I’m not allowed to cross the river on my own until I’m eighteen—that would mean entering another quadrant—but nothing says I can’t visit the road and take a look around. If there are travelers, perhaps they’ll know what’s going on in Bridgetown. And if I go, maybe you’d like to come with me.”

  “How far is it from here?”

  “Not far. Everything in this valley goes downhill to the road and the river—and then on the other side everything goes uphill again. Anyway, I’m sure Grandfather would allow us to travel as far as the river—it’s less than a day’s journey. And the River Road is safe—or at least it’s supposed to be. By Imperial law, no one can raise a hand against another within sight of the River Road, yet if the Emperor’s Prefect no longer travels, then perhaps the Emperor’s laws are no longer obeyed.”

  It made no sense to Jon that men breaking one law would be deterred by the thought of another. But he liked her idea of visiting the river, for the River Road was the way to Kar. H
e’d have to put up with Zoë’s badgering, but that was a small price to pay for the adventure.

  ▲

  “So you want to see the River Road?” Peter asked him. “Or is it just something my granddaughter has persuaded you to do? A pretty girl like Zoë can be hard to resist.”

  “I want to go myself.”

  “I can believe that. At your age, seeing new things is important. But the road is no more than a dusty strip of paving stones. Further north, they keep it in good repair—or at least they used to—but few travelers use the road south of Bridgetown any more and the Emperors have let it fall to ruin. It was different when I was your age, although even then the traffic had dropped off—or so my grandfather told me. A lot can happen in four generations. In his day, caravans still took the road east to Gort, but not any more.

  “If you and Zoë want a look at the road, by all means do it. Just promise me you’ll do nothing dangerous. You can reach the river by early afternoon, spend the rest of the day exploring, and return the next morning. One night away from home is all it’ll take, although you young people will probably stretch it out to two. But no more than two, understand. I like having both of you here. And I still have a lot to teach you, Jon.”

  ▲

  Jon soon regretted having agreed to the trip. The prospect of leading this journey made Zoë particularly obnoxious. But there was no going back, and Peter had been right about their stretching the journey into three days. Zoë said it was silly to go that far and turn back after only a few hours. “I want to make the most of the trip,” she said, explaining that she intended to travel south along the River Road as far as the junction with the road from the east, which crossed the river by a ford. She told Helen they’d return to the Forest House the third afternoon, and Helen raised no objection, so that meant she approved Zoë’s plan.

  As they followed the path east, it was joined by other tracks, in time becoming a narrow road, spanning the stream it followed with stone bridges. It was strange to think so much effort had been put into a way used only by a handful of Foresters. And surely a handful of Foresters couldn’t have completed so much construction.