by Ted Neill
Haille let go of the pouch as if it had grown hot in his hand. The light of day surged back around him, his thoughts his own once more, yet his hand still felt heavy, as if the weight of the stones and the menacing consciousness within them remained.
Jeddah and Mark were staring at him wordlessly. Haille gazed at the face of the sea, the peaks and troughs of waves rolling beneath them. The surface was undisturbed as if nothing had even been dropped into its depths.
“I’ve done what I came to do,” he said. “Turn us back to shore.”
Haille trudged eastward, pushing through spring storms that soaked the roads, left branches dripping from their bright new leaves, and the sky awash with broken clouds. Sleep did not come easily, for the old voices, present in his mind since the day Adamantus died, were restless, their whispers murmuring on the edge of his consciousness. When he did sleep, he didn’t find rest but instead was transported into the dreams of others, colored by loves, passions, conflicts, and snippets of life journeys that were not his own. It created a jumble in his head and at the worst of times he could not separate himself from whatever it was that had been transferred into him.
Most painful of all, lodged in his chest like a barb, was the unanswered question from the stones, the question turning his own words back on him.
In the light of so much loss, what did it matter?
He bypassed Antas, walking scant traveled trails through forest and field and entered the lands he had crossed with Katlyn nearly two years before. A few times he slept in the very same hollows and clearings they had camped in together. It made him grateful for her steadfast loyalty and made him miss her company. But this was a journey he had to make on his own.
One morning, after sleeping beneath a cherry tree, he woke covered in blossoms. One in particular spun down from above, hovered on his knuckle and twirled, like a tiny pink fairy. Then it dropped into the grass with the other hundreds of fallen blossoms to grow still and wither.
He picked up the trade road again as it curved northward outside of Scotsdale. It was busy with carts, their sides dirty with mud, hauling seed to planting farms. A few farmers offered him rides on the backs of their wagons. He took them when he could and his feet appreciated the rest. None of the farmers gave him a second look. He played the part of itinerant wanderer well. Outside of the city, no one recognized him.
He passed the edges of Garn’s grange, the fields busy with workers, the livestock plenty and healthy. The thought of visiting crossed his mind, but he preferred the silence and anonymity the solitude of the past days had given him and so he continued on, a figure passing on the margins. After a few more days he passed the turn which would have led him to Pathus’ home. He had kept up a correspondence with the swordsmith, who, after the invasions, had returned to his farm, his sons and their families joining him, determined to stay close after the war. Haille’s heart warmed with kind thoughts for the old man, who had known his mother and shown her generosity. But Haille did not stop.
He walked upon the same paths he, Val, Cody, and Katlyn had taken, led by Gail in her guise of Avenger Red. Adamantus had ridden with them then and the grief grew in him with every step he took. He had time to relive his mistakes, abandoning his friends, betraying the boys and girls at the Gracestone manor, shame burning in him now as it had then.
When he reached Rivertown, he knew this was one place where he would make a stop, to refresh for the rest of his journey.
Lorna read him unlike anyone else. As she stood in the doorway to River Ridge manor and set eyes on him, his sinking shoulders, his downcast eyes, she spoke. “I know the journey you are on, Haille,” she said, dispensing with his title and addressing him simply as he was. “I will have Sorrel prepare a room for you away from the others. We will see that you are not disturbed.”
“Thank you,” he said, surprised by the lump of gratitude that caught in his throat.
He slept in a tiny room on the ground floor in a wing of the manor still unfrequented by the residents. It was one of the first nights he rested well, although he woke early before the sunrise. Already standing in the doorway, a tray of breakfast in her arms, her hair tied back in an efficient ponytail, her face still lined from her pillow, was Sorrel. She stoked the embers of the fire as Haille slid out of bed, rubbed his eyes, and took a sip of tea. She settled down on a stool across from him. There was food enough for them both as she buttered a raisin roll, dipped it in tea, and took a bite. She sat without speaking, as content in silence as in conversation. Haille found himself grateful for her unassuming company. After the fire grew brighter and the wood began to pop, she spoke.
“You seek the desolation of the moors. They call to you.”
“How did you know?”
She shrugged. “I have been called at times myself. I’ve journeyed there as part of my own training with Lorna.”
“I need the silence,” he said. “The emptiness.”
Sorrel nodded, that unblinking stare of hers settling on his face. “You will find it. It will give you the space you need.”
“To air these voices in my head?”
She nodded. “One does not pass through the trials you have without . . . change.”
They said nothing more and when the breakfast was finished, she lifted the tray, and carried it out to the main house. There was nothing left for Haille to do but leave. He gathered his things and walked down to the Liam River where he found a small rowboat with a young boy waiting in it who, by the look of him, could have been Sorrel’s brother. Like the girl, he was silent and acted as if he had expected Haille, allowing him to settle down on a thwart in the bow before shoving off.
The only sound was that of the oars rotating in the oarlocks and the swift current of the Liam slapping against the bottom of the boat. When they reached the far side, Haille thanked the boy. He nodded wordlessly and turned back to the opposite shore where the sounds of daybreak: a rooster crowing, pots clattering, a chorus of songbirds greeting the sun, carried across the river. Haille turned away, fleeing the noise and commotion of others and turned to the mountains.
It was a good time to be in the Thestos Moors, there was plenty of water as streams appeared, silver threads in the dells that provided him with an abundance of drinking water. With no shade but that of passing clouds, the day grew warm, especially as he climbed from one hill to the next. By midday he was sweating and tied his cloak about his waist. By night he shivered. After a few nights of such cold, he decided there was no rule governing his travels, so he moved by night as well, sleeping in the hours just before dawn when the stars dimmed, the sky grew blue and pink behind the mountains, and the wind settled.
The voices in his mind had gone silent.
Each day the Rimcur Mountains grew closer, the size and details becoming more and more clear. Morning would reward him with some new facet, a new avalanche moving soundlessly across the mountains’ faces, or a new glacier that he could not believe he had not noticed the day before. The gods of rock were brutal in their natural beauty on a scale of time and size far beyond Haille.
What does it matter, in the face of infinity?
When his path ran out, at the sheer wall of the rising mountains, he knew he had reached his destination. It was no remarkable place, just another trough in the grassy rolling sea of hills, but it felt right somehow. A large stone, some boulder released from the grip of the mountains, sat unaccompanied in the sunlight. Haille settled down on the leeward side, gathered a few bunches of grass, and lit a fire as the stars came out.
He remained there for a few days, his food running low but it mattered little to him. During the day he climbed up on the stone and sat, watching the sun in its gradual tracking across the sky. In the stillness he reflected upon all that had transpired in the months before, the acts of courage and sacrifice he had witnessed in others, and the losses he still felt. But as always his thoughts came back to the same question—in light of all the loss, the sadness, the suffering—what did life, and all th
e striving it entailed, matter? Like the consciousness in the stones had said, it left him unsettled because he had indeed asked it himself. It felt as if he had pulled at the threads of his own self and they had begun to fray. And yet after tugging once, he could not stop.
In a moment while he took a break from his thoughts, he found a star that had been carved into the top of the stone he sat upon. So he was not the first to sit upon it. He pictured some other traveler, also seeking something impossible to articulate, trying to fill something unfillable inside of them. Next to the star, the artist had incised the words: “Starlight Stone.”
Haille mused to himself, picturing the stone as an extinguished star, fallen to earth to rest, its life on a grander scale than even the mountains and the moors. He traced the lines of the letters, only to feel them trembling beneath him. He flattened his palm to the rock. There was no doubt, tremors were causing it to shudder. He looked to the mountain slopes for signs of an avalanche, but the plains of snow and rock were motionless under the bright sun.
Then he saw them. They came soaring over the ridge, their legs floating above the ground, their knees bent, their manes flying. Haille laughed out loud to see them in their wild majesty again: the Thestos wilds. He had not seen the horses since his last journey into the moors in his search for the Font of Jasmeen. There were even more this time, covering the slope as if they were land themselves. No wonder the earth shook so. As if they heard him laugh, they turned towards him, that entire wave of hammering motion. On the next ridge beyond he saw even more. The Starlight Stone was shifting as if forgetting its weight.
They surged around him a river parting around a rock. He knew this was the moment he had been searching for. His thoughts transcendent, it occurred to him that throwing himself to the ground beneath the stampeding horses would not be such a bad death. To be beaten into dust and nothing, left to float for eternity on the winds of the mountains.
Seized by the horses feral movement, Haille turned, ran, and leapt off the rock, kicking and screaming as the animals passed beneath him. He was amazed even further to land on one’s back. It had a golden coat, a long unruly mane, and fiery rolling eyes. Riding upon a barebacked elk had prepared him to stay on, his instincts snapping back, even though this ride was much less gentle, throwing him up and down with each gallop. He lost concentration for a moment and slipped, sliding right off the horse, which unlike the elk, had no concern for its rider. His hand seized the mane and his fall was arrested. His feet were whacked painfully about by the horse’s hooves. Off balance, the horse turned and Haille was suddenly looking sideways right into the wall of approaching animals.
Perhaps this is the way, he thought. Death had come for so many. It was inevitable, as Ivan had said to him. It had come for his parents, his friends, Aurora, Victor Twenge, Adamantus, and so many others.
But then he thought of the words of his friends, Val and Cody, Chloe and Gunther, Katlyn, Nathan, and Veolin. He felt the draw of connection, to love, to a cause, and most of all to the suffering he could, and would, choose. It would not be death that would extinguish him, he decided, but life.
It seemed that life wanted now to punish him for the decision he made, the horse veering and turning, bucking. Haille’s feet dragged on the ground. Dirt stung his eyes. A hoof hammered his thigh. He became aware of the thickness of muscle between skin and bone. Maybe there was no returning. Maybe he had already cast his lot with death and surrender. He watched the rhythm of the animal’s gait, then swung forward, caught his feet on the ground and let the swift moving earth send him flying backwards, and with that momentum he made a last desperate swing, a flip upward, and remounted.
He would live. He would not avoid his own destiny, the beauty or the pain hidden in it. He would live and he would live with the precious foreknowledge, given to him this day, that he would not endure, that he would not last, that in the end, life would destroy him.
There would be pain, his arm, his back, his eyes, his entire body told him that just now, but he would imagine, even contrive, a reason for it.
He breathed deeply, knowing he was in death’s embrace and understanding that it no longer mattered. Tears mingled their salinity on his lips. He was crying and laughing at once.
Perhaps this is what it feels like to be a king.
The horse beneath him crested a ridge, the sheer speed and the rising wind nearly knocked him off.
I’ll have to train him.
The horses took Haille as far as the Liam, crossing the moors at a tremendous speed and placing him close to Rivertown in a day. There, he was able to wrestle his mount away from the herd. Afterwards he rode the feisty stallion into town, creating a stir as his mount continued to buck and whinny. He broke down and bought a saddle, realizing that to ride bareback was not a luxury he could afford. It took a while to calm the horse once the saddle was on it, resulting in rope burns to his hands and bruises to his body. But by the end of the day Haille had it running its paces in a corral at River Ridge, Lorna and Sorrel looking on, pleased.
“You have found your spark again,” Lorna observed.
“It was a matter of choosing it,” Haille said, dividing his attention between the horse and his companions. “And having friends to help point the way.”
Lorna smiled, settling against one of the fence posts.
“What will you name him?” Sorrel asked.
The name came to Haille without hesitation. “Thestos, of course.”
The next day with Sorrel, he entered a dark tavern on the edge of the water. It was built from the wood of scuttled barges and smelled of the tar in the beams and the beeswax candles on the tables—not to mention brandy, beer, and pipe weed. They found an adventurous barge captain with crooked hat and tanned skin and asked him how much it would cost to hire a barge from Rivertown to Sidon.
“Well, I don’t know young sir, no one ever goes there. You don’t actually mean to float down the great river into Sidon, do you?”
“I do,” Haille said. “I have friends to visit there. I’ll pay you handsomely.”
The captain laughed and agreed, but said it would take him a few days to assemble a good crew willing to travel into the woods and even then he said they should expect deserters. Haille said that was fine and offered him his asking price. Then he and Sorrel returned to River Ridge and passed an hour taking turns riding Thestos around the corral before joining the others for dinner.
In the middle of the night, Haille woke to the sound of thunder as a storm rolled down off the mountains. Lightning flashed overhead followed by a clap of thunder that sent the animals of the manor into a panic. Cows bellowed and donkeys brayed. Haille wrapped himself in his cloak and stole down to the stables where he found Thestos kicking at his stall. He calmed the horse, whispering to him and stroking his neck with a firm hand as he had seen Yana do with horses before. The storm settled into a steady rain, the rumbles of thunder distant, the flashes of lightning over the horizon. Thestos at rest, Haille propped himself in a window of the hayloft and savored the spray of raindrops on his face, his fingers tracing the scars on his wrists from his crib so long ago.
Somewhere he knew a leaf was falling, slicing through layers of air to hit the forest floor and become decay. A young man was stepping over a flowing gutter, ducking raindrops as he walked to his lover’s home. A mother discovered dirt behind her sleeping son’s ear and licked her finger before rubbing it away. The heads of daisies, their buds closed for the night, bobbed under the weight of the rain. Haille watched it all through the eye of his mind, illuminated by the liberating knowledge that love was the most precious thing in this life, and all the more precious because it would someday be lost.
A tree root toed its way between castle rocks, nature putting the work of human hands in its place. A kettle on a hearth boiled over, a dancing ghost of steam balanced on its spout. Haille pictured Yana somewhere next to a hearth fire surrounded by children, scamps from villages, noble children alike. She would pull one close to
her, perhaps one that she suspected was picked on or wore a dejected face born of neglect or just shyness. She would smooth the boy or girl’s hair, and tell a story, perhaps his story.
“Well, my little ones,” she would say. “Haille was born in a storm . . . .”
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