When
Jaysh awoke, he did so in a dark place. He was lying on a dark bed, four dark
walls surrounding him, and on each dark wall there appeared to be a giant,
five-legged spider perched above a large and blotchy square.
His eyes lingered on one of the four
enormous arachnids, noting its placement on the wall and the position of its
legs. He’d seen quite a few spiders in his day—and eaten quite a few spider
webs as well, mostly the ones strung across the Shun trails in the midst of
summer—and these four didn’t act like spiders.
He turned his head to the side and
squinted at them with his peripheral night vision. Their bodies were too skinny
and their legs too long, and waxy. He squinted with his other eye and realized
they were sconces—obviously none of them lit—and that they supported five
finger-like candles.
The blotchy squares below, he guessed,
were draperies or curtains or, perhaps, a decorative tapestry. He might have
guessed them windows, but they were not outlined in soft yellowing light like
the solitary square in the wall to his right, the one made up of two slender
rectangles he knew to be shutters.
He turned his head and faced the glowing
portal, hearing for the first time the dull roar outside. There might have been
the crash of broken doors and the eruption of shattered windows, but there were
definitely the cry of angry voices, the sound of city folk disgruntled with
their plight and letting the world know.
As he listened further, he supposed it was
their voices that put him in mind of a riot, the rise and fall of their
tempestuous cries as they gave life to the chaotic choir of rage and suffering.
But what could have happened to put them in such a foul mood? Such a collective
explosion of discontent would have required a major disruption, but he couldn’t
recall even a minor disruption. Of course, now that he thought about it,
he couldn’t recall much of anything.
He sat up and threw his legs over the
edge of the bed, rubbing his throbbing temples and wondering where he’d been.
The room in which he sat looked familiar—four evenly-spaced brackets, four
shadowy squares, two lonely chairs—but he could not say when last he’d seen it.
Or for that matter, why he’d seen it.
In one of the corners without a chair, the
floorboard groaned with the shifting of immense weight and Jaysh spun his head
to inspect, groaning at the giant silhouette he saw lurking the shadows.
Welp, he thought dully, I guess
I ain’t full-blown mad jus yet. I still member you.
He gave the hateful kryst one last dirty
look and then turned quickly away, pushing himself from the mattress and
staggering to the shutters. He had no idea what he’d find outside this window,
but the one thing he did know was that he was going to need some vine
and he was going to need it soon. Part of the ache in his head felt like
dehydration and malnutrition, but another part felt distinctly like the call
of the vine.
His grabbed the shutter handles with thumb
and forefinger and pulled, late afternoon sunshine rushing inside and blinding
him to the bellowing crowds below. He shielded his eyes and surveyed the
lunatic asylum that was the city of Onador
To the north, a flock of young kids
sprinted up the street with what appeared to be orange flames leaping from
their fingers. Jaysh was sure they were holding bits of burning wood or strands
of flaming grass, but it looked like a handful of flames.
Likewise, it looked like the rest
of the lunatic masses were killing each other. They were shrieking at the sky
and jumping up and down, some swinging only their arms at their fellow
citizens, others wielding dark objects that resembled hand spades. But they
were no more assaulting one another than the running children were setting
their fingers aflame.
As the woodsman’s ears adjusted to the
noise and his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized their war cries were
actually ballads and that the screaming was actually singing. It was loud and
tuneless, and more passionate than melodic, but it was singing. With the
shutters open, he could pick out some of the words and heard something about a
mighty king and an evil horde and something else about an axe.
The Ballad of Arn?
Jaysh thought that it was,
partly because his beleaguered memory was slowly coming back, but also because
he could see that weapon of choice being swung by the masses was an axe or
hatchet. And instead of chopping each other to pieces, they were merely dancing
their jigs and showing their support.
In the land of the old ones, hacking at
the air with symbolic weapons was the traditional display of allegiance to the
king, regardless of whether the weapon was an axe or knife or just a straighten
set of finger. This was acceptable because the purpose was not to see who had
the biggest axe or the best axe, but to show one’s faith and loyalty to the
magistrate.
Just like that, Jaysh couldn’t breath. He
felt his knees buckle and caught himself on the sill, grabbing the cold stone
with one hand as the other tore at the front of his shirt, plunging inside and
retrieving the walnut-sized stone he had somehow forgotten.
He held it up before his stunned face and
saw it was still attached to its black satin straps and still glowing weakly in
the bright summer sun.
They’re singin to me, he realized
in horror. They’re singin them songs to ME! And he didn’t know why, but
that thought terrified him as much as the thought of them rushing the keep and
hacking him to pulp, it sickened him as much as the time he’d been so hungry
he’d eaten that pheasant without letting it cook like it needed and had fallen
violently ill in the midst of the Shun.
They were cheering for him! Dancing
for him! Going mad in the streets of their city because of him!
And in Jaysh’s experience, when people were happy to see you—when they smiled
and said hello or tired to shake your hand or give you the slightest bit of
attention—they wanted something from you.
Sure, a few of them—like Mums,
perhaps—were honestly polite and friendly and sought no favors for their
kindness, but most of them—like Iman—were soulless gold-diggers and looking for
an excavation. So what could he expect if there was a whole city of
people and instead of a polite nod or gentle smile they were singing your
praises?
Jaysh dropped the Raya against his chest,
took the shutters in both hands, and closed them firmly.
