Brine’s
hand sank a little and, shortly there after, the corners of his mouth followed
suit, slipping back down like an unfortunate mudslide on the landscape of his
face.
A part of him had always known this day would
come, that the mental cracks in his teacher’s head would finally split wide and
that the contents within would spill swiftly from his mind, Brine’s identity
included.
As a child, Brine had watched the gentle
genius as he struggled to recall events from the previous day or facts from a
certain lesson. And on other occasions, his teacher had gone so far as to
forget Brine’s name, referring to him as Tim or Mark or you
there.
But that’s not what’s happening,
said a voice within his mind, one that sounded very similar to his own. He’s
not confused about anything right now and he’s not deep in thought. He’s just
forgotten who you are, that simple. He heard everyone speaking to you—heard them
use your name for Owndiah’s sake—and still he doesn’t remember who you are.
As if to confirm this assertion, the eldest
of the advisers selected that moment to stoop down beside the halfling and say,
“Who’s this, now?”
Reets’ brown and blue eyes swelled to the
size of titan fists. “It’s Brine!” he all but choked. “Yeh know Brine,
yeh old goat!”
A light flickered in Godfry’s eyes. “Ah,
Brine,” he said, his caterpillar eyebrows lifting at last. “That’s
right, that’s right,” he said, nodding triumphantly. “He was the one who went
south to fight the old ones.”
Brine’s hand sank a little lower and,
beside him, Reets began to shake his head like a scabe-wolf with a rabbit in
its jaws, the skin above his beard and below his hairline turning the dark crimson
of an infected blister.
“Actually, Godfry dear,” Mums said,
stepping forward before the halfling erupted, “Brine went to study at Valley
Rock, with the Amian elders.”
“Amians,” Godfry breathed, lifting his
gaze to the titan. “They slay old ones, do they?”
Mums shook her shaggy mane. “Valley Rock
is a monastery, Godfry. It’s where they train disciples.”
“Disciples, you say,” said the old man blankly,
repeating the name of the institution with the same dull expression. “No,” he
said at last, “I can’t say I’ve heard of the place, but it’s still good to meet
you,” he said, giving Brine a polite, yet detached grin. “Any friend of Reets
is a friend of mine,” he explained, taking hold of Brine’s steadily sinking
hand.
Brine managed a weak grin, but didn’t
speak—couldn’t speak.
“So,” Godfry said, still pumping his hand,
“what brings you to Onador?”
“Godfry!” Reets barked, yanking out
his pipe and poking him with the stem. The halfling clearly had more to say,
but instead of saying it, he began coughing into his fist, having inadvertently
sucked saliva down his windpipe.
“Gariel dear,” Mums said, waving to the
butcher’s daughter as she stepped between Reets and Godfry, “would you be so
kind as to take Godfry back to his chair?”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” the butcher’s daughter
said, rushing over to take the old man by the arm. There was a moment’s
hesitation as the eldest advisor asked the young lady who she was, but she
quickly identified herself and the old man was on his way to the seats along
the far wall, completely oblivious of the glum-looking disciple who was staring
at the back his unkempt head.
“Oh, Brine dear,” Mums said, blocking his
view and laying a large hand on his shoulder, “it is so good to see you
again.”
“Yes,” Brine muttered, his eyes unfocused
on the knots of hair at the titan’s midsection. When it finally dawned on him
what she’d said and how he’d responded, he jumped with a start. “Oh, I mean…I’m
sorry. My mind’s wandering.” He mustered a smile and patted the enormous hand
on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you too, Mums. It really is. I’m just…,” his
mind blanked on him and he was staring once more at her hairy gut. “I think I’m
in shock,” he said, “that’s all.”
With her heavy skin and thick fur, Mums
had never been able to do much in the way of expression. So for her, each
emotion had to be expressed through the nuances and inflections of her melodic voice,
so that when she replied to the heartbroken disciple, he could hear every
wrinkle in her sympathetic cheeks and see every line in her loving forehead.
“I suppose ten ages will do that to a
person,” she said, giving his shoulder a light squeeze. “If you weren’t at
least a little taken aback by all of this, Brine dear, I would worry for
you.”
Brine forced a grin and was surprised by
the tears he felt welling his eyes. He supposed they were from the stress of
his journey or perhaps from the emotional overload of this long-awaited
reunion, but there was also a part of him that wondered if they weren’t there simply
to remind him of why he’d made the trek.
A moment later, as he opened his mouth to
thank Mums for her kindness and to thank Reets for tending his gear, he became quite
convinced of this fact. He’d opened his mouth to enunciate, had compressed his
chest to exhale, but nothing happened.
Seeing this, Mums gave him another squeeze
and Reets patted him roughly on the side, but it did not help the words to
form. The greetings had been said, the small talk had been exchanged, and now
there was nothing left but the sad, sad purpose to which Godfry had already alluded.
It seemed to be standing right there with them and waiting to be referenced.
And as Brine searched the eyes of his friends, he saw that they sensed it, too.
“I best check Brine’s gear,” Reets said,
hurrying towards the back of the chamber without so much as a wave. Brine,
however, was not offended. Reets had never been much for this sort of thing. He
was perfectly comfortable carrying Brine’s bleeding body from the gardens or
wrestling scabe-wolves with a knife wedged between his teeth, but don’t ask him
to stick around when the emotion started to flow.
Following the halfling with his eyes,
Brine said, “How long do we have?”
“Not long,” Mums said, looking at the door
in the back of the room, “the cycle of the amulet began yesterday, so I’m
assuming tonight will be the end. It usually lasts a day.” She gave Brine a pat
on the shoulder and slipped towards the exit. “Speaking of which, why don’t I
just check on Kowin?”
Brine watched as she lumbered to the door
in the back of the room, the door which stood in plain sight to all, but which
no one seemed capable of seeing with their eyes or referencing in their conversation.
It was the door through which Brine would be going when Mums returned, the door
through which his long journey from the Rock must finally end.
Secretly though, as he watched the titan
reaching for the handle, he hoped the thumb latch would be locked or the hinges
would be rusted. He did not wish to enter that dark and lonely place, did not
wish to think about entering it. There
was no telling what he would be forced to say in there and, even worse, there
was no telling what he might be forced to hear in—
Movement caught his eye, something on his
right, something so slight as to barely qualify as movement. He turned his head
to inspect—assuming that someone had passed before a candle or that a breeze
had stirred one of the tapestries—but saw neither candle nor tapestry.
Instead, he saw a balding old man in gray
sleeping attire, one seated by the front door and craning his head at the roomful
of guests. That was the movement Brine had seen, the slow craning of his neck
from one advisor to next, so slow that had Brine not been staring in the same
place for an extended period of time, the gradual shifting would never have
registered.
Brine watched a little longer and the word
vulture popped inside his head. It was a horrible thing to say about
another human being—and it wasn’t very Amian, either—but it was true. Vultures were
bald, and the man’s hands were resting on the cane between his legs,
giving his folded arms the appearance of wings. Also contributing to this
illusion was the man’s hunched back and crooked spine, a physical malady that
caused the man’s neck to droop and his head to protrude.
The strongest similarity, however, was his
watchful nature, so furtive and sly that, until now, he’d gone completely
unnoticed. Brine had walked right past the man, had spent quite some time
greeting the others advisers, and the whole while this balding vulture-man had sat
unobserved by the door.
Frowning at him, Brine wondered why they’d not
been introduced. Obviously, the vulture-man was one of the king’s advisers and
a trusted colleague. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be allowed access to the room.
Lathia, Brine realized at last. He’s
the Lathian adviser, the only other kingdom, aside from Igus and Erinthalmus,
from which Jashandar accepted diplomats.
Bearing this in mind, it made sense that Brine
hadn’t met the man. Brine had left Jashandar almost immediately following the Lathian
war, and it was an age or two later before the two kingdoms had formed their allegiances
and exchanged representatives. What did not
make sense, however, was the way the other advisers acted as though they
hadn’t met the man.
Likewise, the vulture-man wasn’t making an
effort to interact with his fellow advisers either. With all the chairs grouped
around the rear exit, it appeared as though the Lathian adviser had
purposefully dragged his chair to the hallway door, possibly so he could have a
better view of his colleagues.
So
what am I missing? Brine wondered. None of the people the vulture-man was
watching were dangerous, and yet the man continued to monitor them like a knot
of spitting vipers, his impassive gaze constantly moving from Gariel to Mums,
Mums to Reets, Reets to Godfry, Godfry to Brine, Brine to…
The gaze stopped.
Brine took a step back and nearly dropped
his monocle. Reflex told him to look way, that he’d been caught in the act of
being rude and that the polite thing to do was divert his gaze and give the
impression that Brine, also, had been making a casual sweep of the room. But
Brine couldn’t look away. He wanted to—wanted to very, very much, actually—but
when he tried to avert his eyes, he found that his ocular ports resisted the
command, found that the communication between mind and eyes had been abruptly
severed and that hunchback’s gray stare seemed to be swallowing him whole.
Then, oddly enough, Brine’s cold sense of
loathing began to fade and, with it, his burning desire to look away. He knew
this was wrong, of course, knew in his head that the hunchback was a
scary man and not to be trusted, but very slowly that thought was being
saturated with an emotion that said otherwise.
This new emotion told him that everything
was all right and that everything was going to be okay. He
felt his apprehension for the vulture-man ebbing from his thoughts and his fear
in general dissipating like smoke.
Brine heard himself think: I mean,
after all, he’s just a man, isn’t he? Just a pathetic old man with a greasy
horseshoe of hair and a twisted array of vertebra. Just a decrepit old codger
sitting way over there in the shadows and minding his…wait a moment…is he
getting closer? He is getting closer, isn’t he? He’s…He’s gliding across the
room or…or maybe the room is gliding passed me? I can’t really tell, but we’re
definitely getting closer. I can’t feel my legs moving, and I can’t see his
moving, but…but we’re definitely getting closer and we’re…we’re going to
COLLIDE!—we’re going to CRASH! We’re going to—
“Sam’s boy?”
Brine jerked at his name, the distance
between himself and the Lathian snapped back into place like a slap to the face,
his vision blurring, his head feeling dizzy…and then he felt nothing.
Looking around the room, he saw that
everything was as it had been, the others gathered by the rear exist, their
voices mixing and mingling, the hunched spectator surveying them from afar,
turning from one to the other and acting as though he didn’t know the disciple
was in the room.
Knowing better than that, Brine watched
him for a time, struggling to understand what had passed between them, but when
the understanding failed to come and it became clear there would be no repeat
occurrence of the strange connectivity, he gave up on the vulture-man and
turned to face the person who’d addressed him.
“Sam’s boy?” Godfry asked again, a look of
recognition struggling on his face.
Brine only stared, unsure of what to
expect. After their previous encounter, it seemed Godfry was capable to saying
almost anything and he didn’t know if he could bear another insulting remark,
especially without Mums or Reets to intervene. But of course, if Brine said
nothing, then they would end up staring at one another as he’d stared at the
dreaded vulture-man of Lathia.
Brine gave a mousy nod and forced a grin.
“I knew it!” Godfry said, his beard
lifting with one of those heartwarming smiles. “I knew it. I said, ‘That’s
Sam’s boy, there. That’s my old student come back at last!’ And it is!” He extended
his hand and, this time, when Brine took hold of it, the old man’s eyes were
alive with recognition and, quite possibly, love. “My gracious, my gracious,”
he breathed, “how long’s it been?”
“Too long,” Brine said, his grin becoming
a smile, and a natural one at that.
“It has, it has,” Godfry said, placing a
bony hand to Brine’s shoulder. “So,” he said, turning to the room and giving it
the curious gaze of one who’d just arrived and who had no clue what was going
on, “what brings you back?”
Brine’s smile vanished from his face. He
didn’t want to lie to Godfry—wanted nothing less in all the world—but at the
same time he had two equally perverse fears circling over his head and the
truth about his return to Onador might bring them both crashing down upon him.
Brine’s first fear was related to the
potential faux pas that might occur once his teacher realized what was
happening in the room behind them. If Brine had nearly gone misty when Mums had
tried to soothe him, what might he do if Godfry cracked wise? He just didn’t
know.
His second fear—which Brine considered to
be the greater of the two—was that this new information about his return might
shove his identity from the old man’s mind. If Godfry’s head was like a
porcelain cup and information was like the tea, then how much could it hold
before things began to slosh over the sides?
And if the slosh involves my identity, he
thought, grimly, I’m not sure I can suffer that a second time. I’m just not.
It makes no sense, I know. But being forgotten by this charismatic old man was
the worst part of the journey, worse even than the desert and the shepherd boy,
the stranger and his—
“Oh, hey,” Brine said, groping for the interior
pocket of his robes and came out holding the note. It was still folded
geometrically and bearing no wrinkles, despite the cramped conditions of his
pocket and the many times he’d laid upon it. “I almost forgot,” he said,
sounding winded.
Godfry squinted at the missive. “Ah, what
have you there, Sam’s boy?”
“I don’t know,” Brine said, shaking the
creamy white paper, “but it’s for you.”
Godfry lifted his eyes from the note to
the disciple. “You came all the way home for this?”
“No, no. Someone gave it to me along the
way, to deliver to you.”
Godfry boggled over the missive, then
said, “And what is it, now?”
Brine shook his head, staring at the note
and watching the light play off its alabaster surface. He’d half-expected it to
do something to his stomach as it had each time he tried to rid himself of it. But
on this occasion, it did nothing. And in a queer way that Brine did not dare to
understand, he thought that this because the note knew it had arrived.
“It’s a message,” he said, shaking the
thing a third time. “It’s from a man, a man named Olymun.” He glanced up,
gauging the advisor’s reaction. “Do you know anyone by that name?”
Godfry looked nonplussed, but managed to
say, “I suppose I must.”
“Well…,” Brine said, flinching as he shook
the paper a fourth time.
Oblivious to the disciple’s behavior,
Godfry took the note and held it to his face, searching it front and back.
“There’s no seal,” he said. “No name.” He flipped it over a few more times. “No
address.” He lifted his head to Brine. “Where’d you say this came from?”
But before Brine could answer, the hallway
door clicked open and two more people entered the room.
