“After the spring rains, the water ran high, and the current was swifter than I remembered it. I couldn’t see how far the kittens had drifted, but up ahead around a curve in the stream, I spotted just a flash of the onion sack bobbing up before it sank down again. I tripped on the mossy rocks and slick mud, and I fell into the water, but I didn’t care. I splashed deeper, wading along, sweeping my hands back and forth ahead of me as I tried to grab the sack. I caught weeds, cut myself on a tangled branch, but the sack had drifted along, still under the water. I couldn’t hear the kittens anymore, and I knew it was too long, but I kept trying. I sloshed forward and dove ahead until finally I caught the sack, wrapped my fingers around the folds of rough cloth. I had it!
“Laughing and crying, I yanked it out of the water and held it up, dripping. It was waterlogged and heavy. Rivulets of stream water ran out of it, but I stumbled to the shore and sprawled up on the bank. With my numb, bleeding fingers I couldn’t pull open the wet knot closing the sack. I tore at it with my fingernails, and finally I ripped the fabric. More water gushed out, and I dumped the kittens out onto the streamside.
“I remember saying ‘No, no, no!’ over and over again. Those poor, fragile kittens flopped out, slick and wet, like fish from a net. And they weren’t moving. Not a one of them.
“I picked them up, pressed gently on them, blew on their tiny faces, trying to get them to respond. Their perfect little tongues lolled out. I couldn’t stop imagining them mewing for help, trying to breathe, dragged under the cold water. They were so young and hadn’t even known their own mama, so I knew they had been crying out for me and my mother. And we hadn’t saved them—we hadn’t saved them!”
Bannon hunched his shoulders and sobbed. “I ran as fast as I could. I tried to get the sack from the water—I really tried! But all the kittens were dead, all five of them.”
Nathan listened with a compassionate frown. He stroked his chin as he sat on his rock next to the campfire. “You tried your best. There was nothing else you could have done. You can’t carry that guilt around with you forever. It’ll kill you.”
As Bannon wept, Nicci watched him intently. In a low voice, she said, “That’s not what he feels guilty about.”
The old wizard was surprised, but Bannon looked up at Nicci with remarkably old eyes. “No,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Not that at all.”
He laced his fingers together, then unraveled them again as he found the courage to go on. “I found a soft spot under a willow near the stream, and I dug out a hole with my bare hands. I buried the kittens and placed the wet sack on top of them, like a blanket that might keep them warm in the cold night. I piled rocks on top of the grave, so that I could show my mother where I had buried them, but I never wanted my father to find out where they were or what I had done.
“I stayed there for a long time, just crying, and then I made my way home. I knew I could never hide my tears or my wet clothes from my father. He would probably beat me for it, or maybe just look at me with smug satisfaction. At the time, with the kittens all dead, I didn’t think he could hurt me any more and I was tired of running.” The young man gulped. “But I came home to find something far worse.”
Nicci felt her shoulder muscles tense, and she braced herself. Bannon spoke in a bleak voice, as if he no longer had any emotion in the memory. “After he drowned the kittens and came back to our cottage, my mother was ready for him. She’d had enough. After all the pain and suffering and fear he had inflicted on her, the murder of those poor innocent kittens was the last straw for her. When he staggered through the door, my mother was waiting.
“I saw the scene afterward, and I guessed what happened. As soon as he entered the house, she held a loose oak axe handle like a warrior’s mace. She attacked my father, struck him in the head, screaming at him. She nearly succeeded, but it was only a glancing blow, enough to draw blood, perhaps crack his skull—and certainly enough to make his anger erupt.
“In a futile effort, she tried to hurt him, maybe even kill him. But my father snatched the oak handle from her hands, tore it right out of her grip, whirled around—” Bannon swallowed. “And he beat her to death with it.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“By the time I came home from burying the kittens, she was already dead. He had smashed her face so that I couldn’t recognize her, couldn’t even see the usual parts of a face at all. Her left eye had been pulped, and broken shards of skull protruded upward, exposing brain. Her mouth was just a ragged hole, and teeth lay scattered around, some of them pounded into the soft meat of her face, like decorations.…”
His voice grew softer, shakier. “My father came for me with the bloody, splintered axe handle, but I had nothing to defend myself with, not even a sword. I threw myself on him nevertheless, howling. I … I don’t even remember it. I hit him, clawed at him, pounded at his chest.
“This time the neighbors had heard my mother’s screams, worse than ever before, and they rushed in only moments after I arrived. They saved me, or else my father would have killed me, too. I was screaming, trying to fight, trying to hurt him. But they pulled me away and subdued him. By that time, most of the fight had gone out of my father. Blood covered his face, his clothes, and his hands. Some from the gash on his scalp where my mother had struck him, but most of the blood belonged to her.
“Someone had raised the alarm, and one goodwife sent her little boy running to town to get the magistrate.” Bannon sucked in a succession of breaths and kneaded his fingers as he stared like a lost soul into the small campfire before he could continue. Overhead, a night bird cried out and took flight from one of the pine trees.
“I couldn’t save the sack of kittens. I couldn’t prevent my father from drowning them, but I ran after him, nevertheless. I waded into the stream and tried to catch them before it was too late. But I always knew it would be too late, and when they were dead I wasted precious time burying them and crying over them … when I could have been there to save my mother.”
He looked up at his listeners, and the empty pain in his hazel eyes struck a deep chill even in Nicci’s heart.
“If I had stayed with my mother, maybe I could have protected her. If I hadn’t gone chasing after the kittens, I would have been there. I would have stood up to him. I would have saved her. She and I would have faced him together. The two of us could have driven him off somehow. After that night, my father never would have hurt me again. Or her.
“But I went to save the kittens instead. I left my mother behind to face that monster all by herself.”
Bannon stood up again, brushed off his pants. He spoke as if he were merely delivering a scout’s report. “I stayed at Chiriya long enough to see my father hanged for murder. By then, I had a few coins, and out of sympathy other villagers gave me money to live on. I could have had a little cottage, started a family, worked the cabbage fields. But the house smelled too much like blood and nightmares, and Chiriya held nothing for me.
“So I signed aboard the next ship that came into our little harbor—the Wavewalker. I left my home, never intending to go back. What I wanted was to find a better place. I wanted a life the way I imagined it.”
Nathan said, “So you’ve been changing your memories, covering up the darkness with fantasies of how you thought your life should be.”
“With lies,” Nicci said.
“Yes, they’re lies,” Bannon said. “The real truth is … poison. I was just trying to make everything better. Was that wrong?”
Nicci was sure now that Bannon Farmer had a good heart. In his mind, and in the way he described his old lie to others, the young man was struggling to make the world into a place it would never be.
When the wizard placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, Bannon flinched as if in a sudden flashback of his father striking him. Nathan didn’t remove his hand, but tightened his grip, like an anchor. “You’re with us now, my boy.”
Nodding, Bannon smeared the back of his hand across his face, wiping away the tears. He
straightened his shoulders and responded with a weak smile. “I agree. That’s good enough.”
Even Nicci rewarded him with an appreciative nod. “You may have more steel in you than I thought.”
CHAPTER 35
Rain and gloom set in for the next four days as they traveled higher into the mountains. The mornings were filled with fog, the days saturated with drizzle, and the nights accompanied by a full downpour. Low-hanging clouds and dense dripping trees kept them from seeing far into the distance, and they could not gauge the high and rugged mountains ahead of them. Eventually, Nicci knew they would find the high point and look down into the lush valley that lay between them and Kol Adair.
Nicci walked along wrapped in a gray woolen cloak the Lockridge innkeeper had given her, which was drenched and heavy. Bannon and Nathan were just as miserable, and the sodden gloom weighed on them as heavily as the young man’s reticence.
On the fifth night out of Lockridge, the downpour increased and the temperature dropped to a bone-penetrating wet cold. Nicci was pleased to find a thick wayward pine, a pyramid-shaped tree with dense, drooping boughs. For those travelers who knew how to identify them, wayward pines formed a solid, reliable shelter in the forest. Richard had shown her how to find and use them.
Nicci shook the long-needled branches to disperse the collected beads of rainwater, then lifted the bough aside to reveal a dark and cozy hollow within. “We’ll sleep here.”
The wizard found a comfortable spot inside under the low overhanging branches. “Now, if you could just find some roasted mutton and a tankard of ale, Sorceress, we’d have a fine night.”
Bannon sat with his knees pulled up against his chest, still withdrawn.
“Be satisfied with what I’ve already provided,” Nicci said. She did use her magic to light a small fire inside the shelter, and the crisp greenwood smoke curled up into the slanted boughs and away from them. Because they were soaked and cold, Nicci also released more magic to dry the moisture in their clothes, so that for the first time in days they actually felt warm and comfortable.
“I can tolerate unpleasant conditions,” she explained, “but not when I don’t have to. We need our strength and a good rest. There’s no telling how far we have yet to go.”
“The journey itself is part of our goal,” Nathan said. “After we find Kol Adair and I am whole again with my magic, we have the rest of the Old World to explore.”
“Let us get a good rest for tonight,” she said, “and explore the whole world tomorrow.”
They warmed water over the fire and made a fortifying soup with barley, dried meat, and spices. Afterward, they collected enough rainwater in a pot outside the wayward pine that they could make hot tea.
Bannon rolled up in his now-dry cloak and pretended to go to sleep, and Nathan looked at him with concern. “Adventures rarely turn out the way one expects,” he said in a low voice to Nicci, but Bannon surely heard as well—as the wizard no doubt intended.
* * *
The next day as they continued through the drizzle, splashing in puddles and slipping in the trail mud, Nathan exuberantly drew his sword and rounded on Bannon. “You walk like a sluggard, my boy. And with your eyes so downcast, a dragon could be upon you before you even noticed.” He held up his sword and stepped in front of the young man, blocking his way. “Defend yourself, or you’re useless to us.”
Though Bannon was startled, the wizard swung his sword, but without malice, and he did so slowly enough that the confused young man had a chance to duck. “Stop, Nathan! What are you doing?”
“Waking you up.” The wizard swung again, more earnestly this time.
Bannon leaped out of the way. He fumbled Sturdy from its scabbard. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Such a pity,” Nathan said, coming after him. “When bloodthirsty enemies come for me, I always let them know whether I’m in the mood for fighting. It makes all the difference.” He swung again, and Bannon lifted his sword to meet the blow with a loud clang. Sparrows in the branches overhead were startled into flight, swooping away to find a drier, more peaceful bough.
Nicci knew exactly what Nathan was doing, although she also understood the young man’s lethargy. After Bannon had been forced to face the fact that his nostalgic life was nothing more than a foolish fantasy, he was like a ship cast adrift with no rudder or sails. Nicci had spent years building shields around her mind and heart, but Bannon was still so young.
Nathan cried out in happy surprise as his opponent counterattacked, whistling his blade through the air. The solid ringing of steel against steel echoed through the waterlogged forest. “That’s better, my boy! I want to know that you can handle yourself if we’re set upon by monsters again.”
They crashed through the underbrush as Nathan chased him. Bannon wheeled to defend himself and press an attack, sending the wizard into full retreat; then, in a furious volley of blows, they brought each other to a standstill. His face animated now, Bannon pressed forward, pushing Nathan, who slipped in the slimy mud of the trail. The wizard tumbled flat on his back, and then Bannon also lost his balance and sprawled beside his mentor. The two men picked themselves up, panting, and laughing. Both were covered in mud.
Nicci watched them, her arms crossed, the woolen traveling cloak pulled around her. Meeting Nathan’s eyes, she gave him a nod of acknowledgment.
The wizard reached out to take the young man’s hand, and pulled him up beside him. “Dear spirits, that didn’t stop the rain, but it may have lifted your gloom.”
“I’m sorry,” Bannon muttered. “When I wanted to leave Chiriya Island, I think … I may have been running away. But now, I realize that isn’t the point at all.” He lifted his chin, which was smeared with mud. The rain kept coming down, fat droplets falling from the dense branches above in a constant cold shower. “I want to go with you. This is the journey I’ve always dreamed about.”
“Good,” Nathan said. “Then, let’s keep exploring.”
Nicci set off in the lead. “If we go far enough, we may even walk out of this rain.”
The higher they climbed, the colder the nights got, but finally the rain ceased. The downpour had lasted long enough to wash the mud from their clothes.
Two days later, the skies cleared of clouds, opening to a fresh blue, and Nicci picked up the pace, rejuvenated by the sunshine. By now, the path had become all but indistinguishable from a game trail, and they had seen no one since leaving Lockridge. Nicci could understand why Emperor Jagang had not bothered to send his armies down to these isolated lands, where there were few people to conquer.
Occasionally, they came upon ruins of large stone buildings that had fallen into disrepair, overgrown by the forest and reclaimed by time.
“This land must have thrived thousands of years ago,” Nathan said. “After the great barrier was erected at the end of the wizard wars, Sulachan and his successors were forced to push south instead, since they could no longer reach the New World. There were cities and roads, trading posts, mining towns, great leaders and internal wars. In fact, Emperor Kurgan devoted most of his conquest to the southern part of the Old World.”
“That is why we’ve heard little of him in our history,” Nicci said. “He was unimportant.”
“He was important enough to these people,” the wizard said.
“I don’t see any people,” Bannon said.
“Use your imagination. They were here.”
They stopped at a mossy, overgrown building foundation. Squares laid out on the ground marked what must have been a large fortress, but now only crumbling remnants outlined the rubble. “The world tends to pass you by when you live your life in a tower.” He kept talking while Nicci and Bannon followed him away from the ruins. “Did I tell you about the time I foolishly tried to escape from the palace? I was young, with little concept of how impregnable my prison was.”
Nicci frowned. “The Sisters never mentioned to me that you had tried to escape.”
“I was only a cen
tury old, just a boy, really. I was brash and willing to take chances … and I was also impossibly bored. Yes, I had the freedom to roam through the high tower rooms, to look at the wonderful books in the library, but such diversions can only distract a young man for so long before he begins to dream. I didn’t want to be their pet prophet, so I laid my plans for months. Yes, they had placed an iron collar around my neck, and with the Rada’Han they could control me and my magic.” His lips quirked in a smile, and he tossed his straight white hair behind him. “So I had to be resourceful and not just use a spell or two to get away.
“When I kept telling the Sisters I was cold, they brought me more blankets, and I used just a tiny bit of the gift to unravel the fibers, which I reassembled into a rope, a long rope, thread after thread. It was strong enough to hold my weight.
“I spent a week being cheerful and attentive to my studies so as to lull the Sisters into a sense of complacency, and then one moonless night I made my way to one of the highest rooms. I barricaded the door after claiming that I meant to study spell books throughout the night. I was a curious young man and wanted to build my powers as a wizard, even though I knew they would never free me.” He unconsciously rubbed at his neck, as if he still felt the iron collar there. “Because a prophet is too dangerous, you see.”
He looked at Bannon to make sure the young man was listening. “I opened the high window and fastened my rope securely to an anchor. I was precluded from using a levitation spell, so I had to resort to more traditional means. When I lowered myself over the sill and looked down, I felt as if the drop went all the way to the underworld.” He regarded Bannon, cocking an eyebrow. “When one lives inside stone-walled rooms, it’s difficult to get a sense of the vastness of the sky or the long drop to the ground below. But I was resolved. I wrapped the rope around my waist and began to lower myself down the wall.”