The fog of forgetting, p.26
The Fog of Forgetting, page 26
Seaborne sat down by the fire and offered food from the baskets. He looked at the three of them in turn, slowly chewing a strip of smoked meat. Chase couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or proud of them—maybe a little of both. Finally Seaborne spoke.
“Well, I’ll hand it to the three of you. Not many on Ayda would disobey one Keeper, then steal from another. It’s no wonder you ran away. I’m questioning the choice of the mountains, though. Not very well thought out. I thought we’d trained you better.”
Knox protested; Seaborne waved him off.
“Good thing you’re well-liked or you’d find yourself in a pretty pickle. When Rothermel heard what you did, he was half-ready to let Dankar have you.”
An uncomfortable silence followed, lightened only by Axl, who groaned happily as she stretched her back to the fire. Evelyn was nestled deep inside the hood of her poncho.
“Why didn’t he?” she asked quietly.
“Rysta intervened in your favor, and you had a few other—fans.”
“Rysta intervened,” Chase repeated, surprised. “Did you know about—”
“About your brother?” Seaborne finished, his voice rising. “Aye. Fine job that was, taking a small boy out on the river like that.” He glared at each of them, then he stretched out his legs and yawned. “Well, I suppose he’s better off than you are at the moment.”
“We were headed back to Melor,” blurted Knox, trying to explain.
Seaborne sniffed. “As if we’d have you.”
“We didn’t mean it to happen. We didn’t mean for Teddy—”
“DIDN’T MEAN TO!” Seaborne yelled, with a force that made them all start. “What did you think would happen if you crossed a Keeper? You think she’d let you prance off with her necklace, right as rain, straight into the hands of the enemy? After everything she and Rothermel told you? You three have always been a little thick in the head.”
“Is Teddy okay?” Chase whispered, looking at the ground.
“No thanks to you lot. Rysta didn’t want him killed by your stupidity, so she sent the sea turtles to collect him.”
“He’s with Rysta, then? Alive? You’re sure?” asked Chase, meeting Seaborne’s eye.
Seaborne gave a quick nod. Chase felt the heavy knob in his chest break apart, replaced by a swooping sense of joy. Teddy was alive!
“Wait,” said Knox. “I don’t get it. Rysta let us go? With the necklace?”
“You really haven’t learned anything, have you?” replied Seaborne. “The necklace is valuable, and not something she’d be pleased to tender, but the greater loss to her would have been the four of you. Did you really think she wouldn’t know what you were up to? Do you think she couldn’t guess?” He shot a severe look at Evelyn, then bit into his meat with an exasperated snort. “She’s a mite older than you, for starters, and she’s seen a thing or two. You thought you were being so tricky, sneaking off after that song and dance. The fact is—she gave you the necklace. She knew from your thoughts, particularly yours,” said Seaborne, gesturing at Evelyn, “that you were determined to confront Dankar. She knew if you had the necklace she could protect you in some way. If you had it, she could use it to guide and advise you—did you not sense that? The necklace is of little use on its own without Rysta. She’s connected to it.”
Chase nodded vigorously. “The skiffs—it was like they steered themselves. I thought it was Teddy, you know, his thoughts, or something! He was wearing the necklace and I thought it followed his wishes.”
“Yes, well, that was her error. She didn’t plan on the little one wearing it. She thought Evelyn would keep it. Even so, she could not let you take Teddy to Dankar, so she stopped you.” He glared at them again. “To the end of my days I will never understand what overcame the three of you. Taking a little boy on the river with nothing but the clothes on your back. Madness.”
Seaborne shifted over and removed a large, wrapped bundle from one of the sleds. “But to your credit, you shook things up. Something has happened that has not happened in—” He began to count on his fingers with an absentminded expression, then shook his head. “Let’s just say in a very long time.” He cradled the bundle in his lap and whistled softly under his breath.
“What?” Knox cried, unable to bear Seaborne’s attempt at suspense.
“There was a meeting,” he said solemnly.
“What kind of meeting?” asked Evelyn.
“A secret meeting between Rothermel and Rysta—and a bittersweet reunion it was, I’m told. I was not there myself.” His expression clouded over for a moment. “But not many were. It was brief.”
“And it was about—us?” asked Evelyn.
Seaborne nodded. “Yes, to be sure, but not just you. Since Tinator’s daylights were sent back to their source, there has been a growing restlessness in Melor. The scent of revenge lies thick in the Wold—it has led to some impetuous and foolish acts,” his eyes darkened. “Not unlike your little adventure here. At the meeting, Rothermel and Rysta took brief counsel with one another. The idea of open war was dismissed, but your idea of using some precious gift as a negotiating tool was examined and determined to—ah—have merit—”
“—not a stone?” Evelyn gasped.
“Of course not,” Seaborne scoffed. “But it was discussed that perhaps something else would do. Something Dankar wants very much.” He grew quiet, allowing his words to sink in.
Chase understood immediately.
“You mean us.”
Seaborne nodded. “I was told that your decision to abandon Rysta and the comfort and protection of Metria was seen as a declaration of willingness to expose yourself to the enemy. After much argument, it was decided that this could be used to Ayda’s advantage: Rothermel would agree to turn you over to Dankar in exchange for a truce with Melor.”
“But … but … he knows Dankar is a liar and a cheat!” Knox sputtered. “Why would Rothermel ever expect him to honor a truce?”
Seaborne’s lips clenched into a tight line.
“There would be some guarantees: You would be given to him one by one. If the truce were broken, the exchanges would cease.”
“That’s slavery—no better than Dankar would do himself. I don’t believe it! I thought the Keepers were under oath to protect us, not offer us up as live sacrifices!” objected Evelyn, flushed with outrage.
“That is the same argument Rysta used. But the case was made that you already accepted that fate—by your actions. You had been told of the danger, yet you chose to run away.”
Evelyn stood up and stared down at him. “Is that what you think? We should be sacrificed to Dankar as … as punishment for trying to find my sister? Do you think that’s justice?”
Seaborne shook his head. “Nay, Evelyn, calm yourself. I do not agree with the council. Nor do the few others who know of it. But there is great peril in Ayda, and some wonder if you were not sent to us for this very reason.”
“To be offered to Dankar?” Evelyn sneered.
“Aye.” Seaborne’s voice was heavy with the truth. “I’ve been told to collect you and bring you back to the Wold. You are of no use to anyone if you are caught here in the wild.”
Evelyn, Knox, and Chase stared at Seaborne disbelievingly. On instinct, they gravitated toward one another. Knox reached for one of the logs by the fire to use as a club.
“There’s no need for that, Knox. I told you when I first met you, I’m not your enemy.” Seaborne gave him a wan, exhausted smile.
“I’m beginning to wonder if there’s much difference between a friend and an enemy here,” said Knox.
“I was sent here to collect you, true, but I didn’t say that was what I’m going to do.” Seaborne stood and gave them a smile so familiar and endearing to the three of them that they almost dropped their guard. As he took a step forward, they stepped back as one, away from him.
“Come now. Have you lost all faith in your old friend, Seaborne?”
They did not respond.
“Maybe this will change your feelings.” With a flourish he lifted one of the remaining bundles from the sleds and opened the flap. To their astonishment an assortment of weapons fell to the ground: Chase’s sword, Knox’s knives, Evelyn’s dagger, and an assortment of slingshots. Then, Seaborne drew out Tinator’s massive crossbow and a quiver full of sharpened bolts and hefted it onto his shoulder. “I’ll be using this, if you please. The others, I think, belong to you.”
“Wha—how did you get them?” cried Knox, squatting beside the pile and quickly stowing away his knives. “I looked everywhere for these! I thought they were gone forever. Rysta took them from us in Metria.”
“Aye, Rysta does not believe young ones should be burdened with such things. She hates the thought of them being put to use. She returned them to Rothermel at the council. But it just so happens that Calla, ah, stumbled upon them, shall we say, and Mara packed them with the supplies.”
Chase picked up his sword fondly, stroking the scabbard with his hand. The weight of it felt good in his grasp, like it belonged to him. Maybe he was being given a second chance to prove himself. He drew the blade from the scabbard and brandished it above his head. Now that he knew Teddy was safe, he would gladly admit that he had never felt so alive or so prepared to face whatever lay ahead.
“What’s the plan?” he asked Seaborne.
“The plan, as much as there is one,” replied Seaborne, “is to gain favor with the only person in Ayda who can give the three of you—and now me, since I’ve thrown my lot in with yours—a fighting chance.” Seaborne threw a nervous glance over his shoulder at the gold-tipped mountains in the distance.
“Ratha?” asked Chase.
Seaborne responded with a curt nod.
Chapter 29
FALSE FOOTING
The temperature dropped violently the next day. By evening, a light snow had begun to fall. Evelyn snuggled deeply into her fur-lined poncho, silently saying another prayer of thanks for Seaborne’s timely arrival. It was their fourth day out in the wild, and the mountains of Varuna were now before them. Scrubby, wheat-colored meadows and granite outlays had given way to tougher and more treacherous ground as they climbed, leading them up into a landscape devoid of color and definition but for the snow-tipped peaks towering over them. Depending on the time of day, the summits looked either tantalizingly close or fearfully remote.
Far below to the south and southwest, they caught a brief glimpse of the glittering waters of the Voss and the Hestredes river. They had skirted the banks of the lake the day before, but dared not stop out in the open. Seaborne was driving them hard, and as they trudged onward, everyone’s hearts and footsteps grew heavier; each had to fight hard against the impulse to stop and gaze backwards, toward the warm waters and shaded groves of Metria and Melor. What lay ahead remained unknown, and, from the starkness that surrounded them, not very welcoming.
Seaborne called for a halt and busied himself with the bottom of the sleds. He planned to remove the wheels and replace them with metal runners for ice when the time came. The campsite for the evening was a wide sunken ledge at the edge of a rocky field. Evelyn was in charge of keeping their small fire burning. Knox fiddled with his throwing knives, unable to settle down. Chase had wandered off, as he had begun to do more often. Knox stooped beside Seaborne, watching him worry a wooden peg from its hole.
“How far do you think we need to go before Ratha finds us?” he asked.
Seaborne pounded the bottom of the wagon with his homemade mallet, ingeniously fashioned from a rock, twine, and a sturdy branch. “Don’t know,” he grunted. “Maybe we’ll find her before she finds us.”
“Rysta said she lives far up, on one of the tallest mountains.”
“I’ve heard that, too, but no one knows. She’s a solitary sort.”
Knox smiled, thinking of Seaborne’s remote cabin. “Takes one to know one, huh, Seaborne?” Seaborne didn’t reply. Knox fussed impatiently with one of his knives.
“But what about her people, towns, villages, that sort of thing? Surely we’ll come across somebody soon?”
“Not likely. I’ve never met a Varunan as long as I’ve lived on Ayda. They avoid contact with others. Most live on their own, hidden away in these mountains. For all we know, they may have us in their sights now,” said Seaborne.
Knox surveyed the barren landscape. Who could possibly stay hidden here? But then again, this was Ayda—anything was possible. Of all the places that he’d been on Ayda, he liked Varuna the least. It was beautiful, which he’d come to expect. The sky was so blue it looked purple, and the views from the heights were magnificent—but there was also a hostile feeling about Varuna: empty and cold and bare except for rocks and moss and scrubby trees. Knox sniffed the air. It smelled like nothing, if nothing had a scent, and it filled him with dread. He picked up Seaborne’s mallet and began striking the ground impatiently. Flint and snow spray flew up and dusted Seaborne’s hands.
“Hey, lad, you’re out of sorts, I know, but don’t take it out on the mountain”—Seaborne grabbed the mallet back—“or me. It’s your daylights; we Melorians are less at home with heights. Find something to occupy your mind and you’ll feel better. Here.” He passed Knox a thin metal blade and a honing stone. “Take this over there and sharpen it. Careful you don’t cut your finger off.” Grateful for a job, Knox took the blade and set to work.
Evelyn came back empty-handed from trying to gather firewood. Chase bounded up to the campsite a few minutes later. His cheeks were red with cold, but his eyes glittered in excitement.
“Over that ridge there’s a huge snowbowl—and a glacier!” he panted, gesticulating wildly. “I saw the ice covering the mountain—a solid sheet of blue ice with green veins running through it!”
“Aye, and that’s what you could see,” said Seaborne with a worried expression. “You didn’t walk near it, did you?”
Chase shook his head. “I thought I’d wait for you.”
“Wise move,” said Seaborne. “A glacier is frozen water—what you saw was just the curtain, the vertical ice. Glaciers will stretch vast distances covering the ground, only you don’t know you’re on ice because of the snow. It can be very perilous—I didn’t think we’d meet up with one so soon.”
“Did you run all the way back?” Knox asked, his eyebrow raised in disbelief. It seemed impossible that this was once the brother who could barely walk fast without wheezing.
“Yeah, I’m fine—” he answered. “It’s easier for me to breathe up here.”
“How odd,” said Evelyn, catching Knox’s eye with an “I-told-you-so” expression. “It’s usually harder to breathe high up in the mountains—the air is thinner.”
Chase was nonchalant. “Yeah, well, not for me, I guess.” He lifted up his arms and let out a loud whoop. The hounds leapt up, ready for action.
“May I remind you that we are trying to be discreet in our actions here?” groused Seaborne. “We don’t need to alert the whole blessed valley—and whoever is lurking there to find us—nor do we need to set off an avalanche. I don’t fancy a meeting with anyone but Ratha up here.”
“He can’t help it,” laughed Evelyn. “It’s his daylights.”
Chase shrugged. He was still hesitant about the idea of daylights, but it was hard to deny that his spirits and energy were responding to being in Varuna.
“What about you?” he asked her. “Do you feel any different?”
“No,” she replied. “Colder, I guess.” Her brow furrowed. “I guess that means I’m not Varunan. I’m definitely not Metrian—so I must either be Melorian, or Exorian, whatever that means.”
Seaborne looked up from his work at the mention of Exor.
“Nay, girl. Don’t be so hasty to put yourself in a box.”
“Well, then, what am I?” she said impatiently. It was bothering her more than she cared to admit. Chase and Knox—and Teddy, for that matter—all knew more or less where they belonged. Why not her? She jabbed at the fire with a stick. “I don’t feel anything.”
Seaborne blew on his hands, coming over to the fire to warm them. He squatted beside her.
“I don’t know much about the daylights and how they come to be divided or balanced within a person, but I do know that sometimes—in some creatures—there is more equality between them. I mean, it’s not as easy to know which of the four is dominant, which makes it harder to discover one’s true nature. Take me, for instance; I always thought of myself as a seafarer, borne and bound to water. ’Twas only after an age here that I came to know what really moved me, and I built my home in Melor. But even so, I’m still drawn to the sea.”
“So, you can sometimes be both, or more than one?” asked Evelyn, trying to understand.
“Sometimes it isn’t clear: All of us—even those beyond the fog—hear the call of the stones of Ayda, but for many of us, the calls are faint and confusing, even when one lives on Ayda where the stones are most powerful. These boys can consider themselves lucky to hear one that speaks louder to them than the other three, but just because you don’t doesn’t mean a thing. Don’t go pigeonholing yourself in with Dankar—or anyone else, for that matter—and fretting. You’ll only make it harder to hear the real call when it comes along.”
“And what if it doesn’t?” said Evelyn, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.
Seaborne leaned in to her with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye.
“It will. It always does. Trick is getting quiet enough in your head to hear it, because for some it’s just a whisper.” The wind gusted between them at that moment, blowing sparks up into the air.
Seaborne followed the glowing ash with his eyes as it rose, spiraling on a current of air, watching until it burnt out. Evelyn was quiet and pensive. He cleared his throat to continue, but before he could utter another word, an eight-legged missile of boy and dog knocked him flat: Knox and Tar roughhousing. He let out a deep grunt of surprise and grabbed Knox by the back of his shirt.
“You’ll find that the more intelligent you are, Evelyn, the softer your daylights will speak,” he roared. “And the simpler you are in the head—well, case in point.” He shook Knox. Evelyn grinned. Seaborne released him with a gentle cuff.
