The Arkanist

Chapter Thirteen: The Bastard of Riveiar

Chapter Thirteen: The Bastard of Riveiar

It was the dead of night when I woke, the world dark, tendrils of light waiting at the edges of things. I shot upright, my scar stinging, and I was sweating, mouth dry in apprehension, in sudden fright. It felt as though the air has been stripped from my lungs. I touched my cloak desperately, pleadingly. There was nothing in it.

The book. I'd lost it.

I sat there for a brief second, the feeling gone out of my body, replaced with a strange nothingness that ate at my heart, clawing at thought and motion. I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it.

But I did. In the chaos of the previous day, it had fallen from my cloak pocket. I had in my pocket, against my side when I went to the merchant's shop. Then I was attacked, and kicked and thrown, and I remember faintly my cloak being ripped, slashed with the iron shiv. It could have fallen out at any time. It could have fallen out when I ran away, but I did not feel it. I had gone numb, numb to all else but surviving. And now, I had survived, but I had lost just as much.
I sat there, still as a strong stone in an autumn gale, sat there in the darkness, the deep black, knowing I would never find the answers I sought. It hurt, for a moment, and I felt my tongue swell and I began to choke up.

Then, I grabbed something, I don't remember what, and threw it, and screamed and beat my fist into the wood table beside my face. I ravaged all that surrounded me, punching myself, tearing apart my cloak, my useless cloak that was supposed to hold the book, but failed.

Then I quieted, my anger seething from my body like steam, and breathed deeply, trying to calm myself, trying to remember what had happened, how it could have fallen out of my cloak so I could find it again, but it could have been anywhere... It was gone. That was all I needed to accept, and that was the hardest thing to accept at that moment. It's the feeling of helplessness, of utter cruelty of it all that wears on the minds of men. The knowledge that you cannot do anything strikes the fiercest.

Aryl never came down, you should know. He never calmed my fury that night or spoke words of wisdom to my tortured ears. I am certain he heard it, certain my rage woke him, certain it startled him, but I am also certain, he understood, and that made all the difference.

You see, Aryl was a man of understanding, as well as much else. I suppose it's why I loved him so much, why I admired him, and also feared him. He understood things before they were explained, before they happened sometimes, and he knew what to do about them, how to act, or how to not act.

This was not his problem, and he knew it. He knew it to be mine, and mine alone. He knew that it was mine to solve, and he let me solve it. Sometimes, the greatest help is the one not given. It teaches us to think and to mature in ways nothing else can.

I hope you understand.

***

I woke again shortly thereafter, the world still cloaked in a restful, dreary slumber, and I was not alone. There was a boy, slightly older than I was, and he stood before the cold, grey hearth in a garish velvet tunic: red, and blue and gold, tasseled in silver. He held a small wax candle before his long, oval face, and prodded me with his finger, but he did not say anything, just prodded.

My first reaction was utter shock, an intense and sudden uneasiness gripping my body, and I simply remained rooted to the spot, unable to move, petrified. It was not Aryl, I knew, nor was it the philos. This person wore straw-blond hair, and their face was pale like a ghost's and their eyes glimmered darkly like to shiny pebbles.