Chapter Nineteen: Crossing Roads
Later that day, we arrived at a crossroads, and with it, an inn, just as Viven had promised. We'd traveled near on ten miles, but in the rain, it had felt like twenty, and anybody who has spent a time on the road knows the difference between ten and twenty miles. It's like cats and dogs. It's simple nothing of the sort.
And, to make matters worse, Yara never made eye contact with me for the rest of the day. Not once.
Not once as she sparked the fire with her cleverly peeled birch bark back at out brief camp, not once as she fed the flames twigs to keep it alive, not once as we sat there, telling idle stories. Not once. Not even a half glimpse in my direction. No, she avoided my very presence. Avoided me like as though I were Tarten himself.
It wasn't anything like a good feeling. I felt sore and painful, ashamed at my vacuous ignorance, my inane stupidity. You see, I don't like making people upset, not even people I don't like, not entirely. I feel bad about it for hours, maybe sometimes even days. The guilt wells inside me like some festering poison, some bacteria waiting to infect some vital organ and ultimately kill me.
So, as I sat there, before the fire, warming my cold, wet hands, I couldn't help but feel a heavy dread settling over my entire being, gnawing at whatever it wished. It felt awful.
But even still, I knew better than to attempt to talk with her as we walked. If it's one thing Aryl taught me, it's that people need space, a concept I understood fully, from practice. So, for the second half of our travels I studied my fellow companions, getting to know them by their quirks, their expressions and their looks. I studied them as I studied Yara for the first time, delving into their heat of being, and asking myself questions I didn't have the answers to.
My eyes caught Rand first, partly because of his size. He was big as a tree, and broad, cut with muscle, wide as a small wagon. His skin was pale as a ghost's and he garbed himself in a long, heavy suit of leathers and quilting, the armor marked with various tribal symbols of the Elbish peoples, swirling etchings, sometimes angular things.
His face, the brief glances I stole, revealed a hard, squared face, as if chiseled from limestone. Dark eyes he wore, and thick brows, with a stout nose and a meticulously clean-shaven face. Yet his hair was long and black, shoulder length, and braided once on the side of his head, the line of hair hung with four stone pieces.
I also noticed he always kept a hand to his hip, his large meaty palm resting over the pommel of his sword. He did this when we rested around the fire and likewise when we walked. It either meant he quite liked the hand-rest, or he was perpetually anxious of attack. I suspected both.
I knew very little about the Elbish, truth be told. They were a strange people, inhabiting a distant island in the north sea, rocky and desolate and grey. Rand didn't say much either. I think in part it was due to his vague understanding of the Anturan tongue, the common language of the continent for over seven hundred years following their conquering. It would make some amount of sense, however, for the Anturans, quite famously, never conquered Elb. There was a single attempt, failed, of course, early in their reign, and it was to be their final attempt. That, was I all I knew about the Elbish. They were strong enough to defeat the world's greatest empire. That, and they brewed a bitter ale.
As much that was interesting about Rand, my eyes lingered on Dagos the longest. He looked a fish out of water in the truest sense. He, unlike Rand, who could manage the general attempt at a sentence in Anturan, did not speak a lick of it. Aryl had told me he was a goldsword, a fighter for hire from the far south. His skin was evidence of that. It was dark, ebony dark, but he showed very little of it. He wore a thin grey tunic, overtop of which a ratty black robe would sway, covering him down to his boots, and he wore gloves over his hands. The only exposed piece of skin was the top-half his head, for he wore a piece of grey cloth around his mouth and nose. He had no hair, and no brows, black pits for eyes.
He was interesting because of his mystic, his reserved nature, his reticence, unreadable in the best of glances. Everybody who stood next to him or sat beside him gave the man, at the least, a meter gap. The thing that took me as a surprise the most was his lack of a sword. He was called a goldsword, but I hadn't even spotted his sword, let alone it be gold. Did he carry it somewhere else? Did he use his hands? My mind thought of the famous swordsman Vintel, a classic Lentish hero, and arguably the greatest swordsman in recorded history, who could summon a sword from a mile off. Maybe Dagos was like that, but I doubted it.
There was also Maert and Tallise, who seemed to know each other, and had worked with each other before. They were mercenaries, garbed in boiled leather and the slight twinkle of mail underneath. Tallise was taller than Maert, and wore a longsword on her back while Maert draped a bow across his shoulders and a quiver along his waist.
It seemed quite obvious why they had taken up the job. Sam, on the other end, was a mystery. He was nothing like any of the other companions. He was young, for starters, and while I was just as young, I possessed a look that appeared older than I was. Sam did not, to his misfortune. He had a boyish face, cursed with it almost, and so Viven took to calling him "boy", a title he would likely never shrug off, until he started greying, of course, but that time was a long ways off.
Elend and Ilith usually kept to themselves: the quiet, intelligent, studious type. They were brothers, both dark haired Lentishmen, however much they were balding. I stayed away from them, as I did Amon and Jaxhen, who were constantly bickering about something. It was raining and I was wet and tired and in need of a warm hearth. I didn't need any further annoyance.
Along the road, amongst my wandering eyes, I even talked with Aryl, something I hadn't done freely since the outset of our journey. Our conversation was convoluted and strange, but when wasn't it? He was a natural teacher in the truest sense. Everything he said, he tried to teach me. While at the time it seemed tedious and annoying, and a fair bit confusing, looking back, I wouldn't trade the times we spent talking about the way rain is created or the differences between solids and liquids for anything. It is a memory I will never get back...
"Saddle the horses," ordered Viven at the head of our company, slowing with the rain, which had now turned to a spitting mist as we arrived at the small town of Durdn. "And don't half-ass it. Those horses are our lives. Anything happens to them, they run away, they get stolen because of some shitty knot, I'll tie you to a plank of wood so you can see what a good knot looks like."
Elend and Ilith were closest to our leader, and so they took the horses off the road to the low overhang of wood and thatch beside the inn as the rest of us filed in through the threshold of maple. As inns go, it was a large one, probably because of its proximity to Raenish; and in relation to the surrounding town, it was large as a castle. Folk from across Lent, and frankly the known world, traveling to the city were bound to stay there, and so once we walked in, it was crowded like a fish market after the tide's gone out.
But with as many people that I saw, there was a strange, unnatural quiet held about the place. The lights were low, the braziers silenced, nothing but small candles around the tap. Nobody was talking, maybe a whisper or two, but in all sincerity, the place was quiet as the calm sea at dawn.
The door shut behind us with a louder clap than anticipated, announcing our presence like thunder at night. Immediately we were met by a distressed gentleman of increasing greyness, who shooed us out as though he a shepherd and we his cattle.
He closed the door with a delicate grace behind him once we were out, and turned on us. "Five minutes more you've to wait," he said, standing before the door, breathing heavy from his seemingly momentary fright. "Terribly sorry, but I'm afraid I simply can do nothing else."
Viven broadened. "We just walked twenty miles in the rain." He spoke easily, calmly. "We're wet, damp, cold, hungry."
"I understand," said the man of increasing greyness, and as I stood there, I noticed his beard was greying, his hair was greying, his brows, his skin, even his eyes; and he wore a dark red velvet doublet and an old cloak of blue. He was, most clearly, the innkeeper. "But we're nearing the end of a performance. Five minutes more and it will come to a close."
Viven narrowed his eyes. "We're leagues off the Old Road and twenty miles off Raenish. Folk around here," he said, gesturing to the low, squat houses. "They're not the sort to watch anything that doesn't pay them money, and they're sure as hell not patrons."
The innkeeper laughed. "No, that they aren't. And no, we are not on the Old Road either, but travelers on the Old Road come down by this road and on to Raenish, and we are the greatest inn for twenty miles outside the city. Fancy folk, lord and lady come by this way. Two years back, I still remember the day, Lord Sarein and Lady Inura of Tur-Atarn stopped for the night with their entire escort. No announcement, no runner, completely unawares. Just three days back Count Edemyr stayed under my roof and many other lesser lords and barons from across Temriant since this place was built. Still now, I host Denic of the House Ribalde and fifth in line to the Lentish throne.
"You see, my inn must accommodate such sort," he continued, breathing easily now. "Plays and music and fine wine, that's what we offer, and it is the very reason why we do so well." He held up his hands, looking around at the forest beside the inn, the wilderness. "We are the light of civilization in a barbaric world, I like to say. We provide service to the nobility of the world, a fine and honorable practice I will always cherish."
Viven laughed playfully, carefully. "A noble establishment, certainly. One that we entered with great ignorance. For that, we are sorry, both me and my fellow companions." At these words, I knew exactly, instantly, what our guide was doing, and immediately thought him twice the man for it. My father had told me a time ago: "Always be kind, unrelentingly kind if you must, to a man who takes you under his roof. There's no knowing what he might do if you aren't." It seemed Viven had heard the saying too.
"Understandable," said the innkeep, pursing his lips. "There is usually a doorman, you should know, Elcite, his name. Yet, of late, he's been ill, dreadfully so, I'm afraid. Something of the stomach. Terrible shame, really."
"As we've demonstrated," said Viven, bowing in forgiveness. "And the play we so fitfully interrupted?"
"Nan Edris Lein," said the greying innkeeper with pride, his voice filled with thespian roots. "A favorite of mine, no doubt. I've even played in it once, when I was far younger, and an actor during a brief spell of time in Leradon.
"I don't recall the name," said Viven, speaking honestly.
"My friend, you are at a loss," said the innkeeper. "A classic of the Lerian court, wild, dramatic, sad and strange. In Twilit Dreams, it's called in Anturan: a tale of a man turned monster by his lover, and her attempts to turn him back. A shame you did not come sooner to catch the beginning."
"The rain slowed our tracks," said Viven. "I would have been honored to see it performed. It sounds fascinating."
Then, through the rain, the inn quieted, and nothing but the faint plucking of a lute could be heard. The innkeeper started to tear up as he listened.
"She has turned him back, but he no longer remembers her face," he said in narration. "And alone they stay in their sweet lilac wood, together, forever.
With glass eyes he gazed upon his once lover,
But could not see that which he did fall
For she was hidden, yet to uncover, lost to forever,
Lost to the fearie queene's thrall.
Alone, together, they linger in that forgotten glade,
Beneath the twilit sky,
Fated to die
But never fade."
As he finished speaking, he smiled, his eyes sparkling in the grey, and as sudden as thunder, a storm of applause swelled from the inn, loud as the savage ocean, consuming the silence.
"It is over," he said softly. "Come. We shall find you a seat."
Thanks for reading....I hope you enjoyed it....Don't forget to COMMENT and VOTE to let me know :)