"Master. I've been looking for you. Whatever are you doing here?"
"Hiding," said Master Harl, sitting on his pine-lacquered trunk and making patterns on the earth with his quarterstaff. Even with the sight of an old bat, his artwork was tidy, organized.
When he didn't expand on his answer, Addie said "From?" with the question mark clear in her articulation of the word.
Master Harl looked up then. His glazed-over eyes did not pierce her as they usually did. Instead they swept over to behind her shoulders somewhere. From round they went oval, and from oval to a slit. He dropped the quarterstaff.
"Shit. From him."
Addie whirled even as a chirring met her ears.
Puhezer Gryphik was ambling towards them on lightweight feet, his baggy silk shirt clipped at the wrists matching his manner. A revolving tiara of dragoses fizzed around his head. He seemed to talking to himself, but then she realized it was him that the chirring came from, not a songbird.
Could the Relic's portend have meant this man?
The minstrel feigned astonishment as he bowed theatrically before them. Up close, the bridge of his nose looked a bit crooked, and the age in the pits of his narrow face more pronounced. He carried the awkward smell of pleasantries exchanged between business acquaintances who happened also to be friends, and the sweet smell of lavender-sandalwood incense withal. The dragoses zipped off.
"I was hoping to corner you one at a time, but lo! The Holder does make achieving that which you desire from your religious roots reasonably easy."
"I thought you were heathen," said Addie.
"And for a long time I thought shit was licorice. Those people would have devoured me alive had I not said what I did say."
"What do you want?"
"Why, nothing at all. I just thought, you know, us mages should stick together."
"We're no mages," Addie denied-
-at the same time as Master Harl said: "Are - you - completely - moronic?"
He looked like he was about to explode into a hundred flaming arrows, and all of those arrows would be directed at the newcomer.
"You insult me, old friend," said Gryphik. "I am half parts genius, quarter parts insane . . . which leaves room for only quarter of a moron in me."
"You know of each other?" Addie asked, frowning.
"Know of?" Gryphik scoffed. "I know him like I do the back of my hand - not much of use, me being no warrior. How do you think I recognized his wrinkled ass? And he knows me too, mayhaps better than he does his genitals."
Addie blinked at him. Then at Master Harl, to see if he would allow this.
"That was a masturbation joke," Gryphik explained.
"That will be enough, Zer, thank you!"
"Just like the old days." Gryphik sighed. "So stoic. The years haven't changed a hair on this man's chest. Well, they're grey now, but you catch the sentiment."
"What do you want?" inquired Master Harl, vexed more than Addie had even seen him. Which she had thought was impossible, since he almost always looked vexed.
"Nothing. I believe I answered that already."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because I happened to be in Dassan at the worst possible time. And because it's been a while since I met someone of our ilk who is not dead or converted."
"How do you know I'm not converted?"
"You, my friend? Throwing yourself at the House Of Ations like some countryside whore at a lordling? No. The Shadneer may rise and drown us all ere that happen."
"But you're a minstrel!" said Addie.
"I am," Gryphik countered easily.
"Then - I just find it hard to believe you have the Skill." Imagining the man making scraps of metal clash with his mind was not dissimilar to the image of a hill bending to kiss a meadow.
"I don't. I am a Tester, not a Skiller."
"No, you're not."
"But I am, truly and really."
It made sense: Testers were mages who could alter your bodily functions. Make you sweat your armpits or piss your pants. Rush your adrenaline or render you lethargic. Heal you or break you. Pedgram's spewing up now made sense. He hadn't fallen sick suddenly because food poisoning symptoms had kicked in. And the audience's captivation . . . Addie had felt her heartrate dampen, her muscles loosen, as she heard his flute.
"You don't look one," she said outwardly.
"Why, thank you. That's just the look I'm going for, then. If fellow mages dip their toes in a pond, others will fall in it, hook, line and sinker."
"Prove it," Addie said even as Master Harl grimaced.
Gryphik looked her in the eye, crossing his arms beneath his chest. His cheeks puffed up like blowfish. "As you wish . . .?"
"Addie. Castele - " But her lips froze in place, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth like iron on lodestone. She felt herself swallow invisible icy thorns as the moisture from her mouth rapidly evaporated. She tried to fish for the knife in her duffel, to lunge for the man, but it was as if a solidified layer of pewter restricted every inch of her body.
"Wrrgh," she managed somehow.
Her eyeballs could move, thankfully. They fixated themselves on Gryphik's face, which was divided neatly by a wide grin.
White smoke rising up to your chest as you inhale . . .
Teeth rattled in her jaw. Her eyes popped. Her thumbs twitched.
. . . turning into pure stark energy as you exhale.
"Ah!" The pewter layer broke, and Addie faltered forward at Gryphik as though she had been released from someone's clutch. They both fell, crunching leaves as they did. Addie landed on his top, her hands a blur as she held her argonz knife to his throat, breathing hard.
"Tilda's bane! Calm down, girl!"
"Let him go, shren." Addie looked up at Master Harl, his bristly brows an arc, and got up reluctantly. "You asked him to display his power, so he did it."
Groaning, the Tester got to his feet. "Spoiled my shirt," he bleated as he wiped dirt and leaves off it. He checked nimbly a contraption-belt under his shirt - a vessel for his flute. It was intact. "Silly girl. Who taught you how to defend against a Bactract? Some priest from Craycht?"
"I did, Zer," said Master Harl.
"That explains how hostile it was," said Gryphik.
"No, it doesn't. I taught her as Marner taught us. She is . . . different. Special."
Gryphik stared at Addie. Addie stared at Master Harl; he had never said this before. He had always attributed the aggressiveness of her defense and Skill to her lack of control over her emotions. In the initial stages of her training, he had numbed her nails to insensitivity with a strange thaumaturgic balm and cleaved them half off so she could not harness a major portion of her ability for many a maes.
Before either she or the minstrel could find their respective tongues, Master Harl picked up his quarterstaff and said: "You should be abed, shren. Get some sleep. Zer, come. Let us go for a stroll together."
The grin reappeared. "I was beginning to worry the years had rusted off your fondness for me," Gryphik said.
Sleep met her like an old lover, and she evaded it likewise. Thus a thousand different thoughts tried to invade her mind instead. Addie sighed each of them away, one after other after another, but they kept returning with an incremented fervor to breach. None too soon her tired sighs turned into tired yawns.
She pressed her head against the boulder and glanced over at the pale-haired daughter and mother. Aeri was scratching her arm in drowse, whereas Nayari was still as stone. Both had their mouth half-open, the sun peeking from above the stringbarks to get a good look at them. Addie did not know for how long she stared, but she closed her eyes when the younger one switched sides and snuggled up against a snoring stranger dressed only in loincloth.
"Smile looks nice on you," said Gryphik's voice. Next he was there himself, squatting besides her. "You should wear it more often. The dimples make you look less like . . ."
"Like I'm about to have your head between two loaves of bread?" Addie said, flustered, removing the smile she hadn't known she sport.
Gryphik snorted delicately. "I was going to say less uncharitable. But those might exactly be the words I was looking for."
"I thought a minstrel is supposed to put the most bastardly wordmonger to shame."
"He is. But mankind hardly ever does what it is supposed to, does it?"
"Suppose so. What, uh, what did Master tell you? About me?"
"I am not supposed to tell." The Tester winked at her. It was a charming wink, the wink of a gentleman to his lady love, the wink of a scribe to his inkpot. That, coupled with the wavy hair and an overall feathery personality, would make anyone think the man was barely in his twenties. But Addie believed her initial assumption of the man being in his mid-forties, or late-forties perhaps, was nearer to the mark.
"But will you?" she said.
"I'm afraid not, or your Master shall have me flayed."
"That tracks. Where is he?"
"Around."
"So helpful."
"I know. Thank me later with wine."
"Not happening."
"We'll see about that. I have noticed he refers to you as shren. You really pledged yourself to him, did you not?"
"There was no other choice."
"You could have bothered not learning the Skill."
"There was no other concrete choice. He wouldn't teach me otherwise."
"So young, so . . . determined. He must see his younger self in you."
A squirrel darted between the witchwood above their heads. Addie yawned.
"You should probably sleep," suggested Gryphik. His voice was low; waking up others would be criminal.
"You think? I can't."
"Fancy hearing a story then? Perhaps your Loras And The Cage? I was pleasantly surprised when you asked to hear it. Not many understand that story, but I hold it rather close to my heart."
"Neither do I," Addie said guiltily, "which is why I wanted to hear it from you. I think the person I heard it from last didn't know the second half."
"Ah," said Gryphik, toying with the belt strapped to his chest. "I don't think whomever you heard it from left out the last half. That is in truth the nature of the ballad. That is the beauty of it."
"I don't see beauty in things left incomplete."
"Why, that's such a shame. Arrupe's painting masterpiece was never completed. A hatchet is an axe never finished. A kite - "
"You know what I mean."
"I actually do not. But that is fine. Perhaps you'll be able to figure it out this time . . . only, ah, I don't think I shall be able to sing. That thick-skulled guard seems to has it in for me."
Addie smiled again, wryly, then quickly contorted her lips. "He does for me, too." She eyed sleeping paupers, then leant towards the minstrel. Whispered: "That flute . . . it's your pava, isn't it?"
Gryphik ignored her statement, which was more answer than she needed. Unexpectedly enough, mages were sensitive about their Relics, about pieces of their soul. "I hope you do not mind if I tell it as a story? Yes, that should be . . . You will find my version of the story might differ from the ones you've heard before."
"When you minstrels say that, it's usually a verbal facsimile."
The man puckered his lips and a soft, dreamy chirring erupted from them. A canary twittered in response.
"I'll take that as an omen." And so Gryphik started. "This story took place in the Year Nine-Nine after the Second Quenching, during the Era Of Progression. It is about a man named Loras Knobs . . ."
. . . and a man named Terrim M'Kaou, and in fact an entire village.
Loras was an earnest, hard-working individual. He worked for his father, who ran a decent smallholding in a village whose name is long forgotten, never retrieved. Loras was unambitious, and his wasn't the threshold you queued before if you wanted advice. His father's was. Father Knobs came up with an innovative irrigation facility for his crops (maybe runoff was siphoned into a basement through ducts or culverts, as it is in the modern day), had a firm hold over his labor, was one shard away from replacing old Noheon Vadiyo (who was hospitalizing erratic beliefs with age) as the village's councilor.
Loras had but one talent that his father did not possess, and this was that he had a way with livestock - nay, with animals all. He could tell when a runt should grow to be healthy, and when a runt was a runt to be done away with. He could tell when the sheep should be sheared so their wool would be unmatched in eminence. He could make the chicken give seven hard eggs in the stead of four in half than half of half the time.
When a cow did not milk, or a guinea fowl did not finish their pail, it was Loras Knobs and not his one-shard-to-councilor father who was called upon to press the cows' teat and force the slugs down the birds' stomach.
In short, Loras truly had a way with animals.
(Yes, dear, I'm afraid without the song's flow, the Gryphiks - nay, the mint Gorub Pahnk - do succumb to repetition. My sincere apology.)
However, Year Nine-Nine in the Nywan Era Of Progression was still a time when quirks were scowled upon by society. Or should it be stated, scowled upon more than they are scowled upon at present. Priests could not rise to ner'ang just then, and the coming of Ardaunts from the Vines Of Wenrakh was speculative gossip, as majority gossip is. And for all the merits Loras Knobs' eccentricity lent, it was still considered an eccentricity.
Come the Rghvir Wildfire of the Shatters, and a firestorm so fierce a rascal such as it never was seen struck the village where the Knobs' resided. Their smallholding was fine, as was the house of then-councilor Noheon Vadiyo, but none else was left undestroyed. Many tens out of few hundreds were wiped of life.
Shortly after, when the village had not yet recovered from this terrible calamity, Vadiyo began to act odd.
'His wiring's as loose as our man-tools,' announced the husbands and brothers and sons.
'His gait's drunken as a fool's,' declared the goodwives and sisters and daughters.
The villagers had Vadiyo impeached and, on their august begs, Knobs was appointed the councilor at last. He was very pleased, and did his job well, and under his supervision and guidance the village anon healed and thrived once more. The Knobs' smallholding became a prosperous plantation. All business thrived, provided tax and levy was timely, duly, dutifully paid.
Councilor Knobs paid former-councilor Vadiyo a daily visit in his cage, for in it he was locked. It was a cage placed on an erected platform at the center of the village, where Mad Noheon Vadiyo was in sight of all. From the top bars of the cage hung a gibbet, and it was Vadiyo's choice to choose his death, or live an underfed life of shame.
He held on to life dearest for quite some time before giving in to the rope.
The next to develop the eccentricities was Terrim M'Kaou. He, much like the councilor's son, developed an affinity with beasts. Once he rode a tiger into the village, causing feral hysteria, and afterwards remembered naught about the incident. Eventually he was put in the public cage too.
Everyone was eager to see when M'Kaou would hang his-self. To their collective disappointment and selective chagrins, that did not come to pass.
The gibbet waited, dangling in silent judgment.
Word about M'Kaou's quirks arrived to the councilor's ear, and for once in fifty Moonsnight and five, he paid Loras a visit. 'Son,' said Councilor Knobs, 'this madness disease seems to manifest its initial symptoms in one presumptive way. Have you any idea of what I speak?'
And of course Loras had an idea. He had several, as a fact of matter, but he kept numerous of those to his-self. If his way with animals was seen as the lurking or lingering signs of madness, Father Knobs would hesitate not to stroke his beard before putting him in the cage like late Vadiyo and headstrong M'Kaou. Anything that could potentially be detrimental to his hold over the councilor position was to be eliminated, blood of his blood or no.
Hence Loras on a cloudless morning, anxious about darling life his singular mistress, went to Terrim M'Kaou. He sought to learn more about his madness, of how it came to be, of how his connection with the beasts infested his brain. This venture was in vain.
So Loras went to M'Kaou next morning, again nugatory, and the next, and the next, and the next, and a flattering number of nexts after that. He went on certain mornings as a comforter, on others as an inquisitor. The only answer Loras ever received from the caged madman was a string of words which formed no sentence that had or will ever be uttered. Terrim M'Kaou wasn't going to hang himself dead, that was becoming evident to the daftest moron in all of land.
Then on a night when the sky was occupied by clouds and constellations, and Cupar was bright and high, Loras overhead Father Knobs consulting somebody on the matter of slipping arsenic from the apothecary into Terrim M'Kaou's next soup. That was the first night Loras spent tossing and turning in his bed, but it was not the last.
He dreamt of poison.
In the morrow he went to see M'Kaou. But M'Kaou was slinging on the noose, unmistakably without breath.
Loras felt a door slam shut inside of him. He was an agreeable man, but he was not a particularly charming one: Terrim M'Kaou, mad or not, had inadvertently become Loras's only friend and confidante, like to life being his only mistress.
With this realization, many other lids, windows and doors shut inside Loras. He tapped into the anger and sadness in his everywhere, and mageically, the cage in front on him crushed under air and turned into a spheroid of iron bars.
Loras knew then that he was different, and that should he stay, he would suffer a similar fate to his friend.
He fled the village the same evening, no aim in mind except putting as much distance between his-self and Councilor Knobs as possible.
"That is essentially what the fifty-five verses boil down to." Gryphik sighed, looking pensive. "I'll admit, it isn't as striking as it is with rhyme. Indeed, what is?"
"Facsimile," Addie commented, yawning openly. "I understand that Loras is a Skiller in this one."
"So he is, so he is."
"And the whole thing with Terrim and the animals is new. Doesn't the original ballad just say he's a nutter?"
"Depends on which one you perceive as original."
Addie felt her lids fall. That made her see the fox from the clearing in the woods and its golden eyes, and what message she had thought they communicated. She opened hers back up.
"Does the story have a point, or do I have snot for brains?"
Gryphik chuckled, caressing the belt-contraption under his baggy silk shirt.
"Does it?" she asked when he didn't expand.
The Tester was interrupted by a conglomeration of attention-grabbing whinnying and neighing. The sound was so loud almost every sleeping soul awoke. It was so frightening every awake soul felt their hackles rise. It was so penetrating every rib shuddered.
Addie and Gryphik got to their feet.
Hooves clopped against the dirt road, in tandem with their heartbeats, approaching swiftly.
A single orrock, eyes bulging and mad-red, stomped to the scene. Past the well, past the food wagon. Its horn was badly sawn off and both its tails were badly chipped.
"Holy Shadneer," Addie heard the minstrel mutter.
The horse-like creature was riderless, and its side was cut open like a gutted mackerel. Intestines spilled out like stuffing from a dummy, and dark icky blood flowed free like quicksilver over its muzzle and fetlocks.
The next chapter will be action-packed, and following that Adeline's arc as something more will start taking shape.
Before we move to that arc, however, we'll be taking a break from Addie and going to a new character I am very excited to introduce: King Alain Khad.
What can I say? Here on, this will be a much more fun book to read and write. Hopefully. This is still the first draft of many.
Thanks for your support!