Chapter Fifty-Eight. My Solo Journey Begins.
Fifty-Eight
My Solo Journey Begins.
When I wake up the following morning, I’m curled on my side facing the door, my hands tucked in at my heart as if I’m praying.
The grit in my mouth abrades my tongue and the insides of my teeth as I try to swallow, and this comparatively small unpleasantness makes me feel all the big pains to an unbearable degree.
Forcing myself to sit up, I—
There’s something in my hands.
His journal.
I glance back at the window seat and try to re-create why I have it. That’s right, he left the thing behind, taking only his pack. So sometime during the night, I must have gone over and picked it up.
As I put the journal down on the bed-sheeting, the small, leather-covered folio opens to the last picture he sketched, of the gates and the meadow beyond. I touch the edges around the drawing, not intruding on the depiction of the stone pylons or the curling pattern of the iron …
With a frown, I look up. Listen hard to all the silence.
Shifting off the bed, I go to the window seat. There are a series of hooks securing the sash in place, and then the shutters have inner locks as well. I finally get it all open, and stare out over the gray sprawl of the Outpost’s shops and homes.
The rain has stopped.
Overhead, the cloud cover remains low and thick, and everything is dripping, from the rooflines to the porch corners to the fences, suggesting that the cessation is recent. Maybe it will start up again, but surely all of the water in the sky is wrung out.
As I regard the town sprawl, I can’t help but wonder where Merc is. I doubt he would have left in the night, and I have to wonder if he stayed with the blond. But with the storm moving along and daylight arriving, I’m guessing he’s well departed by now. Did he take our horse, I wonder.
That is no longer my concern, though. And besides, I’m not going anywhere, so what do I need a horse for—
“No.”
The word comes out of my mouth, but I check over my shoulder because it certainly seems like it was spoken by someone else.
When I turn back around, the clouds part and a beam of sunlight pierces through the congestion.
As it zeroes in on me, shining like Mare’s royal coins, I am swamped by a feeling that I do not belong here.
And not just the lodging house, but this whole town.
Even as the most reasonable side of me points out that this has been my destination, and maybe with people like Ronl and Lena, I could find work and a place to stay …
something in my soul tells me otherwise.
This is not where I am to end up. I’m meant … to keep going.
“Not the plan,” I say aloud as I look to the horizon.
But the protest doesn’t matter now, and it’s not going to mean anything later. As much as I want to fight it, I know that this is a way station to somewhere else. Something else.
My true destiny is calling.
It’s as this conviction sinks in that the commotion starts.
The first of the shouting ripples through the still morning, and not long thereafter, a man comes running down the muddy lane toward the lodging house.
Going by his brown felt dress, he’s clearly a resident, and with that staff in his hand, I’m guessing he’s a farmer or herder of some kind—and I’m not surprised when he leaps up onto the pub’s porch and then I hear one of the doors slap shut.
A moment later, there are all kinds of feet pounding on the porch. A group of men emerge and take off in the direction the herder came from.
Dread chills the nape of my neck. Have they found the cook’s body?
Exactly what kind of “after work” did Merc do—and where?
The doors to the pub open again, and this time there are voices right below me. My ear lends itself to the fast-paced talk—
“—demons! What else could do that—”
“Fates, they are here, too—”
“—parts of the sheeplings, everywhere.”
Not long after, the group of men return. There’s blood on them, on their hands, and on their clothes. Whoever all is speaking under the overhang go silent.
I cover my mouth with my hands and fall back.
Demons. Here—
There’s a thud across my room and my head whips around. It’s my pack. I’d put it on the table, and for some reason, even though the thing was set well enough back from the edge, it’s fallen onto the floor.
Abruptly, I see what’s in there, as if the sack and its strapping have disappeared.
Then I feel the compass and the crown in my hands, sure as if I’m holding them.
With another burst of strange clarity, I remember being in the woods, and the old instrument pointing me to the south in what surely was a flare of magic.
Lastly, I recall the unbelievable story Mr. Lewis told me and the charge he laid at my feet.
The compass to guide me. The crown … which is the point of it all.
I must go to the warrior queen who sees no one, and return the power to her.
My eyes return to the open window. It faces south, almost as if I was destined to get this room—and a strange calmness comes over me, especially as I touch my bandaged forearm. Lena and Ronl. If the demons are here, who will protect them and their baby?
And the sweet young maid. Even if we interceded in time, and even if Thale does what he’s promised, who will protect her?
Against evil.
Thale, with all his might, can’t summon an army to fight the Dark King.
And what if word carries, and what was done at the settlement is done here?
Fates, what if my own village is burned down because the demons have found it, and a mob from some other town comes to purify the population out of fear?
Anathos will not survive a second siege of the Dark King.
I know this in my core. The stories that have been carried forward through history, and are recorded in the Book of Time—which are whispered of at the ends of the nights in the pub back home—tell of suffering unimaginable, of people subjugated by an iron fist of evil.
I still do not know if Mr. Lewis is right about me. What I cannot deny is what is in my pack … and what is stalking now this Outpost in the Badlands.
And what the Fulcrum looked like, with all those black bands.
Lifting a trembling hand to my mouth, I remember the taste of the sand, the black sand, and filigrees of my nightmare tease the edges of my consciousness.
If the Fulcrum is failing, perhaps this queen can beat the demons back?
“Oh, what am I saying…” I moan.
But nothing is keeping me here. And as I lay out my reality, everything is telling me to go—
Knock. Knock.
Shutting the window up, I go over to the door and unlatch the bolting. “Merc—”
“Mistress? I brought you some food.”
I just stand there and blink. It’s the maid, with the short brown hair and the beautiful voice, the one I’ve been so terrified for. Dressed in her red felt, she is carrying a tray laden with bread and drink, and there is a small, worried smile on her lips.
“Food?” she repeats as she lifts the load up a little, like she’s thinking I haven’t noticed it.
I take a step back, my eyes bouncing around her face without getting near her eyes. “Crescent moon…”
“Are you well enough?” The girl comes in and puts the tray on the table. “You are very pale. Here, sit, sit—”
I don’t mean to. But I throw my arms around her and hug her.
“Mistress?” The embrace is tentatively returned. “Do you need a healer? Lena has just given birth, but—”
Easing back, I find myself double-checking that the maid is real. But I still don’t look into her eyes. The answer I need was given to me last night by what Merc did, and I don’t want to know anything else.
“M-mistress?”
“You’re alive,” I choke out. “You’re okay.”
Her head lowers. “Forgive me for the way I behaved yesterday. I—”
“There’s no need to apologize. I shouldn’t have gone in there in the first place. I just … I’ve been worried over you.”
The maid lifts a hand to her bruised temple. “I am well enough. This morning has been … very quiet. It has been a blessed change.”
“I think things are going to get better from now on for you.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “You don’t deserve to be under a man like that.”
As her eyes tear up, she shuffles away and makes a show of going over to the tray. “I know it is but bread and cheese, yet I made both with my own hands.”
“It is a feast for me before I go, and well timed indeed. Thank you.”
She glances back at me. “You are leaving then?”
The image of her in her traditional dress, her pale hands twisting in front of her, the bruising on her face still so painfully obvious, burns into me.
In posing the question, I feel as though she’s a culmination of something that has been coming ever since Mr. Lewis sat me down, something I have been trying to shut out and deny.
I wish Merc were here.
But he’s not. So I answer for myself: “Yes, I’m going.”
Fates, am I really doing this? Am I really heading south? And how will I travel, especially if Merc took our horse …
“Soon, or today?” When I don’t answer, she takes a deep breath. “I shall pack some provisions for you and your husband.”
“Just for me.”
In the periphery of my vision, I note that her brows rise. “You will be returning home then?”
“No, I go to the Kingdom of the South.”
There’s notable relief in the way her shoulders ease of their tension. “Oh, you cannot go south. The flooding will stop you at the valley pass for at least as long as the rain fell.”
Dimly, I recall her saying something about all that. “There’s another way, though. Isn’t there? The barrier, you referred to it as?”
“Oh, no, no one goes through the Crystal Gate. It’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“It’s a barrier impenetrable. For centuries, people have tried, to no avail.”
I go over and look out the window. “Can you show me the direction of the pass?”
The maid comes over and points down the lane. “You follow this all the way out to the travel roading. It will take you to the pass, but there is no reason to go. Three days, at least, for the runoff to clear.”
“What about the—Crystal Gate, is it?”
“It’s the same way. The trail to the gate breaks off from the main way.”
“Is the trail marked? Or overgrown?”
“You cannot miss it. There are ancient pavers that show the way. But that will waste your time as well. Mistress, I’m telling you, best to wait here in this comfortable room before you attempt any travel to the south. What difference will three days make?”
I think of those men returning just now, all bloody. Like Mr. Cavenish back in my village.
“Thank you,” I say.
She smiles and bows. “I shall continue bringing you food.”
The maid backs out of the door and gives me a little wave before shutting me in again.
I stare at the gray panels for a time, and then go back over to the window and listen.
There are many voices now, talking fast and urgently below me, but there are others now.
People are also running between houses, and gathering on porches.
Glancing over my shoulder at the food, I have absolutely no appetite, but I’m glad there’s a sufficiency for two.
After I eat a portion of the bread, and down both mugs of the refreshing drink, I take the case from the pillow that has not been used, and put the rest of what she baked for me in it.
The cheese makes my stomach revolt—not that there’s aught wrong with it.
But then I remember Merc saying to eat up in the tunnel before we made our swim.
That feels like a lifetime ago.
As I force myself to consume the cheese, I count the nights we’ve been here—I’ve been here, rather. So few. It feels like a hundred, and all I can feel is sadness and dread over what’s ahead.
Except there’s no help in wallowing in emotion.
And the truth of it is that this decision, this choice, has been coming since we first arrived.
I need a purpose, other than doing what I did in my own village for people who will eventually betray me to their own superstitions and the reality that the Fulcrum is failing.
I was only thinking of staying because I can’t face what lies before me if I keep going.
But Merc said it best.
Only forward, never back.