Chapter Thirteen
Evening had arrived by the time Donan had crossed the Bridge of the Eye, leaving behind the dense city of Temis for the more rural island of Philios.
A few roads stretched away from the bridge in different directions, cutting through farmland and dry scrub.
With the sun setting, Donan decided to see if he could find lodging somewhere nearby for the night.
He set off down an easterly trackway, asking the few locals he encountered where he might find an inn.
They directed him onward, but at one point, he felt as if someone were watching him.
Glancing back, he caught sight of a few Askarra Guards in the road.
Their presence was surely not unusual, and at first Donan paid them little mind, but as he made his way, he noted how the Amazons kept pace with him.
He thought it a bit paranoid to assume they were following him but decided to take no chances.
He hurried ahead, and upon reaching the inn, he found it also boasted a small crowded tavern, with a few candlelit tables spilling out onto the street.
Donan quickly and quietly slipped into a seat in the back, hidden from view.
The innkeeper served him a plate of cheap shellfish with bread and a few olives, along with watered-down wine.
As Donan ate, the Askarra Guards marched by, sweeping their haughty gaze from one side of the street to the other.
He imagined they were searching for him, but it was also possible he had misread the situation completely.
The townsfolk seated around Donan fell silent as the Amazons passed, but as soon as the warriors had moved on, the gossip began.
“When will they leave?”
“When there’s nothing left to take.”
“I hear it might go up to eight-tenths.”
“Hard to even live on two-tenths, let alone turn a profit.”
“But how can they justify that?”
“You know how. Peace and order.”
“I said it then, and I’ll say it now: no one gives up power once you give it to them.”
“I say it’s time we—”
“Shh.”
A man nearby had noticed Donan sitting in silence behind them, and that ended the conversation as swiftly as the presence of the Askarra Guard. Then the townsfolk all took turns stealing glances at him, some furtively and some quite openly. He tried to meet their curiosity with a pleasant demeanor.
One of them finally asked, “Who might you be, mainlander?”
“My name is Donan.”
“What brings you to Philios, Donan?”
“Curiosity,” Donan said, adhering to the story Tyrael had given the queen. “I am traveling the whole of Skovos to learn from the Askari.”
“Learn what?” another of them asked.
“You may not know this,” Donan said, “but your islands are doing much better than other parts of Sanctuary. Aranoch, Westmarch, Khanduras…there is still much bloodshed and suffering elsewhere, almost as if the reapers still walk among us. But here in Skovos, you enjoy safety and stability.”
The mood of the crowd shifted and tensed, as Donan suspected it might, given the topic of their conversation moments ago.
“I’m here to witness how this has been accomplished,” he added.
At first, no one said anything in response to that, but then one of the more outspoken men leaned toward him. “Stranger, you just witnessed it.”
“What did I witness?”
“Those Amazons in silk. The Askarra Guard. The queen formed them after the Reaping. They take everything, or nearly everything, and then they dole it back out to us like they’re the ones who grew it, or made it.”
Donan remembered the trident stamp he had seen.
“And they expect us to be grateful to them for it!”
“Careful, Ammon,” someone said.
“Why should I be careful with the truth?” the man asked.
“Because that’s not the whole truth, is it?” said a woman nearby. “You’re forgetting how it was after the Reaping. You aren’t talking about the looting, or the pirates, or the Drowned.”
“That was the deal we struck,” said an old man with white hair as thin as cobwebs. “We wanted peace, didn’t we? We wanted things to go back to the way they were, and we traded our freedom to get it. That is the whole truth of it.”
No one spoke for a time after that, but gradually, smaller, hushed conversations sprang up again at the different tables.
Donan bade them all good night and retired to his room, having received at least partial answers to some of the questions the Horadrim had been asking since arriving in Temis.
The Amazons had likely helped to keep Skovos an orderly society even before Malthael’s attack, but in the chaos afterward, Queen Etara had tightened her grip.
The relative prosperity in Skovos had come with a price, however.
Whether that price had been worth paying seemed a matter of perspective.
The next morning, Donan awakened to the sound of a cock’s crow.
He lay in his bed, which was not so uncomfortable as to drive him from it, with his eyes closed, imagining himself in a different time and place.
His sleep had been restless. His conversation with the villagers kept his mind and body turning because there were no easy answers.
Donan opposed the idea of tyrannical rule, and yet the Askari lived in far greater safety than the people of Westmarch or Lut Gholein.
He could not decide for himself what price would be too high for him to pay.
At last, he rose from his bed, dressed, and went downstairs.
For breakfast, the innkeeper served him a boiled egg, a slice of bread, and butter churned with a hint of honey.
She appeared to be about the age his mother would have been, with threads of silver in her dark hair.
It seemed she ran the inn on her own, which he took as yet another sign of the upheaval resulting from Malthael’s Reaping.
Donan had already paid a fair rate for his night’s stay, but having learned more about the financial circumstances of the common folk, he gave the innkeeper a bit more coin on his way toward the door.
She seemed perplexed by his generosity, and even a bit suspicious, but she accepted it.
“Where are you traveling to from here?” she asked.
“I am hoping to speak with the seers.”
“Ah.” Her eyes rolled a bit as she turned away from him. “Of course you are.”
“I take it that doesn’t surprise you.”
“Not really, no.” She pulled a rag from an apron pocket and used it to wipe down an adjacent table. “You’re hardly the first traveler to come here hoping to get a glimpse of the future.”
“Can you blame them?”
“I suppose not.”
“But it doesn’t interest you?”
She stood up straight and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “What doesn’t?”
“Speaking with the seers?”
She chuckled. “Why would I want to go and do a thing like that?”
Her dismissive attitude puzzled him. “I think most people would be drawn to learn something about their future.”
“Many people are,” she said. “Just not me.”
“And why is that?”
“You think it comes free?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you ought to, if you’re heading that way.
” She dropped the rag onto the table she’d been cleaning and motioned for him to sit.
Then she took a chair next to him, one elbow leaning on the table, the other hand propped on her thigh.
“Firstly,” she said, “you’ll have to walk the pilgrimage path to reach the seers.
You won’t know what your individual path looks like until you’re on it, but it often extracts a heavy toll.
After that, there’s the cost of the message they give you. ”
“They expect payment?”
“Not of coin,” she said. “You have to hear the message.”
Donan wondered how hearing the message could be a cost. “Surely that is the whole reason for going—”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But consider this: What happens if they tell you something you don’t want to hear?
You can’t just forget you’ve heard it. You have to live with it every day after.
Or what if they speak a riddle, which they are known to do?
Some visitors have been driven quite mad by their sophistry. ”
“I see.”
“Or let’s say they give you a vague kind of warning. ‘Take care around water,’ or some such. You’d spend the rest of your life in fear, hiding from the world.”
“Do they give warnings of that nature?”
She picked up her cleaning rag. “I’ve heard stories.”
“And where do I find this path that I must walk?”
“If you’re still determined to go after everything I just told you…
” She sighed. “Take the western road from here, and before long you’ll come to another road leading north toward the mountain.
Follow that for the better part of a day, and you’ll eventually reach a shrine.
A seer dwells there. She’ll know which way to send you. What is your name, traveler?”
“Donan.”
“My name is Alenia, and I wish you luck, Donan.”
He thanked her and departed from the inn, after which he found the western road she had mentioned.
He paused at a public fountain to fill his waterskin and then set off into the countryside.
A warm, arid breeze stirred dust into swirls across the paved road, which had not been maintained well in recent years.
Weeds and seedlings had taken root in the cracks between paving stones, and eroded dirt and sand had buried the edges.
Locusts snapped and thrummed, leaping from one tussock to the next.
The sun felt hotter than it had on Temis, or perhaps Temis had simply offered more shade.
The narrow cypress and short scrub trees found along the Philios road provided little relief, and sweat soon dripped from Donan’s brow into his eyes.