Stormwarden (30 page)

XVII
Mearren Ard

Jaric perched on a stool of carved maple, one elbow braced in the sunlight which spilled through the south window of
Telem
ark's cabin. With a freshly sharpened pen in hand, he listed the supplies the forester would purchase during his monthly trip to Corlin market. But the return of his former skill brought him little joy. The familiar flow of ink and the neat incisive script which emerged beneath his nib provided final proof the dream-weaver had not lied about his past; once he had been a copyist in the archives of Morbrith Keep. The certainty left him feeling trapped.

"Add potatoes," said Telemark, pacing between window and hearth in a manner grown routine to Jaric through his months of convalescence. "And lamp oil. That should cover everything."

Jaric dated the list out of habit and laid aside his pen. He stared at his fingers, now heavily callused, and sliced across the right thumb by a scar where an ice otter maimed by a trap had bitten him as he bent to deal a mercy stroke. The hands he studied no longer looked like those of a scribe. Evenings, when the fire burned in the forester's hearth, the past the dream-weaver had unlocked within his mind seemed remote, belonging to a frail sickly stranger whose sleep had been riddled with nightmares of his own inadequacy. Jaric clenched his fists in the sunlight, chilled despite the promise of spring's warmth. At night the dreams and the terrors of that former self flooded his mind, battering away the self-assurance he had discovered at Telemark's side. The boy lived fearful he would waken one morning and discover his earlier image to be the true measure of his worth. All of daylight's logic could not unravel his uncertainty.

"Jaric?" Telemark crossed his arms and leaned against the chimney. "I'll be gone for a fortnight. Be sure the temperature in the drying shed doesn't fall below freezing. I've started seeds in the planting box in the back corner."

Caught with his mind wandering for the fourth time that morning, Jaric nodded.

"Good." Telemark straightened up. He collected the list from the tabletop. "Are you certain you don't wish to come? We could move the sprouts to the root cellar."

"I don't mind staying." Jaric rose as the forester moved about the cabin, gathering together last minute items in preparation for his trip into town. The boy felt no regret from his decision to remain behind. Although Telemark made no issue of the subject, newly planted herbs would do poorly in the root cellar; with Jaric home to tend the fire, the bottled stores would not need to be moved to prevent freezing and the near circuit of traps could be kept in operation.

Telemark laced up his knapsack and directed a keen glance at Jaric. "You'll be all right alone?"

The boy nodded. He jabbed the stopper into the ink flask and rose to help the forester carry the remaining supplies to the door. Outside the drag-sleigh waited, already piled with pelts. Jaric stood awkwardly aside while Telemark buckled on his sword belt and shouldered his bow. Thieves preyed on the fringes of Seitforest even in the depths of winter and the ice otter fur by itself was worth a prince's ransom. The forester never went to the ferry unarmed.

Jaric watched his friend prepare to depart with strangely mixed feelings. He would miss Telemark sorely. But since his return to the cabin, the enchantress who unlocked the memories of his past had sent no more dreams. If she only appeared when he was alone, the boy wished one last chance to question her before the passes opened; for his recollection of events was complete except for the circumstances surrounding his departure from Morbrith. More and more, Jaric sensed the missing facts were pertinent, that Taen had a reason for withholding them. Since her abilities as a dream-weaver permitted her to cross the mental barriers left by an injury, surely she could also create them at will. And Jaric had reason to suspect he was being manipulated.

Disinclined to linger once the drag-sleigh's load was secured, Telemark left for Corlin. He had barely disappeared beyond the bend in the path before Jaric applied himself to mending the gear he had worn out on the trail. By sundown the boy was determined to demand the reason why his life was of such interest to the sorcerer who had once drowned half the souls of Tierl Enneth.

But the dream-weaver did not appear to him that night nor any time following Telemark's departure. Jaric attended his chores with increasing frustration, convinced some fact of vital importance had been denied him. But his attitude in no way affected his work. He checked and baited the traplines conscientiously while the afternoons lengthened toward spring. The icicles dropped from the eaves of the cabin with a sound like shattering crystal and the stream lost its crust of ice. On the fifteenth day, Jaric returned from his rounds to find the drag-sleigh leaning against the weathered boards of the shed. Smoke curled from the cabin's stone chimney, delicate as embroidery against the reddened sky of sunset. Telemark had returned.

Jaric shouted. He burst into a run, knapsack banging clumsily against his shoulders. The cabin door opened as he reached the clearing's edge and Telemark stepped out.

He caught the boy in a smothering embrace. "Stow your gear quickly and come inside. I have a surprise for you."

Jaric did as the forester bid him. But when he returned to the cabin doorway, he hesitated. The closer he came to the inevitable moment of departure, the more jarring he found each variation from habit; never before had the forester brought anything unusual from Corlin. For one wild instant Jaric longed to rush back into the cold familiar darkness of the shed. But Telemark caught his arm firmly and hustled him across the threshold.

Wax candles burned festively on the table beside the window, but Jaric's eyes were drawn at once by the polished metal which gleamed in the light beneath. A sword, dagger, and penknife lay in a row, the bluish patina of new steel in sharp contrast to the rough boards of the tabletop.

Jaric gasped, his hand motionless on the door latch.

"Go on." Telemark prodded him gently forward. "I had them made for you in Corlin."

The boy crossed the floor as if the planking beneath his feet was thin and treacherous as old ice. Candles struck a haze of bronze highlights through his fair hair as he bent to examine Telemark's gift. The weapons were plain but beautifully made. Every detail bespoke painstaking craftsmanship and the result combined grace and beauty with a chilly sense of effectiveness. Jaric regarded the sheen on the cutting edge of the sword blade and knew at once that Telemark had spared no expense. From blades to crossguards, the set glittered with the watery polish of first quality steel, and the pommels bore his name chased in silver.

Telemark crossed to the boy's side. "Try the balance," he urged softly.

Jaric glanced up, a stunned expression on his face. He made no move to touch the weapons.

Interpreting his silence, Telemark caught the boy's shoulders in a firm grip. "You earned them, down to the last copper," he said emphatically. "Did you think I had you lay an extra trapline so I could deck my windows out in brocade?"

He released his hold suddenly, lifted the sword from the tabletop and thrust the grip into
Jaric's
reluctant hands. The boy stared incredulously, then managed to execute an experimental feint. Candlelight danced across the polished curve of the quillon. The size and weight of the weapon suited him too perfectly for coincidence; Telemark had evidently ordered the blades designed exclusively for him.

Jaric raised his eyes to the forester and spoke directly from the heart. "I thank you. Never in life have I received so fine a gift."

"Well then," said Telemark gruffly. "Don't be losing this one as you did the last."

He turned abruptly from the light, but not before Jaric caught sight of the tears which gleamed on his weathered cheeks. The boy laid the sword aside. Without speaking he threw his arms around Telemark's shoulders. And from that moment both understood he was closer to the father Jaric had never known than any person from his childhood at Morbrith.

* * *

Two weeks passed with deceptive swiftness. Comfortably settled into the routine of the trapper's trade, Jaric wished he could forget the price he had promised the dream-weaver in return for his past. But the nights grew inexorably shorter. All too soon Jaric wakened from sleep to the sound of rain hammering against the eaves of the cabin; come morning, he would have to leave Seitforest. Although the weather in the mountains had yet to break, a man traveling alone was best advised to cross the high passes early, before the first caravans of spring attracted bandits to lie in ambush.

Telemark rose at daybreak. He helped load the spare knapsack with journey cake, smoked meat and cheese, as if preparing
Jaric's
supplies for a trip to check on a remote trapline. He spoke very little. His face looked drawn and tired. This time the blanket roll and the spare snowshoes would not be returning to their pegs in the loft.

He strapped the knapsack closed with brisk efficiency, then folded his arms and leaned on it, regarding the boy with a look of uncharacteristic gravity. "Jaric, listen carefully. I have something to tell you that I don't fully understand. But I believe it to be important and you may someday find the information useful."

The boy rested the snowshoes against the settle and devoted his full attention to the forester. Slowly, with many a pause for reflection, Telemark related his encounter with the Llondel demon the day he had tried to deliver Jaric to Kordane's Brotherhood in Corlin. He spared no detail, though the memory of his attempt to renounce responsibility for the boy he had rescued from the woods now pained him deeply.

But Jaric accepted the forester's judgment without criticism. "I don't know what the dreams meant either," he admitted after Telemark had finished. He tried to lighten the forester's mood. "When I find out, I'll be sure to let you know."

The boy and the man regarded each other for a long moment, each one aware the moment of departure could not be delayed any further. At last Jaric shouldered the snowshoes. He moved decisively toward the peg by the door where his cloak hung.

"Wait," said Telemark suddenly. He crossed the room, flung open a cedar chest which rested at his bedside and delved deeply inside. "I want you to have this."

He rose with a cloak of ice otter fur draped over his arm. The garment was strikingly marked, luxuriously thick and lined with the snowy fur of the forest hare. Through a whole season of trapping, Jaric had never seen such pelts.

"It's much too fine," he protested. The worth of such a gift was something a king might envy.

But Telemark tossed the cloak over Jaric's shoulders, in no mood for listening to argument. "This was to be a gift for my son on his eighteenth birthday."

Jaric's
breath stopped in his throat. He had never guessed Telemark had any family.

"Yes, I had a boy and a wife." The forester caressed the silky fur with fingers scarred from years of tending traplines. "They both died of fever while I was on campaign with the Duke's army. That was what made me quit the mercenary's profession."

He dropped his hand, saw Jaric's stricken face and smiled. "I have long since finished grieving, boy. And it's lucky for both of us the moths haven't made a feast of those furs, for Eleith needs no bride price now. Take the cloak with all my blessing. It will keep you warm when you cross the mountains, but wear it inside out lest some bandit takes your life to claim it for himself."

He did not add, as Jaric understood he intended, that the cloak could be sold at need, in exchange for immeasurable wealth. And finding no words for the occasion, Jaric embraced the forester one last time, gathered up his belongings and stepped out into the slush of the dooryard.

Telemark lingered in the doorway long after the boy had vanished down the path to the southeast. The forester would miss Jaric and wonder often through the coming months how the boy fared; yet he also experienced the immeasurable satisfaction of seeing a task complete. Jaric had come to him helpless, frightened and injured; he had left with the promise of growth and a future, however difficult his lot. If he never returned, Telemark would remember the boy at the moment he vanished into Seitforest. For although the fate which awaited him terrified Jaric to his soul, still he had discovered the courage to go forward and meet his destiny.

* * *

Jaric crossed the Furlains while the icy grip of winter still choked the passes with the cruelty of a giant's mailed fists. He struggled through blizzards which drove the snow in smoking clouds off the peaks. Other times, when the sky shone clear azure above his head, he felt the thunderous boom of the spring avalanches shake the mountain beneath his feet. But Telemark had schooled him well to the art of survival in the frozen heart of the wilds. Jaric reached the far slopes two weeks before the equinox, and from a notch cut between the forested foothills gazed down upon the fishing village of Mearren Ard.

The houses looked like toys after the square battlements and watchtowers of Corlin. Built of logs, with steeply pitched roofs shingled with cedar, the buildings nestled against the side of a hill which overlooked two points of land. A well-protected harbor lay between, scattered with the specks of fishing boats lying at anchor.

Jaric propped his snowshoes against the shoulder of a snowdrift and carefully folded his rich cloak inside his knapsack. Then he set off down the muddy trail, a wry expression on his face. The silver in his pocket would not last long at a tavern, even in a settlement as tiny as Mearren Ard. If the only inhabitants were fishermen, his talents as scribe and his knowledge of trapping were unlikely to be considered worthwhile commodities for barter. Either the sorcerer Anskiere made a prompt appearance to claim the service Taen had promised in the dreams or Jaric would take up sailing; he had no intention of selling an ice otter cloak simply to pay for his bed and board.

The sole tavern in Mearren Ard was all but deserted during the daytime. Jaric stepped in from the dirt track which passed for a street and discovered a cramped taproom smoky from a fireplace in need of a chimney sweep. An ancient man in oilskins hunched over a table in the warmest corner of the room, hands cupped possessively around a chipped tankard. His fingers were hooked into useless claws by arthritis, but the sharp clear eyes of a sailor still gazed from his creased sockets. He looked on with crotchety displeasure while Jaric presented his inquiries to the landlord; but no stranger awaited the boy's arrival. Jaric himself was the first outsider to visit Mearren Ard, by land or sea, since winter had closed the passes. The boy sighed and settled in silver for a room. He had no choice but to seek employment and wait until Anskiere chose to present himself.

The taproom grew boisterous by evening, when the fishermen returned. Having bathed away the dirt left from the trail, Jaric went downstairs, found an unoccupied table and ordered a meal of spiced chicken. He ate while the smoky air of afternoon became musty with the sea-smell of oilskins drying by the back door. An assortment of men with weather-beaten faces gathered at the bar, their boots strongly reeking of fish. They called the barmaid by name, yet offered no pleasantries; all seemed to have wives waiting in snug cottages, except for the wizened, arthritic fellow who sat still in his corner as if he never moved from his chair.

Jaric finished his meal, conscious of fleeting glances from the taproom's occupants. No one attempted to approach his table. In the gruff, tight-knit society of Mearren Ard, he was an outsider; the men would wait for him to speak, and probably be relieved when he finished his business and went elsewhere. But Jaric had given the enchantress his word he would remain until Anskiere chose to contact him. Although he longed with all his heart to pack his knapsack and return over the Furlains to Seitforest, instead, he pushed the bones of his dinner aside and rose.

The man at the end of the bar looked up. He studied the blond stranger who paused by his shoulder, his narrowed stare that of a man who had spent a lifetime squinting over water, overseeing fish nets and weather and stars for navigation. His manner was not friendly; Jaric's presence was an intrusion, but the fisherman withheld any judgment until after the boy drew breath and spoke.

"I need work," Jaric opened. "Is there any man among you who could use an extra hand?"

The fisherman grunted and set down his ale mug. All conversation silenced around him as he eyed Jaric from head to foot, and the thick drawl of his reply fell against stillness grown dense as an ocean calm. "D'ye sail, then?"

The boy answered with a confidence he did not feel. "No. I'm willing to learn."

Boots scraped on the taproom floor as the men shifted their feet and the spokesman grunted a second time. "What for? Have ye no trade, then?"

Jaric refused to yield to the mistrust implied by the words. "I spent the winter trapping in Seitforest."

"Crossed the passes, then?" The fisherman considered the cut of Jaric's leather tunic, then the well-kept steel of the knife at his belt. "Well, then," he said at last. "Tavish lost a son, onto last summer. He'll be in, soon as he sets his anchor in the harbor."

The fisherman gestured to an empty stool at the end of the bar and turned back to his beer. Any lad who crossed the Furlains alone before solstice was hardy enough company, even by Mearren Ard's rough standards; and Tavish sorely needed a crewman.

Jaric seated himself and waited, uncomfortably sure what the outcome of his request would have been had he lacked the experience of Telemark's teaching. But none of his uncertainty showed in his manner and presently the main door banged open. A burly man with a fox-colored beard stepped in, accompanied by another who was unmistakably his brother.

The fisherman who had spoken to Jaric immediately raised his voice over the surrounding conversation. "Tavish! Got a boy here who wants work. Never salted his boots, but he claims he's come in over the passes."

Tavish stamped the mud from his feet, shaking the planks in the floor. Followed closely by his brother, he crossed the taproom with the rolling gait of a man better accustomed to a sloop's deck than solid land; and Jaric found himself scrutinized once more by two sets of keen blue eyes.

Tavish scratched his beard with thickened, rope-burned fingers. "Crossed the passes, did ye then?"

Jaric nodded.

"Let's see yer hands." Tavish caught the boy's wrists and examined the calluses on his palms. "Won't look so pretty after a season with the nets," he observed.

Jaric said nothing.

"Ye'll do, then." Tavish leaned across the bar and called for the landlord to fill three tankards. When they arrived, he hooked one for himself, passed one to his brother, and slammed the other down in front of Jaric. "Drink up, then. We sail an hour before daybreak. Boat's named
Gull,
and sure's tide, ye'll get seasick. Get over it quick and ye'll share the catch. Fair?"

"Fair," said Jaric. He tasted the beer and found it bitter.

Tavish grinned, amused by the boy's grimace. "Drink on't, then." And he emptied his tankard.