11 Descent

It was Rumbole and Crest who discovered a route over mountains guarding deep forests hidden between treacherous ridges cut by white-capped rapids leading to precipitous falls. A rough terrain of beauty and bounty where many men had become lost never to return, but not Rumbole and Crest.

They would disappear for months on end only to return with strange and exotic furs. They made a small fortune selling their wares to the merchants of Free Hold; a fortune they would drink and whore away during their sojourn there.

The legend went that they had become trapped on the high mountains by an early winter storm coming in from the east. With the cold and sleet cutting into flesh, they were forced ever westward. Running before the storm they followed the path of migrating animals. Days of cold, catching sleep when they could, moving so as not to perish, it was some time before they realized they were on the lee of the storm sheltered by the pitched contours and jagged heights of mountain peaks. Bone weary, they fell where they stopped and slept for a full day.

It was late afternoon when they woke groggy and hungry. They followed a trail that led them from thinning trees and onto a plateau that overlooked a forest cut by a wide, vast river flowing through it. In the far distance, the river became a dark scar split by a finger of rock capped by a crown of trees. Beyond that they could not see.

Eager to explore this new land they followed the wide slope of the plateau as it descended to the forest floor. From there they made it to the banks of the river and caught red-bellied salmon to replenish themselves.  They followed the river for the next two days until they reached the column of stone. Dark, pitted, with eagles soaring form roosts at its crown, it split the river for a near a mile before stone and water disappeared over a sheer precipice to crash in a roar and spray that battered the stones below.

Looking from the plateau of the falls, they saw a vast landscape of plain and stone and forest. To their right, the vertical face of the mountain stretched to the horizon and the plain ran before it to meet the skyline. Below, the river spilled from a lake of pooled water at the base of the falls. It snaked and looped reflecting glints of orange, amber, and red from the sun. The river crossed the plain to disappear beneath the green treetop of the forest to their left that began to rise from the foothills of the mountain and covered that expanse to touch the horizon. The river  eventually reappeared to mark a course dividing plain from forest. And at the farthest edge of the horizon, barely seen, was a glimmer like a pool of mercury reflected on the surface of the land.

It was there that Poe’s traveling companions were headed.

Poe met them as the mists of morning wrapped the mountains in a chill, damp shade. They started out slowly until the sun peaked the mountains’ height to dissipate the mists and the road was clear before them. It took them a week on the plodding tread of the oxen to make it to the plains.

The days of traveling the winding road from the mountains to the plains had given Poe the opportunity to become better acquainted with the merchant and his two sons. Ham had a dark cap of hair whose ends just grazed the top of his broad back and was thinning slightly at the crown, but his hands were sure and shoulder’s square. His two long legged sons’ hair was lighter and eyes darker than their father’s. Their legs, hair, and eyes were traits from their mother’s folk, or so he had been told. Larkham was the eldest and took that responsibility very seriously as he steered the other wagon; Durham, the youngest, had quick eyes and smile, but was shy to talk through the cracking of his voice.

They had been on the plain’s road for two days. One more day of travel would bring them to the crossroad where their paths would diverge. Poe would take the route south while they continued north.

Rolling over a rut from a crumbling pavestone, the heavy ironbound oaken casks shifted behind them, causing the straps that held them in place to creak. Poe took little notice of the movement or the noise. After many days descent from the mountains, it was a sound he had grown accustomed to. It was the signs of the road needing repair that concerned him and would have to be reported to masons of Free Hold. 

            Ham and his sons were heading to the meet the wine growers of the Lake District, a region as rich and fertile as the ripeness of a woman who bears sons and daughters of distinction and merit. From what he had told Poe, they were going to settle the final details for distributing wine throughout the city of Free Hold. Ham owned two Inns in the city, was well connected through marriage and was hoping to have himself established before the Guild began spreading its influence.

            “I’m only just beginning” had said, sitting beside Poe. “Got my traders license a few years back. Hard getting it, but my wife’s brother has some contacts on the City Council. The Guilds are spending in a lot of money and buying a lot of influence. I’m only a small concern and was able to get my license pushed through.”

            “Who’s keeping their eye on the Inn?” Poe asked. “Miners are a thirsty lot and never more so when they believe there’s easy ale and wine to be had.”

            “My wife and eldest girl. She’s a stern woman and will take no truck from any man.”

            “Not even her husband.” Poe said.

            The merchant laughed, “Especially not me.”

            “Where hail you from originally?” Poe asked. It was a question that he had wanted to broach soon after he met the man, but only now felt comfortable enough in their acquaintance to try. “You have the look of the Thracian Isles. It is rare to see one of your seafaring blood so far inland.”

            The merchants faced sobered and the mirth left him. “You are quick to the charge, young Mage. Quick to the personal and private; many would take your questions as prying and would not think kindly on them or you.”

            “I meant no offense,” Poe said quickly. Ham had only recently begun to warm to him and Poe did not want a retreat into stiff formality.

            “I know, just curious—like most of your kind.”

Ham said nothing for a moment as his shoulders slumped and his gaze stretched into the distance of a past that lifted him from the present. He resided there for a moment before he recalled himself to the now and sat straighter in his seat.

“I will answer, though, but on the condition that you answer my questions as well.”

            Poe hesitated, not wanting to give assent only to have to break oath if Ham asked of him what he could not divulge. 

            “Be not so grave,” Ham interjected into the space of Poe’s doubt. “I will let you judge the questions and if you find they violate some tenet or decree of your sect, you can defer.”

            “I was only considering the debt of hospitality you have bequeath me. I wish not to deny that hospitality by failing to answer.”

            “Well said! Propriety and decorum are lessons well learned at the School, I see. But we are just two men whose paths have crossed, travelers whose tread happens to have overlapped. Be not the Mage but the simple traveler so that we both may honor hospitality and whatever oaths and duties bind us.”

            There were deep subtleties to Ham which Poe was just beginning to realize. It made Poe appreciate just how unsuited he was in reading folk. He could work marvels that others could only guess at, but he still could not see beyond his own preconceptions to gauge a man’s true worth for ill or good. The Magister called it his one true failure. Szatanya said he was too caught up in surface things, esteemed too much the illusions folk wanted to keep of themselves so that he did not look deeply enough to see their true face.

Poe knew it to be true, but people had many faces and he did not want to foreclose any of them by thinking that in one he glance could be summed the mettle of a person’s heart.

            “I agree,” Poe said with a cheeky smile. “But let the first question be mine.”

            Ham chortled. “But of course.”

            It was his off-putting manner, Poe decided; his ease and soft placid eyes that made one feel so comfortable and relaxed. Poe wondered just how successful a merchant or trader or Innkeeper (whatever he professed to be or not to be) Ham really was. He was far sharper than his passive demeanor attested.

            “I’m just curious how you found yourself so far from your folk? What little I know comes by way of rumor and conjecture, but they all concur that Thracians are private in nature and insular in temperament and rarely venture beyond their island settlements. They may hire their services for cause or currency but never for any extended duration.”

             “A dangerous curiosity, a craving to experience as much of the world as possible, and a smuggler whose luck had run out at the wrong time,” Ham replied with a shrug. “It was my craving to experience the world that was my ruin. Such traits were considered dangerous, and, because of that, I was considered different than the others of my generation. Where they wanted lives sailing the coasts of the Thracian isles, I had endless questions about the huge expanse of land a day’s sail from our northernmost island. Growing up we heard nothing but the treachery of the men who inhabited that continent. It was instilled in us not to trust them, especially since the War of the Peninsula—as we call it. But for me, such words only wetted my appetite to learn more.

 “I started sailing young as most of us do. Shipping out with captains who hired their vessels out to mainlanders.  On those voyages I saw all manner of people, a parade of shapes, sizes and characters, dress and styles. I was always eagerly following after the passengers and pestering them about their homeland and its people. I was curious about the reaches beyond our shores. My actions marked me, but I didn’t care. I began reaching farther and farther beyond our shores until I was barely considered one with my people.” His shoulders slumped, and Poe watched his broad jaw harden, his brow furrow and nostrils flare.

“I was young, green, did not realize how deeply set was the intolerance that had formed and shaped my people, but I was to learn when I brought back a wife.”

“I do not mean to dredge up old pain. You have told me enough.”

“No, no, it is a story best be told. Wounds must be opened to the air and sun and salt lest they fester in hidden, dark places like the wound of my people’s hate and rage that broke upon me like an infected, scabrous sore leaking its foul and corrupting taint. Because of that corruption, I lost my wife and nearly my own life. 

“Ban was placed upon me and after many years of running far and long from that pain, I ended up here, the farthest reaches of my world and found someone else who gave me reason to love again.”

Even after many years passing, the memories and their aftermath were still fresh, but he told him a bit of the tale, and his words were steady, soothing, told in a manner as if it were someone else’s life.

He was half a man wounded in spirit when met the woman who had filled the hollow where a heart had once resided.  “If you cannot accept, forgive,” Jocelyn had whispered to him as he had lain in her close embrace, warmed by her love in those moments when nightmare tore at him and held him captive to sights he could not wake from, sounds he could not stop his ears from—the muffled screams, and whimpering cries, as his wife was violated before his eyes, his children’s throats slashed. Banished to the outskirts of the community, no one came to their aid, except for his mother’s brother who was brutally beaten because it. He had learned on that dark, desolate night how powerful hate and rage (his own and others’) could be.

Maddened by rage and desolated by betrayal, Ham had managed to f*e himself from his bonds and butchered those who had brought wrack and ruin upon his house, but by then it was too late, his family were already dead. He dragged the butchered bodies of his betrayers from his home and left his family inside to be cleansed by the towering flames that consumed his dreams and seared the vision of that night on his memory like a brand on flesh.

As the fire grew, it leapt and ignited the trees like a beacon of despite. Exhausted, defeated, hope and spirit drained away to nothing, he fled before the fire consumed him as well.

It took years to recover, and only Jocelyn’s love had given him the confidence and hope to believe in a future beyond pain and sorrow. Now, the memories no longer had the power to persecute, and he had come to make a sort of peace with them, though he could never forget.

            Poe gazed at that bent, severe brow following the play of emotions across the other man’s slash of profile as he told the story. Ham was silent for a long while after he had finished, and the silence was as tangible as a person riding on the seat between them. But, eventually, Ham’s gaze turned away from those memories and back to the road and his guest.

            “Painful memories, distracting memories. I apologize. What host am I to weigh upon you such melancholy tales?”

            “Host enough to extend his hand to a stranger.”

Ham smiled. “Kind of you to say, but know to my question. Where head you, Poe?”

The question caught Poe off guard so that he spoke the first things to his mind. “So little a question for the asking.” He caught himself as he descried how the meaning could be taken wrongly. “I mean no disrespect.”

Ham could barely restrain the twitching of his lips. “You mean because you hold some secret, it must be for the taking and I did not try to take it. I am just curious what errand brings you so far so early from the School. Is that meaning enough?”

“Is my reaction so prickly.”

“No. Just your youth.”

            Poe answered the question before him and not the implications of the question. “I head to a village close to the border in the south, near Great Forest. They see some trade in their province dealing mostly in wool and produce. Along the way, I will check the seals on the way stations and see what provisions are needed so I can report it back to Free Hold.”

            “Is it the province before Lands End? I have heard strange rumors about that place, strange suggestions of power. Some think it to be the Dine.”

            “That is doubtful,” Poe said.

            “Let’s hope fear does not do what the Guild and the Great Houses are trying to do and stop people from coming to settle this new land,” Ham said.

            A chill crawled up the hollow of Poe’s back.

            “Has it gone that far!”

            “No. But there are rumors.”   

            “What are the rumors heard in Free Hold?”

            “Little. Free Hold discourages rumors concerning dangers to settlers and merchants passing through their city. Anyone known to be spreading unfavorable news of the New Land can suffer the attention of the City Guard. But I get many travelers to my Inn, and I hear many things. Mostly what I have told you. But there are darker whispers of people fleeing the place to which you go, tales of death and disappearance.”  Ham turned a direct and wry gaze upon Poe. “I, of course, do not believe or spread such gossip.”

            Of course not. You have too much vested interest to have rumors spread, Poe thought and understood. Their interests were much aligned. They both wanted this land to remain free of the various factions vying to control its resources. Rumors and fear could stop that quicker than any sword or lance.

            There was little to be said after that. Poe had given more in his answer than he would have liked but had also learned more for the giving. He would have to report back to the Magister what Ham told him. It was right that the Magister had suggested this man as a companion to travel with. Right and good.

The steady squeal of the axles and the swaying of the cart were the only distractions to their companionable silence.

Poe let his thoughts drift to when she would establish the link with the Magister and the quickening would begin.