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Three hours later, Dasen finished the last of Tethina’s letters. There had been over a hundred of them. It appeared that she had written Ipid almost monthly for the last twelve years. Ipid had kept them in a book box made of heavily polished walnut with a magnificently inlaid cherry-wood rose. The older pages had yellowed with age, but the ink remained dark, unsullied. The pages had been folded for delivery, but the creases had been carefully pressed out so that the paper would not wear along them. It was clear that Ipid treasured these letters. Some of the earliest were little more than childish pictures with a few poorly constructed and spelled words or phrases, but as they progressed their length and detail also grew.
As Ipid had said, she had a clear, strong hand and was an effective, if inelegant, writer. Still, the letters did nothing to quell Dasen’s fears. If anything, they had confirmed and expounded them. The letters made clear that Tethina was a rebel. She had no friends in the village. The adults chastised her, held her up as a poor example, or simply ignored her. As a result, the other children bullied her with impunity. They teased her, called her names, sought to humiliate her. And she responded in the most overt and even violent ways. She had (proudly) dealt out many a bruise, welt, even broken bone. The worst assaults had resulted in days and days transcribing The Book of Valatarian for the local counselor, a man she clearly hated. And with each altercation, each punishment, Tethina had retreated farther and farther into herself and the forest she loved. As the letters progressed, she wrote more and more about her hunting trips, the game she had killed, the rare herbs she had gathered, the hidden corners of the uninhabited forest she had explored, the days and nights she had spent alone with the trees. Then came the district games. She had prepared herself for them for months, had clearly meant it as the penultimate thumb-to-the-nose for the villagers who had made her life so miserable. Obviously, she had succeeded, but had she really won?
Dasen sat back and put the final letter onto the stack next to him. It was strange for the seat to be empty, but Ipid had exiled Rynn to the driver’s bench when he would not stop reading the letters over Dasen’s shoulder with a series of gasps, snorts, and excoriating comments. His voice still drifted into the box from the front where he was regaling the driver, Esso, a boisterous man, whom Ipid had hired for this trip. They seemed to be enjoying themselves as the guffaws were frequent and loud. To be honest, Dasen was glad that his friend was not with him. He needed time alone to think about it all, and Rynn’s running commentary was not likely to be helpful.
He stared at the polished wood that defined the roof of the coach, traced the patterns in the grain of each board, watched the copper lamp bounce on its chain. He felt the coach shaking beneath him. The road was obviously rough and not improved by the days of rain, but the heavy springs that held each wheel absorbed most of the bumps, and he had grown so used to the feel of the road that he barely noticed it now. His eyes moved down to the open window at his side. The heavy, satin curtain had been roped back to allow in the air and sunlight. The benefit of the rain was that there was no dust blowing in with the warm breeze. The downside was that it made the hot air sticky and heavy. Dasen had stripped off his vest and undone two of his shirt buttons, but sweat soaked his head and his back was damp against the cushion behind him.
Outside the window were trees. For days now, nothing but trees so dense that he could not see more than a few paces beyond the road. Having spent most of his life in cities surrounded by vast plains, he had never conceived that a forest could be this large or dense. The trees looked most like great walls passing on either side of them. How had Tethina ever managed to live in something like that? How could she even walk through the tangle of branches?
“So what do you think?” Ipid asked, drawing Dasen from his thoughts. As he had promised, he had not done any work that morning. He sat, watching Dasen, handing him new letters when he finished each. He answered questions when asked, but did not offer any other comments. Now he looked decidedly uncertain, like he was trying to catch a mouse and was not sure which way it would run.
Dasen thought about Tethina, realized that what he felt most was sympathy. She had been allowed to follow this impossible path, and no one had pulled her back. No one had the courage to tell her no. Then it became a downward spiral. Her denial of the Order made her a pariah in the village, which only led her to rebel further. Now, he wondered if she could ever be saved or if she was too far gone for even the Order to reclaim. And that was what she clearly needed. As long as she defied the Order, she would continue to create conflict in her community and herself. Dasen could not think of a clearer example of why conformity to the Order was so important, of what happened when individuals were allowed to defy the Order. It only confirmed that what Tethina needed most was someone to bring her back, to show her her proper place. That is what a friend would do. “Why didn’t you ever stop her?” he finally asked, feeling real disappointment in his father. “You were her guardian. It was your role to provide her guidance in the Order. It was your responsibility to keep this from happening.”
Ipid flinched but, to Dasen’s surprise, did not seem offended by the question. “What is it that you think happened?”
“She has obviously drifted far from the Order. She has created a turmoil all around her. This is exactly what counselors mean when they speak of the effects of not following the Order. It hurts not only the individual but the entire community, creates strife and discord. It should never have been allowed to go this far.”
Ipid let out a long, slow breath. “I’m sorry that you feel that way. I see things differently. I see a girl who had lost everything. I see a forest that helped her heal when nothing else could. It became the friend she needed, her safe harbor.” Ipid paused and thought. “Certainly you are right that I failed her. But in the same way I failed you, not in this. It was not by allowing her to find and embrace the thing that could heal her. If I had taken that away from her, you can be sure the outcome would have been much worse.”
Dasen opened his mouth to respond. What his father said may have been right in those first few months, but to allow it to go on so long, to reach this point had been a mistake. Now it would be up to him to fix what his father lacked the courage to repair.
Ipid held up a hand to stop him. “Read through the letters again,” he advised. “Pay attention to how she speaks about the forest, about how it makes her feel. Listen to the pride in her words when she talks about the buck she dropped with a single arrow. Then tell me you could have taken that away from her.” He paused, drew another deep breath. “I know this doesn’t fit with what the counselors have taught you, but please consider that the Order is more complex than we accept it to be, consider that not everyone’s path is the same, that the differences may be good, a part of the plan, part of what the Twins meant when they gave us freewill.”
Dasen sat back. What his father had just said bordered on sacrilege. Certainly during the reign of the Empire, it would have been punishable by death. Even now, the Church taught that freewill was not a gift. It was, if anything, a curse endowed to humans by Hilaal to spite his brother. It was each person’s duty to deny their freewill, to rely instead on the ability that Hileil had given them to see the Order and find their place in it. It was only the Exiles that placed their freewill above the Order, and as legend said, doing so had nearly destroyed the world.
Before Dasen could think on it further, the small door at the front of the coach clacked open next to his head. “The drivers wanted me to tell you that Potter’s Place is in sight,” Rynn said. “I don’t know what that means, but we are approaching a collection of building that could, under certain definitions, be considered a village. Mind you, it would have to be a very broad definition of both buildings and village. . . .”
“Thank you, Rynn,” Ipid interrupted. “Please ask the driver to stop. We’ll have lunch here.”
r /> A few minutes later, they stopped at a building that was slightly larger than the nearly fifty other dull grey plank structures that made up the town of Potter’s Place. It was situated in what was little more than a large expanded clearing. Dense forest stretched to every side with the exception of a thirty foot wall of rock on one side where a half of a hill had inexplicably fallen in ages past. A few people walked the streets of the town, mostly women and children – the men were at work, cutting and clearing logs to be sent down the White River to one of Ipid’s mills.
As usual, the women wore long, plain dresses of homespun wool. They had simple bonnets to cover their heads and restrain the mounds of hair piled on their heads. They were friendly, smiling pleasantly at the visitors, but did not stop or offer conversation. Many of the children, however, were not so shy. They formed a clump a few paces from the carriage and buzzed with excitement, ruddy faces marked with wonder. The majority were barefoot, dirty feet bouncing excitedly on the dusty road. Their clothes were made of dull wool, roughly woven and maintained with generous patches. Their hair was primarily dark and long, girls’ tied in great braids; boys hanging over their shoulders. They looked as poor as any peasants or beggars Dasen had seen, but their smiles and twittering conversation seemed ignorant to their depravation
With Ipid’s permission, Elton approached them with a bag of sweets. At first the children backed away from the mountainous man. Most of them had never seen a Morg and knew only the tales of their legendary prowess and occasional brutality as Imperial enforces turned mercenaries. It took Elton reaching into the bag and showing them the sweets to turn the children around. They eventually approached him cautiously and placed their hands into his bag as if expecting it to be full of spiders then seemed surprised by the paper-wrapped hard candies they found.
Dasen watched this dance as he had at almost every stop they had made on this journey. Mills, cities, villages, it was always the same. He wondered how much candy they had given away over the course of the trip. Where did Elton keep it all? When every child’s mouth bulged with sweets, Elton smiled at them, patted a few heads and even let some of the braver children pull his impossibly think beard. The big man had five children of his own in Thoren, though he saw little of them.
“Are you coming, Dasen?” Ipid asked from the door of the two-story structure. Dasen examined it as he walked toward the door. The building was made of grey, weathered boards like all the others. Unlike the buildings in the city that were now built with straight, uniform boards from Ipid’s mills, these planks were uneven, of different widths, and roughly planed. It appeared that someone had whitewashed them, but it did not seem to have had much effect. The building had two small windows on each story, a long uncovered porch, and no sign. Patches of moss clung to the crude shingle roof and only a small stream of smoke rose from the narrow chimney, the only stone aspect of the building.
Inside, there was a single large room. It was dark and stuffy, smelling of smoke, cooking meat, sour beer, and old sweat. To one side was a counter surrounded by various sacks of grains, salt, nails, and other essentials. A scale and simple till marked it as the village store. On the other side, a row of chickens spun over a low fire. It was apparent that they had only recently been added to the spit, probably in anticipation of this group’s arrival. Two rectangular tables led away from the fire, where a boy was just finishing setting out plates, cups, and utensils. One of the tables had three setting, the other a dozen – though they would not be separated by much, Ipid would not dine with those guards and servants who continued on the trip with them.
Ipid led the way to the first table and sat at the bench on the side with a single setting. He motioned for Dasen and Rynn to join him. A moment later, a nervous looking man approached and spoke to Ipid in a low voice. Ipid appeared annoyed but did not express it to the innkeeper. “It will be a while,” he said when the man had gone. “They didn’t expect us so soon and just put the chickens on the spit. They don’t even have bread baked yet, so we might as well get comfortable. I will ask Elton to find one of the bottles of wine we brought. I doubt they have anything here that would be worth washing a glass.
So they sat for what seemed a long time. Between them, they finished the wine before their lunch ever arrived. Dasen could not think of anything to say, and Ipid was no more loquacious, so Rynn filled the gaps. By the time they had eaten and were ready to go, nearly two hours had passed. They rose from the table and found the door just as the first crash of thunder sounded. The rain started a second later, huge drops that increased slowly in number until they fell in sheets. The early afternoon sky turned black, punctuated only by the streaks of lightning chasing each other across the sky. Thunder shook the shanty building so that Dasen thought it might collapse.
Ipid cursed and yelled, but there was nothing they could do. The horses could not pull the coach in a storm like this, and, in any case, the road would be nothing but potholes and mud. Elton and the guards quickly unhitched the enormous draft horses that pulled the coach and found them places in the village’s only small stable. The guards tethered their own mounts in the shelter of the trees and posted a few unlucky men to feed and care for them amidst the storm.
As the storm raged, there was nothing to do but admit that they would have to spend another night away from their destination. The town of Potter’s Place did not have a proper inn, and there were no rooms to rent. Ipid arranged for his guards to stay in various homes while he, Dasen, and Rynn slept in the beds of the store owner and his children – they retreated to the floor of their shop but were comforted by Ipid’s payment.
The poor luck seemed to dampen everyone’s spirits, and no one spoke much as they watched the storm. They tried a game of cards, but no one seemed capable of concentrating on it. Even Rynn was relatively silent. Finally, they gave up and retreated early to the dirty straw mattresses where they spent a last fitful night before their journey’s final leg.
Chapter 6