CHAPTER 20
Lesser had long departed, devoured by the land hours before and night had dropped a wind fluttered veil upon the waking forest. A day of healing in the streets and alleyways of Aryg’ril lay behind him, as Jabari recovered his strength sitting with two of his guards, Nakali and Ren’ai, close around a crackling flame, attending to a less trying task, the preparation of remedies. A very simple thing it was but often he found it an impossible task.
“You can’t just mix scuntiweed with sho-sho.” Jabari could only shake his head.
Ren’ai’s body froze with correction pouring from the Healer’s tongue. “Why not?” Her cheek curled upward in suspicion. “You said Scunti prevents vision loss. Sho-Sho helps night vision. The two together should be extra powerful.” Ren’ai folded her arms with pestle in hand, daring the Healer to tell her differently.
Jabari softened his tone as he staid her hand with a gentle yet firm touch. She would learn in time. “Both very valuable herbs, indeed. But if you mix them into one big concoction; you’ll make a man go blind.” Jabari released to her a smile. “Not to mention the pain it would inflict.” Pulling up her bowl, he tossed the crumbled mixture into fingers of rising yellow flame. “Please, Start over, First Guard.” He stretched his shoulders back a bit as he surrendered the smooth stone bowl into waiting hands.
She thrust the bowl into the fire as he had shown her to be certain all remnants of the two herbs were no more.
The sounds of the forest met his ears between the crackle of their campfire and the sound of slow, rhythmic scraping as splinters parted with Nakali’s newly formed arrow shaft. Up in the trees all around their fortunately found clearing, birds called in at least twenty varying voices from one to the other as if telling stories of their great warriors past understood only to them.
Darkness fingered in from the forest floor. Tree trunks stood as bare columns rising up to outstretching branches. The trunks lay hidden in spots by sparse underbrush which during the day might be fighting to find the sunlight, but now in the calm of dusk just past, their leaves curled and folded into soft slumber. A rising chill lashed his back as his hands opened and closed in the warmth of the fire.
Ren’ai pulled the bowl out hot with a stick and set it on the ground beside her to cool.
Jabari continued. “Ten days with the Scunti and ten with the Sho-sho but not the same ten days. I’d give it at least ten days between.” Jabari pulled out another handful of Sho-Sho and handed it to his student. “When the bowl is cool again, grind these up with a spit of oil and mix it up to a good paste.”
She took the handful of leaves that they had been collecting from the meadow all afternoon, twisted one in nimble fingers. “But, Master, that’s so much work when you can just lift a hand and make it so.”
Jabari pondered the thought moving the leaves across the mortar. How many times had he told his father the same thing, but even if he never understood back then, he knew the answer now. “You didn’t master the SlipSwamp or the FallinFlo in a day. What if I could have lifted my hand and made all of the guards into masters of the perils of the Jagged.”
“It would take much less time to train us. You could build a force in a day; crush all who stood against you.”
“Yes, wouldn’t that be something.”Jabari smiled in fanciful thought. “But I want you to really think about it.”
“I don’t suppose it would mean so much. I couldn’t really say that I had accomplished anything.”
“And.” Master Jabari mused to himself for a moment as his smile widened. He wiped a dark strand from his cheek, and pulled one hand up to the base of his neck, rubbing away the tension there. Yes, the day had been a long one. They had healed many but many they could do nothing for. He always had a toll to pay when he sought to use his skill to heal so many. Sometimes the travis demanded little and sometimes, as he had found the case today, his Guard had to carry him back to camp. He again turned to Ren’ai as he heard her speak.
“And the knowledge, experience, willingness to endure all manner of pain for the final result, it would not be there.”
Master Jabari gave her a look that told her to reach just a bit further.
“It would be strength and agility with no heart.”
He nodded an affirmation. “Teaching the people to heal themselves is of more value than the movement of my hand. But when it is not enough, that is where my hands come in.” Jabari lifted his palms from his task to show her. Ordinary hands in all appearance, but they were not.
The Healer rose, going the one place that Ren’ai did not follow.
Ren’ai took the opportunity to abandon her mortar and pestle and pull up her axe. She would now ask the question her heart had held so tight all day. “When do we get to battle?” Ren’ai tossed another log on the fire turning to Nakali, having set her knife aside to pull from leaves the center spine before tossing them to a bowl next to Ren’ai. Ren’ai knew that they had entered the town, the blood stained ground a testament to Ruric’s relentless slaughter of any who thought to oppose him. She could still see the look on the face of the baker’s sister, the fear in that little boy’s eyes. She had tried to comfort them but there could be no comfort in found in pale, grey eyes. What did it matter; she was not a comforter but a fighter; Ren’ai knew there had to be more to being a guard, and First Guard at that, than grinding herbs and watching the Healer.
Nakali sat across from her. The archer’s legs curled to the side, tossing another leaf into the bowl “We don’t wish for battle, Nai. We are protectors of the Healer. We are not Ruric’s Soldiers looking for helpless victims.”
“I know, but how can the E’epans let this happen? We are four hundred. The weakest of us standing equal to ten men.”
“It is not our place to intervene.” Master Jabari stepped back into the camp, straightening his robe. “The people choose their leaders.”
“They did not choose this.” Ren’ai looked over her shoulder to him, twisting her axe between parted feet, tapping the front of the blade against her booted toes and then the back against a heel.
“A Ruler ushered in with great hope is rarely what he seems. But they made their choice in Tobias and Ruric. They were two men of the same mind. Conquest and control by a vengeful hand.”
“Are you saying that people must suffer the consequences for their actions?”
“Exactly.” Skewering a lizard with a stick, he thrust it into the fire. “We can only hope they will choose better next time.”
Confusion rounded out Ren’ai’s youthful features. “What if people don’t know any better? Shouldn’t we help them?” Such great power she knew their force to possess and for what purpose. To go into villages after the threat had past.
“Absolutely not.” Master Jabari pulled his dinner from the fire, blew on it, and took a careful bite. His teeth crunched into charred flesh “When a ruler starts saying I’m going against the will of the people because they don’t know any better, we are in for dark times, indeed.”
“I guess it’s a good thing that I’m not ruler. I think the people showed very unsound reason the way they welcomed Tobias and Ruric conquering their homelands. Were it in my power, I would certainly have Ruric removed.”
Jabari surrendered a hardy laugh. The flame danced with his glee. “And who would you put in his place?”
“You.”
“Me? I don’t want to rule Aletheia. An E’epan wear the crown? Whether myself or another. It is a thing that I pray I shall never live to see.”
“Lieten, then.” Ren’ai could think of many who would be better than Ruric.
“The gods departed help us. He’s a demanding man of business. A good Trainer. But his inability to accept failure in others, for that he could never be a leader.” Master Jabari gnawed the meat from a lizard leg and offered some to Nakali sitting at his side.
She declined, having had her fill on foraged berries and a handful of nuts she had purchased from a healed merchant in Aryg’ril.
Ren’ai looked to Nakali.
“Don’t look at me.” Nakali shook her head. “A much too demanding task.”
Ren’ai turned back to the Healer.
“It’s hard, isn’t it, to choose a leader? That’s why an E’epan should not just step in and remove a Ruler chosen by the people. As bad as it is right now, it would cause more harm than good. Besides, I sense a more selfish reason that you would like to see him displaced.”
Ren’ai felt as if she were looking into the eyes of a Dreamer but she realized that Jabari just knew her too well.
“Revenge. It seems a thing to right a wrong, but destroys the avenger no less than the focus of her wrath. It is a path I would advise you not to follow.” Jabari slid a leg out, straightening a knee, revealing crossing stripes. The marks across his flesh were no fewer than any of the fighters in the Jagged.
“As you have told me one thousand times. But when does an evil man pay for his crimes?”
“An evil man should pay for his crimes; Please do not misunderstand me. It’s not what we do to an evil man; it’s what a vengeful spirit does to us. I would have him put away no sooner than any in the Jagged. But for revenge it must not be. You will understand in time.”
Ren’ai could not imagine she would ever understand, but it did not change the loyalty she felt to Jabari, for her fellow guards and guards to be in the Jagged. They were the family she had lost and nothing would take that away from her. “Don’t you suppose they should be back from hunting bilberries by now?”
Nakali laughed. “You don’t “hunt” bilberries, Nai; you pick them and bring them back so that the Healer can make his drink.”
“You have to search for them though, don’t you? I call that hunting.” Ren’ai would do anything to make Haerfesting flowers, leaves, roots, fungus and bark for Jabari’s potions more interesting. How quickly she had learned that traveling with the Healer included this as well.
“Call it what you like.” Nakali did not spare her apprentice even a glance as she continued in her task.
Jabari’s eyes widened. “Bil are all around these parts. And the townsfolk let them rot on the bush. Even overlooking the health benefits, really, who passes up bilberry pie? And imagine how strong their sight would be if they drank a few glasses a day. Imagine the hunting they could do then, Nai.”Jabari met Ren’ai’s disinterested stare, catching a glimmer of curiosity. “People just don’t understand the gifts that the land gives us.”
“That is why we have you to teach us, Healer.” Nakali gave him a smile.
“I can teach, but when do people learn?”Jabari looked to the north sky. Soft grey clouds skirted across Sisters Moon.
“Master,” A male guard bounded from the wood with sword low in hand. Jabari turned. Nakali drew up her bow. Ren’ai, slow to respond, not yet realizing the threat, pulled her axe up from between her feet.
Jabari approached his guard, seeing him as one injured with blood dripping from his side though the man tried to stand tall. “Let me get that taken care of for you.”
“No. I’ll be fine. I’ll wrap it well and stop the bleeding, just like you showed me. Go to them, by the river. The force is great, but nothing we have not defeated before. You don’t need me. They were only fifty strong, that is after I took out fifteen before they got me.”The man smiled, even that causing apparent pain.
Jabari lifted a finger to him, asked him to squeeze, testing his strength, then watched his eyes follow his finger back and forth in front of his face. He then turned from the man. “We’ll be back soon.”
Nakali had already disappeared in the direction the man had come from. Ren’ai could not even see her golden garment flapping in the wind.
“Ready for your battle, First Guard?” Jabari whipped open his cloak and pulled two short swords from scabbards, one upon each hip. Ren’ai never would have known they were there.
Ren’ai pulled her axe from her shoulder, held it out and to the ready.
“Good.” Master Jabari’s eyes sparkled in the firelight. “This is really the best part.”
He leapt out into the darkness. Ren’ai struggled to keep up, never imagining that sort of fastness to overtake him. His crimson robes sailed behind him a memory of where he once drifted, footprints in a dusting of an early snow the only sign he had been there.