Some mornings just feel significant. There’s nothing different in the air, but everything has a singular feel nonetheless. Perhaps the feeling comes from within and is projected outward. When everyone anticipates the day—be it birthdays or Harvest Celebration—perhaps they energize it themselves with their own expectations.
When Perrin opened his eyes early in the morning, he knew what day it was: the 37th Day of Planting. He looked up at the high peaked roof and remembered it was exactly one year ago that the old low roof came down. He thought about the many years before when nothing more significant happened than Peto breaking an arm or him getting another gash that required stitches. When their roof gave way last year it was if everything else collapsed in their world. If only he had known what would transpire in the next year . . .
Well if he did, what could he have done? Anything different? He’d asked himself that many times. Visiting his parents after the land tremor and taking back the stores for Edge—he wouldn’t have changed a thing about any of that.
But afterward? Sometimes he pictured himself resigning in front of the Administrators, or taking a stab at Gadiman when he was on that grotesque table. Once he considered what would have happened if he hadn’t taken that mad ride to Idumea in the first place. Would he still have gone down in that spiral that he had to climb out of so many mornings?
When he went to apologize to Rector Yung a few weeks ago, Perrin stayed for much longer than five minutes. He revealed to the tiny man that, despite the attention of his family and friends, he’d felt abandoned.
“By whom?” Rector Yung prodded.
Perrin stared at his hands before saying, “The army. Surely they knew this happens to soldiers sometimes. Shem said he read about trauma in the surgeon’s book, but even the surgeon couldn’t give him much practical advice beyond this bracelet.”
He never took it off, and he frequently found himself fingering it, finding an unexpected comfort in the grooves of the soft chain. He still had dreams, but not as fearsome or as intense as before. And each time he did, he looked at his wrist or grasped it if it was too dark. It was when he felt it missing that a slight wave of panic rushed him, enough to jerk him out of the dream. He’d awake to find himself gripping his arm, clasping the thin wool, and then encountering a sense of calm.
Perrin noticed Rector Yung looking at the chain, now a bit darker and dirtier than when Shem first tied it on to him. Mahrree wanted to wash it, but Perrin assured her he scrubbed it each time he bathed. Besides, he thought it looked better a bit worn and soiled.
Perrin released it and tugged his sleeve to cover it. “Rector, I refuse to believe I was the only who ever suffered this way.”
“You aren’t,” Yung said quietly, meeting his eyes. “With no offense to the memory of your honorable father, the army does know. There were many cases during the Great War, and have been several since. But you see, the army doesn’t want to deal with broken soldiers—forgive my choice of words. They want fighters. If you can’t fight, then you’re ushered out, given a pat on the back, and then it’s hoped you fade away.”
While Perrin wanted to be shocked at that revelation, he knew it was true. There had been a couple of men he heard of over the years that had troubles, then no one heard about them again. He didn’t give them much thought, because the thought that even he could succumb to such a state of mind was too terrifying. In fact, that was probably the biggest terror soldiers faced—not losing their lives, or their limbs, or even their families, but losing themselves.
“How do you know this?” Perrin whispered to Yung.
Yung smiled gently. “It’s never been the fort surgeons who dealt with trauma. It’s always been the village rectors. When men feel abandoned, as you so rightly put it, that’s when they come to the rectors hoping to find the Creator, and quite often we’re able to help facilitate a most wonderful reunion. But Perrin, please forgive both Shem and I, but it wasn’t the surgeon who suggested your bracelet.” Yung squinted his narrow eyes into mere slits and shrugged.
“You?” Perrin sighed. Somehow, he knew. The surgeon never talked to him. In fact, he acted as if the colonel didn’t even exist. And Perrin had never sought him out, either. It was an unspoken mutual avoidance, and while on the surface it seemed to work for both men, it didn’t do any good at all.
Perrin managed a small smile for the old man crouched in front of him. “You knit?”
The rector chuckled. “No, not one bit! But I have a friend who does, and made me many lengths so that I have a ready supply. You’re not my first victim of trauma, Perrin. But you have been one of the most deeply affected.”
“So you’ve worked with others?”
Yung told Perrin about many traumatized men he knew of. Perrin’s imagination was captured by the story of a general during the Great War who suddenly doubted everything in his life, even the devotion of his wife and son. For weeks he was confused and angry with everyone. One of his sergeants was the last to see him, wandering toward the forest. He was never seen again.
Maybe Perrin’s fascination stemmed from the fact that he’d considered that possibility a few times: just leaving. Maybe existing somewhere else would make the horrors of everything else here vanish. He knew enough of the forest to survive in there. But he also knew his family and friends would foolishly try to find him, and then there would have been even greater tragedies.
So he was left to endure it on his own which, he realized now, he didn’t have to. Many wanted to help him, but he refused them. A part of him had feared that they wouldn’t have been able to pull him out of the pit, but that he would’ve dragged them down instead.
Yet when he thought about his past year, honestly, he wouldn’t have traded any of the experiences. He had the impression that every moment seemed to work for his good. Every raw emotion and each tender nerve was exposed to make him feel it. It was if the Creator looked down and said, “Perrin’s had it too easy lately. It’s time to test his mettle.”
But some days he had felt it was more like his metal being tested, burned in a fire, trying to slough off the impurities he didn’t even know were there. He didn’t realize he could feel so murderous, or so motivated by pride.
But worst of all, he didn’t realize he was so vulnerable.
In all of his talks with his wife he avoided going into detail about those times when he was sure she was dead, and it was his fault. He also tried to forget the night he looked up from the floor in his bedroom to see his children cowering behind Shem, holding onto each other. The more he tried to forget that image the more indelible it became. His weakness took away their security, and revealed to them that their father was just a regular man.
Just a regular man.
He could be destroyed as easily as any rubbish collector, and just as quickly, if the Creator decided it. There was no special protection around him, or around anyone. Each person was in the power of the Creator, or could be turned over to be battered by the Refuser. Every soul was equal in the Creator’s eyes.
That was comforting and troubling at the same time.
And Perrin had been powerless to do anything about it. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t march into Paradise, demand to see the Creator, and insist the trials be stopped because of who he was.
But he had two choices: he could fight the direction his life had taken, or he could try to learn from it. There were times, especially in the beginning, when he felt like surrendering. It was just too hard to face his failures, to see the looks of distress on his family’s faces each morning, and to consider going on.
But a quiet voice in the back of his mind would remind him, Surrender to whom? To that darkness that tormented him? He’d come so close to giving up that night when he held the long knife just inches away from his chest. But then what?
There was no end to his existence. If he gave up, he would’ve been in that horror indefinitely. In many ways the terror of that thought pushed him to climb even faster, to try even harder to escape. There was n
o option of surrender. When you’re in a pit, you intuitively look up for a light; that instinct is from the Creator. The compulsion to slump to the ground and weep at the dirt walls was from the Refuser.
He couldn’t abide such an existence.
As obvious as the choices appeared, it took Perrin an excruciatingly long time to recognize them. For more than three seasons he was too paralyzed in his world of chaotic thoughts. So many nights he tried to avoid sleep and what would happen during it. But avoiding it didn’t solve anything. Many afternoons he fell asleep at his desk only to be woken up by his own screaming.
But then there were nights when sleep came so deeply he felt glimmers of hope again. The only image he remembered in those dreams was the face of a young child looking up at him, and himself laughing.
When his family knelt with him in prayer he finally felt some of the chaos slow enough for him to see clearly. And now, when he spent each morning in meditation and consultation with the Creator, he could halt the images in his mind long enough to face the day.
Studying himself so intently was far more painful than the beating Shem gave him in that barn on the way to Idumea. But the pain had a purifying quality to it, showing him how to rely on the only one true strength in the world that wasn’t even in the world. Only the Creator knew him well enough to fix him. It was the Creator who gave him the strength he needed to face the Refuser that terrible night a few weeks ago. It was the Creator who loosened his grip on the long knife that he was about to plunge into his chest.
It was the Creator who won that battle and turned the momentum of the war—not him. He had to always remember that.
So when Perrin woke up on the 37th Day of Planting Season, 336, he wanted this morning to be significant, to be the day he was truly a new man. He had to start keeping his old hours at the fort again and be sure to be home by dinner. He could no longer allow himself to be consumed by himself. There were too many other people needing him, and he could no longer remain indulgently weak. He closed his eyes and repeated the string of meditative thoughts he had established weeks ago.
Who was he? Not a future general, not a colonel, not more important than someone else, but a beloved son of the Creator.
Why was he here? Not to take revenge, not to be important, not to worry about the world’s expectations, but to learn His will and to pass His test.
What was his goal today? Not to be the kind of man the world wanted, but to be the kind of leader the Creator wanted him to be. If he was serving others, he was serving the Creator. He needed to be submissive enough to accept anything the Creator chose to allow the Refuser inflict on him. And only with the Creator’s help could he overcome the Refuser’s trials. The blessings would come some day. Maybe not even in this life, but most assuredly in the next one. Because he was a son of the Creator.
Perrin opened his eyes and breathed deeply. He rolled over to watch his dozing wife. She used to sleep as if on guard, clinging to her side of the bed with a stiffness that seemed impossible to maintain while one was unconscious.
But now, now she lay softly, and closer to him. Her hand was even against his side. In the middle of the night he was aware of her holding his bare upper arm, not feeling his strength, but giving it. She needed that deep slumber, almost as much as he needed to watch her. She needed so much that he hadn’t given her.
When they had first come home from Idumea she had cried about “too many miracles.” At the time, he had thought that was funny. Then, just days later, so much that he loved in his life was destroyed.
Then he in turn destroyed Mahrree’s life.
A few weeks ago during one of their late night discussions he asked her if she felt they still had too many miracles.
“Absolutely!” she said. “It’s not that I would ever want to repeat this year, but I never would have wanted to skip it, either. We’ve learned so much. Besides, there are always more miracles. My father’s last words to me were, ‘Every story has a happy ending, if we just wait long enough.’ Having you back is the greatest miracle so far.”
Her staying by his side was the greatest miracle, he thought. He knew she loved him, but her sacrifices for him were beyond love, if that were possible. She had pulled him back out of the depths, day after day, for seasons. She used to have to dig deep to find him, but now she needed only to nudge him to make sure he was all right.
Somehow he’d make it up to her. He still remembered her dream house with weathered gray wood and window boxes filled with herbs that she told him about on their second wedding anniversary, the dream he told her was nonsense.
But perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps there was something he could do, when he was sure he was solid and complete again. In another year or so, he decided, he would set into motion the next big miracle in her life, something she never would have dreamed possible but Perrin suspected could be.
He felt guilty as she began to stir. Her eyes opened slowly at first, then popped open in worry. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes.” He stroked her face as if he could pull both strength and softness from her cheeks, and he craved both. His hand slid down to her throat and rested there a moment. The movement served two purposes—to show his affection, and to subtly check her pulse. “It was a good night. All’s well.”
Although she never said anything, he was sure she knew why his hand rested on her throat. She twisted her head slightly to kiss his arm. “It’s just that you’re up so early—”
“Well, I have to be today.”
“I know. I remember.” She huddled up to his chest. “Let’s see, one year ago I was about right here . . .”
Perrin closed his eyes in sheer contentment. For too long she didn’t dare get that close to him in bed. He wrapped his arms tightly around her as if he could have absorbed her into his body.
“Yes,” Mahrree muttered into his chest, “and one year ago you were right there, holding me. Hmm. It’s much better on top of the bed than under it, don’t you think? Quieter. And no squirrels.”
He chuckled as she kissed his chest, sighed deeply, and placed her cheek against him.
“I have an idea,” she said dreamily. “How about we just stay here all morning, just like this.”
“Mmm, tempting,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head. “But not today,” he said sadly. “How about tomorrow? We could really get into a great argument.”
They’d fought plenty during the past year. Plenty of shouting, screaming, even throwing things . . .
But very little arguing, the kind that first drew them to each other, and sent them upstairs to “resolve the issue” while their children frowned, trying to figure out why that involved the bedroom.
But they were arguing again, and he hadn’t realized before how desperately he needed her warmth and softness. Before, he was pushing her away while paradoxically trying to save her. In the confusion of his existence there wasn’t room for her in his life.
Now, he realized, she was his life.
She laughed lightly and wrapped her arms around him. “If only there was time, but you know we can’t. I have school tomorrow. This is the only day. You declared it a Day of Remembrance, let’s remember this. Your holiday, your rules.”
He groaned, only slightly irritated. “For the last time, I did NOT declare it a holiday! Rector Yung and the magistrate did.”
She giggled into his chest. “Ooh, so we’re going to argue now? I suppose if we skip breakfast we’ll have time . . .”
He chuckled with her, enjoying the sound of their voices together. “Silly woman,” he kissed her again. “By the way, I’m going to start going to the fort in the mornings again.”
“Are you sure?” She sounded slightly hesitant. “Will you have enough time to prepare yourself each morning?”
“Yes, I’ll have time,” he assured her. “I need to be home for dinner, with you and the children.”
Mahrree sighed. She’d be foolish to try to change his mind. So she’d accept
his decisions, albeit conditionally. “We can try it for a week or two, see how things go. I guess this holiday idea of yours is just the thing to get you going. You just shouldn’t have made it for so early in the morning, though,” she gently teased.
“That was the magistrate’s idea,” he reminded her. “To have it at the same time the land tremor hit.”
Mahrree sighed. “Just an hour later would have been good enough.”
“Oh, please. You’d be getting up right now for school anyway,” he pointed out. “At least this way you don’t have any school at all. You should be thanking me for that.”
“Of course I do. Thank you, by the way.” She was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Do you know what you’re going to say at the ceremony?”
“I’ve got it pretty much worked out.”
“That means you’ll plan when you’re on the platform, right?”
“I used to do very well that way during our debates, if you remember.”
“I remember that’s how I frequently beat you.” She sighed, putting her cheek against his chest again. “It will be strange and wonderful to see you up there again.”
“Want to join me?”
She scoffed. “No, thank you! No one wants to see me, they all want to see the Saver of Edge.”
Perrin groaned and rolled on to his back. “Don’t say that. Seriously, you really think people are coming for that?”
She propped herself up on her arm. “I didn’t want to tell you last night, but my mother said that all the inns are full with your admirers. Many had been asking about you. She was wise enough, for once, to not tell them that she knew you.”
Perrin groaned again. “Mahrree, you better stand up there with me just so they know I’m married!”
“No way. I want to be in the audience watching!” She laughed. But she added, with considerable worry, “Are you sure you’re ready? From what Shem read, something this public and exposed could set you back. We can still do something else,” she suggested. “Or let Brillen handle it. He told me when he arrived last night that he can step in for you. You just give me the signal, and we’re on it.”
He rolled over and kissed her again—properly, on the lips. “I can do it,” he promised. “I really think I need to.”
Mahrree kissed him back, then pulled away to give him a look. He knew that look. It was a slightly squinty, mouth munching, eyebrow raising look, full of anxiety and mischief. She was about to test the waters to see how he really was.
“All right,” she said slowly. “As long as you’re sure . . . Colonel Cuddly.” She leaped out of bed, giggling in nervousness.
Perrin roared and jumped out of bed, chased her down the stairs, and tackled her on the sofa.
“Take it back, woman! I told you, don’t ever say that again!” He picked her up and sat down on the sofa, keeping her easily trapped in his arms. But she wasn’t fighting him. She was laughing too hard.
Peto groggily opened his door. “Ah, come on you two. It’s too early for that!”
That made Mahrree laugh even harder.
Perrin held her firmly. This morning he was solid. Absolutely, fantastically, rock solid. He tried to put on a serious face but he couldn’t completely hide his grin from his son.
Jaytsy came out from the washroom and smiled when she saw them. “What did she say this time, Father?” She had the same look as her mother had. One more test. “Did she call you our future Genial Gentle Generous General again?”
Peto started laughing. “That one’s my favorite! Those poets in Midplain know how to make a title.”
Perrin glared, but mischievously. The teasing was significant. The more there was, the better he was. Laughter rooted him.
“Just don’t fight it, Father,” said Jaytsy as she came over to rescue her mother. She evaluated their knot, then tried to tickle her father despite the fact he had no ticklish spots. At least, that’s what he told her. He could just keep a straight face. But this morning he thought Jaytsy was right. Why fight it?
He released his wife and suddenly grabbed his daughter, tickling her instead. “I said last week, girl,” he tried to be stern as she squirmed and giggled, “to never use those names again!” He dropped her unceremoniously and she collapsed on the floor gasping and laughing.
She looked at him with her mother’s expression again. “All right . . . Shin the Magnificent!”
Perrin growled.
For as much as the fort and Edge were hesitant around him the past year, the rest of the world had rushed to embrace him. He knew what caused it; that first letter he responded to, for Roak at the Stables at Pools. Then he answered another to Gizzada, and another. All thirty-two of them.
He thought that would be the end of it, but those who received his responses must have said something to their families. And their friends. And their neighbors. Perrin heard from Brillen that Gizzada had displayed Perrin’s response on the wall of his back restaurant.
Soon more letters arrived at the fort. Then more. Not just from enlisted men in Pools, but from citizens all over the world writing to him that they thought he should be the next High General in honor of his father and his deeds for Edge.
Then one day the fort received an odd announcement from the Administrators detailing the promotion procedures, and ordered that the notice to be put up on all the village message boards. Perrin wrote to Brillen asking if he knew why any villagers would care about that dreariness.
Brillen explained that he’d heard citizens were also writing to the Administrators, flooding them with insistences that Perrin be promoted to general. Instead of responding to the letters, Idumea showered villagers back with dull notices.
And it didn’t work.
Because next the fort began to receive letters from people saying that if they could choose the High General the way they could choose the local magistrates, Perrin would win. Three weeks ago the mail wagon brought a large bag packed with messages all for the colonel. He hadn’t dared look into the bag when he dropped it on the table late one night after returning from the fort.
“What is that?” Mahrree asked, surprised to see the lump sitting on the papers she was grading.
“My letters,” he said miserably. “Anyone want to read them?”
“Yes!” Jaytsy cried, and she and Peto started snatching and opening letters.
“I just don’t have time for this.” Perrin sat on a chair and regarded the pile with dread.
“We can help answer them,” Jaytsy volunteered.
Peto grinned. “Yes, but Father, I may need some help. This is from a group of ladies in Marsh.” He waved a folded parchment.
“Oh really?” Mahrree said with a glint in her eye.
Perrin sighed.
“Yes, and they want to know,” Peto cleared his throat and assumed an official tone, “Colonel Shin, what is your favorite color?”
“Favorite color?” Perrin sneered. “People have favorite colors? Who wants to know?”
Peto looked down and chuckled. “The Association of Woolen Weavers for Perrin Shin for General, Marsh Chapter.”
Mahrree smirked. “That’s quite a mouthful.”
“So, what is it?” Peto asked solemnly. “There may be a scarf involved.”
“I don’t know,” Perrin shrugged. “Anything but pink, I guess.”
“Hmm,” Peto said, shaking his head. “Too vague an answer. Need something more specific. I think rocks. That’s a good color.”
“Rocks?” Mahrree exclaimed. “That’s not a color!”
But Perrin smiled as he looked at their walls. “Rocks is good. Lots of different shades. Tell them that,” he nodded to the message. “Make them think I’m a little crazy.”
Peto patted his hand. “But we all know you’re a lot crazy.”
Perrin had smiled at that. It was Peto’s way of bringing his father along. Mahrree talked, Shem hovered, Jaytsy hugged, and Peto ridiculed. The more he teased, the better Perrin knew he was that day. It was t
he days when Peto said nothing to him that Perrin realized he was standing at the edge of the pit again.
“Ooh, Father, here’s a good one,” Jaytsy glanced at her brother. “These girls at Upper School #6 in Pools want to know what your son is like.”
“I want that one!” said Peto, lunging for it and throwing Jaytsy the letter he was holding. “You can have the old weaving ladies.”
“No, I’ll take that one.” Perrin grinned as he reached for Jaytsy’s letter. “I’ll tell them he’s annoying, disrespectful, and skinnier than a rail.”
“Mmm,” Mahrree said. “Words to make any fourteen-year-old girl go, Eww!”
Peto stood up, put his hands on his thin waist, tried to puff up his scrawny frame, and said with mock seriousness, “I don’t appreciate your attitudes. I’m exactly what some woman out there wants. Paint a portrait of me. Send it to them. No one will ever remember my father, only me!” and he struck a regal pose.
His sister rolled her eyes while his parents laughed.
The stack of letters, which Peto assured his father many of the most popular ball players received, kept them amused well into the night. Mahrree had tears in her eyes when she finished one from a woman in Scrub that went on about the supposed merits of Colonel Shin. She had closed it by saying, “I’m sure such a wonderful man like you must also be cuddly as well.”
Mahrree had tears of laughter, that is. It was immediately her new nickname for him: Colonel Cuddly.
They had answered the letters, sending out three hundred responses over the past few weeks, but more kept pouring in. Perrin suggested having a woodcut made of a message: Thanks for the sentiment. Please don’t write anymore. Perrin Shin.
Mahrree said that was rude. There were only a few hundred more to still answer. But she didn’t know about the second full bag that arrived at the office yesterday. Shem just chuckled when he set it down in the corner.
Now Colonel Cuddly looked at his daughter on the floor on this significant morning. She was trying hard not to smirk at his feeble attempt at austerity for having been called Shin the Magnificent, a title bestowed upon him by cobblers in Winds.
“Your punishment, for saying those names again, is to get me my breakfast. Now!”
She leaped to her feet, saluted sloppily, and ran to the kitchen.
To Peto in his doorway, Perrin said, “We leave in an hour.”
“Then wake me in fifty minutes,” Peto said and shut his door.
Mahrree started up the stairs, “I’ll make sure your dress uniform ready, Your Highness.”
Perrin grumbled at her, but winked.
And then he was looking out the front windows, all alone on the sofa. The sun would soon be rising. He leaned back and released a sigh that had been building all night.
It was coming. He felt it a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t know how to tell Mahrree. She would’ve thought his paranoia was returning, and occasionally he wondered if that might not be true. It wasn’t as if he was perfectly cured; he knew that he’d never be. A couple of times each week he sat up gasping, but he could deal with it now. He breathed and prayed and concentrated to send it away again. After about only an hour he’d fall back asleep. Those interruptions felt were mild compared to what he used to experience.
But he knew this feeling was different. It was as if he was being warned by Someone else.
Brillen’s visit last night had been what he needed to validate his suspicions. Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Karna had come by the house to see the family since they’d be attending the Remembrance Ceremony this morning. While Mahrree and Brillen’s wife got acquainted in the gathering room, Perrin walked Brillen out to the back garden so they could talk.
“Colonel Shin—Perrin,” he corrected himself when his former commander scowled good-naturedly at him. “You look good. Better than good!” Brillen smiled at him, but only briefly.
Perrin knew his knitted brow expression all too well. “What is it, Brillen? You know I’ll get it out of you eventually, so let’s just make this easier for both of us. Let’s pretend I’ve already cajoled, teased, and even threatened you to the point that you break down and give me the bad news you’re dreading to say.”
Brillen chuckled, his eyes pained. There really was no more time to delay. “Perrin, the Guarders are back. And they may be looking to stay. Scouts from Quake went on a surveillance ride to Moorland and discovered that houses nearest the forests were occupied. Major Fadh sent me an urgent message yesterday wanting to make sure you knew. You’re most likely to get hit first, since you’re the closest. But both of our forts are ready to assist in any way. I’m sure Major Yordin at Mountseen will offer assistance as well. If you need extra men, or supplies, or leadership—”
“I appreciate that,” Perrin cut him off, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But I’m sure we can handle it.”
Brillen shook his head. “If anything happens to you, half of Idumea would demand the execution of Cush, Mal and the Administrators, I’m sure. Even we hear the stories about you. The Compassionate Colonel. The Colonel Who Cares,” he winced at the titles. “People in Rivers stop me on the road to ask questions about you. You’re more popular than that kickball player, whatever his name is. My niece has his name written all over her school slates.”
Perrin chuckled and squeezed his shoulder. “It’s good to know I still have a few friends.”
“Perrin, you’ve got more than a ‘few friends.’ You’ve got the world!”
As Perrin sat this morning on the sofa thinking about Karna’s gleaming evaluation, he knew it didn’t matter how many friends he had: the Administrators couldn’t be happy about the citizens fawning over him. The fact that he hadn’t received any personal communication from the garrison for the past season seemed telling. Captain Thorne had been distant for the past week, thanks to Shem, so Perrin didn’t know what Thorne’s father or grandfather were thinking.
But Perrin knew what he was thinking. Whoever was in charge of sending cats to watch the injured falcon had now called in the mountain lions. He felt as if they were slowly closing in, surrounding him, waiting for the ideal moment to strike.
“They believe I’m still trapped helplessly in the barn,” he whispered to the dawn. “But recently Shem relayed to me a most brilliant battle, carried out in secret. A victim that was surprised, but still overpowered the stalker and rendered him temporarily impotent.” He sniggered in satisfaction.
“So,” he announced quietly to the growing light, “if even my daughter can fight her way out of a barn, surely I can too.”
His next thought was, Why should there even be a ‘barn’?
He got up from the sofa and walked into his study. Instead of taking the seat behind the desk, he sat down in the chair across from it where he could view his bookshelves crammed with books, rolls of old maps, parchments . . . maps—
“There shouldn’t be a ‘barn’,” he whispered. “As long as it exists, others can be imprisoned. So how does one bring down the barn? No, scratch that. How do I bring down the barn?”
A twisting knot of anticipation formed in his chest and radiated, hot and prickly, down his arms. He knew what that meant. He’d felt it before on the rare occasions he was about to embark on a completely different way of thinking, or do something that was about to change the course of his life. He felt it when he was tutored by Hogal when he was eighteen, again when he was twenty-eight and learned Edge would be getting its first fort, and once more at the moment Mahrree Peto first came into view. That sense of significant excitement had come to him a few times since, but what he felt right now was more powerful than ever before.
“I bring down that barn. Correct?” He looked to the ceiling for confirmation.
His heartbeat increased.
He nodded. “So . . . who’s in control of that barn? That’s easy: Nicko Mal, Aldwyn Cush, and Qayin Thorne. But . . . there are also the Guarders. And in the barn, they are—oh, forget the analogy.”
He folde
d his arms, sat back in the chair, and stared at the shelves.
“There are actually two enemies—the Guarders, and my three little friends in Idumea. Both need to be brought down . . . but who should go first? It’s all about power,” he decided.
He glanced up again for confirmation, nodded once, then tapped a finger on his lips.
“Power to . . . create fear? Control fear? Manipulate it? Or maybe,” he leaned forward, “it’s all of it, isn’t it? Fear controls people, keeps them confined. So, eliminate the fear and you free the people. I overcame my fear of my dreams, my fear of the Refuser—”
His voice trembled briefly, still overwhelmed, but not because of what he felt from the Refuser, but from the memory of how the Creator rescued him.
It was the Creator who pulled him from the barn.
It was important to always remember that.
“Dear Creator, tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
He sat quietly for another minute, then slowly nodded.
“You already have, haven’t you? If I eliminate one threat, the other will fall on its own, won’t it? The army and Administrators function primarily to protect us from the Guarders. If there are no more Guarders, then the army becomes nothing more than a peace-keeping force. The politics of it all ends.”
He began to grin.
“Cush and Thorne would be bored silly! Mal would . . . I’m not sure what he’d do, but if the people began to feel a sense of freedom, then . . . Mal just might find himself out of a job. Who needs a controlling protector when there’s nothing left to protect them from? Suddenly there were would be options, possibilities. Opportunities to climb over the walls, and—”
He was grinning broadly now.
“—head into the forests!”
His cheeks began to hurt from the width of his planning.
“That’s it! Obliterate that stupid barn! Let everyone out!” He gazed eagerly at the rolls of maps on his shelf. “And then . . . and then, I could do some amazing things for some remarkable people. Perhaps the army could create a new occupation. Those going exploring may need some guards.”
He sat back, closed his eyes, and let the prospect wash over him until he worried that he might drown in the exhilaration of it all.
Clanging in the kitchen—likely a dropped pot—signaled that a mess was occurring and that Jaytsy was nearly finished cooking, pulling him back to the present. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.
“So, what has to happen first?” he asked the ceiling.
Immediately he knew. Karna had told him last night that one enemy was congregating, just ten miles away from his home. Three other commanders would be willing to help—
That was more than one thousand soldiers.
“Eliminate one, then the other will also fall. Then, everything in the world changes.” He looked to the ceiling and smiled. “That’s what you’ve been trying to teach me, isn’t it? It’s not about revenge. It’s not about changing things for me. It’s about changing things for everyone. That’s why I’m finally getting it now, because my primary target has just taken up residence down the road. How convenient. So, when do You want me to begin changing the world?”
He listened for an answer.
Another pot fell in the kitchen. Jaytsy called out, “Breakfast’s ready!”
Peto’s voice came from his bedroom, muffled, “Is it edible?”
“Peto, you’d think a boot’s edible,” Jaytsy snapped back.
“Oh, grand,” Peto whined loudly. “She’s mistaken my boots for the oatmeal again. Father, I have to go barefoot today—”
But Perrin didn’t answer. He was staring at the ceiling, his eyebrows up in surprise.
Obediently he threw a salute to the highest general he knew.