Stormwarden Page 26

  * * *

  Midwinter's eve came, marked by austere celebration at the cabin. For hours Jaric stared into the fine, smokeless flames of candles made from bees' wax, brought out specially for the occasion. If ever he had known such beauty in the past, his mind could not recall it. Silent with reflection, the boy sipped mulled wine fresh from the heat of the fire, unaware the forester studied him intently in return.

  The shirts which had clothed an unsteady convalescent last autumn now fell without slack from shoulders grown broad with new muscle. Telemark noted the change but offered no comment. Sturdy and self-reliant as Jaric had become, and resilient as his outlook seemed, the fact he could recall no memory of his past lay like a shadow upon his young heart. Deprived of any knowledge of his origins, the boy lived like a man haunted by ghosts. Every commitment became a risk; each achievement, a footing built on sand.

  But midwinter was a poor time to dwell upon somber thoughts. "Come to the shed," said the forester, a glint in his blue eyes. "I have something to show you." He rose and tossed Jaric a cloak from the peg by the back door and the boy followed him out into the night.

  Telemark unbolted the shed door, kicked the snow clear of the sill and tugged the heavy panel open. Jaric waited while the forester pulled a striker from his pocket and lit the candle in the near wall bracket. The flame grew, hesitant in the draft. By its first unsteady light, the boy saw a gleam of new metal on the worktable. He exclaimed and moved closer. There, still shiny from the forge, stood a full set of traps, laid out in Telemark's habitually neat array. Speechless, he turned and faced the forester.

  Telemark picked a stray thread from his sleeve, embarrassed by the intensity of the boy's gaze. "I made spares during the time I was laid up. And I was right to do so, it would seem. You know enough now that we can keep two lines of remote traps going. Are you willing?"

  Jaric reached out, traced the sharpened jaws of an ice otter snare with tentative fingers. He disliked killing animals; like him, they ran unknowing to their fate. But Telemark was never callous with his craft. He took only what he needed, cleanly and well, and never demanded more for the sake of greed. The forest was his livelihood, also his only love. Even with no past experience from which to draw conclusions, Jaric understood he might never know a better friend. The compassion and the trust represented by the forester's gesture touched him deeply. For a moment he could not answer. Yet the expression on his young face told the forester far more than any word.

  The boy would accept the responsibility he had earned. By springtime, he perhaps would have bagged enough pelts to purchase a decent sword and knife. And certain Jaric's destiny did not lie with him in Seitforest, Telemark prayed silently that the boy would have time and the chance to finish the learning he had begun.

  * * *

  A month passed, the forest peaceful under winter's mantle of snow. A fortnight's distance on foot from Telemark's cabin, Jaric settled with his feet to the embers of his campfire. Tired from an arduous day tending traplines and satiated by a meal of stewed rabbit, he leaned back against the trunk of a gnarled old beech while the sky changed from pale violet to the heavy indigo of dusk. The expedition had gone well. The drag-sleigh lay piled high with pelts, including several from the rare six-legged ice otter, whose highly prized fur was beautifully mottled in silver and black. Telemark would be pleased. But morning was soon enough to contemplate the trip back to main camp; for now, Jaric delighted in his evening alone.

  Here as nowhere else he felt at peace with himself. Seitforest took on an austere beauty all its own in the dead of winter. Its law was harsh but fair and its silence made no demands upon a troubled spirit. For competently as Jaric managed the responsibilities of his traplines, the gap in his memory tormented him, leaving a hollow of emptiness at the core of his being no achievement could erase. He felt as malleable as soft clay, fitting the mold of Telemark's life, but owning no shape of his own. Jaric had hammered that mental barrier with questions until his head ached with no success. His past remained obscured until even Telemark ceased promising that time would restore the loss.

  The boy picked a stick off his woodpile, jabbing at the embers of the fire. Sparks flurried skyward, bright and brief as the blossoms of the night-flower vine, which opened but one hour at eventide and wilted immediately thereafter. The image stopped the breath in Jaric's throat. His fingers tightened until bark bit roughly into his palms. Where had he seen such flowers, and when? By the time he had regained awareness after his accident, frost had already withered the greenery in Seitforest.

  Jaric shivered. Suddenly inexplicably dizzy, he filled his lungs with icy pine-scented air, but the moment of disorientation lingered. Gooseflesh prickled his arms though he was not cold and his ears rang with a strange singing note like nothing he had ever experienced.

  A log settled, scattered embers into the snow with a sharp hiss of steam. Jaric started. He rubbed his sleeves, driving away the chills with self-deprecating logic, until a glance at the fire set them off once more. In the bright heart of the flames he again beheld the face of the woman who had guided his search the night of Telemark's injury. Her black hair was bound by a circlet of woven myrtle; the delicately colored blossoms matched her blue eyes. Since no such vines could possibly be in bloom at midwinter, Jaric knew she must be an enchantress. Her beauty left him utterly confused.

  She spoke, and her voice rang oddly inside his head, as if her message originated many leagues distant. "Kerainson Jaric, look upon me and know my face, for I shall return to you this night in a dream. I offer you full memory of the past you have lost; but in exchange I must also demand a price."

  Her image wavered and began to fade.

  Frantic to know more, Jaric shouted, "What price?"

  But his words echoed across the empty forest unanswered and the fire burned as before. Jaric clenched his fists until his knuckles pressed as bloodless as old ivory against his stained leather leggings. The girl's mysterious promise made him blaze with impatience and her unearthly beauty inflamed his mind. Wracked by frustration too intense for expression, the boy wrapped his arms around his knees and stared restlessly at the sky. Stars glittered like chipped ice through silhouetted branches and somewhere above the thickets to the north an owl hooted mournfully. Seitforest remained unchanged in the winter darkness, except that the peace which Jaric found in evening solitude was now irreparably destroyed. Miserable and alone, he threw another log on the fire then bundled his cloak tightly around his body. He diverted the anger he could not express into the motion. Yet no human effort could lift the chill the enchantress had seated in his heart.

  * * *

  Wind arose in the night, pouring icy drafts through the patched canvas of the lean-to's meager shelter. Jaric curled like a cat in his furs, sleepless and tense. With bitter irony he wondered whether the enchantress' sending had been nothing better than an illusion born of his own unanswered needs. His disappointment was so intense that the enchantress' second sending came upon him unnoticed. One moment he lay with his head pillowed in the rigid crook of his arm. The next, his eyes closed and he fell into relaxed sleep.

  * * *

  Jaric dreamed he stood in the center of a twilit clearing. The air was clean and mild, and grasses flowered under his boots. The wintry gloom of Seitforest stood replaced by a towering ring of cedars whose age and majesty held no comparison to any woodland known to mortals. At once the boy knew he beheld a place beyond the boundaries of time, and there the enchantress chose to meet him.

  It never occurred to him to feel afraid. "You were long in coming to me," he accused as she stepped into view between the trees.

  Her shift glimmered white in the gloom, falling in graceful curves over her slender body. Although the glade remained eerily still, her presence reminded Jaric of music and torchlight and the rustle of fine silk on a midsummer's night. The associations arose unbidden, left him uncertain and confused, for the memories seemed those of a stranger.

  "No." The enchantr
ess touched his hand with small warm fingers. Jaric found her nearness disorienting. She gazed deeply into his eyes and spoke as though she shared his most private thoughts. "The memory is your own, Jaric. You grew up at Morbrith Keep. The Earl who rules there often guested great ladies in his hall."

  Jaric felt his chest constrict. He forced himself to speak. "Earlier you mentioned there would be a price for my past."

  Although the enchantress was a woman grown, a look of uncertainty crossed her features, as if a child suddenly gazed out at him through wide blue eyes. She glanced down, but not quickly enough to hide a fleeting expression of sorrow. Jaric guessed, after the open longing in his tone, that she already knew what his answer would be. Whatever her terms, he would accept; if he did not, the desperation, the loss and the question of his own identity would eventually drive him mad. It was no fair choice she offered; that she well understood, and the fact pained her. She looked down as if fascinated by the flowers at her feet.

  But her discomfort was not great enough to make her lift the restraint she had placed upon him. "The price is this: you will cross the Furlains at the earliest possible opportunity. When you reach the coast and the town of Mearren Ard, your fate will pass into the hands of another more powerful than I."

  The enchantress looked up, her expression honestly distressed. "Jaric, I swear by my life. The destiny which awaits you is of crucial concern to those who safeguard the people of Keithland. Anskiere of Elrinfaer is wiser than any but the Vaere. He would not ask your service lightly."

  But neither names nor the girl's entreaty held meaning to one who had no past loyalties to bind him. Jaric's lips thinned, a look entirely alien to the frightened boy who had once fled Morbrith Keep on a stolen horse. "I accept," he said flatly.

  Although the enchantress had won the concession desired by the Vaere, the victory was bitter. Jaric's decision arose from no feeling of compassion for Anskiere, nor for humanity's endangered existence. He consented only to gain knowledge of his birthright; and better than any, Taen knew the consequences were heavier than he could possibly imagine.

  * * *

  Telemark tossed down his polishing rag, hung the last kettle on its hook in the pantry, and succumbed at last to restlessness. Jaric was a week overdue. Unwilling to admit the depth of his concern, the forester paced the cabin's confines, searching for any lingering trace of untidiness; but he had cleaned, polished and mended every belonging he owned twice over since his own return several days ago. No more loose ends remained to distract him.

  He sighed and crossed to the window. Twilight settled over Seitforest, the gloom beneath the beeches all stillness and indigo shadows between the high crests of the drifts. With midwinter past, the snowfall lay deepest, before the first thaw swelled the stream beds. There had been no severe storms of late; already the sun shone warmer in the afternoons, offering easy weather for travel, even with a loaded drag-sleigh. The trapline Jaric covered had been set over mild terrain, far from any traveled route where outlaws might lurk. The boy should not have been delayed.

  Telemark left the window to pace once again, irritated by his own vulnerability. In all other matters he had learned to be fatalistic. The solitary life of the forest suited him; he had no need of companionship. Yet somehow Jaric's earnest desire to excel and the soul-searching depths of his silences had captured more than the forester's sympathy. Telemark roamed past the hearth for the fiftieth time that day; perhaps it was the fact that the boy carried the terrible mark of destiny that had caused him to bestow every protection in his power, even for the brief space of a winter. Few men were unlucky enough to be the focus of a sorcerers' dispute, far less stand noticed by Llondian prophecy. And Jaric was so very human. It was impossible for any man with sensitivity not to be moved by his plight.

  Telemark paused again by the window. Night deepened over the forest and the trees bulked black and twisted beneath a thin sliver of moon. To the untrained eye nothing seemed amiss. But something in the shadows along the path beyond the shed caught Telemark's attention. His fingers tensed on the window frame. He looked more carefully and saw the faintest suggestion of movement. Impatience drove him to act before logic could restrain him.

  Telemark ran to the door. He snatched the lantern from its peg, cursing the tremble in his hand as he fumbled for the striker. The first spark missed the wick entirely. The second caught. Without bothering to pull on a cloak, Telemark let himself out into the icy cold of the night.

  The lantern cast arrows of light between trees limned by the flash and sparkle of hoar frost. Dazzled after the dimness of the cabin, Telemark squinted, unable to tell whether anything moved on the path. Worry made him stubborn. He refused to consider the idea he might have been mistaken.

  "Jaric?" The word died on the air without echo, leaving silence.

  Telemark lowered the lantern, overwhelmed by disappointment. He reached for the latch on the cabin door. But before he could let himself in, he picked up the sound he had strained to hear through five uneventful days; a sharp ring as the drag-sleigh's runners scraped across the rock by the bend in the path.

  "Jaric!" Telemark whirled and crossed the clearing at a run.

  The lantern swung, jounced by his stride, and by its flickering light he saw the boy stumble out of the woods, towing a full load of pelts. Nothing appeared to be wrong. Yet as Telemark drew nearer he saw that Jaric, who was usually fanatically neat, looked raffish and unkempt. His cheeks were unshaven. Dark circles ringed eyes which contained a poignant and painful awareness.

  "Jaric, what happened?" The forester set the lantern on a stump. He caught the boy in a fierce embrace, as if the solid feel of him might reassure the feeling of foreboding which had plagued him week long.

  Jaric clung with a desperate grip, but after a moment straightened up. "I know who I am," he said. The dull edge of resentment in his tone raised the hairs on Telemark's neck. Memory of the Llondel's vision and of the boy's inexplicable destiny gave the man a powerful urge to weep. Instead he grabbed the lantern and gestured back toward the cabin. "Let's go home. You can talk later."

  Jaric drew a heavy breath. He leaned into the straps of the drag-sleigh as if the sweat-stained leather was all that held him bound to the earth. "I have a debt, also," he announced.

  And Telemark suddenly understood why the boy's step was so heavy. It appeared the fate foretold by the Llondel demon had at last overtaken him.

  The forester walked at the boy's side, forcing himself to remain calm. "The tale can wait," he said, sensing reluctance behind Jaric's need to talk.

  They stopped together by the cabin's door stoop. Telemark hooked the lantern on a bracket overhead and bent briskly over the drag-sleigh. The lashings had been tied with painful perfection, as if Jaric had tried to negate the inevitability of his future through single-minded devotion to his present craft. The pelts were expertly dressed, not a hair pressed against the grain during packing, and the axe blade gleamed, newly sharpened and oiled to prevent rust.

  The boy and I are much alike, Telemark thought, and suddenly bit his lip as he realized how deeply his influence had rooted. Jaric had possessed no past and no self-image except what example his healer had provided him. Now, such a meager measure of stability was all the boy had to stave off the devastation of utter upheaval; the reckoning meted out when Jaric first entered Seitforest had been cruel but just. Before his accident, the boy had been singularly unfit to survive.

  With the gentleness he would use to soothe a wounded animal, Telemark spoke. "I knew all along you would not be staying here. But how and when you leave is your choice alone. Until then this cabin is your home." He forced himself to concentrate on the untying of knots as Jaric drew a shaking breath that came very close to a sob.

  At that Telemark could not help but look up. Tears streaked Jaric's face in the yellow glare of the lantern. Behind the boy's flooded eyes, Telemark saw agonized self-awareness and the just pride of accomplishment earned through the hardships of the winter woods.
But undermining such knowledge lay a hunted, desperate self-doubt, as if some blight from early childhood had arisen to haunt the grown man. For suddenly there seemed very little of the boy left in the person who stood silent and determined at the forester's shoulder.

  Torn by unbearable sympathy, Telemark could restrain his inquiry no longer. "How much did you learn?"

  Jaric bent and began to loosen the lines with mechanical practicality. "Nearly everything. I know where I grew up and the names of the parents who bore me. I know I am not Kerain's true son, but the get of a sorcerer." He paused, unwilling to mention any name, and seemingly also unwilling to accept it. "That is the reason I left Morbrith Keep, where I was raised. But I know nothing of how or why I came to leave. Nor do I know why I am going; only that I must go."

  His fingers froze on the knots. He looked up, meeting Telemark's gaze squarely for the first time since his return. And the forester saw he lived in horror of discovering what other surprises might lurk behind those memories still denied him.

  But even Telemark's keen intuition could not guess the full truth; that Jaric's own mother had almost certainly tried to kill him in the very hour of his birth. The other children of the Smith's Guild had never allowed the boy to forget the fact. Kerain's account of his betrothed's crime lay inscribed in the records of Morbrith. As a scribe's apprentice, Jaric had checked the registry for himself and found in the cold words of the Earl's justice the transcription of testimony alongside the entry which sentenced an innocent man to hang.

  The child Kerainson Jaric had grown to manhood without ever coming to terms with the horror born of his mother's rejection. Now posed tenuously at the edge of his first recognition of self-worth, the dream-weaver who guarded the last lost threads of his past demanded that he renounce the only happiness he had ever known in exchange for service to a second sorcerer whose name was linked with four thousand deaths. Pinned between the self-discovery learned under Telemark's guidance and a life-long feeling of inadequacy Jaric struggled, inwardly deafened by overpowering conflict.