A
PICNIC BASKET OF VIPERS
They arrived at the encampment the following
afternoon. Alton made sure Dale went straight to Leese. The mender
pronounced the burn bad, but not as serious as it might have been
and proceeded to make a poultice for it. She also advised that Dale
spend the night with her for observation, but Dale’s protests were
so vociferous that Leese gave in after Estral promised to keep an
eye on the Rider.
Alton thought he
caught a muttered, “Stubborn Riders,” from Leese before she
returned to her tent.
Once Alton reached
the secondary encampment, he tended Night Hawk and then headed
straight to Tower of the Heavens to tell Merdigen about the
previous day’s adventures. By the time he finished, the mage was
pacing.
“This is exceedingly
alarming,” he said. “The part about the music is interesting and
even hopeful, but the rest?” He shook his head.
“What do you make of
it?” Alton asked.
“I haven’t the
faintest. This is beyond my experience. You saw no sign of
Haurris?”
“No, unless that was
his skeleton on the floor.”
Merdigen stopped in
his tracks and gazed thoughtfully into the dark upper reaches of
the tower. “No, I can’t see how. His corporeal self ought to have
been burned upon a pyre when he passed on. It’s what we do, and
what the keepers were instructed to do to us in the end. Unless . .
. unless his corporeal self existed long beyond the rest of us, and
even beyond the keepers. It’s not likely, but it’s not
inconceivable either.”
Alton yawned and his
stomach rumbled. It had been a long couple days.
“I need to consult
with the others,” Merdigen said. “And you need to get some food and
rest. Do not be concerned if I am not here next time you
visit.”
Alton did not need
much persuading to call it a day. He left the tower for the sharp
air outside, amazed to find afternoon had turned into evening. He
headed for the kitchen tent wondering in which tower the mages
would assemble. Of course it would only be seven of them since
Radiscar and Mad Leaf were cut off by the breach. There was a way
for them to circumvent the breach, but it required a lengthy
journey. He often wondered if it were an illusionary journey, or if
magical projections truly experienced the concepts of time,
distance, and danger. The mages seemed to think they could, and
that’s all that counted.
At the kitchen tent
he filled up on a couple of bowls of stew before returning to his
own tent. As he approached it, he was surprised to find the canvas
walls aglow with light and soft music being played within. When he
folded aside the flap, he discovered Estral sitting on one of his
campaign chairs, the lute on her lap, and a lamp at low burn on his
table.
“Hello,” she said as
he stepped in.
“Hello.”
“I hope you don’t
mind, but Dale’s tent was, er, rather busy.”
“Busy?” Alton
dropped into the chair across the table from her. “I thought you
were supposed to be keeping watch over her.”
Estral made a face.
“Her friend, Captain Wallace, is, um, taking care of
her.”
“Captain Wallace?”
Alton asked, perplexed. “Why would he
be taking care of her?”
“Her friend, Captain Wallace,” Estral
stressed.
Alton scratched his
head. “Friend?”
“More than a friend,
I daresay.”
“More than a ... ?
Ooh!” Alton’s cheeks warmed. How dense could he be? He had not seen
. . . had no idea.
“In fact,” Estral
said, “it was darn uncomfortable for me to stay there. Busy, like I
said. Usually they go to his cabin.”
Alton coughed. “I
see. Wallace? Really?” How had he been so unobservant?
Estral nodded. “I
didn’t know where else to go. If it’s a problem, I’ll
leave.”
“N-no. Don’t go out
into the cold. We could . . . we could talk.”
Estral plucked a
series of notes on her lute. “We could. What do you want to talk
about?”
“Well ... I—” Alton
fumbled about thinking hard for several moments, finally grabbing
something out of the air. “The lumber camp. You! I mean, I’d like
to hear more about that. When did you leave the lumber camp for
Selium?”
Estral stopped
playing and furrowed her brow. “When I was six. After an
accident.”
Alton groaned
inwardly at having managed to pick what was undoubtedly a painful
topic. “Karigan mentioned something about that once,” he began
hesitantly.
Estral appeared
unsurprised. “Yes. I had wandered onto the frozen edges of the
river and fell through the ice. I got real sick after, with a bad
ear infection. I suppose I’m lucky I suffered no worse thanks to
one of the men who saw me go in and pulled me out.”
Alton recalled
Karigan telling him the illness had destroyed the hearing in one of
Estral’s ears. So hard to believe when she was so fine a
musician.
“After that,” she
explained, “my parents agreed it was time for me to go to Selium to
live with my father. It was safer and more civilized and all that.
I’ve been there ever since. Well, that is, until now.”
“Do you miss it?” he
asked. “Selium?”
“Well, I’m not much
of a traveler—not at all like my father. I’m a homebody. So this
has been a bit of an adjustment for me, but a fascinating one.” She
smiled.
That smile left
Alton feeling much too warm. He glanced away. “Fascinating,
eh?”
“Very. It’s good to
leave behind all that is comfortable and known every so often. It
opens one’s mind to the wide world. You and Dale walking through
walls, for instance, is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever
seen.”
Alton often took for
granted how it must look to those without magical abilities. For
most people, it certainly was not an everyday occurrence. To his
surprise, Estral then commandeered the conversation, asking him
about stone working and how, as was the tradition in his clan, he’d
been schooled in stonecutting and masonry at a young age. He found
himself describing how a stonecutter could sense the grain of the
stone and how cutting against the grain could mean an imperfect
piece, and how a blacksmith was essential to the process because
someone had to keep the tools sharp.
He was flattered by
her interest in what he considered the mundane details of his life.
Her questions were intelligently framed and not too deeply probing.
She appeared to listen to his answers with her full
attention.
Suddenly he clamped
his mouth shut realizing he’d been talking a
lot. About himself. Had Karigan ever taken such an interest
in him, or was all the questioning by Estral simply something
minstrels were good at?
“What’s wrong?”
Estral asked.
“Nothing. We’ve—I’ve
just been going on and on.”
“It fills many
gaps,” Estral replied. “Karigan naturally did not tell me
everything about you.”
“You never did say,”
he began quietly, staring into the flame of the lamp, “how Karigan
regards me. I’d ... I’d like to know.” He needed to know, but now as his words hung in the
air between them, a sense of mortification crept over him that he
had even asked. That he’d asked Estral
of all people. But who else was there that knew Karigan as well as
she?
“I did tell you,”
Estral replied. “She cares very much for you.”
“I was hoping. I
mean . . .” Now Alton was boiling in his own skin. He looked down
at his hands, unable to meet Estral’s gaze. “I thought maybe there
was more.”
“When I last saw
Karigan, we talked about several things going on her life. Her
father, the young Rider she was training, and other matters she
told me in confidence and which, as her friend, I won’t betray. In
regard to you, she was confused and hurt, but it seemed to me she
cared strongly about retaining your friendship.”
Friendship. The word left a sour tang in his gut,
but he had to remember Estral had last seen Karigan before he’d
apologized. Before his letters.
An awkward silence
hung between the two of them. The tent walls rustled, sending
misshapen shadows rippling across the canvas. Somewhere in the
distance a soldier called out the hour of the watch.
“It’s late,” Estral
murmured. “I think I’d better leave.”
“What?”
“It’s getting late.
I’d best find someplace to stay for the night.”
“No,” Alton said too
sharply. “I mean, please don’t leave. Where would you
go?”
“I don’t know.
Leese’s maybe.”
“That’s all the way
to the main encampment and it’s very dark out.”
She raised an
eyebrow.
“You stay here
tonight,” he said. “I’ve got someplace else I can go.” He stood and
without another word, so she could not argue, he left his tent,
grateful for the cold of night bleeding away the heat burning
inside him. He inhaled deeply, surprised by the tautness of his
body. He scrubbed his face and strode rapidly for the
tower.
Once he was inside,
he found the tower chamber empty but illuminated by a soft glow.
Merdigen had already left to confer with the other mages. He could
be gone for days. Alton was relieved to be alone.
He busied himself by
preparing a fire in the big hearth, first laying down kindling,
then using flint and steel to ignite it. When a small flame
crackled to life, he blew on it to enlarge it, then threw in larger
sticks to build the blaze.
As he worked, he
thought about Estral Andovian sitting alone in his tent. She
awakened something in him that had been absent for a long while,
aroused a craving for her company, her attention, her touch, and it
was only growing. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, but it had been
too dangerous to stay. He could not trust himself. Could not trust
himself now not to flee the tower, run back to his tent, and
immerse himself in her presence, to quell the loneliness within
that he hadn’t recognized before.
Those letters he
wrote to Karigan must have been in reaction to this loneliness, but
her few replies had been circumspect, almost cool, which he’d found
frustrating, hurtful. If she wanted to be friends and nothing more,
why hadn’t she been plain and just said so?
He paused, leaning
against the mantel, considering, trying to imagine how he might
feel in her place. He’d been volatile. Would he have wanted to further incense someone already
burning with so much anger by telling him something he didn’t want
to hear? He’d put her in an impossible position. And truly, as
caught up in his own fantasy as he was, he’d found it inconceivable
she’d want anything less than a much deeper relationship with
him.
He shook his head
like a horse with a fly in its ear. Deluded by his own desires he’d
built castles of moonbeams. He’d mistaken her concern for their
friendship and readiness to forgive him as something more. He
laughed harshly and threw another stick onto the fire. Here he was
once more caught up in his own little world around which everyone
else revolved. How self-centered could he be? For all he knew,
there was someone else in her life now, someone he had not heard
about.
As he thought about
it, another man in Karigan’s life made perfect sense. He’d been
stupid not to see it, not to even think of it. She wanted to stay
friends with him, but feared telling him the full truth would anger
him. Especially because it involved another man. Who was she in
love with? One of their fellow Riders? A merchant? Who?
He stood there stock
still waiting for the eruption of his own fury, but to his
surprise, it did not come as it would have in the past. It just
wasn’t in him now. Maybe after all this time he was finally healing
from the venomous influence of Blackveil.
A tinge of jealousy
did burn inside, but it was subdued. He was more saddened by the
loss of what could have been between him and Karigan for he had
envisioned it well and in detail. Above all else, however, he was
amazed to discover he was ... relieved? Yes, relieved and free.
Karigan did not want him the way he had wanted her to want him, and
maybe he no longer wanted her that way either.
The revelation set
him free. And he liked it.
He had a good notion
of how he would use that freedom. The sizzle and pop of the
hearthfire became music, the strumming of a lute, perhaps, and in
the blaze he saw her face. Not Karigan’s, but Estral Andovian’s.
She stirred something deeper in him than Karigan ever
had.
But how free was he
to pursue Karigan’s friend—her best
friend?—a most sacred bond. He groaned thinking that his
interference could be like opening a picnic basket of
vipers.
He didn’t want to
turn Estral against him by seeming to wrong Karigan, yet Karigan
had made her decision, unvoiced as it might be. Somehow he’d have
to work around her. Karigan, after all, was not here. She was not
here to be hurt, nor had she made any effort to lay claim to him.
He was free to do as he wished and so was she. There should be no
reason for him to feel guilty about moving on, and one couldn’t
help to whom one was attracted. Still, he’d have to go carefully.
He’d—
“Hello.”
Alton jumped, heart
pounding. Standing there in the chamber with him just a few paces
away was not Merdigen or any of the other tower mages, not even
Dale. No, it was Estral Andovian clutching a blanket.