JESSAN - A TALE OF WIZARDRY Chapter 13
Copyright 2006 Trewin Greenaway All Rights Reserved
To learn more about me and the genesis of this tale, visit my website http://www.cronnex.com/ .
I hope to post a new chapter every Saturday. If you're enjoying the story, do let me know!
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Chapter 13
Alfrund walked me to Grysta's door, but left me on the doorstep with a kiss. I had expected this - Fendal had given him a look when we emerged from his living place that, quiet as it was, spoke volumes. And if Alfrund and I were soon to sail to Pharros, Fendal deserved all the time alone with him he could get.
Even so, to be left after our meeting with Orien gave me a pang in the heart. But I remembered the volume in my vest, touched it, and felt better. I went into the house and up the stairs to my room, where I laid on the bed, those of our purchases I had carried home with me.
Before I could do more, Grysta came to the stairwell and summoned me down to supper. When I entered the kitchen, I found Grysta, herself, bent over a cauldron of fragrant fish stew, and Onna laying the table. When she saw my new vest she exclaimed with delight and begged to try it on. I slid it off and passed it to her, knowing the book was safely on my bed. Onna slipped into the vest and being almost as slender as I, made quite a fair appearance in it, as even Grysta admitted. So I gave Onna leave to wear it for the evening, which delighted her very much.
When the meal came to table, we sat down on our stools to eat, Onna coming last, since she had to lift the now empty cauldron out of the flames and set it on the side of the hearth to cool for scrubbing. As she came to the table, for what reason only the Sacred Forces will ever know, she put her hand into one of the pockets of the vest. Then, with a puzzled look, she drew out and examined what she had found there.
My heart sank. It was my undergarment, forgotten since Telo had handed it to me and I had stowed it away. Fortunately, she was standing behind Grysta, who, already bent over her bowl, was busy eating. Onna held the garment up on the tip of one finger and feigned astonishment. "Jessan!" she silently mouthed and, with her other hand, wagged her finger at me sternly.
Yet another time that day I found myself scarlet. "Onna!" I mouthed back, nervously casting an eye at Grysta, and then through gritted teeth, "Please!"
"I hope at least they're yours!" she said quite out loud, as she shoved them back into the vest and came and settled on her stool. Grysta glanced at her quizzically, but said nothing, nor did she later when, periodically, Onna and I would burst into giggles while eating our supper.
It was customary for Grysta, who saw little of me during the day, to ask about what I had been about, but this conversation ended on the day before. She knew very well what I had been up to that day, and did not wish to talk about it in the presence of Onna.
This night, however, studiously keeping my eye from catching hers, I told Grysta about Alfrund and my trip to the market and most of what we had purchased and where. Grysta, who despite her slight size, had a good appetite, kept her eyes on her spoon, but nodded as I spoke to show that she was listening. I dared mention that the whole town was talking about nothing else but the sudden reappearance of Sondaram.
Grysta lifted her head and gave me a sharp look. "I don't doubt it," she said, "although to what purpose I don't know, since the soldiers prevent anyone from climbing the hill to see it."
"The fishermen can see it clearly from the sea," Onna said, "and they say it sparkles on its cliff as if built entirely of precious stones."
"Yes, and no doubt they also believe that the floors within are paved with ginger cakes," Grysta tartly replied. "If a great narwhal emerged from the ocean depths and swam beside them, their teeth would still be chattering with fear. But let something of far greater omen appear on land and all they can do is stare with their hearts aflutter."
Onna then did catch my eye, conveying in a glance that if she had been offered the opportunity, she would have happily reacted the same way.
I smiled. I did wish that Onna knew who I was, because I was tired of deceiving her and, even more, I wanted very much to ask Grysta some questions. I often had time with Onna alone but almost never with Grysta, whose day was full of constant demand for her services.
As it happened, though, this evening Onna, who usually slept in a small room adjoining the kitchen, had been given leave to spend the night at home. She had a new baby brother she greatly wished to see.
This I found out when Grysta stopped the table talk by telling Onna to finish up her soup and do her chores, or she'd have no time left when she went home for anything but sleep. "And," she added shortly, "I expect to find you here when I come down the stairs in the morning, with the fire started and the floor tiles scrubbed."
Onna gave me another look, but dutifully got up and began gathering the soup bowls for the washing pan. I rose myself and carried the slops out for her, tossing them into the darkness. I returned to the kitchen just in time to bid her a good night as she hurried out, her arms clutching the vest tightly to her.
"I may never wear that vest again," I said to Grysta.
She smiled but shook her head. "Onna is honest to a fault. You touched her vanity, which little does, not in this house. You were good to let her wear it."
"I've grown quite fond of her," I answered, "and see why you have, too. She's anxious to learn, skilled at what she does, and would be observant to a fault were she not so sweetly tempered."
Grysta glanced at me. "Yes, Onna misses little," she said. "I hope you haven't revealed anything about yourself to her."
"She's happy to think I'm Alfrund's apprentice," I answered, "although she clearly knows more about him than I do."
Grysta snorted. "You've hardly hidden the subject of your conversations with him. Do you even know how he practices his trade?"
I blushed and shook my head. "I don't even know whether to call it a 'trade' or an 'art.'"
"That's a different matter," Grysta said. "A magician, for instance, professes an art, not a trade, because the power he exercises comes from study, not from handwork. Whereas a leathersmith studies not at all except through observing his master cut and sew.
"Healing, however, is both an art and a trade. Like magic, it requires mastery of what is called natural logic, knowing the inner connections that bind the things of this world together, the way verbal logic construes words into argument."
"Oh!" I said. "As where extract of bindle has strong affinity with metal of birius, although one is a plant and the other smelted from a mineral?"
Grysta was taken aback. "Alfrund has already taught you that?" she asked.
"No," I answered. "Alfrund hasn't had time to teach me much of anything. But I noticed this when I examined them alone, and confirmed it when I held them in my hand together. In spirit, they were brother and sister."
Grysta sighed and shook her head. "If I had brought you up," she said, "I would now be your apprentice. You frighten me, Jessan."
"Grysta!" I cried. "Everyone says that. I hate it! If I become someone to inspire fear, it will be because everyone keeps pushing me to be so. It's as if I could raise my hands like so and cry 'flash, lightning, flash!' and a bolt would strike down from the sky."
Even as I did this, drawn perhaps by my burst of anger, a sense of force surged from my body. Outside the house came a flash of light so brilliant that it flooded through the windows and momentarily blinded us. At the same time we were deafened by what sounded like the heavens being torn asunder.
I turned white as a sheet and closed my eyes. Orien's admonition that perhaps I should learn to fear myself came immediately into my mind. I seized one hand with the other and clutched them together. "I don't want this!" I cried.
Grysta reached over and pried one hand free and held it in her soft, warm one. My own felt cold as ice.
"Jessan, Jessan," she said softly. "No one gets to choose their doom. It's given to you, and you must do your best with it. Yes, yours is an especially hard one, but mostly because you live among those who have no way to share it. You're like a boy who has been raised by sheep and sent to live among wolves. If you keep insisting you're only a sheep, you'll end up as nothing but a meal."
I squeezed her hand and sighed. "That's the best explanation of my plight I've heard so far," I said. "Perhaps because in it I'm the boy, not one of the wolves."
I put my free elbow on the table and rested my head in my hand, continuing to hold hers with my other. "Grysta," I asked, "do you remember the day when I was born?"
"No," Grysta replied, "because if you were born, I wasn't there to see it. But I do remember the exact day that I found you. It was, as you already know, this month, the month of holy Lytha, and the day was the 12th. I was sound asleep in my bed when a voice woke me. 'Grysta,' it said, 'make haste to Sondaram, for a babe cries for you there.'
"Well! I've never been one to tipple at my own potions, so I knew at once that this was a serious business! Of course, I was still too mazy from sleep to yet know what. Even so, I was cautious enough to take a masked lantern with me, one that would do no more than throw some light beneath my feet. It wouldn't have been wise to signal the sentries at the fort that someone was climbing up to the ruins of Sondaram in the middle of the night!
"Now, even as a girl I knew those ruins like the back of my hand, and the darkness made no difference. I was certain that my destination was the center of what was once the great hall. And, sure enough, when I reached that place, there you were, naked and unhappy, wailing away, surrounded by flickering blue light. I wrapped you up in a soft cloth and hugged you to me and you stopped crying at once. And, at that moment, your name came to me quite clearly: 'Jessan.'
"And so Jessan you became. A few weeks later I hired a mule and a boy to walk beside it, and brought you to the village where Peta and her blacksmith lived, for I knew I couldn't raise you here. I would have loved to, but it would've been sheer folly. It would have been only a matter of time before the Summoner sensed your presence, and all would have been over before it had even begun."
"The Summoner!" I said. "He was already here when I was born?" I suppose I should've said "when I arrived," but I didn't even like the thought of that.
"Oh, yes," Grysta answered. "You see, the babies always appear at one or the other of their two temple palaces, and yours are Wethrelad in the east, and Sondaram here in the west. And, at least to my knowledge, no humans can now reach Wethrelad, so it was bound to be here. The Unnameable One installed the Summoner here some years ago, with nothing to do but wait and find you, when you came."
I shivered. When I saw Grysta had noticed this, I explained, "Despite that I'm now skillful at avoiding his touch, the thought of it still fills me with disgust. And I suspect I'm not done with him yet, either - or, rather, he with me."
Grysta said nothing to this, which meant that she thought the same. We sat in a brooding silence for a bit, until I thought of something she had said earlier.
"When you said I knew nothing about how Alfrund practices his trade," I said, "that's but the half of it. I've never even seen him wear the herbalist's leaf-green robe. And since he has no home here, he can't come from Gedd. What's his story, and how does it intertwine with yours and mine?"
Grysta looked at me sternly. "That these questions only now occur to you despite all your time with Alfrund shows that you're at heart still too much a boy, taking what others give you without a thought."
My eyes filled with tears. "Don't scold me, Grysta," I said. "I got a good kick down that road when I learned of the existence of Fendal, and saw what he meant to Alfrund, and Alfrund to him. Take me this small distance further. It would shame me to ask Alfrund himself about what I should already know."
"Well," Grysta said gently, "I am your grandmother and I cannot bear to see you weep. So.... Alfrund is only five years older than you. At about your age he was just finishing his apprenticeship with a great master herbalist named Anisor, who, in turn, was well familiar with Orien.
"Now Orien and Anisor are part of what is called the Guardian Circle, a secret society of mages, healers, scholars, and alchemists, devoted to sustaining the memory of the Nithaial and to risk their lives to protect and nurture them when they next return.
"I'm a member of the Circle myself, although an outer ring of it. So when you appeared, I managed to get word of this to Anisor, whom I once knew well. He sent me a message saying that I should do nothing more for the time being, because there was no safer place for you to grow up than at the very end of the world.
"The danger would come, we both knew, when you reached the age of sixteen. That was when the Cronnex would reveal itself and, at the same time, your maturing process would greatly slow down."
She looked at me. "Has Orien told you that, should you survive your enemy, you will easily live as long as five hundred years? And that it will take you six or seven years to mature as much as a human does in one?"
I shook my head in astonishment. "No," I answered, "or if he did, I pushed it out of my mind immediately."
"This is so because you have an enormous amount to learn compared to any of us," she said, "and so your mind and body are kept in a growing state for an exceedingly long period of time. Get used to being sixteen, because you'll not appear as Alfrund does until he's an old man and I'm long gone to the Hallowed Halls."
She saw my eyes fill with tears again, and patted my hand. "That is your doom," she said. "Be careful of your heart, for to take a lover is to watch him grow old and die while you change little - a very painful thing for each of you. I'm glad that Alfrund is your twerë. You'll need many such to keep loneliness at bay. Take a lover, though, only after you spend a long time looking into your heart."
The flame that burned in the fat tallow candle in the center of the table began to gutter, and I feared that it would remind Grysta of the passing hours and send her off to bed. But, instead, she lit a wooden splinter with the candle's dying flame and sent me to the cupboard for another.
"I'm tired," she said, lighting it and tossing the splinter into the fireplace, "and I'm getting rather old for a two-candle night. But you deserve to have all this explained to you - both by Orien and by myself, since we have each seen and learned different things."
She took up my hand and continued. "So, after consultation with Orien, Anisor approached Alfrund and offered him membership in the Circle. In this, Anisor showed great insight, for Alfrund was, at seventeen, much too young to ordinarily be considered for initiation. Not to mention the fact that he's little given to gravity - and there could be no more serious business than what he was about to be asked to do. Still, that's what transpired, and well that it did so.
"Alfrund set aside his studies and left his home in the great city of Plæcenon to assume the trade of a wandering gatherer of herbs, collecting them in one part of the kingdom and selling them to healers and herbalists elsewhere. That allowed him to travel about without calling attention to himself, and make contact with those in the Circle without anyone being the wiser. For three years he did this, before being sent to Gedd to make contact with me."
"So he has known Fendal for all of... what? Several months?" I asked, suddenly confused.
"Five, in all, I think," answered Grysta, "and a very happy time it has been for him, too, after all those lonely years on the road. I grieve for him that it's now over. It's more than likely that he'll never be with Fendal again."
"Why does every twist of this tale turn to sadness," I cried. "Can't he come and be with Fendal after all this?"
"All this," Grysta echoed, "may take the rest of his life. Or simply take it, period. Haven't you yet guessed that? What's happening now is merely the quiet before the storm. And the clouds are gathering quickly. What you experienced on the road from your village to Gedd was but a gentle spring mist in comparison.
"Indeed, what is to come is beyond the capacity of anyone now living to imagine - even Orien, whose powers have greatly extended his years." She looked immeasurably sad. After a pause, she added in a quiet voice, "The greatest storm perhaps in the history of men."
"And I'm in the center of it," I said.
"And you're in the center of it," she repeated. She gave my hand a last squeeze, took a candle, and made her way to bed.
I was sleepy myself. But I drew the stool over to the fire and sat there, prodding at the coals with the poker and thinking. As I had listened to Grysta speak, I had felt a longing creep over me, which at first I thought was for Alfrund to come and be with me in bed. But it shaped itself differently, and soon I realized it was a desire to go back to Sondaram and bathe in the rushing current of power.
Orien had bade me not to, but Orien was my advisor, not my master. He was to be trusted, surely, but, when all was said and done, he was but a mortal, with a mortal's sense of what was possible and what not. I sat listening until I was sure Grysta was asleep. Then I got to my feet and slipped out into the night.