The Stone of Knowing Complete Set, page 51
“I have been assured that she is a charming old woman. Very proud of her son, too. As she should be.” Zornath flashed another smile at him.
Karevis said nothing, but a chill began to run down his spine as he pondered the possible implications of Rogandan soldiers tracking down his mother.
Zornath eyed him silently for a moment. “I have some very good news,” he announced. “Even you will think it is good news. Even you!”
His teeth appeared once again in a grimace that was probably intended as a smile. “Oh, I know what you think, my dear Commander. The opinion of your dear liaison is not enough to sway you. Oh, no!” He wagged a finger at Karevis and smiled conspiratorially.
“King Agon is planning to shower the people of Varas with his special favor. He desires to show the world the great wisdom of cooperating with Rogand instead of resisting. Your people must pay their taxes without complaint, of course. But they will be treated well. Very well, indeed. This truly is good news, is it not?”
Karevis frowned once more. He had no doubt there would be a sting in the tail of this sudden excess of Rogandan bounty. He just wasn’t clear about the specific direction it might take.
“You and your soldiers also have a special part to play, of course,” Zornath continued mildly.
Here it comes, thought Karevis.
“Lord Drettroth requires very little from the army of Varas. Very little, indeed. He asks only that you take your stand beside your Rogandan allies, defying the enemies of Agon, our mutual king.”
Zornath rose to his feet and drew himself to his full height. “You will fight at our side, and together we will crush the Arvenians!” he cried, his face alight and his fists pounding energetically down onto the table before him. Then he sat down once more, his eyes glowing.
“Never!” said Karevis fiercely, his face set hard like granite.
The mood of the Rogandan changed in an instant. Springing from his chair and planting both hands on the table, he thrust his face threateningly toward Karevis, a look of thunder on his brow.
“Do not imagine—even for an instant—my dear Commander, that you, or your pitiful little army, can hope to defy me in this.”
Karevis drew back in disgust from the stream of spittle that punctuated Zornath’s every word. The Rogandan simply leaned forward even further.
“Every one of your soldiers has left behind a sweetheart...a wife...a child. Perhaps even a mother.” He fixed Karevis with a nasty smile. “I care nothing for them!” He snapped his fingers dismissively. “Nothing! Their safety depends solely on your cooperation. Your enthusiastic cooperation. Think carefully, Commander. Think very carefully, indeed.”
The Rogandan again stood erect, looking down upon Karevis in disdain. “You are DISMISSED!” he roared.
Karevis remained in his seat and glared back at the Rogandan for as long as he dared. Then he rose to his feet and marched defiantly from the tent.
He was beaten, though, and he knew it. He thought of his frail and defenseless mother and began to tremble with suppressed rage. His stomach twisted mercilessly into knots inside of him.
It had always been obvious that foreign occupation would leave the ordinary citizens of Varas vulnerable, but he had stubbornly refused to dwell on that, telling himself he had enough troubles of his own to worry about. He could remain in denial no longer.
He knew that Zornath had about as much human feeling as a viper. He and his kind would not hesitate to trample the helpless women and children of Varas. They would do it eagerly, too, if offered half an opportunity.
Karevis and his entire army were caught in a trap, and the iron jaws were beginning to close tight.
What could he do? How could he find a way to halt this relentless slide into horror and despair?
Such questions had become all too familiar—they plagued him constantly throughout his waking hours. He’d found no answers before, and he could not see any way of escaping now.
12
“Why do you need to hide from the Rogandans, Thomas?”
Rubin’s question caught Thomas off guard. He had promised himself he would tell Rubin and Elena the truth about his situation, and he intended to do so. But he hadn’t been able to figure out how to broach the subject without bringing the stone into it.
“I was staying at a monastery in the mountains, and the Rogandans invaded it. I escaped in a boat, and they apparently decided they wouldn’t simply let me go.”
It was obvious to Thomas that Rubin was not entirely satisfied with his answer.
“Leave him alone, Father,” Elena chided. “We all have our secrets.”
Not for the first time, he wished he could see the expression on her face. But in the days he had stayed with them he’d never caught so much as a glimpse of it.
Later that afternoon Thomas squatted by the stream dressing a rabbit he had snared. Elena sat beside him scraping the skin from some vegetables she had picked from the small garden beside the cabin. She chatted away happily, telling him about a brightly colored bird she had seen recently.
Listening to her talk, he remembered her taciturn manner and strange tone of voice when he first met her.
“I like the sound of your voice,” he said.
She must have been taken aback by his compliment, because the flow of words dried up immediately.
“Thank you,” she eventually managed.
“When we first met, you sounded so gruff. And you hardly said a thing.”
She didn’t respond.
He hadn’t been with them long before he began to suspect that her manner of speaking was forced. Then one day he had surprised her talking to her father without any trace of the rough tones he was used to hearing. She had dropped the pretense after that.
None of them ever talked about it. He knew that Elena and her father had intentionally hidden themselves from the world. So he simply assumed she’d tried to make her voice as unattractive as her appearance to frighten off strangers.
Her father’s earlier question emboldened him to pose a question of his own. “Why are you and your father hiding in the forest?” he asked.
She lifted her head and seemed to study him for a while.
She finally responded. “People in our village misunderstood us—misunderstood me, that is. Some of them were very superstitious. I was accused of being a witch.”
Thomas remembered his own reaction when he first caught sight of her. It wasn’t difficult to imagine why the villagers had feared her. But her appearance truly was misleading. She might be unattractive, but there was nothing evil, or even frightening, about her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it.
“Father decided that I would never be safe until we went somewhere far from other people.”
“How did you come to be like...like you are?” he asked. His question was awkward and indelicate, and he instantly regretted asking it.
She didn’t seem to mind at all. “I was born the way I am,” she said without hesitation. “It didn’t become a problem until I started to grow up, though.”
“How old are you?”
She paused before answering. “Females dislike being asked that question. Has no one ever told you that?”
Her tone carried a hint of rebuke. He had no idea what to make of it. An obviously insensitive question hadn’t bothered her, but what seemed to him a straightforward query had gotten a reaction. How could anyone understand women?
She answered him anyway. “I’m probably a year or two older than you.”
That was a surprise. He had already guessed that she wasn’t as old as he’d first thought. But he’d still imagined her to be quite a bit older than he was himself.
That night as he lay in bed, he found himself thinking about her deformities. Her hunched back could not be hidden, but why was it necessary to conceal her face? Did she have a hook nose with warts on it? Did she have a mustache? On multiple occasions now he’d caught brief glimpses of her chin and the lower part of her cheek. Angry red splotches were always visible on her skin. Could it be leprosy? He shuddered. There was no sign of the disease on her hands, though. And the splotches did not always seem to be in the same location—they moved around. He didn’t think leprosy did that. Did she have some other kind of skin disease?
The more his imagination worked away at it, the more hideous the possibilities became. In the end he called a halt to his creativity. He knew that the reality couldn’t possibly match the runaway imaginings of his overactive mind.
Why was it so fascinating to dwell on the gruesome? He enjoyed a good ghost story around the campfire as much as anyone. Maybe it was only truly frightening if the horror was real. In this case he concluded that however monstrous Elena’s face might be, as a person she was quite agreeable. He felt very sorry for her.
A part of him still wanted to catch a glimpse of her face, dreadful though the sight might be. The fact that it was out of reach only made it all the more tantalizing.
He sighed. At least he had the decency to feel ashamed of himself for thinking about her in this way. He rolled over and tried to get to sleep.
Elena’s father gradually warmed up to Thomas, and it didn’t take long before Rubin seemed to very much appreciate having a male companion on hand. Thomas showed him how to make more effective snares, and he quickly became good at it.
Rubin already had a basic ability to ride, so Thomas attempted to teach him more about horses. He soon discovered, though, that mastery of that kind didn’t come naturally to the older man. With only a single horse between them, Thomas decided there was no pressing need to pass on such skills anyway.
Rubin in turn began to expand Thomas’s skills in building and maintaining dwellings. Thomas was already capable of carrying out small projects, as he had demonstrated following his contentious decision to rebuild the damaged barn for his father. But he still had much to learn. He could not readily account for the discrepancy between his incompetence as a laborer when rebuilding the wall of Arnost and his growing abilities in helping Rubin. He eventually decided that the difference mostly had to do with the overseer. Rubin showed considerable patience when Thomas made mistakes and openly expressed appreciation for his persistence as well as his growing aptitude. Thomas tried hard not to dwell for too long on the contrast between Rubin and his own father.
On a couple of occasions when roof repairs were required, Rubin was very glad to hand the task over to someone younger and more nimble than himself. Spending an hour or two working with Rubin became a regular feature of most days for Thomas.
Elena increasingly became part of his daily routine, too. As the days passed they often found themselves spending time together. She proved to be surprisingly good company.
“You’ve never told me about your mother,” he said on one occasion.
“She died when I was little—not even five years old. She died during childbirth, and the baby died, too. I barely remember her.”
“That must have been hard,” he said.
“It wasn’t so bad,” she replied. “My childhood was still a happy one. My father was kind, and he found ways of spending time with me, as well as working hard to provide for us. But what about your childhood?”
He told her about his parents, and his life in Arnost. He didn’t think there was a great deal to tell, but her gentle questioning gradually uncovered all manner of detail he wouldn’t otherwise have thought to offer. She expressed particular interest in his role as horse master for the king’s army, and more than once he had to remind himself not to bask unduly in her obvious admiration.
Over time they developed a pattern of spending time together each afternoon, wandering along the stream or sitting in a meadow talking. He learned a great deal about her life, first growing up in a town and later in the forest. She told him about the gradual process of alienation that caused them to flee to their hideaway. Whispers and little slights had gradually turned into open insults, accusations and finally threats. Thomas became angry on her behalf when he began to understand the full extent of everything she had been forced to endure so unfairly.
He in his turn told her about their flight from Arnost. He never referred to Brother Vangellis by name—the capture of his friend still felt too raw.
He shared nothing at all about Elbruhe. It seemed to him that it would be insensitive to describe his experiences with a normal girl, even one who spoke a different language and was therefore difficult to communicate with. He felt sorry for Elena and had no desire to make her uncomfortable.
“Are you happy here, Thomas?” she asked him one afternoon.
He had no need to consider his answer. “Yes,” he said without hesitation, “very happy.”
“Do you miss being around other people?”
He thought for a moment. “No,” he replied. “I need to hide, too, if I want to avoid the Rogandans. And it isn’t as if I’m entirely alone here.”
“No,” she agreed. “You’re not alone.”
The more he thought about it, the more it became clear to him that there was nowhere else he would rather be. Arnost had felt like home when his mother had been there. But it had changed for him in so many ways. No other place he had visited in his travels felt even vaguely like home. The monastery was the closest, but he was only ever there as a visitor, and as far as he knew the monastery had been completely destroyed by the Rogandans.
The truth was that as the days went by he felt increasingly detached from the outside world and from his previous life. Elbruhe had gradually slipped away from his conscious mind. He still thought of Brother Vangellis many times every day, but he knew there was no point in worrying about the monk when there was nothing useful to be achieved by it.
Elena became his constant companion, and it gradually became difficult for Thomas to remember what life had been like without her.
In spite of the many challenges she faced, she was calm, considerate, and unfailingly cheerful. He could not imagine why people had ever thought she was a witch. It was true that she was having an effect on him, but not because of any kind of spell she’d cast. Her impact was in no way evil. The monk had taught Thomas to fend for himself, and had begun to instill in him a new appreciation for the value of human life. Elena was helping him to recognize the beauty in a harsh and uncertain world, and to cheerfully embrace the simple joys that life had to offer.
Elena had not been crushed by the burdens of her life; somehow she had managed to rise above them. Bitterness had not taken root in her, and he often marveled at that.
Thomas had now been staying at the cabin for several weeks. On a number of occasions he found himself on the brink of telling Elena about the stone. But each time, for reasons he didn’t understand, he had decided against it.
When he slept he often dreamed of her. In his dreams she never wore a hood, but even so he never managed to see her features. They talked together, but never face to face. Whenever he looked directly at her, her face was turned away from him.
On one occasion he dreamed they were walking hand in hand by the stream. She chatted away merrily, and his heart felt light. After he woke, though, he felt uncomfortable in her presence for almost an entire day.
Finally, one night he dreamed that they were talking as usual, but this time he turned to her and found that she was facing him. The voice he heard was Elena’s, but the face he saw belonged to Elbruhe. He woke with a start to find himself drenched with sweat.
She rarely appeared in his dreams after that, and even then only for brief moments.
“Thomas, could you help me, please?” Elena called.
He joined her at the garden beside the little cabin where she was extending the borders of the cultivated patch.
“What’s the problem?”
“This rock is in the way. I’m not strong enough to move it.”
“Let me do it,” Thomas replied. He bent down and lifted it easily. “Where do you want it?”
“Anywhere out of the way,” she replied. “You’re so much stronger than me!” she added with a little laugh.
“It’s nothing,” said Thomas modestly. He dropped the rock beside a tree and shook the dirt from his hands. “Bye,” he said with a smile, and headed off into the trees.
“Where are you going?” she called after him.
“To the stream. I want to do some fishing.”
“May I join you?”
“Of course,” he replied.
Thomas had made himself a couple of thin spears with very sharp points and serrated edges, and hardened the points in the fire. Spearing fish in a river was not straightforward, but he had become quite adept at it. He had acquired these skills, along with so many others, from Brother Vangellis. He collected the spears from a hollow log where he kept them, and they made their way to the stream.
He selected a shallow spot where he had caught trout on previous occasions. Spear in hand, he squatted down at the edge of the stream and began watching for any sign of fish. Elena sat down beside him and dangled her feet in the water.
After a while with no sign of action, she began humming quietly, swishing her feet back and forth in time to the tune.
“Hey, stop it—you’ll scare the fish away!” said Thomas.
“What fish?” she asked in a dreamy voice. “I can’t see any.”
He leaned forward and scooped a handful of cold water over her.
She jumped to her feet with a little shriek. Quickly positioning herself behind him, she gave him a small shove. Squatting as he was on the balls of his feet, he tumbled forward into the stream with a loud splash. He lurched to his feet with water pouring off him, and sprang forward to grab her by the arm. She danced back out of reach, squealing with delighted terror. Once safe, she stood well back from the stream with her hands on her hips, and regarded his sodden state with a merry laugh.
“You’ll pay for this!” he promised, prompting a fresh burst of laughter in response.
