Middle of the year 632

Spring

Leaf Moon

I admit without shame that I cried when I saw what the war had done to Vaw.

In Gorwill, I had found a long boat that went up the Vuse to the Strongwan's Lip, the last river port on the road to the capital. Beyond that, the Vuse - which had its source within the walls of Vaw - was interspersed with waterfalls and there wasn't enough water to make it navigable. I was sharing the boat with two crewmembers and a sourpuss captain who was conveying beer and grey-marchian iron tools. They only spoke to me when they had to, distrust was written all over their faces, and I think they took me for a man on the run. The fact remained that I had paid with a silver coin and that I had promised another one upon arrival, so they kept their wariness to themselves. For a sum like that, I would have been entitled to ask them to drop me off at any port in the High-Brown, and all four of us knew it.

At first, the green forest rose on either side of the stony banks, quivering with painfully familiar music. This immediately put me in a melancholic mood, because I had the curious impression that I had left the trees and their melody only a few weeks before, whereas it had been seven whole years since I had trodden the humus and the forest paths with Ulrick, Pike and Berda. Then in the north long black streaks had appeared, eschars that had ravaged the woods and drew burned furrows into the very roots of the mountains. The country looked sick, and that made me sick too. I had stood at the bow while, behind, the two boatmen hoisted their dripping poles, and, with a knot in my throat, I had let silent tears roll down my cheeks. I was terribly afraid for Brindy, but that wasn't all. Even though I had never set foot in the devastated cantons, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was a piece of my childhood that had gone up in smoke.

My journey through Wadd had been faster than I had hoped. The trip had taken about ten days, and had been greatly facilitated by my gold and Aiden Corju's ring. I got rid of my carmian clothes as quickly as I could, because they closed doors and attracted hostile looks from the populace, which I could have put up with if they had not also aroused the systematic suspicion of the waddan militiamen. I had kept the quilted doublet because I liked it and I didn't wish to venture to Spinel without some kind of protection. As for the rest, I was now wearing brownian clothes that looked a little too new, large breeches, a wool shirt with yellowed bone buttons, and a comfortable brown surcoat with thin soft leather edging. I had decided to bid farewell to my trusty red cape, which I had replaced with another, with a long hood and whose grayish felt had not been dyed, but worked on several times and lined on the inside with a thin layer of donkey skin that went down to below the shoulders. It was a beautiful object that I had paid full price for, even though I had refused to have it dyed. The craftsman had suggested a dozen different shades, but I would have had to wait two whole days for that. I had taken on the appearance of a successful henchman, and they had begun to treat me as such rather than as a spy, which had made my life easier. The fighting that shook the northern part of the waddan region was barely a rumor in its center. Pastoral life was in full swing, slow and peaceful, and although many faces were wrinkled with worry, there was also the gentle swelling of the fertile fields and hills and the quiet gaze of the livestock. So the road had led me safely to the banks of the Gor.

It took me one day to turn my annoyance at the burns into a kind of frightened anger, and the next to forge the restlessness into something sharper, a tool that could be grasped and wielded. On the boat, there was little else to do. To ruminate, to digest, to accept the turmoil of the world, the storm of the passing time, and to sharpen the weapons I had to face it. My thoughts were punctuated by the soft litany of the pole caressing the current, as well as by the voice of Vaw, which whispered, despite everything, on the wildest banks. In the evening, we played jacks to pass the time, without betting money because the captain forbade it. None of the three men were really talkative, and they played the game as they sailed, repeated gestures by necessity from which they didn't seem to derive any pleasure. I didn't sleep very well during the two nights I was on the boat, waking up each time under the oiled canvas that protected the goods, regretting that I was forbidden to see the milky light of the stars, because, for me, the vawan nights had the smell of blood. The memory of the men I had killed on the road to the cliffs resurfaced in staggering spurts. I also remembered that somewhere further south lay the remains of the weasel-faced boy whose life I had been so slow to take. His pleas mingled with others and with the memory of the plague and the mines. The boatmen watched my torment from the corner of their eyes, but they merely threw the jacks and asked no questions.

There were a few other boats on the Vuse, slender craft that cut through the silent wave like knives. I could see their lanterns mooring in luminous clusters shortly before nightfall, their crews chatting and drinking around the fires they lit on the banks. We were not doing the same, for a reason I didn't know and didn't bother to find out. Our boat avoided the others, and the captain hardly bothered to give his colleagues a vague greeting. Perhaps it was because of me, because the captain had taken my generosity for a hidden request. So we stopped on deserted pebble beaches where we dined alone, bathed in the hum of the mosquitoes and the song of the night forest. In the morning, we left shortly after dawn, while the river was still gray and foggy, which seemed perilous to me. Even though the biggest rocks had long since been removed from the Vuse's bed, we had to maneuver constantly to stay in the middle of the current and avoid running aground, and in places the navigable portion was barely wide enough to fit two boats side by side. When the boat would scrape the pebbles, the captain would suck in the air with a sharp blow between his gaunt teeth and stare disdainfully at the boatman whom he considered responsible. In spite of everything, the trip went on without us having to complain about any collision and if he seemed to me to be in a hurry and cantankerous, the captain also seemed to know his job.

We reached the Strongwan's Lip on a sunny afternoon. All around us, golden rays pierced the branches of the trees and painted the clear water with bright sigils. From downstream, one approached the Lip at the bend of a meander that had carved a wide and hospitable cove around a brownstone ledge. On the river's edge there were rudimentary docks that could accommodate about twenty boats, and worm-eaten wooden shacks piled up along a path that led to the escarpment. Most of the village was on high ground, safe from flooding. I paid what I owed as soon as the wet bow touched the wood of the docks and disembarked without looking back, feeling stressed at the prospect of being so close to my goal. The little river port was more lively than I had expected. Two fishermen were joking crudely while waving eels in the faces of their respective wives, dogs were barking, children were heckling around the pontoons, and further on, porters were unloading goods from a boat under the watchful eye of their foreman. In Gorwill, the atmosphere had been darker, perhaps because the people there had been more affected by the conflict. Here we were only a few miles from the capital, and there had hardly been any fires or massacres.

I asked a young woman who was scaling fish on the docks for directions, and had to restrain myself from rushing to the main road that led to Vaw, which she said was nearby, on the other side of the village. I needed to rest, and to test the waters too, but my heart was racing every time I saw a woman with black hair or a man with green eyes. I had had plenty of time to think about this during the trip, about my expectations and hopes, but it was difficult to rationalize them completely. If Ulrick or any other man with common sense had been with me, he would have told me that my plans were meaningless, except for my haphazard interpretation of words spoken long ago, and he would have been right. In any case, I could be wrong, maybe Brindy had not been taken from the brothel of the canvas village by the peregrine, and in that case she could be anywhere. Still, I had little doubts, which was perhaps more frightening than anything else.

As I inevitably approached my destination, I draped myself in the idea that once I arrived I would have to act. I was still hoping to see the peregrine appear, or to have another dream like the one I had shared with him in the Gor valley, when I was riding with Ulrick towards Garnear, but this passivity might not be enough. I had turned the matter over and over from every conceivable angle, and I had come to a very simple conclusion. If Brindy was still alive and with the Leafies, then she would probably have left the devastated canton to take refuge in the Brambles. I decided that if nothing happened when I got to Spinel, if there was no word, no mysterious figure inviting me to follow her, I would continue my journey to the wild plateau and the Ktoï lands. I had also decided not to go as a friend, and this was probably the hardest part to decide. Breanna's stories had aroused in me a great mistrust of the inhabitants of the Brambles, a mistrust that had already been sharpened by the peregrine himself. The green-eyed man had not been honest with me, or only in a roundabout way, when it served his interests, whatever they might have been. I only knew that he had wanted me to accompany him and that the solar entity I had met in my dream had wanted that too.

"You will find your answers in Spinel. You will find what is dearest to you. Do you hear me? What is dearest to you." These words had haunted my nights for six years. I had wielded the lantern in the galleries and then the axe in the pine trees, and I had found them in the slightest echo, in every trapped moan. It had been the same in Su-Lanté. I had killed for the memory of those words on the cliff road, and I was ready to do it again as many times as it took. The peregrine looked at Brindy when he had said them. He had not been mistaken. She was the most important thing in my life. Besides, I had nothing else. So, years and war be damned, if the peregrine had failed to keep his promise after all I had gone through to honor mine, he would be my enemy.

Before leaving Gorwill I had inquired about the men who wanted to take up the insane challenge of Ovie Vilan, and conquer the Brambles to win her hand. Troops were massing in Spinel, I was told. Most of them had never left, but veterans were arriving in dribs and drabs. Madmen, tough guys, warriors who lived for plunder and murder, who had nothing left to lose and who, in this at least, were similar to me. I vowed to join them. To help them slaughter the ktoï wizards to the last man, if need be. If only I could find Brindy without her being buried under mystifications and riddles, without her being dangled in front of me as a pawn for some obscure motive I knew nothing about. Of course, deep down, I knew that my thinking should have been much more complex, because mixed in with all this were the dreams I had had in Brown-Horn, the Seïd, the savage murders of Nad and Narsilap, all the buried secrets of my childhood. But I think I needed to make things simpler so that I wouldn't lose myself entirely in hesitation and questioning. I needed something tangible and compelling, an arbitrary trajectory that I could feel in control of, at least a little.

I followed the path to the top of the Lip, dodging the barges that came down, bent under the weight of my concerns. There was a small square up there, surrounded by a dozen or so buildings that were more solid than the rickety shacks that hugged the forks of the path. A large forge chimney belched clear smoke at the rate of the bellows, competing in height with an imposing attic with rounded shapes, which I had taken for a watchtower when I had seen it from the docks. Between these two buildings, further east, I could make out the mossy battlements of the Strongwan citadel, one of the oldest strongholds in the primacy, long since abandoned except for the garrison. In the center of the esplanade, an obelisk, with its contours worn by the passage of centuries, rose to the sky. I saw engraved symbols, and then my attention was caught by the face of an inn, whose walls were striped with streaks of lime that looked like large pale fish. I looked at the white wooden sign, which was shaped like a trout, and then at the three toothless old men sitting on creaky stools in front. The door of the inn was open, and a tempting smell of fried food was coming from it. I walked around the square for a while and finally met the innkeeper, who had a cosy establishment with glass skylights and colorful embroidery on the walls. He leased me a bed in a room of three. I then went to sit under the stairs where I waited until evening with a jar of strong and fruity beer and a bowl of pickled lurs.

The other customers began to arrive at dusk, and even a little earlier. Many of them were newly arrived merchants, but there was also a legate and his entourage, who had come from Gorwill. A militia captain as fat as a piglet was exchanging gossip with a traveling scribe whom he seemed to know. Three ragpickers glanced at me, then sat down at the end of my table, one of them complaining in a loud voice about the price of accommodation, which also seemed high to me. The locals had stayed at the docks, where the drink must have been cheaper and the company more familiar. The White-Pike's Inn (as the establishment was called) was obviously a place for wealthy travelers. Soon bowls of warm fried food and sauce were brought to us, along with thick slices of fresh bread, and talk gave way momentarily to chewing and religious silence. I swallowed my fish, savoring the fine flesh of the fry, dipping them one after the other in the cream, which was seasoned with pepper and a touch of wild garlic. At the end of the meal, I discreetly raised my jar to greet one of the ragpickers who was looking at me sideways. The latter became flushed and didn't do it again.

Since it was still early, and I figured it was a good place to listen to what everyone was saying, I joined an assortment of traders and hustlers who had started rolling the dice at the back of the room. A fur trader built like an ox seemed to have initiated the game. When I inquired about the nature of the rules and the stakes, he looked at me from top to bottom and then said in a thunderous voice, "We're playing margot, a penny for the pot, if that's okay with you." I nodded as I put out the change, and the man smiled broadly at me before pulling a stool from the next table and patting it friendly for me to sit down next to him. I wasn't exactly on a roll that night, although I did win a nice round against the scribe, who had joined us. The furrier brightened up the game with mischievous comments and taunts that, while not particularly sharp or subtle, were still relentlessly effective. There was much laughter around the table. When he was sure that I wasn't likely to pull the knife at the slightest provocation, I too was targeted by his jokes, which were aimed at my quietness especially, because the others were jabbering while I was just listening, for the most part. I was soon given the nickname "Talker", which was fine by me: I didn't forget that at one time not so long ago these lands had probably been frequented by bounty hunters with my real name on their lips.

Hours passed by, some went to bed, and six of us gathered around the gaming table: the innkeeper, the fur trader and traveling scribe, a gray-haired merchant from Amuber with a keen mind and green eyes, and two brothers specialized in carts, who made the trip to Vaw with the furrier. These three men were from Cover-Pass. Time passed between the games, and there were fewer jokes and more news, comments about local politics or gossip: the son of the lord who was womanizing in White-Wood, the illness of so-and-so, the marriage of another, the business that had resumed since the end of the war. The alcohol did its work and tongues were loosened one after the other. I nodded sometimes, but never really said anything, but I must admit that my head was starting to wobble when eventually there was silence and the massive furrier turned to me and patted me on the shoulder. The few words he spoke to me afterwards snapped me out of my drowsiness, like a prey surprised by the yelp of the pack.