The chaos faded, and the Wellstone swept him along through his own memories. The first images were from court, flashes of the queen, the beginning of his trip to investigate troubling rumors from countries to the south.
Then two eyes, somewhere between green and brown, caught his attention. Alaric grabbed at the stream of memories, slowing them, watching them unfold.
The eyes peered out of a window at him, curious and amused.
Alaric froze, tottering on an upturned bucket, reaching his arm up as high as he could toward one specific apple high on the tree. He laughed self-consciously. With the break in his concentration, his spell faltered and the apple hanging far above him stopped quivering.
“Hello,” the woman said politely.
“Hello,” he answered, smoothing out his black robe and stepping off the bucket.
The woman raised her eyebrows and looked up at the tree laden with apples.
“Would you like a boost up?”
“No, thank you,” Alaric said. “There’s something undignified about a grown man climbing to the top of an apple tree for an apple when there are perfectly good ones within arm’s reach.”
“Was dignified the look you were going for?”
Alaric laughed again. He looked back up at the apple high on the tree and sighed in resignation. “I’d love a boost up.”
The woman came outside and looked up at the tree. She was almost as tall as Alaric, with golden hair that was trying valiantly to escape from a long braid. Her face, while not striking, was open and happy.
“That particular apple is worth this much work?” She gestured to his robe with a grin. “Not to mention the destruction of your reputation as a respectable Keeper?”
Alaric considered the apple for a moment, knowing it seemed odd. “It’s worth at least that much.”
She offered her hands as a step, and between the two of them, Alaric was able to scramble up onto the first branch of the apple tree. Several minutes later, Alaric dropped back down out of the tree, holding his apple victoriously.
“I hate to tell you this,” the woman said, “but your prize apple has been nibbled on.”
Alaric turned the apple around to look at the bites taken from the side of the fruit.
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I wanted it.”
“You’re a very strange man,” she said.
“This apple was bitten by a green-breasted robin,” Alaric explained. “The saliva of a green-breasted robin is very rare and has some unusual qualities. It’s very exciting to find this apple.”
“Thrilling.”
Alaric grinned and gave the woman a bow. “I’m Alaric. You have the thanks of the Keepers for your assistance in my quest. If there is any way the Keepers or I can repay you, we are in your debt.”
She laughed and curtseyed. “Well, Keeper Alaric, I am Evangeline, and this is my inn. If you would honor me with your patronage and some Keeper-storytelling for my customers, I would feel overpaid.”
Alaric agreed to the storytelling and followed Evangeline into the inn. The walls were rough grey stone. The wooden planks of the floor were worn smooth by years of traffic. The hearth held a cheery fire, and smells of dinner and comfort wafted out of the kitchen. It was everything an inn should be. Alaric found himself relaxing, wanting nothing more than to prop his feet up on the hearth and enjoy a meal.
The common room was full for mid-afternoon. Workers wandered in and out for quick drinks, and a gaggle of old women played a noisy game of cards at a corner table. Three equally old men sat nearby, heckling the card players. Evangeline walked Alaric to a table near the fire.
“I bring you all a treat today,” Evangeline announced to the room, handing Alaric a mug of cider. “A storyteller!”
A cheer went up from the room, and there was a scuffle of chairs as people rearranged themselves to take advantage of the new entertainment.
Alaric rubbed his hands together. “Are there any requests?”
Several suggestions were shouted from different parts of the room.
“Tomkin and the Dragon,” Evangeline said.
A round of hollers agreed with the choice and Alaric nodded. It was a good choice. He took a deep drink of cider, pulled his hood up over his head, and looked down at the floor, letting the room fall into silence. From beneath his hood, he glanced at Evangeline and saw her leaning on the bar, her face set in a look of anticipation. Pleased by her interest, he began.
Images flashed by, of him and Evangeline traveling south. How nervous she had been to meet with the king of Napon.
His memories reached the evening on the sea cliffs.
Did the Wellstone know that some of these memories were more worn than others? Pulled out more often and clung to?
The moon sat low over the ocean, embodying every bit of poetry ever written about such a moment. Evangeline held his hands while the local holy man spoke the wedding pledges.
The image shifted.
The two of them pulled the unwieldy rowboat up onto the lakeshore and collapsed on the sand, half laughing, half groaning. Alaric could barely move his arms, and his back ached. The wind that had risen, making the water so choppy, blew across the beach, cooling him off so quickly he began to shiver.
“That is the worst rowboat ever made,” she said, panting.
“With the world’s smallest oars,” he added. So much for a relaxing afternoon of fishing.
“If we find that obnoxious woman who was yelling, ‘Row! Row!’ from the shore, can you turn her into a rock?”
Alaric laughed. “I’m not good at messing with the boundary between the living and the non-living.”
“A frog, then?”
“A frog is a possibility.”
Alaric loosened his grip, letting images flow past faster, like water through his fingers. Images of walking a forested road with Evangeline, talking about everything and nothing. Sitting around a bonfire, watching village children dance. Scenes of easy happiness.
But then he caught a glimpse of the Lumen Greenwood in the distance, and a small village. The village that had been terrorized by an enormous fire lizard, which had been preying on their flocks and killed a child.
Alaric’s heart faltered, and he grabbed at the flow of memories to stop them, but the Wellstone pulled him on.
Alaric set out with the three villagers to find and kill the fire lizard. Evangeline hadn’t wanted to stay behind, but he’d gotten her to agree at last.
The dull orange lizard attacked them when they were barely out of the village.
Alaric drew vitalle out from it, slowing the lizard, but it was still so fast. The men shot arrows at it, most of them missing wildly as the creature darted around them, spitting burning liquid, raking the men with its claws.
The beast was finally brought down, its body prickling with black-fletched arrows. Alaric stumbled over to the men strewn on the ground. Not one had survived.
There was a noise behind him, and he spun around. Evangeline staggered toward him, a black-fletched arrow lodged in her thigh. His heart faltered.
“No,” he cried, catching her as she fell. “I thought you were in the village.”
She clutched at him, her face white with pain.
Alaric set her down gently. The arrow wasn’t deep. A simple, clean wound like this would heal relatively quickly.
He gave her a moment to brace for the pain before he pulled it out.
She screamed.
Alaric clawed at the memories, frantically trying to stop them, to change them, to block the arrow, to change the story.
The wound had been simple, but it had not been clean. Of course the villagers had poisoned the arrows. But in their terror, they had poisoned them with things they didn’t even have an antidote for.
Alaric climbed the stone steps of the small mountain keep, carrying her in his arms. Her breath came in shallow gasps. Her face was gaunt and pale.
The blanket he had wrapped her in slid off her black, swollen leg. Lines of dark red snaked up her thigh, tracing the poison’s path. He tried to carry her gently, but she shuddered in pain with each step.
Alaric reeled away from the memory, but the Wellstone dragged him relentlessly on.
Alaric stood in the Stronghold council chamber trying not to crush the red scroll in his fist. Sixteen Keepers in black robes were seated at the long, map-strewn table, looking at him with troubled faces.
The Shield smiled warmly. “Brother Alaric, you have a request for the council?”
Alaric held the red scroll from Sidion securely in his hand, feeling the rich thrum of power it held. A power with more fire than the Keepers’ books held. “I would like to travel to Sidion.”
Most of the faces remained impassive. Keeper Gerone sighed, and Keeper Mikal huffed in disapproval.
“For what purpose?” the Shield asked.
They already knew the answer, but Alaric forced the words out, anyway.
“All my attempts have failed. Evangeline is at rest in a holding trance, but I cannot completely stop the progression of the rock snake venom. Our skills cannot save her. I need a way to extract it from her body without killing her.”
Several men murmured in disapproval.
“And you think this is wise?”
“I think my wife is too young to die,” Alaric snapped. “It’s arrogant to think we have all the answers. There are references”—he waved the red scroll at them, causing little bits to crumble off—”of magic beyond what we practice. The Shade Seekers can sever the vitalle from the body—”
“Sever!” cried out Keeper Mikal above the muttering that filled the room. “The body is nothing without vitalle. The life energy and the body are intertwined—”
“Peace, brother,” the Shield broke in. The room fell silent. “Alaric knows all these things. His learning has never been deficient.”
“Any man can become a fool,” muttered Mikal.
“Yes, and any man can stop being a fool and become something better,” the Shield answered. “I, myself, have done both—more than once.” He turned to Alaric. “You knew that we wouldn’t approve this, and you knew why.”
Alaric thought of Evangeline, the blackness of the venom twisting through her body. “Your reasons aren’t as compelling as they used to be.”
The Shield sighed. “No, I don’t suppose they are.”
“This is why Keepers don’t waste time marrying,” Mikal said. “It divides loyalties.”
Alaric’s anger flared, but he refused to look at Mikal, refused to have this fight again. “Will you give me leave to go?”
“No.” The Shield’s answer was simple. More sad than angry.
“Then you sentence my wife to death.” Alaric flung the word across the table.
The Shield did not flinch. “I would save her, and you, from something worse.”
“You sit here in your tower,” Alaric said, biting off each word, “isolated from the world, judging and recording only part of it. You disregard and forbid things you are ignorant of.”
“It is not from ignorance that we have banned the practices of Sidion.”
“You’ve been there? You’ve studied their arts?” Alaric shot at the Shield.
“Yes.”
Several heads turned sharply toward their leader.
“One of those choices that made me more of a fool.”
Alaric paused at that. But then her face came back to him. Her desperate eyes, her hollowed cheeks.
“I must go.”
“Then you will no longer be a Keeper.” Mikal shoved his chair back as he stood.
“No one is discussing casting Alaric out,” the Shield said firmly.
Mikal glared at Alaric before slamming back down into his chair.
The Shield looked around the room. “We do not cast men out for a single choice because no man is defined by a single choice. With each day, we decide anew who we are, what we will grow toward. Alaric has chosen to be a Keeper a thousand times in a thousand ways. No one is discussing his place here, only his request to travel to Sidion.” He turned back to Alaric. “We cannot give you leave to go. It is forbidden.”
Alaric stood, looking down the table at the frail old man. “I asked as a courtesy. I don’t need your permission.”
“We will not stop you, of course, and you will be welcomed back when you return.” The Shield met Alaric’s gaze. “But I beg you to reconsider. This is not what you want. Shade Seekers do not value the things we do. Please do not go. For her sake.”
Alaric stared hard at the man. “I will not sit by and watch her die,” Alaric said, crushing the scroll in his hand. Keeper Gerone’s face grew white, and he stretched his hand toward the ruined red parchment.
Alaric would not be swayed.
He would not lose her.
The Wellstone continued to pull him on. Alaric was at Sidion, reading dark, heartless books. Then he was standing over Evangeline, drawing the red light out from her, apologizing over and over while she screamed in pain. Finally, the ruby solidified, swirling with red light.
Alaric let the memories flow, letting the Wellstone pull them out as quickly as it wanted. When Alaric reached the Death Caves of the southern blood doctors in Napon, the memories slowed. Alaric tried to push them faster, but the Stone recognized that here was a place no Keeper had ever been before. It spent too long absorbing the horrors of that place. Watching healthy people, even women and young children, poisoned. Their symptoms, responses to antidotes, and deaths recorded meticulously. There was so much blood and sickness in those caves you could taste it in the air.
The Wellstone sifted through every memory as Alaric stood by, watching the doctors perform experiment after experiment with the rock snake venom he had brought. They didn’t have rock snakes this far south. He hadn’t known what they would do when he brought it to them. He hadn’t known how many people they would kill trying to develop an antidote. How many people Alaric would have to watch die, unable to stop them.
And even the blood doctors found no antidote.
The Wellstone’s pull on him lessened as the pool of unshared memories shrank. It settled finally on an image of the small keep where Evangeline lay, pale and still. Moonlight fell through the balcony doors onto her thin face, her limp hair. It glinted off the crystal surrounding her, keeping her body alive.
With a moan, Alaric pulled his hands off the Wellstone.