11

Ghosts of the Past

Caelith looked up and set his jaw, reluctant to take another step yet knowing that he must. Down the long years he had charged into battle or run grimly down foreign and menacing trails whose ends were dark and unknowable. Fear had been his companion on many of those occasions, but never before had he hesitated as he did now at the base of the hill leading to his mother’s tent.

The path before him wound its way back and forth under the star-filled sky, climbing higher and higher up the gently sloping hillside under the soft glow of fading twilight until it crested at the warmly lit opening in the large canvas tent that was the only real home he had ever known. There, as she had for uncounted nights over the long troubled years, Dhalia stood her vigil. She gazed into the night and murmured her thoughts to the Deep Magic and her prayers to whatever unnamed gods would hear her. This was Dahlia’s ritual, as strictly maintained as Galen’s own, every evening for as long as Caelith could remember. This image of his mother silhouetted against the flickering light of the evening fire haunted him through the blurred seasons of their exile, down every muddy, dusty, and forgotten road he walked. It shivered next to him in the rain outside every unnamed village where he and his fellow raiders searched desperately for anyone who would trade with them for food. It watched him in the cooling abandon after battle when the world stopped and a sense of lonely frailty filled his heart to call him back from despair. No matter where their wanderings took that huge and battered tent, regardless of its being pitched in mountain glade or desert hilltop, here Dhalia stood each evening and her image called him home.

Tonight was different. His footfalls were heavy, and Caelith grew more grim with every step.

At last he reached the hilltop, a clearing rimmed by the towering hardwoods of the Rhesai Forest. Somewhere nearby in the cover of those trees, the Order of Galen stood watch; thirty-six warriors of the clan chosen to protect Galen and his family. They were ever present and never seen. The clanfolk spoke of their ability to be invisible as being both figurative and literal; that they had mastered not only the arts of silent combat and stealth but used the Deep Magic to disappear from the senses of man and beast. Caelith thought much of their reputation to be mere storyteller’s smoke, but he had to admit that it was easier for him to leave knowing they watched over his parents.

Would that they could protect us from the truth, Caelith thought solemnly.

She stood there as he had always remembered her, though her silhouette in the open flap of the large tent had grown smaller over the years. Yet her back was straight as she stood, her arms folded in front of her, looking out with eyes that saw both onto the world beyond the horizon and into the infinity within.

Caelith forced a tight smile, though he was fairly certain that his eyes belied it, and stepped quickly toward her. “Mother.”

“Ah, Caelith,” she said, returning from the far place of her thoughts. “It’s over so soon?”

She made no move toward him; welcoming arms had never been the way of his family, though Caelith thought his father would have preferred it differently. It was perhaps a sign of their times; his mother had feared to love her boy openly in the early years of his life when so many of the clan’s young had not survived. Self-preservation had over time translated into a physical boundary between mother and son—or so Caelith tried to tell himself.

“The Council is adjourned and there is much to discuss—much to tell.” Caelith hesitated for a moment. “Father should be here soon.”

“I’ve no doubt that there is much to tell—and I’m just as sure that you’ll enjoy telling it.”

Caelith looked thoughtfully at her face. The red hair of her youth had faded nearly to gray. Her face was careworn and lined but her eyes were still bright, though now rimmed with red. Seeing her cheeks stained with tears, he hated what he had to do—what he had come to say. “Mother?”

“She has come, hasn’t she?” Dhalia said with a wistful smile as she lowered her head, averting her eyes. “All these years—and now she has come.”

Caelith cocked his head slightly, trying to catch her eyes. “Yes, mother, she has come, but—but there is more.”

Dhalia nodded as she turned and looked down the hillside. “Yes, of course; much more indeed.”

Caelith turned to follow her gaze. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the starlight, but there, down at the base of the long slope of the hill, stood the unmistakable form of his father. There were two other cloaked figures with him: a slightly shorter, younger man with a heavy traveler’s pack and a woman.

“Is she beautiful?”

Caelith blinked; there was not much time left. “Mother, you know that father . . .”

“Loves me?” Dhalia hugged herself and smiled reflectively. “Of course I do, Caelith. Your father is above all things a man of honor and honesty. He has told me that he loves me and I believe him. It’s just that—well, he loved her first. I don’t know if you can understand that, son; love is a living thing and when it dies it must be mourned. Your father never had that opportunity; they were separated by the fate of the gods rather than their choice. The specter of that past has haunted us ever since—and I must admit that I feared that ghost more than the living woman who embodied it.”

“You needn’t worry about the past, mother,” Caelith said, looking back into her face once more. “It’s done and gone.”

“No, Caelith, and you remember what I tell you,” Dhalia said quietly, her eyes locked uncomfortably with Caelith’s own. “The past is still with us—in the here and now. We are what our past has made us and we live now with who we were. If the Deep Magic has taught us anything, it is that our choices haunt us down the long years, for good or ill; and it is the unexpected consequences of those choices that can be the most dangerous.”

Caelith steeled himself; he could not put it off longer. “They had a son.”

Dhalia took in a long, slow breath.

“Father didn’t know,” Caelith continued, carefully watching his mother. “She must have been expecting when he was caught up in the Election.”

“So you have a brother to trouble you as well,” she said gruffly, her brow furrowed in thought.

“A half-brother.” Caelith nodded, uncertain as to what his mother was trying to tell him. It was her eyes, as always, that gave him his best insight into her thoughts. They had steadied with resolve and strength.

“But a brother, nevertheless,” Dhalia replied quickly. Her focus again seemed to be on a far place and time only she could see. “And an elder brother at that. He comes to us, but not to dwell in his father’s home. He has other purposes in mind.”

Below them, the figures were moving. The cloaked woman reached up for the face of the second man, pulling his head toward her. He bent forward slightly, lowering his pack to the ground. She kissed his forehead, holding him there for a long, tender moment before releasing him. Then she quickly turned away, moving purposefully into the forest’s edge below.

Both Galen and the second figure watched her go for a moment, but the woman never hesitated and never looked back. Galen then reached down to pick up the pack, but the young man deftly snatched it up and shouldered it himself. Galen turned slowly and began making his way up the hill toward the tent, the younger man in tow.

Caelith watched his father, thinking he looked more tired than usual. It was as though a great and old burden had either been removed or renewed. Caelith did not know which it might be, but his father seemed to have aged in the last few hours.

Behind him followed the stranger advancing from the obscurity of darkness into the warm, flickering glow of the tent. The harder Caelith studied this man the more impossible he found accepting him as his own brother. This man looked so different from his own family. Since hearing of his existence, Caelith half expected the fellow to be a copy of himself; a few minor differences, perhaps, but nevertheless recognizable. But this stranger had a soft chin and a rounder, more oval face than either he or his father. His nose was larger and hooked slightly in a way that reminded Caelith of a bird of prey. His build was larger, stockier than Caelith or Galen for that matter. More remarkable still was his nearly complete lack of hair; his scalp, cheeks, and chin were all scraped completely bare, making his large ears stick out.

In his right hand, however, he carried a dragonstaff. Caelith could feel the Eye of the Dragon shift across him, its cold shiver running down his bones. Though the early mystics had learned quickly how to ward off the more frightening aspects of the dreaded device, its presence nevertheless was an uncomfortable and dangerous warning to any magic-bearers under its gaze; it clearly proclaimed Jorgan to be one of the Inquisitas priests of the Pir Drakonis and an enemy of the clans.

Galen halted in front of his wife, his eyes averted, though he spoke to Caelith and Dhalia while gesturing at the newcomer.

“This is—Jorgan.”

Dhalia gazed for a moment on the young man before she curtsied, bowing her head slightly before him. “You are welcome in our home, Jorgan. I’ve prepared a meal for—”

Jorgan abruptly chuckled, his baritone rolling out his words in smooth, liquid tones. “Thank you, ma’am, for your efforts but I have not come to enjoy your hospitality.”

Caelith examined Jorgan more closely, dragging his gaze away from the dragonstaff. The Inquisitas wore an olive green hooded cape, dark trousers, high-top boots, and a dark tan shirt under a striking padded doublet. Though his general costume was drab, the doublet was a deep maroon elegantly and intricately embroidered with silver threads.

“That is an unusual garment,” Caelith said, nodding toward the doublet.

“It is a symbol of my order in the Inquisitas; a special gift from my mother,” Jorgan replied through a careful smile with a hint of condescension. His startling violet eyes locked on Galen as he spoke. “She would have preferred a rose-color cloth but none could be found.”

Galen coughed uncomfortably.

“Ah.” Caelith’s response hung in the air between them all, failing to fill the deepening silence.

“I should have thought he would look at least a little like you, father,” Caelith said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Jorgan’s eyes, creased with his enigmatic smile, shifted back easily toward the young mystic.

“No,” Galen spoke slowly, “but I think he favors his maternal grandfather, Ansal Kadish. He is the very image of—”

“Please,” Jorgan said, clearing his throat. “I am sure it is awkward and difficult for all of you. It hasn’t been that long since I myself learned that I not only had a father still living, but that he is the most—well . . .” His words trailed off as he shrugged, smiling once again.

“The most what?” Caelith’s tone rose.

Jorgan drew in a long, considered breath as his gaze locked on Caelith. His words were disjointed from the lightness of his pleasant face. “Why, the most hated and reviled apostate in all the Five Domains.”

Caelith narrowed his eyes and closed his hand unconsciously around the hilt of his blade.

“Well, yes.” Galen chuckled sadly. “I believe that fairly describes my current status with the Pir Drakonis. But there is more to me—more to all of us—than being the object of your hatred.”

“Hatred?” Jorgan spat. “The word comes so easily to you, but it’s in your own hearts you need to find it. It was not my hatred that turned a small conflict into unbridled warfare that has butchered the faithful Pir for more than a quarter-century!”

“The mystics were being butchered long before that.” Galen’s tone was heavy. “Table meat for the Dragonkings was all any of us ever meant to them. All we wanted was to end the slaughter.”

“It is late,” Dhalia interjected. “Let us leave this outside for one night and—”

“Oh, so all you wanted was to end the slaughter—by forming a mob of heretics to bring down the divine order of the world?” Jorgan sneered with contempt. He turned to face Dhalia. “I thank you out of common courtesy for your offers, madam, but I cannot reside among you or the community of your faithless, godless clansmen. I shall make camp and return in the morning for such councils as are required. Then I shall do as my faith and duty direct me: lead you and your sorry, misguided clans to your precious Calsandria—may Vasska save you when the truth at last is known!”

Jorgan picked up his pack and, flashing another grin, bowed before stepping back into the darkness. He strode confidently down the path under the starlight toward the base of the hill, his dragonstaff glowing with cold blue light.

Caelith looked at his father.

The old clan leader blinked up at the stars overhead and then spoke gruffly. “The order will be disturbed by his presence unless I find a secure place for the boy to camp.”

“You had better go and see to it, then.”

Galen glanced at his wife uncertainly.

“It’s all right, Galen,” she replied. “I’ll be right here waiting for you.”

Galen smiled tightly and then turned, making his way down the hill behind his first son.

“He comes to us, but not to dwell in his father’s tent,” Dhalia murmured.

“Are you a prophetess, mother?”

Dhalia chuckled darkly. “No. I only wish that I were! Like all of us, I walk the dream of the Deep Magic, searching to apply that talent with which we are either blessed or cursed. I, too, feel the wind that blows through our dreams—don’t look so shocked—but the vision that gives it all meaning and context remains the elusive province of the ancients. But, son, I believe there was a time when such mortals walked the earth and knew the will of the gods.”

“He says he can lead us to Calsandria,” Caelith said with more assurance than he felt.

“Calsandria?” Dhalia smiled. “So the Pir think they have found it. That should interest your father a great deal, I should think. This isn’t the first time he has sent someone to look for it.”

Caelith turned to his mother in irritation. “Not the first time? When? Why wasn’t I told of this?”

“Because he thought it a fool’s errand at the time,” Dhalia said, turning to face her son. “He wanted so much to believe that Calsandria existed—as I suppose all the mystic clans want to believe, but he wanted to be sure of it first. He sent his closest friend, the one who could travel the Forsaken Mountains and whose word he could trust on his return.”

“Cephas?”

Dhalia nodded. “Cephas Hadras—that blind old dwarf who used to carry you on his back when you were a boy. He was your father’s best friend even before his Election and no more honest, capable, or trustworthy creature ever walked the face of Aerbon.”

“Good old Cephas.” Caelith nodded. “I’d wondered where he’d gone off to. I take it that Cephas didn’t find Calsandria then.”

“We don’t know,” Dhalia said, concern clouding her face. “He left over a year ago and we still haven’t heard from him.”