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Walking through the hills toward the Midland and home, Bryar endured surely the worst autumn equinox of his adult life.
As the Midland celebrated the first harvest, he should be performing on some plaza or other, feasting on the fruits of summer labors, making love in a patch of dappled sunlight. He’d compose a new tale, a selection of music and song. Always, in his memory, the sun shone.
Bryar trudged along the path, a corner of his mind appreciating the soft warmth of the air and the relatively level track. The rest of his mind registered every lingering ache and exhausted muscle from the force that had felled him almost two nine-days ago, when he’d crested the last rise for his first and only glimpse of the land on the other side of the hills.
Joss walked several paces ahead of him, as he had since they’d left Willow and struck out for home. It had taken all Bryar’s willpower to let her go. He hated, at a visceral level, her descending alone into that new land, placing herself in the power of the man she’d brought to the campsite to restore him to consciousness. His brief encounter with Gauvain chilled him. But she made her own choices, and no one changed Willow’s mind once she’d set it.
At least the core of himself, his energy connection, was intact. Given what the Aura had done to him – and to Willow before him – he supposed he should be grateful for that.
He and Joss steamed in the heat after last night’s rain. His beard itched. His clothing felt both uncomfortably damp and annoyingly ripe; neither of them had been able to wash properly in days. No place for fastidiousness on this trek.
They had barely exchanged a dozen words in the four days they’d traveled together so far. Even faced with another six or seven days on the trail, Bryar was grateful for the mutually agreed silence. His current mood was scarcely conducive to conversation.
Each day, Joss set the pace until Bryar’s uncertain strength gave out. He hunted, hauled water, and prepared their skimpy dinners. He set strips of meat over the fire to dry overnight, to sustain them through the next day’s walk. And he never complained.
And Bryar’s own contribution? Nothing. An anger he hadn’t felt in years tightened his shoulders. He should pull his weight. He should be recovered from the overflow of Aura energy that had knocked him senseless. He should –
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Joss said. His first words in days not related to survival.
“What are you talking about?”
Joss stopped walking. His mouth straightened into tight-lipped determination. “You’re agonizing when you don’t need to. After what you went through, I’m grateful you can walk at all. No one’s mollycoddling you.”
“Willow said you’d been in my head.” Bryar couldn’t help the hostility. Willow had told him about Joss reading his emotions while he was out cold, unable to defend himself. The man’s budding animal whisperer skills weren’t his fault, but what went on in his head was nobody’s business. What gave this giant foreigner the right to invade his thoughts-
“You’ve got that wrong,” Joss said, inadvertently causing another spike in Bryar’s anger. He was doing it again, invading his mind. “The way this whisperer thing works is, I don’t have a clue what you’re thinking. But feelings, that I sense, when they’re strong. At least I’d rather deal with you getting mad than those poor-me vibes. Made me damn uncomfortable.”
Furious now, Bryar shrugged out of his pack, ready to attack the man for his taunt. He stopped short, remembering where he was, who he had become.
Joss sighed and settled onto a boulder jutting into the path. “Not what I meant. Sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re awfully prickly. I’d turn this stuff off if I knew how.”
Bryar dropped the pack and sat next to the other man. He stared out across yet another valley, filled with its own collection of ferns and giant big-leafed trees. Each had its own personality. The lowlands might be swampy or hold swift rivers bordered by lush riparian growth. A few were nearly barren, the vegetation scant and underdeveloped, but verdant, untouched forest blanketed most of them. A mist rose from the foliage, filtering the light until the trail ahead was rendered unworldly.
Unworldly. Unreal. That summed it up. Nothing fit into his understanding anymore. He’d never dreamed the Aura could deal him such a blow. Its inherent danger had been easy to ignore, expressed only as a risk to Quinn, should she probe too far into a template’s depths. But somehow no one translated that into a more generalized menace. Just as no one ever crossed the hills, almost as if the thought had been blocked from Weavers’ minds.
Everything in him ached to create songs, poems praising the landscape, the path, the murmuring breeze caressing the silence. Commemorating the pilgrimage they had set out on, so innocently. So damn stupidly.
But it wasn’t in him, not yet. His body still hurt. His mind felt bruised and tired. Music was far away. He sensed its distant presence, and he had begun to be impatient for the day it filled him again. For now, though, life condensed into putting one foot ahead of the other on the rough path, keeping up with Joss.
But Joss showed no hurry to move from their impromptu resting place. Bryar seized the opportunity to remove a boot and pick at a blister on the side of his toe, wishing Willow was there to tend to it.
“Grew up in a barracks,” Joss said. “Everybody figured I was slow, because I didn’t say much, and my size. Big dumb guy, you know? I had to beat up a few to make them leave me alone, but then they got sneaky – or plain mean. Things I couldn’t catch them at. Want an apple? Found a few on a tree yesterday. May not be edible, but worth a try.”
“Sure.” Bryar rested his foot on top of his boot and accepted the proffered fruit. It was green and hard. He took a tentative bite. Not as sour as it might be, just coming into its ripeness.
Joss bit into his, winced, chewed, and continued. “You have one of those childhoods, too?”
The easy casualness of the question made it possible for him to answer, if obliquely. “Mining towns are tough. No welcome for men in my occupation. Music? Not unless it’s leading a song in the tavern.”
“You look like a scrapper.”
Bryar didn’t respond. He’d sooner forget those days.
“There’s always a jerk out there, I reckon,” Joss continued as if not noticing Bryar’s lack of response. “Needing somebody to pick on. That ended when I got promoted out of the workers’ barracks, but then they ignored me. Everyone assumes I’m stupid or deaf.”
“Even here? I never heard that.”
Joss took another bite of the sour fruit. “No. You’re right. Not so much here. Or on the ship. There they respected my skills. It gave me credibility. And companionship.”
Those companions were lost now, Bryar knew. Four of Joss’s crewmates had died before he and the commander of the thing crash landed not an hour’s walk from Willow’s waysite, throwing their whole world into chaos.
Willow. How was she managing in Borgonne, on the other side of the hills? His mind held only foggy impressions of the Mage. The man had straightened out his brain after the energy waves of the Aura felled him, but through the treatment he’d been aware of arrogance in the man’s personal aura. His restoration had been accomplished for self-serving, not altruistic reasons. Now Willow had put herself in his hands, hoping to regain her own powers. By all that sustained them, he hoped she was right.
“I’m worried about her, too,” Joss said.
Bryar stood, pitched the apple core into the valley, and confronted the larger man, making no effort to mask the anger in his voice. “Stop it. Maybe you can’t help it, but I hate you throwing my thoughts back at me that way.”
Joss nodded. “I don’t mean to be rude. But I told you, it’s not thoughts. Feelings, yes, and I share that one. I miss her.”
“I bet you do.” It was a snarl, and uncalled for. He’d seen no overt sign of a shift in Willow’s relationship with Joss during their long trek east into the hills. Nevertheless, he sensed a new connection between the two of them, disrupting his own easy rapport with her.
Like him, Joss had been staring out across the valley. He spoke without turning his head, addressing the vast space between them and the next hill. “I get it. I mean, I get how you react to me, but I don’t know what to do about it. In my culture, men and women never even meet each other. The social structures are different here, so you tell me what to do.” Joss spread his enormous hands wide, shifting to focus on Bryar.
“She’s a free agent,” he muttered. “She makes her own decisions.”
“We should go.”
Bryar laced on his boot. Both men stood, resumed their packs, and carried on along the track.
~~
A FULL DAY PASSED BEFORE Joss spoke again, other than commonplace words concerning campsite, dinner, sleep.
“So you got picked on, growing up.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t like to talk about it.”
“No, I don’t. That was a different life.”
They were climbing out of one of the innumerable places the trail dipped into a valley, this one shrouded in a cold mist so thick it soaked into his clothing, chilling him and making the climb back out that much harder. Bryar lacked breath for conversation and focused on keeping up.
“Once they found a snake and put it in my bed,” Joss said conversationally. “They didn’t know it was poisonous. Damn near killed me. Or maybe they did know. I don’t understand how anyone can be that mean, though. Especially kids no more than twelve years or so.”
“I mostly got taunts, but plenty of fights, too. My ma grew sick of patching up my clothes.”
“Bet they had a field day with that mark on your face.”
“Yeah. I got to be a good scrapper.” Joss didn’t skirt around the subject of his birthmark, which was rare. It embarrassed people. Bryar found it a relief that Joss dealt with it matter-of-factly.
“For me it was my size. Still is, even here. The kids on the plaza in Stanstead got a game going where they cast me as a boogie-man. Lots of running and screeching. A kid tripped and fell right at my feet, but I terrified him when I stooped to see if he was okay. Like I’d hurt a kid.” Bryar heard insult in Joss’s voice.
“What did you do?”
“Got out of the way. A couple of women came over to help. I think kids might be kind of neat. I can’t imagine what a baby must be like.”
Odd statement. Bryar let it go.
An hour on, the path leveled out, the trees thinned, and a pale sun filtered through the treetops. Bryar stopped and stared, then smiled. The beauty of the scene made it easier to get out of the sullen mood which, he recognized now, had dogged him since they struck out on the trail. In truth, his strength was returning. Slowly, given the limits to their food supply, but steadily. Tonight he’d start the fire – it had been painful, watching Joss struggle every night with a fire stone when he required only a flick of his hand, provided he could find the energy reserves – and set up the camp while Joss went out hunting. Perhaps he’d play the little flute tucked in his pack. Best he could offer at the moment, but as the sunlight rippled over the path through the shifting leaves, he experienced a trickle of faith in the future.