After two days and nights on the road west toward Virna Berin, Tolmer’s spirits remained high. He’d had an unexpectedly spectacular send-off. On the morning of his departure, everyone assembled in the village square to bid him a successful bronath rhanthil. Having put aside his hurt over Tiela’s “marriage,” he set his mind on the object of his undertaking.
The corrath called to him; its siren song seduced his senses with a song of beauty like nothing in his experience. There was no question in his mind that he would have it. No matter what travails presented themselves, the bauble would his. He could not fail; it was unimaginable. He’d be a hero. He’d return as no one before him had ever done, with a prize beyond imagining. Even if his survival wander took him four or five days—longer than any boy in the history of his clan—he would be extolled for his vision. Ballads would be sung about him. He would want for nothing the rest of his life.
The Grandmothers had been shocked at his plan to leave immediately. He wasn’t prepared, they told him, scolding. They reminded him of how he’d shunned their teachings and advice in the past, running away and hiding, following his own inclinations when other boys his age gathered dutifully for their training. Equally, they expressed doubts and concern about his motives. He was not ready for even the simplest of tasks, let alone something on the same magnitude as stealing a ghalthrach’s corrath. Of course they didn’t come straight out and say he’d been a lazy shirker all his life, but he sensed their thoughts. Their faces told all, and deep inside he knew. In his own mind he would never be more ready.
In the end it was Tiela, his sister, who convinced the Old Ones of his preparedness. No one needed to say out loud that it was in her best interest for him to be gone as soon as possible so she could work her wiles on poor Einar…or whoever he was. Tolmer would only be in the way, especially as she had baby-making on her mind. Not unexplainably, the Old Ones relented, and for the better part of the next day, he sat, mind wandering, listening with half a mind on them and the other half on the corrath’s seductive song. The old women coached him and imparted their wisdom. They prepared a special blend of cabanium for his journey, which they hung around his neck in a small canister strung from a length of lamb’s leg tendon.
They gathered the components for his survival kit. As they assembled those essentials, only partially registering the blanket, hatchet, knife, tinder and striker they’d wrapped in a blanket and rolled into his haversack, Tolmer was aware only of the sweet melody playing softly in his mind’s ear. The song beckoned—dared him—to claim her. The anticipation of raising the bauble to the full moon’s light quickened his pulse.
That evening everyone in the village convened in the square for a hastily arranged celebration, with feasting and singing around fires burning high and hot. He’d received pats on the back and hosts of well wishes. Even Rina, the young widow and the prettiest of the girls who were not of his extended family, smiled at him and wished him good fortune in his quest. He barely slept that night.
He kept to the roads, mostly because he needed to make up time; the old man and the girl had a three-day advantage on him, even though they traveled through the wood. By the time he started on his way, more than likely they had already passed through Virna Berin. Who knew where they were headed from there? He would put his trust in the corrath’s song to guide him.
The special cabanium, along with being a concentrated formula to ensure it lasted the duration of his journey, contained an element to protect his pale skin from the sun. Still he needed to exert care not to subject himself to over-exposure, but good fortune smiled on him, as the skies were often cloud-covered. On more than one occasion, he succeeded in begging a ride on the back of an old farmer’s cart, finding sufficient shade behind the rails and piles of pig manure.
With a goodly stock of food in his kit, he found no excuse to deny himself when the slightest of pangs rumbled his stomach, which happened frequently. The first night, he encamped not far from the road in a hollow protected by large standing stones. He built a small fire and indulged in crusty bread and dried and salted meats for his supper. He slept soundly, breaking his fast the following morning with four fintil seed cakes from the supply his sister had packed, and washing them down with cider from the two pint jug. On his second night, he called upon his shadow veil to sneak into a well-built barn amid a cluster of waddle and daub cottages. Unseen by the stocky peasant boys, who laughed and joked, throwing play punches at each other, he stole in amid the cows. For his evening meal, he finished the bread, slathering it with the remains of the sithleberry jam.
On the third night, with Tilindon Wood behind him, Tolmer began his descent through rolling hills into the wide river valley. Laid out before him in the light of dusk and evening shadows, the colors of the sky reflected like satin ribbons off a network of creeks and rivers. The walled city stood dark on the plain in the distance where two rivers met. Not quite half-way down the hills, he found shelter amid an arbor of young, twisty-branched bracklethornes and prepared for the night. When he sat on a flat moss covered rock and reached into his kit, he was taken aback to find his supply of provisions nearly exhausted. He polished off the three remaining seed cakes and emptied the glazed clay jug. What did it matter? He’d soon be on his way home.
By the light of a waning gibbous moon, staring up at the star-strewn heavens late that night, Tolmer lay on his blanket, hands laced behind his head, his mind an endless procession of thoughts and images. He had come a long way for his prize, and he would have a long way back. All had gone well to this point, and before the sun would set again, he’d have entered the gates of Virna Berin, closer than he’d ever been since the day he first set eyes on the crystal. He could still hear it—the corrath’s song, calling to him, telling him she would be his.
Or did he imagine it?