Exile's Return: Conclave of Shadows: Book Three Read online

  Kaspar awoke on the floor of the small hut.

  He had slept in front of the door to prevent Jorgen or his mother from fleeing. Levering himself up on one elbow, he peered around in the early morning gloom. There was only a small window near the chimney to his right, so it was still quite dark in the room.

  The boy and woman were both awake, but neither had moved from their respective sleeping pallets. “Good morning,” Kaspar said as he sat up. He had confiscated their crossbow and any sharp utensil he judged capable of inflicting serious injury and had piled them up out of their reach. He trusted his instincts, as a hunter and a warrior, to awaken him should either of his reluctant companions attempt to harm him, so he had slept well.

  After rising slowly, Kasper started returning the implements to their proper locations; the woman would have work to do. He had spent the balance of the previous afternoon and evening pointing at objects and asking their names: slowly unraveling this new language. He had learned enough to surmise that their dialect was related to ancient Keshian, spoken in the Bitter Sea region a few centuries before. Kaspar had studied Empire history as much as any noble boy was forced to and vaguely remembered references to a religious war which had sent Keshian refugees fleeing west. Apparently some of them must have landed nearby.

  Kaspar always had possessed a flair for languages, though he now wished he had spent a little more time speaking Quegan—an offshoot of the same Keshian dialect these people’s ancestors had spoken. Still, he was getting along well enough if he ever decided to stay and farm around here.

  Kaspar looked at the boy and said, “You can get up.”

  The boy rose. “I can get out?”

  Kaspar realized his inaccuracy and corrected it. “I mean get up, but if you need to go outside, do so.”

  Despite his early behavior toward them, Jorgen had expected to be beaten or killed, and Jojanna had expected to be raped. Not that she wasn’t attractive enough in a weather-beaten fashion, Kaspar conceded, but he had never acquired a taste for unwilling women—not even for those who feigned willingness because of his wealth and power.

  The woman rose and pulled aside the small privacy-curtain while the boy rolled up his bedding and stowed it under the table. Kaspar sat on one of the two stools. She went to the banked fire in the hearth and stirred the embers, adding wood. “You need wood?” Kaspar asked.

  She nodded. “I will cut some more this morning, after milking one of my cows. She lost her calf to a mountain cat last week.”

  “Is the cat troubling you?”

  She didn’t understand his question so he rephrased it, “Is the cat returning to take more calves?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I’ll cut the wood,” said Kaspar. “Where is the axe?”

  “In the…” He didn’t recognize the word, and asked her to repeat it. Then he realized it was an oddly pronounced variant of the Keshian word for “shed.” He repeated it, then said, “I will work for my food.”

  She paused, then nodded and started to prepare the daily meal. “There is no bread,” she said. “I make it the night before.”

  He inclined his head, but said nothing. They both knew why she had not baked last night. She had sat fearfully, waiting for him to assault her, while he repeatedly asked odd or pointless questions about the names of things.

  Slowly, he said, “I will not harm you or the boy. I am a stranger and need to learn if I am to live. I will work for my food.”

  She paused, then looked into his eyes for a moment. As if finally convinced, she nodded. “There are some clothes that belonged to my…” She spoke a word he didn’t understand.

  He interrupted. “Your what?”

  She repeated the word, and said, “My man. Jorgen’s father.”

  The local word for husband, he gathered. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “Three…” Again a new word, but he didn’t bother to interrupt; he’d find out later if she meant days, weeks, or months. “…ago he went to market. He never came back.” Her voice remained calm and her face emotionless, but Kaspar could see a sheen in her eyes. “I looked for three…” Again a word he didn’t understand. “Then I came back to care for Jorgen.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Bandamin.”

  “A good man?”

  She nodded.

  Kaspar said nothing more; he knew she must be wondering what would have happened if Bandamin had been home when he had shown up. Kaspar said, “I’ll chop wood.”

  He went outside and found the axe in the shed next to a small pile of logs. He saw Jorgen feeding some chickens and waved the boy over to him. He motioned to the dwindling pile and said, “Need more soon.”

  The boy nodded and started speaking quickly, pointing to a stand of woods on the other side of the meadow. Kaspar shook his head and said, “I don’t understand. Speak slower.”

  It was clear Jorgen didn’t understand him either, so Kaspar mimicked the boy talking rapidly, then spoke slower.

  The boy’s face brightened in understanding and he said, “We will cut down a tree over there.”

  Kaspar nodded and said, “Later.”

  He was still weakened by his ordeal of the last few days, but he managed to carry enough wood into the hut to keep the fire going for almost a week.

  When he put the last armload into the bin next to the hearth, Jojanna said, “Why are you here?”

  “Because I need water and food to live.”

  “No, not here on the farm,” she said slowly. “I mean here…” she waved a circle around her, as if indicating a larger region. “You are—” a few words he didn’t understand “—from far away, yes?”

  “A foreigner.” He nodded. “Yes, from very far away.” He sat down on the stool. “It is hard to tell without…” He paused. “I don’t have the words—” he said at last. “—yet; when I do, I will tell you.”

  “Truth?”

  He studied her face for a moment, then said, “I will tell you the truth.”

  She said nothing as she looked him in the eyes. Then with a single nod, she returned to her work in the kitchen.

  He stood up. “I will go and help the boy.”

  Kaspar went outside and saw Jorgen heading into the meadow. He stopped briefly, realizing he had no idea what needed to be done. He had owned tenant-farms in Olasko, but the closest he had ever been to one was riding past on horseback. He had a vague idea of what they produced, but little concept of how they did it. He chuckled to himself as he set out after the boy. He couldn’t start learning quickly enough, he decided.

  Felling a tree was far more difficult than Kaspar had anticipated, given that he had only seen it done once before, when he was a boy. It had almost landed on top of him to the evil delight of Jorgen, once the initial fear of injury had passed.

  He had stripped off all the branches and then cut the bole into manageable sections, which he had lashed up with large leather straps that should have been fastened to a horse’s harness. He had discovered that the family’s only horse had vanished along with Jorgen’s father, so now Kaspar played the part of the horse, dragging the timber to the house across the damp meadow. He strained and heaved forward and the recalcitrant log followed him in jumps and starts.

  Pausing to catch his breath, he said to Jorgen, “It seemed like a good idea back there.”

  The boy laughed. “I told you we should have cut it up and carried the wood back to the house.”

  Kaspar shook his head in disbelief. Being told off by a child; it was a concept so alien to him he found it amusing and irritating at the same time. He was used to people deferring to him automatically, to saying nothing critical in his presence. He leaned into the harness again and said, “If Tal Hawkins and his bunch could see me now, they’d be on the floor laughing.”

  He glanced at Jorgen who was obviously amused, and found the boy’s mirth infectious. Kaspar began to chuckle as well. “Very well, you were right. Go back and fetch the axe
and we’ll chop this thing up right here.”

  Jorgen scampered off. Kaspar didn’t relish the idea of a dozen or more trips across the meadow, but without a horse his idea was just plain folly. He stretched as he turned to watch the boy run to where they had left the axe and the water bucket.

  Kaspar had been at the farm for eight days now. What had started off as a fearful experience for the boy and his mother had begun to settle into a relatively calm situation. He still slept by the door, but he no longer gathered up potential weapons. He had chosen that spot to give Jojanna as much privacy as was possible in a one-room hut, and also for security reasons. Anyone attempting to come through the door would have to physically move Kaspar first.

  Kaspar was still vague about the geography surrounding the farm, but he had no doubt that they were constantly plagued by dangers. Bandits and marauding bands of mercenaries were not uncommon in the area, but the farm was far enough removed from the old high road—the one Kaspar had stumbled along—that few travelers ever chanced across it.

  Kaspar stretched again and relished the strength in his muscles. He knew he had lost weight during the three days without food and water, and now the constant exercise of farm-work was further reducing his bulk. A broad-shouldered man, the former Duke of Olasko had always carried his weight effortlessly, and he had indulged in food and wine of the highest quality. Now Kaspar had to wear the missing Bandamin’s clothing because his own trousers were starting to fit too loosely around the waist. He had let his neatly-trimmed beard grow, lacking a razor, mirror, or scissors. Every morning, before washing his face in the water bucket, he caught a glimpse of his reflection and barely recognized himself—sunburned, his dark beard now filling in, and his face thinner. He had been here less than two weeks—what would he look like after a month? Kaspar didn’t want to think about it; he intended to learn as much as he could from these people and then leave, for his future was not farming, no matter what else fate might hold in store for him. Still, he wondered how Jojanna would fare once he left them.

  Jorgen had tried to help Kaspar, but as he was only eight years old, he was often drawn away by boyish interests. His regular chores involved milking the cow who had lost her calf, feeding the chickens, inspecting fences, and other small tasks a small boy was competent enough to perform.

  Jojanna had taken up as much of her husband’s work as she was capable of, but a lot of it was just not possible. While she was as hard a worker as Kaspar had ever met, even she couldn’t manage to be in two places at the same time. Still, he marveled at how industrious she was; rising before dawn and retiring hours after the sun set, to ensure that the farm would be maintained just as her husband had left it.

  Kaspar had hundreds of tenant-farmers on his estates, and had never once given thought to their toils, always taking their efforts for granted. Now he appreciated their lives to a significant degree. Jojanna and Jorgen lived very well in comparison to most Olaskon farmers, for they owned their land, a small herd, and produced saleable crops; but when Kaspar compared their situation to his old way of life, he realized they lived in near-poverty. How much poorer were the farmers of his own nation?

  His nation, he thought bitterly. His birthright had been taken from him and he would have it back or die in the attempt.

  Jorgen returned with the axe and Kaspar set to chopping the tree into smaller sections.

  After a while the boy said, “Why don’t you split it?”

  “What?”

  Jorgen grinned. “I’ll show you.” He ran back to the shed and returned with a wedge of metal. He stuck the narrow end of the wedge into a notch and held it. “Hit it with the back of the axe,” he told Kaspar.

  Kaspar glanced at the axe and saw that the heel was heavy and flat, almost a hammer. He reversed his hold on the handle and swung down, driving the wedge into the wood. Jorgen pulled his hand away with a laugh and shook his hand. “It always makes my fingers sting!”

  Kaspar gave the wedge three powerful blows and then, with a satisfying cracking sound, the bole split down the middle. Muttering, he observed, “You learn something new every day, if you just stop to pay attention.”

  The boy looked at him with a confused expression and said, “What?”

  Kaspar realized he had spoken his native Olaskon, so he repeated it, as best he could, in the local language and the boy nodded.

  Next, Kaspar set to breaking up the rest of the bole and then chopping the remaining split rails into firewood. He found the repetitive effort strangely relaxing.

  Lately, he had been troubled by dreams, odd vignettes and strange feelings. Small glimpses of things barely remembered, but disturbing. The oddest aspect of these dreams were the details which had escaped his notice in real life. It was as if he was watching himself, seeing himself for the first time in various settings. The images would jump from a court dinner, with his sister sitting at his side, to a conversation with a prisoner in one of the dungeons under his citadel, and then to a memory of something that happened when he was alone. What was most disturbing was how he felt when he awoke, it felt as if he had just relived those moments, but this time the emotions were not consistent with how he remembered them before the dream.

  The third night he had one particularly vivid dream-memory; a conversation with Leso Varen in the magician’s private chambers. The room reeked of blood and human excrement, and of alien odors from things the magician insisted on mixing and burning in his work area. Kaspar remembered the conversation well, for it had been the first time Varen had suggested to him that he should consider removing those who stood between himself and the crown of Roldem. Kaspar also remembered how appealing he had found the idea.

  But he had awoken from the dream retching from the memory of the stench in the room; at the time he had visited Varen, he had hardly been aware of it, the smell had not bothered him in the slightest. Yet this morning he had sat bolt-upright before the door of the hut, gasping for breath, and had almost disturbed Jorgen.

  Kaspar encouraged Jorgen to speak about whatever was on his mind, as his constant prattle sensitized Kaspar to the local language. He was becoming quite conversant, but was also frustrated. For all their good qualities, Jorgen and Jojanna were simple farm people who knew almost nothing of the world in which they lived beyond their farm and the village a few days’ walk to the northwest. It was there they sold their cattle and grain, and from what Kaspar could discern, Bandamin had been considered well-to-do by local standards.

  He had been told about the great desert to the northeast, commanded by a race called the Jeshandi, who were not like the nomads who tried to capture him. They were the Bentu, a people who had migrated from the south in Jojanna’s father’s time. Kaspar calculated that it must have been during the war which had ended with the defeat of the Emerald Queen’s army at Nightmare Ridge in the Western Realm of the Kingdom of the Isles. Olaskon intelligence had gathered as much information as they could when Kaspar’s father had been Duke, and some tidbits had been gleaned from agents working in both the Kingdom and Kesh, but what Kaspar had read left him certain that a large part of the story was never reported.

  What he did know was that a woman known as the Emerald Queen had emerged somewhere to the far west of this continent of Novindus and had waged a war of conquest among the various city states, forging a vast army—which included, according to some reports, giant-sized serpent men—and had gathered a fleet for the sole purpose of invading the Kingdom of the Isles.

  While no reason was forthcoming as to why this had happened, and while it defied all conventional military logic, it had still happened. Krondor had been reduced to mostly rubble and the rebuilding of the Western Realm was still underway nearly thirty years later.

  Perhaps, thought Kaspar as he finished chopping wood, I’ll learn something more about it while I make my way across this land. He looked at the boy and said, “Don’t just stand there. Pick up some wood. I’m not going to carry it all.”

  The boy grumbled good-natu
redly as he carried as much as he could: a decent amount of kindling, and Kaspar carried as much as he was able. “I’d give a lot for a horse and wagon,” he said.

  “Father took the horse when he…went away,” said Jorgen, huffing with exertion.

  Kaspar had grasped the various terms for time and now realized that the boy’s father had left three weeks prior to his appearance at their farm. Bandamin had been taking a steer to the village, called Heslagnam, to sell to an innkeeper there. He was then going to purchase some supplies needed for the farm.

  Jojanna and Jorgen had walked to the village when he was three days overdue, only to be told that no one had seen Bandamin. Somewhere between the farm and Heslagnam, the man, his wagon, and the steer had simply vanished.

  Jojanna was reticent to speak on the subject, still hoping after almost two months that her husband might return. Kaspar judged it unlikely. This area had little that passed for law. In theory, there was a covenant among those who lived in the region, enforced at times by the nomads to the north, the Jeshandi, that no one troubled travelers or those who cared for them. The origin of this covenant was lost to history, but like so many other things even that had vanished like smoke in a wind when the Emerald Queen’s army had ravaged this land.

  Kaspar deduced that this farm’s relative wealth, in cattle as well as crops, was the result of Bandamin’s father being one of the few able-bodied men who had evaded being enlisted into the Emerald Queen’s army at sword-point. Kaspar felt frustrated by the gaps in his knowledge, but he pieced together a picture of what had probably happened from things Jojanna had said.

  Her father-in-law had managed to hide while many others were pressed into service for a battle on the other side of the mountains to the southwest—the Sumanu, she called them. He had benefited by finding strays from abandoned farms, as well as seed grain and vegetables. He had found a wagon and horses, and over a few months had come to this little dell and established his farm, which Bandamin had inherited.

  Kaspar put the wood in the wood box behind the hut and started back across the meadow to fetch more. Looking at the tired boy, he said, “Why don’t you see if your mother needs your help?”