Several
servants came out the main door and down the steps to meet the guards and
relieve them of their burdens. In a cart similar to the one carrying Isabelle,
sat Brandol. It was the first time she’d seen him since trying to escape. He
looked worse. His face was thin and white, which made the purple and blue
bruises on his arms, neck, and face stand out. Dried blood covered half his
face and matted his hair. Isabelle was not certain he noticed her. He seemed
lost and empty.
An
important-looking servant stepped gingerly over to the Elite Guard in charge.
It was not the same soldier with brown eyes who convinced her to eat again.
Isabelle wondered where he had gone. The servant told the man: “Give her a
bath. Not him. Then both are to be taken to the Emperor immediately.”
The Journeyman’s Journey
Brandol’s
journey
differed from Isabelle’s in almost every way. He did not bother with yelling.
He knew no one would come for him. Why should they? When James had announced
the arrival of the guards near the pass, something had happened to Brandol. It
was as though a firebrand had been stuck inside his brain and every thought was
consumed in the heat save one:
GET
AWAY!
Everything
after that thought deteriorated to a colorful madness during the fight. Maggie
had tried to give him a pot, which was absurd. He had no idea how to use a
sword, what could he do with a pot? He remembered hiding for a while. As he
hid, he saw nothing but colors so murky he thought he was going blind. When he
finally realized the guards could see him underneath the carriage, he ran
again, this time for the hills. He waved the writ of passage so the guards
would know it was he who had tipped them off, but someone snatched it from him.
When someone shouted Henry’s name, Brandol made the worst mistake of his life:
he turned to look. Then the soldiers snagged him and wrestled him to the
ground.
He
tried to explain that he wasn’t Henry Vestin, but his stammering and stumbling
prevented him from speaking clearly. When he finally managed to say something
coherent the guard smacked him. Hard. Brandol stopped talking after that. They
put him in a cage like a dog where he suffered for hours listening to
Isabelle’s screaming. He thought he’d claw out his ears if she didn’t stop. Her
cries hurt more than the pain of the bruises and wounds the guards had given
him, and yet she went on and on and on.
“You’re
weak, Brandol,” his family had told him ever since he could remember, “and weak
people can’t survive in the world.”
His
mother and father had been right. He was weak. When he turned seven, his father
made him tag along to the market to buy cucumbers. As Brandol rode on the
horse, seated behind his father, he watched with envy as the children ran and
played. Brandol was never allowed to play. Three boys chased each other out of
a house, and Brandol thought he recognized them. Behind the boys, several
puppies came out, barking in high-pitched bursts. Three of them were black, two
were spotted, and one was almost completely white save for its ink-dipped tail.
This one was smaller than the rest of the puppies and had trouble keeping up with
them.
Brandol’s
father pointed a heavy finger at the smallest. “See that?”
Brandol
nodded against his father’s back so his answer would be felt. He didn’t speak
if he could help it. He always said the wrong things.
“That’s
a runt, Brandol. Like you. Sometimes runts die because they can’t fight for
mama’s milk. They’re too weak, unless they learn to be strong.” Then his father
spat a great black wad into the street near the white puppy.
Brandol
nodded again, watching the puppy closely. He wondered then, as a seven-year-old
boy, how long he would live if he was a runt. His brothers, in a family not
known for producing tall men, were all much bigger than he. His only sister
liked to wrestle him to the ground and tickle him until he wet himself.
His
secret joy had been finding different colors to paint pictures. He found all
kinds of wildflowers that he could crush to make paints. Once his father found
him painting instead of working and whacked him with the painting, then made
him paint himself for everyone else to laugh at. That was the first day that
Brandol saw the world change colors.
At
age eleven, his father and mother took him aside and said he would not be able
to work on the family farm. “You can’t pull your weight here,” they said. They
knew of a woodcarver in a nearby town that needed an apprentice, so he was sent
there. After seven years, the master he worked for was ready to give up on him
and send him back to the family farm now that he had grown in size, now even
taller than his brothers. Brandol didn’t want to go back. That was when Henry
had stepped in and offered to give Brandol his first post as a journeyman.
One
of the conditions of working for Henry was Brandol had to learn to read and
write. The journeyman never thought he would learn—or could learn. To his
astonishment, reading and writing was nothing like speaking, and he quickly
learned it.
Henry
had shown faith in Brandol. He had said Brandol’s work promised to be greater
than anything he had seen. “If you’d only show more confidence in your work,”
Henry told him, “many of the problems you keep running into will go away.”
Brandol
tried to be confident. His work did improve under Henry’s hand, but then he got
caught in Henry’s mess, and lost faith in his master.
The
soldiers. The play. Ruther’s blunder at The
Friendly
Fenley. Then
they’d almost died in that blizzard in the forest. It was Henry’s fault for
listening to Ruther. Brandol knew it, so did everyone else. Despite all this,
the turning point for Brandol had been hearing about the ghosts in the Iron
Pass. After that, he’d made up his mind that he if did not start looking out
for himself, he would die with the group, either before they reached the pass
or inside it. The same night that Wilson had told them about the Iron Pass, he’d
heard Ruther leave the house and return without anyone knowing. So, Brandol
snuck out the next night, went to the carriage, and hid the writ of passage in
the deepest pocket of his traveling cloak. He thought that by hiding that
important slip of paper, he would be able to seize an opportunity to sneak away
from the group and use it to reestablish himself somewhere else.
He
was wrong.
He
had never been so terrified as when they went into Bookerton. Even keeping
watch away from the danger had been bad enough. As soon as he alerted James to
Henry’s call, he knew he had to act. Doubling back into town, he sent a letter
to whoever was in charge of the local military. It was a stupid thing to do,
driven by his panic telling him they’d never reach the border without being
caught. It forced him to make his boldest move.
He
needed gold if he was going to start over. Again, Ruther gave him the
opportunity. When asked if they could switch their night watches, Brandol knew
Ruther intended to sneak out. His hands shook so badly as he hefted all those
bags of gold over to the next hill and hid them in the bushes.
When
it became clear they were going to reach the pass, Brandol’s mistakes weighed
on him like a beam of wood across his shoulders. He wanted to tell Henry where to
go back for the gold, but he knew James and Maggie would kick him out of the
group if he confessed. Perhaps he could run away? No, if he mysteriously
disappeared, James would hunt him down. So Brandol kept quiet and prayed his
letter had been delivered too late.
Three
weeks of pain from the guards during the journey north purged some of the
ugliness he felt inside. All he saw during the trip was red. He realized he
deserved to hear Isabelle’s screams. He accepted it all because he was the runt
that had been too weak to survive. Misery and pain kept his mind intact.
Focusing on these things barricaded his thoughts from what horrors awaited him
in Neverak. Twice he tried to tell the guards he wasn’t Henry, but they abused
him even more when he tried to speak. As they beat him, they called him a weak
coward. In his mind it was the same as
runt
.
He
slept a lot. Between his injuries, the cold, and receiving so little to eat, he
did not have the strength to stay awake for more than eight or nine hours a
day. His greatest surprise came when someone banged into his cage. He sat up
only to see Isabelle staring at him. It took him a while to recognize her, she
was so thin and filthy. In her eyes, he saw so many emotions: relief that Henry
wasn’t in the cage, anger at his betrayal, fear, pain. He liked Isabelle. She
had been very kind to him during the times they’d ridden together in the
carriage. Last, he saw sympathy in her eyes, too. Even after all he had done,
she had sympathy for him, for Brandol the runt.
“Oh,
God,” he cried out that night, “please fix this. I didn’t understand. Please
fix this.”
If
someone out there heard him, he didn’t know. He’d never had a reason to believe
in God. No one but Henry had shown him kindness. Even the apprentices had
teased him when Henry wasn’t around. Yet Brandol had repaid Henry in the worst
way possible. He spent many waking moments repeating this prayer. His first
master had called it the Stupid Carpenter’s Prayer.
Please fix this for me
.
It was all he could think to say.
One
day, the guards allowed Brandol a short walk in the early morning, while it was
still cold. Though he had not kept count, he guessed it had been six or seven
days since he’d last been let out of the cage. Isabelle was not in sight. They
had never been let out at the same time.
The
guards had chosen to stop at a group of stables where fresh horses waited to be
harnessed. He tried to enjoy the sounds of animals and the feel of wind on his
face, not knowing if he would ever experience these things again. The scent of
hay and pine was strong. It made the world appear less red, and more green and
white. He heard a bark and saw a dog poking around one of the stables looking
for mice. The dog had an all-white coat and an ink-dipped tail. This dog was no
runt. It had grown into a handsome beast with strong muscles and a healthy
coat. Perhaps the guards used it as a hunting dog, Brandol didn’t know. He
wondered if it were even real.
“
See
that?
” he heard his father say to him again.
“
That’s you,
Brandol. A runt. Sometimes runts die because they can’t fight for mama’s milk.
They’re too weak, unless they learn to be strong.
”
Brandol
hardly moved at all during that short walk. He watched the dog. The runt had
grown to be mighty.
“What
are you looking at?” a guard asked him with a hard knock on the neck. The dog
looked up at the soldier’s voice, tilting his head and curiously staring at
them. Brandol shook his head and let himself be taken back to the cage.
“Please
God, help me fix this,” he said as soon as the carriage doors shut him into
darkness. “Help me find a way to fix this mess.” And for the first time in a
long time, Brandol’s face wore a smile.
Strong
winds blew fiercely cold around Neverak Palace. Brandol shivered as they
brought him out of the carriage by means of the long poles. They dropped him
carelessly on the back of a cart and drove him across the moat. He looked ahead
and saw Isabelle watching him with concern. He knew he must look terrible,
because so did she. He didn’t know of any part of his body that did not hurt.
He
tried not to stare at the palace as his cage was carried off the cart and
inside the great black doors. Its grandeur would only intimidate him, and he
refused to be scared ever again. He saw torches and fireplaces almost
everywhere, warming the air inside the palace walls. At the first fork the
party came to, Isabelle’s cage went left and the servants carried Brandol
straight ahead.
Again
he tried not to think of what was to happen to him. The possibilities were so
endless and he had no way to guess any of them. He observed the portraits and
art hanging on the walls. Many of them were former emperors and empresses, he
supposed. Some were bright and lively, others much less so. After innumerable
twists and turns, they stopped outside a great throne room. Brandol waited
there for several minutes, trying to hold the fragmented pieces of his sanity
together by praying fervently. Finally the guards took him inside.
He
had no doubt the throne room’s grandeur was designed to intimidate visitors.
Brandol thought it worked well. Everything was larger-than-life. Giant golden
statues of past Emperors lined walls that reached to the sky ending in a
brilliant white and gold ceiling. Plush black and red carpet led from the door
to the throne.
With
each step, Brandol could better see the Emperor sitting on his massive throne,
adorned with so much gold and so many jewels that it was grander than anything
else in the magnificently decorated room. The Emperor wore thick red and black
garments, but he did not seem so unpleasant. The Emperor was a younger man,
older certainly than James and Henry, but not by more than ten years, Brandol
guessed. He smiled at Brandol as his cage drew near.
The
Emperor stood as his servants placed Brandol down with more care than he’d been
shown in weeks. He held out his fingers to the nearest servant and was given
black gloves, which he deftly pulled over his hands. Then he received from the
same servant a handkerchief. Even at a distance, Brandol could smell the
flowered scent of the white cloth. The Emperor held it to his nose as he
approached.
“I
promised you, didn’t I?” he asked in a voice so serene that Brandol could not
imagine the Emperor yelling.
Now
was the moment Brandol had prepared himself for since seeing the dog. Of all the
things Ruther had taught him, one thing stuck in Brandol’s mind: “Never stop
performing.”
“You
did,” Brandol said. To his surprise, he did not stammer at all. He tried to
make his voice strong like Henry’s, but his body was so weak that his voice
croaked.