Authors: Jaleigh Johnson
“Where did you go to play today?” Her voice was strained. “I told you not to stray out of sight of the house.”
“You mean out of your sight,” the boy said without looking at her.
The board clattered to the floor. The woman yanked the boy to his feet by his belt. “You will not defy your mother, do you hear? If they find out you’ve touched anyone else”
“I didn’t kill Megwem!” He reached up to wrench her hand away, but she released him before he could touch her.
“You’re just the same. You think I’m plague-touched!” he shouted.
“Darling, that’s not true, I only”
“She was already dying.” Tears ran down the boy’s face. “She was going to die anyway. I could feel it.” He looked at his hands. They were still swollen. “She was so cold. How could she live like that?”
His shoulders shook. His mother turned him around and wrapped her arms around his waist. She stood behind him, rocking him slowly. The boy continued to sob, but eventually he quieted, soothed by his mother’s arms.
Arms which were very careful not to touch his bare skin. Icelin could see the fear jn her eyes, the fear she tried to hide from the boy.
The cottage vanished, whisking away the boy and his mother. In their place, Kaelin reappeared on top of a rotting crate. He held a rat comfortably in his lap. The rest of the troupe was gone.
“Well played!” The beggars were on their feet, applauding and whistling as enthusiastically as the crowd at the Cradle. Icelin could only sit and marvel at how quickly the illusion had come and gone. How fast a boy’s life could change.
Kaelin slid off the crate, letting the rat run free. He walked over to stand in front of Icelin.
“Did you enjoy the show, false front?” he asked, his eyes alight.
Icelin shook het head. “You should have asked his permission. That wasn’t right.”
“Oh, but I did ask. He wanted to hear the tale of the boy lost in the wilderness. You should be grateful. He would never have told you himself.”
“You still had no right.”
“Ah well, then you have my deepest apologies,” the boy said. He didn’t sound the least bit abashed. “Perhaps I should tell him your tale, to even the ground between you.”
“I have no secrets left from any of my friends,” Icelin said. “You don’t scare me.”
Kaelin leaned down. “What about the secrets you’re keeping from yourself?” he said, his words for her ears alone. “The tower where you’ve hidden them all?”
Icelin felt a chill. “I’m not the only one with secrets,” she said unsteadily. “You are not truly a boy, are you? You are spirits imitating flesh.”
“Of course we are,” Kaelin said, sniffing as if he’d just been insulted. “But I remember what a child is, and so do they,” he said, nodding at the beggars. “Everyone knows the best liars are children, and the best storytellers are liars. I am what I am, in service to my craft.”
“So all that,” Icelin said, waving to where the imaginary glade had been, “that was a lie?”
“To the senses, it was,” Kaelin said. “As for the story itself ask him”
Icelin blinked, and suddenly a sleek crow was sitting on her knee. The bird cawed once, loudly, and took flight. Icelin watched it until it disappeared beyond the wrecked ship.
The crowd of beggars broke up, each going to separate nooks of the ship to sleep or talk.
“We should all be resting,” Bellaril said. She stood with Sull off to one side, where the beggars wouldn’t hear.
“You two sleep,” Icelin said. “Ruen and I will keep watch. I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.”
“Why should it be you?” Sull said. “You both look exhausted.”
“We are,” Icelin said. She looked at Ruen, who was staring at the crates and rats. He hadn’t said a word. “Yet neither of us will sleep.”
A quiet figure crouched in the shadows of two crates and gazed down on the beggar folk. He watched them settle in after their strange audience had concluded.
Imagine, watching a cluster of crows and rats for entertainment. Tarvin shook his head. His job had shown him some strange things, but this was a story for tavern talk if he’d ever heard one.
He stood up and faced the guard who’d come bearing a load of food: bread, dried meat, and a bushel basket of nearly rotting fruit.
“A hardy feast,” he said, eyeing the fare. “I trust your master never neglects to bring the food?”
“None have died due to his neglect,” the guard said. “Did you find what you sought? My master will require word of your departure.”
“He doesn’t like having me here,” Tarvin said. “Well, there’s some satisfaction in that. Tell him I’m leaving directly. I didn’t find what I was looking for.”
“A waif of a girl, wandering Mistshore; she’s likely dead,” the guard said.
“You think so?” Tarvin said. “I hope you’re right.”
The guard looked surprised. “I thought your orders were to bring her in alive?”
“Oh, I’m quite clear on my orders. My wishes are another matter.” He crossed his arms. “I have little care whether Icelin Team lives or dies in Mistshore. She belongs here with the rest of the outcasts, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Well then, I wish you good fortune in your diligent search,” the guard said dryly. He pushed past Tarvin and began tying
rope to the handles of the baskets.
“Are you judging me,” Tarvin said, “when you’re tossing food to the diseased with gloved hands and sweating because you don’t want to get too close?” The guard didn’t respond. Tarvin grabbed his arm and spun him around. “Answer me, wretch!”
The guard shrugged his arm off and put a hand to his sword hilt. “You won’t be touching me, little watchman, not out here. You said it yourself: this is Mistshore, and we outcasts don’t like to be looked at down the nose of Waterdeep’s mighty, especially when he’s all alone.”
“Alone?” Tarvin said, laughing. “You have no idea how many of us walk in Mistshore this day. Best be holding those threats inside. You never know who might be listening.”
“Be off with you,” the guard said. He tipped the basket over the side of the ship and lowered the food. “Turn your wrath on the girl. I hope she keeps you running in Mistshore forever.”
“You can be sure she won’t,” Tarvin said. He walked away from the guard, and walked back in the direction of Whalebone Court.
She couldn’t hide for long, not with her wild nature. The burnt warehouse was just the beginning. It was only a matter of time before Icelin Team slipped up again and got somebody else killed.
Tarvin clenched a fist. Gods help her if she tried to turn her wild wrath on him or any of the Watch. Orders or no, he would bring her back to the Warden on a board before he let her magic kill any more of his friends.
He glanced toward the Court. He should meet up with the patrol to see if they’d gained any ground, but something held him back. His presence obviously irritated the master of the Cradle, so why not take advantage of the situation?
He settled back among the crates to watch the beggar folk a while longer. He found it strangely fascinating to see them from this distance, unobserved. Like watching the rats on a sinking
ship. Except these rats were staying on board. Like the rest of Mistshore, they had nowhere else to go.
Icelin lay awake as darkness fell. She watched the stars come out, the tiny lights framed by a ship’s hull. There were no floating crags tonight. She usually only saw them from her roof, on nights like this when she couldn’t sleep. They were often illuminated in purple, their underbellies some kind of crystallized rock.
It had never occurred to her to wonder where the drifting motes came from. They’d been a part of that distant world for so long she’d never questioned what happened to them when they left Waterdeep view.
Just as she’d never before questioned what her dreams meant, until Cerest, and Kaelin’s whispered taunts. Now she wondered about the strange rock crags and the crumbling tower of her dreams. Why did she dream of a place she’d never been to? Why was an elf from distant lands seeking to possess her like an object of power?
“What are you thinking about?”
It was Ruen. He sat a few feet away from her in the dark. These were the first words he’d spoken since Kaelin’s strange play had ended.
Icelin shifted so she could make out his profile. “How long did you stay in the village after you’d been scarred?”
“That’s not what you were thinking about.”
“I was thinking I should read Elgreth’s letters. I have all this time to examine them, yet I haven’t.”
Ruen turned his head. She saw the slash of red in his eyes. “I didn’t stay long. After Megwem, the whole village knew. They wouldn’t touch me. When the monks came to take me into their training, I knew shemy motherhad arranged it somehow. That was fine. I didn’t want to slip and accidentally learn or cause her death, anymore than she did. I’d rather they
all died peacefully, without the knowledge of when it would happen.”
“Is it such a certainty?” Icelin asked. “It doesn’t seem possible to know when someone’s going to die, just by touching them.”
“Doesn’t seem possible for someone to have a perfect memory either,” Ruen said.
Icelin had nothing to say to that. “Were you happy with the monks?” she asked instead.
“For a time. The monks understood more than the others,” Ruen said. “All things originate from the hands, they said. The ki. It’s true. Otherwise Kaelin wouldn’t have any stories for his stage.”
“What do you mean?” Icelin asked.
“He touched all of the beggars. Not many barriers can keep the dead out, and the mortal mind is exceptionally fragile when it’s weakened by illness or infirmity.”
“If that’s true, how did he know our stories?” Icelin said. “We’re not sick.”
Ruen looked at her a long time without saying anything, his gaze burning her with its intensity. It frightened her.
“What is it?” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”
He blinked and shook his head. “Nothing. Maybe the boy could see through us because somewhere inside we wanted our stories told.”
“Yet my letters sit unopened.”
“So open them,” Ruen said, his voice rough, tired. “Even I can’t hide you indefinitely.”
But I’m afraid. “Do you already know how all this is going to turn out?” Icelin asked. “Will I… die from this adventure?”
“I haven’t touched you,” Ruen said. “Not your hands, nor any part of your bare skin. I don’t know how close to death you are.” He looked down at her, and Icelin saw him chewing something over in his mind. When he spoke, it was hesitandy. “If you’re afraid for your life, why not stop now? Turn yourself in to the
Watch, and you won’t have to cast any more spells. I can see how they weaken you,” he said when she started to speak. “Why do you hold onto magic, when it brings you so much grief?”
Icelin was silent for a long time. She knew exactly how to answer him, but she couldn’t at first, because she’d never admitted it outright to herself. It felt strange to do so now.
“The first time I cast a spell, it was agony,” Icelin said. “My head hurt; my stomach felt like it was being yanked inside out. When it was over, my teacher tojd me not to worry, that the pain would not always be so debilitating. I knew even then that he was wrong. I didn’t care. I cast spell after spell; I learned every magic he taught me.”
“Why?” Ruen said. “Why put yourself through the pain?”
“Because it made me forget, “Icelin said. “In that breath when I called the magic, the pain made me forget everything. Me, who can forget nothing. It was a miracle. All the memories I couldn’t bury disappeared when the magic engulfed me. Their weight was gone. For that short time, I was free. Give up magic? I couldn’t conceive of it, not until the fire. Even after I killed those people”
“It was an accident,” Ruen said.
“When I swore I would never use magic again, I broke my promise almost immediately. I locked all the dangerous spells away, yes, but even the little magics caused me pain. I kept those spells close, and cast them often. It was the only way I could forget.”
“It’s not so easy for the rest of us to forget,” Ruen said. “The worst and the best memories stay with you. Some things you’re supposed to experience, no matter how painful.”
“Do words like that aid you, when you touch a man’s bare flesh?” Icelin asked. “When you learn when he will die?”
“No,” Ruen said. “But I still say the words. It’s all I can do.”
He turned his head away from her and tipped his hat down over his face. Icelin started to say something else but let it go.
She pulled the letters out of her pack and laid the bundle in her lap. The first she’d already read. She folded it carefully and laid it aside.
The second letter had dirt caked around the edges of the parchment. Icelin fingered the stains. This letter had come from outside Waterdeep. She wondered what it had gone through to make its way to her great-uncle’s house.
Breaking the brittle seal, Icelin unfolded the pages.
Dear Granddaughter,
I wish you could he with me as I pass through the Dalelands. You would love this country. The sun is rising, the air is crisp, but the dying hints ofcampfire keep me warm. If I listen closely, I can hear the most remarkable sounds. Brant would call me sentimental, but I imagine I can hear the voices of those who walked these roads long ago. What stories would they tell, these brave phantoms, if they could stop a while by my fire? Would their adventures be ofstorming perilous castles or tilling fertilefields? Would they slay dragons or raise daughters? All these things I wonder, as I sit by my fire and think of you.
Icelin clutched the parchment in her hands. This letter and the handful following all came from a different land or city some she had never heard of. Four years went by in a bell as she read. The only thing she could conclude of her grandfather, besides his affection for her, was that restless was too weak a word to ascribe to him. He never stopped moving.
Dear Granddaughter,
Today I looked for the first time upon the city of Luskan. I pray you never have cause to enter this den of depravity and violence. There is no law but that of
the thieves’guilds and street gangs. Ever at war with each other, they take no notice of a lone man seeking shelter.