Servants and Followers (The Legends of Arria, Volume 2) (40 page)

“
I know that
sometimes I do feel helpless, and I wish I could do something, to
be great enough for Jawen’s attention.” Basha said. “But this is
beyond anything I ever could have imagined. I don’t want to wield
the power of the gods, the Swords of Arria. I just wanted Jawen to
notice me, and love me, and marry me. That’s all I ever really
wanted.” He sighed.

“
Ugh.” Oaka said,
rolling his eyes after swallowing. “The same old tune.”

“
What is the matter
with you?” Monika hissed at Oaka.

“
This is how he
always is when it comes to Jawen, and himself,” Oaka muttered.
“You’ll soon learn.”

“
Who is Jawen?” Gnat
asked Basha.

“
I started out on
this quest to get Jawen Tau’s Cup. Jawen is a girl I love in Coe
Baba who said she would marry me if I got her this prize.” Basha
told Gnat, ignoring Oaka and Monika. “And now it seems we’re
veering off further and further away from that. The farther I get
from Coe Baba, the more involved I seem to be getting in some crazy
scheme with Doomba’s Followers and Swords of Arria
and
…
oh no.” He said with a laugh, slapping himself in the face
helplessly as everyone else stared at him.

He couldn’t believe he had not seen
this before. It was obvious in some ways, if you paid attention to
the legends. But real life was not like the legends, and once you
got distracted by mundane concerns, like keeping yourself alive,
you forgot about the legends. But the legends, the stories that the
Old Man had told him and that he had read in books for so many
years, were locked away inside his head, only to be revealed when
they were needed, when they were ready to come out of hiding.

“
What is it, Basha?”
Gnat asked, worried about his manic behavior.

“
This sounds
like
…
this is going to sound really ridiculous
now
…
” Basha said, laughing as he started to stand up. “This
sounds like something the Knights of Arria would be involved
in.”

Oaka, Monika, and then Gnat stared at
each other for a long moment after he had turned towards them.
“What?” Basha asked, serious now as he realized that something was
wrong.

He had seen such
looks on Monika’s and Oaka’s faces yesterday, when he had told them
about what Gnat had said
…
oh, no, they could not possibly
believe that this was possible. And yet he was standing here before
them with the Black Sword in his pack, not to mention Monika’s pack
containing the Blue Sword, two of the Swords of
Arria
…
No, no, no, no, it could not be true.

“
Could it be?” Gnat
asked, almost excited.

“
It might be true.”
Monika said morosely.

“
No, no, I don’t want
it to be true.” Basha said, looking down as he sat down again. “We
can’t be Knights of Arria!” He cried. “It’s impossible! The Knights
of Arria were thousands of years ago, they were
myths, legends, beings of enormous strength and magic. They
were heroes of the past, but not the present!” He struggled to come
up with the right words to describe them. He never had thought much
about how they came to be, they just were, part of the legends. The
others stared at him, shocked by his reaction.

“
New Knights of Arria
don’t get made, they don’t just pop up out of nowhere!” He said.
“The Knights of Arria were born with the power, with the strength
necessary to do good, to bring justice to the world. They were born
with the legend, with the land, they were just
…
There!” He cried.
“Right when we needed them, they were just a part of everything!
We’re just average people, compared to them, we’re nothing like
them!” He said.

It was starting to unravel, his whole
world, like it had when he was 8 years old and he had found out his
parents were not his own. The hard truth won out against the soft
lies that had protected him for all of these years.

“
Face facts, Basha,”
Oaka said, coming over to sit down beside his brother. “The
possibility does exist. I’ll admit that this does sound
far-fetched, and I don’t understand half of it yet myself, but if
these Swords of Arria do belong to you and Monika, or whatever, and
if Doomba, who has ‘power over man and beast’, is trying to stop
you
…
something is going on here beyond this quest, or Fato’s
message about Lord Fobata.” Oaka said.

Basha looked up. “You heard the
prophecy that I got from the Oracle of Mila?” He asked. “You
listened to me and Monika reading it, the morning after Monika
decided to join us?”

“
Yes. That is kind of
why I suspected Monika was a Follower of Doomba in the first
place,” Oaka remarked, glancing back at her. Uh-oh.

“
You thought that I
was
…
” Monika started to say, offended, as Gnat gasped.

“
I heard it, the part
of man and beast, and I started to wonder why you weren’t telling
Basha everything you suspected when I knew you knew more than you
were saying. I thought it made sense to me. I’m sorry.” Oaka said.
At least he was apologizing.

“
Don’t be.” Monika
sighed, grimacing. “I suppose it does make sense, if you were
thinking that way, and I suppose you were trying to protect Basha,”
She said, throwing up her hands in disgust, flinging crumbs. “Even
if you were keeping secrets from him as well.” She accused. What
was she
…
oh, right.

“
Well, I
was
…
I had to be careful.” Oaka told Monika as he stood up and
faced her. “I figured you might try and prevent me from telling
Basha, if I gave myelf away to you, and I had to be careful with
Basha, who didn’t exactly trust me then.” Oaka remarked. “He had a
right to when I had threatened to leave him before.” He glanced
back at Basha. “I’m sorry about that before. I should have been
braver.” Oaka added.

“
You
were
…
” Gnat said, shocked at Oaka’s behavior, and then shook her
head before she covered up her mouth. “Oh my goodness, this is all
so weird and exciting.” She said. “I never thought I would be
involved in something like this before.”

“
Okay, okay,” Basha
said, standing and holding his hands up to step in and prevent
another fight between Oaka and Monika. “Calm down, everyone. Oaka,
I’m sorry if I ever doubted or ignored you in any way. And Monika,
I’m sorry that Oaka acted this way towards you. I know that
whatever reasons you had for concealing the truth were your own,
and Oaka’s case is just the same. Can’t we get all of this settled,
once and for all?” He asked.

“
I’m sorry.” Oaka and
Monika both said at the same time, and then glared at each other
before they stared down at the ground, embarrassed.

“
That’s better.”
Basha said, a little tense with all of this arguing. “I think we
should just forget about all of this Knights of Arria nonsense.
Even if we have their Swords, and even if Black Wolves and
Followers of Doomba are pursuing us, I think we should just focus
on what we know for now, and get going again as soon as Fato
returns. Why speculate about this now when we are in such grave
danger?” He asked.

“
Because speculating
might just save us, Basha, and might lead us to new ideas.” Oaka
said, turning to his brother. “Because speculating is the one thing
that we can do, right here and now, to understand this mess that we
have gotten ourselves into. I wanted to say before that I figured
out the Doomba part in the Oracle’s prophecy with the Black Wolves
chasing us, and
this gruelmoff that tried
to attack us when we were young, Basha, tried to attack you,” Oaka
insisted, “The one that I told you to forget about then, but it was
the one that we saw the Old Man fight off, with his bare hands and
some kind of whip thing. He was involved. The Old Man was involved
from the start, wasn’t he?” Oaka asked, staring up at Basha. “He
knew about the Knights of Arria after all.”

Oh my goodness, how
did he not see this before? Basha stopped as the idea started to
slap him in the face. “He knew? The Old Man knew?” Basha said out
loud. “Oaka, the night of the Courtship ritual, he came up to me,
just after he finished telling the story of how Za and Wan were
created, the very first humans, with Tau’s Cup, and he asked me if
Tau’s Cup was worth more than anything else in the world and I said
no to him
.
I was thinking of Jawen then.” He said, excited
as he was already starting to figure out what was going on here, or
at least part of it anyway.

“
He planted it.” Oaka
gasped. “He planted the seed, the very germ of the idea that you
would ask for Jawen with Tau’s Cup. He knew that you would, you had
nothing else, he practically suggested it to you!”

“
And there’s
something else!” Basha said, remembering. “The Old Man, he said in
the town council chambers, when they held the meeting the next day,
he said that I should go see the Oracle of Mila to have my decision
made. And then when the Old Man accompanied me, he told me the
story of how the Knights of Arria, when they arrived in this
country, the first town they came to was Coe Baba!” He
cried.

Oaka gasped, grabbing
Basha by the shoulders and practically shaking him. “Do you know
what this means? The Old Man, he must have known the Knights of
Arria when they passed through Coe Baba, or maybe he was even one
of them! Basha, this is
crazy.
”

“
I know this is
impossible, and yet I
can’t believe I’m
starting to believe it!” Basha
cried and
laughed, jumping up and
down with Oaka, as Monika and Gnat stared at them both.

“
Basha, Oaka, what is
all of this about?” Monika asked, stopping them when they were
starting to scare her and Gnat. “You can’t--the Old Man is this
storyteller you were telling me about, Basha, when I passed through
your town, right? What is all of this?”

“
The Old Man is key
to all of this,” Basha said, turning to her and Gnat. “The way
things were set up, it was as if the Old Man knew that I would have
to go on this quest for Tau’s Cup. He even suggested it and made
certain that I would go. Possibly so that I would get the Black
Sword and become a Knight of Arria?” He asked, and then laughed at
himself. “A Knight of Arria, this is ridiculous.”

“
Basha, but
that
…
how could he have known you would get the Black Sword?”
Monika asked. “It doesn’t quite connect!”

“
I don’t know. Maybe
because he asked the Oracle of Mila, or maybe because he had some
sort of knowledge of his own for being
not
just a regular storyteller, but possibly one of the Knights of
Arria himself?” Basha told Monika. She seemed skeptical, and he
didn’t blame her, so he continued, “I told you the Old Man was
ancient, that he had probably been around for as long as Coe Baba
existed, but I never told you how he had once fought off a
gruelmoff that tried to attack me and Oaka when we were young. The
strength he had shown then, it was impossible for him to have done
such a thing if he was completely old and frail. Never had he shown
himself capable of doing something like that, before or since. It
was like he was protecting us from Doomba.” Basha said.

“
This is confusing.”
Gnat muttered.

“
I know!” Oaka said,
interrupting Basha’s conversation with Monika, and then sobered up
a little bit. “Basha, the Old Man knew all of this time, ever since
we were children, that you would be
…
I don’t know if he knew exactly
what, one of the Knights of Arria or even carrying the Black Sword,
neither do I, but he must have suspected or known somehow that
something was amiss. That you and me, or just you, would be in
trouble, in danger because of Doomba and his minions chasing after
us. Basha, how could he have known that? What did he know? And why
would he have protected us?” Oaka asked.

“
I don’t know.” Basha
repeated, suddenly serious as well when a new thought had struck
his head, almost as outlandish as the Old Man’s involvement. “And
what if Nisa has been following me as well?” He asked. “Following
me until I needed some help. What if that was her back at Coe Aela,
in the grand banquet hall, and then helping Gnat get the Black
Sword back? And what if she has been following me for a long time
as well? Following me not just since I left Coe Baba, but since I
was living in Coe Baba, just like the Old Man.”

“
The Old Man was
following you?” Oaka asked.

“
How else could he
have known about the gruelmoff attack unless he was right there,
watching or waiting for us?” Basha asked.

“
This is disturbing.”
Monika muttered, shaking her head as she paced around. “The Old Man
following you your whole lifetime, and now Nisa
,
without your
knowledge? This is disturbing, no one should be able or allowed to
do that, not even your parents. Who knows what else they might have
seen?” She asked. “They might have been following us together back
in Coe Baba, when you were showing me about the town. No wonder I
felt so strange there. I do not like being followed.” She
said.