Chapter 6

They ate in silence. The breeze tossed the grasses, which rustled faintly. Birds called more than sang. A hawk circled overhead in silent orbs. The priest found the cake his wife hid in his pouch. A yellow cake, browned on the sides, sticky to the touch, it was shaped like a heart. He felt her love and he felt his guilt. His feelings were wordless thoughts that flowed from his chest and felt like a longing. It was the feeling of questioning himself, questioning why he left her to go on this trek to Fael.

By the afternoon, the sun commanded a desolate, washed out sky and burned off all the morning clouds. There was no escape from its brightness. The priest pulled his hood over his face to spare his eyes, but his skin broiled and dripped sweat in huge drops that ran down the end of his nose.

The heat surrounded his thoughts. His sweat drenched clothes clung to his flesh. And yet his mouth was dry. His lips felt cracked. His thighs chaffed. It started as an itch and then grew into a burn. His feat ached from the walking and pulsed with the heat. When he tried to think about anything, his discomfort nagged and tugged at him until his thoughts returned to how miserable this heat was. He longed for evening, the cool air that would blow across his face and lift the heat and sweat from his face.

He wanted to think about his wife. He wanted to plunge the depths of his missing her but even those thoughts just turned into a way to escape the heat. He imagined himself at home, in the cool shade of their forest, sitting patiently through the hot part of the day. Instead of thinking of her, he thought of the relief. She faded into the background, more of a setting than a person.

At his worst moments, when he felt his head growing light and his breaths came shallow and rapid, he'd remember the precious bundle of sticks. That other spirit, the one that burned rich with the orange flame, was a mystery that must be solved.

The ritual he performed to find the spirit in those branches had revealed two things to him, one expected the other frightful. He expected there to feel the life within the branches -- a fading life since they had been plucked from the tree and the roots that supplied their sustenance. He was surprised that the life he felt was strong, stronger than what he would find in a living tree. But that wasn't what frightened him. It was that orange aura within, that burned at the heart of the branches spirit. He had never felt that before. The gods compel me, he told himself, They have sent me a sight that to ignore would be to invite their displeasure.

They camped in a sheltered cove that faced west. The winds from the plains roared up past the opening. Darkness came slowly as the light from the setting sun had nothing to stop it, and the day clung tightly, not wanting to give into night. The priest had wandered off to gather kindling for a fire. When he returned the miller's son said they won't have a fire. "We're too close to Balrode. We passed her by not long after midday. Remember that tiny trail we took with hill on our left shoulder, and we stared right into the sun? Over that hill she sat. And I don't much like the folks from Balrode. Sometimes they can be little active."

"Active?"

"Yeah, active. You know, testy."

"No, I don't know." The priest knew Balrode. He had been there a few times when a healer was needed. He found the families that lived there to be inviting, even if half the town was fay.

"Aego, you're a healer. Folks always like you. I'm not counting on that to get us through these lands. Less attention we draw the better."

They slept wrapped in blankets on a flat outcropping with two large granite rocks behind them. Before them, the western night sky stretched to a flat, straight horizon where the world cleaved the heavens.

Summer nights along the coast carried the chill of the sea. It reached into their bones. The cold gently carried the priest to sleep. The priest was woken by the howling of wolves in the distance. He then heard the miller's son say, "Told ya."

Overhead stretched a canopy of stars. One of the moons had already set, two remained clinging to the horizon.

Before long the priest heard the miller's son gently snoring. The wolves continued to howl. They sounded far off. The priest couldn't tell if they were getting closer. Their howls echoed off the hills in deceiving ways. He struggled to fall back asleep, and when he did he didn't realize it. His dreams seemed to stretch from his waking thoughts without any indication of the change. When he woke up, he was shivering. He lay in the shadow of the hills. The sky darkened to a dying night on the horizon.

The miller's son squat at the edge of their camp, looking down the hill to the west, to the coast and Fael in the distance. He didn't hear the stranger approach, either.

"Ulso turns to us, travelers." A man said it, from above them, atop the hill they slept upon. He too was crouched. He appeared as a silohuette, a dark cut out on the brightening dawn behind him.

The miller's son looked over his shoulder. "Hey now, it's not kindly to sneak up on folks in the dark." The pale, ghostly morning light lit him up in a washed out way, flattening his features, except for his eyes which were clearly wide and searching. His gaze darted to his spear that lay on the far side of camp, between him and the stranger.

"That's why we waited till morning." The stranger's voice was calm, assured. The situation lent it a menacing quality.

The priest heard the stranger say we but he saw no one else. He propped himself up on his elbows, looked up at the man crouched above him.

"This your hill?" The miller's son stood up. His voice was clipped, challenging. The priest worried the miller's son was looking for a scrap. Throughout their trip it seemed that the miller's son stove to prove himself, the way boys new to being men wanted to signal to the other men that they were to be taken seriously.

"Cold night to camp without a fire. You look fit to build one. Curious choice." The stranger spoke slowly, assuredly.

The priest heard the fay in those statements, the questions implied, the warnings inherent in the outline of what was said.

The priest said, "You're from Balrode." His intonation sounded like a statement, but he meant it as a question. The priest liked fay-speak, and getting to practice it on someone other than his wife would have been welcome had the stakes not felt so high. He was confident that he was correct, the man had to be from Balrode. Balrode had more fay than Nemheim. He remembered the people there and their habits well. Unlike the way the miller's son spoke of Balrode, the priest had a good impression. So he was relieved believing the stranger was from there and not some roaming bandit.

But before the stranger could answer, the miller's son said, "Some folks are drawn to fires, unsavory folks. We're just trying to pass through."

"Where you headed?" The stranger faced the miller's son. Since he didn't answer the priest, the priest took it as confirmation the stranger came from Balrode. Which gave him an uneasy kind of relief, lent credibility to his desire for this to be nothing more than a scout checking on travelers.

"This your hill?" He repeated his challenge. The priest heard the fay-ness in how he kept making this assertion. The miller's son looked about now, openly searching for the rest of his we the stranger referred to.

The priest answered the stranger, "We're headed to Fael, to the high temple. I'm a priest." The priest pulled his feet underneath himself, then with the help of his hands, pushed himself upright. His blanket fell to his waist, he quickly pulled it back over his shoulder.

"A priest? The well-fed one from Nemheim?"

The priest blinked rapidly, he looked surprised and galled by the description. "I've been fortunate ... That's a little bit of ... my wife is a good cook."

"By the looks of it, the best in all the realm!" The stranger laughed.

His mirth was contagious, the miller's son laughed too. "She baked him a cake for the trip," said the miller's son. His tone was playful. "And wouldn't you know it, he didn't share any of it."

"I"m not surprised," said the stranger.

The priest noticed how the tension slackened as the two men poked fun at his belly. He relaxed a bit more. He feared the miller's son acting up and instigating a confrontation more than he feared the appearance of this man.

"I didn't know you wanted any," said the priest. "If you had asked --"

"Oh come on priest, I'm just poking you. Stranger, we'll be on our way with a quickness. We'll beat the sun over the horizon if I have to roll this priest down the hill."

"Stick to the trail, it's safer for you. There are bandits in these hills. The imperials don't patrol north of the river anymore."

The miller's son thanked him for the advice, then the stranger stood up. He held a spear, which until then they hadn't seen. He walked back behind the hill and was gone. The priest was about to say something when the miller's son waved him quiet. They remained fixed there, still, quiet, for several minutes. The miller's son gestured with quick motions to gather up their gear and head out silently.

They didn't speak for nearly a half an hour. "Don't ever tell anyone you're a priest, aego."

"Isn't it obvious by my frock?"

"Not when you're hidden by shadows and have a blanket wrapped around you."

"Wouldn't they be less concerned if a priest passed by their lands than a soldier or bandit?"

"Yup, that's right. Less concerned they'd get hurt. But they ain't got a priest of their own. An easy way to get one is to just take one they find wandering in the hills."

"Come on, now. They're good people there. I've been there."

"We're all good people, aego. Until we can't be."