Chapter 7

TT 21 Isildane 1772

(21 Firedawn -862)

Four days of travel whittled away the priest. His feet throbbed and felt like they had outgrown his shoes. When they stopped, he would unlace his sandals and stretch out his toes, scrape dust and dirt away with a finger. He laced up a little looser each time. His back stiffened. Everything felt tight when he sat on the ground. He laid on his back for relief. His hands rested on his belly, his breath heaved to catch up. It was an effort to think past his exhaustion.

They walked in silence. The priest thought of things he wanted to say, mostly things he wanted to ask, but the effort needed to put voice to these thoughts was too much for him. The miller's son appeared comfortable in the silence. The priest thought he preferred it. He quieted the priest with gestures. When the priests grasp for breath grew too loud, or twigs snapped beneath his feet, he'd turn back, a finger to his lips, and his eyes wide, imploring. Sometimes they stood in silence, the miller's son head still, cocked to the side, his eyes darting about scanning the brush. Often, he raised a hand for a halt, then snuck off into the brush. He had wide, anxious eyes.

The priest laid down when this happened. The miller's son didn't like that. He'd gesture emphatically to the priest to get to his feet. The priest wanted to know why. *Why? There's nothing here but flies, gnats and rabbits." But the miller's son cut off any talk. The priest would have to wait until they stopped for lunch or the day. By that time, the priest was too exhausted to care to ask or even remember to ask.

The priest thought the miller's son too cautious. He disliked how the miller's son characterized the ranger from Balrode. He disliked how the miller's son characterized Balrode. He thought to himself, We're all trying to survive and that it's this sort of rashness that breeds contemptible decisions.

These unspoken concerns festered somewhere within the priest, and grew like a fungus in the dark, with lacy delicate tendrils that cocooned all his thoughts softly, lightly, such that he barely noticed the gradual change in his attitude towards the miller's son. By that fourth day, this irritation was a film over his thoughts that had him searching for fault in the actions of the miller's son rather than understanding of his motives.

The priests thoughts changed in another way: they abandoned words. There was no longer an inner dialogue. Thinking happened in images and visions that had a routine of their own. In the mornings and evenings he pictured his chair in the kitchen, a steaming cup of coffee, the cool shade of the redwoods. In the evenings, he imagined the jagged triangular frame of the shrine at Fael, with its dark interior and candles like tears of a flaming god frozen in the air, illuminating the black statue of Ilsa, with her broad feathered wings and bright green eyes.

In the middle of the day he felt something he could only describe as a surrender. He gave up resenting the journey. He just put one foot in front of the other. Occasionally, he laughed at himself. Four days and reduced to a pitiful mound of sweat and chaffed thighs!. At his best, emptiest, when his thoughts added no weight to his stride, he watched the trail. He saw the details that were too weak to create a memory, the pebbles in the dry dusty path, the stiff dried grasses that broke at the touch rustled in the breeze.

Near Fael clusters of farmhouses and mills bubbled out of the landscape like a symptom of the approaching city. Many were abandoned. Fields of oats lay trampled and worn. Stems laid on the ground in a mash of black and brown, dried and rotted. Across the river were more farms and mills, some working others fallow. Thin fingers of docks reached out into the river. Sun-bleached fishing boats tethered by taunt lines subtly rose and fell in the currents. The river ran smooth, silent, and fast.

Wagons and carts pulled by old, tired horses ambled along the road. The priest and miller's son spent almost as much time stepping aside to make room for the wagons as they did progressing down the road. Tired eyes stared back at them from gaunt faces. Nods and feeble waves greeted them. Guarded salutations that left the miller's son bitter. "Like we ain't good enough people to even give a proper hello."

The priest pursed his lips then said, "What would you expect. We are a sight. We look as if we lived in the dust. And these people of Fael have that imperial sheen."

"Imperial uselessness. Fuck these stuck fools. It ain't like we look hungry and about to beg anything of them."

"Hungry and soiled, we're halfway there and maybe they're not sure of which half."

"Speak sterish, aego. No one's gonna like us if you talk like you're trying to write songs."

The road was a worn cut of dirt through a barren strip of yellowed grasslands. Tiny bugs hovered in clouds and swarmed around the eyes and ears. The priest swatted futilely. The miller's son drew his hood lower over his face.

The first sign of the city were the actual beggars camped along the sides of the roads. Reeds woven into meager coverings over lean-tos of gnarly branches sheltered gaunt, soiled faces. Outstretched hands with wrinkled, dry skin wordlessly reached out, pleading for anything that could be spared. The priest stopped and swung his backpack around to his chest when the miller's son said, "No way aego. We don't give our food."

The priest stood exasperated. His arms dropped to his sides. He felt his anger rising but coherent words failed to capture how he felt. The miller's son turned and continued along the road, as if the priest following him wasn't a question. That too angered the priest. He said nothing, however. He swung his backpack on, gave an apologetic nod to the nearest bigger. The beggars stared back with a contemptuous, steely glare.

The road dipped low on the hills along the river and hid the city from their view. Then, a mile out, they rounded a bend and there it stood, the great keep. A block of stone that erupted above the hills, a like a lone molar poking through the mouth of the bay. Ahead, they saw the low, imperial wall. Beyond that, rising high above the city was the towering Wall of Fael.

The miller's son stopped. His impassive face closed tight, eyes narrowed and fixed upward, at the keep.

"You've never been to Fael?" ventured the priest.

"Not this close."

"It's more impressive the closer you get," the priest referred to the keep.

"Makes no sense to me. Why build something that big and make it look dumb? Craft without craftsmanship."

"Maybe they did, and they're saying something by not saying anything at all."

"That's more of the sort of nonsense talk which makes people think you're odd."

"People think I'm odd?" The priest felt his face flush.

"Tilst's aim, yeah. Look aego, once folks hear you walked to Fael to deliver kindling to a temple, people gonna say they were always right about you?"

"Wait, what? Always right?" The priest was getting hot. He felt it physically. He fixed his eyes on the miller's son like pincers to hold him in place.

The miller's son didn't seem to notice the rise he had gotten out of the priest. "Yeah, you're an odd fuck. I thought you did it on purpose so you'd be left alone. But maybe you didn't know it."

"What? ... What's so odd?" The priest was poised to disqualify the miller's son allegations.

"What do they think is odd, or what I think is odd? Cause if you're asking me, I've seen some shit on this journey. That tummy wrap, for one. Everyone knows you're fat. Who you think you're fooling?"

The priest caressed his belly like a wounded pet. Embarrassment robbed him of his ire. He was about to speak but the miller's son started up again.

"What I mean is, well, most folks just think since you talk to the gods, you get kinda touched by it. You go-a asking them to help you heal things and they probably answer you. They do right? Cause I bet the gods say some shit that really shakes a man up. They probably don't answer you straight. They answer in that pecuilar way you talk. You picked it up from them."

The priest found himself, to his surprise, considering -- deeply considering -- the miller's son's hypothesis and despite his desire to be disagreeable, he reluctantly found it novel. "You know, maybe I am touched." He mused, then gently chuckled. "It's not quite as you describe it. I don't hear words, but there's a feeling you get when you reach out to the spirit of a living thing and soothe it."

"See, you're shooting off that nonsense again. Maybe it's better you don't explain it and we can just go on making excuses for you."

Without noticing how or why his disposition changed, it had. The priest found himself sincerely considering the miller's son's position. And he didn't like that approach. "But what if there's something keen about what I experience that could help someone else?"

"Yeah, unless someone needs help, keep it to yourself. I'm good, so no need. And words like keen, normal people don't use them."

They walked on and the priest felt unsettled. He wanted to consider the miller's son's notion further. He liked the interpretation that the gods speak to him when he performs his rituals. But a dark emotion tainted his thoughts and tugged at him, demanding he find a reason to be angry, to find slights in what the miller's son said. And then in a flash the priest remembered where this discussion started, with the miller's son's dissatisfaction with this legendary, timeless keep. His anger found a purchase and began to rise up again. This boy dwells on appearances, he doesn't see what these things truly mean. He can't see symbols. It's people like him that have us in the straits we're in. Short sighted. Concerned with the obvious, the surface level. But then he caught himself. I'm tired, he admitted. My feet are speaking for me, and this has to stop. He's just a kid. This is what the youth do. He's got a good heart, just misguided.

The wooden gates at the low, imperial wall, were pinned open by two iron spikes that looked rusted in place. Four imperial soldiers crouched on the ground, tossing bones and reacting loudly. They wore the armor unique to the Empire. At Fael when an army was raised, the soldiers brought whatever armor or weapons they have. Not the Imperials. They were fitted by the Empire. An iron breastplate, that glimmered with oil, and was riddled with hammered out dents and the scuffs that marked where. Black cloaks pinned over their shoulders. The bucket helmets with the finger of iron that split their face and guarded their noses. A skirt of leather straps, studded with iron plates, hung form their waist. They wore sandals shod with iron teeth to grip the ground. The helm and cloak seemed to shroud them in shadow. When the priest looked at them he saw soldiers, not people.

Three stacks of aegenti (silver coins) were scooped up by the victorious soldier with a sloppy flourish that scattered a few coins. Silver coins rolled and tottered into the street. People jumped clear. The soldiers, still raucous from the game, claimed the coins without heed of anyone. Except for one coin, which rolled to the feet of the miller's son, who slyly stepped on it and then stood still.

The imperial soldier counted the coins in his palm then looked about with a searching look. His eyes stopped at a point on the ground, the point where the miller's son foot rested. The priest saw it. The miller's son stood awkwardly. One foot a little forward of the other.

The soldier stomped towards the miller's son with a disgusted, disappointed look on his face. He was shaking his head in disapproval, the way authority figures look just before they say, You made me do this to you.

The priest looked at the miller's son and he saw it in his eyes. That impassive face wore the look of someone about to deny something they obviously did. And the priest knew for certain, one of that imperial soldier's coins was under his foot.