The Burden of the Protector (9 page)

Not so for Vìr.

He was left underground, completely alone.

*

Harvesting 12, year 2966, Dàr is 25.

Vìr might have starved to death. The Sy’Iss certainly didn’t seem interested in him. It was like he didn’t exist, never had. There were no knight soldiers at the entrance of the cave and for three days, while spying from afar, I didn’t see anyone come or go. The place was completely abandoned, and I dreaded that Vìr might either be gone, spirited away, or left for dead.

I didn’t understand it, would have thought the Sy’Iss would have at least questioned him about his research and discoveries. But no, nothing. I brushed those incomprehensible notions away as I decided to bring food to Vìr myself. I did so before dawn, coming to the caves before the sun was even out.

The first visit was atrocious. I remember shaking with fright at what I might discover. I hid the food in my heavy coat and brought a torch to illuminate the way. It was deep and far and brought back images of my nightmares, the strange object and the passage into Ul Darak. It took all my courage not to turn back from the darkness. I found several cells, most very small and all empty. I didn’t understand why they would have put Vìr so deep. The tunnels were humid and smelled like the sewers of Vi’Alana. The deeper I got, the heavier the silence.

I was about to quit when I heard faint moans in the distance. I pressed forward until I reached a tiny jail cell, isolated, located at the end of a long and narrow passage. I couldn’t see anything at first. I waved the torch until I discerned a shape sitting in a corner. It was Vìr, his head between his knees. He seemed so weak. He didn’t even look up at my arrival.

“Vìr,” I said, “Vìr! It is I, Dàr…”

At this, he pulled his head up and looked at me through half-opened eyes. I showered him with a profusion of apologies…for my betrayal, for not supporting him, for the cell, and everything. I asked for forgiveness, over and over. My voice sounded raw and I had tears in my eyes.

Then he lifted a hand and asked for my silence. Not without difficulty, he made his way to the door. I passed the bread, cheese, and water to him through the iron bars. He started eating voraciously. While doing so, he never looked at me once.

When done, he sat down with his back against the bars. I couldn’t see his face but knew his eyes were closed.

“Stop apologizing,” he said. His voice was full of pain, broken and weak. “It is not you that is to blame, not entirely.”

He took a long breath.

“Thank you,” he said. “I needed the food.”

A long silence stretched between us that I didn’t dare disturb.

“How…is Maéva?” he finally asked.

“She…” I started, happy for the question. “She is detained in her home day and night, not allowed to leave. I believe she is well treated and fed. She has visitors now and then. I…don’t know them. Scholars of the League, I think.”

Vìr finished the last of the water and returned the skin through the bars.

“Then,” he said, “I might yet be able to forgive you. In time.”

Silence dragged. It was uncomfortable.

“What can I do?” I finally asked, a lame plea.

No answer.

“Vìr, please, tell me what I can do,” I repeated. “Ask me anything. I am here to help.”

He turned toward me and studied me. I knew asking for trust was a lot after what I had done. But I needed to ask.

“In time,” he said.

*

Harvesting 15, year 2966, Dàr is 25.

“You really want to help?” asked Vìr a few days later.

“I do. I have to.”

“Bring me ink and paper,” he said.

The next morning, I had what he asked for.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

The next day, he had a letter for me.

“Deliver this to Sia,” he said. “And tell her to bring it to Maéva.”

“Sia?”

“She is your cousin, is she not?”

“She is,” I said. “But she’s a knight soldier. I…”

Vìr lifted an eyebrow.

“I can find a way,” I said before he could ask anything more. “I will.”

*

Harvesting 19, year 2966, Dàr is 25.

I was true to my word. Although Sia and my family had never been close, I found her and gave her the letter. We exchanged only the briefest of words. The gap between soldiers and protectors was too deep to be crossed easily, and neither of us wanted to shrink it.

The next day, Sia had a letter for me, which I took back to Vìr. Sia and I became messengers between Vìr and Maéva. I never once peeked at what they were writing. I didn’t ask either.

Following a suggestion from Vìr, I spread out my visits, making them irregular. It was a dangerous game. I juggled going to the cave with regular meetings with Eriéla, usually early in the morning. Most protectors stayed home or with relatives during these days. Vìr was becoming increasingly restless with the whole matter.

“Where is the Sy’Iss?” he asked one day. “What is happening out there?”

“I do not know,” I said. “The masters are still debating, I think. They have locked themselves in the Grand Hall and haven’t come out in a while.”

“And the roads?”

“Still nothing. Ta’Énia is closed, and no one can come in or out.”

Vìr paced. The news seemed to bother him severely.

“What is it?” I asked. “What is bothering you?”

Vìr looked at me, a serious air about him. His eyes gleamed with such intensity that I took a step back. I suddenly felt incredibly young and naive. Vìr, on the other hand, seemed a veteran, someone who had battled the world and survived. It was one of the rare occasions when he looked down on me.

“What do you think will happen to me?” he questioned.

“I…hadn’t thought about it.”

“Do so, now,” pressed Vìr.

I took a few moments.

“Exile,” I said.

“Exile…” He pondered it. “And where do you think those who are exiled go? What do they tell you?”

“I do not know,” I admitted. “Nothing is told, but one has to assume they go beyond Jarum. Dalathras maybe, Toria…the Yil Isles in the south. The choice is theirs to make, the path theirs to choose.”

“You make it sound like it is almost a liberation,” Vìr said, pressing each word. But the implied meaning escaped me and I stood there, not saying a word. “One day, you will have to stop deluding yourself.”

Vìr paused, maybe wanting me to ask him what he meant. I did not.

“If not for you, I would already be dead,” he said next. “You are taking grave risks by coming here day after day. For this, I thank you.”

There was genuine worry in Vìr’s voice. I suddenly realized that Vìr wanted to get out and not necessarily for his own safety, but probably for mine.

“What do you think the Sy’Iss will do?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

“It is a good question, isn’t it?” said Vìr. “The Sy’Iss deliberately decided to forget about me. After all this while, I doubt they will simply come for me, take me out and let me walk free. No, the Sy’Iss fears me, fears what I am.”

His words had not a hint of arrogance. It was the simple truth as Vìr saw it.

“More importantly,” he said, “the Sy’Iss fears the Borders and Ul Darak. I see it now. Should have seen it sooner. They do not want to know what Maéva and I discovered. That is why they didn’t come ask me about it, why they never will. Their fear is greater than their curiosity. It might even be worse than that. What if…”

Vìr stopped, turned my way.

“You realize, Dàr, that the Sy’Iss is also not interested in what you have seen. Not in the slightest. It is a good thing you never went to them. A very good thing indeed.”

As Vìr said these words, I was both trembling from terror and strangely incredulous. I was not able to completely believe his assertions. To a certain extent, I might concede that the Sy’Iss might harm Vìr, but me, a devoted knight protector? They wouldn’t. Or would they?

I looked at Vìr and could see that he had made his decision. A plan was forming in his mind. A wave of rebellion went through me, a sharp sensation, definitive. I wanted to help. It didn’t matter what the judgement of the Sy’Iss would be. At that moment, I wanted to help Vìr, a friend.

Eriéla would have disapproved. As would have my whole family. It was an important decision, but the decision had been made when I had come down with food and water that first time.

“What do you need me to do?” I said. “I will help. I will help you to get out.”

Vìr looked down for a brief moment, calm returning to him.

“I apologize,” he said. “This place, this whole situation…”

“Do not fret,” I said. “Just tell me.”

Even after what I had done, it seemed Vìr still saw hope in me. Bending down, he took out a rolled piece of parchment from under a loose rock.

“I accept your offer,” he said.

I nodded.

“Here, take this and guard it well. As usual, pass it to Sia. Then offer her what help you can. Instructions will follow.”

I nodded again, vigorously.

Marks in the Wood

In the middle of the night, a letter was patiently carved with unrelenting determination and the used-up end of a spoon.

“D.”

A few days later, when the sun was at its apogee at the crown of the sky, another letter was added. The following dusk, almost as an afterthought, a brief line was carved from left to right at a weak angle.

“à.”

And this morning, a certain number of days later, a final letter was put into the wood and completed the name.

“r.”

Lying on his belly on the floor, the lone man looked at the letters engraved in a plank of the house wall, in that section hidden under the bed.

It was a weak attempt to be remembered.

Shading 25, year 3001, Dàr is 60.

As I lay in my bed last night, I came to the most terrifying of revelations. It took me several days to even entertain its possibility. I still doubt its veracity, but it is such a formidable idea, so horrid in its implications, that I must put it down. If there is but a tiny chance that it might be true, then someone must know. Someone must stop the abomination that it represents.

It started as I was reminiscing about Vìr, of a time when our friendship was young and growing, before the discovery in the forest. He had asked a question, which at the time was innocent to him and irrelevant to me.

Not so now.

We were discussing the knight protectors, their role in Ta’Énia, the longevity of the service required, which is about thirty years, if one does not include training and mentoring. A protector starts his or her training at fifteen years of age, for most. Mine started at fourteen. The tutelage can be received in Ta’Énia or in a few of the cities of Jarum, such as Vi’Alana. It lasts for five years. Then the pupil becomes a protector and starts participating in the guarding of the Borders. Younger protectors receive the faraway regions. By the time the age of forty is reached, a protector is given only the closest regions of Ta’Énia to patrol. Mentoring the young protectors starts at fifty.

“And after sixty, a well-deserved retirement,” suggested Vìr.

“You could say that,” I remember replying, shocked, probably pale, due to his ignorance and his disregard. Vìr had then lifted an eyebrow, a habit of his when his curiosity was piqued.

“What after sixty, then?”

At first, I had not understood his question. Such a bizarre moment, when our disparate origins put us worlds apart. I had not answered, believing there was no need and nothing to add.

We returned to the subject but one more time, maybe a few months later, maybe a year. “The final age, then, is sixty?” he had asked, probing. I had nodded and steered the discussion toward an unrelated subject.

As I lay in my bed last night, unable to sleep, having overslept during the day, those discussions and questions returned to me. More important, the surprise on Vìr’s face returned. He had shown distress and some incredulity. I believe he would have liked to address the subject again, but we never had the chance. It had seemed important to him and that got me thinking some more.