The Chosen (The Compendium of Raath, Book 1) (28 page)

Krothair blinked his drying eyes, now
realizing he hadn't done that the entire time Ti'Shed had been
talking. And something else dawned on him. Suddenly the frenzied
method of his training became clear to him.

“You're banishing me because I can't replace
your son,” the boy said in a whisper.

“I am banishing you because
I was foolish to think that
anyone
could,” Ti'Shed said. “You are a talented
fighter, but I do not want to see you in the morning. . . Because
you are not my son.” The old man cleared his throat several times
and then he was gone like a shadow in the night.

Krothair wept silently, sobs wracking his
body as his flat pillow slowly soaked with his tears. He didn't
stop until the sun threatened to peek over the horizon.

He quickly gathered what little he had, and
slowly limped out of the place he had lived for the past month.

Krothair was on his own again.

But he was getting used to that.

H
e
didn't want to go back to the Western Watch in his condition, so he
had to choose somewhere else. A place he could recover from all he
had just gone through. It took him a few nights of living in the
town and sleeping in alleys before he found an attic in an
abandoned house. He realized that he probably belonged in the slums
anyway, with his dirty clothes and beaten body.

Krothair wondered idly if this was how he
would live out the rest of his life. He struggled, ashamed and
broken. Deep down - in some spark of his soul - he thought he could
recover, he just wasn't sure when or how fully.

The attic was cold at night, but it didn't
matter. The only things Krothair had taken from Ti'Shed's house had
been his terrible Western Watch practice sword, his clothes, a
blanket, and his Kingsguard paper still tucked in his pocket after
all this time.

He had checked at the stables for the gray
horse he had ridden in on, but he had neglected to keep track of
it, and hadn't been paying, and now the horse was gone.

He thought of Forstina sometimes at night,
thinking that maybe he could be inside that warm tent again and be
told that everything was going to be alright. He knew the Sunburst
Temple would take him in, but he didn't want to be a burden. His
pride wouldn't let him.

Krothair lay on the floor this night,
looking up at the cobwebby ceiling, feeling the pain in his body
subsiding ever so slowly. He thought back to his brush with Katya
and Zin, hoping he wouldn't run into them again, but knowing inside
that they probably wouldn't bother to rob him in his current
state.

Maybe one day I'll try to
be something again
, he thought.

There were plenty of places
for him to go in the city to try and earn a living, but he didn't
really know how to go about it. Perhaps he would just wander back
out into the country. There were hermits weren't there? People who
lived by themselves until they were old, dusty, and full of stories
they had never experienced?
Can't be a
hermit your whole life if you don't start young,
Krothair thought.

He turned to face the wall as he heard
fighting outside. It didn't concern him and he listened to the
yelling die out as someone received a beating.

The slums weren't the most peaceful place,
but perhaps they were where he belonged: the boy who had wanted to
have a family, and had paid dearly for that desire.

The weeks passed.

“W
e've been over this a hundred times,” Halimaldie explained
for the hundredth time. “If you have doubts, remember my rule of
thumb: doing
something
is almost always better than doing
nothing
.”

“You've gone to check on your operations
before,” Tellurian pointed out. “Why do you need a surrogate this
time? Don't you have a network of people? What about Tobbs? Jak?
Harmen? Any of the other people I see bustling around this mansion
all day? I have other matters to-”

“This is a very bad time for my operations
to lack direct oversight,” Halimaldie interrupted. “What I want
from you is just a bit of stability while I am away. You can surely
provide me with that for crying out loud. You're my brother. People
remember that. It's an important connection.”

“I don't know about this,” Tellurian said,
shuffling through the thick stack of papers in front of him. He sat
at Halimaldie's desk, looking very out of place at the helm of a
trading empire. “See, Hal, this is why I gave this up long
ago.”

“Bullshit, Tell. You're a D'Arvenant. It's
still in your blood. I can't trust anyone else with this. You think
I should let one of my competitors run my business in my stead?” He
put his gloved hands on his brother's shoulders. “Mostly I'm doing
this out of pity, you know that, right?” He smiled.

“Aw, poor Tellurian,” his brother said.
“Shackled by freedom.”

“I knew you'd understand.” He patted
Tellurian on the shoulders.

Halimaldie had traveled
much more when he was younger, but lately he had become accustomed
to people coming to him, not him going to them. Tellurian was
right: Halimaldie had done these sort of operational check-ins
before. Trance had said the journey would be significantly shorter
than it should have been and Halimaldie wasn't looking forward to
whatever magics might be worked on him.
Although, Yarrow worked magic on me . . .

Halimaldie started to move about his office,
making sure everything was organized as well as it could be for
Tellurian in his absence. He picked up his most prized possession
from his desk and handed it to Tellurian “You have to wind it twice
a day,” Halimaldie explained.

“What kind of thing is this?” Tellurian
asked, turning the object around in his hands.

“It's a clock.”

“But it's so tiny.”

Halimaldie walked over to Tellurian again.
“It's technolurgy from Trirene,” he explained, tracing the filigree
lines on its face. “I don't know the inner workings of it, but it
cost me a fortune to get it over here. Those Trirenese bastards
deal hard.”

“What are all the numbers on it? They're
different from the ones on the water clock along the northern
wall.”

“It divides the day into
ten separate segments. Each of
those
segments
is divided into a hundred other segments called
decands.”

“You can look at the sundial in the nearest
town square and tell what time it is, Hal. You've got a sundial on
your own property! Besides that, the numbers are all wrong on this
thing! You got taken, brother.”

Halimaldie sighed. “Look how small it is!
It's portable! Sundials don't work at night and you can't lug them
around with you. It would be a lot more practical if everyone used
this kind of thing. Look, Tell, I don't have time to get into the
ins and outs of clocks and life and papers and business. I'm late
meeting these Kingsguardians as it is.”

His brother walked over to him and grabbed
his upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “I mean this when I
say this, Hal: I want to see you return. Whatever you've gotten
yourself wrapped up in here, well . . . Yarrow wasn't sure what to
do about your hand.”

“It's stopped spreading, at least for now,”
Halimaldie said.

“And the Kingsguardians draw trouble to
themselves like a dead squirrel draws flies,” Tellurian continued.
“I won't lose you like I lost father, Hal, so either come back
alive or . . . well, there is no 'or'.” Tellurian embraced him.

“I'm abandoning everything I've built,”
Halimaldie said. “And I'm abandoning Yarrow.”

“Oh, Hal,” his brother said. He pulled back
from the embrace. “You're already putting her on the same pedestal
as your empire? Honestly I've never seen you so smitten. Aren't you
afraid she charmed you with a spell? Maybe she'll get you alone and
turn you into a boar.”

“I deserved that. But I think . . . maybe
I'm different now. Will you put in a good word for me? If she asks
after me, that is.”

“You'll be back from this,” Tellurian said.
Then he thought for a moment, as if trying to reassure himself.
“Probably sooner than you think. These grand quests have a way of
falling apart. And when you come back . . . we'll talk.”

“Sounds good.” Halimaldie turned and started
to go. “Oh. If you have to deal with someone named Polk, it's
alright to want to punch him in the face. There will be a shipment
of spices waiting at the docks in less than an hour, Tell. Take
weapons.”

He glanced over his shoulder one last time
before he left. Tellurian appeared so small in the large room.

T
he city gates were crowded with people and Halimaldie prayed
he wouldn't be recognized as he walked through them. He nodded his
head to the guards and they gave him faint recognition. He wasn't
sure why he was nervous about being recognized. He had, after all,
publicly announced this trip, although not the inconvenient details
of it.

The roads leading from Haroma were wide, but
they narrowed as he walked away from his beloved city. He was
altogether shocked that he was about to travel by land. Not only
did that make the journey twice as long – since they would have to
ride around Haroma Bay instead of over it - but by sea they
wouldn't have to travel briefly in Shailand territory. If
Halimaldie's maps were correct (and he certainly paid enough for
them to be) he and the Kingsguardians would pass directly across
the border between the kingdoms. The war hadn't been over for that
long, and the old tensions were still rather high. He would let the
men with swords deal with that when the time came.

He wore a white shirt with long sleeves that
he now wished were short, and a leather vest with malachite
buttons. He wore short gloves as well, one having bandages under
it. He'd tried to tie the bandages elegantly as Yarrow had and
ended up just kind of wadding them inside. His daggers hung at his
sides, always more symbolic than practical. He had tied back his
hair with a leather cord, and kept his face shaved close.

A letter from Trance had informed him not to
bring his own horse or supplies, and that the Kingsguard would take
care of him. So Halimaldie had done exactly that. The letter had
also given him an odd place to meet with very specific, odd
instructions. About an hour into his walk he took the letter out
and unfolded it.

“Stand at the point where the sycamores meet
and face the setting sun,” he muttered to himself. The traffic had
lightened significantly here, but Halimaldie still felt kind of
like an idiot following these ridiculous directions. He looked
around and saw two trees that he thought might have been sycamores
and they were sort of leaning over each other. He turned west and
started walking.

The road gave way to tangled underbrush and
rather quickly Halimaldie was walking through the woods, with
nothing but his letter to guide him. “Left at the brook and cross
at the log,” he read. “This journey is starting off just
fantastically.”

He came to a small stream and turned left,
following along the bank, stumbling every now and then. He came to
a log that spanned it. The water wasn't deep, but he didn't want to
get his boots wet and so, like a child, he walked carefully across
the rotting log that seemed to be serving as a bridge, nearly
falling three times and having to wheel his arms to catch his
balance.

Once on the other side he consulted his
letter and continued on. He went up hills and down, around strange
trees and through the brush until he came to a road. He recognized
it as one of the main ones that led to Haroma. He turned and
stopped dead in his tracks.

There, standing in front of him, were three
Kingsguardians: Telin, Trance, and another man who looked almost
exactly like Telin. All three wore the silver and purple of the
Kingsguard and each one had provisions and held the reins of a
mount. A fourth horse was grazing nearby.

“What the hell?” Halimaldie said. "I could
have just kept walking on the road I was on and gotten here."

Trance was laughing so hard that he barely
made a sound, his face red. He was doubled over with his hands on
his knees.

“This is why we usually don't leave him in
charge of things like this,” Telin said.

“His boots,” Trance managed to get out
between gasps of laughter. “His boots are dry. He went over the
log!” He was pointing a shaking finger at Halimaldie's feet.

“Oh, we'll be hearing about this until
sunset at least,” Telin said, grimacing. “I apologize, D'Arvenant.
It wasn't until recently that Trance told me he'd done the ol'
treasure map. He gets a kick out of the most juvenile things. This
horse is for you, D'Arvenant.” He indicated the grazer. “For the
next thing we have to do, it would be best if we moved off the
road.”

“Move off the road and into the woods?”
Halimaldie said, looking at Trance. “But I've already spent so much
time there today.”

Trance fell over laughing.

T
hey gathered a little ways off the main road, Halimaldie
falling in quickly with his three escorts. He wasn't much of a
rider, but he'd gotten up on the back of his horse, Bishop, with no
embarrassing slip-ups.

“We have to be ready ta move once it's
initiated,” said the man who was nearly identical to Telin. Even
his voice was similar to Telin's.

That's gotta be Kelin.
Aren't they twins? I should have paid more attention to the
membership of the Kingsguard.