J'role pointed toward the kaer several times.
"He's dead, boy," Garlthik said quietly. "He died from the wizard's spell."
With the ork's big arm draped carefully around J'role's back, the two walked off into the night, J'role's voice a whisper, telling of fountains that poured water filled with small stars and of statues that danced and flew through the air.
5
After Bevarden had done his pratfalls and juggled and made jokes and made everybody laugh, he settled down and told stories.
Each day the people in the kaer survived another twenty-four hours in the stone corridors, prisoners in their shelter of safety. But they knew that generations ago their ancestors had walked the world-a world alive with magic and adventure and a brilliant sun and a blue sky and things called jungles so thick with trees and plants you could not see through it from one side to another. Bevarden reminded everyone of these things.
He acted out stories of adventurers seeking magical elements in craggy mountain peaks, encountering primitive troll tribes. Of ancient warriors defeating the first Horrors that came to the world hundreds of years ago when the invasion was just beginning. Of sailors who traveled huge, rolling, uncovered roads of water called rivers. He spoke of the elves of the Wyrm Wood, with their delicate and perfect faces, their love of the jungles, and their powerful magic with all things living. He reminded people of the dwarven kingdom of Throal, whose language they all spoke. And the powerful Theran Empire that had provided the means to fend off the Horrors.
J'role watched his father and ached to leave the confines of the kaer. And he loved his father, for the man was full of life and energy and spoke of passions and valor and the challenge of being alive. He looked around at the audience assembled in the Atrium and watched everyone enjoying his father playing the part of heroes and trolls and dwarfs and elves. And even though they knew all the stories, they listened, far Bevarden kept fresh in their minds the memories of the life waiting for them at the end of the Scourge.
Garlthik and J'role walked for a long time that night. The stars and moon cast a pale light down to the earth, creating soft shadows of a few scraggly trees along the barren ground.
Garlthik picked the path, and J'role, who continued to speak of the beautiful city, knew only that he was getting farther away from his village and the kaer.
As they walked Garlthik took a small vial out of the pouch tied to his belt. He removed the stopper, and drank down the contents of the vial. Hours later, long into their walk, J'role made a connection between the vial's contents and the fact that Garlthik's groans of pain had ceased and he no longer held his left arm in agony. A magical potion.
Normally J'role would have been astounded to see such powerful magic, but not this night. The small tunnel to his heart created when he had first touched the ring had become so achingly beautiful and overpowering he cared for nothing but the words that came without thought from his lips. The small tunnel had into a vast cavern of cold desire. All he wanted was the promise of happiness that the ring and the images of the city carried. To know that there actually existed a place where he could finally feel whole… J'role had always believed that such a place or a person or an object-
something-could exist. But he had never been able to guess what it might actually be.
Now he knew. The magic city he now spoke of.
Spoke of!
It astounded him further that he was still speaking. It was true he did not have control of his tongue, his jaw, his lips. As ever he found himself disconnected from his own body in the matter of making sounds with his mouth. The words came to him out of the world's magic. He looked around at the barren hills and the scraggly trees and the piles of boulders and stones that dotted the pale blue night. From somewhere in this emptiness came the words. He had no idea why he said what he said. He had no actual picture of the city in his thoughts. He responded to the images formed by the words, moved to tears on occasion, from weakness, yes, but also from a longing for what he spoke of. The more the city's details grew in his mind, the more he longed for the city.
***
Garlthik eyed him curiously as they walked. J'role, who listened to himself with the same interest as Garlthik, sometimes met Garlthik's eye. The ork raised the brow over his good eyes stared down at J'role as they walked on the quiet, cool night. These shared looks made them companions sharing a mystery: the mystery of why their third companion-
the strange words-carried on so.
Finally, after many hours, J'role's throat began to hurt from the talking. The distanced sensations of his lips moving by their own had been replaced by a numbing pain. His mouth was dry. It occurred to him that it might never stop. He stumbled and fell to his knees.
"What is it?" Garlthik asked.
J'role put his hands to his face, touched his lips. They writhed under his fingertips like snakes. A panic came over him. He put his hands together to remove the cold ring. But even as he did so, a horrible feeling overwhelmed him: give up the longing? Despite the agony of his muscles, he wanted to continue to hear about the lovely city. For the first time in nearly a decade he knew hope, and giving that up seemed too terrible.
"You want to stop talking?" Garlthik asked.
J'role nodded.
"Take off the ring."
J'role drew his hands close to his chest, hid the ring under his free hand.
"You can put it on again later," the ork said, and touched his heavy fingers lightly against J'role's shoulder. “I’m not going to take it from you."
The boy eyed the ork curiously.
"No, really, I'm not. I don't think so. You've got something about you-you were mute-
correct? And now you start describing a city when you put on the ring. Something about you … You're connected to where this ring leads." Garlthik turned his face away and put a weary hand to his forehead. "Please, take it off. I've seen some stranger things, but this image of your mouth flapping away, with you not paying any attention. It's too disturbing."
A strange happiness filled J'role. He realized that Garlthik and Mordom and the others wanted the ring because it led to something valuable, not because it was valuable in itself.
Garlthik was surprised by J'role's words, which meant that he hadn't known what the goal was, only that it was something wonderful. And now J'role knew the goal was the city he spoke of. And if Garlthik was going to the city, and wanted to bring J'role along, then he would reach the city as well. Everything would be all right.
J'role decided to remove the ring, if only to rest, and as soon as the ring left his finger a horrible pain crashed into his jaw, as if metal hooks had dug into his teeth. He dropped to the ground, groaning. But more than the physical pain was the terror of losing the sweet longing. He still held the ring in his hand, and from the ring there came the thin tunnel of desire to his heart. But nothing could compare with the full longing for the city. It had been so clear, so specific. If he could just find the city everything would be complete.
Finished. And now there was nothing. Just a memory that he once had something, now gone.
"Come on, boy. Let's find a place to sleep for the night. If they're after us, we'd best hide."
Garlthik leaned down to help J'role up, but at the ork's touch J'role's mind filled with an image of his father lying on the ground, his shoulder torn open by the blast of the magician's spell. The ring and its magical city had kept J'role's head crammed with a longing for the city. But now released, J'role could think of nothing else. He shook his shoulder away from Garlthik's touch, stood, and started back the way they had come.