Hours passed and the rain continued to fall. His father applauded. The day wore on. J'role told his story.
That night the rain stopped and the clouds dispersed, leaving the stars clean and shiny in their wake. Stretched out on the ground, Releana and J'role and Bevarden stared up at the sky, a fire crackling beside them.
Earlier that day Releana had gone off to one of the copses that circled Blood Wood, later returning with enough berries to feed them well.
J'role had not been so happy in a long time. Doing something other than glowering provided its own energy.
Releana said, “My parents were killed by a Horror two years ago. I had already started my apprenticeship as the village wizard. But just a few months ago. . I don't know. . I didn't want to be around the death anymore." She turned to him. "Does that make sense?"
She did not wait for a reply. "Death is strange. So I left. I've been wandering, waiting for something to happen. Something exciting, I mean. When I came to Blood Wood, I didn't know what it was. The elf queen asked me for my gift. I didn't have anything. She threw me into the pit. I thought the elves were supposed to be nicer."
'The world," Bevarden intoned to no one in particular, "is dying."
J'role thought that an odd statement. Hadn't the world been growing itself back from near devastation in the past few decades? Or maybe that didn't matter. Maybe deeper down it was dying. Maybe it was already dead and no one knew it yet.
"No," said Releana. "Parts of it are dead. Our parts. But there's life out there."
Bevarden began a coughing fit. Blood came up from his mouth and fell on the ground in thick drops. Releana and J'role both got up and held him. J'role rocked his father.
"We've got to get him to a questor of Garlen," said Releana J'role nodded. His father quieted.
"So we're going to Throal?"
J'role nodded again, smiling and relieved. She hadn't yet said she would travel with him.
Now he was glad to hear she would.
"Good."
They sat up with Bevarden until he fell asleep. At one point Releana extended her hand and squeezed J’role’s. "You're nice," she said. Then, with a laugh, she added, “I’m glad we were miserable together. We might never have met."
They walked south toward Throal. All three were weak, but the need for help and food and healing drove them on.
Releana talked. "The ring makes people care very much about it. And thus keeps people searching for the city.''
J'role nodded again, this time listening carefully to Releana. He liked it when she reasoned. He'd never met anyone who did it so intensely.
"So, when you wore this ring, you wanted to find the city?” she said.
J'role nodded, confirming what he had told her the day before.
"It made you long for the city," she said thoughtfully. Then she suddenly added, "A geas!"
J'role touched her arm, then shrugged when she looked at him.
"A geas … it's a spell. A powerful one. I haven't the faintest idea how to do one, but I've heard about them. But never one like this. ."
She started to drift off into thought, but J'role tugged her arm again.
"Sorry. Thinking. A geas. . It commands a person to go on a quest. If I cast a geas on you, and command you to go find a particular magic sword, you will go off and find that sword. Whether you want to or not. You do want to." Her hands were moving quickly in the air now, as if she were casting a series of spells as she spoke. "You want to so much that it's … it's like being in love. And not fulfilling your quest is like having your love rejected. It hurts terribly. It hurts so much you become ill. But if you fulfill the quest, everything is right in the world."
She fell silent just long enough to draw in air.
"Anyway. I've never heard of a transferable geas before. I mean, the spell is cast upon a person or a group of people. That's it. I give you, Grim, a quest. And you do it. But this ring … It seems to pass the quest on from one person to the next. Do you still want to find the city now?"
He thought about it. Yes. But not as intensely as when he wore the ring. He didn't know how to express that. But he knew what she was getting at, he definitely felt differently about Parlainth when he'd possessed the ring. He shook his head no.
"But you still want to get the ring?"
He thought about that. Yes. Very much. Why, though? he wondered. Because he wanted the longing for the city to come back. He wanted his soul tied into the quest for the city.
He nodded.
"So the ring doesn't pass on the geas. But it leaves a memory with all the wearers. They all want to own the ring. And if you own the ring, you want to find the city."
This revelation troubled J'role. The longing had been so intense he'd thought it was just his and Garlthik's. To discover that everyone had felt it … Mordom and perhaps countless others. . It made him feel stupid. It cheapened it. Of course, Releana could be wrong.
"Of course, I could be wrong. As I said, I've never heard of anything like this before. It would take a great deal of magic, a knowledge far beyond that possessed by any other magician I've ever met."
J 'role gestured behind them, toward the elven Blood Castle.
"The elves. .?" Releana asked.
J'role nodded. Queen Alachia had said as much.
A moment passed in the still darkness, and then Releana said with quiet excitement, "The elves made the ring." He nodded again.
"Well, it would still be hard, even for them. But with enough time. And enough elves working on it … But what's it for?"
"It's for drinking," said Bevarden, his tone ugly. His mood had begun to shift unpleasantly in the last few hours.
Releana said, "Well, it's to make people find the city. That's it."
J'role tugged on her arm once more, and shrugged again.
"Right," she said. "Why would they create a ring to do that? If they wanted to know where it is, why didn't they just send someone out to find it? Maybe they don't like to leave Blood Wood. But then how did the ring get outside Blood Wood?"
Releana fell silent. J'role thought, If the elves made the ring, how did it get outside Blood Wood? Then he remembered what the elf queen had told him: the elves had made the ring hundreds of years earlier. Before the Scourge. Probably even before the city was lost. But then why did the elves build a ring to find something that wasn't hidden?
19
His father came home just as his mother pulled the blade back to slay J'role. The door opened and his mother froze, a thief caught in the act, not knowing what to do next.
Bevarden stood smiling at them, for a moment not realizing what was happening, seeing only his wife holding his son close.
When he saw the blade in her hand, his face blossomed into horror. Rushing forward, he wrestled her to the ground, knocking the knife from her hand.
She began screaming, crying for J'role's death. She clawed at Bevarden, tears streaming down her face.
Through the open door her shouts and screams carried out into the corridors of the kaer.
Within moments other people began to arrive, thinking a Horror might have invaded the kaer. They entered the room and saw the knife on the floor. Saw Bevarden pinning his wife down. Heard J'role's mother screaming for her son's death.
J'role backed into a corner. A woman from the kaer came over and picked him up, held him tight.
Charneale arrived, tall and imposing, and everyone stepped aside to let him pass. He studied J'role's parents as if from a great distance. Then he waved his hands, and in an instant J'role's mother fell unconscious. Startled, Bevarden turned to look at Charneale, fear weaving itself across his face.