Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Mother Speaks (16 page)

He did not look up at me, and I had the impression he was not even aware I was there. I realized there was no way to know if this impression was correct, for he obviously could mask many of his features—physical and emotional.

I realized, too, that he wanted me to know this.

16

The fleet departed in glory. The trolls, wearing their glittering, glowing armor, took hold of the ship's oars and swept them back in wide arcs as the fifteen ships rose up into the sky. The sails all rested on the yardarms, for they would only be unfurled when conditions demanded using the wind for extra speed. The trolls, I learned, preferred using the oars, for the long, narrow craft could capsize when heavy winds slammed into the sails.

They left in late afternoon and headed west, their ships drifting lazily toward the sun, turning quickly into silhouettes of wonder. The commands of "Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!" in their troll tongue soon turned thin and soft. When the ships were no more than dark dashes in the sky, I made my way back down to the village. With most of the clan away on the raid, there would be more work for the rest of us until they returned days or weeks later.

I did not watch J'role's stories that night, but hid myself down the path where I had spoken to Krattack the night before. Though I told myself with loud thoughts that I wanted nothing to do with anyone, I secretly harbored the wish that Krattack would come along and have another discussion with me. Hearing the "oohs" and "aahs" of J'role's audience coming over the night air, I spoke bitter thoughts to myself about how stupid all of J'role's stories were and how he wasted everybody's time.

Below me the jungles of Barsaive lay as dark as diseased waters. They had grown thick and fast in the mere thirty years since the Scourge had ended. Before that, the world had become almost barren, devastated by the Horrors swarming over our world. When I was still a child and my people had just left the shelter that had hidden us from the Horrors of the Scourge, it was all we could do to create fields for our crops tog grow in. But with help from the Passion of Jaspree we managed to grow food, finding in ourselves that strength and impulse to cultivate and protect the world around us. The earth itself seemed to demand life, and soon jungles sprang up everywhere. I had come to love the abundance of life that flowed over the world. But as I stood high above the jungles that night, they seemed nightmarish. Things were just too complicated, and the thick jungles of that complication were dark, impenetrable, and dangerous.

"Releana?" J'role said. The stories had ended, but wrapped in my cold thoughts, I hadn't noticed. J'role now stood above me, looking down from a path almost directly above my head "I've been looking for you." Ridiculously, he stepped off the ledge and slid down the nearly sheer drop that separated us, drawing on his thief magic to keep his balance.

He slammed into the path where I stood, and I reflexively reached out to stop him from falling off the path. Such a dramatic slide would have carried almost anyone else over the ledge and into the arms of death. But J'role's abilities as a thief adept rescued him from the fate.

He smiled at me, amused at my outstretched hands meant to save him, as if saying, "So, you care about me after all, and I caught you at it." I jerked my hands away. I hated myself for once again underestimating his sense of balance, and for once again revealing my concern.

"You've been ignoring me," he said.

"Yes. I've been enjoying it." I turned and started further down the ledge.

A panic came into his voice now, rare for him, as he called "Wait! What ...?" He ran up behind me, following closely. "I don't understand. I upset you last night. I did something wrong. I'm sure I did. I do things wrong with you all the time. But this time I really don't know what."

He touched my shoulder, hoping to get me to stop. I shook his hand off. Kept walking.

How I enjoyed him coming after me, rather than me constantly longing for him.

"Releana, I really want to know. Please."

Still walking I said, "I'm upset because I could tell you were happy that Vrograth decided we wouldn't be freed to go after the children."

Behind me his footsteps faltered, then rushed to catch up. "I was ..." Then, with actual confusion, he asked, "I was happy?"

"You skipped."

"I skipped?"

"In your step. A skip in your step as we left the cave."

We came to a small clearing—a cul-de-sac bound by massive boulders and a sheer drop.

The dim light of the moon cast a blue pallor over our flesh. I turned to face him, as if he might try to strike me from the back.

"I don't think I skipped."

"You skipped, but I'm sure you weren't aware of it. You're strange that way. You're so used to controlling your face, presenting only what you want the world to see. But the truth of you leaks out in strange ways. I know you too well not to notice. A skip in your step. A subtle wave of the hand at waist height. The beginning of a spin on the ball of your foot, stopped at the last moment. You have too much energy, J'role. The stuff oozes out of you like smoke from fire. Try as you might, you can't control it all ..."

"I think you're seeing too much ...

I held my hand up, silencing him immediately. "Don't you ever do that. Don't you ever try to tell me I'm missing the truth. I've known too many men in the village who did that all the time—dismiss the perceptions of their wives. If you knew who you were, I might discuss the matter with you. But you don't. You don't know who you are, do you?"

"I ...," he began, and faltered. He turned away from me, swinging his arms right and left.

"I don't think I know in the way you mean. In a way that's really worth anything." He smiled at me, the tears in his eyes catching the night's slim light. "You expect more from me than everyone else. I love you for that. But I can't keep up, you see. I'm going to keep disappointing you. There's something wrong ..." His voice trailed off.

My first impulse was to leave, for he had slipped into that pitiable pose again, designed to draw my fury to his despair. It occurred to me, though, that I did expect more from him than from other people. All they wanted from him was to be moved by a story—to lean forward in excitement, to lean back with laughter, to shed a tear during a sad moment. I wanted him to be a human being who could be a father and husband. Maybe he simply couldn't do it.

"Why don't you want to rush after Torran and Samael the way I do?"

"They're safe. You said so yourself. The Overgovernor wants them safe. I'm sure he has the power to do it."

"That's not the point. They're not with me—us!"

"But they're going to be all right."

"Would you stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Changing the subject."

"I'm not."

"You are. I'm talking about why I want to get them back. You're telling me it's not a problem. Stop it!"

"It is a problem, but it's not the problem you think. We'll get them back. That's the problem. Worrying about it ..."

"Well, I am worried about it. They're little children, torn from their mother."

"And father."

"You ripped yourself away."

"Now who's changing the subject?"

"It's the same subject."

He threw his hands in the air. "What?"

"The subject is whether or not you care about them."

"I do care."

"Then why don't you act like it?"

"Releana, horrible things happen all the time. The twins are having a horrible thing happen to them. It happens. They'll go on. It's just part of life." I stared at him. "It's true.

We all suffer. That's just part of what it means to be alive. It's to be expected. That's the point. That's my point. They're suffering. But what are we going to do? Keep them safe from all suffering. For what? So that they'll think the world is safe, when it's really not?"

His voice began to strain, and his fists began to clench. "So they can think life is good and whole and that you can be happy when there's just so much so much, so much ... I mean, better they learn it from us than from the world later on. Better now, than later, because the world isn't this place you think it is, Releana. It'll cut you and scar you. And it hurts ..."

"J'role ...?"

"But it's all right. You see? Because the scars are who we are. The scars of life define us.

Without the pain and the scars, we wouldn't know who we are."

"No ..."

"That's the amazing thing. Life just hurts so much, but that's where we get our strength from. It's from the pain ..."

"No ..."

He stared off at the stars, his words tumbling out quickly, trying to convince himself of something. His eyes became wet and glistened, though he did not cry.

"They're all right, you see, not because everything is right. But because that's just part of what it is. Their being alive."

"J'role, please..."

"The Therans, you saw them. The beauty of their castles. Their physical beauty.

Overgovernor Povelis, flawless to the point of being repulsive. That's wrong. That's their distortion. They try to build so much perfection into their lives that they become unnatural. And the charm you told me about—needing to keep Torran and Samael perfect. That's perverse. They should be scarred. We all should be scarred. That's natural.

That's the way of it."

"J'role! Please! You're frightening me!"

He stopped, looked at me, confused. "You really don't know this?"

His eyes. I thought of Wia's comments about his eyes. There was something wrong about them. He seemed to be staring at me from a different place, a different world. As if he stood on a vantage point of another plane, large enough only for him, viewing the world in a way none of us could ever understand.

"J'role, you've never said—you've never said anything like this ..."

"I thought you knew." He touched his fingertips to his chest.

I shook my head.

His head sank down, his shoulders folded forward. "I ... I sometimes ... I sometimes don't make sense to people." With that, he turned and walked away, his body a trophy of a broken spirit.

"J'role ...” I said, but he kept walking. I did not pursue him. I had no idea what I might say.

Hours passed. The dark jungles below seemed even darker; dangerous pools full of ink waiting to be used to write a tale of mutilation, betrayal, and death.

I waited and waited for some impulse to inspire me to rise and go back to the village. But it never came. Matters of the human heart seemed so hopeless. I remember thinking that night, "And if I rescue my boys, will they be dead from sword or disease in another year's time?" What was the point, I wondered, when nothing seemed to work out?

17

Life in the crystal raider village carried on, with all of us doing the usual tasks. There is no point in listing the details of the work—not that it was tedious, for in the midst of it I was fully engaged and somewhat happy. Work has always been a relief for me.

I will note only this then: that J'role performed his stories with the same intensity each night, but it was only during these performances, and when playing with children, that he seemed truly alive. At all other times he seemed drained of energy, as if a slow disease had begun to consume him.

At no time did he approach me. For my part, I remained silent as well. What were we to talk about? It seemed that the only matter left at hand was the dissolution of our marriage, and though my mind said to destroy my bond with him, another part of me refused. The same part of me that had kept me always waiting for him, I suppose.

Two weeks passed.

Some trolls had gone off on an expedition into the caves of Twilight Peaks and had returned with sacks full of crystals. I was dividing the stones by size and shape—a task the trolls thought I could handle well enough—when a cry came from one of the trolls posted on a cliff above the village. These lookouts served the primary purpose of keeping an eye out for neighboring crystal raiders who might attack the Stoneclaw village.

But in recent days hopes were running high that they would soon spot Vrograth and the fleet returning.

The trolls suddenly stopped work, whatever the task at hand, and stood about. They began speaking quickly in trollic, the noise passing throughout the village like birds flying in formation. Then an abrupt stillness as the trolls all looked west, their heavy hands held up to shield their eyes from the light of the setting sun. The amber light of early evening turned their still forms into stones carved into the shape of people.

I too stood still, staring in the same direction as the trolls. Within moments I saw a line drifting in the sky, though I quickly realized the shape of the line was a trick o f my eye.

In reality it was a series of dots floating near one another. I felt a presence beside me, and turned to see Krattack. I didn't know whether it was an illusion or really him, but I'd decided a few days earlier it didn't really matter.

"It didn't go well," he said. The wind picked up a few strands of his gray hair and moved them about from side to side over his barren scalp. He wore his ragged blue magician's robe covered with the pattern of jungle vines.

He sounded upset and this surprised me. Did he mean not enough ships were lost to fulfill his plans? Or did he feel loss for the lost ships? I looked; back out across the sky and saw between five and ten ships. "I can't tell how many ..."

"There are only nine ships. Six lost. I have no idea how many sailors and warriors."

"How many ships did you expect to be lost?"

"Six. It's still a sad day, whether I guessed correctly or not. The men and women who died have families here. There will be so much sadness." His voice trailed off. His wry distance from the unpleasant realities of political machinations seemed to have vanished, and he was in the middle of pain now.

As the ships sailed closer I could see he was right— nine ships total. The trolls began craning their necks, looking for the rest of the fleet. A soft murmur began, and they turned to one another with questions; no answers could be found.