The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3) (11 page)

“Well, we’ll see,” Eldred left the door open for future medical care.  “Stay brave and get your rest,” he said in parting, and then he was gone.

Grange gave a deep sigh, and closed his eyes, weary.  He was physically weary, but he was spiritually worn too.  He was tired of being suspected of evil intent, when he had none.  He was tired of the mistreatment.  He was tired of having no one he could remember as a friend or ally.  He was tired of having no past, no memories, no connection with the society around him.

He began to doze, thinking of the street urchins in the street who he had playfully sparred with.  He wished he could have more genuine interactions with the people around him.

He sat upright with a bolt.  He had interacted with the boys.  He had understood them, and spoken to them.

He had understood them as they spoke in their own language.

He had spoken to them in their own language.  He had understood the woman on the stairs as well.

He knew their language.  Suddenly.  He didn’t know how, but he surmised that it was a recovered memory, one that he had held and lost prior to the visit to the Yellow Spring, and he wondered about his past.  He had been told that he was likely to recover the memories that the spring water had covered over, and perhaps it was coming true.

But, he further asked himself, what if he were to discover that he really was a Southgar resident?  Why would he have been so far away from civilization, by himself?  What if he really was a Bloomingian – perhaps he really was a pretender to the throne; the King himself had identified him as one.

Except that the Bloomingians in the wilderness outpost had not recognized him, had not known him, had not promoted or assisted him in any way.

He lay back, astounded by the belated realization.  He knew the language, for the most part, he told himself, as he recollected the things he had heard around him.  There were words he didn’t know – many of them.  Perhaps he was simply only partially through the process of recovering memories, or perhaps the language was not his native language.

He lay still, smiling and dozing, wondering what was to come next, feeling pleased despite the pain from the torture.  He knew that Hope and Jenniline would be amazed by his sudden knowledge of their language. 

The room was dark, he realized with a start.  He must have fallen asleep, and the sun must have set.  And there was a knocking on the door, which was why he had awoken.

“Neighbor?” a woman’s voice called.  Grange realized that she was speaking in the common tongue, not the language of Southgar.

“Neighbor, please,” she called.

Grange stood up shakily, the numbness of the alcohol having expired, while the pain of his injuries remained.  He walked cautiously over to the door, then opened it.

The woman from the stair passage stood on the dark landing outside his door.

“Neighbor,” she said earnestly.  “I heard some men downstairs, who said they were looking for a man.  I thought it might be you,” she said nervously.

“Why do you think that?” he asked after a moment’s pause, trying to digest the information.  He also spoke in the common language.

“They said they were looking for someone who did not speak like us from Southgar, and someone who looked beaten up.

“If it’s you, you need to come with me, right now,” she told him.  “They’re going to come upstairs any second.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” Grange practically admitted he was the subject of the search.

“I’m the last one to turn someone in,” she laughed harshly.

“Where are we going?” Grange asked, slipping out of his room onto the small landing.

“Careful,” the woman reached out and grasped his hand in hers, then opened her own door on the opposite side of the landing – just two steps across – and pulled him into the room.

She released her hold of his hand as she closed the door, then fumbled with something, and sparked a lantern, which cast light upon the two occupants and the room around them.  The room was much larger than his, but he didn’t notice that at first, as he gawked at his rescuer-neighbor.

The woman wore colorful makeup, bright colors around her eyes, and on her cheeks, and especially – and surprisingly – on her ample chest, drawing his eyes down to look at the revealing dress she wore.  His eyes followed the colors down, then he raised them immediately with a jerk, back to her face, which would have been pretty even without the makeup, possibly even prettier.

“There’s no time for that now,” the woman said in a no nonsense voice.  “Get in the closet.”  With her lantern in hand, she led him across her room to a door, and pulled it open, revealing a closet space, but before Grange could enter, she pulled on a shelf, which tilted down and revealed shallow ladder treads built in.

They both heard the sound of boots climbing the stairs at that moment.

“Quickly, climb up there, and stay until I tell you to come down,” she pushed him into the closet, then swung the door shut.

“And pull the shelf up after you,” she called through the door.

Grange heard the boots reach the landing, then the opening of a door, perhaps the door of the room he had just abandoned.  There was no sound of a knock on the door, he noted as he awkwardly placed his feet on the treads to scramble up into the hidden cube that rested above the closet doorway, a sheet providing the appearance of a wall at the top of the closet chamber.    He pushed the sheet aside and crawled into the hiding spot.

He reached down and pulled the shelf up, as he heard a knock at his rescuer’s door.  The shelf rose, and then he felt it snap into place.  He curled into the cozy space behind the sheet, and wondered at the construction of such an unusual space, and he wondered how his hostess had even known of its existence.

“Who is it?” the woman in the room asked.

“This is the palace guard; open the door,” a man’s voice said, speaking in the common tongue.

“What did you say?  I didn’t understand you,” Grange’s co-conspirator answered in Southgar’s language.

“We’re here from the palace!” the man answered in the native tongue as well.

“The palace?  Is the king interested in having me come for a visit?  That’s quite a testimony!” the woman laughed, as Grange heard her open her door.

“Are you alone?” one of the guards asked.

“No – you’re here,” the woman answered with a laugh.

Grange heard the woman grunt, and boots clumped into the room, three pairs or perhaps four, he thought.

“We’re here to look around.  Have you seen a man in any of the rooms up here today?” a guard asked.

“There was a man in the room across the hall this afternoon, but someone came and fetched him away not too long ago,” she answered.

Grange heard the closet door suddenly open directly beneath him, and he held his breath.

“Have you had anyone else in here today?” the guard at the closet asked the woman.

“Just the usual collection of lonely hearts,” she replied.

The closet door closed.

“If you hear of your neighbor coming back, come to the palace immediately, and report it,” a guard said.

“So you didn’t come to invite me to see the king?  This is so I can visit this neighbor?  He seemed pretty crippled; can he really enjoy my company?” the woman inquired.

“Go on with you,” the guard said in an amused tone.  “You go back out to the streets and don’t get caught, and be sure to let us know if you see this missing fellow – he’s a bad one, they say.”

The door closed, and Grange sat tensely in his cubby, then heard the woman’s footsteps return to the closet.

“Why don’t you stay up there a little while, just to be safe?” she suggested.  “I had no idea it’s the palace itself looking for you.”

“Thank you,” Grange answered.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Merched,” she replied.

“Thank you Merched,” he told her.  “You saved my life.”

“What did you do to make the palace so mad?  You don’t look like such a bad sort,” she answered.  “No, never mind – I’m better off not knowing.

“I’m going to go downstairs for a bit, then I’ll be back.  Can I bring you anything?” she asked.

“No, I’m fine,” Grange answered, although he wasn’t.  As the shock of nearly being found by the palace guards wore off, the aches and pains throughout his body were reasserting themselves in his consciousness.

“Are you sure?” Merched asked, as if she sensed some hesitance in his voice.

“Could you bring some willow bark tea?” Grange asked.

“Oh, you’re a funny one!” she snorted.  “You’re staying across the alley from a tavern, and you ask for tea. 

“I’ll bring you something, don’t worry,” she assured him.

There was the further sound of steps, and then the sound of a door closing.  Grange was alone once again, his wounded legs curled up near his badly bruised chest, left to wonder about his fate.

He was breathing slowly and easily when he was started into wakefulness by the sound of steps on the staircase, and then the sound of voices murmuring nearby.  The guards were back, he feared, and he gave an involuntary shiver.  He had no weapons, with which to protect himself if the guards came into Merched’s room and searched well enough to find him.

The voices droned softly, before there was a knock at the door.  Grange took a deep breath, ready to react in some fashion, then held his silence, and waited.

After several seconds without a noise, the voices spoke, then the sounds of boots descending the stairs eased Grange’s mind, and he gave a sigh of relief.

“Enough is enough,” he told himself.  He stretched his legs down to rest them on the trick shelf that turned into a ladder, then put weight on his feet, and felt the shelf shift slightly, then resist further movement.   He edged further out of the hidden cubby, his head crouched low.

The shelf suddenly gave a cracking sound, and his feet fell away with the shelf top, sending Grange plummeting to the floor of the closet.  His forehead struck the door frame, and he landed in a heap on the floor, knocking the closet door open, as his torso spilled out into the bedroom.

Grange was stunned and dazed.  He lay still and let his body detect the extent of new damages, then eventually concluded that there were no new injuries that were any worse than the ones he had already suffered.  His feet and ankles were too sore to walk upon, he decided, and so he crawled out of the closet doorway, and for lack of any better destination, he crawled to the bed, and climbed up onto it.

He laid out upon his back, atop the bed, and closed his eyes.  It was relaxing, almost worth the pain of the fall he decided, perhaps even worth getting caught by the guards, just for the chance to lay upon the soft surface of the mattress.

The door to the room opened, unexpectedly, and his eyes flew open as he heard the noise.  He hadn’t heard the footsteps approaching on the stairs – he was completely caught off-guard.

In the doorway, he spied Merched standing, looking at him with a quizzical expression.

“I couldn’t stand to stay up there,” he confessed simply.

The woman closed the door, then walked over and put her canvas sack on a table, and pulled out a ceramic jar.  It was warm, Grange could tell, for Merched kept shifting her fingers’ positions on the jar until she could quickly place it on the table.

“This is your willow tea,” she explained, as she bent down and pulled a mug of a low shelf below the table.  She used the corner of the bed cover as an impromptu holder to shield her fingers as she opened the jar, then poured the steaming contents into the mug.

“Let it cool,” she advised as she placed it on the table on Grange’s side of the bed.

“Thank you,” he told her gratefully.  Seeing the willow bark tea was a reminder of some of the aches he had failed to notice, but it was much more a promise that some of those aches would be sent away soon after he drank the steaming beverage.  He closed his eyes and tried to relax while the tea cooled, and Merched pulled various items out of her shopping  bag and put the items away in various places.

“Why do they want you?” she asked suddenly.

“They think I support the Bloomingians,” he answered.

“Politics!” she snorted in disgust.  “That’s the problem with the kingdom is all this preoccupation with politics.  Why doesn’t anyone in the palace pay attention to making life better for people like us?”

Grange had no answer, so he picked up his mug of willow bark tea and blew on it gently to help it cool, then sipped it down, batting his eyes and wrinkling his nose as he drank the biting beverage.

“Here,” Merched pulled another ceramic jug, a larger one, out and poured its contents into his mug, then poured more into her own.  “This is the ale from the tavern downstairs.  It’ll take away the taste of that nasty stuff you just drank.”

They silently clinked their mugs together in a toast, then drank.

Grange felt sleepy from the long day and the drink of ale.

Merched looked at him speculatively.

“I tell you what,” she said after a pause.  “I’ll let you sleep in my bed tonight – that’s all, of course; nothing more.  Hopefully you’ll be better tomorrow.  But after that, I’m going to have to turn you out.  I have to get on with my life, you know,” she said.

“I understand,” he acknowledged.   The next day was far away; he felt groggy, and in less pain, and he was ready to sleep.

“Thank you Merched.  You saved my life,” he told her drowsily as he closed his eyes, and fell swiftly asleep, oblivious to Merched’s scrutiny of him.  She looked at him, shook her head gently, then undressed and crawled onto the far side of the mattress.

Grange was awoken in the middle of the night by a hard poke in his shoulder.

“I wonder if I should have left you in the dungeon,” a woman’s voice said, “instead of setting you free to cavort with a harlot.”

“I’ll thank you not to insult me in my own home,” Grange heard another voice say, as he tried to rise from the depth of sleep.

“I suppose you’re right,” Grange recognized Jenniline’s voice, the tone just barely gracious.

“He’s the one.  And you’re not going to take him back to the palace?” Merched confirmed.