The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (49 page)

“Tutelage is not merely the instilling of knowledge,” said Normand. “The best tutor is the one that seeds a love of learning. And it is a truly portentous childhood when it is filled with books.”

He turned to me and grasped my shoulder. “And at last we come to you,” he said, squeezing the muscle. He had a grip like an iron clamp. “The prodigal son. We all four of us—Clayton, Ardelia, Edward, myself—knew you would come here one day. We just didn’t know it would be under such troubling auspice. Welcome to the city of Ostlyn, boy. It’s good to see you.”

“How?” I asked. “How did you know?”

“We’ll jaw about it later,” said Normand. “Right now we must arrange a convention of the Council. I’ve been hearing dark things as of late, and I fear that what you’re here for will be no less ominous.”

“Wait one minute here,” said Walter, putting up a hand. “I’m not entirely sure I’m fully grasping the bag of what you’ve all been talking about. Are you trying to tell me that your life thus far is a bauble of fiction on Zam?”

Normand chuckled. “Why yes, yes it is, dear boy. It’s a long, long story, about many people, and it even includes you. It’s very popular, or so I hear.”

“What? You mean I’m in this book too?”

“I suppose you are, at that.”

Noreen seemed to have relaxed on the throne, even leaning back and tossing a leg over one knee. “You are, Deon, but as far as Ed’s written it, you were still a kid.”

“I was going to ask you if any followers of the books idolize me, but I guess it’s a moot point, then.”

“No, but if Ross continues the series, I’m certain you’ll have a rabid cult of Walterites.”

“I’m going to pretend that’s a good thing.”

I regarded Normand with something not quite suspicion. His odd allusions and tone of voice—not to mention his prescient knowledge of our arrival—chewed at the edges of my awareness.

He saw it in my eyes, I think. The old man turned and called the green-coated retainers back into the room. “Please go and arrange for a
hyupyt m’gebbih,
please. Three of them, dispatched to our absent Council members. I need them here as quickly as they can get here.”

To the man that remained, he said, “I will require the remaining three members at midday tomorrow—please go and deliver this delayed summons as best you can.”

“Most haste,” he said to them as they nodded in assent and marched out of the room. “Now,” he said, sitting on the edge of the dais at Noreen’s feet and speaking to all of us with that same intensely warm and trailworn smile, “My lovely princess, and my loyal men, please tell me what has brought you to Destin on such urgent business.”

“Are you aware of the Sileni?” asked Sawyer.

“Ah, yes, yes,” said Normand. “Edward told me of them. They are the water-carriers of the Sea of Dreams, are they not?”

“It looks like they’re tired of being immortal muses. They’ve turned on the universe
,”
I said.

I told Normand our tale thus far, beginning with my father’s death and on through my force-feeding of the Acolouthis and our battle against the Feaster and its corporeal avatar on Destin, the Unremembered Man. I told him what I could recall of the encounter with Hel Grammatica and the Silen Hel had called the Rhetor.

I told him about the mysterious entity trapped underneath the dakhmas that littered the Void floor, slowly growing powerful on the souls drilled through the rock. “The Sileni don’t just have the ability to tell you what to write,” I concluded. “They can tell you what to do. And now they’re telling people to do horrific things.”

Throughout my recollection, the King’s face had grown more and more grim. “Shadowy men, seeding chaos throughout the cosmos as reparation for a millennium of servitude. It seems that things have progressed just as Edward feared. I expect that his knowledge of the coming rebellion was why he was killed.

“With Ed’s and Hel Grammatica’s help, this Rhetor Logos could have possibly been stopped at some point. To our dismay and misfortune, Edward was murdered before he could be warned of his impending assassination and give you the information you needed. Fortunately for us, we had a hidden wild-card the entire time.”

“Eh?”

He pointed to me.

“Me? What do you mean?”

“You are Edward’s heir,” he said. “As you’ve already taken upon yourself, you have now assumed the mantle that Edward once wore. The mantle of the Messenger.”

“The Messenger?”

“Yes. The Sileni do not choose at random who they bring the waters of the Vur Ukasha. Your father was chosen to bring life to the world of Destin, as so many other men were chosen before him to bring other worlds to life. Such men are destined from birth to do so. They are referred to as the Messengers by the muse-creatures. And so, I now see, were you destined to take his place.”

I became solemn myself.

Normand reached out and patted me on the knee. “It’s good to have you back, boy,” he said.

A numb electric chill spread down my body, starting at the crown of my scalp. It took me several seconds to respond with a dry and insubordinate “...What?”

“Three,” said Clayton, as the midwife bustled back into the other room. He turned to his companions, a broad smile spreading across his face. “My third boy! Walter and Oliver, and now a third! Can you believe it? Oh, by the Wolf, what am I going to name this one?”

The scribe spoke up, adjusting his spectacles. “I have a book here I’ve been saving for this. I think it’s got the perfect name.”

—The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 6 “The Feared and the Free”

Trailmates in Time

“E
D NEVER TOLD YOU?” SAID
Normand, feigning amused surprise. “Haven’t you ever felt like you didn’t fit in, no matter where you were? Didn’t you feel like you belonged somewhere else? That you were from a different place and time?”

He stroked his mustache. “Why, you are a native of the country of Ain. You and your brother Sardis were born here. You were spirited away to Earth as protection, and your brother was taken by your mother to the land of Cice Jiunad. Given, the man you were being protected from is now gone, but that’s all water under the bridge.”

My mouth worked, but it took some measure of effort to get words to come out of it. “I was
born
here?”

“Right here in Ostlyn, in fact. Several months before the Great Battle.”

“To an Ainean woman?”

“No,” said Normand. “To a Cicean. The excommunicated Griever, Ardelia Thirion, the Heroine of Ostlyn. She is who fled to Cice Jiunad with your brother to protect you from Tem Lucas, as I returned from my journey to the heart of the Antargata k-Setra to kill the thing the Wilders called Obelus.

“Edward managed to escape to Earth with you, my daughter Noreen, and Clayton’s youngest boy Sawyer, just before Lucas led the No-Men to Ostlyn. The two of them rightly assumed that another plane of existence would be the safest place for you, and, as it turned out, he was right.”

Sawyer and Noreen were the epitome of silence. They stood there, slackjawed and unmoving, probably as numb with shock as I was.

“Funny fate,” said Normand, and he grinned. What he said next sounded very surreal in that rumbly wise-man-on-the-mountain voice. “To bring the three of you back to the city where you were born.”

The old gunslinger smirked slyly, and said, “Tell me—are you familiar with the term...
co-inky-dink?”

I admit that I sat there, stunned, for what felt like a full minute. All of us did. Before I could regain my bearings, Sawyer seemed to have recovered first. He said, his voice low and accusatory, “Sir...this really isn’t a very funny joke.”

“It’s no joke,” said Normand. “No joke at all! No jest, no jibe, nor prank or foul.”

I didn’t even know where to start asking questions. All I could do was stare at him. Suddenly in my confusion, so far away from everything that I’d known, I felt very alone and useless, and put-upon.

“All three of us?” I asked. “How could you possibly know? I mean, myself, yeah, sure, maybe I could get behind that. Is Ed really even my father?”

“Oh, yes,” said the King. “Ardelia spent a lot of time alone with Edward, in those days, while I roamed Destin with Clayton, searching for my nemesis. Your father was not always the, ahh—the
robustly-proportioned
fellow he was when he died. He used to be quite the handsome companion, you know. So much so, that he is the reason why she broke her vow to the Forge. She took Sardis with her when she fled Ostlyn to seek reconciliation with the Ancress.”

He chuffed soft laughter. “She always did have a fondness for the bookish types. As for how I know who you three truly are, you had names when you were taken to Earth. The names you have now. Besides, you so much resemble your forebears that there’s no denying it.”

I had to admit that Noreen had inherited Normand’s cold blue eyes. She finally snapped out of it and looked down at the old man. “You mean...I’m the daughter of Normand Kaliburn?”

“Yes,” said the King. “And Sawyer here is Clayton’s youngest. The Chiral named him much like his two older brothers, Walter and Oliver. It was actually Eddick that proposed he name his boy after a character from a book he’d brought from Earth: Mark Twain’s
Tom Sawyer.
Clayton was fond of using names from Edward’s books. He said he thought it destined them for fame.”

“I have brothers?” asked Sawyer.

“Yes,” said Normand. “Oliver, named after
Oliver Twist
, and Walter here, named after
Walter Mitty
.”

“A
fine surprise!”
said Walter, and he grabbed the other, and embraced him in a big bear hug. I was amazed I hadn’t noticed the familial resemblance before: they shared the same long face, sharp nose, wide mouth, steely eyes. “A fine surprise indeed! I’ve lost a brother and now I’ve gained another! Life has replaced what it has taken away from us. A joyous day all around.”

With Walter’s olive sun-ripened complexion and wavy black locks versus Sawyer’s Earth-pale skin and short hair, it was an easy miss—especially when you’ve taken your friends for granted as I did.

“Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” said Sawyer, still looking a bit shell-shocked as Walter let go of him.

“I’m guessing Clayton never actually read
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,
” I said.

Walter’s head tilted and he looked at me funny.

I shrugged. “I plead the Fifth.”

That’s when I realized that the
vero nihil verius
I had been feeling wasn’t a product of being in a place where the tabards and tunics weren’t mass-produced in China. It was the
absence of homesickness.
I was home, and my heart knew it.

Noreen slid down off the throne and hugged Normand around the neck. He made a noise of alarm and almost fell over, then put an arm around her and held her just as closely. I could see tears on her face before she buried it in his chest. He reached up and stroked her hair with one ancient, scarred hand, and said, “It’s good to have all three of you back. Especially you, my little princess.”

A faint memory rose to the surface of my mind. “It may not have been pure chance that brought us back together,” I said, recalling what Hel had said to Noreen in the tower of silence. “I think Ed’s muse has been a busy bee.”

“It is unfortunate that he is not here for me to demonstrate my gratitude,” said Normand.

“I wonder why we weren’t living with Ed...or brought back to Destin after you killed Tem Lucas?” asked Sawyer. The expression of dazzled astonishment on his face had become one of hurt confusion. “Why did we have to grow up with strangers?”

Here, Normand pursed his lips in regret and looked at the floor as he spoke. It was an odd gesture of humility from such a legendary figure. “There are reasons for both of your issues. The first one I shall address by allowing Edward a modicum of sympathy in that he simply could not afford to raise three children by himself. It ruined him to do so, but he had to give the two of you up to the authorities, so that you would have a better chance at life.”