The moon no decent person could see.
Chapter Sixteen
The celebration was brief, considering Kirab's weakened condition. She, of course, wanted to dance in the streets, but a few coltish steps proved the young woman was a long way from doing a jig. At last Kirah agreed to let Bram carry her, frail but with restored limbs, across the road and up the stairway to her room, where she could rest in comfort.
Seated upon the bottom step near the entrance to the bakery, which was still dark, silent, and scentless, Guerrand waited for him to return. The mage scarcely noticed the street around him; he stared at it, without really seeing.
What did it mean, seeing the black moon? Was he disposed toward Evil now? Guerrand didn't feel any different. Maybe that was the point. Perhaps evil people weren't all the same, or even as different on the inside as he'd believed. Hadn't Justarius said that same thing after Guerrand's Test?
Bram slipped down the staircase and joined his uncle. "Kirah's as scrappy as ever," the young man said fondly. 'Tried to talk me into taking her for a walk in the sunlight, but I finally got her settled. She fell asleep before I could get to the door."
Guerrand nodded his head to acknowledge the comment. One by one the limbs of plague-stricken villagers had returned to normal, reassuring them that the plague's spell had been broken. Just yesterday Thonvil had looked and sounded like a ghost town, the deadly stillness that had pervaded broken only by a groaning spring wind. This sunny morning a handful of people walked the streets, stirring up the noises of living, though where any of them were going when no shops were yet open was anyone's guess.
But the greatest sign that fear had passed was that folks would meet each other's eyes again.
"They don't even know you're the one who saved their lives," Bram said when a young girl and her mother, both with head shawls lowered to feel the heat of the sun on their chocolate-brown hair, nodded in greeting.
"It's better that they don't," Guerrand said soberly.
The men fell into a dull silence, watching the village slowly come back to life.
"I should get home-I mean to the castle, to see how everyone there has fared," Bram said after a while. The young nobleman stood reluctantly, turning the gesture into a long, slow stretch. His eyes traveled south, over the buildings of Thonvil, to the distant, dark fortress that rose up between blue sea and green earth like a mountain of cold stone.
Bram didn't look at his uncle as he said, "You should come with me."
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Guerrand thought the centuries-old fortress appeared more foreboding and entrapping than the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, which had been designed to look that way. "1… don't think that's a good idea, do you?"
"Perhaps not," Bram agreed soberly.
"Besides," Guerrand said, standing also, "I should be getting back to Bastion."
Bram's head swung around, his eyes wild. "So soon? You arrived just days ago."
"Is that all it's been?" Guerrand shook his head in amazement. "It feels like years since…" He stopped himself short of mentioning Lyim's death. So much had happened in so short a time.
"I know what you mean," Bram agreed, plucking at his filthy clothing. "I've worn this same tunic and trousers for so long they're stiff."
Bram's observation left a thoughtful silence. His expression grew sober. "Strange, but it feels like only hours since I found you." The young man looked away and said softly, "I'm just not willing to say good-bye again yet. Didn't Justarius's note say you could take as much time as you needed?"
"Yes," acknowledged Guerrand, "but my work here is done."
Bram's adam's apple rose and fell slowly. "I was hoping you'd welcome the chance to get to know your nephew again."
Guerrand felt his throat thicken. Meeting his nephew's gaze, the mage wondered what growing up at Castle DiThon had been like for Bram. Probably as frustrating and fatherless, considering Cormac's state of mind, as it had been for Guerrand. From all accounts, life at the castle had gotten steadily worse in the last decade. Rank poverty didn't usually improve things. Bram's mother, Rietta, was… well, Rietta. As for his father,Cormac had always seemed distant from his only son, and now he was crazy, gone even when he was present. Guerrand was reminded again of Wilor's dying words.
Bram could see his uncle weakening. "One afternoon, that's all I ask," he pressed. "One calm afternoon, where I can learn what lifepath took you to Bastion, what interests or irritates you and what doesn't." Bram gave his most persuasive smile. "I know a place where nothing intrudes except the rodents in the thatch overhead."
'Truth to tell," said Guerrand, "I'm not in that great a hurry to return to where there is no grass or sky or trees." He looked sidelong at Bram. "This place you know, is it one where a man can put up his feet and have a decent cup of tea?"
'The best!" Bram was already three steps down the street, forcing Guerrand to hurry to fall in stride with him. Rounding the comer on the far edge of town, they came into sight of a run-down shack.
"I sat with Nahamkin through the plague just before 1 left to find you," Bram explained. "I was more than a little surprised this morning to find that the villagers hadn't burned down his cottage."
At first glance, Guerrand thought it wouldn't have hurt the look of the village if the shack were gone. The thatch was old and black all over. The walls were of rocky mud, crumbling in places. And yet, as he got nearer, Guerrand couldn't help but see the comfortable, lived-in and well-loved look about the place. The garden appeared to be struggling against neglect and the season to renew itself.
The cottage reminded him of a run-down version of the one he'd shared with Esme in Harrowdown. There came that familiar tight feeling in his chest, as of the apprehended return of pain that always came with
thoughts of Esme, especially now. He resolved to try to contact her before he returned to Bastion, when his magical strength returned.
"Nahamkin," Guerrand repeated. "Wasn't there a farmer who lived in the surrounds by that name?"
"One and the same," Bram said. "Nahamkin's family more or less abandoned him once the plague struck. I was his only friend, and he mine." He said the words matter-of-factly.
Bram stopped and stooped before the oddly tilting wooden door, as if recalling some pleasant memory, then stepped inside and waved Guerrand in.
Pots and tins and wooden buckets were on every available surface, but no drips fell from the rotted roof today. Hanging from the rafters was a year's supply of butter-colored candles in a variety of shapes and sizes. The place smelled of moss and worms and long-dead ashes.
Bram returned from the well with a pail full of water that he set by the hearth. The young man dropped to his knees with a sigh. "Damnation," he cursed softly. "I didn't even think to grab flint and stone to start a fire." He stood and looked around with a frown on his face, hands on his hips. "There must be something around here I…"
Guerrand knelt next to Bram, nonchalantly lit the logs with a simple cantrip, then dropped into a caned ladder-back chair by the hearth.
Bram regarded his uncle with obvious admiration before moving to Nahamkin's dry sink. Underneath he shifted around crocks until he found the one he sought. Standing again, he shook his head. "I'm embarrassed to admit that I've always thought my herbal skills were pretty useful," he said, sifting two pinches of dried rose hips into Nahamkin's best pewter mugs. "Now they seem pretty inconsequential compared to your magic."