Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 21:25:24 -0700
From: Trewin Greenaway <trewingreenaway@cronnex.com>
Subject: A TALE OF WIZARDRY (jessan-13)

              JESSAN - A TALE OF WIZARDRY Chapter 13

Copyright 2006 Trewin Greenaway All Rights Reserved

To learn more about me and the genesis of this tale, visit my website
http://www.cronnex.com/ .

I hope to post a new chapter every Saturday. If you're enjoying the story,
do let me know!

	   ooooooooooooo0000O000ooooooooooooooo

                       Chapter 13

Alfrund walked me to Grysta's door, but left me on the doorstep with a
kiss. I had expected this - Fendal had given him a look when we emerged
from his living place that, quiet as it was, spoke volumes. And if Alfrund
and I were soon to sail to Pharros, Fendal deserved all the time alone with
him he could get.

Even so, to be left after our meeting with Orien gave me a pang in the
heart. But I remembered the volume in my vest, touched it, and felt
better. I went into the house and up the stairs to my room, where I laid on
the bed, those of our purchases I had carried home with me.

Before I could do more, Grysta came to the stairwell and summoned me down
to supper. When I entered the kitchen, I found Grysta, herself, bent over a
cauldron of fragrant fish stew, and Onna laying the table. When she saw my
new vest she exclaimed with delight and begged to try it on. I slid it off
and passed it to her, knowing the book was safely on my bed. Onna slipped
into the vest and being almost as slender as I, made quite a fair
appearance in it, as even Grysta admitted. So I gave Onna leave to wear it
for the evening, which delighted her very much.

When the meal came to table, we sat down on our stools to eat, Onna coming
last, since she had to lift the now empty cauldron out of the flames and
set it on the side of the hearth to cool for scrubbing. As she came to the
table, for what reason only the Sacred Forces will ever know, she put her
hand into one of the pockets of the vest. Then, with a puzzled look, she
drew out and examined what she had found there.

My heart sank. It was my undergarment, forgotten since Telo had handed it
to me and I had stowed it away. Fortunately, she was standing behind
Grysta, who, already bent over her bowl, was busy eating. Onna held the
garment up on the tip of one finger and feigned astonishment. "Jessan!" she
silently mouthed and, with her other hand, wagged her finger at me sternly.

Yet another time that day I found myself scarlet. "Onna!" I mouthed back,
nervously casting an eye at Grysta, and then through gritted teeth,
"Please!"

"I hope at least they're yours!" she said quite out loud, as she shoved
them back into the vest and came and settled on her stool. Grysta glanced
at her quizzically, but said nothing, nor did she later when, periodically,
Onna and I would burst into giggles while eating our supper.

It was customary for Grysta, who saw little of me during the day, to ask
about what I had been about, but this conversation ended on the day
before. She knew very well what I had been up to that day, and did not wish
to talk about it in the presence of Onna.

This night, however, studiously keeping my eye from catching hers, I told
Grysta about Alfrund and my trip to the market and most of what we had
purchased and where. Grysta, who despite her slight size, had a good
appetite, kept her eyes on her spoon, but nodded as I spoke to show that
she was listening. I dared mention that the whole town was talking about
nothing else but the sudden reappearance of Sondaram.

Grysta lifted her head and gave me a sharp look. "I don't doubt it," she
said, "although to what purpose I don't know, since the soldiers prevent
anyone from climbing the hill to see it."

"The fishermen can see it clearly from the sea," Onna said, "and they say
it sparkles on its cliff as if built entirely of precious stones."

"Yes, and no doubt they also believe that the floors within are paved with
ginger cakes," Grysta tartly replied. "If a great narwhal emerged from the
ocean depths and swam beside them, their teeth would still be chattering
with fear. But let something of far greater omen appear on land and all
they can do is stare with their hearts aflutter."

Onna then did catch my eye, conveying in a glance that if she had been
offered the opportunity, she would have happily reacted the same way.

I smiled. I did wish that Onna knew who I was, because I was tired of
deceiving her and, even more, I wanted very much to ask Grysta some
questions. I often had time with Onna alone but almost never with Grysta,
whose day was full of constant demand for her services.

As it happened, though, this evening Onna, who usually slept in a small
room adjoining the kitchen, had been given leave to spend the night at
home. She had a new baby brother she greatly wished to see.

This I found out when Grysta stopped the table talk by telling Onna to
finish up her soup and do her chores, or she'd have no time left when she
went home for anything but sleep. "And," she added shortly, "I expect to
find you here when I come down the stairs in the morning, with the fire
started and the floor tiles scrubbed."

Onna gave me another look, but dutifully got up and began gathering the
soup bowls for the washing pan. I rose myself and carried the slops out for
her, tossing them into the darkness. I returned to the kitchen just in time
to bid her a good night as she hurried out, her arms clutching the vest
tightly to her.

"I may never wear that vest again," I said to Grysta.

She smiled but shook her head. "Onna is honest to a fault. You touched her
vanity, which little does, not in this house. You were good to let her wear
it."

"I've grown quite fond of her," I answered, "and see why you have,
too. She's anxious to learn, skilled at what she does, and would be
observant to a fault were she not so sweetly tempered."

Grysta glanced at me. "Yes, Onna misses little," she said. "I hope you
haven't revealed anything about yourself to her."

"She's happy to think I'm Alfrund's apprentice," I answered, "although she
clearly knows more about him than I do."

Grysta snorted. "You've hardly hidden the subject of your conversations
with him. Do you even know how he practices his trade?"

I blushed and shook my head. "I don't even know whether to call it a
'trade' or an 'art.'"

"That's a different matter," Grysta said. "A magician, for instance,
professes an art, not a trade, because the power he exercises comes from
study, not from handwork. Whereas a leathersmith studies not at all except
through observing his master cut and sew.

"Healing, however, is both an art and a trade. Like magic, it requires
mastery of what is called natural logic, knowing the inner connections that
bind the things of this world together, the way verbal logic construes
words into argument."

"Oh!" I said. "As where extract of bindle has strong affinity with metal of
birius, although one is a plant and the other smelted from a mineral?"

Grysta was taken aback. "Alfrund has already taught you that?" she asked.

"No," I answered. "Alfrund hasn't had time to teach me much of
anything. But I noticed this when I examined them alone, and confirmed it
when I held them in my hand together. In spirit, they were brother and
sister."

Grysta sighed and shook her head. "If I had brought you up," she said, "I
would now be your apprentice. You frighten me, Jessan."

"Grysta!" I cried. "Everyone says that. I hate it! If I become someone to
inspire fear, it will be because everyone keeps pushing me to be so. It's
as if I could raise my hands like so and cry 'flash, lightning, flash!' and
a bolt would strike down from the sky."

Even as I did this, drawn perhaps by my burst of anger, a sense of force
surged from my body. Outside the house came a flash of light so brilliant
that it flooded through the windows and momentarily blinded us. At the same
time we were deafened by what sounded like the heavens being torn asunder.

I turned white as a sheet and closed my eyes. Orien's admonition that
perhaps I should learn to fear myself came immediately into my mind. I
seized one hand with the other and clutched them together. "I don't want
this!" I cried.

Grysta reached over and pried one hand free and held it in her soft, warm
one. My own felt cold as ice.

"Jessan, Jessan," she said softly. "No one gets to choose their doom. It's
given to you, and you must do your best with it. Yes, yours is an
especially hard one, but mostly because you live among those who have no
way to share it. You're like a boy who has been raised by sheep and sent to
live among wolves. If you keep insisting you're only a sheep, you'll end up
as nothing but a meal."

I squeezed her hand and sighed. "That's the best explanation of my plight
I've heard so far," I said. "Perhaps because in it I'm the boy, not one of
the wolves."

I put my free elbow on the table and rested my head in my hand, continuing
to hold hers with my other. "Grysta," I asked, "do you remember the day
when I was born?"

"No," Grysta replied, "because if you were born, I wasn't there to see
it. But I do remember the exact day that I found you. It was, as you
already know, this month, the month of holy Lytha, and the day was the
12th. I was sound asleep in my bed when a voice woke me. 'Grysta,' it said,
'make haste to Sondaram, for a babe cries for you there.'

"Well! I've never been one to tipple at my own potions, so I knew at once
that this was a serious business! Of course, I was still too mazy from
sleep to yet know what. Even so, I was cautious enough to take a masked
lantern with me, one that would do no more than throw some light beneath my
feet. It wouldn't have been wise to signal the sentries at the fort that
someone was climbing up to the ruins of Sondaram in the middle of the
night!

"Now, even as a girl I knew those ruins like the back of my hand, and the
darkness made no difference. I was certain that my destination was the
center of what was once the great hall. And, sure enough, when I reached
that place, there you were, naked and unhappy, wailing away, surrounded by
flickering blue light. I wrapped you up in a soft cloth and hugged you to
me and you stopped crying at once. And, at that moment, your name came to
me quite clearly: 'Jessan.'

"And so Jessan you became. A few weeks later I hired a mule and a boy to
walk beside it, and brought you to the village where Peta and her
blacksmith lived, for I knew I couldn't raise you here. I would have loved
to, but it would've been sheer folly. It would have been only a matter of
time before the Summoner sensed your presence, and all would have been over
before it had even begun."

"The Summoner!" I said. "He was already here when I was born?" I suppose I
should've said "when I arrived," but I didn't even like the thought of
that.

"Oh, yes," Grysta answered. "You see, the babies always appear at one or
the other of their two temple palaces, and yours are Wethrelad in the east,
and Sondaram here in the west. And, at least to my knowledge, no humans can
now reach Wethrelad, so it was bound to be here. The Unnameable One
installed the Summoner here some years ago, with nothing to do but wait and
find you, when you came."

I shivered. When I saw Grysta had noticed this, I explained, "Despite that
I'm now skillful at avoiding his touch, the thought of it still fills me
with disgust. And I suspect I'm not done with him yet, either - or, rather,
he with me."

Grysta said nothing to this, which meant that she thought the same. We sat
in a brooding silence for a bit, until I thought of something she had said
earlier.

"When you said I knew nothing about how Alfrund practices his trade," I
said, "that's but the half of it. I've never even seen him wear the
herbalist's leaf-green robe. And since he has no home here, he can't come
from Gedd. What's his story, and how does it intertwine with yours and
mine?"

Grysta looked at me sternly. "That these questions only now occur to you
despite all your time with Alfrund shows that you're at heart still too
much a boy, taking what others give you without a thought."

My eyes filled with tears. "Don't scold me, Grysta," I said. "I got a good
kick down that road when I learned of the existence of Fendal, and saw what
he meant to Alfrund, and Alfrund to him. Take me this small distance
further. It would shame me to ask Alfrund himself about what I should
already know."

"Well," Grysta said gently, "I am your grandmother and I cannot bear to see
you weep. So.... Alfrund is only five years older than you. At about your
age he was just finishing his apprenticeship with a great master herbalist
named Anisor, who, in turn, was well familiar with Orien.

"Now Orien and Anisor are part of what is called the Guardian Circle, a
secret society of mages, healers, scholars, and alchemists, devoted to
sustaining the memory of the Nithaial and to risk their lives to protect
and nurture them when they next return.

"I'm a member of the Circle myself, although an outer ring of it. So when
you appeared, I managed to get word of this to Anisor, whom I once knew
well. He sent me a message saying that I should do nothing more for the
time being, because there was no safer place for you to grow up than at the
very end of the world.

"The danger would come, we both knew, when you reached the age of
sixteen. That was when the Cronnex would reveal itself and, at the same
time, your maturing process would greatly slow down."

She looked at me. "Has Orien told you that, should you survive your enemy,
you will easily live as long as five hundred years? And that it will take
you six or seven years to mature as much as a human does in one?"

I shook my head in astonishment. "No," I answered, "or if he did, I pushed
it out of my mind immediately."

"This is so because you have an enormous amount to learn compared to any of
us," she said, "and so your mind and body are kept in a growing state for
an exceedingly long period of time. Get used to being sixteen, because
you'll not appear as Alfrund does until he's an old man and I'm long gone
to the Hallowed Halls."

She saw my eyes fill with tears again, and patted my hand. "That is your
doom," she said. "Be careful of your heart, for to take a lover is to watch
him grow old and die while you change little - a very painful thing for
each of you. I'm glad that Alfrund is your twerė. You'll need many such to
keep loneliness at bay. Take a lover, though, only after you spend a long
time looking into your heart."

The flame that burned in the fat tallow candle in the center of the table
began to gutter, and I feared that it would remind Grysta of the passing
hours and send her off to bed. But, instead, she lit a wooden splinter with
the candle's dying flame and sent me to the cupboard for another.

"I'm tired," she said, lighting it and tossing the splinter into the
fireplace, "and I'm getting rather old for a two-candle night. But you
deserve to have all this explained to you - both by Orien and by myself,
since we have each seen and learned different things."

She took up my hand and continued. "So, after consultation with Orien,
Anisor approached Alfrund and offered him membership in the Circle. In
this, Anisor showed great insight, for Alfrund was, at seventeen, much too
young to ordinarily be considered for initiation. Not to mention the fact
that he's little given to gravity - and there could be no more serious
business than what he was about to be asked to do. Still, that's what
transpired, and well that it did so.

"Alfrund set aside his studies and left his home in the great city of
Plęcenon to assume the trade of a wandering gatherer of herbs, collecting
them in one part of the kingdom and selling them to healers and herbalists
elsewhere. That allowed him to travel about without calling attention to
himself, and make contact with those in the Circle without anyone being the
wiser. For three years he did this, before being sent to Gedd to make
contact with me."

"So he has known Fendal for all of... what? Several months?" I asked,
suddenly confused.

"Five, in all, I think," answered Grysta, "and a very happy time it has
been for him, too, after all those lonely years on the road. I grieve for
him that it's now over. It's more than likely that he'll never be with
Fendal again."

"Why does every twist of this tale turn to sadness," I cried. "Can't he
come and be with Fendal after all this?"

"All this," Grysta echoed, "may take the rest of his life. Or simply take
it, period. Haven't you yet guessed that? What's happening now is merely
the quiet before the storm. And the clouds are gathering quickly. What you
experienced on the road from your village to Gedd was but a gentle spring
mist in comparison.

"Indeed, what is to come is beyond the capacity of anyone now living to
imagine - even Orien, whose powers have greatly extended his years." She
looked immeasurably sad. After a pause, she added in a quiet voice, "The
greatest storm perhaps in the history of men."

"And I'm in the center of it," I said.

"And you're in the center of it," she repeated. She gave my hand a last
squeeze, took a candle, and made her way to bed.

I was sleepy myself. But I drew the stool over to the fire and sat there,
prodding at the coals with the poker and thinking. As I had listened to
Grysta speak, I had felt a longing creep over me, which at first I thought
was for Alfrund to come and be with me in bed. But it shaped itself
differently, and soon I realized it was a desire to go back to Sondaram and
bathe in the rushing current of power.

Orien had bade me not to, but Orien was my advisor, not my master. He was
to be trusted, surely, but, when all was said and done, he was but a
mortal, with a mortal's sense of what was possible and what not. I sat
listening until I was sure Grysta was asleep. Then I got to my feet and
slipped out into the night.