VII

I had known so little of the world. 

Schooling was mandatory but learning was not. I had attended classes with my two brothers yet retained little, so fixed was I on my own possibilities. I as not a warmonger like Ashe, nor a gambler like Bryln. I was quiet and I was reserved, yet I was not an academic. I had no time for geography nor history, and as such, I knew little of what lay beyond, and our place in it. 

Until she arrived, of course. Then everything changed and my eyes were wrenched open, the veil torn from my sight. She taught me so much in so little time. In part due to my list for her and my taking hold and coveting every word that left her lips. In part also because of the way in which she spoke to me, from the very first time I saw her. After her treachery was exposed and she was brought before my father, my brothers, and I. 

The way she looked to me then. The way she looked through me. There were nuances of that first meeting I had missed. Things that my mind had caught up to later, small things that were easily overlooked, but the main one was one I still ruminate on. The way she had looked to me was enough for me to fall for her there and then. Yet I was not the only one she had shared a look with. I digress. That look was enough. Her gaze had passed over my brothers as though they weren’t there. Time and time she thad turned back to me. Of course I should visit her in her oubliette. Secret trysts after the guards had been bribed. They turned a blind eye for so little coin I began to think that my father’s assurances of a contented populace were either a lie for my benefit, or for his own. 

She told me from where had had come, and how long she had been with us. My disbelief at first was laid bare before her, and I was unable to keep the mockery from my tone. Yet she weaved this rejection of her tales into new stories and soon there was nothing but a lust to know know from me. She explained of the old gods, and our place in the world. The knowledge she imparted was worth more than any map, any of our great tomes. 

I was of course, an avid reader of those tomes. My learning was drunken in the classroom but not in my own time, and I had already learned much about the gift I believed I was the only one to possess. Of course, unable to help myself I attempted my burgeoning talent on her. 

This was my first mistake. 

Yet I digress. 

The world and my lacking knowledge of it. She had painted it so vividly for me, yet I knew it to be falsehoods and pure fabrication. She painted an eden, filled with the majesty of the inconsequential and serene. I took this to my brothers, who corrected this and daubed over her vibrancy with dark tones and crimson hues. The horrors they sketched were vivid, and it was this that I took with me to my chambers at night. Yet through both I had a fuller understanding of the peril both from man and beast, and also geographically. 

So I mean this with no understatement when I say that I understand the nature of the journey which I now take, and yet still I did not expect the environment to be so hostile to my passage. I expected some resistance to the soft and pampered foot that I place upon the earth, yet the fallow and laboured land I found myself on beyond the trail was actively fighting back, as though sentient. 

Every step was a hardship, more so than I had ever encountered before. I missed the ranger immediately and was so used to espying him abroad that I still found myself peering into the wet mist in the hope to see his ragged silhouette. Yet there was nothing but the accursed haar, the rain unending. The wind had died as the mist remained and it contributed to the now vertical rain in soaking through my garments until I could feel the expensive cotton rubbing against my goose-pimpled skin. 

How much time passed I could not say. I was aware of the sun passing slowly but could not catch proper sight of it. Not even as much as I expected to, as merely the suggestion of a faint glow. A halo beyond a heavy duvet of cloud. 

This fallow field, pregnant with marshland, gave way to another, the dividing fence even more shattered than the one over which I had initially climbed. Down a small decline I stumbled, fatigue setting in, my clothes heavy. My stomach growled, a sharp pang through my gut. I belched loudly, unable to keep it in, the force of it causing me to throw my hand over my mouth. I chastised myself, unable to keep my own disgust from fermenting the self image of a blundering oaf, unfit for the journey at hand. 

Movement in the mist somewhere a head. A heavy sound. A black shadow. 

My ineptitude had disturbed… something. That which it was I didn’t see, however I hoped it was one of the large black birds that I had espied the previous evening overhead, and nothing more. 

I caught my foot as the ground levelled out, nearly plunging forward but I stopped myself, my hands going out, expecting to break my fall. I remained upright, although I had plunged my foot into a dark pool of water. It was deeper here, this field lower than the last. I sighed, unable to think of an alternate direction save to go around the field. 

A sudden feeling washed over me. Like a shadow across my tombstone. 

Had the ranger been right? He had thought himself so. My instinct was to trust him. 

That decided me, along with the submerged ground before me. I would turn east, follow the field along the raised edge. This would turn me from a direct route towards the mountains but I would avoid the worst of the swampy ground, as well as heading directly away from what I felt strongly to be approaching me, at the ranger’s insistence. Those unseen slouching forms. The Slow Movers. 

Whether they were or were not

they were

it was prudent to not be careless. I would not make it through the flooded field anyway, and it was obvious the best thing was to go round. 

I followed the raised ground for some time, keenly aware that every step I took was a step that would be longer to atone for once I was on the path. The field to my left remained impassable however, and so I walked on. The rain was now what we referred to as a smirr, and it was as though each droplet of water hung in the air, and I walked through it. It soaked me more than if the rain had been driving and heavy like before, as at least then it would only be the top part of me that was sodden - and it was. This smirr however just soaked every inch of me through to the bone and I shivered with the chill, despite the exertion from the walking. 

Eventually I reached the south east corner of the field, nothing with some satisfaction that the raised edge followed the east side and ran northwards. There was a twin lane trail here and I could only surmise that it was a former farm road, between two fields. The fence on the east side of the track confirmed this and - although I could still not espy my destination - I happily turned on to the track and began to follow it north, my spirits a little brighter. 

The track wasn’t devoid of mud nor standing water, and although going was a little easier, it still required care on my part. Nonetheless, I took my time, ignoring the increasingly ferocious growls from my gut, and picked my way northwards. 

The sun moved unseen over head, and still I did not cease for rest. I could not shake that sense of foreboding that followed me like a black dog, ever my shadow. I admonished myself for succumbing to the ranger - someone of whom I had continued to form a darker opinion of since his abandonment of me. I had come to the conclusion that his aged mind was rattled and, although he still obviously was in possession of a keenness of reflex and skill, his brain had gone to seed. I had convinced myself that nothing had seen me, and he was wrong and paranoid to depart with such haste. This fuelled my footsteps, each one that sank into boggy ground accompanied by a curse of the name Pagailon. 

Yet why did I feel hunted?

There were hidden eyes upon me. I felt this with such certainty that I would cast a furtive glance around every so often in an attempt to catch my watcher out. Yet there never was one. The going had been made in almost the utmost silence, and there was no suggestion of movement in sound nor sight to accompany my glances. 

Foolish. I was being foolish. 

The trail continued past the fallow field and past another, this one filled with bales of rotten and sagging wheat. The other side was now marked by a low and crumbling wall, another angels mass of woodland beyond. More fir and pine similar to what I had passed through before. I anxiously scanned for any kinds of bushes and berries once more, my hunger intensifying. I did not know how to hunt and so I was going to have to forage if I was able to this time pick something that wouldn’t spell the end of me. 

The field of sagging bales ended and was now open ground, the wall continuing on my left. The track twisted and turned and I dutifully followed, my legs now sore from the sodden material that now chafed and rubbed as I walked. I could feel my ire rising, my temperament foul. Not for the first time I cursed the ranger, and swore blind to myself that I should I ever cast eye upon him again, he would see who I truly was and how I could take no more his abandonment than any rightful heir would to the desertion of their court or ministry. 

The pine and fir trees soon gave way to birch, proving the ground here to be even more infertile and acidic. Their twisted white trunks erupting from the useless earth like bone from a disturbed grave. 

Either side they grew and still I followed the track, the wall to my left now just an irregular line of mossy stone. I could see the lumpen shapes of what would have made the rest of the wall, now overgrown and dragged back down into the ground. I wondered where this road would lead. A farmstead perhaps. Whilst I did not expect it occupied, I hoped for something intact enough where I could make a reasonable sheltered camp for the night. Long had the day been and slow the progress. I had covered mayhap the best part of two leagues only since the top of the hill the night before. The birch forest having consumed a good portion of my recent journey. I was still alone and wildlife was scarce, however I took comfort in the fact that this place was not bereft of it entirely. I had espied a score of dark birds, about the size of an ale jar each, hopping about amongst the roots and fungi that grew there. It had crossed my mind to attempt to ensnare one until I reasoned that I had nothing to use, however the notion hadn’t completely deserted me, and I thought to camp - either in the shadow of a farmstead or no - and try my hand. 

If not, there was always the fungus. I had rudimentary knowledge of such, relayed to me by the herbalist in the convent, a sincere yet stern woman whose name I could not recall. I had been sent to her by the sisters that saw to my mother to fetch various creams and ointments. I had caught her in the throw of making a large cauldron of mushroom broth and - with the curiosity of a child - had questioned her as to the nature of it’s contents. 

Was she mayhap tired of the company of the sisters, or just naturally wished to satisfy the curiosity of a young boy from the royal quarter, her stern visage melted as she took from her side a large handwritten volume with crude drawings and recipes. She asked me with all seriousness if I wished to know more about such art and I said I yes, however I must return to my mother and would she wish to discuss another time. 

As it so happened I was back down in her small stone kitchen sooner than I would like as - upon my return - the heavy curtains were drawn around my mother’s bed and there was such commotion from within. A sister close by hurriedly requested the materials I had returned with and then ushered me from the room. She was young and most beautiful if I recall, however her perfect skin was creased with concern, her eyes cold and distant. There was a sallowness to her that I found perturbing, and so I did as she asked with haste. Little did I know then how infectious the plague that my mother had contracted would turn out to be. Neither, I think, did the sisters, for if they had, they would have perhaps not crowded her so readily. 

Nevertheless, I returned downstairs and the rest of that afternoon was spent learning about fungi, shrooms and all their various applications and recipes. She let me leaf through the book alone whilst she was otherwise engaged and - as I have already admitted to not being the studios sort save when it interested me - I surprised myself by staying with her and doing so. The worry of my mother possibly keeping me in check, having nowhere else to go, unwilling to stray too far from her side. 

A great many moons since that moment, the herbalist long dead and rotten in the grave. The knowledge she imparted through her book lingered still. Only a little. 

Nonetheless, I had a reasonable amount of confidence that I could identify some of those illustrations in the wild.

As the notion took hold, I soon followed my gut and placed my pack down on the mossy ground, over the remains of the cobblestone wall. I glanced either side, behind me and waited a moment. Listening. 

Nothing but the light spit and patter of the lightly falling rain on the leaves above and around, the slight beat of wing far off. I felt safe enough to move further into the woodland. 

No briar bushes here I saw to my relief, and no corpses. 

Strangely I seemed to feel tension ebb away from me as I entered beneath the canopy of leaves. The wood almost welcoming me in. 

I knelt in front of the nearest patch of mushrooms and gingerly picked one from the stalk. Holding it beneath my nose. Repeating what I had done with the berries. How pointless I knew. My senses and knowledge failed me then, they fail me again. 

I thought I recognised the colourings on the cap, the mustard coloured smear and dark spots. It was distinctive. The more I thought, the more I could picture the illustration. 

I took a bite, then another. The smoked buttery taste activating my saliva glands until I could not help myself, greedily picking up a handful and cramming them into my mouth until I had eaten my fill.