Chapter 5 – Ingold

Two hours before dawn, Dain began to falter. He made no complaint but stumbled through the undergrowth, weaving in a waking dream. Ingold scooped him up and carried on walking. The night grew colder. Frost spread across the undergrowth, decorating each stem with delicate thorns of ice. Ingold trudged on, breath pluming before him, and the moon watched from a ghostly ring.

"What's that?" Dain pointed skyward, teeth chattering. "That circle?"

"A moon-bow," Ingold smiled. Faint about the fullness of the moon a pale moon-ring made the lunar disk the bulls-eye of a target. "Surely you've seen a moon-bow before?"

Dain shook his head. Ingold shrugged, "They're more common in the north. My father called them moon-bows. The sun has rainbows when it rains; the moon has moon-bows. Ice crystals in the sky, my father had an old scroll that explained it." For an instant he saw the old man, thick finger jabbing at the scroll as if forcing out the meaning. A stride later, as the memory faded, Ingold realised the man he saw in that image wasn't old, not really. He himself was older now than his father had been in that memory. And Dain younger than the Ingold that asked the question.

A howl rang out in the distance and Dain startled.

"Easy there." Ingold gave the child in his arms a bounce. "It's not close." The howls of werewolves followed them but the threat was gone. Their cries held a mournful tone, a lament in the deepness of the woods for the falling moon.

Day broke across the treetops and still Ingold walked. He reached the margins of the forest hard on the heels of noon, and the Deodad Woods soon fell behind them. His arms began to ache. Even with the Blood's strength a burden will start to tell when carried hour after hour. Ingold gritted his teeth against the pain. Getting old seemed to be all about burdens. Perhaps that's all age was – an accumulation of things to carry through life with you. The man who let no experience leave a mark might find time never laid a finger on him.

Free of the woods, Ingold set course for the Port of Glorsa, a simple matter of heading north. If his path veered off, then the coast to one side, or the river Leat to the other, would steer him to his destination. Dain woke almost as they left the trees, and Ingold set him on his feet, immediately stretching his arms and trying to squeeze the ache from his biceps.

"We'll have lunch here." He gestured at the unpromising jumble of rocks and gorse covering the slope.

Lunch proved to be two strips of dried beef, fished from the deepest recesses of Ingold's cloak. Dain set to chewing with the dedication of one who has known many hungry days. Ingold found a boulder to sit against and fastidiously began to pick the lint from his own meal. It looked like the kind of treat high-born ladies give to pampered dogs.

Meagre rations notwithstanding, Ingold could wish for no fairer day. The clear wash of the sky stretched to blue infinities. The storm had left the air fresh and the sun lent it a little warmth. The land rolled before them, endless and wrapped in the tatters of late autumn. A good day on which to be a bard. Ingold hummed to himself as they walked on, rolling his melody with the pitch and tempo of the landscape. Dain marched at his side, the horrors of the night seemingly all forgotten.

The boy proved hardy. They covered a good ten miles before the light began to fail. The land had grown boggy about them and they had forded a dozen small streams. Ingold called a halt before one of these narrow rills and handed Dain his water flask to fill. Dain clambered down to dip the flask at the water's edge.

"Do it where the water flows fastest," Ingold called out. He shook his head, reminding himself the child was city bred, ignorant rather than careless.

Ingold fished in his pockets hunting any forgotten scrap of food - he found the circle-key instead, still cold. Strange to find by accident something he had spent so many years hunting. That search had begun long before Dain had even been born. There had never been a doubt that the High Church would hold a copy, but turning conviction into a where and a when... that had proved hard. Men didn't call it the Church of Secrets for nothing. His fingers closed about the key, mood darkening at the touch. Blood and fire lay before him, nothing else. He resolved to stow the key deep in his pack, some place where he wouldn't feel the need to keep checking on it, touching it. He wanted the key for one thing, nothing more. One thing and then he'd toss it into the nearest begging bowl.

"You'll be safe in Glorsa. It's a big city. Thousands of people, maybe ten thousand. The Red Priests won't spot you in such numbers."

"I don't want to stay in Glorsa. I want to stay with you," Dain said.

"I'd like to have you along, lad. You'd be a fine apprentice. But you'll have to learn the bard-lore from somebody else. I can't take you with me. It's too dangerous."

"You took me to Dendarar's house," Dain said.

"Where I'm going there are things that would give Dendarar the Pale nightmares."

"I can help you fight them," Dain said.

"No!"

"Why did you take me from Thelim if you don't want me?" Dain thrust the water-flask at him. "Beggar boys get killed every day – I've seen them die in the street. What's one more to you?"

Ingold turned away. Because you look like Jamus, because you sing like I did, because you're everything I've lost, and because Karalynn would want me to.

"Every bard needs an audience." The words emerged harsh and dipped in sarcasm. He turned to take them back - but took the offered flask instead.

"All right. We'll make camp here. On the drier ground by those bushes. See if you can find me some sticks and we'll have a fire going. A couple of hares and some potatoes would be good too."

Ingold watched Dain hunt for wood. His fingers itched for a lute, for strings to play away his anger, for a song to explain it all. There's nothing I can say. Should I tell him I have a king to kill? He wouldn't understand – hells, I don't understand.

Ingold thought again about what he'd said. Where I'm going there are things that would give that witch nightmares. Plain truth. A truth that had been at his back for the long years of his hunting. At first it had been anger that drove him, pure and simple, a white heat more fierce than the blood-fire banked within him. The anger had changed – he had changed. One had warped the other. The hunt had become habit – his definition. Finding the key had grown into something that, like growing old, like dying, we might talk about but somehow never expect to actually happen.

And now with key in hand and his feet facing the object of his revenge Ingold felt doubt. For the first time in forever he questioned why he would step back into the horror he'd so narrowly escaped. Some burdens however, though it cripples us to carry them, cannot be set aside.

"Burn it all!" Ingold muttered the oath, gaze returning to the boy – a more immediate problem. Ingold knotted his fingers in the grass and raised his eyes to the heavens. The answer came to him, as answers so often did, out of the blue. Maidel! I'll leave him with Maidel. With the matter settled in his mind, Ingold gave thought to making camp.

Sticks were all that Dain could find, and his collection had burned to embers by the time the fog rolled in. As the temperature dropped, the fog rose, boiling from the hollows. Its embrace leeched the warmth from Ingold's bones. Dain looked as pale as the mists.

"We'll move on, Dain-lad. Find ourselves a better spot."

Ingold lifted the boy again. He could feel Dain's small frame shivering in every limb. He let the heat at his core rise, the feeling always the same, as if flames were licking through his flesh. Even if they found no hearth to warm them that night, Ingold's blood would keep the child from freezing. Dain clung to him, unspeaking. What does it take to make this boy complain? What kind of life takes a child's voice like that?

In the small hours of the morning Ingold found a low stone hut, roofed with timber and turf. There had been no need to wake Dain since Ingold 'found' the hut by walking into it. He set his startled passenger on his feet. He could hear Dain's teeth chattering.

"No witches here boy, it's a shepherds' shelter. There'll be some wood for a fire inside. Maybe even some hardtack."

Ingold led the way in, blind in the darkness, doubly so wrapped with fog, Dain's hand in his.

"Grenaroth's Gonads!" Ingold swore. He reached down for the object that had barked his shins. It felt like a low wooden cot. "W-w-w-wh-what a-a-a-are g-g-g-go-go-gonads?" Dain managed through chattering teeth.

Ingold ignored the question. Instead he took a handful of straw from the cot and rubbed it between his palms, willing it to flame. He let the burning mass drop by the doorway, and in its fleeting light found the hearth.

Within the space of five minutes Ingold had a fire going, Dain snuggled in the cot-bed, and a pot of cracked wheat simmering.

"Remind me to say a prayer for shepherds every night, Dain," Ingold said.

In the wooden chest before him cakes of hardtack wrapped in cloth sat next to pans and wooden spoons. To cap it all a small pot of sugar, and a smaller pot of salt, nestled at the rear. Ingold left two silver coins in their place. Somebody else's silver coins – he had to admit that to himself – but it would replace all the losses many times over.

Dawn found them through the mist, and they walked out into a shrouded world. The trees made sinister, sounds muffled. The fog turned Ingold from his path. They found the coast first, stumbling to a halt atop a crumbling cliff that fell to unseen rocks. Ingold followed a coastal path up and down the great swell of headlands for several miles – a slow path but better than weaving in circles without the shore to guide them. Toward noon the wind turned seaward and bore the mist away, revealing the land about them like a revelation, the foam-flecked sea curving off toward blue horizons. Sunshine brought smiles to both their faces and Ingold marveled at the change a few minutes could make. A song lay in that change – or a lesson – or both.

"There she blows!" Ingold pointed to a dark smudge on the horizon. "The port of Glorsa. Gateway to the city-states of Rae. You can get a ship from Glorsa to anywhere under the sun."

Ingold led on, humming softly to the tune of the booming surf and the high calls of gulls. The fact he detested boats he pushed to the rear of his mind, noting that it had grown crowded back there of late.

The walls of Glorsa had seen better times, low and ancient they spoke of days when the port had no fear. The city had long since overflowed its confines, and to reach the city gates Ingold had to lead Dain through the slum that spread around Glorsa like a dirty halo.

The Glorsan Gates stood wide, as they had for decades, rotting timbers folded back against the walls on hinges that would fall to pieces were a move ever made to shut them. Indeed it looked to Ingold as if 'Nelson's Tannery' would have to be razed to the ground in order to give them clearance to close. According to song it was this very vulnerability that had left Glorsa largely unmolested for a hundred years and more. The place posed no threat – the High Church could reach out and take the port any time it liked, and because it could... chose not to.

Not far beyond the gates the choked high-street opened onto a broad square. A dozen men bent their backs, stacking timbers in a pyre where they set the maypole each spring, children and idlers watched on. Ingold frowned.

"I'll get us a room at the 'Tree. I know the landlady there. She'll fix you a meal. I've got a few errands to run - got to see a man about a lute." And find out who they're planning to cook on that pyre. Surely the Red Priests aren't here already?