The Storm's Own Son (Book 1) (12 page)

"He must be so disappoi
nted..." blurted the nodding girl in a way that sounded almost sympathetic, before suddenly shrinking at a cold look from the leader.

"That is what comes from making some penniless
old book hoarder living on an army pension magistrate, instead of one of the local people of quality," sniffed the leader, a little too loudly, as if meaning to be heard and to impress.

At that comment, the other two
made sudden intakes of breath and looked around the room with nervous expressions, as if the leader might have gone too far, and they expected someone to rebuke them. When it didn't happen, their faces took on conspiratorial looks.

"Her outfit is ridiculous
... that mismatched old dress!" said the frowning girl loudly.

"And her hair!" added the nodding girl.

The leader, however, appeared to have new thoughts crossing her mind. As their talk continued, she began to twirl her golden-brown hair and cast little glances towards Talaos. The others started whispering to her with encouraging expressions.  At last, she seemed to work up her courage and walked over to him, putting a bit of sway in her hips. She peered seductively at him from under half-lidded eyes, and slightly parted her lips.

Talaos, sprawled
at ease, glanced up at her, then back at his wine cup.

"I'm
Vanadria," she said in a sultry voice.

"I'm not ready for another wine yet, thank you," replied Talaos.

She looked briefly startled, eyes wide, then regained her half-lidded composure. "Oh, I don't work here. I just noticed you're from out of town, and..."

Talaos looked up at her, arched an eyebrow, and took a sip of wine.

"I... um, my friends and I know all the best..." Vanadria added in a less sultry voice.

"That's right."

"Um... What is?"

"I'm from out of town."

Vanadria stared at him, confusion, curiosity, and resentment at war on her face.

Talaos
gazed absently around the room as he finished his wine.

"Well, I was wondering if you wanted to..." she continued, her voice almost squeaking.

"Thanks for the great night, Vanadria," said Talaos without explanation, suddenly rising from his seat and shouldering his pack.

As he stalked out of the room
and towards his waiting bath and bed, Vanadria boggled at him, transfixed in awkward embarrassment. Talaos turned with a wicked grin, looking right past her and straight at Miriana. She was peeking over her book with a wide sprightly smile and a twinkle in her dreaming eyes. Then, her eyes met those of Talaos.

She blushed and ducked low behind
her tome, hiding all but her wild hair.

7
. Birth

Talaos woke in the cool air of his room, stretching with the languid energy of a lazing cat. Then, his plans for the day jolted him into action. He dressed in his newly cleaned travel clothes and strapped only his short blade to his belt. It felt good to walk lightly, however briefly, without the burdens of travel or all his gear of battle.

He
peered out the slatted window, under deep shady eaves, at the distant mountains.  He needed to be on his way soon, but not today.  His hastily gathered travel gear was in no way fit to handle a journey across those mountains, and he'd need to equip properly.  There were provisions to consider as well, and he thought it wouldn't hurt to buy a couple of spears, in case he had to deal with animals.

As he left his room, he considered the little exterior door at the end of the hall, and the narrow outside stairs beyond it. In his days in Carai, he would have found that both a useful and dangerous feature. Here, he mused, it was merely practical.

After a quick breakfast downstairs, he went about his business as planned.  The town was well set up for travelers, and even with delays for alterations and adjustments, he had everything he needed by noon.  He decided to return to the inn for lunch.  There, he found a
large busy crowd of lunchtime patrons coming and going.

He also found something
else.

Sitting on a chair at the center of a small cluster of tables was a
pale young man around his own age, dressed in the long, fitted, short-sleeved tunic and baggy pants typical of Hunyos, beyond the mountains. He had close-cropped light brown hair, and far more unusually, a full beard. The man also wore a close-fitting white cap on his head, one that immediately reminded Talaos of the caps worn by the Prophet's sorcerers.

The tables around
the man contained a mix of mildly bored diners finishing their lunches, and others, not eating and far more attentive.

The young man was
answering someone.  He spoke in a gentle, earnest voice. 

"It is true, war has come to my home, but I still bring a message of peace..."

Talaos felt a flash in his spirit, like a thunderbolt amidst a clear blue sky.  As he passed by, he kept aware of the scene with the same subtle watchfulness he'd maintained on the back streets of Carai.  He took a seat not far from his spot the night before, and ordered food.

Glancing around, alert and tense, he noticed Miriana back in her corner
from the previous night. She almost looked as if she'd never moved.  The candles behind her were arranged differently, and unlit at the moment, but she wore the same green dress. She'd tied her broken shoulder clasp together with a piece of shiny yellow silk ribbon, but her hair was, if anything, even more disheveled. Interestingly, instead of her shawl, she now had a white linen scarf with a kind of curling beaded embroidery that Talaos guessed might be eastern. He smiled warmly at the thought of  her apparent  indifference to the stylistic dictates of others.

Meanwhile, the crowd in the room was thinning, but
the smaller more densely concentrated group was continuing to gather around the young man. Some younger people, mostly women, a pair of wide-eyed children, and a few  road-dusty travelers were mingled with a larger group of what appeared to be the sick, crippled, or careworn of varying ages. The young man's voice was rising in a lofty, softly passionate way.

"It is true! He is the last and greatest of the prophets, the only true prophet in the world for hundreds of years
.  And for all those years, he, the Living Prophet, has been working humbly and with mercy for all to help mankind."

At that
statement from the young man, Miriana, who hadn't seemed to be paying attention, rose suddenly from her little lair in the corner. As she passed close by Talaos, she stopped and turned to him. Her dreamlike expression gained a hint of sharpness.

She spoke, and her lilting voice sounded defensive
. "I'm of marrying age!"

"Only barely," he replied with a bemused smirk.

Without another word, she walked toward the young man in the robe.

Despite his sarcasm, Talaos
found himself observing with some surprise how small, yet voluptuous she was. High, full breasts and rounded hips framed a waist almost as small as Sorya's. A bare leg flashed through the slit of her long city-style dress. However, she walked with a girl's sprightly, yet awkward step, rather than a woman's more confident swaying hips.

H
er eyes became more focused, her soft brows arched with a flash of anger. She strode right through the circle around the young man and stopped before him with her hands at her hips. He looked up at her benignly. Then she spoke, her voice snapping with anger.

"And what about the thirty prophets he burned alive
atop the ziggurat at Ash'ayur, in the year he captured the great library?"

The young man paused, as if mastering himself, then replied with gentle composure.
"You speak of things centuries in the past, during darker times. Those were not prophets, but demons inhabiting human form, and all their words were lies."

"So
your Prophet says that if anyone but him sees, dreams, has visions of things far away or of what might be... they're demons?"

"Or under the influence of
them, yes. As it was foretold, and in all the ages since..."

"Ha! That just shows how little he knows
!" snarled Miriana.  Then, she turned and walked away, the girlish gait resuming and the dreamy haze returning to her eyes.

"Peace and forgiveness to you," said the young man as she left. He still
had his placid smile, but his eyes watched her intently.  Then, his attention was pulled away as questions erupted from the crowd.

"Burned alive, really?"
gasped one young woman.

"Demons
?" nervously added a traveler in an accent from the far west of the Republic.

The robed man returned his full attention to his audience, striving with soft words
and patient manner to regain control.

As Miriana passed his way again, Talaos, on sudden impulse, caught her in his gaze and waved a welcoming hand to the seat next to his.  Her eyes widened, but she took the seat.

"That was well done," he smiled.

"My father doesn't need me to get married," she answered
. "My older brothers and sisters, from his first wife, are all grown and gone with families of their own..."

Talaos
wryly wondered if she had some personal war with context, but merely gave her an arched eyebrow in reply.

"Oh, him!" she blurted in apparent surprise
. "He had his history all twisted up, and what he said isn't true..."

"Of that much, I'm sure."

"Yes, you... know," she added, her eyes briefly seeming to stare at something distant.

"
Was that intuition?" he replied, teasingly.

"Intuition is just quick guesswork that anyone can do. I
see
things!" she snapped in reply, her eyes flashing once more.

Then she cooled, turned to glance back at the robed young man, and back
again with eyes widening and a hint of sudden fear on her face.

"Can we take a walk
? I... don't feel safe here right now."

Talaos
felt momentarily amused that she saw him as her source of safety, him a stranger in her town, and a man strong enough to scoop her up helplessly with one arm. Even as he thought this, however, he rose, alert and ready, and motioned for her to follow.

~

A gentle wind blew through the fields, and swayed branches in the little copses of trees that dotted the area. The town, not far away, gleamed as the afternoon sun shone on white plaster and red tiles. Talaos walked with Miriana, and breathed in the air. He'd never really thought about what a peaceful place the Republic was, outside of the tough urban streets he'd called home. He appreciated it at last, now that he might leave it forever.

At his side, Miriana had been silent for some time. Her wild hair, hanging to her hips, shone almost
like copper in the sunshine. Without preface, she exclaimed in a carefree voice. "Don't worry about my books or the rest! I leave a lot of things there, and old Galea makes sure they get put in the back room."

Talaos had assumed something like that, given what a fixture Miriana appeared to be at the inn. He looked over at
her, and smiled. With a passing thought, he asked, "So your father was in the army?"

She started, as if waking from
sleep. "Yes, he led a company in the war with Dirion, and got promoted to division commander after he held the pass at Nausica."

He wondered in brief surprise at the idea that a woman so very young would have a father who'd been old enough to be not merely a young soldier, but a
field officer during the war forty years earlier. Then again, Miriana had implied her mother was a second, later wife.

His musings were interrupted as she grabbed his hand,
bouncing with a sudden giddy energy.  She waived toward a nearby circle of trees on a low hillock. There were some old weathered standing stones within.

"Can we sit? I'm not as used to walking all day as you..."

He smiled and nodded, while gently extracting his hand.

They sat on a long low fallen stone covered in
vines and old runes.  Miriana absently picked flowers and braided them into her hair as her eyes looked far away.

The two of them sat
for a long time, quietly together in the sunshine.

Then she looked around her, at the carven stones, at him, and then far away once more.

"They're old, these stones... older than the Republic, or the old Empire, or the Prophet," she said quietly, her voice lilting. "I like to come here, because no one else does anymore."

That much seemed true, thought Talaos
. He'd seen standing stones before, along his way east, and no one paid them much mind.

She looked, if possible, even farther off
, as if lost in distant lands. "They'll come back to you with the storm," she said dreamily, "the storm Talaos."

Talaos stood up with sudden suspicion, and replied, "I never told you my name."

"Your name? I dreamed that last night. I thought it was the name of the storm."

"Who will come back?"

"I don't know, they just will."

The afternoon light was fading, golden in the west.

"We're going back to town, Miriana."

"All right, Talaos
," she answered, seeming to savor the name. Her eyes were wistful.

She
put her delicate hand in his. Feeling protective, this time he let it stay.

~

Talaos finished his dinner. This night, no one bothered him and no girls tried to flirt with him. When they'd gotten back, Miriana had picked up her things and quietly left. He'd gone up to his room to pack his gear for tomorrow, and then downstairs again to eat, long after dark. There was no sign of her tonight, or of the young man who preached for the Prophet. He returned again to his room with a vague sense of unease.

He sat on the edge of his bed,
his mind tense and searching, considering the events of the day. Then he imagined a scene, a scene taken from Miriana's words at lunchtime. He saw her tied to a pyre, burning, as robed and bearded men smiled forgivingly at her screams. With conscious, wrathful will, he changed the scene, and thought of sheets of driving rain putting out the fires, while lightning struck down the robed men.

Purpose ran like lightning of its own through his veins, and he put on his
full fighting gear for the first time since Carai. He donned his belt and baldrics with their silver fittings, his black cloak and his many weapons, and he stalked out to the hallway and through the door to the outside stairs. On passing instinct, he used an old trick from his lawless youth and slipped a little pin of special design in the lock of the door.

Outside, a new, colder wind was blowing from the east. He stalked in widening circles around the town, then outside.  Something occurred to him. He stopped his meandering and made straight for the hillock of the standing stones. He could see the trees blowing softly in the black moonlit distance. As he approached, he saw darker and more solid shapes. He sprinted.

Then he heard
a quiet, muffled scream.

Far a
head, in the faint light atop the hillock stood the young man, now wearing an open robe over his clothes in the style of the Eastlands. He was tying a knotted cord on a bundled shape thrown over a horse.  Another horse stood nearby, saddled and ready.  The young man was speaking in his kindly voice.

"...
foolish to return to this place of evil spirits. Praise be that I found you. Now we will ride east, where those wiser than I will help you cleanse the curse from your soul."