River of Souls (River of Souls 0.50)

There were many mornings when he thought truth might spill from his mouth, but always his throat turned dry before he could speak. It took only a moment of wetting his tongue before the words vanished, and he found himself mired in the details of mundane dreams, and not those of Adele. It was as if he could not speak the truth until she did.

I am not certain I could, even then.

At last, as the summer passed into early autumn, she seemed to lose interest.

“Shall I go?” he asked.

“No. Not yet. We have not yet exhausted our mutual stubbornness.”

Later, Minne said, “She no longer writes. Not for the past few years.”

Minne was no bondsmaid, he had learned. She was a distant cousin from northern Veraene who served as Duhr’s secretary, companion, and sometimes nurse. Asa wanted to know what Minne meant by, She no longer writes. Of course Duhr wrote. Every day when he reported to her presence, Duhr had paper and pen and that same small writing stand. More than once she was writing swiftly as he appeared.

But he remembered the discarded sheets, and how their number grew and shrank over the weeks.

Then, one morning a month after he had arrived, he came to Duhr as usual, only to find her distracted and staring toward the east. He waited, but she did not give him the usual command to recite his dreams. After a few moments, he wandered toward the wall that surrounded the rooftop. Autumn had arrived without his being aware. Crimson and russet dotted the northern hills, and the plains had taken on the dusty brown haze of plowed fields cleared of their harvests. Asa stared south and west, following the highway as it looped over the plains toward the indistinct horizon. Somewhere, in faraway Ysterien, his mother waited, expecting his return. Somewhere the bones of his horse whitened under snow and sun.

He must have spoken that last out loud, because she said, “What happened to your horse?”

Asa turned to meet her intent gaze.

“The truth, Asa. This one time. Please.”

…I would have no lies between us…

It was this memory, in all its incarnations, that tripped him at last into speech.

“I killed it,” he whispered.

She nodded, in a way that reminded him of Zayaa. “Tell me more.”

Slowly, with many false starts and additions, he recounted the day of the bandit attack. He had left the last wayside hostel behind a few days before. It had been an uncomfortable experience, with the sense of many eyes upon him as he set off into the true mountains. But he told himself he had his sword and knives, the spells his cousin taught him.

And my stubbornness.

Duhr said nothing, not even a gesture to urge him on.

He continued with more fluency, describing the state of the trail, the frost and patches of ice, even on that late spring day. The silence of the hills. The echo of his gelding’s hooves over the stone. The first itch of fear when he realized his situation. Then followed a swift recounting of the pursuit, the spells he used, the decision to kill his horse and sent its body over the cliff so the bandits would believe him dead as well.

“It made me sick afterwards,” he said. “I cannot be sorry I did it. But I can be sorry I needed to.”

Eventually he found the courage to turn around. Tanja Duhr beckoned him closer. He did not resist as she took his hand and pulled away the glove he had not removed in her presence. His hands would never be beautiful. The frostbite had marked him with scars, and cracks that refused to heal. As she turned his hand over, he flinched. At last he dared to look.

Faint red reflected from his palms. Just a moment, then it was gone.

“Thank you,” Duhr said.

“For what?” he whispered.

“For even this much of the truth.”

* * *

He spent the afternoon in his rooms, brooding over what she meant by even this much. In the evening, he tried to walk himself to distraction, but nothing helped. He returned and ate the dinner Yvonne the cook brought to him, hardly tasting it. Toward nightfall he fell into a doze.

Minne woke him at midnight. “Go to her.”

Confused, he said, “Where?”