The Last Orellen - Chapter 32: Strongback
Strongback
A month later, on a clear afternoon, a boat docked in Baitown. Kalen and every single one of his female relatives disembarked.
Salla and Illess, wearing their best dresses, raced around the dock, calling out in wonder at every small sight. Kalen couldn’t chase after them since he had Fanna in his arms. The baby was sleeping like a log, completely untroubled by sea travel.
Their mother hadn’t fared so well.
Shelba was decidedly green, and she’d wobbled down the gangplank with Caris and Aunt Jayne holding onto her to keep her from falling.
“You really could have sent Da with me instead of coming yourself,” Kalen said, not for the first time. He watched in concern as his mother leaned against a post stained with seabird droppings. Kalen had assumed she hated boat travel out of some strange sort of principle. That was she’d always made it sound like.
But it turned out to be a much more common and simple reason. Boats made Shelba dizzy and seasick. She’d been ill, and ill-tempered because of it, ever since they left the village before dawn.
“We can go back home in a cart or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Shelba. “I’m not going to spend days going over mountains in a cart when a ship will have us home in hours.”
“Do you get cart-sick, too?” Kalen asked. He was genuinely curious, but she glared at him instead of answering.
When she’d recovered her equilibrium, they headed into town.
The girls were thrilled to be on an adventure, and no doubt Veern and Terth—who’d gotten into a fight with each other yesterday and been left behind as a punishment—would be devastated to have missed the trip. But Baitown was less impressive than Kalen had imagined. Certainly it was much larger than their village, but all the tales he’d heard of continental cities had overwritten and warped his expectations for the largest settlement on Hemarland. He took it all in with an interest that was faintly dulled by disappointment.
The shop where his books were usually purchased was a dusty place that also sold furniture. There were three churches—the only ones Kalen had ever seen, since any worship services conducted in their village were always held outdoors. There was a school.
This last particularly interested him, and he stopped walking to watch the lesson through one of the narrow windows. There were around a dozen students of mixed ages. They were learning multiplication by rote.
Kalen was relieved. He knew multiplication. He was not missing anything at all by never having gone to school.
Then they started in on thirteens, and he scowled. Surely there was no real need to memorize past the twelves?
“Kalen!” Caris called sharply. “You’re getting left behind, and this trip is mostly about you.”
He spun and hurried after the girls, trying to do 13 times 16 in his head as they passed by a public house. Aunt Jayne stopped the woman sweeping the front porch and had a quick word. Coin changed hands, the girl went inside, and a moment later she returned with an enormous brown loaf studded with dried fruit and glazed with sugar.
“Caris, you take this,” Jayne said. “I don’t want your sisters swinging it around. It’ll go sailing into the bushes. Kalen, let your mother hold Fanna. You run down that street there and ask at the church about your letters. They can point you to Yarda’s house when you’re finished. Don’t get dirty.”
Kalen wasn’t sure how she imagined he might get dirty walking down a street to visit a church. Did she think he’d stop to roll around in the mud? But he didn’t argue.
They separated, and he headed for the church, wondering if there was any point when it had been such a short time since his letters had gone out. He’d sent two of them, just a few days after his family had agreed that he could seek an apprenticeship with Arlade Glimont.
The first was addressed to Vardnie of the Amphora Clan on Makeeran Island. This was a polite, bordering-on-pleading message for Zevnie. Kalen reminded her that the year was over, she had agreed she would help him, and that he really, really would like for Arlade to be apprised of all the things they’d kept hidden from her. As soon as possible.
“I should arrive in Granslip Port in Circon around the middle of Saint Tock’s Month,” he’d written, taking enormous pains to make his penmanship perfect in case Zevnie showed the letter to the sorcerer directly. “I will be traveling with Yarda Strongback, whom Sorceress Arlade has met. We will wait there for her, or we will receive any reply she has sent us by churchmail.”
He’d gone on to add how very much he would like to see Zevnie again. And how wonderfully exciting it would be if they were both Arlade’s apprentices.
He knew he was laying it on a bit thick. And he knew there was a fair chance Zevnie would spit on the letter when she received it. But it wasn’t like he had a lot of options, and he’d gone a step further for insurance. His second letter had been addressed to Arlade Glimont and sent directly to the Archipelago. He’d made sure to mention it to Zevnie.
It might take a couple of years from what he knew of the sorcerer’s travel habits, but if Zevnie failed to deliver Kalen’s message, Arlade would eventually arrive back home for the next apprenticeship tournament and find out about it.
It felt like there were a lot of opportunities for Kalen’s plans to go awry. Not the least of which was Arlade receiving the letters and wondering why in the world she ought to port around the continent to pick up someone like Kalen.
But at least he had a way of tracking the letters as they traveled.
The churches of Parneda, Yoat, and Clywing were particularly popular throughout the continent; and they had expanded to some of the islands long ago. Smaller local churches sent membership tallies, a portion of alms, and requests for aid to their respective mother churches every month.
Personal letters could be added to a church’s regular delivery for a fee. The system worked well, from what Kalen had heard. This was the first time he’d ever had occasion to use it.
He arrived at the Church of Yoat, which looked like a very well decorated barn on the inside, and rang a bell he found on a small table by the entrance.
A plump, cheerful woman with a scarf on her head appeared from a side door.
“Someone brought letters here for me earlier this month?” Kalen said. “I wanted to check and see where they were?”
“You’re in luck,” she said. “A new receipt page arrived yesterday. I just need your name and verse to check it.”
She took him through the side door, and he found himself inside a tiny room, barely big enough for the two of them. The woman wedged herself into a chair behind the desk and pulled out a wooden box that was full of papers. She took out the one on top. It was covered in a hand-inked grid.
Kalen’s letters had each been assigned a different verse from the Book of Yoat when they were delivered to the church by his uncle weeks ago. The woman in the scarf showed him the spots on the grid that matched.
Kln H.I. – Yoat 843:12 and 843:13 had both arrived at a Church of Clywing on another island two weeks ago.
“That little circle out to the side means they were safely forwarded from there,” the woman said brightly. “So on they go to wherever you’ve addressed them!”
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She held out her hand then, and Kalen discovered, to his shock, that he was expected to pay for the privilege of tracking his messages.
“Not just for sending them? I have to pay every time I check where they are, too?”
“Yes,” she said, her hand still out-held.
“Um…I’m not actually carrying any money. Can I bring it by tomorrow morning?”
She muttered something about bumpkins, but she let him go.
#
Not long after that, Kalen arrived at his real destination. It was a small stone cottage on the outskirts of town. A beautifully kept vegetable garden out front was buzzing with bees, and Kalen paused for a moment to appreciate the enormous size of the clogs that had been left by the front door.
He could hear voices inside.
He knocked once and entered, only to stop short at the sight that greeted him. His mother, his aunt, and his cousins were crammed in around a table set with painted porcelain plates. The sugar-glazed loaf was set in a place of honor at the center of the table beside a bowl full of berries.
Taking up nearly a quarter of the table by herself was the largest person on the entire island. Yarda Strongback was in her early forties, with thick streaks of gray dulling her long brown hair at the temples. She had a wide, friendly face, and a smile made no less charming by the absence of one of her front teeth.
She’d been drinking milk when he walked in, and the large mug she was using was almost completely hidden inside her massive fist. It took a second for Kalen to realize that his baby sister was held in Yarda’s other arm. Fanna looked like a sparrow perched on the limb of an oak.
Kalen and the other children had been warned at length not to stare at the giantess or say anything rude. So he made a point of letting his eyes rove over the whole table instead of focusing only on their host.
“Oh, there he is!” she cried with beaming enthusiasm. “Hello, little cousin! We finally meet! We are soon to travel the world together, and a grand adventure we shall have!”
“It’s good to meet you,” Kalen said sincerely. “Thank you for letting me go with you on your trip.”
“Ho!” said Yarda. Her voice filled the whole house. “Thank you for letting me go with you. Mayhap your new master will have a way to hurry me along to the other side of the world. A fine thing it would be to shorten the trip. My Roden will marry his girl next week, and I’d like to be back home before they get around to grandchildren!”
And here was one of the reasons Shelba had agreed to Kalen’s decision.
Yarda Strongback, his father’s distant cousin, was trying to get to the Archipelago, too. If Kalen’s letters didn’t reach their destination, or if Arlade didn’t meet him in Circon, then Kalen would have a trustworthy adult with him for the long trip there.
It was a rare chance, one brought about by less than ideal circumstances, as Yarda seemed to have been explaining to everyone when he arrived.
“That wizarn woman came all the way to Baitown just to have a look at me!” she exclaimed. “There I was with the baker in a headlock and the cooper trying to grab me ‘round the knees, and she interrupted the match like we were a bunch of rowdy youngsters. ‘You sit down right this instant!’ she said. ‘Your heart’s about ten beats away from heading to the afterlife and taking you with it, you big fool!’”
Kalen couldn’t imagine Arlade saying it in quite that way, but the sentiment came across well enough.
The sorcerer and Zevnie had stayed in Baitown to study Yarda for a couple of days before moving on to Kalen’s village. Arlade had told the giantess that she ought to seek treatment for a heart condition at the Archipelago, where many practitioners more skilled in healing than Arlade would be interested in helping her due to the uniqueness of her case. She’d even offered to let Yarda travel with her and Zevnie for part of the journey.
Yarda, who’d felt fine at the time, had ignored her warning and the offer.
“Ah…but lately I am tired when I shouldn’t be and sore where I shouldn’t be. And I think I did make a mistake when I told her to be on her way without bothering me further.” She shook her head. “But here we are, and now I shall travel in company of Cousin Jorn’s boy, who can summon thunderstorms like a wizarn out of a tale!”
She turned to Kalen with obvious excitement, and he found himself blinking in surprise.
Word about his trouble at the rock had naturally gotten around to everyone soon after he’d told his family about it. Mostly people had chosen not to mention it to his face, but he heard their whispers. The ones who did bring it up did so warily. Kalen was spending most of his time staying out of sight and out of peoples way these days.
But it soon became clear that Yarda was not afraid of Kalen. Indeed, she seemed to be something of a fan.
“Heard Jorn’s boy had taken up magic and smote the forest,” she said, pounding the table with a fist so that the pretty plates bounced and rattled. “And I thought to myself, ‘Now, that sounds like an interesting person to meet!’”
She laughed uproariously.
“And then Old Sieber tells me that he has brought word from Shelba and Jorn asking if I will take the boy with me to the continent. And I say ‘yes’ of course. And not an hour later, my neighbor Clar marches in and says, ‘I cannot believe you have agreed to take a dangerous devil’s child all the way across the world, Yarda!’”
“Kalen is no more a devil than I am!” said Shelba, her nostrils flaring. She’d recovered her spirits now that they were on dry land. “Where does this woman live? I’d like to have a word with her about the sin of gossip.”
“I didn’t summon a whole storm,” Kalen added. He hoped his mother wasn’t about to march over to some other lady’s house and yell at her. “I can’t do something like that yet.”
“Yet!” Yarda cried. “That’s the spirit! You will be a fine wizarn with that attitude and we will have more stories to tell about you.”
Aunt Jayne looked faint at the thought. But she cleared her throat and said, “Our whole family appreciates you agreeing to watch over him, Yarda. He won’t give you a bit of trouble.”
“Of course he won’t,” Shelba agreed.
“He will not,” Caris confirmed.
Kalen sighed. Having three people vouch for him in such rapid succession made it feel less like they were offering honest assurances and more like they were trying to bind him with their words.
But Yarda only laughed again. “I hope he does give me some of it! My own boy is eighteen now. And such a fine, sensible young man that he takes care of me instead of the other way around. I miss all that trouble he put me through back when he was full of stupid.”
“I’ll try to be a good traveling companion,” Kalen said diplomatically.
“Our ship leaves in a month,” she told them. “It’s coming in from Tiriswaith. An autumn sailing is a bad omen some say, but I see no reason to give them heed. You’ll share a room with me if my snoring doesn’t drive you abovedecks. Only a couple of quick stops along the way, and when we land on the continent, we’ll stay in Circon for a time. If Arlade wizarn cannot meet us, we will travel across the country and take a ship from the Eastern coast. Or maybe head south to Swait and go from there.”
Kalen was glad Lander wasn’t present to hear that. Kalen had sworn on his life that he wouldn’t set foot anywhere the Orellens were being hunted, and that included Swait.
They spent the rest of the evening talking about the upcoming trip, letting Yarda play with the baby, and offering marital advice to Yarda’s strikingly normal-looking son.
Roden handled the influx of increasingly personal information with a steadiness that Kalen found impressive. And before they all left the next day, the young man took Kalen aside and thanked him seriously for the small part he would play as Yarda’s tagalong.
“It will be a relief to have letters from her,” he said quietly. “She doesn’t say it, but she has truly been unwell these past months.”
“I’ll write you messages from every port,” Kalen promised.
Roden’s fiancee was the town’s schoolteacher, as it turned out. She would read Kalen’s letters to him when they arrived.
They shook hands, and parted ways.
It feels strange, Kalen thought as he walked beside his mother on the way back to the docks. In a month, he would be here again to board a ship. It would sail away. No matter what happened next, he wouldn’t see home again for a long time.
“Kalen, you be good to Yarda,” Shelba said suddenly.
Kalen looked up in surprise. In the morning sunlight, the loose hairs around her face were glowing bright. “To her?” he asked. “Not for her?”
“She must be so afraid to leave her family for such a thing.” Shelba spoke quietly. “She laughs much, but she must be worried.”
“Roden said something like that, too…”
His mother nodded. Her arms tightened around Fanna. “If you were a little boy, I would tell you to behave yourself and not make trouble for her,” she said. “But you are growing up, aren’t you? So I will not tell you what you ought to know full well on your own.”
She paused, her eyes fixed on the distance.
“Instead I will tell you to take care of her. Pay attention to the difficulties of your journey with her, and ease her burden in the ways you can. Write her letters home for her and see to it that they are sent properly. Can you do that?”
“I can,” said Kalen, a peculiar weight settling inside him, as if he’d sworn an oath.
How odd, he thought later, as he watched the coastline slide past the railing of the small boat they were taking home. If his mother had told him to behave for Yarda Strongback, he would have said yes and meant it.
He’d had no intention of pestering the woman on the trip, and he had certainly not planned to abandon her if she became ill or needed help. But now, just because of his mother’s small and obvious request, he thought that he might literally be able to carry the giantess to the Archipelago if he had to.
It felt almost like Shelba had cast a spell on him.
As the sun set, their ship approached the village, but Kalen found himself staring across the dark water to the place where the continent waited. Almost without thinking about it, he reached into his pocket and drew out the bone-covered coin.
He didn’t have the right kind of question to ask, but he pulled a tiny bit of magic from inside himself and pushed it into the coin anyway.
He’d felt a faint warmth from the coin before when he used it, and he’d seen the runes glow when he had it out of its case. But now that he’d become a magician, there was something a little different about it. It was like…a texture in the air around the coin when it was used.
An invisible, diaphanous something just beyond Kalen’s sight or reach.
He could only examine it indirectly, like it was a quiet thought on the edge of his own imagination instead of anything real. But sometimes, when he was in exactly the right mood, he thought he felt a single thread of that mysterious something, thin as spider-silk, trailing off into the distance.
Always toward the continent. Or maybe even beyond it.
What are you?
The coin lay in his palm, quiet and harmless.
Kalen didn’t know what, exactly, he was asking. But he knew in which direction his answers lay.
