Chapter 38: Neville – Survivors
Lencon was empty. The bodies had been buried, the survivors disappeared. The Skeleton of Anuré looked like he belonged here. He could sit in a throne made of sticks and remain empty in the empty city. But the Skeleton was not empty. He might have no meat to his body, but his eyes were feverish with life or death.
‘Where are the survivors?’ asked Manó. ‘They were in no condition to travel to the Halls of Snow during the storms.’
Neville pointed south. The storms had nearly erased the tracks, but the bush was damaged by dozens of feet.
‘To the Frontier?’ the Eslarian asked. ‘No one in Franária would willingly go there. Not even Maëlle had the courage, years ago.’
‘I went there,’ said Neville. ‘My men came with me.’
‘You are insane and you wield magic,’ the Eslarian pointed at the black bow. ‘Normal people don’t go to the Frontier. Look at it. There might be colors there, but the dark is also more powerful. The Frontier is what lays between us and the Land of the Banished. Mortals and mysteries. Darkness.’
The Eslarian was right. No one in Franária would go south of Lencon or Anuré. However, the tracks led to the ancient Frontier forest.
‘Maybe the people from the Frontier collected them,’ said Maëlle. ‘They’re among us. Remember the colors.’
Neville left Manó in charge of raising camp. There was light still, but the weaker slaves couldn’t move on. He then followed what was left of the tracks out of Lencon. He needed to know what had happened to those people. He wished they were well, he needed petals that had not fallen. A rain of petals is poetic, but it is also dead. Neville was tired of falling petals.
As he walked toward the old forest, he thought of Henrique’s flowers; that orchid, the roses, the peach trees. He missed the Emerald orchards. Once he saw a flower in Fabec. A weed that had grown between the stones of the Square House’s mosaic, beside the frog, at the fox’s feet. The flower itself looked like it was part of the mosaic, purple, small, and fragile. It had color.
With eyes focused on the ground, Neville went to the Frontier. He noticed when he entered the shade of the great trees. The temperature there was different, but Neville couldn’t tell if it was colder or warmer. Maybe it wasn’t the intensity that changed, but the personality.
Temperature with a temper.
‘You again,’ someone said.
Neville straightened up, an arrow ready to shoot. There was a young man in front of him. Had he been there all this time, hidden by the darkness from the Land of the Banished? Or had he come closer without a sound? Both possibilities were frightening. The man had eyes the color of honey, his skin was copper, but not quite like the Eslarian’s. More fire than metal. His hair, straight and thick, was the color of volcanic rock. He had a sword at his back with a worn-out hilt: two wolves carved at the guard, a tree carved at the pommel, a green tassel. A Satironese sword. Neville had never seen one outside the books.
The young man studied Neville with equal curiosity. Maybe he had never seen a Baynardian outside the books. Who knew what kind of people lived in the Frontier. Neville had read that magic and darkness distort space and time. Maybe the Frontier was so vast that the young man had traveled his entire life to reach its end.
Neville took a step back. It had been a very long time since his imagination took such a flight. The younger man still watched him.
‘Neville of Baynard,’ said the young man. ‘Hero or villain?’
‘There are no heroes in this land,’ said Neville.
‘Ah, a pessimist.’
‘Admire someone long enough and they will disappoint you.’
‘Looks to me like you’ve been admiring the wrong kind of people,’ said the young man. ‘You went to Anuré to rescue your mother. That sounds to me like a noble feat. On the other hand, you brought war this far. It had never touched the south of Franária with this kind of bloody death. Only the slow death of slaves.’
Neville lowered his bow. ‘I did something terrible.’
‘Did you?’
‘The deaths in Lencon, in Anuré.’
‘Death,’ said the young man, ‘is nothing new. Survivors are.’
‘Do you know where they went?’
‘We took them in. Practically dragged them. They were more afraid of the Frontier than of certain death, but they’re fine.’
Suddenly, Neville’s imagination couldn’t be contained anymore and Neville wanted to know:
‘Is it true that there is as much darkness in the Frontier as in the Land of the Banished? Is it true that your cities have no walls? That there is a dragon?’
‘Walls are useless against the dangers that cross the Blood,’ said the young man. ‘I must go. I’ll see you as a hero for now. By the way,’ he said, ‘my name is Pierre and the dragon is real.’
He went back into the forest where two people waited for him. A black man, bald and tall, and a woman with curly hair highlighted by the sun. She held the reins of a black and white horse.
‘Fulion?’ murmured Neville.
The three of them disappeared in the forest and Neville went back to Lencon, half hero, half villain, half confused. He thought he had seen, right before he turned away from the Frontier, hundreds of very green leaves blinking at him. He found Manó standing where he had killed the old man and the boy. Manó searched the ground, looking for some sort of answer. Neville didn’t know the question.
The slaves decided to stay in Lencon. Not all of them had made it there. Only three went to Fabec with Neville: Maëlle, the Eslarian, the Skeleton.