Chapter 60: Gregoire – On the Frontier’s Road
The Frontier had one road only and it followed the Blood. On that road, at dusk, going from Lourdes to Carlaje, a wagon moaned its way. The wheels’s lament echoed with different voices on either side of the road. To the left, where the Frontier Woods were grayed by the northern darkness, the lament crumbled like cries from thirsty, aged throats. On the riverside, where the darkness of the Banished was old, darker and pregnant with mystery, the lament whirled and densed into nightmarish sighs.
The wagon. It was a young man who drove it. He had long, delicate, ink-stained fingers. His skin was almost white, his hair almost straight, his nose almost arched. His name was Gregoire and he wanted to rename the phenomena of the world. The reins rested on his legs, the drowsy mules rocking their heads down the way, Gregoire wrote new names for darkness on his diary. He thought it na immense lack of imagination to call darkness darkness only because they were dark. The grey was grey because it stole away the colours.
Darkness – Plague – Pestilence – Cockroach of the Soul – Soulroach...
If it weren’t for this interminable War, Gregoire would be a great poet.
Darkness – Darksart – Nessdart
Gregoire massaged his neck. Who in the world would say Nessdart instead of Darkness? The sky above the road was a mosaic of leaves, claws and sky. Many trees had already begun to green, but the late ones – there were always late ones, who hesitated between staying dark and gloomy like the trees across the Blood, and greening out for spring. There were many late trees this year. Maybe Master Combelain was right: the darkness was growing right under everybody’s noses, but no one saw it. Darkness blinded people. People died without noticing when they died of the darkness.
The mules stopped. It wasn’t a sudden stop, but Gregoire was surprised because those mules moved their legs in rhythm with the Blood. Mules that grew up breathing the darkness from the Land of the Banished always moved in a drowsy sameness, without rest and without end. They never went faster, they never stopped.
In the middle of the road there was a wraith. The black cloak leaked on the road like ink. It had no face. Gregoire hugged his diary like a shield.
‘How long,’ asked the Wraith. ‘How long was I away?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gregoire. ‘I don’t know anything.’
The silence coming from inside the black hood quieted down the wind and surrounded the wagon.
‘You carry darkness in your wagon,’ said the Wraith.
‘Not because I want to. If I knew I’d have to keep them, I wouldn’t have taken them.’
The Wraith moved, which was scary because he felt like a force, a phenomenon, a mountain that was suddenly walking around the wagon and looking inside.
Gregoire turned around and faced the Wraith at the other end of the wagon. Between them there were two men: one tall and powerful, who must have been black before he was gray. He carried two things: a black bow and a white man.
The white man was also gray. So gray that he crumbled down and Gregoire was afraid to breathe near him, lest he becomes dust. He had long eyelashes and a small chin.
‘I found them on the road between Lourdes and Lenás,’ said Gregoire. ‘No one wants to shelter them, so I have to carry them along the road. I’m a messenger.’
That was almost true. Gregoire had never been to the North, he wasn’t like Menior, Fulion and Pierre. They were something similar to the Emperial Messengers of Sátiron. Gregoire was more like the post. Still. He carried messages, right?
‘They don’t talk, speak, nothing,’ he said. ‘Master Combelain said they should die soon. The grey must have corroded their memories and probably their souls.’
The Wraith pointed at the black man.
‘His name is Neville.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do you know his name?’
‘I know it because he knows it.’
‘Is that good or bad?’ asked Gregoire.
‘It means he hasn’t been completely corrupted by darkness. It means there is hope.’
‘Hope is a good thing.’
‘Hope only exists where despair rules. We turn to hope when there’s nothing left.’
‘Well,’ said Gregoire, ‘that one, the big one, he’s holding on firmly to the nothing he has left. When I found him on the road, he was dragging himself and that other man. He came to me. I tried to run, but the mules wouldn’t go any faster. He couldn’t reach me, but I couldn’t get away either. ‘
The black archer followed Gregoire all the way to Lenás, where it was decided that Gregoire would take the grey ones to Carlaje. In Carlaje it was decided he’d stay with the grey ones until he reached Lourdes. And there they said it would be better to take them back to Lena’s.
‘Can you help them?’ asked Gregoire.
‘They went too far in the realm of darkness, I don’t have the power to bring them back.’
Gregoire closed his eyes and looked away. His head hurt when he looked at the grey ones for too long, especially the smaller man. He was so thin that he looked more like a veil than a human being.
The wagon rocked and Gregoire turnedf around to see the Wraith coming aboard.
‘We need a safe place to stay,’ said the Wraith. ‘There’s a hut ahead.’
‘What for?’
‘Shelter.’
‘Yes, of course, I know what huts are for, but why do we need a safe place to stay? Didn’t you say you don’t have the power to help these two?’
‘I don’t, but,’ Sáeril pointed to Neville, ‘it is possible that he does.’
The mules began to move again, and they went into the night until they reached one of those huts that were raised by the hundreds during the Empire to shelter travellers. Only three of those huts were left. All of them in the Frontier.
Gregoire and the Wraith looked after the mules, then carried the two grey ones inside. The Wraith summoned a fire at the center of the hut, and stood by it, throwing shadows on the walls. His wish was to leave that pile of grey and mystery in the hut and leave alone, free and full of rhyme.
‘I’m ready,’ said the Wraith.
Gregoire jumped up.
‘Are you afraid of me?’ asked the Wraith.
‘I don’t know who – or what – you are,’ said Gregoire.
‘Neither do I. That should scare me, not you.’
Great, thought Gregoire. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Sealing the place. I don’t want War’s darkness leaking in while I’m defenseless.’
Gregoire sat against a wall and hugged his knees, wuite unhappy with that word, defenseless. The Wraith sat across from him, his cleak making a pond of darkness on the floor.
‘You are responsible for keeping us alive,’ said the Wraith.
‘How?’
‘By giving us food and water.’
‘How long is this going to take?’
‘A few days, a few months… if I’m succcessful.’
‘What happens if you fail?’
‘They’ll stay grey. I will die.’
Gregoire’s lungs refused to drag air.
‘How do I feed you?’
The Wraith pulled back his hood and Gregoires horrer turned to awe.
‘You’re na elf! I thought the elves were extinct.’
‘My name is Sáeril Quepentorne,’ said the Wraith. ‘I was an elf. As I told you, I don’t know what I am enymore. What you see is just an illusion.’ He turned to the grey men.
‘Wait,’ Gregoire shouted, but he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to mystery-mage to risk his life for those two soul-less men; he wanted the Wraith to stay, to save Franária and que world, to kill the red dragon. He sat there, with his mouth open, wishing he didn’t have to live any adventure outside his books.
Sáeril waited.
‘What do I do when we run out of food?’ asked Gregoire.
‘Get more.’
‘Didn’t you just seal the place?’
‘Against the War, not against you. Give me your hand.’
Gregoire obeyed and Sáeril put a seed in his hand.
‘There is a man,’ said the Wraith, ‘his name is Pierre.’
‘He is my brother,’ said Gregoire.
‘Convenient. If I don’t come back, give him the seed.’
Sáeril turned to the grey ones again. In an instant he wasn’t there anymore. His body sat across from Gregoire, but Sáeril had dipped into the darkness.