The Arkanist

Chapter Nineteen: Crossing Roads

Chapter Nineteen: Crossing Roads

Later that day, we arrived at a crossroads, and with it, an inn, just as Viven had promised. We'd traveled near on ten miles, but in the rain, it had felt like twenty, and anybody who has spent a time on the road knows the difference between ten and twenty miles. It's like cats and dogs. It's simple nothing of the sort.

And, to make matters worse, Yara never made eye contact with me for the rest of the day. Not once.

Not once as she sparked the fire with her cleverly peeled birch bark back at out brief camp, not once as she fed the flames twigs to keep it alive, not once as we sat there, telling idle stories. Not once. Not even a half glimpse in my direction. No, she avoided my very presence. Avoided me like as though I were Tarten himself.

It wasn't anything like a good feeling. I felt sore and painful, ashamed at my vacuous ignorance, my inane stupidity. You see, I don't like making people upset, not even people I don't like, not entirely. I feel bad about it for hours, maybe sometimes even days. The guilt wells inside me like some festering poison, some bacteria waiting to infect some vital organ and ultimately kill me.

So, as I sat there, before the fire, warming my cold, wet hands, I couldn't help but feel a heavy dread settling over my entire being, gnawing at whatever it wished. It felt awful.

But even still, I knew better than to attempt to talk with her as we walked. If it's one thing Aryl taught me, it's that people need space, a concept I understood fully, from practice. So, for the second half of our travels I studied my fellow companions, getting to know them by their quirks, their expressions and their looks. I studied them as I studied Yara for the first time, delving into their heat of being, and asking myself questions I didn't have the answers to.

My eyes caught Rand first, partly because of his size. He was big as a tree, and broad, cut with muscle, wide as a small wagon. His skin was pale as a ghost's and he garbed himself in a long, heavy suit of leathers and quilting, the armor marked with various tribal symbols of the Elbish peoples, swirling etchings, sometimes angular things.

His face, the brief glances I stole, revealed a hard, squared face, as if chiseled from limestone. Dark eyes he wore, and thick brows, with a stout nose and a meticulously clean-shaven face. Yet his hair was long and black, shoulder length, and braided once on the side of his head, the line of hair hung with four stone pieces.

I also noticed he always kept a hand to his hip, his large meaty palm resting over the pommel of his sword. He did this when we rested around the fire and likewise when we walked. It either meant he quite liked the hand-rest, or he was perpetually anxious of attack. I suspected both.

I knew very little about the Elbish, truth be told. They were a strange people, inhabiting a distant island in the north sea, rocky and desolate and grey. Rand didn't say much either. I think in part it was due to his vague understanding of the Anturan tongue, the common language of the continent for over seven hundred years following their conquering. It would make some amount of sense, however, for the Anturans, quite famously, never conquered Elb. There was a single attempt, failed, of course, early in their reign, and it was to be their final attempt. That, was I all I knew about the Elbish. They were strong enough to defeat the world's greatest empire. That, and they brewed a bitter ale.

As much that was interesting about Rand, my eyes lingered on Dagos the longest. He looked a fish out of water in the truest sense. He, unlike Rand, who could manage the general attempt at a sentence in Anturan, did not speak a lick of it. Aryl had told me he was a goldsword, a fighter for hire from the far south. His skin was evidence of that. It was dark, ebony dark, but he showed very little of it. He wore a thin grey tunic, overtop of which a ratty black robe would sway, covering him down to his boots, and he wore gloves over his hands. The only exposed piece of skin was the top-half his head, for he wore a piece of grey cloth around his mouth and nose. He had no hair, and no brows, black pits for eyes.