Robert Hughes - The Prophet of Lamath

“I did.”

“What did it say?” This was an old question, one they always argued about. Dorlyth tossed it out casually as he drained the rest of his cup, now gone cold.

“It led me to Lamath,” Pelmen said quietly, and Dorlyth bit his lip and examined the cup in his hands.

Finally he spoke. “What happens when you go there, Pelmen? You’ve never really explained it to me.”

“I can’t explain it to myself,” Pelmen said. Propping his feet on Dorlyth’s couch and lacing his hands behind his head, he leaned back and made an attempt. “You experience the powers?”

“Of course I do,” Dorlyth grunted. “I just can’t shape them as you can.”

“It is a strange thing, my friend.” Pelmen now held his hands together at his waist. Dorlyth jumped, for suddenly there was a little brown mouse in those cupped hands, then once again they were empty. He glanced up at Pelmen’s face, but the man was looking elsewhere—at a place far away, perhaps in Lamath. “I shape the powers here as if they were extensions of my own mind. I think a thing a certain way, and the thing is there, in palpable form. I don’t know why, I only know it is. But somewhere in the Great North Fir, as I near the Lamathian border, I stop shaping the powers—and the Power starts shaping me.”

“Sounds unpleasant.”

“Then you don’t understand. Because it is the sweetest of pleasures—not less because it comes wholly unbidden, and is far beyond my control.”

“The essence of the dragon gets you?” Dorlyth asked with a sneer.

Pelmen shook his head patiently. “Has nothing to do With the dragon, Dorlyth. Nothing at all.”

“This ancient book explains the feeling to you?” Dorlyth asked, striving now to be fair to a thing he didn’t understand.

“Partly. Partly the feeling explains itself.”

“And that makes you want to go to Lamath—so you can get another charge?”

“No. I must go to Lamath someday in order to be who I am there. Whoever that is.”

“You’re Pelmen the powershaper, that’s all I need to know,” Dorlyth thundered, confused by all this and choosing to dismiss it from his mind. “That’s good enough for me.”

“But you see, my friend—that isn’t good enough for me.” The huge oaken door at the far end of the room slammed open, and Rosha mod Dorlyth stalked in. He carried his scabbarded greatsword on his right shoulder, with his shirt slung over his left. His skin was smooth and slick with sweat, colored a gleaming, burnished brown, the hue of burned butter. He hung the sword on a wall hook and mopped his face with his shirt, then turned his head to grin at Pelmen over a sinewy shoulder.

“Y-you’re up,” he mumbled happily.

“Of course I’m up.” Pelmen smiled back. “You expect me to sleep all day?” Rosha jerked his head up, indicating the upper rooms in the tower. “G-g-girl is.” Pelmen raised his eyebrows, and looked at Dorlyth, who shrugged, his brown eyes sparkling merrily. “You have some interest in the lady?” Pelmen asked innocently. Rosha’s face was dark, but even in the dim light of the nickering candles his blush was evident. His expression hardened, his jaws clenched together, and he shook his head. He found a seat at the far end of the room, retrieved the sword, and busied himself with sharpening its already razorlike edge. Pelmen looked at Dorlyth again.

“Pay him no mind, he won’t talk to me, either,” Dorlyth said.

Pelmen glanced again at the broad muscular back now turned to him and sighed. Then he chuckled quietly. “Looks like his mother, doesn’t he?” Pelmen observed.

Dorlyth cocked his head, and regarded those gleaming shoulders skeptically. “That chunk of meat?” Dorlyth mused.

Pelmen grinned at him. “Well, maybe in coloring.” The hairy warrior’s face expressed amusement mixed with fierce pride. It told Pelmen something he already knew—that Dorlyth loved this spirited young battler, above his land, above his castle, above his very life.

Dorlyth rejoiced at the rippling of the lad’s muscles as he honed and polished the giant blade. He thrilled when he watched the lad whirl the heavy weapon around his head as if it were nothing more than a butcher’s cleaver. He had trained Rosha in every battle art he’d learned himself through his long years of conflict, and had come finally to admit that the boy was a more natural fighter than he had ever been. In that admission his pride commingled with his fear, for he knew the lad was afraid of nothing that frightened other men, and Doriyth knew how necessary fear was to self-preservation. How could he teach the boy his limits? Again and again Doriyth had worked these worries through his mind, and again and again forced himself to acknowledge that Rosha was nearly grown and would need to find his own way through the world. Yet as he sat and watched the boy now, he wished that he could shape the powers as Pelmen did and force time to stand still.

“Not even I can stop time,” Pelmen said, and Doriyth jumped as if he’d been slapped.

“Have you taken up mind reading since your last visit?” Doriyth asked indignantly.

“I could always read yours, my friend.” Pelmen gestured toward Rosha. “He’ll soon be ready to go.”

“Let’s not rush it, shall we?” Doriyth snapped, standing. “He still has things to learn.”

“Such as?”

“How to talk, for one.”

“I t-talk all right,” Rosha stammered fiercely, twisting around to look at his father.

“All right for a butterfly!” Doriyth bellowed, then flapped his arms in the air. “Flit, flit, can’t sit down on a word and make it stick!” It was incredible to Pelmen how swiftly the boy was out of his chair, how gracefully he danced across the floor, and how effortlessly he brought the five-foot blade to his father’s throat. His face was a violent red, and his mouth was screwed up as he fought to spew forth a stream of invective that just wouldn’t come.

His father didn’t flinch. He just glanced over at Pelmen and murmured, “You see? You tease him about his speech and he wants to chop your head off.” His eyes shifted back to lock with his son’s angry glare.

“Even mine?” he asked quietly. Rosha dropped his sword point to the stone floor, and followed it down with his eyes.

When he looked back up at his father, there was a trace of a grin on his severe lips. He shook his head.

Pelmen sighed deeply, and patted his chest. “That shocked me.”

“That’s what you get for throwing fireballs at unsuspecting warriors,” Doriyth grunted. He grabbed the drape and flung it shut. This time the candles blew out, and Doriyth groaned at the nuisance. “Pelmen, would you mind…” he began, but already in the middle of the dark room there was the beginning of a turquoise glow that grew into a sphere of blue-green flame. The ball touched all the candles in turn, setting a blue flame on each. The three men became engrossed in the beauty of its dancing movement.

“How lovely!” Bronwynn exclaimed, her face alive with wonder, and immediately all eyes were fixed on her instead.

Were he inclined toward speech, Rosha would have used those same words to describe his vision of her as she stepped through the doorway. She was not a tall girl, but short would not describe her either, for that has connotations of stubbiness about it, and there was nothing stubby about the Princess of Chaomonous. Except, perhaps, for her nose, which was turned up in a saucy peak, and covered with youthful freckles. The rest of her face was a lady’s face. Her mouth was small and her lips full, and she pouted them together now for maximum effect. They glistened in the flickering candlelight, for she had licked them just prior to stepping into the room. Her eyes and chin were proud as she turned her head to survey the furnishings, and Rosha thought he’d never seen eyes so startlingly blue on anyone save his mother. She wore his mother’s old robes—clothes treasured lovingly by his father in these long years since her passing—and in her regal bearing, Bronwynn did them justice. They were the orange-red color of a robin’s breast, and the golden brown hair awash on her shoulders in carefully cultivated disarray somehow made that color more vibrant and exciting than Rosha could recall it ever being before. One could say without exaggeration that he was taken with her. Nor was that fact lost on his father and on Pelmen.