A. Hartley - Will Power

I wasn’t, of course, but things could have been worse: a good deal worse, in fact. Behind me was a small woman, olive-skinned and with narrow black eyes and small features. Her long, raven-black hair was held back by a silver pin. She leaned on a silver-shod staff of ebony.

“Lisha?” I gasped.

“You’re deaf as a post, Will,” she remarked. “I’ve been following you for ten minutes, trying to make sure it was you and that no one else was tracking you on this side of the river. I thought I was making enough noise to wake the dead.”

“I heard you,” I replied, guardedly. This was not the first friend I had met wandering in these woods and the last one had turned out to have been dead some time. “How did you find me?”

“I heard from Rose that the city was up in arms looking for you.”

“There’s no way she could have gotten word to you that quickly,” I replied, keeping my sword raised and level. “I’ve only been running from them for an hour or so. It would take her three times that just to get back to the inn and give you the news.”

“She didn’t have to,” said Lisha, unoffended by my skepticism. “I came with her in the carriage, hidden, of course. I was concerned that we hadn’t heard from you, and then one of Rose’s other clients mentioned your behavior at the banquet. . ”

“I was set up!” I exclaimed. “I could drink all those tarted-up clowns into the middle of next week, especially with that gutless rubbish they call beer around here. . ”

“I know, Will,” said Lisha, smiling her small and cryptic smile. “That’s one of the reasons I thought you might be in trouble. Someone was obviously trying to discredit you, or worse.”

“Exactly,” I agreed, huffily.

“So I hid in the trunk under the carriage seats and came down with Rose to the city gates. We arrived just after the soldiers had come this way looking for you. Everyone was talking about it. I guessed that your only possible escape would be on this side of the river, though I’m still not clear why they wouldn’t cross over and continue to search on this side.”

“Why aren’t you wet? How did you cross the river?”

“I used the dam where that building is-”

“Yes, all right,” I interrupted, reluctant to talk about that ominous and disquieting structure for fear of articulating what went on inside it. She fell silent and watched me and as I looked at her closely, I realized that I no more expected her to start falling into dead bones and powdered flesh than I expected her to sprout another head and sing a duet. Relief and pleasure crept over me. “God, it’s good to see you,” I exclaimed.

“You, too,” she answered, smiling. “Now we must move. You can tell me your news while we walk.”

“Which way?”

“It doesn’t matter, so long as we get away from the riverbank and those search parties. They may yet cross the water. The way you were heading seems as good an idea as any.”

“But this takes us deeper into the haunted forest,” I said, trying not to whine.

“Haunted?” she said. “Will, are you all right?”

“I know, I know. But I’ve seen things here that, well, don’t make sense. I don’t know what’s real. My gut says that you are Lisha, and I’m trusting to that because I want you to be Lisha. I’m making some kind of leap of faith. Or maybe it’s a leap of desperation. Can you make a leap of desperation? I believe you are you because if I allow myself to think that you are really some tentacled demon in a cunning disguise, I’ll probably go mad, and I’d prefer not to do that just yet, thank you.”

She extended her hand. “Here, Will,” she said. “Take my tentacle.”

I started and gave her a look of alarm.

“A joke,” she said with only the smallest crinkling of her lips. “Come on.”

I took her hand and it felt real enough, small and warm. She led me through the paths of the swamp like a child leading an indulgent adult. Still, it occurred to me again, I had rarely been gladder to see anyone in my life.

“And this hooded figure in the library was not the assassin who chased you in the alley,” asked Lisha.

“No,” I said. We had paused to eat some bread which she had brought with her, seated on the trunk of a tree that had torn up its entire root system as it fell. I continued, thoughtfully. “This was someone I had never come across before. Something , perhaps. I don’t know. He was more than just some old coot in a cloak. He was more than old, for a start. He was phenomenally old. And he knew things, and not just about the prophecy. I don’t think he even wanted me to hear that-I’d swear it wasn’t his voice. It was almost like I was hearing his memory, a memory he wanted to keep hidden. That’s the impression I had more than anything else: he remembers. It’s like he’s an embodiment of the people or the city. . Something. And he knew about me. About us. About the city. I’m not sure how I know, but he could see. . maybe not everywhere at once, but he could see a lot more than was in that room. It was weird.”

Lisha munched silently while I finished this lame and embarrassed account. I tried to grin, expecting her to dismiss the whole thing as the product of an overactive imagination, but even though I’d spent a lot of time with the likes of Renthrette, I should have known better. Lisha nodded thoughtfully, uncritically, and shaped a smile that was compassionate, as if offering sympathy for what she could tell had been a harrowing experience.

I pressed on. “Aliana knew, too. The girl who ran the library, I mean. There was more to her than met the eye. She knew there was no fire behind those doors, but she pretended there was to get rid of me. Somehow, finding my way in there and seeing him-it; whatever-was what shot me to the top of the most-wanted list. I don’t know why, partly because if I’m supposed to have learned something crucial from what I saw, I didn’t, and partly because I just walked in. It wasn’t guarded. It wasn’t even locked.”

“They must think you are dangerous,” said Lisha. “It must be the prophecy, though I am at a loss as to what it means or where it came from. Garnet is a greater warrior than you and they have accepted him, so it must be something you know or something you might guess.”

“I’ve eaten rabbits that knew more than me,” I mused. “No, if that old bloke in the library is some state secret worth killing for, I have no idea why. Yes, he was creepy and scared me to death, but that seems the rule rather than the exception round here. The line between the exotic and the downright terrifying has gotten very thin of late.”

I took a woolen blanket from my pack and wrapped it around myself. I was still damp, and the air was, if anything, getting colder.

“What about these recurring accounts of old battles and buildings?” she asked. “Could this mysterious old man have any connection to those?”

“I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you bring it up, I’m tempted to say yes. Each time I heard one of those strange, formulaic accounts, I felt like the words were coming from somewhere else.”

“From him?”

“It’s possible. I know it sounds absurd, but I think it could be true.”

“Why, though? What do the stories have in common?”

“I only heard a couple of variations and they were quite different,” I said. “One was about a particular family heirloom, a weapon. The other was about the building of the city, as I said.”

“And both were about continued family involvement,” she answered, reflectively. “Heritage. History. I don’t know, maybe-”

I cut her off, blinded by a realization. “History,” I thought aloud. “That’s got to be it. There were no history books in the library, and all the other books were being changed. Many were destroyed altogether. Some were in an unreadable language, but some were in Thrusian almost the same as ours or the ‘fair folk’s.’ I have some here.”