Aros

“Have you lost your bloody mind? You agreed?” Aros said, his grey eyes hard as he stared across the table at the fat man. For his part, Mashal did not look very happy himself. Of the three of them, only Feren seemed untroubled, but then, what had ever troubled Feren? He looked back to the fat man as he began to speak.

“Deceived, I was!” Mashal exclaimed, “Tricked! The lure of gold. Aros, Aros, my greatest friend, he offered me a hundred and fifty SOLONS! I poured him wine. It was done.”

“Gods burn you, he spilled a little gold and you let your brains leak out your arse.” Aros snapped.

Mashal drew himself up, protesting. “A little gold? A little gold, you say? A hundred and fifty solons will buy half this wretched kingdom, you old sand-bitch! And it is so: If I had known, if I had even imagined…”

“It didn’t occur to you to – ask – before you took the money?”

Mashal’s immense girth shifted uncomfortably at that. “It was hot. The sun would have driven any man blind. And the gold, we must not be forgetting the gold.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever known you to forget that, Uncle,” smiled Feren, then, turning to her father, “I thought the place was a myth? Another one of those travelers’ tales, maybe a glorified ruin somewhere.”

Aros stared at his daughter. In his mind’s eye, he could see the stand of willows upon the hill, could hear the clip of iron-clad hooves upon stony ground. Beyond the grove, he remembered, lay the valley, and in the valley, Ellemond. He shook his head free of the memory.

“No, no myth,” he found himself saying.

“It is so,” agreed Mashal, “Together, we gazed upon the place of ruin. Ellemond is real, sweetling. Too real. And that is why he has come to us, this Sepherrin. ‘You have gazed upon Ellemond,’ he says to me, and by your mother’s eyes, it is so. But Mashal was young then, and great. Now he is old, and only his belly remains great.”

“Aye,” Aros said, growing wearier by the minute. “That, and his greed.”

Mashal leaned forward, spreading his hands before Aros, “Your friend is not perfect, truth-speaker. He is frail like all men. He is not so brave as you, nor so admired. But he will go to this place, he is bound. For our friendship, let him not go alone!”

Feren touched his arm, “Is it truly so bad?”

“It is,” said Aros, rubbing his thumbs against his temples, “A bloody nightmare. We turned back before we could even hail the barren walls.”

“It is a place of sorrow, little one,” said Mashal, his eye lingering on Aros, “A place it seems, that I will venture alone. Oh, Aros, old friend. This place is distant and frightening. Do not refuse me, else It may be my last refusal.”

“He’s paid you a hundred and fifty bloody solons,” said Aros, letting his weary hand fall to the tabletop. “I don’t think this time, there will be a turning back.”

Mashal blanched, but shook his head, “You are a mercenary still, Aros. Your honor is a corpse! But not Mashal Angranosti. The wine was poured. I go.”

“You great fool of an ox, don’t you remember?” cried Aros, a sinking feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. He hated that feeling. It always meant bad things to come. “How can you go back?”

Stiff backed, Mashal rose. Aros had seen that mulish look on his face before. The large man would not be persuaded. “I can and I will. On these two feet that the gods saw fit to give me. Goodnight, Aros Allendi.”

Gritting his teeth, Aros could only watch as the big man lumbered away. Mashal was a fool, ten times over. He was a fool Aros did not wish to lose. But for all the affection Aros bore the great pig of a man, he was fonder still of his own life, his own sanity. He did not follow Mashal as he stalked from the marble terrace.

Feren’s voice was detached, curious, as if nothing in the world were the matter. “Will he go, do you think?”

“Aye, that he will,” said Aros, feeling the bile rise in his throat, “The wine has been poured.”

“He’s your friend,” she said simply, brown eyes studying her father.

“One I’ll surely miss, but I’ll not have you orphaned before your wedding for Mashal’s sake. He’s a fool. Thrice damn the man, he’s a fool.”

“Father-“ she began.

He banged his fist onto the table, rattling the crystal goblets. “I said I’m not going, Feren. That’s all.”

She studied him with those cool brown eyes, and perhaps he might have caught a glint of reproach there. Or maybe it was just the little seed of a thought that was already growing in him. The troubling thought that he might just have abandoned his oldest friend to that terrible place.

“Excuse me,” said Feren, as she rose from her seat. Aros nodded, quiet.

He watched her disappear past the struggling hedge, dying now for want of water in this blistering heat. And then he was alone, save for the oppressive weight of a cloudy sky above him, and not a star to mar the inky blackness.

So many years ago, Aros remembered, the night that party crested the hill before Ellemond.

That night too had been forsaken by the stars.

. . .

Previous: Part 1: Mashal

Next: Part 3: Jordan