Longing Ring

5

After Bevarden had done his pratfalls and juggled and made jokes and made everybody laugh, he settled down and told stories.

Each day the people in the kaer survived another twenty-four hours in the stone corridors, prisoners in their shelter of safety. But they knew that generations ago their ancestors had walked the world-a world alive with magic and adventure and a brilliant sun and a blue sky and things called jungles so thick with trees and plants you could not see through it from one side to another. Bevarden reminded everyone of these things.

He acted out stories of adventurers seeking magical elements in craggy mountain peaks, encountering primitive troll tribes. Of ancient warriors defeating the first Horrors that came to the world hundreds of years ago when the invasion was just beginning. Of sailors who traveled huge, rolling, uncovered roads of water called rivers. He spoke of the elves of the Wyrm Wood, with their delicate and perfect faces, their love of the jungles, and their powerful magic with all things living. He reminded people of the dwarven kingdom of Throal, whose language they all spoke. And the powerful Theran Empire that had provided the means to fend off the Horrors.

J'role watched his father and ached to leave the confines of the kaer. And he loved his father, for the man was full of life and energy and spoke of passions and valor and the challenge of being alive. He looked around at the audience assembled in the Atrium and watched everyone enjoying his father playing the part of heroes and trolls and dwarfs and elves. And even though they knew all the stories, they listened, far Bevarden kept fresh in their minds the memories of the life waiting for them at the end of the Scourge.

Garlthik and J'role walked for a long time that night. The stars and moon cast a pale light down to the earth, creating soft shadows of a few scraggly trees along the barren ground.

Garlthik picked the path, and J'role, who continued to speak of the beautiful city, knew only that he was getting farther away from his village and the kaer.

As they walked Garlthik took a small vial out of the pouch tied to his belt. He removed the stopper, and drank down the contents of the vial. Hours later, long into their walk, J'role made a connection between the vial's contents and the fact that Garlthik's groans of pain had ceased and he no longer held his left arm in agony. A magical potion.

Normally J'role would have been astounded to see such powerful magic, but not this night. The small tunnel to his heart created when he had first touched the ring had become so achingly beautiful and overpowering he cared for nothing but the words that came without thought from his lips. The small tunnel had into a vast cavern of cold desire. All he wanted was the promise of happiness that the ring and the images of the city carried. To know that there actually existed a place where he could finally feel whole… J'role had always believed that such a place or a person or an object-

something-could exist. But he had never been able to guess what it might actually be.

Now he knew. The magic city he now spoke of.

Spoke of!

It astounded him further that he was still speaking. It was true he did not have control of his tongue, his jaw, his lips. As ever he found himself disconnected from his own body in the matter of making sounds with his mouth. The words came to him out of the world's magic. He looked around at the barren hills and the scraggly trees and the piles of boulders and stones that dotted the pale blue night. From somewhere in this emptiness came the words. He had no idea why he said what he said. He had no actual picture of the city in his thoughts. He responded to the images formed by the words, moved to tears on occasion, from weakness, yes, but also from a longing for what he spoke of. The more the city's details grew in his mind, the more he longed for the city.

***

Garlthik eyed him curiously as they walked. J'role, who listened to himself with the same interest as Garlthik, sometimes met Garlthik's eye. The ork raised the brow over his good eyes stared down at J'role as they walked on the quiet, cool night. These shared looks made them companions sharing a mystery: the mystery of why their third companion-

the strange words-carried on so.

Finally, after many hours, J'role's throat began to hurt from the talking. The distanced sensations of his lips moving by their own had been replaced by a numbing pain. His mouth was dry. It occurred to him that it might never stop. He stumbled and fell to his knees.

"What is it?" Garlthik asked.

J'role put his hands to his face, touched his lips. They writhed under his fingertips like snakes. A panic came over him. He put his hands together to remove the cold ring. But even as he did so, a horrible feeling overwhelmed him: give up the longing? Despite the agony of his muscles, he wanted to continue to hear about the lovely city. For the first time in nearly a decade he knew hope, and giving that up seemed too terrible.

"You want to stop talking?" Garlthik asked.

J'role nodded.

"Take off the ring."

J'role drew his hands close to his chest, hid the ring under his free hand.

"You can put it on again later," the ork said, and touched his heavy fingers lightly against J'role's shoulder. “I’m not going to take it from you."

The boy eyed the ork curiously.

"No, really, I'm not. I don't think so. You've got something about you-you were mute-

correct? And now you start describing a city when you put on the ring. Something about you … You're connected to where this ring leads." Garlthik turned his face away and put a weary hand to his forehead. "Please, take it off. I've seen some stranger things, but this image of your mouth flapping away, with you not paying any attention. It's too disturbing."

A strange happiness filled J'role. He realized that Garlthik and Mordom and the others wanted the ring because it led to something valuable, not because it was valuable in itself.

Garlthik was surprised by J'role's words, which meant that he hadn't known what the goal was, only that it was something wonderful. And now J'role knew the goal was the city he spoke of. And if Garlthik was going to the city, and wanted to bring J'role along, then he would reach the city as well. Everything would be all right.

J'role decided to remove the ring, if only to rest, and as soon as the ring left his finger a horrible pain crashed into his jaw, as if metal hooks had dug into his teeth. He dropped to the ground, groaning. But more than the physical pain was the terror of losing the sweet longing. He still held the ring in his hand, and from the ring there came the thin tunnel of desire to his heart. But nothing could compare with the full longing for the city. It had been so clear, so specific. If he could just find the city everything would be complete.

Finished. And now there was nothing. Just a memory that he once had something, now gone.

"Come on, boy. Let's find a place to sleep for the night. If they're after us, we'd best hide."

Garlthik leaned down to help J'role up, but at the ork's touch J'role's mind filled with an image of his father lying on the ground, his shoulder torn open by the blast of the magician's spell. The ring and its magical city had kept J'role's head crammed with a longing for the city. But now released, J'role could think of nothing else. He shook his shoulder away from Garlthik's touch, stood, and started back the way they had come.

"Where are you going?" the ork barked, exasperated.

J'role looked out over the still landscape. He had never been so far from home, a six hours' walk. He'd never needed to navigate back to his village from such a distance, and the landmarks he'd used all his life were useless now. Worse, he'd paid no attention to the way they had traveled.

He thought he saw the tip of the Red Hills, low and dark, but he couldn't be certain. Then he thought he spotted a large rock formation that was just east of his village, but realized it was too round at the top, too wide at the base.

J'role felt as if he were floating in a great void, lost forever to everything he'd known.

No. He could get back. He'd find it.

With his legs aching, the dried blood cool and itchy on his forehead, he started back in what he thought was the right direction. He clutched the ring tight in his hand, not only to hold on to the slight feeling of longing, but because It was all he now owned, his only connection to his home. To his father.

"Where are you going, boy?"

He heard Garlthik take a few heavy strides toward him and then a big hand was on him, spinning him around

The ork leaned his huge face in toward J'role's. "I said, where are you going?"

J'role- stared at the ork for a moment, afraid. Garlthik had attacked him earlier. He might do it again. He pointed back in the general direction they'd come.

"What do you want to go back there for, lad? That magician is certain to crisp your flesh if you should ever meet him." The ork smiled like a friend giving advice, but J'role could not believe him.

J 'role shook his head, then clenched his fists as he tried to figure out how to communicate his concern for his father. Finally he tapped his chest with one hand, then raised the hand above his head. Garlthik peered at him, uncertain. "I could just speak at him. And then run," J'role thought.

"Don't," said the creature, suddenly harsh in J'role's thoughts after so many hours of silence. "He may have magic you don't understand. He might kill you."

It seemed odd for the creature to be giving him advice- and helpful advice, at that-

something the thing in his head had never done before. But remembering the magician's spells and his father's ruined shoulder, J'role decided not to use his voice. But he wanted to go back.

"He's dead," Garlthik said simply.

J'role remembered now. Garlthik had told him, but he'd lost the meaning of the words under the power of the ring. Why had he put it on? He'd forgotten everything when he put the ring on. He should have gone back! He could have done something.

He flung the ring down on the ground, whirled away from Garlthik, started walking.

Letting go of the ring-a quick flash of cold in his hand, suddenly gone-he wanted it back. Part of him wanted to scoop the ring back up, put it back on. Feel the desire, the aching, delirious desire of longing to see the city. But he kept moving. Maybe Garlthik was wrong. Maybe his father hadn't died. J'role couldn't know for sure. So much happened so fast.

"BOY!' Garlthik shouted after him. Again the heavy steps followed. Rough hands grabbed him, whirled him around once more. The broad face that peered-down at him showed no pretense of kindness now. The large teeth that protruded over Garlthik's lips heaved up and down. "You will not go, do you understand? Your father is dead, and there is nothing you can do to bring him back. And I want you. Do you understand? There's something about you. Don't know what it is yet. But you have something … That city you described. I'm looking for that-I think. You can help me. I'm certain of it.

Everybody who's put that ring on is looking for something. But I've got you. I'm going to find it-we're going to find it. And when we do, we'll be rich. Do you understand? Rich!

Only the potential for wealth could make my heart hunger so!"

My father, J'role thought.

"Dead," said the creature. "You let him die when you deserted him. There's no need-"

"I didn't mean to!"

"But you did. You did mean to." A wet chill touched the flesh of his back.

"Do you remember what he asked you? 'Did you mean what you said?' he asked. When you were shouting; in the corridor by the pit. Do you remember?"

"Yes, he asked me that. But it was you who spoke. I didn't say anything."

"Oh, yes you did, J'role, young J'role, J'role the bringer of madness. You did. I let you speak clearly. I let you speak directly. That's why it's so dangerous. Most people can only use words-poor tools, words. But I speak with a clarity-I speak hate clearly. Purified.

Absolute.'

"But how …"

"It's my talent. Alas, my only talent." With a laugh it said, "We're all limited in our own way. I found all the hate he held in himself and twisted it back on him."

"And my mother?"

"The same. And the fool in the tunnels, now locked in eternal embrace with your mother at the bottom of the corpse pit."

J'role sank to the ground. An emptiness filled his chest as he thought of the ring. The ring clarified emptiness, made such an aching longing comprehensible. It also gave him a hope: to find the city meant being free of the emptiness.

He wanted that very much.

He looked up and saw the ork looking down at him, confused. "Listen t o me," he said carefully. "We need each other now. They're after both of us. And we have the power, together, to find the greatest treasure of all the treasures. Let’s you and me work together.

An alliance." He extended his: large hand.

J'role nodded and slowly stood. He took the ork's hand and shook it.

He walked back to the ring, picked it up, immediately feeling better. The longing caused by the ring's touch pained him, but it was purified, absolute. He did not place the ring on His finger, however. That would be too much right now.

They found an outcropping of large boulders among some hills, and here they sought out a shelter. Soon they found a small cave-like hole formed by three tall boulders leaning against one another. As they settled down J'role began to shiver. Garlthik was cold, too, and set up a small pile of dry sticks he had found while searching for the cave. He reached into the pouch on his belt, and J'role thought he might be looking for another magical item for use in starting the fire. Instead the ork pulled out a piece of flint, which he sparked against the stone floor of their shelter. Soon he had a fire going.

Without another word Garlthik lay down and slept. For a few moments J'role watched the flames grow and wither frantically in their brief lives. The orange and yellow light played over Garlthik's rough, wrinkled face, which looked so peaceful now. Again he wondered at the fact that he had only met Garlthik One-Eye that very day.

J'role stretched out on the ground, the heat of the fire comforting him as his father's body had so often given comfort when J'role was younger. He thought of his father, now dead-simply gone-and then of Garlthik. They were so very different, yet J'role was strangely linked to each one, a horrible imbalance based on awkward dependency.

He tried to imagine what it would be like to have the most important person in his life be someone with whom he was on equal footing. But he couldn't think of how it might happen.

When they set out in the late morning of the next day, Garlthik was in the same jaunty mood as when J'role had first met him. He hummed a song, smiled his broad, toothy smile. His tattered cloak, still as blue as night when the sun had just set and the stars first came out, billowed around him, and his sword swung at his side. The sky stretched overhead, a pale blue streaked with long, wispy clouds. They walked east, rising higher and higher into a long mountain range.

Every so often Garlthik would stop humming and ask J'role questions.

"Did you actually see the city in your head? I mean, pictures of it?"

J'role indicated no.

"Just words, eh?"

Then the ork would continue to hum, a bit of a skip in his walk.

"Did you see any people? Or landmarks of any kind?"

Again J’role indicated no. And as the day wore on and he continued to answer the odds questions in the negative, he wondered what worth he really possessed for Garlthik, and what the ork might eventually do with him if he proved himself worthless.

The walk itself exhilarated J'role. Where the previous night he had been terrified to realize how far he was from home, now the distance he put between his village and himself sent a strange, unknown excitement coursing through his muscles. He could feel his former life fading from his body, like an old splinter sliding out of flesh. His past would be meaningless to the new people he met. No one would know that his mother had gone mad, that his father was a drunkard. They would know only that J'role was a mute and no more than that. No one would know he was cursed.

"We'll keep walking until I think of something," said Garlthik. "I want to put distance between Mordom and us."

And so they walked.

As J'role saw mountain ranges he'd never seen before, saw rivers running crooked and blue-green that he'd never known existed, he was overwhelmed by the realization of how much there was in the world. By walking forward into it, new possibilities opened for him. The promise of …

Something else.