25 – Homecoming
Ward felt an almost irrational sense of relief when the elevator lurched and began to climb upward, not back down into the lizard-man arena. He wasn’t the only one; Haley let out a whoop and twisted her neck, trying to peer upward through the bars. It was a tight squeeze for two people in one section of the elevator. “I can’t see anything yet.”
“Well, let me know if—”
“I see something! White marble . . . lots of light . . . a stairway leading up!”
“Shit, maybe we really are done.” Ward hadn’t felt so relieved in a long while. He’d gone into the catacombs vastly underestimating them, or perhaps it was more that he hadn’t taken them seriously. In any case, if they were about to be let out, he’d learned his lesson. He’d need some time to decompress before hunting out another challenge. For the moment, he wanted to get his comfortable room back at the inn, take a long hot soak, and do some shopping for clean clothes.
The elevator rose above the white marble floor, and he saw that Haley had been right. The space was almost cheerily illuminated, and white steps led upward. Nothing else was in the small room outside the metal bars. When the cage door rattled open, he and Haley exited, followed by a strangely quiet Grace. Ward looked at her and frowned, but she didn’t say anything. Rather, she offered him a pleasant smile. Had he done something to earn some points with her? Was it the way he’d described her to Haley?
“I think this is it, Ward! The exit!” Haley dashed forward, light on her feet, without the weight of her missing backpack. Ward winced at the thought. He still felt a little guilty about leaving it behind. He hoped she hadn’t lost any family treasures or anything. She stopped at the first step, turning to wait for him, so Ward picked up his pace, stepping out of the elevator and onto the staircase. They’d only climbed up five steps or so before Haley pointed and exclaimed, “I see the sky!” After that, there was no holding her back; she charged forward, and Ward, laughing, hurried after her, taking the steps two at a time.
He could smell the outdoors before he saw them. It smelled like it had rained recently, and a faint hint of pine tickled his nose. Haley beat him out of the marble-lined stairway, and she cheered, excitedly calling down to him, “We did it, Ward! We beat a challenge! I can see the town!”
Ward emerged from the subterranean stairway to the cool touch of a light breeze that feathered his hair and filled his lungs with a rich, fresh breath of air he hadn’t realized he’d been missing. The sun was low in the sky, off to his right, but the sky was still bright blue, and the feeling he got as he squinted into it must have been something like how prisoners felt when they walked through the prison gates on release day.
“Holy shit, that smells good!” He looked around, noting the rolling hills and the scattered, tall, thin trees. They looked and smelled like pines, though their trunks were very slender, and their needles were gathered in thick clumps on skinny, flexible branches.
“Isn’t it wonderful to be out! Look!” She pointed down the hill to Ward’s left, and he saw, past another dozen or so smaller hills, the checkered fields of farmland outside the tall, white-washed walls of Tarnish.
“Hey, how ‘bout that! I thought we’d come up right in town, not way out here.”
“The catacombs are strange. There are dozens of exits known to exist around this valley.” She pointed back at the stairway, or what Ward thought would be the stairway, but when he looked, it was gone—nothing but smooth hillside remained. “The exits don’t linger long.”
“That is . . . strange, but not the strangest thing I’ve seen, I guess.” He shivered and rubbed his palms together briskly. “Is it me, or is the air a bit chillier than when we went in? I swear it feels like fall to me—”
“Gods!” Haley cried, scanning the distant fields. “You’re right! They’re harvesting! They shouldn’t have started that for another month!”
“I thought something was strange about the time in there!” Grace announced, moving to stand near Haley, staring into the distance as if she could determine more about the situation than the local girl.
“Well, let’s get started. We won’t find any answers standing up here and staring.” Ward started down the hill, his worn, filthy leather shoes sliding and crunching on the loose soil and scattered stones. He got distracted, looking up at the pale outlines of different moons or nearby planets—he wasn’t sure which—and didn’t notice Haley wasn’t following him for several minutes. When it dawned on him that he and Grace were trudging down the slope alone, he slid to a halt and turned to peer up the hillside, looking for her.
It took him a minute, but his eyes were sharper than they used to be, and he finally spotted her slender figure sitting on the ground, leaning against the bole of one of the tall pine trees. “Hey!” he called, waving an arm. She responded, but only after several long seconds, waving her arm forward as though shooing him onward.
“I think she’s crying,” Grace said, squinting.
“You can’t see anything I can’t!”
“Well, look harder, doofus! I think she’s crying.” Ward frowned, but he did what she said and shaded his eyes, squinting to peer up the hill toward her. Sure enough, his mana-enhanced vision picked up a sheen of tears on the girl’s pale face.
“Ah, dammit.” He began the laborious process of climbing back up the hill. When he reached her, Haley was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes glistening with tears and sniffing noisily as she tried to speak.
“Just—” A sob wracked her, and she buried her face in her knees. Ward squatted before her, sweat dripping down his brow. “Just leave me, Ward. I’ll catch up.” Her words were muffled, but he could hear she was still crying.
Ward reached out to jostle her. “Hey, kiddo, what’s the problem? Is it your brother?”
She took a long, shuddering breath, then spoke quickly, getting the words out before she sobbed again, “I have to tell my family he’s dead!”
“Ah, yeah. That’s going to be awful; there's no denying it. You made it, though, and I promise they’ll be happy about that.”
“Why?” she mumbled.
“Why?”
“Why’d we do it? What did I gain?”
Her forlorn pack, sitting outside the closed elevator, flashed through Ward’s mind. “Uh . . . shit, I don’t know.” Suddenly, a spark of genius ignited in Ward’s mind. “Well, you got me. We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
“We are? I’d hoped to get a refinement or magical ore or—Ward, can I join you for the next challenge you do? My family won't be so disappointed if I have a purpose and a powerful new ally.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘powerful,’” Grace said, ruining the moment.
“If I do any more, sure. Right now, all I can think about is a bath. Come on, Haley. Walk with me. I’ll stand with you when you see your folks, okay?” He stood up and held out a hand. Haley took it, her fingers hot as usual, and he pulled her up. “Sheesh! You need to put on some weight. How does a hot meal at the inn sound? Well, I’m sure your family will want to feed you, but you gotta try Fan’s cooking . . .” He rambled on like that for a while, falling into an old role he’d picked up on the job, helping people deal with grief and loss.
By the time they’d descended from the big hill and were working their way across the next one, he got a laugh out of Haley by describing the horrible itch his self-made poncho was starting to give him. “You do look ridiculous. I didn’t want to say anything, but that blanket is not fit to be worn as clothing.”
“Listen; if you’d seen my clothes, you’d have made the same decision.”
“What was it like? The refinement? I’ve heard it makes you vomit.”
“Oh, it does that and a whole lot more! I was sweating sludge, but that was only half of it—the purge. I also got so hot that I was steaming. I hallucinated; I heard voices, saw every color in the rainbow, and felt like I was zooming through the universe for a while. Well, it’s over now. If I ever get another one, I hope it won’t be so bad.” Ward shrugged.
“Don’t count on it,” Grace chimed in. “It’ll probably be worse!”
“That’s not very encouraging, Grace.” Ward winked at Haley. “She thinks the next one will be even worse.”
“Can she hear me?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Hi, Grace!” Haley turned and waved in a circle.
“She’s between us.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Haley turned and waved at the air between her and Ward.
“She’s . . .” Grace started to laugh. “She’s humoring you! She thinks you’re nuts!”
“No, she’s not!” Ward growled. “Grace thinks you’re just humoring me.”
“I wouldn’t!” Haley smiled and looked up at him, her pale brown eyes bright with the setting sun's light. Ward believed her in that moment, and he smiled back.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” Grace admitted after a moment. “She’s giving me hero-worship vibes now. I don’t know if it’s so smart to keep her around, but maybe . . . Maybe she’ll be useful.” Ward ignored her and kept walking.
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Soon, they descended the last sloping hill into the fields, and Haley led the way to a dirt track between a couple of freshly tilled plots. “Could we have been gone this long? These fields were full of squash and beets when we went in.”
“Well, it felt like a long day and then a long sleep to me. Nothing in that place made sense, though.” They continued in silence as Haley mulled things over, and Grace disappeared to ride in Ward’s head. By the time they came around the last field and stepped onto the big road traversing the valley's center, the sun was nearly set, and darkness loomed. Ward saw many yellow-lit windows out on the fields, and he thought the farmhouses looked especially cozy and welcoming. Wood fires burned in the kitchens, and the smell of smoke and food cooking was everywhere. His stomach rumbled, and his mouth filled with saliva, and he and Haley both quickened their steps, though likely for different reasons.
“You sure you wanna see your folks tonight? Maybe we should stay at the inn, get cleaned up, and then you can go home in the morning.”
“Oh, that’s very tempting, Ward, but I feel duty-bound to hurry home.” She looked at him in the shadows leading up to the gate and added, “You don’t have to come with me right now if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, no; I promised. Come on—lead the way.” Haley nodded, and they hurried on. The guards at the gate hardly looked at them, which was a significant change from the first time Ward went through, but he didn’t complain. The streets weren’t overly busy, and Ward was amused to note that he didn’t look so out of place in his woolen poncho and beat-up, filthy armor. The working-class folk of Tarnish were truly working-class. They wore wool, leather, or rough-spun clothes that looked to be made of hemp or low-grade cotton. They were filthy from their labors, some covered in mud and dirt, others in soot, and still others in blood or some mixture of the three.
If it weren’t for his apparently glowing eyes, he doubted anyone would have given him a second glance. As it was, plenty of people noticed them, but they looked away quickly. After the duel he’d witnessed his first time in town, he kind of understood why people wouldn’t want to get mixed up with someone like him; they didn’t know he couldn’t do squat with his mana. As they wended their way up the narrow streets that climbed toward the western wall, he voiced a concern, “I wonder if these glowing eyes are going to get me in trouble.”
Haley turned to look at him. “How so?”
“Well, what if someone thinks I can work magic? What if they want to challenge me or something?”
“Ward, you can work magic. You saved me with it, remember?”
“That was kind of a one-time thing. I can’t remember the words I used, and it almost killed me. I had to chug that potion afterward.”
“Well, I’m just saying, the potential is there. Most people will fear you rather than feel like challenging you. Stronger sorcerers will ignore you unless you give them a reason to punish you. Those at your level or near it might want to fight you for your knowledge or artifacts. That’s the same with anyone, though—a criminal might want to rob me right now.”
“Is that how it’s done? People fight each other for their ‘knowledge’? Do you mean the words?”
“I only know stories.” Haley shrugged. “I’ve heard of sorcerers dueling for words, sure. I’ve also heard of them fighting over artifacts like that tongue our friend tricked you into activating for him.”
“Or my mana-well,” Ward growled, clenching his fist as he remembered his vendetta against Nevkin.
“I hope that little bastard doesn’t die in there.” Ward turned to the sound of Grace’s voice. She walked behind them, daintily traipsing over the rough cobbles in her spotless suit and red-polished toes.
Ward nodded to her, winking. “Yeah, I hope he gets out.”
“Is that Grace?” Haley turned, starting to catch onto Ward’s quirks.
“Tell her to ignore me, please! I don’t want the whole town talking about us!”
“She’s a little shy, Haley. Try to pretend you don’t know about her while we’re near other people.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Haley slowed and stopped, pointing to a big wrought-iron gate. A bright gas lantern flared from the top of a brick post next to the gate. Ward could tell the glass globe of the lamp had been blown by hand; it wasn’t quite round, and he could see a lot of bubbles and imperfections. “That’s the gate to our neighborhood.”
“Looks nice.”
“It’s fairly nice. My father makes a good living managing the logistics for the largest caravan company in town.” She stood there, fidgeting, scratching at the side of her thumbnail with her other hand.
“Hey. Come on. They’re going to be relieved to see you.” Ward gave her a nudge, and she took a deep breath and started toward the gate. He followed her through, then up a nicely cobbled road lined with brick and stone homes that reminded him of something he might see in a Christmas catalog—narrow, two-storied, with high-peaked gables. The windows were cut into small panes, and warm, glowing lamplight shone out of most of them. “Damn,” Ward sighed, looking around at all the cozy homes lining the street, “I take it back—this neighborhood isn’t just nice, it’s great. It must have been magical growing up around here.”
“Well,” Haley followed his gaze and slowed her steps, really taking in the homes, and Ward suddenly felt stupid as fresh tears filled her eyes and began to stream down her cheeks, “I guess you’re right! It was,” she sniffed and sobbed, “great!”
“Come on! You got this.” Ward put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her against his side as they walked. After a minute, she sniffed and pointed up a flagstone path lined with regularly placed gas lamps burning with soft amber light. Ward nodded and asked, “They have gas lines in the street or what?”
“Yes.” Haley sniffed and chuckled. “Before we left, my father was complaining about them shutting it off soon to perform maintenance on the pipes.” She led the way up the path to the narrow porch of her home. The front door was framed in cloudy glass windows, behind which Ward could see more flames flicker, though he couldn’t tell if it was from lamps or a fire. Haley didn’t pause on the stoop. She stepped up to the door and pulled it open, and as the warmth and light spilled out into the night, she called out, “Mom? Dad?”
Ward hung back as Haley stepped into the foyer, but she gestured for him to follow. It was a nice space, tiled in black and white, with wainscoting and plenty of family portraits on the high walls. Gas lamps burned on either side of the entry, illuminating two hallways, and ahead of them, a beautiful, dark wood banister lined a stairway leading up to the second floor. “Mother!” Haley called out again.
“Maybe no one’s home,” Grace said from behind Ward. He flinched but managed to contain his reaction to the chill she elicited on the nape of his neck. Her prediction was proven wrong almost immediately as the sound of clattering dishes and running feet came to them. Seconds later, a middle-aged couple, whose facial features bore strong echoes of Haley’s, burst into the room.
“Haley!” the man cried, rushing forward to grab her into a hug.
“Oh dear! We thought you’d never return!” the woman said, crowding in to stroke Haley’s hair as she buried her face in her father’s neck. After that, the questions and sobbing answers came fast and furious, and Ward just sort of hung back by the door, feeling awkward. After a while, the dad finally broke his tear-streaked gaze away from Haley’s face and looked at him. Ward couldn’t help noticing he wore a bit of a grimace.
“Who’s this then?”
“This is Ward! I met him in the catacombs, and he saved my life several times. Ward, my parents, Vinera and Efrud.”
“Ah!” Ward held up a hand in protest. “No, no, it was more of a partnership. Your daughter did her fair share of life saving.”
Efrud nodded, sniffing. “And poor Fost? Did you meet him, sir?”
“Um, I’m sorry, but only briefly.” Ward shrugged and, not wanting to be brutally honest with people who’d just learned of their son’s death, added, “He seemed like a fine, strong young man. Life’s not fair.”
Vinera tsked and put an arm around Haley’s shoulders. “No, it certainly isn’t. Well, Haley? Will you tell us about your adventure? Will you regale us with tales of Fost’s bravery? And you, sir, will you join us for dessert?”
“Well, I—”
“Mother, Father,” Haley said, interrupting Ward’s attempt to beg his way out of the situation, “Tell me: how long were we gone?”
“Why, it’s been something like five weeks! We feared we’d lost you both!”
“Five weeks!” Ward's eyes nearly bugged out of his head.
“Oh, yes! When the other victors emerged after only a handful of days, we began to lose hope . . .”
“Other people got out?”
“Yes! A mage like yourself, sir—a woman with brightly glowing green eyes. The mayor invited her to dinner. Then there was the fellow who came out boasting of the artifacts he’d gained. He stole a steam wagon and drove off north, making quite a scene, claiming to have ‘conquered the catacombs’ and swearing he had another challenge to attend—”
“Did he have a tattooed head?” Ward asked, cutting Haley’s father off mid-sentence.
“Indeed, he did, sir! The mayor issued a wanted notice for him, as well, for his thievery!”
“Nevkin!” Haley groaned, smashing a fist into her palm.
“That little creep!” Grace cried from behind Ward.
“You knew the man?” Haley’s mother asked, still clinging to her daughter.
“Yes! He betrayed us. I would’ve died if not for Ward’s heroics.”
“Then I am in your debt, sir.” Haley’s father stepped forward, holding out a hand. Ward took it, grasping the man’s broad palm firmly.
“No, you aren’t. As I said, Haley also saved me a time or two.” He turned to Haley and her mother. “Listen, I’m going to head to the inn, get cleaned up, and rest a bit. I’ll leave you to catch up with your folks.” He unslung his backpack and unfastened the top flap. “Hang on a second, though.” They all stood watching as he pulled out the bolt of silky blue fabric. “This is your daughter’s. She won it from the catacombs. I’m sure she would have gained more treasure if not for Nevkin’s betrayal.” He handed it to Haley and winked, shaking his head slightly when she opened her mouth to protest.
“Well, sir,” Haley’s father offered his hand again, and Ward took it, “I must insist that you join us for dinner soon. Additionally, I’ll be reporting your heroics to the mayor, and you can rest assured that he’ll be quite pleased to hear of Haley’s safe return and your role in the matter.”
“Well, that’s not necess—”
“Nonsense! I insist! I know you sorcerers are busy, and you likely have other adventures awaiting you, but—”
“I’ll be traveling with him, father!” Haley announced, and Ward groaned inwardly. Was this really the time?
“Truly? Aren’t you simply delivering her to us? You’re taking her as an apprentice?”
“Father!”
“Sir, I have to reiterate: Haley did as much to secure our victory over the catacombs as I did. Now, listen to your daughter’s tale, and I’ll be sure to accept your invitation for dinner, but let’s all have some rest first, yeah?”
“Very good, very good.” He squeezed Ward’s hand again, and then Ward turned to leave, but not before Haley’s mother could rush forward to try to hug him. Ward grabbed her shoulders, stopping her short with a gentle squeeze.
“No, no—trust me! You don’t want to embrace me right now. The catacombs, at least some of the parts I traversed, were filthy.”
“Oh, very well, sir. I’m sorry to admit, but I fear you’re correct.” She wrinkled her nose and took a step back.
“Okay, see you soon, Haley. A pleasure to meet you folks.” Ward waved and stepped out the door, sighing heavily in the cool night air.
“Well, that was awkward.” Grace gave him a nudge to get walking down the path, and as they rejoined the road and turned back toward the center of town, she continued, “They seemed to get over the loss of their son quickly.”
“I think they’d already sort of accepted the idea that both their kids were dead. They seemed surprised and happy to see Haley, so that was nice, at least.”
Grace slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, let’s get you cleaned up, then figure out where that Nevkin rat got off to.”
Ward took a deep breath, blew it out, and sighed, soaking in the fresh air once again. “Sure. Sounds good; I’m going to soak for at least two hours.”