Chapter Four – The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep by Kelly D. Tolman
Posted by admin on October 20, 2008
The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep is a fantasy novel describing the adventures of Colter Halfspear as he becomes a man and an initiate of magical powers.
Later that evening, Harrim invited me into his private dining room, after I had already stuffed myself of course, where he and my mother dined privately. My mother dressed in the most beautiful scarlet, and she set her hair beneath a lace cap, very unlike anything I had seen her wear in the summers since my father died, but very much how I remembered her from before. Harrim served a table as grand as I have seen any innkeeper set, and far grander than many a nobleman, for the platters and cups were gold and silver, and even I knew the wine came of no common vintage.
“Come in and sit with us, my boy,” said Harrim cheerfully. “You’re of an age now when you should sit with the men, not the boys. Take some wine.” I refused the goblet for I sensed something amiss. I never ignored that sense. “Suit yourself then…”
“Colter,” interrupted my mother. “We have some wonderful news to share with you.”
“’Em, right,” and for the first and only time I believe that I saw Master Wilder slightly embarrassed. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some wine? No? Ok, well, Colter, as you know I fancy your mother. I have for some time, but now that your pa’s been gone so long.”
“Harrim has asked me to marry him,” said my mother. Her face beamed like a girl again, and I could tell a great weight had lifted from her. “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s the most wonderful thing that could happen for us. No more digging and scratching and starving on that god-forsaken farm.”
There is something truly awful about being reminded how pointless your hard work is, especially when you already know it. I hated the work, and I hated starving. I despised having bloody feet and sores, but I loved the land. “I like the farm,” I muttered.
“Of course you don’t have to leave the farm,” said Harrim, once again cheerful. “Betta of course will come here and live with us, you are welcome, naturally, if you want. You’re a man now, old enough to choose what you want.”
“Of course, that’s right,” agreed mamma with a smile and a laugh. “We will be married within a market, and then it’s all yours anyway, to do with as you like. You can work it or rent it or sell it. I am sure Harrim will help you set up any trade you wish. Won’t you Harrim?”
“Of course, my dear. He’s a hard worker and bright. What do you have to say, Colter?”
The truth is I didn’t have anything to say really. Honestly nothing at all, but I think that is the first time I discovered how to lie, or at least how to conceal my emotions, which is better than lying. “This is truly wonderful.” I smiled and I laughed. “Now I wish I hadn’t eaten so much already since this calls for a celebration.” We all laughed and talked and once again mamma became the lady she had always been.
Harrim kept a great water clock in that private room, and after glancing at it a few times he invited me to take a walk with him. Mamma said, “Go on son, I’m afraid there will be more news and more decisions to make tonight.”
Harrim grabbed a lantern and led me to a path behind the Waystop that wandered into the hills south of town. Usually the land there is green and grassy, now the hills were brown and dry. The night had taken on a cooler tone, and I caught the scent of summer rain on the breeze. “There will be rain,” I commented. “That will help the farm through the summer.”
Harrim didn’t seem to notice my remarks, but he put a massive arm around my shoulders and guided me off the main path into a little grove of trees just outside of town. I was neither tall nor large, and Harrim was both. We must have looked an odd pair in the lantern light.
“You do understand the need for this marriage,” he said.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “I am happy for you both.”
“I am glad to hear it, although I know that your thoughts are undoubtedly more complex than that. In time I hope to be able to help you through some of those complexities, but in the meantime I want you to understand that I know I can never replace your father, and that life at the inn can never replace life at the farm. Your mother is practical.”
“She has sense,” we said at the same moment and we both laughed.
“Yes, she has sense,” continued Harrim. “Enough to go for all of us. The only thing she didn’t have sense about was your father.”
I jerked away instinctively and searched his eyes for the humor, but found only sincere sadness. I couldn’t find a way to respond or express the hurt I felt in his words.
“Colter, please, just a little further,” he pleaded. And we continued into the trees. “Your mother loved, still loves, your father more deeply than I have ever known a person to love another, but she loved him too much, more than she should have.”
“More than he deserved, you mean,” I replied. I was angry, resentful, a boy.
“No, not more than he deserved. More than he could handle. More than he could return. Let me show you. Let me explain.”
We reached a small clearing in the trees where the starlight sprinkled down to the ground in soft wisps over the buzzing insects. A large stone dominated the clearing. It was circular in shape and rounded on top, perhaps a meter and a half high at the center and two meters in diameter. The moonlight danced over the stone and it seemed to begin to glow with a soft inner light as we approached.
“Kyven brought a number of treasures back with him when he returned from his adventures. This is one he brought back the first time, before he ever married, before you were born. Take a look.”
The stone now definitely glowed with a soft green light and wisps of green vapor began to slip off the surface of the stone into the air and over the ground. Wherever the vapors touched the grass, it turned one shade further from brown to green until within a few short moments the entire grove appeared vibrant and green again, as if just after a spring rain.
“The stone is tied to the will of the gods, Colter. It brings life and prosperity when we follow their will and death and plague when we do not.”
“So, what does this have to do with me?” A naive question, one I suspected I knew the answer to, but I needed to hear it.
“When I said ‘we’ I really meant ‘you.’ You need to follow the will of the gods. In order for your father to retrieve the spear of Udelf and defeat the demon lord of the hordes of Kaarum, he made a pact with Tylos to forever obey and serve. That is why he left again after completing his first adventure. But it nearly broke your mother’s heart. She waited in agony those winters while he was gone. You were born and grew in prosperity and the plantation prospered in those days. Then he returned. Something about that final journey changed him. He never confided all of the details to me, but I knew that he was hurt beyond casual notice.”
“He was wounded in battle. That’s what he told me,” I said.
The innkeeper looked at me. A deep sadness covered his face. “Yes, he was wounded, but not so much from battle as from heartbreak. He came home to your mother, his one true love and forsook his adventuring ways, and he began to wither. You see, he was compelled to hunt evil.”
“But he gave it up for mamma,” I finished his thought. I began to understand at that moment. It was only a beginning, but an unfortunate sad beginning, like swallowing tyrnwood prepared without sweetening for the first time. I stared at that stone and the wonder I felt at seeing the green vapors turned to loathing and fear of the unknown.
“It started working again today,” said Harrim. I had guessed as much but I didn’t need to say it. “The council is going to meet today to decide how long you will be permitted to stay in the village. Then you will have to take up where your father left off.”
I admit I cried. “I’ll send your mother for you.” He left me there to cry out the last vestiges of my boyhood alone in the thin lantern light. So I did, and as my teardrops fell on that warm, inviting stone my fears turned to curiosity and my loathing into longing for the wide world. Some part of me enjoyed the thought of finding glory and riches, of standing on my own against a Kaarum rather than hiding frightened in a corner. And some part of me wanted to simply wake up in the morning and go back to my parched fields to try to grow a crop for the autumn harvest.
Copyright 2008 Kelly David Tolman
On to The Cleansing of Darnuth Keep Fantasy Novel Chapter Five
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