The Legend of Broken

“True. It does not enlighten us as to why he was killed — not completely. But enough for now — we shall discuss all this further, within Stasi’s cave. Help your fellows, there, and then join us as soon as you can.”

The old man begins to hobble away again, the great panther taking up her watchful position, just far enough behind him to have an unobstructed view of the foragers, who observe the pair’s departure with three puzzled faces.

{iii:}

“His mind certainly seems unaffected by all he has endured,” Veloc judges, watching Caliphestros and the seemingly magical white panther disappear over the next ridge. “Although I’ll wager his talk of not being a sorcerer is a ruse.”

“Do you fault him?” Keera asks. “Look what his punishment for that title was, from the God-King and the priests of Kafra.”

The conversation is interrupted by a sudden flutter of wings: the small, active wings of a speckled bird that descends onto a branch just above the foragers, clicking its beak and clucking from its throat.

“Te-kamp!” the bird blurts, still flapping its wings energetically at the Bane. “Te-kamp! Kaw-ee-fess-tross!”

Keera eyes her disbelieving friends. “I think you have a small hint as to his powers as a sorcerer, Veloc,” she says. Then, to the bird, she calls, “Tell your master not to worry. We shall not be long!”

But the bird makes no move.

“Oh, splendid …,” Heldo-Bah grumbles, as the three foragers set about breaking their camp. “Must I now mind my mouth around every animal in Davon Wood, lest it report back to that old cripple?”

“For now,” Veloc replies, “I’d recommend it. And I’d recommend learning a few new phrases of address for him, Heldo-Bah. It’s plain we don’t know what he actually is, or what power he has over how many and which of these beings.”

“True, brother,” Keera agrees, kicking dirt atop their smoldering fire and still studying the starling admiringly — for she has rightly begun to suspect that the bird’s speech has been the result of long acquaintance, not sorcery. “And did you take note of one thing, particularly? The effortless manner in which he persuades the panther to do his bidding — does it not remind you of someone?”

Veloc claps a hand to his forehead. “That witch of a priestess — she showed precisely the same art!”

“Well,” Heldo-Bah says doubtfully. “Not precisely the same art. I don’t think the old man uses seduction upon — that is … Oh, no …” As so often happens, the gap-toothed grin of confident skepticism instantly becomes an expression of shocked fear. “Does he?”

“No, I don’t believe anything of the sort,” Keera says. “The similarity is only in the silent, practiced manner of communicating; and it is no coincidence, I’ll wager.”

“Exactly so, Keera,” says Veloc. “To find one such being is improbable enough, but two—and both of the royal circle, in which they must have moved for at least a few of the same years? Why, sister, he said it himself: ‘I know only one other like you.’ Yes, he bears watching, our new friend. Clever as a stoat, for all his being legless.”

Keera holds up a hand, considering the matter for a moment, and then finally whispers: “You are right, Veloc — he did not say he knew one other with such a gift. ‘I know only one other …’ Those were indeed his words.”

“You suspect he yet communicates with the Kafran priestess?” Veloc asks.

Keera cocks her head, puzzling with it. “Not as we understand it, certainly. But two mortals who can command the mightiest of forest spirits? One old, one young — is it not likely that the one taught the other? And if the other is indeed not only a priestess, but a Wife of Kafra … I do not like to think it, for I believe he is a good man who truly wants and means to help us. But his soul is as scarred as his legs, and his thoughts have been made obscure by the deceit and treachery of Broken’s rulers. Until we are certain of the pattern of their twists and turns, I think we must keep our encounter with the priestess from him …”

So great does Keera’s preoccupation with these thoughts become that she not only falls behind her brother and Heldo-Bah as they make for Caliphestros’s camp, but nearly stumbles headlong into the old man’s enormous herb garden, with its rich, almost overpowering blend of aromas, before realizing that they have arrived at their destination. Only as her head is sent swimming by those same scents does Keera hear the calls of Veloc and Heldo-Bah, who are already by the mouth of the cave wherein Caliphestros and Stasi have lived for so long; and, taking a few moments to appreciate the other seemingly impossible aspects of the grounds outside the cave — particularly the forge, with its marvelously engineered chimney of stone and mortar, in which the foragers’ host has created, by the look of the area about the thing, many essential tools, as well as fascinating scientific implements, over the years — Keera finally joins the others, her happiness growing, once again, as the panther bounds toward her when she appears at the cave entrance.

Yet no amount of speculation based on what they have seen outside the cave can prepare any of the foragers for what Caliphestros and Stasi have achieve within: for the den’s appointments are almost stupefying.

“You could give our Groba a welcome lesson in the comfortable furnishing of caves, old man,” Heldo-Bah declares, throwing himself upon Caliphestros’s own large sack of goose down, but quickly getting to his feet again when the panther growls low and turns toward him. “But how did you manage it all?” the gap-toothed forager continues, joining Veloc and making no attempt, for a few moments, to dilute his amazement with sarcasm.

“Aye,” Veloc agrees. “It is achievement enough for any man, but you, wounded — nay, mutilated! — as you found yourself upon arriving here, how was it, how has it been possible?”

Caliphestros indicates the panther, and then begins to hobble toward her, feeling a most pointed confusion of heart and mind that is caused by the unprecedented sight and sounds of other humans moving about settings that have ever been his own and hers alone. “I never could have managed it without the assistance — always given ere it was ever asked — of Stasi. I should never have survived, if not for her help.”

As he reaches the panther, Caliphestros scratches behind her tall, unusually peaked ears, requesting affection and receiving, without doubt, much; but Stasi also maintains her position by Keera.

“You have made a true friend,” Caliphestros muses to the tracker, allowing the slight — and, he knows, somewhat absurd — jealousy that he feels to reveal itself plainly in the tone of his words.

“She honors me, my lord,” Keera says. “But such adversities as the two of you have conquered together must surely have marked you as forever her closest friend.”

“And here are your vaunted books, my lord,” Veloc calls, having reached one of Caliphestros’s rough-hewn shelves in the cave walls, upon which sit many of the former Second Minister of Broken’s volumes. “Even in a cave, so many — yet have they truly aided the creation of this wondrous home?”

“More than you could likely comprehend, Veloc,” the old man answers. “These are but a small part of the collection that I brought with me to Broken, and built upon during my years there. And, with a few exceptions, they were chosen because they had some relevance to my survival in this place, and to the final reckoning with Broken that I first prayed, then later hoped, and finally believed would come: hence, as you see, I have pored time and again over examinations of history and medicine, of science and war, and of the realms in which science and war merge — those of metallurgy and chemistry.”

Heldo-Bah, having detected attractive aromas emerging from a large iron pot that sits on the edge of the cookstove’s surface, has begun to lift its lid; but at these last words, he drops it noisily. “Alchemy!” he cries, glancing from Veloc to Keera quickly. “So — that is why they exiled you from Broken!”

Caliphestros only tilts his head judiciously. “If, by that ridiculous outburst, you mean to say that the rulers of the great city and its kingdom were, in the end, as superstitious, ignorant, and hostile to reason and knowledge as yourself, Heldo-Bah, then you are correct.”

“Oho!” the impertinent forager scoffs. “You call alchemy reason, do you? And attempting to transform base metals into gold is evidence of high scientific wisdom, I suppose? Tell me, then — do you also abuse yourself out in the great Wood, spending your seed into holes the ground and attempting to grow tiny men like vegetables?”†