Previously:

  Tyruc and Sareit have a conversation on his past and the nature of their world, but when Sareit asks about the mysterious Som, Tyruc has no answers.

  Two full days had passed since his battle with the jackals, yet Tyruc still moved gingerly as his shoulder, back, and sides ached despite there being no marks upon them. He used the bowl of hot water Oliette had brought him to soak washrags and clean himself, but the warmth did little to soothe his soreness.

  The morning patrol will help work out the kinks, he assured himself, but then guiltily followed with, unless I run into Sareit.

  Tyruc had spent the last two days withering under Sareit’s stare from afar as he did his level best to avoid another one-on-one conversation with her. Her parents had mercifully interrupted them just as they broached the subject of Som, much to Sareit’s frustration and Tyruc’s relief. He could not bear to face her until he could answer her lingering question, “Who is Som?”

  Since then, Tyruc stayed busy as he could while he worked on an answer.

  “Are you planning on being any help today, Asena?” Tyruc asked the air without much hope.

  Sure enough, his guardian did not reply. She had grown quieter over the days, and she flatly ignored any questions he asked about the nature of Som.

  He waited a moment longer. The herald’s presence hovered in the back of his mind but continued in her silence. With a frustrated groan, Tyruc returned to preparing for the day.

  He examined himself in the mirror atop the dresser. He had roughly shaved his beard down to a stubble, and his messy mop of hair was now a good deal shorter. Not exactly the face of a hero, he lamented.

  He dressed in the outfit laid out for him, comprised of work trousers, brown leather boots, and a new, blue tunic. The sword he had wielded during the invasion (as the townsfolk had come to refer to it) was sheathed in its ornate scabbard, and after a moment of deliberation, he strapped it across his back.

  The tunic fit him well. Its cobalt hue tickled something in his memory, echoing some location he had seen in prior days. It could have been the clear skies over H’vraan, or perhaps the sapphire waters surrounding the Middle Isles. More likely, though, was the realm of blue flames in which he had made the deal that utterly changed his life.

  “I think this is my favorite color,” he announced as he descended the stairs. The two elder Honeywillows were in the lobby, Dallor looming behind the front counter and Oliette dusting already pristine furniture.

  “It’s lovely on you,” Oliette agreed, having been the one to supply it to him. Her hand twitched toward him. “Your collar, Sir.”

  Tyruc reached up to where his collar was folded under the scabbard’s strap. He adjusted it and nodded his thanks toward her. “I wasn’t sure about bringing the sword today. Is it too much?”

  “Not at all. You look like an adventurer,” she said with a playful brandishing of her feather duster. “Folks are still pretty shaken up. It was such a kindness for you to offer to protect our town while our militia is away. Seeing our Sleeping Hero awake and patrolling around with a sword on his back makes us all feel a little more at peace.”

  When Asena suggested that Tyruc take up patrolling Bodra’s streets, his mouth had dried to a cottony aridness at the thought of being paraded through the town. But Asena’s suggestions had a way of sounding like commands, and it doubled as a perfect opportunity for avoiding Sareit.

  “Sir Tyruc, if you’d like to go through the tavern to the room in the corner,” Dallor offered, “I’ll bring you something hearty before you head out.”

  “You don’t need to go to any special trouble for me,” Tyruc said, knowing from experience what the rebuttal would be.

  “No trouble at all, Sir; head on through.”

  Tyruc nodded politely at Dallor and Oliette as he passed them, feeling their eyes follow him attentively. They both bore inscrutable expressions that left Tyruc with a lump in his throat.

  Why do they stare at me like that?

  They have cared for you every day for three years, Asena whispered. Allow them time to adjust.

  Adjust to what?

  He crossed into the spacious tavern, Dallor also entering through the service door behind the bar.

  More than a dozen patrons were scattered around the room. A man and a woman with lux features similar to Tyruc’s sat at a table in the back corner to Tyruc’s right, and a little boy played with a ragdoll while seated in the man’s lap. The woman stirred her drink absently, watching her husband and child with a small smile.

  At the curving bar to his left, three men chatted over their steaming bowls. Each was of a different tribe. One was a stocky, furred zoan Tyruc knew to be called Belfin; another was a willowy fellow with a dusty complexion, aquiline features, and pointed ears; and the last was the enormous, elderly man named Zox’ilpramis (“Zox to my friends; you’ll call me Zox, yes?”) who sported ruddy skin and a back hunched like a hilltop.

  Zox pointed a massive, gnarled finger at Dallor and rumbled, “And then I say to him, ‘You won’t get another penny from me,’ and I walked away!” His creased face cracked into a rueful smile. “By the blaze, I was back at his stall an hour later, begging for another jar of preserves.”

  His compatriots snickered. Dallor joined them with a grin, refilling their mugs with dark mead.

  “We have all been there,” the thin one commiserated. “I do believe more than half my cupboards are dedicated to the Honeywillow name.”

  Belfin took a deep swig from his mug and belched into the back of his hand in an attempt at polite manners. “Aye, and since I’ll be taking my cargo all the way to Fymtonstahd, I know I’ll only be selling a fraction of what I bought here ‘cause I can’t keep my own hands off the product. It’s positively criminal.”

  “You’re the one who came up with the idea,” Dallor reminded him without sympathy. “What did you tell me? ‘We’ll be rich, Dallor, stinking rich if you let me sell your food in Orynheim!’”

  “And those Orynian dogs have lapped up every bit of it, thank you very much,” the zoan rebutted smugly. “Give me another couple trips, and I’ll have the mongrels eating Honeywillow delicacies out of the palm of my hand.”

  The tavern stilled. Belfin looked around himself as though just realizing where he was. His companions’ humors had vanished. The child in the corner played on, but the woman now intently watched the men at the bar.

  “Belfin—” Dallor broke the silence with a grimace.

  “Dallor, it was a slip of the tongue!”

  “That’s the fifth slip this week,” the innkeeper replied.

  “But, but,” Belfin sputtered, “you know I don’t mean anything by it. I’m your business partner, your friend!”

  Dallor nodded slowly. He looked around the room until he landed on Tyruc watching from the doorway. Dallor looked at him for a long moment, then his expression shifted from chagrin to something much harder. “It’s time to head out, Belfin.”

  Belfin opened and closed his mouth several times, looking to his companions. None would meet his eyes. The thin man in particular had turned his face away with cheeks flushed.

  Several of the room’s occupants flinched when Belfin pushed himself from the bar, toppling his stool backward to clatter on the tavern floor. He marched for the door, growled the word “move,” and shouldered past Tyruc.

  They all heard Oliette greet the man in the lobby with no reply given. She entered the tavern, her brows crinkled in concern. “Is everything all right?”

  Dallor grunted. “I warned him, Oli,” was all Dallor offered in explanation, though not without another glance toward Tyruc.

  The other patrons slowly resumed their meals and conversations. Tyruc moved through the bar as unobtrusively as he could, giving tight-lipped smiles to those who looked up at him as he passed. He righted the fallen barstool, earning a stern nod of thanks from Dallor.

  Dallor loaded a tray with a piled plate and a pair of steaming mugs, then led the way to the curtained doorway in the corner. When the door past the veil would not open, he grumbled under his breath, carefully balanced the tray in one hand, and unlocked the door with a key from his apron pocket. “After you, Sir.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Tyruc entered a room which had probably once been storage and was converted into a private dining area. Four round tables, each big enough to seat six or so people, were evenly spaced around the room. Instead of plates and cups, books and parchment paper covered their tops. The entire far wall was covered by a mural of a map, small squares of paper pinned to it in various places with notes and illustrations.

  Dallor bumped the door closed behind them. “Welcome to Sareit’s ‘war room,’ as she likes to call it. Take a seat and enjoy your breakfast.”

  Tyruc cleared one of the tables of its books and papers, careful not to disturb the paperwork more than necessary as he shuffled the materials to the next table over. “Much appreciated.” As he took a seat, he asked, “Is everything all right?”

  Dallor blustered, “You mean that bit with Belfin? Yes, fine, fine.” He cleared his throat and squeezed the tray in his hands. “Actually, I’d like to explain that mess out there.” He set the tray down and took a seat next to Tyruc, motioning for him to go ahead and eat. “We have a ‘zero-tolerance policy’ here at our inn.”

  “‘Zero-tolerance’ for what?” Tyruc managed around a mouthful of food.

  “For anything like what you heard out of Belfin just now.” He cleared his throat again and continued. “After the war ended, we were flooded with recovering soldiers of all shades, both Merrosian and Orynian.”

  Tyruc swallowed. “Right. Miss Oliette told me about how she saw the first scouts arrive together.”

  “Yes, and I’m sure she made it sound like a fairytale, didn’t she?”

  Tyruc nodded.

  “Where she saw hope, I saw trouble. When they said the generals had picked Bodra to be the recovery center for all those soldiers, Oli invited them right in. Told them to use our inn as their base, and she didn’t even think about what they were really doing with us.”

  “What were they doing? Who are ‘they?’” Tyruc asked, trying but failing to keep up. He took a sip of the honeyed tea brought for him, finding an aromatic herbal note in the aftertaste.

  Focus, Tyruc.

  Dallor took a swig of steaming black liquid in the other mug he had brought for himself. “General Thadrik Morningstar and Senator Aeschos von Neias, the leaders of the Merrosian and Orynian armies respectively. They were the two who shook hands at the Final Battle’s end, the two who became the default rulers of the nations with the duchess and the king dead, and the two who decided to use Bodra as an experiment.”

  Tyruc still had not regained any memories about his part in that deal, so he asked, “An experiment?”

  “There are a number of us Bodrans who are convinced that it wasn’t just good faith that saw our town chosen for the post-war recovery. It was to see how mingling Merrosians and Orynians would work somewhere no one would care about should it all go up in flames.”

  “Miss Oliette implied that things have been fairly civil between the two nations.”

  “Optimist,” Dallor chuckled. “The thing is, if me and Oli’d had a bet on whether this whole truce thing would work out, then Oli would have won. I was convinced we were going to lose everything inviting those soldiers here. But we made it work partly because Oli was right; most folks were just relieved to not have to butcher each other anymore. Many became friends with people on the other side of the line.

  “But we also made it work because I refused to tolerate any kind of rough talk about another person’s nationality. We had to take a hard line on it, elsewise our town wouldn’t have survived. It was ugly for a while, and me and Oli lost more ‘n a few patrons and friends because we refused to let any badmouthing happen in this building.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Sareit had to reel me in a little,” Dallor admitted. “In all honesty, if I had kept throwing people out on their first offense, I would’ve had to leave, too. Having a grudge against people you’ve been told are your enemies your entire life is a hard habit to break, even if you know it’s wrong. And slips of the tongue happen even with people who are tryin’ to be better.”

  “So what did you do instead?”

  “Sareit convinced me to borrow a rule they had at the Library: three chances. Their philosophy is to let people grow from their mistakes, but if you make the same mistake three separate times, you are either unable or unwilling to learn. Seems more than fair to me.

  “Once Sareit had talked me down, I reached out to the ones I had given the boot on the first offense and invited them back, but only a handful took me up on it. Belfin was first in line and already scheming about selling our products in Orynheim.” He sighed deeply. “You know what kills me? He’s been careful. He never said anything that could be called extreme, but you saw how even simple barbs can dig into a person.”

  “Like the thin fellow at the bar with him?” Tyruc asked.

  “Aye. His name is Yuill. I wasn’t sure if you two had met yet. He’s a Forestfolk from Orynheim, and he came with the second wave of soldiers and just never left. Bodra got quite a few new residents that way.”

  “Was he injured?”

  “No, he arrived with a unit of healers sent to get the injured back on their feet. And he is one of the nicest men I’ve ever had the pleasure of serving at my bar,” Dallor said with growing heat. “And there’s that sweet family from Torv, just trying to find someplace they can get by, and then they all gotta hear a loudmouthed ape in my tavern call them ‘dogs.’”

  “Someone else’s mouth isn’t your fault,” Tyruc said.

  “I have to disagree. No one has said it to my face, but it’s common gossip around town that I play favorites when it comes to Belfin on account of us going back a ways. And I’m ashamed to admit they’d be right. I’ve let him get away with remarks like that for three years. But not today, not in front of you.”

  Dallor faced him fully, his brow furrowed as he mustered his words together. “You are a hero to us, and I don’t just mean our family. Every survivor that arrived at our inn had a story of how the Wolf Rider saved their life, how he helped Merrosians and Orynians alike, and how seeing him fight gave them the strength to stand up and live. And after seeing you face down those beasts myself the other day, I have you standing in my tavern and watching how I handle my business, my home,” his voice wavered. “Sir Tyruc, I was wrong to let Belfin keep insulting my other guests, and I was wrong to treat him differently than anyone else. You gave me the kick in the rear to put a stop to it.”

  “But I just stood there,” Tyruc protested. The weight of Dallor’s admiration crushed him. I didn’t do anything.

  It is what is being done through you, Tyruc. You are witnessing the ripples of being a Herald. Som can work even just through your willingness to be present.

  As though joining Asena in reassurance, Dallor said, “You were here when we needed you to be.” The large man stood, nodded his thanks, and exited with the tray and his empty mug.

  He is right.

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  This is going to be a point of contention, I see. Humility is a virtue, but denial is not.

  Tyruc held back his retort. If nothing else, the past several days of a divine being speaking to him in his head had proven that arguing with her was pointless. Ignoring her was much more effective.

  Once Tyruc finished his breakfast and drained the remainder of his tea, his eyes were drawn back to the map at the room’s rear. He stood to examine it more closely.

  Mountainous crags crowded the western edge, tagged with a flowing script that read “Titan’s Range.” A lush forest hugged the interior wall of the mountains, but as the forest sprawled out from the hills and across the north, the greenness died away to twisting, gray branches. On the right side of the map, a river flowed from north to south and curved in an arc around the bottom. Thusly framed, the center was dedicated to farmlands and the circular town labeled “Bodra.”

  The door to the war room creaked open behind him.

  “Has this been painted directly onto the wall?” Tyruc asked over his shoulder. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” said Sareit.

  Tyruc spun around. He had expected Dallor to have returned. I’m trapped in here with Sareit and her stare and her questions, and I still don’t have any clue who Som really is. What am I gonna do?

  Do not be so dramatic, Asena huffed. You have the answer, Tyruc. You just do not fully understand it.

  Sareit weaved through the tables and joined him by the map. “We formed the militia about a year ago, and I made this our base of operations. The jackal attacks were the main cause,” she reached up and straightened one of the pinned notes to the west near the mountain range. “but there are more troubles that just those things. I try to keep track of them and plan how we can best help.”

  Tyruc scanned the map again, primarily to appear busy. Some of the parchment notes scattered across its surface were scribbles of text, others charcoal-shaded drawings.

  Pick one, Asena whispered.

  Which one?

  Asena went silent again.

  “I hate it when she does that,” he muttered.

  “What was that?” Sareit’s hands drifted toward her robes, no doubt for her notebook and pen.

  “Nothing.”

  Even from the corner of his eye, Tyruc could see her stare darken.

  Without any inclination as to what his choice would mean, Tyruc’s eyes danced around unable to settle on any one note. After another beat, he screwed his eyes shut and thrusted his index finger toward the wall. “Ouch,” he hissed as he had misjudged the distance and poked a little too hard.

  “What are you doing?” Sareit asked incredulously. She caught her tone, then added, “Is there something you’re looking for? That’s just the middle of nowhere.”

  Indeed, his finger pressed against a grassy plain to the northeast of the Bodra township.

  Tyruc slid his finger southward to the nearest note, positioned directly east of Bodra and bordering on the Rhul River. “What’s this note about?”

  There were actually two pieces of parchment at that locale, one stacked behind the other. The one on top was filled with text, but the second had been shaded black with charcoal except for two ovals in the center. It took him a moment to realize the ovals were meant to be eyes peering out from the darkness.

  Sareit removed the paper. “This drawing was sent to us by a carrier pigeon from Zifa’s Farm. There are a handful of families out there living in a growing farming community, but we’ve heard there’s been some strange sightings. Our militia went to investigate the day before the invasion.” She locked eyes with Tyruc. “They should have returned by now, but…”

  But something is wrong. Tyruc sensed it, like the earthy scent of rain heralding a coming storm.

  New trouble erupts in Bodra when the militia returns, having barely survived a monster encounter at a nearby farmstead. It falls to Tyruc to investigate.

  S.M. Osborne's Legendarium.