Chapter 5: Five

It was another dreary day. The clouds were low and heavy, and sleet fell almost horizontally, blown by the strong mountain winds. Sarah stared out of the water-streaked windows which overlooked the town’s main street below, glad she was dry and indoors.

“See anything?” John asked from the bed.

“No,” Sarah replied tiredly, “nobody’s out in this weather.”

“It must have been three days since we’ve seen the sun,” John groused.

A smile crept across Sarah’s face. “I thought you said you never wanted to leave this room.”

It had taken them almost four days to reach Parindale, which to their surprise, was a mining town in the northern mountains of Mithria, and home to a sizable dwarf population. They had arrived at the Motherlode Inn cold, exhausted, and flush with money.

They hired the best room, posing, as they often did, as brother and sister. Unlike the busybodies in the central regions, the innkeeper seemed to take their story at face value. The inn itself was far more lavish than either were accustomed to with down beddings and soft linen sheets and to their surprise, human-sized furniture. There was a luxurious sofa and the nook from which Sarah watched the street and where they could take their meals in the privacy of their own room.

John let off an annoyed sigh. “It’s not natural for humans to be cooped up indoors for this long. Where is he?”

“He said he needed a few days,” Sarah sighed as she twirled a lock of her hair around her finger, “perhaps we should have pressed him for a firmer timeline.”

She was greeted with silence. She glanced over at John who was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“Why do you suppose we’re here?” Sarah ventured, “we’re a long way from Corrington.”

John’s reply was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Oh, that must be dinner,” Sarah beamed. She leapt to her feet and ran to the door. She wasn’t hungry. Dinner time signalled the end of her shift on watch, and she was looking forward to falling into her soft, seemingly bottomless bed.

She opened the door and saw a tray bearing two plates of sausages, mash, gravy, and boiled vegetables.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling broadly. When she attempted to take the tray, she noticed that it was being held by a stocky dwarf sporting a rich black beard instead of the usual chubby human barmaid. She looked up and gasped.

“John,” she said, “he’s here.”

“Making yourselves comfortable, I see,” Grimald grinned as he let himself in. He let off a low whistle as he inspected their room, “very comfortable.”

“What took you so long?” John demanded.

“There’s a lot of moving parts with a job as big as this,” Grimald pointed out, as he set their dinner down on the table, “and a lot of things to set into motion.”

He paused and stared at Sarah from under his bushy eyebrows before adding, “and you two left quite the mess with the Temple of Agni back in Woodhop.”

Sarah turned red.

“Aren’t there a lot of dwarves who worship Agni?” John asked suspiciously.

“There are, you’re right,” Grimald grinned, “but me, I worship Jord, the stone mother, like a good dwarf of Vilnerg.”

“So, what are we doing here?” Sarah asked.

“We’re here to recruit our final member,” Grimald replied as he sank into an easy chair. He looked at the fireplace and his eyes widened, “ooh, a real fireplace. Do you mind if I light it?”

John shrugged as he sat across from Sarah at the nook. “Help yourself.”

He tucked into his supper as Grimald fussed with the fireplace. Soon, a fire was crackling and the room warmed up.

“Are you going to tell us why we’re here?” Sarah asked. The job had been gnawing at her. She knew all too well that nothing came free in this world, and certainly not from Roldo. If this job was paying so well, it had to be very dangerous indeed.

“We’re here to recruit the final member of our little party,” Grimald replied as he watched the fire dance with satisfaction.

Sarah’s eyebrows soared. “It’s only going to be the four of us?”

The dwarf nodded. “Discretion is key in this little endeavour.”

“So who is he and what is he doing in a dump like this?” John asked.

“Dump he says,” Grimald sniffed, looking at their luxurious surroundings, “we may be out in the middle of nowhere, but this town is rich, make no mistake. The value of the veins in these mountains is enough to make even my whiskers curl.”

“Is the person we’re recruiting wealthy?” Sarah ventured.

Grimald laughed. “Goodness no.”

He fell silent as he watched the fire for a spell. After a minute or two, he blinked and walked to the door. “It’s a little late now. We’ll go look for him tomorrow.”

He paused at the door and looked at John and Sarah in turn. “Don’t tire yourselves out tonight, we have a long day tomorrow.”

John turned red. “We’re not like that!”

Grimald laughed and closed the door behind him while Sarah hid a smile. “You shouldn’t let him rile you up so easily.”

“Everyone we meet seems to have their minds in the gutter,” John huffed, “what’s wrong with them?”

“They just don’t understand us,” Sarah smiled as she sat at the table across from John. She reached out and held his hand in hers.

John looked at her and the irritation vanished from his face. “This job,” he remarked, calm now, “it could be the last one we need to do.”

A sly grin crossed Sarah’s face. “Oh?”

“Wouldn’t it?” John asked, looking confused, “the money on offer is more than my old man ever saw in his lifetime.”

“I thought we promised to return as renown adventurers,” Sarah laughed, “not the wealthiest people the town had ever seen.”

John fell silent as he stared out of the window, lost in his own thoughts as Sarah began to eat. At length, John looked back at her and asked, “aren’t you ready to return?”

“You were the one insisting on the promise,” Sarah reminded him, “I was and am ready to spend my life with you.”

She paused and felt her cheeks colour at what she’d just said, and then powered through it, “however, I am not ready to settle down in one place just yet.”

She looked John in his deep brown eyes and continued, “if you will recall, you also promised to show me the world, Jonathan Stadley. That is one promise I intend to hold you to.”

John was the son of a stonemason. His father had turned to drink after his wife died giving birth to him and had died penniless when John was six, forcing the young boy to make a living doing odd jobs around town. The town of Golton was small and young John had supplemented his meagre income with petty theft. Sarah, on the other hand, was the fourth daughter of a builder. Her family was one of the most respectable in town, but she had been a clumsy and plain-looking child, and therefore largely ignored by her parents who had their hands full raising seven children while running their business, which left her largely free to roam the streets and make befriend the young street urchin.

As their relationship blossomed, so did John’s insecurities about his upbringing. He had convinced her to set out on a life of adventure, and he, who had declared, very publicly to her parents, that he would return to them, as an adventurer of great renown and ask them for her hand in marriage. Her parents, on the other hand, while fairly indifferent towards their daughter, agreed, so long as he promised that he would be able to provide for her. And so they had set off from the sleepy town of Golton to make their names and fortune.

Sarah smiled to herself. There had been plenty of hard times, but she would not have traded them for anything in the world. If not for John, she would still be stuck in Golton, probably married off in some arranged marriage to someone she didn’t know or care about. John for his part was determined to fulfil his promise before advancing their relationship. Sarah knew how men were with their pride and was content to wait for him to feel worthy enough. They were still young, after all.

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“And it is one I intend to keep, my lady,” John said with a debonair smile.

Sarah smiled warmly before turning serious. “I’m worried about this job.”

“So am I,” John said, “but we haven’t much of a choice, have we?”

“What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

“There’s a lot of money at stake and we’ve already spent some of it,” John replied.

“Part of that was for the last job,” Sarah pointed out, “we could just return the rest…”

“You know what Roldo is like,” John scowled, “but that aside… it’s not going to be easy for us to find work if we go somewhere new.”

“What makes you say that?”

John gave her a looked at her for a moment before sighing, “now that those Agni fanatics are aware of you, they’re going to have the eyes and ears sharpened for any news of a girl with blue fire. There aren’t many of them at the moment here in the Four Kingdoms, but you can bet they’ll be converging from all over soon.”

“Does that mean my adventuring days are over?” Sarah asked quietly.

John shook his head and took her hands in his. “No, once we do this job and get paid, we’ll be able to go adventuring on our own terms. No fighting, just seeing the world.”

Sarah didn’t think it would be that easy but allowed herself to believe John’s words. “Won’t that be nice,” she said dreamily.

“Perhaps we could explore Effulian,” John continued, “there can’t be many of Agni’s worshippers there.”

“The great elven kingdom?” Sarah grinned broadly, “you’re only suggesting that because you’re obsessed with elves.”

“That may be part of the reason,” John admitted, “but they and Agni worshippers don’t exactly get along.”

“I suppose you have a point there,” Sarah conceded, “however, I don’t think the elves will be too amused to find Agni’s Chosen in their lands.

The elves, by and large, were worshippers of Varuna, the god of water and nature. There was said to be animosity between Varuna and Agni, the god of fire and war. The perceived rivalry between the gods had caused several wars in the past between the kingdoms of the elves and the dwarves, who largely worshipped Agni and Jord, the goddess of stone and earth.

Sarah recalled a book she read detailing the legendary wars where Chosen fought Chosen in battles so titanic that they turned mountain ranges into seas. Ultimately, they had been so ruinous that the two gods themselves had descended onto the mortal plane through the Chosen and demanded peace between their worshippers. However, such grudges were not so easily forgotten, especially amongst the immortal elves. To this day, an uneasy truce existed where the worshippers of Agni and Varuna largely stayed out of one another’s way.

John smiled, “we’d just better make sure you don’t get discovered then.”

“So it will be a holiday?” Sarah ventured.

John shrugged. “It could be. The money will give us the freedom to decide that when we’re there, won’t it?”

Sarah turned serious. “So you’re dead set on going through with this job?”

John nodded.

“We don’t even know what we have to do,” Sarah protested.

John looked down at his empty plate and scowled. “we might never get another chance like this again.”

“Promise me, John,” Sarah said, “promise me that we back out if it gets too dangerous.”

“And what will we do about Roldo and his gold?” John asked.

“We can worry about that when the time comes,” Sarah said, “I don’t like this, John. Grimald hasn’t asked for a commitment from us yet either, which worries me even more.”

John took a deep breath. “I’ll make you a deal. Grimald is a cautious dwarf. If he backs out of this job, so do we.”

Sarah brightened. “Yes, that sounds reasonable.”

“So, we do this job, then Effulian?” John ventured, trying to keep the hope from his face.

“We’ll see,” Sarah laughed, “but yes, I would very much like to explore the land of the elves. It sounds like a wonderful place, though I have heard they’re not very welcoming to outsiders, particularly not humans.”

She then stifled a yawn. “It will be grand to get a full night’s sleep.”

John nodded. “It does seem a little silly to have stayed up through the night waiting for him now.”

“You were the one who insisted upon it,” Sarah pointed out.

“What’s a little lost sleep when so much gold is at stake?” John asked defensively.

Sarah walked over to her bed and sank into it, feeling very content. A good night’s sleep, one last job and then they could spend the rest of their lives exploring the world together.

“Who do you think we’re meeting tomorrow?” she asked sleepily.

“I think he’ll be a fighter,” John said, but she didn’t hear the reply, having already drifted off to sleep.

 

“Time is running out. Give yourself to me!”  the familiar voice boomed.

Sarah opened her eyes and found herself lying on a stone before the altar. The statue of Agni seemed to be glaring at her from atop his warhorse.

“I have already told you, my life is my own!” Sarah roared defiantly.

“The son of the night is coming,” the disembodied voice warned, “shirk your duties and you risk losing everything!”

“Choose someone else!” Sarah cried, “I have no desire to be your Chosen!”

“Fool!” the room burst into flames as the voice roared, “the die is cast. Your fate is set. There is no changing it now!”

“No!” she cried, “I will live my life on my own terms!”

“Then the boy will be the first to suffer,” the voice warned.

The flames went out abruptly, plunging her into darkness. Sarah woke up and sat upright. Her face was bathed in sweat. She looked around the room and to her relief, John was asleep in the next bed, breathing softly.

The dreams were becoming more real. And more urgent. Was she doing the right thing in ignoring them and pursuing her own desires? She looked at John and decided that she didn’t care if what she was doing was right. She had no interest in getting entangled with the destinies of gods. She had asked for no part in that.

What if Agni refused to grant her His power as punishment for not submitting? Her power. Or his? The pit where Tom had died flashed in her mind and a wave of guilt engulfed her. Despite what Grimald and John said, she knew she was responsible for his death. Had it been avoidable? Could they have escaped the orcs if she hadn’t used her fire? Would she be able to use it again? The questions nagged at her, denying her sleep, and before she knew it, the sun began to shine faintly through the gaps in the curtains.

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