The Warded Man

Ragen was quiet a long time. “Look, Lissa,” he said finally. “I know how upset you’ve been that you haven’t gotten pregnant …”

“Don’t you dare bring that into this!” Elissa growled.

“Arlen is not your son!” Ragen shouted. “No amount of smothering will ever make it so! He is our guest, not our child!”

“Of course he’s not our child!” Elissa shouted. “How could he be when you’re out delivering ripping letters whenever I cycle?”

“You knew what I was when you married me,” Ragen reminded her.

“I know,” Elissa replied, “and I’m realizing that I should have listened to my mother.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ragen demanded.

“It means I can’t do this anymore,” Elissa said, starting to cry. “The constant waiting, wondering if you’ll ever come home; the scars you claim are nothing. The praying that the scant few times we make love will conceive before I’m too old. And now, this!

“I knew what you were when we married,” she sobbed, “and I thought I had learned to handle it. But this … Ragen, I just can’t bear the thought of losing you both. I can’t!”

A hand rested on Arlen’s shoulder, giving him a start. Margrit stood there, a stern look on her face. “You shouldn’t be listening to this,” she said, and Arlen felt ashamed for his spying. He was about to leave when he caught the Messenger’s words.

“All right,” Ragen said. “I’ll tell Arlen he can’t come, and stop encouraging him.”

“Really?” Elissa sniffled.

“I promise,” Ragen said. “And when I get back from Harden’s Grove,” he added, “I’ll take a few months off and keep you so fertilized that something can’t help but grow.”

“Oh, Ragen!” Elissa laughed, and Arlen heard her fall into his arms.

“You’re right,” Arlen told Margrit. “I had no right to listen to that.” He swallowed the angry lump in his throat. “But they had no right to discuss it in the first place.”

He went up to his room and began packing his things. Better to sleep on a hard pallet in Cob’s shop than in a soft bed that came at the cost of his right to make his own decisions.

For months, Arlen avoided Ragen and Elissa. They stopped by Cob’s shop often to see him, but he was not to be found. They sent servants to make overtures, but the results were the same.

Without use of Ragen’s stable, Arlen bought his own horse and practiced riding in the fields outside the city. Mery and Jaik often accompanied him, the three of them growing closer. Mery frowned upon the practice, but they were all still young, and the simple joy of galloping a horse about the fields drove other feelings away.

Arlen worked with increasing autonomy in Cob’s shop, taking calls and new customers unsupervised. His name became known in warding circles, and Cob’s profits grew. He hired servants and took on more apprentices, leaving the bulk of their training to Arlen.

Most evenings, Arlen and Mery walked together, taking in the colors of the sky. Their kisses grew hungrier, both wanting more, but Mery always pulled away before it went too far.

“You’ll be done with your apprenticeship in another year,” she kept saying. “We can marry the next day, if you wish, and you can ravish me every night from then on.”

One morning when Cob was away from the shop, Elissa paid a visit. Arlen, busy talking to a customer, didn’t notice her until it was too late.

“Hello, Arlen,” she said when the customer left.

“Hello, Lady Elissa,” he replied.

“There’s no need to be so formal,” Elissa said.

“I think informality confused the nature of our relationship,” Arlen replied. “I don’t want to repeat the error.”

“I’ve apologized again and again, Arlen,” Elissa said. “What will it take for you to forgive me?”

“Mean it,” Arlen answered. The two apprentices at the workbench looked at one another, then got up in unison and left the room.

Elissa took no notice of them. “I do,” she said.

“You don’t,” Arlen replied, gathering some books from the counter and moving to put them away. “You’re sorry that I overheard, and took offense. You’re sorry that I left. The only thing you’re not sorry about is what you did, making Ragen refuse to take me.”

“It’s a dangerous trip,” Elissa said carefully.

Arlen slammed down the books, and met Elissa’s eyes for the first time. “I’ve made the trip a dozen times in the last six months,” he said.

“Arlen!” Elissa gasped.

“I’ve been to the Duke’s Mines, as well,” Arlen went on. “And the South Quarries. Everywhere within a day of the city. I’ve made my circles, and the Messengers’ Guild’s been courting me ever since I gave them my application, taking me wherever I want to go. You’ve accomplished nothing. I won’t be caged, Elissa. Not by you, not by anyone.”

“I never wanted to cage you, Arlen, only to protect you,” Elissa said softly.

“That was never your place,” Arlen said, turning back to his work.

“Perhaps not,” Elissa sighed, “but I only did it because I care. Because I love you.”

Arlen paused, refusing to look at her.

“Would it be so bad, Arlen?” Elissa asked. “Cob isn’t young, and he loves you like a son. Would it be such a curse to take over his shop and marry that pretty girl I’ve seen you with?”

Arlen shook his head. “I’m not going to be a Warder, not ever.”

“What about when you retire, like Cob?”

“I’ll be dead before then,” Arlen said.

“Arlen! What a terrible thing to say!”

“Why?” Arlen asked. “It’s the truth. No Messenger keeps working and manages to die of old age.”

“But if you know it’s going to kill you, then why do it?” Elissa demanded.

“Because I’d rather live a few years knowing I’m free than spend decades in a prison.”

“Miln is hardly a prison, Arlen,” Elissa said.

“It is,” he insisted. “We convince ourselves that it’s the whole world, but it isn’t. We tell ourselves that there’s nothing out there we don’t have here, but there is. Why do you think Ragen keeps messaging? He has all the money he could ever spend.”

“Ragen is in service to the duke. He has a duty to do the job, because no one else can.”

Arlen snorted. “There are other Messengers, Elissa, and Ragen looks at the duke like he was a bug. He doesn’t do it out of loyalty, or honor. He does it because he knows the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That there’s more out there than there is in here,” Arlen said.

“I’m pregnant, Arlen,” Elissa said. “Do you think Ragen will find that somewhere else?”

Arlen paused. “Congratulations,” he said at last. “I know how much you wanted it.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“I suppose you’ll expect Ragen to retire, then. A father can’t risk himself, can he?”

“There are other ways to fight demons, Arlen. Every birth is a victory against them.”

“You sound just like my father,” Arlen said.

Elissa’s eyes widened. As long as she had known Arlen, he’d never spoken of his parents.

“He sounds like a wise man,” she said softly.

She’d said the wrong thing. Elissa knew it immediately. Arlen’s face hardened into something she had never seen before; something frightening.

“He wasn’t wise!” Arlen shouted, throwing a cup of brushes to the floor. It shattered, sending inky droplets everywhere. “He was a coward! He let my mother die! He let her die …” His face screwed up into an anguished grimace, and he stumbled, clenching his fists. Elissa rushed to him, not knowing what to do or say, only knowing that she wanted to hold him.

“He let her die because he was scared of the night,” Arlen whispered. He tried to resist as her arms encircled him, but she held on tightly as he wept.

She held him a long time, stroking his hair. Finally, she whispered, “Come home, Arlen.”

Arlen spent the last year of his apprenticeship living with Ragen and Elissa, but the nature of their relationship had changed. He was his own man now, and not even Elissa tried to fight it any longer. To her surprise, her surrender only brought them closer. Arlen doted on her as her belly grew, he and Ragen scheduling their excursions so that she was never alone.

Arlen also spent a great deal of time with Elissa’s Herb Gatherer midwife. Ragen said a Messenger needed to know something of a Gatherer’s art, so Arlen sought plants and roots that grew beyond the city walls for the woman, and she taught him something of her craft.

Ragen stayed close to Miln in those months, and when his daughter, Marya, was born, he hung up his spear for good. He and Cob spent that entire night drinking and toasting.

Arlen sat with them, but he stared at his glass, lost in thought.

“We should make plans,” Mery said one evening, as she and Arlen walked to her father’s house.

“Plans?” Arlen asked.

“For the wedding, goose,” Mery laughed. “My father would never let me marry an apprentice, but he’ll speak of nothing else once you’re a Warder.”

“Messenger,” Arlen corrected.

Mery looked at him for a long time. “It’s time to put your trips aside, Arlen,” she said. “You’ll be a father soon.”

“What has that got to do with it?” Arlen asked. “Lots of Messengers are fathers.”

“I won’t marry a Messenger,” Mery said flatly. “You know that. You’ve always known.”

“Just as you’ve always known that’s what I am,” Arlen replied. “Yet here you are.”

“I thought you could change,” Mery said. “I thought you could escape this delusion that you’re somehow trapped, that you need to risk your life to be free. I thought you loved me!”

“I do,” Arlen said.

“But not enough to give this up,” she said. Arlen was quiet.

“How can you love me and still do this?” Mery demanded.

“Ragen loves Elissa,” Arlen said.

“It’s possible to do both.”

“Elissa hates what Ragen does,” Mery countered. “You said so yourself.”

“And yet they’ve been married fifteen years,” Arlen said.

“Is that what you condemn me to?” Mery asked. “Sleepless nights alone, not knowing if you’ll ever come back? Wondering if you’re dead, or if you’ve met some minx in another city?”

“That won’t happen,” Arlen said.

“You’re corespawned right it won’t,” Mery said, as tears began to flow down her cheeks. “I won’t let it. We’re done.”

“Mery, please,” Arlen said, reaching out to her, but she drew back, evading his grasp.

“We have nothing more to say.” She whirled and ran off toward her father’s house.