Nicci felt her shoulder muscles tense, and she braced herself. Bannon spoke in a bleak voice, as if he no longer had any emotion in the memory. “After he drowned the kittens and came back to our cottage, my mother was ready for him. She’d had enough. After all the pain and suffering and fear he had inflicted on her, the murder of those poor innocent kittens was the last straw for her. When he staggered through the door, my mother was waiting.
“I saw the scene afterward, and I guessed what happened. As soon as he entered the house, she held a loose oak axe handle like a warrior’s mace. She attacked my father, struck him in the head, screaming at him. She nearly succeeded, but it was only a glancing blow, enough to draw blood, perhaps crack his skull—and certainly enough to make his anger erupt.
“In a futile effort, she tried to hurt him, maybe even kill him. But my father snatched the oak handle from her hands, tore it right out of her grip, whirled around—” Bannon swallowed. “And he beat her to death with it.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“By the time I came home from burying the kittens, she was already dead. He had smashed her face so that I couldn’t recognize her, couldn’t even see the usual parts of a face at all. Her left eye had been pulped, and broken shards of skull protruded upward, exposing brain. Her mouth was just a ragged hole, and teeth lay scattered around, some of them pounded into the soft meat of her face, like decorations.…”
His voice grew softer, shakier. “My father came for me with the bloody, splintered axe handle, but I had nothing to defend myself with, not even a sword. I threw myself on him nevertheless, howling. I … I don’t even remember it. I hit him, clawed at him, pounded at his chest.
“This time the neighbors had heard my mother’s screams, worse than ever before, and they rushed in only moments after I arrived. They saved me, or else my father would have killed me, too. I was screaming, trying to fight, trying to hurt him. But they pulled me away and subdued him. By that time, most of the fight had gone out of my father. Blood covered his face, his clothes, and his hands. Some from the gash on his scalp where my mother had struck him, but most of the blood belonged to her.
“Someone had raised the alarm, and one goodwife sent her little boy running to town to get the magistrate.” Bannon sucked in a succession of breaths and kneaded his fingers as he stared like a lost soul into the small campfire before he could continue. Overhead, a night bird cried out and took flight from one of the pine trees.
“I couldn’t save the sack of kittens. I couldn’t prevent my father from drowning them, but I ran after him, nevertheless. I waded into the stream and tried to catch them before it was too late. But I always knew it would be too late, and when they were dead I wasted precious time burying them and crying over them … when I could have been there to save my mother.”
He looked up at his listeners, and the empty pain in his hazel eyes struck a deep chill even in Nicci’s heart.
“If I had stayed with my mother, maybe I could have protected her. If I hadn’t gone chasing after the kittens, I would have been there. I would have stood up to him. I would have saved her. She and I would have faced him together. The two of us could have driven him off somehow. After that night, my father never would have hurt me again. Or her.
“But I went to save the kittens instead. I left my mother behind to face that monster all by herself.”
Bannon stood up again, brushed off his pants. He spoke as if he were merely delivering a scout’s report. “I stayed at Chiriya long enough to see my father hanged for murder. By then, I had a few coins, and out of sympathy other villagers gave me money to live on. I could have had a little cottage, started a family, worked the cabbage fields. But the house smelled too much like blood and nightmares, and Chiriya held nothing for me.
“So I signed aboard the next ship that came into our little harbor—the Wavewalker. I left my home, never intending to go back. What I wanted was to find a better place. I wanted a life the way I imagined it.”
Nathan said, “So you’ve been changing your memories, covering up the darkness with fantasies of how you thought your life should be.”
“With lies,” Nicci said.
“Yes, they’re lies,” Bannon said. “The real truth is … poison. I was just trying to make everything better. Was that wrong?”
Nicci was sure now that Bannon Farmer had a good heart. In his mind, and in the way he described his old lie to others, the young man was struggling to make the world into a place it would never be.
When the wizard placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, Bannon flinched as if in a sudden flashback of his father striking him. Nathan didn’t remove his hand, but tightened his grip, like an anchor. “You’re with us now, my boy.”
Nodding, Bannon smeared the back of his hand across his face, wiping away the tears. He straightened his shoulders and responded with a weak smile. “I agree. That’s good enough.”
Even Nicci rewarded him with an appreciative nod. “You may have more steel in you than I thought.”
CHAPTER 35
Rain and gloom set in for the next four days as they traveled higher into the mountains. The mornings were filled with fog, the days saturated with drizzle, and the nights accompanied by a full downpour. Low-hanging clouds and dense dripping trees kept them from seeing far into the distance, and they could not gauge the high and rugged mountains ahead of them. Eventually, Nicci knew they would find the high point and look down into the lush valley that lay between them and Kol Adair.
Nicci walked along wrapped in a gray woolen cloak the Lockridge innkeeper had given her, which was drenched and heavy. Bannon and Nathan were just as miserable, and the sodden gloom weighed on them as heavily as the young man’s reticence.
On the fifth night out of Lockridge, the downpour increased and the temperature dropped to a bone-penetrating wet cold. Nicci was pleased to find a thick wayward pine, a pyramid-shaped tree with dense, drooping boughs. For those travelers who knew how to identify them, wayward pines formed a solid, reliable shelter in the forest. Richard had shown her how to find and use them.
Nicci shook the long-needled branches to disperse the collected beads of rainwater, then lifted the bough aside to reveal a dark and cozy hollow within. “We’ll sleep here.”
The wizard found a comfortable spot inside under the low overhanging branches. “Now, if you could just find some roasted mutton and a tankard of ale, Sorceress, we’d have a fine night.”
Bannon sat with his knees pulled up against his chest, still withdrawn.
“Be satisfied with what I’ve already provided,” Nicci said. She did use her magic to light a small fire inside the shelter, and the crisp greenwood smoke curled up into the slanted boughs and away from them. Because they were soaked and cold, Nicci also released more magic to dry the moisture in their clothes, so that for the first time in days they actually felt warm and comfortable.
“I can tolerate unpleasant conditions,” she explained, “but not when I don’t have to. We need our strength and a good rest. There’s no telling how far we have yet to go.”