The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) Garrett Robinson (poetry books to read TXT) 📖

you met him,” said Sun. “I thought he would be just another name in a tavern, heard briefly and then never seen again. Like Elsie, who you left in Northwood. I have never heard of him in any other tale of you and the Wanderer.”

“But you had never heard of Sten either, and yet you can see how important he was,” said Albern. “None of this would have happened without Sten. Indeed, I was just some man in a tavern when first you laid eyes upon me. Yet now here we are, riding off together.”

Sun raised her eyebrows. “We are not riding anywhere together. You are riding, and I am walking.”

That made Albern laugh aloud, his voice ringing through the night to be swallowed by the trees on either side of the road. “A privilege of age. And you will not have to walk for much longer.”

“I am pleased to hear it.”

Albern smiled and shook his head. “In any case, you should never discount strangers met by chance—if, indeed, you believe in chance at all. My own thoughts on that matter are far from settled, and my opinions have changed much over the years. But the more I see in my life, the more I begin to believe that there is indeed some great pattern that binds everything together, drawing certain people closer to each other before pulling them away.

“I do not think it was chance, for instance, that brought Mag and Sten together. The moment those two met, it was as though they had been together all their lives. Sten was a simple farmer in northeastern Selvan, and Mag and I were passing through in one of those years when we served no mercenary company in particular. We only intended to stay in the town for a day or two, but then, there was Sten. We had been there almost a week before I even realized we had remained longer than we planned. And that was strange, for I had spent most of those days alone, while Mag and Sten had gone walking together. I usually only shared their company in the evenings, when we would sit and talk and drink in the way that only young people can drink, with no fear of the pain morning will bring. Yet it all seemed … right. Natural. I was traveling with Mag, and Mag belonged in that town, at that time, by Sten’s side. And so nothing seemed untoward, as far as I was concerned.

“We left the town after three weeks, and we joined another mercenary company soon afterwards. We campaigned for some months, and then we returned to northeastern Selvan—and we went back to Sten’s town while we waited for the company to get hired again. We only stayed a week that time—but the next time we returned, we were there for two. Every time the company came home, Mag and I found ourselves in that town, and Mag found herself by Sten’s side.

“Now, as I have told you already, Mag was not the sort to seek out bedfellows. She had had one or two whirlwind romances while I had known her, but they never went past a certain point. But in those early days with Sten, it never even went that far. It was as though she and Sten did not even think of each other as lovers. Rather, Mag seemed to have adopted the attitude that time spent away from Sten was simply foolish. If she had to, for our duty to the company, of course she would part from him. But given the option, she would always be with him, and that was simply the way it went.

“Not long afterwards, the company went out on one of the longest campaigns I have ever seen. Almost a year we were on the road, and Mag’s mood grew more and more dour. About six months into the campaign, Mag approached the captain and requested a leave of absence. ‘To visit family,’ she told him, but I knew full well that Mag had no living family. Of course, she told me where she was really going—she was returning to northeastern Selvan for a month, to see Sten, because she was worried how he was getting on.

“The captain was loath to let her leave, but he did it anyways. Mag was gone for three weeks, and then she returned. In some ways, it seemed as though a great weight had lifted from her shoulders, and she joked more often and laughed more readily. But I could tell she was troubled, and when she thought no one was looking, I caught her staring into the distance, her expression one of deep thought.

“At last I approached her. ‘Mag,’ I said. ‘Something happened while you were gone. Would you spit it out and tell me, so that I can stop worrying about you?’

“She looked entirely confused. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘I am the same as I have always been.’

“‘May the dark take me if that is true,’ I said. ‘You seem relieved ever since you visited Sten, but it also seems as if something else troubles you. Why are you upset?’

“‘I am not upset,’ she assured me. ‘Though I suppose you are right that something has bothered me. But it is not my own sadness—it is Sten’s. He was happy to see me, of course. But something weighed on him, and no matter how I asked, he would not tell me what was wrong. There was a great sadness in his eyes when I left him, and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since.’

“Then I laughed at her, laughed long and loud. ‘Mag, you are the greatest warrior I have ever known,’ I told her. ‘And you are also the greatest idiot. Sten is troubled because he loves you with all of his heart. And judging by the fact that you took leave to go visit him—when you have never taken leave in all the years I