บท 9: Detour
When Sarel said slimes only knew how to eat, she was not exaggerating even a little.
Defi rolled another suirberry in its direction. Turq immediately pounced on it.
He watched as, like every other suirberry it had 'eaten', the green fruit was visibly drawn inside the slime's body. The translucent nature of the mystic animal meant that Defi could see the grape slowly disintegrate and become part of the slime.
Oddly, the slime's body only ever enlarged when he was feeding it in large amounts. Once the food was digested, Turq returned to its default size. There was no waste left behind. A slime's digestion must be incredibly efficient, he mused. Surely the food was not just for survival?
Falie had allowed Turq to eat the damaged and unusable suirberries for a pittance, as most years she only used them as fertilizer and chicken feed.
She had six hecte of land planted in suirberries, and of the hundred or so quartel barrels she made into her 'wine' per harvest, most of them were speedily acquired by a mysterious buyer in the nearest river city of Ecthys.
If people were actually drinking the stuff, then Defi maintained that Ascharon's reputation as the gourmet empire was a greatly vicious lie.
In any case, for the last sennight, Turq had been steadily munching on ten kilogar of suirberry every day that Defi helped with the harvest. It was a wonder it did not just shrivel up into a raisin-Turq from the sourness. But of course the marvelous Turq was above such things; its gut was mighty, of legendary fame.
"Defi, we're going back."
Defi straightened at Falie's call, attaching his water-skin to his belt and plopping Turq on his head. Sarel said that due to the summon bond, humans in general wouldn't be subsumed to the slime's devouring appetite. The reason she had to out and say the words was a scene not to be told. In fact, Defi had forgotten it completely.
He grabbed his picking basket and jogged after Falie.
In the recent days, he had come to realize that Garun had given him an entirely different notion on how much work a harvest was. He truly had been pampered, he fumed.
The overseer had only let him work in the easy hours of the morning, and when the sun rose high had banished him to the house, reasoning that Defi must take care of his studies as well. The man had also not let him work for more than three days every week, citing holidays and feast-days and various other observances.
The cad. How much study did the man put into religious observances of the Church in order to have that much logic to use against Defi?!
He twisted his wrist viciously, dramatically. The knife freed several clusters of suirberries without harming the vine.
"Good technique," commented Falie, to his right.
"Thank you," he returned courteously. "I have found that it is all in the mindset."
Turq bounced from Defi's head to his shoulder. He smiled at it.
Oh well. It was not like Defi was truly mad at the man.
Besides, it would take five or so years for Garun to establish himself as a seller of spice with a reputation famous enough to cross an empire. Defi did not want to hold a grudge that long; the man had only been doing what must be done after all. If Defi had spent all his time on the farm, he would not have managed his studies. If his father had found that he had become a farmer in truth, Garun and the rest of slaves would've been sold away and Defi punished.
He had learned many things at that farm. The Current swirling through him, light and pure, was enough proof of that. He was grateful that the soothing warmth of the Current had followed him here, to this place where all that he knew seemed so insubstantial to everything new looming around him.
He had to get himself together. He had to, hadn't he? But, Creator have mercy, the Treachery seemed to have leeched him of strength. What conviction did he have now, what power? When he had to keep leaning on others simply to survive?
When he parted from Garun's family, he had fancied himself a traveling knight, setting out to right wrongs and find his own place in the world. The river Redelan stretched out before him, seemingly wide enough to contain the whole of civilization, a path to the glory inherent in his blood. And yet, he was here.
Here, he idled the world away.
He should be doing something. Was he not born for something great? It had been the refrain of his life from the first moment he could remember. He should be planning, plotting. His sister was still out there, as was the river captain who had robbed him, even Garun who was expecting him to become someone worthy of a future favor.
He had lost his possessions and mementos, the clothes on his back were not even his, nor were the tools in his hand and the lands he worked.
And yet, he only planned ways to extend his stay with Sarel just for her cooking, he spent hours feeding Turq suirberries that Falie took out of his already meager pay, he was not even deigning to learn the written language.
He had deliberately failed every responsibility that Ontrea told him should have been his as a noble. Was he so wretched that a near-death would have him abandon what he had been taught, the soul of his native land?
In fact, the worst thing, the thing that he could almost not bear was this:
It felt like the freest he had been in his life.
*
*
"I'm taking a detour."
"I'm the one at the reins of this thing," Defi countered. He ignored the slightly disdainful look at the insistence in keeping to land-based terminology and pushed the pole once more against the shallow gravel-filled bottom at the edge of the river. The widening of the waterway in fact indicated that they were already at the lake.
"Where I'm going is no place for a child."
He scowled, stabbed the pole into the river. "What a fortunate coincidence that there is no child in the vicinity."
"Well, I suppose both of us are detouring then."
He groaned internally. He could have stayed silent and poled this damnable scow right to the town. He nudged the watercraft in the direction Sarel indicated.
It was a house. Curiously, it was built right against the water. The wooden wall of the building was hanging over the river. A large window took up most of the upper half of the wall.
He maneuvered them parallel to the window.
Sarel leaned in. "Two of the leaf ale!"
"What?" was the answer. "Someone actually buys that garbage?"
"You want my money or not?" Sarel asked, impatience coloring her tone.
Well, she had a point. Defi had heard similar logic in a number of lessons; he'd not heard someone say it so bluntly before though.
The proprietor apparently thought her point valid as well. A couple of large two-handled cups hit the sill of the window without added words. Green liquid was immediately poured into them.
Sarel motioned him to take the other one.
"Where we're going," she said, "is a dark place, full of hidden dangers and unexpected monsters, plagues and illnesses. This is the only fortifying we'll have."
There was a low chuckle from the shade of the building. "Why not supply us instead?"
"If I thought you'd know what to do with fruit, I'd throw the things at you." Sarel tipped her cup into her mouth.
Defi leaned into the window, then over the side of the house. There was no one to be seen. He eyed his cup skeptically.
"Problem, boy?" A voice murmured.
"I don't drink mysterious brews poured by people I cannot see." It was said not quite apologetically.
He'd seen the cups filled from different containers but not the person pouring them, no way to gauge intention. In the Current, he was only a low-adept and to glean intention from nothing was an advanced technique.
There was a smattering of laughter from various places. "Where'd you get this one, Sarel?"
"People down south thought to saddle me with him," Sarel emptied her cup, lifted a brow at Defi. "We're not leaving until that's gone."
Garun's lessons came to the fore. He'd been offered something made to be drunk or eaten. Ascharon tradition would say, to not even take a sip would be rude. But precaution had kept him alive for years.
Defi took the cup and offered it to Turq, who was lounging on his shoulder. Sarel's eyes sparked in amusement, and a few of the invisible voices laughed.
The slime investigated the liquid, then stretched its body into the cup. Defi pressed his lips to the cup rim after Turq had retreated in contentment, letting the tip of his tongue touch the droplets, and then placed the cup back down, empty. The taste on his lips was a little sweet, a hint of bitterness. An ale? He made a note. It tasted interesting. "Thanks."
Sarel placed a handful of ronds, the coins with the ashy color, on the enlarged sill of the lake tavern and then they were off.
Defi waited until they were a bit further from the bank. "Down south?"
"Your accent sounds something like the mountain people there, near the southern border."
"Ah." He waited for Sarel to ask. But the woman just leaned back against the raised bow with closed eyes.
Defi poled to the Lowpool town in a slightly tense silence that was oddly comfortable.
**
Chapter End
**
*
Notes:
Hecte – a measure of land area, which in the surveying books is noted as 100x100 mar.
Quartel – a barrel-size containing 25 litr of volume.
Sennight – seven days. Literally 'seven-night'. In each of the thirteen months of the Ascharon calendar, there are exactly four sennights.
Week – in Ontrea, the equivalent of ten days.
Ale - a drink of malted grains flavored by gruit, which is a concoction of herbs, flowers, and spices
[In Earthen units, a 'litr' contains a volume the equal of 1000mL. In the same system of measures, the Ascharon 'mar' is of similar property as a 'metre'. – from the journal of the Magician of Dimensions]
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