[Mkguild] "Burning Time" pt. 2

[Nathan Pfaunmiller]

Part 2...

__________________________

<I>From the Journal of Vincent Lois</I>



<I>November the 23rd, in the year 707, Cristos Reckoning</I>



            Today the weather was finally clear enough for me to get out and
about once more.  For the first time in what seems like a millennium,  I was
able to wander the streets of this keep.  It is so much different now than
it was before, and the Curse is not all that has worked to make it so.  The
people I once knew in this keep are mostly gone.  Some left before the storm
hit, escaping the wrath of the Curse altogether by moving to the south.  Others
died in that same battle, fighting to the last breath to keep this keep in
the right hands.  One, I am told, went insane after being Cursed, and spent
the last four years of his life acting as though he had been born a
horse.  Others
have fallen in subsequent battles, and some few have died peacefully, a
rarity among people in such a violently contested area as the keep.



            Of the few that survive, many bear little resemblance to the
people I once knew, although their personalities are clearly the same.  The
craftsmen I once knew are almost all gone, either dead, having lost their
place of business to the effects of war, or no longer having a form that
allows them to ply their craft.  Of those, only one seems to have adjusted
well.  Instead of leaving his craft altogether, he has taken on a student,
who seems to have learned very well at the hooves of her master.



            In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the one
thing I spent my most time with is still as I left it.  The library seems to
have changed very little apart from the forms of its inhabitants.  The books
are still there, black ink scrawled across yellowing paper…  Still just as I
remember them.  Besides that, only the stones of the keep itself seem to
have remained unchanged, and even they show signs of wear.  Nothing escapes
the effects of time…



            Tomorrow I will see what might remain of the Deaf Mule.  What I
have seen of the rest of the keep does not give me much hope that it much
resembles what it was those many years ago.  Still, perhaps I may yet find
that that one thing remains somewhat unchanged.  One can only hope…



<I>Vincent Lois</I>



*                      *                      *                      *


            Lois closed his journal and sighed for a moment.  He drummed his
fingers on the tabletop beside the travel-worn book and glanced over at the
single window in his room.  He had made sure to get a room with an
accessible window in it, even though it cost a little bit more, especially
to ensure that it was a private room.  Money had long ago ceased to be an
object, however.



            He stood and walked over to the shuttered window, pulling it
open so that he could see clearly beyond.  The roofs of the nearby buildings
had already shed most of the ice from the earlier freezing rain and only a
few small streams of water remained visible, trickling between shingles and
off slanted edges, sometimes into drains, sometimes simply landing on the
street below.



            Lois reached out of his window and grabbed ahold of the exposed
beams that held the roof solid.  It felt rough, and seemed dry enough to
ensure good grip…



            He returned inside only long enough to extinguish the flame in
the lantern, and then he hefted himself up and out of the window and onto
the roof.



            Lois didn’t sleep that night.  He spent several hours sitting
out on top of the inn’s roof, thinking.  He likely got a good bit of rest
there, in all honesty, but it was fitful and separated by lines of thought
that led off into nothing.  The decisions of his past always ran through his
mind when he had any time to sit and reflect, although they were not just
his own decisions that bothered him.



            He second guessed a lot of people he had known.  Alternate
possibilities had always intrigued him, so sometimes he tried to piece
together what might have been if a few select people had chosen differently..
Unfortunately, whenever he let his mind wander in that way, it would
eventually lead back to the one person he could never reconcile in his ideas
of what the world might have been.



            He had known his father only in his younger years, but it was
not only a result of his life as an assassin that he had the gift to find
things meant to be hidden from him.  He had always had a knack for being in
the right places to overhear things, and he had never passed up an
opportunity.  Through a long string of conversations he had managed to
create a patchwork of evidence that led him to see the truth about his
father.



            The boys in his home had always teased him about his lazy
father, but Vincent Lois was nothing if not stiff-necked and stubborn.  He
refused to acknowledge any fault on his father’s part, even when the law of
the land sent him to the manor to serve as incentive for his father to pull
his weight.



            Through the long years of his stay in the manor, Lois never
missed an opportunity to go back and see the man.  He was always sitting
somewhere with a full view of his ever-empty fields, delighting himself in
nothing but sunrises, sunsets, and the maxims and “wise sayings” that he had
collected over years of listening to foreign travelers.  Lois hadn’t much
cared for the sayings, although they had a natural effect of rubbing off on
him whether he paid much attention or not.



            As the years grew on, and the pieces of conversation slowly
filled in the empty pieces, Lois had begun to realize that the claims of his
childhood tormentors and the gossip about the manor were the only logical
explanation for the strange behavior of his father.



            Lois had never worked up the courage to confront his father
about his idleness.  All he had known at that time was that, idle or not, he
wanted to be able to live with his father again.  His strong work ethic was
directly a result of that fact, but even the diligence on his part was not
enough to make up the amount of good cropland that had been wasted by his
father as each year passed.



            And then Lois’ father had died.



            Lois hadn’t accepted it when he first heard it.  He had simply
run off, disregarding any orders to the contrary, until he stood beside his
father’s bed.  He was the only one there besides his mother to shed a tear
for the man, and the same was true of the funeral.  Vincent should have been
working at the manor during the small affair, but he couldn’t find it within
himself to not be present.  By that time he was old enough to realize what
was happening and, idle or not, good father or not, he felt it was his
responsibility to be there for his father.



            It still brought no satisfaction, no ease for the pain.  He had
hoped that the dirt would bury his own sorrow as it did his father, but it
only deepened his grief.



            Lois had still never understood his connection to the man.  His
father, by all rights, had only ever spoken to him.  Whenever he needed
anything, he would call Vincent or his mother to provide for that need, yet
the young man had always felt a deep, abiding sense of loyalty to his
father.  It was such a frustratingly illogical thing; no one else in his
life had generated that sort of attachment, and, although the man’s flaws
were obvious, no one he had ever met had defied his second guessing so
thoroughly.



            What if his father had been a diligent worker?  The question had
occurred to Lois more than once, but he could never reconcile the rest of
reality with that one change.  Regardless of the hundreds of possibilities
he could think of for what may have happened if any minute detail had been
different elsewhere, the fact that his father was an idle man whose life’s
work was worth less than the cost of the food he ate was a constant, not a
variable.



            Nothing frustrated Lois more than something outside of nature
that remained constant.  Change, or at least the possibility of change, was
something that simply had to be there.  With his father, however, there was
no such possibility.



            Lois finally caught himself short in his frustrated cycle of
thoughts sometime just before dawn.  He sighed to release some tension, but
that wasn’t quite enough.  Lois stood up on the inn’s roof, stretching as he
did.  He knew one thing that would release that tension, and so he started
off at a jog, lightly letting his feet fall along the shingles of the roof,
following the slant of the roof without allowing it to affect his footing or
balance.  He jogged a lap around the rooftop to make sure his footing before
taking off with a rush, changing rooftops smoothly and without breaking
stride.


!DSPAM:4c5a38aa272691459720162!
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