Kared's Children - Chapter 6

To live hundreds of years wasn’t necessarily something he would have wanted, but he knew it would have been horrible to have to live that time half in lunacy. He pitied the healer and was in awe of all the old man had experienced. The body which lay unmoving inside the hut represented Kared’s history itself, made physical and real.

Damon would have liked Xeter to be well just so he could have asked him more questions. He’d always enjoyed the elderly; there was something about the calm ways they went about their lives, as though they knew what their limits were and they wanted only to live within those limits. Bedelia had been like that. She was humble and kind. Notwithstanding whatever her husband may have told her or the difficulties his wandering may have caused in her life, she always had been willing to listen and be trustworthy. She had worked hard to gain his trust. And she had gained it.

And now she was dead.

He couldn’t believe it was so. He had seen the monster that had attacked Rowan. Smelled its foul breath. He had felt his sword shatter as it bounced against the monster’s tough hide. And still he didn’t believe what he’d experienced.

His arm, still in pain, was evidence, though, that all that had happened was real. The old man’s words were evidence. That he was present, in this encampment, on this hillside, tucked somewhere far within the back hills, was evidence.

The hills really were called the Prairie Hills, because they marked the end of the Harshland, in the northern part of Kared, which once had been a prairie, and the beginning of the foothills of the Black Mountains. The mountains separated Rowan from the rest of Kared to the south. Until now, Damon never actually had been farther than a ridge or two back into the hills. He had heard stories, though, of twisting ravines and even catacombs that perhaps stretched from beneath the city up into the foothills. But he’d never paid those stories much attention. Until now.

"Until now"-the phrase kept coming back to him, to taunt him. It was as though his entire life had been a dream, and that, now, this, this dreamlike arrangement, in which he kept watch over a living body that was as one dead, was the reality.

He remembered what Xeter had told him: that much of what he had heard about Kared’s history was true. He remembered his words about the sword. The sword of Alara! It was a fantasy, a dream, a legend. But Xeter had spoken of it as though it were real, as though it were as solid as a waterskin or one of the mud bricks in his hut.

He thought of Aaron and of immortality. He wondered what it would have felt like: to know that he could live forever. He wondered what could have happened to the warrior.

But most of all he worried about the old man.

. . .

By the fourth day, Xeter’s condition had worsened. His body was drying up; Damon could pinch his skin between his fingers and it would stay upright. He still hadn’t been able to get any water down Xeter’s throat. The old man wouldn’t cough or choke or react at all when Damon tried; instead, he just would lie there, unresponsive, while the water spilled from his mouth. It was as though a plug had been placed in his throat that let no water in and no words out.