9.) “Why are you really doing this?” Marston asked. “Favory has
been pestering me for an answer, and I must admit I am equally curious.”
The lady in question was riding in the pilgrim’s cart just ahead
of us, her red stallion tied to the back. Laughter filtered back to us, and I
could almost gauge the progression of the seduction by the sound.
Marston sat next to me on the apple cart. The contraption groaned
under the weight of two men, even though Marston was not a large man. Hobson
the carpenter had done his best, but the wood wasn’t sturdy and threatened to collapse
every time it went over a bump in the road. I did not know then that it would,
imbued with the spirit of Seed, outlast every other conveyance.
“Remind me to never let Toug ride with me,” I said, as the cart
let out an alarming creak.
“What is this thing?” Marston asked, reaching over and peeling a
large sprinter from the dash. “It looks ill-prepared for a long journey. Is
this crabapple wood?”
“It is symbolic,” I said. “Honoring Moregone’s proudest
creation.”
“You are not the symbolic nor the honoring type,” Marston said.
“So what are you really intending?” His emerald green eyes bore into me,
seeming to strip away all pretenses.
Marston could not help being honest, despite his profession as a
thief. Once, as I stood watch outside a depository while he broke into the
safe, the Prince’s constabulary braced me. I was in the midst of an elaborate
explanation when Marston emerged, carrying a suspiciously clanky bag over his
shoulder.
“What do you have there?”
“I believe these are your wages for the month,” Marston said with
a flat voice.
The fight that ensued was equally honest and blunt. Fortunately,
we were the victors, but I made sure that I had Marston’s promise of muteness
every job thereafter.
“Marston…have you ever wondered where I came from? You were but a
boy when I first met you. Do I appear to have changed in the slightest?”
“I’ve always known you are witchy,” Marston said, shrugging his
shoulders.
“But you have never asked for the particulars. Don’t you find
that strange?”
“Not really. If I asked everyone for the particulars of their
past it would never end?”
I snorted in exasperation. “You are just like every other citizen
of the Thirteen Principalities.”
He shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do not.”
“I shall prove it to you with a single question. What lies beyond
the Shield Mountains?”
“What?”
“It a reasonable question. The mountains are not overly tall, and
even from here I can see gaps in them. They shouldn’t be hard to cross. So why
has no one in living memory done so?”
“I…I don’t know,” Marston said. It was more of an answer than I
usually got. Most often the person would simply change the subject as if the
question had never been asked.
I took a long breath. I’d probably told Marston this story
before. Eventually I told everyone I knew, and eventually everyone forgot I’d
told them. “I know the mountains are not
impassible because long ago I crossed over them.”
Marston looked ready to challenge me, but then his innate honesty
took hold. He kept his silence, and even more impressive, he still looked me in
the eye
“I was not born in the Thirteen Principalities, Marston. I am a
stranger here, even after all the centuries I’ve been here. Three times I have
seen the Mirror God erase the past; three times this land has started over. It
wasn’t always the Thirteen Principalities. Once it was called Stronghold, ruled
by a single king. Before that it was what was called a democracy, with each
province, down to the smallest hamlet, ruling themselves.
“But the citizens of this land just went on, unaware that
anything had changed.”
Marston absorbed this information, shaking his head as if he
didn’t believe it. But again he surprised me.
“But you remember?”
“So I thought—so I congratulated myself each time, and yet… I’ve begun
to realize there are gaps in my memory. There are things I should remember that
slip away when I reach for them. The Mirror God is slowly erasing everything I
was.”
“They who forget, shall
also remember,” Marston intoned. For a thief, he was strangely devout; perhaps
the root of his honesty. “The Mirror God is forgiving,”
“The Mirror God is a son of a bitch.”
Surprisingly, Marston laughed. I don’t think I’d ever heard him
laugh before. It was like gravel grinding.
“I have almost forgotten my homeland, but I have vague memories
of things that seem like magic to me now. Carriages without horses, light that
doesn’t burn, even conveyances that fly through the air. While the Mirror God
keeps this land in childhood the world outside progresses. The Mirror God has
hidden us in reflections, in the shadows and corners of mirrors, so that we
have been forgotten even as we forget.”
“Why have you not tried to leave before?” Marston asked.
“I believe…I suspect I have. I think perhaps on my way to doing
so, I got distracted.”
Again Marston laughed. “Why will this time be different?”
Of course, Marston asked the honest question, the one I’d been
avoiding.
“I think the Mirror God forgot about Moregone—or perhaps more
importantly, Moregone has forgotten the Mirror God--and that is why is has
disappeared. Moregone was always the most practical and least romantic of the
principalities. Also the least devout. It is what attracted me to it in the
first place. While the rest of the principalities vie for supremacy, Moregone
gets on with the practicalities of living. They can’t be bothered with “magic,”
which they consider to be unreliable. The last time I was there they had built
a machine that picked crabapples and another that cultivated their fields of
artichokes.
“In other words, Moregone has progressed and is now in a state of
limbo, neither part of the Thirteen Principalities nor of the outside world….
If left alone long enough, I believe the Eleventh Principality will be
forgotten completely, and the inhabitants of this land will believe there are
Twelve Principalities and always have been.”
“If that is what the Mirror God wants then…” Marston began.
I interrupted him. “Quite the opposite. My sudden inspiration to
investigate was not my own. When I told Prince Cambral that I intended to
detour around the Shield Mountains, he didn’t blink an eye. Nor have any of the
rest of you questioned it. The Mirror God wants us to look, to remind the
people of Moregone that it is one of the principalities, and to pull it back.”
Marston was silent for a long time. “This must all be true.
Because how else could I be thinking it? What is your intention, Evard?”
“To find Moregone and to help its people to forget the Thirteen
Principalities ever existed.”