The Belromanticum

Chapter 10

Real life does not fit easily into such concepts asvolumes. Yet in transcribing life into a chronicle such as this one, certain allowances must be made. Certain conventions, ideas, organizational shortcuts. The following vignette, though undeniably less significant in the shape of the world, has outsized importance to my life. If my life is a chronicle, this is the final chapter of the first volume.

I place the ending here, and not slightly further down the road, as this feels like the end of my youth. There is no single moment I truly stopped being the apprentice at Thunderhead and became the mage known across this world. This is as close to such an event as I can come.

This is also the precipice of the dark times. Those who know my history know what comes next. That damnable war and my long exile were thunderclouds on the horizon as yet unglimpsed. That is not to say there weren't moments of joy, places where the sun peeked through these stormy skies. Meeting my Sarakiel, the sight of the Turquoise Sea at sunset, and my first wedding in far Kharsoom were but a few examples, but the next volume is one of darkness and loss.

I left Iarveiros behind, a weight on my shoulders and a melancholy in my heart that I could not yet name. Ellisyr's sword hung heavy on my hip, a trophy of my victory that felt more like a millstone. I turned once to look upon the elven city, wondering if I would see Tara on the balcony watching me go, but there was no one. I was alone on the road.

I wanted to walk for a time, at least long enough to get out of easy sight of the balcony. Perhaps it was foolishness, but I felt eyes on me even if I could see none. I waited until I arrived at the standing stones to call Zhahllaia from her lamp. She stepped from the smoke, and though she would always deny it, I saw relief flicker over her ageless features. As she took me in, her attention snagged on the elven longsword belted around my waist.

"Seems you have much to tell me," she said.

"Indeed I do," I said, setting out my bedroll for the night. I told her the story from the moment I returned her to her lamp to my departure from Iarveiros. I told her of Tara's rescue from the clutches of Ghorza the Hammer and the duel to the death against Ellisyr.

When I was finished, Zhahllaia was silent for a time, her gold-flecked eyes distant. She looked at me, coming to her learned opinion on the matter. "Now you are the leilatha of she with the most expansive holdings in Iarveiros," said the djinn.

"So it would seem."

"I still do not like the elves," she said, "but if you are to be mated with one, she should be of high status."

I had to laugh. "I am pleased you approve."

"I would be offended if one to whom I had bound myself would accept less." She straightened, displaying the petite perfection of her form. "Now, I would like to lay with you."

"Of course, my love," I agreed. After the complexities of my time with the elves, Zhahllaia's ethereal embrace would be a homecoming.

***

***

Several days later, after travel through the Hinterlands with my wazira at my side, I reached the fork in the road. One went into the mountains and would eventually lead me to Steelhelm and the Mythseekers. The other was an older path.

I found myself unable to take the path to Steelhelm. I couldn't return to the Mythseekers yet. My heart wanted a different road. I stopped at the edge of the standing stones.

Zhahllaia frowned at me in confusion, no doubt thinking my wits had deserted me. "It is this way," she said, indicating the path into the mountains. She was an odd sight on that gray morning, nude save for her delicate golden chains.

"No," I said. "I need to go..." I nodded to the west.

She looked where I gestured and understanding dawned over her lovely features. Then as she turned to me, a cloud of concern appeared in her eyes. "I understand. Do...do you wish to speak on the matter?"

I gave her a smile. "No, my love. I just need to see it again, to see if it is as my memory. I think that after I do, I can return to the Mythseekers."

"Yes. This is good. I will watch over you while you sleep. Then you may return me to my lamp. I will await you there."

"Thank you, Zhahllaia."

Her face relaxed into a smile. "You do not need to thank me." She approached, standing on her toes to brush a scintillating kiss over my mouth. "But the fact that you do makes me love you."

We walked quickly that day, eager to get to the business of loveplay. The following morning, I awoke within sight of Thunderhead.

"Did you ever think you would see it again?" Zhahllaia asked.

"Yes. Though not so soon."

"What is in your heart?"

"That place was my entire world." I looked at the sad pile of stones on its promontory. "How was my world so small?"

Zhahllaia's hand touched my arm with the feel of soft breath over the nape of my neck. I shivered in the sudden bliss of her caress. "You have grown. Thunderhead is too modest for one such as you."

I chuckled. "Is that my concubine speaking? Or my wazira?" I asked, using the title she'd given herself.

"I am both of those things and many others besides, my love."

"Return to your lamp, Zhahllaia the Enlightened."

She curtsied, stepping back into the smoke, and was gone. I wrapped the lamp in my robe and returned it to its place in my pack. Thunderhead loomed against the gray sky over the Gray Ocean. I thought of my two decades there, when Burley Shoal had been the farthest I would travel.

Rhadoviel would be in there, at his experiments. I didn't want to see the old man. I would eventually, perhaps, but not today.

I ambled south. The road was as I remembered it, with the puddles of muddy water in the same places, the twists where they had always been. It had been years, though not many in the great span of things. At the time, it felt like forever. I remembered taking this road with Hob's reins in hand, the mule clopping along behind. Years and years of that, as soon as I was old enough to lead a pack animal.

The cliff descended from its dizzying heights until it encircled the small and storm-swept bay where Burley Shoal clung to the shores like a collection of barnacles. A wooden wharf poked into the water, and a collection of shacks, houses, and larger buildings spread out onto the land. In the first two decades of my life, this had been the biggest place I could imagine. Now it seemed hopelessly tiny, unforgivably provincial.

I couldn't help wonder what my paramours might think of this sight. Zhahllaia had never seen it, but I didn't have to wonder. Anything other than the heights of Old Qammuz would be dismissed. The lovely scaled visage of the dragonblood Allegeth ur-Udraeg appeared to me next. I imagined her sharp-toothed grin, her flame-colored eyes flashing with amusement that my origins should be so humble. I pictured my elven noble Tarasynora. There was a time when I would have thought she would have been delighted by the modesty of Burley Shoal. Now I was not so certain.

I started seeing familiar faces. The people of Burley Shoal were of a type, likely because they were to greater or lesser degree, related to one another. Their hair ranged from a honey blonde to walnut brown, and they had round faces and fair skin that grew more freckled and wind-chapped the older they got. They were short and often stout, with powerful shoulders and legs, thickened by a life of labor. They were hardworking people, fishermen and craftsmen, a necessary trait to carve out a good living in this chilly and rocky part of the northwestern coast of Rhandonia.

I passed a fishmonger taking a wheelbarrow to the press where it would be rendered into garum. He paused. "Apologies, Master Wizard, do I know you?"

I blinked at him. "Adalbert?"

He broke into a gap-toothed smile. "Itisyou, Belromanazar! I scarcely recognized you with the beard and the..." He puffed his chest up, demonstrating the muscle I had put on my frame over my adventuring career. "The night eft, though, he hasn't changed."

"It is good to see you. You're still making garum I see."

"Oh yes. It's an excellent trade. I seem to recall you never had a taste for it."

"I think I might like it now."

"Why are you here, young master? I had heard you were an adventurer."

"It's true enough." Curiosity overtook me. "Who did you hear this from?"

"Do you remember Bridda?"

My heart gave a kick. As though I could forget my first love. "Galfrid's daughter."

"Galfrid died last winter, I'm sorry to say. She took over the bakery from him."

"I am sorry to hear about Galfrid. He was a good man."

"He was at that, but she is the better baker." He looked at me, affection and esteem flashing in his light brown eyes. "We have some pride in you, young master. You were not precisely of Burley Shoal, but we think of you as our own. That you're out there doing great things, well, it feels like our village is putting a stamp on the world."

"I don't know that I've been doing that. At the moment, I was going to the tavern for a meal."

"The food is as you remember," he hefted the wheelbarrow, getting the fragrant mass of fish ready to move, giving me a nod. "I will tell my wife I saw you. Our own wizard!"

I chuckled. I remembered when Adalbert thought of me as little more than a nuisance. But now, in my fine elven robes, carrying a magic staff and Ellisyr's sword on my waist, I was a local hero.

I walked down the main thoroughfare that used to seem like it went horizon to horizon. It was laughably short, going from the smokehouse at the north end, puffing its fishy, savory miasma into the air, to the tavern at the southern end where the road led to the more populated parts of Rhandonia.

Curiosity overwhelmed me as I made for the tavern. Though I hadn't consciously thought it, I realized that a piece of the urge to return here had been the desire to see Bridda again. I know not why, whether it was to see that she was miserable and small, or to see if love still sparked in my heart, or just toseeher. I know this: When I was young, seeing Bridda was the best part of my week. I'd carry a smile from her next to my heart late into the lonely night. Those days were simpler. I didn't have these worries about Tarasynora, these doubts creeping into what until then had been the purest love, the fear that I was dancing to a tune I could not yet hear. Bridda was an anchor to a time where my worries were undeniably smaller. As small as this town now appeared.

I turned into the bakery halfway down the main thoroughfare. The warm scent of bread enfolded me and I was a boy again. Sometimes Galfrid would sneak me a fresh-baked roll to enjoy on the walk back to Thunderhead. An incomparable kindness.

I walked to the front counter, drinking in the scents. The racks of bread, now empty, did not look like they could have fit more than ten loaves. I could see the higher shelves easily. I was overcome with the memory of resting my elbows on the counter, but that had been so many years ago. The bakery was not smaller than it had been when I left, but smaller than it had loomed in my memory, when it had held my first infatuation. Foolish to think a bakery in a small fishing village could compare to the ice forges of Vexacion or the abandoned charnel houses of Ul Adrax. I'd walked into those as an explorer, a conqueror, a destroyer. Now this bakery was trying to hold the same man.

Bridda came bustling out of the back. I would recognize her anywhere, though she'd changed in the years I was gone. She'd grown rounder, pleasantly so, with great soft hips and breasts, a full posterior, even a belly spilling over the belt of her apron. A softer body than I was used to, one that would be thinned out by the privations of the trail. Like her bread, she had grown, risen.

Her honey blonde hair was up and under a kerchief, and her brown eyes were weary but still bright. Her round face had a few more lines, but they were lovely on her. My heart fluttered as I took her in, as though I were still a boy.

Two children trailed her, a boy and a girl. The boy was the elder, and right on the edge of when a child's features first begin to harden. He was the spitting image of the bard whose name I couldn't remember. Mira's companion, who had seduced Bridda that night when I lay with the rogue. In retrospect, that had been the fork in the path. I hadn't seen it then, but it was obvious now.

The girl was a couple years younger, and to my unschooled eyes, I thought freshly weaned. She resembled nothing so much as Bridda in miniature. I have never been overly concerned with children, but I could only feel love and a sense of protectiveness for her.

"And what can I do for you, Master..." She trailed off, her eyes flickering over me, then to Oddrin on my shoulder. Recognition bloomed in her eyes. "Belromanazar? Can that be you?"

I laughed. "It is me, Bridda."

"Oh Gods, let me look at you. Gerold, Enna, this is an old friend of ma's!" she came around the counter and threw her arms around me. I hugged her awkwardly. This was the first time we had ever embraced. The sensation of her pillowy breasts pressing into my chest would have kept me warm on many a night.

"It is good to see you," I said to her, then to the children, "and good to meet you.'

"Are you a wizard?" Gerold asked.

"He is! And an adventurer besides," Bridda beamed, then added, "so I've heard."

"It's true."

"What brings you here? Visiting your master, I expect."

"I was passing through. Don't think I'll see the old man."

She cocked her head, looking up at me, and for a moment she was the same winsome lass who only had eyes for the bard. "No one has. Since you went off to seek your fortune, he sends some creature here on his errands. A set of clothes with no one in them. Leads the mule and everything."

"I miss old Hob sometimes."

"It's a new mule, I'm afraid."

I felt a stab of grief of Hob. As mules went, he had been a decent friend. "I heard about your father. You have my deepest condolences. I was always fond of him."

"He was fond of you as well. Said that you had it worse than anyone, living with the old wizard."

"It wasn't as bad as all that," I said. My gaze went from her face, down her body and back to her eyes. "You are exactly as I remember."

"You're sweet," she said. "I am twice the size and four times as tired. I expect you came by for bread?"

"I was on my way to the tavern for a meal. I came in..." I felt my face grow hot, but I was no longer a boy. "I wanted to see you."

"Oh," she said, color springing to her round cheeks. "I hope I do not disappoint."

"You never could."

The color deepened and she straightened her kerchief and couldn't look me in the eye. "The day's bread had been sold. Would you like company at your meal?" she asked.

"More than anything."

"Let me take the little ones to my mother's and I will meet you there?"

"Ma! I want to talk to the wizard!" Gerold complained.

"How long will you stay?" Bridda asked.

"At least a night." I looked to Gerold and Enna. "I would be happy to entertain the two of you in the morning."

"You go on ahead, Belromanazar. You remember where it is, and if you don't, a fine adventurer should find it with no trouble. I'll join you as soon as these two are squared away."

I left the bakery, my heart pounding. I felt like the boy at Thunderhead who finally mustered the courage to talk to the baker's daughter. The years had been erased in an instant. I found the tavern where the owner and the barmaid fussed over me. I ordered a mug of the local beer and sat down to drink, watching the door and waiting for Bridda. It was funny, I had lain with a dragonblood, a nereid, and an elven noble and I was nervous about dinner with a baker.

Bridda came in, her face lighting in a lovely smile when she saw me. "Hagen," she called to the owner, "two of whatever you're calling stew." She pulled out her chair and sat, sighing with the fatigue of a long day. "Children are a blessing from the gods and a trial all at once."

"I would not know."

"They are not easy, but I would not trade them for anything," she said with an affectionate smile.

Hagen came out a short while later with fish stew over trenchers of bread. "Bridda, can you believe it? Our Belromanazar returned."

"Could scarcely believe my eyes."

"I'd not have known him except for the night eft," Hagen said.

"I would have known him. The eyes tell." Hers sparkled as they met mine.

Hagen left us to our meal. Better than my rations on the trail, though nothing compared to the elven delicacies I'd been dining on only a week before. I barely noticed. I was too engrossed in my companion. My youthful imagination had turned Bridda into an ethereal being. Eating with her now showed her to be an earthbound woman. She was so much better this way.

She asked about my adventures, and I told her tales, ones that would hew more closely to the traditional chronicles of my life. The lost cities, the creatures I had battled, the treasures I'd found.

She told me of her life. Mallathar had sired little Gerold as was obvious for any who set eyes on both of them, and she'd borne the boy alone. Mallathar had never returned to this place and likely never knew he had a son here. While Gerold was still on the breast, she had married Elbrin, a fisherman I vaguely remembered, who had given her Enna.

"Where is Elbrin?" I asked, scooping up a bit of fish with my trencher.

"Out on the Gray," she said, "in search of the sailbacks. He goes for weeks at a time."

"I remember the fishermen like that. Halfway between a fisherman and an adventurer."

"And a fool," Bridda said without much malice. "He's a good enough man, but I think he loves the sea more than his family."

"Gerold and Enna are wonderful."

"They are. Tell me, great adventurer, do you want children?"

"I don't know how I would have them, nor what I would do with them."

"That one woman you mentioned, that...Allegeth? The way you speak of her, like you wish she would bear your children." I was not sure what I heard in her voice then. Not precisely jealousy, but perhaps something close to it. A baker envying the life of an adventurer.

I chuckled. "She is an adventurer too. I think that would multiply the problems."

"But you do not deny it." Her brown eyes were on mine, clear and strong.

"We never spoke like this when we were young."

"How could we?" she laughed. "You scurried off whenever I tried to talk to you."

"I did not!" I protested, but she was right.

"You did!"

"I was intimidated," I said, meeting her eyes and finding they were fixed on me. "I have to admit, I was fond of you."

"I always thought you were handsome. And awizard... A baker's daughter could do worse." She popped a piece of bread into her mouth with a smirk.

A shred of fancy danced before my eyes. I spoke it before I could stop myself. "Do you think there is another place...another world, perhaps, where I am a hedge wizard of Burley Shoal and I married the baker's daughter?"

She sat up, puffing her impressive chest out. "Begging your pardon. I am thebaker."

I bowed. "My humblest apologies, madam."

She ate, the color returning to her cheeks. "I know only that isn't what happened here. Things went as they did and there's no going back. Before you left, it felt like you were going to talk to me soon. You kept lingering, and every day I thought that would be when...then you were absent."

"I almost spoke to you. You were besotted with Mallathar." I pushed a piece of fish around on my plate.

"That was one night." Her lips quirked. "And he was not my first."

My eyes widened. "What?"

"There is not much to do in Burley Shoal." The smirk became a grin.