Chapter 12

“I’d thought you’d volunteer the information after we left,” Zuri said. “Who is Darizcuren?”

“I heard a story,” Leniz said and then he stopped. “I heard a story about a woman from the northern homesteads. She and her husband had two children and, well, they sampled their back field if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Zuri said, “They got addicted to drugs.”

“Well, the way I heard it, the next homestead found the two children, young mind you, wandering on the road, alone and hungry. When they went to check on the parents, the husband was dead, and the wife was missing. They never found her body.”

“Her name was Darizcuren,” Zuri said, shifting his pack on his back.

“The name is not uncommon and there are a few similar names,” Leniz said. “I think I heard right though.”

“Which leaves us with a question she will not answer, for whom was she asking absolution? Human wreckage in the middle of a pile of human debris proves you cannot outrun your past; you always carry it with you.”

“Now, you sound like Gura again,” Leniz said. “Do you feel like you are being watched?”

“Now that you bring it to my attention, the world is quieter than usual. Darizcuren?”

“She was deep asleep when we left,” Leniz said. “With the state of her health, she couldn’t follow us at the pace we’ve set this morning. Besides, the rest of Fundazioa would ignore her presence. This quiet is more unsettling.”

“Who? What?”

“The wolf pack,” Leniz said. “There were ten of them. What exactly did you say to them last night?”

“The key words were friend ... friend, protector, and guide,” Zuri said. “I’m trying to communicate in the old language to animals. Who knows what they really heard or understand? They seemed to like it though.”

“They sounded like the drunken revelry at a harvest moon festival,” Leniz said. “Those were the days. You danced with your wife and then you danced with your neighbor’s wife and then near to dawn, you pulled your pants back up. Somehow, you stumbled home with the right woman and a headache.”

“Sounds like something I would like to experience,” Zuri said. “We were speaking of wolves though. We thought they were trailing us when we left the temple however many days ago. Last night we encountered a different pack, and they appear to be following us even closer than the last one.

“They haven’t stopped us or interfered yet,” Leniz said. “Maybe the Ancient language protects us.”

Zuri stopped walking. “I think it is time to explain yourself, Leniz. I was living another repetitious day blessing fields to earn a meal and a spot to sleep, and then you show up with a ready story in the morning. Each step of the way, any impediments are removed, leaving us the ability to move quickly. What path are we walking, old man?”

“I thought we were being subtle,” Leniz said, shaking his head.

“I may have been distracted but no, there was no subtlety.”

Leniz sighed. “We might as well walk while I recite my sad tale. Come, Gura, the day is still young, and we have much ground to cover.”

They returned to their westward path, taking time to listen for the ambient noise of insects and small scurrying creatures who were typically out hunting for food in the early morning. The way was still silent.

“I am a member of the Council of Elders, as you might have guessed,” Leniz said. “The First Homestead is older than memory. Our records are minimal but concise, and we do not have a founding date of that homestead. Some brief notations ascribe the place as the last instead of the first. If Fundazioa was our true heartland, the designation of last makes sense from one point of view. With our exile from the land unrecorded, we simply do not know what happened and why First Homestead still exists. We carefully follow the rules passed down to us without knowing the why of it.

“We’ve been sending adventurers onto Fundazioa for generations, asking them to find answers. No one ever returned with such information. We knew there were unseen barriers and probable hidden places, but when our explorers returned, they had nothing to show. Peculiarly, their memories of exactly what they had seen and the general routes they had taken faded rapidly. Even the maps they drew while walking Fundazioa were distorted, mostly unreadable once they were opened in Qirin.

“The mystery of Fundazioa evolved into the myth of the Forsaken Plain. The delusional and the desperate began to climb the steps and disappear into the hills and valleys. When any of these sorts came back, they were clearly mad by the time they returned to First Homestead. I didn’t show you, but there is a cremation pit beyond the back field.

“Down in Qirin, our circumstances have been slowly declining. In the last generation or two, the Kingdom has come seeking the ‘medications’ that are possible in our back fields. Their Nobles’ and merchants’ lusts for mind-numbing sensations and hallucinogenic visions have hastened the downward trend of our birthrates. Entire families have been wiped out and even clans have been decimated by addiction. Curiosity about the rest of the Kingdom draws a few away every year, and they never return. We are a people in decline.