Chapter 3

If his head had not been swimming before, Borner was thoroughly befuddled now as he tried to wind his way through the woods. At some point he stopped. He put down his sack and his staff, and hugged himself. He rocked himself back and forth to a simple mindless tune from his childhood until he felt secure enough to let go.

A small hillock before him was crisscrossed with animal runs. He had no thread left but he did have thin strips of buckskin that were well-seasoned and strong when braided. Collecting branches from under the trees, he spent the rest of the afternoon setting snares. With the little light that was left, he made a comfortable nest of leaves and evergreen needles from the forest floor. All the work had been monotonous, deliberately so.

Sitting cross-legged in the darkening shadows, Borner allowed his mind to open again. Twenty years had supposedly passed, and he looked his age of a few days ago rather than aged. Vanity he could live with and maybe use to his advantage. The woman had no reason to lie about his looks after all. Even more, she had no reason to lie about Andamathea.

The fact that all perished at Andamathea was another matter altogether. Only days ago, he had seen their faces. The merchants with their round bellies, the mothers fretting over their children, his friends, and his charges - all of them were slaughtered. No one would know their names but him, and even he could not know, could not remember all those faces, all of Andamathea, the city of stone arches.

Where was his god to comfort him? The god had died at Andamathea. What an absurd statement he chided himself, but the statement had meaning. Gods do not die but belief does. Did he not teach that when a parent loses a child and curses the god, the priest must hold the parent all the closer? But an entire city? Countries? The people of Arimas? There was no god to offer him consolation and even if there were, he would toss it aside. Life is sacred, maybe not the god.

The tune of the “The Widow’s Dirge” seethed through his thoughts. Sung without the accompaniment of instruments, it was a slow lament with an elegant melody, the words described a world bereft. He began to cry. As the anguish washed over him, a wail from the bottom of his ribcage tore through his sinews. Again and again, he howled his grief towards the empty night sky. His mourning paean had no words, only the rise and fall of agonies and brutal loneliness. His voice grew hoarse and only whimpers burbled from his lips as he curled into a ball and fell into a deep, troubled sleep.

He awoke in the morning with a sore throat. Taking a swallow of water, Borner mechanically walked over to the runs to check his traps. He had snared two. One he released, watching it sprint away through the grasses. He twisted the neck on the other and immediately set about eviscerating the carcass. He ate the raw meat until his hunger was gone; there was almost nothing left to save. Burying the rest away from any human eyes, he was confident a scavenger would find the trove soon enough.

He stood blind. The Void danced before his eyes, a soul-crushing blackness that threatened to whisk the air from his lungs. It whispered in his thoughts, enticing him to lay down in the dirt and melt back into the earth. All his pain would be gone, promised the Void. Borner recognized the promise was the truth. Had not the Rock had something to say about truth?

The Void was an old, old enemy. Some children grew up with a fear of a monster under the mattress or the magical creature under the bridge, but not Borner. No mere demon or talking spirit would have held his particular attention because he had no fear of violence and maiming, finding it commonplace in the city of his youth. No, his personal nemesis had been a dark creature of nothingness that gently offered to consume his pained soul; he came to call his tormentor “The Void.” His personal tormentor had returned after decades of absence with a vengeance, no doubt born out of massacre and loss. The genius of the Void was that it never lied, Borner had learned long ago; the Void began with calm, sweet promises that could easily slip beneath his guard.

“Promises,” he snarled the word between his clenched teeth. The subject made his stomach turn. Promises were always a lie. “I promise I’ll be back by nightfall,” his mother had said one fateful morning. A promise was a hope, not a certainty. He never found her body and from that day forward, he did his best to never let a promise slip through his lips. In those dark days, the Void had promised to reunite him with his mother, if he would just jump from the city wall or the rooftop or topple himself at the lip of the well. He almost listened.

Later, he was convinced to utter a vow in the Temple of Arimas. Vows, the priest told him, were not promises. Promises were words between human beings, as fragile as the men and women who made them. A vow was a promise between a mortal and a god, though. As the god was strong and enduring, so was the vow. Yet the priest and the temple were gone, and his vow along with them. Worse, Borner had convinced others to make the same vow and they had died because of it.

Was he guilty of peddling a vow that was promise in disguise? A promise that led to the massacre of tens of thousands of innocents? What Arimas touted in the scrolls was not the whole promise, maybe not even half. The congregations believed that the Mystery was a euphemism for God, a one god. Yet, the Mystery was a talking rock that declared itself to be unashamedly mortal. No god. The new truth was that there was no God, no god, and that no vows existed to offer the gullible. The only promises that existed were fragile. The ultimate vow of Arimas was no vow after all. Yes, Arimas always was a clever one.

Only the Void offered the certainty of freedom from promises that would never be fulfilled. The absence of promises would create a truthful world, albeit an empty one, a sad, broken, mournful world. So Borner learned: The Void promised emptiness and emptiness is what it gave.

He picked up his juntu staff and twirled it between his hands, letting its comfortable balance reassure him that he had not lost all sanity. He dismissed The Void, knowing that its seductive call would return, as it always did. He looked up to the sky, broken with the few clouds. He could see again.

Finding his direction between the rising sun in the east and mountain peak in the northeast, which was still visible, Borner struck a south by south-west trail towards the road from which he had fled yesterday. His mind was numb, but his determination was set.

On the second day, he found the road again and it was empty. Knowing that he was taking a chance but frustrated by the aimless game trails and endless detours of thick forest, Borner took the road southward. By the end of the day, he emerged out of the forested foothills and gazed upon a plain that stretched out to the horizon. He could see a river in the distance, farms, and a ferry where several roads came to a point. He made plans for the morrow.

As Borner sat on the near side of the river waiting for his turn to board the ferry, which could be late in the day or possibly tomorrow, he listened carefully to the conversations. On one hand, he was practicing his Parmean and on the other, he was trying to learn where in the world he was.

Between eavesdropping and careful, open-ended questions, he learned that the capital city was called Gemma and that the king was young and dashing. Life in the capital was more dangerous these days and the taxes were high again. As people mingled and waited for the ferry, they would open their aprons or spread a jacket to offer their wares. By watching the impromptu market, Borner formed a decent idea of how much the local currency was worth and what it would buy. He opened a few bundles and tried his luck. He had some business, ending the afternoon with enough coin to pay the ferryman and to purchase a bite to eat.

On the other side, he quickly discovered that he was not going to be able to pay for a ride on a cart. Despite all the jewels he had in his possession, he did not have enough small coin in his purse to pay for the simple things. He picked up his juntu staff and joined the crowd walking down the King’s Highway towards the city. The journey by foot would be days long.

Ever wary of pickpockets and thieves, Borner was careful who was walking beside and behind him. As the mob thinned out, two middle-aged women and their five children along with two goats cut him out of the group and latched onto him. They were in the business of selling dyes for clothing and glazes. Everyone was carrying bags of crushed minerals, freshwater snail shells, and dried flower petals. The goats were for milk along the way. The two women made small talk with him as the children listened attentively to the conversation. Finally, the two were satisfied with whatever he had been saying and invited him to join them at their wayside camp. At the juncture of three trees and two stones, which did not look any different than other points of the road to Borner, the families turned aside and traipsed through a brief strip of trees to the riverside.

Borner spotted an old, well-used fire pit in the clearing to which the families were heading. He surmised that, if this trip to the city was a regular trek for the dye makers, then they must have set campgrounds along the way. The journey was suddenly easier.

The goats were staked, and the beasts set about immediately to devour their dinner of grasses and weeds. After gathering wood and sparking a fire, Borner shared the remnants of his food with the others, who were much better provisioned than he was. With their immediate hunger satisfied and fire crackling under the superbly clear night skies, the children bundled themselves together and fell asleep. Their slight snores brought a smile to Borner’s face although he not quite sure why.

These past nights he had despised the dark, fearing the unfettered memories that were released. Sad thoughts puttered through his mind for a moment when he was suddenly sandwiched between two warm bodies. He grunted in surprise only to dissolve into a quiet laugh as two hands, one from each side, grabbed at the buttons on his britches.

“I think someone likes our plan,” the one on his right said.

“As long as he understands that what happens on the road...” the other said started to say.

“Becomes a memorable fantasy for years to come,” Borner finished for her.

“Oo, I like how this one thinks,” the first one said as she fished his cock and began to stroke it. “My, my, this is quite the stiff stalk. It’s more of a rock, unbendable like.”

Borner reached with both hands to hike up the skirts. Finding their legs already spread, he went directly to their nether lips and began rubbing them up and down. As soon as he felt moisture, he plunged his fingers between their lips and into their clefts.

“You have some proper training, you do,” said one. “He has already got me wet and squirming. Do you mind, sister?”

“You’re always so impatient,” the other said. “Go ahead.”

“Come on, young buck, climb aboard,” the first one said. Borner responded by pulling back his hands and pushing down his pants. He laid down on his back and returned his hand to the other sister’s cleft. Feeling well seated in her wetness, he prompted the other one to climb aboard him with pats on her thigh.

“He is a daring one, sister,” said the first and she clambered on top of his thighs and took aim. “He fits nicely, too.”

Borner felt hard as he had not felt in years, not since the best days of his youth. His cock was solid, substantial and unyielding as she slid down onto his hips. He remembered early days, thinking that he could go forever and never give in until he so commanded. He threw back his head with joy, finding lost memories and feelings that had silently disappeared with the passing of the seasons.