me darker, having heard the truth? I did not want to lie to a friend such as him, who had seen me through half a life's worth of strife. Still, the truth would not improve my image in his eyes. What to say?
"Jovan?" he said, grabbing my arm, stopping me.
The breeze picked up, and the grass swayed more violently, as it sensed the chance to harry potential victims. The breeze began to howl in my ears, and the long grass whipped at us, almost grabbing at our legs. I ignored it, as did Erik. His eyes interrogated me, and I averted my gaze.
"Jovan, how did you know the Kronan wolves would not run us down?" His question was more intensely asked this time, and I would not dare make him ask it a third time. I could sense the anger in him.
I could not think of how to phrase it, so I simply stated it as though a mere fact, unimportant and beneath explanation. "Kronan wolves never attack without their leader. I killed the leader, and you his mate."
"How did you know that wolf was their leader?" His tone was no less suspicious.
I shook my head. "Their leader always come in from the front. They hunt like that, always. Their leader moves ahead of the pack, and when it spots prey between itself and the pack, it brings more wolves to it. Then the main pack drives the prey into the leader's group, and they bring it down." I looked past him, seeing it in my mind. "They feed right there, their feet covered in the still-warm blood of the prey. Sometimes the creature is not altogether dead when they start feeding."
Erik's eyes narrowed with that wary glare of his. I carried on.
"When I saw the pack leader out in the open," I continued, "I realized that the other wolves had not caught up with him yet. So, I took the initiative and charged. Once it was dead, I knew the pack would stop. I have seen it before."
The silence hung between us, with only the sound of the malevolent breeze and swaying of the grass to beat against our ears. Erik's eyes searched my own for the truth, as though he expected that I was lying to him.
"You never mentioned to me that you had seen these things hunt before. Why?"
I shrugged. "You keep telling me that nobody wants to hear my stories, so I stopped telling them."
"This is one I want to hear, Jovan." He grumbled again, the sure sign of his annoyance. "And perhaps, at some point during the tale, you can explain why it is that a pack of Kronan wolves, who have not once ventured outside their own tiny forest, suddenly decided to cross open ground and enter a forest that is not familiar hunting ground, all to kill two men."
I shrugged again. "How would I know that, Erik?"
"Not once, Jovan! Not once!" He yelled, and the breeze blew harder, the grasses rustling more, as though excited by the anger shown here.
"What do you want me to say?" I asked quietly.
I realized then that he still held my arm, and was squeezing tightly. It hurt, his powerful grip tightening ever more. He shook his head, and the look of anger that covered his face deepened, darkened.
"They were following you, Jovan." He nodded. "I think they were stalking you."
"Why?"
He looked me over, shaking his head in disgust. "They can smell it on you, that place!"
He pushed me backward, and I stumbled several steps away from him. He stabbed at me with a pointed finger. "This is what I am talking about, Jovan! This is what I mean. You insist on going there, to Skyreach, and this is what happens. The stink is all over you, and it is not the sort of thing you can wash out of your cloths by dipping them in the river. I might not be able to smell it, but those things obviously can!" He pointed back toward the way we had come.
"That is," I started.
"What?" he barked. "It is what? Absurd? Ridiculous?" He paused, looked around. "Is it, really? This is what I am talking about," he repeated his damning accusation, obviously too upset to say much more. "This is what I am talking about."
He pushed past me, shaking his head as much in disappointment as in anger. The grass seemed to pull away from him, as though his anger was more than they wished to encounter. I stood in silence for a moment, ignoring the grasses which tried to goad me eastward. The anger coming from Erik, which seemed worse now than the howling fire-storms of Skyreach, cried its own doom. I swiped my hand at the wavering grass, and followed in Erik's wake.
Our village was still a two day walk southward.
CHAPTER 2
By the end of that day, with the wolves long since turned away from us, Erik's anger had settled into a quiet burn, like a fire hidden from view. I knew he was still angry. I could almost feel his thoughts, as though they battered me about, stabbed at me, and carved me up. From the outside, to a stranger seeing him from afar, he might have seemed at peace. He might have looked as though he was taking a quiet walk through friendly fields, daydreaming. His face showed no anger. Not even his eyes, on those rare occasion when he turned about to look my way, betrayed annoyance. No, none of that.
He was angry, though. I could feel it. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps he... no. Absurd. It was absurd. I was no more drawn to that place, that terrible keep, than any other place on Theris. Why would it be so? What draw could it have? There was no power to be taken, no riches, no great knowledge to arm myself with. I had no material reason to go there, nothing to gain.
Sure, there were spy reports. Kronan power, so alluring, drew far too many to betray our fair land. Spies sent in reports from all over our kingdom and theirs. Indeed, Kronan spies spent as much time watching their own people as they did us. The spy reports, so very detailed, so very plentiful, spelled out the very essence of life across two kingdoms and a thousand years. I read those reports, sometimes for days on end, absorbing the minutiae of Krona's shadow-army of spies and murderers. Even Erik, one of the great soldiers of our age, was watched and noted by the Kronan spies. I set those notes aside, somehow sensing it an intrusion to look into the life of a man I knew and respected. The others, though, those who were dead or had fled into the doom of the eastern desert, the reports of their lives were mine for the reading. What harm was it to read those papers?
Reading those reports made me feel as though I were the center of some great whirlwind of forbidden knowledge. It was fascinating to wonder what had been done with that information. Did the great generals, and the Lords they served, use it all, or did it merely sit and gather dust? Was the possession of knowledge power in and of itself, or was it merely another tool, along with the doom-wrought blades and cruel armor of the keep?
To me, contemplating such things was fascinating. A mental exercise. I could gain nothing from it. No power, nor knowledge that matter anymore.
No, Erik was reading far more into my excursions to Skyreach Keep than he should.
***
We walked through the day, and well into the night. The moon was full and bright in the cloudless sky, occluded by nothing more than a flock of bats racing skyward in search of their evening meals. The winged creatures cast terrible profiles as they swarmed about the sky in search of field mice and such. Their shrieks were a strain to the ear, but ultimately harmless. These were not the bats
