The Prophet of Rain
by
William Woodall
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2008 William Woodall
Cover photo copyright 2006 by Wolfgang Staudt
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For Nathan, Elisabeth, and Mathew,
With much love. . .
This tale of dreams come true.
Chapter One
Beginnings
A long time ago, in a town beside a river, there lived a young boy named Jeremy, and he had red hair. Not like a carrot or an orange, but really the reddest you ever saw. . . red as apple peelings or rose petals, red as cherries in May. Now this might not have mattered much, after all, except for what came of it later, which I am just about to tell you.
On the day it all began, Jeremy would never have guessed that anything unusual was coming. He’d taken the cows down to drink from the river, as he usually did every evening when the sun had gone down a bit. It was a dull job most of the time. Now and then he had to prod one of the cows with a long stick to nudge her back onto the path, but that was all.
The distant shadow of the Cesmean Mountains lay ahead of him, and for a while Jeremy let his mind wander, imagining himself on the back of a wild stallion with a sword in his hand, tracking down and destroying the evil barbarians who were supposed to lurk there. He sighed, so quietly that he barely noticed it himself. There were so many things more exciting in the world than thirsty cows.
That sigh would have earned him a swift kick in the shins if his brother Melech had been with him that day. Melech was seventeen, and he didn’t approve of daydreaming. Jeremy secretly thought it was because his brother was too stupid to imagine anything himself, but he would never have dared to say such a thing out loud. Melech would have smacked him for it.
The herd came to the top of the last rise in the path before it sloped steeply down to the nearly dry bed of the Murray River. The cool, heavy smell of water was in the air, and the cows trotted a little faster in their eagerness to reach it. Jeremy dawdled a while on the hilltop, shading his eyes from the low sun. The river trickled out of sight around a rocky outcrop not far to the west, and he knew that somewhere far away in that direction lay the sea, and the great city of Rustrum where King Joseph lived.
To the east, there was only the narrow valley climbing out of sight among the Eyre Hills. There was a gravelly sand bar at the foot of the path where useful things sometimes washed ashore, but no one knew where they came from. No one had ever gone that way to see.
He wondered what it might be like to start walking upstream, exploring the whole river until he found the place where it gushed out from the stone, or (it might be) flowed out from some deep and cold lake, high in the mountains. It might even be a magical lake that turned everything to gold, or contained an evil water dragon that nobody but he could ever kill. . . or maybe both! He smiled a little.
It is written, in the Book of the Prophets, that the Most High knows all the desires of our hearts, even the least wish of the most ignorant child. Such things are never passed by without answer, but the answer may often come in a form we never expected. So it was in this case.
Jeremy shook his head a little to collect his woolly thoughts. He noticed guiltily that several of the cows had finished drinking, and now they were drifting up and down the bank to graze. He hurried downstream to get ahead of the ones in that direction, a little annoyed with himself for not paying better attention. There might still be enough time to get them all home before anyone noticed it had taken him longer than it ought to. He hated the thought of seeing the smirk on Melech's face if anyone found out he’d let the cows wander off.
He ran carelessly in the gathering dusk, paying no attention to anything except the cows and what his brother would think of him for losing them.
But greedy eyes watched him from the edge of the forest, and marked well that he was both young and alone. A caravan of Sohrab traders, passing by on business of their own, had decided to camp near the river for the night.
The Sohrab are an ancient people, and they had traded in rare and precious merchandise all up and down the Murray valley (and indeed, far beyond it), for time out of mind. They dealt in only the costliest and most difficult-to-find items. Jewels, spices, silks, the deep blue dye of Cerise, and, sometimes. . . slaves with flaming red hair. Anything unusual was always more valuable. Jeremy didn’t realize his danger.
Just as he made it to the cow which had wandered farthest down the bank, he found himself quickly surrounded by tall men swathed in pale cotton robes. The Sohrab didn’t come that way very often, but he recognized them at once. They looked unfriendly, with arms crossed silently and dark eyes that never blinked. He started to feel a little scared.
"Good evening, sirs. The village is that way," he said in a voice that he hoped sounded very polite and unafraid, and he raised his hand to point back upstream. One of the men nodded slightly, and Jeremy let himself relax a tiny bit. But when the man spoke, he felt real terror.
"You will come with us now, boy. You will fetch an excellent price in the mountains," the man said calmly, with a horrible smile.
Jeremy certainly didn’t mean to give up without a fight, and he dashed for the riverbank as fast as he could go. It wasn’t far to the edge of the water, and if he could swim to the opposite bank he might have enough time to hide among the trees that grew along the broken edge of the valley on that side. They would never find him there.
His speed caught them by surprise. He dodged easily through an opening in the circle of men, and hope surged through him as he saw the way open to the river. But luck was not with him that day (or maybe it was), and his foot caught on one of the bare roots trailing out from the edge of the forest. He stumbled, and even though he ran on for a little while, trying with all his might to regain his balance, he fell to the ground just at the water's edge. Before he could get back to his feet they were on him, pinning him to the ground harshly and crushing his face into the dirt. Someone kicked him in the ribs hard enough to knock the breath out of him, but the pain wasn’t nearly so bad as the terror he felt.
They soon let him up, with a gag in his mouth to keep him from screaming for help, and from that moment on the traders made sure that at least two men held firmly to his arms at all times. He looked desperately for any chance to escape and hindered them as much as he was able, dragging his feet and going limp. He got a stinging slap in the face for that, and the men dragged him along the ground behind them anyway, not caring at all if the rocks tore his clothes and skin or if his arms got twisted.
They pulled him quickly to the Sohrab camp a little farther down the river, hidden carefully in the edge of the woods. The caravan was a small one, with six wagons drawn up in a rough circle against anyone who might be tempted to attack them. The Sohrab were known as vicious fighters when it came to protecting their merchandise, but there were still those who couldn’t resist the lure of so much wealth. Jeremy was taken to one of the wagons, and put there alone in a sturdy cage of steel bars. He immediately examined every corner and crevice to see if there might be any way out, but the Sohrab had built carefully.
Jeremy sat down in one of the corners, farthest back in the shadows, pulled his knees up to his chest, and buried his head in his arms. His whole body hurt from being dragged across the river rocks, and his lip was bleeding a little. He might have cried then, if he hadn’t been so afraid. He listened to the sounds of the camp outside, and guessed the Sohrab were getting ready to leave. Probably so no one from the village could attempt a rescue.
Soon he was brought food and a flask of water, passed to him through the bars by one of the women whose task that was. Jeremy chewed the bits of meat and cheese with no interest, hardly tasting them. He wished bitterly that he’d listened to Melech and not daydreamed so much. He wondered what had become of the cows, and how long it would be until someone came down to the river to look for him, and what they would think when they found him missing. Would they wonder if a lion had killed him, or if he’d fallen in the river and drowned, or what? He wondered what Melech would say. Most of all, he wondered what these strange folk would do with him. He knew they meant to sell him for a slave, somewhere, sometime, but that could mean many different things.
Jeremy curled into a ball in the corner of the cage against the creeping chill of the night, and then he did cry for a while. The gentle swaying of the wagon bed was soothing, and eventually, in spite of his fear, he slept.
Chapter Two
The House of Amagon
For the next several weeks, Jeremy rode in the cage. The Sohrab were not really very cruel to him; he was too valuable for that. They simply made sure he had no chance to escape. The caravan moved like a snail, but no one came to challenge them or to look for a missing boy. Or if they did, Jeremy heard nothing about it. For a while they had followed the Murray downstream, but after that they struck out in another direction entirely, and Jeremy had no idea where he might be. He was never allowed to see anything outside the wagon, except for a patch of sky above the back doors. He was just as miserable as you might expect, even after he began to get used to the routine.
Sometimes one of the old women would sit in the wagon with him during the heat of the day, and out of loneliness he took to talking to her. Not “with” her, for she never answered him, but she also never told him to be quiet. So he told her about the village and the cows, and Melech and Papa, and his favorite dog, and playing ball on the village green with his friends. He told her about the lessons he remembered from the Book of the Prophets, and what he thought about them, and anything else that came to his mind. She was a good listener, and he started to feel that she was his friend, in a strange sort of way. For a while, he could almost forget he was locked in a steel cage on his way to a slave market, and then who knew what kind of horrors after that. But Jeremy decided he would be patient for now, and see what happened. There wasn’t much else he could do until things changed.
After a few weeks, one of the Sohrab men came to his cage with a leather and steel collar for his neck, and a long steel chain attached to it. Jeremy was made to wear this, and no amount of pulling and stretching could get it off. From then on he was allowed to begin riding one of the smaller ponies during the day, with the end of his chain always attached to the belt of a man who rode beside him. They still put him in the cage at night, but it was a great improvement to be allowed outside even part of the time. He wasn’t sure why the change was made. Jeremy could only guess at their reasons, for they never explained anything to him and never answered questions. Indeed, they hardly ever talked to him at all except to give orders, and that wasn’t often. Whatever their purposes may have been, he was glad of them.
At first it was nice to feel the wind and the sun against his face after being locked up inside the stuffy wagon for so long, but soon he began to feel lonely again. He never saw the old woman anymore, and the Sohrab men expected him to be quiet. They weren’t above enforcing it with blows if necessary, and Jeremy learned very quickly to keep his mouth shut.
The caravan traveled now through a country which had once been well settled, for the old stones that marked the edges of fields and vineyards still lined the road in places. It was all desolate and empty now, and dry as dust. Lack of rain had long since destroyed whatever people had once lived in that place. Even Jeremy's own village had not suffered so much, yet. Here there was no river to bring life-giving water to the parched fields and paddocks.
The Sohrab spent the night sometimes in the empty houses and barns when it happened to be convenient, but normally they didn’t linger in these places. Jeremy guessed they had a civilized destination in mind, for all the wagons and packs were full of things to sell. He wondered again where they were taking him. The land was so vast and all so much the same that it was impossible for him to keep track of the road.
After weeks and weeks of travel through the dead farm country, the caravan went down through a deep cutting in a cliff, and came out onto a well-kept road that ran along the banks of a river which, although low, still flowed strongly between banks of gray stone. They followed this road for some distance, and came eventually to a wide stone bridge that led across the river and into a great walled city, with blue pennants floating from the turrets on a soft warm breeze. The leader of the caravan halted at the gates, and after a whispered conversation with the gate guards, they were welcomed inside the city. The leader seemed to know exactly where to go, and soon the caravan came out into a wide stone plaza thronged with excited city folk. Within minutes, the Sohrab were set up to do business, with all their dazzling and costly merchandise displayed openly for the inspection of the city dwellers. Most turned away when they heard the prices, but there was still no shortage of those with plenty of gold to spend. By the end of the day, the Sohrab had raked in more money than Jeremy had ever dreamed existed in the world.
Jeremy himself was put in a cage near the front of the Sohrab display, so customers could examine him better. Several did, even inspecting his teeth and looking at his feet and hands and feeling his muscles and asking how much he ate and whether he was good natured or not. This went on all day long, and still no one bought him. You can imagine what a nasty mood he was in by the time the market closed, after being poked and prodded for hours on end. He felt like biting the next person who wanted to look at his teeth.
Jeremy hoped, a little forlornly, that maybe they would let him go sooner or later if no one wanted to buy him. But the Sohrab are a crafty race, and they had never had any intention of selling him to anyone in the marketplace. Jeremy’s buyer was already waiting; indeed, had already paid for him. The purpose of displaying him in the market was only to attract curiosity-seekers who might then be enticed to buy other items. Part of Jeremy’s sale price had been the agreement that he was to remain in the cage all day for others to see. Jeremy knew nothing of that until much later, though.
Late in the evening three men came to the marketplace just as the Sohrab were packing their caravan to depart (for they never spent the night within the walls of a city), and with a deep bow, the leader of the caravan turned over the key to Jeremy's cage. Without a backward glance, the traders departed. Jeremy had to resist a strong urge to spit on the ground at them as they walked away.
Two of the servants picked him up, cage and all, and followed the third man to a large stone house somewhere in the city. He couldn’t have said where it was in relation to the marketplace, for the streets were narrow and full of people. Nor did he suppose that it mattered much. The man who had bought him owned a stupendous palace, larger than any building Jeremy had yet seen within the city. It rose five stories high from the street, built of dressed gray stone, and had several towers and turrets that rose higher yet. There were no windows on the ground floor, but he could see a few in the upper reaches of the House. To his amazement, he saw that some of the upper windows were even made of glass, instead of the usual dried sheep skin or oiled paper. He couldn’t imagine how rich the owner of the house must be, to afford so much glass. The double front doors were of stout beams of oak wood, reinforced with hinges of wrought iron.
Only one stood open, letting yellow lamplight spill out into the darkening street.
The door was so large that the servants easily carried Jeremy’s cage through the opening. Inside was a grand atrium, paved with blue marble and with a stone fountain in the center. It was carved in the shape of a lion standing on a rock, and there had once been a pool of water all around the base of it, but that was dry now. Strange people dressed in blue silk and diamonds were moving to and fro across the room while he watched, but none of them seemed to pay any attention to him. Jeremy couldn’t guess who they were or what they were doing.
He didn’t have much time to look. The porters soon carried him to a grand staircase on the left side of the atrium, and then up several flights of stairs and along many lengthy passages until they came to a room inside one of the high stone towers that looked out over the rooftops of the city, with a glimpse of the dry land beyond. Here the servants set down the cage that held Jeremy, and all but one of them left the room. The one who remained locked the door quite carefully behind him, and then swung open Jeremy's cage and beckoned for him to come out.
Jeremy didn’t need to be asked twice. He climbed out of the small door, stood up, and stretched his cramped body. The room he found himself in was just as richly furnished as the rest of the House. The walls and the floor were of blue veined marble, the furniture built of the rarest woods, inlaid with silver and upholstered with blue velvet. He noticed a low table set with golden dishes full of food, and a suit of new clothes, just his size, laid out fresh upon the velvet couch. He didn’t know quite what to make of all this. In spite of his hunger, he stood still and looked silently at the man who had brought him, determined not to be the one to speak first.
"Please eat and refresh yourself, young master," the man said, gesturing toward the table. Jeremy couldn’t tell for sure, but it was possible that the ghost of a smile had passed across his face. All the bitter fury he felt about his captivity threatened to boil up and overwhelm him, at the sight of that faint smile. But Jeremy had learned quickly among the Sohrab that caution was necessary, and he didn’t lose his temper. It wouldn’t do, and it might be very dangerous, to show any hint of anger toward this man. Still, he was determined to get some information, even if it did cost him a beating.
"Where am I?" he demanded finally. The old man did smile then, a warm smile that was very hard not to return. Jeremy found his anger and humiliation fading away a little in spite of himself.
"You are in the city of Cerise, in the House of Lord Amagon, and all will be well now that you’re here, young man. Fear nothing, and be glad that you have come, for there are no slaves and no bondservants in the house of Amagon; only those who serve our Master in love and respect. And there are many such, for he is a great man. I am one of them, and I pray that you’ll choose to stay here with us also. But first you must eat and bathe and refresh yourself, and dress as befits one of the household, for our Master wishes to talk with you as soon as you’re ready," the old man said.
Jeremy was astonished at the sudden change in his fortunes, and he couldn’t quite believe it. For a long moment he stood there with his mouth half open.
"And if I don't choose to stay?" he asked, suspiciously. The old man shrugged his shoulders, moved slowly to the door and unlocked it.
"There’s the door, young master; you’re free to go, if that’s what you truly wish. As I said, there are no slaves and no prisoners in this house. But if you will stay just a little while, and speak to Lord Amagon. . . well, that’s only courtesy to the one who purchased your freedom out of slavery among the Sohrab. Will you at least remain long enough to thank him?" the old man asked. Jeremy felt a little ashamed of himself, when things were put that way. It would be very rude and ungrateful not to thank the Master of the House, if that’s the way things had happened. And if he could really leave whenever he wanted to, then maybe. . .
"I will speak to Lord Amagon," he said grudgingly. The old man smiled happily.
"Then please accept Lord Amagon's hospitality for this little while, young master. The bath is in the next chamber, and your clothes and various refreshments lie here before you. My name is Coreb, and I will await you in the hall outside. If you should require anything at all, simply call for me and I will do my best to provide it," he said.
Jeremy would really have liked to ask a lot more questions at that point, but Coreb vanished into the hallway with hardly more than a whisper of his shoes against the deep pile of the carpet, leaving Jeremy alone in the fancy room, with nothing for company but his own mightily confused thoughts.
He had been fully prepared to be surly and resistant to whatever he was ordered to do when he reached this place, and the courteous treatment he was getting left him befuddled and not sure how to act. He kept thinking there had to be a catch to all this, somewhere. But he was tired, and he was filthy, and caked in dirt and sweat, and he was ravenously hungry, and the means to correct all these things lay close at hand. He decided for the time being at least he would take things at face value.
Accordingly, he entered the next chamber, stripped off his dirty rags, and slipped gratefully into the marble basin of the bath. It was the first time in weeks that he’d had the luxury of a bath, and the simple pleasure of being truly clean again improved his mood immensely. There were various bath oils and soaps arranged around the tub, and a seemingly limitless supply of hot and cold water. Jeremy scrubbed himself thoroughly until his skin was pink and glowing, and his hair restored to its normal deep red. After drying himself with one of the thick white towels and combing his hair, he returned to the other room and put on the clothes laid out for him on the couch. There was a white linen shirt and pants, and a long blue robe of watered silk that came down to his ankles, hemmed and bordered with white gold and diamonds. The shoes were soft blue leather and curled up at the toes. Everything was wonderfully soft and comfortable, not at all as you might expect nice clothes to be. They were almost as nice to wear as they were to look at. Jeremy couldn’t resist going to the large mirror on the wall to see himself, and couldn’t help laughing at his reflection. He’d never looked so strange in all his life, he thought. Then he quickly returned to the table and attacked the food that had been left for him. At first he was too hungry to care much what it tasted like and he paid close attention to business, but as his hunger subsided a bit he realized he’d never tasted such a meal before. There were iced fruits, and fresh white bread with butter, and toasted bits of meat and cheese with tangy sauces. He began to eat more slowly, so as to savor it all more thoroughly. At that point he was feeling quite kindly toward his host, and well disposed to listen to whatever he had to say. Coreb seemed to appear out of thin air, and stood by the door.
"Are you ready, young master?" he asked. Jeremy was, and together they left the room in the tower. Coreb led him through many other halls and passageways, full of tapestries and golden candle sconces and crystal and paintings, until he was dizzy with the size of the place. At last they arrived in a room somewhat plainer than the others; not very large, and containing only a wooden table and two chairs. In one of them sat a young man, tall and fair of face, with dark hair and bright blue eyes.
He was dressed all in blue, with only a small handful of diamonds to adorn his clothes. Fewer than Jeremy wore, in fact. He was reading a book, and looked up when Coreb opened the door. He smiled at them both.
"I’m glad to see you looking so well, young man," he said to Jeremy, and waved a hand for him to sit down and for Coreb to leave them alone.
Jeremy took the other chair and quietly watched Lord Amagon. Strangely, it was the book which impressed him more than the wealth. The wealth meant nothing to him, because he didn’t really comprehend its value yet. But in the village, the only book that existed was a copy of the Book of the Prophets, and that was always kept in the church. Not many people could have read it, even if there had been a copy in every house. The priest could read, and maybe one or two others, but few took the time to learn more than the small amount that was necessary for everyday tasks. The fact that Amagon knew how to read raised him a good bit in Jeremy’s respect. He wasn’t at all the sort of fellow Jeremy had expected.
"So, tell me, young man, what’s your name?" Lord Amagon asked.
"Jeremy," the boy said. Lord Amagon smiled and shook his hand.
"And do you know, Jeremy, why you’re here, and why I purchased your freedom from the Sohrab?"
"No, sir, I don't," Jeremy admitted.
"Well, then, I’ll tell you," Lord Amagon said, laying his book aside and sitting more comfortably in his chair.
"Perhaps, if you’ve noticed much of my home as you walked to and fro, you may have seen that I have been blessed with a great deal of wealth. Indeed, I am quite likely the wealthiest man in all the kingdom, if not the world. Perhaps you’ve heard of the blue dye of Cerise, which is the costliest and rarest in the world, and which is sold only to kings and noblemen. That dye comes from a mine in the hills nearby, and I am the owner of that mine. I have the means to do a great many things for my city, and for those who happen to cross my path from time to time. I keep on good terms with the Sohrab, for it is impossible to trade in any merchandise without taking them into account. Some of them I know quite well, and it happens that one of these I know is an old caravan leader and his wife, who trade on the eastern marches."
“It’s been useful for me to know them, for sometimes they come across items of great value, which they naturally wish to offer to me, first. You are one such item, though perhaps they never would have realized it, if you hadn’t been so talkative.” Here Amagon smiled.
“You may not know how much time you spent talking to the leader’s wife, but she was very impressed with you. As soon as the caravan drew near to Cerise, she and her husband came to me, and told me they had something special that might interest me. They had intended to sell you to one of the chieftains of the Lachishite barbarians in the mountains, for those are an ignorant and superstitious folk, and red is a sacred color to them. I’m not sure what they would have done with you. . . maybe kept you for a luck charm, or married you off to one of their girls, or they might have bled you now and then and drunk your blood because they thought it was specially holy, or some other barbaric and brutal thing like that. The Sohrab would not have cared what became of you, after cash was in hand. Make no mistake. . . they know I keep no slaves, but to them it matters not at all what a customer chooses to do with the things he buys, so long as they get their payment. In any case, the old lady told me you are both intelligent and good of heart, and these are things I have much need of, in my various dealings.”
Amagon paused for a moment, and looked at Jeremy frankly.
“And also. . . though some may consider it foolish, I couldn’t allow a child of my own people to be condemned to a lifetime of slavery (or worse) among the Lachishites. Not if I knew of it in time, and if it lay within my power to prevent it.”
"And so it is that I have purchased your freedom. You may take it and go, if you wish, but I must for the sake of mercy warn you that another Sohrab clan would be quite happy to recapture you and sell you again, perhaps to someone less considerate than myself. I’m not on such good terms with every caravan, and I can affect little that goes on beyond Cerise. However, if you wish, you may remain here in my house to serve me. You will be provided with clothes, and quarters, and all that you require, and I will pay you a good wage, as I do all my servants. What do you think of my offer?" Lord Amagon asked.
Jeremy saw at once that he had no real choice. The Sohrab awaited him outside the city walls, and that alone turned the offer of freedom into a mockery. But still. . . Lord Amagon didn’t have to offer him anything. In time something better might turn up, but for now he could think of no better plan for himself.
“I accept your offer, sir,” he said.
Chapter Three
Jonah
“Excellent,” Lord Amagon said. “For now, I will make you a page. It will be your duty to deliver messages to various places in the city or beyond, at such times as I or others in the house may require. I don’t think you will find the work difficult, after you have learned your way around the streets. However, you will also be expected to learn to read and write, and to speak certain useful languages, and to practice courtesy, and such other things as are needful for a noble and gentle person to know. When you are not occupied with these tasks, your time is your own, but you are expected to return to the House no later than sundown each day, unless you are told otherwise. If you don’t, you may find yourself locked outside for the night.”
Lord Amagon clapped his hands, and Coreb instantly appeared from outside the doorway.
“Coreb, take this boy to the pages’ barracks, and ensure that he has all things needful,” Amagon ordered.
“Of course, sir,” Coreb replied, with a deep bow. Before leaving the room with Coreb, Jeremy looked back at Amagon for a moment.
“Thank you, sir,” he said sincerely. Amagon smiled.
“Thank the Most High, and not His humble servant,” he said. Jeremy had never heard anyone but a priest say such a thing before, and his impression of Lord Amagon went up yet another notch.
Coreb led him back down into the main part of the House, all the way to the ground floor. They didn’t go by way of the grand staircase that would have brought them back to the front atrium, but somehow arrived at the rear of the House not far from what must have been the kitchen.
Jeremy could hear pots and pans being washed up, and the lingering odor of bread and roast meat filled the air. He was hopelessly lost, but he supposed he would learn his way around soon enough. Some distance down the hall from the kitchen, they came to a smaller set of double doors that stood ajar, and Coreb led him into the barracks.
It was a long room, containing thirty bunks along the inside wall, with a wardrobe or cabinet of sorts beside each one. Across from the beds were large glass windows that looked out onto the herb-and-vegetable garden used by the kitchen. The entire House was built around a central courtyard, to which there was no access except by passing through the House itself. The ground floor rooms which faced the courtyard could safely have windows, for no enemy could approach from that direction anyway. Across the garden and the rest of the courtyard were other parts of the House, but Jeremy couldn’t tell what they might be in the semi-darkness.
There were about twenty other boys in the room when they arrived. . . resting on their bunks, reading, talking to each other, or playing games at one of the wooden tables by the windows. They were of various ages, from slightly younger than Jeremy all the way up to tall youths with thin beards. They all looked up when Coreb appeared at the door.
“Boys, this is Jeremy, who will be joining you. Please make him feel welcome,” Coreb said. This was met with a loud chorus of greetings. Jeremy smiled, a little uncertainly.
Coreb took Jeremy to the bunk nearest the door and showed him the contents of his locker- five sets of uniforms, a nicer suit of clothes much like the ones he was wearing, to be used on feast days or for chapel services, and two sets of plain cotton jumpers for dirty or difficult work. There were also boots and caps and other necessary things. When all this was done, Coreb excused himself, reminded the boys that it would be time for lights-out soon, and shut the door.
There were in fact twenty-three other pages at the time Jeremy came to the House. They were friendly and seemed to like each other, but Jeremy never felt that he had much in common with them. They were mostly the younger sons of wealthy families in Cerise. Not one of them had ever set foot outside the city walls nor ever suffered a day of want. Jeremy couldn’t help thinking of them as overgrown babies. . . even the older boys who shaved twice a week. This put up a subtle wall between them, so that Jeremy never made any real friends among the other pages. He worked well with them, and even played and talked with them, but he was close to no one.
Time passed, and life was not unkind to him. He did his work well and without complaint, as he’d always been taught to do, and he watched his pay accumulate in the bank downtown. He had nice things, and a respected place in the House. He was taught to read and cipher, and studied geography and music and many other things he could never have learned in the village of his birth. Cerise was a beautiful and interesting city, with many things to see and do. He liked to walk down to the stone-paved marketplace on Sunday afternoons and watch the jugglers and the bear tamers who gathered there, and it was sometimes possible to see traders who brought merchandise from the farthest corners of the world. He avoided the marketplace whenever a caravan of Sohrab came to trade, for he could never quite forget the horror of his captivity with them and he disliked being reminded of it. But they didn’t come often, and there were many other traders besides them. Jeremy had no real complaints about his life, except for a vague sort of loneliness. He wasn’t used to spending so much of his time alone. Melech had been hateful sometimes, but at least he was always there. Or if not, then Jeremy had always had friends to do things with. Here there was no one except the other pages, and try as he might, he found it awfully hard to take them seriously.
On a cold day in the winter, when he’d been in the House for several months, it happened that Jeremy found himself with nothing to do. No messages needed to be sent, and his studies were done for the day. All the other pages were busy, and it was much too cold to think of going out. He hung around the kitchen for a while to see if he could scrounge something to eat, but eventually the cooks shooed him away. He soon got tired of sitting by the fountain. With nothing else to do, he decided to take a lamp and explore the House for a while. No matter how much he roamed the halls, there always seemed to be more of it to see.
On this day, he eventually came out in the stable where the horses were kept. This was a place he’d never had any reason to visit before, so he took some passing interest in it.
The stable boys were in the middle of grooming the horses when he arrived, for Amagon expected his mounts to look presentable at all times. Jeremy knew lots about cows, but the only horses in the village had been a couple of old draft animals that were used to plow the fields. No one rode, and certainly there were no such beautiful animals as these. Jeremy sat down on an upended water bucket and watched the stable boys work for a while.
The boy nearest him was younger than the others, working with a curry comb on a chestnut horse nearly twice his height. Even with a stool, he was having trouble reaching all the way up onto the horse’s withers. He had the jet black hair and bright blue eyes of almost all the people of Cerise. . . a combination Jeremy was still not quite used to.
“Could I help?” Jeremy finally asked, after watching the boy for a while. The boy turned to him with a ready smile.
“It’s not so easy as it looks, I’m afraid. But if you like, I’ll teach you how,” he said.
“Sure,” Jeremy said, getting up from the bucket and walking into the stall.
Jonah (for that was the boy’s name) turned out to be a fun and friendly person to talk to. He made himself old friends with Jeremy at once, as if they’d known each other for years instead of just met. He tried to show the older boy how to curry the horse, but it soon became obvious he was trying hard not to laugh as he watched.
“Here, you better let me finish her,” Jonah finally said, smiling. Somehow Jeremy didn’t mind being laughed at. It reminded him of playing with his friends in the village, when everybody knew the laughter was good-natured. So he laughed a little himself, and handed back the comb.
“You’re right, it’s harder than it looks,” he admitted, “How did you learn how to do it so well?”
“Aw, I’ve been doing this since I was old enough to hold a comb in my hands,” Jonah told him.
“You’ve been here that long?” Jeremy asked.
“No, no. . . I’ve only been here in the House about three months. But I grew up on a horse farm outside the city. All my family knows about horses,” he said proudly.
“I wish I did, but we only had cows,” Jeremy said wistfully.
They went on talking for quite a while, and when he finished grooming the horse Jonah was done with work for the day. He carefully put away his brushes and tools, patted the horse on her flank, and then dusted his hands and looked at Jeremy.
“If you’re not doing anything, would you like to come up to the loft and play darts?” he asked, as if just thinking of it.
“Sure,” Jeremy said. He followed Jonah up a wooden ladder to the hay loft above the stable. The stable boys had cleared out a small area for a table and chairs, and there was a dart board against one wall. They were surrounded by walls of golden and sweet-smelling hay that reached right up to the roof.
“All this will be gone by springtime,” Jonah said, waving an arm at the hay. It didn’t seem possible to Jeremy that the horses could ever eat that much. . . but he supposed some of it was used for bedding and other things too.
“How do you get it all up here?” he asked, since he was sure it didn’t come up and down the ladder.
“Oh, there’s a big trap door way down at the far end. We use that for getting the hay in and out when we need to. The ladder is just for getting up here to our little dart place, mostly,” Jonah explained.
They played several games of darts, until the winter sun began to fade. Lamps or candles of any kind were strictly forbidden in the hay loft because of the danger of fire, and so the end of daylight also meant the end of their games. Jonah was a much better dart player, but Jeremy enjoyed himself anyway. After supper in the Great Hall, they agreed to meet in the hay loft and play some more the next afternoon.
The two of them soon became fast friends. Jonah had less free time than Jeremy did, but on Sundays and some evenings, when the weather was nice, they left the House together and explored Cerise. Jonah’s favorite activity was to go up on the city wall and flick peanut shells down onto the heads of people leaving the city through the gate. He was very skilled at this, and soon taught Jeremy to do it almost as well as he did. Sometimes the victims looked up at the battlements and laughed, and sometimes they scowled or cursed at the boys. Jonah had come to the wall many times and already had a fair idea who the sourpusses were, and generally they tried to aim for the ones who would laugh.
Jeremy took them to the marketplace to watch the dancing bears and the traders, and other times they just roamed the streets together, seeing whatever there was to see. Neither of them knew much about the city. Jeremy had arrived in a cage, and Jonah had never set foot within the walls until the day he came to Lord Amagon’s stables.
“Do you like it here, Jonah?” Jeremy asked his friend one day, as they sat on the wall. They were not flicking peanut shells today, just enjoying the cooler wind atop the battlements. There were several picnickers and strollers with the same idea. It was high summer, and the heat rising from the pavement stones on the street was almost unbearable.
“It’s as good as may be,” Jonah shrugged. “I don’t want to do it for always, but I like the House and I like the City, and the other boys in the stable are nice fellows to work with.”
“Oh, I know. It’s a good place like that. But what do you want to do when you leave here?” Jeremy asked.
“Be King of Rustrum and do anything I please, of course,” Jonah laughed. He reached over and punched Jeremy’s arm in a friendly sort of way. “Why are you asking me all this, anyway?”
Jeremy chewed on his lip and thought about that a while.
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to think about what I might do when I get too old to be a page anymore. The pagemaster always tells us to plan ahead like that, so I guess I’m just curious about what other people are thinking about,” he said at last. Jonah rolled his eyes.
“You’re too darned serious, Jeremy. That’s years and years away,” he said.
“True, but I just wonder sometimes,” Jeremy said.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think, since it matters so much to you. I hope I can become a scholar at the university, and find out all kinds of things nobody ever knew before. And I hope I can do something for my family back in the village, maybe,” Jonah said, soberly.
Jeremy thought about this.
“I’m not sure what I want,” he said quietly. “I want to do something noble and grand, you know. Kill a dragon like they used to do in the old days, or explore a huge desert on foot, or swim across the sea and find out what’s on the other side of it. Something wild and awesome like that.”
Jonah looked at his friend for a second as if not sure what to say, then he laughed a little and punched his arm again.
“Now I know you’re crazy, boy,” he said, not unkindly. After a second Jeremy laughed too, and the serious topic was forgotten.
Jonah, when he wasn’t being a prankster, was generally a trustworthy and respectable boy. He knew lots of interesting things, and he didn’t mind sharing what he knew. He taught Jeremy how to ride the horses properly (his short experience of riding with the Sohrab caravan hardly counted), and sometimes they would ride out through the gates and around the countryside. It was good for the horses to get exercised regularly, and Lord Amagon didn’t mind if the stable boys left the city from time to time, provided they didn’t go too far and treated the horses well.
Most of the area close to Cerise was farm land watered by ditches dug from the Blue River, with patches of oak woods here and there. The main road led beside the riverbank- north to the dye mines, and far south to Rustrum. The old east road led up onto the High Plain and the Eyre Hills (and finally to Jeremy’s village) but that way wasn’t used much anymore.
The boys generally stuck to the main road by the river, for there was more to see and do that way. They sometimes went to Jonah’s village, three miles upstream. There was a deep, wide pool in the river at that place, with huge willow trees leaning far out over the water, and in the summertime they could tie up the horses and go swimming. Jeremy was as good a swimmer as Jonah was, for Melech had taught him to swim almost before he could walk. It was one of the few kind things he could ever remember his brother doing.
Jeremy wouldn’t have wanted to go home now even if he could have. He had a much better life in Cerise than he could ever have hoped for in the village, and he knew he wasn’t the first boy who ever had to find work in a distant city. If Papa had been able to find a tradesman to apprentice him to, he might have had to leave home soon anyway, Sohrab or not. He knew all this in his mind, but there were still times when he missed his old life more than he would have believed possible. He didn’t say much about it, most of the time. Jonah usually knew what he was thinking at times like that, and for once didn’t tease him about being too serious. He knew what it felt like to leave home, too.
Jonah could still go back and visit his family now and then, though. He asked Jeremy to come with him whenever he went, and Jeremy soon discovered that he enjoyed these visits very much. They were kindly folk, though not quite what he was used to. Jonah had at least twelve brothers and sisters, some older and some younger. They all lived in a three room wooden house surrounded by wide pastures for horses, and Jonah’s two older brothers were expert horsemen. One of his sisters was already married, but she still lived nearby and even brought her own baby to the house as often as not. The place always seemed on the very verge of bursting with people. They were a family that joked and laughed a lot, and nothing ever seemed to annoy or upset them. They took Jeremy to heart like a long-lost son and brother, from the moment he first walked in the door, without even thinking about it. Jeremy might have been surprised by this, if he hadn’t already seen it from Jonah himself. As it was, he sometimes felt more at home in that house than he ever had in the place he was born to. He felt a little disloyal for that, but he couldn’t help it.
Jonah sometimes laughed and said he hadn’t known he was getting another brother, but he meant it kindly.
Jeremy never did learn to be more than a decent rider, but he had lots of fun in the process. He was happier in those days than he could ever remember, and he thanked the Most High every day for bringing him to Cerise. He would certainly never have come there without the Sohrab, and he could even be thankful for his captivity, when he thought about it.
One glad day followed another, until he began to believe those times would go on forever. But of happy days and golden years there is often little to say, while they last. Nor do they last forever, in a dark and fallen world.
For the rest of his life, Jeremy never forgot those years in Cerise, and the memory of joy stood him in good stead during the evil days that lay ahead.
Chapter Four
Eli
After three years, Jeremy was placed over all the pages in the household, so high had he risen in the favor of Lord Amagon. The position was an important one, for all of Amagon's messages and the smooth running of his day-to-day life depended on the pages. It was a high honor for one so young. Most of the time Jeremy loved his work, but as time went on he gradually began to feel unsatisfied again. There was little challenge to be faced, little to be done which seemed awesome or grand. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was he wanted. . . it was just something that nagged him in the back of his mind, like an itch he couldn’t quite scratch. There were times when he thought it might drive him crazy, and when he had these moods he became irritable and restless. No amount of honor and money could ever quite kill the desire for greatness that was written on his heart.
He took to walking the streets of the city alone, deep in thought. If he stayed in the House, there were always people who needed to see him about something or other, and he wanted time to think. His wanderings took him into places he’d never visited as a page boy, for there was little need to send messages to the poorer sections of town. Old clothes and a droopy hood over his head helped to make him less recognizable, for he knew it wouldn’t do at all to be known as a servant of one of the great Houses. At best it would make people uneasy, and at worst it might earn him a cut throat in a dark alley. Parts of the city were very dangerous territory, and he couldn’t have said why he felt compelled to visit such places. He didn’t often do much except watch people, and sometimes talk to them. He knew Lord Amagon and even Jonah would have been horrified if they knew where he’d been. So he kept his roaming to himself, and said nothing about his restless thoughts.
It chanced that on one of these walks, he ended up near the River Gate on the east side of the city. . . not a very safe place to be, with night approaching. The narrow street was fronted with cheap taverns with names like The Little Brown Jug or The Blood and Guts. The muddy filth on the streets stuck to the bottom of his shoes, for the paving stones were rarely washed in this neighborhood. He watched a barefoot old woman in a dirty skirt digging through a trash pile beside one of the taverns, and heard the not-too-distant sound of drunk men fighting. It was a sad place, and Jeremy had almost made up his mind to turn around and go home.
Almost, until he saw a young boy huddled against a trash pile, with a little cup in front of him to beg for coins. There were many like him in the back alleys of Cerise, but today Jeremy felt an impulse to talk to this one. The boy looked up at him as he approached. This was a little unusual, for most beggars kept their heads down and didn’t dare look into the eyes of the city folk. The boy was thin and ragged and filthy, with the dull eyes that came from hunger and lack of love. Jeremy squatted down so as to speak to him more easily.
“What’s your name, boy?” he asked.
“My name is Eli, may it please your grace,” the boy said. That also was unusual, for the boy’s speech was unlike that of an ignorant street urchin. Noblemen and cultured folk addressed one another in that fashion, if they were roughly equals, but it was unheard of to be called “your grace” by a child, much less a street beggar. Indeed it could even be taken as an insult, if the boy had only known it. He obviously did not, so Jeremy let it pass. He was curious enough to ask about it, though.
“Tell me, Eli, how is it that you speak to me as an equal?” he asked mildly. He didn’t mean this in a harsh way, for he was simply curious. But his words struck terror into the child.
“I’m sorry, lord! I meant no offense!” he cried, cringing down on the filthy street and dropping his face as if he expected a blow. Jeremy hastily reached down and pulled the boy’s face up to look at him again.
“I’m not offended, Eli. . . I’d just like to know why you called me ‘your grace’,” he explained, as calmly as he could. The boy couldn’t answer him for few minutes until he had gotten over his fright.
“Lord, I found the words in a book of old tales. I meant only to do you honor,” he said.
“You can read?” Jeremy asked, more than a little shocked.
“Yes, Lord, but only a little. The old priest at the church by the River Gate taught me a little, before he died,” the boy said.
Jeremy thought about this for a long time. It must have been an awfully kind and devoted priest, to have taken the time to do such a thing. Jeremy wished for a minute that he knew the man’s name. Then he looked at the child more carefully, for he had the beginnings of an idea.