Chapter 18 - Show Me

  “Show you?” Varg rumbled as he polished the dried blood from his arrow pierced breastplate with an old rag. “The priest can’t give you new eyes.”

  "Bah," the old man barked back.

  “He means with his class power,” Jane cut in, sitting down on the bed next to Hobb. “He was the town’s fortune teller before the Reaping. Afterward, he was blessed with the ability to see the past of others, allowing those he used his power on to witness their pasts once more alongside him. Although it appears he’s been a bit deceitful about the scope of his powers this past year,” she added in a stern tone.

  "Leave an old man his tricks, Mistress Jane," Hobb replied with a grin.

  “Just stay out of my head, old man,” Varg said as he tossed the bloodied rag into a small hearth in the corner of the hut. “If the priest wants to know what it’s like having his eyes burned out of his own head, that’s his business.”

  As Varg exchanged his pleasantries with the Seer, Robert considered the blind man’s powers. He can revisit the past... The thought scared Robert, suddenly unready to face the memories of his own past and those of the family he’d lost. He felt the palms of his hands begin to sweat despite the encroaching cold of the Frozen Forest.

  "How does it work?" Robert asked Hobb with a nervous voice.

  “It’s simple, really. Your mind will play back for me from this current moment in time in reverse, as if someone had created a painting for every second of your life. I can look through each one going backward in time until such a painting strikes my fancy, at which point I can reach out and enter it, reliving the moment from an onlooker’s perspective, let’s say. I can even bring you along if you wish.”

  Robert stood silently, not satisfied with the Seer’s explanation.

  “There are some limits, unfortunately. The farther I go back, the greater the draw on my mana,” Hobb added.

  "And why do you need to see the late King Henry’s death?" Robert asked. "What’s he to you other than a fallen leader of a fallen land?"

  "Call me sentimental. I’ve been a part of this fallen land, as you call it, far longer than you, young healer," the old man rasped. "Consider it an old fortune teller’s last request before you continue on your great adventure, while I wait for the inevitable in this old hut, in darkness."

  Robert sighed when a loud meow echoed at the doorway. He turned, finding the fat orange and white haired cat that had originally bolted from the hut now walking casually to a large wooden bowl of food beneath a small table on the opposite side of the room.

  "Wesly, is that you, you yellow belly? Now you show up!" the old man shouted, waving a clenched fist in the air.

  Before the old man could get any more wound up, Robert spoke up. "All right, Hobb. As a parting gesture, I’ll show you where we last saw King Henry. Then, unfortunately, we must depart this land for our own quest." He looked toward Jane, who was trying to keep the old man from rising to argue with the cat. "But it looks like we’ll be leaving you in good company," he added, nodding toward her.

  "Wah," the old man said, turning his attention away from the returning cat and back to Robert. "Oh right. Let’s do this then, shall we."

  "All right, should I be sitting for th..." Robert started when his vision went white. He felt an intense burning sensation tear into his eyes, just as Varg had warned, before a sudden pull dragged him downward as if into the earth itself. The blinding white faded to darkness, and he found himself suddenly standing again in the first circular chamber of the Raid of Stormskeep.

  To his surprise, he saw himself off in the distance beside the giant dead felinoid, with the rest of their once large raid group scattered around the chamber. Everything felt off, Robert thought, as he watched one of the raiders midstep, his extended foot impossibly suspended in the air as if frozen in place. Time is slowed, as if he were rewatching events through the lens of a dream, although it appeared he could still move his arms and legs at normal speed.

  "Quite the rush, aye, healer?" Hobb said, suddenly appearing beside him.

  "Your eyes," Robert replied, surprised, as the man’s blindfold was gone, revealing bright blue eyes full of sight. The man’s once aged robes were now pristine, and his hair and beard were now well kept. "You can see?"

  "Well, of course. This power wouldn’t be much use if I couldn’t," he laughed, the sound echoing strangely across the stone walls of the chamber.

  Robert followed the sound bouncing across the walls before looking back toward the large raiding party, watching to see if anyone reacted to the old man’s loud laugh, but finding that none did.

  "Oh, don’t worry about them. They can’t hear us. We aren’t time travelers, no, no, no," he said, shaking his head as he began to walk forward toward the rest of the raiding party, passing the large statue of an orb at the center of the chamber.

  “Oh, golly, don’t tell me the old bastard died to that giant cat,” Hobb said in disbelief as they continued forward toward King Henry’s final resting place. They passed Robert’s doppelganger standing next to Varg as the raiding party made its way toward the elevator that would lead down to the raid’s future horrors.

  "I’m afraid he did," Robert replied. "But I believe he was the one to fell the great beast in battle."

  "Oh, I’m sure that’s what he’d want you to think, the vain bastard," the old man rasped with animated disdain.

  "Did you know the man?" Robert asked, curious as to where the hatred was coming from.

  They stopped at the king’s decaying corpse, which was splayed out just in front of them. The giant felinoid’s head had crushed him from the waist down, one arm outstretched, grasping at the stone floor as if he had been trying to pull himself free before the end.

  To Robert’s surprise, the now regal looking old man spat on the dead king before flicking a glimmering golden coin onto the corpse’s back.

  "Aye, I knew him. How do you think I lost my eyes?" he said, spitting again. "One of the man’s idiotic adventures led us to some unfortunate circumstances, ending with an arrow through my head," he added, tapping a finger against his temple.

  “Were you related?” Robert asked, seeing some resemblance in the now slightly more youthful looking Seer.

  “Aye, an uncle. Perhaps I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around after I lost my sight, but banishing me into the wilderness?” The man scowled. “Tell me, did the man not add another statue of himself looking like a clodpoll during these past few years?”

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  Robert simply shrugged, unaware which statues were new or not within the city.

  “Bah,” he added, rubbing one hand down his face, his angry mask briefly slipping. He sighed. “I forgive you, nephew,” he said gently before turning toward Robert.

  “Thank you, healer, for taking me here and for providing an old, jaded man a bit of closure. We can leave here now. But before we do, there are some things we should probably discuss.”

  "Such as?" Robert asked, concerned.

  "My power. Recall how I said I can see your past as a million paintings at once?"

  "Yes, you said they come to you in reverse order, from present to past," Robert replied.

  "Well, it’s not so targeted, unfortunately. Before I jumped into your memory, my power casts a wide net around myself as the pasts of all those in close proximity flood my vision. It’s chaos as I try to make heads or tails of whose memories I plan to enter, but I get glimpses from everyone unless I’m far off on my lonesome in the wilderness, let’s say. The empty camp has been something of a godsend these past couple weeks, despite the loneliness."

  "Okay, so you know all of my party’s pasts now?" Robert asked.

  "Not exactly. Just images of them. I can’t hear what’s spoken unless I jump into a memory, but my mana only lasts so long."

  “How can you make heads or tails of what’s being said at this speed?” Robert asked, extending a hand toward his ill fated raiding group as they headed for the elevator leading down toward Metalurgist Rat’s chamber. “The slowed sounds are so muffled and indiscernible.”

  "Oh, that," he said, putting a hand to his temple. "That I control."

  Suddenly the raiding group began to move faster and faster until, in a flash, they disappeared down the elevator shaft, and in the blink of an eye, Robert felt time freeze again.

  "That’s as far as this memory will take us," he said.

  Robert turned toward the Seer in amazement. "Quite the power, Master Hobb."

  "Indeed it is. I guess the sight showed pity on me when granting me my class selection," he said, cackling into a laugh.

  "It has been something, to see again, if not exactly with my eyes."

  “But that’s besides the point I wanted to discuss. You’re traveling with some large gray monster, am I correct?” Hobb asked, surprising Robert even though he should not have been, knowing the Seer’s power.

  "We are, but the orc is friendly, for the most part. He stayed back on our ship to avoid too many questions."

  "You show up in a flying ship, land it outside our gates, and you’re hoping to avoid too many questions?" Hobb asked, once again falling into a cackling laugh.

  Robert reddened at the preposterousness of it. "I guess it was a bit of a silly plan, but the Frozen Forest doesn’t leave much room for hiding such a massive vessel," he said with a shrug.

  "All well, my dear healer. But I saw part of your orc’s past. The parts I could see were quite illuminating. Would you like to see?"

  Robert stood for a moment, unsure how he felt about sneaking into another’s memories. “Perhaps we should let him know before dropping him into this dreamscape,” he said.

  "Pft. I don’t have the mana to bring him here," Hobb said as he stepped toward Robert, grasping him with both hands and staring into him with almost ethereal blue eyes. "Walk with me, Robert of Shearford, into the world of orcs."

  At that moment, Robert sensed the floor beneath him disappear as the raid chamber around them dissolved into a glow of white mist. As the darkened stone walls faded from his vision, with a snap of Hobb’s fingers, a new setting sprang into existence.

  No longer was Robert standing in the darkened tomb of the Raid of Stormskeep. He was back atop Brukk’s frigate, or at least that was how it felt to a disoriented Robert, yet nothing seemed entirely correct or as he remembered it. The tall mast beside him was pristine. The iron arrow that had impaled it during their flight from the other orc corsairs was no longer present, and all around him, orcs and goblins scrambled in slow motion in every direction across the deck.

  “Quite the ingenious contraption, healer. I’m a bit jealous I’ll never get the chance to fly on one myself,” Hobb said, walking up beside Robert, who was staring past the bow of the ship where a massive red portal pulsed directly in front of their position. A dungeon portal? he thought. Beyond it stretched a rocky red landscape as far as the eye could see.

  "Still with me, healer?" Hobb said, tapping Robert on the shoulder and snapping him from his trance as he stared at the glowing portal in front of them.

  “What? Oh, yes, I’m here,” he finally replied. "Why not come with us then, Master Hobb? We literally have this very ship just outside your gates."

  "Hah, I appreciate the offer, but I’m not long to be cooped up on a wooden boat for the rest of my days, flying or not. Besides, I’m not sure your scary friend would let me," he said, pointing past Robert to his right.

  Robert turned, finding Brukk in jagged black armor. His gray head and dull black eyes were fixed upward at something behind them. He held out a single armored, clawed hand, pointing skyward, frozen mid roar, a terrifying sight, Robert thought, as he looked upward toward the direction Brukk was pointing. Above them stretched a starlit night sky, the stars bright lights fighting against the pitch blackness. But this was not the sky he had known all his life. None of the stars he used for navigation or for timing his crops were there. Not a single familiar constellation, he thought. But dead center within the unfamiliar cosmos, in the direction Brukk had been pointing, a bright neon sun glared high above, illuminating the reddish homeworld of the orcs in a haunting greenish glow.

  “It’s not a sun, and that isn’t a dungeon portal behind us,” Robert said aloud, part question and part statement, to Hobb, the Seer of dreams and nightmares.

  "I think not, my dear healer," Hobb said as he stared up beside him.

  "The convergence. They were running," Robert said. "From whatever that was," he added grimly, pointing upward.

  "Your guess is as good as mine, healer. But you want to know what else? This wasn’t even the strangest memory I’ve seen today," Hobb said as he placed an old hand atop Robert’s shoulder, and the memory shimmered once more into a familiar white mist.

  The wooden deck Robert had just been standing on suddenly snapped into lush green grass. An open prairie, Robert thought as he looked around to find massive red barked trees sprouting up from the world all around them. Though these trees were not quite right either. He had never seen a tree on his world quite so large, he thought.

  "Look there," Hobb called out, suddenly walking up behind him again as if he had materialized from the mist itself.

  To Robert’s right, the largest tree he had ever seen stood towering above them. Toward the base of the tree, what looked like a wooden door trimmed in ornate golden decorations was built directly into the trunk, as if it opened into some kind of dwelling within. Sprouting from the side of the trunk was a bronze cast tubing structure wrapping upward around the trunk again and again until it extended past the green mushroom shaped crown of the great tree. Billowing upward from the bronze tube was what looked to Robert like steam, except frozen in time.

  "What is this place?" Robert asked in awe.

  "I was hoping you would know," Hobb replied. "Look there, by the door."

  Robert drew his attention back down toward the base of the tree. By the gold trimmed door, he could make out some kind of large object, but it was blurred to his vision. He squinted, trying to discern its shape, but it eluded him.

  "I can’t make it out. Let’s move closer." he said.

  He began to walk forward along the grass as Hobb followed beside him, chuckling.

  "It doesn’t quite work like that," he said as they continued forward, but something was wrong. The farther they walked toward the tree, the more Robert felt the distance remain unchanged. He stopped as Hobb caught up beside him.

  "We can’t travel past the memory of the person who created it. We couldn’t pass through that door unless the one who remembers it did. But that’s the funny thing, healer. Do you see anyone else around us?"

  Robert looked at Hobb, confused.

  “This memory stood out to me as I reached out with my power. An unusual picture among a million others, even among those of your orc friends. The rest of those pictures seemed to fall into place. But this one? Whose memory did we step into, and how did they stop me from drawing it further?”

  Hobb looked around once more before lifting his old hands in a shrug. "Someone from your group has been to this place, healer, but who... I guess I’ll leave that for you to figure out."