Remembrance

Even as I write this I know that people in Arina have forgotten most things about them. It is plain to me. I would talk to my father about all the silver they had paid us and he would be puzzled, like he did not know where it had all come from. I would ask the innkeeper, Arafat, about them, only to see him struggle to remember. "They slept for three days here, right? I didn't talk to them too much," he would tell me, then quickly change the subject to something more mundane.

They had, in fact, slept in his inn for months. The two had come as travelers from the West, old Men bearded and leaning, one on a staff the other on a crooked cane. I remember they looked weary and ragged when I met them on the road outside the village, as if on some kind of great journey. One of them, the tall one, wore a blue raiment, a sort of cloak; it looked as though it had been fine and warm once, but it was torn when I met him. He never answered me about it but I knew they must have come under some kind of attack. His friend, the shorter one, was clad in the leather vest of a soldier, which he had tried hard to mask; the sigils had all been erased and he wore the azure remains of some older garment over them. I never asked him about that but I suspected that after surviving whatever had attacked them, the two had armed themselves with found weapons and tokens, perhaps from some other, dead companions. The big one's staff was tipped with a spear point at the bottom end, and I once saw a broad dagger hidden in the little one's belt.

It did not look like the two travelers, the Old'uns as we'd called them, were any sort of rich lords or merchants, but it always seemed like they had enough money to pay for themselves, ragged as they were. When they arrived, tired but ever in good cheer, very quickly they bought supplies and tools for themselves, and rented a room at the inn. The second time I saw them they had sewn or bought themselves new travelling cloaks, both of them hooded and blue. The little one smiled and gave me a silver coin with a winged helm on it. "Thank you for guiding us to your town," he'd said, but I had only met them by accident if anything. I do not know, to this day, what work they sought to do in our village. Perhaps we were just a stop for respite in their journey, or perhaps they had found here something they had been looking for. Many times they came by our house, asking my father to lend them my help. At first he was wary, but a bent old man, coming with a jest and a silver coin to ask your son for help is nothing to be scared of.

I would run errands for them, buying Gwînuial from Siere the herbalist or salts and earths from the miner caravans. It was strange to me, how they avoided the caravans and travelling merchants, as if seeking secrecy from any who might spread word of their presence abroad. Sometimes they would invite me to their room at the inn, to show me the vials and pots they sent me to replace, if they were broken or charred as if by some conflagration. My father said there was no such thing as sorcerers, that magic was a myth the Elves used to deceive Men, but I never found any better word to describe the Old'uns than "wizards". For their part they never answered me plainly what they hoped to achieve, telling me only once that the skies above Arina were very clear. The tall one showed me then something he called a "star chart", a disc of wood I had brought him where he had carved circles and dots, which he said represented the constellations of the heavens above. "When one hunts the dark," he said to me, "one needs light to guide him." Neither of them ever explained to me what darkness they were hunting, but they were always giving with other sorts of lore. The little one carried many books in his bag, and scrolls of paper. He taught me the letters and how to read them, and write them, something which not even my father knew how to do; he'd always told me that sort of thing doesn't help anyone "in the real world". Before I met the Old'uns I did not even know my father could be wrong about something.

I think it was the fact that they met me first out of all the people in our village that ultimately spared me. I cannot imagine why else they would allow a lowly carpenter's apprentice to remember them, when obviously they had worked so hard to make themselves forgotten by all others.

I look now on the statue I carved for them, and I believe that before long I will forget them as well. Already the tall one's cowl and the little one's boots look strange to me, like things I've never seen before. When I heard they were planning to depart I felt a sadness overcome me, like whatever enchantment had visited me in my little life was ending. I spent two whole days looking for the blue stone near the mines (the tall one had said it was called "lapis") and a night and a day polishing and carving it. When I came to them with it, the tall one smiled as he reached for it. I do not know if he liked it or if he was merely acting like he did, to make a child happy, but after he showed it to his friend (or was it his brother?) they both told me they would not keep it. "We do not need this to remember you," he said. "You will be with us in our minds for as long as we walk this earth," the short one continued, as he usually did, finishing what the other had started. "You might need it to remember us, however, in the days to come. Writing about us may help you as well, and you shall need practice for your letters," he told me.

Then they both turned their eyes to me, and for a moment their smiles were gone: "But show this, and your writing to no one." As they said this to me, in unison, for a moment I was frightened, and it looked to me like the two kind old men that had tutored me were now as great kings, tall and fearsome, with a great doom written in the stars above them. Quickly the feeling faded, and I could see them again as they were.

The next day they left, and within a week I began to notice how the people around me were forgetting them. And I fear that shall be my fate as well before long, unless, as the little one told me, I write some account of their passing through our village. Even now I cannot remember their names. I feel unsure if they ever had any, but I clearly remember calling the little one from another room, by a name all of his own, at least once when I visited them... so I suppose they must have.

I never found out what they had sought in Arina, or if they found it. Or what the Darkness was that they were hunting, or why, with each day that passed the short one carved another small notch into his cane, in a long dotted spiral moving towards a nail he had beaten near the end of the rod.

Five weeks later another traveler came into our village. I met him in the inn, as he was speaking with Arafat and also Batciu, his helper. This one was not like the Old'uns. He was old, yes, but he was clad in a white hooded cloak, so clean that it looked brand new. He had many coins and smiled and drank, and talked, but not like them. It felt to me like he disliked us and did not want to linger here long, but was trying to hide it as best he could. At first he did not pay me any mind, before he noticed I was listening to his discussion. Then, when he did, he bent over slightly, and smiled as he looked at me.

"Do you know of whom I speak? I am looking for two old friends of mine, fellow travelers who I believe came down the road after the passing of last winter."

His voice was deep, and pleasant; it reminded me of the stewed pork my mother used to make, and when he spoke to me then I wanted, for a moment, with all my heart to tell him everything about my wizard-friends. He was wise and old like them, and it was clear that everything he did was good for me and for my family, in ways so great and mysterious I could not fathom them. Had he waited another second I would have spoken, but he did not. Instead, he rose and ruffled the hair on my head, and went to sit at one of the tables and talk with the men there.

A few days later this traveler left as well, and it felt to me that I had done good not to reveal anything to him.

It has been many years now since those days when the two wizards wandered our village. I am older and wiser myself, and I have decided not to remain here. Despite my father's protests I shall travel west, to the land where they use silver coins with winged helms. My old friends told me that it was a land rich and wondrous, and that its chief city was white and shining and full of lore and learning.

I shall go there, and see if reading can indeed help me in the real world.

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