The Pleasure of Memory by Welcome Cole

room for duty or responsibility to others.”
    Luren rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that’s supposed to have some deeply insightful meaning for me since you serve up the same lesson at least once a week. And I’m equally sure that I still don’t have a clue what it means.”
    “No obvious lies,” Chance said, squeezing the boy’s shoulder.
    “It’s not a lie; it’s selective listening. I learned it from my master.”
    Chance took the backpack from him. “You're a good apprentice, Luren,” he said as he helped the boy slip it onto his back, “And you’re well on your way to becoming a great man and a powerful mage, but right now, I need you to listen to me. I want you to follow my instructions without question or hesitation.”
    A cloud passed over the boy’s face. “I know what you're going to say.”
    Chance gripped his shoulder again and squeezed it with equal parts warmth and authority. “This is most likely just a caeyl malfunction,” he said, “But I'm responsible for the buffer zone this forest creates, so I don’t have the luxury of ignoring it. I’m going to check out a couple of the sentries and scout the valley rim. It’s possible I’ll be gone overnight. I need you to help me by tending the animals and minding the house. It’d be a good time to clean that fouled chimney, too. I’m tired of waking with ash in my mouth.”
    Luren rolled his eyes again. “Right.”
    Chance picked a twig from Luren’s hair and stroked the tangled blonde locks back into place. “I promise you can help me charge all the sentries when I get back. It’s time you learned basic animation anyway.”
    The boy pulled his head free and turned away. He walked sullenly back toward the steps leading up to the path. “I'll do it because you want me to,” he said as he climbed the narrow stairs, “But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
    “You just mind the house, boy. And if Sarrigh happens by for the pox elixirs, they’re ripening in the root cellar. Give him those with the red leaf stamp, not the blue ones.”
    “Yes, O mighty lord and master,” Luren said as he backed away, “By your will, your Lordship. Just promise you’ll be careful out there. I’m too busy to come save your butt.” Then he turned and disappeared into the ferns above.
    He was barely out of sight before Chance’s humor was dead and buried. He immediately crossed the road and climbed up into the forest on the opposite side.
    The land here inclined less severely than the hill leading up to his house. However, it’d change soon enough as he neared the ridge of steep cliffs overlooking the wide valley separating the northern and southern forests. There, it was a half-mile higher than the valley floor.
    The appearance of the sentry had completely shattered an already miserable morning. It had to be a malfunction. The notion of a Vaemysh invasion was simply too preposterous to chew. It’d been two hundred years since the Vaemyn last entered these woods with blood in their eyes, and the price of any manner of invasion would be unacceptably steep to their people. They’d been the cause of too many wars over the last thousand years, and the Allies had made it clear they’d not tolerate another at the Vaemyn’s hands.
    Yet, another voice murmured from deep back in the doubting recesses of his mind, a thin, timid voice that whispered his bellowing confidence into silence: And what if it’s true?
    If the news held any truth at all, if the Vaemyn had indeed sent warriors into Na te’Yed, the consequences were greater and more severe than anything he’d faced in his lifetime. It would shatter the stability of the entire region and lead to a war like no one alive had ever witnessed.
    If even a word of this was true, there was no worse message the beast could have delivered.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    V
     
    THE SWORD
     
     
     
B
    EAM COULDN’T MOVE.
    Or maybe he simply lacked the will for it.
    Not that it mattered. In truth, he was prepared