Alarik's Crusade

Chapter 22: Repercussions

Jathi hesitated before entering the clearing in which she promised to meet Adilash and report her findings. She paced, leaving a small trail where her feet stomped repeatedly on the ground the same way Adilash’s had when he circled in frustration and confusion not so long ago. It was not that she feared a reprimand, as she and Adilash were not only on equal footing but it was simply not in his character. It was that look of disappointment in his eyes she feared.

She shook her head and pushed the hair from her eyes. She was being foolish. This was Adilash she meant to speak to. Adilash, who would have forgiven her for any sin or transgression. That was just his character… for better or worse.

Steeling herself, she walked with all the pride and courage her position had afforded her. However, the moment she entered that clearing, all semblance of stoicism shattered like the veil it was.

Sitting right across from Adilash was Majad, bright red robes pulled up to his eyes as they always were. Neither spoke, but both stared intently at each other, even as she entered.

“A pleasure to see you both,” she said, convincing no one.

“May you grant us the permission of skipping the pleasantries,” Majad said, still keeping his eyes on Adilash, the latter sitting stooped and withered, the former’s back as straight as the horizon upon the plains beyond their borders. “We were having a frank discussion of where you were. We have come to a disagreement.”

“Indeed we have,” Adilash agreed, meeting his gaze, although even that seemed to tax him. Everything seemed to, lately.

Majad turned his head to Jathi, only moving from the neck, his shoulders still facing towards Adilash. “I believe you may have visited someone, did you not?” It was more of a statement than a question. How he felt, however, was a mystery. All of Jathi’s political skills, her abilities to read people, were at a loss with the man.

“I did,” she said, finding no other path to take. It wasn’t hot enough in the rainforest to cause her face to flush as it had. She cursed herself for showing her hand as she did, but there was little she could do to help it. Neither could she find any comfort in Adilash, who was still staring daggers across the way from where he sat.

“Adilash refused to divulge such information to me,” he said, not looking at the man in which he spoke.

“I owe you nothing in regards to whom we choose to speak!” he snapped at him. A little man, health failing, yet still so full of fury. Endlessly defiant. It was one of many reasons she admired him.

Majad’s head snapped back at Adilash. Rigid again. Jathi couldn’t help but wince. The robe pulled up over his mouth did little to make him appear more welcoming. “I need you to explain why you’ve decided that I am no longer worthy of your trust. I have done nothing to deserve this. I have been an extension-”

“Yes, yes, an extension of our will!” Adilash interrupted, remembering his words from a previous encounter. They stuck with him as they had with Jathi.

He looked back to her now, cold stare level and contemplative. His shoulders, torso, nothing else had moved. Frozen, like a statue, save for his neck, a perfect, easy control and only what is necessary. “Could you please indulge me and clarify again why I am here?”

Jathi grimaced. He already knew. She was walking into a trap, and she had to divert from it. But again, it felt fruitless; he was to say what he was to say. Might as well face it now. “To provide us service as we administer our decision.”

“Correct by half,” he said. “And the rest.”

“Watch your tongue-” Adilash began, but Majad held up a hand.

“I meant no disrespect. However, we all know there is another part to my role here.”

“To serve as a protector from the intruding crusaders,” Jathi added. She understood now. She winced as she waited for him to say it.

“Yes. And as you know, you could very well have prevented me from succeeding in my role as you did not uphold your end of the agreement - in that it is to be me who deals with the Vanderik and the Khorsuli directly, and beyond the first meeting to not speak with them again. For your own safety. That safety was… compromised, upon this latest meeting, as you know.”

Adilash stood more rapidly than Jathi knew he could. “What do you mean? Jathi, could you have been hurt?”

“The Khorsuli woman was not particularly welcoming to me due to the likelihood of the loss of her ally,” Jathi said. “She gave me a warning.”

“She threatened you?” Adilash said, his cane wobbling upon the dirt.

“A warning,” Jathi said calmly, raising her hands and showing it was not something to be of concern. She wished desperately that Majad would not push the point further.

“In the form of an arrow, just above her head,” Majad said, shattering that hope so quickly.

“She fired at you!” Adilash all but yelled, forgetting the standard mandate that those in the rainforest best not make noises above the necessary level lest they rouse the interest of the predators that skulked the shadows. “This cannot stand! We should expel them from Hashai immediately, and never allow them upon these grounds again!”

Jathi put her hands up and made a patting motion. “You’re overreacting. She was angry. Volatile. I shouldn’t have contacted her the way I did, and I spoke with her in the wrong manner. I was too arrogant in my approach.” She kept her voice down, and in part sounded similar to Majad. She got that way whenever she tried to control a situation.

“Overreacting,” Adilash repeated, looking somewhat embarrassed after having been made to look foolish after putting his faith in Jathi only to have Majad proven correct once again. “You had an arrow shot at your head!”

“Not at,” Jathi corrected. “She is an experienced hunter. A Khorsuli shaman! If she had wished to have hit me, she would have,” she said, slowing her speech at the end as if the words themselves were trying to warn her that her line of reasoning was a foolish endeavour.

“A tremendous comfort, knowing she could easily have taken your life!” Adilash snapped, a look of anger on his face that came across so rarely.

Majad cleared his throat, still sitting perfectly upright upon his log. “I believe we’re missing the purpose I have brought this issue to your attention-”

“To disparage me!” Jathi called out, still remembering that it was Majad who broke her secret. Although, was it even a secret? Did she really wish to keep it from her husband? She wasn’t sure, and that bothered her further.

“I’m afraid not, Jathi,” Majad continued, voice clear in spite of the mask resting over his mouth. “I brought it to your attention to clear my name further - although I am yet unsure as to why it needs clearing.” His head snapped to Jathi. “Did you discover anything at all that disproved what I have reported?”

“No,” Jathi reluctantly whispered.

“I have done nothing beyond act as the loyal servant, and yet I am treated as a spy or a provocateur. I am your will. If it is my tone or my manner that makes you lose faith in me, then I am afraid those failings lie not on myself.” He stood up and began to walk out the way Jathi had come in. “I hope that you can put aside your grievances to look at how I’ve acted. But for now, I am to return to my duties of observation and testing, and will do so with the utmost quality.” He turned his back and walked into the rainforest again. “Just as I always have,” he said as he disappeared into the thick vegetation.

Adilash sat back down again, breathing heavily, his chest heaving with every moment. His cane tapped repeatedly on the ground, and he stared forward in a mixture of anger and disbelief. And partly a sense of betrayal. Jathi could sense it in him, disappointment not in her failure as she had feared, but in the fact that she had so recklessly put herself in danger.

Jathi sat across from him, in the place Majad had been. This had all gone wrong. Her frustration with herself and her situation grew immensely.

Adilash tapped his cane over and over, but it slowed, as his breathing did, until eventually he had returned himself to a state of at least moderate calm. “This cane,” he said, tapping it once more. “Traded on behalf of our people for many of our potions, to allow me to move swiftly through this rainforest still.”

Jathi shook her head. “I know this, and I’m thankful, you know that, but you don’t need to say this.”

Adilash continued undaunted. “I need this because of another potion I made. Just a few years ago, when I was young - I’m still young now, of course, but young in appearance. When my wife had proved to be too reckless. Lacked caution during a hunt for reagents. A snake got her. Could have taken her from this world. Taken her from me.”

“Again, Adilash… I understand…”

“But through hours of labour and a little luck, I was able to craft an elixir to sap myself of my life’s energy, and to give it to you. This,” he said, pointing to his withered features and wrinkly, aged visage, “is the cost of recklessness. This is the cost of rash decisions. It could have all been for naught.”

Jathi’s eyebrows shot up. She crossed her arms. “Oh, is that what this is, then? You’re upset that I could have ruined your sacrifice? I put myself at these risks for our people. I am ready to do that. I could have died then, but in service to Hashai!”

“Don’t accuse me of thinking selfishly when we both know why you went out to speak with that woman! It was arrogance!” Adilash snapped back at her.

“Are you saying I went to see what was truth and what was lies, to perhaps determine the fate of our people, strictly because I wanted to prove that I could? I would have thought you knew me better than that! But perhaps you don’t!”

Adilash looked down again, and allowed his shoulders to slump. Taking a deep breath, the anger passed through his body and out of him, finding his calm and allowing the full weight of their argument to settle. “Perhaps you’re right-”

“Indeed I am!” Jathi interrupted, fire still in her veins, but whispered an apology and realised she had overstepped.

“-and perhaps I’ve said things in anger I shouldn’t have. I am sorry. And I mean that.” Jathi believed him, some of the anger drifting from her as well. “But we cannot let Majad divide us. In many ways, he has been correct. We can’t police his every action, nor has he told us anything untrue, and he has managed to stay more or less to the decisions we would have made. It may have been us that strayed from the plan.”

“I just…” Jathi began, scratching at an itch on her arm and eyeing the rainforest’s many shadows cautiously. “I just don’t think I can trust him. There’s something about the man that’s terribly eerie.”

“I’m certainly well aware of that. But at the moment, we have no choice.”

Jathi walked up to him, still sitting on the log, weary as ever. She rested a hand on his knee and sat with him; the prime of youth with a broken body. “Then we must remember to trust each other.”