The Cave Part 4

Later, after we had washed up thoroughly, I sat with Tharkin for the vegetable soup and light green tea. I was famished after waking, but my stomach was also much smaller than it had been, and eating too much made me feel nauseous. The meat I was craving, no longer sounded good as I simply tried to keep down what I had. Rice was also offered, and that helped calm my stomach.

"Slow and steady at first, and then we can turn to more substantial food tomorrow," said Tharkin, watching me keenly with his very clear blue eyes. I realized they reminded me of an open azure sky.

"It is really quite good," said I in response, honestly though there was not much to taste. It lacked much seasoning, but in a way that was probably best. A memory was just at my fingertips, stirred up by the meal, but I could not nail it down.

"Do you have a trade?" asked the old man, after a long sip from his tea cup. "Craftsman?"

I blushed at the question, for there was one thing that I recalled quite clearly about myself, and that was that I had always been good at lifting things that were not my own. Locks and cleverly designed gadgets that served to protect items or trap the foolish, always fascinated me because I wanted to the know how they worked. The fastest way to those answers were to take those things apart. Somewhere in the back of my memories it seemed that someone had taught me how to do these things. A man or a woman, I could not see them clearly in my mind's eye, but there was a figure dimly silhouetted.

"I, um, am good at picking locks and taking things that are not mine," I replied sheepishly, wanting to avert my eyes from Tharkin's, but he seemed to hold my gaze firmly against my will.

"Light fingers and inquisitive mind, huh?" he said with one lifted eye brow. "What did you hope to steal up in the mountains?"

"I cannot remember."

"You are far from home, I can tell that by your accent. Sylivian? From the imperial colonies?"

"I still don't know, but that gives me a place to start," said I. "Where am I now if, I might ask? What is this place?"

"This is my sanctuary," replied the old man, spreading his hands wide to encompass the expanse before him. "My place of refuge until old age ends and the eternal journey begins."

"I hope that doesn't start anytime soon," I replied with a laugh, imagining being alone in the mountains by myself.

"I have been dying a long time," replied Tharkin, fixing me with a meaningful stare. "Many people have been, but perhaps that is too macabre for a sunny morning."

"Yes, sort of," I replied, trying to understand his meaning. Had this man been dying of a terminal illness? There was nothing wrong with him from my point of view, but it seemed like an inappropriate topic to delve into.

"Do you live alone then? I haven't seen anyone else."

"Yes, it is just myself," replied the old man, setting aside his finished tea cup. "Once there were others, but very few ever stay long, and I have no desire to travel again. This is my final destination."

"Can you tell me anything about the voice from the cave?" I asked, something in his solemn tone reminding me suddenly of the mysterious being in the shadows. "There was someone there when I woke and directed me to you."

Tharkin took a long time to respond to my question. Getting up from his seat solemnly and walking to a birch wood cabinet. It was one of the few pieces of furniture in the room, and I saw him take out a black bag and long stem pipe. He returned and sat again crossed legged on the floor, taking a small ember from the fire to light his filled pipe after a moment. A few long smoke rings filled the air before he seemed to consider his answer to my question crystallized in his mind.

"The voice from the cave?" he asked, still not answering me directly. "Yes, someone old and secretive. You can find many ancient things in caves, and not all good or bad, just there from beyond mortal memory. However, this voice that you refer too, has been there a very long time and no one has seen its corporeal form since the queens out of the east first went to war in the forgotten deserts of Sanmar."

"I don't know what you are talking about," I replied, hearing a sad remembrance in his voice as if he could see events that had taken place with his own eyes. "What queens? Where is Sanmar?"

"That is how long since the voice went into the cave," he replied with a twinkle in his eye. "Few now remember those days or the people that lived and died, some with honor and some in vain."

I had a feeling at this point that he was not going to directly answer my inquiry at all, watching the smoke rings gather up towards the ceiling, drifting in a hazy cloud of blue gray. Gentle whispers of breeze from the open windows, guided out soft tendrils of this mist, but not fast enough to dispel the thickening mass. Just as I was about to rise and move to open another door leading to the back garden, a flicker of movement stopped me.

Within the swirling, forms began to take shape, or at least I believed they were shadows of beings. Where once had been blue and gray haze, there was a lightening of white, and then the vague sense of far sweeping red landscape. The vision I watched unfold was as if I was flying quickly over all that I saw, great hosts of armies, and creatures carrying engines of war. Then I was in a hall of gilded walls, beholding a fierce combat between to women with swords and daggers.

Then suddenly there was a rage of fire before me, a storm filled wave that covered me with its fury. I cried out, but I was not burned. Huge beasts battled in a world of darkness and flame so intense, all that I could see were blurs of movement as their vast bodies crashed together, they disengaged, only to come to blows again. I was stunned. Finally a fierce blue sky opened up to my eyes, and I could see the soft fall of something that looked like snow coming down all about me. The flakes were wrong though. These were pieces of ash. Something was burning fiercely. Then the vision was gone.

I gasped a moment, my voice lost. Then coughing, I felt rather than saw the smoke from the pipe dissipating. Tharkin's eyes were upon me, and they appeared to glitter with less than human light.