Chapter the Sixth of Part the First
In which the narrative recounts acts from the life of Polnar in Rekkmerr.
Polnar awoke to the same jerky motion of the wagon that he awoke to the first time. His head was still pounding as hard as it was before. He opened his eyes a little. Not much light came into the wagon that was something like a shed on wheels. There was only a small smudgy window on one side, but he could see Ritzvah doing some sewing in the dim light.
“Feeling better?” Ritzvah asked in tones that painfully reminded Polnar of his mother.
“No,” Polnar answered.
“I think the pain will pass,” said Ritzvah.
“No it won’t.”
“I mean the pain in your head. The pain of your loss will be with you forever.”
“I know.”
Polnar’s loss was nothing less than that of his entire family. Only half a moon earlier, he had them all. That was before the plague struck his village. Polnar was among the first to be struck down by the plague and he became so feverish that he was sure he was going to die. So afraid of the plague were his parents and brothers and sisters that they fled the family hut, leaving Polnar to die alone. But he did not die. He recovered and staggered out of the hut in search of his family. What he saw horrified him. Two huts were burning and the bodies of many people he had known all his life were piled up at the edge of the small village. Many other people were lying on the ground, coughing and sweating the way Polnar did. In the pile of the dead, Polnar recognized one sister and his brother.
“Mom? Papa?” Polnar asked.
“Dead,” said the fletcher. “Why are you not dead, too?”
“You started it,” said the spinner.
Suddenly, Polnar was surrounded by villagers, among them his kin, his friends and his parents’ friends. Some had heavy sticks in their hands, others had stones. Polnar covered his face to defend himself. A woman pulled his hands away. Even the gentle Murmansk, wise elder of the village, raised a stick and drove it into Polnar’s head to knock him out.
The first time Polnar woke up to the cart’s motion and the throbbing of his head, Murmansk was looking down on him.
“I suppose your head hurts with the blow I gave you,” he said,
“Yea.”
“I could think of no other way to save your life,” Murmansk explained. “When I knocked you out, I told the others you were dead and then I swiped your body out from under their noses.”
“That is when we decided to flee the village,” said Petzkah, a young woman of the village who was also in the cart. “Ritzvah and me and Ned.”
Polnar saw the youth, Ned, sitting quietly, his face a blank.
“Ritzvah is driving the ox right now,” said Murmansk. “I decided we had better flee before they found out you were alive.”
“Is it true—my parents are dead?” Polnar asked.
Murmansk nodded sadly.
“It’s true. We’re all the family any of us have left.”
And then Polnar lost consciousness again. He awoke later to Ritzvah’s presence and the sound of Ned strumming his thumb strings.
“Why did you save me?” Polnar asked.
“Murmansk knew better than to blame you for the plague, but he could not explain that to the others,” Ritzvah explained.
Polnar drifted off into unconsciousness again and came to when the cart stopped.
“I think we are far enough away that we can stop here for the night,” Murmansk announced from the front of the wagon.
Polnar’s head was still swimming when he was helped out of the wagon and placed in a sheltered spot near a fire that Ned and Petzkah were already building. Nobody asked him to do anything. Food was cooked and passed around. Polnar managed to eat and drink a little. Nobody seemed interested in speaking much. Ned started to play his thumb strings again. Murmansk brought out his drone. Ritzvah whipped out a pipe and played a squealing, mournful tune. Petzkah collected a few rocks and beat them in rhythm with a pair of sticks.
“I guess I’m the only one who can’t play an instrument,” said Polnar.
“You have a voice,” said Murmansk.
“Yes, I have heard you sing,” said Ritzvah.
That was when Polnar still had a family and a village. He pulled himself to his feet and made his way back to the wagon, almost falling over on the way. He crawled in and tried to fall back to sleep. The music kept him awake. He almost liked the sound of it. Ned’s simple thumb strings started to sound richer, as if he had added strings to it. Then somebody started to sing at a high pitch. Ritzvah? Petzkah’s? Ned’s voice had dropped and Murmansk had a very deep voice when he sang. The song was about as sad as Polnar felt. Polnar raised his head. Another boy was sitting in the back of the wagon, looking at something and singing to himself. Polnar asked himself if Murmansk had gone back to the village to rescue somebody else who was being blamed for the plague, but the boy was not from his village or any other village he knew. Instead of the skirt around the middle such as boys and men wore, this boy was wearing a thick skirt that covered his body. His face was much more pale than any human Polnar had ever seen, although he had heard there were people like that who lived far away from his village. Polnar still heard the piping and drumming and the thumb strings and the drone, but the sounds were quite faint. Liking the sound of the music the boy was making, Polnar crawled over towards him. He was quite startled when his hands touched a smooth stone. He was quite sure the wagon was made only of wood, but then he wasn’t seeing and thinking very clearly. There were piles of white and yellow palm leaves all around unlike anything Polnar had seen before. Another thing that seemed odd to Polnar was that there were a couple patches of sparkling light close by. The singing and playing trailed off.
“Ah! I thought others would come here,” said the boy.
“Come where?” Polnar asked. “I thought I was in a wagon that a few of us fled our village in.”
“I suppose you are,” said the boy. “I am just off my study room at Drakkenfleiss Academy.”
“Never heard of that. Don’t know what you mean,” said Polnar. “Must be the blow to my head mixing up my thoughts.”
The boy came over to Polnar.
“I see you have been injured,” said the boy as he gently touched Polnar’s head where it hurt the most. “I could give you a healing spell, but I’m not good at that, and I might make it worse.”
“I know how to do a healing spell,” said another boy, who suddenly appeared.
He was wearing the same kind of long heavy dress as the first boy was wearing and his face was even more pale than the other’s.
“How come you came here?” asked the first boy.
“I followed you, of course,” said the second.
“I thought you said this was a worthless world fragment.”
“So what? Just because this place is worthless doesn’t mean you’re entitled to it. Who’s this?”
“I don’t know his name. He is from a different world, I think. He needs healing. His head was injured.”
“And no wonder with you putting you clumsy mitts on him.”
The second boy examined Polnar’s head for himself.
“Head’s injured, all right. Who are you, anyway?”
“Polnar.”
“Where do you come from?”
“My village.”
“I’m Dunsland,” said the first boy. “He’s Malcoomb.”
“Dunsland Dilworth is the dunce of the academy,” said Malcoomb. “I’ll zing a spell into you that’ll cure a hundred headaches.”
He said a few strange words and Polnar felt something like hot sparks attack his head.
“Ow!”
“It should be better now,” said Malcoomb.
But the pain in Polnar’s head was searing.
“It’s not,” Polnar complained. “It’s worse.”
“I’ll sing for you,” Dunsland offered.
“Don’t bother,” said Malcoomb.
“You can sing,” said Polnar, desperate for anything that might help and thinking that Dunsland was nicer and more likely to cure the pain.
Dunsland started to sing a soothing song that was almost like a lullaby that mothers sing to their babies. Then Polnar heard a light, tinkling sound that went along with Dunsland’s singing. He opened his eyes and saw Dunsland playing a string instrument with little sticks . Suddenly Polnar’s head felt as if Murmansk had never struck him with a stone.
“Better?” asked Dunsland when he finished the song.
“Yes.”
“How did you do that?” Malcoomb asked Dunsland.
“I don’t know,” Dunsland answered.
“You sing well, Dunsland,” said Polnar.
“You haven’t heard me sing,” said Malcoomb.
That was true, but Polnar chose not to say the obvious. Malcoomb sang a brief song about toads and toadstools. Not bad, but hardly as good as Dunsland, and hardly the kind of song that would have cured a pounding head.
“Now, who sings better?” asked Malcoomb.
“Dunsland.”
Polnar felt a sharp burning pain on his collar bone.
“Ow!”
“Oh! Sorry!” said Malcoomb.
The boy made a quick gesture and the pain stabbed him worse.
“Ow!”
Dunsland sang a snatch of his song and the pain stopped. Malcoomb gave Dunsland a nasty look that Dunsland ignored.
“Can you sing, Polnar?” Dunsland asked him.
“I’m not in the mood,” Polnar answered. “I just lost my family to the plague and a few of us escaped from the village after everybody there tried to kill me because they blamed me for the plague, as if I wanted to get sick or lose my family over it.”
“Suit yourself,” said Malcoomb.
“Try singing a song,” said Dunsland. “I haven’t lost my family and so I am not as sad as you, but I sing when things go wrong.”
“Which is all the time,” Malcoomb added.
Dunsland played a soft figure of notes on his instrument. It put a tune into Polnar’s head and he sang:
Where is my father? Where is my mother?
Where is my sister? Where is my brother?
Where are my neighbors? Where is my village?
Where has the plague taken all of them to?
Polnar had to admit that he felt better for having sung that bit of a song.
“You sing well,” said Dunsland.
“There’s no magic to it,” said Malcoomb.
“Maybe there is magic that you can’t hear,” said Dunsland.
“Anything you can hear, I can hear better,” said Malcoomb.
Polnar drew himself back when he saw a bird fly between him and the other two boys. The bird chirped at the boys and then was gone.
“We are being called to class by Conjuring Master Magus Daylanna,” said Dunsland. “I am glad to have met you, Polnar. I hope I find you here again. I hope we meet others here.”
Both boys melted away and Polnar, feeling stronger, sat up. The strange place in the back of the wagon, or beyond it, seemed a bit brighter. Polnar thought that there might be more sparkles of light but he wasn’t sure. That could easily have been his fevered imagination. He climbed to his feet and walked out of the strange place and into the back of the wagon. As soon as he had stepped out of the room, it disappeared behind him and the wagon looked the way it always had. Still hearing the others in the group making music outside, Polnar went out to join them. What they were playing went with the song he made up in the strange place in the back of the wagon and so he sang it again.
Where is my father? Where is my mother?
Where is my sister? Where is my brother?
Where are my neighbors? Where is my village?
Where has the plague taken all of them to?
When he finished singing it, the instruments all died away and everybody was looking intently at him.
“I knew you could sing,” said Murmansk.
“I think we have solved the problem as to what we will do to make a bit of a living,” said Ritzvah.
“What’s that?” asked Ned.
“We can bring our music from place to place,” Ritzvah replied.
“I’ll have to make a better drum than these rocks and these sticks,” said Petzkah.
“I suppose we could be a traveling music group,” said Murmansk, “but I don’t think people would throw coins at us for my drone or Ritzvah’s pipe. We might get a few coins tossed at us for Petzkah’s drumming and Ned’s plucking, but I think we’d get most of our coins for Polnar’s voice.”
Proceed to Chapter the Seventh of Part the First