It was now, when it had become important, that my memory sputtered and failed me. I sat back in the saddle, telling myself it was of little consequence, these turnips and childhood struggles. Telling myself to put it out of mind.
But out of mind it would not be put. And in the long, haunted noontide, as we climbed past greenery into the rubble-strewn pathways of the Vingaards, I thought of all my doings, how perhaps one deft stroke of the sword or more experienced command, one different path chosen or even one less vision in the stones, and I would have had my brother beside me with all of his flaws and outrages and promise.
I used to say that you could see a miracle coming for miles if you just paid attention. But you can't when your mind is on other things. It is then that you get down and burrow in and follow your nose until something more reliable than attention or logic or common sense comes up to meet you.
I met Shardos in a pass leading toward the site of Brithelm's old encampment. My friends had lagged behind me, giving me generous space to wrestle with thoughts of Alfric, so Lily and I were quite alone as the pathway narrowed through rubble and sheer walls streaked with pink granite. I turned a corner and lost sight of the party. Indeed, Ramiro's usual racket of trumpeting and bluster, louder through the morning as he tried to cheer me up, faded into a whisper behind me as Lily put distance between me and their faint consolations.
It was a silence that bred suspicions.
After all, the talk behind me had touched upon bandits. And wasn't it a fact that bandits preferred a narrow pass for their villainy, raining arrows and rocks and the skulls of their previous victims down upon the unwary?
The first bowl fell, hurtling like a meteor from some concealed spot above me, splintering in the gravel and grit underhoof and sending shards flying in all directions. I yelped and drew sword, imagining an army of Nerakan cutthroats who had chosen this time and place to test their most ruthless and bloodthirsty plan of ambush.
The pass was too narrow to turn the mare around. Lily snorted and drew the reins from my hand with a strong twist of her head. A growl descended from the rocks above me. Amid my imaginings of wild beasts and their even wilder masters, of bloodlust and dismemberment, the unassuming form of the juggler appeared on the rocks above me. A big dog crouched at his side, its hackles raised.
"Be still, Birgis," he soothed. "'Tis only a lad, and no enemy of yours."
The dog lay down at his feet, its growl receding. I breathed again and stood upright in the stirrups, trying my best to look knightly and offended.
The man had been dressed by a whirlwind. Pieced together by rags, a coat of yellow and purple and black draped over his shoulders. The coat had a yawning hole at its left side, not torn as far as I could tell, but seeming to be an oversight or the fancy of a mad tailor.
The tunic beneath this monstrosity was a lime green outrage that had once made a mockery of silk, no doubt, but its best years over, it had taken on a sort of magnificent ugliness. His shoes matched only in form. One was of black leather, the other of red.
I hid a smile, fearing he might be insulted and send the dog to do the work it was obviously more than happy to do, curled at his feet and baring its hundreds of sharp teeth. But the man paid little attention to me, staring blankly above me.
"I'm sorry, lad, that the bowl was so… proximate. Sometimes I lose them, even in a catch and carry I've done since before you were born. And my goodness, they do make a racket when they settle, don't they?"
"Begging your pardon, sir," I began politely, eyeing the dog, whose fur had risen in a wiry, aggressive mane about its frighteningly strong neck. I listened anxiously for the sound of approaching horses.
Ramiro, no doubt, had stopped out of earshot for a snack or a drink or a nap-for anything, in short, that would delay him.
The motley man above me made no movement, no sign of fighting or of running away. No sign, even, that he noticed the sword I was brandishing.
I waved my hand at him.
No response. Perhaps it was a trick of light or shadows in this rocky region.
I made the most hideous face I could imagine, flashed him the most obscene hand gesture I knew.
Growls from the dog only.
It was only then I noticed that the man held two other bowls.
"Are you in the habit of juggling crockery?" I asked uneasily, brushing the folds of my cloak to remove any stray shards that might discomfort me hours from now when I dismounted or crouched by a fire.
"Indeed I am, young sir," the man replied serenely. "The dog has learned to dodge bowls and to reconnoiter."
It was then I was sure the juggler was blind.
"So your companion, sir-"
"Birgis."
"So Birgis is… the eyes in your alliance?"
A long pause filled the cool mountain air while the man awaited the obvious next question, while I debated whether I should give him the satisfaction of asking it. But I had to know.
"Doesn't your… lack of sight pose a problem in juggling?"
"Indeed it does, young sir," he replied, stroking the bristled back of the dog beside him, who growled once more and lay still, waiting no doubt for a sudden movement or loud noise on my part-anything that might justify his dragging me from my horse and disemboweling me.
I heard the clopping of hooves on the trail behind me. Ramiro and Dannelle came into view, then Oliver close behind them, leading the riderless horses. My big, blustering companion tipped his traveling hat politely at the sight of the juggler.
"Indeed, it is a long story. Times have been," the blind man went on heedlessly, "that I would have given my earthly goods for a set of eyes. But I shan't trouble you with a drawn-out and tedious tale."
"Why, nonsense!" Ramiro boomed merrily, already halfway dismounted. "What better time for stories and lore than when you have stopped for the day, ready for a meal and rest and a whiling of hours?"
"Ramiro…" I began, but there was no stopping it. The big man sat and motioned to Oliver, who sighed, retraced his steps to a notch among the rocks, and set about to build a fire.
"You could stand with a bit of distraction yourself, Galen," Ramiro added, "and what good is a story if not to while away all heaviness and woe?"
"What good indeed?" asked the juggler, stepping cautiously down the rock face, the dog scrambling nimbly onto his shoulders. Together they hopped lightly onto the surface of the trail, the story beginning before the blind man had crouched by the fire to warm his hands.
"Mine were the sharpest of eyes," the juggler began, "in my early years, when I juggled torches and knives in a floating palace on the edge of the Blood Sea…"
And on it went, through an hour of silliness and farfetched stories of some notorious performing career that spanned Ansalon from one end to the other. As he told his story, the juggler stood and produced three bottles from somewhere in those patchwork robes. It was like sleight of hand to begin with, and I caught myself watching for secrets, for distractions and misdirections as though he were intent on pocketing our coins rather than bedazzling us.
Bedazzle us he did, for as his life unfolded, the bottles flashed brightly in the mountain air, first green, then red, then blue. Then as he tossed them more quickly, the colors combined, green and violet and yellow from somewhere unexpected, until I think I saw the entire spectrum, and the colors moved quickly into transparency as the blind man seemed to juggle ice and light over our marveling heads.
The youngest son of a circus family, Shardos-for that was his name-had been bom in far-off Kothas beyond the Blood Sea, by the strait that easterners call the Pirate's Run. He said he had come west over its waters with his family "not long after the Cataclysm."