Death After Death

Chapter 189: Shifting Paths

Simon woke up in bed, in a dark room. At first, he feared he’d returned to the cabin, but when he didn’t feel the familiar lumps in that straw mattress, he calmed down. Well, woke was perhaps not the right word. His dreams tore at him violently, and he would have sworn that he’d woken up and fallen asleep for a week's worth of nights, but when he asked the gray-robed priestess about it, she said he was brought back only a few hours ago.

His clothes and other things had been folded and stacked neatly beside him in the dim room. Part of him felt like what had happened last night was just a dream, but he knew that it wasn’t. Even without the headache, he would have known that.

Food was brought to him evenings and mornings by Diara, and when he asked her how long he was supposed to stay there, she just smiled patiently before explaining, “Seeing through the mists of time can be very hard on even the most prepared.”

“But I didn’t look through time,” he insisted. “I just had... strange dreams.”

“That is what they all say,” she agreed, “But if such things were easy, then they would not be valuable.”

Simon meditated on her words and on those dreams. He even explained as much as he could remember to his mirror. Still, it was two days before he rose once more.

When he emerged from his room armed and armored, she asked, “Will you be leaving already?”

“That depends,” Simon answered with a smile, “Is there any chance I could get a tour of the city before I go?” Even before she opened her mouth, he knew the answer was going to be no, but some part of him had to ask.

“You could,” she said, “If that is what the mists showed you, but our city... it’s not a place people come back from. Those who stay must stay forever.”

“Oh?” he asked, somewhat surprised by her answer. “I thought it was just for the priests and priestesses and the like.”

“It’s for that too,” she agreed, “But we do not leave the mountain either, so that distinction hardly matters. Did your visions tell you that you should stay?”

He shook his head. Maybe they told me I should take one more bath with you, he told himself, but he didn’t say any of that out loud. Instead, he thanked her for her time and hospitality, and then, with one last look at the stunning caldera city, he started traveling down the mountain.

Just as he’d suspected when he’d first seen the narrow trail, it was a dozen times easier to traverse than the trail he’d blazed. It had taken him over a week to climb up the mountain, but he was only forced to sleep a single night under an overhang on the way down, and the weather slowly got warmer approached the ground.

The trail was never wide, and sometimes it was damaged by beast men activity or landslides. It was never perfect, but it was a thousand times better than sheer cliff faces and gravel-strewn slopes.

Most of the way, his view was obscured by the same clouds that had plagued him on the way up the mountain. There were occasions where he got glimpses of the wider landscape, though, and they were enough to make him understand Diara’s fascination with the sea. Even in those foggy glimpses, it appeared endless from here, and save for the occasional island, it probably was.

He decided to take a look and quickly found the problem. A medium-sized merchant ship had damaged their rudder just enough that they were unlikely to make it past the rocks into Ionar’s harbor, but the village blacksmith had died years before, so they were trying and failing to do it themselves.

Simon watched the sailors take turns trying to hammer the brass fitting into shape, making it worse and worse until it finally cracked. Eventually, he volunteered to do it himself.

“You?” one man laughed. “Look at those soft hands. Are you an artist? A scholar?”

“I’m no blacksmith,” Simon agreed, causing a wave of laughter, “Not usually. But I spent years at the forge in my youth, which is probably more than all you lot put together, isn’t it?”

“What’s your price then?” the merchant asked testily. “The red wine I carry from the north is in no hurry, but some of my other goods are perishable, and I aim to be on my way!”

“For me? Nothing,” Simon answered with a shrug. “But for the people of this little town, how about you throw a proper feast. Food, drink, the works. You know, as gratitude for their assistance to you in their time of need.”

“A feast?” he asked, “growing red in the face, but that could cost a fortune with what I'm carrying.”

Simon shrugged, setting the two halves of the broken rudder strap back down. “That’s fine. Good luck on the remainder of your voyage.”

“But... I’ll pay you in gold!” the portly man said. “We can work this out!”

“I already have gold,” Simon answered, jingling his own purse. “And a strong sword arm to go with it. I was just going to do this out of the goodness in my heart, but I can see you have no goodness in yours.”

Simon only got a dozen steps away before the man caved, and a cheer went up among the sailors. Simon let them go to their tasks while he got the ramshackle forge back in some kind of order. Then, after he fetched some driftwood, he got to work.

The villagers came up to him, wondering what he was doing, but Simon just smiled. “Just getting you guys a good dinner out of the deal. There's nothing wrong with that, right?”

No one harassed him after that, and it took only a few hours to rework the metal into the shape it needed to be and repair the crack. He didn’t deliver the work until the evening when the pig was roasting, and the wine was flowing, though. He even rowed out to the ship with the quartermaster, reattached it, and restrung the steering ropes while everyone else celebrated.

Afterward, he joined them but didn’t get drunk. After he’d flashed his own wealth to make a point, that would have been more than stupid. Instead, he socialized with the locals and the sailors and learned a little more about what was going on in the area. Given that another version of him was currently living in Ionar right now as a healer, though, none of it was a surprise to him.

In the morning the little ship was gone, but Simon stayed behind, and no one gave him any trouble about setting up in the old smithy if that was indeed what he intended to do.