The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

jovial. But they did not fall into dark periods of silence, as I did. They complained about the road, but they smiled as they did it. Once, when we were forced to make camp in between towns because I had pushed us to ride into the early evening, we were huddled around a meager fire beneath some trees. The rain made it impossible to see more than half a span in any direction. Suddenly Mag looked over at Dryleaf and laughed.

“Well, old man,” she said lightly. “You are on the road again. I daresay it is not as pleasant as you had dreamed, when you were back in Lan Shui.”

Dryleaf chuckled. “You are wrong, dear one. I feel almost young again. But remember, I had been sitting in the same spot for so long. Years of holding still. Of course it feels good to be moving again now—I have only been doing it for a few weeks. Let us speak again in a few months, and I will tell you how I feel then. I only hope I do not hold you up again the way I did in Dorsea.”

Despite my foul temper, his guilt made me feel guilty in turn. “We have told you not to trouble yourself over that,” I said. “No one can help it when sickness finds them in the wilds.”

“Yet it happens to young folk like yourself less often than to the old.”

“Less often to me, mayhap,” I said. “But never to Mag at all. She has never been sick a day in her life, that I have seen. Even when dysentery would sweep through our camp, forcing the captains to patrol the tents and ensure every fool washed their hands and boiled their water before drinking it, Mag never suffered from it. They used to say she was Elf-blessed.”

Mag shrugged. “And I always said that I simply took better care of myself than you did, and I say it again now.”

“I took perfectly good care of myself,” I countered. “Certainly better than you. Some folk have all the luck.”

She shrugged again. Oku, who had been lying near my feet, raised his head and licked my hand. I scratched his ears.

“Do you see?” I said. “Even Oku agrees with me.”

“Oku was not there,” Mag pointed out.

“He is wise beyond the measure of a normal wolfhound,” I insisted, lowering both hands to fluff his face. “Nothing escapes him.”

The hound licked my face, and I laughed as I wiped it off. Then I sighed. “I know I have not been the cheeriest companion since Opara,” I said, only just loud enough for them to hear over the rain. “Thank you for putting up with me.”

“We understand, my boy,” said Dryleaf. “And I hope we have not seemed indifferent to your plight. No one blames you for worrying about your kin.”

“Friends have a duty to friends, and soldiers on campaign to each other,” said Mag, speaking so lightly that it almost sounded false. “Do not try too hard to hide your worries behind an insincere smile. The two of us will not let you sink too deep into an evil mood. Have I not already said that you are awful at taking care of yourself?”

I scowled. “It was not I who ran off into the mountains alone after enemy archers, eschewing the hiding place that kept the rest of us safe.”

Mag and Dryleaf both chuckled, and the old man shook his head. “You should listen to your friend, my dear. Just wait until age catches up with you. You will not find yourself so impervious to sickness then, nor to injury.”

We fell into silence, and Mag stared at the flames for a while longer, deep in thought, while Dryleaf and I ate and went to sleep.

I kept working on Jordel’s song as we went north. It would not leave my thoughts, as though Jordel himself were there and anxious for me to write something to commemorate him, before the matter passed from my mind. As if I could forget a man I had loved so well, with whom I had shared a bedroll more than once while we traveled through the Greatrocks—a tryst springing from lack of options as much as anything else, but no less earnest for all of that. Dryleaf heard me singing or writing it in snatches, and though he kept prodding me to share my work with him, I was not yet ready.

“You have spent a great deal of time on it,” he said.

“Not that long,” I told him. “I started shortly after we left Lan Shui. And I want it to be perfect.”

Dryleaf scoffed. “My boy, there is no such thing as perfect, especially when it comes to songs and stories. I think you are letting your own conceit get in the way of your work.”

“Conceit?” I said. “I only want to ensure it is a fitting tribute to a friend. A friend who was important to me.”

“Your friend,” said Dryleaf. “What would he think, if you sang him the song you have? Right now, with no further work upon it?”

I scowled, for I knew the answer. And I gave it, even as I tried to explain it away. “Jordel would praise it. He would tell me it was wonderful, because he was wonderful, and always full of praise. But that does not mean he would be right. He would say the same thing if I wrote and sang it with a troll’s grace. I have to make it worthy of him.”

Dryleaf kept staring sightlessly northwards, but dissatisfaction twisted his lips. “You have told me you are inexperienced when it comes to this sort of thing. I would advise you to trust my judgement. But I know, too, that such advice is hard to hear, especially at the beginning. If you wish to keep it to yourself, I will stop hounding you.”

I could hear wisdom in his words, and it made me feel guilty. But still I was not ready. “Thank