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

“Then you tricked me,” said Sun. “You led me along on a scheme.”

“I did,” said Albern. “I think you needed me to. But it is done now. And if I was wrong, then you can go. You can return to your family, whom you despise, and go along with their plots, which you disdain.”

Sun was standing again. She had no more memory of rising than she had had of sitting down. “Or?”

Albern cocked an eyebrow. “Or what?”

“You make it sound as though I have another choice. I could go home. Or …?”

“Or you could come with me, and I could tell you another story.”

She looked away from him. “Where are you going?”

“Lan Shui.”

“The town where—”

Albern nodded. “The town from the tale, yes.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I am visiting a friend,” said Albern. “And then I am taking care of some business. It is somewhat akin to our business tonight, but until I have your answer, I do not think I will tell you any more.”

“How do you mean to fight another monster like that one if I do not come with you?” said Sun.

Albern smiled at her again. “You were here, in the right place at the right time, tonight. But if you had not come, someone else would have. And if no one shows up, I can hunt someone down. But tonight it was you, and I am glad. You may believe whatever you wish, Sun, but I told you. I no longer believe in chance as I did when I was your age.”

“I … I still do not understand,” said Sun.

“What?” said Albern, spreading his arm wide. “Ask me anything you wish, and I shall do my best to explain.”

A thousand questions whirled in her mind, but none of them seemed like the right one. She tossed them aside one by one, until at last she had the question she truly wanted to ask—the only one, really, she could ask.

“Should we go after it?” she said, looking Albern in the eye. “If it escapes, we may regret it.”

“Well, we may,” said Albern, suddenly cagey. “But we may regret it even more deeply if we pursue it in the woods by moonslight. We do not have a warrior like Mag at our side, and I have my doubts about battling the beast twice in one night.”

“Oh, but once was fine,” said Sun, shaking her head.

“For a young one like that, yes,” said Albern. When she gave him a look, he nodded. “Yes, very young. I would not have brought you out here to fight a creature like the ones Mag and I faced. They were old, very old, nearly as old as the bones of the hills whence they came. I doubt the one we saw tonight is much older than I am.”

“That is quite old,” said Sun.

Albern’s mouth twisted. “Always ready with a barb. I admire that. In any case, you said you wanted to do good things more than you wanted accolades. Well, you have done a very good thing tonight, though I doubt anyone shall ever hear of it. Return to your family if you wish.”

So saying, he strode to her and took his bow from the ground. In an instant, he had unstrung it and stowed the string in a pouch at his belt, and then he set off through the trees towards the place where he had left his horse. Sun, for the second time that night, found herself staring after the old bowyer, dumbstruck. Just before he vanished from sight, she ran after him.

“Wait!” she cried. “What if I do want to come with you?”

Albern stopped and looked back at her, squinting in the moonslight. “You seemed quite angry, and so I gave the cause up for lost.”

“I am quite angry.”

He shrugged. “Well, then. You can find your way back to town, can you not? You know where the road is—just there. I do not think you will meet any more dangers in the forest tonight, but I could give you my sword, if you wish. Morled should still be there, if you hurry, and I do not doubt that she would be glad to see you.”

Sun looked off through the trees. There, far in the distance, she could just make out the lights of the town: a soft, fiery glow over the top of a hill, that poured through the trees in little shafts.

It had been a long time. Half the night. Her retainers would be nearly frantic, and Mother and Father would have been alerted that she was missing by this point.

But she could still go to them. She could go on through the rest of their tour of Dorsea, and then return home to Dulmun. She could carry on with only the memory of this one little adventure.

She looked at Albern instead.

“I want to come with you.”

With one hand on his saddle, Albern regarded her. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Sun lifted her chin. “Is my company unwelcome?”

“You will have a hard time turning back if you go on with me tonight,” said Albern. “So I would like you to be very sure of your choice before you make it.”

“I do not hate my family,” she said. “Yet for a long time, I have not been able to say that I love them, either, and I think their feelings are the same towards me. In my kingdom, parents adopt children often, and those children are treated just the same as if the parents had bedded to make them. You need not share your family’s blood to love them—yet neither must you love them simply because you share blood. I am not desperate to escape them, and I would not die if I remained. Yet I need a better purpose in my life than that. I need something more to pull me through each day than the thought that things could be worse.”

She took another step towards Albern, and now they were eye-to-eye. “You are