Chapter 10: Voutan

Skinner is summoned back to the Vale to answer for slaying Tang Jan Dun.

 

Voutan: Chapter 10

He woke with a start and a splash. Someone stood over him with a now empty pail. He gazed up into the moonlit face.

“What’s the idea . . .” he frowned fiercely.

“Time for your penance, Skinner,” growled a voice pregnant with wrath and loss.

“Penance?” He tried to rise, but found that he was tied to a low, straight branch.

Looking around, he found himself in the staff tree grove—back in the Vale.

“Tang Jan Dun,” the voice was raw with anguish.

“Sorry,” Skinner hated himself for a moment. “I knew no better.”

“Ignorance is no excuse!” The man struck him with something sharp that seared the skin on his face. He could feel blood welling up as he was struck again and again.

“Stop!” he bellowed. “You’re pushin’ your luck here, Bozo!”

“Ignorant roundear!” This time it was a fist that crashed into Skinner’s face.

He woke again to the cold sting of water.

“Hit me again,” Skinner growled, “and . . .”

His lips split as what felt like a coconut hit him in the mouth. He could feel his teeth loosen from the blow, but it was not as hard as the fist had been. He wondered if the man was playing with him, or just wanted to inflict pain rather than permanent injury.

“Are you—” he spat blood from his mouth. “Are you quite finished now?”

“I’ll never finish with you!” The sentence was punctuated with a punch to his ear. His ear split from the impact, more painful than the lips.

He looked up into the face. Contorted with rage and grief, it was nearly unrecognizable. Not that Skinner should have recognized Kurtney of the Vurhk, having never previously met him, but he did. Kurtney was the present Pinnacle of the Order of Druids, the highest ranking Druid in the Vale. A dhari from the Vurhk, he had taken his stick at Koltain about sixty years ago. Skinner mulled it over, realizing that the memory was Dun’s.

“Dun offers his regrets,” Skinner said darkly. “He seems to think your temper should long ago have kept you from the Order, but he respects you just the same.”

“Waster!” Kurtney struck him again with a shock of spiked tree limbs. From the smell and the size of the thorns, Skinner guessed them to be taken from something related to Osage-orange trees.

“Back off, Kurtney,” Skinner growled through clenched teeth. “I am not happy with your rendition of a homecoming parade.”

“Homecoming?” He was so vehement now that spittle punctuated his words more than the deadly implications of his tone. He struck Skinner several more times, this time on his bare feet.

Kandor!

A bright flash of light filled the grove as Skinner found himself free and standing with the staff in his hand. He leveled the staff at the druid for a moment, death in his eyes. But instead of striking, as he felt like doing, Skinner swallowed the reaction and bowed to Kurtney.

“I will not be further abused,” he said tersely.

“Rot of age,” Kurtney snapped, weaving his fingers in what Skinner found to be a fascinating series of gestures.

“I think not,” Skinner reached out with his staff and smacked the druids hand as though smacking an unruly student with a ruler.

“You must pay!” Kurtney swung at him again, but Skinner brushed the attack away lightly.

“I really am losing patience with you.”

“Then end yourself!” Kurtney struck out with the flail of thorny switches again.

“Get hold of yourself, man!” Skinner grabbed him in a hold spell that caused all Kurtney’s muscles to contract as though in rigor mortis.

Kurtney struggled madly for a few moments before wailing one long shriek of invectives and then dropping into a fetal ball of wracking sobs. Skinner released the spell, sadness replacing the anger in his eyes and causing his stomach to contract with sympathy. He sighed and walked to the edge of the grove to allow Kurtney the dignity of solitude to pall his grief.

Skinner breathed deeply and gratefully the night air of Anandamere, content to sit and stargaze as long as it took for Kurtney to express his grief. He wiped thick drops of blood from his stinging wounds, smiling wanly at the difference between internal and external pain. Bleeding had always been a good way to keep him from caving in to despair. It gave him something outside himself to focus on. The physical pain was easier to focus on, and it would heal much more quickly.

The sun was signaling a new day to his left when Skinner felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find a small primate waving him toward the place he had left the druid. Following, he studied the small primate. It was very similar to monkeys he had seen back home on the National Geographic channel. Its dense fur was dun and auburn, shaded intriguingly here and there with cocoa and black. It moved like any monkey, balancing with its prehensile tail now and again and bounding occasionally to cover open ground.

“G’morning,” he nodded to Kurtney as he walked into the glade where Kurtney sat hunched, face drained.

“Hello,” Kurtney nodded curtly. His eyes were hollowed with grief and sleep deprivation. Skinner was surprised to find the man’s face lined. No other dhari Skinner could recall had shown signs of aging. They all looked thirty-something to him. Kurtney, however, looked to be pushing eighty—or whatever the dhari equivalent might be.

“I am sorry,” Skinner stopped, feeling awkward as he so often did around people he considered to outrank him in any fashion. It was a feeling he had never associated with anyone in the Vale. Not even his mentors and instructors in Diahlar had impressed him as superiors or any more venerable than himself.

“You should be,” Kurtney’s voice was hollow now. “Great, great loss. What loss . . .”

“Is there . . .” Skinner had the undeniable conviction that Kurtney wanted something from him.

“You,” Kurtney glared at him from under white, bushy eyebrows. “You. You . . .”

“I?” Skinner prompted.

“You,” Kurtney adjusted his posture, his back straightening as though someone had taken a great burden from his shoulders. “You shall be my final apprentice.”

“Apprentice?” Skinner looked at him dully.

“Yes,” Kurtney nodded slowly. “You comprehend.”

“Yes?” Skinner was uncertain he fully understand the implications of the statement.

“You comprehend,” Kurtney nodded sagely, pointing to his temple.

“My friends . . .” Skinner began.

“Your friends believe you dead,” Kurtney told him. “They have decided among them to begin their own nation here. I have given them the name Voutan, and they accept it.”

“Voutan,” Skinner nodded.

“Come,” he waved Skinner to his side and strolled northward. “You shall be the guardian of the Grove until you find an apt guardian. In the meantime, you shall do all that I tell you. You will learn much.

“Do not terry,” he turned slightly to encourage Skinner. “Much to know. Much to do.”