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seasons!”
    “Yeah?  Well then—”
    “Both of you shut it!  Now you two get over there in
the trees.  We got this side.  Wait till he reaches that shadow there.”
    “Fine.  Then we got to get a bottle.  I’m dry as
dust.”
    “Go on.  He’s almost here.”
     
    *        *        *        *        *
     
    This, thought Colbey, is exactly what I hate about the outlands.
    He did not give the four ruffians a last glance where
he left them crumpled in the road, each bleeding heavily, if not fatally.  If
they had sense enough to clean the dust from the gashes after they crawled
away, then the long recovery might bless them with enough wit to comprehend
their folly.  Colbey recognized one from the town he had left moments earlier
yet never considered going back to report to the local guards.  It was none of
his concern.
    What was his concern was getting through this
cursed punishment so he could tell the council members exactly what he thought
of them.  Colbey knew why they had sent him out here, and it had nothing to do
with the supposed threat represented by military forces outside the forest. 
‘This is what happens when you talk back to us’, that was the message.  He
supposed ‘shape up or suffer’ might be another.
    It surprised him how much he missed the Rovasii’s
depths.  He had experienced no joy at all during this exile and still wondered
at Adel’s enthusiasm when she had learned of an extra trip to these filthy
hovels this year.  Her buoyant attitude had served only to annoy Colbey further
the longer he’d been forced to endure it.  When she left him on his own after
the second town it had been a relief.
    Now he wandered from town to town along the forest’s
fringes, asking ridiculous questions and being attacked by every disreputable
cutthroat who happened to glimpse his coin pouch when he stopped for a night. 
It would have been tolerable if new or useful information presented itself, but
he could have told the council everything learned so far before he had ever
left!
    Seven towns down, only twenty-four to go.  By the
Twelve, what a depressing thought that was.  Colbey would be lucky if he
returned by winter at this rate.  Another good reason not to double back and
report to the town guards.
    With no enthusiasm at all, Colbey shrugged his pack
into a comfortable position and continued his journey through exile.
     
    *        *        *        *        *
     
    Leaves were changing their hues and lazily spinning
while they fell to the ground, the foremost sign summer progressed inexorably
toward its close.  The fall winds washed across the hills outside town, still
lacking the bite of their winter cousins.  In the golden glow of the setting
sun one autumn evening, Marik laid his mother to rest in the hills beneath the
grassy sea.
    Her death came as a surprise to no one.  Unable to
force her illness into submission via any of the herbman’s merchandise, Lilly’s
descent had been steady, if slow.  In the end her coughing fits expelled blood
mixed with the other fluids that had become constant.  They knew it would not
be much longer.
    He had spent all his time with her, knowing he could
do nothing and yet constantly imagining a scene where the herbman would burst
though the door with a new medicine he’d acquired.  Marik knew it would not be,
yet still he dreamed.  His powerlessness made him cry at times when he was
alone.
    A local priest from Lilly’s faith laid her to rest in
a brief, solemn ceremony.  Macie attended, as well as many of the women his
mother had worked with, including Minta.  They offered their condolences. 
Their words echoed hollowly.
    The townspeople sympathized with Marik in the
following eightday before their previous opinions resurfaced, exacerbated by
his avoidance of Master Pate.  Jobs he had been able to garner to earn coin for
a sick mother mysteriously dried up.  Nobody ever had extra