A Facet for the Gem Read Online Free PDF Page B

growing call to exile you permanently.”
    “I’ll save them the trouble,” Morlen replied. “I came back for supplies, food, that’s all. I was going to trade everything I gathered on the hunt—you should’ve seen it. I was going to have all I’d need to make it for years out there, but…” He trailed off, expecting little consolation. “I’m still leaving, today if possible, with whatever I can get. I might go north of the Quiet Waste. Maybe you could help me.”
    “Ah yes, the wide frontier,” said the old man. “So beckoning to the young and adventurous of heart, and so littered with their bones.”
    “I’m not staying here! I never asked these people for anything, never disagreed when they said something about me wasn’t right. But they never gave me a chance to change.”
    “A man may consider himself changed,” replied Nottleforf, “merely after finding what was always hidden in him.”
    Morlen sent over a suspicious look, uncertain toward what course he was being nudged. He did not understand why Nottleforf had tried to aid him through most of his early life, when many would have left an infant of low birth to follow its mother to the grave. Whether would-be guardians came and went, or humble households offered scraps and a cold night’s sleep, Nottleforf had always brought him from one to the next. And now that he was grown, they were quite distant. Yet there was an ever-present impression that, while Nottleforf purposely remained detached, he was secretly watchful.
    “When I was younger, one of the families that took me in had two other boys close to my age. Do you remember?” he asked.
    “I do,” said Nottleforf.
    Morlen was certain the wizard had heard the stories that had circulated about him over the years, though he’d never been asked for his own accounts. “The father was a blacksmith, strict,” he continued. “But the mother was kind, and told her sons to treat me like their brother. After a month had gone by, I thought I might finally be home. Then one day, the boys were sparring too close to the hearth, and the one with his back to it didn’t see that his tunic had caught fire. I pushed him out of the way, even though his brother saw what had happened and did nothing, and he hit his head. His parents came and found him unconscious with me batting out the smoke at his side, and his brother told them I’d done it all on purpose.
    “The father cornered me against the fire and tried to beat me, and I was so panicked that I grabbed the iron poker from the flames and hit his hand with it. His fingers broke and were badly blistered. He screamed that he’d never be able to work in the smithy again, and I ran out and never looked back. After that, I’ve always sensed something in the way people look at me, and it’s as though I can only be what they think I am.
    “You used to take such an interest in my welfare.” Morlen laughed, shaking his head. “Looking in on me, like someone who wants to be seen but not needed. All I need is to not be this, anymore,” he said, rigidly crouched beside the horse, wiping more refuse from his hair.
    Seeing Morlen’s snapped bow dangling toward the dirt from around his neck, Nottleforf withdrew the broken arc, untied the string and delicately balanced both halves in wrinkled yet nimble hands. Interlocking the jaggedly split pieces with slight pressure between his thumb and index finger, he plucked a long hair from his ample beard and wrapped the grayish strand twice around the fracture. Then he applied more force that sent a popping heat from his fingertips, melting a now luminous thread to flood every gap in the break, until, with no scar to be found, the bow was whole.
    “You were lucky with this,” said Nottleforf, offering it back to him. “There is much I cannot mend so deftly.”
    Morlen accepted the weapon slowly with raised brows, surprised by the greatest amount of care Nottleforf had displayed in many years, and restrung it