In no valley was this condition more absolute than in the high mountain valley of Rieeve.
Small and perfect, teardrop-shaped as if fallen from a God grieved to have given it up, Rieeve glimmered like an emerald in its cradle between the Ti and Uki alpine ranges. Fields of waist-high grasses formed a lush green carpet that covered the valley from end to end.
Ahead, at the northingmost edge of the valley, Wing could see Melant, simply referred to as the Village. Beneath the watchful eye of one ancient castle lay carefully planned rows of older daub cottages and newer log homes, meticulously tended gardens and polished cobblestone streets all within which his people had formed a communal life of complete isolation.
Wholly separate from their world, Wing regretted that his race had so long ago refused outsiders. Effectively discouraged, even the independent tradesmen and caravans that had once traveled through Rieeve no longer risked the route, for without rest and provisions the trek out of Rieeve over the Uki Mountain range would prove disastrous for beast and man alike.
Astride the family’s young silver filly, Wing’s attention caught only fragments of the conversation between his brother and father. As the only family to live at the opposite end of the valley, any work or social life among their people meant they had to make the trip into the Village, something they had down to a science — they knew exactly how long it took on foot, horseback, together or solo, through the tall grasses of Kive, shucks of Kojko, or snows of Ime.
With his eyes fixed upon the green blur of valley grass moving beneath his horse’s feet, Wing shook his head and tried to escape the lingering ache in his chest. Last night had been the third time the vision had come to claim his life. At first, he’d longed to tell Nien about it for the demons that attended the vision seemed to be growing longer claws with each visit. But there never seemed to be a good time and so the days, turns, and seasons plodded on and just when the demon-claw lacerations had begun to heal the vision would come again, reopening and enlarging the tears until the resulting scar tissue had risen like a bulwark, shutting off Wing’s sensitivity to it and finally even his longing to speak of it.
Beside him, Nien and Joash continued their conversation.
“As affluent as Leeal-Branc purports to be,” Joash was saying, “how much of her home is built with Mesko wood depends on the trees, not her social status.”
“That’s a good thing,” Nien said.
“That’s a very good thing,” Joash agreed.
“So, no cutting this revolution?”
“No, there will be. There are three saplings with good chances.”
Nien knew what that meant: One of the Ancients had to go.
“Do you know which one it will be?”
“Me’lont or I’ont. My next visit will tell me.”
Nien nodded. It was difficult to say goodbye to any of the Ancient trees, but the next generation of Mesko trees depended upon it, and as the Mesko Tender the sacred role of their preservation was up to his father.
Light skinned, dusty-haired, and hazel-eyed, Joash alone of the threesome carried the familiar genetic traits of their race.
“Don’t fall asleep, son,” he said to Wing.
With a flash of bright green eyes, Wing glanced mechanically at his father.
“Just leave me be if I fall off,” he replied tiredly.
“Sorry, can’t. We’ve already got more than two men can do in the time we have left.”
Wing offered a sigh of acknowledgement before looking over his shoulder at Nien. “Meeting with Commander Lant this morning?”
“Yes. We’ve got in some new recruits. He’ll probably want me to run them through drills.”
Wing closed his eyes again.
As the three fell into a comfortable silence covered by a morning breeze and the swish of their horses’ tails through the tall grasses, Nien took a quick appraisal of his brother. Seeing Wing now — the very sight of him so comforting and real — he could almost forget how terrible and dark he had looked last night.
The memory of it made Nien shiver. He did not know what horrifying thing came to battle with Wing in those moments, but it was doing him no good, driving him further into isolation — and Wing had never been much enthralled with society. Still more telling was the darkness Nien had noticed spinning behind Wing’s eyes when he thought no one was looking.
But there could be a lot of reasons for that, Nien mused. Not just a bad dream.
Consumed with prophecy and anxious with fear, their people had singled Wing out as the answer-to and fulfillment-of the binding thread of their society.
Wing had only been nine revolutions old at the time.
Nien choked back the urge to walk into the Council chamber with his sword and hack the room apart. It wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to.
As Wing had grown the soft edges of the boy had transformed into the bold frame of a man. Angular features, flawless skin, emerald eyes, thick mane of silky black hair, and a physique forged from long hours in the fields and the building of homes, had placed him as the paragon of their people — he would be their Leader of Legend, their Seer, their Saviour — he would be their Merehr, no matter what they had to do to convince him.
Of course, the incident with the trap and the shy’teh hadn’t helped either. At one point the entire Council had come out to their home and made their thoughts clear as to whom they thought Wing to be.
After that, in the place of the brother Nien had known, emerged someone else. Someone who went inside himself entirely, holding his thoughts, his feelings, his view of the world in secret, moving deeper and deeper into a silence that even Nien found himself less and less privy to.
Nien had missed him then. He missed him still. In an odd way, Nien had become a little like Wing himself, holding all that Wing had once shared with him in secret and in silence, unable to speak of it — even with Wing himself through which they had come.
Except for the seasonal festivals, now, over twenty revolutions later, Wing went into the Village only at the behest of their father, and sometimes for Carly.
Nien had once suggested to Wing that his distancing himself from their people only caused their curiosity as well as their desperation to grow —
He now regretted having said as much, for the very sight of Wing in the Village aroused such an intense sense of the supernatural that even Nien had an easier time going unnoticed amongst an entire race of light-skinned people than Wing did.
Really, Nien thought, I should have known. Nothing can be hidden or kept secret in Rieeve — except the truth.
Looking up, Nien directed his gaze to the left and saw a familiar hut sitting at the edge of a large field, its tall grasses laid flat by Rieeve’s small fighting force, the Cant, who used the area as their training ground.
“I’ll see you two tonight,” Nien said.
Wing opened his eyes again. “Good luck.”
“And to you.”
Nien was about to rein his horse aside, parting with Wing and Joash as he always did on the outskirts of the Village, when he noticed a large gathering of men coming towards them across the fields.
Chapter 3
Prophecy
O n the outskirts of the Village the large gathering of villagers neared the three men on horseback.
At the head of the gathering came Grek Occoju, the Spokesman of the Rieevan Council. The rest of the Council was with him as well as a surprising number of villagers.
What was going on? Nien wondered. He’d never seen such a gathering. And at the edge of the Village?
Nien caught his hand sliding toward the sword lashed to the saddle beneath his left knee and drew it back quickly, shocked at the inclination. The Council was annoying, persistent, but never violent.
The two parties came to a stop face to face. It was Grek Occoju that spoke first.
“Father-Cawutt, Mesko Tender and honorary member of this Council,” he said to Joash by means of address. And then to the brothers, he said: “So
ns-Wing and Nien.”
Joash, Wing, and Nien inclined their heads. “Councilman,” they said.
“We’re lucky to have met you before you’d gotten into your day’s work,” Grek said.
Luck had nothing to do with it, Nien growled at him silently. You make it a point of Rieevan etiquette to know everything about us.
“What is it, gentlemen?” Joash asked.
“We came to talk to Wing,” Grek said.
As if on cue, Joash’s horse threw its head and snorted. Nien saw that Joash was keeping a tight rein as he replied: “About what?”
“Lant has news.”
Cant Commander, Lant Ce’Mandu, was also a member of the Rieevan Council and the only Rieevan that had ever been outside of Rieeve’s mountainous borders. As much as the Council resented, and for tens of revolutions had ignored Lant’s extrinsic communications they, nevertheless, only had his word to confirm their worst fears: that a race from a splinter continent in the northing had made an inroad upon their own and that this was the time the Ancient Writings had warned would come.
“What is it?” Joash asked.
“Councilman Lant has received word that the northing Valley of Lou has fallen into the hands of the Ka’ull.”
Every head in the group turned to Wing.
“What have you seen, Son-Cawutt?” one of the younger Council members asked. “Will we be protected?”
Seen? Nien wondered. There were Wing’s nightmares, but —
He glanced at his brother. Wing’s face had gone pale, his eyes the colour of ash. It took Wing a moment to reply: “Seen?”
“What have you been shown?” another Council member said.
Been shown? Nien thought. Sech’nya. They really believe Wing can see beyond sight? And then Nien had a worse thought. Maybe they actually believe he can see the future. That he’d already known Lou was going to fall.
There was a holding of the collective breath.
“We know Eosha speaks to you,” said a Villager with such conviction that Nien winced. He couldn’t imagine what Wing was thinking. “What has he said?”
It was believed that Eosha, the most revered of the prophet-writers in the Ancient Writings, would speak to the one, Merehr.
Nien felt something in his chest tighten. If the people believed Eosha was speaking to Wing than it was much worse than he’d suspected.
Aware that Joash was watching the throng of men, Nien kept his own eyes on Wing.
After an unendurable time, Wing said, “Nothing.”
Nien had not thought it possible to experience a silence more awkward than that which already played between his family and the Council —
He was wrong.
“Nothing?” came a bewildered reply from one of the villagers.
“You need not hide your visions from us,” Grek Occoju said carefully, holding one hand behind him as if warning the rest to stay there.
Wing looked at the Council Spokesman. “You would trust a vision I might have had over word from Lant?”
“We would,” came the unequivocal answer.
“We know there may be trouble,” Joash said. “That’s why the Council approved the formation of the Cant.”
Grek Occoju nodded. “Yes, but we all agree it will take more than the Cant. If Commander Lant’s information is…reliable.”
Again, Grek look at Wing. Again, the gathering drew into silence waiting for Wing to speak.
It seemed to take a very long time for Wing to say, “Trust what Lant tells you.”
Nien thought that would have been enough. There was in Wing’s voice relief as well as sanction. But neither the Council nor the villagers could understand such nuances in his brother’s tone, they took it as Wing rejecting them —
Again.
Through the crowd, a few voices broke here and there, incredulous, angry.
From behind Grek, someone yelled, “Why won’t you tell us? Are we not worthy of it? Are you testing us or humiliating us?”
The pulse of tension through the large crowd was making Nien, Joash, and Wing’s horses’ nervous. Wing was having an especially hard time of it since the young filly was green broke only.
“Please tell us,” one of the villagers said.
“There is nothing to tell,” Wing replied. “Listen to Lant.”
A rumble began to move through the gathering. Nien’s hands were tingling, his chest was tight, and sweat had begun to trickle down his sides. He almost reached for his sword again. Had Joash not appeared so at ease, Nien would have already thrust himself between the throng of men and Wing.
From the back, a villager shouted, “You would rather have the Ka’ull take Rieeve, too? See our people die at their hands?!”
There was a moment of shock as the rest processed what the Villager had accused Wing of, and like that, the Villagers were divided into two camps. Five men turned on the one who had shouted, while others rushed in to back him. Someone was shoved, a punch was thrown. The gathering heaved, pushing up against the Council members at the front. Grek raised a hand, but the gesture went ignored. The Villagers were too busy shouting back and forth at each other.
“It’s not Son-Cawutt’s fault! Maybe he can’t tell us, maybe…”
“Can’t? Of course he does and of course he can!”
“What does all of this mean then?! Is it all for nothing?!” And suddenly something was flying through the air in the direction of Wing and Joash. The filly squealed and threw her head. Blood exploded across Wing’s face.
In dismay someone cried out, “You’ve drawn Merehr’s blood!”
A fresh peppering of startled gasps followed as heads whipped in the direction of Wing. Eyes popped wide and the two camps were one again upon seeing the blood on Wing’s face, on the side of the silver filly.
Wing was struggling mightily to bring the filly back under control. But it was obvious Wing was reeling himself, and Nien was concerned his brother may not be able to keep the saddle.
Behind them, an eerie silence had begun to fall over the heated crowd. Nien glanced over his shoulder and saw each and every one of the Villagers watching in terrible awe.
We’ve got to get Wing out of here, Nien thought, trying to maneuver his horse around Joash to get to Wing. But Joash was ahead of Nien…
Pulling his foot out of the stirrup, Joash swung his horse around as close as he could get to the silver filly and kicked her smartly in the flank.
The already frantic filly went wild. Kicking out with her back legs, the moment they touched ground again she was bolting, racing away from the crowd of Villagers, conveying Wing back toward the opposite end of the valley and home.
As Nien and Joash had hoped, the sight of Wing being raced away on the back of the terrified filly punched a hole in the energy of the gathering as they all watched Wing grow smaller and smaller against the green horizon of fields.
As Wing faded into nothingness and the realization of how far the confrontation had escalated came to rest in the minds of the gathering, looks of shock and shame faded quickly into something that, Nien thought, was far worse —
Despair.
A despair that seemed to set itself into the earth beneath them like the living roots of a pestilential ecosystem.
Nien saw Wing, for possibly the first time, through the desperate eyes of their people. How his brother had to be Merehr. Because they were not prepared to face what might be coming if he was not, if what Lant said was true. And now, something just as terrible had happened. The reason, Nien suspected, for the unearthly silence of the gathering. It came from a passage in the Ancient Writings: “He that draws Merehr’s blood opens the gates of ruin.”
In the eyes of the people, Merehr’s blood had just been drawn. The spray of Wing’s blood across the silvery-white neck of the filly stood like an omen framed against green fields and the faces of people who wanted to love him. A moment frozen in time that could only presage devastation.
Without words, the villagers collected themselve
s. More had been hurt than Nien had supposed. Some were pressing hands to bleeding or bruised faces. Still others were cradling broken knuckles and wrists from punches blocked or thrown.
There was a look from Grek Occoju to Joash, a lingering pause, and then Grek turned and the gathering dispersed.
In a strange collection of moments, Joash and Nien were left alone in the fields at the edge of the Village.
“I should go find Wing,” Nien said. “It looked like he got hurt.”
Joash shook his head. “Give him some time, son. Reean is at the house if he needs help. We’ll see him tonight.”
“I hate this,” Nien said.
His voice as pained as Nien’s, Joash replied, “Me, too.”
Together, Nien and Joash gathered up all the gear and tools that had been thrown from their horses during the scuffle.
In the trampled grasses, Nien glanced over as Joash bent to retrieve a small hand-held copy of the Ancient Writings.
It was not a part of their belongings.
Joash held it briefly in his big, rough hands before looking up at Nien.
Nien understood that it must have been the object that had been thrown at Wing by the enraged villager.
He watched Joash slap it against the palm of his hand, causing a small rise of dust, before shoving it into one of his saddlebags along with the rest of the roofing tools.
Re-securing straps and the saddlebags, as they mounted up and parted once again, Nien felt that something terrible had just happened — far beyond broken arms and bruised knuckles.
An ache followed his eyes into the distant fields.
A few times over their lives together, Nien had glimpsed, even experienced Wing’s world. It was impossibly beautiful — it was also dark and cryptic and terrifying. Last night had been a dose of all three…
Wing & Nien Page 3
