by Alex Bentley
Not from El, but from the man who is pressing me back with every slash and thrust of his sword.
Slek Mydra.
The words he said to dying Hilder. The words he said to me.
Afraid? So what? So what if you are afraid? It matters not. You think I am never afraid? That I do not experience fear? Fear and courage are the same river. When you are afraid, you are swimming against the current. When you are brave, you are swimming with the current, letting it take you were it will. Either way, you are in the river. And the river can bring pain, suffering, death. But it is easier to swim with the current. Once you realise this and embrace the fear, accept that it is simply… there, you have the makings of a warrior. It is not the fear that paralyses. It is the battling of it. So say we Sceada, anyway.
Fear and courage. The same river.
And the Sceada do not lie. If they say something is so, then it is so.
The same river.
I am submerged in it. And so is Slek Mydra, who even now is smiling. Smiling and seemingly fearless. But he is not fearless. He is swimming in fear. The only difference is he is doing so willingly, not battling against it.
And then the fear is no longer weakening my muscles, no longer clawing at my heart, no longer emptying my lungs or taking my mind back to the Ritual of the Seven Cuts and the Seven Cups. The fear is just there. As the sky is there. As the air I breathe is there.
“It is not the fear that paralyses,” I say. “It is the battling of it.”
This causes Mydra to raise an eyebrow. To hesitate.
I lunge forward, jabbing my sword at his midsection.
The move catches him by surprise and he fails to parry.
My sword tip punctures his armour. But only by half an inch.
As I draw back, I swipe at his weapon arm and feel a satisfying resistance.
He grunts, shuffling back out of the reach of my sword.
“First blood is yours, daughter and son of Aryc Clainh. I salute you.” He tosses the blade to his other hand. “But the Sceada fight with both hands. And that is the last blood you shall draw.”
He charges at me, roaring.
I smile.
Less than a minute ago, I would have run. I wouldn’t have been able to help myself. Fear would have driven me to it.
And I am still afraid. The fear is all around me.
But it does not matter. It is simply… there.
I fight. I fight, though I know I cannot win. I fight with clarity.
When he thrusts, I dodge. When he slashes, I duck or step back. Occasionally, I parry, but only when I can use the Sceada’s own momentum to divert his blade. I counterattack when I can, finding openings here and there, jabbing into them and slashing as I retreat.
Twice I catch him, once on his right forearm, once to the left wrist. Each time, the cut is deep enough to extract a grunt and send Mydra into a brief retreat.
But he is still smiling and shows no sign of tiring.
I, on the other hand, am beginning to weary.
“You are flagging, Alys. Perhaps drop the sword now. The Jarl may let you live.”
“You are wrong about that,” I say. “Just as you were wrong about my first cut being the last.”
A cloud of anger shadows Mydra’s face.
“I will give you one last chance to lay down your sword, Clainh,” he says through gritted teeth.
“Do you believe the Jarl will let me live?” I ask.
The Sceada cannot lie. It is not in their nature. And so Mydra says nothing.
I repeat the question.
Myra shrugs.
“No,” he says. “I do not believe that he will.”
I smile.
“To the death, then?” he says.
“To the death,” I say.
I attack him with such savagery, such ferocity, that I do not recognise myself.
Steel clashes against steel so hard, sparks illuminate the gloom.
“That’s the spirit!” roars Mydra, a grin almost splitting his face.
I wonder if my face now has the same countenance as that of my likeness at the Dead City’s gates: rage, determination, madness.
I strike at him again and again, and he parries each blow, but step by step I am driving him back. Every bone in my hand and arm thrums with pain. I can feel blood running down my leg from my reopened arrow wound.
And I don’t care.
I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.
For one foolish moment, I believe I can win, that I can kill Slek Mydra, this fierce Sceada warrior who has been in more battles than I have years in my bones.
And then my sword—my father’s sword—breaks.
Chapter 32
A Final Cruelty
I stare at the broken blade and, for one ridiculous second, I worry that my father will be disappointed with me for not having looked after it properly.
And then the Sceada slashes at the arm holding the half-sword. It is not as deep as it could have been—I don’t doubt Mydra could have lopped off my arm at the elbow—but it is deep enough that I drop my weapon.
He lunges at me, grips me by the throat and lifts me from the ground.
He does all of this with such ease that I know I could never have beaten him, no matter how many nicks and slices I delivered, no matter how much blood I drew. I am not strong enough yet. I am not good enough yet.
But at least I am not filled with fear as I was.
I punch his arm, finding the places my sword opened up. I punch over and over, until my knuckles are red not only with his blood, but with mine. I kick at his chest and belly, connecting again and again. But his armour does more damage to my feet than I can ever hope to do to him. I might leave him with a bruise or two, but that is all. But I don’t stop kicking or punching until the energy goes out of me, as a candle flame goes out when it has burned the last of its tallow.
And even as I hang there, struggling to draw breath past the tightening grip of his hand, I am not filled with fear. I am swimming in it. I am swimming with it.
“You fought well,” says Mydra. “You would best most of the men of Gafol. I would put heavy coin on you, Alys. It is a shame. I would like to see what you would grow into. But I am here on my Jarl’s business.”
He points the tip of his sword at my chest, my heart. It is to be a quick death, then. A merciful death. He pulls back his arm… then stops.
Confusion creases his brow.
He drops the sword. It is heavy and makes a sound like chiming bells as it strikes the stones of the road.
Next, he drops me. I land on my feet, but my wounded leg betrays me, and I continue down to the ground.
He turns, facing away from me.
There is a knife sticking out of his back, between the shoulder blades. It is sunk in up to its hilt. The handle is pretty, white bone, carved in the shape of one of the Sea Ladies that are said to swim off the coast at Leax, with tail and scales where legs should be.
The knife belongs to Casmel Durn, to Cass.
I cannot see him past Mydra, but I hear him speak.
“Good evening, Slek Mydra,” he says with good cheer. “I’m the boy who made a fool of you in Awlen.”
Mydra roars. His hands scrabble for the knife in his back, almost finding it.
Legs useless, I drag myself to my father’s broken sword, seize the grip as tight as my waning strength will allow, and slash its incomplete blade across the back of the Sceada’s thighs. One cut that is really two.
He turns back to me now, still roaring, still smiling.
He reaches down and picks up his sword.
As he bends, I see Cass, his own sword drawn, striding forward, preparing to finish him.
But we have surprised the Sceada twice, and he will not allow himself to be outwitted a third time. He rises quickly, bringing his elbow back in a swift and brutal motion. I hear it crunch into Cass’s face. He cries out in pain, and I see him crumple to the floor, his nose a bloody mess, his eyes rolling wildly for
a second before unconsciousness takes him.
I turn away from the scene and begin pulling myself toward my bow, beyond which is all that remains of Madec: a pile of smouldering ash in the shape of a man.
I don’t get very far.
Mydra’s foot comes down hard on my wounded leg and pins me to the ground. I stretch a hand toward my bow, but my fingertips strain an inch from it.
I can hear the pain in his voice when he says, “I am less sorry than I was to put an end to your life, Alys Clainh. But I am still sorry.”
He lifts his foot from my thigh.
“Turn,” he says. “I would not put a sword in your back, even if you and your comrade would mine.”
I twist myself onto my back.
Mydra stands over me, sword in hand. He is not smiling now. He looks grim and regretful.
“Be done with it,” I say.
There is no fear in my voice, and my heart is not beating as hard as perhaps it should.
Then I see Ethra’s face appear above Mydra’s head. She looks angry.
She is floating in the air.
I consider the possibility I am hallucinating, that pain, exhaustion and the prospect of death have made me delirious.
Then Ethra grabs Mydra’s shoulders and drags him upward.
Shock wipes the regret from his face, and he drops his sword.
They hang ten yards above me, the Sceada’s legs kicking.
He reaches behind him. At first, I think he is trying to get to Ethra. But then I realise it’s the knife he’s after. Cass’s knife, buried between his shoulder blades.
I scuttle back, sitting up as I do so, until I am beside my bow. I pick it up, nock an arrow.
The knife is in Mydra’s hand now, the blade dripping with his own blood.
I draw back the bowstring and surprise myself when I succeed, despite my exhaustion, in pulling it to the anchor point.
Mydra’s arm arcs back toward Ethra.
I aim; then I loose the arrow.
It strikes Mydra’s arm and, with a noise more howl than roar, he drops the knife.
Ethra takes him higher.
Twenty yards. Thirty. Forty. Fifty.
And then she drops him.
He makes no noise as he falls. He just stretches out his arms, accepting his fate.
I watch his swift descent, not even looking away when his body strikes the broken stones of the road between Cass and me, refusing to cover my ears to the sound of his cracking bones, the wet slap of blood.
Using my bow as a staff, I stand and make my way over to the dead Sceada.
Only he isn’t dead.
His bloody mouth opens and closes. His eyes dart this way and that, as if tracking the erratic trail of a housefly, and then they lock onto mine.
His voice little more than a fragmented wheeze, he says, “It… is… well.”
His eyes clip shut. His jaw drops wide, releasing its tide of blood.
At the same moment as Mydra leaves our world, Cass returns.
He sits up, his hand to his face.
“By nobe,” he says. “By nobe ib bokem.”
“It might be an improvement,” says Ethra, landing lightly beside him. Then, suddenly serious, “Is that… Madec?” She points at the man-shaped pile of glowing, smoking ashes.
“Yes,” I say.
“Could you…?” she says.
Could I? I don’t know. There is so little of him.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“But you should try,” says Ethra. “If you have the strength.”
I don’t have the strength. I barely have any strength.
But I try.
I kneel next to the pile of ashes. I feel a warmth from it, as you would from a hearth fire that is dwindling near evening’s end.
But how am I to find and release my Glyst when I am too tired for rage? Last time, when I raised Hilder, I found my anger by locating my fear that was coiled about it like a fensnake. But now it seems I have no fear within me. Master Fensnake has slithered into the waters and away. There are no signs pointing to my Glyst, no keys to its door, nor even any moss growing up high on the trees giving an indication of the direction in which it might be found.
Where is my Glyst?
The Glyst is everywhere in the Glyster. It connects the soul with the heart with the mind with the muscles with the bones with the blood.
The words of Hrof Arstafas.
My blood.
My bones.
My muscles.
My mind.
My heart.
My soul.
There.
There it is.
Where it always was: everywhere.
Everywhere in me.
My Glyst.
I direct it, shepherd it, from my blood, bones, muscles, mind, heart and soul, down into my fingertips, and I push my hands into the burning ash that is all that is left of Madec Teeg.
And then I am in the Nowhere once more, that place where there are no troubles because there are no things. And again, I want to stay. But maybe not quite so much as before, maybe only a little this time, as one might wish to have a nap, a brief respite from labour.
And again the ripple comes. But it seems bigger this time, more violent, as if I am further from the shore and closer to the point of collision. Even though I have no body in this Nowhere, I feel it.
The stone has hit the lake.
It is about the Big Things. The Gods.
Suddenly, I am back in the Dead City, back in Utlath as was.
I turn to the shattered mess that was Slek Mydra. I point my right hand at him.
“It is coming,” says the Sceada’s slack, hanging mouth, despite the blood that fills it. “It is coming. The Gravene.”
The pale-pink lifelight lifts from Mydra’s impact-distorted head. His already sagging body collapses until it is just a skin filled with almost nothing.
The light floats toward me. I smell blackberries and rose petals. I reach to touch it.
“It’s too late,” says Ethra.
I look first at her, then at the remains of Madec.
But there are no remains.
A wind that seems to have come into existence for the express purpose is carrying them in a spiralling blue-grey cloud down the broken road toward the docks.
“No!” I say. “There was still so much he needed to tell me. So much that I need to know.”
I touch Mydra’s lifelight and, with a sweep of my arm, send it after Madec’s ashen remains.
But the lifelight resists. It veers right where I would have it go forward; then it disappears between the very buildings from which the Sceada had ambushed us. For a moment, its pink glow lingers in the shadows, and then it is gone.
I can’t help feeling this is Slek Mydra’s final revenge. And I can’t help but, on some level of myself I never knew existed, admire his final cruelty.
A long time passes.
It gets darker, colder.
“What now?” says Ethra.
“Now?” I say. “Now, we build an army. We build an army to fight the Gravene. An army of Glysters.”
Chapter 33
The Beginning
We return to Madec’s Library.
I dress the wound Mydra inflicted upon my arm. Then, as I reset Cass’s nose as best I can, I share with him all that Madec Teeg had told.
“I am absent for just a few hours,” he says. “And you’ve gone from Alys Clainh to this… Dracafysian. You’ve been busy.”
He is trying to make light of it, but there is a look in his rapidly bruising eyes of bewilderment.
“It is a lot to take in,” I say. “Perhaps it’s best to put some sleep on top of it. Besides, who knows how much of it is true and how much is the fancy of storytellers?”
He nods, the bewilderment still in his eyes.
I turn to Ethra and say, “You changed your mind. You kept your Glyst.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I d
on’t know what I expect her to say.
“I like flying,” she says. “And my skin hasn’t come loose for days now. But mostly it’s the flying. The Maradyn had just begun the ceremony. I was lying on my back and I was looking up at the sky and I thought how wonderful it was that I could go there any time I wanted, up into the sky.”
And I am reminded that she is a child still.
We all are, really, Ethra, Cass and I. But Ethra more so.
“I need you to fly,” I say. “Mydra has sent an outrider to Gafol. I need you to get there before him. Find my father. His is the roundhouse on the outer edge of the town, just before the barren land rolls into the Freewood. Find him. Take him to my Aunty Elsam. I will meet you there. And I need you to go now, even though it’s dark.”
“I’m not scared,” she says.
“Give my father this,” I say, handing her the broken sword. “So he will know you speak true. Tell him I am well. You will have to be quick. The grefa stones will start whistling the moment you arrive.”
I hug her then and kiss her cheek.
“I will see you in a few days. A week at most.”
“Any longer, and I will come looking for you.”
Cass and I follow Ethra down the stairs and out of the tower. Cass hugs her, and I hug her again.
“Good luck, Ethra Kell-Clainh,” I say.
“Luck is a bucket with a hole, Alys Clainh-Kell,” she replies.
And then she is gone, up into the dark sky.
“I will wait until light before heading out,” says Cass. There is a dressing across his nose and his eyes are black. “I am not as brave as Ethra.”
It is chilly outside, and we go back into the Library.
“You are limping,” says Cass as we near the top of the stairs. “Let me redress that wound.”
“I can do it,” I say.
“I can do it better,” he replies.
I lie on the bed, positioning the blanket so only the wound is visible. He makes a salve of leaves and petals from Madec’s chest and applies them gently.
“Why did you come back?” I ask.
“I was on the road to Leax, and I looked back over my shoulder and saw the statue at the gates. The statue of you. You looked fierce. And then I looked at the wolf, your companion. And I thought how fine it would be to have a wolf for a companion. A person with a wolf for a companion would be safe.” He begins to apply the dressing over the salve, and his fingers briefly brush my thigh. “And then I realised you don’t have a wolf for a companion. You have Ethra. And you have me.” He covers my thigh with the blanket. “And I felt ashamed. And, also, I felt afraid for you.”
