by Davis Ashura
Jake had been about to call Fiona ‘the Bitch’, their private name for the crone, but thankfully, he’d caught himself in time. A few days back, thinking they were alone in their cottage, they’d discussed Fiona, mocking her, laughing at her idiocy, and complaining about her cruelty.
No one else had been around, but somehow Fiona had learned what they’d said, and her punishment had been severe with lots of pain.
Later, one of the drones had told them about the Walkers—the Air Masters—Sinskrill’s spies who heard everything. Closed windows, shut doors, even deep caverns weren’t immune to their penetrating ears. From then on, William and Jake were careful to speak in only the most banal, inoffensive terms about any topic.
“What do we do?” Jake asked.
“What we’re told, until we earn our way out of this cesspool.”
“Earn?”
“We’re both supposed to be raha’asras, untrained and all that,” William said, “but from what Jason and Mr. Zeus told me, raha’asras are powerful.”
“Then we get to live like Fiona, with only the Servitor telling us what to do?” Jake asked.
“Sounds as heavenly as somewhere warm,” William replied.
“Warm,” Jake agreed in a fervent tone.
“Did you notice when Fiona unlocked our lorethasras this morning?” William asked.
“I noticed,” Jake replied. “There’s no way to miss something like that. The way everything suddenly brightened, like all the sounds were prettier, the smells sharper, the air sweeter.”
“It’s the only part of this nightmare that makes the rest of it tolerable.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Jake disagreed. “Nothing could make up for what’s happened to us. I’d trade all of this—I don’t care how wonderful you think lorethasra or lorasra feels—if we could wake up home tomorrow morning in my bed.”
His words struck a sympathetic chord, but the phrasing set William to laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Jake demanded, sounding offended.
“I didn’t know you played for the receiving team.”
“Receiving team? What are you talking about? I play defense,” Jake said, clearly confused now.
William laughed again. “Think about what you said. We wake up in your bed tomorrow.”
Jake laughed. “Even if I did play for the receiving team, there’s no way I’d want to share a bed with you.”
“I’m so disappointed,” William said dryly.
Jake chuckled again, but a second later he sobered up. “You know what I mean, though, right? I’d give up all the supposed glory of magic if we could go home.”
William waited for the wind to whine through the gaps in the mortar before answering. Walkers could supposedly hear anything, but maybe they couldn’t distinguish a whisper amidst the sound of a blustering breeze.
A few seconds later he had what he needed. “We will,” he vowed in a murmur, while the wind whistled through their cottage. “We know where the anchor line is. Once we’re taught how to use our lorethasra, we’ll open it and get off this hellhole.”
“That won’t be enough,” Jake said.
The wind stilled, and so did their conversation.
“What did they do with your nomasras?” Jake asked.
“They took them,” William told him. Even as he spoke the words, he understood what Jake was trying to tell him. Yes, they could learn to use the anchor line and flee Sinskrill, but without nomasras containing lorasra, they wouldn’t get far. Which meant they’d have to make what they needed.
Just another obstacle to overcome.
SCHEMES AND DEATH
March 1987
* * *
“You used to be faster,” Sherlock Carpenter mocked. He was a tall man, young, slender, and with long fingers that played over the hilt of his blunted jian. More importantly, he was Village Paradiso’s Prime, their ruler under the Servitor’s tutelage. Sherlock quirked his eyebrows in challenge. “Again? Or are you tired of losing, little bishan?”
Serena maintained her composure, keeping her face still and suppressing any evidence of her irritation. She calmly retied her hair, gathering stray strands into her ponytail. Her brother sought to annoy her and cause her to lose focus. One of the oldest tricks in the world, since anger rarely aided a cunning warrior.
Even now, Sherlock’s thin lips curled in a mocking smirk, another attempt to needle her. “Being away from Sinskrill has made you soft,” he said.
“Believe what you want,” Serena replied, “but while my skills might have deteriorated during my time in the Far Abroad, you and I both know how matters between us usually ended before I left. Enjoy your triumph while it lasts.”
They sparred in the lower courtyard of the Servitor’s Palace. A wall of alabaster stone rose all around them. Barracks and paddocks stood to the east while a viewing stand rose to the north, along with entrances into the Palace proper. South held the raised portcullis and main gate, but the west contained an open space. There, in squares of packed dirt, the mahavans, bishans, and shills sparred and trained.
This was the Crucible. This was the true heart of Sinskrill. This was where all could witness the skills or follies of those seeking greatness. This was where shills gained promotion to bishans, and where bishans earned the opportunity to become mahavans. All the time, those training within understood that failure at any step would end with the stripping of their lorethasra and they would live out the rest of their lives as drones.
Sherlock called her forward. “Prove it.”
“Not a problem,” Serena said. Before setting herself, she took time to adjust the heavy padding protecting her chest and arms.
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but Serena didn’t hurry. In truth, she needed the break. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she tried not to pant. While she had trained in the Far Beyond, it hadn’t been with the intensity required of the Crucible. Worse, her protective padding both weighed her down and inhibited her movements. She had forgotten how heavy it was and had yet to fully adapt to it.
“Any time you’re ready,” Sherlock pressed.
“I’m ready,” Serena said. “I’ll break the brakes off you.” She laughed at Sherlock’s perplexed frown. Distraction worked as well as angering an enemy.
Serena attacked before the confusion faded from Sherlock’s face. She expected his uncertainty to force him back into old patterns. She swept her blunted jian from her waist upward in a diagonal slash. Sherlock blocked. He followed up with a thrust. Serena slapped aside his blade. She stepped into his guard. A knee to the gut, and Sherlock folded over. She set her jian against his neck.
“Touch,” Serena said. She breathed deep and worked to slow her thudding heart and did her best to hide her fatigue.
Sherlock stood up with a scowl. “Swords are a simple measure of skill, but my talents lie elsewhere,” he declared. “Politics, for instance. In that arena, I’ll—how did you phrase it? Ah, yes. Beat the brakes off you. Or do you really think the Servitor will displace one of us on your behalf? That you or Adam, your Isha, will gain Primeship over one of the villages? It won’t happen,” he jeered.
“Not yet, but I’d watch out once I’m made a citizen.”
Sherlock scowled further, and Serena secretly smiled. Fool. How easy he was to tweak. It amazed her anew how Sherlock had ever gained control of a village, given his lack of control over himself.
“There are only twelve citizens,” Sherlock said, “and none of the current holders are old or feeble.”
“Then perhaps one of them shall be enfeebled.”
Sherlock grinned. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you found a spine, being away from home.”
“And if I didn’t know better, I’d think you found a brain.”
“How droll.” Sherlock readied his blade. “Again?”
Serena brought up her blade.
“Ready?” Sherlock asked, his very question an insult.
In the Crucible, a blade in hand was itself an indic
ation of readiness.
“Only if you are,” Serena answered with a mocking smile.
Once more Sherlock foolishly displayed his emotions. He grimaced in irritation, and Serena mentally rolled her eyes. Pathetic. As Isha had often taught, Knowledge of your enemy’s emotional state gives you control of your enemy’s emotions. Serena believed it a truth as obvious as gravity, but apparently Sherlock had never learned it. Perhaps, she thought, because Darren Pyre, the aging leader of the Fire Masters, had served as his mentor. Maybe the old man had grown lazy in his dotage.
Sherlock rushed in.
Serena slipped a high thrust and parried a low sweep. She gave way when Sherlock pressed forward. She slid under an overhand strike. He blocked her return horizontal slash and lunged in behind his parry. Again, Serena ghosted away.
“Do you run from all your fights now?” Sherlock sneered. “I heard this new raha’asra had you running all the time. You sprinted across half a continent, fleeing for your life, did you not?”
Serena maintained focus on Sherlock’s blade and stance.
“This William Wilde. I understand you had to feign feelings for him,” Sherlock continued. “Perhaps those feelings became true, and you became as soft as he is.” He lunged in behind a thrust and carried it into a diagonal slash.
Serena’s concentration broke for a moment. She didn’t like thinking about William.
A horizontal slice she barely blocked forced her attention back to the match, and she forced aside her guilty thoughts, the weakness that had settled in her heart like pus. Only the living moment mattered.
She studied Sherlock while she slid aside from another vertical slash and slipped a thrust. His horizontal slash met air when she darted back.
Sherlock stepped away with a growl of frustration. “You have become a runner,” he complained.
In that instant Serena saw her opportunity. She stepped right, cutting an angle. A diagonal slice arched upward from left to right. Sherlock blocked it, but Serena rode her momentum into a straight thrust. The blade skimmed along Sherlock’s sword before slamming into his padded chest.
He stumbled back with a curse.
“Maybe I do run more than I once did,” Serena said, “but I still find a way to win.” She stepped out of the training square, leaving before Sherlock could recall her and challenge her again. There was no chance she could beat him with that maneuver a second time.
Much like the raptor’s nest for which it was named, the Eyrie stood atop the Wild Peak, the southernmost tower of the Servitor’s Palace. Wide windows lined three walls of the room as well as the ceiling and provided expansive views of Sinskrill in three directions.
Leaning off the Eyrie like an accusing finger stood a long, glass-bottomed balcony, the Judging Line. Those deemed treasonous to Sinskrill were tossed off that high platform, with their fate given to the hands of the judging winds. The balcony swayed in the blasts of wind blowing at the Eyrie’s heights, and only the most daring, or those with no choice in the matter, such as the drones required to keep the Line clean, risked spending any time out there.
For Serena, the balcony had never brought her unease. She found it peaceful, all alone with no one to bother her. Her comfort at the heights made it all the more surprising that her talents had ended up being Fire and Earth rather than Air.
Regardless, she enjoyed spending time on the Judging Line, or when the weather wouldn’t allow it, within the Eyrie itself. Such as this morning when a cloudless dawn had brought bright sunshine streaming down upon Sinskrill, and set the nearby indigo waters of the Norwegian Sea to glistening. Farther, past where the saha’asra no longer held sway, the water appeared leaden. Westward, Village White Sun had already risen for the day, and the drones, ant-like in the distance, moved about, doing as they were bidden.
As she watched them, Serena wondered about William and Jake. How were they doing? Probably not good. How could she expect anything else given the nature of her home?
A line of drones broke off from the others and approached the Servitor’s Palace, and Serena’s curiosity piqued. Though her talents didn’t include mastery of Air, she could still use that Element to a certain extent. She sourced her lorethasra. She sometimes wondered what aroma it carried but no asrasin could know the scent of their own magic, and she didn’t trust anyone to tell her. They’d only lie.
She drew out a thin tendril of her silvery Spirit and coated it with a thick layer of Air mixed with a touch of Water. Next, she reached for lorasra, which ebbed in dendritic pulses along ley lines throughout the Servitor’s Palace. She separated it into its component Elements, and to the thimbleful that she extracted, Serena attached her nascent braid, Air-to-Air and Water-to-Water.
The air before her eyes stiffened, hardening into lenses. Binoculars. An old trick, one all mahavans knew. Serena tuned its depth and quality until the faces of those distant drones sharpened into focus.
Though their features weren’t identical, the peasants were nonetheless indistinguishable. They all possessed faces frozen in the same dead-eyed expression, a flat-featured, dull acceptance of their miserable fate, a loss of identity and hope Serena had already seen on William’s and Jake’s visages when she’d seen them yesterday plowing a field by hand.
The morning’s bright mood faltered, and Serena stared off in the distance, wondering again what she could have done differently. As always, she had no answer. If William and Jake had escaped to Arylyn, what would have happened to Selene? Serena might have been judged a failure, stripped of her lorethasra, and her sister left defenseless and alone.
Serena shook her head.
She had taken the least, worst choice available to her, and she decided that guilt had no reason to find a home in her heart, not when her entire impetus had been to save her sister.
Sweet Selene.
They shared the same parents. The Servitor, of course, and a drone woman whose name should have long since been forgotten, but one Serena remembered. Cinnamon. Their birth-mother had been a woman of great beauty, and it had been that beauty which had captured the Servitor’s attention. Upon her, he had bred Serena and then almost a decade later, Selene.
They had been a happy enough family, but like all drones, their lives had been hard with scarcity and persistent cold.
At age ten Serena had undergone and survived the Tempering, the testing all children of Sinskrill underwent to determine their fitness for becoming mahavans. Upon her passage she’d been whisked away from Cinnamon and formally adopted by the Servitor and his wife, childless Alaina, who had never been much of a mother.
Instead, it had been Cinnamon to whom Serena had gone for comfort and love, who had wiped away Serena’s tears and kissed her skinned knees. Serena could still remember her birth mother’s smell, hear her bright laughter, and feel her loving arms holding her. Cinnamon had taught Serena of gardening, but the love they shared had ultimately doomed her.
Alaina, cruel like all mahavans, had accused Serena’s birth-mother of blasphemy, denying the divinity of Lord Shet. As a result, Cinnamon had been killed, eyes gouged out and whipped to death in front of Serena. Toward the end of the torture, Alaina, smiling with vicious triumph, had allowed Serena to speak with Cinnamon one last time. Blood had streaked her mother’s face. Her body had been flayed open, and she’d lost control of her bowels. Serena had wept. She had held Cinnamon’s hands and promised to take care of Selene, to let nothing terrible happen to her. Cinnamon had smiled then. She’d cupped Serena’s face as she died.
Serena shuddered, caught in the whirlwind of her most terrible memory, unable and unwilling to let go of the pain. The pain spurred her, kept her from succumbing to Sinskrill’s lurid call of darkness and futility. And any god who listened to her pleas, who helped save Selene from their mother’s terrible fate, would forever earn Serena’s worship.
A drone intruded on her thoughts, bringing her a meal of eggs, coarse bread layered with butter and cheese, and buffalo milk.
The interrupti
on reminded Serena of why she had come to the Eyrie in the first place, and she took a breath, settling her thoughts before taking an appreciative sip of the thick, buttery liquid. Much better than the flavored, white water that pretended to be milk in the Far Abroad. Serena dug into the breakfast, eating in silence and only looking up when Isha approached.
He seated himself beside her, and a drone brought him a plate similar to Serena’s. “What thoughts press so heavily upon you?”
“Alaina died on a day like this,” Serena replied, mixing a truth with a lie.
“I didn’t realize you were close to her.”
“I wasn’t, but to have died so young is a tragedy.”
Isha shrugged, clearly uncaring, as he tucked into his meal.
Of course, his dismissiveness might have changed if he’d known the truth about Alaina’s tragic death.
Serena had been very careful with the poison she had administered to her adopted mother—vengeance for Cinnamon. In addition, with Alaina’s death, the Servitor had done exactly as Serena had hoped. She had been put in charge of Selene’s upbringing. Together, they had shared a room in the servants’ section of the Palace all through Serena’s time as a shill and a bishan, but following her elevation, they now shared a mahavan’s quarters.
“Your charge . . . how is she?” Isha asked, breaking into her thoughts.
“Well enough,” Serena replied, unsure as to the purpose of Isha’s question.
“Next year she faces the Tempering,” Isha noted. “Have you considered what will happen to her if she doesn’t pass?”
“She’ll pass.”
“Once she does, and becomes a shill, who will have the mentoring of her?”
“Are you offering?” Serena asked with a half-smile.
Isha chuckled. “Certainly not. One shill and bishan is enough for me.”
“Then maybe I should take on the role myself,” Serena said.
“Is that wise?”
“You don’t think I can be hard enough on her?”
