by Davis Ashura
“They smell something,” Evelyn said.
A howl broke the relative quiet, and their horses shifted about, skin twitching.
“Unformed wolves,” Tristan said. “It’s still the heart of winter. That’s when they come down.”
“We should have killed them off long ago,” Brandon said with a grimace.
“They’re unformed,” Serena reminded them. “How can we hunt what we can’t rightly identify?”
“The Spiritualists can identify them,” Brandon pointed out.
“Then why is it that every Servitor for the past thousand years seems to disagree with your logic?” Tristan countered, clearly the most devout of them. “Why haven’t they done what you think they should?”
Brandon shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Then you should trust the Servitor.”
“I do, but—”
Serena cut off Brandon’s reply with a slash of her arm. An eavesdropping Walker could easily claim that Brandon’s words were treasonous or blasphemous. “We all trust the Servitor, and through him Lord Shet,” Serena said, flashing Brandon a glare of warning.
“His glory returns,” the others intoned, and Serena breathed a little easier.
Another set of howls had the horses shifting again.
“I think the wolves are getting closer,” Evelyn said with a frown.
“We’d better get down there and help keep those idiots alive,” Serena said in feigned disgust meant to conceal her worry. The Tenders should have pulled the drones back by now, but the peasants still worked the fields, oblivious to their danger. Closest to the forest and the howling wolves were William and Jake.
“What’s that howling noise?” Jake asked, looking up from where he’d been working manure into the soil.
“Wolves,” William answered, head still bent to his task as he dug into the ground with his hoe.
Jake glanced around nervously.
“They won’t attack a group of people this big,” William said. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned. “Don’t worry about it.” He continued to work, wearing the same dull-eyed, placid features displayed by the rest of the broken-spirited drones, but William wasn’t broken. Jake knew it. However, William’s ability to pretend otherwise was impressive.
Such as the other day, when that bitch Serena had shown up. Jake wanted to break her face, and he knew William felt the same way. Somehow, though, William had kept his composure. He’d stayed calm in the face of humiliation.
Jake wished he knew how William did it, because he was barely holding on. He shook with rage one moment and wanted to weep the next. Sometimes he wished that when he went to sleep, he’d never wake up.
Sad to want to be done with life at eighteen.
Jake couldn’t help it. He hated this place, and if it wasn’t for William keeping up his spirits, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.
“Better get back to work,” William whispered. “Tender Thomas is giving you the stink-eye.”
Jake didn’t bother glancing to where William’s eyes had gone. Instead, he grunted his ‘thanks’ and got back to work, grateful that he had a partner he could rely on. Neither of them had made friends with any of the other drones, all of whom would probably sell them out in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself. It was Sinskrill’s way: trust no one.
“You ever wonder why they have such normal names?” Jake asked William a short time later.
“The people here?” William shrugged. “I heard it was because Lord Shet, may his glory soon return—”
“His glory returns,” Jake said with an eyeroll. Stupid phrase, but if he didn’t say it and someone found out, the old witch, Fiona, would punish him.
“—ordered them to conquer the world in his name. Part of that meant they had to learn the ways of their greatest enemies, even to the point of taking on their names. For a long time they had Chinese ones.”
“And now they have English ones?”
“That’s what Fiona told me, but who knows if it’s true,” William said.
The wolves howled again, the sounds closer. Jake’s eyes darted about in increasing worry. He looked to Tender Thomas, whose face wore a sickly demeanor. The mahavan’s eyes flitted about in apparent nervousness.
“Drones,” the Tender called out. “Retreat south toward the village. We’ll wait out the wolves there.”
No sooner had he spoken than four lean, gray shapes burst out of the foliage carpeting the low-lying western hills. They streaked toward the drones.
William reacted instantly. He broke the blade off of his hoe and held the wooden shaft before him in a defensive posture. “Get behind me,” he ordered Jake.
“We have to go,” Jake protested.
Tender Thomas, the mahavan who should have stayed behind and protected the drones, had already taken off. He sprinted away from the wolves. The rest of the drones ran too, dropping tools as they raced for safety. They wouldn’t reach it. The wolves were coming on too fast.
Unless William held them off and bought the drones some time.
Jake vacillated. The panicked part of him told him to race after the drones, but his better part wanted to stand and fight with his friend.
“I need you to protect my back, William said. “Get behind me.” His voice sounded strangely calm, unhurried and unworried, as if he’d spent his entire life fighting off wild wolves.
Jake did as William instructed. He swallowed heavily as the wolves charged. There was no way to outrun them. Panic again threatened to overturn his thoughts, but with an effort he got his mind working. He snapped off the blade of his hoe and copied William’s stance.
Thudding hoofbeats from behind them gave Jake hope. Horses thundered their way, and only mahavans rode. He risked a glimpse back and snarled when he saw who led the charge.
Serena. Great.
She’d probably tie them up and hand them over to the slavering wolves.
The animals peeled off into two pairs. So did Serena and her three horsemen. The earth trembled, and Jake struggled to remain upright. William had no such trouble.
A howling wind blew one wolf off its feet, entangling it with the other running by its side. Both screamed when a stream of fire billowed off Serena’s hands and engulfed them.
The last two wolves darted past the two riders facing them. The animals now had a clear path to Jake and William.
“Oh, shit,” Jake whispered.
“I’ve got this,” William said, his voice still calm and measured. “It’ll be fine.”
The wolves lunged, and William spun about. He moved faster than anyone Jake had ever seen. His staff blurred, but the wolves were equally swift. They evaded his thrusts and swings while he batted aside their lunges and snapping teeth.
All the while, Jake stood like a frozen spectator. He held his staff before him, unsure how he could help William. Entering the fight would probably distract his friend rather than provide support.
The mahavans circled back. The wolves snarled as they focused on this new challenge. They flicked their gazes from the oncoming mahavans to William and back again. Their yellow eyes glowed, and Jake inhaled sharply. The wolves’ eyes brimmed with intelligence, with thought, cunning, and planning.
As one, the animals raced back toward the forest. At the last moment, one of them hurled itself at a mahavan, Tender Winegate. The mahavan screamed as the wolf ripped his throat open. Both animals fled before the other mahavans could react.
NECESSARY DECISIONS
March 1987
* * *
The Loving Servant, the Servitor of Sinskrill, Axel Carpenter, listened carefully as his daughter stated her case. She spoke in simple terms, explaining what had transpired yesterday. She did so without unnecessary commentary or emotional pleas. Excellent. Axel felt pride at the kind of mahavan Serena had become, poised, precise, and rational. Adam, Axel’s half-brother, had done well in her training, expunging all weaknesses but one: Serena’s love for her sister, Selene.
Even now, the young girl busily swept the corners of the Throne Hall of Lord Shet with a tied-off bundle of rushes. Those of the Far Abroad would have described Selene as Serena’s Achilles heel.
An apt description.
Axel’s mind wandered as he considered his youngest child. Scrawny, but destined to be a great beauty, like her broodmare. But appearances meant less on Sinskrill than elsewhere. Here the issue of gravest importance was whether the girl had the hardness of heart, the strength at her core to become a mahavan.
Axel couldn’t tell—no one could—but they would learn this summer when Selene faced her Tempering. She’d either pass or fail, the fate of all children who weren’t stripped of their lorethasra at birth.
A disquiet at the notion roiled through Axel. He wanted Selene to succeed. He hoped she would, but until then, like all children, she had to serve as a drone. Even a Servitor couldn’t overturn such a long-standing law, not even for the sake of his daughter.
Axel returned his attention to the matter at hand. Fiona stood beside Serena, maintaining a disdainful posture, but her scornful mien didn’t deceive the Servitor. He’d known her far too long. He saw the way her eyes occasionally flitted about, the nervousness betrayed by lips pressed into a thin line. Fiona was rightfully fearful. Her actions, her lack of attention and regard for the raha’asras under her care, had brought them to near calamity, and as a result to all of Sinskrill. She would be punished for her poor judgment, and she knew it.
The only question was how harsh a judgment she would face. Axel hadn’t yet decided, but given the serious nature of the charges, he had ordered the meeting be held in the Throne Hall of Lord Shet. All verdicts involving a mahavan accused of incompetence were adjudicated here.
Axel’s gaze played over the room. He already knew most of the facts of the matter and no longer needed to pay the proceedings much mind.
At the public entrance to the Throne Hall stood a pair of large, gray double-doors twice the height of a man. From there, a wide aisle led through a forest of iridescent, gold-enameled columns ascending from an onyx-marble floor to a ribbed ceiling of glass and mosaics that depicted scenes from Shet’s Counsel, Sinskrill’s holiest book. In one image the god humbly provided knowledge of fire. In another he lifted humanity from the depths of ignorance. A different one showed Shet striving against the endless forces of evil.
Axel shifted in the Servitor’s Chair, a richly upholstered leather seat shot with threads of gold and framed with purpleheart wood, which held the noblest of colors. It sat upon a raised dais, two steps above the rest of the floor, while three levels higher brooded the empty throne of Lord Shet. A titanic statue of the god’s warrior persona loomed behind it and over the entire Hall.
Six arms reached out from the figure’s shoulders, each hand holding a different weapon. The right hands grasped a khopesh, a mace, and the Book of the Dead. In his left ones, Shet held a bow, a spear, and the Knife of Woe. The jaws of a crocodile helmeted the figure’s head, serving as a crown, and a sneer of cold command twisted the statue’s face.
Justifiably so.
Before his long slumber, the mighty had gazed upon Shet’s works and torn their hair in despair.
Fiona began her defense, but Axel knew what she would say. He knew what everyone would say. No plans or schemes remained hidden from him. All events stood out as clearly as the sunshine pouring through the windows lining the Throne Hall. How could it be otherwise with Shet to guide his thoughts, to let him see the truth as no man otherwise could?
Then again, upon ascension no Servitor remained merely a man or woman. All became so much more, masters of all forms of asra. Even the mighty Sapient Dormant, the Overward of the necrosed, had once bent knee and pledged obeisance to the unbroken line of Servitors.
“How could I have known the unformed would attack?” Fiona asked. “Always before, they approach at night, seeking those who aren’t protected by stone and heavy doors.”
“Such as foolish lovers slaking their lust in the fields?” Axel needled, reminding Fiona of an unfortunate incident from her youth.
The old raha’asra reddened, and the Servitor smirked. She never had learned to control her emotions, unlike his daughter, who stood unruffled and ready.
“The unformed are an abomination, and we should . . .” Fiona began.
“Enough.” Axel cut off further discussion. He leaned forward in his chair. “You have failed. In all ways. Judgment will be rendered.”
Fiona stiffened.
Good.
Not including Serena and Selene, the old raha’asra had three living grandchildren who had achieved the rank of mahavan, and one of them a Prime. As a result, Fiona had grown too proud and influential. It was time to cut her down.
“You won’t be stripped, and you’ll retain your rank,” Axel said. He noticed Fiona’s shoulders slump in relief, but now came the pain. “But Travail will take over instructorship of the new raha’asras. He will answer to Serena, and you will answer to the troll. You will serve Travail in whatever capacity he requires.” Axel leaned back in his chair. “So says the Voice of Lord Shet.”
“May his glory soon return,” Serena and Fiona recited.
“Dismissed.”
After they left, Axel sat alone in the empty Throne Hall—Selene had gone on to some other task—and he flexed an arm. Fur rippled on his forearm as the appendage took on the form of a bear’s foreleg. Long claws extended from wide, heavy paws.
Fiona thought the unformed an abomination.
Axel smirked. On this, as in many other matters, she was deeply mistaken. The unformed were Shet’s wild children, much like the line of Servitors.
Arylyn
* * *
Jason sat on the front porch of Mr. Zeus’ house in Arylyn and sipped a glass of lemonade as he stared out over the waters down below.
The cascades tumbling over Lilith’s Cliffs gathered below as a narrow continuation of River Namaste. The waters flowed north through a canyon of rugged rocks before eventually emptying into the Pacific Ocean. A mile past the river, a golden beach stenciled an aquamarine bay before merging into a soaring glassine, ruddy-black cliff and decorated by a rainbow that arched from sea to stone.
Jason had always loved it here. Even if the views had been dull he would have loved it since this was Mr. Zeus’ home, warm and inviting. A white-picket fence demarcated the front of the property and was split by a low gate opening beneath a jasmine-cloaked arbor. A slim walkway of granite flagstone traced a gray line through gardens and a small plot of grass. The narrow path gave way to wooden steps rising to a wraparound porch supported by stacked stone columns, and eventually a front door painted the same robin’s-egg blue as the exterior siding.
With no one to maintain the home and grounds during the years Mr. Zeus and Jason had been away, the house had fallen into disrepair. It took weeks of hard labor to bring the place back to a semblance of order, and peeling paint and overgrown weeds had been the least of their concerns. More pressing had been the leaky pipe underneath the kitchen sink, which had rotted most of the flooring in that room.
Now everything was once more in tip-top shape and beautiful. The only thing missing was William.
“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” Mr. Zeus asked.
Jason nodded. “He should be here with us.”
“He will be,” Mr. Zeus promised. “Both him and Jake.”
“You’ve figured out a way to get them off Sinskrill?” Jason asked, a thin thread of hope pulsing through him.
Mr. Zeus hesitated. His pause meant the answer remained ‘no’, but Jason felt only minimal disappointment. After all, he had expected it.
“I haven’t yet figured out a way, but I will,” Mr. Zeus said.
“You really think so?” Jason asked. “Be honest.”
“I already have a sense of Sinskrill’s location, and eventually I’ll have more,” Mr. Zeus said. “So honestly, yes, I think we’ll find him.”
“I still don’t
understand how knowing Sinskrill’s location is going to help us,” Jason replied with a frown. “We still don’t know the key to Sinskrill’s anchor line.”
“Getting there isn’t the hard part,” Mr. Zeus said. “The hard part is the island itself. We don’t know anything about it. We don’t know how many people live there, how many mahavans, the structure of their government . . . anything.”
“From what I’ve read, they don’t have much of a government,” Jason said. “They have these people, drones they call them. Slaves it sounds like. Then there are the mahavans, and a ruler.”
“The Servitor,” Mr. Zeus supplied.
Jason shook his head in disgust. “You’d think after warring with them for as long as we have, we’d know a little more about the enemy.”
“Then you’d be wrong,” Mr. Zeus said. “After we retreated to our respective islands, the interactions we’ve had with the mahavans can be numbered on one hand.”
“Which does nothing to help William’s situation.”
“Patience. I know he’s somewhere north of us—”
“But how do we get to him?” Jason interrupted, hating his pessimism and whining.
“A boat, remember?”
Jason muttered in disbelief, cursing his stupidity. Of course, a boat. How could he have forgotten? The anchor lines made travel between far off places more manageable, but they obviously weren’t the only means to journey to distant locales.
“In all the histories of the wars between our people, one thing becomes quickly clear. The enemy hardly ever seeks the solution to a problem through any means other than asra.” Mr. Zeus wore a crafty smile. “I doubt the mahavans or their Servitor will expect us to simply sail to their shores.”
“How do we let William know we’re coming?”
“For that we have dreams.”
Jason smiled, and hope once more flitted through his heart.
Sinskrill
* * *
Serena stood at the base of Mount Toll, at a spot where the River White Sun leapt down a ladder of waterfalls and rapids as it cut through a set of gorges and chasms. The Servitor had passed word to Travail, informing the troll of her arrival. They had agreed to meet at this rocky place of wind and water.
