by Ellyn, Court
Thorn dug through the contents of the sideboard, found a label that pleased him and popped the cork. The vintage was some golden wine he’d brought home during one of his visits. “You’re aware of the disappearances?”
“Of course. Rumors of the latest disappearance spice every dinner table in Aralorr. Have for years. People hardly pay attention to the news anymore.”
Thorn offered his brother a glass of the foreign wine. Kelyn waved it away, so he offered it to his apprentice instead. Rhian muttered his thanks and took his glass to the window seat. The delicate crystal looked fragile in his rough, tanned hands. He directed his attention out the window, but there was little to see but flowerbeds, high walls, and darkness.
“Let this renew your interest, War Commander,” said Thorn, nose lowered over his own glass. “Every person who disappeared is avedra. Or strong enough in the Old Blood to be suspected.”
“What, all of them?” He recalled at least two dozen persons missing from Aralorr alone, more from Evaronna, more still from Leania.
“We aren’t as rare as I once thought. Most avedrin, it seems, simply never find out the truth. But someone somewhere knows. It’s easy enough to detect them if you have the skill, like I did with Jaedren this morning.”
Now Kelyn had to sit. He sank onto the edge of the scarred writing table. “Carah—” How many times had he let her go into the village alone? Go riding with only a handful of guards, or with only her brother to accompany her? It could have been her. At any time, his little girl might have disappeared.
“Four years ago, I started investigating the disappearances. The same signs cropped up each time.”
“Bear tracks.”
“Right. Bogginai.”
“Ogres. Yes, I remember.” Kelyn eyed the dagger with the ogre-tusk haft adorning Thorn’s belt.
“They’re using magical means to carry out the abductions. That’s the only thing that accounts for the tracks leading nowhere.”
“Were the two dwarves avedrin also?”
“Dwarves?”
“The iron merchants I told you about, four or five years ago.”
“Ah, I’d forgotten. No, as far as I know dwarves can’t be avedrin. Though I’ve not heard of elf-dwarf children either. My guess is that it was the iron their attackers cared about. The dwarves themselves were probably roasted.”
“So the war the dwarves are fighting ties in with these disappearances?”
“Somehow it must, but that’s the one part of the puzzle we can’t decipher.”
“And what do ogres want with avedrin?”
“Maybe nothing. It’s probably those who command the ogres who want the avedrin.”
“I thought I knew all my enemies,” Kelyn muttered. He felt as if he swam in foreign waters. Despite voicing his curiosity over the years, he’d never been able to convince his brother to speak openly about things of Magic before. While he was fascinated, he was also terrified. He did not understand this enemy. “Who are we dealing with?”
“We think we know, but we’ve had little confirmation. Several years ago, Elarion began defecting from Avidan Wood.”
“Elves?”
Aye. And unless you would see me pinned to a tree by arrows you will keep that to yourself. Agreed?”
Kelyn nodded. Foreign waters, indeed.
“Shortly afterward, the ogres began amassing, clan joining clan. It was unprecedented. Understand, ogres and Elarion have been enemies since the first ogre walked out of the Mahkahan swamps three thousand years ago, so it took us a while to believe what we were seeing. It’s these rebel Elarion who must be leading the ogres and abducting the avedrin.”
“But why? My daughter has nothing to do with ogres or elves.” If he said it loudly enough, often enough, might the words act as a charm and keep Carah safe? He had never felt so helpless to protect his family, and that made him angry.
“Oh, come, come, Kelyn. You know what avedrin are capable of. So do the Elarion. Trained, we are a force to reckon with. They want us out of the way. Why? I don’t know. It could be simple hatred. Hatred for the mixed blood. But do Elarion hate ogres less? Quite the contrary. If these rebel Elarion have something to do with the war between the dwarves and the ogres, and it seems likely, then I must assume they have some larger plan in mind. And I fear that plan is to wage war on humankind as well.”
“Another Elf War. Goddess help us.” Kelyn wished now he had paid more attention to Etivva’s history lessons. He resolved to have a long discussion with his old tutor at the first possible opportunity, and apologize for not caring. “That was so long ago, it’s more legend than history. Unless they’re scholars like you, people won’t understand.”
“Many Elarion were alive then. They still remember.”
“Are they all against us?”
“By no means.” Thorn poured himself a second drink. Kelyn recanted and gestured for one as well. His brother took pity and filled him a glass. “When I reported this information to the Elders, they agreed to let me lead a search party into ogre territory. An armed company, if you will. Believe that? Your scholar of a brother leading soldiers?”
“Not for a moment.” The golden wine was strong and rich. Green apples and caramel, butter and cinnamon in his veins. At any other time he would’ve complimented his brother’s choice, but right now he only cared for its calming effect. He wanted to grab onto some evil, conniving shadow and break its neck.
“We looked everywhere for the avedrin. Didn’t we, Rhian?”
The younger avedra nodded, somber and silent. Thorn rolled his eyes at his apprentice’s lack of contribution. The younger avedra fidgeted, paced from one window to the other, as if he felt more useful outside walking the walls. Thorn tried to shove another glass of wine into his hand, but Rhian’s mouth formed a tart, if silent, response. Thorn shrugged and set the glass down on the sideboard. Kelyn suspected the words that passed between them were anything but sweet endearments.
“Your search turned up nothing, obviously,” he prompted.
“No sign of them anywhere. The few ogres we managed to capture told us little enough. The avedrin were hidden in the Shadow Mounds. No, they were deep in the Drakhans. No, in the Silver Mountains. No, they’d all been eaten. All lies. When one ogre saw we were applying pain to his den mates, he cut out his own tongue to prevent himself from spilling the big secret.”
Kelyn’s belly clenched. His gentle brother, speaking of these methods like they were a request for lamb chops? But, then, this wasn’t Kieryn, wasn’t it? “You … torture them?”
Thorn’s eyes narrowed to cool blue slits. “If I told you what the naenion have done to human and Elari for pleasure alone, you’d spew your guts. Yes, I tortured them. I delved into their twisted, reptilian minds with magical fingers and tore their brains apart. But they have shields, see. Magical barriers that keep Rhian and myself from reading their thoughts. So torture was our last option. When that yielded nothing, we stopped taking prisoners.”
“So you’ve given up trying to find them.”
Thorn answered with a sorrowful nod.
Kelyn flipped a chair around and sat with his arms draped over the backrest. His fingers knotted together so tightly that the knuckles throbbed. He had so many questions, but he didn’t know how to ask them. At the nearest shelf, Rhian started flipping through books. “You joined my brother during all this?”
Rhian slid the books back and with a wry grin said, “Bad timing, eh? That’s what the dranithi told me when she put an arrow in me for trespassing. Her troop dragged me to one of their watch towers and kept me under lock and key for a couple weeks until Thorn returned from poking around in the … Shadow Mounds, was it? The Elarion weren’t in a generous mood. They said my life depended on whether Thorn took me for an apprentice. Thought I’d seen my last ray of sunlight for sure.”
Thorn sighed in overdramatic fashion. “Of course, I took pity on him. Can’t stand to see a grown boy cry.”
“I did not cry, my lor
d. Hell, I didn’t even beg. I just wanted to know what in the Abyss was going on. But before I knew it, he was dragging me all over the bleeding continent. Do you know how hard it is to learn how to conjure fire with ogres and this jackass breathing down your neck?”
That managed to tease a chuckle out of Kelyn.
“But I assure you, I learned to use a sword damn quick.”
“An entirely new life.”
“You have no idea, m’ lord.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Thorn said. “My pupil came to Avidanyth armed with unbeatable bar-brawling skills. I’d bet on him over Eliad any day. I just had to show him which end of a sword to hold onto and pretend to be you, War Commander. He even learned that I meant what I said.”
Rhian snorted. “Aye, the hard way. You wanna see?” Child-like enthusiasm sprang into his eyes.
Thorn looked to the ceiling. “Oh, please, no comparing battle scars.”
Grinning as if irking his teacher were the greatest pleasure under the sun, Rhian laid aside his sword belt, stripped off the leather jerkin, and turned his back to the light of the stained-glass lamp. Four purple scars slashed from his left shoulder blade to his ribs on the right. “Shredded me open to the bone.”
“An ogre did this?” Kelyn asked. The span and strength of those fingers!
“Never turn your back on one,” Rhian said, only half in jest. “No matter how dead he looks.”
“I’ll remember that,” Kelyn said dryly.
“The gashes were the least of the danger,” Thorn said. “Naenion feed on carrion, and they don’t bathe. Rhian was down for weeks with fever. We almost lost him. Pulled all the infection out that I could, only to have it spread again.”
“Aye, I kept thinking, ‘Why in hell did I ever leave Sandy Cape? Sure I coulda died there just as unhappily.’ But I got my revenge, so I did.” Many a green cat-like stripe adorned the young avedra’s forearms.
Knowing more about these monsters provided Kelyn no comfort. He sagged into the chair again. “What are we to do? Sit and wait for these sons-of-bitches to find my daughter?”
“That’s why I came home. We’re going to use all our resources to keep her safe.” Thorn’s hands were as solid as stone on Kelyn’s shoulders. “Do you hear me? Tomorrow morning I’ll begin her training. Jaedren’s, too. He’s young yet, but it’s necessary.”
Kelyn nodded. His neck felt as wobbly as a reed.
“Rhoslyn doesn’t need to know why, only that it’s long past due.”
Kelyn climbed to his feet. “No, I can’t hide this from her. But I’ll wait till morning. One of us should sleep soundly.”
Thorn waited until the War Commander hauled himself from the library before he peered back at the iron stair. “You can come out now.”
A gasp rose from the stairwell. Dark, disheveled curls and a pair of elvish blue eyes popped into view. “You should have just invited me, Uncle Thorn.”
“Hnh, says you.” He returned to the sideboard, filled his glass for the third time. He drank too much these days.
Rhian dived back into his jerkin. Carah approached the table, nose turned up, but Thorn wasn’t fooled. The heat in her cheeks and her sidelong glance in Rhian’s direction told him she’d seen the whole picture.
“How much did you hear?”
Thorn’s question reclaimed his niece’s attention. She stood alongside the writing table, thumbnail digging into the old wood. “Well, you mentioned Old Blood and bear tracks.”
“Ach.” Everything, then. “It’s all for the better, I guess. Spares me from having to repeat it all later.”
A smile threatened to crack through Carah’s embarrassment. “Are you really going to begin my training?”
Thorn turned his own nose high. “Only if you really and truly forgive me.”
“Oh, Uncle Thorn,” she sang and flung her arms around him. “You had your reasons for not coming back. I understand that now. I’ll never be angry with you again.”
“Ha! We’ll see about that a week from now. You might hate my guts by then.”
“I won’t disappoint you, I promise.”
~~~~
16
At dawn, Thorn led his new apprentices to the north gatehouse, and atop the wind-battered towers he explained the ways of the universe, just as Zellel had done for him more than twenty years before. “If I told you that everything is made of things you can’t see or touch, would you believe me? Energy is the most fundamental building block that makes up our world. Energies bonded together in vast patterns.”
Carah and Jaedren stared at him, enrapt, eyes large with wonder.
“Take a look at the stones and mortar that make up this wall.” Saw-tooth crenellations hemmed them in, blushing in the early light. Though the north gatehouse was rarely used, sentries were stationed here regularly. Thorn had dismissed them, but curiosity drew them back along the parapets. They listened from a distance, waiting for lightning to spark.
When Thorn said nothing else, his apprentices realized they were to take his invitation literally. They peered closer at the heavy basalt blocks, the gray and green lichen painting the gray stone, the ancient, crumbling mortar. Carah shrugged and looked up at him, puzzled. Jaedren asked, “How small do the grains become?”
Thorn grinned. “How small, indeed? Until they stop being grains and become something else. The sun’s heat, the dancer’s bonfire, the force behind the currents of the sea and the wings of the wind, even your own bodies, all these things are composed of energies.” He gathered them close, laid heavy hands on their shoulders so their attention did not stray, and so the nosey sentries could not hear. “As avedrin, you have the privilege of being able to tap into these energies, move them around, even transmute them. Some say it is our curse.”
“Curse?” Jaedren gulped.
“In such an ability lies enormous responsibility. Within it lies the potential for great good and greater danger. In manipulating these energies, we alter the fabric of the universe. We disturb its weave, for better or worse. If I were to remove a stone from this tower’s foundation, I would hasten its inevitable collapse, even if we could not see or feel the effects of this change for years to come. Before you act, you must think. We must always be cautious. For all things are connected, and plucking one stone, one thread may begin a dire unraveling that will affect generations a hundred, a thousand years from now. The strongest of us could destroy this world with a whisper.”
Jaedren’s breathing came in panicked little pants. “I’m scared. I don’t want to learn now.”
Thorn squeezed his shoulder, offered a tender smile. “I do not tell you these things to frighten you, only to make you understand that this is no game. What you have inside you is no trifling matter. To ignore it now is to risk disaster later. Before I knew I was avedra, I killed a man without touching him. He was a bad man, to be sure, but the fire from my hands was not intentional. What if that fire had shot wide and killed the king or my father—or your father? I tell you these things, Jaedren, so that when you call fire from your hands, you will understand fully what you are doing.”
The boy relaxed, and after a moment he nodded, determined to continue.
Thorn released them, adding in a lighter tone, “You will begin as I did, by developing your eyes and ears. Silent Speech and Veil Sight will be your best defense against the creatures who hide behind the Veil. The green men, Jaedren. There, too, dwell the fairies and Elarion, and all beings of the Second Point of the Triangle. Humans and animals belong to the Third Point. The dwarves occupy some fuzzy place in between—meaning they can use some spells and peek into the Veil, even if they live on our side of it. And, of course, Ana-Forah is the First Point. Some say the dragons dwell there with her. I think I can corroborate that belief.” He remembered vast wings sweeping from clouds of light.
“Oh, yes, Uncle Thorn,” said Carah, rolling her eyes, “Etivva has lectured us relentlessly on the relationships among the Triangle. It’s her favorite bedtime story.�
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“Then take it to heart. She is not one for foolishness. You ought to know.”
Jaedren chuckled behind his hand, quick to catch the jab. Carah scowled at him.
“Remember, young avedrin, as far as we understand, thought is merely impulses of energy. Yesterday, when my horse ‘spoke’ to you, Jaedren, and when the falcons pled for freedom, Carah, the animals were placing thought impulses inside your heads, even if they didn’t know what they were doing. An avedra doesn’t hear the thoughts of others with mundane ears, bits of flesh and whatnot. They hear by extending the awareness of the mind and tapping into those impulses.”
“This should be easy,” Carah said. “We’ve already proven we can do it.”
Thorn replied with a dry grin. Should he tell them there was a difference between accident and intention? Better to let them figure it out on their own. “Right. With that, I’ll say nothing more, and we enter the silence of learning.”
~~~~
Carah drummed her fingers on the pages of a superbly dull book, heaved a sigh, slouched farther down into the miserably hard chair, and cleared her throat though it didn’t need it. Anything to break the silence. For hours, silence oozed from the library walls and dripped from the coffered ceiling.
At lunchtime, Uncle Thorn sent for the pearl fisher. Even then the silence remained unbroken. They conversed over roasted quail, or appeared to do so, without making a sound. After the dinner things had been cleared away, Rhian remained, apparently at Thorn’s insistence, so they could talk and give his students something to listen for. The sun dipped lower over the western towers, and the two of them occupied the far end of the table, hands gesturing, lips moving with half-formed words, faces changing expression. The only audible sound either of them made was the occasional burst of laughter.
Carah heard nothing. Just the slow passing of a wasted day as wax melted down the side of the hour candle. This is a joke. They’ll soon look at me, point, and tell me what an idiot I am for having believed them.
