The Turner Chronicles Box Set Edition

by Mark Eller

  About the time Autumn decided she was finished playing with her food, Chet completed his liquid meal. Kit placed him on the floor beside his brother where the two curled up into one another and fell fast asleep. Autumn, however, had other ideas. She wanted to play. Her favorite games consisted of 'lets see how far I can walk without falling down' and 'gee, I think that can fit into my mouth."

  Aaron enjoyed watching her, helped her into an upright position a time or three, and pulled about twenty objects out of her mouth. When she finally settled down, he lifted up both Chet and Bret, held them in his arms, and gazed into their sleepy eyes for the entire minute they remained awake. He had to smile. Those two were the sleepingest children he had ever seen. Where most kids fought to stay awake, these two thought there was nothing better than a good long nap.

  Looking down on them, he felt tenderness. He loved his children. He really did. It was just that he didn't--well--love them in that aching 'I have to see them now' type of way. For the most part, he felt more like a tolerant uncle than a father.

  Kit rested a hand on his shoulder. "They're very special." She lifted her hand and rubbed the back of his neck with a soft touch that sent electric chills running through him. His fingers trembled where they rested against the children's skin. Aaron tilted his head back to look at his wife.

  Her eyes were fastened on the babies, her gaze tender. Red hair gently framed her features. The day's fading light left part of her softly planed, slightly weather-roughened face in shadows. Her expression was filled with the sweet love of a mother for her children, showing not the least awareness of what her touch did to him.

  "Thank you for them, Aaron. I need to thank you for a lot, but most of all, thank you for them."

  Aaron gave her a small smile while his body trembled under her touch and an ache filled his gut. She was his wife. If he insisted, she would agree to have sex with him. She would take his hand and lead him into the bedroom. Once there, she would lie still while he vented his passion on her body. He would have his way, and during all that time, Kit would stare at one spot on the ceiling, loathing the feel of his skin. Afterward, she would quietly rise from the bed and go outside. Once there, she would find an available outhouse and heave.

  Aaron could not do that to her or to himself, so he so he gave her his half-smile, gritted his teeth, and bled a little inside, because her indifference hurt. If he had actually loved her, the situation would be unbearable.

  He looked back to Kit, and hoping to ease the pain, asked, "Do you have anything to drink?"

  She looked startled for a moment. "Do you mean alcohol?"

  "Yes."

  "I have a couple bottles of wine."

  "Bring me a glass, please. A big glass. I want to drink a toast to our children."

  Kit looked doubtful, but after a short hesitation she nodded and moved away. Aaron knew she was disappointed in him, but he refused to worry about that. His request had fulfilled its purpose. Her fingers no longer threaded through his hair, promising affection she was incapable of giving.

  After bringing him a large tumbler of wine, Kit pulled Bret from his arms so he could drink it. Aaron drank half in one gulp and decided he would not tell Kit he had a date coming up, the original reason for his visit. This wasn't the right time to bring up such matters, not so soon after holding his children.

  He took down another gulp.

  * * *

  Someone was knocking on his door when Aaron transported into his apartment. Grumbling, he half-walked, half-stumbled to the door, unlocked it, and swung it open.

  Hazel eyes bore into his.

  "Are you going to invite us in?"

  Stepping back, Aaron waved an inviting hand. The engineering instructor entered his apartment. Several students, one holding a thick pad of oversized sketching paper, and one man pushing middle age, entered behind her.

  The instructor held a folded sheet of paper in one hand. "Forgive me," she said. "From the looks of this place, I have my doubts as to whether you have the funds you say you do. I did not expect to find you in a lower middle-class apartment complex."

  Aaron shrugged. "All the higher rent places leave their occupants too isolated."

  "I'm sorry, but I really need to see proof that you can pay us."

  Her face was set in concrete. The students around her shuffled nervously. Aaron saw desire and doubt in their faces. The middle-aged man, whom Aaron assumed was another instructor, scowled.

  Waving their concerns away, Aaron paced over to his writing desk. Knowing he shouldn't do what he was about to do, not caring because he had drank half a bottle of wine, he kicked the bottom side panel of the writing desk. He banged a fist on its right back corner and wiggled out a drawer that moments earlier had looked like nothing more than a section of the desk's carved design. Reaching inside the drawer, he pulled out a small bag and tossed it to the instructor.

  She caught it, weighed it in her hand, and pulled loose its drawstring. Unasked, one of the students cupped her hands. When the instructor tipped the bag over the cupped hands, a small flow of silver poured out. Aaron knew there would be five oversized coins in all.

  Lifting one of the coins, the instructor studied it. "This is a one hundred silver piece." Her gaze turned back to Aaron. "Did you know this was a one hundred silver piece?"

  It was a stupid question and did not require an answer. Half drunk, Aaron felt very magnanimous. "Use that to pay for wages and any other expenses you incur on this project. If you meet my requirements within three months, I'll give you another just like it."

  Leaning forward, he stared into her hazel eyes. "And if the project is finished two weeks sooner, I'll give you two more."

  "Two more," one of the students whispered. Aaron couldn't blame the young man. Graduate students were perennially strapped for cash. Books, residence, and classroom fees left most in debt for years. The money he had just handed over would pay for an entire year's education for six students, with an unreasonable amount left over for the two professors. The addition of other coins would raise their potential pay to ridiculous levels no matter how many others were brought onto the project.

  "My name is Miss Trunkle. My associate is Mister Banigate. These five are our most promising students, and I think we had best get to work. Why don't we sit down? Tell us what you want, and then I'll tell you what you're going to get. Miss Ardridge, if you could lay the pad on the table, I'd be most grateful. Mister Turner, this is a list of the students who are considering your project. Only these five agreed to it sight unseen." She clapped her hands. "Okay, people. Time is wasting, and we only have ten weeks and two days to get this done."

  They gathered around the table. Aaron took a few moments to pour another drink before pushing in beside them.

  Chapter 6

  "It's going to be a long day," Gerda said.

  Edges dug into Heralda's cramped fingers. Sweat ran into her eyes. She gripped the rough field stone tighter, but even that hold was not enough to stop it from sliding in her grasp. The stone tilted, nicked its corner into the rising wall, slipped from her hands, and fell to the ground. Heralda took a moment to flex the cramp from her fingers. Her vision was blurry, and her eyes stung from the salty sweat.

  "A long day," she agreed, rolling her shoulders to loosen muscles. Building walls was a chore she enjoyed, but it did tend to put an ache in a person.

  Heralda wiped a trail of sweat from her face. She lifted the stone slab again, being more careful of her hold, and gently set it into place. It fit perfectly into the thin bed of cement, but that was no longer a surprise. Many of the things she now did were beyond not only her understanding, but also that of Clan elders. Many of the nomadic Freelorn thought she was taking on characteristics of the interlopers. They thought she had gained the secret of Isabellan Talents, but that was not true. Heralda had no Talent, not in the way the Clan thought. She had only the skill in her hands and a sharp eye. Those were the only abilities she used, but they were abilities she had nev
er possessed in great quantities before she fought and died in a losing war.

  She accepted another stone slab from Gerda. The older woman looked at Heralda as if she did not fully understand what she saw. Heralda was used to that. She received that look frequently now, and truthfully, felt the same way about herself. She wished she knew the meaning of what had happened to her. She was not the person she had been two years earlier. Normally, this was something that could be said of any fourteen-year-old, but she was different. Most fourteen-year olds had not gone to war and died.

  And she had died. Many others had died also, but unlike her, they had not been reborn.

  The fact that she lived again was what truly set her apart from the rest of her clan. She should be dead, had been dead, but she lived. Maybe that was why her hands and mind worked so much better than they ever had before. Maybe the act of dying improved the construction of a person's body. Maybe it strengthened a person's heart or fired her mind. Maybe.

  But no, that idea was damning. In that direction lay blasphemy, and blasphemy was something she would not engage in, not even in her most secret thoughts. Thought often became desire, and desire sometimes became intent, and with intent a person occasionally took action. Wrong action could lose a woman her immortal soul, and her soul was something Heralda would never gamble with.

  Perhaps that was it. Perhaps she was different because she not only knew she had a soul, she knew her soul. She had seen its shape and form during the Ecstasy.

  No, knowing her soul could not be it. It was the Ecstasy that had changed her. It had to be the Ecstasy, though she did not want that to be true. During that one moment of death into life, the world around her had disappeared into a joy and glory that consumed her entire attention, wiping away all other thoughts and concerns. The Ecstasy had taken her thoughts away from war, away from the crossbow bolt that had pierced her body before finding a home in the forearm of her best friend. She had been touched by the One God, Father of the Son and the Ward. Because of the Ecstasy Heralda was no longer entirely human. In some small way she had become holy, a being greater than those around her, and yet she was still human, still limited by ignorance and uncertainties that others never suspected.

  She had lived after having an arrow shot completely through her body. Her friend had died when infection set into a much smaller wound. For this Heralda was hated and feared and loved and almost worshiped. Her people saw her as something different, something to be feared or envied. Many thought her the Chosen of the One God.

  She frowned. She was not the Chosen. He was yet to come.

  "You never misplace one," Gerda said.

  Heralda looked at the clanswoman. Gerda owned restless feet and an inquisitive mind. She was one of the few people who did not resent Heralda's changes. That might be because she had seen Heralda crying and bleeding after the bolt cut its pathway through her chest, exiting just to the right of her spine. Gerda had held Heralda's dead body when the Ecstasy came over her. She had seen the blood stop flowing and watched Heralda's flesh heal.

  When Heralda regained life, Gerda, face pale, reached down to cut the string of war trophies away from her belt. She had cast the five strung ears onto the ground, denying her past glory in that miraculous moment. Her gesture had been a beginning. Before the day was out, more than half the Clan present cast aside their trophies, too.

  "You barely need to look to see where to place a stone," Gerda observed.

  Heralda drew her thoughts back to the present. "I don't understand it either. Sometimes I think the stone shapes itself to suit the place where I put it."

  "Whatever the reason, I won't complain of the results. We'll finish this building in less than two months."

  Stilling, Heralda turned her gaze to the older woman. Unlike most people, she liked what she saw. Neither nomad nor settled, Gerda was a wanderer who seemed unable to decide her place despite having almost reached her first quarter century. Instead of being ashamed of her indecision, she espoused satisfaction with her lifestyle to anyone who listened. Few of her listeners believed. They reacted to Gerda like they reacted to the changes in Heralda. They could not conceive of a person who was neither one thing nor another. To most Clan, a person was made for only one way of living. Their chore was to discover what that way was. Once discovered, the chosen course should never be veered from--except Gerda had never chosen.

  "What is it like?" Heralda asked.

  "What is what like?"

  "Having no real home. Not knowing where you will be from one season to another, not knowing what friends you can count on if something happens to you."

  Gerda set down the slab she had just lifted. Her face was gentle and humorous, a sharp contrast from the woman Heralda remembered fighting beside during the war. "But my life isn't like that. I like variety, but I don't desire the strange. I follow more paths than most, but they are always the same paths. Each one brings me to old friends."

  Knowing came upon Heralda. The Knowing was a gift and a curse and more a part of her than the hand attached to her wrist. The knowledge had been tickling at the back of her mind for weeks. She had tried to deny it, but the denial was useless.

  "I think I will be more nomad than any other of the Thirty Clans. I will travel further than Clan has ever traveled before, and I will have few friends. People love or hate those they hold in awe, but seldom offer them friendship."

  Gerda stilled and then sighed. "I will speak to Bersalac. We need to take you to Telven so the Op Bin Frae can look into you."

  "Yes," Heralda agreed. "Jerkak needs to see into me, or I will never know who I am."

  The piles of slab stone were smaller than they had been a day earlier. More stone would need to be gathered and split if this section of the wall was to be completed within the week.

  "We won't see the finishing of this building, you and I and some others," Heralda said. "We will be in Telven long before that time."

  "I'll make arrangements," Gerda promised.

  Heralda reached for another slab. She felt lonely and distant. Looking at Gerda, she saw a shade where moments before there had been a woman. She saw fire flare from a hand, and then she saw Gerda fall. Closing her eyes, Heralda shuddered and wished this newfound gift were not hers.

  "There is no need to hurry," she told the woman who was fated to die. "We wait for the One God's Chosen, Death's Bringer. Aaron Turner will ride with us."

  Chapter 7

  Bang Bang Bang Bang

  "Wha--."

  Bang Bang Bang Bang

  Aaron pulled himself out of a deep sleep with the realization that he was the owner of a drink-fuzzed head and that some incredibly rude person pounded on his apartment door.

  "Hold on a minute!"

  Bang Bang Bang Bang

  "I said hold on!"

  Grumbling, Aaron crawled out of bed and tumbled on a robe. He staggered and stumbled over a pile of clothes that had been collecting on his bedroom floor for the past week and a half. The clothes scattered beneath his feet, but that was okay because it just made the pile look smaller. The mess reminded him that he should have Miss Frainwind come in and tidy up soon. Since the dust bunnies under his bed threatened to eat his shoes, he was probably a couple days overdue for that chore.

  Grimacing, he took another look around.

  Okay, he was a couple weeks overdue for that chore.

  The visitor still pounded away. When he stumbled through the bedroom door, Aaron saw that whoever was doing the pounding was at least somewhat polite. Even though the chain and lock weren't fastened, his rude visitor had kept herself on the proper side of the door.

  Aaron blinked aching eyes and looked over to the table. It, and the area around it, were a bigger mess than the rest of his apartment, covered with discarded sheets of wadded up oversized drafting paper that contained impossible ideas. The sheets with preliminary designs that might be workable had left with the students. Resting on the edge of the table were four silver coins stacked in a neat column.


  Staring at the coins, Aaron debated the pros and cons of putting them back into the same hiding place. He supposed he would have to find another cubbyhole now. It would tempt the fates as well as unfairly test the honesty of poor engineering students to put the coins in the same hideaway.

  Bang Bang Bang Bang

  "Almost there!"

  He paused to throw a sheet of paper over the silver coins. There was no point in tempting the whims of providence or the honesty of his neighbors, either.

  He opened the door as the pounding slowed and stopped. Blinking blurry eyes, Aaron looked around in confusion, seeing nobody, until a tapping on his chest inspired him to lower his gaze. Holding a newspaper in his hand, Billy Severn grinned up at Aaron.

  "Ma says she's done with it an' knows you sometimes like to read up on things, so you're to have this." His eyes sparkled with suppressed mirth as he took in Aaron's dishevelment.

  "Thank your mother for me," Aaron told him gravely.

  "I will," Billy said. "Another thing. We're about to head out for services. Ma told me to say that you should be ashamed because you haven't been to church for the last three weeks."

  "Maybe I've changed parishes."

  "Ma said you might say that. She says you just sleep too late after you've been drinking. She told me to be sure you were awake before I leave." His smile was cheerfully vindictive. "So, are you awake?"

  Aaron rubbed his aching eyes while reflecting that he was a victim of nosy neighbors. The main problem with apartment living was thin walls. Everybody knew everybody else's business. "I'm awake. Awake enough anyway."

  Billy cast a nervous glance over his shoulder and then turned back to Aaron. "I really got to go now. Ma will tan my hide if I make her late for services."

  Aaron started to raise his hand to wave the boy off, but Billy was already halfway down the hallway. The lad's apartment door stood open. The shape of Widow Severn hovered in it. Aaron gave Mistress Severn a smile and a wink as Billy darted past her into his apartment. She was a good woman, was the widow, and almost a friend.