Frantically, he repeated the motions and the words, louder this time, still with no result. He did so again. Nothing. The next time was interrupted by Master Solon’s hand going up.
“That is enough, Aeden. If the magic has not come yet, it will not. You are done. You have failed the Trial of Magic. I am sorry.” The old master hung his head.
Aeden looked to his father, whose face had gone pale. Scanning the crowd, he found his mother. She had tears in her eyes as she looked at him. Why were they overreacting so? Was he to be banished? What was the punishment for not passing the Trial of Magic? He was afraid he would find out all too soon.
Three of the clan warriors stepped forward. One grabbed his arm roughly in a fist and one of the others did the same with Seam. The men pulled the two boys away from the crowd toward the clan meeting hall.
“What is going on?” Seam asked. “I need to see my father. Let me go. What is the meaning of this?”
Aeden kept silent. Words would do him no good. Whatever happened to them would happen. And he didn’t think it would be good.
Chapter 11
Aeden and Seam were kept in the meeting hall until well after the sun went down. They were not given any food or water, something Aeden took to mean that they were the lowest kind of prisoner.
“What do you think will happen?” Seam said, his voice frantic. He had probably been going over the possibilities. Aeden knew he had. The boy had not shut his mouth the entire time they were there. He announced every idea that popped into his head, and the chief’s son stopped listening long ago.
“Why won’t you speak?” Seam said. “How can you be so calm? They may beat us, or banish us. What is wrong with you?”
“Seam,” Aeden finally said, “if you do not shut up, I will knock you out. Whatever they will do, they will do. Your whining and pacing will not make it easier and will not change the outcome. Sit down and wait for them to get us. We’ll find out what will become of us soon enough.”
The other boy looked as if he would argue, but he knew well enough Aeden’s fighting ability. It was not an empty boast. Aeden could strike him to unconsciousness fairly easily. The other boy sat down and stopped talking, though he fidgeted and kept darting glances from the door to Aeden and back again.
The same three warriors came to fetch them three hours after darkness had fallen. They were Sartan’s friends Arlden, Beathan, and Fingal.
“Come,” Beathan said. His tone made it clear that if they did not do so willingly, they would be made to come. The two boys followed him out, and the other two men swung in behind them.
They were taken to the edge of the village, where most of the village council was waiting. When Seam saw his father, Dor, he tried to run to him, calling at him, “Father, what is happening? What will you do to us? Are we to be beaten?” The strong arm of Fingal, a giant of a man, stopped the boy cold. Dor wore an expression that was somewhere between sadness and disgust. He turned his head to talk to another of the elders.
Aeden stood there quietly, watching the exchange. He turned his gaze to find his father looking at him. His face was a mask, but his eyes, oh his eyes. Aeden knew then what was to become of him. He nodded slightly to his father and let out a breath, dipping his head to look at the ground.
“You are to come with us,” Sartan said to the boys as he started walking out of the village to the east. Aeden followed immediately, Seam after a few seconds and a prodding by one of the other warriors.
They walked for almost three hours, the torches carried by the warriors and elders the only light on the cloudy night. Aeden had never been this far east of the village—his ordeal of survival had been to the north of his home. He watched what he could see in the circle of light made by the brands, but it looked no different than any unfamiliar landscape in the dark. He gave up and looked at the ground directly in front of his feet.
Their escorts did not prevent the boys from speaking to each other. Seam edged in close to Aeden and nattered on about what was going to happen. None of the others would answer, so he fixated on Aeden.
After Seam asked the chief’s son what would become of them for the dozenth time, Aeden grabbed the boy by his tunic and pulled him in so their faces were only two inches apart. “Shut your mouth, Seam. You don’t want me to describe what will happen to us. Be silent and act like a warrior. It will all be over soon. Now is no time to be a little girl.”
He released the other boy and went back to looking at the path in front of him, but not before he saw several of the men around him nod, including his father…and Seam’s father as well.
“Stop,” Sartan said after they had been traveling for several hours.
The brush and small trees of the highlands around their village transformed into bigger, heavier trees. They had been steadily descending into the flatlands, and it seemed that they were truly no longer in the highlands—in Aeden’s homeland—at all. It was as if they were in another world entirely. It would happen here.
Sartan called out names of the warriors with them, directing half to go toward Seam and half toward Aeden. The fathers were to be with their sons. It was to be expected.
“You, among the many trainees in the warrior arts of Clan Tannoch, have failed the Trial of Magic,” Sartan said, his voice heavy as if fighting emotion. “That offense is inexcusable. The magic of the Raibrech is what makes our clan, and those who would be warriors must have mastery of it. Without it, you are not of Clan Tannoch and you must be cut away.”
Seam still did not understand. He looked around, at his father, at Sartan, at Aeden. He still did not see.
“It would be better,” Sartan continued, “had you never been born than to bring shame upon your families in this way. To amend the wrong, you will be beaten—”
Seam let out a relieved exhalation. They had been beaten before, he must have thought. It would not be so bad.
“—until you are dead,” Sartan continued, “the final blows being struck by your own…father. It is the Daodh Gnath.”
Seam’s gasp filled the night air. Now. Now he understood.
Sartan spoke again. “You will not fight back, or your limbs will be broken to prevent it. You will stand like warriors and accept your punishment so that you do not bring even more embarrassment and dishonor upon your families. Do you understand this?”
Aeden nodded. Seam started pleading with his father. “Father, there must be something you can do. You are an elder. Do not do this. I will train harder, I will pass the test. Allow me a month and I will pass the test. Please. Please!”
Dor took his son by the arm and pulled him violently forward toward him. Then he pushed him toward one side of the clearing they were in. The others who were assigned to Seam went with him. Thudding sounds began to fill the air, dull echoes of flesh striking flesh, as did screams of pain from the boy.
“You are to be beaten in such a way that you will feel the pain of it, every blow meant not to kill but to injure,” Sartan said, his face frozen in an emotionless mask. “Your suffering will last as long as possible to bleed your unworth from your mortal flesh. No killing blow will be struck until the last, struck by your own father, is dealt. May your suffering and pain cleanse you and prepare you for the embrace of Percipius, Lord of the Grave.”
He had said it loud enough for both boys to hear, but Aeden knew it was only for his sake, and for the sake of tradition and ritual. Aeden nodded as he was led twenty feet away to another part of the clearing.
And then the blows began to fall.
Chapter 12
“Fthr…awk…hss...awk…”
The noise brought Aeden out of whatever dreamless sleep he had been trapped in. He tried to open his eyes, but didn’t have the strength. His eyelids seemed strange anyway, as if they were fused to the skin of his face. He tried to move his hand to rub them, but his limbs didn’t seem to respond.
A light came close to him, burning like a sun. Aeden squeezed his eyelids, but they were already closed.
&nb
sp; “…the light…back off…” the sounds came again. Words, then, not unintelligible babbling. The ball of fire that had invaded the safety of his darkness receded.
Something cool and wet touched his forehead, startling him, but his sluggish body couldn’t even muster the energy to flinch. His breathing quickened, but that was all he could manage.
“…going to live?” another voice, a softer, more pleasant, almost musical one, said.
“I think so, girl, though Danta knows how it’s possible. I thought for sure he was a goner.” This voice was deeper, obviously male, whereas the other, Aeden recognized, had been female.
“Don’t crowd him, Fahtin,” another female voice—an older sounding one—said.
Aeden focused all his energy on his eyelids, willing them to open. They did. Slowly. He fluttered them, bringing them up a hair and then allowing them to retreat when the light was about to overwhelm him. After what must have been hours, he opened them enough to see. Blinking rapidly and straining to make sense of the blurry world in front of him, he was finally able to pick out shapes.
“He’s opening his eyes,” the younger woman said. Fahtin? Is that what the older woman called her?
A dark-haired shape resolved itself into a girl, her pretty face hovering over his, much too closely. Aeden grunted. Words were still beyond him.
“Back away now, Fahtin,” the older woman said. “Give him some room to breathe.” This woman’s more mature face came into view, an older copy of the young girl with decades and a just a few pounds added. “Would you like to drink something? Some water?”
Aeden grunted again, tried to nod, but could not move his head. It weighed a thousand pounds.
The cold metal of a cup touched Aeden’s lips and he vocalized his surprise.
“It’s just a bit of water,” the kindly woman said. “Nothing to be concerned about. It may be a little cold, but that will be fine.”
She tilted the cup and allowed water to drizzle into his mouth. The sweetness of it traveled down his parched throat, soothing the fire he hadn’t even known was there. He tried to take a breath and some of the water went into his lungs.
The coughing fit that took him shot white-hot tendrils of pain through his body. The world spun and blackened at the edges of his sight. The darkness narrowed, and then everything else winked out.
When Aeden was lucid again, he knew some time had passed. Music seemed to invade the darkness, its slow, haunting strains making him feel like weeping. The fast, raucous canter of other songs made him wish he could tap his fingers. He opened his eyes, more easily this time, and saw only the girl sitting in front of him, watching him.
“Fahtin?” he croaked. Her half-lidded eyes snapped open all the way and she made a little seated hop.
“Yes?” she said. “Yes. That is my name. You heard that much, did you? Good, then maybe your brains were not turned to mush like the rest of your body.”
“Water,” he forced out past the desert of his mouth.
“Of course. Here, but drink slowly and do not take a breath while drinking like before.”
The familiar touch of the cup to his lips, and then the trickle of life-giving water felt wonderful in the midst of all his pain. The girl gave him barely a swallow at a time, then allowed him to breathe before tilting the cup for him again.
“Mother says I can try to give you some broth, if you want. It will be days before you can eat, probably, but at least the soup will be something more than water. Would you like some?”
“Aye,” Aeden forced out. Words didn’t hurt as much with his throat wetted.
The girl bustled around for a few minutes and came back with another cup. Before it even got near his face, he could smell it. The tangy aroma made his stomach growl and his mouth start to water. She tilted the cup so he could take a little at a time, as she had done earlier with the water.
“I added some cold water to it so that it wouldn’t be too hot,” the girl said. “Is it still too hot? Is it okay?”
“Fine.” His speech sounded more like words and less like croaks now with the warm liquid soothing his throat even more than the water had.
“You gave us quite a scare,” she continued. “No one was really sure if you would make it. Luckily, Jehira knows some herb lore, and there was not much damage inside you. The outside looked bad, though.” She seemed to have run out of things to say. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”
“Me. Too.”
It was at least two days, judging from the times he awoke to the light of day and to the dark of night, before they could prop him up so that he could properly see who was nursing him back to health.
He was in the middle of what seemed to be a caravan of some sort. Wagons, shaped like rounded little houses on wheels, were arrayed like mushrooms in a faerie ring, their bright colors flashing in the sunlight filtering through the trees around the clearing they were in. A line of horses stamped, skin twitching and tails flicking, off to his right. A fire pit lay directly in front of him twenty feet or so away, and people hustled around doing work or chatting with others. They were colorful, too. At least, their clothing was.
Fahtin stepped back from him. “There, will that do? Are you comfortable?”
Aeden nodded. It was the first time he’d been able to get a good look at the girl who had been feeding him and nursing him back to health. He was well familiar with her dark brown hair, flowing in gentle waves to the tip of her breastbone, and the fine, angular cast of her face, but seeing her all at once like this, in the daylight instead of in small pieces in dim light, made him realize just how beautiful she was. Her hazel eyes had green starbursts within them that twinkled when she smiled. And she seemed to smile a lot. Her clothes, as colorful as the ones around her, were of reds and yellows, a dazzling display of lines and hues that hurt his eyes when he looked too closely at the pattern. Bracelets on each wrist clattered as she moved, and her skirt, bright yellow, seemed to make the sun above look almost dim.
“Aye,” he said, “at least, as comfortable as I can be.”
He was still in constant pain. He had not seen what condition he was in, but he felt it. The Croagh relegated the pain to a corner of his mind so it didn’t overwhelm him. Doing so made it seem as if his body belonged to someone else. It would not move at his bidding, and even something as simple as breathing caused agony that made him want to tense up. It was probably lucky for him that he couldn’t, or the pain would most likely increase. He twitched the fingers on his left hand and saw the movement out of the corner of his eye. That was new.
“You seem to be more coherent than you have been,” she said. “That’s good. It means you are healing.” She nodded at him. “It is past time for a proper introduction. I am Fahtin Achaya, of the Gypta. And you are?”
Aeden cleared his throat weakly. “I am Aeden, son of Sartan, of Clan Tannoch. Thank you for your care, Fahtin.”
She smiled at him, her perfect white teeth shining in the morning sun. “So you are from the clans.”
“I told you he was, girl,” the man’s voice he had heard several days past said. Its owner came into view. His dark hair brushed his shoulders and his face was clean-shaven. It was obvious he was related to the girl, with the same sharp features and thin face. His clothes—loose pants, a billowy shirt, and a vest over the top of it—were also striking in their colors. Blues, greens, reds, and yellows swirled and clashed enough to make Aeden dizzy. The man looked old enough that he was probably her father. “With that hair and those eyes, in this place, what else could he be?”
Aeden didn’t speak, waiting on the man.
“I am Darun Achaya, Fahtin’s father and leader of this family. My wife is Ritma.” The older woman he had heard and seen earlier stepped beside the man and waved at Aeden. Yes, he could definitely see the resemblance to her daughter. She was still beautiful, though age had softened some of the sharp angles of her face, and she was a bit heavier than her other two family members. Fahtin seemed a perfect blending of her tw
o parents.
“What happened?”Aeden asked.
“We were hoping you would tell us that,” Darun said. “We found you, just a hair’s breadth from being dead, lying twenty feet from another boy about your age who truly was dead. There were no weapon marks on you, none that we could see, but you were obviously beaten, and by more than just one man, if I don’t miss my guess.”
“Beaten,” Aeden said. “Yes.”
“Oh, Darun,” Ritma said. “Leave over. Let the boy regain some strength first before you ask him to recount something so distressing. There is plenty of time to learn the situation of his condition later. You just rest Aeden, regain your strength. You can answer questions when you are up to it.”
“I understand your concern, Ritma,” her husband said, “but I need to find out if we will be attacked by the Crows. If the boy is some kind of criminal and sentenced to be executed, they may attack us for taking him in. Are you then, boy? Are you a criminal? Answer me that and I will leave the rest for later.”
“I am no criminal,” Aeden said.
“Very well. Rest then, get your strength, and we will hear your tale in a few days. Good enough for you, my wife?”
Ritma slapped the man’s shoulder lightly. “Fine, but be off with you now. Nursing wounded men is women’s work and no concern of yours.”
Darun favored his wife with a smile and moved off toward one of the wagons. The exchange, and the emotion that came with it, had sapped Aeden’s energy. He was not a criminal, true enough, but what was he? He had been cast out, left for dead. The clan did not want him. His life consisted of disgrace and embarrassment. He deserved to die. Why hadn’t he?
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