Standing, the man kept his face still and expressionless as a stone. He was tall with light hair hanging down past his shoulders. He had on a worn-looking leather jerkin. A flat, wide nose dominated his face. He stepped forward from where he stood over my bags and I caught sight of a huge sword at his side. I halted in my tracks.
I started to reach for my bow when I realised I had not taken it. Unarmed, I reached for Navitas. He lifted both hands above his head as if in surrender. “Now, now master Kadin. No need for such. Calm yourself. I am Boryka. By your Navitas, you are already a warrior of mind; and much more powerful than you realise.” He gave a glimmer of a smile. “In fact, more powerful than any thought possible. You have much to learn of this still, but not from me. I am here to teach you to be a warrior and master of your body.”
As he was speaking, he reached down and picked up a sheathed sword. As he walked over to me, he reminded me of Markai; he moved with the same fluidity and power. He rested the sword over both of his hands and with a bow, presented it to me. “This is yours, master Kadin. Destined to be yours ages before you were even conceived. I believe you have some rudimentary skill with the sword. The Tretakai are known for many things, but unfortunately swordsmanship is not one of them.”
I was a little affronted by his words, but knew them to be true so I kept my tongue. I accepted the weapon, bowing in return and replied formally, “Thank you, Master Boryka. May the sun show you your path and the moon keep you walking along it.”
He bobbed his head.
I inspected the sword and unsheathed it. My breath caught. It was magnificent. The beautifully carved hilt was inlaid in gold with the image of Markai completed by blue sapphires for eyes. The blade almost seemed to ripple and glow.
He saw me running my finger over the golden image of Markai. “As I said, this was destined for you. Now, it is time you start learning how to use this blade. Let us see how far along your training is.”
When I looked around, I realised we were no longer in the clearing by the stream. We were not even in the forest, but standing in the centre of a massive stone bowl. There were steps leading up the side of it, but it was so deep that I could not see what lay beyond the rim of the bowl. It was full day with the sun beat down on us mercilessly.
Absently, I thought that it had not been this hot in months. Before I could push this errant thought away, he had his sword unsheathed and was poised, ready to attack. The instant I raised my sword, he lunged towards me.
I barely managed to block his thrust and stepped back off balance. He made a tut-tut sound. I stepped forward and swung towards him. Again and again he easily blocked all my blows. After only a few minutes, I had sweat soaking my shirt and it was dripping from my brow. He hardly looked as if he had exerted any effort whatsoever.
Finally, he held up a hand. “We have a long way to go. You are more off balance than not. Your movements are sloppy. I can see what you plan to do before you even realise you are planning it.
“You must learn the Shea-Rin. Now concentrate and follow my example.”
Without looking to see if I did as he asked, he turned his back on me. He set his feet wide apart and crouched low. With sword in hand, he started moving fluidly from one form to another. I was already tired from sparring with him and it was not long before I was breathing hard. I had lost track of the number of forms we had gone through and I was ready to collapse. My legs shook and I could barely keep my grip on my sword. To my great relief Master Boryka straightened up, bowed and turned to face me.
He looked me over and I thought I saw amusement flicker across his flint grey eyes, but it was gone too quickly to be sure. “You did well. Most trainees do not make it all the way through the first time. You must repeat this exercise once in the morning light and once in dusk’s embrace.”
I was too exhausted to speak so I simply nodded my agreement.
“I expect improvement when we next meet. Be diligent in this. It is not only your life that will depend on your proficiency.” He pointed up at the sky. “When the moon is next full, I will test you once more.” With that, he turned around and stalked away and up the steps.
I strapped my sword around my waist and slowly followed. With screaming muscles, I struggled to make it up the steep stairs. When I reached the top, I stopped and looked around, my mouth dropped open. A vast open landscape stretched as far as I could see. Master Boryka was nowhere to be seen and yet where could he have gone?
There was nothing but sand; no trees or hills, or a single blade of grass to break the landscape. I swung around, scrutinising the horizon in every direction. Something shoved at my shoulder and I spun around only to find nothing there. The bowl had also now disappeared, swallowed by the sand. Another shove. Again, I looked around, but found nothing.
An ice cold wave of water hit me in the face. I gasped wiping the water away. Opening my eyes, I found a worried looking Grer standing over me with an empty water skin in hand. “Are ye a’right, Kadin? I do be sorry about the water, but ye were twisting and turning and talkin’ all nonsense like ye be havin’ a bad dream. When I couldn’t wake ye, I be worried. I thought maybe that awful tea ye had, had truly been poison.”
I gave him a grim smile. “I am starting to wonder the same thing, Grer.”
With a puzzled look on his face, he pointed next to my bedroll. “Well now, ye been holdin’ out on me. Ye didn’t say ye was a LemMestari.”
I frowned and looked to see what he was pointing at. My eyes widened in disbelief.
Next to my bedroll lay the sword master Boryka had given me. I stared at it; I was sure it could not truly be real. I picked it up, cradling it as though it might break, and examined the elegant hilt. I looked up at Grer. “What is a LemMestari?”
His brows furrowed and his eyes grew hard. “How do ye get to own such a blade without realising what ye got? Ye didn’t steal this, did ye? I’d be in a bad position if ye did, working for the King an all.”
I tried to think on my feet to come up with a plausible story without having to tell him the truth. Not that he would have believed me if I told him I got it in a dream. “I got it from my father,” I said. “He died before I was born and this is all I have left of him.”
He relaxed a little. “That, boy, is a blade of Kings. No mistakin’ that hilt ye got there. It’s the stuff o’ legends that is. They say there were only ever five made by the great Blade Masters. Made for the five great Kings of Surrelmidia. Mind, this would ha’ been back before the Severance. Ye say ye had this fro ye da? Nobody never said nothin’ to ye, boy?” Doubt crept back into his voice.
I scrambled to embellish my story. “It was left wrapped up with the Cha. It had been my father’s dying wish that the Cha keep it for me. He was never to open the package and only to give it to me once I reached my seventeenth name day.”
He seemed somewhat mollified. “Well ye should take care o’ that and mayhap be a bit careful with who sees ye with it. Lotsa men out there would kill ye without a second thought to get their hands on tha’ sword.”
I bobbed my head, grateful for his advice.
As was now the norm, my head felt thick and foggy, but today I had the added gift of every single muscle in my body aching and my head was pounding. A quick swim in the cold stream helped clear my head, but my body was so stiff that even dressing was difficult. Grer shared some of his flatbread and cheese with me. He even had some coffee, which we brewed over a small cook fire. I was relieved to see Balder had returned sometime in the night and was grazing close by.
We both started packing up our belongings and refilling water skins at the stream. “Where do you go from here, Grer?” I knew I had to continue on my own, but I did not quite know what I would say if Grer said he would continue on with me.
He shrugged. “I have finished what I have come to do. Now I need to go back to Hefrnea ta report ta the King. Are ye planning ta come into town?”
I shook my head.
Relief warred with a bit of regret
for the lost company. “I think I have more to discover out here before I make my way back to civilisation.”
He grinned. “Thought ye might say tha’. Well it’s been a pleasure meetin’ ye. May the season be fruitful and kind to ye.”
I bowed and said, “May your feet follow a sure road lighted by the sun.”
I mounted Balder and we set off on our separate ways.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
After hours of riding, I decided I needed to expend some energy. I found some fresh tarvaga tracks and got my sling out of my saddlebag loading it with a smooth stone. A short while later I spotted it close to its burrow. I knew I only had one attempt at it, but that was all I needed. With deathly precision, my stone hit the animal in the head killing it instantly. I strapped it to my saddle and set off again.
I was a bit more wary after my run in with the Dyrrendrel and so I reached for Navitas. Heightened awareness flooded all my senses. I could pinpoint where each and every bird was from the merest tweet. I could smell the stench of a ground rat burrow thirty feet away. I felt alive.
Balder started shying to the left and snorting. I looked around immediately thinking of the Dyrrendrel. There was a rustle in a nearby brush and just as I reached for my bow, Markai came padding out. I almost laughed at my own jitteriness. I patted Balder and spoke softly to her to try to settle her nerves. I rode on for the rest of the day enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of the forest.
With Navitas flowing through me and Markai quietly trotting next to me, I felt whole. It had only been a day since I had embraced Navitas, but now it was filling a hole that I had not realised I had.
Once dusk started setting in Master Boryka’s instructions came back to me. I dismounted and let Balder graze. I took out the sword. Each time I looked at it I could not help but be amazed at the craftsmanship, the beauty and the feeling of power I felt when I held it in my hands.
Standing in a small clearing, I hesitated. I tried to recall all the forms of the Shea-Rin, but I could not bring them to mind. I could clearly remember the first form though, so with my sword in hand I set my feet wide apart and crouched low. Markai sat a little way off looking at me intently. I took a deep breath and as if of its own volition, my body started moving. When I tried to bring to mind the shape of the next form I need I could not remember it, but apparently, my body did.
Each time I thought I would hesitate or stop for lack of knowing what to do next my body simply did it. Finally, I simply let my mind go blank and poured all my awareness into what my body was doing. It felt like taking my outer Navitas focus and reversing it to focus it completely on my body. On each and every muscle, strengthening and shaping each form of the Shea-Rin. I did not even notice the utter exhaustion flooding me until I finished the last form and all but collapsed, my whole body shaking. My clothes were drenched in sweat and clung uncomfortably to my body. I could do nothing but sit and recover. Markai was still looking at me and I could swear I could see approval in those intelligent eyes. It could also have been that I was slightly delusional with fatigue.
Long after the sun had disappeared, I was still sitting in the same place. I hardly had the strength to move, but eventually motivated by hunger, I made camp and built up a good fire.
The night had turned cold and I sat close to the fire as I made a soup with some of my precious spices, onion and potatoes and roasted the tarvaga. Markai was sleeping curled up next to the fire. A few times that night, I thought I heard the soft growl of the Dyrrendrel or the soft crunching of leaves under paws. Each time I looked over to Markai to see if she had heard it as well and although she was not sleeping anymore, she did not seem alarmed.
I poured my cup of the Cha’s tea. With some relief, I noted that it was the last cup. I steeled myself and swallowed it down. I shuddered and spat a few times to try to rid my mouth of the disgusting taste.
Throughout this Markai watched me with interest, or perhaps it was amusement. I settled on my sleeping mat and she came to lie next to me. The feel of her against my back was unsettling to start with. The feeling of my skin burning and icy water running under my skin spread from where she was touching me, through my whole body. After a few minutes, it felt….. right.
Her presence surrounded me and filled me. Lying on the hard ground, in the middle of nowhere I felt more at home than I had ever before. The cold fled and even my body no longer felt the pain of my earlier exertion. I drifted off to sleep.
I woke up with full night still around me. My fire had burned out, and through the dim moonlight, I saw a figure sitting a little way off with my sword in their hands. I flew up already focusing my Navitas. Instantly Markai appeared and snarling was running towards the figure. She stood up and I saw that it was Quiniewa.
Relief rushed over me and Markai stopped abruptly in her tracks. Quiniewa appeared as a young woman and did not look alarmed in the least by how close we had come to attacking her.
Instead, she was looking at Markai with immense joy written all over her face. It made her look even younger, childlike. She rushed over to Markai and threw her arms around her, enveloping her in a tight hug. My breath caught. No one had previously seen her, not to mention touched her.
It almost felt as if Quiniewa was hugging me. It was most peculiar. I moved my arms about just to convince myself that there were no arms around me. Even more curious, was that I could feel what Markai was feeling. I was able to distinguish clearly between her emotions and my own, but hers was still just as real and intense as if they were in fact my own.
I realised that they knew each other. How this was possible I did not know, but I got a most definite sense of joy at the reunion with an old friend from Markai. When Quiniewa released her I expected my connectedness with Markai to go also, but it did not even diminish. They were looking at each other intently. Quiniewa was murmuring in a low voice, too low for me to make out any words, but I could tell it was not a language I had ever come across before. Through my connection to Markai I realised they were actually conversing. I did not hear any response from her, but I could feel her conveying her message back to the Teacher, although I did not understand what was being said.
I picked up Sunder and fastened it to my belt. Finally, the Teacher walked over to me. She had a smile from ear to ear. “Kadin, you surprise me. I did not know you were capable of bringing Markai here. Your affinity with the Navitas must be growing stronger than what we had anticipated for this early on. That is good.” I looked over to Markai and when I looked back at Quiniewa, she was once again the old woman. “I do not truly know how I brought her here. I guess we fell asleep together and when I arrived here, she was here also. Where is here?”
Looking around I saw we were once again out of the forest; we were standing in the middle of a city square. There were no people to be seen. Seemingly deserted it was eerily quiet apart from a large fountain in the middle of the square. There was a gigantic stone statue in the middle of a man in armour, a sword in his hand with the tip resting on the stone next to his foot. He had a handsome but severe face. As if he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. A strange thing, he had sapphires for eyes. Around his feet there were criss-crossing fountains spraying in a circle around him.
I walked closer to the fountain and slowly made my way all around it. I came to the sword and gasped. I unsheathed my sword and held it up for comparison; they were identical. It had the same image of Markai on the hilt, down to the sapphire gems for eyes. I looked over at Quiniewa. She was watching me, a serene look on her.
“How is this possible? The sword in the statue matches mine exactly. And his eyes… Where are we?”
She looked around as if she was only now noticing the city around us. “This is the largest city in all of Surrelmidia, Klairance. That,” she pointed at the statue, “is the Great King Vlearian. The more important question here is when are we?” She gave me a meaningful look, eyebrows raised.
I frowned. “What do you mean when?”
S
he clicked her tongue and with a roll of her eyes said, “Think Kadin. Have you heard of King Vlearian, of Klairance? No? Therefore, do you not think you may have heard of this city if it was the biggest city of all of Surrelmidia? At the Severance, this city and all that you see here were destroyed. That was over five thousand years ago.” Again, she looked at me probingly to make sure I understood what she was saying.
My mouth was hanging open and she took this as acknowledgment. “I looked back at the sword of the statue. “How is this possible? That is my sword, but it cannot be five thousand years old! It is simply not possible. Mine has to simply have been modelled on this one, surely?”
She fixed me with a stare. “Master Kadin, we will have to work on your perception of what is and what is not possible. Have you learnt nothing since your Seeking started?” Without pausing for an answer, she continued. “Before you started learning of the Navitas, would you have believed in creatures that appear to you and you alone, seemingly from another realm? Would you have believed a brew of tea had the power to open your mind up to experiences beyond your ‘normal’ realm? You have to stop thinking so small. Open your mind to these events, these possibilities. Embrace them, Kadin. What you can imagine may be more important than what you know. The mind is a very powerful tool. Even more so for you than for others. What you can imagine you can bring to fruition. The first step to achieving the impossible is to believe it is not only possible, but simple.”
She stalked over to the statue. Pointing to the man she said, “This was King Vlearian. He was the ruler of Klairance for fifty years before the Severance. That sword he holds is the one you now hold; Sunder. Forged for King Vlearian and imbued with power by the wizards of the three councils of the Lords. It is not simply a sword and if you open yourself to the potential of it, you alone will be able to wield the most powerful weapon of all mankind.”
It was a lot to take in. A sword five thousand years old, that Master Boryka said was meant for me. “Does that mean there is some connection between this King Vlearian and me? How could I be connected to a King five thousand years dead? I am not from royal lineage. I am an orphan for blood’s sake!”
Book of Remembrance: The Forgotten Gods: Book One Page 5
