Shadow of the Ancients

by Pierre Grimbert

  Early sunlight slowly roused the town of Semilia, and as residents awoke, they found their city blanketed in fresh snowfall. A guard came to the open-farm as the second deciday bells rang to take a head count of the guests and see if their accommodations were acceptable. Nakapan lied about Grigán’s health when the guard pushed him, and he later explained that strangers with grave maladies were immediately kicked out of town.

  The chief of the troupe had planned to do a show at noon and then start on the path for Pont. Wanting to keep the group together, and after hearing Corenn’s arguments, he agreed to delay their departure until the next day. The Day of the Earth’s festivals wouldn’t start for four more days anyhow, and they could find hundreds of ways to make the delay useful, with buying provisions, performing maintenance on the wagons, accounting, and other work.

  Grigán continued to sleep, though he reacted by moaning or turning over when Corenn shook him. It was reassuring to see that the warrior had enough energy to protest, so the Mother allowed herself to rest. Léti decided to join her.

  Rey brought Lana with him to watch the entertainers’ show. Bowbaq and Yan burned the dead mimastins, as the ground was so frozen they couldn’t possibly dig a grave. Out of decency, the giant forced Ifio to stay away while he finished the difficult task. It was the first time in four days that they had separated. The little monkey celebrated the giant’s return like a puppy.

  Bowbaq liked seeing the monkey run along his expansive shoulders and arms. In the open-farm, they were the only two without a chore to do, along with Yan, who enviously watched Bowbaq play with the monkey.

  “Do you still want to be an erjak, my friend?” Bowbaq asked, smiling. “I think Ifio is ready now.”

  An animal’s first reaction to an erjak’s powers was always one of intense fear, followed by a fierce anger. If the erjak wanted a lasting contact, he had to attenuate these harmful effects by preparing the animal for human presence before the first contact. Yan and Bowbaq had already accomplished this part.

  The giant had been a model of thoughtfulness and gentility toward Ifio, so much so that the female mimastin, far from fearing the bearded Arque, always strove to be near Bowbaq—standing on his head and shoulders, hiding in his fur coats. Yan did not escape these marks of affection, and the mimastin would often perch on the magician’s neck or shoulders.

  “Still, it’s better that I leash her first,” Bowbaq said. “There’s little chance she will hurt us, but she could run away and die from the cold.”

  Putting action to words, he attached the old leash to Ifio’s collar. The animal saw this as the first signs of a coming torture, and fled as far as the leash allowed. It took the two men more than a deciday to regain her confidence, with the help of many sweets, soft words, and a few games.

  “Now you can try, if you want,” the giant announced. “The most important thing is to start slowly.”

  Yan swallowed before concentrating. He had hoped that Bowbaq might offer some more advice before his first effort, but the giant offered no further guidance. At least Bowbaq was true to his word; he had told Yan at the beginning of this undertaking that he didn’t know how an erjak’s power worked. The only thing he could teach was how to help Yan interpret what he would see in an animal’s mind, and how to give animals simple directions with something similar to a dialogue.

  If Yan could reach the animal’s mind, he would be an erjak. If not, Bowbaq could do nothing for him.

  The young man recalled Corenn’s many warnings and advice. Everything, whether an object or living being, could be defined by the five elements. water, fire, earth, and wind were the primary elements, with recept a fifth element that dictated how strongly an object would resist magic. Yan had the rare power, when he was concentrating, of seeing this spiritual composition, which was something the Mother called the Sublime Essence.

  Magicians used their Will to allow them to use the energy in their bodies to alter one or more of the five elements. The most easily manipulated was earth, true matter, which magicians could mold like clay in their hands—deforming or destroying with ease—as long as they could handle the spell’s languor, its power growing in proportion to the spell.

  Reading someone’s mind required little concentration. The only thing that a magician needed was a keen sense of observation and a feel for the target’s wind. A rock held practically none of this element; the same rock used to build a statue would have a little more. Plants had more than stones, and the largest wind element in plants could be found in the oldest trees of magical species: maoals, sterile apple trees, blue pines, and others.

  Wind was primarily an element in animals, where there was another hierarchy. Insects were the least endowed, sometimes having less than large-limbed plants. Then came fish, mollusks, and crustaceans, slightly more bright than any fly. Higher up were reptiles, then birds. Finally mammals, humans, those that nursed their young, as Bowbaq described it.

  The giant had never penetrated the mind of anything other than a mammal. Certain Arque legends mentioned connections between erjaks and birds of prey, but he had never seen it. They said that an animal’s spirit grew with its shell, and that if an erjak were to find a three-foot-long mosquito, it could be asked about the taste of human blood. Bowbaq wouldn’t want to try it.

  Yan had already touched another living being’s wind element: Grigán’s. Because he could see the Sublime Essence, he was capable not only of reading minds, but of modifying them. With this power, Yan could change memories, personality, intellect, convictions, even the deepest of feelings. Corenn had warned him against this power, so much so that Yan was reluctant even to try it anymore. Whenever he used the power, he avoided pushing his concentration to that level. The thought that he could have done damage to his friend’s mind frightened him and made him respect the power he wielded.

  Considering all these possibilities, he proceeded with caution with the mimastin. The ease with which he could see Ifio’s essence scared him a little. Even when he tried to hold himself back, it appeared almost instantly. Contrary to an earth spell, the wind spell left Yan aware of the outside world. He could see the little monkey twitch subtly and pull away from him with terror.

  “Wise one,” he said sluggishly, “it’s nothing. It’s me.”

  “You’re there?” Bowbaq asked

  “I’m there, yes. The poor beast is scared to death.”

  Ifio hid under the giant’s arms, and he walked away slowly. “She needs to understand that we are not torturing her. The surprise will go away soon. What do you see, Yan?”

  “A sphere,” Yan responded, his eyes hazy. “Sand on the bottom, split by a fissure where it disappears. On top, a small piece of ice surrounded by fire. The emerging mist is Ifio’s spirit.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that,” Bowbaq commented, shaking his head. “Normally, I imagine a kind of fog.”

  “That’s it,” Yan confirmed, seeing the vapors rise in the sphere. “That’s exactly it.”

  He extended his hand to Ifio, who didn’t calm down. Feeling cornered, the mimastin jumped and bit Yan’s hand, before running back to Bowbaq and howling stridently.

  “Don’t let go!” Bowbaq warned, while his friend shuddered in pain. “If you stop now, it will be harder next time.”

  Yan tried to concentrate, following his new teacher’s advice. At this stage, if Ifio could have controlled her thoughts, she would have closed off her mind to any intrusion, as a human would have done. But the little mimastin could only think to flee, to escape what felt to her like the most dangerous possible attack.

  Yan focused on the mystical sphere and the rare spectacle of seeing a living being’s essence. Minuscule currents of vapor turned, changing direction and twisting together in beautiful lengths, thicknesses, and shapes. By narrowing his perception to just these wisps of wind, Yan could discern particular traces, following them with his eyes and watching them slow, deform, and suddenly rebound with a slightly different trajectory. The color pa
tterns turned out to be full of beautiful nuance. If he didn’t focus, the ensemble could be described as a simple fog, but Yan could see so much finesse and beauty in the evolving swirls that he felt it was something divine.

  What would a human spirit look like!

  He vaguely heard Bowbaq announce that Ifio had calmed down. He already knew that, though; he could see the relaxation as the currents slowed down.

  Soon he was close enough to touch them. He imagined his own body next to the sphere and extended an ethereal hand through the glassy recept; it was soft, like breaking the surface of water, with none of the thickness like Ji’s portal.

  His hand grazed a vaporous current, and Yan knew the painful scars on Ifio’s back, as if the monkey were a part of him now. He touched other vapors, and felt affection and fear toward Bowbaq.

  Yan felt emboldened, and he brought his other hand into the sphere, then his entire body. He was little Yan in the monkey’s spirit. The currents passed through him, revealing their information. Most of these were physical impulses, but a few emotions burst through: fear, fear, hunger, fear, gratitude, fear, cold, hunger . . .

  Yan flew through the storm with the joy of a new experience. Of course, he was careful not to fully live it: only his perception of the Sublime Essence allowed him such a voyage, which was no more than a waking dream. His body was still in the open-farm, next to Bowbaq’s, but his spirit had plunged into the monkey’s.

  He continued his progression with the sense of pending discoveries. At the heart of the sphere, the winds were more violent, numerous and charged with information. Yan suddenly felt the fleeting sensation of Ifio’s feet on the wood; an instant later, he perceived Bowbaq, his own body, and the wall behind them, as if from the monkey’s eyes. This sensation kept repeating, more and more often, and Yan grew aware of the monkey’s limbs, one by one, and then all of her senses. His own body seemed far away, and in his concentration, he lost a sense of his own form.

  He saw Bowbaq—even more gigantic from this height—grab his immobile body and speak to him softly. It would be funny to surprise him now!

  He did three somersaults, surprised he could handle this new foreign body so well. Then he stepped back and leaned on the wall like a human.

  “Yan,” Bowbaq stuttered, horrified. “You are in Ifio! You have reached her deep mind!”

  Seeing his friend’s panicked expression, Yan pulled himself out of the euphoria that had overcome him and brutally lost his concentration. It was then that the languor floored him.

  The first thing the young man saw when he woke was Corenn’s angry face, and Bowbaq’s anxious one behind her. Thinking about the coming lecture, Yan had a painful migraine that sent him back into the shadows.

  When he awoke again, he was more successful at maintaining consciousness. Though his mind had returned, his body was drained. Yan felt weak, cold, sore, and sleepy, and he had a splitting migraine so strong that it blurred his vision. If he weren’t already laid out on his back, he would have collapsed again.

  He knew exactly where all the pain was coming from: the languor. But he had never felt it last for more than a few instants, even when he had lost consciousness. What he was feeling now was something different. Corenn had described the sensation to him before as a persistent languor, the apathy. This was the punishment for a magician who pulled too much force from his body.

  “Yan? Can you hear me?” the Mother asked, her voice resonating as if in a dream.

  The young man wanted to speak but his throat was dry. He slowly nodded his head.

  “Can you see my finger?”

  Corenn waved her index finger in front of his face. He followed its trajectory with some difficulty, blinking his eyelids often.

  “He takes a while to respond,” she said to Bowbaq with a reproachful sigh. “He still needs to rest. And now we have two sick! I suppose you’re proud of yourselves?”

  Yan couldn’t respond, unlike the giant, who said timidly, “He touched the deep mind!”

  “And so what?” the Mother asked, calmer now. “Is such a feat worth dying for?”

  “No, no, friend Corenn,” mumbled Bowbaq, who had intervened more to apologize than to excuse Yan. “He shouldn’t have, it’s true . . . And I should have warned him. But all the same, he touched her deep mind!”

  The Mother began to understand what this meant for the giant, given his insistence on the point. But she couldn’t help but be distracted by Yan’s comatose state, which Bowbaq had brought to her attention only a few moments before. His frozen hands and empty eyes; it would make Léti suffer, and that would be her responsibility.

  Even if her student seemed to be out of danger, she had to tame her own curiosity and leave the discussion on the famous deep mind for later. Yan and Bowbaq, despite their discoveries, needed to understand the gravity of their errors.

  “I don’t give a margolin’s ass about that, Bowbaq,” she declared. “Don’t you see that Yan could have gone mad, because he went too far? And you pushed him there.”

  The young man succumbed to his weakness on hearing this last reply. Weren’t the heirs all mad already? The threshold of going too far had already been crossed by several leagues and several times over, ever since they saw the wonder of Ji’s portal.

  Seeing Yan unwell, Léti took the opportunity to ridicule her aunt about the supposed dangers she herself faced when training with Grigán. If the young woman regularly had small bruises and wounds, those healed quickly and had never forced her to stay in bed all day, unlike the effects of magic on the apprentice magician.

  Lana came back enchanted by the troupe’s show. Léti noticed that Rey was still holding the Maz by her waist as they entered the room, and felt somewhat jealous. Not out of affection for the actor, but because she and Yan rarely had such moments together.

  Before the Züu massacred all the other heirs, perhaps they had shared such moments, yes. But not after. What was she to him, exactly? Now that they had traveled a good portion of the known world together, what could Yan want with a little Kaulienne?

  As was typical, she shook off these agonizing thoughts to concentrate on the reality in front of her: after more than five perilous dékades of travel, the remaining heirs were still alive, and even if the future were uncertain, at least they were going to confront it together.

  Thinking about Yan and their journey, Léti listened, feigning interest, to Maz Lana’s account of the troupe’s abilities. The priestess had little interest in the amuseur’s ridiculous games, but the rest had amazed her. The acrobats, the horsewomen, Gallop the juggler, Anaël and his wolf, and the last number with Deremin and his assistant, which the others hadn’t been able to see.

  His number was surely a fraud, and the Rominian didn’t pretend it was anything else except to please the crowd. Beyond simple sleight of hand, his favorite trick was to surprise the spectators with purses that “magically” appeared in their pockets. The clowning dwarves placed them there throughout the show, ahead of the finale, but the crowd loved this last trick. Deremin confessed shamelessly that the purses came from spectators who had left the show early.

  Nakapan always gathered a meager offering in Semilia, but giving the town a show was a custom, an unwritten law. It was a way to thank the prince for granting them the open-farm and free passage, which were things the ruler could take away at any time.

  The day of rest in front of a warm fire served the heirs well and passed too quickly. Yan and Grigán woke at nearly the same time, just before dusk. They both listened attentively while the others explained their mishaps, but this didn’t take away from their recovery. They felt so good, in fact, that when it was time for the others to sleep, the young man and the warrior felt more than a little disappointed to have missed the day.

  They spent part of their night talking, mostly focusing on Grigán’s plethora of travels and experiences. That night around the fire, the two men were peaceful and spoke freely, as if they weren’t pursued by the Grand Guild, on Zuïa’s bl
acklist, hunted by an invincible demon, and menaced by a man turned immortal. The conversation was pleasantly strange, as if they were two men who still had time for domestic pursuits.

  Time passed, and Yan felt close to telling Grigán the truth: the one concerning the warrior’s pending doom. He couldn’t find the courage or an excuse to share such a burden, though, so he left that conversation on the tip of his tongue.

  “Do you still feel sick?” was all the young man could awkwardly ask.

  “I don’t know . . . No, I don’t think so,” the warrior added, after reflecting on it. “Why, do I seem like it?”

  “No, I was just wondering how we might ensure your good health . . .”

  He didn’t need to say anything more. They all knew that Grigán could suffer another episode, one day or another. The episodes kept getting worse, and the next one could kill him, but they were powerless to stop them.

  The troupe and the heirs left Semilia shortly after dawn, traveling together for another day, the end of which would be their last as a group. Grigán and the others would head for the Holy City, while Nakapan and his troupe would set up in Pont and stay there for the festivals of the Earth.

  It was with a certain sadness that they set out for their final day together; they had become friends, in spite of the Rominians’ apparent indifference just a few days before. The heirs were going to miss Anaël and his wolf in particular, Gallop the juggler, Nakapan the giant, and even the false mage Deremin, who had shown himself to be an agreeable and jolly man. No one had seen Tonk, and even the other entertainers were relieved by his absence.