by S. G. Night
Racath’s eyebrows lifted. “And what exactly does that entail?” he asked. “What is my…curriculum, for lack of a better word, going to be.”
“We will cover everything in detail,” Oron answered. “We are more than a little pressed for time, what with the development of recent events, and so we will need to accelerate your tutelage. What took Notak and Rachel years to learn, we shall have to cover in a few months at most. While you are here, we will teach you the nature of the Demons, how to fight them, and how to beat them. We will teach you to be ten times the assassin, fighter, and operative that you were as a Genshwin. We will educate you on the shape of the world, on this side of the Wall and beyond — science, history, mathematics, philosophy, language, everything. We will teach you all about magic, its theory and its applications.” Oron gave him a significant look. “While you are here, Racath, we will teach you to be a leader — the leader of the Scorpions. And we will teach it to you faster than any one before you. Can you handle that?”
Racath’s head was swimming. The sheer volume of the knowledge, the beautiful knowledge that Oron was offering to him was tugging at his throat. History? Magic? Advanced training? The world beyond the Wall? Books? Racath wanted that. He wanted it like a freezing man wants fire. He needed it.
“Yes. I can handle it.”
“I’m going to need your word, Racath,” Oron said seriously. “If we’re going to be successful, we’re all going to have to work as hard as we can to make a Scorpion out of you as quickly as we can, and that includes you. I need your word that you will obey me, that you will do as I instruct, and do it to the best of your abilities. And in return you will have my word that I will do all that I can to prepare you for what you will face as the Scorpions. Do I have your word?”
Racath didn’t like the sound of the word obey. But he couldn’t really see any way around it. So he nodded. “Yes.”
“Say the words, please,” Oron insisted.
He frowned. “You have my word.”
“Thank you,” Oron breathed. He almost appeared…relieved. “And do you understand all of this? All this history we just discussed?”
Racath nodded again. “Yeah. I’ve got it. But…what I’m still confused about is the part about me. Nelle told me that her prophecies revolve around me, and me alone. That she stopped aging so that she could be around to guide me as a peer once I was born. But why me? What’s so special about me? Why am I the third Scorpion, and why am I the focus of God’s only augur? And what do Nelle’s prophecies — hell, what does God have to do with destroying the Dominion? What does God want with me?”
No one spoke for a moment. Slowly, Oron and Nelle looked at each other.
“How much did you tell him?” Oron asked her.
“She told me I’d be a key player in bringing down the Dominion,” Racath interjected, suddenly irritated — it pissed him off when people spoke of him, rather than to him. “Her exact words were one of the most important people of this Age.”
They both looked back at him. Nelle gave a low whistle. “Damn. I thought my memory was good.”
Racath ignored her. “So? What the hell is that supposed mean? She said I’d be instrumental in bringing down the Dominion. What does that entail? Why me? What makes me so much more special than the other two Scorpions that I get my own personal augur?”
Nelle frowned at Oron. “You should tell him.”
“Is that the best idea?” Oron asked her. “You’ve always said that telling people about what you see can complicate—”
“He doesn’t have to know everything,” Nelle said. “But he deserves to know why he’s here. What he’s meant to do. We definitely shouldn’t tell him how he’s supposed to do it, or how things are going to work out. But we can at least tell him what he is.”
“What do you mean, what I am?” Racath demanded.
Without answering, Oron spoke again to Nelle. “Will he believe me?”
The augur looked thoughtfully at Racath, her gaze penetrating him, as though searching his soul. “I think so. It’ll take him a while to grasp it, maybe a day or two. But he can take it.”
Nineteen years of ignorance began to bubble over as boiling, scalding frustration. Before Racath knew it he was shouting. “God dammit, just tell me! I’ve been in the goddam dark my whole goddam life! I’m sick of people keeping things from me! If you’re going to say something, then say it!”
Pressing his lips together, Oron looked at Racath with a strange sadness on his face. “Alright then….You see, Racath, there is a section of Jedan scripture in taj Libris Io that was written in the First Age by God’s thirteenth augur, Adria. Its Rotenic name is taj Libris o’Sjon’a. In Skuran, it is known as the Tome of Sights. Are you familiar with it at all?”
Racath shook his head. “No. My mother taught me what she could about the scriptures, but my father wouldn’t let her read them to me at all. He had sort of given up on God.”
Oron gave an understanding shrug. “Adria’s role as the augur was to look into the distant future, and compile a book of stories — allegorical prophecies — concerning the Ages to come. That book became the Sights when taj Libris Io was compiled. Many of those prophecies occurred during the Second and Third Ages. But there are two of particular importance that focus on our time. One proclaims that a great nation, a nation that was yet unborn in the time of Adria, would fall from a state of power and grace. Into darkness, death, and suffering. Dragged down by a monster that it would be too weak to fight.”
“The fall of Io,” Racath assumed. “And the other?”
“The other,” Oron said. “is known as Vae Valores Krilati.”
Racath pondered a moment, thinking back on the Rotenic that he had learned from the Velik Tor library. “The blessed saved?” he guessed.
“Your Rotenic needs work,” Oron commented. “This Blessed Savior. It speaks of the end of the darkness foretold in the other prophecy. Of the Krilati, the savior who will destroy the Demons.”
“Behold, there shall awaken a Dragon Amongst Wolves, rising in fire from a city split asunder,” Nelle said quietly, as though she were reciting. “And the Father will grant him power, and his power shall be to free and to liberate and to burn and to destroy,” Her eyes turned to Racath, burning with nightfire. “And the power to shatter the chains that shackle this fallen realm shall be his alone.”
It was as though a boulder had suddenly fallen onto his chest. He couldn’t breathe. For some reason, he could not will his lungs to draw in air. Like there was no air to breathe. “You mean…” he whispered, then swallowed. “You’re saying…you think that I…”
“My visions are bound to the Krilati,” Nelle told him. “I was tasked to see his life, his future, to find him and to guide him as he fights for Io. The face in my visions is the face of the man who would save us all. Your face.”
Racath did not speak. He could not speak.
“My visions are bound to the Krilati,” Nelle repeated. “And my visions are bound to you, Racath Thanjel.”
“But…but I—”
“It all fits, Racath,” Oron said. “Think about it.”
The facts danced in circles in Racath’s head, like images cycling across his eyes. A Dragon Amongst Wolves, rising in fire from a city split asunder….Milonok. The Day of Severance. They had called him the Dragon.
“You are the Krilati, Racath,” Nelle declared. “You are my Dragon Amongst Wolves.”
EIGHTEEN
Neophany
When he woke the next morning, Racath’s head was a reverberating cacophony of confusion. He’d gone nearly catatonic the night before when Nelle had told him the truth of things. His memory was foggy, but he’d remembered a few moments of pathetic, token argument. His own mind rejecting the very notion of the Krilati. His own disbelief. His own shock.
Oron had decided that he’d need the night to sleep on it, promising him that he’d be able to think clearer in the morning. The older Majiski had shown him to the guest room prepa
red for him, telling him that they would discuss the nature of his training the next morning. He’d collapsed into the bed, and soon fallen into deep hibernation.
And now…now every question was a buzzing wasp inside his head, his skull a crowded, swarming hive. The droning of it drew him fitfully from sleep, and he awoke in the narrow, unfamiliar bed in the narrow, unfamiliar room.
He pried his eyes open; they stung and watered from a night of tightly clenched eyelids. The small guest room was nearly barren, windowless, occupied only by the bed and a short table in the corner.
On that table lay the various components of his Shadow. Someone had brought them in during the night and laid them out for him all neat-and-tidy. The cloak-coat was folded into a trim square with his gauntlets (which he could have sworn he was wearing when he got in bed) perched atop it; his arsenal of miscellaneous weaponry had been extracted from their housings in the cloak and arranged on the tabletop. The bolter Alexis had given him rested against the wall in the corner.
A square parchment note lay on top of his thing as well, black ink scrawled across its surface. Leaning over, Racath read:
I took the liberty of washing your things. Everything smells fresh and clean now! Hope I didn’t wake you when I brought them in last night. I know you’ve got a lot on your mind right now, so take your time. Oron and I are usually up a little after sunrise — if you’re up before then, Oron says you’re free to peruse the library. We’ll be meeting in the living room tomorrow morning, so don’t wander too far!
Sleep tight!
N.
Nelle had drawn a wee happy-face at the bottom. The gesture brought an unconscious smile to Racath’s lips. He folded up the note and put it with his things.
He didn’t bother to don his gear. Wearing only his dark tunic and pants, he dragged himself, bare-markara, out of bed and staggered through the door into the next room.
That’s when he found the library. He’d been so consumed by the shock of last night that he hadn’t even registered the place as he’d stumbled through it on his way to bed. But now he saw it, and his worries were momentarily brushed aside.
Bookshelves filled the tall-ceilinged room — a dozen rows of polished shelves, nearly as large as Velik Tor’s library. Volumes bound in colorful leather filled every shelf from top to bottom, gold-leaf titles glimmering across their spines. A stratum of dust frosted their beautiful covers, like the kiss of dewdrops on early-morning grass. Dust, not of neglect or disuse — but of age, experience, and much careful handling. Racath could smell the musk of the eager pages, could taste it on the air, like the taste of a home-cooked meal, enticing him.
Like a wonderstruck child, Racath wandered the stacks, admiring the categorization that Oron had employed. Rows broken down by topic, topic broken down by author, author broken down by…not by title, something else…chronology, perhaps?
He read each shiny title as he stepped between shelves. They spoke to him. Calling him by name. Like old friends, friends with hearth-fire smiles and familiar laughter. Each title whispered to him, inviting him to pry them open and plunder the beautiful secrets held between their pages. But there were so many. So many voices begging to be heard. So many books begging to be read. So many secrets yearning to be shared. How could he choose just one? How could he possibly choose one treasure over another? It was like deciding which child you loved the most.
Eventually, he pulled one volume down at random from a shelf: a book bound in deep-red leather. Its whispers grew, became excited, like a bride on her wedding night. The cover read Discourses on Faerie and Mythologies: a Compendium by Martin Gotkin. He’d never read it — it wasn’t in the Velik Tor library. It was new to him. New.
Heart in his throat, Racath coaxed the binding open and gazed into the first marvelous page. Standing there between the shelves, he began to read. Secrets, things hidden for so many years — by the Demons, by Mrak, by everyone — flooded into him. He reveled.
The book was a compilation of folktales, myths, and legends concerning fae creatures from the lore of a dozen different regions, and the author’s accompanying analyses on their origin, cultural significance, and connectivity. It was extensive, and more than a little longwinded; the author’s logic was difficult to follow in some places. Too often it referred to places, events, and pieces of pre-Dominion history — secrets yet unknown to him. It left Racath frustrated.
It was not until a yawn disturbed him that he came up for air. Looking up, he saw Nelle shuffling around the corner of the shelf. As far as Racath could see, the only thing Nelle was wearing was a long-sleeved nightshirt that fell to her knees. It wasn’t particularly revealing attire, but it left a length of her slender claves bare. Her legs were long, smooth, and creamy white. Her sunny hair laid strewn haphazard and tangled around her head. Her blue eyes were bleary, and her face had that chalky early-morning look to it.
But she was beautiful. As beautiful as the books. Somehow — without even trying, in a state of absentminded lethargy — she was still striking, like accidental nightfire.
She greeted him with a tired smile, her arms crossed over her chest for warmth. “Morning,” she yawned again. “Sleep well?”
The question processed in Racath’s head only after he realized he’d been staring at her.
“Uhh…” he finally replied. “Well…I slept, at least. I don’t think you could classify it as sleeping well.”
Nelle shrugged one shoulder sympathetically. “We’ve all been there, haven’t we?” She paused. “So…how’re you doing? About what we talked about last night?”
The anxiety and confusion that the library had pushed out of his mind wiggled its way back in like a white knife slipping through a ribcage. He swallowed. “I’m not sure. I’m not really sure of anything anymore.”
“Do you believe it?” Nelle asked carefully.
Racath snorted. “That I’m the…whatever you called it, Krilati?” He shook his head. “I don’t know yet. I mean, in my head I can’t really deny it — I believe in God, and all the pieces line up too conveniently to dismiss as coincidence…and I’ve always wanted to do my part to get rid of the Demons, but…”
Nelle raised her eyebrows expectantly. “But?”
He shook his head again. “But I don’t know if I can handle that kind of burden on my shoulders. There’s a difference between wanting to fight for good, and being told that you have to, because you’re the only one who can. Before, whenever I decided to fight the Dominion, it was something I did because I wanted to. But now…” he sighed. “Now, if what you say is true, then I don’t have a choice anymore, because God picked me. So…I don’t know. I don’t know if I can believe that. If I can accept it or not.”
Nelle nodded understandingly. “I understand. It wasn’t an easy thing to hear. But I see what I see, Racath. And I see only the truth. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to accept it. You’re the Krilati, like it or not.”
A dark silence followed. Racath didn’t like what she was saying, but the last thing he wanted to do was keep thinking about it.
Nelle shuffled a few steps closer, peering at the open book in Racath’s hands. “Watcha got there?”
Glad for the change of subject, Racath shut the book and held it up so she could read the title on the cover.
She made a face of mild disgust. “Ugh. Of all the things in here, why on earth would you pick Gotkin?”
That deflated Racath a bit. He shrugged sheepishly. “I dunno…faerie mythologies seemed interesting…”
“They are,” Nelle said. “But trust me — you don’t want to start with Gotkin.”
Another hopeless shrug. “I’ll admit I was having a little trouble. I’m a bit lacking in terms of contextual prerequisites.”
“Like what?” Nelle asked interestedly.
“Like this.” He flipped the book open to a page that he had read before. “Here, he’s talking about some region called…Tevin, south of Tarsus in Majiskura, and the primitive locals’ stories of
creatures they call stelpa, which he relates to the parent-myth of dryads. He then connects it to the legends of a place called….” Racath flipped a few pages. “Gravis Mons, a mountainous area home to underdeveloped oligarchic villages in the northeast of Domhan…a region whose stories of the fabled dryad date back to the days of its settlement to the time of the Second Majerian Wars, long before the Jedan pilgrims made their great exodus from Athair.
“Okay…” Nelle answered. “What are you confused about?”
Racath looked back up at her. “He’s talking about all these things, all these places, like it’s common knowledge.” He paused to let that sink in, and then made a flamboyant gesture of frustration and helplessness. “I’ve got no idea what any of this means. I’ve never even heard of Tevin, Tarsus, or Majiskura. I don't have a clue where Domhan is, let alone where its underdeveloped settlements are. These places could be on the moon for all I know. And what exactly were the Second Majerian Wars? When was it, who fought in it, how big was it, where did it happen, how many other Majerian Wars were there? What the does Majerian even mean? And when was there an exodus of Jedan pilgrims? Where the hell is Athair? Where did they emigrate to?” He threw up his hands. “I’m just so damn lost.”
The girl with golden hair titled her head at him. “Look, this is perfectly natural. You’ve been kept in the dark for a long, long time. There are lots of things about the world — things that would have been common knowledge for the average man during the Third Age, when Gotkin wrote that book — that you’ve never been exposed to. That’s alright.”
