And again.
~Let go the threads of Water, Sherakai. You are using it as your focal point rather than Fire.~
The voice slipped into his awareness like a breeze. Calm followed it, encouragement.
Energy filled everything; Sherakai had only to separate Fire from Water and Spirit. It was the last thing he wanted. The intimate connection with Bairith discouraged a deliberate fumble. Stay away from the Fire, Sherakai. Alarm gnawed at him.
~Are you afraid?~
~Yes,~ he confessed.
~It will not hurt you.~
“How can it not?” he asked aloud. “If I cannot control it, it will burn me.”
“I am right here with you.”
“If it—ignites, how will you stop it?” If it touched him he would burn, no matter how the flames were extinguished. Still, now was as good a time as any to see if his captor would reveal any of his secrets.
Bairith’s magic tingled down his arms, bringing Sherakai bolt upright. His eyes widened as the water in the bowl curled upward to wrap over the side and around his hand. He drew back with a gasp, but the liquid followed the movement. Having his suspicion confirmed did nothing to ease the fountaining fear and dread.
Bairith chuckled in his ear. “Trust me, I will take care of you.”
The assurance was poor comfort. He trusted Bairith like a deer trusted a daxar. Like the mountain cat, the jansu was beautiful and deadly. A trembling breath left him, then he nodded. “I just—didn’t know you could do that.”
“I can do many things.”
“Yes.” Best to change the subject. “I didn’t know you were warrior class, either. You’re very good.” Would Bairith have been able to best Iniki dan Sorehi?
“I am not warrior class. Now concentrate.”
Jaw knotting, he set to work. He could see the Fire thread, gleaming orange and red, mobile and intriguing.
Bairith guided, directed, and coaxed.
It took every ounce of Sherakai’s strength to focus only on seeing…
Exhaustion robbed him of any exultation he might have felt in his failure. It also saved him from another beating. Sitting on his bed, he considered Fesh and Teth as the pair watched him finish his evening meal.
“Where is the woman who cared for me when I was sick?” he asked.
Teth turned his sharp teeth to an itch on his flank, deliberately spurning the question.
“Could you find her?”
Head tipped, Fesh gave Sherakai a thoughtful look. His shoulders moved in a manner much like a shrug.
“Do you trust her?”
Again the long, serious consideration. This time Teth joined in and neither of them offered an opinion.
Sherakai mopped up the remains of his meal with the last of his bread, then licked his fingers. “I shouldn’t.” She’d been kind to him and she’d helped in his escape with Mimeru. If Bairith ever found out, the woman would be in terrible trouble. She was Bairith’s, whatever role she might fill for him.
Teth snatched the empty plate away and the mock conversation ended. After that, he had books and maps to study until the candle burned low. When it died, he slept then got up to repeat the process all over again the next day.
Physical exercise and sparring practice.
Abysmal failure attempting to catch hold of Fire.
Studying.
Sleeping.
He didn’t see Deishi. He didn’t see the lavender-eyed woman. He hoped the first had finally taken his advice and left, and he wondered too often about the second. Who was she, and why had she helped him? Was she afraid of him or for him? And what had Bairith meant when he’d said Sherakai was not just the key to opening the gate, but that he’d bring down the wall and every pillar? What pillars? Where were they?
These questions and others wove their way into his dreams. They twisted the threads of nightmares that rarely allowed him a night of peace. When he woke panting and cold with sweat, he would ease the misery by imagining how he might kill Bairith Mindar. Or Tylond Corlyr. Both, if he had any choice in the matter.
In the light of day, he pondered how he’d developed such a single-minded blood thirst. His father would disapprove. But his father didn’t come for him. His dead brothers didn’t come to him to give advice. Even Mimeru hadn't deigned to visit him. And Bairith continued to drive him relentlessly toward his mysterious goal.
“Again,” the jansu demanded when the pair of them faced off in the practice chamber. “Do it again and again until you get it right.”
How did one make an exhausted body repeat a task it had continually failed? “I cannot. Please…”
“You should please your lord, yes.” He paced away from Sherakai, slapping his ash wood sword against his leg in irritation. Eventually, he stopped and exhaled a long breath before continuing in a milder tone. “You are learning. Now get up and do it the way I told you, then you may rest.”
Sherakai forced his quivering muscles to work. Lifting his own weapon, he grasped it with both hands. The form was difficult when he was well rested. Weary and in pain, he couldn’t keep the wooden blade up to defend himself against the strikes that rained down on him with exquisite grace and precision.
A jab to his bare thigh sent him crashing to the sand, gasping and clenching his teeth. Tears would be met with blows, and Bairith had perfected physical punishment. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why it mattered; a beating was a beating. He waited, trembling like a leaf, wishing he could will himself to unconsciousness. Insensibility was the only escape.
The tenor of his lessons had changed since the last visit to Tylond’s surgery. The issue with the aro added its own flavor. More potions and more magic had gone into the healing of his bones, tendons, and ligaments. Lord Chiro grew ever more angry at Sherakai’s persistent failure to meet his lofty expectations.
Recently Bairith had enlisted the help of the scar-faced man from the night of the feast. He was called Chief Hamrin and spoke with an awful accent that made him difficult to understand. Sherakai thought it northern Suminian, but couldn’t be certain. He served as a partner while Bairith instructed Sherakai on the finer points of combat, with or without the magic.
Sherakai had learned to look forward to his rest. After the excruciating punishment for his continued failure, there would be blessed unconsciousness. Bairith would not kill him. He would not cripple him beyond anything Healer Tylond could repair. The repairs themselves were a torment. As always, the man continued to take pleasure in Sherakai’s pain.
Lying in the sand, Sherakai waited for a rain of blows across his shoulders. When contact finally came, he did not even close his eyes. When had he stopped flinching? The gentle hand combing through his sweat- and blood-soaked hair brought with it another kind of pain and a resigned despair.
“You are so beautiful and so strong,” Bairith murmured.
Sherakai had long ago ceased trying to figure out what was beautiful about a broken, bleeding body. He’d stopped trying to understand how the mage saw strength in quivering uselessness.
“What is pain?” the mage asked.
“Suffering and agony.” He was too exhausted to summon even a sneer.
“Why do you waste breath on humor when you are so impaired? What is pain?”
With his tongue, he explored a swollen lip. “Pain is energy.”
“Energy, yes, and if you cannot master it, you cannot win.”
Sherakai pulled one knee up to relieve the sting in his side. “What am I to win, lord?”
“Battles. Honor. Glory. Redemption.”
“I do not want to fight.” He’d said the words so often that he wasn’t sure now he’d spoken them aloud.
Bairith’s reply assured him he’d been heard. “I know. And yet you will become a force to be reckoned with. I see the promise in you; it shines from you and you cannot hide it. Even the seer has remarked upon it.”
“What seer?” The woman, he guessed. Bairith had never called her a seer before, but Sherakai knew.
He knew.
“You do not believe I would leave our future to mere chance, do you?”
“No.” Only average, mortal, ordinary men did that. “And if I do not want honor and glory?”
“Then life.”
“I would prefer death.”
“Never death, my son, you are far too valuable for that.”
The number of times he’d been brought back from the brink blurred. They should not. Death was a significant event.
He did not think the third prize, redemption, could be had for the price of mastering the magic of pain, nor for inflicting it—or death—on others. The murders he’d committed haunted him, the ghosts of the dead creeping up on him at the most unexpected moments. Like this one. He breathed through dry lips until the memory of the gasping stablehand faded. “What will I redeem for you?”
The mage stroked Sherakai’s arm. Then a little breeze stole away the jansu’s warmth and the ever-present scent of sweet cicely. The scrape of wood announced the return of practice weapons to their barrel. Then came the rustle of fabric as Bairith removed his soiled clothes.
Once upon a time the clash of weapons and men grunting and swearing had filled the chamber during lessons. Iniki dan Sorehi had still lived then. Now they had the entire enormous space to themselves.
Water gurgled, then splashed on the stones beneath the barrels as the mage washed. Another whisper of fabric, then soft footsteps. Green silk threaded with silver pooled upon the sands beside Sherakai as Bairith knelt. He had no strength to oppose the tender hands that rolled him onto his bleeding back. He had nothing to stay the energy that flowed from the mage, carrying promises of rest, of peace. The coppery tang of his own blood blended with Bairith’s perfume.
“One day soon the forging will be complete, my pet, and you will be a sword beyond compare. A sword made for my hand alone.”
Bairith cultivated his grand plans. Sherakai refused them. He could allow only one thing to matter: the building of his strength and the honing of his talent to destroy his tormentor. And what a joke that was. When he wanted nothing more than to give up and die, it was his enemy who threatened and cajoled him back to reality.
Bairith dragged one finger through a cut on Sherakai’s chest. With the blood, he painted a fluid symbol on the youth’s forehead. The foreign words he spoke drew Sherakai’s will through him and away like particles of sand. Bairith licked his bloodied finger and smiled.
“With each drop of blood, each pearl of sweat, each day that passes, you and I become closer.”
The beating that passed for a practice session gave him a blessed sense of apathy he could not manufacture on his own. Bairith repeated the words and the spells every single day. Let him believe them if he liked. Let him believe Sherakai’s defenses and his will withered. Maybe it was true today, but it had failed to be final thus far, and he had lost count of the days. “Closer,” he echoed, envisioning a long, straight sword dripping crimson. He licked his lips.
Bairith cradled Sherakai’s hand and stroked his arm. Dark energy followed, probing for weakness.
He did not cry out when the magic revealed a fracture in the outer bone. He’d blocked a blow that would have otherwise landed on his face and likely shattered his jaw and teeth. Not an accident or misjudgment, but a test in an endless procession of tests.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes.” Of course it did.
The mage nodded. “Remember my instructions. Find the pain. Hold it. Push into the center of it and become the pain.”
Sherakai did as he was told, not because Bairith willed it, but because if the pain won and overcame him he would suffer longer. If the pain won, Bairith would use it against him as he had so many times before. It was easier with these smaller hurts, but as the jansu continued his lessons Sherakai’s ability and endurance increased.
Calling on magic, Bairith bound the bone with shadows.
Predictably, Sherakai shivered. The sensation of ice would fade, but he couldn’t shake the impression of black threads woven into his very essence. Tylond used them, too, only Tylond liked to watch Sherakai’s expression when he attached them. Shaders, both of them, coloring him to be just like them. Their weave had yet to reach his heart, but it was only a matter of time.
Protect your great heart. How? Dear gods, how?
When they worked together in the practice chamber, Bairith used magic to prevent Sherakai from inflicting any serious wounds. Though hardly fair, it didn’t surprise him in the least. Bairith would not risk himself. It made him harder to kill.
“Good. Very good. We will continue to work to enable you to harness this talent as easily when you fight as when you are prone in the dirt.”
Sherakai had no wish to harness it. The entire concept felt unclean. Dark.
“Do you know what tomorrow is?” Bairith asked, sending the lingering shadows to the corners of the chamber.
It had been a long time since Sherakai had seen the sky; he didn’t know what day it was, or what season. It didn’t matter. No certain number of days stood between Sherakai and either freedom or death. He could die, he reasoned. The fatal blow might come when he was too far away for Bairith to invoke the spells that held him to this world. He didn’t like to think about them always being in place, but even if they were, perhaps they would not last forever.
“Do you?” Bairith prompted, but Sherakai remained silent.
No matter what answer he gave, it would be the wrong one. It’s the day after today. It’s another training day. Even a simple no would prove an excuse for whatever the jansu planned to do to him anyway.
“Tomorrow marks midsummer. You have a celebration in this country, the Festival of the Ancestors.” He signaled to Fesh and Teth waiting near a door. “You’ve come a long way since last year. Let us see how far, shall we?”
“Yes, lord.”
Breathing a heavy sigh, he got to his feet. He had to clench his teeth to prevent a groan. Teth leaned against him, supporting him until his head stopped spinning.
“You will bathe and dress for the occasion.” Bairith rose, as graceful as ever. A flick of his hand rid him of the sand clinging to his open robe. A sense of cleanliness and spirits pressed through the link. Sherakai could not understand the purpose. “Fasting is appropriate, I believe.”
“Yes, lord.”
Bairith caught the youth’s jaw and lifted it. “Have you forgotten how to converse?”
He regarded the simmering blue sea of the jansu’s eyes wearily. “I did not realize it was festival time. I look forward to the event.” With resignation, perhaps, and the certainty that he would find no joy in it. “Is there someone particular you wish me to speak to?”
The mage bestowed a small smile upon him, turning his grip into a caress. “Certainly. It would be foolish to go unprepared, would it not? Rest well tonight, little dragon.”
Chapter 14
A six-day period with the summer solstice at its center marked the Festival of the Ancestors. On this shortest night of the year, the wards between the spiritual and physical worlds were thinnest. At this time, one could communicate with the dead. During the holiday, families and loved ones tended the burial grounds. They cleaned and straightened, painted and decorated. Mourning ribbons fluttered from gate posts and from the lintels of homes.
Garlands and bouquets of gold-and-red Sunset Cup flowers were woven with the saffron strands. A tea made from the flower’s dried bulbs increased the ability to see the spirits. Smoke from the burning bulbs might reveal them. Scented candles, the flames representative of the flower, were prevalent. They burned during the entire festival, chasing away creeping shadows.
The holiday was one of fasting or light meals meant only for sustaining the body. Priests and priestesses of Bahenn, the goddess of death, painted their faces gold bisected with black from forehead to chin. In exchange for small gifts, they would speak to the dead for those unable or unwilling to do so themselves. Sherakai had seen the Bahennan only once when he’d visite
d Kelamara with his father. The paint had removed humanity from their features and turned them into eery figures that had troubled his dreams.
Bairith’s keep wore none of the traditional colors or scents of the festival. Pungent incense burned in ornate brass lamps. The smoke curled upward to hover near the ceiling. Sherakai thought he saw faces peering at him from the vapors.
The pall was worse in the underground chamber where he had first been brought before the master of the Gates of Heaven. The Heart, it was called. Bitterness ruined a scent like lemons. Colors shifted uncomfortably without settling on any particular hue. In spite of the chamber’s high ceiling, the vapor writhed not far overhead. When he glanced upward to pierce the gloom, Teth yanked on Sherakai’s arm then smacked the back of his head.
Don’t look up there.
Where they’d walked confidently through the halls, both beasts now hunched along, hackles up and heads down. He couldn’t blame them. The odor alone was intimidating. A little stretching of his senses revealed the delicate prickle of magic at work. Air created a false ceiling to keep the smoke in place.
The stuff veiled Bairith where he stood at the center of the runic circle, hands together and head bowed as if in prayer. Muted light from the tall braziers gave him a flickering, ethereal appearance.
“Are you ready?” Notwithstanding their softness, Bairith’s words penetrated Sherakai’s core.
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
“I have studied the texts you chose for me. Is there more wisdom you could impart, lord?”
“Do you have questions about what you read?”
“No.”
“Then begin.”
He hesitated. “Will there be tea? Or candles? A garland of Sunset Cup?”
Bairith’s mouth curled in contempt. “The influence of the blossom is unnecessary, and it clouds the mind. The other is tripe only of use in comforting the weak.”
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