Flesh and Bone

by Robin Lythgoe

  “That was quite the display.” The jansu sounded ambivalent.

  The rustle of fabric and a soft gasp came from behind him. Sherakai lifted his gaze to find the golden-haired woman who’d helped him and his sister, her eyes wide and face pale.

  Should he acknowledge her or not? She had never been introduced to him, never appeared in company with the jansu except for once at Sherakai’s sickbed. She still had no name. He settled for another reserved nod. “I remember little of it,” he replied truthfully to the jansu. He managed to keep his voice even.

  “That is a shame. It is unfortunate Mage Tylond is not available to help mend that problem. Do you not agree? Imagine how your tactics might improve if you could recall the details.”

  “Yes,” he said, noncommittal.

  With a flick of his hand, the jansu sent a pair of servants to the corner, quiet as shadows. “Come. Look at him,” He took his companion’s hand to pull her forward. “How do you see my dragon now, woman?”

  He must be displeased with her; he always called Sherakai “boy” when he behaved stupidly. The way the jansu put emphasis on that single description carried the whiplash sting of mockery. How dare he? Yet as much as Sherakai’s hackles raised on her behalf, his head lowered in shame. In failing to make good use of the opportunity she’d given him, he had become this thing. And now he stood before her, filthy and stinking and disgraceful.

  “Wounded,” she answered the jansu, disbelieving and… sad. “I see him wounded body and soul.”

  “Wounds happen in battle. He will recover. Look at him. Tell me what you See.”

  “As you wish. Let me touch him.” She stepped forward.

  “No,” Sherakai whispered, appalled. “Please.” But no one listened to him and in short order he was kneeling on the floor, staring up into her calm lavender eyes.

  She rested her fingers against his abraded cheek, as tender as he remembered. “Why has a healer not seen him, Chief Hamrin?” she asked.

  The jansu spoke before Hamrin could even open his mouth to respond. “He would not need one if he were obedient.”

  “It is true, Lady.” Sherakai could not tear his gaze from her face. He didn’t want to. “I tried,” he said, though he wasn’t talking about the fight at all.

  Her head tipped a fraction. “I know.” The slightest brush of her fingers conveyed her understanding.

  “Do you know how your defiance costs me, Sherakai?” Bairith paced away to stand at the window. The light from the skies cast an uneven nimbus around him. “It is petty, and yet you persist.”

  “The rakeshi—” Sherakai began.

  “Do not blame the rakeshi, which would have eagerly and ably defended you. And did it not when I gave you my assistance?”

  “It did.” There was no use arguing against the extremity of men ripped limb from limb. The jansu would have his way no matter what Sherakai thought or felt, but for this infinitesimal moment, gentleness and human warmth held him. “Will you forgive me?”

  “You do not make it easy.” The jansu let out an impatient sigh.

  The woman nodded and her eyes grew bright with moisture. She knew his words were meant for her.

  “I will do better,” he told her. “I swear it. Only teach me how.”

  It is in your heart, the woman mouthed. Keep it safe.

  “I try, boy. If I did not love you so…” The jansu’s voice trailed away as he gazed out the window.

  How? Every day his heart grew smaller and harder. How could he protect it from the constant battering of violence, of loneliness?

  Use it.

  Incomprehension threatened the mask of indifference. Sherakai gave the tiniest shake of his head. He kills those I love.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “Stillness yields more fruit, my lord,” she said without censure.

  Sherakai admired the abrupt quiet in the link. How many years did it take to master such control? The noise from the arena fell away a moment later, the air marking the borders of the room suddenly thick.

  An unconscious step brought Hamrin Demirruk further inside.

  “Leave,” the jansu said.

  “Stay,” the woman countered, then smiled at Bairith. “Please let him stay. One of us may need his strong arm.”

  Bairith linked his hands behind his back. “Very well, begin.”

  The soft, feminine hands on his face reminded Sherakai of his mother. He closed his eyes but, “Look at me,” she said, and he could not disobey. It was not magic she used to coerce him, but something more subtle. Something more… precious.

  She regarded him for a long time before she drew upon the aro. Like sunlight creeping across a windowsill, the world fell away from him. He could still see the light and the way it caressed the side of the seer’s face, but a cool, soft blanket of infinity wrapped around him. Enfolded him. He heard the wind among the stars, distant voices that grew nearer and louder, transforming into words. A dozen different songs—a hundred—a thousand—rose and fell. He could not understand what they said.

  He would be lost among them. Never had he felt so small, and yet so integral a part of the fabric of existence.

  The seer’s hands tightened their grip.

  His own lifted, hesitated at the audacity, the wonder, then covered hers.

  She sighed.

  “What do you see?” Lord Bairith’s voice came to them as through a veil of falling water, muffled and washed of inflection.

  The seer’s careful inhalations formed a delicate “oh” of caution. The lavender in her eyes darkened. In contrast, her skin paled until it was the color of stars. Translucent. Ephemeral.

  Was that real?

  A shadow fell across her, then disappeared like a cloud traversing the earth. Were the stars as bright as her eyes?

  “Precious blood wasted,” she whispered, hers the voice of the thousand. “An awakening… chains broken… he rises.” And then, more urgently, “He rises still… only he can break the chains.”

  She swayed and would have toppled but for Hamrin, who caught her and lowered her to a couch. Released so abruptly, Sherakai blinked in confusion, then caught himself on one arm before he fell. Stars and wind song continued to tease him and he had no defense against it. Wished instead that he could hold it close to him forever. How astonishingly beautiful…!

  “Did I not tell you?” The jansu’s above him, victorious.

  “Here, lad.” Hamrin guided Sherakai to where he could lean against something. Another couch, he thought.

  “It is in you, Sherakai.” The seer’s eyes were nearly black, wide with apprehension. It made his heart stammer. What did she see? “Yours if you will but remember—”

  “Remember what?” The jansu had her now, held her face the way she’d held Sherakai’s, but without her passion. He had no heart.

  She did not answer right away but struggled to find or form the words. “You have the key.”

  “What key?”

  “The first key.” She did not see him. She did not see this place at all. “The second key… is gone, but it will come into your hands again.” Her brow furrowed. “A promise. It does not belong to this time.”

  Bairith had a frown of his own, directed now upon Sherakai. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

  “The third key,” she breathed, she groaned. “Oh, it hurts. It hurts…”

  Her visions teased Sherakai, shadows and suggestions of what might be. He saw Iniki’s face after he died, longing. Deishi’s, sad. His father’s, determined and proud. Hamrin’s, wistful. But Hamrin lives still! He groped after the shape of possibility—no, probability. He didn’t understand anything except that the path was grueling, but not hopeless. People he’d never met intersected his course. A red-headed woman with eyes bright as emeralds and an intense gleam surrounding her caught and held him all-too-briefly. A slender, shaggy-haired man with a scar across one eye held up a bloody sword and grinned. The wind song stole away whatever he said, but his lips shaped o
ne word: brother. A glimpse of dark curls and steely blue eyes surrounded by spirals of water made no sense at all. The vision was immediately chased by the sound of children’s laughter, a powerful summons, and a sense of falling.

  Chapter 46

  “Drink this,” a rough voice said.

  Water moistened Sherakai’s lips and caressed his throat. The everyday-ness of it brought the gray surroundings back into sharp focus. Memory of who and what took longer to catch up. The man held Sherakai against his chest, an arm around his shoulders. He regarded the grizzled features while words from further away slowly gained shape. A woman’s voice, tired and worried, responded to another man—one wrapped in the threads of absolute authority.

  “—more than I thought. There is too much magic working in him for anything to be certain beyond what I’ve told you.”

  “I will call the mages. Together we will quell the disturbance and heal him.”

  That particular arrogance belonged to Bairith Mindar.

  “Do not. No, do not.” Panic threaded her words.

  The lord’s voice dipped low. “Tell me what else you’ve seen. I know there is more. Will he disappoint me as the others did?”

  His keeper’s grip tightened.

  Sherakai touched the man’s jaw in reassurance and request. He needed room to draw breath. The contact startled his keeper. He loosed his hold and shifted away, but quietly, as if he might attract unwanted notice. Sherakai leaned against the couch. Stars still decorated his peripheral vision. Invisible gremlins stood on his shoulder, pounding one side of his head with sledgehammers. It finally registered that his armor had been removed, and he found it in a neat stack nearby. Hamrin…

  “He is nothing like the others.” Irritation embroidered the woman’s voice. “He is immeasurably stronger. He has a heart, Bairith.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “His heart belongs to me.”

  “Only if you nurture it.”

  “What more do you expect me to do?” As if anything more could possibly be done after all had been given.

  A long silence followed.

  It drew Sherakai’s gaze. The pair of them sat together on another couch, silhouetted against a glare that spoke only of chaos and misery. The woman stood suddenly. Sherakai flinched, but she turned to the jansu and did not even glance his way. The unreliable light illuminated her face, showing dark smears at the corners of her eyes and her nose. Had she bled? Why?

  “This I know, Bairith Mindar.” Her voice changed, chilly certainty crushing the fear. Her posture straightened, became imperious. “From the first day you asked me to see for you, I have watched the dragon rise again and again. The tides that surround him change with every vision. They grow increasingly violent. He conquers, but he is not the same. Time after time, I see him transforming, growing, refining. His wings—” Frustration stained her hesitation. “His wings stretch out to the horizon. Under one is destruction, under the other is restoration. I cannot see which wing covers you, my love. These things I have told you too many times to count, and still you doubt me. You doubt him.”

  Bairith rose, capturing her wrists and yanking her close. “I do not doubt my dragon.” His mouth curled into a sneer. “He will destroy my enemies and restore my inheritance. Have you not said that he promises victory and destruction? It is you who sow seeds of doubt and contention when you refuse me the details of your visions.”

  She lifted her chin, defiant. “I cannot give details that tumble and shift as leaves before the storm.”

  “You can; you choose not to. You prevent me from shoring up the ground beneath us. One might believe you wish us to fail,” he hissed, challenging.

  “Is my desire to preserve the safety of your body, mind, and soul a betrayal, master? Because if it is, I confess that I will betray you every single day I draw breath.”

  Her strength and determination made her beautiful at that moment. Sherakai leaned forward, a hand pressed to his chest over a heart yearning to have someone look at him with that much passion, that much belief.

  Breast to breast, the pair challenged each other, until Bairith pushed her from him. “Perhaps you should reduce the amount of the Dreamer’s Tea you use. It impairs your good sense.”

  “As you wish.” A strange little smile haunted her face as she bowed to him.

  “Sherakai.”

  The single word commanded immediate obedience. The foolish, romantic yearning shriveled and disappeared. He struggled to stand. Hamrin got him to his feet and then held him there when he swayed like a sapling in the wind. He could do nothing about the avalanche pounding Sherakai’s skull.

  “Tell me what you saw.” Imperious, he tucked his hands into his copious sleeves. His image blurred, then divided into two identical replicas. “Focus, boy. Get control of yourself.”

  “Yessir,” he slurred. Controlling himself meant controlling the pain, but he needed his head to do that. Every throb obliterated his attempt to gather the magic.

  “My lord,” Hamrin ventured, his voice sounding from the depths of a well. “If this has to be done now, it might be best to let him do it sitting down.”

  “Very well.” Bairith waited until the couch supported Sherakai. When Hamrin made to crouch next to him he gestured the instructor away. “Do you require anything else, Sherakai?” the jansu inquired, all barbed solicitude, but distant.

  Pain arrested the instinct to shake his head. “No. Please.” Was that the right word? The shape was wrong in his mouth.

  “Tell me what you saw during the vision,” Bairith repeated, taking Sherakai’s hand between his. “Better yet, show me.”

  Aro wrenched Sherakai forward, caught him in a grip of iron, and ripped through the haze of pain to plunder everything he’d felt, tasted, seen, and heard.

  “My lord, his eyes!” came a distant shout.

  The rakeshi moved quick as thought. With his free hand, he punched Bairith Mindar’s face, then grabbed the mage’s arm and twisted. The bones broke with a satisfying crunch, eliciting a strangled cry. He stumbled and fell to one knee. Aro scattered. Someone screamed—the woman. A flurry of motion accompanied deeper shouts and a sharp sense of urgency as the room’s remaining occupants fled.

  The mage spoke a single word the rakeshi did not recognize. He needed to stop it; needed to take his enemy down as fast and as hard as he could. Another vicious kick at the broken arm was already too late. Aro shuddered between them. A barrier of air, incompletely formed, reduced his kick to a tap. He twisted, landed on all fours, and sprang away.

  Distract, get out, survive…

  Keenly aware of his surroundings, he backed toward the wall. He needed a weapon. Plucking a yellow-green lamp from its sconce, he hurled it hard at the mage’s feet. It did not break as he’d hoped, but skidded across the carpet and did exactly nothing.

  Bairith Mindar’s bloody smile promised defeat. He raised his good arm and barked a stream of incomprehensible words. For the magic to affect the rakeshi, the mage would either have to spend extra energy to push it through his defensive spell or drop the latter entirely.

  Unwilling to wait for the results of the casting, the rakeshi charged.

  His attack bore both of them toward the balcony railing. The spell created a nearly solid obstruction between the pair that did nothing to stop the pressure the rakeshi exerted. He pushed the advantage, shoving the mage against the balustrade. Against the maddening spell still in place between the room and the arena.

  It didn’t budge.

  Shouting and the rattle of armored reinforcements came from the corridor.

  The rakeshi rammed repeatedly against the defensive wall. It shuddered and buckled. Bairith Mindar’s face contorted in pain even the shield did not conceal. Notwithstanding, the mage managed to grind out another spell.

  The shield evaporated.

  The rakeshi’s powerful shoulder slammed into the mage’s chest.

  A hand groped for the rakeshi’s face, fingers digging into flesh.

  He growl
ed and tossed his head to dislodge the grip. Instead, the air in his mouth, nose, and lungs thickened. He punched the mage’s vulnerable belly.

  Heard the breath expel.

  Felt the grunt that traveled through skin and bone.

  Tasted sweet cicely.

  He struck again. The mage’s body sagged against him, and the rakeshi took a step to keep his balance. A blow slammed into him from behind.

  The mage lifted his head and spoke, but a high-pitched ringing sound swallowed the words. It screamed of danger. Instinctively, the rakeshi thrust the mage away to turn toward this new threat. Three men stood between him and the questionable freedom of the corridor. Two of them died with their weapons still ascending. The third jabbed the butt of his spear into the rakeshi’s belly.

  He staggered backward, wavered, and went down on one knee.

  Emboldened, the man jabbed again.

  The rakeshi fell, his leg twisting beneath him, the motion slow and unnatural. His head bounced on the thick carpet. Lurid apple-green light from the useless lamp bathed the side of his face and cast the room in surreal color. Indistinct sounds refused to match action. The man’s mouth moved and muffled words floated to the rakeshi’s ears.

  “…you have a… keep it down… better use… kill it…”

  The smallest twist of his own head brought the mage into view. He sprawled on the floor close by, his beautiful features grim with pain. His good hand lifted. Another body filled the rakeshi’s vision, stepping over the downed mage to crouch behind and help him sit up.

  The light from the arena darkened. What was this? Sunset? He craned his neck, trying to see, trying to make sense of the anomaly. The pressure in his chest eased a fraction.

  “Look at me.” The aro in Bairith Mindar’s Voice was impossible to resist. “Are you quite finished?”

  So much noise, and as reliable as a swarm of mosquitoes. His lips peeled back from his teeth. While the mage continued to poison the air with his words, the rakeshi focused his waning strength.

  “Do you understand?” Bairith Mindar asked, face serious and eyes narrow.

  With a growl, the rakeshi launched himself at the hated half-breed.