His friend’s face imperceptibly twisted at the mention of Ren much like Keltheryl’s spirit at the unspoken reminder of Hadrion.
“Right,” he croaked through a dry mouth.
Raimie left without another word, and Keltheryl reached for anger to smother the unpleasantness which threatened to take over once more, but the fiery emotion had dissipated upon his confrontation with his friend. In his mind’s eye, Hadrion grinned at him, pleased to have learned the technique Keltheryl had been teaching.
Oh, gods. Please, let me return to the familiar, bored state I floated in for the last dozen cycles.
Why had he ever thought welcoming emotions back a good idea, and where was a distraction when he needed one? Nothing could keep pain at bay. Nothing except…
He fumbled for the peace and stillness at the center of his being, a quiet blocked by a thin barrier, and a wash of calm worked its magic on the distress which ate at him. Releasing the breath he’d held, he hastily strode forth to find somewhere to sleep for the night.
“Master primeancer, sir?” the yard master asked behind him. “I- I hate to mention this, but… you’re glowing. You, um, you might want to dim that a bit if you wish to stay hidden.”
The man must have seen something on Keltheryl’s turned face because his hands rose before him.
“Don’t concern yourself with me! I know how important it is to keep your secret!” Swallowing, the master looked away. “I had a little brother… He…
“Anyway, he wasn’t very good at concealing what he was. The Enforcers came for him when he was nine. He put up a good fight, but-”
“Ele primeancers walk Auden again?” Keltheryl asked.
The master seemed taken aback. “Well, sure. Both varieties crop up all the time, probably more than we know. The poor things must quickly learn how to hide their primeancy, otherwise, they’re recruited or murdered by the Enforcers, depending on their affinity.”
Keltheryl rounded on Creation who guiltily browsed a stack of practice pikes. “You told me Ele was abandoning the physical realm.” He carefully controlled his voice, keeping it blank.
“We are.” Creation’s gaze darted up to him and down to the weapons.
“Really. Yet, Ele can somehow spare splinters for new primeancers here.”
The splinter refused to stop his inspection.
“Why are you keeping secrets from me? I’d thought we’d moved past this cloak and dagger nonsense,” Keltheryl said. “I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me, even if it comes with a healthy dose of complaining and sarcasm. Do I not deserve the full truth?”
Creation took a deep breath, held it, and released it in a rush. “I can’t,” was all he would say.
“Because your whole says so, or-?”
“Because I’m trying to keep you safe!” Creation bellowed, finally facing Keltheryl. “You don’t know from what I’ve shielded you, what the whole wants from you!”
“Maybe if you told me, I could HELP!” Keltheryl shouted.
They glared at one another. Vaguely, Keltheryl was aware of the yard master’s quiet lock-up and departure. His hasty exit was probably for the best. This conversation had quickly barreled into dangerous territory, and if it unraveled further, Keltheryl didn’t want anyone caught in the crossfire.
“Try to draw from me,” Creation said.
“What?” Keltheryl asked. “Why would I-? You’re not my source.”
“I know,” Creation said, crossing his arms, “but you’re our Champion. You can draw from any piece of any aspect. Taking from yourself is easier, or at least, it must be so, otherwise, you’d have sought an alternative like this ages ago.”
“…all right.”
The splinter’s logic seemed sound, but Keltheryl couldn't help but feel surprise when he reached toward Creation and found a point of peace within the splinter.
“Huh.”
He teased an Ele tendril from Creation, a wondering smile spreading across his face, when the flow shut off. Startled, he lost control of the thread he held, and it zipped off, tipping over a barrel full of poorly made staves. Had Ele just… cut him off?
“What. The. Godsdamned. Hell?” Keltheryl uttered, barely aware of speaking in the haze of his shock.
Creation was suddenly beside him, hand on his shoulder, and for a millisecond, he could swear he felt pressure there.
“My whole indeed retreats from the physical plane, but you must remember, Erianger, we’re an eternal force of nature. Our retreat may take eons. It has to start somewhere, however, and the vast majority of the whole has decided it will begin with you. I tried so hard to argue… I’m sorry.”
With… him? After everything he’d sacrificed for Ele? Was Creation being serious? One look at the splinter’s face said he was, and there the anger was again, bright and crystalline in its purity, spinning Keltheryl from the splinter so great was the stranglehold he induced.
“Thank you, Creation, you’ve provided the perfect escape from grief and guilt, but you might want to leave me. I appreciate you’ve fought for me, but even the faintest glimmer of Ele will tip me over at the moment, and we don’t want to experience an out of control Champion again, do we?” he asked, facing the splinter with a peeled back smile and bared teeth.
Creation had already popped away. The splinter knew him well.
What now? Did he find Ren? The laughter which filled the air sounded almost crazed, and it cut off when he clamped his lips together. No, probably not wise to encounter his grieving sister when he was like this.
He could find the nearest Kiraak encampment and wipe them out, but… Raimie had discovered a way to cleanse Corruption from the pitiful beings. Even if it remained to be seen whether returning the Kiraak’s humanity was a blessing or a curse, he couldn’t slaughter monsters who had the potential to be free of Daevetch.
Raimie’s request required his attention at some point. His friend probably meant for Keltheryl to find him in the morning, but he needed something to occupy his time now, and his only other option was to try sleep. He knew how such an attempt would end: a night spent raging at Ele and the life within which it had captured him.
Mind made up, Keltheryl cast off every leftover Ele speck which clung to him and left the training yard in his wake.
* * *
The view while balancing atop Tiro’s concealing lattice was, as usual, terrifying due to its height above good old, solid ground. Keltheryl carefully crossed the length of the beam Raimie had chosen for his perch until he hovered over his friend. Raimie cracked an eye open, and his face scrunched with disbelief.
“You already talked to Ren?” he asked.
“Couldn’t find her,” Keltheryl replied. “What do you need from me?”
“This can’t wait until morning?” Raimie complained.
“No.”
His friend must have sensed an inkling of the frustration and fury which lurked beneath Keltheryl’s mask because he sat up and folded his legs under one another.
“I need you to restore my father,” he said, meeting Keltheryl’s gaze as if the request was a challenge.
And it was. Keltheryl distinctly recalled explaining to his friend the reasons he avoided using his special curse on other people.
“Why would you ask this of me?” he inquired, more from curiosity than anything else.
Raimie wouldn’t impinge upon another’s beliefs unless he thought the intrusion absolutely necessary.
“I need to clear my debt to my father, and restoring him is the only way I can repay him now that Teron’s dead,” Raimie answered.
His gaze flickered away for a second, unfocusing while a hand waved, but his eyes quickly returned to Keltheryl with even greater conviction.
“You know I can’t do as you ask.” Keltheryl tried to persuade Raimie to retract the request. “My reasoning-”
“Is tenuous at best.” Raimie finished for him. “Even if you’re correct concerning the severe consequences which afflict the people you fi
x, I’ve explained the possibility to my father. He understands a worse malady may curse him later. The prospect didn’t change his desire to have his legs restored.”
Keltheryl reigned anger in with difficulty. He left his hand on his saber, enough comfort radiating from the aggressive stance to quell the outburst he wished to unleash.
“You told your father what I can do?” he asked.
“It was necessary,” Raimie answered, his jaw set. “You’ve no need to worry, Khel. My father won’t prove a danger to you. He’ll leave, for good, once I’ve paid him in full for my failings.”
“Why would you banish your father?” Keltheryl asked.
Family was the ultimate connection. They were the ones to protect and love no matter what. Why would Raimie, who’d sacrificed so much for the soldier’s he’d adopted as family, desire an absence of his father’s presence?
Raimie’s teeth ground together, and his focus turned inward. After a solid minute of silence, he growled with frustration.
“I’m telling him, Nyl! He’s my best friend! He deserves to know the truth, so keep your objections to yourself,” he mumbled to no one.
At least, no one Keltheryl could see. Raimie extended a hand to the beam before him.
“Please, sit.”
And so, Raimie told Keltheryl everything. About Nylion whom he called his ‘second half’. About the life he’d led as a child and the accident which had caused his mother’s death. About his family’s conspiracy to separate him from an essential part of who he was. About their manipulation of his memories so Nylion was all but forgotten. About his struggle to break the spell and return to who he’d been ten years ago. About the consequence of two lives jumbled in his head instead of one.
“I don’t want revenge, even if that’s what Nyl longs for more than anything else. I only want justice for what they did. While I can’t touch Marcuset or Gistrick because of their influence on the troops or Eledis because, well,” Raimie shuddered, “Eledis, I believe I can safely exile my father to the mercy of Doldimar’s domain, and I can rest easy knowing banishment won’t be a death sentence for him. He did serve as spymaster for Kaedesa’s Hand at one point.
“Can you understand, Khel? My father, Eledis, all of them, they… I don’t know if the banishment will be permanent, but my father can’t stay with me right now. I’d leave him if I could, walk away and never look back, but I’m needed here. They need me, and I… I can’t have distractions. Bad enough Eledis will stay to remind me of my fragmented past,” Raimie finished. “Now you know why I’ve come to you. I want to right the scales before sending my father away, and to do that, I need to fix his legs. Please, Khel, I need your help.”
Something more had to hide behind Raimie’s desire specifically for Aramar to leave, something he either hid from Keltheryl or perhaps from himself….
He, however, was distracting from the real questions. How was Keltheryl to respond to such a confession? It had been many cycles since any had sought to confide in him, and no one had ever carried a secret this complicated or horrific.
Also, what did one say to someone who’d admitted to hearing another voice in his head?
“Please say something,” Raimie whispered.
Keltheryl flinched at how similar his response was to Raimie’s upon his Ele’s Champion admission last fall.
“So, it’s Nylion, not Nyl?” he blurted the first question to come to mind.
Raimie blinked. “Did you know about my other half?” he asked.
“I had my suspicions after Da’kul,” Keltheryl confirmed. “Raimie… this having a second person in your head thing-”
“I know how crazy it sounds, trust me. I know…” Raimie went distant again as if listening. “But he’s there! He’s protected me my whole life. I can’t just deny him!”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Keltheryl said. “It’s just a little much. Then again, I suppose me telling you I’ve been reincarnated several hundred times to fight for an invisible force of nature would have been a lot for you. So, why don’t you answer my first question rather than letting us dwell on our own private insanities. Nylion?”
“His name’s Nylion, but I call him Nyl for short,” Raimie answered with a smirk. “It’s our private joke because anyone who ever learns of him insists he isn’t real, just a figment of my mind, but they don’t know anything.” He spat the last words.
“Even if he were simply something your mind concocted, he’d be real to you,” Keltheryl mused, surprised by the conclusions he was drawing. “So, whether he is or not doesn’t matter one way or the other.”
“Exactly! Thank you.”
Was that it? Did he simply accept what Raimie had said? Most people would run screaming after his friend’s confession. Then again, Keltheryl wasn’t most people.
So someone named Nylion lived in his friends head? So what? Raimie was Raimie, no matter what else might clog his mind, and Aramar had hurt his friend.
Cautiously climbing to his feet, Keltheryl dusted off his clothes. “Where’s your father, Raimie?”
“Does that mean you’ll fix him?” his friend asked in response.
“Let’s see. Aramar not only tried to make you his version of normal by suppressing who you are,” Keltheryl held up a finger, “but he did it so poorly the change didn’t stick and you suffered when the spell broke. Add to that how whiny he was in Ada’ir after Kaedesa captured you and the drain he’s placed on us since the paralysis, then yes, I’ll risk the consequences to restore his legs.”
“Please don’t hurt him more than required,” Raimie muttered.
“Of course not! He’s your father, no matter what he’s done in the past. I’ll only restore him because you’ve asked.”
“Then… I believe he’s at Sigemond’s,” Raimie said.
“Great!” Keltheryl replied. “Better get going if I want to find him before dawn. The descent from this awful height will take an hour at the least, and I’ll have to hike across the city following it.”
“You’re not taking the fast route down?” Raimie asked.
“I’m Keltheryl at the moment, my friend. I’m incognito amongst the humans, so no prominent displays of Ele magic for me,” Keltheryl answered, attempting to make a funny face. “I’m slowed to mundane speeds.”
Raimie laughed and then snorted, trying to contain it. “I’m sorry. That’s just…” He burst out laughing again. “It's terribly ironic is all. Champion of Ele can’t use Ele.”
The smile dropped from Keltheryl’s face. Fury tugged at him, begging him to indulge, but he turned on his heels.
“Night, Raimie,” he mumbled, raising a hand toward his friend.
“Good night!” Raimie called. “Oh, one last thing! Father knows you’re Kheled.”
He pulled up short, already transitioning to the Eselan persona. Gods, that kid couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it. Ruefully shaking his head, Kheled made for the lattice’s perimeter and the safety of solid ground below.
* * *
As usual, the tavern was noisy, packed, and smelled strongly of alcohol and sticky sweetness. Kheled meandered to the bar, raising a hand to grab the barkeep’s attention.
“Ah!” Sigemond exclaimed. “Keltheryl! A whiskey fur yu, my friend?”
“No, thank you.” Kheled chuckled. “Tempting, but no. I’m looking for Aramar. Heard tell he was here.”
“Yu hurd right! In corner there.” Sigemond pointed.
Aramar’s familiar, drab hair should have been a blazing beacon for Kheled, considering its exact similarity to Raimie’s. His wheelchair required so much floor space a bubble absent bodies surrounded the man, an abnormality in the busy tavern. How had Kheled missed him?
“Thank you, Sigemond!” He ruefully imparted his gratitude, grateful the barkeep hadn’t ridiculed his imperceptiveness.
Slicing through the crowd was a chore in which Kheled hated to partake, but he went forth despite his misgivings. By the time he reached the tavern’s far wal
l, he was out of breath.
When he flopped onto the bench opposite Raimie’s father, Aramar was in the process of raising a froth-topped mug to his lips. He thought better of taking a sip and lowered it to the table.
“Kheled,” he intoned.
“One of the many names I go by,” Kheled acknowledged.
“I always knew there was something off about you,” Aramar murmured. “I assume your story encompasses more than what my son shared, but for my purposes, I suppose hearing the full tale wouldn’t matter…”
He trailed off, looking anywhere but at Kheled. “He told you what he wants?”
“He did.”
Aramar’s shoulders fell, and his lips went white. “How do we do this?” he asked.
“I touch you and allow the magic to do as it wishes rather than restraining it as I must. Your maladies will transfer to me, and you’ll be free to walk again.”
“Transfer?” Aramar asked. “Does that mean you’ll become crippled in my stead?”
“I’ll be fine,” Kheled answered with a feral grin at which Aramar flinched. “I’d make a request of you.”
“Whatever you want!” Aramar promised.
“You once laid claim to the title of spymaster, correct?” Kheled asked. “Once we’re finished, I’d bid you leave here as a spy would. No one can notice a man condemned to a wheelchair walks from Sigemond’s tavern.”
“You want to do this here?” Aramar hissed, glancing around the busy tavern. “You don’t want to go somewhere more private?”
“Here is fine,” Kheled replied.
He didn’t wait for permission. Resting his hand on Aramar’s, he Let Go. Tremendous force tore through his spine, an abrupt flash of agony which vanished so quickly it dazed him, and he lost all feeling below his waist. The paralysis, Kheled had expected. The drunkenness, however, came as a surprise. He toppled forward onto the table’s wooden surface, the spinning room refusing him time to balance on his dead hips and legs.
A King's Caution (The Eternal War Book 2) Page 30
