Song Of Mornius

by Diane E Steinbach

  Around their table, large men were pressing close. Gaelin tensed at the acrid smells they brought with them, of roy—a beverage of barley, yeast and chimara flowers—or worse, the fermented potato brew preferred by his stepfather. Despite himself, Gaelin cringed. Then he tilted his staff to lean against it.

  “I had a friend who lived in Kideren,” his rescuer said, eyeing him, “who owned a grakan he’d raised from a cub. Matar gave it love, kept it gentle, but after his death, his younger brother, Alandari, took over. You’ve heard this story, Gaelin? You know it?”

  Gaelin chewed at his lip. He did not want to know. More men were crowding into the tavern. Tucking his feet under his chair, he locked his gaze on the soft-spoken stranger facing him. No, he has a name, Gaelin chided himself, Terrek Florne, and now he read anger in his companion’s gold-flecked stare.

  “The great bear lost weight,” said Terrek. “I saw it once and I could count every rib. Matar’s brother had a cruel streak and liked to hear it howl. Until one day, the beast turned on Alandari and ripped out his throat. I know because my brother, Camron, found him torn to pieces in their barn. The sight of it . . .” Terrek scowled at his hands. “My only brother is dear to me. His exposure to that death unraveled him. Camron lost his senses, and for a time, I had to care for him.”

  Gaelin regarded the cloth next to his bowl, the fabric tinged with blood from between his fingers, reminders of Seth Lavahl. In the stoneware vessel steamed the stew he could not bring himself to eat. “Was the beast destroyed?” he asked pointedly, raising his voice over the tavern’s din.

  Terrek grimaced and shook his head. Watching him, Gaelin picked up his wooden utensil at last and dunked it into his stew.

  “Eat up,” said Terrek. “We need to talk.”

  Gaelin toyed with his food while Terrek ate, again letting his mind wander. With a practiced shake, he dropped his auburn hair over his eyes and glanced out the window at the pub’s glowing lantern.

  Terrek, he thought, squinting at the man across the table. Distracted by the tavern’s noise, Gaelin cast about at the men and women standing near. Did Seth Lavahl come here? How many of these people know him?

  As Terrek set aside his spoon, Gaelin peered at him from beneath his matted hair. “I have to confess!” Gaelin blurted. “I can’t live with what I’ve done. The Enforcers would listen to you.”

  Terrek frowned at his hands and wiped them calmly with his napkin. “Am I to understand you’re asking to die?”

  Gaelin looked at the bowl in front of him and nodded.

  “Well, forget it,” Terrek said. “We don’t kill people for defending themselves.” Leaning his weight against the back of his chair, Terrek appraised him. “If you were stronger, I’d recruit you. I need warriors, criminals or not. You have no home or place to go. I’d take you on, but for your safety, I can’t let myself—”

  “That’s fine. I don’t want to be a burden.”

  “Let me finish.” Terrek reached across the table, and Gaelin felt the larger man’s fingers touch his forehead, flicking the hair from his eyes. “You’re no warrior, and I’m off to battle things you wouldn’t believe: magic-warped humans we call dachs. They’re all muscle and toughened skin. They’re strong and hard to kill. Some have wings, but the ones who don’t are still plenty lethal with their poisonous spines. The cult that makes them . . . Erebos’s slavers . . . I’d be putting you at risk. My father wants me to protect Kideren and Vale Horse. I’m not going to cause the deaths of unskilled men!”

  “I’m strong enough,” Gaelin countered. “I could learn to fight. I could care for your animals until I do.”

  “You’re what, sixteen?” Terrek lifted his tankard of mulled wine to sip at its contents, then licked his lips. “You’d look even younger if we cleaned you up. You’ve hardly any beard.”

  “Nineteen,” said Gaelin. “I’m nineteen.” Angrily he pointed to the right side of his jaw. “I was burned here so now it won’t grow. That’s all.”

  “Still, you’ve been up on that mountain. Now you’re scared to death just sitting there. Have you never seen people?”

  Gaelin met his steady regard. “No. I’ve never seen anyone.”

  “It’s no wonder you seem younger,” Terrek said, “which leads me to my problem. I’ve aided you with food, or I will if you ever eat it. So now what? Do I just leave you here, out in the cold and homeless? You don’t have much meat on you . . . which, come to think of it, how did you make it down the mountain without freezing? You managed it in one day?”

  “If Seth Lavahl can get here to drink . . .” Gaelin stopped, taken aback at his own sarcasm. Again he glanced at his staff, and at the glowing blue stone with its streaks of violet, green, and amber at Mornius’s crown. “I ran; that’s how,” he muttered, while across the table, Terrek inhaled sharply as he focused on the gem.

  “This is old,” Terrek said with a gesture toward the staff’s crystal. “Familiar, too.” Reaching out, he waited for Gaelin’s permission and then touched Mornius’s bottomwood shaft. “I know this.” Carefully he tilted the staff to examine the caged gem. “I studied artifacts from Earth at university. “There are many. If you travel any distance, Gaelin, you will find that there are even whole buildings from Earth—relics, we like to call them—strewn across this world.”

  “I know,” said Gaelin. “That’s what the barn was, where I slept. It’s the word my mother used.”

  “Really?” Terrek cocked his head. “I didn’t realize we had any that large near Kideren. Lesser things like rocks are less familiar, though the elves might know of this. They like to use what quartz they can find from Earth to channel their power. This one’s beautiful, Gaelin. Is it yours?”

  Gaelin nodded. “My father gave it to my mother after he had a premonition of his death. Seth Lavahl wanted their home. He was in town shoeing my father’s horse. Or at least that’s what my mother told me. He had heard that my father had a barn high up on the mountain and wanted it. So he came in the night and slit my father’s throat. The barn wasn’t useable, but he didn’t get to see that until dawn.”

  “Killed for a barn?” Terrek scowled at his bowl. “I never liked him. I saw him trying to shoe a fractious colt once. He got mad at the little beast and threw a hammer at its head. He missed his target, of course, intoxicated as I’m sure he was, but still . . . I guess it shouldn’t surprise me.”

  Gaelin sighed. “Before her death, my mother told me my great-grandfather’s father fought with this staff. She didn’t tell me how, just that he was the first who did. Sometimes the staff helps me, too, and I can’t explain . . . But today was different. I got here by myself.”

  “Your staff has a name. Did you know that? If I’m not mistaken, this is Mornius you carry, and the gem is called the Skystone. The stone is a relic from Earth. It contains—”

  “I didn’t realize the stone had a na—” Gaelin broke off at the sudden intensity of Terrek’s gaze, the flare of warning in his eyes as he stared up.

  Gaelin heard the slow creaking of the floorboards beneath him. He sensed the presence of someone large and very masculine looming behind his back.

  “You’re Florne?” a gravelly voice asked. “The one with the army?”

  As the man spoke, his tone rough and slurred from too much ale, Gaelin cringed. For one wild moment, he feared Seth Lavahl had reassembled himself and trailed him down the mountain.

  “I would hardly call it that,” Terrek said, leaning back in his chair. “I lead a brave rabble of men, many of them hired to defend my father’s interests, as well as Kideren itself, and you.”

  “So Florne Recluse gave you a job, did he?” the big drunk snarled. “How nice. Did he give you those fancy titles, too, Commander?”

  Terrek nodded. “As a matter of fact, he did. He thought the younger men would respond better—”

  “You talked my brother into joining you and now he’s dead, isn’t he?” the man pressed. “Why else wouldn’t he return with you?”

&nbs
p; With a slight shake of his head, Terrek motioned Gaelin to stay still. Then, standing, he thrust back his chair. “Your brother had a mind of his own, Lars. Feyin Broudel wanted to fight! Death is coming for Kideren, and he wanted to stop it.”

  “For Kideren, you say?” Hands clenched, the big man leaned into Gaelin’s peripheral vision, and Gaelin gasped at the fury he saw on the ruddy face. “Death for Kideren? Is that the lie you’re telling these days? Is that what you’re telling this . . . Hades’s blazes, what a stink! What’s this filth you’ve dragged in?”

  “Someone,” said Terrek, “I’d prefer to sit with more than you, and yes, death, for all of us, or worse. People don’t just die, you know. They’re changed into dachs, or bodachs, as we once called them. Ever see one, Lars? I have. During my stay at university, I saw paintings of monsters from Earth called demons. Monsters, and that’s what the dachs are!”

  “Is that how Feyin was killed?” the man returned. “Fighting your ‘demons’ for you? You think your puny band can stop them, but all you do is slay more good men, as you destroyed my brother! What’s your count up to now, Lordling? Fifty, sixty men? Against what . . . thousands?”

  “One hundred and twenty-two, last time I checked.” Terrek softened his voice. “Look, I’m sorry about your brother, but he died defending his home. We fight the cult, Lars, my volunteers and the men my father hired. Which is more than you do sitting here waiting for them to take you. If people like you weren’t so bli—”

  “Fight?” Broudel sputtered. “With ignorant children?”

  A second man charged at Terrek’s back. Larger than the first, he had circled around while Lars spoke. When Terrek fell under the jabs of his attacker’s fists, the tavern’s patrons threw aside their chairs and stood.

  From a shadowed niche flanking the bar, four men in travel-stained garments leapt to Terrek’s aid, charging into the battle with their swords drawn.

  Heart pounding, Gaelin bolted from his seat as sounds of combat filled the little room, driving him to cower in a corner near the door.

  Terrek, clambering to his feet, managed to throw a punch at the largest man before Lars Broudel hooked him around his neck. As Terrek went rigid, Gaelin saw Broudel braced behind him and holding him fast. Frozen with dread, Gaelin watched the drunk draw his sword, and with deliberate slowness, stab his blade through Terrek’s torso.

  An older man sprang to Terrek’s defense, smashing a half-empty bottle over the enraged Broudel’s head. Ignoring him, the drunk adjusted his stance to support Terrek’s weight as he twisted the hilt. With blood on his lips, Terrek sank to the floor.

  Gaelin gawked at the red pool spreading out from beneath his benefactor’s ribs. It reminded him of his capacity for violence—the life he had taken earlier that day. In his grasp, his staff trembled, its blue-violet stone flaring above him. His consciousness separated from his body as an unfamiliar other arrived to manipulate him. As an observer, he witnessed his limbs moving, scrabbling him across the creaky floor to kneel below the battling men.

  Gaelin clamped his staff against his side with his arm as he clung to the wounded man, the room spinning fast around him, the shouts from the combatants muted above him, their movements slowed.

  Far in the distance, he heard a fathomless voice as pressure mounted in his chest, threatening to tear him apart. Desperate for air, Gaelin mastered himself once more and seized Terrek’s wrist, hauling at the armored man’s dead weight with all the strength he could muster.

  “Hang on!” he yelled. Muscles burned over his bruised ribs as he heaved backward. Through the doorway he struggled, dragging the dying Terrek out into the rainy night. Then he knelt.

  “You’re filth, you know that?” came Seth Lavahl’s voice from the storm of his past. “You miserable runt! Why did I ever let you live? I have no—”

  Gaelin hammered his left fist on the flagstones next to his knee. He shuddered as the pain cleared his head. “You listened,” he said, bending over the stricken man. “You wanted to help me.”

  As Gaelin gripped Mornius, the agony in his chest shifted to his fingers. A force like fire thrust his hand down, bringing the weight of the Skystone to bear against his companion’s wound.

  Energy blasted from the stone, forming a cool, silvery current under the driving rain. Eyes closed, Gaelin threw back his head, his writhing body taken by a power he could not control.

  At last a comforting darkness settled upon him, and he sensed himself falling, his body collapsing on the stony path. He managed a breath, and then another.

  An arm slid beneath his back, lifting him into a seated position. Dazed, Gaelin squinted at the figure kneeling beside him, a man’s blurry face he could not make out. “I should die,” he murmured. “I’ve killed someone.”

  “After you saved my life?” a familiar voice asked. “I think not!”

  Gaelin started when he recognized Terrek supporting his back. “You’re alive? What happened? What did I do?”

  “For now, I am,” said Terrek. “Thanks to your staff. It has made you a healer, I see. Well, now I know.”

  “Know what?” Reaching out, his fingertips tingling, Gaelin searched the wet stones and the mud for his staff.

  Terrek chuckled. “What you might do for my men.”

  Chapter 3

  AVALAR MISTAVERE TURNED her back from the storm’s renewed assault. The cruel wind blasted her little boat, thrusting her stumbling from the windrunner’s prow. In dismay, she caught the taste of land in the salty air, the tang of driftweed rotting on stone.

  She clung to the sturdy port rail, holding on tight as the slash of a distant shoreline appeared between the pitching swells. “Impossible!” she groaned. She inspected her boat’s slackened sail above her and nodded. The scraps she had pieced together snapped and rippled, flinging water at her sodden hair.

  “Shortened canvas, as Captain Kurgenrock would want, and yes, Uncle, I am running at an angle. So how in Hothra’s bloody coral could I have come so far? This squall—has it been with me all night?” She glared up at the roiling black clouds. I am a giant, she fumed in silence. You shall not break me!

  Lightning forked behind the waves, and she tensed at the jolt through her bones, the magic within her flesh echoing the storm’s rage. She toppled to her knees, ducking her head as she hastened beneath the boom and hauled herself up onto the helm’s raised seat.

  Breakers splashed the protruding rocks to the port side of her boat, the five looming smudges she craned her neck to see. Bracing her feet at the back of the mast, she seized the tiller, tacking once more to cut through the wind. With a flick of her head, she shook the hair from her eyes, and frantically dug one-handed for her map, groping with red swollen fingers into the breast pocket of her shearling vest to retrieve the soggy parchment. She stared when the drawing flew open, the wind shredding it in her grasp, flinging its tatters to the deck.

  As if it were the backdrop of a dream, she knew the seaboard ahead, recognizing the curve of its bay. She had beheld sketches of the lofty cliffs beyond the gray beach in her lessons at Freedom Hall. The long, jagged gouges in the vertical rock were unmistakable.

  Ever since her childhood, she recalled, she had longed for this—to voyage to Thalus, the land her people feared. Yet, now that it was within her sight, she was gasping for breath, tightness balling in her chest.

  Avalar groaned where she sat at the helm, watching the mist coalesce below the faraway cliffs. Now she discerned phantoms in the fog, remnants of ghosts from the memories she had inherited from her father. Limned in silver on the sand, the specters of the doomed giants swayed in the wind, their wails barely audible as they opened their arms to the sea.

  She gaped, leaning forward over her knees. You did see them, Father, she thought, the ones who arrived too late. Is this why you forbade me to come here? To protect me from the truth? I am no child!

  She bowed her head, her tears burning her cheeks as she sensed the helplessness her father, Grevelin, had felt. She hated he
r magic, the power that uncovered his past and the wounds he had striven to hide.

  Torrents pelted her exposed face and neck, the downpour obscuring her view of the haunted shore. Limp with grief for her long-lost people, she sagged above the tiller.

  “This cannot be Thalus,” she reasoned aloud. “The slavers’ land is farther than this; it lies to the south from our home on Hothra Isle.”

  Again she froze, whimpering under her breath as the cliffs reappeared. Visions knifed through her head. Within a wave’s breaking crest, she glimpsed her father’s boyhood in the tunnels beneath the ground, felt the magic in his flesh, the agony he had suffered when his captors had turned it against him.

  Avalar, frowning, peered through the deluge at the slavers’ former homeland. Why would humans crave our power? she wondered. How could they hold us in thrall as they did?

  She leaned back on her seat, her fingers aching as she gripped the windrunner’s helm. No haunted shore will stop me, she thought, steering hard to port and between the threatening rocks. Once my people learn what I have done, they, too, shall come here. Our grain crops shall flourish once more in this land!

  Her magic revived within her muscles, strengthened by the gale buffeting her body and the splashing of seawater across her back. Through the haze in her eyes, she saw the clouds gather angrily above her head, rotating like a ponderous wheel.

  She howled, clinging to the tiller as her boat shot sideways, buoyed by the corkwood trimming the base of its hull. Clambering to her feet, she caught the stiff fabric flapping over her head with her free hand and leaned back, anchoring the drenched sail with her weight.

  A massive rock filled her vision, jutting black and ominous from its watery cradle. With her left hand still clutching the canvas, she pressed hard against the tiller, struggling to slew her little boat to starboard, to turn . . .

  The prow crumpled upon the stone. Water gushed around her ankles.

  “Sephrym, help me!” Avalar threw herself forward, clinging to the mast as she felt the frigid ocean swelling around her legs, her little boat spinning into a trough. Another wave crashed down with brutal strength, breaking her windrunner’s keel, then tearing her from the mast and into the sea.