He lowered his blade and Wynne’s face fell. Rafen’s sword hand dropped to his side. He felt defeated, like he had run into a wall.
Chapter Six
The
Sianian Wolf
Lessons with Erasmus were hard. Though Alexander had kept up Rafen’s fencing lessons throughout the sabbatical, it had now been three months since Rafen had stopped training. His muscles were unused to the discipline. Erasmus implied there wasn’t much technique he could teach Rafen. After all, Rafen had learned from the best. Still, he hoped that by training Rafen’s body, his mind would be sufficiently tamed for controlling kesmal.
Queen Arlene had taught Rafen that kesmal was an imbalance in the nature of something, causing it to take on supernatural qualities. All things had a unique balance of the four principles: fire, water, earth, and air. To make kesmal, all a philosopher had to do was inject an extra amount of any one quality into the medium he chose to conduct his power. Most philosophers chose to use the air as their medium, though occasionally they manipulated a rock, bush, or something else altogether. The two main types of kesmal were jarl – blood kesmal, which largely influenced physical things; and dun kesmal — which influenced spiritual things. Erasmus said Rafen’s transformation into a wolf was a combination of the two, though his lack of control over his dun kesmal meant he didn’t retain his right mind when he was an animal.
Discipline was Erasmus’ emphasis. He gave up at nothing. When Rafen had a fencing sequence wrong, he forced him to work on it for an entire day. He allowed only minimal rests: five minutes or less.
“And again,” he would say, until Rafen almost exploded with frustration. He would surge forward and attack Erasmus in blind anger, bringing his sword down wildly. Erasmus beat him every time.
“Strong feeling is suicide in battle,” he told Rafen.
After three weeks training, Rafen was tired.
“It will take at least three months for you to get back lost strength,” Erasmus said, giving his sword a swing.
They were in the familiar clearing. Erasmus impatiently watched Rafen chew some dry bread Wynne had brought them both; he had finished his long ago. The man was unnatural. He wandered restlessly around the clearing, deliberately stepping on twigs and dead boxelder leaves to hear them crack.
The screen of leaves above Rafen was thin, because the winter winds swept more of it away daily. The sky was gray, and the sun pale and watery. Nearby, a rustling in the hawthorn behind the boxelders might have been a white-tailed deer. The moisture of rain hung in the air. The world seemed so very languid.
A ringing slap startled him. Belated pain prickled his thigh.
“You’ve had a quarter of an hour,” Erasmus said evenly, now swinging the flat of his sword into Rafen’s other leg.
The violent stinging drove Rafen to his feet. “Will you stop?” he shouted, dropping his bread to the forest floor. He had only had five minutes.
“Hurry up,” Erasmus said. He swung the flat of his sword into Rafen’s left side.
“Aaah!” Rafen yelled, doubling over. He prayed Erasmus hadn’t broken a rib.
As Erasmus moved again, Rafen straightened in a rush, whipping his dented broadsword from its sheath. The next blow descended on Rafen’s shoulder with crushing force. Rafen stumbled back and parried awkwardly. Before he knew it, Erasmus had drawn him into another two hours’ practice with no rests. Rafen’s legs quaked. He struggled to keep his footing, his lungs burning. Erasmus kept lunging, shouting out routines, dictating exercises.
Rafen pushed past weariness, discovering he was a machine. The moves that had troubled him for three weeks became second nature. He scarcely heard Erasmus say “three, four, seven, eleven, two,” before he performed the routine. His left arm moved with alacrity that he derived from the air around him. For the first time since his father’s death, Rafen’s soul reached out for the Phoenix once more.
“Eight, one, nine, five, six.”
The knowledge that the space around him was filled by some golden, supreme presence renewed his strength, reminding him of the past. Memories of fencing with Alexander returned to him. Rafen wondered what had become of him. He had been on the ship when the royal family had entered the palace, unlike General Jacob, who had been in Siana at the time the Lashki had taken over. With a hollow feeling, Rafen realized Jacob was probably dead too. Uneasy memories of his father’s poor fencing skills slipped through his mind: King Robert fumbling with a parry, then staring surprisedly when the cork on Rafen’s sword prodded his sagging belly. And then Etana was saying, “I know what you’re capable of, Rafen…”
“Twelve, three, seven, five, two.”
Humiliating tears came to Rafen’s eyes again. He kept moving through the routine: up, down, a sideways slash, a step to the right, a step across, left, and then the upward slash followed by the downward stroke. The stillness around him was that of the Phoenix watching over him.
“Well,” Erasmus said.
He had stopped calling out routines. Rafen stood still, quivering slightly and panting. His sword hung at his side. He raised his eyes to Erasmus’.
“I’m very sorry,” Erasmus said. “I know this pains you. Aye, you remember much you want to forget.” Erasmus’ wrinkled face filled with compassion. To Rafen’s surprise, his eyes were misty.
Rafen blinked unshed tears away. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m better… now.”
“He would have wanted you to fight,” Erasmus said. Rafen knew he referred to his father. “I saw his face the day he announced you were the Fledgling. He was proud. He would want you to fight for Zion’s sake.”
Rafen nodded, unable to speak.
“I know you’re tired,” Erasmus said. “Grief does that. I understand. I lost my wife twelve moons ago.”
An explosive rainfall rent the air around them. The trees whistled in the wind, and the leaves rushed above. Silver sheets filled the space between Rafen and Erasmus. A delicious shiver ran down Rafen’s back as the rain splashed on his shoulders and raindrops trickled down his face. He looked at Erasmus again, surprised. He had never given a thought to where Erasmus’ wife had gone.
“We won’t train much longer. Zion willing we will raise some supporters within the next four weeks,” Erasmus said. “If we have thirty or forty men, we can start some trouble for the Tarhians.”
Rafen nodded. The mention of some decent fighting sent a thrill through him. He found himself smiling at Erasmus. Somehow, he’d grown to like him.
*
The huge man cringed beneath Alakil’s shadow, and Alakil watched him with the disinterest of the Lashki Mirah, the ruler and conqueror he had chosen to be. The stone house was shadowed, and its earthen floor was ribbed and furrowed with the struggle that had taken place. The warm air of Zal Ricio ’el Nria wafted through the door; air that was never too humid, but merely part of the lush, living atmosphere of a land where natives ruled, as all natives should.
It was beautiful, it was sheer ecstasy to make a seven foot Zaldian cringe. The Zaldians were philosophers in their own right, each and every one of them, and Alakil had always respected them for their indigenous strengths.
The Zaldian stared up at Alakil, one eye bruised and closed. A long blue stripe across his forehead stretched to his hairline, and a trail of his dark, black-green blood dribbled out of his mouth.
“I have nothing,” he said, his tattooed hands forming fists.
He was sprawled against the back wall of his stone house, his broken spear at Alakil’s feet. Alakil leered at him.
“You will have nothing,” he said in the Ashurite accent he was fiercely proud of. “The pain has not really begun yet. Tell me: did he leave the country with them or not?”
The Zaldian’s wide, dark brown eyes stared at the Lashki, and beads of sweat glistened on his swarthy skin. Slowly and deliberately, he raised his head and spat at the bottom of the Lashki’s robe.
Lifting the copper rod in one quick movement, the Lashki held it over the
Zaldian’s arm and focused on the fast, fluid motion of his own kesmal. First a downward jerk slit the Zaldian’s forearm open, and he screamed. Next the Lashki raised the rod fractionally. A great, solidified slug detached itself from the open wound and hung from the rod, twirling slightly. The Lashki had been fascinated when he had first discovered he could do this with blood.
The Zaldian’s shriek became a moan. He slid completely onto the floor, his face twitching. “I have… no picture,” he gasped, his left arm lying at his side. Blackish blood bubbled up like water in a mountain brook and overflowed onto the skin.
“I told you what he looked like,” Alakil said. “I am running out of patience, Zaldian. He was short with black hair. He had the face of one who does kesmal, and the eyes of one who has seen the Phoenix.”
The Zaldian opened his mouth to reply, his breathing a rasp. The Lashki checked him.
“Remember that if you do not tell me, you will die a more painful death than the one I will give you if you do.”
The Zaldian’s breathing became faster.
“He was here,” he said. “Yes, he was.”
“And he left with them?” Alakil probed. “In good health?”
“Yes, yes.”
The Lashki’s face darkened. Noticing it, the Zaldian gasped, “He was sickly, perhaps.”
“No,” the Lashki said, in the peremptory tone of a parent to a misbehaving child.
He swooped down and seized the Zaldian’s throat, shoving the tip of the copper rod into the bruised eye. The Zaldian’s scream was consuming. However, the Lashki was listening to the song of Nazt around and within him. If only Nazt were not blind! Then it could tell him where Rafen was now, rather than constructing visions for him.
“You will tell me the truth,” the Lashki said loudly, “and not what you think I want to hear. Did he leave after all? Or did your people hide him here?”
He removed the rod from the Zaldian’s bleeding eyelid, and released his neck. The man’s head dropped back onto the earthen floor with a thud. It rolled sideways, and briefly, Alakil wondered if he had killed him too soon. Alakil had worked so hard to find this man who served the Zaldian chief. He had no family to miss him.
The man’s one healthy eye opened a crack. “No,” he said. “He is alive. He did leave with them… healthy… ready to return to Siana.”
The Lashki nodded, stroking the rod. It had seemed so probable that Rafen was dead. Yet the boy had more resilience than he had thought. The Lashki hissed in his throat and absentmindedly performed the jerk and lift action again.
The Zaldian’s dying shriek was thin and stretched. His neck tensed as his mouth opened as far as it would go. The Lashki raised the rod, and the great dark, dripping mass of the heart swam before him in a coagulated globe.
*
They’d done it in Tarhia. Rafen was determined they wouldn’t do it here. The woman’s screams were louder now. He had almost reached her. He bolted through the fiddlewoods and red cedars, almost swallowing the leaves before his face. A bobwhite scuttled out of his way. Bursting through a screen of branches, Rafen paused, panting.
A stone’s throw from him, a little thatched farmhouse stood on the deserted landscape beyond the Woods. The door was open. Four Tarhian soldiers in blue uniforms were clustered around it. One dragged a woman out of the house by her hair.
Rafen’s blood pulsed in his ears. It didn’t matter what Erasmus said about messing with kesmal; Erasmus no longer spent every moment of the day and night with him. After their daily training, he had gone home, and now Rafen could feel the Phoenix’s eyes on him. He wasn’t afraid. Instinctively, he knew this time his sanity would not abandon him.
He fell to the ground on all fours, hair rising along his body in a furry black tidal wave. His face lengthened into the familiar wolf snout. His jet black eyes smoldering, he kicked up the loose dirt with his paws in a wild charge toward the house. Savage barks sounded like thunderclaps in his head as he flew toward the Tarhians.
They were moving. A broad man, heavyset and muscular, still gripped the woman’s hair. He screamed something unintelligible as the others swung their rifles into position. One shot rang out, and it was an exaggerated miss. The woman was tugging desperately to escape, her face wet with tears and sweat.
Reaching the group, Rafen dodged a blow from one of the Tarhians’ rifles. He focused on the exposed neck, tensed his legs, then sprang. Something internal stopped him. He threw himself sideways, his teeth closing on the flesh of the man’s shoulder. Jerking his head back, Rafen ripped himself free, rolled in the air, and fell to the ground, his joints bending to break his fall. The Tarhian dropped his rifle onto the packed dirt, screaming in agony. Rafen whirled around to see the next armed Tarhian making for him. He pounced again, this time closing his teeth on the forearm. The Tarhian staggered sideways when Rafen released him, and he and his wounded companion started running as fast they could. A third Tarhian could be seen some distance away, having fled as soon as Rafen reached them. That left the broad man by the door.
Rafen lunged toward him. The broad man released the woman, who ran frantically toward the Woods. Rafen jerked himself left when the man hurled a short knife at him. Springing at the Tarhian’s chest, Rafen shot his head upward and allowed his jaws to close on the throat. Even though the man was pulling at him with hairy hands, his resistance dwindled instantly.
Opening his mouth, Rafen dropped to the ground. The bulk of the broad man sank slowly near the door, like a large ship sliding underwater. The woman had stopped running and turned to stare at Rafen wildly, already anticipating her fate.
Yet Rafen was finished. He trotted away from the fallen Tarhian toward the Woods.
*
“She said the Sianian Wolf came to her,” Erasmus said, staring at Rafen.
Rafen pretended to be very busy sharpening his sword on the head-sized rock next to him. The boxelders and oaks surrounding the clearing were alive with the frigid wind and the songs of wood thrushes and cerulean warblers. Leaves crackled before falling. Dimly, the sound of the river reached Rafen’s ears.
Erasmus rose from the patch of dirt he’d been sitting on. “Aye, and more interesting was that these milksops had rifles.”
Rifles were rare in Siana. Only the Tarhians and the vagabonds in the West knew how to produce firearms. When the worlds had been one, Zion had created two kinds of people: the pure-bloods (Liai, changelings, nephilim, and Children of the West, from whom the Zaldians were descended), and the humans. While the pure-blooded had kesmal in their veins, the humans had to rely on their natural abilities. The Tarhians, a people with little kesmal, were descended from humans interbred with a minority of purebloods, and had, through their art, produced firearms. They guarded their secret jealously. The vagabonds and pirates had gained access to firearms by being in close counsel with Talmon.
“Would you know it,” Erasmus went on, “the clever wolf was too fast for them.”
Rafen swallowed. He knew none of the wolves in his pack could have done what he had done that day, even with animal instinct.
Erasmus’ tone became deadly. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
Rafen had been expecting Erasmus to hit him with his sword again. This response worried him more.
“Maybe,” he said indifferently.
Silence. Erasmus turned his sword over in his hands, looking at it intently.
Rafen met his eyes, reddening. “They were attacking her,” he said, his voice rising. “They were Tarhians! So I transformed.”
“And you remember everything you did?” Erasmus sounded suspicious.
Rafen did remember. He remembered often in his sleep the events of five days ago. When he had transformed into a wolf before, potent forgetfulness had taken him. His time was outrageously and savagely enjoyable, and he recalled it only as a wolf. Five days ago had been different. When he had lunged toward the Tarhians, he had had all the coolness and calculating of a man, all the intelligence and vision of the Fledglin
g. He had reasoned that his victim deserved death.
Yet his mind went over and over the tugging motion that had torn the throat open. He had seen people die before. Still, horror came over him every time he recalled the Tarhian falling. He had delivered death, the sudden cessation, the ultimate attack and end.
“Yes,” he said. “I remember.”
“You killed a man.”
“Yes.”
The admission that had felt like a stone in his throat sounded on the air, ugly, sibilant.
“Well, you have my congratulations.”
A smile spread over Erasmus’ weathered features. Rafen straightened, staring blankly at him.
“Your abilities are that much better already,” Erasmus said, still smiling. It was the closest Rafen had ever seen Erasmus get to the “nice old man” appearance. “The Woods first awoke the kesmal in you, and now you are controlling it. I’ve noticed the improvement for some time now, actually. You know your way through the Woods much better than before, because of your wolf senses. This time you used your craft to help someone… and you remembered how high the stakes were. You did well.”
“But was it wrong?” Rafen blurted out. He sheathed his sword with a shaking hand.
“Ah,” Erasmus said. “That is every warrior’s question.” He paused, staring at the green cupola above. “Rafen, good and evil can’t bide in harmony with each other. Evil will try to crush good. Good must abstain from evil. The two are in tension.”
He moved around the clearing, looking at each of the gray tree trunks in turn as if they had the answers.
“Afore long,” he said, “one will destroy the other. Evil attacks first, because it has no rules. However, if good is to survive, we have to fight. If we don’t destroy evil, it will destroy us.”
“Then it’s only a struggle for survival,” Rafen said, feeling like he were suffocating. “Good and evil both want to survive. They aren’t any different.”
“No,” Erasmus said quickly. “It’s not only a struggle for survival, Rafen. It is about whom you serve, Zion or Nazt. It is about furthering a kingdom. If a man serves Nazt, he serves a force that wants to tear down everything. If he serves Zion, he is good, not evil. When Zion establishes a perfect kingdom someday in the future, there will be no evil. We are already warriors of that kingdom. We have to destroy His enemies.”
The Sianian Wolf Page 6
