He motioned to the swaying collage of pines around them.
“Unless your plan is anything short of digging a hole in the ground and staying there for the next ten months, you’d be better off finding another way to get through the freeze.”
Raz sat for a long minute, pondering the advice.
“Then where would I go?” he asked finally. “What’s the closest town from here?”
Arrun didn’t respond at that.
“Arrun?” Raz pressed.
“Azbar,” the boy answered reluctantly. “Lueski and I ran in a circle, hoping the hunters would get tired and return home since they were so close. We’re less than two days away but—”
“Can you take me there?”
“What? No! Have you not been listening? If we get caught in that place we’re as good as dead. They’ll chain us to the Arena walls just to make sure we don’t run again!”
“Arrun,” Raz said quietly, “I promise you, if you take me to Azbar, I will make sure no harm comes to you. That goes even more so for Lueski. I’ll throw myself in the Cages before I let a girl her age step into a place like the Arena.”
“The Cages?” Arrun asked, confused. “… I don’t understand.”
“It’s not important,” Raz told him, pulling his hood up and lying on his side as he wrapped a wing over his body for warmth. “But you have my word. Take me to Azbar, and I will see to it that you and your sister can stop running for good.”
CHAPTER 7
“Adventure is the essence of life. What would we be were it not for excitement, for that bold sense of daring and pleasure? It is not mankind’s place to sit idly back in the comforts of our communities, but rather to take hold of Laor’s gift of life and experience it to its fullest. Shameful is the man who has never felt the sand of the Southern desert under his feet, or experienced the rush of the Northern winds atop a mountain. Shameful is he who does not wish to ford a neck-deep river, or witness the sun rise over the eastern horizon of the Dramion Sea. We have been blessed with life, blessed with the ability to make and hold on to memories till and beyond our deathbed. What would we be if we did not take advantage of these wonderful gifts, and instead let opportunity pass us by?”
—Xaviun Fuerd, High Priest of Cyurgi’ Di, c. 550 v.S.
It was a rare day for being so close to the freeze. Talo looked up from his place in the saddle, smiling at the shining sun he could only barely glimpse through the trees. They’d been on the road for three days now, but today was the first he and Carro had been able to shed their thick deerskin mantles and stuff them away into their packs. They rode now in typical traveler’s attire: sleeveless fur-lined leather jerkins, layered wool pants, and heavy boots. While he felt oddly uncomfortable outside the customary white robes of his faith, Talo couldn’t help but enjoy the freedom as they made their way through the Woods, his steel staff lying lengthwise across his lap. It had been a long time since he’d left the Citadel with it, and as he took a deep breath he reached down, feeling the strength of the metal between his fingers. It reminded him of decades long past where he’d spent years at a time away from anyplace he might have called home, adventures after he was first granted his consecration. He remembered climbing the ragged slopes of the Vietalis Ranges, fending off ambushes by the winter animals and the wild mountain men along the way. He remembered the western coastline, trailing leagues and leagues of pebbled beaches textured with bleached driftwood logs and shiny pearly shells. He remembered the heat of the South in summer and bitter cold of the Northern valley towns in full clutch of the freeze.
Talo did not resent his place amongst the Laorin. The Lifegiver had seen to grant him just reprieve for his hard time of servitude in the form of the High Priest’s mantle, and it was a comfortable life for an aging man. But Talo had never been one to sit idle when his hands could aid in the work that needed to be done, and he often pined for the days when it was he who was set off into the world, and not the younger Priests and Priestesses he set off himself.
How I’ve missed you, old friend, Talo thought privately, rubbing a thumb against the roughhewn steel of the staff as he watched the patched dirt and grass of the forest road pass beneath them. More than I’ve ever let myself realize, I believe.
“You could do it again, you know?”
Talo blinked, shaken from his brief musings. Turning in his saddle, he looked back to find Carro watching him closely.
“What?”
“You could do it again,” the Priest repeated, clucking his horse into a trot until he was riding beside his partner. “You don’t have to bear the title if you don’t want to. It is not a forced position. You have the right to pass it on anytime you see fit.”
Talo sighed, turning his eyes back to the road.
“Am I so obvious?” he asked. A moment later he felt a hand rest gently on his knee. Carro had pulled his horse close enough to Talo’s to lean over and reach.
“Not to those who do not know you as well as I,” Carro said gently, giving him a small smile. “But barely a fraction of the year has passed and already I see you tire of it. Your energy is gone. You seem… unhappy.”
Talo hesitated, then moved to lace his fingers overtop Carro’s.
“If you are concerned about us…”
“No,” Carro said with a laugh, pulling his hand away and moving his horse to the other side of the path once more. “I’m concerned about you. I can’t read your thoughts, Talo, as much as I’d like to, but it’s as plain as a black bear in the snow to me that you sometimes wish the title had been given to someone else. Why not hand it off? No one would think less of you, considering you’ve done well even in the brief time you’ve held it. We could say this trip was a chance to see how Jofrey handles the title. If he does well, he could replace you.”
Talo thought about it. If he renounced the High Priest’s position, he’d have full freedom to personally address the matters he cared about. The last few years had been one thing. Tending to Eret and making sure the old Priest’s affairs were all in order had been an all-consuming detail. He hadn’t felt the nagging desire to be more than a man behind a desk during that time, content with aiding his former mentor with whatever the ailing man had needed. Now that Eret was held in His embrace, though, things were different…
Talo had hated having to argue with Syrah about leaving the Citadel. For one thing he hated arguing with her because the woman was like a daughter to him, one he’d even given his family name to, and she was as intelligent, calculating, and kind as he could ever have hoped his own children might have been had Carro and he had that option. The fact that she’d disapproved of his decision was saddening. Not because he felt betrayed in any way, but because her disapproval had reason.
It was that fact that had bothered Talo the most about his departure. The concept that taking matters into his own hands was not the best method of dealing with a situation was foreign to him, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. All his life Talo had been a man of action, even before finding the Lifegiver, and sitting back as others carried the burden was not a natural part for him to play. It was a part for people like Petrük, that insufferable viper, who claimed good intentions while truthfully only seeking the comforts such positions allowed.
Perhaps I could step away… Talo thought, coaxing his horse back onto the trail as it swerved towards what must have been a particularly appealing patch of grass. Hearing himself think, though, he smiled.
“Carro al’Dor, you shameful bastard,” he said with a laugh, looking at the Priest. “What kind of influence have you become to me? You’ve got me dreaming of long roads and open skies.”
Carro grinned mischievously, shrugging.
“I merely blew on the budding flame. The dreams were already there, as I’m sure you know.”
Too true.
Talo nodded. But was it worth the worry, really? He thought of Eret—a man much like himself in so many ways—and of all the things he had achieved as High Priest. Eret had found a way to
transform the title into something ideal for his manner of handling the responsibilities the position presented, so why couldn’t Talo do the same? Was he really thinking of giving it all up just for the chance to step into the sun again? His knee barely let him walk on a good day, and managing the winding steps down the mountain path had been a painful and time-consuming ordeal. If he were being truthful, Talo doubted he had much time left before he’d have to choose between Carro casting a permanent splint over his leg, or be satisfied with a life lived from his ass, which would be planted firmly on his bed.
“I think it’s something to think about another time,” he said after a while, turning to look at Carro. “For now we have more pressing matters to attend to before we can worry about any of mine.”
“Unfortunately,” Carro said sourly. “I’ve heard of this Quin Tern, Talo. I know you dealt with his father a long time ago, but between what you’ve told me of him and what I’ve gathered of his son, they are as far apart as can be.”
“Markus was a good man, despite his decisions,” Talo replied with a nod. “He was fairly easily swayed away from the temptations of the coin the Arena was bringing in, and even became an advocate for the shutting down of others when he realized Azbar could stand on its own two feet without the fights.”
“Which would make his son the black to his white,” Carro said insistently. “This is not a man to see reason unless it can be counted and spent. I understand that the towns suffered much this past freeze, but if half the things I’ve heard from the Azbar temple are true, then storms were less a reason and more an opportunity for Tern. He leapt at the chance to reopen the Arena. You’d think a decision like that, made by a rational man, would at least merit some period of contemplation.”
“Unfortunately, the reality is that most of these are not ‘rational’ men,” Talo responded, pushing aside an overhanging branch with his staff and ducking beneath it as he passed. “Of all the people I dealt with the first time we took on the Arenas, Markus Tern was probably the most level-headed. Did it surprise me? Not in the least. Anyone who plays any sort of hand in the popularization of such carnage is a different kind of person, Carro. I was a different kind of person. You have to have an appreciation for the violence to enjoy the fights, so you’ll pardon me if I say you’d best stay clear of the stadium once we reach Azbar.”
“Not a problem,” Carro said quickly, his face abruptly green. It was an amusing air, contrasting the man’s bulk and beaded blond beard that made him look so much like one of the savage mountain clansmen. Despite his tough exterior, the Priest had never had much of a stomach when it came to blood.
“It makes you the better man,” Talo said. “If the council was so eager to jump on board with Tern and risk crossing the Laorin by going against the ban, then they will be a mix of the same kind of people.”
“Then how are we going to deal with them?”
Talo sighed. “Unfortunately, the answer to that question is ‘any way we can.’ I’d love to think at least some of those responsible will be close enough to faith to hear reason in a discussion with Priests, but sometimes they are simply too far gone. From there it’s negotiations, arguments, compromise… I wasn’t short of bribing and threatening in my younger days, but I had a name amongst those people then.”
“You don’t think they’ll remember the Lifetaker?”
Talo’s breath caught short, and he tensed.
“A title I’d as soon forget, Carro, if you please.”
“Unwise,” the Priest said, stepping his horse around the glassy surface of a wide puddle as they came to a curve in the road. “If we are returning to a world you left, you’d best be prepared for what you’re going to find under the cobwebs, handsome. Should we end up facing off with them directly, it may serve some use if these men have an idea who you were, and may at least shield you against insults some are undoubtedly going to throw our way.”
Talo was silent for a time.
“Lifetaker,” he spat quietly. “I was so proud of that name once, can you imagine that? The irony… Did you know I used to despise the Priests and Priestesses who would come around every summer, trying to spread the good word of Laor? I ran a fair share of them out of the town myself. Even Kal a time or two. It’s the reason I took the name. Just to spite them and their ‘life-giving’ god.”
“You said it yourself: you are no longer that man,” Carro insisted, reaching out again to touch his partner’s shoulder as they crossed a shallow riverbed, their mounts’ iron shoes clopping over the old stonework of the narrow bridge beneath them. “You are far changed and far come. The Talo Brahnt I know has nothing shared with the Talo Brahnt of the past, as anyone who knows you now can attest to.”
He swept an arm around, motioning to the Arocklen’s trees.
“Look at this place,” he persisted. “Would the man you were half a century ago have been able to be here now, enjoying a conversation with a one such as me?”
Talo grunted.
“Laughable,” he said.
“Exactly.” Carro smiled. “I know you’ve long since come to terms with what you were and what you’ve done. The weight of the good you’ve worked for the people of this world heavily outdoes the burden of the pain you wrought. There is nothing left of the Lifetaker in you, so accept the fact that his name might serve, and realize it won’t drag you back to a place you would rather never return to.”
“You’re too wise for a man your age,” Talo said, reaching out to shove the Priest teasingly as their horses got too close again. “Anybody ever tell you that?”
“They have,” Carro said, raising an eyebrow. “Twenty or thirty years ago, when it was true.”
The two men shared a laugh at that, then rode on in silence, appreciating the merciful weather as the winding road continued its misshapen path south through the Woods.
CHAPTER 8
“It is a wise man who avoids entangling himself in circumstances he knows little of. There are unfortunate situations in which it is a necessary risk, but these moments are few and far between, and as dangerous as they are rare. Not knowing is to not be prepared, and to not be prepared is to barrel headlong into moments in life better avoided.”
—Jarden Arro, Champion of the Arro clan
Azbar was unlike any place Raz had ever laid eyes on. Many of the fringe cities of the South were surrounded by walls on all sides, but those were built of plastered mud and brick, mending their innate weaknesses with sheer bulk. Azbar’s walls were made of mortared stone blocks, darkened by lichen and time, and were half again as tall as even Miropa’s defenses had been. Ovate bastion towers stood every hundred-and-fifty paces along the line, their monolithic forms stuck aggressively out from the wall into the quarter-mile stretch of open field that partially ringed the town, each topped with a heavy dark banner embossed with the crossed antlers and sword that could only be the city’s emblem. As if that weren’t enough, the place was cleverly built with its back to a sheer cliff, a great ravine cut out of the earth by a rushing river that still flowed several hundred feet below. A smaller tributary ran straight through the community, bisecting it, and fell off the ridge in a misty waterfall Raz had made out from miles away as they’d crested a clear hill barely an hour’s walk from their destination.
Now that they were practically at the gates, though, Raz couldn’t help but gape at everything else laid out before him.
Azbar was less town and more metropolis, a city hidden in the woods. It was built along sloping earth, so even a hundred paces from the wall, Raz, Arrun, and Lueski could see much of the place, peaking at a steep cliff that hung out and over the canyon. A great stone-and-timber mansion of some kind was the only building at the top of this tall protrusion, almost foreboding in the way it looked out over the rest of the town.
“The town hall,” Arrun told Raz, following his eyes to the singular building in the distance. “At least technically.”
“Technically?” Raz asked, tearing his eyes away from the place a
s he shifted the heavy sack he had gathered up in his left hand. As they’d entered their final few miles, he’d freed Ahna from the straps, wanting to be prepared for anything on their approach
He’d sworn the siblings their safety, and he intended to stick by that promise.
“The Chairman uses it as his personal estate,” Arrun answered, making sure Lueski’s hand was held tight in his as they continued their approach on the gate. “He’s taken up residence there, and no one tries to stop him. They’re too afraid of the pit.”
“Sounds like a charming man,” Raz muttered under his breath, pulling his hood up to hide his face. His tail was already tucked away and his wings pulled in tight. “Now be quiet. They’ve seen us.”
The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1 Page 40
