by Joe Jackson
Kari smiled; already some good was coming from this risky situation.
*****
Kari and her friends spent most of the day watching the mallasti children play football, followed by a much rougher game of lacrosse involving the adolescents. While the younger children’s football match involved only mild pushing and shoving when they competed for the ball, the adolescents’ game was much more high-impact and violent. The teens seemed to have no rules against laying vicious hits on each other, and in fact seemed to take a lot of sporting pleasure out of knocking each other to the ground. It was still a game with rules, and scoring was the definite goal, but the lacrosse game was much more brutal.
Kari wondered if that was the beginning of the mallasti youth “graduating” to a more violent lifestyle that might one day culminate with going to Citaria to cause trouble. It didn’t seem like the case, as mallasti were typically spell-casters, and shied away from physical combat as often as not despite their bulky bodies, sharp claws, and bone-crushing jaws. There was clearly something about the hyena demons that Kari had yet to see: some facet of their society that led these sport-playing youths to become vicious soldiers of the kings.
Sonja could hardly contain herself, fidgeting and biting her lip every so often, excited for the possibility that Uldriana or the other mallasti might teach her something. As little as Kari trusted them, she knew the mallasti were masters of the arcane, and if anyone could teach her sister-in-law what was wrong with her power, it might be them. Failing that, Kari thought perhaps the elestram, who were also very strong in the ways of wizardry, might be able to do so. At what price, Kari couldn’t say; since they were staying among the mallasti, it didn’t seem like much of an imposition for them to teach Sonja.
With the afternoon sun retreating toward the horizon, Kari and her friends followed the mallasti youths and their instructors back into the village. Uldriana met them near the entrance of her family’s teepee, but she gestured toward the central fire pit and accompanied them over. “Take your meal out here near the fire,” she said, igniting the wood with a gesture, just as the male had done the night before. “You will not be permitted to sit amongst my family while we share our evening meal. Make yourselves comfortable here, and take your supper, and I will come out and speak with you when I am finished with mine.”
Kari was disappointed with that, but she didn’t offer any argument, and neither did her friends. Uldriana seemed to be the youngest of the family sharing her teepee, so it wasn’t likely she was asked for input in the decision-making. Kari started to dig through her pack for her rations, but after Uldriana had disappeared into her family tent, a mallasti male came and left a large wooden bowl of cooked meat near the fire. He gestured toward it and then left without a word, and Kari regarded her friends only briefly before they began to divvy up the gift.
They began to share their dinner, glad to have something hot and fresh to share, but their ears perked up as singing echoed from the many tents around them. Whatever was being sung, it was in that other language the mallasti used, and so neither Kari nor her friends could make out any of it. It was yet another surprise from the hyena demons, who seemed so full of surprises, and Kari wondered how her Order had stayed ignorant about their enemies for so long. She glanced to her friends to see what they thought, but just as quickly as the singing had come up from all around, it ended.
“That sounded like a hymn of blessing,” Danilynn commented when Kari’s eyes met hers. “I couldn’t understand a word of it, but that’s the closest thing I can think of.”
“Would make a certain sense before supper, but that demons would do so…,” Kari said, trailing off and shaking her head.
The meat provided was fowl, and the three rir women ate their fill of it. It was greasy but tasty dark meat, and compared to the dried fruits, breads, and nuts of their trail rations, it tasted like a feast. Kari was glad the hyena demons would share any of their food considering how unwelcome she and her friends were in the village. She mixed in some of her rations with the hot meat, and her friends did likewise. Kari hoped she’d brought enough food for their journey; she had figured it would take no more than six weeks to get back home. If they got stranded somewhere or the trip took longer than expected, their food supply might not be enough, and she had no idea if they could resupply in any of the demon cities.
“Thinking about our food supply?” Danilynn asked. Kari realized she must have been staring off into nothingness for a few minutes, and she nodded to her friend’s question. “Don’t worry about it too much; I can always conjure something up if it comes to that. The ‘food from the gods’ isn’t exactly the most appetizing thing you’ll ever eat, but it’s sufficient to keep you alive and energetic.”
Kari nodded again; having logistics covered was always a plus when traveling. It made her think back to her time under Kris Jir’tana’s command in the Great War, and the way he’d handled logistics. Traveling through the mountains for years meant that supply lines were hard to maintain at the best of times, and using wagons or carts to haul supplies wasn’t efficient or, in many cases, even feasible. Supplies had been rationed out with incredibly strict guidelines, and soldiers caught violating orders were punished rather severely. It was part of what had kept Kari on such a tight military schedule when it came to eating and other needs, even well after the War was over.
“Knowing we have something to eat means one less thing to worry about,” Kari said, and her friends nodded. She glanced to the west, the direction they would presumably be going once they finally left the village. “There doesn’t seem to be any lack of running water here, so as long as we can trust the water to not be poisonous, that should cover our most basic needs.”
“I can conjure water, too, should the need arise,” Danilynn added. “The last thing the gods need is their warrior-priests expiring from starvation when out in the field.”
Kari chuckled. “I’m so used to being on the road all the time, that even having lived in my mother-in-law’s house for three years and enjoyed her cooking for that long hasn’t changed the way I feel about trail rations,” she joked. “They may be on the bland side and even a bit stale, but they stay down nicely in a fight.”
Her friends chuckled, and Uldriana soon came out and sat on the dusty ground with them. She didn’t say anything, simply taking in the three rir women eating with that impassive gaze. One of the other females from her tent called to her after half a minute, and they spoke back and forth rapidly. Uldriana huffed and gestured while they spoke, and then she finally waved off the elder female’s words. The mallasti woman growled low but then went back inside the tent, and Kari beheld Uldriana curiously. It seemed that teenagers were the same among any species.
Before Kari could voice her thoughts, the mallasti girl turned to Sonja. “The elders have agreed that I may show you what I know of arcane power,” she said. “Understand that I am still young for one of my people, so my mastery of it is far from complete. However, I believe there will be much I can show you.”
“Anything you could show me would be helpful,” Sonja said. She pulled her thick spell book out of her pack and laid it on the ground before her. She opened it and flipped through a few pages, but just when she found the page she was looking for, she glanced around the village suspiciously. “I’m not going to attract the attention of your king or one of your enemies if I start weaving spells, am I?”
“If you are having difficulties with your ‘weaving,’ then I doubt anything you could do would be of sufficient power to attract attention,” Uldriana said with a wave of her clawed hand. “However, I will give you warning now that using arcane transportation to cross the borders between realms, or doing other things such as defacing the land or killing the people of a realm, will surely attract more attention than you would like.”
Sonja nodded. She glanced at the spell scribed in her book for scant moments before she began a low, mumbling incantation and wove a pattern in the air with her finger. Kari
had seen this spell before and, just as she expected, Sonja’s large two-handed sword appeared in her hands when she completed it. “That’s about as complicated a spell as I can manage,” she said. She put the sword down beside her and flipped a few more pages in her book. “I’m fairly proficient with wards and shields, and can use certain abjurations to mask our movements while traveling, but most of these spells elude my grasp.”
Uldriana looked bewildered while Sonja cast her spell, and she stared at the scarlet-haired woman curiously. “May I see that book?” she asked.
Sonja hesitated, but after a glance at Kari and then Danilynn, she handed the book over to the mallasti girl. Kari knew that Sonja was hesitant to let anyone other than perhaps her teacher touch her spell book; it held the accumulated knowledge of the years of her study under the arch-mage’s tutelage, and if it were lost or damaged, she’d have to start all over again. Kari didn’t understand the nuances of learning arcane magic, but she knew that wizards penned their spells in a unique way, so trying to memorize spells from another’s book was difficult. It seemed odd to Kari, but that was how Sonja had explained things to her.
Uldriana flipped through the tome casually, her brows rising and her eyes widening from time to time as she passed over some of the more complicated-looking diagrams. She ended up on what looked like the same page Sonja had cast her summoning spell from, and the mallasti girl’s clawed fingers slid carefully over the page. After a moment, her eyes began to glow a light blue. She looked about herself and let forth a hmmmm. She began gesticulating, and it looked to Kari as though Uldriana was plucking the strings of some upright musical instrument. After a minute, she shook her head, and the blue glow dissipated from her eyes. “You wish me to help you master the arcane?” she asked Sonja, and the scarlet-haired woman nodded eagerly.
The mallasti girl turned and tossed the spell book into the fire pit, and the book quickly caught fire and began to char in moments. Sonja gasped and then screamed, and she dove forward into the fire to grab the book before it was completely consumed. Serilian-rir as she was, the heat of the fire didn’t even faze Sonja, but though she got the book out without harm to herself, Kari could see the book was ruined. The demonhunter let her hands fall down to the hilts of her swords and wondered how many of the mallasti she could kill if they came to Uldriana’s defense.
“What have you done?!” Sonja screamed in fury. Furry heads began to appear at the doorways to the surrounding tents.
Uldriana looked at Kari as though expecting her to draw her swords. “I have taken the first step in helping you learn to master the arcane,” the mallasti girl said. She turned back to Sonja and gestured toward the ruined tome. “I do not know who you have been learning from, but they have been crippling your progress with misguided efforts.”
Sonja held up the destroyed book and most of it fell to a pile of crisp ash between her fingers. She closed her eyes and blew out a long sigh, as angry as Kari could ever remember seeing her. Kari waited to see what Uldriana meant before she got defensive on her sister-in-law’s behalf. “What are you talking about?” Sonja asked with obviously forced civility. “You just destroyed years of my life. Without this book, I can’t do anything!”
“Nonsense,” the mallasti girl said in her typical deadpan tone. Kari suddenly found her impassive expression annoying, and imagined Sonja must feel the same way. Still, the girl continued, “You have been unable to do most of what you have tried because of that book. You should find that without its limitations, the power responds to your call much more easily.”
Sonja looked off to the side, sighed, but then growled. “You’re going to need to do a better job of explaining than that,” she spat.
“You know that arcane power flows through the blood of my people?” Uldriana asked, and Sonja nodded tentatively. “Such is the case for you, though not quite to the same extent; I could sense that the moment I met you. Your master…whoever has been teaching you, they have not been teaching you to master the arcane, but to be mastered by it.” Her eyes glowed blue again and she tugged at those unseen strands in the air around her; Kari half expected to hear music. “Your teacher has taught you to tug on these strands of power that drape over our worlds, but he has not taught you properly. You seek to master the arcane through ritual and borrowing power, rather than simply using the power that is your birthright to manipulate the world according to your will.”
“Is she making any sense to you?” Kari asked, a stunned expression on Sonja’s face
“Yes, she is,” Sonja said, and she held up her hand to stave off further interruptions. “Go on, please.”
Uldriana gestured casually. “The power of the arcane has many names attributed to it: magic, power, sorcery, and many others more specific to the effects it creates. We prefer to call it force, for like any force, the use of the arcane creates both an action and a reaction. Every action you enact by means of arcane force creates a reaction in the world around you: as you manipulate, so are you in turn manipulated, and you cannot harm or heal without sending ripples across the waters.”
Kari sat quietly and listened. What Uldriana said made some sense to her, but it sounded a little too theoretical, too much like science or philosophy, two things Kari had never grasped easily due to her poor education. She released the hilts of her swords and once again sat cross-legged with her hands in her lap. If Sonja was satisfied with Uldriana’s explanation and lesson, then Kari wouldn’t get in the middle. She was out of her element when it came to arcane magic, and by the look on Danilynn’s face, it was obvious the priestess felt the same way. Kari looked around and saw that nearly all the mallasti who had responded to Sonja’s angry outburst had retreated back inside their homes. She was satisfied that Sonja would not be needing her help.
“Consider the fire,” Uldriana continued, and Sonja stared into the flames. “Do not simply look at the fire; feel it. You have expressed the ability to sense the thoughts of others; try to do the same thing with the fire, and tell me what it is you sense.”
“Consumption,” Sonja said after a few moments, and her brow scrunched up. “I can sense the wood being turned to ash as it releases light, water, and heat.”
“The very basics of transmutation and wielding fire,” the mallasti girl said with a nod. “Feel the way the fire tears the wood apart into these separate elements, and know that when you need summon a torrent of fire, you are doing a similar thing, only with a different fuel. Many believe we ‘create’ fire, but fire is not a thing that is created, it is a reaction to the application of arcane force, or power. Do you understand?”
“Gods, I think I do,” Sonja said, and Kari couldn’t remember a time when her sister-in-law had looked so enlightened. “But one thing I don’t understand: why was my spell book holding me back?”
“I suspect your own mind was fighting against itself in such matters,” the mallasti girl said. “On the one hand, your mind was calling upon your innate power, but then you were trying to force things to happen by manipulating the arcane strands. I suppose that in essence, you were trying to do twice as much work as was necessary to accomplish one end.”
Sonja scoffed. “All this time I thought I wasn’t trying hard enough, and it turns out I was trying too hard?” she breathed. “So if I don’t manipulate the strands, how do I cast spells now?”
Uldriana shook her head. “Do not think of it as ‘casting a spell’; think of it as causing an action and a reaction,” she said, and with a gesture, she snuffed out the fire. “Look upon the wood in the fire pit and think of what you want it to do. Do not simply think about setting it on fire; in essence tell the wood what you want: manipulate it to your will, and trust that the power in your blood will accomplish what your heart and mind seek.”
Sonja stared at the smoking pile of wood, and Kari wondered how hard her sister-in-law was trying. Her answer came moments later when a short flame appeared in the center. Slowly it grew, until the fire pit was fully alight once again. It wasn’t quite
the display Uldriana and the other mallasti had put on when igniting the wood, but then they’d had years of practice. For Sonja to set a fire without any chants or gestures was a start. Kari was pleased that such a shock had turned into a good lesson; perhaps the loss of the spell book was a minor thing after all.
“Very good. Let us move on to another practical application,” Uldriana said. “Close your eyes and open your senses, just as you normally do when trying to hear the thoughts of others. Instead of opening your second sense of hearing, instead open your mind and your heart, and take in the pulse of life around you. Sense my life-force, and that of your friends. Then move further out and feel the families around you in their tents, the bonds that they share, the feel of their bodies pressed together in intimacy, the breath of life in the bellies of the pregnant females, the fire of youth in the little ones…”
Sonja opened her eyes and turned to Kari, shock on her features. “Is it coming to you a little easier now?” the demonhunter asked her sister-in-law.
“Kari, you…did you know…you’re pregnant?” Sonja managed slowly.
“What?” Kari blurted, stunned nearly speechless. She wondered how she could have gotten pregnant, but realized it was a pretty stupid thing to wonder. She and Grakin had made love several times without the use of protection before and after her trip to Barcon. Kari thought perhaps that was the real reason she was so tired and sore after her work in Barcon, and that maybe the fight with Turillia had little enough to do with it. She touched her hand to her lower belly. Life had kept her so busy the last few weeks that she failed to realize she was pregnant. While the strength of her focus impressed her, it also worried her in another way.
“I really am? Can you tell how far along?” Kari asked. She was curious to know if it had happened before or after she’d left for Barcon.
