by AS Hamilton
Brynn was weary, his shoulders aching; it was as if he'd fought for hours instead of what was probably twenty minutes. Sershja was fatigued too. The brave horse had borne his weight through it all, as well as fighting! With the arrival of the mysterious warrior, it had all ended so quickly.
Sershja started to move and Brynn looked in the direction the horse was heading. Another horse lay a little down the hill, her foreleg broken. She was breathless with pain, her pupils dilated and nostrils flaring. Sershja offered her comfort, whinnying and snuffling as he approached.
But the warrior was closer and reached the stricken animal before him. She dismounted with practiced grace and the horse rolled her eyes with fear as the warrior drew her sword from her shoulder harness.
Sershja neighed in dismay, spurring his rider to dismount and intervene, yelling: 'Stop!'
The warrior ignored him, raising her sword. As the sharp point descended, Brynn skidded between it and the horse, throwing his forearm out to knock the sword aside, the blade slicing into his bracer and jarring his whole arm as the hilt struck it. Yanking her sword away, the warrior withdrew.
'It's the best way,' she told him, her smooth voice retaining a hard edge, unphased by Brynn's intervention. 'There's no way it can heal out here.'
Brynn looked up at the helmed face, the mesh protecting her eyes concealed them, but he could still see that she remained emotionless, like stone. His gaze flicked to that of the hawk upon her shoulder,.'No,' he denied, 'there is another way.'
The warrior was silent for a moment and then the helmet started to retract into itself, revealing a delicate elvan face. She frowned. 'You are able to heal?'
Brynn was sure he heard a note of contempt in her voice, but she hid it well. There was also surprise in her tone and he found that harder to understand. Many mages learned to use blade and bow, mostly due to the necessity of survival as much as to protect those they fought with. So his ability to heal should not be completely unexpected.
Rather than react to either emotion, Brynn simply nodded confirmation. 'I will see to the mare. Please, walk the horses and allow them to cool after their exertion.'
'As you will,' she responded. 'What of the dead?'
Brynn did not answer, instead closing his eyes to concentrate. He let out a long sigh and then the warrior realised the bodies were 'misting' before they disappeared, she raised a red-gold brow and shook her head in wonder. Scooping up Sershja's reins, she reactivated her helm, the metal pieces whispering into place. The empath talent, which he used to remove the dead and the healing talent were not likely to draw the attention of Abbarane mages as neither were considered a threat.
Gently taking the horse's muzzle in both hands, Brynn sent, 'Look.'
The horse turned frightened eyes from the warrior towards him.
'Sleep,' he willed.
Day 2 – Late Morning
Mehani Woods
Brynn shifted planes, moving to his ghanri. Traditionally, a ghanri was a practice area and resting place, but the may-en-ghi also taught him to use it to cloak himself from other mages. Being masters of camouflage, it seemed appropriate to Brynn that they had developed this technique. It was very fortunate, Brynn thought, that he had saved Baschia's life all those turns ago, earning her friendship and acceptance by the may-en-ghi community.
Having just finished healing the mare, he could feel 'Her' relief. It was not that he did not feel the mare's pain himself, but that 'She' felt it more clearly. She was the spirit who was connected to him through the planes. The elvan had very distinct beliefs about spirit connections. One was called jenishae, which described the feeling when spirits connected. All elvan experienced jenishae at some point. Brynn's connection with Her was a more intense version of jenishae called shaen-duura. Some mistakenly referred to it as love-at-first-sight, but many shared shaen-duura without being lovers. With jenishae, when someone sent to you, you knew their thoughts were not yours; they had a different rhythm, but with shaen-duura you regularly mistook their thoughts and emotions for your own. So sometimes Brynn perceived where She was, saw stars that were not above him, felt cold when it was warm, or was hungry when he had eaten.
He originally became aware of Her through his empath talent when her emotions, unfiltered, overwhelmed him. At first, he had not known it was Her and for almost twenty turns, it had been a bewildering experience when their shared empath abilities caused abrupt changes in his emotions. Thank Fate that when Sarre was teaching him some empath techniques, he made the link between Her and Brynn. Belon had then taught him how to cope with Her emotions. When working on the planes, they often came across lost, distressed spirits. These spirits could be comforted by healers and his mother showed him how to use the same techniques to soothe Her. Last time had been in the midst of a battle, though, leaving no time to calm Her. That day he discovered another way to curtail the unwanted influx of emotion, but he did not want to dwell on that, right now... With the mare seen to, She was gone. As always, after that fleeting moment of relief, She disappeared.
Brynn allowed himself to enjoy the peace of his ghanri. Away from this place, he was constantly filtering paths, thoughts and emotions. Healing the mare had only taken a few minutes, although it felt longer on the planes. His next priority was to investigate his new ally, the hawk-helmed warrior. Another task that would not take a great deal of time. The warrior was still walking the horses and he was keen to glean as much as he could from the planes before he decided how to approach her. She was obviously a rebel, but he wanted to know her motives in helping him and whether he should offer friendship or diplomatically part ways.
Day 2 – Late Morning
Denas
The view from this balcony was superb, Colnba thought. It was possible, if one did not look directly down, that one could forget they were in the midst of a city with views offering panoramas of mountains, orchards, forests, and even the ocean. It was as a city was meant to be, indiscernible from nature rather than steadfastly on top of it.
The mage stretched his long limbs and shook his blue fringe out of his eyes. Pale-blue eyes swept over the darkening landscape one final time before he moved indoors. The balcony doors whispered apart at the mage's will and closed behind him. Feeling restless and moody, Colnba willed all the window panes to darken as well.
What had he felt? On the planes, just now.
It had been some kind of entity, he knew that because of the pain it had been suffering. The pain had been so intense, so sharp… What kind of injury could have left it radiating such pain? And the despair — he felt it right across the planes! Why had it run from him? He had not given any indication of aggression, there had been no need, something feeling that level of suffering was not a threat. Was that how it had come to be there? Had it been disoriented? Or seeking refuge, mayhap?
The planes he had been on were human ones, which was a factor that contributed to his puzzlement. He had been checking on Malithorn's human mages. Many assumed that because they were human, they were completely loyal to Malithorn. Colnba knew for a certainty that this was not true. Recently, three human mages had accepted bribes for information on prisoners. These transactions could be matched with three successful extractions of prisoners by rebels. Those mages had paid for their treachery with their lives.
Why they thought they could get away with it was something Colnba could never understand. Not one of them tried to conceal their memories — rebels did a far better job, and it required a fully-trained mage to even start unlocking the information in a rebel's mind. It made it easy for him to trace each one's involvement. Interrogating the memories of the human mages wasn't an easy task for him; human planes were harder to navigate than elvan ones. Colnba could never adequately give reasons for it, but every time he did it, he came away feeling drained and ill-tempered.
The mage huffed, he should not be scanning human minds; that was why. He had advised Malithorn several times that a human mage would be more efficient and they were not all untrust
worthy, some of them Colnba even liked. Liacoren could do it, she already meddled in everyone else's minds. But Malithorn insisted Colnba keep the task, not even allowing him to assign it to Ko-rayen. The Ko-renti mage had a warrior's spirit and the darkness in others did not bother him. Nor did the consequences of reporting on those perceived as traitors by Malithorn. He was also one of the few mages who suffered no moral dilemmas when it came to killing. Another benefit, Colnba supposed, of being a Ko-renti.
Regardless of other, more suitable, candidates to undertake the task, Colnba kept it because Malithorn derived a perverse satisfaction in knowing Colnba was unsettled by the experience. He suspected some of his discomfort was due to being an elvan on human planes. He would stand out; allies and enemies alike would know an elvan walked their paths. They would feel him, as one always did when a presence dared impose itself in places it did not belong. That made the task more laborious and intense.
This brought him back to his original question, what had he sensed on those planes? And had he felt it for the same reason he despised being there? Because it, too, did not belong.
Planes were difficult to describe, because it depended on which planes you were on, how you accessed them, your personal perceptions, how strong your talent was, how well trained you were, and whether those planes were 'natural' to you. Some were straight-forward, the planes of the past, for instance, were very similar to how a person experienced memory. But spirit planes varied greatly and were best described as having different levels. There were entry planes, which were planes where you could perceive all spirits, and then there were specific spirit planes, like those of an individual person. Colnba liked to visualise them as waterways. The entry planes were like large lakes or even a sea, a person's individual spirit plane might be a river, the planes of their mind; a spring, the planes of their memory a creek branching off from it. Some were like being amidst a fog, others like being immersed in darkness. Many planes you could shape, to a degree, making them seem like open sky or dense forest, and you could fly through them like a bird or stalk like a predator.
For the task of investigating the human mages, Colnba first entered the spirit plane and looked for the spirits that he was interested in. To him, it was a vast plain of whiteness where the spirits appeared as coloured mists. He had enough skill to overlay this plane with the astral plane. The astral plane was exactly like the physical plane, but a spirit could not interact with physical beings on it. You moved through it very much like you did the physical world without the impediments of a physical body. So he could 'walk' from his room down the hall to another room, or he could, if he knew his destination, just think himself there. Equally, he could 'fly' from one part of the city to another. Walls and doors would not stop you, nor any other physical object. Because his task had been to identify specific mages and investigate them, Colnba used the astral plane to find them and identify them, then the spirit planes to access their spirits and from there he sought out the planes of their past, which held their memories.
The difference between human and elvan planes became apparent when he moved from the spirit plane to the planes of a specific spirit. An elvan spirit had a degree of affinity with another elvan, so when he moved his spirit into the planes of another elvan, there was less resistance than when he tried to access a human's spirit plane. It had been while he had been transitioning through the spirit plane, moving from one human mage to the next, that he had become aware of the mysterious entity.
Colnba stepped into his dressing room. He was cold. He considered several cloaks, just as many coats and soft, woollen tunics. None of them appealed to him and he frowned irritably at himself, he was sulking. He snatched a dark-blue, long-sleeved tunic from its hanger and stalked back to his desk as he pulled it on. With the windows completely darkened, the room was utterly without light, yet he navigated it without fault, skirting the sunken section where he did his meditations. He scowled at the empty desktop as he tugged the tunic down. There had been a decanter of zilveran here this afternoon, a servant must have cleared it away. He dropped gracefully into the chair and resigned himself to his bad mood; nothing would be satisfactory until his temper wore out.
If he could figure out what that entity had been, how it had ended up on those planes, mayhap that might go towards restoring his mood. He was certain he was not mistaken; that presence was not of those human planes. What he found more perplexing, was that it was not elvan either... It was an intelligent being, he knew this because he had picked up parts of its thoughts. But they made little sense. Something about a chase, a battle, dead soldiers and a broken leg. A broken leg would not have caused the amount of pain he had felt, something more must have besieged the presence. Mayhap in this battle it had suffered a devastating loss; a companion, or parent possibly...
The frustration rankled him, but without knowing when or where the battle had occurred, trying to find the answers would take too long and require more energy than he was willing to expend. For all he knew, it had been a ghost remembering a centuries-old battle, which would explain why he felt it was neither human nor elvan.
He hated unanswered questions, though. A flash of defiance flared through him; he had mastered all the talents, overcome mages twice his age, and, for a short time, was an heir to the Crown. All he had to do was want it enough and he could make it his will. Just then his mind seized a seemingly stray thought, a question to which he could get an answer; had any of their soldiers engaged in a battle recently? That might be worth investigating.
Day 2 – Early Evening
Mehani Woods
(Sey-sjhon River, near Ferneau)
'I am Brynn-a-kai of the House of Neran. I go by Brynn,' he told the warrior, sipping the liquid of the hot casserole. After Brynn had healed the mare and retrieved his bolts, they had ridden south-east to find a safe place to camp for the evening. They had used his travel stove and supplies, but the warrior had done the preparation. His mother had prepared the little packets of dried vegetables for Brynn's trip, and Brynn was always amazed at how the rehydrated contents expanded after only a short time in boiling water and how thick whatever sauce his mother used to flavour it became. It was almost like being home.
'Brynn-a-kai? An unusual name, as Brynn-a-kai is also the name of a house.'
Nodding, Brynn scowled briefly. 'It is. House of Brynn-a-kai, which is also known as the 'ruling house' because it trains leaders. Its members have held positions in every branch of government including the Crown. According to my father, more members of House of Brynn-a-kai have been chosen for the position of Crown or Crown-Heir than any other. As to why my parents named me after the house,' Brynn shrugged, 'they say it's tradition. My father is House of Brynn-a-kai. By Fate's path, though, just about every elvan I meet asks me about it,' he complained with a groan.
Sariah could understand his frustration, it was an unusual, and not necessarily wise, choice by his parents. 'I am Sariah of the House of Ko-renti. Treya is my horse companion and upon my shoulder is Kaydyr,' she said. Serving herself a bowl of casserole, Sariah sat on her cloak. 'I regret I was not at your side earlier in the confrontation,' she added, not quite with apology, more with the formality of someone who knew that a mage might possibly perceive she had hesitated in coming to his aid.
Brynn waved off her apology. 'You came in good time and for that I am thankful.'
'It is odd that you are alone, all mages I know travel with an armed escort.'
Brynn repressed a smile, there was definitely recrimination hidden in the low, smooth tone. But then, considering her history, her faith in mages was diminished.
'Indeed,' he said agreeably. 'It is the nature of my mission. You are blind though, are you not?' The question was aimed at turning the conversation away from himself.
Sariah tilted her still-helmed head to one side, as she considered his question. 'Yes. How did you know?' she asked curiously, putting her bowl down. Her helm retracted; fully revealing her sightless red-gold eyes.
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sp; 'I know many things, and I know in my time I will see even more. What I do not know, and what I do not think that I will ever see anything to match, is how you fought as you did today,' Brynn said with open admiration. 'For it was quite an amazing thing.'
'Kaydyr,' she answered with a trace of pride.
He nodded. Had he not looked into her past, there were still clues. The hawk, Kaydyr, always took up positions relating to the line of sight she required, either from a tree, upon her shoulder or on Treya's head. He had also observed that when the hawk's head moved from one direction to another, Sariah's head often moved too.
'The way you fight, the way you walk and move… It is astounding. It is like you can see.'
The warrior dismissed the compliment with a slight shake of her head. 'I have been blind a long time and it is now as normal to me as breathing.'
Brynn could tell that she was pleased by the praise though, as was Kaydyr. Again, there was that guarding of emotion, though.
'The practice was excruciatingly tedious at times,' Sariah continued, 'but the rewards are worthwhile. Being able to watch yourself fight is also a good way to assess weaknesses and correct them,' she murmured modestly, holding her wrist out for Kaydyr. Moving the hawk close to her bowl, she let him snap up some of her casserole. The leather on her bracers demonstrated the sharpness of Kaydyr's talons in the deep, piercing marks left from repeated use.
'May I ask a question?'
Sariah shrugged. 'Ask what you will.'
'As I was healing the horse, I came to wonder, Sariah, what is it you search for? If you tell me of it, I may be of help to you as you have been to me,' he said using his talent to allow her to trust him despite their short acquaintance. Having explored her past planes, he already knew her background and about her search. He knew he could help her, and it might get him out of the path of the patrols for a while. From his investigations, he'd learned that if he did not speed things up, it would take Sariah turns to trust him enough to tell him anything of depth. Neither she nor her brother had that luxury.
