by V. S. Holmes
“You don’t go to the same tavern as Arman’s friends?”
“There are a few I enjoy. Which is theirs?”
“It’s called the Lily and Ahonsa, based on some lewd Athrolani myth, if I remember.” Bren laughed. “Bars and sex seem to be firm bedfellows.”
Reka snorted a soft laugh. She had clearly adjusted to the Athrolani humor. “No, that’s not one I visit. I prefer a storytelling to a brawl. Does Mirik have alehouses? Arman mentioned you were eager to be....” She frowned. “You call it tousled?”
He threw a friendly arm around her shoulder. “Tossed. Mirik had only the alcohol that we shipped over, and we drank over the barracks’ fires. I’m tired of the company of bone weary men.”
Her eyes crinkled in a Border grin. “That the only reason you wished to drink with me?”
“You make me sound like a boor. It could have been for good conversation.”
“You are a boor,” she joked as they ducked into the loud warmth of the alehouse. “Now, what will our first pints be? Whisky or spice-mead?”
Bren called for the second and they wove through the tables to a set of chairs by the musicians. The tavern was well built for the district. Each of the pillars had been carved into a well-dressed hare standing erect. Some had headdresses and skirts, others tunics and monocles. Bren snorted, despite the obvious quality of the craftsmanship. “Reka, what is this place?”
“The Wise Hare. It might be odd, but they have good music and mead.”
As if summoned by her words, the serving woman arrived. A small tray balanced on her pregnant belly. She grinned at them, plunking the drinks down along with a plate of seasoned meat. Reka’s feet tapped in time to the quick music after their first two drinks. After the fourth, Bren convinced her to join in the dancing. Her leathers were better suited to the forest, but she moved easily, hands above her head. She twisted in a choppy, yet rhythmic, dance that must have been Border. The firelight highlighted her body and Bren wondered absently how the male warriors could ignore the fact that their companions were female. After a few turns Reka taught him the complex steps to another one.
“What is it?” He pitched his voice so she could hear him over the lively music.
“A dance for luck in battle.”
At her words Bren noticed how some motions were parries or strikes. One even looked like the launching of an arrow. He tried the steps again. It was close to midnight when they returned to the palace, their route far more wavering than before. Bren wordlessly opened his door and stepped aside in an invitation. She tugged off his jerkin and shirt, her own already on the floor. As her hands moved to the laces of his breeches he wondered if there was a dance that would make him a good king. Her lips drove the thought from his mind and he fell back onto the bed. Reka landed on top of him with a rare, low, laugh.
Φ
The 3rd Day of Lineme, 1252
The Isle of Le’yan
Gray fog burst on Alea’s chest with cold splinters. “Do not close your eyes. You cannot see if someone attacks!” Elle raised her hands to throw another ball of mist.
Alea reached down again, eyes open now, but it was difficult to visualize her power while distracted by the training court around her. She pulled a tendril into her hands and sent it towards the largest stone. It dissipated before it hit. “I don’t feel the way I normally do. I don’t have those emotions.”
She had not had them since the siege. The darkness crouching on the edge of her thoughts kept anything more than the trivial from her heart. She was scared to call it apathy, scared to think she might never feel again.
“You have never used your power without fear?” Elle pressed a hand against her brow. “Breathe deeply. Remember the sensation of your power filling you. Follow that.” Elle gestured to the smallest stone. “Now, pick it up and turn it over. Gently.”
Alea glared at the accidental insult, but turned to the rock. She pushed power through her fingers and shoved. The stone disintegrated into sand. She heaved a sigh. “If the Berrin and Azirik are so powerful, why must I learn the small things? Whatever I must do to them needs to be massive.”
“Control, Lyne’alea. Your power is not just a force, not just an extension of your hand, but a weapon. You will need to have control, lest you hurt your allies.”
“I am the Destroyer and you have not let me forget the only time I used Creation. Those are not things done at a whim.” She turned back to the rocks and focused. By noon, she was no closer to completing the task.
Elle straightened her dress. “Perhaps we ought to start even smaller. As children we would sit for hours, just feeling our power. Unlearning poor habits is harder than learning good ones.”
“You act as if we have all the time in the world, Elle.” Alea rubbed her face, hoping to scrub frustration from her body. “I understand this is my blood and I have no choice in that, but I’ve taken up the mantel of a war I had no interest in, even after it robbed me of the only life I knew.”
“We are not weak humans like Athrolan’s queen. We cannot be dazzled by the first sign of black fog.” The voice behind Alea was deep and hoarse. “Learn your ignorance – there were many women we thought might be the Dhoah’ Laen.”
Alea turned to see the tall, elder Laen from her first evening.
“Lyne’alea, this is Elai.” Elle’s gaze was fixed on the older Laen’s sandals.
Alea met the woman’s eyes. “They are dead and I am here. Destruction is not a simple thing to master. It may be easy to forget, hiding in this monotonous world, but war does not wait. I need knowledge now, not in a year.”
“You showed incredible stupidity bringing that boy back. You damaged our power irreparably.”
“Boy?” Alea turned to Elle, incredulous. “The same boy you asked to bind himself to me? The same boy who is taking up a duty you thought was dead? We took whatever boyhood he still had.” She glanced at Elai. This was not a conversation to have when angry, but her only method of communication with the Laen seemed to be argument. “If you wish to teach me, you might bother to understand me first.” She stalked out of the yard, realizing she sounded like the child she insisted she was not. “This lesson is done. Perhaps tomorrow one of you will have come to your senses.”
She was relieved to find the library deserted. She took up her place at the table and opened a tome. It detailed the spread of the different races and the waning of the Laen’s power. The Rakos died out, the Laen died out, the only gods who were our allies died out. She disliked the theme.
“We know you deserve respect.” Mera’s voice was soft and kind.
Alea looked up. The anger was draining from her. “Then why do I feel as if it’s the opposite?”
“We’re scared of what you can do. You’re supposed to save our race. You are mighty and sweeping and terrifying.”
“I do not want reverence either. I want to be seen as an equal, a woman, a daughter. I’ve given up so much for this war. There is very little left inside of me to give.” Her voice broke and she looked down, ashamed at her tears. “I know what I did was dangerous and terrible. I know what it made me. Yet, none of you have thought to ask me why.”
“I’m sorry, Lyne’alea. Most of us never knew a life other than this. You have. Finish your reading. Perhaps Elle will talk to you tomorrow.” She pressed a hand to Alea’s arm. “She’s never been a master of words, your mother.”
“We share that, then, if nothing else.” When she had gone, Alea sat back. Bren had told her how frustrating his armor-cleaning had been as a boy. She had thought the siege was her armor-cleaning. Now she was not so certain. Elle reached me from across a continent. Faint, but Arman saw her. She touched her power and reached her mind out across the ocean. It was a familiar path. I swam through this with Arman’s soul. The thought caught in her throat and she shook her head to clear it. She focused her mind and pressed through the electrified barrier between the worlds. Her mind raced over the water. Mirik glowed, a tiny constellation of copper-red stars. S
he followed the brown-laced ball of light that was her brother’s. Curiosity flitted across her thoughts. Though he shared her blood, his soul looked the same as any man’s. He sat at a desk, reading.
She nudged his consciousness. Brothermine?
He jumped, surprised. “Alea?”
Yes! How are you? I miss you.
“Toar, how are you doing this? Or have I been up too late and am hearing things?”
No, it’s really me. How is Mirik?
“We’re working through the city, clearing rubble, searching for anything that will help. It’s slow. The queen wants to make it into a fort. And you, how are you? Are you learning a lot?” He tilted his chair back on two legs.
I’m learning a lot, though not what I expected. More about myself, which is useful.
“I’ve been doing heart-searching, too. Everyone seems to want me to be king. We just returned from Athrolan today, actually. During our report the queen told me I needed to choose what role to have. Her exact words were ‘you cannot have the glory and power of a king with the responsibility of a soldier.’“
Well then. If you wait too long the decision will be made for you. She laughed at the face he made. Have you decided?
“I think a picture is fast forming.” He sighed. “Enough of my problems. What have you learned?”
That I am nothing like the Laen want me to be.
His eyes widened. “That sounds unpleasant.”
Rather. They argue over how to teach me, what to teach me, and the nature of my power. I read a lot. Some of it is quite interesting. What remains unwritten by the historians is even more interesting.
“I think most history is interesting.”
You and Arman both. I prefer fables and poetry, though this is changing my opinion somewhat. I still feel useless. I think we were wrong – this is my armor cleaning. She felt her power shudder and she sighed. I think I ought to go. I’m tiring. I miss you.
“I miss you, too. Visit me again, if you can.”
I will. Her mind raveled back to her body quickly, leaving her feeling cold and alone. The book would not read itself, however, and talking with Bren had centered her thoughts for the moment. She turned back to the page before her with a frown. She was ashamed of so much, yet none of it was what the Laen told her she should regret.
Chapter FIVE
The 8th Day of Lineme, 1252
The City of Ceir Athrolan
ARMAN WANTED ANSWERS. The last time he wanted information he burnt a man from within to read his thoughts. Arman tipped his head back onto the cool plaster of the dome. Dawn was one of the few times the early summer heat-haze dissipated long enough for the faint shadow of Mirik to appear on the horizon. In the stillness, his heartbeat was thunder. He had yet to sleep, and now it was dawn. The journal Eras had lent him sat on the stone beside him, a silent and patient companion.
He closed his eyes against the blooming light of dawn. Surely I could ask the other parts of myself. He sunk into his own thoughts, following the curls of white-gold power that knotted the surface of his mind. The air was a caress on his over-heated skin. There was a history tucked away in his thoughts, a litany of everything the Rakos had ever been. He had not formed a question when he discovered the storm that waited ahead of their ship. It had been a burning, angry concept at the forefront of his thoughts as he punched through the other man’s mind.
He gathered the few things he already knew about the Rakos, about his own abilities. He tied them about his thoughts like a cocoon. In his head, it sounded like a riddle. I am fire. I am smoke. I am thought. I am earth. The air felt colder as his body began to burn from within. His mind itched. A great tangle of information glowed in the center of his soulblood. It stung his mental touch. He traced the individual lines that snarled together, finally finding a free end. Ignoring the strange sensation, he grabbed at it and tugged. A thousand burning images bombarded him.
A Rakos stood on a mountain’s peak, staring down at a statue of a regal woman beside a lake. The city still stood, not yet in ruins. The image flashed to that of a battle at the edge of the lake. Men swarmed the area, and the Rakos attacked. Monsters screamed from above, their tattered wings raining feathers. Flames burst from the Rakos’s hands and mouths, smoke spiraling into the sky.
Who am I? Arman plunged down, under the surface of the pulsing knot. A blond man stood in a room, dark and windowless, a tomb without the coffin. He had dragged a body into the darkness and crouched over the monster’s head. The man drew his knife and cut around the creature’s brow, parting the scales and skin. A glimmer of gold and white shone through the layers of muscle. He parted the flesh further until his fingers could gain purchase on the metal ringing the creature’s skull. Bone cracked as he finally wrenched it free. Arman winced.
A pair of yellow eyes blotted out every thought, glaring into his mind and soul with burning fervor. Its voice was manic and keening. It took Arman a moment to decipher the words. Rather, it was a single word, repeated with the ferocity of a madman. “Fear. Fear. Fear”
Φ
The 11th Day of Lineme, 1252
Arman began to wonder if the journal’s author was quite sane. The humor and the wry biting words were familiar to Arman. He had spoken to men jaded by life. Sometimes he felt his own voice twisting into cynicism. The author certainly knew enough about the world, and it was the type of knowledge not learned in books, but from walking the road. He spoke of the Northlands wistfully, and of Athrolan tenderly. Arman was fairly certain the man that penned the pages before him had also left legends in his wake.
Arman flipped to a passage he had marked with a bit of string. The Rakos were mentioned often, and with curiosity, not fear.
I did not understand the true nature of the bond between Rakos and Laen. Nuirene brought back pieces of black rock-metal he called magnetite. They came from a star-fall. The rocks were heavy, and if brought near each other, would fly together. A large piece would collect thousands of tiny particles, but two pieces of the same size would collide with force enough to break a man’s finger. Thus it is with power.
Arman frowned. The man was not sane. Nevertheless, he wandered into the section at the back of the library holding books and maps regarding metals and rocks. It was mostly used by those seeking to build within the city, or to plan where the next mine would be dug. It was deserted and the shelves dusty. He ran a calloused finger through the dust by the tablets labeled “Ma-” and found a small wooden box. Across the top was a blocky stamp titling the contents as star-stone. Arman opened the box to find a small velvet pouch holding two black spheres. At first they looked like polished metal, but the grain and swirls indicated they were, in fact, rocks. With effort he pulled them apart, letting them snap back together with a surprising crack. He repeated the action several times, amused. Finally, he replaced them in the box and returned to the journal.
The Laen power acts in one fashion, and the Rakos’s in another. Though they are opposite, they are equal and in the equal opposition there is an attraction that cannot be defied and will break all in its path. Sometimes even those who wield it.
Arman had agreed with everything written, but now, when called an equal to the Laen, he scoffed. At the time he wrote it, the author had never felt the power Alea radiated. Their powers were two pieces of a whole, but not equal ones.
Though better than the isolation before, Arman’s life still felt dualistic. He spent the days as Arrowlash, studying, learning about Rakos power. At night he was Arman, drinking and carousing. It was an extension of who he had been in Vielrona. The disconnect allowed him to relax, but he knew eventually there would be no divide. One would bleed into the other and Arman would be lost forever in Rakos flames.
He glared at the ale in his glass, trying to determine whether he minded. The drink was a rich golden brown. Summer gold. It was a comforting color, familiar and warm. Veredy’s hair.
“Eh, we lost Arman to his thoughts again.”
Arman grinned and flicked hi
s gaze to Kal. He let enough of his power into his body to make his voice rumble. It was a fun trick and rarely made them actually remember what he was. “Just deciding how long I should wait before I whip all your arses.” He threw down another card, absently wondering which game they were playing. Would a Rakos enjoy drinking and card games? He did not know.
Φ
The 13th Day of Lineme, 1252
The City of Mirik
Bren tossed onto his side, staring out the window. It was dark and the view was poor. He was glad to be out of the tedious meetings, but Mirik did not feel like home. It only gave him more to think about. The queen’s pointed words stung more than he admitted. I am betwixt two roles and I try to act in both with the responsibility of neither. He briefly wished he could talk to Alea. When he had been Azirik’s man and thoughts kept him from sleep, Bren had walked out by the harbor to think, away from the boisterous chaos of the other men.
His boots were on in moments. He crossed the courtyard and slipped through the gates easily, calling a greeting to the guards. His usual course took him around the harbor, but he paused, looking up at the city gates. Changing direction, he chose the abandoned streets of the city. He was certain the Kit tailed him, but that only served to make the night feel more desolate. He turned west at the palace walls, following them to what had once been gardens. They were dense and overgrown now, but made a good ladder up the city walls. He scrambled up quickly, perching at the top to look out over the waves. The walls were complete, ready to encompass the fort and town that would serve as Athrolan’s northern-most outpost.
He leaned back against the tree stretching over the stone. “Come out, Oland. I know you’re there.”
There was silence for a moment, then a rustle as the Miriken climbed up to sit beside him. He was quiet, running his worn hand over the newly-lain stone. “Ye cleaned her up nice.”
“Makes me wish I could remember what she was like at her might, before Azirik.”
“When yer grandpap ruled.”
