“ ‘Your people’,” Rhusta said. “Not you?”
Wing didn’t want to give the old man anything, least of all a confession. But he also compelled to be honest, possibly because he’d so rarely been able to be so in Rieeve. “No,” Wing said. “No, I don’t. Not anymore.” Bracing himself for the triumph he thought he’d see in the old man’s eye, what Wing saw instead surprised him: genuine curiosity.
“What about,” Rhusta said slowly, “the book of the Prophet Poet Eneefa? I’ve heard that Rieevans have a particular fascination with those passages that speak of the Leader of Legend. The one called ‘Merehr’ in your tongue?”
A tremor in Wing’s hand caused him to bend the small ledger and for the first time Wing experienced something else: suspicion. What was Rhusta playing at? With sudden clarity Wing realized that Rhusta’s questions were not innocent, nor ignorant; he was leading Wing, like a colt.
“Tell me — educate me — Rieevan, what your people really believe about those verses?”
Wing opened the ledger slowly. Sight of his native tongue set a chill to his skin even as it lit something hot in his bones. He turned to the page, able to find it even in the transcribed version. “‘And Eosha will send the Leader’,” he read slowly. “‘With him will come knowledge, light, and power. His understanding and mercy will take in the lands and he will be Merehr, the leader of his people’...”
Wing closed his eyes as he shut the book.
Rhusta leaned forward in his old wooden chair. “So, this is not merely information to you, Rieevan? You, your people believe it?”
Wing shook his head. “I already told you, they believed it yes. I don’t.”
Wing handed the book back to Rhusta.
“Your people do and you don’t? Why are you different?”
Wing’s shoulders tightened as he thought to himself, Don’t say it. Don’t tell him. He doesn’t deserve to know — he wouldn’t care.
“Well?” the old man pressed.
“They did, yes.”
“Ah, so they once did. But like you, they don’t anymore?”
“No,” Wing said. “They believed until the end.”
To Wing’s surprise, Rhusta remained quiet. Wing slowly raised his eyes.
“The end?” Rhusta said after a moment, his voice was suddenly wary.
“Death,” Wing said, everything inside of him falling still. “They’re all dead.”
To Wing’s own ears the words felt strange, unreal upon his tongue: Because I’ve never said it before. My people are dead, I am the last of my race, and I had no one to tell. Not one human soul to tell —
Until now.
Wing was staggered by the truth of it; he also felt the rise of an irrepressible anger that the first and possibly only person that would know what had happened to his people was an unpleasant old man who would not, for one moment, mourn the loss of an entire world, a culture, a way of life. Of a people he, in fact, seemed to despise. The old man would not miss the festivals and songs and laughter and nights by fireplaces and warm dinners and sweet black dirt and snow under moonlight. The old man would not miss Wing’s father, the Mesko Tender, the listener of the great trees. He would not miss Reean, the touch of her hands, the smell of her apron. Nor would he miss Carly, the thick curl of her hair, the look in her eye when she wanted to make love. And Nien.
Nien.
Wing felt as if his brother’s name would lay him open. His breath started coming fast and shallow, and he felt himself beginning to burn, as if his organs were on fire. It seemed to raise the temperature of the room. He blinked, his eyes burning like the white-hot flame of a sword smith’s forge. It seemed all of the subtle and not so subtle insults to Wing and to Rieeve had lodged into Wing’s core, a core that felt like that of a star, one that might birth a galaxy or destroy one. Wing was peripherally aware that his hands had begun to tremble and in his gut rose the same shocking inclination he’d felt back in Rieeve while chasing down the fire-starter in the Village: a need, a rage that could kill. He remembered looking into the black void of the Ka’ull’s hooded face, this thing that was less than man, a destroyer of his people, his world, his life and in that moment Wing had known he was capable of taking a life. He was feeling it again, now. He was done with taking insults, especially from a man who had no right —
What did the old man know anyway? What could possibly account for his contempt?
It was with carefulness, however, that Rhusta asked his next question: “How?”
Slowly, heart throbbing in his breast, Wing replied, “The Ka’ull.” As he spoke the word, Wing saw a muscle twitch in Rhusta’s cheek. This spontaneous reaction, though minute, surprised Wing; it was also enough to pierce a small hole in the zenith of his anger. Like molten fire, Wing felt some of the heat begin to drain from his eyes, moving thick and heavy through his arms and legs, pooling in his stomach heavy and uneasy. As the sensation slowly began to cool, it left him feeling glassy like fired earthenware and pale as an early Ime morning.
After these long, nebulous moments, Wing said, “Believe in what you have here, for there’s nothing in that book worth understanding. Not enough wisdom in it to save even one of those who believed in it so fully.”
The old man had been looking at him as Wing had spoken. But when Wing raised his eyes to him, the old man looked away, his gaze fixing upon his hands, folded around the ledger in his lap.
Believing their intercourse now, gratefully, at an end, Wing was about to move away when Rhusta said, “But he did save one.”
Wing stopped.
It seemed Rhusta was about to say one thing before pausing and saying instead: “You.”
The silence in the room was palpable.
“I wasn’t saved,” Wing replied, his voice a silver thread. “I just happened to live. I just happened not to be there.” Wing waited for the old man to look at him, daring him to dispute it.
But the old man did not look up at him, nor did he speak again.
Spent, Wing moved into the masquerading half-light cast by the fire at the other side of the cabin.
Early on, Rhusta had insinuated that four turns would be all he could tolerate having Wing around. Now, only a day of tracking lay between Wing and his continuing on to Legran.
He was happy for it. The grimness of his teacher had been good for him — with the skills he had learned, Wing felt confident he could make it to Legran in better condition than he’d arrived here. But after tonight’s exchange and revelation Wing could not imagine staying even one more day. Tomorrow he would leave. Probably to Legran. Either way, he would go.
No sound at all came from Rhusta’s side of the cabin. Usually, the old man would be snoring by now. Wing glanced over at him — a dim lump of shadow in the firelight.
Four turns here with Rhusta, eight since the night he’d left his home.
Wing shut his eyes to the darkness. Telling Rhusta had made fresh the wound again. How did I manage to bury such a thing? Wing asked himself. The end of everything he’d ever loved. Gone. Taken. Erased without a thought. Without consideration. The injustice of it was so profound Wing could not contain the emotion.
He shoved himself over onto his side, squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his palms against them, but like a well-trained boxer, the feeling evaded his every effort, coming back with short jabs and punches, reminding him with every hit: You are the last of your race.
But then, unexpectedly, Wing almost laughed. He’d not realized until this moment what a final, cruel joke that was. That the last of the Rieevan race should be him, one who looked nothing like his people, who shared not even one attribute that would place him as having been one of them — not the creamy white skin, the brown hair the colour of Mesko bark, not even in eyes of hazel that changed with the season or the clothes he wore.
As he pictured his people, his friends, his family, he heard their voices in perfect memory:
“What have you seen, Son-Cawutt? Will we be protected?”
“Why won’t you tell us? Are we not worthy of it? Are you testing us? Humiliating us?!”
“What I am asking is that you at least think about joining the Cant.”
“As you know, the people think you’re the one. We’re here to ask if you will believe in them as they believe in you.”
“I’ve heard you can’t be killed!”
“Is it true? Will you live forever?”
Was that why his people were dead? Because he had never, truly, believed in them as they believed in him? Was he truly that arrogant? Or that weak?
Maybe it had nothing to do with the Ka’ull at all. Maybe it had nothing to do with the flaws in the Ancient Writings.
Maybe the only flaw had been in him.
Lant, Wing beseeched silently. I’m so sorry. He pressed his face into the blanket that served as his pillow. I didn’t listen to you. I didn’t listen to them —
“Merehr!” the cry seemed to come from all around him.
Wing shook his head, gripping the blanket hard against his face.
“Merehr!”
— The chorus of voices grew steadily, a reverberating echo carried over mountain on moonlight, thrumming over and over...
“Merehr Merehr Merehr!”
Lurching to his feet, Wing stumbled across the cabin in the dark, hit the door with a hand, found the latch, and shoving his way through the door rushed out into the cold, sharp touch of night.
At the other side of the room, Rhusta opened his eyes as the cabin door swung back hard and then creaked shut. When he closed his eyes again, a sob escaped him. He pounded his face into his threadbare pillow and growled out a coarse torrent of tears.
Chapter 54
New Life, Still Hurt
W ith a bag of tools swinging from each shoulder, Nien made his way around to the sunrising wing of the house. Unlike so many other days, today he did not think about his father or Wing, nor was he reliving the days when the three would separate: Wing and their father into the Village for construction work whilst he headed toward the Cantfields. Today he was Sep, the man who had been taken in by a man called Monteray and a woman named Kate, and the sun was up and the gentle wind passing over the river carried the first hints of what he hoped might be an early Kive. Passing by the doors to the large one-roomed edifice he had never yet entered, he bumped into Monteray.
“Good morning,” Monteray said.
“And to you,” Nien replied, noting a bundle hanging over Monteray’s shoulder. “Traveling?”
“Yes. It’s time to go see an old friend.” He looked out toward the house. “Thanks for all the work you’ve done. I hate to leave right now, but — ”
“It’s fine. What needs to be done in the next little while can be done by one, for the most part.”
“If you need some help, have Kate send for Call. He can be useful.”
“I will.”
Monteray paused for a moment, mentally going over what he had in his duffle. Shaking his head, he turned back, saying, “I usually forget something.” He stopped. “You haven’t been inside the Mietan yet, have you?”
“No,” Nien replied.
Monteray looked scandalized. “Well, it’s time you did — it’s very nearly my favorite thing. Come on in.”
Nien unshouldered his burdens and followed Monteray.
Stepping in through the two massive doors, Nien could not help but pause. One large open space, everything about the Mietan drew in the senses like a seduction. At one end sat a large dais with an unembellished chair, rich in its simplicity. The floor was laid with warm honey-coloured wood, ingrained with symbols that were pleasing to the eye, though none of which Nien recognized. There was in the air the scent and flavour of freshly cut wood, early morning sun, and the discrete tang of metal.
“This...is a beautiful space.”
Monteray turned a full circle, smiling. “I’m partial to it. Kate jokes that I built the house for her and this for me.” Monteray led Nien around the open space, unadorned by furnishings or shelves, except for a section of wall near the raised dais containing a discreet collection of swords. Reaching up, Monteray took down a long, slender sword. Nien had never seen anything like it. Its blade was flat, edged on one side, but nearly as thin as a sheet of vellum. Monteray moved the glistening blade over his head, sweeping it in a graceful arc before suddenly striking out in two quick movements. The blade cut through the air in quick thrusts of air that were nearly silent.
“It’s a wonderful weapon,” he said, pausing and holding it out in front of him, “one of the finest ever made in Jayak, and a special gift.” He looked up at Nien. “You all right?”
Nien stood, frozen suddenly with fear. It felt as if his heart were near to breaking his skin, and his throat trying to choke him. He blinked and saw Monteray’s expression. He swallowed hard.
“Yes,” Nien managed to say. “It’s…beautiful.” The word felt sick in Nien’s mouth, like the worst lie he’d ever spoken.
Monteray nodded to him and replaced the sword onto its place on the wall. “I guess I’d better get going — oh, wait,” he said, and stepping over behind the dais, took up a small knife dressed in an elegant leather sheath. “A gift,” he said. “Almost forgot it twice now.”
Nien nodded in silence and followed Monteray back outside.
“Thanks again for all your help,” Monteray said. “I’ll be back in a couple turns.”
“Travel well,” Nien managed to say, and quickly re-shouldering the two bags of tools, disappeared around the corner of the Mietan.
Chapter 55
Legendary Ties
D ay broke early to find Wing and Rhusta following a narrow trail above a steep ravine. They had been gone since early morning, heading for a stream apart from the one that flowed nearer to the cabin but where a specific moss grew that Rhusta wanted for wound packing and bedding material. Wing had been determined to leave after the disturbing and painful discussion over the Ancient Writings the night before. But the morning had come and, finding a rather significant change in Rhusta’s typically surly demeanor, had decided to stay at least a few more days. They had the moss to collect and he wanted to put the last touches on the leather capote he’d been making for himself before leaving for Legran. This time, when he set out, he would be prepared.
Pondering Rhusta’s turn-about, which was as confusing to him as his snobbery had been up until that morning, another sensation touched off in Wing’s mind. Coming to a slow stop, aware of a tingling in his hands and inside his chest, he noticed Rhusta stop as well, likely wondering what Wing was doing; but Wing’s attention was drawn to a stand of gnarled trees and shrub flanking a set of particularly large boulders. He cocked his head slightly to the side and listened. And then he heard it: From behind one of the massive boulders, a low rumble.
He was not mistaken.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Wing said, voice low, as he began walking again, very slowly, pushing Rhusta ahead of him…
But it was too late.
There was an explosive roar, the sound of claws scouring rock, and a flash of silver teeth. Wing shoved Rhusta to the ground as over five pendtars of black fury hit Wing in the chest, lifting him off his feet and tossing him backward over the ravine.
Caught in the feral embrace of a full grown shy’teh, Wing and the huge cat flew over the edge of the ravine, spinning down the dramatic slope beneath it.
Bound like lovers in a dance of death, Wing and the shy’teh hurtled into a free-slide avalanche of bone-white scree.
For Wing, time ceased to exist as he’d known it, as if his mind and his body existed in two different dimensions. Grabbing out, desperate to find something, anything, to hold on to, he fought for his life. But his reaching only found the rending claws of the shy’teh and jagged edges of sharp rock.
I’m going to die, flashed through his mind, just as one of his flailing hands caught hold of something solid.
With a wrenching yank that punched him sideways into the scabrous edges of t
alus and nearly separated his shoulder, the fall terminated —
But the battle was far from over.
Wing managed to maintain his grip on the gnarled branch of mountain brush that had stopped the fall, but the shy’teh hung on as well —
To him.
With one set of great white claws, she dug into Wing’s hip. With her other paw, she reached around, hooked his back, and pulled herself up.
Wing screamed. Fire exploded in his back as muscle, sinew, and nerve felt sure to be ripped from the frame of his body. Recoiling, Wing tried to get his knees between his belly and hers, but theirs was a wild dance and he lost ground as quickly as he gained it.
Fighting her with his legs, Wing struck out with his free hand and hit her in the throat, curling his fingers around her larynx.
A snarl erupted from the shy’teh’s barreled chest and she came at him with her teeth. Wing turned his head. She missed his face, and sank her four large fangs into his shoulder. Wing gasped, his own teeth locking around the air gushing out of his lungs. Shockingly, he managed to maintain his grip on the furry mass of her throat and bore down, succeeding in pushing her back.
But he was unable to sustain the effort for long.
As the strength in hand and arm began to fail, the cat withdrew her teeth from his shoulder and, with a snarl, came at his throat.
This is it, he thought. Nien, I —
A shot of air whistled across his cheek followed by a solid thwunk.
The shy’teh jerked. Wing gasped. On top of him the big cat quivered and then her fierce gaze relaxed. Slowly, her claws released, her enormous head rolled to the side, and she began to slide off him. Her ribs caught briefly on his feet, then her front legs rotated over and she was tumbling away down the ravine.
Wing couldn’t believe it. He looked down. The large black mass that had, a moment before, been the most deadly, terrible force he’d ever encountered, now lay at the bottom of the scree field, body twitching from after-death reflex, an arrow quivering in her side right behind her front leg. A perfect shot. An impossible shot.
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