Wing & Nien

by Shytei Corellian

  “Merehr is gone,” he said.

  Fe moved a little past Nien, staring intently at Wing. En’t stepped up behind his little sister, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “Does it hurt?” Hagen asked, eyes frozen on the wound in Wing’s chest.

  “No, Hagen.”

  And then Lily pressed in through the ring of soldiers. Her eyes passed from Wing and turned upon the armor-clad gathering of adult soldiers. Indignantly, she shouted at them: “We’ve only just found him! You can’t take him!” Nien saw Carly’s shoulders shake. All around, came only silence.

  Beseeching and angry, Lily turned her gaze to Pree K, then to Nien. Nien had no idea what to say.

  Lily stared at him a moment and then turned on Wing. “Come back!” she cried.

  Her shout caused Nien to flinch and he could only watch as Lily ran forward and dropped at Wing’s side. Grabbing his body armour, she dug her fingers in and shook him with a ferocity that caused a handful of SiQQiy’s men to look away.

  Carly reached up to push her back when Jhock hurried forward and, kneeling behind Lily, took her in his hands and turned her firmly around. Surprisingly, she did not fight Jhock as he stood and pulled her up into his arms.

  Still standing behind him, Nien felt SiQQiy turn to look behind her.

  From across the fields, through the battlefield, came three figures. All three were dressed in the rustic clothing of Legran: one straight and strong, another slightly bent with long greying hair, and another much younger than the other two, cheeks flushed with the adrenaline of first battle. Led by the stooped one, they approached the silent gathering.

  SiQQiy stepped away from Nien and into the arms of the tallest of the three. “Monteray,” she said.

  From behind Monteray, came Call, followed by Rhusta — No, Rhegal, Nien thought, correcting himself.

  Quiet greetings were offered, and Nien and SiQQiy parted, watching as their friends’ eyes came to rest on the tall figure with short black hair lying in the midst of the short circle of men and children.

  As if acting upon a silent wish, the crowd closed in around Nien and Carly. White breath from the surrounding company filled the air.

  Only from Wing’s still body could no breath be seen lilting upon the cold light of Ime.

  Chapter 94

  What Lies Beneath Lives Above

  B eneath snow, beneath the unbreathing weight of the dead, Rieeve lay in stillness.

  At the southing end of the valley the only remnants of battle was that of blood and torn up earth. The stately Cawutt home stood undamaged by both battle and quake.

  At the northing end of the valley, however, the vestiges and ruin of war and earthquake was complete.

  Viyer lay in rubble. The earth had opened up and swallowed not only great chunks of the castle but also the two innermost rows of burnt homes in the Village, plunging them like so many dark skeletons into the quake’s gaping crevasse.

  Those Ka’ull still physically able had run and been routed on the outskirts of the castle by the converging troops from Jayak and Legran. A few hundred had escaped into the mountains and been pursued, but more than three-fourths of the Ka’ull army lay behind, dead or dying on the fields of Rieeve. Those that had survived battle, quake, and the fighters from Legran and Jayak, would be met by another force that had been sent out from Jayak and Quieness some turns before, meant to catch any who made it as far as the Ti-Uki Confluence. In Rieeve, supplies, animals, and weapons had all been left behind —

  And Nien had wanted none of it.

  “Whatever the conjoining armies from the other valleys want,” he had said, “they can take.”

  SiQQiy had, nevertheless, persuaded Nien to keep some things that could be salvaged from Castle Viyer after the quake. He’d acquiesced, but had put Pree K in charge of the details.

  As night fell in the silence of the main room in the large Cawutt home, Nien came up behind Rhegal. Everyone had finally fallen to sleep, including Carly, who lay on the floor among them, SiQQiy sitting with her, cradling her head in her lap.

  “If you will,” Nien said quietly.

  Rhegal followed Nien into the bedroom at the back. There, on the bed in the far corner, lay a long figure.

  “Will you help me prepare the body?” Nien asked.

  Rhegal nodded his head.

  Reaching out, Nien’s hand shook as he withdrew the bed sheet from Wing’s face.

  Beside him, Rhegal whispered hoarsely, “Yosha,” as if the sight of Wing’s face had literally taken his breath away. Nien waited as Rhegal collected himself. “I bring him in, I patch him up — twice. He wanted to die back then. He had everything to live for now.” Nien could hear Rhegal’s throat working reluctantly. “It was supposed to be me.”

  Nien glanced at Rhegal. The old man’s grey eyes were studying the outline of the man beneath the teeana sheets as if he were a seer stone. Nien wondered what the old man meant until Rhegal continued: “I was supposed to be Merehr. I wasn’t, I can see that. But if I’d said yes, if I’d…” He shook his head. “He came,” and it seemed to Nien that the old man had forgotten Nien was there. “Merehr finally came. So why am I still here?”

  Taking up the long sheet of fine teeana they would use to wrap Wing in for burial, he held one end out to Rhegal. The old man cleared his throat, took the sheet, and the two men began their work.

  Some time passed in the progression of their solemn task before Rhegal said, “Do you know that I dreamed about meeting him as a child?”

  Nien shook his head, no, before saying, “But I think he wondered why you disliked him so much.”

  “I didn’t not like him,” Rhegal said, the barest hint of defensiveness in his tone. He sighed. “I’d hoped he’d figured that out.”

  Seeing the thought disturbed Rhegal, Nien added, “I’m sure he did.”

  “Those turns in the mountains when he came to me for help, when he looked to me to be the teacher, the truth was I was watching him, testing him. The truth was, I wanted him to be Merehr. I, well, maybe I should have told him so.”

  “He would not want you to regret.” Nien managed a short, diplomatic tip of his mouth. “He also would not have wanted you to call him Merehr.”

  Rhegal sighed. “From him, from our people — I’ve stopped hoping for forgiveness.”

  “You did a great deal for Wing. And don’t blame yourself for what our people thought or wanted from you. That, trust me, would be the last thing Wing would want.” Nien gazed at the still face of his brother. “It’s done now, anyway.”

  As they finished their preparation, Nien held the last corner of the teeana sheet that would cover Wing’s face.

  This time, it was Rhegal that had to help Nien continue. Wordlessly, Rhegal lifted Wing’s head, waiting for Nien to make the final wrap.

  Choked with emotion, Nien wound the sheet over Wing’s face and together they tucked the end behind Wing’s head.

  “Take the bed upstairs,” Nien said to Rhegal. “I’m going to stay down here for a while.”

  Rhegal left and Nien was alone in the room.

  Nien spent a terrible night, unable to sleep well, tossing and turning until Netalf came into the back room.

  “Commander Cawutt,” Netalf said quietly.

  Nien propped himself up on an elbow, scratching at one blood shot eye. “Yes?”

  “One of the Hettha is here. There is a question about the Ka’ull dead.”

  “A question?” Nien asked wearily.

  “Yes, Commander.” And that was all he said.

  Nien looked at him and understood. Nodding heavily, he got up, caught himself glancing at the still, teeana-wrapped form lying on the bed across from him, and then began to hunt for his boots.

  As the first light began to bleed over the mountains into the valley, Nien and Netalf rode toward the village side of the valley, arriving within sight of what remained of Castle Viyer. There, in a state far outreaching mere exhaustion, Nien dismounted and stood, looking down a se
emingly endless line of the dead. The Ka’ull had been separated from the dead of the united valleys.

  Monteray, Call, SiQQiy, Pree K, and the leader of the Jayakan forces arrived shortly thereafter and came to stand at his side.

  “We could dig pits. We could burn them,” Oiita, the Jayakan commander, suggested of the Ka’ull dead.

  Nien remained still. It probably appeared as if he were gazing at the dead but, in fact, he was listening, hoping to hear a voice no one else could.

  After a moment, he asked, “Monteray, do you know what the burial rites or rituals of the Ka’ull are?”

  “Pyres,” Monteray replied. “But there are specific rituals and these I do not know well enough to perform.”

  Without raising his eyes, Nien said, “Netalf, do we have any Ka’ull survivors nearby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bring one of them to me.”

  His eyes still fixed upon the unfathomable sight before him, it took Nien a moment to realize Netalf had returned, leading a Ka’ull soldier along by the elbow, the soldier’s arms bound behind him at the wrists.

  “Here is one who understands the Fultershier,” Netalf said to Nien, “ — or at least is willing to speak in it.”

  Nien considered the man’s eyes and was struck by what he saw there. He’d expected to see pain, hatred, fear. What he saw instead was an intense grief, devoid of animosity.

  “What is your name?” Nien asked.

  “Tem’a,” the captive Ka’ull soldier answered.

  “Your dead,” Nien said. “There is a ritual, yes? That you observe in their burial?”

  The Ka’ull, Tem’a, nodded. “There is.”

  “What is it?”

  As if reciting a poem, Tem’a replied, “‘Under Ka’ skies, they burn. To Ka’ skies go the dead: life, ash, the dead, to be born again.’”

  “Under Ka’ skies?” Nien said.

  Tem’a nodded and Nien saw they understood one another.

  Quizzically, SiQQiy and Oiita, the Jayakan Commander, looked to Nien.

  “The burning of their dead must be performed under Ka’ull sky, in their own land,” Nien said. He turned back to Tem’a. “Otherwise you believe their spirits will be lost?”

  Tem’a, hesitated briefly and nodded. “I don’t believe that, necessarily. But yes, Commander.”

  His reply interested Nien…what was it about this Ka’ull?

  He could have been the one that killed Wing, Nien thought. And he’s Ka’ull.

  So why did he not hate the man?

  With sincerity, Nien replied, “You must see that this cannot be accomplished.”

  Nien had expected some negative reaction from the Ka’ull, Tem’a, even if it was unspoken. What Nien saw instead was not only resignation but a sadness and regret so deep Nien felt it might swallow both of them whole.

  Wordlessly, Nien acknowledged the soulful cognizance, expressed in silence, of where they stood, of what could and could not be done. If more men, Nien thought, were like this Ka’ull, perhaps such a thing as they had all just been through could have been prevented.

  But few were like him, and so here they were.

  With weariness dragging at Nien’s very soul, he said: “We will burn your dead here, in Rieeve, and they will ascend to Rieevan skies. Once there, if they don’t find it to their liking, then perhaps they will find their way to the northing on their own accord.”

  For a long moment, the Preak-born Rieevan and the soldier of the Ka’ull took each other in; brown eyes flaked with honey meeting deep blue eyes of warm Kive rain, both begging to find understanding in the wreck and stench that filled their senses all around.

  Was this the beginning or the end? Where would both their people go from here?

  “I can perform the rituals; I can guide them — if you will permit it,” Tem’a said, his voice thin as frost on a blade of grass.

  Nien nodded his head to him. “You may perform whatever rituals you need.” Nien paused then and, glancing over his shoulder toward the far end of the valley, imagined the log home and the tall figure wrapped in teeana sheets that lay within. “And I shall attend to mine.”

  He met Tem’a’s eyes once more, and with a deep breath that it pained him to take, turned away and with SiQQiy by his side agreed to meet Monteray, Pree K, Call, and Netalf back at his home later that evening.

  With the wine drunk, the children tucked once more into their bedrolls in the main room and the adults dispersing, Nien retreated into the back room of the house. He stood alone, facing out the back window toward the Village side of the valley. He’d removed the heavy blanket that had covered the window at the back to prevent any inside light from bleeding out; it was unnecessary now. Staring out into the night, he didn’t hear Carly come in until she was already at his side.

  “Where’s SiQQiy?” she asked.

  “Asleep.”

  Carly looked out the window. “It’s so peaceful now.”

  Nien agreed silently, asking, “How are the children?” He’d been so busy with the organization of affairs after the battle and the earthquake that he’d not had more than a moment to spend with the children.

  Carly shook her head. “I don’t know.” She paused a moment. “Did you ever hear them call him Merehr when he wasn’t around?”

  “E’te,” Nien replied thoughtfully.

  “I don’t know if he was or wasn’t, but the kids, they were absolutely sure,” Carly said, and Nien felt a shiver, a rush of understanding that was both sickening and beautiful. “How can they be,” Carly asked, “so sure? When I loved him so much, how could I not have known?” She shivered roughly, rubbing her arms and sniffing back a fresh rush of tears. “Sorry. I think I’m still in shock.”

  Nien took her hand in his. “Me, too.”

  Side by side they stared out the window. “He was Merehr,” Carly said softly, “wasn’t he?”

  “I think so,” Nien replied.

  “Did he know it?”

  Nien’s throat tightened. “E’te.”

  “What happened between the two of you in the Mesko Forest? Wing came in and got you one morning, early…”

  “He was trying to explain,” Nien said.

  “Explain,” Carly said, and to Nien’s surprise, she snorted in amusement. “He tried to explain it to me, too. I didn’t take it very well.”

  “Well, don’t feel bad. I’m not sure I took it much better. And I’m still not sure I understood half of what happened, but I think he knew that his part in all of this was coming to a close. I think he knew he was going to die.”

  Carly glanced over her shoulder at Nien in the dim light, searching his face. After a moment, she nodded, tears rising again in her eyes. “I think,” she said, her voice breaking, “that he did more than that. I think he knew you are the one to fix all of this.”

  Hearing the normally pragmatic Carly say the same thing Wing had that day in the clearing caused something to stir, hot and uncomfortable, in Nien’s chest.

  “Wing never liked the idea of one person speaking for Eosha. A prophet, a Leader, a Merehr can be a very dangerous thing, obtaining a sort of Self-Omniscience.”

  “But that wasn’t Wing,” Carly said. “And that isn’t you, either, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “No,” Nien said, agreeing with her. Still, his voice was pained. “It worries me anyway.”

  She squeezed his hand and turned her gaze once more to the dark outside the window.

  “The children seemed to have had no doubt about any of us. It seemed obvious to them who Wing was. Who you are. What we could do together.”

  “If they only knew…” Nien said.

  “If I had even a modicum of their faith…”

  “Not true,” Nien said. “You survived after Castle Viyer was taken. Wing and I were comfortable at the Monterays’ and you were still living in the wild, alone, hurt...”

  “Sheer survival instinct,” Carly said. “I wanted to die. Every night, I wished I had.”


  Nien rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “And yet, here we are.”

  Carly was silent a moment. “And he’s gone.”

  The soft, quiet sob in Carly’s throat squeezed Nien’s heart. He placed his arm around her and pulled her close.

  “I don’t know how to live with this…” Carly muttered.

  Nien shook his head silently as tears began to roll, hot and uncomfortable, down his cheeks.

  Carly swiped gruffly at her running nose. “We’ve won. We’ve done more than I ever thought possible; but right now, I don’t care. I would rather have stayed in Legran, run away with you and Wing and lived on one of those beaches you two talked about, than be here, now, without him.”

  Nien drew a deep, shuddering breath. Carly was right — it did feel like that. They had accomplished the unimaginable and yet Nien felt empty, as if, without Wing, it meant nothing.

  Carly rested her head into the crook of Nien’s shoulder. Nien placed his hand atop her head, his large hand able to cup the crown of her skull as he hunted the night outside of the window for some kind of consolation.

  Wing, he thought, searching the darkness. Where are you?

  Carly pressed her cheek into Nien’s shirt.

  Nien held her tighter.

  “How can I say how much I hurt when you’re here?” Nien asked.

  Carly sniffed. “I loved him more than I ever thought I could love anyone, but the two of you — you shared the same heart for all your lives.”

  Carly’s words felt sure to burst the small restraint Nien had on his emotions.

  “I washed his blood out of my cloak,” Nien said, “as if it had only been from a cut on his knee.”

  Carly’s tears were slowly soaking through Nien’s thin undershirt. He glanced up at the rafters.

  “He left us with everything he’d ever wanted to give us. There is a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs, and that ledger,” Nien said, nodding at the leather-clad book laying on the chest of drawers between his and Wing’s bed. “That night, after Wing came back from the river in Legran, I asked him if he was Merehr. He said he was. He also said all of us are.”