They continued forward in silence. A strange silence, too. Hackeneth was typically as booming of a metropolis as the Wasmer could sustain, with farmers, laborers, and merchants crowding the streets. Nothing compared to Rostane, of course, but nothing had prepared him for this echoing emptiness that filled the air. Hafgan saw perhaps half a dozen Wasmer going about their various businesses. One man was fixing his boots. A woman was dragging a sled full of sealed chamber pots. One child, a little girl, played with a stick doll between a couple of crates. But, they should have been fighting through crowds.
“Well, my king, perhaps you should not have returned,” Yurin growled quietly. Hafgan wasn’t sure if it was a friendly warning or a threat. Considering the setting, a threat was more likely.
“Like I said, no matter what happens, I serve my people first,” Hafgan answered, scanning every person in sight, examining each of the windows.
So, when the attack came, it wasn’t surprising.
The Wasmer stood up on the roof of a nearby building before drawing back his bow string. He was quick, this archer. But Hafgan attained his hedwicchen in an instant, feeling his anxieties and fears leaving him, the aches of the road and his injuries fading into an objective awareness. He was perfectly centered, controlled, and the world even seemed to slow around him.
The arrow left the bowstring and Hafgan heard the thwap of the string as it vibrated to a pause. The arrowhead was black, absorbing the light of the sun, and the feathers were a pure white that blended with the snow of the nearby peaks. The archer smiled, so certain he was of the course of his shot. He was probably the best archer they’d been able to drudge up, whoever it was who they’d sent to kill him.
It was a good shot, too. Hafgan was thinking that as he brought his spear around in a rapid blur, knocking the projectile aside with little apparent effort. His mind realized how dangerous that choice had been, how it would have been easier to throw himself flat, but, within his hedwicchen, he had few doubts about his prowess. Deflecting arrows had been part of his training. As had preventing assassination attempts.
So, he was also ready when the old man fixing his boot extracted a dagger and flung it at him. This time, he tossed his spear into one hand and batted aside the dagger with the back of his other, feeling the thing cut a hot line into his skin through his gloves. Enric and Alwyn rushed over to take down the man with a spear thrust. Two of his other men tried scaling the house from which the archer had launched his attack, but the man was already gone. Hafgan heard Paston shout an order for them to return.
Then he stood on the balls of his feet, waiting for Yurin to proceed with an attack of his own. But, though his brother had drawn his sword, he did not attack. In fact, his back was to Hafgan, looking for other attackers. So, apparently this attempt did not have the approval of the Dyn Doethas.
“Do they still travel in pairs?” Hafgan asked of his brother.
“You will find many of the old ways no longer hold,” Yurin said, even as he rushed at the child playing with her stick doll. The girl had raised the thing to her lips, the hidden blowgun likely loaded with enough poison to stop Hafgan’s heart in a moment. The poison’s effectiveness never became a question, though, as Yurin’s blade severed the girl’s head from her shoulders. Even through his hedwicchen, Hafgan felt a surge of anger the likes of which he had never experienced.
“Peace, brother.”
Yurin turned rapidly, seeing the look in Hafgan’s eyes. “She intended to kill you.”
“She was a girl. A child.” Hafgan retained his hedwicchen, but just barely. This child, this girl, had had no choice in this matter, certainly. She’d been told what she needed to do, and now paid the price. But, that was Hackeneth. That was the Carreg Da. That was the Wasmer. Hierarchical to the point of sacrificing children in service of killing an unknown adversary.
When he’d been young, Hafgan had thought he could fix that. Now, he only sought to save it.
“Like I said, the old ways no longer hold. Remember your training. ‘If one seeks your blood, they are the enemy. Even if they be a friend.’”
Hafgan remembered those words being intoned by Taern a number of times.
“I have no friends here,” he said, resting his spear back over his shoulder and continuing forward toward Enorry Falls.
***
When he was young, Hafgan was idealistic.
Even before his parents sold him to the Dyn Doethas, Hafgan always had grand hopes for a better life. Working in the lumber camps—despite the danger of dismemberment and death—was fairly humdrum. The children primarily gathered kindling and stripped fallen trees of their branches before the trees were hauled off for processing. Yurin and Hafgan would tear through their work for the day and then go on adventures.
They would climb nearby peaks and swim through sub-arctic lakes, ever daring each other to greater feats of bravery. Yurin was the older, bigger, and stronger brother, and he could always climb higher, dive deeper, and jump further. Hafgan could barely count the times that he nearly died, plummeting off cliffs or nearly tumbling from the tricky point that was halfway to the top of Enorry Falls. But, Yurin would grab him at the last moment, and when the shaking terror passed, they would laugh in the manner of invincible, immortal children before mindlessly risking their lives again.
And, like an immortal child, Hafgan saw himself raising his own status. He would, based simply on his prowess and courage, raise his family from the laborer caste to the warrior caste and earn both glory and a comfortable life for his family. His mother deserved a life that was easier than group-hauling fallen trees through the snow, or cooking great pots of tuber-heavy stew to feed forty laborers. And his father deserved hands that were less calloused, cracked, and bleeding from swinging an axe day after day.
So, Hafgan thought to eventually raise himself to a warrior and then a war leader. Castes were fairly impermeable, but there were stories of great heroes doing so. Maybe, then, he could wield some authority over the Wasmer, gaining some influence and creating change. Maybe he’d even eliminate the caste system—a dream of his. Though Yurin was his better in all things physical, Hafgan was quicker and stronger than the other boys his age. They would gather at night and wrestle, the most common sport of the Wasmer. He rarely experienced trouble in subduing the other children, and always stopped just short of hurting them. His precision and control made him confident that he would, one day, become a war leader.
So, that day when Taern Llegyn, a gleaming Dyn Doethas warrior who was seemingly ten feet tall, showed up at their camp and purchased he and Yurin from his parents, Hafgan wasn’t too upset. It was his chance to attain his destiny.
That had been a long time ago.
Twenty-five years had done little to change Taern. Instead of a pure black, his hair was streaked with silver. His facial hair was still trimmed fairly short with just a couple of braids flowing downward. Though the Dyn Doethas would never shave his face in the style of the budredda, he knew that fewer handholds meant less risk in a fight. His face was more weathered, certainly, and his bulky musculature had given way to a more slender, aged strength, but Taern, father of the Haearn Doethas, was hale and hearty still.
Hafgan, escorted alone to an isolated chamber deep in the Laenor—the palatial living quarters of the Dyn Doethas that sat deep behind Enorry Falls—held his hedwicchen as tightly as he could. He wanted to bury any emotions that he might feel at the sight of this man. He was rarely prone to rage or fear, but this man standing before him had the capability of eliciting both.
Taern surveyed Hafgan, his chilly blue eyes cutting through Hafgan like a mountain wind near the peaks. Hafgan carefully met his gaze, keeping his eyes partially blurred to avoid the intensity of his teacher and tormenter’s attention. His hedwicchen was complete, but even so, some remnants of memory tugged at his consciousness, so strongly did Taern loom in his past.
There was a crushing sound behind him, causing Hafgan to instinctively bounce to the balls of his f
eet, ready for an attack. His head whipped around, one hand held toward Taern defensively and the other ready to fend off an assault. But it was merely the door slamming as the guards left the two of them alone.
Hafgan fixed his gaze back on Taern, who was now smiling a disarming grin, his arms spread wide in a greeting.
“Welcome home, my son,” he said in the smooth voice of a practiced orator. It almost sounded authentic to Hafgan, though he knew better. This man could manipulate his own emotions and the emotions of others with as little effort as Hafgan would use to jump over a small creek.
“Arwein,” intoned Hafgan, recognizing Taern with the Wasmer title of ‘Master’. Whatever was between them, Taern had still earned that right.
“The people of Hackeneth have missed you. I have missed you,” Taern said, his face growing wistful. Sad, even.
“I find that unlikely, Arwein,” Hafgan said, switching to Ardian. Taern briefly frowned at the sound of the neighboring country’s tongue before again adopting a grin.
“Well, perhaps the former is false. But I can honestly tell you… the latter is true.” His Ardian was certainly rougher than Hafgan’s, but his words were precise. Everything Taern did was a practice in precision. “Hafgan, I have known you since you were a pup, an impetuous boy of five or six winters. Twenty years, I worked with you. Twenty years, I taught you. Twenty years, I learned from you. With what we have been through, my son, I would consider you family. Or even a friend.”
Hafgan remembered the Taern of five years ago on the day of his departure, covered in blood and quivering with anger, cursing Hafgan with the strength of every false Wasmer god. There was no love lost between the two of them.
“Twenty years, you deprived me,” Hafgan corrected him, his voice carrying the monotone of his hedwicchen “Twenty years, you tortured me. Twenty years, you lied to me. You can pretend, Arwein, that there was a purpose to all of it. You can pretend that the terrors your forced upon me were in my best interest, for some greater purpose. But you would be lying, Arwein. For, when it came down to it, it was all for you. For you to command. For you to control.” Hafgan was now in a state of relaxed readiness, prepared for any eventuality. The Taern of old would never suffer such insolence.
Instead of responding directly, Taern stared at Hafgan for a minute with a brief appraisal before sighing a deep sigh. He gestured to an austere, poorly-carved chair and took a seat himself in one opposite. Hafgan tentatively sat down across from him, wondering at the trick.
“You live too much in the hedwicchen, my son,” Taern observed, changing the subject. “There are dangers in that.”
There were, indeed, dangers. The dulling of emotions, even when not in the hedwicchen. The inability to feel strong emotions, even in times of great need. And a lack of self-preservation; when one did not feel fear, one might take unnecessary risks. Reflecting on his last five years—from the objective cocoon of the hedwicchen—Hafgan knew that he’d risked life on dozens of occasions, the most recent being his fight with Yanso. Or maybe his first encounter with Yurin… turning his back on his dangerous, unpredictable, quite possibly insane brother. No, it would have been deflecting an arrow with his spear when attacked by the assassins.
He’d been damned by returning to Hackenath in the first place.
“I am what you made me, Arwein,” Hafgan said in his best monotone. Taern crossed his legs and leaned forward into his hands. It was not a defensible posture. Hafgan wondered whether it was a show of submission, disrespect, or just his older master getting soft and forgetful. Looking into his clear, azure gaze, however, Hafgan knew it wasn’t the latter.
“Hafgan, release your hedwicchen. Look at me and tell me what you feel,” Taern said, his voice sounding almost eager.
“No.” Hafgan would not put himself at this man’s mercy for even a moment.
“Please, my son. I know you do not trust me. But I swear to you, on my own life, that I mean you no harm.” The only life that Taern would care about would be his own, and Wasmer tended to take their oaths seriously. Even Taern.
Especially Taern.
Hafgan let his hedwicchen fade. The focus—on everything and nothing—left him. The vast emptiness that allowed him to remain objective, factual, and intensely focused was suddenly gone. The complete and utter understanding of his own capabilities, and the ability to weigh a dozen possibilities and calculate the probability of success, gone.
And his emotions slammed back into his brain.
He felt his teeth baring as he looked at Taern, a surge of burning anger building in his chest. He clenched his fists so hard that the bones audibly popped, and he tensed every muscle in his body, preparing to lunge. Apparently, his overuse of the hedwicchen had not dulled his emotions to the extent that he could no longer feel anger in the face of his Arwein.
In the face of the man who’d made Hafgan kill his parents.
“I… I…” Hafgan sputtered, lost in fury. It was almost as if twenty-five years of repressed rage and hate hit him all at once. Perhaps another side effect of living too much in the hedwicchen. “I should rip your throat from your body and fill the bellies of your victims with your blood. I… I should break each of your bones and toss you from the heights of Enorry Falls, polluting the water with your taint. I…” He almost felt lightheaded from restraining his urge, from continuing to voice his desires without acting on them. His discipline held, but just barely. He was here on a mission, he tried to remind himself. He still wanted what was best for his people, even if his people would rather not take credit for his existence.
Taern had the dignity to appear grim, though unafraid. “Before you kill me, I ask you to look deeper. Tell me, what have I experienced? What am I feeling?” Taern asked, his tone holding an unusual note.
The rational part of Hafgan fought back his burning desire to wrap his hands around this man’s neck, the animal instinct to make him pay. His earliest lessons, before he had mastered the hedwicchen, had been focused on understanding emotions. People fought with emotions—anger, fear, joy—and understanding and using them was essential for combat. But so was reading the emotions of the common people, and knowing how to tug on fears and insecurities, as well as their faith in the gods, to manipulate them into becoming willing slaves.
Taern had tested them, the ten Haearn Doethas pupils, by forcing them to read the emotions and experiences of people brought into the Laenor. Merchants, laborers, miners, and even some warriors. The pupils had been asked to simply observe these people, alone or in a conversation with Taern, and then describe what each person was feeling. And not just through a ‘This merchant seemed pleased,’ but in a more detailed examination, such as ‘The recent famine has the merchant anxious for the future of his family, but he is simultaneously excited that his biggest competitor is out of business.’ There’d been leaps of inference that needed to be made, using a broad understanding of emotional tells and a deep understanding of cultural and environmental factors.
Emotions, Hafgan knew, could only truly be read outside of the hedwicchen. Part of understanding emotions in others was seeing what emotions they elicited within the self. One cannot truly understand rage or depression simply as an observer, bereft of empathy.
Taern’s mouth twitched slightly upward, just on one side, as he observed Hafgan’s war against his own anger. The brief smile, though, flickered and died; it was forced. An act.
Hafgan examined Taern’s face in detail, top to bottom. He hadn’t seen the man in five years. On the surface, Taern appeared largely unchanged, but Hafgan could see a growing crease between his eyebrows denoting an increase in general anxiety. He also noticed the six-inch-long scar—which Hafgan had put on Taern’s forehead himself—and that it seemed to stand out against more worry-wrinkles. Taern had always been so confident, and though he’d sought to revolutionize Wasmer culture, he’d rarely appeared to worry.
His eyes, though, gave it away. The dark circles, illuminated in the low light, denoted little sleep. And,
his eyes seemed… they seemed clouded, sad. He looked at Hafgan the way that a parent would gaze upon a neglected child after realizing that that child was filled only with hate. It was a guilt there. A shame. Remorse.
It could be faked, Hafgan knew. Taern was a master manipulator, able to simulate emotions as accurately as one of the great actors in the Ardian theater. The Wasmer did not have any sort of theater; the harsh conditions of the Tulanques lent themselves better to sports requiring physical prowess, and stone craft, than the fine arts that the humans likened to culture. Once, out of sheer curiosity, Hafgan had taken some of his ill-earned gains from The House and gone to the Penton Theater, built during the reign of Samuel Penton the Second. The building, meant to add culture to compete with Florens and some much-needed, curved architecture to the blocky Rostane, had been packed full that night. The great Manis Deon had been playing the role of the king in Thantos’ Dream, and he always drew a crowd.
Hafgan vividly remembered Deon playing the titular King Barros Thantos. The man had commanded the stage, literally demanding attention. When Thantos’ father had passed, breathing his dying wish that his son would hold the warring duchies together, Hafgan had felt the unfamiliar urge to cry. When Thantos had married Marin Thatcher, forming an alliance with the once strong Jecustan empire and finding love at the same time, his heart had leapt for joy. And, when Thantos had been assassinated by a pasnes alna, in a great theatrical conflagration, Hafgan had known real anger against the mages.
Taern was better than Deon.
He could make a mother smile as he took her child away for a few paltry garrs. He could deliver a sentence for execution, with the condemned thanking him before being speared through the heart to have the blood drained into the waiting mouth of his other victims. He could make warriors’ hearts leap before sending them on a suicide mission against a rival tribe. He could convince a man to kill his parents in cold blood.
Hafgan, in his rage, wanted to believe that Taern was manipulating him. That he was faking this evident regret, trying to regain Hafgan’s loyalty for some nefarious plot. But, somewhere deep within himself, he knew that Taern was telling the truth. He knew that Taern was truly exhausted, and truly regretful.
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