“Here,” he said, regaining Lambelhen’s attention.
Lambelhen reached for his cloak, and Daghahen dodged his hand gracefully, waving the cloak as if in a dance. “Oh no, allow me. You’re my guest.” His body movements were always graceful, along with his words. He had relied on them in his youth. However, Lambelhen knew all about that. He most likely suspected Daghahen was planning something, but he had to try anyway. He retained the cloak as long as possible to buy time to complete the incantation; waving it a bit made for a good distraction too.
Melah doena haxil, melah doena haxil. He couldn’t merely think the words, the spell required saying them. The words slid out in low murmurs, bending his lips as little as possible. Turning his head as naturally as he could and using his unkempt hair to mask his face, he finished his chant and gave the cloak a flourishing twirl. It landed on Lambelhen’s shoulders. If Lambelhen noticed his lips moving, he’d know. And if he knew, Daghahen and his family would be in trouble.
Their eyes locked. With the cloak now resting on Lambelhen’s shoulders, he squinted at Daghahen.
He knows!
Daghahen smiled, proceeded to tie the string for him, and carried on as if he’d done nothing out of place.
“Short journey, smooth road,” he said, and opened the door for his brother.
Lambelhen approached the threshold. He spun around. “Daghahen.”
“Yes?” Daghahen’s pounding heart buried the sound of his own voice.
Lambelhen’s grin widened. “You’re a lucky saehgahn.” He strode out, mounted his horse, and cantered off through the tangle of trees.
Daghahen closed the door and leaned against it. A clammy sweat formed on his upper lip and temples. Lambelhen hadn’t seen it. His hands shook uncontrollably as they reached under his bloodstained tabard and retrieved the exquisite sword he’d managed to steal with the simple switching spell. Now it hung on his belt by its hilt. If luck was on his side, Lambelhen wouldn’t notice the fireplace poker in his scabbard for at least the rest of the day considering he didn’t actually use it. The sword acted more as a good luck charm for Lambelhen than a weapon.
Daghahen bent over to catch his balance as the room suddenly spun around him. It had been so long since he’d used magic. He wanted to quit, he really did. The cloaking spell he’d cast over this house had lasted ten years. It must’ve weakened for Lambelhen to have dispelled it so easily. Of course, Lambelhen wouldn’t have ceased his sorcery practice. He’d always been the better spell caster. Daghahen relied on his natural ability to charm and read the stars. He’d gone soft. His blissful abandonment of magic would be his demise so long as Lambelhen still lived. He had to resume his practice.
He straightened, the dizziness fading. A sculpted nude figure was molded on the cross section of the sword’s hilt, its arms crossed over its midsection like a dead body, just as Daghahen remembered. The deeply-etched word, “HATHROHJILH,” ran along the opposite side of the blade. It remained as shiny and mar-free as it was years ago when the twins obtained it.
What have I done?
Ibex rumbled in his head, Gained the edge, that’s what. You’ll kill him.
“Daghahen, are you all right?” Orinleah called from behind the tarp.
“Yes, my dear. I’m just exhausted.”
“You can sleep in here next to me. I’m sure we’ll be fine while you rest.”
“Orinleah,” he said, leaning against the door again.
“Yes?”
“Did I ever tell you I love you?”
Her voice shook now. “No. Please come here. I dearly want to see you!”
His eyes never left his warped reflection in the blade. This must be it. It had never occurred to him to steal the sword before. He knew little about it, but he’d find out whatever he needed to know to prepare for Lambelhen’s certain return.
He put the sword down and scrambled to a certain corner, clawing at the floorboards with his long fingers. He lifted up the loose ones and found a tattered book lying amongst wispy cobwebs in its hollow under the floor.
He brushed the dust off the cover, labeled with the burnt symbol of a hideous swine’s face made up of tiny runes, long ago covered by fabric. Someone in the past had tried to hide the book’s identity. The fabric had faded to grey and hung in threads off the book’s edges. Though the book was not terribly thick, its weight dragged on his muscles.
He shuddered. His old sorcery grimoire. He closed his eyes, not quite ready to see it again. Could this be his best defense?
“See there? The posts?” Daghahen asked, pointing to the three skinny logs he’d hewn from felled trees. They stood in the ground, decorated with feathers, bones, and green cloth tied to them.
It took her a moment; the posts were somewhat camouflaged by their ornamentation. “Yes,” Orinleah answered when her eyes settled. Their one-year-old son lay against her, sucking his thumb with his head laid under her chin.
“Many posts like it are erected all around our house… By saehgahn law, you’re never to go beyond them.”
“What?”
“They’re for our safety. I’ve planned it out; they’re set wide enough for us to reach each area most important to us.”
“But—but what if we need to go to a clan to ask for food or help or…”
He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Please trust me. If you need anything, I’ll go and get it for you. You’ll still have the berry patch. Wild onions grow all around. We’ll have mushrooms, and we have our stream for water and fishing. If you want other kinds of fish, I’ll go to other places to get them. I’ll also gather firewood from outside the barriers.”
She exhaled and leaned against him, putting her forehead on his chest. “I trust you, saehgahn… It’s not as if I can go home to visit my family anyway. Even if I needed to speak to the Desteer, I can’t. I made my decision.”
He wrapped his arm around her, bringing her and Dorhen in close. “You don’t need them anymore. We’re establishing our own clan.”
“You’re a good saehgahn, Dag. I’m lucky you came to me. We will make our own clan. A strong one.”
He kissed the top of her head. Making themselves stronger was their sole option. They couldn’t run away from Lambelhen’s impending return. Refuge found in the human lands in comparison to what Norr provided was like comparing a nut to a boulder. They’d be hard-pressed to find any other corner of Norr where they could slip under the nose of the ruling clan or the telepathic reach of the Desteer. It had taken him long enough to find this spot years ago. This place, this homestead, offered their best hope.
Later that night, Orinleah made silent steps through the tarp door to join Daghahen by the hearth. He’d surrendered to the comfort of the white ox pelt spread across the floor. Customarily, all married couples kept a white ox pelt in their home, and Daghahen had found one for her recently, making up for a custom he couldn’t fulfill when they were first married.
When he had presented it to her, she hugged it to her chest and said, “Now we’re complete.” It made her smile so brightly he hadn’t the heart to confess how he’d bought it from a roadside peddler during his last trip into the human lands for supplies.
She knelt beside him and, in an excited haste, her hands went straight to his hair. She slid one sleek leg over his lap and her lips went to his throat.
“What about the lad?” he asked.
“He’s asleep already.”
She wrapped her legs around his middle. That usual sense of hesitation came over him, put in place by various events in his repulsive past, but he slowed his breath and concentrated in an attempt to relax, as he usually had to do. They hadn’t made love much at all in the year since Dorhen was born. Refusing her offer would seem odd. Daghahen couldn’t put his mind to anything but Lambelhen’s unexpected visit.
“Are you sure, lass?”
She cut him off, shushing him. “Of course I am. You said we would start our own clan. We can’t start a clan with only one child.”
She unclasped his poncho and threw it aside. Sliding her hands around to rub his shoulders and the back of his neck, she plunged her tongue into his mouth. Her moves worked.
Pulling her mouth away, she traced her lips to his ear and whispered, “I dreamed about you again.”
“What?”
“Mmm-hmm. You might be interested to know I’ve experienced a few of them since we met.”
He kept silent and resisted at first when she pushed him to lie flat. She pulled his shirt off and insisted he lie down. The furry surface of their marriage pelt comforted his bare back with its thick, tickling locks of wool.
“Although,” she continued, tracing her fingers across his stomach to the laces on his leggings, “in the dreams, you’re always more wild. And you like it when I’m on top. I wonder if you prefer that in real life. You’ve never made any requests.”
“Um.” He swallowed and closed his eyes while she did her work. He abandoned whatever response he might have offered. None of that sounded like him, though. He’d never been a wild lover, and harbored no particular favor for any position. He decided not to worry about it. If her dreams excited her so much, he owed it to her to make them real. She deserved all the love he could lavish upon her, along with the clan she desired to establish.
Daghahen left the house each day and made it home later each night. At first, he told Orinleah he had been fishing, and when he couldn’t find time to bring home evidence, he said he had visited Theddir to earn some dendrea. All of it was putrid lies.
His answers to her questions became less elaborate and more brief, and she asked so many questions: Were the fish not biting today? What is Theddir like? Where’s the money you made today? Do you think the thief who robbed you will get caught? With dwindling answers and sharp diversions, he carefully trained her to stop asking.
But he was still their guardian and provider. Some days, he managed to bring home fish and silver dendrea with funny Lightlandic letters and fat-nosed faces embossed on them. He balanced covering his lies with his sorcery practice. Sorcery always demanded more time, more energy. He gave it what it wanted, and its demands increased.
The years passed, and Dorhen grew into an adorable and mischievous little saeghar. But Daghahen could hardly delight in this fleeting novelty. Each night he returned home, Dorhen greeted him with loving and inspired praises and whatever sort of trinket he had made from clay with his mother’s help earlier in the afternoon. Daghahen always stepped past him and rushed to the dark bedroom to collapse on the bed. Orinleah’s voice shushing and turning Dorhen away from the room reverberated in his ears as he drifted to sleep.
“Daghahen, wake up, my love.”
“Hmm?” Daghahen opened his heavy eyelids. His wife, lying beside him, nudged his shoulder. He had fallen asleep wearing his clothes from yesterday.
“I have to talk to you. I’m frightened.”
He raised his head a bit more. In the deep hour of the night, Dorhen slept soundly on his cot. “Who frightened my Orinleah?”
“I saw a spirit in the forest. It wasn’t the first sighting.”
“You were dreaming,” Daghahen said, and patted her head, hoping she would lay it down and go to sleep. Her voice sounded so high and energetic, she must have been awake all this time. He shushed her so she wouldn’t wake Dorhen.
“It appears on rainy days. It looks like a saehgahn, but it has blue hair. Have you seen it?”
Daghahen had seen many spirits but wasn’t about to tell her about them. “No. Go to sleep, my love.”
“It has wings too, which it wears like ornaments of pride. Oh, and sharp eyes! It wants something from us.”
“Orinleah, you’re—”
“There’s more. A horrible episode… Dorhen played in the creek the other day, and he caught a frog. I said, ‘Put that poor thing down,’ and when I got a closer view, I saw no frog. A tiny person with legs like a frog sat in his hands, trying to kick its way out. When I screamed, it wriggled free and escaped. I grabbed him and ran away so fast his shoes are still on the bank. The fairies are after our son, I think. What do we do?”
Stretching his arm around her, he snuggled her in close and spread his lips into a smile. Though he couldn’t see her in the dark, she might sense it somehow. The lass often demonstrated strong intuition. He’d have to work hard to keep his secrets from her.
“Don’t worry about them, lass. They’re pests. Put some dirt on his face. They won’t steal a dirty saeghar.”
She didn’t speak again, so he took the chance to fall back to sleep.
Standing in the damp forest, Daghahen threw off his tan tabard and unwound the dirty grey strips of cloth from his arms. He’d wrapped them to hide the numerous cuts he had made during his sorcery practice. Orinleah hadn’t asked about them, so she might not have noticed them yet. He slapped the old grimoire onto a rock and flopped it open, snapping pages over in search of spells he could use to counter Lambelhen’s magic. The barrier posts wouldn’t be enough.
Sorcery was for the literate. It worked by contacting demons or pixies and satisfying their demands in return for their aid. Anything from information to a temporary power or new learned spell could be acquired.
Daghahen and Lambelhen had discovered it when they’d traveled the Darklands together after their mother died. Daghahen had wanted nothing to do with it at first, but Lambelhen found it to be profitable. Its soothing effects also tended to suppress his lusts.
Early in their practice, the two had fallen in with a small, cave-dwelling cult of practitioners who tried their hardest to contact a spirit called Naerezek. Lambelhen sneered and referred to the other members as simpletons behind their backs.
One day, he managed to steal their leader’s grimoire. Never sure how he worked differently, Daghahen watched his brother summon the disturbing jackal-headed beast over a huge bonfire they built in the forest. It happened, and right as Daghahen began to doubt the spirit’s existence. Pleased with Lambelhen’s offerings, Naerezek proposed to be his pettygod, and to transform Lambelhen’s debilitating lust into a strength. Afterward, sexual intercourse restored his energy so he could sleep less and practice more.
When the twins returned to the cult’s cave, Lambelhen used a new spell, courtesy of Naerezek, to shapeshift into a large beast with fur and fangs and rampage through the cave’s chambers. When the echoing screams stopped, Daghahen entered the cave, shaking all over. Bypassing the heaping carnage littering the tunnels, he found his brother in the dead leader’s chamber, laughing in delight, naked save for all the blood of his victims, rummaging through the leader’s store of riches and magical objects.
Now, Daghahen remembered his thought in that moment so long ago: escaping his brother would be difficult. He had been right.
Sorcerers worked in factions, and kept a dark spirit, or pettygod, as their deity. Ilbith worshipped five pixies with enormous magic power loaned to the sorcerers, who studied diligently to keep their favor. Naerezek was one, which helped the twins’ entry to the faction because Lambelhen already flaunted its favor. The others were Hael, Ingnet, Wik, and Thaxyl, although Thaxyl was now out of commission.
Thaxyl had once been great centuries ago, almost like a real god. It appeared for Daghahen over a murky concoction of ingredients in a large bowl merely as a grey wisp struggling to stay aglow. Fairies set out in this form as wisps drifting about, collecting energy from various sources. This one had evolved all the way to pixie form.
A corpse-like face flickered within the wisp. A voice raked Daghahen’s mind. “Feed my children and we’ll talk.”
Daghahen cocked his head. “Children?”
“A fool as old as you should’ve seen them. Do not let them die. If you will feed them, I can collect their energy.”
Daghahen’s days of sating another person’s desires were over. “I contacted you to get information, and I see you’ve degraded. Ilbith has four deities left now, I suppose.” Back during his time there, Ilbith boasted about having
Thaxyl’s favor regardless. With some investigation into the remaining four, he might find out how to break through the spell barriers protecting Lambelhen’s life. “At least tell me what happened to you.”
“Creating the Thaccilians spent all my energy, and now observe their status. If they don’t feed, they’ll die out.”
“Ah yes, the heart-eaters. I’ve seen ‘em. Didn’t know you ceased to be a pixie because of them. So they supply you with a fast channel of energy to feed your reserves—that is, if they were faring any better. If they go extinct, it’ll take you a millennia to evolve into a pixie again. Do your sorcerer-followers know about your debacle?”
“Yes. They’ve tried to free my children and failed.”
“Do you know Lambelhen McShivvey in Ilbith?” Daghahen asked.
“Maybe.”
“You choose not to answer?” The glowing wisp blinked out but managed to return. “I want to know what sort of enchantments he wears or what blessings have been placed on him to keep him alive. I tried to kill him once and failed. He has many tricks in play.”
The little grey hovering flame blinked out again. “Please!” Daghahen tossed another fistful of bone dust into the bowl. The wisp flickered back in. A hiss scraped his skull, and Daghahen groaned and covered his ears.
“Ask Hael…” The wisp faded again, and the glow died for good.
Hael. Another of Ilbith’s pettygods. The texts said it dwelled among and drew energy from the dying. It might be beyond Daghahen’s ability to contact. In fact, it required a series of small contacts before a real audience could be arranged, and Hael might not be the only pixie involved. However many Lambelhen used, Daghahen would have to please each pixie, outdoing whatever sacrifices Lambelhen had first offered them.
In his diligent practicing, Daghahen’s skin took on a long-lasting clamminess, and the corners of his mouth drooped. Sorcery, a dark and demanding mistress, drained one’s energy and happiness. It sucked the light bonded to one’s soul—drove a wedge straight between a person and the Creator. His light had been restored in his new life, but again it withered.
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