Fury Lingers: Book One of The Foreseen Trilogy

by Ethan Spears

  Having spent much of the last week thinking about the basin and the water, she already knew what she wanted to do. She picked one of the nuts from her hand and dropped it experimentally into the bowl. The nut struck the water, and there was a popping sound and a slight hiss. The water clouded, turning murky and brown, then changed to a light blue. The blue became shot with white and green and, before Mergau knew it, she was staring at a lone tree, one among many in a field, framed by a brilliant afternoon sky.

  The sound of wind through leaves echoed in the cave around her. People were talking nearby, speaking Krik. Or at least an ancient form of Krik as, like the books, it was a jumble of nonsense to modern ears. Two human men appeared in the basin, clothed in a patchwork of furs and leathers. They chatted as they walked to the tree. One stood underneath with a basket while the other climbed the bole, reached out, and began shaking branches. A shower of nuts rained down while the man below ran about to catch as many as he could.

  Mergau blinked as she watched the scene play out, thrilled to have quickly discovered a way to get a reaction from this obviously magic pool, though that thrill faded as she fell to considering what she saw. It was like looking at a distant event with her own scrying, but the sounds always played in her head, never the air around her. Was the water showing her a different time, perhaps the history of the nut she had thrown in? That seemed likely, though considering it was a presumably twelve-thousand-year-old nut, the basin had chosen to show her the day it was harvested. Did the water know what days were significant to the nut’s existence?

  She knew a great way to find out. With an excitement born of impatience, she rolled up a sleeve, reached a hand forward, and dunked in a finger.

  The water seared her, and she immediately pulled back. It wasn’t hot, rather it ate at her skin like acid. She clutched her hand, cursing her own carelessness and ineptitude. She didn’t regret her decision, however, as the scene in the water soon muddied and shifted again. She watched, sucking on the injured finger.

  She was looking at the interior of a hut that was unfamiliar to her. An orcish man she didn’t recognize sat in a chair, cradling a child. He seemed half-asleep, but his arm bounced idly, causing the child to coo. He was large and clearly once powerfully built, but now was turning to fat, hints of gray in his black hair which was tied back in a tail.

  Footsteps could be heard approaching. The door opened, causing the man to come fully awake with a snort. He stood with some difficulty, trying to keep the child steady. “Welcome home, Pakkat,” he said formally, walking towards the other. “How’s your sister?”

  Mergau’s heart jumped; Pakkat was her mother’s name. “Not well,” When she unwrapped the coarse cloth from around her neck, Mergau recognized her immediately, even though she had long since died. Her left tusk was chipped where she had been kicked in the face while sleeping outside in the dark—a mistake of early youth—and her hair was bunched at the top of her head, a tower of braided hair that was a style embarrassingly popular at one time.

  The man walked over and kissed her mother. Mergau reckoned he was her father, who had passed away before she was born. He looked like a sturdy old goat, but when he gave the baby over to its mother, he handled it like it was made of precious glass.

  “The sandstorms make it difficult for anyone to reach her and her food stores are ruined by sand,” Pakkat said. “I tried to convince her to come live with us, but she insists on staying out there alone. She’s already sick, and I fear she might starve before the storms end.”

  “We both know you’ll never let that happen,” said the father. “Even the sandstorms won’t stop you from caring for her, and I’ll be along any time you ask.”

  Pakkat gave him a grateful smile. “You know she’ll never let you near her house.”

  “Good thing I don’t care what she wants.”

  Pakkat laughed. “Did Larna give you any trouble?”

  “No. He sleeps soundly with little encouragement.”

  “Good,” said Pakkat, smiling down at her baby. Mergau smiled too, for her older brother looked adorable in his swaddling cloth and would have been embarrassed to be seen like that.

  She also felt a lump in her throat and tears begin to gather. Seeing him alive again, even as a baby, made her miss him terribly.

  Pakkat rocked Larna back and forth for a bit, then placed him down on a soft bed of grass.

  As she admired her child, she let out a heavy sigh. Her husband came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle. “Are you tired, love?”

  “Now? No.”

  “But you’re worried.”

  “I’m always worried, Daschi. There’s always something to worry about.”

  “These storms will pass, and Reli will be healthy again, you’ll see. Sometimes I swear that tough old bitch has more stamina than I do.”

  Pakkat laughed again, as did Mergau, who had been raised in part by her aunt Reli and knew her to be a tough and formidable woman. Pakkat leaned into him, saying, “I don’t know if she would be happy or upset to hear that.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “And you underestimate yourself. You have plenty of stamina left.”

  “Oh?” One of his hands rose under her shirt, rising to her breast. “I suppose I have enough stamina to ease your mind.”

  “You always have your mind on one thing, don’t you, Daschi?”

  “You should learn from me.” He bent forward and kissed her neck.

  She moaned lightly. “You incorrigible man.” She turned and kissed him as his other hand slipped below her skirts.

  Mergau realized she was about to witness her own conception and panicked. She did the only thing she could think of and drove her fist into the water, dispersing the vision. A massive jolt of power shot up her arm and she was launched backward through the open doorway, crashing into and over the table in the reading room. She lay stunned and in pain on the floor, feeling several burns, cuts, and bruises. As the blue glow faded from the ceiling above, she belatedly realized she could have just thrown the nuts into the water to interrupt the vision, but she did not regret her decision.

  ***

  Something about these visions from the water gave Mergau purpose.

  The books were no longer what motivated her to stay in the cave. At first, she knew guilt at this feeling, but Reggy’s words stayed with her, reminding her that no matter what she did, it was entirely possible, even probable, that Ezma was expecting exactly this. With that in mind, her lack of progress sat only as a shallow worry in her stomach. It would take her years to make sense of all these books, and that was time she knew she didn’t have. What little she translated was of no use, but she continued as it helped pass the time while she waited for the basin to fill again.

  Ezma knew what sort of student she was getting when she chose Mergau: a woman who would sate her own curiosity at the expense of safety and time. Mergau would wait for the pool because that was the thing that most interested her in these caves. She convinced herself easily that the answers she sought would eventually show themselves in the waters of the basin, for there was nothing else here for her. If that wasn’t the answer, then the answers would come when she tired of the pool and left. It was a much more relaxing way to view her seemingly insurmountable task.

  Another week had passed since the last time the basin filled, and once more she heard the sound of running water. She moved her plate of food to the side, closed her book and placed it back on the shelf, and walked to the basin room. She was confident she had figured out several key things about the basin: that it filled on its own at the same time every week; that it showed the history of the item placed in it, which it slowly destroyed as it did so; and that it would continue to function so long as she used it, but once she stopped, the waters would quickly vanish. These were all guesses, but her last two interactions made her believe them to be true.

  Mergau already had several of her hairs plucked out and waiting in a pocket of her shirt. Th
is would be her first real attempt to seek something from the basin rather than toying with it to discover its purpose. If her hairs showed her nothing, there were plenty of books and scrolls she could tear a piece off of. Damaging an artifact of their tremendous age didn’t sit well with her, but it was either that, or they were destroyed later when Ezma’s prediction of the world ending came to pass.

  She still wondered what this world’s end was going to be, only sure that it was somehow related to the second Fury. Why that would end the world and not just, say, the reign of the elves or the continent of Nilriel, was something she didn’t understand. Even should the servants of Kenta conquer the continents of Nilriel and Astran, then somehow acquire the boats and sailing knowledge needed to traverse to oceans and conquer the rest of Aden, that still left the world alive, just less diverse.

  Taking one of the hairs, she dropped it into the awaiting waters. The strand let off the tiniest puff of smoke and a nearly inaudible sizzle, then sank into the depths, vanishing behind the scene that was forming.

  The scene that played out was unknown to her. She saw a child that could only be her, no more than seven or eight years old, though she wasn’t sure what significant event this would be since she didn’t remember anything from when she was that young. She watched and waited, though her younger self only played in the dirt with a young orc boy whose name she couldn’t even remember, someone most likely dead in the forest ambush.

  The two of them dug through the dirt for several minutes, mostly in silence, speaking only to direct one another to dig here or there, some master plan in action that only children could understand. At length, the basin began to cloud again, and the scene vanished, leaving the water murky and calm.

  Mergau frowned. Had she misconstrued the purpose of the basin? Or perhaps there was some rule she didn’t understand? With little else to go on, she dropped another hair into the basin to see what happened.

  Again the water clouded over, and now she saw herself as a young adult. Her hair was done up in a fanciful style instead of her usual braid, and she wore a particularly fetching dress her aunt Reli had sewn for her. She must have been doing something formal for her to have made herself up like that.

  Her old self walked along, approaching another hut, and instantly Mergau recognized it. She made a sound of disgust as her young self knocked on the door. Barely a second passed before an orc opened it up, a tall and powerful man, who gave her a charming if slightly panicked smile. He was Bresk, her first and only lover. While he was attempting to please her now, she did not wish to see this scene play out.

  She tossed in another hair, getting another scene. Bresk was towering over her, drunken, nude, half of her torn dress in his hands, her own whimpers echoing from somewhere out of the basin’s focus. She most certainly did not want to see this. This was why she had skipped the last one. She had to keep herself from striking the waters again, satisfying herself to aim for his face and spit into the basin.

  The basin clouded, clearing to show Mergau reaching into the cabinet for some of the food that now mixed with her spit.

  She dropped in another hair. The scene became a dense forest. Another scene she did not want to see, as she could already hear the marching and singing of her people as they walked straight into a slaughter, Aoden and his elves somewhere in the trees above, invisible even as she knew they were there.

  She dumped half the remaining hairs into the basin, and the scene shifted to a ragged Mergau throwing herself into the arms of a pregnant Jierta, weeping and trying to explain what had happened in the forest. Jierta tried to comfort her, not yet understanding the news that Mergau was bringing, only confused as to why her sister and the other women had returned.

  Mergau was growing frustrated with these scenes. Each one was worse than the last, and she didn’t want to watch any of them. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to be delving into her own past. She threw the last of her hairs into the water, promising to move on to another object’s history if this didn’t turn out to be anything useful.

  The vision swam again, and a familiar voice rose from the depths. “If you leave my home on this idiotic venture,” it said, “you are not welcome back. Do you understand me?”

  “Why does this water only show me things I don’t want to see?” Mergau muttered. “Is my life nothing but bad memories?” Thoughtfully, she added, “Or maybe it only shows bad memories? Does a nut consider its harvesting a bad memory?”

  As she pondered, the scene came together. Mergau saw herself standing before Ezma in her hut, and from the looks of it, this was moments before she stormed out of her teacher’s life forever. Ezma’s back was to her, but she had full view of herself. Naked anger and hatred shone in her past self’s eyes as they bore into Ezma. Mergau was amazed at the ferocity of her own expression. She remembered being angry, but that look on her face was almost feral. It frightened her to think she ever let herself get so consumed by her anger.

  Despite her discomfort at these events, she couldn’t bring herself to interrupt them. Ezma was dead, and this was the last Mergau was likely to see her. With that in mind, she allowed the events to play out, hardly seeming familiar as the haze of emotions shrouded it in her memory. She watched herself snarl and hiss her words like an animal as she spoke to Ezma. At length, Mergau heard Ezma utter the last words she had ever heard her teacher say. “You have nothing, so nothing will stop you from leaving this instant.”

  Her past self looked shocked for a moment, dismayed, then the anger returned. She turned and was out of the door with a flash of robes and a thunderous slam.

  Ezma stood there for a moment, trembling. She turned, and Mergau watched as she dabbed the corners of her eyes. Mergau made an involuntary groan of sympathy at the sight.

  “See what you’ve done to me, girl?” Ezma said to herself. “Can you ever fully comprehend the patience and willpower this took?”

  Mergau shook her head. “Oh, mistress,” she said. “I know I wasn’t the most patient of students and I left in such a rude manner, but I wish I could tell you how sorry I am for the way I acted.”

  Ezma’s eyes swiveled and locked with hers. “Don’t worry. This is all as it must be.”

  Mergau pulled back, but just as swiftly, Ezma opened a portal to her other room and began pulling things through and placing them about her tiny hut. Mergau gathered her wits as best she could. “Can you hear me?”

  The Ezma in the vision shrugged. “Yes and no,” she said. “It’s impossible to detect scrying from the past or future, so I cannot hear you or see you, but I do know that you’re watching, for I have seen this scene play out a hundred times before; me dealing with my final moments, and you sitting by the Pool of Visions in Hetipa’s cave.”

  Mergau swallowed. “Your final moments?” she asked weakly. “So then, shortly… I’m sorry.”

  “Do you think I want your half-assed apologies?” Ezma snapped, whirling to face Mergau. Her lips were pressed together into a hard frown that made her look like a pouting child. “Now you care? You don’t get how painful and heartbreaking this all was for me, do you? Sometimes you’re just the most clueless of airheads, I swear.”

  Mergau was taken aback. “What? I don’t—”

  “I mean,” Ezma continued, waving her hand lazily behind her to guide her floating furniture into place, “here I am, working my ass off to get you all trained up, and you were moping around like a spoiled brat being sent to her corner. ‘Oh, I’m so mad that I have to follow the instructions of the person I asked to instruct me!’” She blew a raspberry. “How did that never strike you as the height of stupidity?”

  Mergau took a step back from the pool. “You’re not Ezma. She never acted like this.”

  “I’m not ‘acting’ like anything,” she said, throwing her arms out in exasperation, causing a table to smash into her bed. “What you’re seeing is the real Ezma. Everything before was the act. The whole learned sage, hard-ass teacher thing was the act, you ruk-slow bumpkin: calling you �
�child,’ forcing patience, not giving you a much-needed slap across the face when you deserved it, that was me acting. But that’s over and done with, finally, thank the gods. At this point, death would practically be…” she stopped abruptly, looking pained. She sniffed, her hand went to her mouth, and her eyes began welling up. “Gods damn it all! I’ve seen myself cry here a hundred times before, but like an idiot, I thought I could keep it together when the time came at last.” She roughly wiped the tears away as they began to fall.

  Mergau was too overwhelmed to speak. The woman before her hardly seemed the same as the one that heartlessly watched her bleed and burn, the one who pushed her over the edge of mental and physical exhaustion time and time again, the one who, without expression or hesitation, had slain an orcish warrior and sent five more running for their lives. Now she seemed hardly more mature than a child in the emotional throes of puberty.

  Ezma composed herself. “Tell me honestly, Mergau; what do you think of me?”

  Mergau shook her head. “Now? I hardly know what to think of you.”

  Ezma laughed lightly, a high-pitched tinkling so unlike her own voice. “Still a smartass,” she said. “Gods, I’ll miss you.”

  “Miss me? Really?”

  She laughed again. “Sorry, that probably sounded odd. As Christopher told you, I’ve been watching you for a while—eleven years, short a few weeks. You’ve been a companion of mine for longer than you know. I know I didn’t act like it but, after watching you for so long, I began to care deeply for your well-being. I regret that I never got to show you that in person.”

  “That… really?”

  “I know, I know, you hardly even knew me. It’s weird, I get it. I was just hoping to hear you say something good about me. A last wish sort of thing.”

  “I… you…” Mergau struggled. Too much was happening and all of it unexpected. This information was something she was neither looking for nor prepared for. She felt a bit touched, but mostly she was extremely uncomfortable. “You fed me,” she managed, “and trained me. I appreciate that.”