Shoreseeker

by Brandon M. Lindsay

  Tharadis sat on the rug, legs folded in front of him, leaning back as his arms propped him up. A single oil lamp sat on the table next to her, filling the room with more warmth than illumination. The silver clip sat next to the lamp, its hammered surface shimmering in the flickering light.

  Serena set her wood and knife in the basket and began to rock back and forth in her chair, staring out the unshuttered window into night. A change came over her, a look of acceptance. A thin yellow blanket covered her legs, though it was warm enough without it. A black and white moth fluttered in the air before her, catching her attention briefly before dancing out of sight.

  “My husband won’t touch me anymore.” Her voice was emotionless, flat, without inflection. She continued to rock in her chair. Though she and Tharadis were exactly the same age, born less than a week apart, she looked older now, like someone who had experienced the worst life has to offer and grown weary of it. “Not even if I beg him to. He won’t even hold my hand. The body, I’ve discovered that it can endure much. But the heart … the heart is a fragile thing, prone to breaking. And it doesn’t lend itself to mending quickly.”

  A cicada sawed its whirring song outside. Tharadis turned to watch the stars flicker in the firmament. Like most nights, the sky was cloudless. He wondered what it would like to feel rain on his skin. Freshwater ran in streams that cut across the lowlands nearly all year round, but Tharadis couldn’t remember the last time water actually fell from the sky. It had happened when he had been little, but he didn’t remember it.

  “He told me what he really thought of me. He said I was a leper, and that my skin would begin to rot. He told me that he left me alone so much because … because he was worried he would get sick, too.” That hesitation was the only emotion she betrayed. Her face was a mask. “If he would only slap me, or shake me, anything at all, it would be better than this. But he’s afraid to hurt my body with even the gentlest touch. Even if he must watch my soul wither and die, he refuses to cause me a little discomfort.” Her eyes focused sharply on Tharadis. “Do you know what sustains me?”

  His gaze met her eyes briefly, then sank to the floor.

  “Your cooking.”

  He smiled faintly. “I’m not that good.”

  “You are. But it wouldn’t have mattered if you weren’t. That you cared enough to do it, that you treated me like a woman and not brittle blade of grass, that you cared more about my thoughts and ideas than about my pain … those things are the nourishment I need.”

  The moth landed on his knee before Tharadis saw it coming. Two black dots stared up at him from its wings like frightened eyes, blinking as the moth quickly flapped them.

  Serena stopped her rocking. “Those, and knowing that you love me.”

  The moth flew off his knee, circled about in a seemingly senseless fashion, but eventually found its way out the window to join the cicada.

  “Is that so wrong?” he asked the night.

  “You haven’t been listening.”

  “I have,” he said. “But someone had to say it.”

  “Tharadis.”

  “Good night.” He rose to leave, but he didn’t take a step to the door. He couldn’t move his feet. They were fixed where they were. I can leave at any time, he told himself. Any time I want to. They’re my feet.

  He could have left at any time, but he chose to stay instead.

  Tharadis turned back to her, and when their eyes met, no words were spoken, but they both moved as if one mind. Serena rose from the chair and eased herself onto the bed. Tharadis was there with her. Serena’s hands took his, her fingers entwined in his, and pulled them close to her ears until he had no choice but to straddle her hips with his knees. Every muscle in his body grew tense, quivering with anticipation. His hands, pinned to the thin mattress, couldn’t help him now, so he slowly his face down to her chest. After he had unfastened the button on her dress, he blew softly on the exposed skin of her breast. He felt her shudder beneath him.

  Suddenly worried, he glanced up at her face and saw tears streaming down her cheeks. But then she said, “Don’t stop.”

  He didn’t. He knew that stopping now would hurt her more than it would him.

  Tears continued to fall down Serena’s face all through the night. She wept as Tharadis had never seen her weep. But Tharadis knew that it was a bodily pain, a pain she had learned to endure.

  Her soul would know nothing of pain then. He swore he could feel it soaring through him.

  As dawn finally broke, her back arched, her toes curled, her fingers reached desperately for the sky, for the light of life. A few rays of the sun’s light touched her briefly, and she was triumphant.

  * * *

  Two days later, the door to Sunflowers slammed open. Tharadis heard it from where he sat on the kitchen floor, scrubbing a pot with a handful of sand. It was not what he had in mind when he asked Dalton to let him work in the kitchen, but it was a step forward. Ignoring whatever the disturbance had been, he put his mind back to his task.

  “Where is my brother?”

  Tharadis froze. A few grains of sand fell to the floor.

  “He’s, ah, in the kitchen, Warden.”

  Tharadis set the pot aside and stood, dusting his hand off on his tunic.

  Owan stepped into the kitchen. His square face betrayed nothing, though there were a few drops of blood clinging to his short beard. A wound, and fresh.

  Owan towered over him, and always had. Though this was Tharadis’s twentieth year, Owan made him feel as if he were thirteen again.

  The sword he always wore, the sword of Naruvieth’s Warden, gleamed with deadly promise in the etched steel-covered sheath at Owan’s hip. Another sword was tucked under his arm. He lifted his arm to let that sword fall to the ground, then kicked it disdainfully to Tharadis.

  “That’s … Father’s sword.”

  Owan nodded. “That’s right. He died protecting this city, protecting you, while you …” He scrubbed at his beard, wincing briefly when he touched the wound on his chin. His eyes turned savage. “I want you pick up that sword and follow me to Westing Fields. You’re going to learn how to use it, and I'm going to teach you.”

  Shores take me. Father. Dead. His father was dead. The thought was mere words, a rattling in his mind. Mother would be crying. So would Esta. She was too young to have to learn about things like this.

  Father.

  He picked up the sword. It wasn’t as ostentatious as his brother’s, but it was a fighter’s sword. Father had been a fighter. Tharadis clutched it to his chest. His mind was empty. All it could conjure was a single question: “Why?”

  Owan turned to the door. “So you won't be defenseless when I kill you."

  Chapter 37: The Duel

  Tharadis was on a knee in the short yellow grass, desperately trying not to clutch at the wound in his side. The strike had glanced off his rib, a finger’s width from killing him. The pain was searing.

  It would only feel worse if he touched it, so his fingers hovered near it, trembling. He compromised by wrapping his fingers in a sweat-drenched fold of his tunic.

  Owan stood twenty paces away, impassively wiping the edge of his blade with an expensive lace kerchief, looking as fresh as if he had just woken up, as if he hadn’t spent the afternoon battering his younger brother.

  It wasn’t the first time Owan had scored his flesh. Sometimes he would go for days without hurting Tharadis. Sometimes, Tharadis imagined he could see a flash of sympathy in Owan’s eyes if the gash was deep enough. Owan’s face would be filled with something harder when Tharadis looked again.

  His father’s sword lay in the grass at Tharadis’s feet. Mastering himself, mastering the pain, he gripped the hilt with his free hand and stood.

  The Westing Fields were one of the few places south of the Rift where grass grew heavily. It was relatively flat, though pocked with sand gopher dens. Tharadis had found many of them with his feet, twisting his ankles in the process. One or two he had found with
his face.

  Trees surrounded the fields, separating them from the rest of the plateau. Hardy shrubs dotted the grounds, though many of those had been cleared. The tawny grass no longer grew here in the places where children usually played.

  Months had passed since Owan had told Tharadis he would kill him, but only in the past few weeks had Tharadis been able to stand his ground—at least against his own ineptitude. He had never been much of a fighter, though he had gotten himself in a few scuffles when Esta found herself the subject of teasing. Those had been more Tharadis drawing a line. Never had it been a matter of life and death.

  Owan had pledged to take his life. Tharadis knew Owan intended just that.

  At least when Tharadis had proved himself worthy to die on his blade.

  Tharadis sighed, wincing at the pain this caused him, and tossed Father’s sword back in the grass. “I’m done with this,” he said, turning. “I’m done with you.” He began walking toward the dusty footpath that led into town.

  To his surprise, he heard Owan slide his own blade back into his scabbard. “Fine,” Owan said. Then, as if the thought just occurred to him, he added, “Aren’t you interested in why your audience hasn’t come?”

  Tharadis paused. From the beginning, people had come to watch. Few people knew what was going on at first, thinking that since their father had died, Owan was training him for the Shoresmen, or at least that it was some harmless sibling rivalry. As the brutal lessons continued, they had come to realize it was something else entirely. Many stopped showing up, though a few came every day, curious.

  One person, however, had not come once. Tharadis hadn’t seen Serena's face since that night.

  She was who Owan was referring to. But Tharadis would not be baited further. He continued walking.

  “Wouldn’t you at least like to know how she’s doing?” he asked, the very soul of calmness. “If you stay with me for the rest of the afternoon, I will consider telling you.”

  Consider. Which meant that he wouldn’t. Still, it was tempting to hope, but he knew better than to believe Owan would err on the side of mercy. Though he claimed to not want to hurt his wife, Owan had a cruel streak in him.

  “I have to work tomorrow,” Tharadis said, though Dalton hadn’t been asking about him. “And so do you, presumably. If you still call yourself Warden.”

  “Oh, I do.” He could hear Owan’s slow and measured footsteps as he walked up behind him. “Warden of Naruvieth. Righter of wrongs. Defender of the innocent. Avenger of the betrayed.”

  “I’m not the one who killed our father.”

  “True.” Never once had Owan admitted why he wanted to kill Tharadis. There was no need. There was only one thing Tharadis had done that would ever warrant Owan’s desire for his blood.

  But why hadn’t he taken it? Why this farce with training him for the sword? Owan had even taken to paying for Tharadis’s needs while he trained, seeing as it took up all the hours Tharadis would have had to work. Tharadis had refused his brother’s money at first, but Owan wouldn’t take it back. He had said he wanted Tharadis to focus on what was important—his death—rather than his pride. His lessons on the Westing Fields had only reinforced that.

  Was there more to what he wanted? He said he wouldn’t kill him in cold blood. Perhaps there was truth to that, but Tharadis couldn’t shake the suspicion that there was more to it.

  It was that more than anything else that made him go back up and pick up his father’s sword.

  “Good,” Owan said, though his voice didn’t betray any pleasure. He drew his own blade, eyes intent, and crouched into a defensive position. “Now. Come at me.”

  * * *

  The sun sank beyond the horizon to the clash of steel.

  At one point during the day, one of Owan’s men had come by to report that there was nothing to report. Over the past few weeks, Tharadis had heard—mostly by listening in the marketplace, since no one would talk to him about it openly—that crime had plummeted. Neighbors were settling their disputes without the help of the Shoresmen. No one thought of it as a good turn, for everyone understood the cause: people were deathly afraid of Owan.

  Some called it obsession. Others, speaking in whispers, called it possession. Ever since the formation of the Rift, not a Naruvian had seen a sheggam with his own two eyes, but the tales from older times were fresh in everybody’s mind. The sheggam were the beasts that mothers used to frighten their children into obedience; they were shadows in the dark of night that filled the hearts of brave men with crippling fear. They simply couldn’t understand why a man who was once considered so honorable would suddenly be seized by the notion to beat and humiliate his own flesh and blood. At least not without blaming it on a sheggam curse.

  It wasn’t merely that, though. Owan wouldn’t sleep in his own home at night; he would simply wander off in some random direction and return by morning. A few people had seen him do it, though no one dared go to his home while he was gone. Days would go by before anyone would see Serena. Those were the worst, when Tharadis was sure that Owan was venting his frustrations out on her. It was always a relief when she had been spotted in town, but she was never there when Tharadis was. He heard she had taken to using a crutch again. A few people remembered the day when she had been carried across town by her husband’s brother and knew the cause of Owan’s obsession was nothing supernatural, nothing beyond the understanding of normal men.

  Normal men could understand a jealous rage just fine.

  When the last traces of twilight vanished, Owan dropped the tip of his sword. “Enough for today.”

  It was all Tharadis could do to keep from collapsing where he stood. Sweat slicked his hair and stung his eyes. Every breath was a gasp. A dozen nicks and scratches bled through the fabric of his tunic. It was almost to a point beyond mending. Each cut burned as if the steel were still in him. The red moon was full in the sky, providing some light, but it was still darker than Tharadis was used to while sparring. Owan’s blade had had no trouble finding him, however.

  Owan took a drink from his water skin and, after a moment of eyeing Tharadis, tossed it to him.

  “You want me to end this. I know, little brother. It wouldn’t be difficult, you know.”

  Tharadis wiped his mouth. The water was almost as hot as the air, but was as welcome as a second chance at life. “Right. All I have to do is die on your blade.”

  “No, of course not. Though that’s one way.” He walked to Tharadis and took the skin back. Fireflies danced around them. Owan stared up at the sky. Tiny points of light reflected off his eyes. His voice was calm, yet there was an undercurrent of pleading in it. “You can beg for my forgiveness.”

  Tharadis paused to consider it. It would be a simple thing to do. He could just say a few words, and this whole messy business would be behind them. Things would go back to the way they were before.

  Tharadis remembered those moments leading up to the night everything changed. He remembered Serena holding the dunblossom in her hands, the look of utter bleakness in her eyes, shrouding the spark of life which had always seemed to glow so brightly. He knew he had saved her in a way Owan never could, or would.

  Tharadis sighed. “I cannot ask you for forgiveness,” he said. “That would assume I feel guilty about what I’ve done. I could tell you that, I could say those words, but it would be a lie. I can’t regret what I’ve done. That would be betrayal.”

  “And what you did to me wasn't?”

  “I … I don’t know if I believe it was. At least, not my betrayal.”

  Owan turned to look at him with more puzzlement than accusation in his voice. “You blame her?”

  “No, Owan,” said Tharadis quietly. “I blame you for your pain.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised.” Owan turned to walk away. “Whether you’re ready or not, tomorrow is the day you will die. Prepare yourself.”

  * * *

  Tharadis knew Owan wouldn’t have told anyone—sometimes it seemed he had fo
rgotten the world existed, and could only see Tharadis with a flat, emotionless gaze—but that stopped no one from figuring out that today would be the day. People filled the fields, from shopkeepers and tanners to even some farmers from the lowlands. A few small children, boys mostly, pushed up against the legs of adults, eyes wide with morbid fascination. A handful of the more business-minded vendors from town wove through the press, selling hot food. Some people Tharadis didn’t even know, and many he did. Dalton was there, standing among the crowd circling around the area Tharadis and Owan had taken to be their unofficial sparring grounds, but he wouldn’t meet Tharadis’s eyes.

  He didn’t expect his mother to show up. The pain of losing her husband was deep, and the fact that Owan planned on taking a son from her as well would be difficult to bear. Tharadis scanned the sweating faces of the crowd as the sun crawled higher in the sky and was grateful not to see her there. She might not have been able to stop Owan from this, but at least she didn’t sanction it.

  He looked for another face in the crowd—Serena’s. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to witness this either, but he did want to see her face one last time. He saw nothing of her before Owan stepped into the ring.

  The muscles beneath his crimson tunic were taut as cords ready to snap. He had shaved off his beard, save for a single patch of black on his chin. Tharadis wondered why that looked so familiar—Owan had always kept a full beard—when he remembered that it was how Father used to wear his own beard when both Tharadis and Owan were children.

  Not wanting to get slashed to pieces, the crowd gave them an ample berth. They were close enough to see the action, while far enough away that Tharadis couldn’t hear some of the more quietly spoken words through the general murmur. As much as everyone wanted to witness the spectacle, no one wanted to be skewered by an errant sword thrust.