by Heath Pfaff
Mud huts began to pop up frequently. Their inhabitants went about their business, mostly indifferent to the strangers in their midst, though some of the Shao Geok did cast fearful expressions in our direction. Apparently they knew only too well the might of Weaver and his kind - my kind. Some few, though, gazed at us with a different look entirely, one that was filled with a terrible hunger.
"I've secured us passage." I heard a voice calling, and a moment later Silent trotted up next to us. He looked down at me for a moment and smiled. "You're looking a lot better."
"I'm feeling a lot better." I told him, and returned his smile, since it looked natural on his face. Silent was a conundrum. He was obviously serving Weaver, but he seemed little changed- other than his voice - from when I had known him as my guard. He was still quick to smile, and showed a genuine interest in my wellbeing. It would have been easier to know what to think of him if he'd been more like Lucidil, cold and always a bit distant. If such had been the case I could dislike him, distrust him, but his ever friendly and open face made it impossible to dislike the black-eyed warrior.
"That's good because the weather is not in our favor for a crossing." Silent seemed oddly cheery about this.
"The Walking Death are adept at sea craft and their handling. In these parts they've had to become so in order to survive. The game in the area is very limited, so they eat mostly fish. They will see us safely to our destination." Weaver assured Silent and me. We made our way through the rest of the ramshackle town of the monsters, past homes and buildings that looked like they served some form of public purpose, perhaps stores or meeting halls.
The extent of the Shao Geok society astounded me. They had a level of social interaction I had never anticipated. The males stood protectively in front of their mates, and their offspring, eyeing us as we proceeded to the ocean, some sporting sashes about their bodies lined with various implements and tools. For the most part they were completely unclad other than their fur, but some of the females wore necklaces of cord strung with feathers, bone, and occasionally a colorful rock or jewel. The loremaster in me wanted to stay longer in their village, to learn more about them as a people, but the more pragmatic part of me insisted that the less time we spent amongst them, the better off we would be. They may be intelligent, and they may have a unique society, but they still considered humans a loathed rival and easy source of food.
We reached the ocean front in short order, Silent leading us to the craft that would take us across the stretch of ocean between the mainland and our island destination. The boat was larger than I had imagined it would be, being sizable enough to easily sit fifteen or more of the south coast's native residents, and even more humans. The craft seemed constructed of a large hollowed out tree, the wood treated with a substance I was unfamiliar with that caused water to bead on its surface instead of soaking into the wood. There was one creature already aboard the vessel, sitting in the bow, its long arms draped in the water, and another standing on shore, obviously waiting for our arrival. As we approached, it made a croaking sound in its throat, followed by a gravely bark.
"Yes, just the three of us." Weaver said to the beast, obviously understanding what it had said. The creature barked again, and Silent aided Weaver in carrying my stretcher aboard the ship and laying it out amidships. The entire vessel weaved and bobbed as we boarded, my stomach weaving and bobbing with it.
"You understand their language?" I asked Weaver, already knowing the answer, but wanting to make some conversation to take my mind off of the motion of the boat beneath my back.
"Yes, and some of them understand ours as well. Some few even speak ours, and I can speak theirs, but it is generally easier just to speak in our native tongues. We are not vocally designed to communicate. Learning their language is easy enough, but actually speaking it is only possible to those of us with 'the voice,' and even then it is difficult. They have an equally difficult time mastering our form of speech, but they have sharp minds and can learn to understand us as quickly as we can learn to understand them," the red-eyed warrior explained, and I thought I heard a note of respect in his voice.
"You hold them in esteem." I said, a little surprised.
"Indeed. They have struggled at the fringes of human civilization all their lives, forced into the most inhospitable places in our world, but they still manage, and have become stronger for it." He smiled down at me as the boat lurched out into the water, the Shao Geok who had been waiting for us at the shore line hopping into the craft as it pulled away from the bank. "If only that humanity was so quick to adapt and strengthen themselves. Instead they spend all their time looking for the easiest ways to live, surrounding themselves in frivolous excess, and seemingly bent upon their destructive course. The Shao Geok will destroy them all someday, I think, if humanity does not become stronger."
"That doesn't seem to displease you." I probed at Weaver, looking for some further insight into his difficult to read personality. His crass and obvious distaste of mankind was alarming of itself, but I sensed a greater darkness beneath his words.
"Should it?" He said, no longer looking at me, but looking out over the turbulent ocean. The two creatures in the boat with us had each grabbed hold of two long flipper-like paddles that seemed molded to fit their inhuman hands. Together, they began rowing at the water, using their massive upper body strength to propel the boat in the direction of their choosing at a faster rate than I had thought possible. "Am I any more different from them than I am from humanity?" Weaver added after a moment, holding up his clawed hands.
"You are what you make yourself, Weaver." I told him, remembering the similar turn of phrase he'd used on me not long before.
He laughed loudly and looked down at me once more. "I suppose I am. You've a good head on your neck. Let us hope you can keep it there." Weaver walked to the edge of the boat and looked out over the sea, and after a short time Silent came to sit beside me.
"How are you healing?" He asked of me, his normal ready smile on his face.
"Well enough, but I don't fancy being carried around," I answered, returning his smile with one of my own. I could almost believe things hadn't changed between us, if I really tried.
"It's about an hour by boat to the island, and Weaver thinks by then you should be ready to start walking. I'll warn you, at first those legs are going to be weak, and you'll have to work on finding your balance all over again. It'll come faster than it did in training, a lot faster, but those first few weeks will be rough." He said, sharing his own experiences for my benefit. I could feel the strength in my legs, and it was building fast. I suspected that if I were to get to my feet at that moment, I could run until the sun faded from the sky for the last time. In fact, there was so much energy and power in my body that I was hard pressed to remain still.
"I will keep that in mind," I told him, and it wasn't an outright lie. I knew that the advice about the balance, at least, would come in handy when I began to use my new legs for the first time. "Silent, do these new limbs change anything else about my body? I've been feeling..." I thought about it for a moment. I wasn't sure how to phrase the changes I'd felt inside of me. I knew the arms and legs were completely new, but to me it felt like my entire bone structure had become denser, and that my heart pumped with a stronger rhythm.
"Like your bones are made of steel?" He said, a grin spreading across his face. "It's like with the eyes, you take a piece into your body, and you gain the functionality of that piece, but your body makes changes to accommodate the new pieces." He tried to explain, but when he saw the blank expression on my face he went on. "What good would those new arms do you, if when you fully extended the muscle in them they tore free from your shoulder socket?"
"Ahh, I see. So the new pieces are making sure my body is fit to handle them," I said, thinking I had the connection figured out.
"In a way," Silent answered, a thoughtful expression on his face, and I guessed that I didn't have it after all. "It's actually the eyes though, tha
t facilitate the changes you're experiencing. They have already changed your anatomy, and as you add parts, they allow you to incorporate them into your body's chemistry, making the physical changes necessary for you to function in your new state, but you must form a bond before taking in a new part or your eyes will not be able to adjust your body to the new pieces."
I nodded, thinking back on my fight with the fell beast, and the subsequent attaching of its limbs to my body. "The blood bond?" I asked.
"Yes, that is the most common way to form a bond. The combat, the mutual injuring, they start the process, and then it is completed with the physical attachment of the new parts. It's a strong magic, and all strong magic requires a great sacrifice. If you really want to know more, though, you should talk to Luc... to Weaver. He knows far more than anyone else on the subject."
I caught his near slip, but pointedly ignored it. Weaver's identity was no longer a secret to me anyway. I wouldn't bother to cause trouble for Silent by calling him out on it. "I will have to make a point of talking to him about it," I told my travel companion.
"There will be plenty of time to talk once we reach the island," Weaver said from where he stood, a few feet away. With the sound of the ocean, and the paddling of the two Shao Geok, I'd have thought he wouldn't have heard Silent and me speaking, but I should have known that with his keen ears, so much like mine, he would have no trouble following our conversation. "Once we are there, I'm sure there will be a great many questions you would like answered, and I will see to as many as possible."
That was the first time information had been offered to me, and I felt I might have been better off without it. I laid my head back down, looking up at the sky that seemed to crest and sway with the motion of the sea. I could feel my body making more adjustments to my new arms, legs, and ears. I could also feel it adjusting itself to the pitch and sway of the boat. I had become keenly aware of the changes going on within me, and it was a peculiar sensation, feeling one's body change. I flexed a hand and felt it respond perfectly to my command of motion. I could feel every weave of the fabric used to create the stretcher I was on brushing against my fingertips, and was acutely aware that the claws on that hand would sharpen, at my willing, into blades fine enough to render the fabric into shreds. I don't know where the knowledge came from. It was simply there, as a person might know that if they turn their ear in the direction of a sound, they could hear said sound more clearly. I didn't need to be taught, I was just aware. I wondered if it was the same for all the Knights of Ethan.
My travel companions fell silent, and it seemed for a time that the only sounds in the world were the splash of the Shao Geok oarsmen and the lapping of the ocean against the side of the wood craft as it cut through the water towards its destination. I stared into the sky, and it stared back into me. I had the feeling that so many of my questions would soon be answered, but I feared what those answers might entail. I wished, not for the first time, that I could be back at Fell Rock with Kye, talking and enjoying her company. In the short time we'd had together, she'd always known how to make me feel better. The world had always seemed right with her. It was strange that Fell Rock had become a place of my fondest, and yet also my most loathed memories. It was stranger still that both those sets of memories, good and ill, had all happened within a single year of my life. A single year ago I was a completely different person, one less wise in the world.
I must have been lost in thought for a while, because it seemed only a short time later that I was jarred roughly back into my surroundings by our craft striking the shore of our destination. Before I knew what was happening, Weaver was at my side, leaning down to look at me.
"Do you think you're ready to walk?" He asked, and I replied with a nod of my head. I was quite ready to walk. "Alright, but we need to take it easy." He reached a hand out to me, which I reached out to take with one of my own. I gripped his hand firmly, but not as firmly as I could have, had I really wanted to. I didn't want Weaver to know exactly how well adapted I was to my new body parts. I allowed a slight tremor into my hand as I pulled myself, in a way I hoped wasn't overly theatrical, to my feet. As I came up to my full height, one that was at least six or seven inches higher than it had been before my acquisition of stronger, longer legs, I almost lost my balance and stumbled. It was only a momentary thing, my body quickly adjusting itself to the changes, but it was enough to convince Lucidil that I was, indeed, still in the process of healing. He immediately stepped over and put my arm around his shoulder, urging Silent to do the same on the other side of me. I didn't tell him that, after the initial reorientation, I felt fine on my legs, indeed I was eager to stretch them and see what I could do with all the raw power I felt inside them. Instead of bursting free and seeing just how far and fast I could run, however, I let my weight lay on Lucidil's shoulders as he and Silent proceeded to help me off the boat. As I cleared the craft, I got my first real look at the island we'd landed on.
The wind was blowing hard and fast across its rocky surface, whistling against the skeletal remains of trees that seemed to have died of no other cause than simple atrophy. The sandy shore ended abruptly maybe ten feet from where the sea washed against its banks, to be replaced by rough grass growing sparsely amidst jagged rock outcroppings. It was all mostly covered by a sheet of ragged snow and ice. The most notable attribute of the island was a tall, jagged mountain that reeked of sulfur rising high into the frozen sky some distance away. The whole area seemed gloomy and dank. The island itself, though, was not the most impressive thing that caught my eye. As we disembarked I found myself at the edge of a massive war camp. A hundred feet from shore, thousands of tents were spread about, housing all manner of different creature. I saw Shao Geok, members of Kye's people, the Uliona, some few humans, and cloaked figures that appeared to be Knights of Ethan, among others I couldn't recognize at all. I was immediately stunned by the scope of what lay before me. Had I believed Lucidil when he told me that he was taking me to a meeting place where I would find other Knights of Ethan, I would no longer hold any such disillusions. Though there were Knights about, or those that looked like them, the camp I was in was obviously not a camp of the king's men. His colors were nowhere to be seen.
Two figures approached us, both dressed in shifting cloaks, though only one in the newer cloaks that Silent, Lucidil, and myself were wearing. As they drew near, the figure in the newer cloak dropped her face mask, exposing a serene feminine face that immediately put me in mind of Kye, causing a pain of loss to surge through me. Her eyes were those of a Knight of Ethan, only colored a brilliant blue. My first inclination was to believe that she was like Weaver and me, but I realized quite quickly that she was a pure Uliona, and it was that strangeness about her that had so reminded me of my lost love. When she raised her arm in salute to Weaver, however, she had the scaled arms of a Knight. Her hair was just over shoulder length long and tied loosely back in two white-blond tails. After offering her salute, she quickly abandoned any sense of formality and ran to Weaver, throwing her arms about him and pressing her lips hungrily to his. He returned her passionate embrace, leaving my weight to fall upon Silent in the process. Silent held me easily, however, his strength more than equal to my added weight, though it was difficult for me to simply fall into him as though I couldn't keep my legs beneath me, when my natural inclination was simply to straighten my legs and walk. I looked on in surprise, not sure what to make of Weaver and his female companion. After a time, they separated, and Weaver made introductions.
"Lowin," He gestured toward the girl. "This is Ferocity, though she generally goes by Fero. My love," he said, then addressing the girl he identified as Fero, "this is the boy we went to find, Lowin Fenly."
She flashed, activating her speed, and my eyes adjusted instantly, making it seem as though she was only walking quickly in my direction, rather than moving faster than the average eye could follow. She stepped before me and resumed normal speed, moving her face to within inches of mine, her brilliant blue
eyes locked on me.
"Oh, they're so pretty!" She exclaimed loudly, before grabbing at one of my hands and picking it up to examine it. "And the fur, I've never seen markings like these!" Her free hand brushed back my hood, and she tweaked the tip of one of my ears with a delighted giggle. "These are great."
Weaver laughed. "Yes, our friend Lowin is something special. Fero here," he indicated the woman still excitedly examining the red stripes on my wrists and ears. "Is a natural ascendant. She is one of only two such cases."
"Natural ascendant?" I asked, feeling stupid.
"It means I am an Uliona who was able to rise to the status of Knight of Ethan," Fero chirped in, finally releasing my hand and stepping back.