Wings Unseen

by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

  Tonim swung from branch to branch a few dozen yards away, lashing both blue and copper feathers. He and Jerusho had developed a partnership. The Ertion retrieved any feathers he could reach from the forest floor while Tonim claimed the higher prizes. An interesting strategy, but Janto did not want to share the glory of victory, even if that victory was holding a belt of peculiarly colored feathers.

  Janto crossed the trail when he spied a feather dangling from a low branch and a couple tied a few feet up the next tree. He grabbed the knot that bound the nearest one then pulled its rope taught, wincing as the motion deepened a sore where the rope rubbed against his forefinger. Then he drew his knife through the rope. As he reached for another, high enough he had to stand on tiptoe, a hundred temple bells rang out. A more puzzling noise joined the clanging—Sielban’s voice, as clear as if he stood beside him saying, “The game is complete. Follow the bells and find me.”

  Janto gripped the knot that bound his final feather, but he knew better than to add it to his collection. The game was over.

  “Shall we find him together?” Tonim hung right above his head. “So you heard him, too, then?”

  “Like a bear storming through my head, rooting around for his pot of jam.” Jerusho caught up to them in three strides. “I hope he does not do that often. That clanging is loud enough to wake a jurgen.”

  “You know those don’t exist, right?” Janto teased.

  “What is it with my honorable fellow Muraters and their prejudice against things unseen?” Jerusho displayed a disdain Janto would not have thought him capable of. “Next, you will be telling me Madel isn’t real.”

  “Of course She is,” Tonim scoffed as he lowered his feet to the ground. “She reaches out to us all the time, bestowing us with Her blessing and protection.”

  “But have you witnessed Her hand of blue flame reaching toward you?” It was one thing to believe in Madel and another thing entirely to believe creatures of legend were real, or so Janto thought. Yet Sielban had spoken into all of their minds at once, and Janto had accepted it without qualms. Why not a jurgen? Or the silver stag for that matter?

  Tonim shrugged. “Should be much simpler to find him this time. I don’t think we could get lost following that noise.” He started off in the direction of the bells’ ringing.

  “What do you make of Sielban doing that? It is not normal, being able to talk to us that way.”

  “I have heard rumors Rasselerians possess such magic.” Jerusho pulled dry leaves from the branches as they walked, crumbling them beneath his fingers. “And of course, several times in our history, Madel blessed people with powers when the need was great enough.”

  Didio Albrecht’s Silver Guard. Might it truly have existed? Janto had considered magic a convenient explanation for events for which they had few records. But with what he had witnessed here …

  “Do you believe in magic, truly?”

  Jerusho did not hesitate. “Certainly. If you spend enough time in the study of Madel, you will learn all the ways She uses Her power to make our lives better. Magical gifts are but one of many.”

  “That’s daft.” Tonim wiggled his ankle while they walked. “Why didn’t she give us magic before Turyn’s Peace? It would have come in handy fighting the Meduans.”

  Jerusho shrugged. “Who can say? Maybe she considered it a battle we brought on ourselves.”

  In the next clearing, they found Sielban wearing the same suit as yesterday, its patterns shifting with the sunlight to create an effective illusion, appearing an arm’s length away or as many as ten yards. He waited to speak until they all gathered, feather-laden belts dragging behind them. “Good morning, little children. I hope you have enjoyed your game. Tell me, what are its results? Who has won Lash the Feather?”

  Janto assessed their fortunes, most having done about as well as him, fizzling any hopes of victory. Nap had an impressive array of yellow feathers lashed to his belt, including a few larger than any bird had the right to lay claim to. Jerusho and Tonim’s partnership yielded the most voluminous pile. Both men had more feathers individually than the others had managed, and together, it was an impressive sight. They were covered in them, blue and copper hues as intermingled as the layers of Sielban’s camouflage. They stood proudly as the others eyed their haul, yet Nap stepped forward first.

  “I think I have the most, Teacher.” Nap held up his belt for inspection. “Jerusho and Tonim have more, but they worked together. Is that not cheating?”

  Sielban flicked his tongue across his teeth. “Do the rest of you agree? Did those with the most gain them unfairly?”

  By the expressions on their faces, Jerusho and Tonim did not consider themselves cheaters. The thought had not crossed Janto’s mind … but surely no man could have claimed that many feathers on his own.

  “I agree with Nap,” Rall supported his fellow Wasylim. “They did not play by the rules, so Nap should have the win.”

  “They did not play by the rules.” Flivio mocked the statement with a smirk Janto now considered his usual expression. “Are we five years of age? I thought we were men. You sound like they pinched your money in a game of Sheven Teeth, not Lash the Feathers.”

  “So you would award the win to the pair,” Sielban mused, “but your reason would be to deny the children their candy, not to give the winners their due.”

  “Well, yes.” Flivio raised his elbows to their teacher, taking no offense at the charge. “It’s a lot more fun that way.”

  “We have two votes in favor of Napeler. And three in favor of those with the most feathers, assuming our partners would vote for themselves. Will others weigh in? There are two voices yet to be heard.”

  “But you gave us the answer.” Hamsyn laid his belt at Jerusho’s feet. “They have the most feathers, and so they win, despite the methods.”

  Flivio nodded in agreement. “And who’s to say the methods were wrong? We were quite happy to start without any rules. I would say they did better than the rest of us at coming up with a way to win, not a way to cheat.”

  To his credit, Nap blushed at the reprimand. Janto did, too, gladdened he had not proclaimed in Nap’s favor so fast. I almost did, though.

  By Madel’s hand, he had much to learn from these men. Nap may have been wrong, but his drive to excel was amazing. When had Janto needed to excel at anything?

  The joy on Jerusho’s and Tonim’s faces as Sielban dubbed them the winners was reason enough for Janto to abandon any lingering doubts of their worthiness. But he had plenty about his own.

  CHAPTER 14

  SERRA

  We are only partway through your initiation, but it is never too early to say it—some of you will be leaving us.” Ryn Gylles sat on a raised stool in the middle of the Trilling Hut. The teaching hut would be a more appropriate name, but the initiates had rechristened it in honor of the speed and flow of Gylles’s speech. “Some of you will find the Order is not your calling after all.”

  The room quieted. Several initiates shook their heads in denial, but others stared at their feet.

  “I am here to tell you that’s all right.” The ryn’s face brightened so greatly, Serra thought Madel’s hand reached down to him for a moment. She gasped, drawing curious gazes from the initiates seated close by. She was used to that by now. It had been a week and a half, but she had not found a place among them, though Lourda had been wonderful, accepting her instantly with a warmth that reminded Serra of Lord Xantas’s bone-crushing hugs. The woman had even allowed Serra to brush her wild hair, though she yelled at every tangle pull, causing Poline to laugh.

  “All of you will remember this month for the rest of your lives. But only a few will continue with it. And that is all right.” Ryn Gylles sipped from a quartz-studded chalice. “Those who stay will become novices and continue with Madel’s training. Those who go will live their lives more fully than they could here. It is not a failing to go, but a recognition this life is not for you.”

  Serra wondered which of
the thirty or so men and women would stay. How strange these few weeks might be the ones to determine the courses of their lives. Serra was still unsure why she was there. Maybe the Brothers considered a spiritual queen a greater ally. Or they thought of her grief and gave her the space to deal with it. Calming her tempers was easier away from the day-to-day activities of Callyn.

  Gylles spoke again. “Not to change the subject—okay, I mean to change the subject now that two-thirds of you are as pale as a granfaylon’s underside.” That elicited laughter and smiles all around. “Let us turn our thoughts back to the designing of rituals. What is the purpose of the bells?”

  Asten, a wisp of a man she imagined had ended up at Enjoin while chasing drapian seeds on the breeze, shot his hand up. “My rynna said the bells are struck to tune our minds to Madel’s resonance.”

  “Your rynna was correct, and if you continue, Asten, I hope you will give the same answer to others who seek it in the future.”

  Colini spoke next, a middle-aged man from Neville. “Ryn Gylles, I have never heard anyone talk about resonance in relation to the rituals. That answer sounds meant to shut up a questioning child, not teach her about the Order.”

  “Oh, but it’s not!” Gylles’s voice pitched higher in his excitement. “Madel reaches to us from another space, a different resonance, you might say. She is here, all around us, but a goddess does not live in the world as we do. She has always been and will always be. Such an entity cannot be part of our world. She is outside of our existence but connects Herself to us. The bell, when struck, reminds us to open ourselves to that.”

  Serra found that a rather beautiful thought, one she would have never considered before coming here. She could see why Dever Albrecht had been drawn to a life full of such remarkable images and ideas.

  Ryn Gylles struck the bell that stood in the middle of the room then dismissed them. He caught Serra’s eye as she made to leave, and she whispered to Lourda that she would meet her back at the cabin. She had grown quite fond of Ryn Gylles, especially these occasional afternoon chats together. He was as easy to talk with as Queen Lexamy.

  “Are we to have a walk today?”

  He shook his head. “No, I have a little extra teaching for you, something the others will soon learn, but I wanted you to keep in mind for now.” He sounded graver than normal; the joy she had glimpsed a moment ago drained out of his countenance so thoroughly he resembled a granfaylon himself.

  “But why tell me?” She laughed and played with her clove necklace. “I am not an initiate.”

  He ignored the question. “There are other things out there, Serra, truths besides Madel we shut our senses to. The war between the gods did not eliminate all darkness from our lives.”

  “Surely the existence of Medua is proof enough of that?”

  Again, he did not answer. She left the room with a foreboding she had not felt since Ser Allyn had brought her the Ravens’ letter.

  Lourda stood under the lip of their hut, lacing up her knee-high sandals, and Poline walked out of the doorway as Serra approached. She raised her elbows in greeting. “Do you want to come for a walk by the lake with us?”

  The invitation took Serra by surprise. “I would love to.” It would help her forget how Ryn Gylles had turned her blood to ice with a few words. Serra laced the golden ribbons of her sturdier sandals around her legs. Her fingers moved quickly—it would take nearly half an hour to reach the lake, and they would barely have time to skip stones on it before having to return for the evening ritual. Plus, she was proud of the speed of her lacing, a significant improvement from being unable to unclasp a single button by herself. She imagined Bini turning her other servants away at her bedroom door. Lady Serra will dress herself today. Serra giggled then joined Poline and Lourda on the path.

  The afternoon light was dimming when they reached Lake Ashra, its surface gleaming as the sun’s rays broke over the water. Regardless of the picturesque surroundings, Serra wished Madel or the Brothers would dispel the jocal flies. The pests were thicker than the spider webbing that covered grapevines at harvest time.

  “Does Callyn have anything this beautiful?” Poline’s eyes glittered. Serra shook her head but recalled the city’s bridge over the falls and smiled.

  “Oh, yes, it does. But only our bridge can compare to this. You should see it, Poline, a thousand stones of sparkling quartz. People claim you can go blind from staring at it.”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  “It is wonderful.” Serra considered the woman before her, swatting at flies. Poline was in her sixties, but she’d seen so little outside of her Wasylim town. Not that Serra had seen much more than Callyn and Gavenstone. “You should come sometime, after your studies here. You can visit me at the castle.”

  “Do you know you will return? Will you not continue as a novice?”

  The question took Serra by surprise. Of course she would return to Callyn and everyone she loved. Janto, Queen Lexamy—by Madel’s hand, she missed Bini’s prattle. She had needed time away, but the castle was her home. Had she talked so little of it the others would think she did not want to go back?

  No. She had been reserved here, but that was not why Poline asked. The other initiates did not know she was here at the Brothers’ request, and royalty sometimes studied under the Order. Some continued up until the moment they’d pledge their troth to Madel—the king certainly had. Lying by omission to these women felt shameful, but Ryn Gylles had asked her to—that had to make it right. Right?

  “Lady Serra! Poline! Come right away!” Lourda called from the shore. A plume of black and red smoke hovered above her head, but it dissipated too quickly for it to have been real. Serra blinked her eyes, then Poline grabbed her hand and they ran.

  What they found made Serra lose the remnants of her lunch in the nearest bush. Poline merely screamed. Serra wiped her lips with leaves once she’d stopped heaving, leaving a sharp, metallic taste in her mouth. Then she faced the sight again.

  Two green-tinged skins lay on the ground, sacks as thin as scrolls. One was smaller than the other, and they both looked concave, like something had been sucked right out of them. Through the holes puncturing them, she could see a crimson liquid inside. It oozed like congealed blood, but it couldn’t be blood. There was so much of it and nothing else inside the sacks. They could not be bodies, at least not human ones. They cannot.

  “Are they animals left to rot?”

  Lourda shook her head with pronounced sadness. “These are people.” Her voice was steady, though she had tears in her eyes. “Look here.”

  She lifted an edge of one skin with a stick, revealing a tiny drindem doll beneath it, almost identical to the one Serra had had as a girl. The thickened liquid had leaked all over it.

  “A child.” Poline clutched her chest.

  “And here.” Lourda prodded the other skin, exposing a string of hooked fish beneath it.

  “The fish do not smell.” Poline’s voice trembled. “This is fresh. They have died recently. But that is not possible.” Fear besieged her visage as Poline continued, “I had heard there had been deaths, but I did not believe it.”

  “Did not believe what?” Poline’s words confused Serra. “What sort of deaths have you heard about?”

  “Rumors, I thought, people spreading rumors of a killer in Rasseleria that sucked the blood out of its victims. Some of my daughters thought it was a Meduan”—Poline uttered the word with contempt—“come back to torment us again, but I figured it was a pack of wolves at worst. I did not think it could be real.”

  Serra gawked at the skins. “But that cannot be right. These people are drained of everything but blood. What sort of animal could do that?”

  “I do not know. It is too dreadful to be real.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Lourda deferred to Serra, a responsibility she did not want right then. The thought of bringing the skins—the people—back with them to Enjoin made her queasy, but they could not be left to rot. Lan
serim did not leave their dead to the elements, especially not ones who had suffered like this. They deserved more.

  “We must bury them, and then we will tell the priests. They will know what to do. They have to.”

  The lake had darkened, now ominous instead of beautiful, something only a vast body of water could do. She was cursed to relearn, again and again, how fast perspectives could shift.

  “Here.” She pulled a greenish shard of glass out of the sand, perhaps a relic of ages past. “We can use these.”

  Serra was grateful the thickness of flies lessened near the bodies. They dug shallow graves, anxious to leave, and used bunched leaves to shift the skins into the holes. The skins were heavier than they looked, and Serra cringed as blood dripped onto her sheath. They were people, she reminded herself, my people. I can wear their blood.

  A fly bit her as they took their first few steps away from the graves. She cursed, and Lourda and Poline moved away in fear.

  “I’m sorry. It was a fly—I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”

  No one said they should keep a fast pace, but they fell into one all the same. They knew they had reached the temple when they could hear the evening ritual chants. As they neared, the bell rang, and it felt like a premonition. A few initiates she had yet to meet walked out first. The peaceful expressions on their faces were quickly replaced by ones of disgust. Serra had never been observed with such eyes before.

  “What happened?” They moved aside for the others coming out. “There is blood all over your clothes!”

  “There were … there were bodies at the lake.” Serra cursed the tears welling in her eyes. She should be stronger than this, should be able to react with calm to such events. “We buried them.”

  “It was horrible.” Lourda made no attempt at composure, her tears an engorged mountain stream overflowing the banks of her creamy skin. “A child and maybe a man—something happened to their insides, dissolved them.”