Elsewhere, high summer was beginning to make itself felt. The lush fields to the south would be parched and cracked. The distant north, where they were eventually headed, Teryithyr, would be unaffected.
The high summer heat held no sway here. Bitter cold taunted bones and the sharp, dry wind stung flesh. If the cold or the sea took you out here there would be no witness. No rescue. Nobody knew this place – why would they? There was nothing here for men. Just solace. Perhaps repentance. Few would choose to make such a place their home.
As each season passed the north slumbered as it always had. Thaxamalan waited, its baleful eyes shut and crusted with ice, while Rythe held him in frozen sleep for eternity and Carious and Dow shunned him with their warmth.
Here, there was nothing. No smells, sounds, feelings but those made by the sea.
Shorn stood staring out across his home, the home of his heart and the home of youth, and watched, as he watched each day, waiting for the Seafarers to answer his call. A month’s ride to this place was distant for him. He knew it to be much greater for the Feewar.
He scanned the horizon each day for as long as he could bear, waiting for the Feewar. While he waited for the vessel he prepared. Hardening his heart for the meeting he knew would come soon. He was waiting for the Feewar, but he had also come to ready his soul. The barren outcropping seemed a fitting place. His sword, honed to undying sharpness, was clutched in his white-knuckled fist, his hand frozen onto it.
The suns’ rays had tanned him, even though their heat was only blown away. He was leaner by far – there was little sustenance to be had from the land. Each day he came at first light. Each night he left, climbing down to his camp and the waiting Harlot. Before he ate and slept he had trained. He had made himself a pair of soft hide, trousers and a bracer of thicker leather for his right arm. His shirt was still in tatters, providing little protection against the steel bracer that supported his crippled left hand. Some days he would take the bracer off his leg. It grew stronger ever day. His left hand, though, would still not clench. The scar on his forearm had turned red and healed in thick hard flesh, curving in toward the bone. The muscles there would never heal. He knew because they were absent.
Instead, he trained his leg back to health and practised using his arm as a balance for the sword, using the flaring blade along the top of his left forearm to block and slash, his whole arm another blade, support and flexibility gained where his left arm faltered. To an outsider it looked as though a master practised. To Shorn it felt clumsy and slow. He knew he was faster, improving in this odd new style. It would not be enough when Wen came for him. The man would look into Shorn’s eyes and see the death his weapon had wrought. He would finally put his student down.
Shorn was beginning to see the man’s point. The time he had spent alone on this cliff had given him new insight. Drun was right. Only people are truly worth fighting for. Today, suns high above him, he would meet Wen again. Then he would find out if all the honing had been for nothing.
When Blood-Leaf is shorn of rubies will the last child wake.
Shorn’s sword had a name, too. Once, long, long ago, when Carious first birthed a sun and an ancient enemy was defeated, Cruor Bract met her twin.
*
End
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Rythe Awakes (The Rythe Trilogy) Page 40