Wanderer's Song

by P. E. Padilla

  Wanderer’s Song

  Song of Prophecy Book 1

  P. E. Padilla

  Copyright © 2017 by P. E. Padilla

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  To Paul.

  Keep training, brother. Maybe, in a time of darkness, your skills will be needed, too.

  Contents

  PEP Talk

  Partial Map of Dizhelim

  Intro Quote

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Wanderer’s Song Glossary

  Thank you!

  Newsletter

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by P. E. Padilla

  Partial Map of Dizhelim

  Comes the Malatirsay

  When mankind all but fails

  So fall the animaru

  So the light prevails.

  Commentary on the Song, by Ahred Chimlain, Prophet to the King of Salamus, Year 4 of the New Age

  Prologue

  The infant’s scream pierced the night air, causing Sartan Tannoch to feel a prickle of irritation. The wailing continued unabated for long minutes, punctuated only by the thunder that followed immediately after each flash of light in the sky. The storm would be upon them soon.

  “Miera,” he growled, the brogue of the clans on his tongue. He spoke loudly, but the wind still whisked his words away almost before they could be heard. “Will you take care of her, please? Is it not enough of a trial without her caterwauling?” He closed his eyes and breathed. He didn’t like that he was so out of sorts that he snapped at her.

  “Aye,” his wife responded, mouth going to a tight line. She was already rocking the baby, trying to soothe her. “I’ll do what I can.” She covered her infant daughter’s face with the blanket in anticipation of the rain and cooed to the girl. The crying lessened, but did not cease.

  Sartan looked to the infant in his own arms, the boy. He stared at his father with big eyes but made no sound. The clan chieftain wondered what the baby was thinking, if babies indeed thought at all. He was just happy the twin in his arms wasn’t crying like his sister. This was hard enough already.

  “We must be about the ritual, Sartan,” Arlden said.

  Sartan looked at his friend and fellow warrior. He was a big man, though not quite so big as Sartan himself. His long, dark braid had little bells and bits of colored stones tied in it. The scars crisscrossing his bare, muscular torso flashed silver every time the lightning struck. He wore his great sword across his back, two long knives at his waist, and the small throwing hatchets he favored strapped to his lower legs.

  “Do I need you to tell me my business?” Sartan snapped. “I know the laws as well as you. Do not rush me in this. It will be done.”

  Arlden broke eye contact with the chief and shrugged slightly. “As you say.”

  The infant girl was screeching again despite all Miera, Sartan’s wife, could do to shut her up. Let her cry. It would soon be over.

  Sartan felt a gaze settle upon him and looked down at his son. The baby was intent on his face, as if willing a question into his father’s mind. It was discomforting, seeing that intelligence in so tiny a person. It wasn’t natural.

  Shaking his head, the clan chief looked back to his wife. “Miera, it is time. Go and take care of the girl. I will handle my part with the lad.” He frowned, but it was not meant for his wife.

  Miera’s beautiful face scrunched into a grimace. Even with that expression, she was so striking it took Sartan’s breath away. Her long red hair danced in the wind, whipping about her and giving her a wild look. He had no doubt his daughter would have shared her mother’s beauty.

  Had she been allowed to grow.

  A sadness rushed through him, unlike anything he had ever felt. He was accustomed to pain. Those of the Croagh Aet Brech, the clans of the highlands, were most at home when it afflicted them, but this was different. This ached from the inside out instead of how pain should be, from the outside in. He tamped it down with ruthless efficiency and shifted his eyes back to the bonfire. Absently, he noticed Miera slipping away with the wailing girl, the tiny bundle in blankets held protectively to her chest. The cries faded as the pair got farther away.

  A movement caught Sartan’s eye. His son, Aeden, craned his head toward his crying sister. His eyes held question and fear and something else. Resolve, maybe? No, that wasn’t possible in a child not yet a month old.

  Arlden spoke again. “We are ready, Clan Chief. Shall we proceed?”

  “Yes.”

  Clearing his throat, Arlden spoke to the crowd gathered around the fire.

  “As it has been since ages past, the ritual of welcome must be performed. For each child, a formal greeting must be given to allow a child to be taken into the clan. Boys or girls, it is the same. Except for one case.

  “As it has been passed down for as long as the Croagh Aet Brech have existed, if twins are born of the clan chief, one a boy and one a girl, the female must be sacrificed so that her power will inhabit the male. To allow her to live will weaken the boy, and he will be unable to lead the clan in the way he is required.”

  The warrior looked to his friend, and Sartan saw compassion in his eyes. Never had anyone thought it would be necessary to actually enforce that tradition. In fact, Sartan had never heard of it happening in his, or any of the other, clans. He was not happy to be the first.

  Arlden continued. “So as not to show disrespect for the male child, the female will meet her end away from his ritual, in the dark and empty highlands while he is accepted in the brightness of the fire.

  “Aeden, son of Sartan, Chief of the Tannoch clan, be you welcome. Our brother you are and will always be, for so long as you follow clan laws and rep
resent the clan well in every way.”

  Arlden reached near the edge of the fire and dragged a finger in the ash. Stepping forward, he wiped it across the infant’s forehead, leaving a gray smudge there.

  “So has it always been done, so is it complete. Welcome, brother Aeden. May you grow strong and be the bane of Tannoch enemies for decades to come.”

  “Achman!” everyone shouted, startling the baby in Sartan’s arms. Still, the infant made no sound, just stared up at his father. The clan chief had never seen the like.

  Sartan held the baby up, letting the firelight wash over him. As he did, it began to rain.

  1

  Sartan Tannoch watched his son train. The clack of wooden swords echoed in the little sheltered valley in which two boys sparred. Sword on sword, sword on shield, and the occasional softer thunk of shields clashing against each other or against the body of an opponent, made a kind of grim symphony.

  The chief of the Tannoch clan smiled. It wasn’t as sweet as the sound of steel, but the rhythm was the same. Well, nearly the same. The sound of battle between skilled warriors was flowing music, songs within songs. This was more like off-key humming or whistling. Still, the melody was there, buried beneath the untrained movements.

  Young Aeden was only eight years old, but he was more skilled than boys several years older. He seemed to adapt well and learn quickly. He would be a fine warrior, a great clan chief after Sartan’s bones had been returned to the earth.

  The boy’s hair was auburn, neither true red nor brown. Just like his father’s. Sartan glanced down the hill at Miera, striding up past the grazing sheep, coming toward him, her red hair a dazzling shroud of flame. It was the color of the berry paste that the Croagh smeared on themselves before battle, and like the thrill of battle, seeing her made his heartbeat quicken.

  Would his daughter have had her mother’s hair? Better not to think of that. He still felt as if part of his soul was missing. He understood tradition and had no choice but to adhere to it, but it was a cruel joke the fates played on him, giving him twins, one of each sex. He shook his head sadly. Two girls, or two boys, and it would have been a different story.

  “What is it, my love?” Miera asked. “Do you not take pride in your son’s abilities?”

  Sartan took her hand and pulled her to him, kissing her cheek. “Aye, I take pride in him. Look how he moves. At eight years old, he can best most of the boys in training and all of the girls. He will be a fine warrior.”

  “And a fine chief, when it comes to that,” she added.

  “Aye, that as well. I thought that very thing less than a minute ago.”

  “Then what is troubling you? Dinna tell me ‘nothing.’ I know that face too well.”

  “’Tis nothing. I was just thinking about the girl.”

  “Ah,” Miera said. “Dwelling on it will not change the past. Our thoughts should be on now, on the living, and on the future.”

  “You are wise, my wife,” Sartan said, kissing her again. “The future is right down there.” He pointed toward Aeden. “He has been introduced to his training partner, his Braitharlan, just this morning.”

  Miera’s full lips turned down into a frown. “I know it is tradition, a way of testing and ensuring loyalty to the clan first, but it’s old and barbaric. Like some of the other traditions and rituals.” She gave him a significant look. “Creating a bond between two young boys, nurturing it, letting it grow, causing them to rely on and cherish it, only to make them fight until one is unconscious or dead, that I do not agree with.”

  “It is our way,” Sartan said. “Warriors must be loyal and act without hesitation for the good of the clan as a whole. Personal attachments must come second. A distant second. You know this.”

  “I know this. I still do not have to like it.”

  “How is it that you have risen to clan chief’s wife with such a tender heart?” he asked, rubbing her shoulders and peering into her eyes as if the answer would be found there.

  “Oh, that is simple. I merely exploited my beauty and trapped the man I knew would be chief. You men have your loyalty, we women folk have other weapons.” She winked at him and then pursed her lips provocatively.

  Sartan laughed. “Yes, you do. You knew from the start I couldn’t resist you. I think perhaps when boys are training for battle, girls are taken aside and given lessons in stealing a man’s mind and heart away from him.”

  The smile she gave him seemed to light up the hillside. “Such things could possibly be true. Who knows what secret powers there are in the world?” Her bare shoulder raised just a hair, pulling Sartan’s eyes from her face to her body.

  “Woman, I have a mind to take you to someplace apart and search you for secrets.”

  She raised her shoulder a bit more, tilted her head toward him, and formed a smoky smile that caused parts of him to tingle. “I have a mind to let you.”

  With a last look at the skinny boy with auburn hair waving in the breeze, Sartan Tannoch wrapped his arm around his wife and headed for their home. He would think of his son’s training later. For the moment, other, more urgent thoughts occupied his mind.

  Later that evening, Aeden sat silently at the table, eating the goat meat stew in front of him. His blue eyes glowed in the lamplight.

  “Your father and I watched you fighting today,” his mother said, ladling up some stew for herself. Sartan was already sitting at the table shoveling his meal into his mouth.

  The boy looked to her, but said nothing.

  “We are both impressed with your progress. You have a natural talent with weapons and with unarmed combat. We have watched you at other times, as well.”

  No one spoke for a full minute.

  “Why are you so quiet, lad?” Sartan asked around a mouthful of his dinner.

  “I speak when there is need,” the boy responded. He dipped a piece of bread in his stew and stuffed it in his mouth.

  “Aye, you do that. But most boys talk constantly when they are your age.”

  “Most boys my age have nothing important to say.”

  Sartan chuckled at that. “’Tis true. I’ll give you that. Still, being so quiet, people might think you simple.”

  “Oh, leave the boy be,” Miera said. “He doesn’t need to be a great orator. He will grow out of it. He is just shy.”

  “Well, shy is fine, but timid is not.”

  “He is not timid, Sartan. You have seen him fight. No one will think him timid.”

  “Ach. Very well, I’ll grant you that.” He turned to his son. “It’s fine, lad. Just promise to speak to me if you are having troubles. Will you do that?”

  “Yes, father,” the boy said, swiveling his blue orbs to meet his father’s paler blue eyes. Sartan was surprised—again—by the depth of those eyes, the intelligence. No, no one would think him simple, not if they looked into those eyes. The clan chief let the matter drop and continued his meal.

  2

  The scream echoed like crashing thunder. The unearthly wail ran through Aeden and made him vibrate. He wasn’t scared. He knew it wasn’t something come to attack him, though it sounded feral, animal, to him.

  He was trapped in the body of an infant, helpless to do anything but move his head toward the sound.

  There was another baby, one he should recognize, he thought. A figure near him made an indistinct buzzing sound. Speech? Looking up, he saw a face close to his and he worked his eyes to focus so closely.

  It was his father, his mouth moving and sounds coming out. The man’s giant face pointed toward the sound, which continued unabated. Aeden willed his neck to move, his heavy and oversized head swiveling so he could see a woman, his mother, holding the screaming baby. She spoke as well.

  The sounds were foreign, as if he did not know how to speak their language. The crying concerned him most, though. What had they done to her—somehow, he knew the other infant was a girl—to make her so upset? A few stray raindrops fell on his face, and he thought maybe the problem was as simple
as her being wet.

  His eyes seemed to lose focus, and he had to force them to sharpen his gaze. He made no sound himself; he dared not. His two huge parents were agitated at the sounds the girl made, and he knew that if he made them, too, bad things would happen to him. He watched and remained silent.

  Other words were exchanged, and his mother walked away, out of the light of the nearby fire.

  Aeden grappled with understanding, trying to think through what had happened but finding his mind unable to grasp the simplest thing about the situation. He only understood that the girl cried and made sounds, and then they took her away.

  Where did she go? He had no concept of distance or time or anything else. Just that crying made bad things happen. It was clear and simple to him. He would not cry, would not make a sound, and he would be safe.

  The wind carried an echo of a scream to his infant ears, and the sound disappeared quickly in the patter of the coming rain and loud booms that shook the world.