CHILDREN OF AMARID

by DAVID B. COE

  With that, he spun away and stormed off toward the camp, leaving Baden and Trahn to absorb the news he had borne. They stood without speaking, watching the light from his crystal grow dimmer, until finally it disappeared. And still they said nothing. As soon as Orris had mentioned the little girl, a vision of her face had blossomed in Baden’s mind, like a flower or a flame, gaining clarity with each passing second. He tried now, desperately and in vain, to thrust it away. Soon, perhaps within the next hour, he would confront Theron’s spirit. He could not enter the grove with the little girl’s face, with Cailin’s face—somehow he knew her name—intruding on his thoughts. He felt old and frightened, a far cry from the image of power and purpose that he had hoped to project to the First Owl-Master.

  “You shouldn’t have apologized to him, Baden!” Trahn said at length, his voice thick with anger. “He had no right to say what he did!”

  Baden shrugged wearily. “It’s not important,” he murmured.

  After a moment, Trahn nodded. “You’re right,” he conceded in a more subdued tone. He paused, and when he spoke again, there were tears in his eyes. “I keep seeing the little girl.”

  “Cailin,” Baden said bleakly. “Her name’s Cailin. I see her, too.”

  “She looks to be the same age as my Jaynell.”

  Baden could think of nothing to say in response. Perhaps sensing this, Trahn changed the subject. “What will Jessamyn do?” he asked. “Will she take us back to Kaera?”

  “I don’t know,” the Owl-Master responded. “I can’t imagine that she’d leave here without first entering the grove, but believe me when I tell you that she’ll take this even harder than we have.”

  Lightning blazed overhead, and, a few seconds later, the ground shook with the answering thunder. They started making their way back toward the camp.

  “Do you still think that Theron is behind the attacks?” Trahn asked, after they had walked a small distance.

  Baden opened his mouth to reply. But in that moment, a voice cried out from the far side of the camp and then was abruptly, unnervingly silenced.

  The mages stopped and stared at each other.

  “Jessamyn!” Baden exclaimed, and they both began running in the direction from which the cry had come. They were far away, though. So far away.

  “I’m definitely scared,” Jaryd commented as he and Alayna rummaged through the gear, searching for the tarpaulins, “but I’m calmer than I had expected to be.”

  Alayna nodded. “Me, too. It’s as if I’ve been preparing—here they are,” she said, holding up the folded cloths, “—as if I’ve been preparing for this night my entire life. I don’t really know how to explain it.”

  They unfolded the sheets of canvas and began placing them over the gear and food.

  “I almost think that it would be harder to wait for the delegation outside the grove,” Jaryd observed. “I don’t envy the others at all.”

  “Did Trahn say anything to you about it?”

  Jaryd shook his head. “No, nothing. But,” he added, “that doesn’t mean much, really. Trahn isn’t one to express his feelings that freely. Why, did Sartol say anything to you?”

  She shrugged. “Just that he wished he hadn’t gotten sick when he did. He tried not to seem too disappointed, but I think he was holding something back.”

  “How about Orris?”

  “You mean did he say something to me?”

  “Yes.”

  Alayna laughed. “Of course not; I don’t think that Orris talks to anybody.”

  Jaryd laughed also. “I’m relieved: I thought it was just me he didn’t like.”

  “No,” Alayna told him, her mirth subsiding, “but he does seem particularly hostile toward you.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Jaryd agreed, “although I have no idea why he should be.”

  “He doesn’t seem to like Baden very much. Maybe it’s just because you’re Baden’s nephew,” Alayna suggested.

  “Maybe.”

  They worked without speaking for a short while, tucking the corners of the tarpaulins under some of the equipment to keep them secure against the wind, and carefully arranging each piece so that it overlapped the last. At one point Jaryd paused to look over at Ishalla and Fylimar, who sat together on an old stump, so much alike that they reminded him of bookends.

  “May I ask you something?” Jaryd chanced, turning back to Alayna.

  She did not meet his glance, but a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “I’m not sure,” she answered shyly. “I think I know what you want to ask, and I’m not certain that I want to discuss it right now.”

  “We may never get another chance, Alayna.”

  She looked at him then, her smile slowly fading as his eyes held hers. At length, she nodded.

  “The other night, when you asked me to sit with you—”

  “When I was taking care of Sartol?” she broke in.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so,” she commented, smiling again. “Go on,” she added.

  “When I asked you what I had done to offend you,” Jaryd continued, “you said that I hadn’t done anything, and then you amended that; I think you said, ‘At least nothing you could control.’ What did you mean?”

  They had stopped working, although they had yet to tie down the coverings. Alayna stood gazing at him, and Jaryd thought back to the first time he had ever seen her, on the wooded grounds of Amarid’s home, as the mages of the Order had lined up for the opening procession of the Gathering. There was a storm coming; even now Jaryd could hear thunder. And yet, the air around them seemed suddenly to have grown still. Jaryd felt his heart hammering in his chest.

  “You scare me, Jaryd,” she said in a tight voice. “You scare me more than any man I’ve known.”

  “Scare you?” Jaryd said with bewilderment. “Why?”

  “Do you remember the first time our eyes met?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he answered in a gentle voice, “very well.”

  She smiled. “So do I. But that wasn’t the first time I’d seen you.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  She took a deep breath. “I had visions of you long before the Gathering,” she told him.

  Jaryd didn’t respond for some time; he wasn’t sure how to respond. What she had told him should have come as a shock, but, he realized, he had expected something like this.

  He looked at her and found that she was watching him closely. “What kind of visions?” he finally asked her.

  She flushed slightly. “I’m not sure that I can describe them,” she replied. “I’m still not certain what they meant.”

  “Did you recognize me right away?” he asked.

  “At the Gathering, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  “I was pretty sure,” she replied, “but I wasn’t positive until you showed up the second day with your hawk. Then I knew.”

  Jaryd nodded again. Their interaction finally made sense to him. He understood why she had treated him so strangely. He, of all people, appreciated the power of unexpected visions. “So what do we do now?” he asked. “Was there anything in your visions that would keep us from being friends?”

  Alayna hesitated, but only for an instant. “No,” she said, smiling at him. “Nothing at all.”

  He smiled in return. “I’m glad.” He stepped across the pile of supplies to where Alayna stood, and took her hands in his. “Look,” he began, gazing into her eyes—green and brown they were, like a forest. “I don’t even know if we’re going to live through the night. But if we do . . .” He stopped, unsure of how he wanted to finish the thought.

  She smiled at him radiantly and, stepping forward, kissed him gently on the cheek. “If we do,” she repeated softly.

  He moved to kiss her on the lips, but, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Jessamyn coming toward them. Quickly, the young mages pulled away from each other and returned to their task, using several lengths of rope to tie the tarpaulins in place. Glancing up f
rom their work a short while later, Jaryd noticed that the Owl-Sage had changed directions, and was now making her way toward the cluster of trees near Theron’s Grove to which Sartol had gone to find the torches.

  “That would have been embarrassing,” Jaryd remarked with a wry grin.

  Alayna shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, returning his smile. “Jessamyn would understand. She’d probably think it was very sweet.”

  “Great,” Jaryd returned with sarcasm. Then something occurred to him. “How would Sartol react?” he asked.

  “Fine, I think. He did volunteer to get the torches so that we could be together,” she reminded him.

  “True. I just wondered because the two of you spend so much time together.”

  “You and Baden spend a lot of time together,” she said pointedly. “Is there something I should know?”

  Jaryd felt himself blushing. “Point taken,” he surrendered as Alayna giggled.

  “What about the blonde?” she asked a moment later, her tone more serious.

  “The blonde?”

  “The one who kissed you the morning we left Amarid,” Alayna reminded him. “How many blondes are there in your life?”

  Jaryd nodded with recognition. “You mean Kayle.” He smiled. “Are you jealous?”

  “Don’t play games, Jaryd,” she insisted. “Not with this.”

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “Kayle’s just a friend. I promise.”

  “She seemed like more than a friend that morning.”

  “I know how it seemed,” he replied, trying to sound reassuring. “But we’re just friends.”

  She stared at him, her eyes locked on his, as if she was trying to gauge whether he was telling the truth. After several moments, she nodded, and they continued to work in silence.

  Just as they finished securing the tarpaulins, they heard footsteps and, turning toward the sound, they saw Peredur approaching them.

  “Have either of you seen Jessamyn?” he asked without preamble.

  “Yes, First,” Jaryd told him, “we saw her just a few minutes ago. She was going up to that thicket,” he added, pointing toward the small copse, “in the direction Sartol went.”

  “Thank you,” Peredur responded absently, already moving off in the direction Jaryd had indicated. “She tells us all to get some rest,” he muttered as he walked away, “but she gets none herself.”

  “He really takes care of her, doesn’t he?” Alayna observed as she watched the First of the Sage make his way toward the thicket.

  “To the extent that anyone can,” Jaryd agreed with a small laugh. “I don’t think she’d be very easy to take care of.”

  Lightning illuminated the terrain, making it seem, for a split second, as if daylight had returned. They braced themselves, waiting for the thunder. It came sooner than Jaryd expected, crashing loudly, and causing the ground beneath them to vibrate.

  “So, are we done here?” Alayna said, looking down at the protected supplies.

  “I think so,” Jaryd answered. “That should hold. Why don’t we go find the shelter that Jessamyn set up and see if we can stay dry, too.”

  Alayna continued to stare at the tarpaulins, the look in her eyes rueful. “Actually,” she said sheepishly, “now that we’re finished, I’m kind of hungry.”

  Jaryd laughed, and pulled a small sack of dried meat from the folds of his cloak. “Luckily for you, I had a little foresight.”

  She looked at him coyly. “Well, aren’t you just—”

  She never finished the thought. From the cluster of trees to which Sartol and then Jessamyn had gone came a cry for help that ended with frightening abruptness.

  “That sounded like Jessamyn!” Alayna declared.

  Jaryd nodded once, and the two of them took off toward the thicket with their hawks gliding overhead.

  She was surprisingly strong, given her age, and he had expected her to attack him, not simply to cloak herself protectively in her own power. For these reasons alone, she managed to cry out before he could silence her. But silence her he did. It took only a moment for his mastery of the Mage-Craft to over-power her warding, and then, with a quick gesture, no more than the tightening of his fingers into a fist, he stopped her breathing. It gratified him to see the terror in her eyes, to see written across the Owl-Sage’s distorted features her shock at the ease with which he was killing her. Surely, he thought—and perhaps it crossed her mind as well in these last few seconds of her life—no mage has known such power since Amarid and Theron themselves walked the land.

  He had worked so hard for so many years making himself this strong, stretching the limits of his endurance and that of his bird, honing his skills with the Mage-Craft until he could kill with little more than a gesture. He remembered one night in particular, when he had stood by the shores of a small, secluded lake near his home in the northern reaches of Tobyn’s Wood, pouring his mage-fire into the water for as long as he and Huvan could bear. He had lost all sense of time and place, conscious only of the tide of power moving within him. But when finally he collapsed in an exhausted heap, he had found the water of the lake bubbling and steaming like a pot of broth on a fire, bringing hundreds upon hundreds of dead fish to the lake’s surface. He had lain there for hours, too spent to move. But the following night, he did it again.

  And now, finally, his labors were paying off. Too late, the white owl leapt off Jessamyn’s shoulder and tried to attack him, but Huvan, the more powerful of the two birds, managed to drive the creature off. A moment later the Owl-Sage dropped to her knees, her eyes beginning to bulge from her skull, her rigid hands, white knuckled, still clutching her staff. She stared up at him, imploring him to spare her.

  He smiled grimly. “I’m sorry, Jessamyn,” he said to her, “that you had to learn in this way how powerful I’ve grown. You see, don’t you, that they should never have made you Owl-Sage? That I was the one who deserved it? It’s unfair, really, that you should have to pay for their error, but, if it’s any consolation, you won’t be the only one. Others will pay as well. If I’m this strong now,” he added, “imagine how my power will flow when I’ve linked myself to the Summoning Stone.”

  Still staring at him with wide, wild eyes, the Owl-Sage toppled over onto her side and writhed pitifully on the ground. It wasn’t as amusing to watch now, and he looked away as she died. Doing so, he beheld the pearly light of Peredur’s ceryll as the First of the Sage entered the thicket. He had known, as soon as Jessamyn screamed, that the others would be coming. But he had not expected any of them this soon. There was nothing he could do, except kill Peredur as well.

  “Jessamyn?” he heard the old man call out, his voice quavering with alarm. Then the Owl-Master spotted him and hurried forward. “Sartol, have you seen—?” Peredur froze, paralyzed by the sight of Jessamyn’s body sprawled on the ground before him.

  Without giving the old fool time to raise an alarm, Sartol closed his eyes for an instant to convey a single thought to Huvan, who had just settled back onto his shoulder. Immediately, the great owl hurled itself at Peredur’s head. The mage flinched, and, in that moment, Huvan altered her course sharply and seized the first’s small owl in her outstretched talons. She alighted on a nearby branch, severed the head of the smaller bird with a quick, wrenching motion of her powerful feet, and began to tear hungrily into the body of her prey.

  “It would seem, Peredur, that you’re about to join the ranks of the Unsettled,” Sartol remarked in a mocking tone. “I had hoped that Jessamyn would join you, but, alas, her bird escaped.”

  The first tried to shout something to the others, but this time Sartol was ready. Closing his hand into a fist again, he cut off the old man’s breathing. He then fisted his other hand and, bringing the two together, made a twisting motion not unlike the one Huvan had used to kill Peredur’s owl. The first’s head snapped to the side unnaturally, breaking his neck, and he collapsed in a contorted heap next to his beloved.

  Even as the first fell to the ground, ho
wever, Sartol could already hear others running toward the cluster of trees. Alayna, and Baden’s brat, he guessed. He shook his head, glancing briefly around the thicket. Events were spiraling beyond his control at an alarming rate; he could not go on killing every member of the company this way. Or could I? he wondered. Standing alone, no mage in the entire Order could defeat him. He could kill off the delegation, inflict a few ugly but harmless injuries on himself, and blame their murders on Theron, claiming to have escaped death himself only by sheerest good fortune. Jaryd and Alayna together posed no threat: she had only begun to develop her powers, and the boy did not yet even have a ceryll. Baden and Trahn represented the only real danger, because they always traveled together, and he felt fairly certain that he could handle them. Now, if by some chance Orris ended up with them . . . well, that was a scenario that Sartol did not even wish to consider.

  The young mages had almost reached him; he could see the purple light of the ceryll he had given to Alayna. He had to decide. Looking around him again, he realized that he had little choice in the matter. Huvan still tore at the carcass of Peredur’s familiar; the altered torch lay on the ground next to the bodies of the Owl-Sage and her first. He had been careless. He had ruined what appeared to be a perfect plan, and so had brought himself to this moment. He would have to kill the young mages; he might have to kill all of them. But with a bit of luck, it wouldn’t come to that. Once again, he would have to look for an opportunity.

  Jaryd and Alayna burst through the trees and halted a few feet from where he stood. He watched the horror register on their features as they surveyed the scene before them. It began to rain in large, pelting drops.