by T. A. Miles
The sun had yet to fully rise over South Meadows. Larks anticipated the light of morning with sporadic song that offered the illusion of a peaceful day ahead.
Nature can be the most talented of liars, Tahlia thought to herself from her low vantage atop a pile of great slabs of rock that seemed almost flung onto the earth by the gods’ hands. They might well have been shards of the past; fragments of the world that was before the world they knew now. Unfortunately, what they had come to know was a world poised to join the graveyard of its ancestral remains.
“So grim in the morning, dear heart.” The calm voice of her spouse joined the morning birdsong, drawing Tahlia’s eyes to a trim, shapely form fit neatly into soft white leathers. A short cloak to match and a high-held tail of rich brown moved in the breeze. Though it was cool, that breeze utterly failed to lift the stagnation from the ever-heated air of a battlefield.
Tahlia didn’t reply to her lover’s observation with more than a tired smile of greeting. After so long at this front she could almost forget that Endurance was one of her most developed talents. As her gaze drifted back to a horizon marked prominently with a strong line of trees, she felt her expression tighten into a frown. “It’s far too quiet, Syndel.”
And now Syndel chose not to answer in words. Tahlia knew that her lover’s keen blue eyes were on the forest’s edge. The other Mage-Adept was seeing with her uniquely attuned soul, as well as with those eyes. Tahlia knew well by now how to translate the silence that accompanied it. The grim reality of their daily situation became a stone in her gut.
Before too long, Tahlia tautly exhaled. “They’re coming,” she said. Looking over her shoulder at Syndel, she added, “Aren’t they?”
With a hard line pressing across otherwise soft lips, Syndel said, “Yes, they are.”
Tahlia knew better than to delay. She turned and leaped from the rocks, moving quickly to her mount. She swung herself into the saddle of the gray mare, delaying the animal’s instinct to charge in response to her rush long enough to turn back to her spouse, who was still stood upon the rocks, like an ivory-clad sentinel.
“How far?” Tahlia asked her.
“Nearer than far,” was the response.
Tahlia issued a nod that went unseen by her partner and prompted the horse beneath her to move quickly toward camp. Soldiers who saw her coming were spurred to immediate action by her approach, as they should have been. Any sudden movement here was to be neither ignored nor taken lightly. She rode through the abrupt clamor of armor and weapons toward the general’s tent. The man was emerging just as she arrived. An early riser by necessity, he was mostly in armor already, his short hair a lit golden in the combined glows from the camp and the rising sun.
“It’s time, Bheld,” Tahlia told him.
The look in the man’s blue eyes—a mix of annoyance and despair—told her that their reinforcements were still a long way off. Tahlia complained with a curse, but wasted no further time on the matter. The troops remaining required rousing and preparation. They were a strong lot, but they were growing weary. They had a long, bloody morning ahead of them.
Korsten fell into water red as blood. He sank slowly from a surface that appeared translucent and pink beneath moon or sunlight; he couldn’t tell which. The tinted waves churned the view above him as he drifted further and further from it. At first the liquid enveloping him felt cool, but soon it was hot against his skin, seeping determinedly beneath it as blackness rose in the corner of his vision. Dark arms passed him along, ever downward … into Hell’s depths.
Voices whispered at him discordantly as he drifted. “Stay with us.”
“You’re ours now.”
“And we belong to you.”
“…Master.”
His throat constricted involuntarily at the last word in a grim cadence, forcing his lips apart. Water rushed in, metallic and bittersweet. As if in hasty response to his panic, wispy black hands reached across his body and over his face.
He pushed and pulled them away instinctively.
Stop!
The thought sang across his mind with the swiftness of a blade drawn against them, and the immediacy with which the hands and arms recoiled stirred an uneasiness in him that was somehow not as clearly decipherable as he felt it should have been.
“Master….” the voices protested, or begged. Perhaps it was both. The sound stirred across his senses like the flutter of many wings in stagnant air. Beneath it he heard his name … and then the water turned to light, the pink light of morning.
From a bed, Korsten looked toward the window of a room that felt spacious; the air around him moved freely, as if the water in his dream had transformed. His mother sat smiling at him before the window, red hair dark against the ocean view over her white shoulder. She watched him with what he’d always taken for gentleness, his private shelter from his father and from life outside of his dreams or a book. Looking at her delicate features now he saw something else. He saw wisdom, of an ancient sort. Thoughts of Ashwin flashed across his mind and he watched the smile slowly seep from his mother’s features.
He felt at once confused and remiss. “Mother,” he began.
“Korsten,” she said, her voice overlapping his own. “Come home.”
He sat up slowly, his gaze transfixed on his mother’s eyes. They appeared almost a blushed golden in the glow of the rising sun. He remembered them blue.
“I am home,” he said to her.
In that moment the dream let him know it was one by ending. Consciousness opened his eyes to a view of white walls bordered with dark wood. A tapestry that seemed immediately familiar stirred in a breeze which smelled distinctly of the sea, the shadow of its edges drifting lazily across a tiled floor. Korsten studied the woven view of woods edged with carefully stitched borders of interlocking vines. Birds and woodland animals were embedded within the fanciful image of many-colored threads. It was an image he’d gazed upon with deep fascination for the majority of his young years. He had always loved the colors, and the impression of many different animals, their artful likenesses making the forest around them alive and somehow sacred.
Images of a boy with dark red hair moved across his memory, as if he were witness to a reflection of his own past. No more than five in years, the boy stood before the tapestry, looking up at it and over its many details. Small fingers traced the shape of an animal here or there, seeming to settle on one in particular. And then he came to the bed, loosening the cuff of one sleeve enough to slide a stowed paring knife out. He climbed onto the bed very near to where Korsten currently lay. The boy stayed on the edge of it, leaning toward the bedpost. The knife became a stylus in the ensuing moments, for carving an unskilled version of a deer from the tapestry.
It was in tribute to the anonymous artist; Korsten recalled with remarkable clarity. With equal accuracy, he recalled the door opening. In his mind’s eye, he watched himself leap off the bed, dropping the knife as he made a hasty dash for the tapestry, which he then attempted to hide behind. The fabric had not even fully settled around him before Sethaniel—all height and leanness—was pulling his child out by the arm. Korsten tried to abandon the memory there, but the image of his father came to the bedside, bringing the avatar of Korsten’s childhood with him. There was a stern aspect to the movement, but it was not rough, as he had been anticipating witnessing. Likewise, when Sethaniel knelt beside the offended bedpost, the smallish offender was neither struck, nor shouted at. He was scolded for having pilfered the blade and for having used it on furniture.
The boy of Korsten’s memory colored with embarrassment immediately. He began to cry over that embarrassment and in so doing, he sought comfort from the very person who had embarrassed him. Sethaniel picked him up and carried both himself and Korsten’s younger self from the room, as well as from the half-awake dream state Korsten couldn’t seem to move out of.
It was in realizing th
at he’d begun falling back asleep, that he became more alert, opening and blinking his eyes deliberately. Sensation beyond imagined began to settle over him now. His body ached somewhat and his eyes were adverse to both air and light. He rolled onto his side, which helped him to further anchor himself to the physical world. His gaze moved over the tapestry with more purpose and when memory had sufficiently brought him back to each detail he’d admired as a child, he felt at a genuine loss as to how to respond. How would he have gotten here? The gods themselves would have had to scoop him out of the ocean and set him in this place—the last place he would have believed he ever wanted to be again.
Before a serious internal argument began, Korsten reached his hand to the post nearest his head, where a carving more grotesque than he remembered it lay in glaring view beneath his fingers. He ran his thumb over it, and in that moment an indescribable sensation coursed through him, through skin and through blood, burrowing deep into his bones and nearly causing him to shudder. The feeling had him more than poised to jump at the sound of a man’s voice in the room.
“I see you’re awake.”
Korsten flipped over to face the window suddenly enough that he felt he may have strained something. The voice had been so familiar that he could only recognize the face that accompanied it; to do otherwise would have been blatant refusal or deliberate ignorance. Through the years’ gathering around the man’s eyes and mouth, and across his brow … through the profuse graying of still thick dark hair … and through the pale ring age had put around dark eyes, it was impossible not to see Sethaniel Brierly. It was impossible also for Korsten to respond beyond staring at him. He could not even think beyond seeing what lay in his vision, moments after a vision where his childhood antagonist had done nothing antagonistic beyond parent. Very early childhood tried to rush away with his memories into adolescence, but he pulled back as if to rein in an unbroken horse. His emotions collided against his disbelief … his mortification—his elation?—like a river to a dam. The barest of facts were all that seeped through.
His father was alive. His father was old … he had aged. Korsten should have aged also in all of this time and yet he sat staring upon Sethaniel looking only just older than the child the man had sent away so very long ago. He felt wrong somehow for not having aged beyond that. He felt suddenly wrong for everything; for time wasted, for time lost, for all the time spent being Sethaniel’s enemy instead of his child. It disarmed Korsten to have such remorse leap to the front of his thoughts so readily, and he could say nothing of it. A part of him did not want to. It was that part which rekindled the angst of his youth. In that moment, he felt grateful to the wiser part of him, which maintained his silence.
“Your tongue has never held so still,” Sethaniel commented, more in character with what Korsten recalled of him. Such words, spoken in seeming spite, in the past would have set father and son to battle against one another instantly, but the delivery of them now failed to incite. It may have been because Sethaniel’s voice sounded thick with emotion that Korsten had never allowed him to have in the past. And although the elder’s gaze remained steady and sharp, it didn’t fully meet with Korsten’s.
An awkward silence settled, and Sethaniel stood. Korsten’s eyes lingered on the window bench where his father had been seated, evidently watching over him while he slept. His mind instinctively wandered away from the current situation and the unease that accompanied it, back to the shore he now recalled having awakened on. Unconsciousness had come not through exhaustion entirely, but by means of a spell. A mage spell….
Korsten considered the woman on the beach, but didn’t get further than her silhouette against the sunlight when the bedroom door drew shut. His gaze passed across the empty space from the window to the door. Sethaniel had gone.
Since a bath had been drawn for him, Korsten took full advantage of warm, fragrant water that embraced in a less terminal way than the sea’s cold arms. It felt good on sore limbs and against tender skin. If only his mind could be as comforted. As it was, an uncomfortable hour or more slipped past while Korsten debated whether or not he should leave the bedroom of his childhood through the door or the window. Though the debate was less serious than when he was a child and staunchly approved of avoiding a certain parent at all cost, including a potential fall from the trellis that rimmed the corner wall bordering his room. The memory brought back another, that of a certain old girl less than gracefully descending from one floor of the Seminary to the next by way of trellis and balcony railing. The memory became so vivid that he imagined the sound of her voice. He thought then of Lerissa’s penchant for cursing and how inappropriate Sethaniel would find that, which brought him back around to the fact that he was not only home, but in his father’s house. His father, who was still alive. Perhaps he should have expected nothing less of Sethaniel. Stubbornness was, after all, a Brierly family trait. Or perhaps defiance was the better label.
But how had he gotten here? Had he Reached so far? As uncooperative as his memory was currently, he believed he would have had to perform the act unconscious or near to it. The ocean remained the last solid image in his mind. He would have thought himself too far out to have drifted onto Cenily’s shores with any life left in him. He should have drowned.
I didn’t, though. I’m home somehow. Gods….
Korsten wondered suddenly about his sisters, then about the heir Sethaniel had adopted. A fresh wave of discomfort broke over him, but he rose against it, out of and away from the bath. He dried himself and dressed in his layers of white, wondering absently if he’d had anything else laid out for him, if the fabric not of magic weave would change color. He supposed it didn’t really matter and that he was seeking distraction. He let his wet curls fall as they were inclined—noting to himself that they were getting quite a bit longer than he tended to allow—and carried himself toward the door. His hand fell onto the latch and he hesitated once more.
Should he go looking for his father, or simply place himself in a common area and wait to see if Sethaniel found him? In either event, what could he possibly say to his father? There were several things he shouldn’t say, he knew. Likewise, he could think of some words he would rather not hear from Sethaniel either. Of course, quarreling was not what mattered. Not anymore, surely. Would they still quarrel after such a long time? And over what? Sethaniel had made his position clear and Korsten had regarded that position in the only way he could from a distance as great as Haddowyn. It was a very sharp, cold blow dealt to him in the moment he reminded himself that Sethaniel’s position all those years ago had been that he no longer wished to keep Korsten as his child. Sethaniel had as much as given him to his uncle. He’d been disinherited.
Something about that settled oddly in his mind, which offered no amelioration to his churning stomach. He wondered what to do.
In his indecision, he heard a woman’s voice, not in reverie but in reality this time. He was certain of it.
Looking over his shoulder he listened for a moment to the carrying murmur from outside. Eventually, he abandoned the door for the window. Kneeling on the bench, he leaned against the low sill and looked out onto the yard. A wide swath of green to either side of a path lay directly below, rimmed by a row of narrow conifer trees which preceded a gentle slope toward the beach. Memory mapped out the remains of the grounds for him instantly. Before it could remind him of too much else, his gaze landed on a blonde head below. The length of that pale golden hair was wound into a thick braid which was in turn wound into a heavy crown circling the woman’s head. A loose tunic appearing more the persuasion of a short dress was worn in blue over thick stockings and riding boots … also blue.
“Good gods….” Korsten murmured, and he may as well have shouted it for the immediacy with which it seemed to draw the other mage’s attention.
Lerissa looked up to his window and smiled brightly. “Hell’s depths, you’re alive! I’m coming up!”
Korst
en’s brow lifted at once. In his mind she was already on the trellis and climbing, leaving the individual in her presence—who Korsten scarcely noticed—to stare gaping at her failing etiquette. It was with no small amount of surprise or relief that Korsten noted her use of the door.
His gaze traveled over his shoulder toward the bedroom door, then back to the path below as he began to withdraw from the window. The individual Lerissa had been in the company of remained below and was looking to the source of Lerissa’s excitement. The man was easily middle-aged and no one Korsten could say that he recognized, though there may have been some recognition in the way the man looked at Korsten. He didn’t know how much he appreciated the idea of individuals from his childhood recognizing him while he fumbled to recall who they may have been. He retreated fully from the window and the man’s stare, turning toward the door mere moments before Lerissa let herself in. She left the door open in her rush to cross the room and get her arms around him. Returning the embrace was no difficulty at all, barring the pangs of regret for the time she’d been away from the Seminary and the reason behind her absence.
He found it remarkably easy, if not direly necessary to ask, “Is Sharlotte with you?”
Lerissa withdrew from him with an all too familiar grin. She was the most charmingly aggressive person Korsten had ever met, and she looked not quite as young as he recalled seeing her last.
Before Korsten could dwell on that overly, Lerissa said, “Shouldn’t you open this conversation with how greatly you missed me? But of course, you won’t, because you’ve always been a worrier and clearly haven’t changed at all.” She hugged him again, then kissed his jaw before drawing back once more. “Korsten, the worrier, I’ve missed you greatly. And, yes, Sharlotte is with me.”
An echo of dismay from the past radiated through him, dissipating more quickly than he would have anticipated. Their differences were certainly of little import now, and his and Sethaniel’s differences should have been rendered insignificant by time and circumstances as well. He was home—however he’d come to be there—and it may have been the gods’ intention that he be in the company of both his father and Sharlotte to mend or at least come to terms with the past. A significant part of Morenne’s strategy had been unearthed in Indhovan and whether or not either Sharlotte or Sethaniel wanted to put the past behind them and accept him and his role in all of this, he could not afford to carry the stress of their strained relations any further.