by T. A. Miles
Eisleth didn’t argue these matters with Ashwin frequently, however. Haphazard had always been Ashwin’s learning method, and only he could make it seem graceful. He and his foremost student, perhaps. Of course, Ashwin was the mentor for Korsten; he had traveled an equally arduous course by the same means. Though their destinations were entirely different, Ashwin’s experience and his understanding of Korsten’s nature granted him the wisdom and the ambition—and the stamina—to guide. Eisleth’s own pace and method were much better suited to one such as Merran.
And it was at his own pace that Eisleth finally said, “Demartas was adopted into our family.”
“So, he was not a blood relation,” his brother said, having patiently waited for Eisleth to carry on their conversation.
“No,” Eisleth answered. “He was orphaned by circumstances even I no longer recall.”
“I remember him a friend to us.”
“You remember with lenience or incorrectly,” Eiselth said, his gaze sliding toward his twin. “He was entirely envious.”
Ashwin frowned only slightly. “Of us?”
“Of you,” Eisleth replied. “He believed since we were children that the gods had blessed you, and cursed him. In a similar fashion to some members of the Vadryn, particularly when they are merged with humans, he turned his envy into an obsessive admiration, a dangerous love for what he in actuality despised.”
“I’d forgotten,” Ashwin admitted, his frown growing not with contempt for the memory, but as if he could still somehow paint that memory better.
Eisleth rarely had patience for that aspect of his twin. With his own frown, he said, “He murdered your second wife, Ashwin. And your natural response, which was of shock and revilement over his actions, was taken as an unjust rejection. He left in anger, to the northern reaches, where….”
“I recall it now,” Ashwin interrupted with an upheld hand.
Eisleth accepted that, though he doubted it was fully truthful. If it had been, there would have been tears in his brother’s eyes. Ashwin was currently receiving information without argument. Whether or not he recalled or believed it to be entirely true would be a consideration for later. After the fact, Eisleth detested having given information to his brother that way. He detested more that his brother had shone so brightly in his time that he had acquired the darkest of enemies.
It was out of remorse for his own unintentional cruelty, that Eisleth said, “Auslen.”
Ashwin looked somewhat perplexed.
Eisleth explained. “That was the name of your eldest son.”
Ashwin’s gaze moved ahead of them. And now there was the expected trace of tears. Because he remembered. Nothing more was spoken between them, not even during the moments spent waiting for Jeselle and Ceth to join them at the entryway. Once the other two elders had, and the four of them resealed the door, Ashwin left immediately. His silence in doing so troubled Eisleth greatly.
Korsten had taken his time eating and dressing. His thoughts revolved constantly between Merran and Ashwin, making frequent side courses to Indhovan, to his father, and to his recurring dreams and visions of both the Vadryn and his mother. He still felt that he knew what his mother wanted, or what the memory of his mother was inspiring him to believe she wanted. But surely he would be sent back to Indhovan to help or maybe even asked to assist along the western front, preferably after Merran had awakened. That brought him to thinking about Merran’s hand, and the Healing that had been done to it. It appeared that a large portion of his friend’s hand had been bound, maybe even replaced, by the material Ceth had used. Perhaps as if Korsten had used the material in his own hand to create the shape of one. Only he presumed that in Merran’s case it would come with all the essential functionality of the original appendage, or something very near to it.
How peculiar. Peculiar, but fortunate. If only Korsten had been able to stay to assist with the crone, perhaps that would not have happened. In the moment the thought finished forming, he realized there was no sense in arguing the matter, even internally. At the time, Merran could not have gone with Serawe and it was done besides. They had each taken the opponent they felt obligated or equipped to deal with for their own reasons. They’d agreed on that without words. Merran stayed and Korsten left. Merran had been injured. Korsten had been temporarily lost at sea and felt that he verged at times on losing his mind to his defiant talents. Thankfully, he could not blame them for what had happened with Ashwin. That was his decision in the moment he made it. He still would not say that he had any regret for the moment itself. He loved Ashwin and that was an expression of their love for each other. It had never been quite so clear with Merran, especially not beyond the moments they were expressing.
With a sigh, Korsten forced himself to let the matter go for at least a little while. In the process, his gaze travelled to the bedside table and the object lying there. “What are you?” he murmured at the peculiar pendant. Shortly afterward, he reached over and picked it up.
“Korsten.”
The sounding of his name had him drop the heirloom while he looked quickly behind him and around the room. There was no one present.
The voice had been a whisper, not easily assigned a gender.
“Come home.”
The voice became audible enough with those words to be recognized. Again, his mother’s voice. Korsten looked for her visage, but did not see it anywhere in the room. He resigned himself to stop searching and turned back around on the bed, only to be faced with Zerxa standing directly before him. She was near enough that he could almost feel the warmth of her presence and feel the soft fabric of her brocade dress. A scent of flowers and ocean air wafted into his space and all of it had him nearly leaping backward across the bed. He stayed put, in spite of the urge to do otherwise. That urge unanswered sent a spasm chasing through his body, especially while he looked into his mother’s pale eyes as she bent toward him.
Zerxa raised her delicate hands as if to take his face in them. “My child,” she said, and her voice sounded eerily off of the natural sounds presently entering his room at the Seminary. “You must come home.”
“Where do you mean?” Korsten asked quickly, lest he lose the nerve or the sense to do so. Vision or no, this was a form of communication. Be it with his mother’s spirit, or with himself—gods save him from his madness—it was important. “Do you mean north? But what of the fighting to either side of here? I can’t abandon….”
Zerxa straightened, pointing to the bedside table.
Korsten’s eyes followed the gesture to the peculiar pendant of exquisitely woven metal.
“You have the key now,” she said.
“The key to what?”
“Come home, Korsten,” Zerxa said. And then she folded her hands together, and leaned forward to kiss his forehead, as she had when he was quite small. But he never felt the contact. The vision of Zerxa vanished, and left him facing the bright sky of an early day pouring through the wall of arched windows that lined his balcony.
Korsten sat utterly still in the light breeze and the songs of birds. And then he sat slowly forward, pushing his hands over his face as if to clear his eyes of the vision that had passed. The memory of it went nowhere.
He looked over to Zerxa’s pendant, and eventually reached over to pick it up once again. A faint glow moved through the object, tracing over every turn of the intricate piece. It felt slightly warm beneath his skin. Studying it, his mind grew steadily very clear with determination. There were vital answers waiting for him.
Korsten, don’t!
Ashwin’s voice raced across his mind an instant before his mentor arrived in his room by Reach. A foreign sensation of defiance welled momentarily within Korsten upon Ashwin’s arrival. A worse sensation was the anger that radiated from the Mage-Superior immediately afterward, followed by a drain on all of his senses that nearly collapsed him. He felt as if an extensi
on of Ashwin’s presence had swept through him, and taken his very strength from his body.
“Ashwin, what are you doing?” Korsten asked, his sudden tears reflected in Ashwin’s eyes. He laid back, because he felt that was all he could do apart from fall. “What have you done to me?”
“What I do, I do for Edrinor,” Ashwin said with a barely detectable tremor in his voice. “And for all of us here in this war, and most of all … I do it for you, Korsten … my life’s dearest love.”
Korsten felt a tear slide down the side of his face, into his hair. “Ashwin….”
“If you leave here now, Korsten,” his mentor said, firmer in voice than Korsten ever recalled hearing him. “It may be to your destruction.”
Hadn’t that always been a risk? Korsten found himself confused by this sudden discussion, and his reaction to it, which was to be defiant and confused simultaneously.
“Under the circumstances,” Ashwin continued, and Korsten sensed him come nearer the bed and lower to retrieve something—not Korsten’s hand, but the item within it. He paused until he had taken it from Korsten’s grasp into his own.
“Under the circumstances,” Ashwin began again, “even if any of us could suffer the loss of you, it could also mean the end of this war in our enemy’s favor.”
“What do you mean?” Korsten asked, rapidly feeling that he wanted to sleep away this sensation and this experience, the helpless sensation of betrayal that had come with it. He desired nothing more than for it to be a dream.
“I’d forgotten so much,” Ashwin said, and rather than feed Korsten’s growing distress by leaving with Zerxa’s pendant, he sat upon the bed beside Korsten. “You’ve helped me to remember.”
Korsten closed his eyes, succumbing fast to the exhaustion.
“This inheritance draws you north,” Ashwin continued. “North holds your beginnings, and it nearly brought you to your end. I nearly lost my own will during that period when you were held captive by Morenne. I’m sure that you can imagine what that means, Korsten. You’re not ignorant—you never have been. One as old as I, and as developed in Will, perhaps my most prominent talent apart from Empathy … defeated by loss, as if I had not faced it before. I can’t let you follow in the path of your predecessor.”
Korsten slid his gaze in Ashwin’s direction, observing him through vision clouded with tears and an unnatural lack of energy. He managed to grasp the fact that he had been Neutralized, and that Ashwin had done it in a moment of fear, fear that Korsten was going to unconsciously Reach to wherever his emotions were connecting with regarding his mother and what she had left him. His mentor was right to fear. Korsten couldn’t say for certain that he wouldn’t have done just that.
He shut his eyes for a moment, tightly. Opening them again, he slid his fingers across the bedding, and found the ends of Ashwin’s hair.
Ashwin looked at him. “I’m sorry, Korsten.” He lifted Korsten’s hand and placed Zerxa’s pendant back into it. He pressed it there gently, closing Korsten’s fingers around it, which he then kissed.
Afterward, Ashwin stood. “You must not leave the Seminary. Please, come to the Council Chamber once you’ve recovered. Further explanation will be provided.”
Korsten did not answer, not in word or thought, or emotion. He cleared his mind as best he could and concentrated solely on how drained he felt in that moment. It was enough to convince Ashwin that their peculiar mode of discussion was, not resolved, but past its point of danger. Danger between them, perhaps, in regards to their relationship.
In spite of the moments immediately behind them now, Korsten did not feel that they were threatened by what had happened. He was hurt by it, but with thanks especially to the spell touch that apparently refused to diminish between them, that he knew that Ashwin was hurt also. He had hurt himself with his own actions, and perhaps that action had been inspired by the panic a different hurt had inspired. Korsten knew that he had been welling up to do something hazardous. He had been doing it frequently as of late and Ashwin was within his rights to not trust him. A Neutralizing spell was nothing he would have expected, but perhaps it was earned. Whether or not it had been, it would take much more than that to deplete his profound admiration and respect for Ashwin.
It may have been those thoughts, forming in spite of Korsten’s attempt to think of nothing, that enabled Ashwin to eventually depart from the room. He did so quietly. In his wake, Korsten felt the silence, and the pendant in his hand. He felt groggy, but he could not sleep. He would not.
Drawing a deep breath, Korsten held it, and raised himself upright on the bed. It was a tremendous effort, as if he had risen through a pall of packed earth, but in rising, the effects of the spell seemed to break apart and fall away from him. He stood deliberately, exhaled slowly, then took the necessary steps toward the chair in his room, where he found his jacket. Slipping it on over his sleeveless jerkin, he deposited Zerxa’s pendant into his pocket, and walked swiftly to the balcony. Once there, he put a hand upon the stone rail and lofted himself over it. He twisted his body toward the building as he dropped and caught the trellis, then preceded to climb down. If leaving by way of emotion and spell was going to alert Ashwin, he would take a conventional and less immediately upsetting route. There was nothing to climbing, except the climb. The work assisted in clearing his mind and waking his body after Ashwin’s spell. He wouldn’t allow himself to consider the ramifications of what he was doing. His goal was simply to leave.
Ashwin may have believed that it was safer for him to stay, but Korsten believed that it was in actuality better for him to leave. If he wasn’t mad to the point of delusion, he was already drawing spirits other than their fellow mages into the Seminary to communicate with him. Where would it leave him if he were to be visited by Renmyr, as he had been in the past—perhaps as recently as Indhovan—and he somehow allowed the demon beyond their Barriers? That would surely risk all of them, and Ashwin’s hypothetical future of an unfavorable end to the war would indeed come to pass. In the process it might well cost the lives of both Ashwin and Merran. While he wished dearly that the latter mentioned friend would be accompanying him out of Vassenleigh this time, he could not wait for him.
A light pulsed in the darkness. Again, it was coming from Merran’s hand … or where his hand should have been, had it not been destroyed by….
“It was your choice,” the crone told him. “Your decision to come to this place and to become one of the defilers.”
Merran remembered, without her help.
“The Seminary?” Constable Jer said, reading over Magistrate Owin’s shoulder. He looked at me, seated in a chair across the office. “Well, that would mean you met a mage, Merran. What did he look like? I bet he had a fine weapon. I hear them mages carry excellent blades.”
I shrugged, feeling what a mage’s blade had done to my shoulder. The wound still felt fresh, hours after its issue.
“You must remember something,” Jer said, coming around the desk when the magistrate shooed him away. He stood in front of it instead, arms folded across his chest. “Did you see the demon then? Surely you at least saw what killed your family.”
“That’s enough, Jer!” Magistrate Owin barked. “Out of here!”
“I’m just askin’—”
“Out, I said!”
Jer unfolded his arms with an irritated frown then walked away, closing the door behind him as he left the office.
A brief silence settled. Eventually, Magistrate Owin laid the parchment he’d been reading flat on the desktop. He folded his hands upon it and looked at me with hints of sympathy beneath his professional demeanor. “You have no other family, young Merran?”
I shook my head.
The magistrate sighed. “Well, you’re still too young to be your own man. As Mage-Adept Ceth has politely recommended, you’ll be warded to Lord Rauld. I’ll have Jer take you to him at once.” He stood, the
n looked at me and said, “I’m truly sorry for what’s happened to you, boy.”
I acknowledged him with a nod and he left the room. Soon I heard his voice and Jer’s through the door.
“Rauld’s not gonna want him,” Jer said. “He’s not the strongest lad….”
“He’s not undersized either,” the magistrate interrupted. “He’s as well off as most boys his age where strength is concerned. It’s his mental condition that worries me. He hasn’t spoken a word since he got here.”
“Yeah. He’s got blood on his shirt, too. Did you see it? Maybe the beast got him. Maybe he’ll be one of ‘em before too long.”
“Absurd!” Owin answered. “The mage wouldn’t have let him leave and sent him to us with that signed statement. The poor lad must have fallen or something while trying to get away. It gives me chills to think about this. One of the Vadryn lurking so close to our town and none of us knowing it until it massacres an entire family.”
“All but young Merran,” Jer pointed out. “Gods must have blessed him, if he really came away from that mess as right as he looks.”
“He isn’t blessed. The mage would have taken the lad back to Vassenleigh with him if he had any gods-given talents.” The magistrate sighed. “I wish the man had taken him, though. Rauld isn’t going to like this.”
“He’ll say he can always use someone to clean the stables,” Jer said, laughing.
My eyes stung with tears, but I blinked them back. I didn’t want to go live with Lord Rauld, any more than he wanted me to come live with him. I wanted my family back and if I couldn’t have that….
Actually, I didn’t know what I wanted. I tried hating my father for allowing what had happened, but it didn’t change anything or make me feel any better. In fact, it made me feel worse. Maybe the mage was right. Maybe it wasn’t my father’s fault, but who else could I blame? The Vadryn? They were still too insubstantial to me. I hadn’t seen much of the one that attacked my home, nothing at all really. I could only see my father with Ervanien’s crumpled form at his feet. Demon or no, it was my father’s hands that took the life from my siblings and my mother.