***
“Wake, Shardian,” Nassir's low voice brought Dayn back to their retreat. The Defender pointed toward a hole dug in the far end of the ground. A few handfuls of water filled the bottom. “I've filled our water stores. Drink your fill before we set out again. How are your wounds?”
“I still ache, but I feel better than yesterday.”
Dayn moved sluggishly over for a drink. The water tasted gritty, but still refreshed him. He scooped another handful to his lips. It tasted old, and―
He spluttered and coughed. Water spilled down his chest. Nassir eyed him disapprovingly. “I didn't say to waste it. A farmer should know better.”
“Are you alright, lad?” Lurec watched him intently.
“I...” Dayn hesitated. He feared to tell them what he had just experienced, for reasons he could not explain. The...impressions he gained of his surroundings were growing stronger. He looked at the Ringmen; Nassir's face impassive, Lurec's lined with concern. If I don’t trust them, why am I even here?
“I know things I should not know, about...things,” he began awkwardly. Nassir's eyes narrowed. Dayn motioned at the water. “I can...taste the types of rock this water passed through to reach the surface. It’s seeping out of a crack in some limestone, and I know it is about a half mile beneath the ground. I think it's―”
“The Seed,” Lurec breathed. He and Nassir shared a long look. “It must be. I knew we should have examined it more before leaving the Ring. Adazia and all of her maneuvering can burn, if we fail to―”
“Preceptor,” Nassir interrupted. “We must see to ourselves at the moment. Night is wasting. Perhaps you can speak with him, tomorrow?”
Lurec looked ready to argue, but nodded. “I suppose that will have to do.”
“Are you still prepared to journey?” Nassir's eyes fixed Dayn in place.
“No. I’m not bounding a span more until you tell me what’s going on!” Dayn thought his heart might leap out of his chest, but the words came out in a rush before the Ringmen could stop him. “I won’t ignore it anymore. The Seed is doing things to me, and no one will say why. I know things about plants, just by touching them. We should all be in a healer’s bed after the beating we took, but I barely feel the bruises—and I’ll bet you don’t, either. Your arm was in a sling, and you were both thrown into the split walls, same as me! And what I did to the voidwalker, he just…fell apart…” Dayn stopped with a shudder. “What’s happening to me?”
The Ringmen gazed at each other for a long moment. Dayn looked down at the hole, already filling with water again. He began to fill it back in with loose sand so they would not see his hands shake. The Defender spoke first. “We have little time—”
“Nassir, we need to make time. We owe him that much.”
The Defender bristled, then did something Dayn had never seen before. He relented. “Answer his questions, then, quickly.” He vanished in the split's entrance.
“Dayn, you must forgive me,” Lurec said after a moment.
“For what?”
“For not fighting for you harder on the Ring.” He picked up his pack, clearly troubled by Dayn's revelation. The Defender was gone, but he still lowered his voice. “The Lord Ascendant means well, but you should not have come with us. Years before you or I were born, there were just seventeen. But now there are thirty-eight. Thirty-eight worlds.”
Dayn shrugged apprehensively. “The smallest toddler knows the World Belt is big. Worlds are found and lost all the time. What does that have to do with me, and the Seed?”
“Worlds are not found, they—” Lurec stopped himself with a grimace. “There’s so much you deserve to know. The Seed was only created for one world. Specifically, for one region of one world, to work in concert with other Seeds and their Seedbearers. There’s no telling what it will do, now that it is outside of that purpose.”
The Preceptor shouldered his pack. His expression reminded Dayn of his parents’ faces when he was a boy and shivering in his bed for a week with wisptouch fever. Healer Cari brought him through it safely, but everyone was so scared, and kept Joam and Tela away until the sickness passed.
He saw that same fear in the Preceptor’s eyes now, only there was no way to be healed from the Seed. Old powers can take a liking to you, Nerlin had once warned him.
Dayn barely kept his voice calm. “You think it’s making me sick.”
“No, no. There’s no telling what effect our travels will have on it, or on you. I suspect your abilities will continue to grow. But there may be some strain, too. Headaches, tiredness. I don’t want to frighten you, not until we know more. You are proving that there may be more truth to Seedlore than we ever believed. Most of what you’ve experienced does not stray from myth, except for…what you did to the voidwalker.”
Dayn felt a lump rise in his throat. There was just one time he had not felt completely helpless since leaving Shard—with the Seed in his hand, watching Moridos’s shell cleave from his pale skin. The Seed seemed to create more problems than it solved, and the uncertainty in Lurec’s eyes did not encourage Dayn in the least. “What can I do?”
“Don’t let fear rule you,” Lurec said. He began walking and Dayn followed. “Some principles of the Ring may aid you, at least. I will gladly teach you what I can, until we understand the Seed better. Peace send that the Defender agrees with me, for once.”
***
The road meandered along an eastern route, avoiding the valleys and ravines that crisscrossed the terrain surrounding Olende. By the end of the second night, Dayn's legs were beginning to ache. He thought they could shave days from their journey by venturing through the splits, and said so.
“Terrible idea, farmer.” The Defender shook his head as he led them into another hideaway, this time a collapsed canyon wall. They picked their way through the boulders, ducking into a small space completely encased in rubble. The charred remains of a campfire lay in the center. “The splits form a maze that the most well-traveled Arans avoid. We would be fools to risk them.”
Dayn set his pack down with a shrug, wondering how long they could keep this up. Nassir set down the bits of wood he had collected during their bounding and deftly started a fire with a piece of flint he kept secreted somewhere in his armor. The Preceptor motioned for Dayn to join him, and after a moment the Defender sat, too. Dayn was grateful the sticks did not give off much smoke nor heat, their space was cool and he wanted it to stay that way when the sun came to full strength. He looked at the Preceptor expectantly.
“Do you remember the first time you were face to face with a voidwalker?” Lurec asked.
Dayn nodded slowly. “Yes, the morning of Evensong. It wasn't nearly so bad as this...this last time.”
“There are many weapons among the Belt. Quello folk and their mauls, Dervishi bladebreakers, Aran swords. But the best weaponmaster is worthless without preparation against a voidwalker's influence on the mind. What the Defenders call the void thrall.”
“Preceptor, if I may?” Nassir continued at Lurec's nod. “Your most powerful tool is not your body, it is your will. Your spirit. A man who controls his own spirit is stronger than a warrior who overwhelms five people with swords. Stronger than one who takes a city by force.”
The Defender’s words surprised Dayn, but he listened raptly.
“You know something of what I'm to teach you already,” Lurec said. “Your friend, when you fled the village in the night―he signaled us of your leap. Do you know how?”
Dayn drew a breath, barely hiding his impatience as he recalled his last night in Wia Wells. “I never thought about it. Nerlin used the leap point. It worked the same as the navigators and their vapor array. What does that have to do with—”
“That’s not all he used. It begins with a stillness of your mind.”
The Ringmen said nothing more. They both just stared into the sputtering fire. Dayn joined them for a moment, imitating as best he could. Milchamah often spoke of quieting his senses, but it never helpe
d Dayn's fighting any. He stared into the fire, but his focus began to waver, and his mind drifted.
“That’s good,” Lurec spoke suddenly, his eyes intent on the fire. “Find the stillness.”
Dayn straightened where he sat somewhat guiltily, but his thoughts soon drifted away from the fire once more. He imagined the torrent again, flickering like fireflies caught in a high wind. He could almost feel the rock sweeping past him, dark and jagged shadows that moved faster than a blink. A wingline, taut and frayed, swinging into the void. At the end of it a Vatdra Collar, hauling a boy in a worn red cloak...
“Peace!” Dayn exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “That was me, in the torrent―”
“Through my eyes, yes.” Lurec's expression sagged, as though he had just expended a great effort. He directed a tired but pleased look at Dayn.
“I’ve never heard of a successful bridging on a first attempt.” Nassir regarded Lurec with new respect in his brown eyes. “You are truly skilled, Preceptor.”
“You will learn this in time, lad,” Lurec said. “The best trained can touch another's mind over fantastic distances, if the proper affinity is created. The Ring employs many Senders throughout the Belt with such talent, to warn of danger to the worlds. The dreamlacers of Hutan are the most powerful of them. It’s said they can touch any mind in the World Belt with their Sending, given time to channel their ability. This first night is only to show you how powerful your mind truly is. I believe your potential in Sending is strong. Perhaps a benefit of the Seed, or something you already possessed a gift for.”
“It’s an old practice, ancient and forgotten to all but a few,” Nassir added. “It’s not surprising that the gift would run strong in Shard's sons.”
“How will this help me against a voidwalker?” Dayn asked.
“Their thrall is a twisted form of Sending, evil and cancerous to all it touches,” the Defender said. “Ringmen are taught to ward against such assaults.
“What you withstood in the Echowind Split has broken the strongest Defenders. Some are driven mad on the spot. Others are wounded in the mind, in ways that only reveal themselves over time. It is a wretched way to end your days.”
Dayn remembered the stricken guards back in the plaza, staring at nothing as the Aran healers whispered over them. He sat back down. “I will learn,” he promised. “Sand and ash but I will.”
“Good,” Lurec said. He seemed to relax. “Your first exercise will involve mastering your senses. Lose yourself in the fire. Release your thoughts with each breath...”
So the days went, a routine simple enough to madden the dullest farmer on Shard. Every muscle in Dayn’s legs was tied in knots when they finally stopped before sunrise, and he fell asleep soon after Lurec’s training. The Preceptor’s lessons soon proved more taxing than the Defender’s bounding.
Dayn had never really thought about his thoughts, but the Preceptor bade him to dredge up every memory he could remember, his hopes and darkest fears, in order to understand them. Lurec also made him imagine a house with a thousand rooms. Each room held a painting or a statue that represented a moment in his life, or a feeling, or a person.
“A palace in the sky, an underwater city, a cave with walls made of fire,” Lurec said. “What you surround your rooms with does not matter, so long as you can recall what is inside each of them, and fill them all. Your fears and desires must have their rooms, too. They are the sum of who you will become. Commit them perfectly to your memory.”
Dayn used people most often, for they were easiest to remember. He quickly ran out of friends and family from Wia Wells, and soon turned to more recent acquaintances. In one room he imagined Eriya in a Defender’s black armor. She rode a great red bear that ran in circles, because her world was Dervish. Another room opened into the torrent, and within it he imagined Nerlin coursing, with both of his feet whole and a Victor’s Sash on his shoulder, laughing.
“You must visit the thousand rooms every day,” Lurec would say. “A voidwalker’s thrall twists your mind until you can no longer grasp reality. Your world is only as real as your perception allows. The clearer your rooms become in your mind, the less influence the thrall will exert over you.”
Dayn awoke every night to Nassir’s boot nudging his ribs. Despite falling asleep exhausted, he awoke with new stores of energy. Lurec seemed to as well, and agreed that the Seed was lending them more strength than their dried meat and bread could account for. “Dayn, may I have the Seed for a while? I’ll return it to you at the end of the day. If there’s any way to help you carry it, I’ll find it.”
Dayn fished the Seed from his pack and turned it over in his hands. It glowed as it always did when he handled it, but dimmed as soon as Lurec took it. Almost like it wants to stay close. Dayn felt a sudden impulse to snatch it back from the Preceptor, but he could not decide if that was to keep the Seed for himself or throw it into one of Ara’s splits. He barely nibbled at some bread before he was fast asleep.
Lurec studied the Seed for the next three days, scribbling in his journal before returning it. The third morning he gave it back to Dayn for good, with an exasperated look on his face. “I’ve done everything within my means, short of breaking it open to see what’s inside.”
“If it can be broken.” Nassir proffered his scabbard to the Preceptor, who ignored him.
“Keep it close, Dayn,” Lurec urged. “Seedbearers in the stories could banish decay with a touch, or guide the migration of birds with a thought. I suspect that in time, you will be able to tell us more of it than we can.”
The Preceptor did not complain once over their relentless pace. Dayn’s bruises and scrapes from their fight with the voidwalkers healed faster than he thought possible, as did the Ringmen’s. Dayn and Lurec woke just before nightfall each night refreshed, and although he never saw the Defender sleep, Dayn felt certain the Seed’s effects strengthened him, too. Nassir never said as much, but Dayn saw it in the contemplative look that touched the Defender’s eyes whenever Dayn took out the Seed to hold it.
Their routine changed abruptly when the dust storms descended. The billowing gusts of wind pinned them in caves for days on end, leaving the Defender gritting his teeth over the time lost. “There’s no guarantee the transport will wait for us,” he would growl.
Nearly a week after they left Olende, the Defender returned to their latest shelter. He bore several long strips of wood, although they had already gathered a few brittle branches and some dried dung to burn just before this latest storm.
“We’ll make the most of this time,” he announced, squatting to pick through his pack. He made a tight bundle of half the strips using wingline fibers, then tossed the finished product to Dayn. Lurec looked on thoughtfully as he held the Seed.
Dayn looked at the bundled sticks for a moment before placing them on the ground. “My father said that a man who chooses a sword at his beginning will be chosen by a sword at his end.”
“A wise man.” Nassir studied Dayn as he fashioned a second practice sword. Finally, he stood and stretched. Red sand spilled around his feet as he removed his armor. He shook more out of his dreadlocks with a grimace as the storm howled outside.
The Defender reached for his scabbard where it leaned upon a wall and drew his ugly blade. The screeching metal echoed through the cave, setting Dayn's teeth on edge. The Defender's sword gleamed dully in the fire’s weak light as Nassir turned it in his hands.
“At another time in my life, I might have agreed with your father. But your path is different than his, a journey that may cross many swords. Once you’ve shunned the hilt, how will you avoid the tip?”
“This suits me fine,” Dayn said, nodding toward his silverpine staff. “But maybe you could teach me how to guard against a sword. There’s no need for such weapons on Shard.”
“Very well.” Nassir motioned him away from the fire. When Dayn complained about the lack of space, the Defender silenced him sharply. “This is no festival contest, Shardian. To defeat any opponen
t, you must learn to fight in any environment. Now, defend yourself!”
Before Dayn could blink, the makeshift sword came crashing toward his head. He threw himself out of the way, lunging for the staff the Defender had not even allowed him to grab. Dayn spun around in just enough time to stop a sliding thrust to his ribs. The clack, clack of wood on wood rang through the cave as Nassir put Dayn through the paces.
He drove Dayn toward the fire, pinned him against the wall, even sent him barreling into Lurec. Welts soon formed on his arms and ribs, painful reminders of every failed deflection. Despite all of his efforts, Dayn could not stave off the Defender's attacks. The Ringman was simply too quick.
“I've heard an old saying.” The Defender regarded him coolly, showing no sign of exertion. “'Strike a Shardian when he's not looking and he will forgive you. Hide his staff and he will soon be defeated.' Is that true, farmer?”
“We're not so bloodthirsty as folk from other worlds,” Dayn retorted. Lurec frowned in disapproval as he watched.
“But you are trained from your cribs for the staff.” He raised his makeshift sword high. Dayn felt the wall of the cave against his back. “Winning a match or tending a herd is not the same as killing a man. You must learn to attack. Your opponent will overwhelm you if he knows you will not fight back.”
Nassir brought his makeshift sword down with a shout. Dayn raised his staff to meet it with a loud snap. He blinked black circles from his vision and looked around, dazed. The top of his head throbbed in pain. His staff lay broken in two next to him on the ground.
“The boy is no Initiate, Defender,” Lurec snapped. His voice came as a muddle. “How is he to learn if you knock him senseless?”
The Seedbearing Prince: Part I Page 34