“Lessons were your idea, Preceptor. We agreed to train his mind and body. He wouldn’t last two seconds against a voidwalker without the Seed. Neither would you. Get up, Shardian. Your lesson is not yet through.”
Dayn began to silently lament whenever fresh storms slowed their progress. Lurec was adamant that he continue to fill his thousand rooms, and the training with Nassir continued even if the space was too cramped to wield the pieces of his useless staff. Dayn refused to burn the wood, even though he fared better with his bare hands against the Defender. The broken silverpine made his heart ache. Looking at it reminded him of home the most, and another staff he hoped to hold again, with the deeds of Ro’Halans carved into the grain.
“Voidwalkers use no weapons, Shardian. Don’t you remember the Echowind Split?”
“Of course I―”
Dayn yelped as Nassir bent his arm at a dangerous angle behind his back. The Defender proved to be an expert at grappling as well as the sword. In spite of Nassir’s instruction, Dayn showed no proficiency for the sword forms, though the stances at least were familiar.
The days passed, and they were forced in by yet another storm. “You were right, farmboy,” the Defender said disgustedly as Dayn’s practice sword went clattering across another cave floor. “A lifetime under Weaponmaster Seib could not hide your lack of skill. Best leave you to your staff.”
“Just because I―” Dayn swallowed his retort when the astonished look on Nassir's face prompted him to turn around.
Lurec edged around the fire, which cast flickering shadows over his uncertain face. He turned the practice sword over in his hands.
“I’ve never been so helpless in all my life as back in that plaza. Perhaps I should learn something of this, also.” Upon seeing their faces, he added a bit defensively, “Well, pardon me if I don’t want to be snapped in two like a twig!” Dayn held up his hands and stood aside.
“Very well,” was all the Defender said. Dayn sat down next to their pitiful pile of firewood as Lurec took to his training with an air of resignation.
Dayn soon found himself taking any opening just to sleep. Before the caves, the merest hint of daylight would wake him, but Dayn soon found he could sleep nearly on command. He threw himself into his mental lessons every day, taking them as seriously as he would his coursing practice. His latest addition to the rooms was Samli, wearing a Regent’s purple cloak and flipping a moondrop in his hand. The navigator was dead now, with no wreathe for his grave on the cold slopes of Mount Patel, but he won every wager in Dayn’s thousand rooms.
The house in his mind usually took the form of his home on Shard, only with endless wooden halls marching away from the hearth room. Sometimes he used the Ring because the warren of halls and ramps was easier to order, and other times he used the torrent, where the craters on a thousand erratics opened into his thousand rooms. He could not decide between them.
Another night found the Preceptor bravely holding his own in the shelter of a deep split. This latest camp offered only the barest protection, errant wind often gusted in to blow sparks from the fire.
“Mind your feet,” Nassir barked, dancing Lurec into a corner. Dayn knew his own sword play to be weak, but he had trounced Lurec easily whenever they sparred. The Preceptor would certainly never make a weaponmaster, and likely not even become more than a middling opponent, but he set about his lessons with a determination that surprised Dayn. And, he improved. The Defender pressed Lurec just as hard as Dayn, though when they were done he often looked at the Preceptor as though he did not recognize him.
When it was not Dayn's turn to be tossed around, or shown how to bound into kicks, he practiced with the halves of his staff. The two long sticks were awkward, but if a voidwalker broke his staff as easily as Nassir could―without even using a sword―Dayn wanted any added prowess he could muster.
A crack across his shin brought him back to his latest practice session.
“Focus, Shardian,” Nassir called out, already dodging back out of reach of Dayn’s thrust.
“You almost touched him, Dayn,” the Preceptor urged. “Keep at it.” He had committed himself entirely to the training. Sometimes Lurec and Dayn squared off while Nassir barked direction over the echoed clatter of wood. Other times, they took on the Defender as a team, or paired with Nassir to go against each other.
Lurec always pressed for more if the Defender was not firm. “This isn’t the torrent for me to strap you to my back, Preceptor,” Nassir would say. “Rest. We cannot afford to leave you behind.”
With their food running low, Dayn began to worry whether they would reach Peyha in time. For every three or four days of bounding, they were guaranteed a sand storm that forced them into the splits. The worst of the storms lasted four whole days, virtually remaking the landscape. What they saw after finally emerging from their dusty cave changed everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Weep
I've walked the sickmetal valleys of Tu'um, and coursed through Crell's Knot. But if there is a hell in all the World Belt, it's in the belly of a fleshweep.
-Guardian Benlor
Nassir and Lurec stared at the windswept road on the evening after that worst storm. The sun sank rapidly in a clear blue sky. No dust would mar the stars as in weeks before. Dayn reached up to touch a red flag hanging from one of the narrow stone columns that marked the way to Peyha.
“A week ago I couldn’t reach this high on my best bound,” he said. Over twelve spans of new sand lay under their feet. “Sometimes I wonder how there is any of Ara left. It could all just be blown into the torrent, and...what is it?”
The two Ringmen ignored Dayn completely. They stood before an outcrop of rock, likely a low hill before the sandstorm buried it. The peak curled to the north and shielded a flat swath from being completely windblown. There were odd furrows in the sand.
“We are being hunted,” Nassir said. Dayn stepped closer to behold the strangest tracks he had ever seen, made by some sort of massive, wickedly split hoof. But the front protruded sideways, so it appeared two of the same creature stood back to back as they shuffled. Unless...Dayn's eyes widened in dismay.
Lurec read his face with a glance. “Ah, so you see. Yes, this creature has more than four legs. We think, at least.”
Dayn quickly eyed the distance where the belly would be, between the outward facing hoofprints. “But that would mean it’s six spans wide!”
“Yes,” Nassir agreed, his face even stonier than usual. “Twice the size of a ragehawk.”
Dayn peered at the tracks. The depression in the sand between the two tracks looked compacted and smooth. Almost like a toad on its belly. He found it difficult to picture the creature at all. Something about it felt...wrong, in a way he could not describe. “What leaves tracks like this?”
“A weep,” Lurec said. “It’s feeding, and from what we can see here...” He pointed to where the strange furrows disappeared. The Preceptor sounded troubled, and genuinely afraid. “It can fly.”
The tracks looked lost to the drifting sand at that point, but Dayn saw that the Preceptor was right. They simply stopped.
“Defender, this is most troubling. I believed these creatures myth.”
“Peace shelters us,” Nassir replied. “I first saw tracks two days outside of Olende, but they were random. It’s riderless.” The Defender looked Dayn in the eye. “Voidwalkers have...mounts, Shardian. On the Ring, we call them fleshweep. Dread creatures, spawned in the caves of Thar'Kur itself. We've only seen them sparingly over the decades. Weep are hard for the voidwalkers to control, and just as likely to kill their riders as one of us.”
“I suppose it changes nothing for our journey at this point,” Lurec said.
“Yes. The night still protects us. Their bodies glow with an orange hue, once they have…fed.” Nassir rose from his squat and wordlessly started off through the sand, following the red flags.
The Defender’s words made Dayn swallow. They brought to mind a memory of Joam on the
road, before Evensong. The Southforte folk say they saw an amber light in the sky. The voidwalkers had been around them the whole time, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Dayn decided not to press the subject further, after a good look at the sick pallor of Lurec's face.
That night they made poor time, trudging over the hill-sized dunes deposited by the sandstorm. There were no caves to take shelter in before daylight, so they pressed through the early morning sun at Nassir's insistence. Dayn’s exhaustion robbed him of sleep when they did finally find shade, two hours past dawn. The Defender pressed them to move further each new day.
One morning they stopped to rest at a spring bubbling up from a crevasse in the shade of a cliff. Lurec nearly giggled in relief over spotting the spindly trees the Aran guards told them to look for. They had not seen another living soul these past weeks, so Dayn was not surprised they had the water source to themselves. He filled a skin eagerly and plunked himself down on a rock to drain it dry. Sweet and cold, the water made his teeth ache, but he panted gratefully and gulped all the more.
“Peyha is only an hour away,” Nassir announced upon returning from his customary scout. He brought new food with him, spotted apples and a white cheese from Peyha’s goats. The apples were bruised and the cheese was sharp enough to make a ridgecat spit, but Dayn could not ask for a finer feast. “The transport is still there. We’ll rest here until it leaves, in three days. I don’t want to attract notice among the Arans by taking lodging in the city.”
“Peace be praised.” Dayn sighed in relief. The journey had wearied him to the bone, weak Aran ground or not. He wondered how the Defender did not melt under all of his armor. Nassir favored Dayn with a knowing look that made him frown.
“To think I once complained about the pallet in my study.” Lurec lay flopped on his back. The Aran sun had dealt harshly with his fair skin, and he looked ready to begin peeling on the spot.
At the Preceptor’s request, Nassir actually permitted an open campfire―a small one―so they sat among the stars. Dayn watched the sky in awe. A great black mass had appeared along the northern horizon, swallowing up the stars as it moved silently through the night. Pinpricks of light in a radial pattern twinkled within the middle of it, as though the darkness carried its own stars within.
“We never see other worlds so close back home,” Dayn said. “Only the torrent.”
“Magnificent, is it not?” Lurec followed Dayn's gaze. “Montollos. Soon you will walk the ribbons and ride the skybridges between the endless towers of the Great City.” True appreciation resonated in the Preceptor's words. Dayn looked on eagerly, amazed that people were capable of building such marvels.
“I believe you are ready to attempt another Sending.” Lurec sat near the fire, his blue eyes steady and focused.
“Why did you wait so long?” Dayn asked.
“On the Ring, a new Preceptor must perfectly recount his thousand rooms in front of the Masters of the Halls before he is judged fit to learn the Sending. We must ensure a soundness of mind and steadfast heart in order for such an ability to be taught. Your circumstances are decidedly…different, but you should still be trained.”
“Sending can be used for evil, Shardian,” Nassir cautioned. “To whisper poisonous thoughts into the mind of another, or sway a person’s intentions without their knowledge. A Sender who does this is no better than a voidwalker.”
“Are you ready?” Lurec asked.
Dayn licked his lips and nodded. He stilled his mind, looking into the fire once more. The Preceptor’s Sending came so quickly that Dayn doubted it at first. In his mind’s eye, he saw an elderly man with a stooped back, surrounded by six younger people, boys and girls with the same sandy hair. They waved, all smiling, though one of the younger boys fought away tears.
Behind them, rose a monument ten spans high, of three naked granite figures, two women and one man holding a broken white disk of marble, stretching their arms forth as though to join the pieces back together. The long limbed birds lining the figures’ arms rose in flight, just as the door of a transport closed shut.
Dayn opened his eyes. “I saw…what was that?”
Lurec smiled. “Good. I was not always a Preceptor. That’s the Remembrance Crypt on my world, Uhrau. The people you saw were my family, come to see me off to the Ring.”
“They didn’t want you to go?”
“My cousin Telron took it hard,” Lurec admitted. “This Sending is one of my fondest memories. I’ve not seen my family in ten years. I wanted you to understand that we are…sympathetic to what you are doing for the Ring. You have not sworn our oaths, but that makes the role you play all the more meaningful.”
Dayn nodded, staring into the red and white coals. The faint breeze faded out of his hearing, lost within the rhythm of his own heartbeat. Montollos passed silently overhead, a dark swath of gridded stars. The Defender’s lips parted, but then his face grew wooden, and the moment passed with his words still unspoken. Lurec sighed and shook his head. “Time for you to practice, lad. Start with the stillness.”
They stayed several nights under the protection of the leaning cliffside. The overhang sheltered them well from the sun, and the spring’s water was cool and deep, surrounded by tough leaved plants and more needle spires that helped keep the air cool. The Defender believed the fleshweep would avoid straying too close to Peyha, and his instincts proved true, for they saw no more tracks.
Dayn’s attempts at Sending ended in failure no matter how he stilled his mind, or how simple the image or memory he formed to share with the Ringmen. The Preceptor's lessons were taxing, like working a newly discovered muscle, but Dayn attacked the mental exercises with a determined grimness. He did not want to be at the mercy of a voidwalker again.
The third night, the Ringmen regarded him silently as he sat crosslegged, staring into the fire. Dayn had chosen the easiest image he could think of to impress in the Ringmen’s minds, the Highest Shir-Hun. The choice did not prove to be wise because his thoughts inevitably drifted to Soong, and that would not do well for his first Sending at all.
“My luck was better with the sword.” Dayn gave an exasperated sigh and would have stood up, but Lurec’s raised eyebrows kept him in place by the fire.
“You are doing better than you know. Stillness.”
Dayn gritted his teeth, but slowed his breathing as Lurec had shown him.
The Defender sat some distance away from them at the Preceptor’s insistence, for he was sharpening his sickmetal blade. “Some talents are as natural as breathing, while others take years to master.” His whetstone rasping over the ugly metal did little to help Dayn’s concentration. He closed his eyes. “I’ve thought little about what I would do after this conflict with Thar’Kur is finished. My wife will always have her hawks to tend, but I have no love for those monsters. I’ve often envied you farmers, your simple life. Maybe one day you will teach me how to grow things in the soil, Shardian.”
“You will pick it up easily, if you have the patience for it.” Dayn could not help himself—the thought of Nassir popped into his head, wearing his Defender’s armor and spiked mask. Great gouts of dirt flew all around him as he hacked away at some poor inkroot with his giant sword. A strangled noise made Dayn open his eyes.
The Preceptor’s face had turned purple, and he held his sides as if his ribs would split from silent laughter. Dayn looked at him in utter confusion. Lurec composed himself hastily, wiping tears from his eyes before announcing, “He’s done it, Defender. A first Sending, and a memorable one at that. Well done, young Shardian.”
Dayn winced, but Lurec just smiled and gave him a wink. The Defender did not even look up from his sword. “He grows in leaps and bounds,” he observed. “Is it the affinity, Preceptor, or the Seed's influence?”
Lurec scratched his chin thoughtfully. “A bit of both, in my estimates. Who can say? Affinity is a strange thing, a confluence of mind and spirit among close companions.”
“What does that mean?” Dayn asked.
He allowed himself a moment of pride over the accomplishment, and took relief in the knowledge that the Defender did not seem to care what his Sending consisted of in the least.
“Our presence may aid your study, in a way. Because we are both trained in these disciplines,” Nassir explained.
“Maybe,” Dayn said, reaching into his pack. The Ringmen quieted themselves suddenly as the Seed began to glow in Dayn's hand, bright and regular, attuning to his heartbeat as before. For the first time, that did not fill him with fear. “Or maybe my presence is helping you.”
Nassir snorted and abruptly put away his sword. “Time will tell, Shardian.” Dayn may have rankled the Defender, but noted that Nassir did not disagree. The Defender gave them both a suspicious look before vanishing into the night to make his circuit of their camp.
“The Force General who yearned to be a farmer. Maybe he could scare the thorns off of the roses for you.” Lurec turned back to the fire with a wry smile. “You have a courser’s sense of humor, I’ll give you that, lad. It seemed just weeks ago there was nothing to you but crops and kin.”
Dayn shook his head in wonder as he watched the Seed glow. The surrounding desert remained clear and quiet, only the mass of the Montollos world-shadow above them marred a pristine night. “It's only been that long, hasn't it?”
“Soon enough this will be over, and you’ll return home.”
“If everything works out on Montollos, what will happen?” Dayn asked. “You won’t need me anymore. What will you do with the Seed once I go back to Shard?”
“The Seed must be taken to the world of Panen.”
“Panen.” Dayn repeated hesitantly. He knew nothing of the world. “I remember now, the Lord Ascendant spoke of it. The Highest knew you were going there, too. What's so important there?”
“I suppose it will do little harm to tell you this,” Lurec looked around furtively before continuing. “The Halls of Understanding have hidden a greatship there, nearly as large as the Ring itself. A Master Preceptor, Irwin Dosay, will take charge of the Seed. Once its power is fully realized, the World Belt's squabbling over resources will cease forever. I daresay you’ll be a hero then.”
The Seedbearing Prince: Part I Page 35