“It’s been an assassination,” said the Great Priest, while the Governor, swaying with the spear, was trying to stand up. The spear looked like it had pierced a clay knoll, without doing any harm. The Governor leaned on one knee.
“Treason!” he yelled. “They haven’t marked the right spot!”
Jeff was immediately knocked down. He woke up on a large table with his legs and right arm tied tight. He saw Rea next to him, in the same position.
“What are they doing to us?” he asked. “Killing us?”
“I don’t think so. To their minds, that would return good for evil.”
“What if they’re doing it according to our laws? What have we done wrong? You’re carrying the joke too far! I’m a Euro-American citizen!”
“Take it easy. They want to punish us for not having shown the vulnerable spot.”
“But I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“Don’t forget I was handling that bloody device.”
“Why on earth didn’t you show him that spot? Was it in an indecent place?”
Rea looked at him sadly. “Because I’ve got my own opinions about everything I do. And I simply couldn’t do it.”
Meanwhile, the old Xile they had seen at the secret meeting approached with Jeff’s knife in his hand.
“You shall get your punishment, aliens!” The Governor’s voice seemed to be coming from somewhere underground. “Ienarch, proceed!”
Despite Jeff’s yells, the Xile skillfully cut the veins of his left hand. The blood started to flow into a tin pot. He did the same thing to Rea, who knew it was no use hoping.
“I’m sorry, Theo,” she said.
“My name’s not Theo,” he said weakly.
“I always call them that.” She smiled and fainted.
Jeff looked at her for a few more seconds, until that wretched sensation of emptiness made him sick. Darkness and pleasant warmth overcame him. When everything cleared up, he was able to see himself and Rea again, as if they were floating somewhere high above, even higher than the stone ceiling. He was flying somewhere quickly, feeling her breath near him. The hot whirl carried him to the entrance of a tunnel of dense light. He also seemed to hear music in front of him, above, where someone faceless and dear to him was standing with one’s back to the light, as though waiting for him for a long time, forever….She was so close, nothing could ever separate them again, and he felt so very happy.…
He woke up on the table, unbound. His left hand was bandaged, and there were some wet leaves on his forehead. The old Xile shook him mercilessly.
“The punishment has been accomplished. You’re free to go. You and her. You’ve been sent back.”
Jeff put his hand on his forehead and started to cry. He hid his tears with his left palm, though there was no one to see him anymore. Yes, with luck, he could have been There!
THE CALLING OF IAM’KENDRON, by Michael R. Collings
The following is a prequel to the full-length novel, Wordsmith.
Kynne lingered for a last glimpse from the top of the cliff. Beyond and beneath, expanding in an endless half-disk of opalescent light, the Northern Sea reflected the blankness of the Veil of Heaven. It was almost dusk, that time of day when the horizon whispered closer, until finally Veil and ocean met a breath away from land.
A thin breeze curled about the cliffs, stirring Kynne’s hair, fingering his cheeks and naked arms. He breathed deeply, sensing even at this great height the saltiness of the sea—an odor as familiar to him as the lowing of cattle in the summer meadows or the sight of rhiam pods ripening in Growing Time. He was a range-lad, born in Myvern, destined to live there until he died.
And he loved the thought.
Myvern was home, a tiny village on the northernmost coast of Omne, huddled against the seaward knees of the Lesser Pillars. Kynne’s father had been Myvern-born, as had his grandfather—as had been his forebears for more generations than anyone could distinctly remember. The high passes in the Pillars, the paths along treacherous rock faces, the hidden cracks and crevices in the mountain heights—these defined Kynne’s world. These, and the enigmatic ocean curling negligently across a gravel beach, narrow and long, encompassing Myvern on two sides.
The boy sighed. He could hardly get enough of this, this wandering freely across the lower slopes, this standing here on his private lookout rock, watching the play of colors across the ocean as evening approached. Already the Veil was nearing land. Soon the fogs of late Harvest Time would smother the Pillars, draping all in mistiness and mystery.
And Kynne’s explorations would be over for another season. He had hoped, this Cycle, to reach the southernmost peak of the range, to be able to look down across the great fields of Heartland, toward the south, toward Los’ang, the largest city on Omne and the seat of the Makers.
He sighed again. Not this Cycle. As an orphan, he had perhaps more time to himself than did the other boys. But that would end soon. Next year he would be an apprentice. He would have responsibilities to his village and to the family who would accept him into their cottage. He would be inhibited, hampered, shackled by time and maturity. He would have little time left for exploring.
He turned from the suffusing glow and leaped lightly from rock to ledge, from ledge to rock, picking his way along invisible trails down impossibly steep rock faces. His feet, practically bare in the thin sandals he wore for hiking, curled over jutting rocks, seeking secure niches among the shifting detritus.
Then suddenly, he stopped. For a moment he did not know why. Then he heard it again, consciously heard it.
Off to his left, a low, rough snarl, like unseasoned wood wrenched and twisted in a Dark Time storm.
The boy froze.
Here in the Lesser Pillars there were few wild things—far fewer than still survived in the rugged, wind-scoured steeps of the Pillars of Beginnings. But there were a handful of predators, even this close to the village…and some were dangerous to man.
Slowly Kynne swiveled on one heel, moving almost imperceptibly, scanning the arabesques of light and shadow staining the mountain wall towering above him.
He could see nothing. No movement. And now there was no sound either. Had he actually heard it? His hearing was not especially acute; perhaps he had imagined….
No, there it was again. A rasping, threatening and low.
Squinting to limit the dying glare from the Veil of Heaven, he followed the direction of the sound with his eyes.
There! A flicker of something not mineral, something live and deep and dark. He slid his right foot back a fraction of an inch, feeling for a more secure foothold, reaching with his toes for firmer, flatter rock.
With a snarl that echoed through the volcanic stone like ripping thunder, the thing exploded from behind a jagged knife of obsidian, springing three times Kynne’s height, and landing on an outcrop not a dozen yards away.
Kynne paled and swallowed hard. It was a wulf. He had thought that they were extinct. His grandfather had told tales by candlelight of the great hunts in the elder days, when Omne was new, when men had first discovered their power and destroyed the great beasts.
Even yet there was a single hide in the village, old and almost hairless but terrifying nonetheless to the children. Long curling talons still depended from the pelt the length of a strong man’s forearm, and the fangs yellowing in the horrible grimace of the skull still chilled Kynne.
He had thought the wulfs extinct.
It settled down again, mollified momentarily by Kynne’s absolute stillness. It crouched, claws raking at the detritus littering the outcrop, eyes balefully black and piercing.
The tableau continued for a half dozen heartbeats before Kynne tensed to leap sideways toward a wedge-shaped chimney a few feet down slope. He was unarmed, unprepared, poorly situated on the steep slope—everything was to the wulf’s advantage. He could see the beast bracing, its hackles rising like pinions along the arched backbone. Knotted muscles bunched, rippled like the sea in full tide.
<
br /> Kynne leaped.
With a lunge he hoped would catch the beast unaware, he threw himself backward against the smooth, obsidian face of the Pillars, then slid down and around, putting a thin column between himself and his attacker. The beast in turn had leaped even as Kynne had, striking for the boy then twisting in midair as it registered the actual thrust of its quarry’s movements. For a breath it hung suspended in air, writhing on the evening breeze, a thing of darkness and death, before it struck solid rock a few feet from where Kynne had disappeared.
With a snarl almost human in its unmuted disappointment, the beast spun around the protruding edge of the column, poised, jaws snapping shut….
…on nothing.
The boy was not there.
Furious, the wulf coiled around sniffing, catching the elusive scent, leaping once more toward the figure now a ledge away.
Kynne had taken full advantage of the wulf’s momentary confusion to jump a five-foot gap between the ledge at the base of the column and the rubble near the mouth of the chimney. It would be close, and much depended on how quickly the wulf could re-orient in mid-jump, but the boy had seen his only possible chance and had taken it. He had a few seconds start on the beast.
He scuttled along the talus immediately below the narrow opening of the chimney. Behind him, the wulf leaped once more, easily spanning the fissure between ledges, landing with a thump and a snarl. Close…only a breath away.
And Kynne was inside the chimney.
The beast lunged, fangs bared and claws extended. Kynne felt a searing pain as the beast scraped the outside of his leg. With a frantic kick, the boy insinuated himself through the narrow opening.
A tide of blood-red pain swept through him, then receded, pulling with it energy and hope. Kynne looked down. The escape had been close—too close, actually, since he was bleeding freely from a jagged rip extending from his thigh to just below his knee. Rhiam thongs hung in tatters from the thin soles of his sandals; already he could feel the leather slipping as he scrabbled to half-back himself further into the sheltering darkness of the Pillars. His blood flowed in rivulets on the cold stone, swirling in and out of shadows, darkening in the air.
Outside, the wulf howled in frustration, once, a long, terrible paean tinged with threat. It shuffled for a moment, panting noisily at the opening to the chimney, thrusting its shaggy muzzle as far into the interior as its bulk would allow. Kynne was suddenly swallowed by darkness as the wulf’s body cut off all light. He could sense the beast pushing steadily nearer as it worked its way between the stone walls, an inch at a time, inexorably closer.
The boy bit his lip as a second flush of pain suffused his wounded leg. Five long lines wavered down his thigh, the middle three deeper and wicked-looking, highlighted in a sudden shaft of light. The wulf had backed out; the chimney had proven too confining for it.
For an instant, Kynne shivered with a thrill of hope. The beast would leave, it would return to the higher ranges, would leave him alone. He would struggle down the mountain somehow….
The light was cut in half. Kynne leaned forward, braced with his hands against the round stone to avoid straining his leg.
The wulf had settled down, sprawled against the opening, eyes glittering in at Kynne. It would wait. It could afford to wait. The boy could not. Already Kynne knew that he had been seriously weakened. And night was nearly complete.
With a sharp hiss of breath, Kynne slumped against the cold stone. He wore no shirt. Rough edges bit into his back and shoulders but he took no notice. He could hear his breathing as it hissed through the small cave. The fires that rippled through the gashes in his thigh had died, replaced by a slow numbness, almost as if the wulf had introduced a sleeping-draught into the wounds. Such a thing would not be unheard of. Omne was capable of strange arrangements to protect her own.
By now light had died completely. Like most Omnans, Kynne had a basic distrust—almost fear—of night. The Veil of Heaven coalesced, blocking out the faintest glimmers of light reflecting from lanterns shining valiantly but ineffectually through window openings. All of Omne, the entire land, lay black, shadow within shadow, when night was full. Kynne could no longer even see the outline of the wulf, but something warned him that the beast was still lying patiently a few feet away, waiting, sure of an eventual kill. The boy shrugged his shoulders to try to find a smoother stretch of stone, then relaxed, letting his head fall back.
He closed his eyes, but his mind remained alert, kaleidoscoping through pathways of memories long thought forgotten. He caught fragmentary glimpses of his mother and father, dead Cycles before and half dissolved from the villagers’ memories. He half-heard Alinor’s lilting laughter whisper reassuringly through the darkness, and then he was lost to consciousness.
* * * *
The dream, when it came, was frighteningly surreal, concrete. Kynne felt himself pulled upward, as if from a deep well draped in the perpetual darkness of Omnan night. In the dream he opened his eyes, he felt the light pressure released as upper lids lifted free from lower—yet he could not see. The darkness was absolute, complete.
Then, it seemed, a faint blue spark illumed somewhere in the deepness of his mind, beyond memory, beyond volition. At first it was merely the subtlest hint of blue, a perception of something not blackness, yet too peripheral to be identified. Then it grew, gaining potency as it expanded until (he dreamed) his being was suffused with the same blue—not the icy blue of death, the frozen blue of unlife, but rather a living, warming tone that coursed through his body, along his limbs, and as it did so, he found himself leaning against the rough stone, then kneeling, struggling up on the injured leg, and finally standing. And he seemed (as he dreamed) surprised and amazed that he was yet alive. Beneath him, a dark rosette ripping across the unbroken stone floor of the narrow cavern, his blood bloomed archil in the mounting illumination.
The boy stood, wavering as one newly awakened from sleep, mind-caressing sleep (he dreamed) and waited, waited for…he knew not what. But he waited, unmoving and unspeaking, until there, at the spot in his brain where the blue light had begun, something else formed, equally evanescent, equally subtle. This time, it was not light but pattern—patterns of color which promised words, which seemed on the verge of integrating within him into a communication, directed at him, specific to him. For a racing second he seemed (he dreamed) to recall a face…no, that was not quite accurate. It was not a face but a shape, a form. A woman’s form, draped in…yes, in blue, the same color that now radiated from within him and lit up the cavern that was his prison, lit up the shaggy outline of the beast crouching in sleep at the mouth of the chimney. A woman’s form, strangely familiar, yet Kynne was certain (as he dreamed) that he had never seen such a form before, a tall, gaunt body wrapped loosely in a billowing…wait, let me think, yes, once, long ago, a stranger in Myvern, a visitor from the south, from Los’ang itself. A…a…. The word eluded him, even as the patterns in his mind crystallized and he heard/saw words forming. He did not understand the patterns, but stood in rapt attention as the remaining swirls flickered through his consciousness, then released him to his own will. He straightened. With one hand he pointed toward the beast still sleeping on the rocks. The blue light extended toward the beast, touching it lightly on the head, just behind the scruff of jutting, matted fur. With a shriek almost human in timbre, the wulf jerked its head about, glaring into the chimney, fully awake and unaccountably angered. It lunged into the stony slit, bruising shoulders on outcrops, scraping fur from its haunches as it thrust, claws outstretched, toward the source of the light.
Kynne remained motionless, entranced by the patterns now fading into a kaleidoscopic blur. He saw without seeing the glistening claws, stained bright cerulean and curving like ripened rhiam pods, but sharp and deadly. And then he spoke.
The words echoed slightly, low and musical, unfamiliar yet stirring responses within himself. The words tumbled out, one over the other, as if impatient to achieve reality without being expres
sed. First they warned, and Kynne knew that somehow the beast comprehended the warning. The bow-taut tension in the claws relaxed, the scythe-like curves drooping in response. But not enough.
Again, the words of warning—and this time Kynne could see into the beast’s small brain and trace competing patterns of fear and anger.
Still not enough. The words sharpened. The beast became angrier, the strange light more piercing, ominous instead of comforting and warm. Kynne felt power welling within him, power uncontrolled by any external force. He could do as he willed. He stepped forward one step, two, three, until his legs were within the triangle of the wulf’s outstretched limbs. The beast did not strike, not yet. For the moment, the paralysis of fear and incomprehension was too great for its animal mind. The blue light glared hypnotically through pupils distended by darkness.
Kynne bent stiffly at the waist, ungraceful in his new power, exultant, and touched the beast lightly on the head. Instantly the eyes turned inward, as if to follow the path of blue piercing toward the center of the beast’s being. Then, with a silent cough the wulf lowered itself to the ground, muzzle crossing folded forelegs as if asleep. And it slept…forever.
A shuddering shriek reverberated through Kynne: he had killed! And he knew that the killing had been unnecessary, almost accidental as he had flooded power unrestrained through the beast. He could have merely frightened it away, yet he had not. He had killed. The thought left his mouth tasting acrid.
He stepped back into the depths of the cavern, feeling drained of both will and power, struggling unsuccessfully against a flood of tears—tears of relief, of relaxed tension, of sorrow for another living being and for his involvement in that death. In the suffused light of Omnan day, he would not have cared about the death of an animal, particularly one as vicious as a wulf of the high ranges; in the phantasmagorical universe of Omnan night, of the unaccountable blue light, he felt his heart wrench as if he were again experiencing his first days as an orphan, as if again his parents had been riven from him by the violence of a Dark Time storm hurling itself mindlessly against the ramparts of the Lesser Pillars. He wept, for a beast that would have destroyed him. But he had to survive. He did not know why; indeed, at this moment, he did not really care whether he survived or not. But a lingering color/pattern impelled him.
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