The Redemption, Volume 1

by Clyde B Northrup

  Klare stood and moved next to her husband. “Let me see.” She touched the staff and both her eyes and Klaybear’s grew distant.

  “Do you see it?” Klaybear asked.

  “Yes,” Klare replied, “but it would be easy to miss, because the thread to the south is so bright by comparison, as you said, an echo, no, barely an echo that fades.”

  “Distance?” Rokwolf asked to forestall any comments.

  “It is difficult to tell,” Klaybear replied, “as it is barely visible, but I would guess that it must be very far away, at least twice as far as the sword, but the thread south is still the same as before.”

  “So the one is still where we thought, and the second is nowhere near the Mariskal,” Tevvy noted.

  Klare frowned and removed her hand from the staff, eyes refocusing; she sat down. “If it exists at all,” she noted. “What does it mean, I wonder?” she asked.

  Klaybear shrugged. “We can ask Thal later.” He looked at Rokwolf. “So where are we sending the three of you?” he asked.

  Rokwolf’s jaw clenched again, but he turned to Tevvy. “You mentioned that you wanted to go straight to Rykelle, why?”

  “Better intelligence,” Tevvy replied, “my father has many contacts, along with the advanced students, all of whom could collect much information for us in a short time, and we could stay hidden. I also collected some samples in Kilnar that I need analyzed.”

  “The drug samples you mentioned before?” Rokwolf asked.

  Tevvy nodded. “Anything that will tell us more about what has happened,” he added, “will be helpful. We also have direct access to the Mariskal from the school, which will make it easy for us to leave town and enter the swamp without being noticed.”

  Rokwolf nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, “although I still might want to return to Kilnar. Where in Rykelle?”

  Tevvy noticed the two horses ready to go. “Since you have horses,” he noted, “it will have to be our stable, which is a house across the street, converted for this purpose.”

  “How will we enter the school unnoticed?” Rokwolf asked.

  “From beneath,” Tevvy replied, grinning.

  Rokwolf nodded. “I guess that means it’s your turn to open the archway, just make sure you pass the staff back to my twin before you step through.”

  Chapter 9

  All kortexem returning to Karble, and all who journey with them, may enter the gate only at sunrise; a banner is raised on each tower for visitors from the other orders who enter with the kortexi; a banner representing the Mountain of Vision is raised on each tower for the newly initiated kortexi returning to report. The kortexi and his party are escorted through town by an honor guard of one dozen led by the Wesento’s second. . . . A ritual challenge is issued at the crossroads before the citadel gates to honor he who returns home in triumph. . . .

  from the Kodex Kortexem by Sir Karble III

  “Should we warn them,” Klaybear asked, “or simply surprise them?”

  Klare looked up suddenly, lost in thought. “Oh, yes, I have to go and ‘mother’ some ‘naughty boys,’” she noted sarcastically. “Barge in and surprise them,” she noted after a moment, “that will put them off their guard and give me a chance to succeed quickly.”

  Klaybear held out the staff to Klare. “You saw where they were,” he noted.

  She nodded and accepted breath-giver but hesitated a moment before opening the door.

  “Something wrong, dear?” he asked.

  “Just gathering my thoughts,” she snapped.

  “And your temper,” he noted.

  She smiled and drew the circle and arch, but just before she finished, she said: “Step through at the same moment, at the instant they notice.” She finished the arch, and they stepped through the moment it shimmered, moving from dry air to air that was thick, and not just with moisture from the heavy rain still falling. Thal and Blakstar sat facing away from each other, polishing their saddles, so both had to turn when they heard the sound of the archway opening, and both their faces mirrored one another: shock and surprise.

  “Klaybear, Klare,” they said in unison.

  “What are you doing here?” Blakstar asked.

  “In the middle of the night?” Thal added.

  Klaybear started to open his mouth to reply, but one look at Klare shut his mouth; he simply backed up, extremely glad that Klare was not looking at him right now. Thal flinched under her glare; Blakstar’s eyes narrowed.

  “I’m here because of you,” she stabbed a finger at Thal, “and you,” she stabbed another finger at Blakstar. “What has gotten into the two of you? Why are you behaving like two brothers who need to be bent over my knee, one at a time, and spanked like naughty boys?”

  Thal’s face flushed brighter than his hair; Blakstar did not show any outward effects from Klare’s tirade.

  “I leave you alone for a few days and the two of you are at each other’s’ throats! Don’t you two realize that the one sure way for Gar to defeat us is to get us fighting each other? I imagine he is in fits of laughter right now, knowing that he has driven a wedge between us.”

  Blakstar jumped to his feet. “Us! What do you mean? It’s between him and me, not us!”

  “Uh-huh,” Klare nodded, “it’s just the two of you, and the longer it goes on, the surer both of you will be that each of you is right and the other wrong, and then you will begin to try and sway the rest of us, to gain allies, and soon it will be all of us, and Gar has won, without fighting a single battle, or losing one of his minions.”

  Thal looked quite sheepish. “I’ve tried to apologize,” he began, “but he. . . .”

  Klare cut him off. “You are trying to justify yourself, and your mistake, whatever it was, and I do not want to know, because it does not matter.” She glared at the white maghi until he closed his mouth. She turned back to the kortexi who still stood facing her, unyielding. “Let it go,” she said simply. “You already carry more guilt than anyone should, and the One knows you have reason to, and I understand, better than anyone: would you care to debate me on that?” she challenged.

  The kortexi did not move, but Klare saw a hint of his eyes widening before he controlled it.

  “How do you know that?” he asked, his voice cold.

  “You must let it go,” she went on in a softer voice, “or it will destroy us all.”

  Blakstar’s face flashed back and forth between disbelief and anger. “How can you even suggest . . . ,” he began, “when they . . . , when she . . . ,” he stuttered, halted, swallowed, and then went on, “when she is still out there, somewhere, a tortured captive with no hope of . . . ,” he came to a stop again, looking down and around the room, as if he could find the words somewhere around the hut, anywhere but Klare’s concerned face staring up at him. “How can you ask me to forget?”

  Klare shook her head. “I’m not asking you to forget,” she noted, “I’m asking you to release the anger and hatred you feel and forgive your brother.”

  The anger left Blakstar’s face to be replaced by confusion. “I have no brother,” he said, “I’m an only child.”

  Klare caught his eye and drew his gaze toward Thal and Klaybear. “That is no longer true,” Klare remarked. “You now have five brothers and at least two sisters, and three of us are in this room with you.”

  Klaybear raised an eyebrow at this. “I thought you were the ‘mother,’” he noted.

  “Only when you regress in behavior to beardless boys needing spankings,” she smiled.

  Blakstar was shaking his head. “It isn’t right that he . . . ,” he stopped, seeing Klare’s green eyes flash, “I mean, Thal, should go looking into other peoples’ minds.”

  Klare burst into laughter, which shocked the kortexi more than anything else that had happened.

  “Why do you think that’s so funny?” Blakstar asked, caught between anger and surprise at her laughter.

  “It isn’t right for you to practice swinging your sword, either,” s
he countered.

  Confusion replaced shock on the kortexi’s face. “Huh?”

  “Especially not that sword,” Klare went on, pointing to will-giver, “with any of us.”

  “But I have to practice,” Blakstar protested, “all of us have to practice with our weapons daily, or else we will lose the ability to fight in battle.”

  “Precisely,” Klare said.

  The kortexi’s brow wrinkled as he considered.

  “And when you face someone you are about to battle,” Klare went on, not giving him too much time to think, “even someone you are not about to battle, can you not tell, simply by observing the person, much about how that person would act if you faced him, or her, in combat?”

  “Yes,” Blakstar replied, his face brightening as he understood, “we must be ready at any moment to fight; I mean, look at what has happened to us over the last weeks: had each of us not been assessing everyone at every moment, none of us would be here.”

  “Precisely,” Klare said again.

  Klaybear nodded suggestively to him as Blakstar glanced his way. “Wait a minute,” the kortexi said, brow still wrinkled, “are you suggesting that Thal. . . .”

  “. . . and me,” Klaybear inserted, pointing to himself as he nodded.

  “. . . and I,” Klare added, correcting her husband.

  “. . . that all of you,” Blakstar went on, “regularly, look into other minds?”

  “You make it sound so terrible,” Klare said.

  “Isn’t it?” Blakstar asked. “Prying into other peoples’ secrets?”

  “It is terrible,” Klare agreed, “for us, but not in the way you understand. We do not go around ‘prying into peoples’ secrets,’” she said with a mocking voice, “that would require too much time and energy, and it would leave us completely open to attack by others who also possess the ability. In order to be prepared, as you said, we must, wherever we go, scan our surroundings with gentle, wispy feelers, looking for minds that are aware of our scans, but all we actually sense is the surface, whatever each person happens to be feeling at the moment.”

  “Thinking,” Klaybear noted, “the surface thoughts.”

  Klare looked at Thal. “Thoughts or feelings?” she asked.

  Thal looked carefully at Klare before responding, evaluating her mood; he rubbed his chin idly. “That is one of the things that distinguishes us,” he answered evasively, “although my mother did try to teach me how to sense emotions; I could never quite get the hang of it,” he admitted.

  Klare’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “Wethem!” she exclaimed. She looked back at the kortexi. “Do you understand now?” she asked.

  He nodded hesitantly. “I think so,” Blakstar replied.

  “We do not go delving into minds looking for secrets,” Klare added.

  Thal’s face flushed; he cleared his throat. “I did,” he said, “and I should not have done it, but I had convinced myself, wrongly, that Blakstar was partially responsible for my parents’ deaths, because I was told not to expect to leave until later in the year. I was wrong, and I am sorry, my brother.”

  The others were all looking at him with surprise, but the kortexi was the first to speak.

  “I wasn’t supposed to leave until fall,” he noted, “but my master called me in after the spring council and said that plans had changed: I was ready, he said, and should leave immediately.”

  “Did you?” Klare asked.

  Blakstar shook his head. “No, odd things kept happening that delayed my departure for a full ten days,” he replied, and seeing their questioning looks, he went on. “My horse went lame, and then the smith could not find armor to fit me, so he had to make it from scratch. However, each morning when he returned to the forge to continue his work, all of it had disappeared, even though guards had been posted and had not seen or heard anything, but then it all fell into place on the tenth day.”

  “Just in time,” Klaybear noted, “for Xythrax to get his forces into place and pull Rokwolf and the other seklesem out of position, discrediting him and leaving you wide open for . . . ,” he left the sentence unfinished.

  “So it would seem,” Blakstar admitted.

  Thal was shaking his head; he stood and started to pace. “But the morgle was part of the group,” he put in, “with the rod, so there was no need for the extra time,” he stopped, tapping his chin with one finger while looking up toward the ceiling, “unless the morgle did not at that time have the rod.”

  Now it was Klaybear’s turn to shake his head. “I recall Rokwolf saying,” he said, “that one of his scouts reported seeing the morgle move his forces using the rod.”

  “That only means,” Thal countered, “that the morgle had the rod after they began the attack that drew the seklesem out of position. It does not preclude . . . ,” he started to say but stopped when Klare stamped her foot and glared at him.

  “You’ve distracted me again!” she exclaimed. “We are not here to debate what might have happened!”

  “But it’s the only way . . . ,” Thal tried to protest, but she cut him off.

  The magluku in the hut flashed three times then brightened as Klare spoke. “We don’t have time for this . . . ,” she was saying. “What’s that mean?”

  The kortexi’s face wrinkled with concern. “It’s time for us to get up and get ready,” he sighed, “and we haven’t finished cleaning and polishing.”

  “Never mind that now,” Klare said, “I can take care of that in an instant.” She took both of Blakstar’s hands in her own. “Are your parents still living?” she asked.

  “My mother,” he replied. “My father was killed in an accident about two years after I came to Karble; he was helping one of our neighbors, a widow, break one of her horses, and he got thrown off and hit his head on a rock.”

  “What if you discovered that it was not an accident?” Klare said.

  The change in his demeanor was instant: he went from calm and relaxed to ready to attack in an eye blink. “Who?” he asked.

  “This is hypothetical,” Klare said, “I did not know about your father’s accident until this moment.” Blakstar visibly relaxed. “But suppose you discovered that I was responsible, and in that accident, your mother also died; how would you feel toward me?”

  The kortexi’s brow wrinkled as he tried to grasp what Klare was telling him. After a silent moment he frowned. “I think I understand,” he said, “but that does not justify what he did.”

  “No one is suggesting it,” Klare replied, taking and holding his eyes, “but understanding is the first step to forgiving and letting go.”

  Blakstar nodded slowly; Klare released his hands, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, which made him blush. “Now, what needs to be done?” she asked, her tone suddenly businesslike.

  “We haven’t finished polishing the saddles and harness,” Blakstar pointed, still blushing.

  “All right,” Klare said, turning to her husband. “Dear, I’ll need to borrow breath-giver.” She accepted the staff from him, then turned and pushed up her sleeves. The eye-shaped emerald glowed green, although the wethem did not hear the words she spoke; she pointed breath-giver at each saddle in turn, and a piece of green light shot from the staff, engulfing each saddle for a moment, then winking out. Each saddle shone as if it were newly fashioned and unused.

  “How did you do that?” Thal asked, his face wide with surprise.

  Klare ignored his question. “What else?”

  Blakstar hesitated before speaking. “We are supposed to wear our very best clothes after we cleanse our bodies, but I don’t think . . . ,” he tried to say, but Klare was already pointing the staff at him, a growing ball of green light erupting from the eye-shaped emerald. The green ball hit him and surrounded him. Klare turned the staff on Thal, shooting a second green ball that surrounded the white maghi. When the light winked out only moments later, both were clean, as if they had bathed and put on clean clothes.

  “I never . . . you
never,” Klaybear stammered, “how come you never told me you could do that? Why did I have to spend all that time tediously cleaning our home when I could have used elemental power?”

  Klare smiled at him. “You needed to work,” she replied with a shrug, “it builds character.” She turned again to the kortexi; the magluku flashed twice. “Anything else?”

  “Just our horses,” Blakstar said. “We are supposed to spend the next few minutes in meditation before leaving.”

  Klare nodded. “Be very careful here,” she said, “there is some evil at work in Karble, possibly a traitor.”

  Thal’s eyebrows went up at this. “That would explain the ten-day delay.”

  “That traitor will set up some kind of challenge that you will be honor-bound to accept,” Klare went on, “a challenge that could end in bloodshed.”

  Thal nodded. “Not a surprise,” he said, “considering all that has happened to us.”

  “How do you know this?” Blakstar asked.

  “I dreamed it,” Klare replied, “in much the same way as Klaybear’s visions: with the images all crushed together. Also, we will be involved,” she pointed to herself and her husband, “I’m not sure how; contact us later this morning when you discover that you need us.” She tossed breath-giver to her husband.

  Blakstar shook his head as he dropped to his knees. “I have no idea what you mean,” he said, “but I’m sure we will.”

  Blakstar reined in his horse; Thal stopped beside him. The many towers and walls of Karble were visible in the gray light before dawn; the eastern mountains were black against the glow of the dawn, whose light had just touched the tips of the highest towers. The main gate of the city lay about a quarter of a mile up a gentle slope directly ahead of them. The horses shifted uneasily, catching the mood of their riders.

  “At least the rain stopped,” Thal noted.

  “It usually does,” Blakstar replied shortly.

  A few moments passed in silence. “Is anything wrong?” Thal asked finally.

  The kortexi shifted in his saddle; he looked uncomfortable holding his lance with the white banner tied to the point; a gentle breeze stirred and stretched the cloth out, and Thal saw again the symbol of the Waters of Life, now blushing as the sun moved closer to rising. Blakstar scanned the battlements; his eyes stopped again on the towers on either side of the gate where a single banner bearing the kortexi symbol fluttered from a pole atop each tower.