by Jacob Cooper
Reign was overcome with anger more than sadness. “You cannot leave me! You cannot leave me!” she shouted over and over again in a staccato rhythm as she beat her fist upon his wounded chest. “You cannot leave! Everyone leaves me! Not you, too! Not you!” Her tears were freezing to her face before they could fall as she screamed her demands to her dying brother.
“Not you, too!”
And then, she could stand no more of the mental, physical and emotional onslaught, and she passed out with her head upon Hedron’s shallowly rising chest.
When the old woman arrived, she looked down at the children. The wolf, which stood several heads taller than either youngling, sat over them with its large chest lowered gently over the girl as she lay on top of the boy. The bushy tail was also wrapped around her shoulders, providing protection and warmth.
“Up, Elohk,” she said. The wolf removed itself from its position of covering the younglings. The woman pulled the girl off the boy, who was gravely wounded in his chest, though they both had sustained wounds. The boy was bare-chested except for a dark-green shredded cloak loosely hung around his shoulders. She turned him on his side gently and saw the sigil sewn into the cloak. Jayden gasped. She knew the sigil of House Kerr, but even more, she knew this cloak around the young boy.
“Thannuel,” she said out loud.
The wolf whined softly. It knew the scent the cloak carried, although it did not know the boy in it. The scent alone, the old woman knew, would be enough for the wolf to instinctively recognize that the boy and girl were important and worthy of its protection. It howled another long note that echoed through the morning.
THIRTEEN
Shane
Day 18 of 3rd Low 407 A.U.
IT WAS A COMPLEX SEA of thought that careened within Shane. Currents threatened to send him into fits of madness, from whence he feared never to resurface if swept there. He struggled to remain conscious. Not to avoid sleep, but to keep a grasp on his identity.
“Why have you summoned me here?” he asked the older, bald man in front of him. They stood in the charred courtyard of the ruined Hold Kerr, no one else present. Shane briefly wondered how Tyjil had come to be here, so far from Wellyn’s hold. No horse or carriage was present, none that he could see anyway. I could do it, Shane admitted to himself. I could break him, extinguish him. Snuff out the pathetic man’s flickering flame of life before he knew what happened. I have done it before. But then the former fisherman realized it was quite unlike Tyjil to put himself knowingly in danger, or even the smallest perception of potential danger. It was unlikely he was alone after all, though his wood-dweller senses could still not decipher anyone else’s presence. If someone else was here, they were in place before he arrived and had not moved since.
The fire’s ravages from earlier this year remained undeniably visible. Khans had executed a controlled burning of the hold after Moira and her servants were killed. The High Duke had ordered the use of fire, to symbolically purge the Realm of the treachery that had been brewed within these walls. The evening’s mild breeze carried the lingering scent of ash mingled with dead foliage. Vines, shrubbery and frondescence of all kinds were either consumed in the fire or had faded to lifelessness against the hold’s walls. The sun’s light had recast itself to the deep orange luminescence that accompanied the last hours of light before first moon.
Shane did not like this place, not since he had carried out the first part of his mission. The fires he and the Khans set had consumed all around the hold and the dead within its walls. But the stone of the edifice remained—its tint black and brindle from the furnace, covered in soot—and Shane did too. He realized he was now more closely related to stones and dead things than the forest and things of life. He visualized the flames that leaped upon Moira’s body, how they had reduced her to ash and bone. Why? How could I have done such an act? I am only a fisherman; I am only—
Only a predator! a louder voice within him said, one that had been increasing in volume internally.
“It’s only appropriate, of course, that we meet where you first learned of your higher capabilities, yes?” Tyjil answered. When he smiled, Shane fully expected to see a forked tongue slither out of his mouth.
“I cannot be away long,” Shane said. “My absence will be noticed.”
“Isn’t it nice to be noticed for once in your life?” Tyjil jeered. “I’m sure that woman does not miss you. She probably does better on her own, yes? Certainly those feral offspring you call children—”
“My wife’s name is Ahnia,” Shane interjected.
“That might be true if you had a wife. That was the old person, remember? No, of course you don’t, you were so forgettable then. You are reborn and have no need for family, just like me. You bask in the freedom with me, don’t you, brother?”
“If it is true that I have no family, then you have nothing to chain me with any longer,” Shane answered.
Tyjil smiled, almost impressed. “See, you have started to think in reason, in plots and ploys. Is it not exhilarating?”
“What, Tyjil, do you want?” Shane snapped, growing tired of this interaction.
“Ah yes, now we come to it. I need to know your progress, of course. You are well embedded into the hold guard?” Tyjil asked while raising an eyebrow.
“I am. I sent word by wing over four span ago. You must have received it.”
“So I did.”
“Then why bring me here to ask questions that you already know the answers to?” Shane asked, not able to hide the disgust in his voice.
“How did it come to pass?” Tyjil pressed on, ignoring Shane’s question.
“It was as the message said. I begged a position from Master Aiden. He refused at first because of my lack of training with steel and my age, but I persisted. Eventually, I prevailed and he agreed.” Shane did not tell him of the true struggle it had been to convince Aiden to allow him to join the hold guard without appearing anxious or desperate. He had thought Aiden might have suspected something and that his efforts would be thwarted, but the young master of the hold guard did indeed finally agree to accept him in their ranks. He had to train longer and harder than the other guards, and Aiden pushed him to near a breaking point every day. Shane had no doubt it was in an effort to force him out, to force him to give up. But Aiden did not know the motive that drove Shane to succeed, nor the strength of it.
Tyjil approached nearer to Shane, and walked around him slowly. He looked up at Shane and reached a hand out slowly to Shane’s midsection without looking away from Shane’s eyes. Tyjil grabbed the bottom of the man’s tunic and lifted it up. He inspected Shane’s body for a brief moment. Shane tensed.
“No, not the soft fisherman at all anymore, are we? Tell me, do you find yourself with eager female companionship now that you have a body more desirable to such things?”
Shane slapped Tyjil’s hand away and stepped back with speed that Tyjil could not track with his eyes. A slight tremor shot through the ground from somewhere in the west side of the hold, faint but distinct.
So, the snake is not alone.
“Tell me my wife and children are safe and unharmed,” Shane demanded. “Tell me true, or I swear by the Cursed Heavens I’ll crush your throat before your escort has a chance to react.”
“Good!” Tyjil remarked, bringing his hands together in front of his face. He looked utterly thrilled. “You have truly come far, my boy. Is not the strength you now possess and the will to use it a gift? Are you not grateful for who you are becoming, an apex predator? Certainly you see the wisdom in my methods now, yes?”
Shane did not answer, but continued to stand still. He was reaching out to sense any other motion not natural to their environment. Nothing.
“But do not become overconfident, fisherman. My escort, as you say, may prove more of a challenge than you anticipate.”
There was something in the tone of Tyjil’s voice that gave him pause and checked him.
“Tell me of my family!” Shane
again demanded.
“Oh, very well.” Tyjil put up his hands as if in surrender. “You would do well to forget them, though. You will not need them for motivation much longer. They will soon forget you, I am sure, yes?”
Shane took a step toward Tyjil, a menacing look radiating from him.
“Uh, uh, uh, now, now,” Tyjil admonished, his voice oozing with condescension. “I’m only trying to help you, my boy.” He reached inside his robe and produced a small rolled parcel of parchment. Shane snatched it from him. He unraveled it hastily and turned his back to Tyjil. The words were in his wife’s handwriting.
“We are all well and await your return, my love.”
Shane took in the message and had a few moments of blessed relief to the tension and stress that accompanied him almost constantly. He tightened his fist around the message and brought it to his chest as he gazed upward to the sky, a distant look upon him. Then he whirled on Tyjil.
“When was this written? How long ago? How do I know she wasn’t forced to write this and communicate false assurance?” Shane was shaking as he held the message in his clenched fist out toward Tyjil.
The Duke’s advisor, however, was not impressed and yawned as if bored.
“And now, I must take my leave. Hold fast, my son, and become very acquainted with Hold Therrium. It may likely be years before the next stage develops. You are a wood-dweller, true, but never forget to whom you truly belong.”
The old man looked to the west and said, “Maynard.” From the shadows stepped a large man with a thick, dark-hooded robe. The man walked with strength, Shane observed. It was a strange description, he thought, but could not think of another way to describe it. A vile power seemed to exude from this hooded figure. He could not see any part of this man, just the rough, blockish outline portrayed from beneath the long robe. Though he could not see the man’s face, Shane’s breath faltered, followed by a cold sweat on the back of his neck. Its presence was amplified by the wind, sending a chill through the wood-dweller’s torso.
“Years?” Shane asked. A shudder in his voice betrayed a feeling of desperation he was trying to conceal.
“Remember, Shane, only ponder on the how, not the what. You will be transfigured to whom you need to be, the High Duke’s instrument in bringing a new glorious age. But, you still need these next years to grow, to flourish within yourself.” With that, Tyjil turned and exited the hold with the hooded man in tow.
Shane lowered his head as the last slivers of fiery orange daylight dwindled to night.
FOURTEEN
Shilkath
Day 29 of 4th Low 407 A.U.
THE BORATHEIN NAHGI LEADER called his closest warriors together in his thickly insulated tent. Skins of all create lined the inside of the massive mobile structure. Shilkath had given up his grand palace over a decade ago as the changing land demanded it, but retained his mantle as Deklar among the people of his nahgi. Other nahgi had done the same. His people were forced to become nomadic and, although the Borathein were hardened by the centuries in a mostly fallow and frozen land, having refused to leave with their kin centuries before, the time had definitely come for change. For this purpose he called his nahgi’s warriors together in council. He would need them now for a great undertaking. Holy Vyath had shown him a path, one that would avenge their fallen kin and surely lead to the Shores of Thracia.
Shilkath’s tent, in the center of the nahgi, was large enough to accommodate a dozen families and their beasts, even several Alysaar. The winged animals stood as tall as the largest horse and then half again. Though their bodies resembled more a thick-scaled dog with a long neck and stunted stout, their most unique feature was a beard of sharp, jagged bones under the maw. Petting an Alysaar under the chin was simply out of the question.
Shilkath waited until the others had arrived before stoking a fire. Each warrior sat on a stone covered by at least one fur skin around the fire and waited. Their beards were long and full of evidences of their various conquests, some more decorated than others. None, however, surpassed Shilkath’s in weight or number of ornaments. Each symbol in his beard, crafted of bone and tanned skin, was in the shape of the family or nahgi’s name that had been defeated. The bone and skin needed to proclaim each victory had been harvested from among the defeated dead. Brutality was their way of life and the Deklar reveled in it.
When all had arrived and were seated, Shilkath opened the skins that hung over his shoulders and across his chest. A thick tunic was revealed underneath that he grabbed and rent halfway down from the top. The warriors gathered around him saw the gash across his chest, obviously a fresh wound that was barely a day old, if that. They said nothing but knew what he had done.
“I have sworn to the God of Vengeance a holy pact and undertaken a Griptha upon the altar of ice and bone this very day,” Shilkath announced. Some of the warriors looked down into the fire.
“We will unite the tribes,” he continued. “When we have their nahgi added to ours, we will cross the Ice Desert into the lands of our fallen kin and thrust them to the frozen plains of Kulbrar.” He was a man of deliberate words, not wasting the warm air inside him by speaking beyond what was necessary.
A younger warrior, Mindok, spoke. “The other nahgi will resist your leadership.”
“We will require it of them,” Shilkath answered.
“Great Shilkath, they will not heed your words. You are not their Deklar.”
To this, Shilkath stood and, without a word, exited the tent. The frigid evening air greeted him, clamoring for attention as it bit at his face’s exposed flesh, but the hard Deklar did not take notice. Only a few paces outside his tent, obediently sat his Alysaar. Hawgl grunted an acknowledgement as his master approached and shivered his wings.
“No,” Shilkath said. “We do not ride today.”
He felt Hawgl’s disappointment. His Alysaar was one of the largest Shilkath had ever seen, certainly the largest in his nahgi. The beast had proven immensely stubborn to break and many had failed before him, but Shilkath was not to be refused. By and by the beautiful winged weapon of an animal capitulated until the two had formed a bond that Shilkath felt was stronger than any he had with one of his own kind.
He pulled a knife free from its sheath and slashed two ropes that secured a large rolled bundle of blankets across the beast’s back. It fell to the frozen ground with a heavy thud. Hulking the mass over his right shoulder after sheathing his blade, he spoke a guttural command to the Alysaar, admonishing the creature to remain. It gave its agreement through a heavy exhaled shudder.
Entering the tent, the Deklar found that the scene around his fire had not changed. All were in silence, a few with uncertain looks manifested on their faces. Shilkath dropped his burden close to the fire and unrolled the blanket. Revealed inside was a dead man with a beard nearly as full as Shilkath’s.
Mindok, normally reserved, stood in surprise. “Is this not your cousin, Aksath? Is he not the Deklar of the Drabhine tribe?”
Prethor, Shilkath’s nephew, agreed, finding his flail and spear. “Surely their entire Drabhine nahgi will be upon us any moment!”
Instead of answering, Shilkath again freed his knife and sheared the dead man’s beard, an insult worthy of death. After this act, the Deklar proceeded to liberate three of the dead man’s fingers from his left hand and skinned them with a precision that would awe any warrior of the Borathein. Before many moments, the skin and tendons had been cut away, leaving just the bones and a bit of cartilage. Using strands from the hacked beard, Shilkath lashed the bones into a crude triangle that flexed slightly where the knuckles and joints were. Next, a patch of skin was extricated from the dead Deklar’s forehead in the shape of the Drabhine tribe’s sigil and was then fastened to the boney triangle. For good measure, Shilkath next removed both the man’s ears and secured one to each side of the base of the finger-boned triangle. Finally, he wove the concoction into his already heavily laden beard. All of this was done within less than half the time a lo
g smaller than a child’s forearm would have taken to be consumed in their fire.
“If I must, I will add the bones of each nahgi’s Deklar to my beard. I have sworn this Griptha to Vyath.” This was not spoken with vibrato or with raising fists to the skies. It was spoken with calm confidence and certainty. “Aksath did not understand. Now he does, as does his tribe. They are sworn to me as their new Deklar.”
The others were silent until Prethor again spoke.
“They are not weak, Uncle. Those who defeated our kin. Once you have united the tribes, are you sure we can conquer across the Ice Desert?”
“We don’t have a choice,” answered Bellathia, one of the many female warriors. She was perhaps their most skilled Alysaar rider. “Our lands will be completely uninhabitable within a decade.”
“They have been for decades already,” Shilkath corrected.
“We could look elsewhere,” Prethor said. “There have to be other lands we could discover.”
“No,” Deklar Shilkath snapped, visibly annoyed by this suggestion. Was Prethor afraid? “You forget the Griptha. This is not only about finding new land. My holy Pact of Vengeance has been made. Vyath rules in this.”
The Borathein had many gods, a wide pantheon. Vyath was the god of war and vengeance, and with whom Shilkath had made his pact, his Griptha, seeking Vyath’s blessing.
“Our brothers were betrayed more than four centuries ago,” Shilkath went on. “We did not know more than a hundred years after their fall that they were even extinct because of the Ice Desert’s rapid expanse. They fell by conquest, which is honorable in the sight of Vyath. Those who defeated them, these Senthary, gained the right of the land. But, the Arlethians, we know, still live, having betrayed our kin and joined the invaders. They have maintained their lands through treachery. We are strong enough now to erase all from the land below the Ice Desert and I sent forth our Javelin.”