by Matthew Ward
“—So? Without herb training it won’t help.”
“No. Let me finish. I can do it between any object. It doesn’t have to be through a focal point. It doesn’t have to be like with like.”
Drystn shook his head, looking more annoyed than before.
“That’s impossible. You just had a dream or something.”
He turned to walk back inside.
“Wait! Just let me show you really fast.”
“Eidr. We don’t have time.”
Eidr knew exactly what to say. “The bairsgn can do it.”
Drystn stopped. He stared off at the distance for a moment then turned toward Eidr.
“Okay fine. Just do it so we can get back.”
Drystn closed his eyes.
Eidr asked, “Are you ready?”
“Just do it!”
Eidr summoned the mental state that came so naturally to him now. He pulled spior from the rock next to Drystn. He cupped his mind around it and formed it into grass spior. He then pushed the spior into the grass in front of Drystn.
Drystn opened his eyes, wide with fright.
He gasped, “Holy shit. Do something else. I need to make sure this isn’t some fluke or trick. Don’t use a focal point this time. You said you could do that.”
“Okay. But you might not like it.”
Eidr pulled the spior from the grass then pushed it into Drystn. Drystn’s whole body spasmed.
Eidr said, “Oh, no. Are you okay? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Drystn jumped up. “Hurt me? That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever felt. Let’s get back now. You’re right. That may be of use.”
Drystn ran around. He had so much energy. He couldn’t seem to control it. They returned to the dwelling as Naethr carried the neighbor in. Drystn put his fingers on the man’s neck.
“He has a pulse. I’m not sure I can do much until he wakes. Put him over there, and I’ll keep an eye on him.”
Eidr walked outside. It turned out the triage wasn’t necessary. There were several injuries, but they came at a slow pace and only one was serious. A woman’s boiling stew had toppled onto her, and she came with full-body burns. The rest were similar to Eidr’s shoulder. Plunging debris or falling down were the cause of most of the visits.
When the trail of people subsided, the family returned to bed. They slept long. Eidr awoke to the sight of Drystn staring at him.
As Eidr opened his eyes, Drystn asked, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“No. What are you talking about?”
“We did it. You’re the secret weapon. With you we can probably defeat the bairsgn. I don’t quite know how to do it yet, but you can probably pull spior from the bairsgn. We need a way to drain it of its spior, and it will probably die. We have to get back to Talamir Center to tell the others and formulate a plan.”
Eidr wanted the bairsgn gone as much as Drystn, but this scared him. He was only ten. He couldn’t be the one to fight such a beast one on one. The adults that had trained for years needed to be the ones to do it. They had made vows for this type of thing. He could die. He didn’t want to die.
XVIII
The language came in bits and pieces over the months that Maedc spent in the mountain. One day, he found himself speaking fluently without needing to translate first. The realization pulled him out of the moment, and he floundered for a second while he tried to regain his state of mind. That was the day he decided he needed to solve the mystery of bathing once and for all.
He trudged his way up several floors of the mountain to the watering hole. He had all but ignored coming to the location for fear of inciting more panic among the bathers. Maedc sniffed an armpit and was revolted by how much it smelled.
He had resorted to going alone in the middle of the night a few times. Tumr, who didn’t seem to care how the locals reacted, bathed more regularly and would be grateful for Maedc’s newfound courage.
He felt confident he could finally get to the bottom of it now that he had language to help. He approached the waterfall with caution. A man hummed as he scrubbed himself with the hair tool.
Maedc took this as a sign he was in a good mood. He realized he had never heard someone from the First Age make music with an instrument. They sometimes sang to themselves, like this man, but never anything like in Talamir.
He waited for the man to finish washing, and when he knelt and kissed the stone, he said, “Praise be to the water that giveth life.”
The person got up and said goodbye to Maedc, but Maedc shouted back, “Wait!”
The person spun, still naked and confused. “What is it?” He looked like he expected some wild beast to be there on the attack.
Maedc calmed himself and said, “When I’ve bathed here in the past, people ran in fear when I entered the water. Why is that?”
“Did you give the water thanks?”
“I said the words you just said.”
“Not the words. Did you give the water thanks?”
Frustration tensed in Maedc’s gut. He understood the man’s words but not their meaning. What else could he be referring to? He needed a way to figure it out. The man gave him a pleading look, like he wanted to be excused from this conversation.
Maedc said, “Wait there and tell me what I’m doing wrong. Do not run away in fear.”
The man looked terrified at this suggestion.
He said, “I will try.”
He watched Maedc undress. Maedc knelt and kissed the rock and said, “Praise be to the water that giveth life.”
He then proceeded as he had seen everyone else. He stood and entered the water. The man’s face turned ghastly white as if he had witnessed blasphemy, but true to his word, he didn’t leave. What on Talamir? Maedc had followed the ritual exactly. These people were insufferable.
He kept calm and asked, “What is it? What did I do wrong?”
“Sir, you did not give the water your spior in thanks. The words are a mere formality.”
Oh, that’s why I couldn’t see what the difference was.
Maedc couldn’t believe this. He asked, “Everyone who bathes gives the water their spior each time? How does it not kill you over the course of a lifetime?”
“We, of course, only give a small amount, and then we take back new spior at the end. It is a part of becoming clean to take in clean spior. One who is not willing to part with spior in thanks to the water will be cursed by water. It is said you will die by drowning in a flood if you are so stingy with the water. I am sorry for your future.”
The man said this in such a matter of fact way, as if there was no doubt of its truth. He grabbed his clothes and ran off. Maedc decided it was only a silly superstition. He finished bathing. Since he didn’t have the Talent, he would never be able to properly thank the water. Something about this unsettled him.
As he bathed, he realized what unnerved him; he had just received confirmation that every single person living in the mountain could not only move spior, but move it from their body to other non-focal point sources and then back to their bodies.
Why didn’t they live forever? There would be accidents that resulted in early deaths, but no one should ever die from old age if they could keep giving themselves spior. Maedc suddenly felt his understanding of spior was severely limited. He finished washing and returned to his living area for the daily lesson.
A stunning surprise greeted him as he entered the area. Utk, their teacher, stood waiting, and Tumr was nowhere to be seen. She had on clothing that almost resembled a Talamir robe. It flowed around her in an elegant display of fashion.
He had never seen anyone in the mountain wear anything but separate leather top and bottom clothing. This was made of continuous material he had never seen before. Maedc’s heart beat faster, and he sheepishly moved closer.
He asked, “May I feel the cloth? I’ve never seen it before.”
These simple sentences came easily enough, despite the growing lump in his throat
.
She said, “Yes. Of course.”
He moved in and gently touched the sleeve near her wrist. His hand glided over the slick material. It was remarkable what people could produce when such a variety of resources were so easy to gather. Maedc’s hand accidentally brushed Utk’s wrist, and he quickly backed away. Heat flushed to his cheeks.
Utk smiled and gave a songful laugh.
She asked, “What’s wrong?”
Maedc couldn’t admit his embarrassment without telling her how strongly he had come to feel about her. He hadn’t even learned the proper words to express it. She had a beauty that came from her fullness. In Talamir, everyone subsisted on fish and grass products with a few vegetables and tart berries on special occasions. They walked everywhere, all the time.
In the mountain, people stayed in pretty much the same place. They ate meats and lush, sweet fruit that grew on trees. Maedc often felt sick from how much food he ate here. Still, almost no one was fat, but they all had a noticeable fullness to them. This fullness manifested itself in Utk through excruciating beauty. Now this clothing emphasized all the right parts of her body to awaken a tempestuous desire inside of him.
He wanted to tell her all this and more but only managed to squeak out, “Where’s Tumr?”
She said, “I think he is tired of reading from A Brief History of Talamir. He said he would go practice the language by shopping at the bazaar.”
So many questions rose to Maedc’s mind, but he decided to ask the least intrusive one.
“I’ve been wondering for a long time why the book calls the place I’m from Talamir, but everyone in the mountain calls it Tr.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it. I guess it probably got shortened at some point.”
His mind was elsewhere, but it didn’t quite make sense. The Second Age came after the First, so why wasn’t it the Second Age with the shortened version?
Now that he was talking, he dared push further with a compliment. “You look really nice. Are you dressed this way for a reason?”
She smiled again, and Maedc thought he might faint.
“Yes. Actually, we’re going somewhere special today. We should hurry. We might be late.”
Utk grabbed his hand and dragged Maedc up the mountain. He tried not to read too much into it. The First Age people touched each other all the time. His weak legs had trouble climbing at the speed she wanted to go. He didn’t want to let go of her hand to catch his breath, though, so he pressed on.
They walked across one of the flat areas to a place Maedc hadn’t noticed before. The back section had another false wall enclosing a large area. A crowd had gathered and was seated on the floor. They all faced a slightly raised area where a group of men stood facing them. The men had on some sort of uniform, because they were all dressed the same with fancy headdresses on. It was then that Maedc recalled Tkz wearing the same that first day for the sacrifice ceremony.
Maedc suddenly forgot about touching Utk. Panic rushed through him as he realized this must be another ceremony. They might even be planning on sacrificing him to give his spior to the rest of the people seated there. He needed to get out of that room right away. Even if someone else was about to be sacrificed, he didn’t want to see it happen again. The first sacrifice still gave him nightmares.
Maedc looked around for a way to sneak out. He needed an excuse right away, but he couldn’t think of one. Utk noticed something was wrong. She held his hand up and wiped at the sweat. She said a word. She rubbed the sweat again and said the word again.
Maedc said it back when he realized she was trying to teach him the word for sweat.
She asked, “Why do you sweat?”
He whispered back, “What is this? I’m scared.”
The shame at having to admit this to her came as a blazing tightness in his chest. Utk laughed her beautiful laugh, and Maedc relaxed at the sound.
Her gentle voice asked, “Why? There is no need to be afraid. It is a, oh, you don’t know the word.”
She hummed a song. Huh?
She said, “Just sit. You’ll see.”
Maedc looked at the room and realized everyone was staring at them. They had made quite a disruptive entrance. A few of the men in the front glared at him. He cautiously sat, and Utk held his hand tighter, bringing much needed comfort.
Then it began. Maedc had never experienced anything quite like it. Within seconds, he was transported to a different place. The men began to sing. The words were irrelevant. He had been wrong about the First Age and music.
The instrumental music that the Second Age produced with their reed recorders and grass flutes seemed so childish. They had simple songs for dancing and entertainment, but it never occurred to him, until this moment, that people could sing together. It never occurred to him that music could make him feel something. Music was for fun.
The voices mingled together into strange and beautiful harmonies, unlike anything the Second Age had ever produced. The collected sounds ran through his body creating a visceral reaction. He briefly thought he was receiving spior again, but then dismissed this idea. Somehow the way the melodies flowed over each other, often resulting in harsh clashes of tension, stirred something deep within him without the aid of spior.
All of a sudden, the flowing melodies broke off into one huge, uniform block of power. The sound washed over him. He had lost all sense of himself and became one with the sound. It was all that mattered. He could have died without struggle in that moment. Tears flowed from his eyes, and bumps formed across his skin. The sound of a thousand people crying in unified agony swept the space. How could sound alone do this to a person?
Then it ended. Maedc saw Utk look at him out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t move. His tears had almost stopped, but he still couldn’t speak. It was too much to process. Instead, he got up and cowered around the corner to where no one could see him and slid to the ground.
A few seconds later, Utk came out.
She asked, “What is wrong?”
Maedc still shook from the experience, and he realized he held his hand to his heart, as if it were about to break.
He said, “I don’t know. I’ve never experienced anything like that. It hurts, I think.”
She smiled and sat next to him.
“Do not worry. It is okay. It means you are human.”
She leaned in and kissed him. It was only on the cheek, a custom among friends in the First Age. Maedc searched her eyes to see if she felt something more: if she felt the same way he did. A glimmer in her eye caught his attention. He took this for a sign and leaned in and kissed her on the lips. He gave in to her and the moment stretched out before him, the sadness from the song a distant memory.
Then she pulled away. She took his hand, and he relaxed. She said, “We must go back in now. The next song will begin shortly.”
She tugged him to his feet, and they reentered the performance area. The songs moved him again, but they were much less intense. Maedc worried that he had lost the chance at such an experience again by fretting over what the kiss meant.
He kept obsessing over it and never got transported away by the music like the first time. The most fascinating aspect was how notes he would have considered mistakes in Talamir were the exact ones that moved him the most. They created harsh dissonances in exactly the right way.
After the performance ended, they walked back to Maedc’s living area, hand in hand. They walked in the relaxed, joyous stride of new lovers: shoulders bumping, hips knocking, gentle and affectionate physical contact. Maedc worried that Tumr would be back and wreck his chances at any intimate time together.
When they rounded the corner to the living space, they found something much more shocking. Tkz stood there. Utk immediately pulled away and bowed to him. Maedc’s heart pounded. She had probably broken some rule by kissing him, and now she would be removed from her position. His heart cried out. He hadn’t meant to get her in trouble. How had the news spread so quick
ly? It must have been one of the annoyed people at the performance.
Tkz said, “I see the studies are going well.”
Utk looked up.
She said, “Yes. They are both near fluent.”
Maedc tried to think of something to contribute to prove it and said, “Yes. It goes well.”
Maedc kicked himself for being so inarticulate. The sound of scuffling feet reflected through the area. Tumr come around the corner.
Tkz said, “Good. You’re both here. I have important news.”
XIX
Drystn didn’t know how to break the news to Ahl and Naethr with the type of delicacy that such a profound discovery deserves, so he just said it.
“Can you please sit down for a moment?”
Ahl and Naethr gave each other worried looks. They sat, and Drystn said, “Your son is very special. He has an ability I’ve never seen before. He has an ability that shouldn’t even be possible. It breaks everything we know about spior.”
Ahl shocked Drystn by acting angry. He expected pride or excitement. They had produced the most powerful spiorist in the history of the Second Age. She stood and leaned toward Drystn with fierce intensity.
“What does that mean: breaks spior?”
Drystn laughed.
He said, “No, no. He doesn’t break spior, though I guess that’s one way to phrase what he can do. He can move spior in ways that go against the Laws of Spior.”
“What do you mean? He was tested for the Talent, and he didn’t have it.”
Drystn had calmed down now that the conversation flowed. Still, he felt pressure to speed this along. This was what they had been waiting for. They had a weapon that could possibly defeat the bairsgn before it destroyed all of Talamir.
Drystn said, “He most certainly has the Talent. Trust me. I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s able to do things that we were told at school no one could do.”
Ahl pressed on. “But how did this happen?”
“I have no idea.”
Something did feel off about all of this. Drystn thought back to his own discovery of the Talent. It would be highly unlikely that Eidr had this powerful form of the Talent and went undetected. Drystn’s wasn’t even a fraction of this powerful, and he had accidentally killed all sorts of plants in his youth. Everyone he knew had the same sort of experience; it was how the tester knew in a single day of observation. Drystn turned to Eidr.