by Thomas Rath
Tam sighed. “Mush again? Isn’t there anything else I can have?”
He shook his head. He’d been feeding her ever since she’d been waking long enough to eat and she always asked the same question. He figured it should have worn him to anger by now but the cute little pout she made with her mouth always made him feel strange inside. Not angry, not even upset, just…strange.
“You know the rules,” he finally said, suddenly feeling a little uncomfortable with himself—and with her. “Kat and Bren still think its best you have this. They think it will help you…” he stopped. He didn’t know how to say it. How do you gently say something like ‘it will help you not have another maniacal episode’? He couldn’t think of any other way to say it and was about to just blurt it out when she rescued him—or more like took him from one uncomfortable situation to another.
“Kat and Bren,” she huffed. “Is there anything else you can talk about besides those two?”
He shrugged pushing the spoonful of mush into her mouth.
“You watch out for that Kat girl, Dor,” Tam warned, slopping the mush around in her mouth before forcing it down. “She’s had her eyes on you for a time. And the way she treats me when you’re not around, well.”
Dor suddenly felt his face get warm, figuring it must be from the steaming mush, but feeling even more uncomfortable all the same. “I…I…she…well, I think you’re just not quite yourself yet.”
Tam took another bite and then rested her head back onto her pillow. “You’re right about that,” she said, completely letting go of what they were just talking about. She’d been like that. Her mind never stayed on the same thing for very long. Bren said that it was a side effect of the dranlok. “Do you think much about, Thane?” she suddenly asked.
He looked into the bowl of mush and moved it around with the spoon. “All the time,” he sighed.
Tam’s eyes suddenly glazed and got distant. “So do I. I miss him. He always made me laugh. Of anyone, he always made me feel like a real person.”
Dor suddenly felt even stranger than before. He was confused. It was like Tam’s words were making him angry with Thane. But, why? How could he be angry with Thane? He didn’t like the way her voice sounded either when she spoke of him. The way she said his name was much softer and warmer than the way she said his. “Haven’t I always been nice to you, too?” he asked and then regretted the question. Of course he hadn’t been. She’d always been a terrible nag. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been more than happy to see her leave, until now, anyway. He didn’t know if it was because of her situation but he suddenly felt sorry for how he’d always treated her.
Tam just snorted. But before she could answer, Kat burst through the door. Dor sighed in relief, missing the angry look that Tam shot him but not failing to catch the one Kat turned on him. “So there you are,” she snapped. “I should have known you’d be here. With her,” she nodded her head towards Tam.
Dor felt like he could feel thunderclouds gathering just over his head and suddenly had an incredible urge to flee the room. “Where else would I be?” he asked dumbly but in a soft voice. “It’s breakfast time. You know I always feed Tam.”
Kat guffawed. “Can’t someone else do it?”
He shrugged. “Well, Bren is too busy with others seeking healing and you never, well, you never want to. So I guess that leaves me. Does that upset you?”
Tam just glared at the other girl thinking that she was lucky that her hands and feet were tied or she would have made it so she couldn’t eat anything but mush for quite a long time.
Kat looked offended. “Angry? I’m not angry. I just thought you might want to spend your time doing something useful, like learning a new Tane.”
Dor’s face lit up. “Are you and Bren ready?” Ever since he’d learned that Bren and Kat had both picked up some of the talents of the other Tane he’d been jumping out of his skin to see if he couldn’t also learn something. Both had promised to teach him when they had the time.
“Yes,” Kat smiled. “That is why I’ve been looking for you.” She reached out and touched his arm.
Tam coughed and Dor looked back at her, her face suddenly very pretty as she smiled at him. His excitement dissipated slightly and he looked again at the bowl in his hands and then back at Kat. “As soon as I finish feeding Tam I’ll be there. Just give me a few more minutes.”
Kat’s face darkened and she shot a quick, angry look at Tam before she turned on her heals, and without another word, stalked out of the room slamming the door behind her. Tam smiled openly, turning it on Dor as he again lifted the spoon for her.
* * *
“There’s no other choice, Myles,” Jack said his voice rising in frustration. “You have to evacuate the city. You have to get these people out!”
Braxton turned on him, his own face red with emotion. “And where do you propose that I send them?” he retorted with equal force. “I can’t just command them to go and push them out through the gates. We’ve been over this too many times, Jack. I can do nothing. Without the king’s command, I can’t send them out.” Braxton put his hands to his face in frustration and then sank back into his chair behind his desk. He and Jack had, for the last hour, been arguing in his tiny office and he was suddenly feeling very much like a trapped animal. He wanted out, but knew there was nowhere for him to go. He, with all the other people in the fortress town, was stuck.
“Send them to Calandra. Send them to Tigford. In Dren’s name, send them to Hell’s End Station. There’s nobody there anymore. Send them anywhere, but get them out!”
The colonel’s fist came down hard onto his desk. “Why do you pester me like this, old man? You know that I can’t do it. It would be treason to go against the king. And you know that until he gives the word, the best I can do is hold Haykon until it is overrun.”
Jack sprang from his chair and leaned forward on Braxton’s desk. “It is overrun,” he spat. “And it will be with blood if these people are forced to stay.”
Braxton sighed. “No one is forcing them to stay. You know that, Jack. But I can’t declare the fort ‘quit’ without the king’s order. We don’t even know for certain that we will be attacked. Please, we have been friends for longer than I care to remember, but if you are not willing to take up your own responsibilities, then you cannot ask me to shirk mine.” He knew that his words cut deep, but he was feeling just as frustrated and trapped by King Dagan’s incompetence as was Jack. The difference was that Jack could do something about it while he could not.
Jack sat back down, his manner revealing the obvious hurt he felt by Braxton’s accusing words. He knew that his friend was right but it didn’t change how he felt.
“Look, Jack,” Braxton started, his voice apologetic, “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, no,” Jack interrupted, “you’re right. You are a noble man. It is I who has let these people down. I see that now, but at the time….” He let his voice trail off.
“That is past, my friend. Let’s not concentrate on what has been or what might be. Let us figure out what we will do now.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Maybe there is hope still.” He knew that his words were empty but he said them anyway hoping that to hear them would convince him that they were true. Even though Myles had voiced doubt that they would be attacked, both knew it was only a matter of time. They could go south and attack the Tjal in the Great Plains of Enn but that was more than doubtful. The Tjal could scatter before such a host without losing a single person. But Haykon, here they were meat in a corral just waiting to be slaughtered.
Although Braxton called his command a fort, the glory of Haykon was many years past. The great city that was once a real fort and outpost similar to Hell’s End had become, over the years, just another large city with a wall around it. Their only real hope was the wall at the pass. Once past that, the trolls and goblins would roll over them without mercy leaving none left to tell the story. They needed more help and more ti
me.
But Braxton was right. They couldn’t just send the people away without a place to go. Most had lived their entire lives here with their families. To send them out alone, without an army to guard them, would invite certain death should the trolls and goblins attack while they were in the open. There were also rumors spreading now that the orcs had left the Underwoods and were heading north in mass. “We need a larger wall.”
Myles sighed. “I’ve got all the men I can spare working on it now. It will be as large as they can make it before,” he caught himself, “if we’re attacked.”
* * *
“Try again,” Bren insisted.
Dor had been trying for the past two hours to ignite a tiny pile of dried wood shavings using the QenChe word that drew fire but he had not even been able to get a brief spark or wisp of smoke. He would have had greater luck by just putting them into the direct sunlight than he was trying to use a Tane that was not his own. He sighed. This was not what he thought it would be. He felt ridiculous now for even thinking he could do it.
He and Bren were alone in a tiny courtyard just outside of his and Tam’s sleeping quarters. To her chagrin, Bren had sent Kat on an errand to check on a newborn, knowing all too well that to have her around would completely destroy Dor’s concentration.
“Feel the wood beneath your hand,” Bren continued as Dor put his hand back on top of the shavings. “Feel the emptiness there that is created by death. Feel the lack of spirit and pull the fire into it. It’s right there waiting. All you have to do is say the word and help it through.”
Dor felt the wood beneath his hand but was having difficulty in sensing any lack of spirit. His Tane dealt with water. Water was alive. He’d never touched “dead” water before, if there was even such a thing. He understood the reasoning behind the whole process but was unable to connect it to anything in his own experience to help him understand what it was he was supposed to be feeling. Bren had been very patient, but it was obvious that he too was starting to feel a little frustrated at Dor’s inability to feel the death in the wood. Bren had even had him grasp the leaves of a living plant to try and help him feel the difference but it did nothing for him.
“Shonosh.” The word slipped out of his mouth, as if on its own, and his hand suddenly began to burn. Excited, he looked down expecting to see a small fire burning amongst the tinder but was disappointed to find the wood still lying in a pile, undisturbed. “But my hand,” he complained. Turning it over he instantly found the reason for the burning sensation he was feeling. A red fire ant had crawled in amongst the shavings and was taking out its aggression of being smashed by clinging to Dor’s hand with its oversized pinchers. Brushing the ant away, he looked at Bren, his face betraying the disappointment he felt.
“Maybe we should quit for today, Dor,” Bren said, his voice flat but revealing his own doubts all the same. “It is not an easy thing to feel a Tane that has been dormant in you your whole life.”
“Dormant?” Dor shot, his voice harder than he had wanted. “What do you mean, dormant? I don’t have this Tane. I’m MarGua remember? The antithesis of QenChe.” Then his face suddenly brightened. “That’s it!”
“What?” Bren asked, uncertain how his complete failure could elicit such a response.
“I’m the antithesis of QenChe. That must be it. There is no way that I can pull fire because water is completely opposite and against it.”
Bren shrugged. “I don’t think that is right, although you are of pure blood where I am not. So, I guess there could be some truth to it. Because you are pure MarGua, you may be incapable of learning anything else.”
Dor’s face dropped. He’d been so excited about the idea of learning another Tane that it had never occurred to him that his purity in one might eliminate him from another.
“Or maybe you just need to change what and how you think,” Bren added, his face dark as if deep in thought.
Dor looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“You’re right when you say you are the antithesis of fire. Water and fire cannot coexist because they operate differently. They are contradictory forces; opposites.”
“That’s brilliant,” Dor mocked. “So?”
“So,” Bren replied, not missing Dor’s sarcasm, “you must be the opposite of who you are. You must turn all around and go in the opposite direction. Think of your water Tane and then do the contrary.”
Dor screwed up his face in thought, digesting Bren’s words and his theory. It sounded reasonable. Do the opposite of water to obtain the opposite result—fire. But what was the opposite. He could not create water so he could not do the reverse to create fire. He could sense if it was good. He could sense how pure it was. He could even live under the water for extended periods of time, but he never really thought on how he did it; he just did. His body reacted to water naturally. There had to be a connection somewhere, something that tied them together. Something he could work with. “Oxygen!”
Bren had been eyeing him curiously trying to come up with his own solution when Dor’s shout startled him. “Oxygen?”
“Yes,” Dor said, the answer seeming so simple now. “Oxygen is the common ground. Think about it. All of the five Tane deal in some way with oxygen. The blood carries it, the earth creates it through its plants, the wind moves it around, fire eats it and water stores it. It’s got to be the answer.”
Bren nodded, catching on to Dor’s excitement and building it into his own. “You’re right. But how do we use it? How do we figure out how to make it work for you?”
“Water stores it and fire eats it,” Dor repeated, pinching his lip. “My natural tendency must be to store oxygen; to preserve it.”
“So,” Bren broke in, following Dor’s line of thinking, “you have to go from storing it to eating it. You have to go against your natural tendencies of storing oxygen.”
“Right,” Dor’s face brightened. “That must be why only MarGua can stay under water for so long. We store oxygen. So all I have to do is go against that and let it release, or be eaten, as it were. Give it away to create fire.”
Bren smiled. “I think you have it, in theory, that is. But can you put it to action?”
Dor shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
He spent the next fifteen minutes trying to go against his natural instincts and release the oxygen instead of store it but he was still treading on unfamiliar ground. It was still something that was completely opposite and different from whom he was. It made him feel like he was betraying an old friend.
Closing his eyes he again put his hand on the wood and felt it against his skin, still burning from the ant bite. He concentrated hard trying to force himself to give away the oxygen but it was no use. He couldn’t sense anything familiar in it. Opening his eyes he looked at the plant that Bren had had him touch earlier.
A thought suddenly came to him. “Maybe,” he whispered and reached out for the plant. Touching it gently, he tried to find the common ground in it. Tried to feel the water, the oxygen that was created there and released. He felt for the exhale. His hand shook with anticipation as it hovered on the tender leaf just barely touching the skin. Something was there. It was not totally familiar but yet was still not completely foreign. Oxygen. It had to be. It was there, but without it’s hydrogen counterpart it felt incomplete. It felt uncomfortable. His first reaction was to hold onto it, to try and turn it back into the plant. The opposite he said over and over again in his mind. Let it go. Release it. Feed it to the fire.
He battled with himself for a long moment. It repulsed him to even think about doing it. It was contrary. It was not who he was. It was acting against himself. It was right there and he knew he could manipulate it, but his MarGua Tane revolted against him doing so.
His whole body was starting to shake now and beads of sweat began pouring down his face. He could do this. He could make this work. Be contrary. Be the opposite. Suddenly, his lips parted and a single word escaped just barely above a whisper.
“Shonosh.” He’d said it and beneath his hand a pocket of flame briefly flared out around his fingers before blowing itself out in a tiny puff. Almost immediately he lurched forward and emptied his stomach onto the ground.
Bren was instantly by his side prattling back and forth between “you did it” and “are you all right?”
Dor lifted a hand to wave him away and then rolled over, his face blanched with a line of spittle running to his chin. “I feel dirty.”
“Of course, you do,” Bren grinned. “You are lying in the dirt.”
Dor shook his head. “No, I feel dirty inside. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t do that again.”
“But you did do it,” Bren pressed excitedly. “You were able to go against your Tane and force out that of another. After all your hard work, you should be ecstatic.”
Dor pushed himself onto his hands, the color very slowly returning to his face. “Yes, I know, but I don’t. I feel undone.” He wiped the bile off his lip and then turned away and spit. “I don’t think the QenChe Tane is right for me. Not if I have to feel like this every time I use it.”
* * *
Dor stared down at Tam, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she slept soundly. Not long before he’d been awakened by her screams as she threw another fit wrestling against her restraints and spitting out at him every foul word she could think of. Her eyes had burned with pure hatred as she promised to get loose and kill him for keeping her from it. He would die, she yelled, for taking hers away.
He just watched her, almost in tears with pity for what she was suffering. Wanting to grab her and hold her and make it all better but knowing that to get too close would almost certainly end his life. He didn’t quite know why, but even though he knew it was the dranlok that was making her say all those things about him, it still hurt to hear her say them.