A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings Book 1)

by Kevin Hearne

  Kallindra and the young man—perhaps her brother?—had been killed by slashes to their throats. The blood had stained her tunic and pooled underneath her neck, where her hair had become mired in it.

  “Gondel. We need to be leaving,” Ponder’s voice floated into my consciousness and hung there until I could attach some significance to it.

  “What?”

  “Look.” I turned around and saw that there were more Eculans coming from the city. Many more, too many to count. “I can’t handle that many without resorting to violence.”

  I wanted to tell him to resort to it immediately. Summon winds to lift them high in the air, as my brother had to the Hathrim, and let them fall to their deaths. These monsters had no regard for peace. But it was not my place to give such orders, and even if it was, it wouldn’t be in keeping with Reinei’s teachings.

  “Her journal,” I muttered to myself. “Where is her journal?” If she had kept up with it, I might learn what had happened after I left her. I found it lying on her belly, her left arm draped over it as if to shield it from violation. I slipped it out and squeezed her cold hand. “I am so sorry, Kallindra. I hope you and your family are not haunting the winds here. Be at peace. Your story will be told.”

  “Scholar, we really need to go!” Ponder said.

  “Coming!”

  I scrambled out as best as I could, fingers pinched tightly around the journal, and Ponder lifted us up and away from the reach of the Eculans. The wind didn’t carry us back toward Setyrön, however, which surprised me. Ponder instead floated us out over the harbor and set us down on the deck of one of the anchored Eculan ships, well out of spear range but still within their sight. They could try swimming out after us if they wished or board a boat to chase us, but it didn’t matter. We’d have plenty of time to react to anything they tried.

  “What do you want to do now?” Ponder asked.

  “Report to Setyrön that Möllerud is actively occupied and all their party is lost.”

  “Should we do that, though, when they might see us depart and decide to follow us to Setyrön?”

  “I don’t think it will make a difference,” I said. “They already knew the people they slaughtered came from that direction. And they saw us coming from that direction as well. We won’t be giving them any new information. But Setyrön doesn’t know about this. They should be warned.”

  “Very well. And after that?”

  “We will head north. Continuing to seek information here will lead us both into a situation where we must break the peace. Let us visit Göfyrd and then the capital. Trading facts with the pelenaut might be fruitful.”

  The tempest nodded but said nothing. He folded his arms and frowned at the pale bodies collecting at the shore.

  “Ponder?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know of any way to give the spirits you see here some measure of peace?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I wish I did, Gondel.”

  As if in answer the wind picked up and howled about our ears. I couldn’t bear to stand anymore, and I crumpled to the floor of the boat, hugging Kallindra’s journal to my chest, a record of a now-extinct way of life. Once again, I had been too late to be of any help to the Brynts. I had to find some way to leap ahead of the Eculans and anticipate their next move or I would be doing nothing but writing their histories.

  The bard sighed heavily when he dissolved his seeming. “That is, of course, how I came to know of the contents of Kallindra’s journal. Gondel Vedd brought it here to Pelemyn. Tomorrow we’ll have more from Abhi and revisit Culland du Raffert.”

  Tidal pools can mirror life at times, for they are simultaneously a place of beauty and wonder, yet occupied by horrors with teeth and there is no place to escape them. After I returned home from the bard’s performance, I felt trapped in one.

  Elynea had found a job and was positively beaming about it, her face and indeed her entire body transformed by the personal victory. But since this came as a complete surprise to me and I had walked in expecting to say that I had a job waiting for her if she wanted it, my face wasn’t suffused with unadulterated joy when she said, “Isn’t that great?”

  It was only a second or two’s delay, if that, for me to let go of my expectations and embrace her good news. But she noticed. When I said, “Oh, yes. Of course! That’s fantastic!” she frowned and folded her arms across her chest.

  “Are you sure? You don’t seem that thrilled.”

  “No, I am! Honestly, congratulations. Sorry, I was just surprised because I was about to say I’ve found a job for you if you wanted it.”

  She cocked her head. “When did I ever ask you to get a job for me, Dervan?”

  “Well, never—”

  “That’s right. I never asked. Because I didn’t want your help. I wanted to get a job on my own, and I did. Drown me if I didn’t.”

  “And that’s wonderful! Seriously. I’m very happy for you. Please forgive me my presumption. Tell me about your job.”

  She eyed me for a moment, uncertain of my sincerity, and I admit that it hurt. It was a pain I’ve felt before—wounded pride, perhaps? Far too simple a label but perhaps close enough. It was more accurately an intellectual awareness that I was wrong, a fervent desire to be right from the start and go back in time to be right, coupled with an awareness that I couldn’t do that and that in fact wishing to do so was stupid and immature, piled on top of the stupidity I already felt for assuming Elynea would want my help, and underneath it all an irrational desire to lash out in anger at Elynea when she had done nothing wrong and in truth I was angry at myself.

  Sarena had trained me to identify at least what was going on in my head. She could tell what I was thinking and feeling because she’d seen the same things in the faces of men around the world. It didn’t stop me from feeling any of it, but it did stop me from acting on those things the way many men would. So I restrained myself from making it worse and did what I knew to be right: give Elynea nothing but encouragement. When she was convinced I wanted to hear about it, she unfolded her arms and clasped her hands together, beaming and bobbing up and down on her toes.

  “I’m formally apprenticed to a Fornish master woodworker! Eee!” She gave up the bouncing and did some full-on jumps, and that set off her kids. Tamöd and Pyrella leapt around the house, delighted because their mother’s mood was so infectious, making high-pitched noises of joy and laughing.

  I congratulated her again; she thanked me and then said that some post had arrived for me and she’d put it on my desk to keep it safe from the playing kids. That was my chance to escape with a shred or two of my dignity intact, and I withdrew to investigate, closing the door behind me and sighing.

  “Brilliant, Dervan,” I said aloud. Maybe the letter would make me feel better.

  It bore the seal of the university, and I gave a surprised grunt. That was an impressively quick response. I tore it open, nearly as excited as the children for a moment, but my face quickly fell. Greetings, and then:

  “I regret to inform you that while the university will open again, it will do so at greatly diminished capacity and your services will not be required.” I read that three times in mounting disbelief before continuing. “I hear that you have secured other important work during the hiatus, and I hope you will continue to find that fulfilling and prosperous.” Best wishes and the signature of the chief scholar of my department. My hands gripped the edges of the letter so tightly that my fingers turned white at the edges and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth.

  He had heard? What had he heard, and from whom? Was this the hand of the Wraith at work, making sure I had nothing else to do but work for him—or the Lung or the pelenaut—from now on?

  I had to sit down and rest my face in my hands, letting the letter fall. My temporary employment by the government was supposed to be just that: temporary. I’d spent the majority of my professional life as a scholar and introduced myself as such; my identity was bound up with a job that made
me feel proud and useful. What was I now? Certainly not a soldier, though I seemed to be in their company more often than not these days. And I couldn’t tell people I was a spy even if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to. No: I was definitely not a spy. The last thing I wanted was to follow my wife into an abyss of plots and deception and poisons.

  Rölly might intervene if I asked, but I’d be ashamed to play on that association any more than I already had. Asking him to help after the university closed was what had washed me into this tidal pool in the first place. And I had the uncomfortable feeling that this arrangement was what he preferred anyway.

  There was a soft knock at my door, and Elynea called through it, “Dervan? Are you hungry? I feel like cooking if you want.”

  Mastering my voice into something amiable, I replied, “Ah, yes, that would be grand. I’ll be out to help in a moment.”

  I took a couple of deep breaths. Elynea’s example might be the one for me to follow. She had reinvented herself; it had not been without effort, true, or a good measure of pain, but she’d proved that it could be done. Opening the door of my room, I paused at the threshold so that I wouldn’t interrupt a family moment. Elynea was chopping up a carrot on a board in the kitchen, and Pyrella had frozen, staring at her. It was her intensity of expression that had caused me to freeze as well. Tamöd caught on and stopped jumping up and down on the couch, where he’d been singing the Current Chorus. The abrupt silence made Elynea look up to see what was wrong.

  “What is it, Pyrella?” she said.

  “You’re cooking?” her daughter asked, her voice tiny.

  Elynea shrugged. “Yes. You want to eat tonight, don’t you?”

  “But you haven’t cooked in a long time.”

  Elynea looked down at the chopped-up vegetables and the knife in her hand, suddenly realizing it was true. Her shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Pyrella said. “I’m just noticing. And I’m glad. Because it’s like you’re back now.”

  The knife clattered to the counter as Elynea rushed around the counter to give Pyrella a hug. They were already sobbing as they embraced, and Tamöd’s mouth dropped open; he was too young to understand. As I eased backward into my room and slowly shut the door, I heard him say, “Hey! What’s going on?”

  Feeling guilty about eavesdropping but telling myself it was necessary so that I didn’t stomp through an important time for healing, I waited until their voices resumed their happy tones and I could hear the knife thwacking on the cutting board again. Then I cleared my throat noisily as I exited my room and joined them.

  Over dinner I asked if they had heard that the pelenaut had declared Festwyf open for resettlement. Elynea nodded. “But you won’t be going back?”

  The kids looked to their mother, perhaps a bit worried, and she caught it. “No,” she replied. “I’ve lived there long enough and for even longer in my mind. I’m here now. We are here now. Time to live in the present and be thankful for what’s in front of us.”

  Pyrella beamed at her mother. “I’m thankful.”

  Tamöd asked, “Is there going to be pudding in front of us after this?”

  Fintan and I revisited the Kaurian restaurant where the bard had first been recognized in public. We were not so lucky as to arrive just after a shipment of oranges this time, and the menu had most of its meat entrees crossed out, replaced by new seafood dishes. They were all prepared with dry Kaurian spices and sometimes slivers of Kaurian tree nuts either baked on or garnishing the fillets. Kindin Ladd, the Priest of the Gale, was enjoying his lunch there, and we waved to each other across the dining room and traded smiles.

  The bard looked a little weary under his eyes and I inquired if he had slept well. He shook his head.

  “The nightmares were bad last night.”

  I pursed my lips, considering. I knew that many people suffered lingering mental effects after something terrible happened to them—how could they not?—and that it took many forms. Their tempers flared quickly, or they withdrew and shut down the way Elynea had until recently, or they had nightmares or vivid flashbacks of whatever trauma they experienced, or all that and more. Regardless, it crippled them to some extent. My panic attacks and nightmares about gravemaws hounded me for years and then ebbed thanks to a Kaurian principle Rölly told me about. Deciding that neither of us had anything to lose, I brought it up.

  “Have you ever heard of the Kaurian practice of presence?”

  “I’ve heard of it, but I’m not too clear on the concept. Why?”

  “It helped me reduce the number and frequency of my nightmares. Or maybe it was simply a matter of time, as I suggested yesterday, though I still get them every once in a while. The problem with such horror is that some things, once seen, can never be unseen. Since you pointed out that your memories won’t fade over time and I think practicing presence helped me, perhaps it might help you, too.”

  “I don’t know,” Fintan said. “If it’s associated with Reinei, I might offend the Triple Goddess.”

  “It’s not a religious practice at all,” I assured him, “though of course the Church of Reinei condones anything that leads to peace, including personal peace of mind. It is simple to adapt by those of other faiths or of no faith at all. I could try to explain, but I might not do it justice. There’s a Priest of the Gale a few tables over whom I know. Would you mind if I invited him to briefly outline the practice?”

  Fintan shrugged. “Sure.”

  I waved to catch Kindin’s attention and beckoned him over. After introducing him to Fintan, I asked him to explain presence and its benefits to us as laypeople.

  “Certainly. May I sit? I will stay only a small while.”

  We begged him to be seated, and he thanked us.

  “Outside the Church of Reinei,” he began, “presence is a therapeutic practice that suggests one should make a conscious effort to live in the present. The reasons for this deserve to be examined regardless of one’s faith. We begin with this observation: That which tends to cause us mental distress is either memories of the past or worries about the future. In such times we are not living in the present; we are missing the peace and fulfillment in every moment because our mind is absent in some other time that lies behind us or ahead. To amend this—to ease the distress we feel—we must train ourselves to be mindful of the now.” Kindin leaned back and grinned. “Open your senses to this instant, friends. Is it not fine? The clank of pans and the hiss of heat from the kitchen. The chimes dangling in the wind outside the door that we can hear, a muffled yet insouciant song of the wind. The smell and taste of your food and the bounty of the ocean that makes it possible. The craftsmanship on display in this building and this very table, a beautiful hardwood improved from my home. The company you are keeping, Fintan—a Brynt and a Kaurian, with darker skin and different cultures from yours but still men who love and mourn and exult in the sun as you do. To be present, you note these things instead of ignore them. You allow—no, let me rather say, you encourage the wonders of the moment to occupy your thoughts rather than your past or future.”

  “All right; that sounds fine in theory,” Fintan replied, “but if I’m to achieve that, isn’t that some form of repression? I can’t prevent thoughts of the past or future from happening. They won’t simply go away.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not suggesting that!” The priest straightened in his chair, his hands held up in a placating gesture. “I’m suggesting that what you may be doing instead is repressing the present, and your path to peace is to simply stop doing that.” He spread his arms wide. “Open yourself to it instead. Give this particular time its due.” He dropped his hands and hunched forward, his eyes boring into Fintan’s. “And then, when these unpleasant thoughts of the past or the future inevitably intrude, you note them, as you do the present, but when they are placed next to the present and the beauty of this world, you will also note they are not nearly as important as they once were.” His intensity faded, and he
smiled again as his body relaxed in his chair. “I am told that practicing presence has helped many people with troubled pasts. Their feelings of anxiety and panic decrease, and they even experience fewer nightmares if that is something that afflicts them. I hope it works for you as well.”

  Fintan gave him a tight nod. “Thank you very much.”

  “Should you wish further instruction, perhaps some specific techniques, you may visit or leave word for me at the Kaurian embassy,” Kindin said, taking his cue. He rose from his chair and gave a little bow. “Please breathe peace.”

  When he was out of earshot, the bard chuckled. “I feel better already.” He nodded and said more sincerely, “Thank you, Dervan. That might actually help. And I will note what I see presently for the record: you are a kind man.”

  I ducked my head, not knowing how to respond. But I think both of us were in good spirits after that, and it was our most amiable work session to date.

  “I’ve noticed a little something about my diet in recent days,” Fintan said upon the wall, “and you might be experiencing something similar. Here’s one of your songs, one of my personal favorites.”

  I had fish heads for my breakfast

  For my lunch and dinner too

  And all my friends are fish heads

  Don’t know what I’m going to do

  I’m mighty sick of fish heads