Three Acts of Penance [01] Attrition: The First Act of Penance

by S. G. Night

  “ — Impossible because fire is a chemical reaction and requires flammable matter to fuel it?” Racath cut him off again. “Yeah. I still haven’t figured that out.”

  The old teacher was starting to look annoyed. “Very astute. I’ll explain it to you, if I may continue…?” He wasn’t asking for permission. He was admonishing Racath for interrupting.

  Racath nodded once, unashamed.

  “It’s called mage-fire. It’s not the same as mundane fire — a fuel source burning. Mage-fire is flame as a raw element. The protean energy in your getu is being converted directly into the fire itself. There is no need for material fuel. Clear enough?”

  “Clear enough.”

  Racath was starting to feel better until Oron snuffed the candle out again.

  “There are two other forms of magic that I will not be teaching you,” Oron said, his face growing serious again. “The seventh, and eight forms. Spiritual galdury, more commonly called sorcery. And entropic galdury — chaos magic.”

  Frowning, Racath crossed his arms. “Why can’t I learn those?”

  “Because they’re dangerous, impractical, or come at too great a cost,” Oron said sharply — it almost sounded like a rebuke.

  Racath waited, but the older Majiski seemed to have nothing more to say on the matter. It bothered him, being afforded so much new knowledge, just to have Oron withhold pieces he disapproved of. Isn’t that exactly what Mrak had done for years?

  What did he care if it were dangerous? He just wanted to understand things. And having those small things kept from him made him feel like a child. Too young to be privileged with such information. Too naïve to understand. The feeling only added to the mounting pile of annoyance in his throat.

  “Lastly,” Oron said eventually. “There is cognitive galdury. The mind is a curious thing, and it possesses a unique form of energy that we don’t really understand. However, through the application of the Rotenic language, the cognitive power can be projected.”

  “Rotenic?” Racath repeated.

  “Yes, Rotenic. It is the language of God, and so it possesses many unique and useful properties — such as the ability to carry magical influence. You see this in rotendry, how the Rotenic glyphs can be imbued with power. The process of turning those runes from simple carvings into caches of magic requires the use of cognitive galdury. The rotendrial rune that allows Stingers to open by mental command is another example. Two galdurists who are gifted with cognitive magic are able to communicate telepathically over great distance — something that I will teach you to do while you are training here. And then…” Oron’s smile became devious. “…there is glamoury.”

  Racath cocked his head. “Glamoury?”

  When Oron spoke again, a strange haze fell across Racath’s mind. Suddenly, the world seemed foggy and distant. He couldn’t conjure a coherent thought into his mind. Through the gloom, he saw Oron’s mouth move. His voice seemed to echo all around Racath — not just through the kitchen, but inside Racath’s skull, his ear canals, and his eye sockets:

  “Silldet teh drom dye’ek taj bordth.”

  His ears heard the individual Rotenic words, but by the time they reached his brain, they had somehow been processed into an instinctive and irresistible command — smash your face into the table.

  And, without meaning to, he obeyed.

  The hazy delirium shattered like a foggy window as his forehead collided with the table. The surface was solid, unyielding, more like stone than wood. The impact rang in his ears, reverberated in his teeth and jaw. A wordless shout of pain and surprise burst from his mouth as he recoiled, clutching his brow. He was distantly aware that, across the table, the old Majiski was laughing at him.

  “What — fauling — what the faul was that?!” Racath growled, his words slurring.

  “That was glamoury,” Oron said perfunctorily. “A kind of cognitive magic that allows a galdurist to influence the mind of another. It’s easy to do, but it only works on people who don’t see it coming or don’t know how to recognize it. Not too difficult to shrug off, if you know how.”

  “You…you made me hit myself in the face!” Racath sputtered indignantly.

  “Yes, I did.” Oron responded. There was no remorse in his eyes. “I told you I would be testing your resolve when you least expect it. This is going to be one of my methods from now on.”

  The irritation that had been smoldering in Racath’s chest, the anger that he’d been fostering since yesterday in the pit, finally boiled over. It exploded out of him as his temper gave way, erupting into fully-fledged, unadulterated raged.

  “Good God, what the faul is your problem?!” he hissed, rising unsteadily to his feet. “Where the hell do you get off, doing piss like that to me?!”

  “I merely demonstrated a principle,” Oron said with infuriating passiveness.

  “You hexed me!” Racath shouted, slamming his fist down on the table. “How do you possibly expect me to—”

  “Need I remind you of the promise you made the other day, Racath?” Oron interrupted placidly. “You promised me that you would—”

  It was Racath’s turn to interject. “ — To obey you fully in order to learn, yes! I did say that! But I never signed on to be your personal whipping boy!”

  “This is all part of the learning process, Racath,” the older Majiski said.

  “Don’t you dare patronize me, old man!” Racath snarled. “Don’t even think about talking down to me.”

  Oron’s eyes narrowed dangerously. They glared at each other for a moment of tense, strained silence. When Oron finally spoke, his tone was patiently smooth, but there was a hint of steel around the edges.

  “I think,” he said. “We should leave off here for now. You need some air. Perhaps a good sparring session with Nelle might do you some good.”

  Racath didn’t have to hesitate. “Perhaps you’re right.” He turned on his heel and stomped through the archway and into the foyer.

  “You’re forgetting your Shadow,” Oron called matter-of-factly from the kitchen.

  Racath ignored his teacher. He yanked the front door open, stepped forward and tripped over the threshold on the way. Swearing, he slammed the door shut in his wake.

  Back in the kitchen, Oron turned to look at the pair of birds nesting above the stove.

  Sokol and Elohim stared back at him, their black eyes twinkling.

  “Well, he got his father’s temper,” he sighed as he began to collect his lesson materials from the tabletop. “Let’s just hope he’s got a shred of his mother in him, too.”

  Elohim chirped in agreement. Sokol seemed to nod.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Chasing Dragons

  Practically spitting with outrage, Racath stormed down the stone stairs of the empty sparring pit. There he began to pace up and down in a fury, chiseling a rut into the sand underfoot. His ears were still ringing from his encounter with the table, and the fading delirium of Oron’s hex still had twisted his gut into a painful coil. Streams of profanity ground out between his teeth — curses directed at whatever chance had brought him to the domus.

  “You’re early.”

  Racath whirled around at the sound of the voice. Nelle lay above him at the rim of the pit. On her back, she was staring blankly up at the illusionary skies. One arm dangled over the edge of the pit, swinging lazily alongside a lock of long hair that drifted gracefully in the breeze. She had abandoned her tunic in favor of a woman’s sleeveless sparring shirt that left her midriff and arms open to the air. Her ever-present gloves still sheathed her forearms from the elbow down.

  Racath’s eyebrows knitted into an angry knot. “Am I?”

  She sat up, her feet hanging out over the edge of the pit. “You are.” She cocked her head at him, her eyes concerned. “Everything okay?”

  “Oh, everything’s great,” Racath spat, massaging his bruised forehead angrily. “Everything’s just perfect.”

  “Now now,” Nelle said. “Is that sarcasm I hear?”<
br />
  “Just a little bit, yeah.”

  Nelle dropped down gracefully to the sand. She took a few steps closer to him. The distant pain that had gripped her this morning had faded, and she looked much closer to her normal self — albeit marred by worry. “What is it, Racath?”

  “Oron is what!” Racath shouted, waving his hand emphatically toward the cottage. “That old friend of yours. He hexed me!”

  Understanding dawned on Nelle’s face. “Ahh…” she said slowly. “That. Yeah. He did the same thing to Notak and Rachel.”

  “How pleasant of him,” he scowled. “Bastard…”

  Nelle leaned back a bit at that, stung, hurt visible in her eyes. “That’s hardly called for, I think.”

  “The old kook hexed me!” he repeated. “I’d say it’s completely called for.”

  “I’m sure he was just trying to teach you…” Nelle replied softly, clearly protective on her friend’s behalf.

  “Teach me?” Racath snorted. “By making me smash my own face against the table? Hell of a way to teach someone.”

  Nelle’s eyes frosted over, the defensiveness turning slowly to anger. “Racath…”

  “What?” he demanded. “Don’t tell me you agree his methods! Do you?! Do you think he’s justified?!”

  “Justified?” she asked indignantly. “Justified is exactly the wrong way to think about it. If he were justified, that would imply that you somehow deserved what you got.” “So, assuming that you didn’t deserve it—”

  “I didn’t!”

  “ — then a better question would be do I think he has a reason behind his methods.”

  There was something in the casual ease of her voice that pricked at Racath’s patience. “And does he?”

  Nelle took a long step closer to him. “Can you think of a reason, Racath?”

  “He enjoys turning my guts inside out?” Racath said bitterly.

  Nelle’s expression was stony. “Try again.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he snapped. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  “Think, Racath,” she enunciated, crossing her arms. “You know there’s a reason. Oron’s not a sadist.”

  “Oh really?” he challenged. “I’ve haven’t even been here for three days, and so far he’s beaten me with a stick, hexed me into smashing my own face into the table, and — overall — treated me like a fauling child that he can just kick around and talk down to! All with a smile on his face! Can you honestly say that’s not sadistic?”

  “Yes,” Nelle answered flatly. “He doesn’t enjoy it, Racath. He does it out of necessity. It’s all—”

  “Part of the learning process? That’s exactly what he told me.” He waved his hands about scathingly and mimicked: “It’s all part of the learning process, Racath. Please sit down and allow me to continue smashing your face in.” He scowled at her again. “Please. What is there to learn from piss like that.”

  She gave a single, humorless laugh. This laugh was not like wind chimes — it sounded closer to an icicle cracking. “You really don’t understand, do you.”

  “Clearly I don’t,” Racath growled. “Enlighten me again.”

  Nelle glared at him in a way that could have punched a hole through the ceiling of the domus. What was left of her understanding and empathy her was suddenly, completely gone. In its place, a dark, terrifying condescension took over.

  “What do you think you’re doing here, Thanjel?” she asked of him. “Do you think we’re trying to make you into a better assassin? You think we’re just trying to make you into some meaningless Genshwin myth for the hell of it? Do you think you’ll just prance back to Velik Tor when you’re done here? Go back to killing Dominion water-boys? Maybe that’s what Mrak thinks, but I sincerely hope you have more brains than he does.

  “Understand this: we are preparing you to change the world. You’re not here to learn how to spin piss into gold — you’re here to learn how to kill the Mnogo gods. Do you really think Oron can teach you that by holding your hand and making everything sunshine and rainbows for you? He has to be harsh — cruel, even — because you don’t just teach someone how to be that powerful. You have to provoke them into unlocking their potential on their own. That is what he’s doing. Did you ever consider that?”

  Racath glared at her just as fiercely. “And what if I’m not what you think I am?! What if I’m not the Krilati you say I’m supposed to be?! I’m not even sure I believe—”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  Her fists were clenched so tight that her limbs shook. Terrible knowledge was chiseled into every line of her face. Her blue eyes were a thousand feet deep, like a winter abyss, filled with the suffocating experience of a century of life. It was the first time she ever looked truly old to Racath. The first time she truly frightened him.

  “Don’t you even think to question my visions, Racath Tarek Thanjel.” She spat each word like a mouthful of poison. “I’ve been waiting for the Dragon Amongst Wolves since before you were born. I’ve been seeing the face of the Krilati for a hundred years — your face!”

  She was shouting. Her last two words were so forceful, so fierce and stinging that they pushed Racath back a step.

  “I knew you before you were made!” she screamed at him. “I’ve been looking for you my entire life! Searching for the man I saw who I see in my head when I sleep!”

  “I—” Racath tried to retort, but Nelle’s eyes silenced him.

  “The man I saw was strong. Enduring. Courageous. Valiant. Selfless. But the person standing here right now, he—” she stabbed a condemning finger into his chest. “ — he is not that man. You feel like you’re being treated like a child, Racath? Maybe it’s because you are a child. A whiney child griping about how he hates his schoolteacher.”

  Racath didn’t realize he was backpedaling until his back hit the stone wall of the pit. He was pinned, rooted to the ground between the impervious stone, and the angry goddess before him.

  Nelle stood nose-to-nose with him, angry tears clinging to her eyelashes. “You are the Krilati, and if you don’t save us then no one will. You are the man from dreams. Or, at least, you will be, if you grow up. I’ve been waiting for so long, Racath — a hundred thousand days waiting for you! And now that you’re finally here, you act like this?!”

  She shook her head with such a profound disappointment that it made Racath shrink, made his stomach drop, made his heart cave in with the weight of it.

  “Well, I’m sick of chasing dragons. I’m not going to keep hunting for the man when the boy is already here. So grow a pair. Get over yourself. Swallow your pride and learn from what Oron has to teach you, so that you can become what God needs you to be. What I need you to be. What everyone needs you to be. Grow up, Thanjel. Grow up and prove me right.”

  Nelle turned on her heel and stormed out of the pit, leaving Racath alone in the sand.

  Her sudden tirade had stunned him. Her words had pierced him like a bitter knife, deflating his self-righteous indignation. For several moments, he stood there in shocked silence, blinking stupidly.

  Then he swore at himself. He had been a fool. He had known that something was already eating at Nelle, something causing her pain. She hadn’t wronged him. She had only ever been a friend. And what had he done? He had gone and dumped his petty issues on top of that, questioning her abilities as an augur in the process — exactly what Oron had told him not to do.

  She deserved than that. Better than him.

  And she had been right, of course. He was being juvenile. Ridiculous, even. Hadn’t this been what he’d wanted all along? A chance to fight for Io, a real chance to destroy the Dominion for good? In a way, hadn’t he always wanted to be the Krilati, to be a person who fought for those who couldn’t fight for themselves — people like Quentin, or the other people of the Burrows? And yet he was too much a child to accept the opportunity now that it was finally being given to him.

  Before, when Nelle and Oron had told him about the Dragon Am
ongst Wolves, he had resented the idea of such a duty being forced upon him. He had hated the thought of being chosen, selected, without his consent, for the task. But maybe…maybe that was the wrong way to think about it.

  Maybe he wasn’t the Krilati because he had been chosen to fight for Io…maybe he was the Krilati because he himself had chosen to fight for Io.

  Racath realized then that he could do it. He could be the man that Nelle described. He could be the Krilati. But if he was going to carry the fate of his country on his shoulders, he couldn’t be a child about it. He would have to do better: embrace Oron’s brutal methods, learn from them, and overcome them; eat up every scrap of knowledge that Oron threw at him; be the perfect student, and become the perfect Scorpion.

  It could all work, so long as he chose to do what he had to do. He set his jaw and headed for the stairs.

  Very well, then. All doubts erased. He could be the Krilati. He could be the best Scorpion that the Genshwin had ever seen. He would be. He chose to be.

  Everyone would get what they wanted, what they needed. Oron would have his student. Nelle would have her Dragon Amongst Wolves. The Demons and their pawns would have their destroyer. Io would have its freedom.

  And as for himself…well, so long as the good people were happy and the bad people were dead in the end, what more could Racath ever need?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Women

  Racath did not approach Oron until the following morning. He had spent most of the evening pacing the length of his small bedroom, choking down what remained of his pride and practicing his apology a hundred different ways. In the end, he managed to look the older Majiski in the eye, admit his own childishness, and ask for clemency.

  Oron had responded with a fatherly smile, accepted Racath’s apology, and said that the matter was forgotten. He praised Racath for the maturity he had demonstrated, then asked what had prompted Racath’s change of heart. Racath told him about his argument with Nelle in the pit the day before.

  In the time it took tell the story, Oron tried to glamour Racath four times. The first three attempts caught Racath off-guard, and he ended slapping himself in the face, falling off his chair, and gnawing on his own fingers as a result. The fourth time he saw it coming and was able to push through the nausea and the haze without succumbing to Oron’s hex.