Etherwalker

by Cameron Dayton

  With that, he left.

  Enoch exhaled, almost as though he had been holding his breath the whole time.

  He knows I’m Pensanden!

  The thought shook Enoch. From the way everyone had acted, he had assumed this secret would bring dire consequences. Hatred, or fear. But the king mentioned it as if it were just an interesting facet of who Enoch was, like his swords or the color of his eyes.

  He knows I’m Pensanden—and he smiled.

  * * * *

  The sparring room was huge. It was higher up in the tower than Enoch’s room was and had tall windows looking out over the city. The view was breathtaking, with various smaller towers and minarets glinting in the morning light. Enoch squinted his eyes to see if he could find the Headsman’s Hole, or at least recognize the general area. Unfortunately, nothing looked familiar from this height.

  “So you found your sword?”

  Enoch turned and smiled, his hand dropping to rest on the familiar pommel of Master Gershom’s iskeyar. It had been placed on top of the sole piece of furniture in this enormous room, a long table carved from the same wood as the posts in his bedroom. The sword had been polished until it shone like silver, and the stained sheepskin wrappings about the grip had been replaced with white calfskin wound in a thin silver cord. Enoch had been too stunned by the king’s initial introduction to notice that a similar treatment had been given to the derech, and he had apologized profusely when Nyraud next visited. King Nyraud had shaken his head and smiled, saying that of course he would have a blademaster’s weapons taken care of while the Nahuati was indisposed. He said hospitality was important, more so when your guest was such a dangerous one.

  The king was often referring to Enoch’s martial prowess like that. At first Enoch thought he was being made fun of, that King Nyraud was being condescending. Master Gershom was usually sparing with his praise. It was hard to get used to such treatment from a king.

  Well, not too hard.

  Enoch looked down, tried to straighten the white cloth at his waist. He felt odd in this spotless sparring gear, restricted. The man who had fitted him said that this had belonged to King Nyraud’s son, said that Enoch was shorter than the boy and the jerkin would need tightening.

  I should have stuck my chest out more. I’ll never be able to move properly in this thing.

  The king was dressed in more formal dueling armor—silvery plates protecting his chest, arms, and thighs, all sewn into a similarly brilliant white doublet and hose. He even wore white leather boots, detailed with silver tracings that ran to a shining cap at the point of the toe. Sheathed at his side was a pearl-handled practice foil. While thin and flexible like a true foil, the King’s variation was longer than average and curved at the tip. The cimitárra was the fashionable style of sword here in the Reaches. Or so Enoch had heard.

  Enoch didn’t know much more than that concerning King Nyraud’s lands—just what he’d been able to glean from Master Gershom about the “lands of Babel” north of Midian. The Emim Reaches, spreading from the Edrei foothills eastward to Akkadia, and northward to the swamps of Jabbok. Enoch imagined that he’d been in Nyraud’s domain ever since he’d met Rictus.

  “Alright, blademaster—shall we spar?”

  “Oh, I should tell you, Milord. I’m not a blademaster. I was trained by one, and was learning the pensa spada, but I never did any of the trials. And I’ve never been tiered. Master Gershom said you had to earn your tiers with blood.”

  “Well, that sounds oddly appropriate, eh?”

  Enoch laughed.

  “Enoch, if passing through the now-frozen tunnels of Babel while single-handedly fending off a horde of starving trolls doesn’t earn you a tier or two, then I don’t know what would.”

  Or what about killing coldmen? Breaking a Silverwitch?

  Enoch decided he was going to stop feeling guilty for taking pride in his accomplishments. The king was right—it was important to set yourself apart from others sometimes.

  King Nyraud leaned forward and handed him another finely wrought practice foil. It matched the king’s own, and Enoch smiled to see that the workmanship on this “toy” was more elaborate than that on any blade—on any thing—he’d ever held.

  “I apologize that we don’t have tools more befitting your expertise, but maybe the Nahuati-in-Training would deign to use these poor Babel foils?”

  Enoch had already unbuckled his new tooled-leather sword belt and carefully placed it on the table where he’d found his iskeyar. He gave the foil a few practice thrusts.

  The length is unwieldy, but maybe I can try a few of the sweeping moves that Rictus favored? That sword of his was longer, but similarly proportioned.

  He attempted a lunge. It felt slow.

  I’m used to sparring unencumbered by all this cloth and armor plates, so I’ll need to remember to adjust my dodges accordingly.

  The king watched him, curious.

  “Shall we?”

  Enoch bowed and saluted.

  “Avanza!”

  And with that, he was dueling against King Nyraud of Babel. The king was fast, and his reach was extensive. Luckily, Enoch had been sparring with Rictus—the appropriate parries and sets to move inside a tall opponent’s radius were still fresh in his mind. The unfamiliar curved tip of the cimitárra kept frustrating Enoch’s advances, though.

  King Nyraud noticed this and pressed the attack. With a subtle flick of the wrist, he could slip his blade over the top of Enoch’s with alarming precision. It was through his reflexes alone that Enoch was able to dodge these thrusts.

  I’m going to get tired out before he does—I need to parry those.

  The problem was, Enoch noted, that he was too accustomed to having his other hand free. It felt so sluggish to be anchored to this single unwieldy length.

  Use the length. Let the blade’s own weight carry the forte into his thrust.

  The next time Nyraud lanced his foil over the top of Enoch’s point, the boy pushed his foil high while letting his wrist dip. The thicker forte caught Nyraud’s thrust and snapped his foil in two.

  Nyraud stood there for a second, stunned. Enoch leaned in and tapped him on the chest with his foil.

  “Point.”

  The king held up the remaining stub of his foil and laughed.

  “Enoch, tell me that this isn’t your first time sparring with a cimitárra or I may have to abandon swordplay for good. After those first clumsy dodges, I was sure that you didn’t know how to defend with a single blade.” He shrugged and threw the stub down to the ground. “Apparently, you can.”

  The king found another foil, and they sparred until the windows were dark and their jerkins were drenched in sweat. Enoch had never enjoyed his practice so much—sure, dueling with Rictus had been fun, and the specter kept the conversation lively. But what could compare to dueling with a king who had nothing but astonished praise for your skill? And having cool fruit juices delivered to the room every hour didn’t hurt. Enoch felt drained and bruised and ready to drop. But he couldn’t remember being happier.

  Nyraud didn’t look tired, but Enoch couldn’t miss the king’s slight limp where he’d scored a sharp blow after one of their longer bouts.

  “Well, Enoch, I think that we’ve both learned something today. Unfortunately, you learned how easy it is to bruise a taller opponent. And I learned that even royal dueling armor can’t protect a man everywhere.” He rubbed at his ribs, right under one of the pectoral plates, and winced.

  “Luckily for me, I’ve got a kingdom to run. So I get to escape your foil for now.”

  Enoch saluted with his foil and tried to give a decent bow. His arms hurt.

  “I learned more than that, Milord. I learned that the cimitárra can move surprisingly fast when the dualist leads with the tip. I learned that while the length can hinder quick movements, it can be used defensively in ways that my shorter iskeyar never can. And I learned—” Enoch groaned tiredly, reaching over to retrieve his old blades from the
table, “—that a cimitárra, even wielded by an expert, could never best the two blades of a Nahuati.” Enoch caught himself, realizing that his speech with King Nyraud had maybe gotten too informal.

  He doesn’t seem to mind.

  King Nyraud laughed at Enoch’s surety.

  “You aren’t bragging, are you? You sound as though this were some obvious fact. These things are never so clear, Enoch. I’ve personally seen men with cimitárras carve a blademaster to pieces—not in a duel, mind you, but on the battlefield. The Nahuati aren’t immortal.”

  “No, no. I know that, Milord. I . . . watched my own master fall to enemies. I’m not talking about a crowded battlefield or a mismatched number of opponents. I’m just saying that one cimitárra against the derech and iskeyar simply can’t overcome the speed and myriad movements the two blades present. Everything else being equal, of course.”

  “Which is a rarity I’ve never encountered,” chuckled the king. “I tell you, Enoch, ‘everything else’ is rarely equal, and never so simple as you would make it sound.”

  “I’m sorry, King Nyraud, but this is how I see the weapons—they hold moves and counter-moves. The complexity and variation which two mismatched swords provide will always outweigh the possibilities of a single sword. Especially one so limited and directionally-focused as the cimitárra.”

  The king was silent, his eyes focused on the ceiling. He seemed to be thinking.

  Enoch cringed.

  I’ve gone too far. I need to learn to keep the talk of patterns to myself.

  “Enoch, this isn’t just dueling bluster you’re giving me, is it? You’ve actually calculated the possible advances, parries, and retreats for these weapons.”

  Enoch nodded.

  Nyraud shook his head, then clapped him on the back with a shout of laughter. “Ha! My boy, I think I just realized something. You are applying your Pensanden skills to swordplay! Brilliant! Now I don’t feel so bad for losing half my bouts to a youth! Your quick adaptation to every single one of my feints. Your counter-parries that began before my parries even ended. I was starting to think my tricks were all old, obvious and primary stratagems taught to any novice. But no, you literally calculated the possibilities of my every foray and then reasoned the best response.”

  Isn’t this how everyone does it? Master Gershom never made such noise about my dueling.

  It felt good. They discussed Enoch’s ability to recognize patterns as they walked towards the elevator, which would take them from the sparring room to Enoch’s floor. Enoch still marveled at the sensation of stomach-dropping unease he felt when the machine first lifted them. He had studied the workings of the elevator and laughed to find such a simple mechanism sheathed in the complexity of the Ark.

  Enoch had talked about this with the king and was proud to have surprised Nyraud with what he had learned from Rictus about this ancient space-vehicle. Enoch still refrained from mentioning Rictus and Cal; although as time went by, it was less out of loyalty to his companions and more out of a desire to retain the king’s respect for having slain twelve trolls single-handedly.

  Technically, they couldn’t have done it without me.

  It was almost as though the king had been reading his mind.

  “We need to discuss your ‘special’ abilities at some point, Enoch.”

  “Why is that, Milord?”

  “I know enough of your people’s history to know that adolescence is when your powers start to blossom. It was a time when the young etherwalkers would begin an intense training regimen with an array of teachers. There aren’t any teachers left, Enoch, but I have some recordings saved on the specialized Unit here in the tower.”

  Enoch’s face must have shown some of the fear he felt upon remembering the last time he’d used a Unit.

  The face. The command. The marking.

  Nyraud’s studies must have hinted at something like what Enoch had gone through. He put a consoling hand on Enoch’s shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Enoch. This machine isn’t on a public network like the consoles down in Babel. And it’s shielded—so no prying eyes or ears will notice you. Again.”

  The king tapped Enoch’s wrist, winking.

  How does he know about the marking? What else does he know? I need to learn from him.

  The elevator door opened, and Enoch stepped out. He bowed to the king, and Nyraud nodded his head with a smile.

  “We’ll go to the Core Unit tomorrow, Enoch. It’s down in the tunnels, you know. Not far from where we found you.”

  The door closed. Enoch shivered, although the hallway was perfectly warm.

  * * * *

  Even wrapped in warm furs and surrounded by a patrol of armed guards, Enoch felt vulnerable. The blue lights flickering over his head were too horribly familiar.

  The king had been insisting on this trip down into the tunnels for the past several weeks. He said it was too important for Enoch to perfect his skills, to reach his true potential. Enoch had delayed and delayed until finally he was unable to refuse. He didn’t want to appear frightened before King Nyraud.

  Mesha had taken one step into the tunnel behind Enoch and then hissed, her fur flashing a sickly blue. She remembered what was down here and would not follow no matter how Enoch cajoled her. Just as he was about to step out of sight, she gave another angry hiss, bolted down the hallway, and leapt on his shoulders. Enoch had smiled, given her some comforting pats, and tried to ignore the claws poking into the skin around his neck. Mesha hadn’t moved an inch since then, and Lieutenant Stykes, the Huntsman who had originally rescued Enoch from the tunnels, had a good laugh at the “little fish-stealing monster.”

  They had taken two different elevators to get this low, and now had been walking for the past hour. The air was getting frigid. King Nyraud broke the silence by telling Enoch about his adventures in these tunnels.

  When the king was a boy, these tunnels provided an escape from the “mundane stretches of royal life” and were a unique source of both amusement and education for the prince. He had learned much of his hunting skills down here, tracking the elusive trolls in a darkness that required you to rely on smell and sound if you wanted to survive. Granted, the trolls were less aggressive and direct back before the cold killed the fish and vermin they generally subsisted on. But according to King Nyraud, they still put up quite a fight if you cornered them.

  Now he was talking about the recent cold.

  “When the cooling tank was ruptured, I had my alchemist come and analyze the remaining girders to see if the cold could threaten the stability of the tower. He said that the spill was mostly contained in the cave—that the overall temperature drop in the tunnels couldn’t affect materials built for ‘the vacuum of space.’ I assumed it would clear out the trolls, too, but instead it’s driven them up to the alleyways of Babel. Apparently starvation doesn’t kill the things, just makes them more daring. I assume you found one of their new ‘grab holes’ and found your way in.”

  Enoch just nodded his head.

  “My men are scouring the city for the holes, Enoch. Sealing them up again. We can’t have every beggar, treasure-seeker, and boy-Nahuati in Babel wandering around the roots of our royal tower, can we?”

  Laughter from the guards.

  Not guards—these men with the red-fletched arrows are his elite Huntsmen. The most able of his soldiers.

  Enoch was still restricted in his movements throughout the tower, but he had picked up on a few things. From the commands he’d overheard King Nyraud giving to his messengers, Enoch surmised that the king had a surprisingly large army for a land with such innocuous and even-tempered neighbors. Not that Enoch was any sort of an expert in these things, but he couldn’t help but consider the numbers that Nyraud whispered to his underlings. If they referred to soldiers, it would be a force to rival any of the historic battles he read of in the recitings Master Gershom had assigned him. Enoch couldn’t ignore the patterns; this army was big. And apparently it was growing.

>   Does he know about the coldmen in Midian, and is he preparing for them? Should I tell him what I’ve seen?

  But Enoch kept quiet about where he came from, and the king didn’t ask. Enoch was afraid that the truth of his humble shepherd upbringing would disgust this regal man who treated him like a peer.

  King Nyraud had been delighted when Enoch brought the overhead lights to life, even though it wrung further hissing from Mesha. The king said that the wiring was too complex for any of his alchemists to decipher, and he had to rely on torches to visit the “Core Unit.” He said that similar lighting—even heating and cooling elements like the fan in Enoch’s room—had once existed throughout the entire tower, but most had been ripped out to be replaced by more pragmatic braziers and sconces. The king had then looked at Enoch with his eyebrows raised.

  I think he wants me to fix his tower. That would be hard; this place is so old. So broken.

  But it would be fun to try.

  King Nyraud called the Huntsmen to a halt and crouched down, running his fingers over claw marks in the flooring. They were wide and crusted brown with blood.

  “I’ve tried to hunt the trolls out of these tunnels for years, you know. The creatures are, as I’m sure you witnessed, amazingly resilient. And prolific. The females stay in their deepest caves with the brood. Count yourself lucky to have avoided one of those big girls, Enoch. They eat the males when food runs low.”

  Enoch shivered inside the warmth of his cloak.

  This place has that effect on me.

  He tried to change the subject.

  “Milord mentioned that he had an ‘alchemist’ come look at the girders. I don’t know the word, but it sounds like somebody who sees things like I do. Are there more Pensanden in Babel?”

  The king shook his head, then signaled for the party to start moving again. Enoch could see the breath of the men walking in front of him. It was getting colder, which meant they were nearing the cave.

  “How I wish my alchemists could see things like you do, Enoch. You would be surprised how hard it is just to find those willing to study the remnants of the old sciences, even these many centuries after the Schism. We lost so much in the Sixth Hunt—all of the scientists, the learned men, yes. But worse, we lost our desire to discover. We let our fear of the Worldbreakers rule us. And the cruelest irony is that the Sixth Hunt wasn’t led by the Serpent, wasn’t manned by blackspawn. We began it. We finished it. The last few kingdoms of men on earth anchored their place in a perpetual Dark Age all by themselves.