Reality's Plaything

by Will Greenway

  She glanced outside to the rain. “Well, storm or not, we better prepare to move. I don’t know how Mazerak found us. We better not be here if they send somebody who has less to lose.”

  Irodee patted Bannor’s shoulder. “Irodee think we should be honored, being in the company of two princesses.” She winked at him. “Sarai is not the only one who will be spanked when she gets home.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Wren said. “I had a good reason for leaving too. I don’t know why they wouldn’t believe how important this was.”

  The Myrmigyne shook her head. “Irodee thinks it had nothing to do with importance. They don’t want to be involved in another war.”

  Wren’s blue eyes met Bannor’s. “This is a problem that would have come to haunt us.” She picked up her backpack and began stuffing items away. “The threat was ten times what mother thought. Don’t you agree?”

  Irodee shrugged. “Not matter what Irodee think. In fact, not think it matter whether you right or not, either.”

  “In that I would have to concur, I’ll be up for a spanking, for sure.” She sighed. “Come on, Bannor, Sarai, let’s move. We’ll try to get a few leagues and find shelter further south.”

  Bannor headed for his equipment. He glanced back at Sarai as she starting working on her bedroll. It was a silly question but Bannor had to ask. “Would your father really spank a daughter 400 summers old?”

  Sarai half-smiled. “Does water run down hill?”

  * * *

  What is ultimate power? Some think of it as the ability to destroy all that is, others say it is the strength to restore true life to things deceased.

  Another line of reasoning is ultimate power is the talent of being able to shape any person or thing to your will. The Garmtur’Shak Nola is a little of all of those, and none of them. The study of this particular kind of Ka’Amok has proven central to achieving Tan’Acho.

  —From the Dedriad, ‘musings of an immortal’.

  Chapter Fifteen

  « ^ »

  Bannor pushed the shoulder high brush aside and let Sarai step through. The fields of chaffweed filled the air with a biting pungency. Insects buzzed incessantly. The soaked ground sucked at his boots as he brought up the rear. Wiping the sweat off his forehead he glanced at the sun high in the sky. Another five bells of hard march left today.

  On the morning after the encounter with Mazerak, the storm had abated. Its effects remained. The muggy air clung like a stifling shroud.

  Only a swaying of weeds marked where Wren picked the trail ahead of them. Next, Irodee towered over the tops of the scrub brush. Her dark hair flicked in the breeze like a pennon. Wren’s desire to move untraceably had made their journey far more arduous.

  He concentrated on covering their tracks. It was a task he knew better than any of the women—for once. He brushed the weeds back into place behind them. In this terrain, he could only make a trail harder to see from a distance. He hoped to find rocky ground further west.

  Four days of travel with no sign of pursuit had made him nervous. He found it worse than knowing something actively hunted them. They continued toward the coastal city of Bravadura. Once there, Wren’s allies would conceal them until they arranged transport to Cosmodarus.

  Bannor still didn’t want to travel offworld, especially not to hide. He kept reminding himself that keeping Sarai safe outweighed his comfort. The fact that Cosmodarus was a city of wizards gave Bannor hope that he could find answers for Sarai’s peculiar behavior. He finally realized that she changed most notably at night. She became snappish and he sensed her always on the verge of doing or saying something hurtful. When Mazerak revealed she was a princess, it made it worse.

  He still found it hard to believe. His head ached when he thought about it. What should he do? If he started treating her differently she’d be upset. Of late Sarai had been preoccupied with being self-sufficient which made her more sensitive to his attitude than ever. Bloody royalty, he didn’t know whether to count his fortunes or run for the hills.

  “You really are a princess?” he breathed.

  Sarai flipped her silvery hair and frowned. Even in this heat she looked as fresh as if she’d just stepped out of the bath. “For the hundredth time, my One, yes. If you ask me again, you’ll limp the rest of the way to Bravadura.” She sighed. “I apologize for being hesitant to talk.” She fell back to walk with him. “I told you I have two sisters.”

  He nodded.

  “Ryelle, the eldest will accede mother to the throne. There is Janai, and I am youngest. That is why father is willing to marry me off for a little while.”

  “For a little while?” His brow furrowed.

  “Prince Myrgul is over thirty summers old. Since the health of Ivaneth’s royal family is poor, father figures at worst Myrgul would plague me for forty summers. Once widowed, I would bring my alliances back to Malan.”

  Her cool tone made him shiver. In four decades and a man would leave Sarai’s life by natural causes. The same way he would. Bannor had never thought of it that way. A human life spanned only a tiny part of an elf’s existence. Sarai was gray elven and no one even knew how long they lived. A half-elven jeweler Bannor hired to make Sarai’s betrothal ring said he’d read of common elves living to be a hundred human generations old.

  They measure time in human generations, not the passing of seasons.

  He swallowed. A pang shot through his heart. How could I be any more than a passing fancy to her? “Will it be like that with me, Little Star? A deep breath and I’m gone?”

  Sarai stopped. Irodee looked back and paused.

  “I apologize, my One. I know that sounded callous. Those are Father’s words. He makes me angry. To him, humans are born to be his playthings.”

  “What do you think?”

  Sarai reached out and meshed her fingers with his. She started moving again and Irodee broke a trail for them. Light glinted in Sarai’s violet eyes. “There is only one human I like to play with.” Grinning, she poked his ribs. “He can be a colossal bother, but I love him anyway.”

  It made him feel warm inside. Something kept echoing in his head. He would plague me for no more than forty summers. “Tell me, how much can you love a man who will shrivel up after a few turns of the seasons.”

  “Too much.” Her face turned stony. “With such short lives, humans burn bright. Many elves are drawn to that passion. We call them ‘silcomhad jihira’, star kissers. Getting burned is inevitable when you try to embrace the sun. The pain starts long before your lover’s death. Watching him waste away is agony.”

  Sarai closed her eyes, the lids fluttering. “Our own kind seem cool after holding flames. The desolation over losing a short-lived is called ‘kerakah’, the great despair. It can last as long as a century. Loneliness always drives the sufferers back.” She bit her lip. “Some elves hate humans because they’ve watched loved ones die of kerakah. It is ugly.” Sarai’s voice faded.

  “Cheerful subject,” Wren said still hidden by the weeds. “However, your worry is over nothing.”

  Bannor felt a flash of heat. “How can you say it’s nothing!?”

  He sensed Wren rolling her eyes. The habit irritated him. After six days with the savant, he saw it in his sleep. After the eyes, came that patient tone. She rarely sounded condescending. He took it that way, regardless.

  He hated feeling dumb. She treated him as if he were a child. He wasn’t stupid; he simply never had that fancy learning going for him. Give him a forest, a town, a siege, normal people and problems-he understood those things.

  “Bannor, let me answer it with a question.”

  “All right.” He hated these kinds of answers.

  “Since we started this trip, your ability turned Sarai into an elemental, that same talent transformed me into pure magic and back. It’s done other things equally as amazing. Now, given that, how hard do you think it would be to turn a human into a gray elf?”

  Sarai’s eyes widened. Her expression looked
as if Wren had struck her with a lightning bolt.

  The simplicity of it hit Bannor. The ease with which Wren cut the heart out of a problem amazed him. Had she already considered it, or did she solve it in the time it took Sarai to explain it?

  “No, my One, that is a bad idea,” Sarai said coolly. “As much because I might lose the ‘human’ you, as the way my people react to a changeling. Some people have been changed into elves over the centuries. They were treated as pariahs.” She gripped his hand. “Wren is right, though. When you master your power, slowing your own aging will be simple.”

  “Irodee think whatever Bannor wants will simply be.” She smiled at him, a beautiful woman wading through a sea of rippling gold.

  Wren and Irodee talked about his talent as if he would become a god. No deity would make mistakes like him. The thought of such incredible power made his stomach burn. Even without all the other’s book learning he knew the huge responsibility that such power implied.

  “I get it. Let’s not talk about the Nola.” Wren called all savant powers Nola for short. Since they’d started discussing it at night, he’d adopted the term himself.

  Sarai put her cheek against his arm. She looked the most cheerful she’d been since the encounter with Mazerak.

  “Does Bannor mind if we talk about food? Irodee is hungry. We ate half-rations this morning.”

  It surprised him that Irodee didn’t talk about it more. That huge body had to require a lot of nourishment, far more than he’d seen her eat. “Not far from here is a town named Dewfield just east of the Corwinian border. We can get provisions there.”

  “It’s on the Karameth, so they have boats, right?” Apparently, Wren knew the Karameth River marked the Corwin/Ivaneth border.

  Bannor wished he could pluck the savant out of the chaff and put her on Irodee’s shoulders so he could see her face. “Yes, traders come upstream in spring when the waters are high. We could take a barge downstream.”

  “We’ll do it,” Wren said. Bannor felt good when she took his suggestions without question. “I’d planned to book passage at Candleshire, but since it’s impossible to sleep when Irodee is hungry, we’ll go your way. Her stomach rumbling is like trying to sleep through a ground quake.”

  The Myrmigyne snorted. She slapped a bug and tossed it away. “At least Irodee not snore.”

  He met Sarai eyes and she grinned.

  “Wren, I should go into town to get provisions while you and Sarai book passage. Keep Irodee out of sight until boarding. Everyone in town would remember her.”

  “Two plans in a row. Fugitive life agrees with you, Bannor.”

  “I think it’s more because a demon isn’t breathing on my neck.”

  “That always helps,” Wren admitted.

  The town of Dewfield was a rotted tooth in the jaw of the countryside, one that should have been pulled a decade ago. Bannor’s nose wrinkled at the smells of overflowing privies, burning stinkwood and poorly cleaned animal hides hung in the wind to dry. In his summers as a Baronial woodsman, he’d avoided this place when possible. He had always cut short his stopovers in this borderland colony with its rough-hewn buildings and coarse inhabitants.

  He shoved the pouch of gold Wren gave him underneath his leather jerkin to keep the jingle of coins to a minimum. Loosening his axes, he made sure to keep two paces between him and any passerby.

  Men and women in this town slunk from one place to another. They wore drab clothes, and for a people who lived near a river they didn’t seem to wash often. Few met his eyes, and any who did made his skin feel oily.

  Altercations were common in this miserable town. Meanness proliferated here like suck-bugs in a swamp. When Wren agreed to let him come alone, it surprised him. He’d expected her to argue. He guessed she figured if he could handle the place before he became a savant, then nothing had changed.

  Of thirty odd buildings in town, three were taverns. A sooty sword-nicked sign proclaimed one place the Troll’s Breath pub. The two-story building was so infested with wood mites that it looked as if it might blow over in a stiff breeze. Dewfield’s solitary sundries shop stood next to it.

  Two lanky men with leathery faces and serpent eyes sized him up from the pub’s mouth. Both wore river-lizard boots and hats. Scabbards for oversized skinning knives rode on their hips. Bannor judged those blades cut humans more often than animals.

  Bannor ducked into the sundry. Inside it smelled of tallow and spoiled grain. Hedgecloth bags and rickety crates stood in haphazard stacks. Rusty farm implements jutted from dilapidated barrels. A bored, old woman with dull eyes and a puckered face took his provisions order. Her voice creaked like a rusty hinge as she tallied his purchases.

  Bannor didn’t quibble over her high prices. He wanted out fast. He did verify that she gave him good food and supplies. The delay made him edgy. He watched the door. Clinking coins always drew attention.

  Loading everything into a freshly-bought traveling pack, he shouldered the heavy load and tightened the straps. With Bravadura a month away, he took no chances that they might be forced to avoid populated lands. At Wren’s pace, hunting wouldn’t be possible in the game-sparse south.

  Bannor glimpsed a movement by the doorway. He grabbed a shovel from a barrel. “I’ll bring this right back.”

  The shopkeeper narrowed her eyes, but said nothing. He approached the door at an even speed. On the right, he saw the tips of scaly green boots. Holding a hand-axe in his left and a shovel in his right he took one fast step outside.

  A man grunted. Bannor blocked the weighted leather bag with the shovel handle. The wood shattered under the blow. He whacked the man in the face with the flat of the spade. The curved iron clanked as it impacted bone. The man’s head hit the wall with a wooden thunk. Bannor glimpsed a flash of silver in time to jab the second man in the stomach with the flat of his axe. The skinning knife nicked his forearm in a slash of burning. Bannor counter-attacked. The shovel pealed like a broken bell.

  He knelt by the man who’d used the knife. “By Odin, that was a sour note.” He took the bandit’s lizard-skin hat and put it on his own head.

  Applying pressure to the bloody gouge in his arm he reentered the sundry. Dropping the broken shovel on the counter, he tossed the shopkeeper a gold coin. “Get it tuned.”

  On the way out, he grabbed a rag to stop the bleeding. He examined the two men. They’d live, not that either deserved to. Five summers ago this incident would have made him angry. Now, he expected it and reacted accordingly. It was simple survival among wolves. The borderland’s problems were all symptoms of a kingdom that had expanded beyond its grasp, flesh feeding upon itself to stay alive.

  Half dozen of the patrons had gathered outside the Troll’s Breath to view the scuffle’s results. No one spoke above a mumble. They appeared disappointed he hadn’t killed the two bullies. If they wanted murder, he wouldn’t provide it.

  Two men wearing hooded cloaks with bows strapped over their shoulders pushed out of a tavern across the lane. They glanced at the front of the sundry. Their eyes locked on Bannor. The men looked pale in waning afternoon light. Muscles rippled under their tight tunics and he saw the glint of mail around their collars. Their weapons all looked well worn. He wouldn’t be taking these two out with a shovel.

  He walked straight ahead as if not noticing them.

  “You.” One pointed at him.

  Bannor glanced and saw the man’s hair was white. For all their muscles, neither appeared very tall. Bannor acted as if he hadn’t heard.

  “You there, with the pack!” The man’s voice sounded high, and he spoke with a northern twang.

  He let out a breath and faced them. “Yes?”

  They came close with a few steps, spreading out to have angles on him if there was trouble. They did it so casually it convinced him they were trained guardsmen.

  The one with the white hair pointed at him and Bannor met his gaze. He masked his surprise with effort. Deep lavender eyes looked out of a fine-boned, a
geless face: elves, both of them.

  His heart stumbled, but he kept his face smooth.

  The elf pointed to Bannor’s hand-axes. “You are one of the Baron’s woodsmen, are you not?”

  His stomach tightened. How did he know? He glanced down and saw the woods clan seals engraved on the metal heads. He’d used the axes so long he’d forgotten they were marked so prominently. Still, not many would know the origin of that symbol.

  No sense in giving the elf the impression he stole them. “I am. What’s this about?”

  “We’re looking for a woodsman, a garrison captain. A loner, we understand, he summers somewhere in the mountains. In the winter, he sells pelts and moves around between the towns along this river.”

  Animal instinct said bolt, intellect told him to stay calm. Obviously these two didn’t know what he looked like or they’d be all over him by now. How had they found out so quickly? The Malanian capital was weeks away.

  “A captain, you say? Know what he looks like? There be ten odd garrison commanders. I don’t see ‘em but once or twice a season myself.”

  “No,” the elf admitted. “You would remember him, though. He’s been keeping an elven woman with him. She has silver hair and violet eyes.”

  “You don’t say?” Bannor almost choked. He kept a smile plastered on his face. He could see over the heads of the two elf guardsmen.

  Waving to him from down the street was Sarai.

  * * *

  Recently, a peer asked me if I believed in the legend of Starholme Prime, the place where it is rumored all of our kind were born.

  I answered that not only did I believe in the place’s existence, but that I had proof that certain of the Ka’Amok had been there and had sealed it away from our kind forever. My peer then demanded that I tell her what miscreant dared do such a thing. I answered, “look to the ones I hate, there you will find your answer…”

  —From the Dedriad, ‘musings of an immortal’.