He doesn’t have much time.
He finds her after what feels like hours, after he is covered with dirt, surrounded by the stench of death, the smell of decay filling his nose until he feels like he is one of them.
It is only the first part of what he needs to do.
Uncovering the body carefully with his hands, he eventually clears enough away that he can lift her, throwing her over the saddle of one of the horses he has with him. After he fills the hole, making it look as it had before he started, he ties her down, fighting not to breathe, wincing at the stiffness of her limbs as he ties cords around her hands.
He feels sick briefly, fights nausea, his hand over his mouth.
Then he remember his uncle’s voice, the words he spoke to him only the day before, and his hands steady, even as he grits his teeth.
He finishes lashing her down and leads the horse back to the tree. He mounts the other horse he brought with him. He has a few hours’ ride, and it is well past midnight now.
He has to hurry.
The sunlight swirls, showing a gaunt face looking at him from across a wooden table.
In the morning, especially on a day like this one, his uncle always looked older.
A human cooks for them, and the boy drinks coffee, grimacing against the taste as he wipes his mouth. He has never liked coffee, but it is the norm to drink it here, so he is teaching himself. He avoids the seer’s stare until his uncle addresses him directly.
“She is dead?” he says, his voice holding a faint lilt of surprise. “You did this on your own, nephew?”
“On my own?” The boy looks at the old seer, his mouth a hard line. “You told me to.”
“I told you it might be necessary,” the old seer concedes. “Yes.”
“So? Is that not the same thing?" Nenzi's eyes dropped to the table once more, even as his jaw hardened. "...Since when have your ‘suggestions’ been anything other than orders, uncle?” Hearing the edge creeping sharper into his voice, he fell silent, frowning at the plate of eggs placed in front of him. Pulling apart a roll to butter it, he ignored Merenje’s eyes from the other side of the kitchen, where he sat in the window box, smoking a cigarette.
“I took care of it,” he muttered. “You said we had to move soon, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” the seer clicks softly, glancing at Merenje. “Yes, I did.”
The boy catches the look between them.
“And her body is where, nephew?”
“I told you. Under an oak tree. In the old forest...behind where it forks for Ruchnell.”
Merenje raises an eyebrow at the old man, but the seer is looking at the boy again.
“...When did you do this, nephew?”
The boy pauses, as if thinking. He frowns. “Not long after you said it. Maybe a day or two after. Not longer.”
His uncle doesn’t answer, but continues to stare at his face.
The boy forces his eyes to his plate, then his fork to capture some of the eggs lying upon it. He eats silently, without letting his mind think about what he puts into his mouth, without looking at the food, or using his light on it.
“Does her death distress you, nephew?” the old seer asks.
He feels his jaw harden. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“She was my friend.”
His uncle clicks at him softly. “We have spoken about this, nephew.”
“I know.” He digs his fork back into the plate, letting his expression harden. “But Kuchta was different. She was my friend...I don’t care if she was human. I don’t care if that means I was ‘attached.’ She was my friend.”
His uncle clicks at him softly, faintly sympathetic.
“Your heart does you credit, nephew,” he says softly. “But this self-delusion must be corrected, if you are to fulfill the whole of your work here...”
“It is not heart,” he says, giving the old seer a warning look. “I observe. I see who she is, and I respond. She was a good friend to me...better than any I have had...”
“She was human.”
“I do not care.”
“You should care, nephew...for it could mean your death if you don’t. You cannot ever trust them, nephew. Not really. Not in the way you would clearly like to believe...”
The boy doesn’t answer him. He stares out the window of the stone house, holding his fork in one hand as he watches the birds in the trees outside.
“Their minds are so weak,” his uncle reminds him. “...They will betray you even without meaning to, nephew. Any seer can push them into betraying you, without them even knowing they have been pushed. They could be pushed into putting a gun to your head, pulling the trigger. They would betray their own children...their own spouses and parents...”
“I know. You have said all of this.”
“You have seen it, nephew. You have seen it with your own eyes...with your light. You see it weekly from what I hear, in the humans in town.” He smiles faintly. “You have seen it with the humans you have coerced into your bed...”
The boy doesn’t look up, swallowing another mouthful of eggs, right before he reaches for a piece of the thick toast.
“I took care of it, didn’t I?” He glares at the old seer. “I did as you asked. Don’t ask me to like it. Don’t, uncle...not today. I’m not in the mood to lie.”
The old seer’s eyes continue to study his face.
The boy’s expression doesn’t change as he eats.
After another pause, his uncle purrs again, clicking softly, as if to himself.
Then, he dismisses their previous conversation with a wave of his long, white fingers, leaning back on the wooden bench.
“Very well,” he says. His eyes return to the boy’s face, but holding a calmer scrutiny now. “Are all of the loose ends tied up? With your human school?”
“Yes.”
“Then we can train tonight? You and I?”
The younger seer hesitates, then looks up at the seer.
“I had thought we would train today,” he says, his voice cagey.
The man in the corner of the room laughs. “Busy tonight, pup?” When the boy only gives him a hard look, still chewing his bread, the human laughs louder. “Go on. Tell him. Tell him what you’ve been doing at night, lad...”
When Nenzi looks up, the old seer is watching him, his dark yellow eyes incurious. One of his eyebrows rise on his long forehead, pulling up the skin.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me, nephew?”
When Nenzi only shakes his head, gesturing negative, the human laughs again.
“He’s fighting at night. On the street. Winning not a small amount of change, too, from what I hear.” Hopping down off the window seat, the human walks to the stove, pouring himself more coffee from the saucer on the stove. “Where’s our share of it, runt? Seeing as how it’s our training you’ve got under you, helping you win...?”
Menlim doesn’t take his eyes off the boy’s face. “Is this true, Nenzi?”
The younger seer shrugs, chewing bread without looking up.
“So what’s the money for, runt?” Merenje laughs. “You want to buy another girl of your very own?”
The younger seer doesn’t look at him. His eyes return to the window instead.
Menlim watches him for another moment, then sighs, clicking softly.
“We will work today then,” he says. “Is that agreeable to you?”
Fighting not to let his surprise show, the younger seer nods. “Yes, uncle.”
“Good.” He steeples his fingers, resting them against his chest. “And you have been practicing? For the exercises today?”
A shadow crosses the other’s eyes, but he nods. “Yes.”
“Any progress?”
Nenzi doesn’t look at him for a moment. When the seer’s light darts out, touching his, he flinches, turning his eyes to face his uncle across the table.
“No.”
“Nenzi.” Menlim watches him, his eyes pensive where h
e leans against the bench. “We are running out of time. The pre-manipulatory work is finished. I have taught you everything I can...done everything I can to try to induce it in you...”
The boy gestures dismissively. “I know you have. I will spend more time with it, uncle.”
“There can be no more delays with this, nephew.”
“I understand.”
The old seer continues to stare at him, his eyes motionless.
“I know you do not want me to seek out further motivations,” he says, softer. “Things that might speed the process...”
The younger man looks at him, his mouth hard.
“No, uncle. I don’t.”
“Then we will pray for success together, yes? The two of us?”
Nenzi’s eyes are hard when he looks up, almost as hard as those of the human who watches them both from a darker corner of the room. Nenzi sees the ember of the human's cigarette glow from that same corner, lighting his dark eyes; he feels the human’s stare, but doesn’t return it. His expression doesn’t move as he meets the motionless gaze of his guardian.
“I will pray with you, uncle,” is all he says.
His voice, when he speaks next, even carries feeling in it, whispers off the stronger pulse of his light. The uncle feels it, and his eyes narrow slightly, as he scans the light of the younger seer.
When they begin to speak, even the birds outside seem to grow quiet.
Iltere ak selen’te dur Hulen-ta
Isre arendelan ti’ a rigalem
Ut isthre ag tem degri
Y’enj balente ut re mugre di ali
Isre rata s’u threk Ralhe t’u rigalem
Isre arendelir d’goro anse vikrenme
Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm
Isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum...
The One God oversees his steps
Knowing the destiny of the one is harder
For to lead is sacrifice
Lost in the tides of time and meaning
He follows unto the Bridge’s first light
A spark, in darkness...
When he learns that hardness overcomes
And that all what he has done
He has done for the greater good...
When he reaches the part about her, something in his voice catches.
But he doesn’t lose the words.
Their voices echo together in the morning air as they finish. He manages to recite every word along with the old seer, and when they are done, Menlim is still staring at him, his dark amber eyes motionless. He doesn’t move as the boy resumes eating, doesn’t turn his gaze from the younger, rounder face.
The boy feels it, but he pretends not to notice.
He is crying.
I am with him this time, so lost in him I can’t feel anything else...I can’t even see him.
I see his hands, our hands, in his lap. I see the coarse coat he wears, the splatter of blood on his off-white shirt. He holds the gun in both his hands, cradling it almost, the barrel on the lap of the dark spun pants with the holes in the knees.
He looks up at the rusted warehouse, and he can’t see past its broken walls.
He’s come out here.
He’s come out here before...when his uncle isn’t around. When he isn’t being watched.
It is one place he uses to be alone.
He sits there and I feel what he wants to do. I feel him wrestle with it, and a part of me fights him, even though the time is past...even though this moment has already happened. I cannot reach him, cannot reason with him.
I can only be there, inside of him, when he first puts the gun to his head.
He holds it there, cocking it. His finger trembles by the trigger, and I feel the thoughts on him, the pain in his light. He remembers his parents, but that is dim now too.
He remembers Gisele.
The pain worsens, until he can barely breathe. He has let the gun drop in the pause, but he raises it again, placing it against the side of his head.
He closes his eyes...
“Nenzi!”
He lets out an exhale, and anger replaces the other. He lets the gun drop to his lap once more, but he doesn’t uncock it, or take his finger off the trigger.
“Nenzi, what are you doing?”
“Go away!” he says. “Leave me alone.”
But the old seer only stands there, silent in the waving grass. How he came upon him without being heard, without being seen...but the boy doesn’t care about that either. He isn’t a boy anymore. He is old enough to decide to die.
“Are you so sure of that, nephew?” Menlim asks.
Nenzi doesn’t think about his words; he doesn’t want to. His voice comes out angry, a near snarl. A voice he never uses with the old seer.
“You won’t have any reason to do it anymore,” he says. “You’ll stop killing them, with me gone. You won’t have any reason to do it anymore...”
There is a silence.
Then the old seer clicks softly, sitting gracefully on a stone not far from where the younger seer sits. His eyes hold no anger, only a kind of thoughtful patience.
“You missed your lesson today.”
“Fuck the lesson!” His eyes rose, meeting those of the other seer. “I’ll never be able to do it! It won’t matter what you do! And you’ll have killed them all for nothing!” He raised the gun back to his head, pressing the end against his temple.
“If I do this, it stops. It...all...stops!”
The old seer folds his hands, clicking again softly as he shakes his head.
“No, brother,” the seer says simply, using the designation of equals for the first time with him. “This war will come, with you or without you. There will be many deaths, with or without you...”
“We’re not at war!”
“We are at war, Nenzi...only you are too far away from it still to feel the effects of it.” The old seer’s eyes narrow, growing harder. “Right now, as we speak, your brothers and sisters are being butchered in Asia...relocated...enslaved...”
“I don’t care.” He puts his finger by the trigger once more. “I don’t...fucking...care...”
“The war will happen, whether you are here or not,” the old seer repeats heavily. “But if you are not here, Nenzi, then we will lose. The seer race will cease to be.”
Nenzi shakes his head, his jaw clenched.
But the old seer clicks at him, louder.
“We are not ready for this fight, Nenzi,” he says, his voice sharp.
When the boy only shakes his head again, Menlim speaks louder.
“...We have spent too many centuries in caves...praying to our Ancestors. Telling ourselves that our ability to see into the Barrier will protect us from what happens down here. Our brothers and sisters are superior beings, Nenzi...and they are being slaughtered right now, for the simple reason that they do not have the kind of mental strength that allows them to fight back. It simply does not occur to them...it does not occur to them to defend themselves...”
“I can’t change that...” he says.
“But you can, Nenzi! Don’t you see?” Menlim leans forward, clasping his long hands between his knees. “You can teach them. You can teach them to fight. You can teach a whole generation how to fight back...how to survive...”
Nenzi holds the gun in his lap again, but he shakes his head, looking at it.
“Maybe we aren’t meant to survive, uncle,” he says.
The old seer frowns mildly, shaking his skull-like head.
“We are meant to lead humans into their next evolutionary state, my friend,” he says, his voice matter of fact. “Your wife will do that...and you must be ready for her. You must prepare things for her...” His voice grows more gentle still. “Will you abandon her here? Will you let her come here...expecting to find you, only to find herself alone? Would you do that to her?”
Pain clutches at his chest, tightening his hands on the gun.
“Gods,” he says, his voice a near cry. “I can’t do this
...not even for her.”
“You can, Nenzi,” the other says. “And you will. I can see it in your light. You are so close now, you have only yourself in the way...”
“But I try. I try every day...even more than I tell you. I try all the time...”
“Then stop doing it for me,” the old seer says, his voice stern for the first time. “Stop doing it to avoid pain, Nenzi! Stop doing it to make your life easier. Do it because it is what you are meant to do...do it so you can fulfill your purpose! Do it for her!”
The younger seer's jaw tightens again, but he doesn’t answer. He stares at the gun in his hands, and doesn’t move when the old seer regains his feet.
“I cannot help you with this, Nenzi,” the old man says. “If you choose to end yourself...to take the coward’s way out, when you are so close...”
“I’m not a fucking coward!”
“Then prove it to me!” the old man returns shortly, his voice impatient, carrying an edge of contempt. “Prove it to the gods! Be a man, Nenzi! If you do not like the direction your life is going, change it. Do not whinge about it like a broken animal...do not expect someone to come along and hand your power to you. Men with lesser powers than you...with lesser potential than you...have fought harder for what meager lots they were given...”
The young seer feels his jaw clench harder, hurting his face.
He doesn’t look up though, or respond to the seer’s words.
He doesn’t move, in fact, as Menlim leaves him, walking away through the thigh-high grass covering the hill. He sits without moving, holding the gun in both of his hands, staring at it. It isn’t until the old seer is well and truly gone that the boy realizes that he meant what he said. Even after everything, his uncle is not coming back.
He will let him end his life.
Clenching his jaw, he rises to his feet.
He doesn’t want to think about his uncle’s words, but he can’t seem to help that, either. His uncle is right. He is weak. He has always been weak.
Allie's War Season Two Page 85