Song Of Mornius

by Diane E Steinbach

  Gaelin slumped, his head bowed as he embraced the staff and pressed it to his chest. Heedless of the bloody grass, he rolled over onto his face as the light pulsing beside him went dark.

  Chapter 8

  GAELIN STIRRED, DRAWN from the mist by a rock and sway of motion, the grinding crunch of hooves breaking through the frozen crust. He sensed a pressure holding him still, the feel of hands clamped over his ribs.

  Voices spoke above him. He saw glimmers of firelight and the golden rise of another dawn. Someone shifted him, and for a time he rode, his chin tapping against his chest.

  He shivered at the kiss of wind on his cheek, finding himself stretched atop a blanket. Beneath his back and his cushion of layered wool, a squeaky wooden floor jerked as it moved. He heard the neighing of several horses, smelled grain and the sweet scent of hay—until the sky tipped him over, spinning him into the fog.

  Then he was facedown, his cheek against the frosted ground. He caught a confused glimpse of a misty stream below him as someone raised him up, an impression in the stiffened grass where his body had been. “Thirsty,” he mumbled, batting at the arms holding him still.

  “Let’s try some soup,” Vyergin said. “The lad needs fluids.”

  Gaelin nodded, staring at the smudge of sunlight through the branches. He licked his lips at the thought of Vyergin’s broth, smiling at the crackle of a nearby fire as his mind began to drift.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  GAELIN AWOKE TANGLED in blankets, the taste of salt on his tongue and sweat trickling down his neck. Dreamily he gaped at the tent’s slanted ceiling, his ears catching the sound of whispering snowflakes.

  As his head cleared, he rolled onto his stomach, wriggling forward under his covers. He peered through the crack of the tent’s door-flap at the pale sky and the looming white peaks. The trees in his view dwarfed the figure he spied by the central fire. They were the massive kingskies, a silvery blue conifer he had not seen around Heartwood.

  He kicked at the blankets and lifted up onto his elbows for a better glimpse of the man seated beside the flames. He recognized Terrek, watching as the commander inclined his body toward the blaze.

  Climbing upright, Gaelin picked his way from the shelter.

  A line of spear points glittered to his right, their shafts propped against the trees. All around him, the warriors struck their tents or knelt to pack their gear. Behind the shelters that were still erect, the horses rattled their pails, eagerly lipping the last of their grain.

  Terrek glanced up, the muscles tightening around his mouth beneath his regrowth of sandy beard. “Nice to see you awake.”

  Gaelin squatted near the fire and yawned. The kettle spat water at the flames, sending puffs of steam to mingle with the smoke. “How far have we come?”

  The lines deepened between Terrek’s brows. His leather cuirass squeaked when he shifted on the knotty log. “The attack was the day before yesterday,” he said. “Heartwood is safe. I’m not sure if you saw it, but the elves raised a dome over the town no dachs could breach.”

  Gaelin stared. “Two days?”

  “We’ve journeyed twenty leagues since the battle on the hills,” said Terrek. “The mountains slowed us a bit, but our new ponies got us through.”

  “Ponies?” Gaelin looked again at the trees where the tethered animals munched their grain.

  “Adapted to higher elevations, yes,” Terrek said. “They have tougher feet too, though they still need pads under their shoes to protect them from the snow. We stopped at Westermore to have the horses we kept reshod, and while we were waiting, we swapped out the wagons, got three sleds for our provisions, and I’ve hired wranglers to help with the animals. It cost a heavy shukna, but my father’s credit was good.

  “Oh, and”—bending forward, Terrek snatched up a stick from beside his legs and poked it at the fire—“remind me later; I have some new gear for you in my pack. We bought more blankets, too.” He gestured to the nubby fabric covering his lap. “It gets colder where we’re going.”

  Gaelin lowered his head when the clearing around him canted sideways. He braced against the stump behind him and pushed himself up to claim it as his seat.

  “Dizzy?” Terrek asked, concerned.

  Gaelin nodded. “Did someone . . . carry me?”

  Terrek dropped the stick and stood. “That was Jahn Oburne. The trail got steep for a while and I had my horse to deal with. We feared you might fall.”

  Oburne. Gaelin cast about the camp through the random spits of snow, but the swarthy lieutenant was missing along with several warriors. Scouting party, he thought with a frown. Turning back, he met Terrek’s gaze. “I’m tired of riding. Today I’m going to walk.”

  “You will not.” Terrek reseated himself while Silva, clad in his black guard’s armor and mail, brought his breakfast.

  At the sight of the steamy porridge, Gaelin heard his stomach gurgle loudly. Laughing, Terrek offered him the wooden bowl and motioned to Silva to fetch another. With a grin, the guard sauntered off.

  Gaelin sampled the fehley, its honey savor and nutty smell making him ravenous. Three sticky spoonfuls of the porridge were already hot in his belly before he remembered and jerked up his head. “Thank you.”

  Still chuckling, Terrek bent, lifting the kettle with Vyergin’s fire stick. While Gaelin watched, he poured them both chimara tea. “You’re welcome.” Terrek passed him a mug. “It’s no wonder you’re hungry. Vyergin got some broth into you yesterday though, which was more than I could do.”

  “Vyergin?” Feeling his muscles tense, Gaelin scowled across the fire at the grizzled captain helping the wranglers load the sleds. His body trembling, Gaelin hunched over his bowl and mug.

  “He’s not a bad man,” said Terrek. “He did what he had to. Those things on your scalp would have infested us as well, so we had to do something. And how did you thank us for our help? You scratched up Vyergin’s neck. I didn’t see him giving you any scars.”

  “It was humiliating. He hurt me.” Gaelin, setting aside his bowl with its crooked metal spoon, slanted a resentful glare at his benefactor. “You both did, and then you buried my hair!”

  “We had to get rid of it somehow,” Terrek said. “The elves have their rules we have to follow. We couldn’t burn it; imagine the smell!” He paused. “Look, there’s bad hurting, like what your stepfather did, and then there’s the kind that helps, the way healers do. Think about it. You feel better, do you not? Your sores are healed?”

  “I guess.” For a time, Gaelin sipped the soothing tea, trying to forget the echo of his screams—his helpless thrashing while the two grown men had held him down.

  He stared at an object behind the fire, a battle-ax propped against a mottled rock. The sight made him yearn for his staff, for the reassurance of a nobler kind of power. After a moment, he glanced up, seeing Terrek accept a second bowl from his bald-pated guard and begin to eat.

  “It’s yours if you want it,” Terrek said around a mouthful of porridge.

  Gaelin blinked. “What is?”

  “The weapon you’re admiring. I hear you fought well during the battle. You won the right to wield it when you killed your first dach.”

  “No.” With a shudder, Gaelin grimaced.

  “That’s a shame,” Terrek replied. “It’s a beautiful ax.”

  Gaelin eyed the weapon and nodded. “The elves in the temple,” he said, hoping to change the subject, “used a word I didn’t know. They said humans have been here for nine hundred cycles. What are cycles—years? And what did they mean? Were we someplace else before?”

  “Indeed, we were,” Terrek said. “We had our own world, a planet we called Earth. I studied this at university, and I’ve heard legends, too. My father told me them, and his father . . . you know.”

  Gaelin glowered at his tea. “No, I don’t. I never had a father.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to have mine.” Terrek stretched out his leg and laughed at Silva’s startled reaction. Grinning, he passed his
bowl to the armored man.

  “Sorry, Gaelin,” he said. “It’s just that Lucian, my father, is a difficult man. People make him uneasy, so as a rule, he avoids them. He has a head for business, though, and an uncanny rapport with horses, but if your heart is hurting, forget it, he’s impossible. I’m here for the same reason my mother left: to escape his abuse. I requested he give me a task, which he did—to watch over both his land and Kideren, where we get our supplies.”

  Gaelin traced the rim of his mug with his finger. “I don’t think your father would like me very much. I—”

  “Do you want me to answer you or not?” Terrek cut in, and meeting his gaze, Gaelin nodded.

  “Very well,” Terrek said. “It’s easiest if you close your eyes and imagine a starry sky. Do you have it?” Gaelin nodded. “Good,” Terrek’s voice continued. “Now arrange your stars into two clusters, keeping one nearby and the other far away.” He hesitated again. “On Earth, we called those groupings ‘galaxies.’ Each had millions of stars, all like the sun you see in the sky, with worlds that move around them.

  “Earth existed in the galaxy you placed at a distance, while the planet we stand on orbits a star in the one that’s closer. Now forget the stars. See the blackness you put between them?” Again Gaelin nodded. “We were taken across that by an energy being named Sephrym who was trying to save this world. Perhaps the elves mentioned him?”

  “They did,” said Gaelin. “They talked about Holram, too, and something called Erebos. He’s Holram’s enemy and he wants me dead.”

  “Erebos is the one who attacked Earth. He’s a creator of darkness who enjoys torture and feeding off suffering. Earth’s warder, Holram, tried to stop him but failed. He wasn’t strong enough. Another defender of suns, Tythos, came to help, but the Destroyer defeated them both.”

  “Are these things gods?” Gaelin picked a blue petal of chimara from his tea, his lids heavy under the brew’s calming influence.

  Terrek jabbed his stick at the fire, sending a skittering of sparks across the snow. “They’re like custodians,” he said, “though I’m sure they’ve inspired some strange beliefs on many worlds. But nothing exists outside of nature, Gaelin. These beings die like everything else. Holram wasn’t killed in this battle with Erebos, but he was gravely wounded, as was Tythos—both of them reduced to shadows of what they were.

  “Holram knew we were doomed. By attacking the Earth’s sun, infusing it with his power until it exploded, he was trying to use our destruction to protect other worlds from Erebos.”

  As Gaelin frowned, Terrek chuckled. “It’s a myth, Gaelin. Don’t take it to heart. Yes, there might be truth in it . . . somewhere. These creatures do exist, as you know.” Terrek sighed. “You have proof of that in your staff. They have no bodies, yet they live.

  “When I was younger,” he continued, his amber eyes glinting, “I had to cross Warder’s Fall to get from Geresh City to Shattan. Except for the trees the elves planted along the roadway—which I hear they still have to tend constantly—the rest of the land was dead where the warders were cast down. I saw no plants or trees, nothing as far as I could see. The ground was poisoned. It is dead now.”

  “This Sephrym . . .” Gaelin shifted closer to the fire’s heat, his gaze on Terrek. “He’s another of these things?”

  “Yes, and the only one who is Erebos’s equal.” Terrek gestured to the sun’s pale disk beyond the clouds. “Nine hundred years ago, that was dying. Sephrym was working to revive it, as he’s always done before. He looked for . . . power from other failing stars. Sensing our sun’s imminent destruction, he reached from this, the Denevaar galaxy, into our own.

  “Magic binds the universe. The more planets like this one are allowed to perish, the more the stars themselves will drift apart. Sephrym would do anything, even cross the divide between galaxies, to preserve this world. He ensnared the heat from our dying sun and caught by mistake the battling warders, bringing them here as well. Holram and Tythos made a final grab at Earth before they were taken, and that’s how we were transported.”

  Gaelin glared at his friend. “I don’t know these words,” he muttered. “Universe and galaxies?”

  “Because they’re not from here,” Terrek said. “They come from old Earth books we study. We’ve lost our wisdom, Gaelin. The theory goes that Sephrym didn’t want or need physical matter, so he cast us down. And now here we are, refugees on a world that spins in the wrong direction around a sun that never dies.” He cleared his throat. “That’s something I learned at university. It’s why we see the sun rising in the west here. On Earth it was reversed.”

  “And how charming we’re stuck with Erebos, too, who wants to torture us,” said Oburne’s sarcastic voice.

  Gaelin jumped when snow crunched behind him. He glimpsed rippling brown fur and scooted over, giving way when Oburne passed by to settle his bulk on the log next to Terrek.

  “Oh, Sephrym, the wise and magnificent,” Oburne intoned, “casting aside warders, of all things—who happen to be lethal to his precious world.” Oburne snorted. “Stop making him out to be the hero, Terrek. If he had just killed Erebos then and there, we’d have no cult butchering us now.”

  “True enough,” Terrek admitted, “but he was trying to save his star. I don’t think he cared what else he ensnared.”

  “Anyway, it’s just a myth.” Oburne shrugged back his weighty cloak. “Superstition and nonsense, lad. Pay it no heed.”

  “Tell that to his staff,” Terrek said. “Gaelin, fetch Mornius for us, will you? I’d like to introduce Holram to Mister Skeptic here.”

  Gaelin braced himself to rise, but Oburne gripped him and held him still. “No, boy,” the warrior said in a gruff voice. “That’s not necessary.”

  “So he’s in my staff.” Gaelin looked across Oburne’s barrel chest at his friend. “This Holram.” Embarrassed, he swallowed. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “The crystal on your staff comes from Earth,” Terrek explained. “It’s dead; it has no magic. The power of these beings is lethal to this world, so they must hide in dead stone. First, Holram fled to a temple—a petrified tree near Tierdon—but he found it too restrictive; he couldn’t move as he wished. So the elves made your staff for the Skystone and found a human to carry it. That would be your ancestor, Gaelin. Jaegar Othelion.

  “As for Erebos, he slew Tythos upon arriving on this planet and wounded this land during his flight to the mountains. There he found an extinct volcano to hide in after he destroyed what life Mount Chesna still had. Now Talenkai serves as his shield from his enemy, Sephrym, until Erebos becomes strong enough to break free.”

  “Holram . . . didn’t mean to kill the way he did,” Gaelin said. He set his mug on the log beside Oburne and stood. From the nearby tent, he sensed his staff’s hold on him. “Holram wanted to heal the dachs, but I interfered.”

  “They were trying to slaughter us, Gaelin,” Terrek replied. “It was hardly the right time to be helping them.”

  Gaelin heard a soft clink as Terrek placed his cup on the frozen ground. “You were disoriented, Wren told me, and I saw it a few times myself during the battle. Perhaps your state of mind confused the warder.”

  “Wren tells you everything I do?” Gaelin jerked up his head. “He needs to mind his own business. I can take care of myself!”

  Terrek leaned back from the fire to survey him from behind Oburne’s shoulders. “Wren saved your hide at Heartwood, so I made him your guard. Don’t be stubborn, Gaelin. You refused the ax you won. You won’t even carry a knife.”

  “It’s fine,” muttered Gaelin. Once again he peered at the tent, feeling the yearning for his staff in his bones. “I’ll accept the guard, but I—”

  “You saved my life, too,” Terrek interjected. “I won’t pressure you to use Mornius. But as long as you’re with us, you’ll have Wren Neche guarding your back.”

  Gaelin winced, his mouth dry as he recalled the ugly wound Lars Broudel had inflicted on Terrek in the pub at Kid
eren. At that time, he had wanted to die. He had committed murder, proving to be all the terrible things his stepfather had thought him.

  Voices rose in the distance, the yells of the warriors carrying across the snow as they practiced their drills.

  Gaelin glanced at the trees that concealed the men from his view. I’ll never be like them, he realized, flexing his arm. He had enough strength to wield a weapon if he had to, but he lacked the heart for it, a fact he was keenly aware of. I wouldn’t have enough endurance, either.

  “Gaelin?” Terrek leaned toward him.

  “I’d like to fight.” Gaelin stopped, unsure if he had spoken aloud. “I’d like to learn to ride horses and use a sword, but when I think about hurting the dachs . . .” He rubbed at his mouth. “They’re people, Terrek. They can’t help what they are and . . . in a way I was like them. I know how it feels to be seen as less than a person.”

  Terrek cleared his throat. “Ask Caven Roth what he went through and how he uses his pain to fight. It gives him courage.”

  “And my hurts help me to know where other people are injured,” Gaelin countered. “Enough to guide the staff to make them well. I fight, too, against their suffering.

  “I believe Mornius can kill, but I’m not a warrior, and I’m its wielder. There must be a reason for that.”

  “A valid point,” said Terrek. “Holram chose you, didn’t he? If he had wanted a fighter, he could have picked someone else. One of your stepbrothers, perhaps, and as a result none of my men would be healed and I’d be dead right now.”

  After a pause, Gaelin nodded.

  “Today you’ll ride with me,” Terrek told him. “You’re one of us; you belong here as much as any of these men. Understood?”

  “Even if I decide not to fight or . . . do as you ask?”

  Terrek’s grin was fierce. “Even so.”

  Chapter 9

  GAELIN HELD TIGHTLY to Terrek’s saddle, his body swaying with Duncan’s lurching steps. His thighs gripping the cantle, he fought to stay centered on the horse’s broad hips as the animal’s muscles worked beneath him.