The Young Dread

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  She flew down the steep land to the water, grabbing at trees and roots and rocks and never slowing from a run. Then she was at the river, wide and shallow here. She removed her shoes and cloak and crossed it, feeling the cold water envelop her, the moon’s reflection guiding her along the surface.

  On the opposite riverbank, she ran again, ferns whipping at her legs, to the deep pool at the foot of the waterfall. She did not pause to admire the falls, but found her way over slippery algae and moss to the rocky wall. She looked up the face of the precipice and felt herself being called by the kindred spirit nesting far above her.

  She began to climb.

  The waterfall cliff was a twisted maze of indentations, caves, and narrow clefts, overgrown by vines and moss. The Young Dread worked her way upward in near darkness, finding footholds and secret channels. There was no reason to suppose she could find a way up, and yet she was certain she would, because she’d decided it would be so. On this night of liberty, which was approximately her thirteenth birthday, Maud felt she had the freedom to decide such things.

  Her hands and her feet were cut by sharp edges, but she ignored these discomforts. Pain means little, she told herself, using her master’s words. It is only pain.

  At the Middle Dread’s hands, she’d been struck with speeding rocks, hit by horseshoes, slapped, thrown out of trees. Those things too she could bear without complaint. And yet the scrapes and blisters of this climb were different, because the cliff did not mean to hurt her, the cliff did not desire to prove her weak. It was only itself, ancient rock and living plant, neither helping her nor hindering her, merely allowing her to be.

  The sky was growing lighter when she reached the aerie. She came up through a fissure several yards from the tiny cave—little more than a covered ledge—where a great nest of sticks and moss had been built up over many years. It was so much larger up close than it had looked from the ground—the nest of a giant.

  Maud pulled herself outward to the face of the cliff, where only a narrow jut of stone stood between her and a fatal plummet into the waterfall’s pool. She eased herself along the cliff face, caught hold of the root of a crooked tree growing above her from a crack in the rock wall, and drew herself upright.

  The eagle was inside her nest, an enormous hunched figure. In the growing light, the Young Dread observed the dark feathers, ruffled by a predawn breeze.

  The eagle’s head swiveled and she caught sight of Maud on the ledge, only a few yards away. The giant bird turned toward the human girl, flared her wings—they were seven or eight feet across—and opened her wicked beak.

  An amber-colored eye scrutinized the Young Dread, the eye of a creature who, like Maud, kept apart from humanity, who lived in the quiet, endless moments between. The Young Dread held herself entirely still. Under the eagle’s inspection, she felt a connection between the bird’s mind and her own, and across this connection she experienced a wave of instinctual thought that seemed to ask: Hunter? Prey? Mate? When Maud did not fit any of these categories, the eagle turned away, relegating her to the background.

  The eagle jumped to the lip of the nest, revealing two large speckled eggs upon which she’d been sitting. She regarded Maud a second time, but only long enough to assure herself that the girl had not moved since her last appraisal. Hunter? Prey? Mate? the Young Dread felt again. And again the answer was: None of those. Then the great bird turned her eyes to the countryside below.

  In the early twilight, the eagle’s gaze swept the land, and Maud’s gaze followed. She threw her sight, as the Old Dread had taught her to do, and all at once, she could examine the world—the deep river pool below, the trees and ferns along its bank, the wild moor beyond—in minute detail, as though it were close enough to reach out and touch.

  The Young Dread threw her hearing. The cacophony of the waterfall, a breeze assaulting the cliff, and a thousand small creatures across the land came to her ears. She focused on the eagle herself, heard the bird’s heart beating, her breath moving slowly in and out of her powerful lungs.

  She thought again of how the eagle was like a Dread: solitary, controlled, a hunter when need be, but more than that, a judge of the world spread out below her.

  Maud’s extended hearing picked up a new noise—two new noises. There were twin heartbeats, so fast they sounded almost continuous. The eggs. She was listening to the heartbeats of the eaglets inside their shells. And she could hear more: a stretching, rasping sound as the tiny birds moved in their confined spaces. They were nearly old enough to hatch.

  She turned to the mother, who was still perched at the lip of the nest. The eagle wouldn’t be solitary much longer; soon she would have two chicks to care for, two companions to love her.

  Love. Maud could remember love from long ago, when she’d had a mother and a father. So much time had passed since then, however, that love was more of an idea to her than an actual feeling.

  The eagle’s head cocked to one side. She’d spotted something. Maud sharpened her gaze and saw what the bird had seen: a hare darting through the undergrowth a thousand yards away.

  The eagle extended her wings to their full span, and then she stepped off the nest into the air and she flew.

  The Young Dread watched her go, and as the bird flew farther away, she felt their kinship fade. The eagle would have eaglets and must have a mate somewhere, who would return to her. Maud would be stuck as she was, learning from the Middle Dread who hated her and hoping to someday again see her master, the Old Dread—the one person who cared for her and for whom she cared.

  She watched until the silent winged predator became little more than a black line against the brightening sky.

  Maud imagined herself stepping off the rock ledge into the gentle dawn air and not falling, but simply floating away.

  Instead, she climbed back down the cliff, gathered her meager belongings, and walked back the way she’d come.

  Chapter 3

  A Ghost

  When she crossed the river to return to the estate, the Young Dread threw her hearing in every direction, taking in the sounds of dawn. She was surprised, as she walked along the riverbank, to hear two boys arguing. They were far away to the south, so distant that she couldn’t make out their words, only their tone and that they were quite young. She wondered, fleetingly, if she was hearing the same cloaked peasant boy she’d seen the night before. Had he been chased off the estate by the Middle Dread? Was he heading south, with a companion, back to his own village? Why had he come here?

  In the estate woods, she was presented with two paths, and she chose the route that would take her past the residents of the estate. Visiting the eagle had left her with a feeling of emptiness. Now she craved human company, if only for a short while.

  The sun was lifting itself above the horizon when she reached the first collection of cabins tucked into the forest. Through the windows, she saw rows of cots, already made tidy by their owners, who had gotten up before the sun. Up ahead was the noise of swords crashing against each other.

  “Come, Ralph, don’t let her get behind you! You, Elizabeth, watch your hands, keep your sword up. Aiden, lower, boy!”

  Beyond the cabins was a clearing where a large group of Seeker apprentices, between the ages of nine and eleven, were hacking at each other quite skillfully with training swords. Girls and boys fought equally, a state of affairs the Young Dread knew she would find nowhere in the world besides a Seeker training camp.

  Their instructor was a woman with flaming red hair. Maud had seen her before, of course, when the woman was much younger—Maud saw all Seekers on the estate sooner or later. This woman was named Glenna—no, Gwynna. She was from the Seeker house of the Eagle. Maud had observed the woman’s oath ceremony, which must have been at least fifteen years previously.

  She threw her sight to examine Gwynna’s wrist. The dagger-shaped scar was there, in the same spot where the Middle Dread had burned it into her flesh, marking her as a sworn Seeker. It pleased the Young Dread to know
that the woman now trained apprentices.

  Maud felt the eyes of the children follow her as she moved quietly between trees at the edge of the clearing. One student who watched her instead of his opponent got whacked on the side of the head with a blunt wooden sword.

  “Davie, ye daft boy, keep yer eyes where they belong,” Gwynna snapped.

  They all attempted to ignore the Young Dread then, but she sensed their furtive glances, searching for her, then quickly turning away. She’d been awake on the estate for several days, so this wasn’t the first time these children had seen her, but they were not used to her presence. She was a Dread, and she inspired dread. She was, to them, an unknown force, there to ensure Seekers upheld their traditions of noble deeds. And to the older Seekers, she was ageless; she spent so many years There that each time she returned to the world, she hadn’t grown much older. She’d aged only about six years during the last three hundred.

  “It’s like she’s gliding along the ground,” one of the children said softly.

  “Or like the ground itself is moving while she remains still,” another said, with something like awe.

  “Attend!” Gwynna told them firmly. “You will surely have a chance to meet the Young Dread if you make it to your oaths. Now, eyes on your opponents!”

  Gwynna peered at the Young Dread as she moved by. She inclined her head slightly in greeting. The Young Dread found herself strangely pleased by the recognition. It was as though she was a person, not merely a presence. And yet there was something wary in the woman’s gaze.

  Maud moved through the woods toward the second set of dormitory cottages, closer to the center of the estate. Chaotic noises were floating to her from up ahead. She had thought she craved human contact, but there was something unpleasant about the way the younger apprentices had looked at her. Now she slipped deeper into the shadows as she walked.

  “Again!” came an order ahead. “Fast! Again!”

  There was a high whine piercing the air. The Young Dread stepped around the trunk of an enormous oak and reached the edge of a new, larger clearing. The apprentices here were older—perhaps thirteen. There were six of them. Three wore disruptors strapped across their chests, and the whine was coming from those weapons. The disruptors were like small cannons of an iridescent metal, with short barrels covered by hundreds of irregularly shaped holes. Each weapon whined in a slightly different key, and the effect of the noise alone was almost overpowering. They were ready to fire.

  The apprentices with disruptors were closing in on three others, who were positioned in the middle of the open space. One of the three defenders wore a metal helm, just as the Young Dread had done on the previous night. She could see his clear eyes studying the attackers as they approached. The other two defenders carried shields of the same shimmering metal as the disruptors. The concentric circles of those shields began to rotate, each in its own direction and at its own speed, creating a dizzying view.

  “Attack!” called a man at the opposite edge of the clearing from Maud. He had a graying mustache and long hair with streaks of silver. The Young Dread had met him too during her last waking. He was Gordon, House of the Ram, an excellent fighter and teacher.

  The attackers charged the defenders, and all three disruptors fired. From each barrel, thousands of electrical sparks shot out, hissing and buzzing like swarms of wasps, flashing in the light of the rising sun. If those sparks reached a human head, they would surround it and destroy the victim’s sanity, and they would never leave. Facing a disruptor without fear was one of the hardest tasks of a Seeker apprentice. But these students looked well trained.

  The defenders watched the sparks coming at them from all sides. With practiced ease, they took their positions, the one wearing the helm in the middle, the two with shields each putting a hand on one of his shoulders, the rings of their shields spinning faster and faster.

  The sparks were upon them, and they swept their shields through the storm. Electricity crackled as the sparks hit the metal, and the Young Dread saw the shields almost glowing as they absorbed the onslaught. The hiss and crackle became louder; then the sparks were thrown back out at the attackers in wild showers that burst from the edges of each shield like fireworks.

  The attackers dove for the ground and covered their heads as the sparks passed over them. Finding no human target, the electric flashes collided with the dirt and burst into nothingness in explosions of rainbow-colored light.

  Now all six fighters drew their coiled whipswords, cracked them out into solid form. The Young Dread watched the oily surface of each whipsword slide about itself, then solidify into whatever shape the fighter had chosen. The combatants now fought hand to hand.

  “Nicely done!” called Gordon from the edge of the clearing.

  He’d seen the Young Dread. Like Gwynna, he inclined his head to her in a gesture of respect, but there was caution in his eyes. Maud inclined her head to him as a compliment on his students’ fighting abilities.

  As soon as she left the clearing, it became obvious that she was being followed. The footsteps were light but not very skillful. It was someone quite young and small, then. The Young Dread made no sign that she was aware of her pursuer until she was in a shadowy section of woods. Then she turned suddenly and found herself facing a girl who could have been no more than four years old. She had fair hair that was nearly white, and dark brown eyes. She was so young, she wore a loose smock dress, not the trousers and blouse worn by Seeker apprentices of both genders.

  The little girl gasped when the Young Dread turned on her. She stood petrified, her mouth hanging open as though she’d come face to face with a bear. Then her thumb came up and plugged her mouth, and she began furiously sucking—her wide eyes glued to Maud. She must be the child of one of the instructors. Perhaps Gordon, Maud thought. She had his eyes.

  The girl regained her wits and stepped backward very slowly, as if backing away from the bear. No, not a bear. The girl was looking at the Young Dread as if she were an otherworldly apparition in a fairy story—a creature who was very much other. When she’d backed up far enough to put a large tree between herself and the Young Dread, she turned and ran as fast as her short legs would carry her.

  Maud turned back to her own course and startled a young Seeker standing guard at the edge of a small glade. He ducked his head respectfully as she stepped past him.

  A group of older apprentices was huddled around a white-haired woman, who spoke to them in a low murmur. These students were older than Maud—physically, at least—perhaps fourteen. Their instructor had an athame laid out across both of her hands, the ancient dagger of pale stone glinting dully in the early-morning light. The woman’s eyes flicked up to watch the Young Dread approach, but she didn’t pause in her stream of quiet words, and because of this, her students didn’t notice Maud’s presence.

  “When you’ve learned the coordinates of athames, I will let you handle this precious device,” she was telling them softly, “but not until then. Note the number of dials.”

  With one hand, she indicated the stacked series of movable rings that made up the athame’s hilt. Each ring had a dozen small faces, and on each face a symbol was carved.

  “We line up symbols to create the coordinates of where we will go. A good Seeker can determine these almost without thinking….”

  The Young Dread passed on, giving the students and their instructor privacy as they stepped into the mysteries of the athame, an implement at the heart of Seekers’ training and special knowledge. They would learn, soon enough, that the athame, when used properly, could carve a hole in the fabric of the world, to bring its user There. And they would learn all one could learn about that strange darkness There—between the dimensions of the real world and outside the flow of time. From There, they could use the athame again, to carve a hole back to somewhere else in the world. It was a tool to get anywhere one wished. Each Seeker would be expected to use the ancient implement for noble deeds, to bring honor to his or her Seeker
house. And Maud, as a Dread, was there to ensure Seekers used their athames honorably. She would spend hundreds of years in the blackness There, apart from the world, returning for brief visits such as this one, to be a judge.

  The Young Dread looked back for a moment, to find the students all bent over the athame, fully attentive. Their instructor—Lilias, that was her name; Maud had seen her on her last waking, when the woman had looked much younger—regarded the Young Dread briefly, then turned back to her apprentices.

  Maud passed out the other side of the glade. She had wanted to see the people on the estate, and she had. In fact, she’d seen, in brief glimpses, almost the whole progression of Seeker training and most of the apprentices preparing to take the oath. And now she wished she’d walked a different way and remained in solitude. Her emptiness had only grown stronger.

  The little girl’s gaze had been the most honest. The Young Dread was not a human to these Seekers and apprentices. She was a ghost.

  Chapter 4

  A Fight

  When she finally neared the cottages of the Dreads, Maud heard the clash of whipswords again—but this was nothing like the childish fights of the apprentices. This was the rapid, ferocious strike and counterstrike of a Dread doing battle.

  And there were voices:

  “…and how have you been occupying yourself in the years since last I saw you?” asked the first voice.

  “Only in good deeds, of course,” said the second.

  The Young Dread shifted gears and took off through the trees, a strange emotion coming over her. She knew who was fighting: one combatant was the Middle Dread, and the other was…

  …the Old Dread.

  The first voice was his. Her master was awake. After years sleeping There, he’d come back to them.

  “Good deeds were not how you occupied yourself the last time we met,” the Old Dread said.