The Raging One

by Lexy Wolfe

  Ash lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, lost in his thoughts. Amelana leaned over, half resting on him, tracing circles across his chest. "Ash," she purred as her golden blond hair cascaded down her back and across his chest. "You are still so tense." She kissed him lightly, but he did not respond. "What is on your mind, Ash?"

  "My thoughts are my own, Journeyman," he stated without inflection.

  She sighed dramatically. "Do you still dwell on that dead servant girl of yours?" Heedless of the darkening expression on the Illaini Magus's face, Amelana said carelessly, "She was barely worth keeping as a servant. Holding onto grief for a lowborn such as her is beneath you. You should be happy you were able to be rid of her." Sliding her hand down his side to his hip, she purred, "What good are cold memories when you have me to keep you warm?"

  The mage growled, shoving the naked girl off and sitting up. He closed his hand on her throat, glaring into her eyes. "If you ever speak of Dessa again, I will send you home marked as the tramp you are." Shoving her away, he glared, barely restraining from striking her. "Get your clothing. Leave me." Wide-eyed, Amelana obeyed, tripping over herself.

  Alone, Ash sighed and lay back again. He created a privacy barrier with the wave of a hand, the invisible wall that kept sounds from penetrating it bringing him utter silence. "Dessa." His whispered voice carried a hint of desperation as he closed his eyes. The sight in his mind's eye was not that of the gentle girl he had known nearly all his life, who had forgiven him for his inability to protect her when he could never forgive himself.

  The woman in the forefront of his mind was the Desanti woman Storm. Ash growled. "Be gone from my thoughts, Swordanzen!" The scene of Dessa's rape from his youth and the scene from the Desanti market inexplicably played themselves together in his mind. He shook his head sharply as he pushed himself to a sitting position, pressing the heels of his hands against his temples. "I will not allow anyone to taint Dessa's memory. Least of all an ungrateful savage like you!" Restless, he got dressed and stalked out of the pavilion.

  Not particularly caring where he was going, Ash walked deeper into the darkness, away from the sounds of large numbers of people. Eventually, he came to a place lush with greenery. Strange trees were gnarled and windblown, ferns huddling around their trunks. Though incomparably foreign to anything he had ever known, the plants soothed his mind, giving him a modicum of peace. He went deeper into this unexpected refuge of greenery, finding a rock by the small pool of water in the oasis's center to sit on. He sighed softly, staring at the reflection of the waxing moons rippling with the gentle evening breeze.

  A familiar, bitter voice disturbed the mage's tranquility. "Did you purposely choose this place, defiler, or did fate guide your feet here to disrupt my peace?" Storm's weary voice was touched with a great cat's purr. Studying him a long time, the irritation that radiated from her subsided. "I see. You seek solace from your own shadows pursuing you."

  Unable to ignore her presence, bothered by her keen and unwanted insight, Ash glanced over at the woman seated amongst the tall ferns near the rock he had chosen to sit on. He frowned slightly as he studied her with more objectivity, noticing the stained bandages she wore. "You are injured. Was it one of those men who harmed you? That one called Sumalen?" Remembering the feeling of something unnamable bothering him about Sumalen, Ash's voice got a harsher, almost protective, edge to it. "You should have your wounds tended to."

  Storm looked taken aback, opening her green-gold eyes to study him. "I am surprised it matters to you, treewalker."

  "It doesn't," the mage denied tersely, looking back towards the water. "I simply wondered if that brute was the one who injured you." He looked over at the woman again, his mind making an intuitive leap. "You are the Swordanzen that Master Almek wished to meet." The woman was still and silent, though she opened her eyes again to study him narrowly. "Master Almek said you are taking us to the site where you encountered the darkling."

  Still, Storm said nothing. Her eyes closed again, legs crossed, hands resting lightly on her knees. But he could see the tension across her shoulders. Finally, she stated, "The elders are informing the tribes that Lord Almek and his students are permitted beyond First Home so you will not be killed on sight." After a moment, she spoke again, but with visceral pleasure edging her chill tones. "Elder Verris wants you to bear witness to your ancestral failure."

  Ash's eyes narrowed to slits. "Failure?"

  Storm opened her eyes to meet his. "Our people still live." Ash ground his teeth at the cold words. "Do you revel seeing what your defiler ancestors had done? How they ripped the very life from the land, from not only warriors, but elders and infants and even the unborn, and left us to suffer? Does it anger you to discover they were not strong enough to destroy all of Desantiva completely?

  "Perhaps knowing Desanti are not as weak as you convinced yourselves we were sits in the pit of your stomach like pieces of broken glass, cutting you inside a thousand times. Maybe you believe one day we might come to exact justice for your ancestors' crimes against the gods." Green-gold eyes narrowed as she insinuated, "It torments you with unreasoning fear, doesn't it?"

  "Do not presume to know my thoughts, Swordanzen," Ash growled harshly. "You know nothing of what I think."

  Rising with lithe suppleness, Storm stretched, unconcerned about the underlying threat behind his words, or that he could see the deep red of blood on her bandages from the wounds that continued to bleed. She leveled a hard look on the mage. "Lord Almek Two-Tones thinks you are worthy of serving him." Her voice was mocking and derisive. Turning to walk into the darkness, her voice drifted back. "You better be, defiler."

  Chapter 27

  ASH returned to the pavilion as the sky began to glow with the false dawn. The bard, the gypsy mercenaries and his apprentice had returned already, Emil proudly showing off a strange knife to Taylin and Almek. "It be called obsidian. Th' whole thing be carved from it." Though the light glinted off of the facets, the black of the glassy obsidian seemed to hold greedily onto the light, a deeper black than any of the northern folk had seen before.

  Mureln waved a nonchalant hand dismissively. "I still say you got lucky. The gods must watch over idiots."

  Emil grinned toothily, waving the blade around. "I may be an idiot, but I still won this pretty fair 'n square. So ye not be needin' t' worry some angry merchant be goin' t' chase us down or nothing."

  "I have never seen anyone able to throw knives so well." Terrence's enthusiasm was as boundless as it was innocent. "I think even the Desanti were impressed. It was like they danced across your fingers."

  "Ah, m'boy, nimble fingers be good fer many things." Emil winked. "Ye can ask many of th' girls who been with me over th' years."

  "And a few of their husbands," Mureln drawled, this time avoiding Emil's fist to his arm. "Don't listen to this lout when it comes to advice about women, Terrence. He has been slapped more times than there are blades of grass on the plains."

  Emil looked affronted. "Just b'cause I can't charm th' balls off a bull like ye can, Mureln, ain't no reason t' be talkin' bad 'bout me." He glared up at Emaris. "An' you quit yer grinnin', ye big lunk! Yer s'posed t' back me up!" The men laughed at the skinny mercenary who humphed and crossed his arms in a pout.

  Mureln looked up at the mage as the man paused by their shared sleeping area, meeting his eyes. Nodding slightly, Mureln turned to his companions. "I'm going to go shake the sand out of my britches before the morning meal is brought. Make sure you bottomless pits leave some food for me when it arrives." Emil waved Mureln off, drawing Terrence over to the common table to talk about 'real' women. Mureln shook his head, following the mage into the private area.

  As soon as the bard entered, Ash waved his hand. The sounds outside of their area went utterly silent, not even Emil's rather loud and descriptive exaggerations audible. Mureln nodded thoughtfully as he dropped down to sit on his sleeping mat. "Impressive privacy barrier. It is a rare gift to be able to use your Northern magic wi
thout speaking. I'm impressed."

  The mage snorted softly as he removed his outer robes, dismissing the compliment. It was a few minutes before he finally spoke, his words slow and measured. "Tell me, Bard. Why do you not judge me as everyone else seems to do?"

  Mureln sat down, upending his boots one after the other to pour out the fine grains that had gotten inside. "We all judge each other, Illaini Magus," he said with a shrug. "It is the nature of humans to judge, good or ill."

  "Do not play Forentan philosophy games with me, Bard. I have not the temper for it. You know what I am asking you." Sitting across from each other, Ash fixed Mureln with an intense gaze. "Most of these desert folk look at me as if I were one of the ancients who had wielded the forbidden magicks of the Great War. Your own sister looked on me as if I were a murderer though I had never even met her before and done no harm to her. They look at me thus for no other reason than because I am Forentan." He looked at Mureln again. "Everyone but you. Why?"

  Any hint of levity faded from Mureln's expression, silent as he considered his response. "I am a master bard. My duty, my passion, is sharing the memories, both factual and emotional, of as many people I encounter as I can. Many fall prey to passing the same judgments on individuals as they do on an entire group."

  He looked at his hand, rubbing his thumb along the calluses along his fingertips. "For a bard to show bias knowingly towards anyone poisons the art. While some have resented me for my lack of biases because it means I do not agree with their own, it would be far worse if our prejudices conflicted. My word would become suspect, their trust in me would be gone."

  "The Desanti judge everyone as their enemy," Ash observed bitterly.

  "You must try to see the world from their point of view, Andar." Ash looked up at Mureln with a puzzled frown. "For all their bravado, deep in their hearts, they are afraid. They are afraid of disappearing entirely from the face of the Sundered Lands. Their lives are harsh. Since the Great War, their numbers are..." He pressed his lips together and waved a hand. "Nearly all the Desanti that live are here for this Time of Gathering. Barely the population of a single small city up north."

  The mage blinked, his anger evaporating into shock. "...All of them?"

  "All of them," Mureln confirmed. "They cannot remain in one place for long. The land struggles to sustain what numbers they have. Once per year, the tribes come together in peace. Some will go with another tribe to strengthen the bloodlines. And then they will separate again to wander the land with smaller groups."

  "You said the Vodani are cousins to the Desanti," Ash stated, his question implied.

  "There are many things the Vodani and Desanti share in common. Desanti are fiercely protective of the land they call home. The Vodani are those Desanti who began to feel the call of home in the waves of Vodanya. All Vodani are wanderers. Our spirits move as the tides, urging us to new places, new experiences. We shared what the mages had wrought on the warriors in the final battle until the sundering split Desantiva and Vodanya was born."

  "So you chose to become a bard because of your wandering spirit?"

  Mureln chuckled a little. "Ever since I was a boy, I have been curious about the other lands. The other peoples. I was Almek's student when I was a boy. Until the music called to me. When the music called, I answered. The first stories I learned from the Desanti only made me hungrier to experience the truth for myself."

  "And what truth had you found?" Ash's voice did not quite hold the disdain it might have had only minutes before.

  Mureln quirked a faint smile. "I learned many things. I learned that perceptions are born of some grain of truth. But what is seen on the surface may run through to the core, or may only be an illusion in the mind's eye." He regarded Ash steadily, waiting for the mage to consider his words.

  "Do you see a murderer when you look at me?" Ash asked simply, his eyes fixed on the belt in his hands, squeezed in an attempt to conceal his agitation.

  The bard blinked at the unexpected question. "I see a man who is capable of murder, but not a murderer. I see a man who was once confident he knew everything he needed to of the world beyond his homeland and discovered it is much, much more complicated than he anticipated." He was silent for a time. "When I first met you, I thought you were an arrogant bastard who dismissed everyone else as worthless and beneath him."

  Flinching inwardly, the mage could not deny the accuracy of Mureln's initial observations. "And now?" Ash's voice was barely audible despite the privacy barrier that cordoned off sounds from both sides.

  "I see a man who tried to become strong enough to be able to protect those he cared about, to control everything so it would all be safe, and had his entire world crash around him when he discovered that utter control was still beyond his grasp." Pausing, the bard continued in a gentle voice.

  "You look at your past with new eyes, and you question yourself. You look at your people's past and realize what they have tried to forget. You look at the future, and realize it isn't as clear as you thought it was and that you are not strong enough to protect everyone alone."

  Ash's face colored at Mureln's blunt and accurate honesty. He looked away to conceal some of his shame from the Vodani. "I am weak."

  "Weak? Hardly." Mureln's clipped tones drew Ash to look up at him again. "Most of what your people want is predictability. You want the world nice and ordered. And you fooled yourself into believing you had finally achieved that elusive order and predictability. But you learned the world was neither and someone you cared about suffered for that mistake. You strove to make yourself stronger and still it was not enough to protect Dessa."

  "And Vodani do not want the same thing?" Ash asked, deflecting the focus away from himself for at least a moment. "Control over your world?"

  Mureln could not help but chuckle softly. "Ah, I suppose in a sense we do. But we live within the embrace of the oceans. There is no power greater, and while some of us are gifted enough to influence the tides and storms enough to delay or dampen them, we accept we cannot stop them. Instead, we learn how to adjust to their comings and goings." He sighed softly, expression sad. "And sometimes, no matter the skill, the precautions, we cannot prevent the inevitable. The world simply is not predictable. But we rather like it that way."

  Ash frowned. "Why would you like unpredictability? It brings nothing but pain and grief."

  Mureln looked pityingly at the mage. "There is both pleasure and pain in life. Success is so much sweeter knowing the losses that could have been. Each day becomes a treasure because it may be the last. Each smile, each touch, each chance encounter... I would rather die right here and now having lived each day to its fullest than live another tens of hundreds of years knowing what to expect each and every day." The bard studied the withdrawn mage for a time. "Something happened tonight." His voice prodded the mage to explain.

  "I encountered the Swordanzen that will be guiding Master Almek into the desert. The woman Storm il'Thandar." Mureln sat bolt upright, staring at Ash as he fell silent. The mage's jaw muscles jumping as he clenched his teeth.

  "You are still whole," Mureln offered hopefully after a minute, trying to give Ash a positive point. "I take that as... promising. She won't be trying to kill you on sight."

  The mage did not seem to hear him, eyes undoubtedly focused on the woman in his mind. "She still bleeds from the wounds she sustained during the encounter." Mureln opened his mouth to interrupt, but closed it again, the strange hint of concern for the Desanti woman in the Forentan's voice silencing the bard. He watched the mage's profile closely. "And she assures that Master Almek and his students will... not be killed for leaving First Home." He did not even sound like he doubted the woman's words, which intrigued Mureln even more.

  Mureln narrowed his eyes. "She said something else." The mage pressed his lips together. "Something that cut deep."

  "My thoughts are my own, Bard," Ash gritted out. Try as he might, he could not repress the frustration that bubbled up, erupting in a burst of hiss
ed seething. "She accuses me of being no different than the ones who-who..." He clenched his fists angrily. "No different than my ancestors who murdered hers. What happened then was wrong. If I could go back and stop what happened... Not even these savages deserved..."

  The muscles along Mureln's back relaxed slightly as he understood. "You are a son of your ancestors, Ash Andar. Yes, my Desanti ancestors curse you as a murderer, Forentan. The Desanti can only judge you by the last Forenten who came here. It is easier to suspect and hate all until they prove themselves worthy than make a mistake by trusting first and risking losing everything they have fought to gain.

  "You are your own man. I judge you for the man you are now. I do not see a murderer." Rising, Mureln stood looking down at the mage who stared sightlessly ahead of him. "What I do see is a lonely, solitary man who has chosen to be alone."

  Chapter 28

  THE morning sun was high in the sky when the group emerged with their gear, squinting and not entirely awake. "Master Ash?" Terrence asked, yawning. "Why are we leaving now? Not even the Desanti are awake."

  Almek smiled sympathetically to the young man. "The Elders recommended it would be best to depart before the tribes are fully awake. Desanti obey their elders to a fault, but he does not want to tempt fate by giving them the chance to... try to get away with anything. It is nearing the end of the Time of Gathering. By the time we return, the tribes should be well scattered and our guide will help us avoid them."

  "Where is my horse?" Amelana demanded to know impatiently. "I swear, if these dogs have eaten my horse, I will—!"

  "You will what?" Storm emerged from one of the paths, leading a dangerous looking reptilian creature that distantly resembled a horse. Long horns capped with gleaming bronze caught the light as it lowered its head, angling its horns menacingly towards the Forentan woman. "Shhh, drizar," the woman crooned affectionately to the animal. The animal relaxed, snorting and digging at the ground, striking sparks with his metal-shod claws. Similar beasts were led by young handlers, all saddled with gear strapped to the backs of the saddles. These other beasts, however, while still evil looking, were considerably less massive and much more docile than Storm's mount.