by Fiona Patton
Confused suddenly, his mind began to drift, listing to one side like a leaky boat. The lights pressed forward, sensing his returning receptivity, and he pushed them away with an impatient shake of his head. What had Timur’s question been, he demanded silently. He’d just heard it. Something about banners, the regiments of a Yuruk kazakin.
His expression cleared as he remembered. No, not a kazakin, the kazakin; the first kazakin come from the west to answer the new wyrdin’s call to arms. His call to arms; his and the Rus-Yuruk’s. He remembered.
The elders—Kursk, Ayami, Timur, and the rest—had needed little convincing to agree to attack Yildiz-Koy. With the long, tedious winter over and the sharp spring breeze calling them to ride and to fight, the promise of victory was as unnecessary as any outside motivation; they’d only needed someone to name the place. And although they wouldn’t trust him to lead, not yet, one village was no better or worse than another and so they would trust him to name the place. The place would be the test of further trust to come.
Still, Yildiz-Koy was walled and well guarded and so Kursk had sent messengers out across the plains: come and fight with us; come and bloody the nose of the great Warriors of Estavia with us; come and loot a fat farming lakeside village with us.
Come and see with us if our new wyrdin is truly as powerful as he pretends to be.
The first kazakin from the western Khes-Yuruk was due to arrive any day now. Was it near? Graize had to know, but he didn’t know. But he had to know. But he didn’t know. His mind began to splinter under the dual pressure of panic and doubt and suddenly, buzzing impatiently like an angry wasp, a single light darted forward and exploded across his vision. Startled, he jerked back, and then began to smile. He’d forgotten. The lights needed this attack to grow. They needed it to feed. The lights would know, and they would tell him. Gesturing them forward, he formed the question in his mind.
“Is the kazakin near?”
Finally understood, the lights cavorted about his head, then streaked into the air, forming their answer in the sky, and Graize laughed out loud, his mind suddenly clear and clean for the first time in days, almost as if the rain had already swept past, carrying off each loose, chaotic thought like a swollen river might carry off debris. He turned, his eyes purposely blank, the game already forming in his mind.
“I see horses,” he said in a distant, singsong voice, “wearing the scent of moisture on their flanks.”
“And on the horses?”
The lights formed his new answer at once.
“Riders. Many riders, dressed in furs with curved blades in their belts and destiny surrounding them like gray mantles.”
“Are they near?”
The lights pulled back, lines of mist streaming down to pool upon the ground. He shook his head.
“Not yet. It’s raining in the west, storming. They’re standing beneath a steep escarpment, protected from the storm. When it’s done and the sun comes out of hiding to bathe the plains in light, then they’ll come.”
Beside him, both Timur and Danjel nodded in satisfaction and he felt their thoughts as if they’d shouted them aloud. The riders he could have made up, but not the reasoning, he was still too new to the plains. Or so they thought.
“When will the storm come?” Timur prodded.
This time he knew the spirits could tell him, feeling their excitement and suddenly understanding why. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a triumphant grimace more a snarl than a smile as the wyrdin’s own words echoed in his mind.
“Power is simply life’s fuel.”
And what a fuel it was, he agreed.
“Tonight.”
“Plenty of time, then. We should get back.”
Turning, Timur and Danjel led the way back to the encampment as Graize took one last look at the sky. The lights swooped in on him again like a flock of seabirds, their newly found hunger almost screeching in his mind.
“We have a new enemy,” they insisted.
“It doesn’t matter,” he answered.
“But he’s allying himself with an old enemy.”
“It still doesn’t matter.”
“But...”
“No.” Lifting one hand, he ran a caressing finger ithrough their midst, bleeding off their anxiety. “He can’t stop us,” he assured them. “You’ll feed; I promised that you would.”
“When?”
“Soon. Very, very soon. There’s a storm coming. You can feed from the storm. We can both feed from the storm.”
“How?”
“I’ll show you how. When the storm comes. You’ll feed and grow strong.”
Comforted, the lights calmed. They were still hungry, but they would feed. Graize had promised that they would.
His own mind racing with excitement at the thought of this new stream of possibility, Graize brought his mount awkwardly into step beside Danjel’s. The game was on. The lights would feed and so would he. As soon as the storm came. Catching up another tiny spirit, he tasted the approaching rain and laughed out loud.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, far away but coming closer. As the sun set slowly behind the heavy, western storm clouds, Graize crouched outside the tent he shared with Danjel and five other youths, breathing in the thick cluster of spirits that hovered about his face. Their small allotment of power sent a cooling track of ice down his throat, filling his belly with prophecy. Like the lights, they could sense the storm was coming; unlike the lights, they knew that they could draw power from its strength. That’s what they’d told him; the secret they’d shared with him.
“Power is simply life’s fuel.”
He nodded. The spirits had been born on a thousand nights like this one; out over the wild lands, each and every one of them. Closing his eyes, he reached out to the west, feeling the storm front drawing closer, knowing something else.
So had he.
And he could lose himself in its embrace as easily as they could if he wanted to.
The memory of that first night above the plains caused a sudden twist of spirit-fed excitement to ripple through his body, but he suppressed it. Not now, he told himself sternly. He had too many other things to do right now.
Ignoring the well of disappointment that followed, he pulled his mind back, then sent it flying out across the slumbering encampment on the wings of the spirits.
By the time the kazakin had returned that evening, the breeze had been so filled with the whispers of wind and rain that anyone could have read the signs, so much so that the shepherds had brought their flocks and herds into the paddocks for the night. Now, a single delinkos sat cross-legged beneath a makeshift tent to guard them, her dog standing protectively by her side. The rest of the Yuruk were all battened down, the tents tightened, and the people lying in their riding clothes in case the storm brought flooding or, worse, fire. But in the tent behind him, his new kardon, Rayne, Caleb, Briz, Gabrie, and Tahnan, all slept soundly, trusting that their elders would rouse them if need be. Only Danjel tossed fitfully under his woolen blanket, his wild blood stirred by the power of the approaching storm. For a heartbeat they shared a dream of flying freely over the plains, then, with a gesture, Graize settled the other youth into a deeper slumber. He would be the only wyrdin awake tonight. He had things to do, important things, and he didn’t want to be disturbed.
Excited by his thoughts, the lights spun around him as the wind picked up, sending his hair whipping about his face.
“Whisper, whisper, whisper,” he chided them out loud. “It’s like sitting in a nest of hungry sea snakes. Be still.”
The lights calmed, then began to spin again as a dozen tiny drops of moisture scattered across Graize’s cheeks. It would be soon. He stood.
When the storm finally broke over the camp, he was ready for it. The wind battered against his tent, sending sheaves of rain coursing over his face and, as he threw his arms wide, his mind leaped into the sky. Released, the lights hurtled after him.
In the heart of the storm, lightnin
g flashed almost continuously, sending out a dozen, jagged streaks of energy at a time to shatter across the rumbling clouds. As each one touched the air, it became a tiny, newborn spirit, swollen with prophecy and, opening his mind wider than he ever had before, Graize drew each one in, feeling them fill him with a power so raw and strong he thought it might tear him into pieces. All around him, the lights cavorted in a near drunken frenzy, growing and swelling as they followed his lead, sucking up the spirits as fast as the storm could spew them out, the immature presence Graize had fashioned within the lights growing stronger and more self-aware with each passing moment. When the storm moved on, it followed, drawing Graize along behind it.
Spread out across the clouds, Graize hardly noticed until he found himself far out above the gray, wind-tossed waves of Gol-Bardak. Then, as the eastern shore came into view, he felt a sudden tugging at his chest. He looked down.
Far away he saw himself standing as still as death, rain-drenched features raised to the sky, the pupil of one eye pinprick tight, the other wide and staring. A silver thread of power, fine as a strand of spiderwebbing, held him in place, but as he watched, it stretched almost to the breaking point, causing his heartbeat to falter. He paused, still pulled by the power of the storm, until he felt something touch his face as if from a great distance. He used the feeling to anchor himself in the physical world, then slowly, he began the painful journey back into his body, hauling in the lights behind him like a school of struggling fish in an overburdened net.
The presence within them fought him, but eventually he pulled it from the storm as well. As it smacked back into the deep recesses of his mind, his body crumpled.
Physical sensation returned slowly, a sharp pain just below his right eye, a copper taste in his mouth, the sound of his own ragged breathing, and finally, the sight of Rayne looking down at him, her expression a mixture of concern and annoyance. He stirred, realizing that he was lying cradled in her arms and when she saw the light of recognition return to his eyes, annoyance won out over concern.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she scolded in a harsh whisper so as not to wake the others. “You’re not ready to follow the spirits. And don’t try and tell me that wasn’t what you were doing because I know what it looks like. Only Timur can do it safely. And Timur is old.”
He tried to rise, but the faintest tensing of her muscles held him in place.
“I don’t care if you think you’re strong enough,” she continued, sensing his thoughts from the look on his face. “It’s not about strength. It’s about temptation. And you almost lost out to it.”
He frowned at her angrily and she glared right back at him. “I know the spirits sing to you, Graize. We can all see it. It makes you a powerful wyrdin, but it also makes you wide open to attack. They’re dangerous. You can’t trust them. You think just because you can understand their words, they want to share what they know with you? They don‘t, not any more than any wild animal wants to share its den.”
Hearing the truth in her words, Graize cast a jaundiced look toward his ever present crowd of spirits who fluttered back in agitation.
“They’ll try to distract you,” Rayne continued. “And you’re distractible enough already.” She smiled smugly down at him. “I had to take drastic measures to bring you back.”
Suddenly recognizing the copper taste in his mouth, Graize ran the back of his hand along his lips, feeling a thin trickle of blood smear across his knuckles.
“I hit you,” Rayne explained matter-of-factly. “Twice. It was the only way to snap you back to yourself. Otherwise you would have flown away like your beetle birth fetish.”
“Birth ... ?”
Rayne shook her head in exasperation. “Townies,” she muttered. Twisting slightly, she made herself comfortable, leaning her back against the tent pole. “The first creature that sees you when you’re birthed into this world is your birth fetish. It helps you, especially when you’re a wyrdin. Aba figures you were reborn over the Berbat-Dunya so the first creature that saw you was ... ?” She paused expectantly.
He frowned. “My stag beetle?” The force of the storm had scoured his mind clear of the usual foggy clutter that pressed upon his thoughts, but her words still made very little sense to him. “It can’t see me, Rayne, it’s dead.”
She cuffed him absently as she might have done to Caleb.
“I know it’s dead,” she snapped. “I’m not talking about the actual creature; I’m talking about its spirit. It links with you, becomes part of who you are and how you see the world. And how the world sees you.”
“So I’m a beetle?”
“Yes. Beetles can live anywhere, eat anything, and stag beetle males have huge nasty mandibles for fighting. But they also have wings. Wings are a problem. If you fly too far or too long, you lose track of your body and then the spirits eat you.” She made a ferocious face at him. “But don’t worry. I’m here, and I’ll smack, kick, or bite you back to the world any time you need it. My birth fetish is a marten.”
“A weasel?”
“That’s right, and weasels eat anything, too, including beetles.”
He chuckled thinly. “Just remember,” he warned, “beetles bite back.”
She sniffed disdainfully at him. “Maybe, but just you remember they make a tasty snack well worth the risk.” Hunkering down, she pulled a soft, sheep’s wool blanket over the two of them. “Now go to sleep,” she ordered. “The storm’s passed. Everyone’s safe.”
Feeling the last of his energy drain from his body with her words, Graize closed his eyes, allowing the spirits to return to cocoon his mind in a misty white blanket of newly born potential, then opened them again.
“What’s Danjel’s birth fetish?” he asked.
“Swallow.”
“Kursk’s?”
“Fox.”
“Ozan’s?”
“Nightingale.”
“And Caleb’s?”
She snickered. “Mouse, whether he likes it or not. Now go to sleep.”
Nodding, he called the Presence to him, wondering idly what creature had first seen it birthed, before drifting off to dream of shining, white waves and a figure with eyes the color of snow.
An hour later he awoke, feeling the storm center spitting the last of its fury against a mist-wrapped tower on the northern shore of the Deniz-Siyah. Wrapped in blankets and wedged safely between Danjel and Rayne, Graize could still feel it dancing across his nerves, heightening his newly strengthened awareness. Without even trying, he could feel the others sleeping all around him, their dreams lying open to his thoughts as easily as if they were speaking them aloud. Then, despite Rayne’s warning, in one breath his mind took wing on the backs of his spirits soaring beyond the tent, to touch the sleeping minds of his new people: Kursk and Ayami, their dreams as well as their bodies entwined together, Ozan, his sleeping mind filled with music, Timur ever mindful and alert even in repose, all the way to the single shepherd asleep in her small tent, leaving the dog to stand watch over their slumbering charges. He breathed in the scent of fleece, heard the soft wicker of ponies, then reached out to the rain-drenched plains and the sparkling slivers of power that identified every living creature, from the tiniest insect hidden in the grass roots to the hosts of faraway Yuruk kazakin waiting for the dawn to continue their journey to the shores of Gol-Bardak and the raid on Yildiz-Koy.
He smiled in the darkness.
Yildiz-Koy. Where he and the new Presence would feed from more than just the spirits of the wild lands and their songs.
Roused by the thought, the Presence buzzed sleepily against his mind.
“Soon,” he crooned to it. “Soon, you’ll feed from spirits so strong this feast will seem like famine. Soon, you’ll feed from the Warriors of Estavia. And so will I.”
Closing his eyes, he reached for the ebbing storm once more, felt it touch the sleeping mind of the northern sorcerer across the sea and pulled his thoughts back quickly before the man could sense him in return. It wa
s not yet time to engage with that potential ally-cum-enemy, but—he chuckled to himself—soon, very, very soon. Everything would be soon. Rayne was wrong. He was strong enough to follow the spirits and they would share their den with him whether they wanted to or not. Beetles ate anything, and he would eat the spirits, eat every last one of them, if they didn’t give him what he wanted. And the Presence would help him. It had been birthed into this world, and the first creature that had seen it was himself, whatever snowy-eyed Incasa might think.
Pressing himself against the warm curve of Danjel’s hip, Graize wrapped the new Godling he’d formed from lights and lightning and prophecy about his mind, and fell into a dreamless sleep as his storm faded into the distance.
10
Seers
THE MIDAFTERNOON SUN BEAT DOWN upon the white cobblestones of Thesa, the only town of note on the island of Amatus. Her golden hair falling loose about her shoulders, Panos walked freely through the northern market, the dust and the heat whispering fine lines of-music across her toes as she made her way through the crowded stalls, shops, and carts. She’d been coming here ever since she was a very small child and all the merchants knew her by sight as well as by reputation. Ignoring the many calls of greeting, she followed a faint line of pale light as it led her inexorably toward a familiar artisan’s tent, the counter lined with wooden toys and small stone sculptures. Lifting the figure of a white dolphin, she marveled at how the purely physical chill of cold marble battled the equally strong sensation of wind blowing through her mind.
The shop’s proprietor stepped forward, a pleased expression on her face.
“You honor my humble craft as always, Oracle,” she said with a bow, carefully keeping her gaze from locking with Panos‘. “How may I serve you today?”
Enjoying the taste of plums that the woman’s words evoked, Panos gave her a dreamy smile.
“How many colors do your marble creatures come in?” she asked, stroking the smooth length of the dolphin’s flank.