by K R Schultz
“Hold!” Eideron shouted. “There is no need for haste. Since your visions have waited several months, they can wait a bit longer. I am uncertain how to help those people or even find them since Aarda is vast. We live deep in the Eastern Wastes, and your three strangers are probably far away. If the Creator wants us to help them, He will have warned us well in advance. I must attend a Synod meeting this morning, so when I meet my friend Himish, I will seek his advice.”
“Sorry, Master. When shall I fetch her then?”
“Bring her for the midweek evening meal. We can dine together then. Now be off and let me finish my breakfast in peace.”
“Yes, Master.” Simea bowed and scurried from the room. On his way out, he bumped a vase filled with crystalline flowers set near the doorway. Eideron grimaced, fully expecting the vessel to share the fate of the dish the boy had broken earlier, but Simea caught it as it tipped from its perch. He bowed to Eideron and, with shaking hands, set it back in place.
After the boy left, Eideron lost his appetite. The boy has given me food for thought, along with my morning meal. Despite his inner turmoil, he forced himself to eat, and once finished, he opened the door of his quarters. He squinted in the sunlight and stepped out onto the balcony connecting all the dwellings on this level. He realized he was late, troubled by Simea’s story, he hurried along the walkway toward the lift.
Eideron usually enjoyed watching the Windriders soar across the caldera before he descended to the valley floor. His home on the ancient crater’s lip provided a vantage point to appreciate their acrobatic skills. He had never flown a glider but often imagined the freedom Windriders felt while they soared high above the valley floor. But today, preoccupied with Simea’s revelation, Eideron ignored both the magnificent view of the caldera below and the gliders overhead. The almost deserted lift platform near his quarters emphasized his tardiness. He had neither the desire nor the time for imaginary flights this morning.
CHAPTER FIVE
Recovery
For three days and nights, Laakea burned with fever and lay motionless while Isil watched over him. She bathed him with moist cloths to reduce his temperature and sang every prayer-song she knew over him. Neither Isil nor Rehaak had seen a fever so severe. The boy’s labored breaths and rhythmic heartbeat were the only evidence he still lived.
“It’s the morning of the fourth day.” Isil leaned forward with her hands hanging limply over her knees and her head down. “The long nights fearing that any breath might be his last has brung me near to breakin’. My faith has grown thin.” Her voice broke. “Are you sure we can’t do no more for the lad?
“We did all we could, but without knowing what happened to him, I am reluctant to give him an herbal febrifuge. I doubt he could swallow it.” Rehaak chewed the inside of his cheek. “I do not know what caused this, and if I guess wrong, he is so weak it could kill him. We are both helpless, and I know nothing else we can do to break the fever. As you told me before, Laakea is in the Creator’s hands. Whether he lives or dies is up to Him.”
“Why didn’t we hear the lad at work? We shoulda heard him a-bangin’ on the anvil while he made them swords and that there breastplate.” She pointed to the smithy where the items lay gleaming on the workbench.
Rehaak shrugged. “I can think of no explanation. If he ever wakes, we will ask him, but for now, we can only monitor his condition and make him comfortable.” Rehaak left the room while Isil continued her vigil over Laakea’s fevered form.
Exhaustion and lack of sunlight weakened her and muddled her thoughts, but she refused to leave Laakea’s bedside. Isil understood Rehaak’s reluctance to act, but she wanted to do more. In desperation, she spoke to Laakea. “We needs you back, laddie. You got your weapons, but they be useless if there be no one to wield ’em.” She hoped her words penetrated the coma.
Despite the hot, moist tears blurring her vision, Isil’s eyes burned like she had sand trapped under her eyelids. She wanted to stomp and shout in frustration but refrained. “If my son had lived, he’d be your age. You are a brave, strong lad, and no mother could ask more from a son,” Isil said and closed her eyes while she waited.
Another interminable day lay ahead, and Isil felt like an eggshell in an empty nest with the hatchlings fledged and flown—fragile, empty, and alone. Sorrow surfaced in her thoughts like sulfurous bubbles from the depths of a swamp. To ease her despair, she poured out her heart to the Creator.
“I’s lost and helpless. I just met Laakea, but I loves him like my boy Eyhan. If You be takin’ him now, that be Your right. Laakea belongs to You, but what’ll I do if I loses him? How can You ’spect me to continue if I loses this boy too? My life will be like water poured onto dry ground and absorbed without a damp spot to prove that I were ever here. I done lived without direction, purpose, and meanin’ to my life for too long now. I gave up everythin’ to join these men on this journey, and if You takes him, if it be over, I’ll just drift aimlessly till the cold, bony fingers o’ death reaches out to claw me into the next life.
“It used to be simple and clear what I should be doin’ next. Now, that seems fruitless. Meals made, dishes washed, mithun tended, freight hauled from one place to the next don’t mean squat. Is that all my life amounts to? Is my life just a list o’ tasks completed with tally marks beside each one? I wants more’n that. I were somebody to someone once, and I had folk what cared about me. This here young’un has got to live ’cause to him I’m somebody. Please don’t be takin’ another child away from me now that I got a son to love again.” Her head sagged until it rested on the bed beside Laakea. Consciousness slipped away, and she slept, troubled by her fears.
Isil awoke to a hand stroking her hair. She jerked upright and blinked in the morning light, which streamed through the window. Laakea looked pale and drawn, but his blue eyes glinted in the sunlight—he was awake at last! She grasped his hand in both of her calloused palms. It felt cool to her touch.
“Praise the Creator!” she shouted, then threw herself across Laakea and enfolded him in a hug that threatened to squeeze out his renewed life.
“Isil,” he panted. “Let me go before you smother me.”
“Sorry, laddie.” She released him, embarrassed by her thoughtlessness, but flooded with relief that he was alive. “Rehaak, come quick, Laakea’s awake!” Isil shouted.
Rehaak bounded into the room and halted beside her.
“You are alive.” Rehaak’s eyes shone, and he bounced on his toes.
“Spot, your keen grasp of the obvious amazes me.”
Laakea’s weak grin was a healing balm to Rehaak’s heart, but it didn’t ease the guilt etching his soul. “And your sense of humor is still as bad as your cooking,” Rehaak rubbed his hands together.
“Stop it, the pair o’ you,” Isil scolded, though there was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. “Is that the best you can do for someone who has laid at the gates o’ death these past four nights? Rehaak, get this young man vittles afore he wastes away.”
“Yes, mistress,” he mocked. “Welcome back, Laakea. While you were sick, she was an unbearable tyrant. I need your help to deliver me from the scourge of her incessant demands.”
Isil stood and raised her hand as if to cuff Rehaak.
“See what I mean?” he said. He scampered to the doorway in mock terror. “Please don’t flog me anymore. I promise I will behave. I will show you the scars and bruises later, Laakea.”
Laakea chuckled at Rehaak’s antics. He got out of bed with Isil’s help, but he wobbled like a newborn lamb when he tried to walk. After he had dressed, gone to the privy, and washed, he dragged his exhausted body to the kitchen table. While he waited for Rehaak to bring breakfast to the table, he drank mug after mug of water to quench his fierce thirst.
Rehaak set a steaming platter heaped with food onto the table and slid a generous portion onto Laakea’s plate.
The boy tore a massive chunk from the loaf of bread Isil pushed toward him and speared a sau
sage with his fork. “I…had…an…interesting…dream,” he said between mouthfuls as he wolfed down eggs, sausages and sopped up the egg yolk with the rest of the bread.
Isil and Rehaak looked knowingly at one another but remained silent while Laakea related his experiences in the Garden of Flame. Neither Rehaak nor Isil interrupted his story. Laakea told Rehaak what he had discovered about selfishness being the source of all mankind’s problems. Rehaak nodded in agreement.
When Laakea finished the tale, Rehaak rose from the table. “Stay with Isil, I must get something from the smithy,” he said.
“What’s going on, Isil?”
“You’ll see soon enough, I imagine.”
Within moments, Rehaak returned with a large bundle wrapped in oiled skins. It clanked when he set it on the table in front of Laakea. He did not comment but watched Laakea closely as he eyed the bundle.
“What’s this? Is it a ‘glad you didn’t die’ present for me? You shouldn’t have.”
“It is a present alright,” Rehaak said with a cryptic smile. “Isil and I hoped you could tell us how you got it, but you have already solved that mystery for us.”
CHAPTER SIX
Aeron Suul
Blue-gray morning came, moist and misty around him. It wasn’t freezing, but the light breeze and the fog-tinged air gave the day a sharp bite that accentuated the morning’s shadows. A hot breakfast would have lifted Aelfric’s spirits. There was plenty of wood, spray-dampened, salt-impregnated, and impossible to light; besides, he had nothing left to cook. After Aelfric lost the boat and most of his provisions to the surf, he had reached shore but only found his weapons and duffel bag the next morning. Two tendays of hard marching brought Aelfric near the port at Aeron Suul. Near enough to spot the outlines of masts in the harbor against the silvery morning sky.
The ocean stretched toward the horizon and reflected the light like a sheet of beaten metal. Aelfric made out the darker blue and purple colors of the inlet’s opposite shore. Khel Braah’s mountains, their indigo edges silhouetted against the sky, cast hazy outlines at the limit of his sight to the west and towered above the green wall of the forest behind him. The beach gravel slid and grated underfoot, slowing, and tiring him, but it had proved easier than thrashing through the brush farther from the shoreline laden with his weapons and heavy pack. There were no thorny branches here to tear at his face and hands and no obstacles hidden in the undergrowth to snare his tired feet.
Aelfric pulled some jerked meat from his pouch and chewed it as he slogged toward the harbor. Few people strolled the rocks and gravel beaches of Khel Braah. Those he encountered circled wide to avoid him. The Abrhaani sensed Aelfric’s anger and resolve, hardened to a brittle crystalline edge, and they knew by instinct he was deadly. They were right since; he was returning home to cause bloodshed and violence, and to reap vengeance.
He needed a ship to cross Syn Gersuul, and that was why he had come. Vessels waited here, and Aelfric knew he would find one, and with it, a way home to Baradon. Determination propelled him forward, overruling his tired legs. He strode onward, lost in his thoughts until he reached the town, and marched down the street toward the pier, intent on reaching his destination before his strength failed. The townspeople eyed him from their shop windows and peered at him from the doorways of their houses made of squared stones.
Aelfric walked alone and outnumbered several hundredfold, but they still feared him. Sixteen years of living among them had altered his viewpoint. Aelfric realized the Greens’, for all their shortcomings, were more tolerant people than his species.
The Abrhaani were kinder and more understanding than even the members of the Brotherhood, the Eniila holy men who guarded their cities of refuge. The Greens’ tolerance and understanding were their greatest strengths and their biggest weaknesses, but even the Greens’ broad-mindedness had limits. If anyone threatened their precious trees or animals, they became as violent as anyone else.
Aelfric smiled grimly. He imagined how he looked now, no longer the quiet village smith, but a strange warrior, armed, lethal, and hard as the metal of the sword hanging across his back. Aelfric personified their nightmares. Death incarnate visited Aeron Suul today, dressed in Aelfric’s scarred face and body.
On the battlefield, before he came to live among them, he had faced thousands of their little soldiers in countless skirmishes and cut them down like a sickle mowing grass. He had killed better men than these on his way to an actual battle and might do so again, he hoped later rather than sooner. The score he intended to settle was not with the Greens but with his own kind, those who betrayed him.
Aelfric rounded the corner and stalked onto the dock. He ignored the Abrhaani townsfolk and strode confidently down the center of the pier, past crates of cargo. The smell of creosote, salt, rotting seaweed, and freshly caught fish hung in the air. Aelfric ignored the dockworkers and deckhands, who glared at him. Except for these men, most townspeople had never seen an Eniila. Aelfric strode past the ships unloading goods since they likely wouldn’t leave port again before the winter storms. He had no more time to waste. A new brigantine called the Sea Witch, loading trade goods, and preparing to leave port attracted his attention. Sixteen years had passed in a heartbeat. He had lost his wife and son. All he had to show for the time spent on Khel Braah was an empty ache in his heart. Cold anger and bitter vengeance were all that remained to move him forward.
Aelfric halted. Work stopped. Deckhands stared.
Aelfric waited a moment before fixing his gaze on the Abrhaani deckhand nearest him.
“Where is the master of this vessel?” he boomed.
Although the man looked ready to dash away, he stood his ground while a crowd grew around Aelfric. If he let them get up enough nerve, they might try to overwhelm him with their numbers. No doubt, men among this group had fought in the war and had old scores to settle with any Eniila warrior. Tired and footsore, he was unwilling to pay the cost of an encounter if they attacked him. Best to press on before tempers flare and the situation gets out of control.
“I said,” he thrust out his chest, put his hands on his hips, and watched the crowd. They didn’t back away. Confidence in their numbers is making them brave. “Where is the master of this vessel? I wish to book passage to Baradon.”
“I will take you to him, sir,” the deckhand answered with a steady voice, his courage bolstered by the growing number of Abrhaani hovering around the battle-scarred giant. “Follow me, please.” The deckhand walked past Aelfric toward the town, back the way he came.
The crowd on the pier parted to let them through, and the murmur of the Greens’ voices, as they talked in hushed tones, faded behind him. I’m not out of danger yet, but if they intend to ambush me in an alley, their numbers will be useless against my strength and skill.
Just when Aelfric was sure he had earned his safety through sheer audacity, he noticed a bowman scrambling onto a roof. The archer cocked and aimed his crossbow at Aelfric’s chest. Aelfric pretended not to see, but he tensed for the release of the bolt. He’d seen Abrhaani fighters use crossbows once before, during the battle of Edalis. An Abrhaani with a crossbow meant only one thing: this Abrhaani was an old campaigner who fought the Eniila in Baradon. I pray he releases his bolt soon. If I haven’t gotten too old and soft from my years of exile, I might be able to swat it aside or dodge it.
Each step brought him closer to his potential killer and reduced his chances for survival, but he pressed on behind the man leading the way. Aelfric considered using his guide as a shield, but the man was too far ahead. This bowman knew his craft. It was one of his own axioms: “Be sure of your first shot, or you may never get a second.”
Aelfric walked on, trying to exude confidence he did not feel. “Tell that fool on the roof to put away his weapon before I climb up and feed it to him,” he growled to his guide. “I have no wish to begin a fracas, but I swear it will end badly for you and your town if you force it upon me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Greenhouse, a dance club in a dilapidated warehouse, sat near the caldera’s north wall among other storehouses. The storehouse always sat in shadow. Its moss-covered exterior made it appear like a massive squarish mound of green fuzz nestled against the crater’s steep side and gave the structure its name. Light and noise from inside spilled out into the street as Kyonna pulled the door open. The place hummed with energy, and young Sokai packed the dance-floor. Ky spotted her friends amid the crowd and shouldered her way through the dancers gyrating bodies to join her workmates. “Thanks for waiting for me,” she shouted above the noise and the music.
“You shouldn’t have taken that last job, Wild Child,” Kyonna’s friend Rais said, using Kyonna’s Windrider nickname. “It could have waited until tomorrow. You risked your ass doing it. One of these days, you’ll tangle with a suspension cable in the poor light, and that will be the end of your career and your crazy life. We began wondering if we would celebrate your funeral and your anniversary at the same event.”
“Never fear. I lead a charmed life,” Kyonna waggled a forefinger in his face. “Where’s the drink you promised me?”
“Follow me,” He took her hand and dragged her along as he danced and elbowed his way across the crowded floor toward the bar. Halfway there, he turned to Kyonna and said, “Stop staring at my ass, you perv. I can feel your eyes burning holes in my pants.”
“If you don’t want the attention, you shouldn’t display the merchandise in those tight jeans, Rais,” Kyonna countered.
Once they reached the rectangular bar enclosing the bandstand near the center of the warehouse, Rais ordered drinks for them. Ky leaned her back against the bar counter and surveyed the room while they waited for their beverages.