Mystic Warrior

by Tracy Hickman

Their guards pushed them forward into the center of what had been the grand rotunda. The grasses under their feet were trampled flat, as were many of the flowers that had been cultivated here, a chaos no faery would allow into a tower of Qestardis. By the looks of the plants on the main floor, the tower must have been taken several days before.

  No word had reached them that the tower had fallen to an enemy. There must have been no one free to convey the message. No escapees. Everyone had been caught, and, by the looks of the wings mounted on the entrance door, killed.

  In the center of the rotunda, one of the creatures was hunched over a large, crude table. It must have been built by the Famadorians, as the wood had not been coaxed into shape as the faeries do, but was rather hacked and forced together. Several tapestries lay across the surface, as well as thin rolls of dried wood pulp. The Famadorian rested with both his hands spread wide on the table, his muddy brown wings stretching wide for a moment in the creature’s listlessness, then folded back into place. He was intently studying whatever was on the table before him, his head bowed down.

  The winged guards stopped just short of the table, their grip still harsh against Dwynwyn’s skin.

  “The female faeries, Master,” announced Dwynwyn’s guard. “You asked that they be brought to you at once.”

  Dwynwyn glanced at the rough man in surprise. “You speak our language? You speak the faery tongue?”

  The winged man at the table looked up at last, his light golden hair pulled straight back from his high forehead. His eyes were narrow but of a piercing pale blue color. His face was angular, with a strange, dangerous smile playing on his lips. Dwynwyn feared that smile more than anything she could remember.

  “Well, will you listen to that, Sargo? We speak their language!” He straightened up to stand erect, crossing his arms over his chest as he stood casually observing his prisoners. “What arrogant presumption we find in these faery folk. Their language! Their culture! Their glory! Everything they say just seems to make you want to tear their wings off, doesn’t it?”

  “Right you are, Master!” laughed the one named Sargo.

  Dwynwyn noticed Aislynn blanch next to her. “Who are you?”

  The master chuckled as he spoke. “We are the Kyree. More precisely, since I just know that you’ll want me to be precise, we are what remains of the Aerie Kongei of the Jhunthong Province, loyal servants of the Greater Empire of Kyree. Does that help?”

  Dwynwyn blinked. “The Kyree?”

  “No, I can see that it doesn’t help at all.” The master shrugged. He stepped casually around the table as he spoke, his narrow eyes never leaving Dwynwyn. “Yes, we are the Kyree, of whom you know absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Although, if you did know something you might even concede the possibility that it was you who learned your language from us.”

  “You are Famadorians, then,” Dwynwyn said, her calling as Seeker driving her to ask the questions burning inside her. “You are winged Famadorians?”

  The master laughed out loud. He spoke to the guard but his eyes remained fixed on Dwynwyn. “Sargo, can you believe it? These faeries are amazing. Everything that isn’t faery must be Famadorian!”

  Sargo and the other guards laughed darkly. “Right you are, Master!”

  “Such arrogant conceit!” the master said, shaking his head, his voice suddenly speaking as though instructing a child. “They play in their little nursery with all their pretty little toys. They bicker—not about who is superior because they all know that they are superior—but rather about which of them is more superior to the other superior faeries! Anything outside their careful little world is ‘Famadorian’ and therefore worthy only of their disdain.”

  The master leaned forward suddenly, his face only inches away from Dwynwyn’s.

  “No,” he said with a quiet, biting voice. “We are not centaurs. We are not satyrs. We are not mermen or harpies or griffons or hippocampi or unicorns or dragonmen. And, by oblivion, we most certainly will not be conveniently lumped by you into any sack of entrails called Famadorians! We are the Kyree!”

  The master leaned back once more, leaning comfortably against the table.

  “Please, sir. Master,” Dwynwyn continued, unfazed by his hostility. “You are new to us and we do not understand. What are your intentions? Tell us what you want from us.”

  “No,” the master said through a large smile.

  Dwynwyn was confused. “But surely you have demands! There may be a way that I can communicate that with the court at Qestardis. Let us return to the capital with your problems and I will return with their answer.”

  “No,” the master replied simply.

  “At least tell me your name!” Dwynwyn demanded.

  “No, I won’t even give you that satisfaction, madam,” the master said, placing his hands on his hips. “Sargo, I thought I asked you to bring them here to answer my questions! Faeries! Who can understand them? First you can’t get them to talk, and then, when they finally do talk, all you want is for them to shut up.”

  The guards laughed deeply once more.

  “It’s my turn,” the master said, leaning forward once more. “What is your name?”

  “I am Dwynwyn.”

  “Very good, and what is your station?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What is your . . . what do you call it . . . oh, yes, what is your caste?”

  “I am a Seeker,” Dwynwyn said quietly.

  “And your companion, is she a ‘Seeker’ as well?”

  Dwynwyn blinked. Being a faery, it was beyond her ability to speak or think anything beyond what was real and observed. The problem was that she knew this creature’s questions would very quickly touch on subjects whose truthful answers would bring ruin on herself and everything she loved. She could not let this thing—this Kyree—know Aislynn’s name and station. Dwynwyn had only one choice when confronted with a direct question that was too dangerous to answer.

  Dwynwyn answered nothing.

  The master raised an eyebrow. “You see what I mean, Sargo? You did hear me, didn’t you, Dwynwyn?”

  “Yes, I heard you,” Dwynwyn answered carefully.

  “I see . . . but you’re not going to answer me?”

  “No, I cannot.”

  The master nodded. “You came with a large and armed contingent. Do the faeries know that we are here?”

  Silence.

  “Who are the faeries fighting now?”

  Silence.

  “Why have you come?”

  Silence.

  “Who is your companion? Where did you begin your journey? How long did you travel?”

  Dwynwyn glared back.

  “Bah! This is hopeless!” the master said, waving his hand dismissively as he walked back around the table to resume his musings. “Let all faeries die in their own silence. Sargo, kill them both and dispose of them as with the others.”

  “At your command, Master,” Sargo said, casually pulling his sword free of its scabbard.

  “No!” Aislynn yelped. “Please, Dwynwyn!”

  Dwynwyn put her arms around the princess, hiding the girl’s face in her breast. She closed her eyes, not wanting to witness her own approaching death. She retreated in that moment into her own thoughts; wishing she had something—anything—to delay their deaths, to buy her time to think . . .

  In her mind, she recalled the wingless man giving her a gift.

  “Yeow!”

  Dwynwyn opened her eyes.

  Through a gray flickering veil, she could see that Sargo was holding his bleeding arm. She and Aislynn were inside some sort of extraordinary and inexplicable bubble that shimmered darkly around them. She thought that there was something familiar to it, as though she had seen it somewhere before, but had no idea where it came from or what had caused it.

  The master was once more moving around the table toward them. “Sargo! What is it?”

  “I . . . I don’t know, Master!” Sargo grimaced, wincing through his
pain. “I swung my sword and—I don’t know.”

  “Plutich,” the master ordered, “hand me that pole.”

  The guard addressed as Plutich reached over and pulled a long staff from where it was leaning at the side of the rotunda. He handed it to the master and took a pair of careful steps back. The master grasped the pole and carefully slid it toward the gray sphere throbbing around Dwynwyn and Aislynn.

  No one in the room was more astonished than Dwynwyn at the result.

  The pole entered the sphere, only to emerge thrusting back in the direction from which it had come. The master, both eyebrows now raised, pushed and pulled on the staff. It slid easily in and out without resistance. It moved normally in every respect—except that its sharp point threatened to stick its wielder. The master then moved around the sphere, testing the pole at various points. Each time the pole pushed directly at Dwynwyn, and each time it stuck back out pointing at him.

  The master pulled the pole back and stood considering the problem for a moment.

  “What is it?” Sargo asked.

  “I don’t know,” the master responded, somehow amused by it all. “What do you think?”

  “I think I cut myself with my own blade, Master,” Sargo said ruefully. “It’s the power of spirits, but I’ll be plucked if I know whether they’re good or bad. What are your orders, Master?”

  “Well,” the master said, leaning on the staff as he eyed Dwynwyn in the sphere. “My first order is to not use any spears or arrows on these faeries or everyone in the room will be dropping like sparrows!”

  A chuckle ran through the room.

  Aislynn spoke quietly. “Dwynwyn! What do you think it is? Where do you suppose it came from?”

  “I don’t know,” the Seeker replied. “I think . . . I think it is a new truth.”

  “A new truth? What kind of new truth?”

  Dwynwyn reached her hand out to touch the sphere with her extended finger. She expected some resistance but her hand passed through, only to bend suddenly back through the wall of the sphere with her finger pointing directly back at her.

  Aislynn closed her eyes. “Please don’t do that!” she begged. “It makes me ill just to think of it.”

  Dwynwyn stared in amazement. She opened her hand and moved her fingers. There was no pain or unusual sensation of any kind . . . just her arm folded back through the edge of the sphere. She pulled it back and smiled. “All right, it’s all right now.”

  None of this had escaped the attention of the master. “Well, Sargo, if our weapons can’t get in then I am left to wonder if anything else can either. We may not be able to harm them for now, but they don’t seem to be going anywhere either.” He then turned to the sphere. “In there! Can you hear me in there?”

  “Yes,” she replied, still testing the properties of this incredible new truth. “Can you hear me?”

  “I can, indeed,” the master responded. “I am curious as to how long you can keep this marvelous defense going.”

  “As am I,” Dwynwyn replied.

  The master sat down on the ground, his legs crossed. “Then I believe we have some time to continue our discussion after all. By the way, I won’t harm you or your companion now: you have shown me something that I very much want to have. I suspect I’ll need you alive in order to get it.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” Dwynwyn replied coolly. The air in the sphere already was beginning to taste stale. It was getting difficult to breathe.

  “Now that we understand each other,” the master said through a thin smile, “perhaps we can continue our discussion? What was your name again?”

  “Dwynwyn,” the Seeker answered. Her head was beginning to hurt. “And you?”

  “Xian,” the Kyree master replied sweetly. “My name is Xian.”

  Dwynwyn shook her head. Her vision was beginning to blur. She wondered if this strange globe protecting them would remain after the shadows closed around her mind. She thought for a moment that she was somewhere new. She could see a thin, wingless man in a hooded robe walking through winter grasses of a high mountain meadow. She could see small, wicked creatures, Famadorians no doubt, who darted about in the grass behind the thin man, hiding their gleaming sharp-toothed smiles. Atop a nearby hill, her more familiar wingless man waved at the robed man, who saluted him back. The wicked creatures licked their lips.

  Xian’s voice was distant and fading. “Dwynwyn?”

  Dwynwyn reached out toward her wingless friend in that other world, and fell into darkness.

  35

  Beholder

  Rhea lay back on the large, flat rock, her head cradled in her hands behind her head. The rock was still warm on her back in the late afternoon. It eased her pains despite its unforgiving surface. She relaxed into it as though it were the softest of beds and every bit as welcome.

  The afternoon sun flickered over her eyes, dappled by the shifting leaves of the oaks that towered over her. The leaves drifted down toward her, each careening in a spinning eddy of the cool afternoon breeze. She watched their gentle approach with calm satisfaction. The peace of a warm fall day had settled over her, removing her from the cares of her life for a time and granting her rest. It was an enchantment of its own, she thought as she lay there, as powerful as anything Maddoc or Galen was dreaming up. She was grateful to her ancestors for providing it and hoped that her thankful face could be seen by them as they looked down from the sky.

  The rock rested next to a brook that tumbled down the cleft between two hills. Behind it was a small cavern, their shelter for the night. It was a fortunate find; Rhea did not relish the idea of another cold night under an open sky.

  She turned slightly to gaze down the small canyon. Its cheerful brook continued downward through the trees until it was obscured completely by the Talwood Forest and the broadening plain of the Southern Steppes. The brook was an insignificant tributary to the River Zhamra, one of hundreds that fed the river’s course. Even from here through the trunks of the whispering trees, Rhea could see the winding course of the river cutting a vibrant, twisting course across the plains and fields. It ended at Lake Evni, now a brilliant plate of fire as it reflected the vibrant salmon color of the evening clouds overhead. Closer by, to the west and but a few miles distant from the base of her comfortable seclusion, columns of smoke were rising from the hearths of the village of Talwood. Those were the evening fires that welcomed the farmers to their homes and their rewards for the labors of the day. Those were the signs of simple peace and the comfort of unchallenged routine.

  How she longed for them. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to remember, if just for a moment, the quiet of what such a life was like. She swept the floor of her neatly kept and simple home. She instructed her darling little girl on the geography of her homeland so that she might not be lost. She prepared supper for her husband and daughter as she had each night. She took satisfaction in the joy and comfort it brought them. With Dahlia safely in bed, she read the histories next to Maddoc as they sat by the light of their hearth each night. She rested in his arms, cradled securely in his undying and unquestionable love.

  Rhea opened her eyes, a tear coursing down across her nose as she lay gazing once more at the town that seemed more and more distant from her as she watched. It had been a simple life and a good life and now it was gone. For several years now, her husband had gone mad in ways that she did not comprehend. He was Chosen. He was of the Elect. She did not know what it meant, and the more she learned the more puzzling and frightening it became. Maddoc had told her that there was no mystery so dark that it could not be understood under the lamp of knowledge. Dahlia was sixteen when the suspicions of their neighbors forced them to leave their home on the north shore, moving with Maddoc from place to place, never staying in one town long enough to attract attention or, worse, attend the local Festivals of the Election. Over their years of flight, Rhea and her daughter had been shining that lamp on the problem of Maddoc’s madness. The mystery had become a dwarven mine into w
hich they were all walking deeper and deeper with each step. The farther they walked, the darker it became, until it seemed that she and the lamp were all that were lit in this black and unfathomable, bottomless place.

  Dahlia—their gifted, beautiful girl—had already contracted the madness. She understood what was happening in Maddoc’s world of dreams far better than Rhea. There was a pattern to it, their daughter would say, a rhythm like a song that she could not quite hear. Unlike her husband, Dahlia seemed to accept the madness with a calm and almost dispassionate clarity. It was something she wanted to study and dissect, as her father had taught her to do in all her learning from childhood. Rhea felt that perhaps through Dahlia’s guidance, they were coming to the end of the long darkness at last.

  Then, by accident, Maddoc had been discovered during one of his more violent fits. Rhea could not get word to Dahlia but knew her daughter could survive alone where her husband could not. She chose in that moment, and wandered far from her hearth and her daughter and that simple life that had once seemed so mindless. Now she longed for the mundane life in that little village of Talwood that was as far from her as the other end of the world.

  Hearing the snapping of twigs down the small canyon, she rolled quickly off the back of her rock. She was not expecting the intrusion on her solitude, but some caution was in order. It would hardly do for her to be discovered here by some errant hunter while she waited.

  Two figures moved through the trees and up the draw next to the brook. Both carried cloth sacks over their shoulders. Even through the trees at a distance, Rhea could see that one of them wore a faded rose doublet. She smiled to herself. Galen’s outfit was not entirely well suited for stealth.

  “Welcome back, you two,” she said cheerfully as they approached. “Meet with any success?”

  “Yes we did, thank you,” Galen rejoined, his words a little winded from his exertions. “We bear all manner of delights . . . as long as you are not too particular. Could you spare some accommodations for the night?”

  Rhea snickered. “If that is the case, then you may have the best in the house . . . in fact, you may have the house if you can find it.”