The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  "And then we'll see?"

  Minn smiled. "Who's the teacher here?"

  At the edge of the tide pool, he knelt. Minn stayed standing, which made him momentarily self-conscious about his decision; getting a few inches closer to the nether probably would not bring him the slightest bit closer to being able to touch it with his mind. But whatever, he was already down on his knees. More restful anyway.

  A blue-finned fish drifted above a brainish lump of coral, nibbling at whatever caught its fancy. Blays cleared his throat—bit of an odd thing to do, given that he wasn't about to speak to it, but again, this was his show—and looked. And there the nether was. Tucked beneath the fish's scales. Looming in its gawping mouth. Lurking in its flesh.

  He reached out with his mind.

  He thought he did, anyway. He certainly focused on the fish and the nether inside it, concentrating on the wisps of blackness. But he didn't feel a thing.

  "Is this like when I was trying to see it?" He sat back on the rocks, withdrawing his focus. "Am I touching it, but it's so subtle I just don't know it?"

  "Everyone's feel for the shadows is different," Minn said. "But when you do feel it, trust me—you'll know."

  He tried again, jabbing his attention at the fish like a spear. It didn't flinch. Neither did its nether. He tried coming at it sidelong, whistling a lazy tune while his thoughts snuck closer and closer. All to no effect. He was about to cycle through all these approaches again, then sat back and threw back his head.

  He was going about this like a stupid person. Flailing about like a child with a wooden sword. Speaking of, he was already damn good at one area that required the perfect tuning of his mind and body: sword fighting. And he had a ritual whenever he was attempting to learn a new technique.

  It had begun as a general exercise, a way to isolate and thus gain control of every individual muscle group in his body: as he breathed in and out, he flexed and relaxed, learning to isolate (say) the muscles under his arms from those in his shoulders. It was a surprisingly useful exercise. It relaxed him, but it also taught him to exert sudden, devastating force wherever he cared to deliver it. For instance, a downward cross-body stroke could be augmented with a sudden diagonal tensing of his abdominals. He might do no more than twitch his wrist, but the extra force generated by the rest of his body could add bone-splitting force to his strike.

  Over the years, he had adapted the technique into more than a method to coordinate his musculature. It was also a way to clear his head, to get out of himself. Using it, he could learn a new skill in minutes. Invent new fighting techniques from whole cloth. By envisioning the combination of movements that would lead to an effective maneuver, he could break it down muscle by muscle, then combine those movements into a single gesture. A few days of practice, and the new technique no longer took conscious thought.

  As he sat on the rock, he put himself through his paces, starting with his head and working his way down. He tensed his ears, scalp, and brow. His neck, then his shoulders. His pectorals and lats, abdominals and hips, and so on. From the corner of his vision, Minn was giving him a funny look, but he was already feeling better, more at one with the various components that comprised the Blays he was. He let his breath flow in and out. He reached for the fish.

  "Oh shit," he said. "It feels like being stabbed with cold iron!"

  Minn jolted forward. "Are you okay? Did you sit on something?"

  "I felt it. The nether! It's cold and it hurts, right?"

  "Generally." She pushed out her lower lip. "But you can't have felt it already. You just started."

  "Unless you gored me with a pigsticker while I wasn't looking, I think I've done it."

  "How?" she said.

  "I swooped in on it."

  "You swooped in on it?"

  "Like a bird of prey." He cut his hand through the air. "Like a blade closing on the bearer's enemy."

  "Impossible," Minn said. "Then do it again."

  "Whatever you say." He breathed, tensed, relaxed. Reached out. Felt the icy sting. Though he'd touched it with his mind, not his fingers, he couldn't stop from shaking out his hand.

  She blinked. "How'd you do that?"

  "Magic."

  "Well, you've magically destroyed weeks of my plans."

  "Does that upset you?"

  She looked up from the fish. "I put a lot of thought into those lessons."

  "Plans are like newborns." He straightened, retracting his focus from the nether. "Best not to get attached to them until they grow sturdy enough to be put to work."

  She laughed, then stopped herself. "Perhaps you'd like to spend the rest of the day honing your new skill. I have to find a way to build new plans on the ruins of the old."

  He thought he pretty much had it down, but it wouldn't hurt to be sure. As Minn retired to the caves, he worked his way around the pools, touching the nether within the snails, minnows, kelp, and a cruising octopus. He didn't see what the big deal was. The nether was there. He knew it was there. So why shouldn't he be able to touch it?

  Hungry, and too lazy to go build a fire, he cut loose some mussels and ate them raw. He wouldn't go so far as to say he was getting a taste for raw mussels—he wasn't sure you could get a taste for nature's phlegm—but he no longer minded them. Funny how fast you got used to things.

  In the morning, he and Minn reconvened at the tide pools. He stretched his elbow over his head and pulled it to the side, extending his shoulder. "Figured out what you're going to do with me next?"

  "Tell you about the next Season."

  "Just like that?"

  She brushed a ragged bang from her eyes. "What were you expecting, a feast in your honor? Shall I fetch the stew?"

  In truth, he had been expecting something to mark his accomplishment. The Progression of the Seasons was supposed to take about as long as the real ones, wasn't it? And he'd burned through Winter in ten minutes. Darned impressive, he thought.

  He supposed that, in the scheme of things, it was nothing more than a baby step. He hadn't even begun to use the nether yet. This was just his ego standing up and taking its pants off. Ego could be a fine thing, of course. A strong one could help you accomplish goals even when those goals were plainly boneheaded. And aside from the practical advantages of ego, it was simply a fun thing to have.

  But at the moment, ego wasn't helping. If anything, it was slowing him down. When it came time to learn, the role model was the sponge, and he had yet to meet a sponge that was full of itself. What with all the holes, they could never get enough.

  "Yesterday's stew can wait." He blew into his hands. "I hope the real winter passes as quickly as the fake one."

  "A change that sudden would drown us in storms," Minn said. She took a moment, letting her amusement fade and replacing it with a look of authority. "Spring. The season of melting and unlocking. First you saw the nether. Then you learned to reach it. Next, you learn to melt it."

  "Makes sense. It felt as cold as snowman's piss."

  "It's critical to keep in mind this isn't literal. Though similar in some ways, the nether isn't ice. It isn't water, either. Don't confuse a metaphor for what's actually in front of you."

  "Don't worry, I'm used to dealing with people who are constitutionally incapable of talking in plain terms."

  "Then get to work."

  He ran through his breathing warmups. On top of a damp, slimy rock, a fiddler crab was jerking its big claw back and forth, announcing to all the other crabs that it was the most fiddlin' fiddler that ever fiddled. He saw the nether in it, touched it. It was as cold and sharp as before. He intensified his focus, imagining it as the heat of a climbing bonfire. The nether stayed cold. Immobile.

  He was unworried. He hadn't expected Spring to zip by as briskly as Winter. The subtleties of Fall were still fresh in his mind. After a while, Minn returned to whatever other duties occupied her in the caves, but he stayed beside the captive saltwater, willing the nether to come forth.

  A week later, he was
still there. He had tried any number of mental tricks. Thinking of his attention as heat that would melt the dark ice. That it was a knife that would slice loose the fastened shadows. That it was a big old fist capable of yanking trees out by their roots. He had tried it on crabs, fish, birds, grass, slime, coral, a juvenile shark, a lost seal. And, as far as he could tell, he'd gotten exactly nowhere.

  "Got any more roots?" he asked Minn at the end of Spring's first week. "Preferably something that will cause my brains to pour out my ears so I can pick them up and give them a shake?"

  "Nat-root won't do you any good here," she said. She caught the look on his face. "But we can try it anyway."

  "I mean, worst case, we have a good time, right?"

  So they ate bowls of mashed-up root and Minn sat by the water while he tried to warm, force, and tickle the nether from its obstinate shell. He fell over more than once, but despite one incredibly vivid hallucination that he'd convinced the shadows to swim out from their hidey-holes and leap like a pod of dolphins, he had no luck.

  Another week went by, never to return. The first snow hit, a squall of whirling flakes that barely had time to crust the sand before a warm wind blew in from the south. Blays watched it melt with calm fury. Stupid nature, always showing people up. When he calmed down a bit, he tried to take a lesson from that, to imagine where he might conjure up a southern wind of his own, but after a couple of flailing attempts, he threw the idea out like an empty mussel shell.

  Thinking it would be the strongest and thus easiest to get a handle on, he cut himself to work with his own blood. But that got him nowhere. Except bandaged. Finally, so frustrated he could kill something, he climbed up the staircase to the misty plateau, where he could overlook the beach and have a laugh about flinging himself down upon it.

  The climb felt good. The solid sheet of mist-borne ice on the rocks, however, felt like it might induce death. But there was something bracing about that, something that kicked him free of his snarled irritation and back into immediate survival, so he turned his back on the ocean and picked his way inland.

  Below, the exuberant tide thundered to the shore. Ahead, he heard nothing. Not even the dripping of water. But then he heard voices: one male, and one female.

  They appeared to be conversing, not shouting, so he left his sword sheathed (he'd only brought it because the plateau was known to harbor centipedes as long as your arm). He crept forward, keeping knobby pillars of rock between himself and the two people. Anyway, he didn't need to see the woman to recognize the voice as Minn's.

  He came within proper earshot as their conversation reached the goodbye phase. Their parting words were lengthy, and as it became clear he was eavesdropping on close friends, Blays grew sheepish. He turned back to the staircase. By the time he reached the bottom, however, he felt less bad—Minn wasn't supposed to be up there in the first place. He sat in the sand to watch the stairs.

  Minn walked out a couple minutes later. Her eyes alighted on Blays, widening.

  "Went up for a walk?" he said.

  "Just to clear my head," she said.

  "Me too. Who were you talking to?"

  She shrugged. "A friend. Who else?"

  "This friend sounded decidedly male."

  "Afraid I'm replacing you?"

  "Are we allowed visitors, then? Or is that one of the countless things I still don't understand about Pocket Cove?"

  Minn eyed him, head angling to the side. "Maybe it's time to fix that. I haven't been much help this Season. Then again, the first time is as much a lesson for the teacher as the student."

  "I'm your first student?" Blays said. "I don't know whether to feel honored or horrified."

  "Both, I'd think. Perhaps it's time to take you to my teacher."

  "Now I'm definitely horrified."

  Minn smiled. "At least your instincts are good."

  She took him to the cave, then had him wait in his room while she went deeper. She returned and nodded. As they walked to the main tunnel and ventured toward what lay beyond, Blays found himself so thrilled to be seeing something new that he laughed out loud. Minn glanced at him but held her tongue.

  Torchstones embedded in the walls threw just enough light to reveal the way. They passed a doorway every ten or twenty feet, each papery door supported on a frame of the bamboo-like reeds that grew on the beaches to the north. The hallways grew warmer, rich with the scent of incense and spices. Although Blays knew better than to say so, it was probably to cover up the smell of fish oil that hung in the air, too.

  Once, they passed a young woman in a loose robe, a red scarf fluttering from her wrist. The woman gazed at Blays with mild curiosity and moved on. After a couple more turns, Minn opened one of the parchment doors. A brief foyer opened to a wide room. The walls and floors were so thick with blankets and rugs it took Blays a moment to spot the woman sitting in their midst.

  "Oh," he said. "You again."

  Minn's head cranked around. "You know each other?"

  "We met a few years ago," Blays said. "Sort of. I think Dante was too busy blathering for me to get in a single word."

  "I remember you," the woman said. Her long dark hair was streaked with gray. "But we don't get many visitors."

  "Really? All it would take is a three-hundred-foot ladder."

  "My name is Ro," she said. "Minn tells me you're stuck on Spring."

  Blays looked up from a rug woven with a repeating geometric pattern he'd never seen before. "Is that unusual? I thought these things could take months to get right."

  "Often, yes. Others find it goes much faster. But after unusually swift advancement, you seem to be..."

  "Unable to find my ass with both hands." He winced. "Ma'am. If that's what you prefer to be called."

  "Ro is fine."

  "Maybe I passed my first two Seasons too easily, without gathering the tools to go further. Maybe I'm missing something obvious. Or maybe I'm not cut out for this. Either way, I would appreciate any lessons you can manage to pound through my dense skull."

  She nodded. "First, why don't you tell me what you've been doing."

  "Well, whenever I try to get the nether to move, I—"

  "When you try to do what?"

  "You know," he said. "Make it melt. Make it let go of whatever it's stuck on so it will come over and say hello."

  She turned on Minn, face heavy with reproach. "You couldn't have asked him this yourself?"

  Minn held up her hands. "I never told him anything about trying to move it."

  "Apparently you didn't do so well explaining the concept of melt, either."

  "He's my first student."

  "Don't Pocket yourself," Ro said, softening her voice. "I'm not berating. I'm explaining."

  "It could be," Minn said, "that my explanation was lacking."

  "Or maybe he really is that dense."

  "Ro!"

  "Oh, she's right," Blays said. "You shouldn't assume I've understood a single word you've ever said."

  "You're trying to skip Spring and go straight to Summer," Minn said.

  "Well, why didn't you say so?"

  "You might think there is no difference between unlocking nether and getting it to move." Ro leaned forward, blankets rumpling. "But if you're thirsty and all you have is snow, you won't be able to drink until you've turned it into water."

  Blays nodded slowly. "And drinking is a special skill of its own, too."

  Ro smiled wryly. "Tell me about it."

  "Oh, do you have a bottle of something?"

  "Get back to work."

  This was said friendly enough, but Minn took it as an omen to depart immediately. She thanked Ro and took Blays back through the maze of tunnels to the gusty beach. Sand blew over the dunes in streams.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "Yeah, you really trampled the rabbit on that one."

  "I should have paid better attention. I've been wasting your time."

  He wiped his nose against the cold. "Then I guess we'd better get to
it."

  "You're dedicated, aren't you?"

  "When I have to be."

  He resumed his studies at the pools. Minn took a more active role, watching him closely. He'd never enjoyed instruction that was too hands-on, preferring to be given the occasional pointer or whack on the head and be otherwise left to himself. But this wasn't like learning to bake bread or sew a wound, straightforward and a mere matter of practice. This was magic.

  Then again, maybe learning to do magic was as mundane as learning to do anything else. A simple equation of effort and time. Either way, the only way to move forward was to keep at it. Though she continued to keep watch on him, after a few days, Minn backed off to let his revelations come at their own pace.

  For three days, a wind blew in that was so warm Blays would have sworn it came all the way from the Carlons. When it got cold again, it stayed cold. As for the nether, his progress with it was as fleeting as that warm snap—a summerblink, Minn had called it—but he found that, as he attempted day after day to melt it, to coax it away from the physical world it held fast to, he grew better and better at seeing it. At reaching it. It came faster and stood out sharper. This consoled him even when, a month into Spring, he still couldn't do more than make the nether shiver.

  He didn't spend all his time in practice. Often, he poked along the shores, exploring closer and closer to the curled horns of rock enclosing Pocket Cove. The beach was nice. Somehow placid, even or especially when the wind whipped the waves into such thunderous hammers that he jumped out of his skin each time one boomed into the sand.

  He still missed Lira. It made him angry that he'd known her less than a year, and had truly been with her for a handful of months, yet years after the fact, he still mourned her as if he'd lost some deep part of himself. Like a limb he'd never known he had. That was the galling part. He'd been happy before she came into his life. Even happier once she was there, granted, but once she was gone, in a just universe, he would have returned to that same pre-Lira baseline.

  He had always pushed through his dark moods with a combination of hard work, an eagerness to try new things, and a happy fatalism. Maybe it was still working; after all, he had been far worse back in Mallon not all that long ago.