by Ellyn, Court
“You’ll teach me to do that?”
“Won’t be easy, there’s only so much I can tell you. The rest is up to you. But little else will teach you so well the control you’ll need for further lessons. Ach, we’re wasting time, boy.”
Kieryn grit his teeth. “I have a name, old man.”
The avedra grinned behind his plaited beard. “Think you deserve respect, do you?”
“Do you?”
At this, Zellel emitted a rumble of laughter. “So be it,” he complied, sinking into his chair. “Ask away, Kieryn.” Zellel’s accent made the consonants of his words sharp and turned the ‘r’ of Kieryn’s name into a soft ‘d’.
He folded his height into a chair across from his instructor, and Zellel lay his staff lengthwise upon the table between them. The crystal orb fractured the morning sunlight and cast tiny rainbows like dancing minnows across the books. Kieryn eyed the staff warily, waiting for it to perform some spectacular feat on its own, and noticed that a set of carved talons held the orb in place. He assumed the claw was that of a falcon until he discerned scales ornamenting the ankle. Suddenly he couldn’t recall the urgent questions he’d meant to ask. He sought something, anything.
“Does every avedra carry a staff?”
“Let’s keep this simple. I shall follow the methods of my teacher. She was Jusharél, a Roreshan who lived in Dorél with a secret community of our kind. She said the staff must be earned. As must the robe and the stripes. The robe comes first. Master your eyes and ears, then maybe. The staff you won’t earn until you can manipulate the elements around you. The stripes, you earn on your own.” A private horror darkened Zellel’s last statement.
At risk of earning further contempt, Kieryn asked, “What stripes?” He searched the green velvet robe as he would the breast of an infantryman’s tabard. But the only stripes he found ornamented the shoulder rolls: gold embroidery alternated with the green velvet itself. That couldn’t be what Zellel meant. Then Kieryn’s glance settled on the white streaks at Zellel’s brow, and the old man grinned.
“It’s a strange thing, indeed,” Zellel said. “It can’t be explained, and not every avedra is put to a trial that results in badges like these. Pray to Ana-Forah, Kieryn, that she spares you from such a struggle.”
“How did you earn yours?” Kieryn asked, voice hushed by awe.
Zellel tasted the clear icy air of the Drakhan peaks, watched the sun set over the heights in the west, the vast ribs of the world. Felt the evil things emerge with the night. He searched for the Elarion, but other creatures searched for him. Many years he’d been away from Júsharel and the avedra commune hidden in the highlands of Dorél, and now he wandered alone, seeking, always seeking. He’d found the crumbled towers of ancient ruins tucked away in nameless valleys, but even using his Veil Sight he failed to find the Elaran builders. Instead, he found large, twisted creatures with spotted brown-green skin stinking of the carrion they fed on. These naenion had thought to feed on Zellel, but he eluded them, striking down their mightiest hunters with the fire in his hands, and now they sent an army to rid their mountains of him. How many thousands cornered him in that canyon? He lost count of how many days they came at him, how many days he held them off. Alone.
He snarled an answer at the boy: “Fighting for my life, what else?” Zellel exhaled heavily, as if the fight were only now over. “Another world exists beyond the mundane senses, boy. Wars being fought all the time, all around us. The Veil Folk are too dissimilar to live peaceably. And as avedrin, we who are born to both Flesh and Magic, are too often caught up in the struggle, taking side or another.”
Kieryn didn’t understand the meaning behind the words, and he decided not to press for details, not yet. Instead, he asked, “Can we heal the sick, then? Last night, His Grace said he could feel—”
“No,” Zellel interrupted sourly. “Of all the injuries we can heal, we cannot reverse the effects of old age and the frailties of the dying. Harac is the only friend I own, and to watch him waste away brings me pain beyond your imagining. He’d be as hale as ever, had I the ability.” He rose and stepped to the window, his hand waving away an apology before Kieryn could speak it. “That you wish to help His Grace proves to me that your heart is in a good place. Make certain it stays there.” Against the morning light, his profile looked as hard and jagged as the face of Mount Drenéleth. “The road we walk is a narrow one, boy … Kieryn. The abilities we possess … ah, a small host of us could conquer the world. If you had spoken differently last night, I’d have sent you home. But, perhaps, young as you are, you have yet to realize your life’s ambition.”
With a shrug, Kieryn said, “I have little desire other than study, and simple joys.”
“Ah, a wife who gives you little complaint, children to follow after you, a house peaceful and warm?”
“Certainly.”
Zellel nodded forlornly. “I, too, once dreamt of those things. ‘Tis the common dream, no matter what one’s race. But Ana often has other plans for us.”
“Is that why you left Heret?”
Zellel heard the dolphins scream. His father managed the fishing trade in the city of Qeturah on the eastern shore of Loknoth. A dozen Brenlachs would fit within the confines of Loknoth’s shores, and there, the brown-faced fishermen set sail in their broad-hulled trawlers and cast wide their nets. Their prize was the freshwater dolphin, whose meat was sweet and whose oil was fine and costly. By the time the fishermen returned with their catch, the dolphins were already dead and gutted, but young Zellel could still hear them screaming.
How often had he pled with his father to make the fishermen stop? But the dolphin was their livelihood, and Zellel’s father came to think his son addled, weak-stomached, weak-hearted. At sixteen, Zellel could bear it no longer. The dolphins’ anguished pleas plagued his sleep, and he began to think he was crazy. He stopped sleeping to avoid the nightmares of the creatures calling to him to save them. When his body gave out, he lay on the reed rug in his room, listening to the lap of the waves, a rhythm as maddening and damning as a water clock. Gradually he became aware of a light hovering over him. He thought he’d died and Ana had come for him. Golden like sunshine on the waves, the light said to him, “You hear their deaths because you are special, Zellel. Come away now. It’s time.”
And so he had left. Setting out over the Vanaza Mountains, he left behind the Loknoth and the crying dolphins. The shore of Gedalya Bay led him through the palm groves of southern Roresha and across the mighty Adreddán River into the deep jungles of Ixaka. The primal forests begrudgingly gave way for magnificent cities like Itsaso, whose queens grew rich on spice fields and sugar cane. Painted columns flanked the streets, and temple-crowned pyramids climbed toward the Mother-Father. From Itsaso, Zellel sailed down the Marjan River into the drier lowlands of Dorél, where kemyls fed on pungent sage. In the cool highlands, he slept before his campfire, and the dolphins woke him again. He found a woman staring at him from across the dying embers. “We’ve been waiting for you, Zellel. Your guardian told us about you and led you to us at last.” Júsharel explained to him the ‘gift’ he’d inherited and took him through secret doors to the deep places where the oldest society of avedrin dwelled.
The boy shifted in his chair, nervous in the long silence, and Zellel crossed the years to return to the library. “I left to find who I was, and that’s all.”
Kieryn put on a bitter smile. “Then we’re of similar ambition.”
“Once you know who you are? What then?”
“How can I possibly answer that? I thought I might travel, wander the world and write about what I found. But knowing someone who’s already done that takes some of the originality out of my big idea.” He surrendered with a shrug and replied, “I guess, I’ll just wait and see what the Mother has in store for me.”
The answer took Zellel by surprise. Was the boy really so open-minded, or obscenely ignorant? Look at him, sitting there in the sunlight, golden as an Elari princeling and despera
te to trust, to understand. Innocence still emanated from him like wind from the sea, and Zellel realized he envied the boy for it. He did not, however, envy him the pain that would come with the loss of it. Zellel couldn’t recall feeling anything before he felt that pain. It had come too early. Beneath the innocence, he wondered, who was this youth? When innocence had been stripped away, what would his ambitions be then?
He was like one of the glittering specks of dust floating in the beams of sunlight. Those specks collided into one another, kicking each other off course, into some new direction. Kieryn might drift happily in the light now, but one day something would crash into him and send him hurtling into the darkness beyond. Was he the kind who would lose himself in that darkness, or would he be able to find his way back to the light? Wherever he went, Kieryn would take his abilities with him; he would use them for Light or for Dark or for some shadowy place between.
Zellel could still send the boy home, save him the anguish. But was that choice Zellel’s to make? He sighed. “Enough questions. Let us begin. And here’s incentive for you: once you earn your robe, I’ll take you to meet the Lady. She’d be displeased if I didn’t.”
“The Lady?”
“Aye, Aerdria, Lady of the Elarion.”
Kieryn gulped. “An elf? Here? Why would an elf … an Elari want to meet me?”
“Why wouldn’t you want to meet an Elari?”
Kieryn thought of his father.
~~~~
After a spot of tea for breakfast, Zellel said, “We’ll start with your ears.” He stood over Kieryn, glaring down at him as Etivva never did. “Your guardian tells me the ability to hear unspoken thoughts comes easy for you.”
“It does?” Kieryn started to follow with ‘What guardian?’
But Zellel snapped, “How else did you learn of the assassin’s intention?”
Kieryn remembered the debilitating headache, the incessant voices. Sometimes the speakers—thinkers, rather—had seemed to be whispering directly in his ear, then were suddenly far away, cocooned within a buzzing beehive. He asked, “Last night, why did you touch me to hear to my thoughts?”
“I wasn’t hearing your thoughts. I was seeing them. Avedrin must treat Silent Speech as one matter and mental pictures as another. But the skills come hand in hand. Learn the control of one, learn the other with little effort. I tell you this: thoughts are merely impulses of energy, as is anything else in the universe. As avedrin, we have the ability to tap into these impulses, merely to feel them, or to manipulate them. Wizardry is just that, the bending, even the breaking of these vast, various energies with one’s will. And therein, too, lies the danger, the reason why we are feared, and why we often fear ourselves: inherent within us is the ability to alter the fabric of all things, to impose our will—for good or evil—over anything we choose.
“Even the Elarion are not capable of everything we are. They understand the energies of our universe, often better than we, and they are able to feel the energies as we do, but they can’t manipulate them. They have their spells and wards, for certain—that is the whole essence of their Veil—but they are unable to alter the weave of the universe.
“Imagine the universe is a vast tower. Now, to utilize our gift may be as innocuous as brushing our fingers against the mortar between the stones—or as harmful as striking it with a hammer. Mark me well: given enough time and focus, the strongest of us could destroy this planet with a whisper. And so we must use discretion, foresight, hesitation.”
Feeling as if he drowned under a wave of new speculation, Kieryn asked, “How do we know what’s for the best? How do we know if we’re doing more damage than good? If the path we choose pleases the Mother-Father?”
He expected Zellel to berate his stupidity; instead, he pondered Kieryn’s questions gravely. “We cannot foresee the consequences of our actions, only guess. How do we know, when we ply our hands, that we do what is best for those we wish to help? Flip the coin, and when we strike an enemy, how do we know we do not also hurt someone we had no intention of hurting?
“Philosophers throughout the ages have said that avedrin only exist to interfere. Those same philosophers say that Ana-Forah never makes mistakes. So are we tools of the Mother, or stones in the cog? But listen to us! We digress. To work! And you’d better catch on quickly, boy, because I don’t like repeating myself.”
“But—”
“Elaran!” he interrupted, excited now. He made for the shelves of handwritten books, returned with a thick volume and dropped it in front of Kieryn. Columns of the sinuous script shaped a delectable, intimidating puzzle. “First the characters, then basic words. You’ll recognize many of the words, believe it or not. The old language of which humans speak is, in fact, Elaran, and they use many of its elements everyday without realizing. But enough. Dig in the drawer for ink and quill, and listen well. You try to hear me with your ears of flesh and you won’t hear a thing. Got it?”
“Sure.”
“I doubt it.”
He tugged a bell rope. When the servant arrived, Zellel requested an easel and stack of parchment. He set the easel before the table and with some power of his mind held the parchment in place. Upon it, he scrawled one indecipherable letter after another. Though Kieryn copied them, they remained as meaningless as a baby’s burbles. The silence pounded in his eardrums. He could hear nothing but the scratch of the quill, the buzz of a fly trapped in the window. By noon, Kieryn wanted to throttle the old wizard. And by late afternoon, he sat fuming, thrumming his fingers, grinding his teeth. Zellel kept scribbling; he pinned up a clean page, scribbled, scribbled, waved his hands about as his mind elaborated on correct pronunciation or the position of adjectives, all of which escaped Kieryn completely.
At last, he slammed down his quill and shouted, “It’s useless, Zellel! I can’t do this!”
Zellel rounded on him, eyes smoldering, and Kieryn was glad he couldn’t hear the insults roaring from the avedra’s mind. He could counter them, however. Go rot in the Abyss, you flaming pile of ogre shit, his mind screamed. Hear that, did you?
The avedra lunged for his staff, swept it in a wide glittering arc, and cracked Kieryn upside the head. He reeled to the floor, head ringing, and heard, “Zellel! Stay your hand. He’s mine!”
The ceiling swam. Swirling spots gathered and Kieryn feared he was going blind. Yellow, white, lavender, tiny lights like fireflies in summer. As if they were caught in a cyclone, the spots tightened into a column nearly a foot tall; bare legs, arms, and fluttering wings took shape within the soft golden light.
“You promised me, fay!” Zellel shouted, pointing a crooked finger.
“I know what I promised you,” the fairy replied, voice high and clear as ringing crystal, and sharp with anger. “But that was before you tried to kill him.”
“I? Kill him? He’s barely worth the effort of a good swat, your boy is.”
The fairy swelled in brightness. “I’ll put you to sleep, so help me I will, you lay one more hand on him.”
“Fine! You teach him.” He threw his staff to the floor, and charged with Zellel’s fury, the orb sent off a flash of sparks.
“Now, now, ta h’aurien,” the fairy cooed, whisking before him. “Kieryn needs you. But if you haven’t the patience for one another, I can always take him to someone … more suited.”
Zellel flapped a hand at the fairy. She evaded him as lithely as a hummingbird. “You just tell him to live up to his word.”
“He told you he’d finish what he began, and so he will.”
The glare that Zellel lowered on Kieryn might’ve melted ice. “One more chance, boy. One! Disappoint me, and so help me, you’ll think I was the storm and the flood.”
The fairy span in a corkscrew, giggling in triumph. Her golden wings left behind streamers of soft light as she darted toward Kieryn. He flinched aside, afraid that she was the result of the knot rising on his head. But she was too familiar to be an hallucination. So familiar, the golden hair swirling about the lo
ng, slender face, the pointed chin, the dainty peak of a nose. And the eyes. There were no pupils in those eyes, and they were the same lavender as the garland of crocuses resting atop her head. This was the face of his first waking memory. The voice and the laughter he had longed for.
“Saffron,” he said.
“Aye,” she replied.
“Goddess, you’re real.” He reached a hand to touch the threads of light rippling from her like water. “You left—”
“I never left you. Well, never more than a few days at a time. I watched you grow, ensuring that boys’ fights and falls from horses caused no lasting damage. And now, for you, I have broken my word to Zellel. I promised him I wouldn’t show myself until you could see past the Veil with your own eyes. You must have patience with yourself. An accomplished avedra isn’t made in a day. The lessons Zellel has to teach you will cause you pain, but on the other side of pain is perfection. Within you, my dear one, lies the courage to endure it, I am certain. Can you hear me?”
Only then did Kieryn realize that Saffron’s lips no longer moved, yet her voice resounded in his mind like the notes of lingering song.
Yes, he answered silently, fearing the thought would get no farther than his skull.
Good, now close your eyes and feel where your mind hears my voice. You hear it below your conscious awareness, Kieryn. Below even the inner voice that speaks to you of right and wrong, safety and danger. You hear it in your most fundamental self, that instinctual part that is purely avedra. You feel it?
Yes, he thought, though he wouldn’t have been able to explain the feeling if he tried. It was something definite, something distinct, like a buzzing hole at the base of his brain, seeking to suck in every sound that neared. A knowledgeable void. A void of awareness. Strange …