by Jeff Wilson
Seoras rose to his feet, untroubled by, or perhaps just unaware of, the several vacant minutes he had spent laying on the ground. The distortion he was shaping and maintaining with ease was more powerful than ever. It stretched far beyond the range he had formerly been capable of, and the window through which Edryd could observe his teachers mind was clearer than it had ever been. Seoras was admiring the strength he was now wielding with a look of wonder and awe. He turned to Edryd and stared in amazement.
“You really can’t shape,” Seoras said. “I can see that now, I just don’t understand why. If you could touch the dark, you would be something this world has not seen in hundreds of years.”
Seoras allowed the displacement he was shaping to dissipate. It continued to shrink until its boundaries passed over Edryd, at which point it collapsed to nothing and vanished. Seoras ceased his hold on the dark reluctantly, feeling the loss of the raw power that had been at his command.
“You may not be able to pattern the dark, but you see it clearly. Far better and much further than I could have imagined. We will work with that. There is a way forward, but we have to approach everything differently.”
Seoras said nothing more for a moment, formulating new possibilities as he integrated the fragmented discoveries he had just exposed. “I need to think on this,” Seoras said, and then turned away, looking confused.
Edryd wanted to tell him to take all the time he needed. He did not understand any of what had just happened. He ought to have demanded answers, but he felt too frightened to try to follow Seoras, who was now heading up to the manor. Edryd felt weak, and realized he was shaking. Seoras was nothing less than an absolute monster. No person should be able to control so much power.
He felt Irial place her hand on his arm. “Let’s go home. You don’t need to be here today,” she said, her face tight with worry.
Edryd didn’t argue. His head hurt fiercely and his body ached. It seemed to Edryd as if his soul had fought against the confines of its vessel, exceeding what should have been withstood, leaving him worn and unstable. There was a residual effect in the courtyard left over from what had just happened, undermining the reality of the place where they still stood, and Edryd wanted nothing more than to get as far away as he could.
He began to feel better almost immediately after they left the estate, but one lasting aftereffect remained. It lessened but did not disappear. Edryd felt like something trapped within him was trying to force a way out. The concept terrified him, and he did what he could to put it out of his mind.
After rounding a corner that blocked the town from view, they travelled another half mile before leaving the path and climbing a short distance to a field of grass that lay beside a cold clear stream. It was the same stream that met the path further down the mountain, following alongside it until reaching the town where it flowed through a channel that fed into a pond on the southern edge of the settlement.
Edryd gathered water in cupped hands and drank deeply, before dipping his hands back in again and bringing up more water to wash over his head and across his neck and face. The water was neither deep nor wide here, or he might have been tempted to submerge his head in it.
Irial unwound a scarf from around her shoulders. Edryd supposed that she planned to gather some of the blackberries that they had spied yesterday, and maybe collect assortments of herbs growing in the wild. He normally would have offered to help. It wasn’t often needed, nor was he often much use when he did help, but he usually learned something from assisting her.
“You should rest for a little while,” Irial said, concerned about the injuries that she could see, and even more worried over those that he hid from her. She couldn’t experience changes in the shape and pattern of the dark the way Edryd did, and so would not have been able to directly understand the magnitude of what had taken place that morning, but she could see that it had shaken him.
“I’ll just take a nap then until you get back,” Edryd agreed. He smiled, trying to reassure her that he was fine.
“I will be quick,” she promised.
“Not too quick,” he said, still smiling, “or it won’t be much of a nap.”
Edryd watched for a little while as Irial picked berries from the branches of a nearby bush. Lying down in the low grass, he closed his eyes for a moment. She was gone when he opened them again.
Closing his eyes once more, he tried to calm the thoughts and worries racing through his head, but failed. He tried again to shut everything out, the fragrance of the fresh grass, the sound of the wind filtering through the leaves of the forest, and the warmth of the sun washing over him. Achieving no measure of success, he settled on the opposite approach and opened himself to everything at once. He was aware of pain from the cuts in his skin, the damp ground beneath him, currents of air carrying bits of pollen and the aromatic fragrance of juniper trees, and the sound of water splashing over the stubborn stones that impeded the stream’s descending route down the mountain. Each additional sensory contribution weakened distinctions between all of the others until they bled together into a meaningless union.
His physical awareness receded, his mind disregarding signals to which it could no longer assign meaning or importance. Conversely, his comprehension of the dark, and through it his connection to everything else, deepened. Everything, living things in particular, distorted the shape of the dark into subtle but complex patterns. He could intuit information about the objects that created these patterns, and in doing so construct an understanding of the world around him.
It felt unexpected yet familiar, as if discovering a depth that had always been there in the periphery of his experience. It wasn’t new. He had been discerning patterns in the dark for a long time now, but by subduing his other senses his mind was able to see the world in a new way. It afforded a unique and fluid perspective.
As if from an external viewpoint, Edryd could see himself, and he saw that he was warping the shape of the dark in all directions, a constant unchanging passive effect fixed tightly around him as its source. From within the limited range across which this envelopment extended, Edryd’s mind accounted for the effect and subtracted it out. From beyond its circumference, it disappeared as if neither he nor the displacement were even there. Edryd could infer its existence, only while shifting perspective near the edge of the effect. He tried to alter the shape, believing that something might have changed, but was rewarded with confirmation that nothing was any different. He might as well have been trying to form a piece of pottery out of flowing water.
The new mode of experience was taking a toll. It felt ungrounded, and it was disorienting to feel so disconnected from physical perception. Concerned that he could become lost, Edryd discovered that he did not know how to exit this altered state. In a panic he tried to tear free. As had happened earlier that morning, he became aware of something inside. Some shaped piece of the dark nestled in his mind, resisting his every effort. Terror sparked a cascade that collapsed everything. Edryd was assaulted by blinding light and roaring sounds, and the pain from his injuries was overwhelming. Then everything returned to normal. Edryd blinked. The world was again a place of physical sights and sounds.
Irial was no longer there. He judged that less than half an hour had passed. He was nervous, but he had to try again. He closed his eyes and tried to repeat the process, but it wouldn’t work. The experience had unsettled him too much. He wanted to talk with someone. The fear and excitement that he felt were too much to be held in. Edryd stood up, shook his coat to loosen bits of grass and debris that clung to his back, and began looking east. He wondered for a moment why he felt so certain about the direction. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected he had recognized her in the patterns left in the dark. He almost felt like he still could. Edryd sat back down and decided to wait, trying to see if he could get a sense of Irial’s location in the woods, and perhaps fooling himself that he could.
She returned with a pile of blackberries loaded into her scarf, covered by m
int leaves layered above them. She also had a piece of honeycomb wrapped in some leaves and a bundle of hedge cleaver plants collected from the edges of the meadow. Sitting down beside him, she began mashing the hedge cleaver in the hollow of a stone until it became a moist paste. She mixed this with honey and spread it over Edryd’s cuts.
“Does Seoras know who I am?” Edryd asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “You think he might?”
“If he does, he hasn’t said anything. But he was already in a rage when I showed up. He attacked me only moments after I came through the gate. Something was different.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Irial objected. “I couldn’t have been very far away when it started.”
“Swords were drawn,” Edryd explained, “but they never crossed.”
Irial popped a blackberry in her mouth. “You are going to have to explain that to me,” she said.
“He was out of control. I didn’t dare block his strikes, and there was no way to fight back. All I could do was run and dodge the attacks.”
“Dodge some of the attacks,” she corrected, looking critically at his injuries.
“He was trying to kill me,” Edryd said. He had no doubt this was the truth. “He stopped just short of doing so.”
Irial placed a couple of fingers on his neck, tracing over the paste-smeared line of the cut. “Maybe you did fight back,” she said. “Sigil knights were said to be able to create spiritual armor. Maybe something like that stopped Seoras, and saved you.”
Edryd thought of what he had discovered only moments before, the warping of the dark that surrounded him, but that was more a cloak of concealment than it was a form of physical protection.
“I am no sigil knight,” he said. She hadn’t mentioned anything like this before. Seoras had spoken of Edryd being something that had not been seen in hundreds of years. That reference seemed clear now. It was an unpleasant and suspicious coincidence that Seoras and Irial had both reached and expressed similar conclusions mere hours apart.
“But you were a captain in the Sigil Order,” Irial protested.
“There are no sigil knights in the Sigil Order in Nar Edor,” Edryd insisted. “It is made up of men. I wouldn’t call them ordinary men, but there are among them no masters of spiritual energy, nor any shapers of the dark—just ordinary soldiers.”
Irial was unconvinced. “If what I have heard can be trusted at all, you awakened a sword—your father’s sigil sword.”
Edryd did not like this topic, and he particularly did not like discussing it with Irial. “What happened that day… it left my brother dead. It had never happened before and has not happened since. I have tried for a month now to grasp hold of the dark, and I am no more capable than I was when I started. Seoras is stronger than ever, but I am exactly the same as I was before I got here.”
Irial did not give up. “It isn’t supposed to work that way,” she said. “An apprentice in the Sigil Order drew the strength to manipulate spiritual energy from his master. The relationship did not strengthen the teacher.”
A warning tone crept into Edryd’s reply, an unconscious reaction to his presumption that Irial had failed to appreciate the degree to which this topic troubled him. “This isn’t the Sigil Order, and that distempered wolf, Seoras, is no source of strength. Not to me or to anyone else.” Irial began to respond, but Edryd wasn’t done. “How is it that you suddenly think yourself an expert on all these things?” he demanded.
Edryd was surprised at how harsh his complaint had sounded, but it engendered an unexpected reaction. Irial seemed to be embarrassed, as if she did not want to answer that question. Edryd let it drop and Irial dodged the subject by moving to another topic. “How would you feel about rearranging some of Logaeir’s schemes for you and the Ascomanni?” she asked.
The spontaneous smile on her protector’s face gave her all the answer that she could have needed as Edryd listened carefully while she explained the details of her plan.
Chapter 13
A Captain of the Sigil Corp
Currents of smoke drifted in the air above the cottage, drawn not through the stone chimney vent, but through the hole in the center of the thatched roof of the cottage. Edryd was alarmed. He had never known the fire pit to have been put to use, and he couldn’t imagine Eithne would have built up a fire in it while they were gone. Irial was untroubled, for she knew what it meant.
“He’s here already,” Irial said.
“Who?” Edryd asked.
“Logaeir. He will be inside waiting, and he will have brought others too.”
Edryd did not think there would have been enough time from when Ruach had left last night for him to have made it back to the Ascomanni camp and return with Logaeir, but Edryd had no clear idea as to precisely where the encampment was, so his assumptions could have been wrong. The encampment would have to be closer to the island than he had thought. Even assuming that it was, Edryd wasn’t sure how Irial knew that Logaeir was inside.
“Whenever he comes with a group, he makes use of the fire pit,” Irial explained, answering Edryd’s unspoken question.
Feeling protective towards Irial as he thought about Logaeir, Edryd moved a hand into position near the hilt of the sword at his side. He had made the movement without fully appreciating the depth of the feelings that motivated his response, and in truth, had not noticed that he had even done it. Irial noticed, and was annoyed, thinking that Edryd’s overtly vigilant reaction was disproportionate to any actual threat, but she did not say anything.
“Remember, you have leverage,” she reminded Edryd as they approached the cottage together. “He will have no choice but to agree.”
Entering through the door, they were greeted by the smell of cooked meat. A wild pig, its skin blackened and charred by the heat from the coals of the fire, was roasting in its own fat on a spit in the center of the room. Edryd had walked in full of caution, but he was made eager by the food. Other than fish caught in the ocean waters near An Innis, meat was difficult to procure here, and Edryd had not had the chance to enjoy a feast like this one since before he had first arrived.
Oren and Ruach looked on from the back of the open hall as Edryd stepped forward. Logaeir, seated beside Captain Krin at the end of the table next to the fire pit, was going through a collection of pages which were bound up between white cloth-covered wooden panels. Eithne sat opposite, silently staring with obvious interest at the book in Logaeir’s hands.
“A Compendium of the History of the Sigil Order, by Ludin Kar,” Logaeir said without looking up.
Though he had not known its title, Edryd recognized the book, along with the much larger book about the ‘Ossian Oligarchs’ that sat unopened on the table alongside it. A leather bag that had once held both of the books lay discarded on the floor beside Logaeir’s feet. Surprised, Edryd turned to Irial with an unspoken question, wondering why she had lied. She had told him it had been a book on food preparation. He now understood the source of her sudden expertise on the Sigil Order.
“To think I studied under this fool,” Logaeir laughed.
“That’s unkind of you to say so, Logaeir, considering you would still be nothing more than the backwards and ignorant little boy of no consequence that you once were, if you had not met him,” Irial chided.
“Logaeir might be the size of a little a boy, but I’m not sure I believe that this devil ever was one,” Krin laughed. “And he remains a man of no consequence, though he would have us all believe otherwise.”
The deliberately cavalier attitude that Logaeir had cultivated with so much care fell away for a moment, as he took umbrage at the insults. “I am not ungrateful to him, but this nonsense isn’t scholarship, it’s a work of fiction,” he said, stabbing a finger at the pages of the book.
“A quorum of sigil knights, assembled together, could defeat even the darkness of the night, summoning the light of day to illuminate a battlefield,” Logaeir said, reading from the book. “First of all, is it
likely that a pitched battle would be fought in the middle of the night?”
“I can think of several reasons why one might be,” Edryd said.
“It wouldn’t be likely,” Logaeir said, ignoring Edryd’s answer to his question, “but if it were, and the Sigil Knights could summon light, why would they want to? A spiritual warrior who can fight with his eyes closed would have an advantage in the dark. Even if you let that pass, doesn’t it strike anyone else as so much mythical absurdity?”
Oren and Ruach took on serious expressions, looking to Edryd, expecting him to put Logaeir in his place. Edryd, who would have been of a similar opinion as Logaeir not so long ago, didn’t bother to object, even though he had recently seen for himself some of what Logaeir had just now dismissed as ‘mythical absurdity’.
“We have ourselves three sigil knights gathered right here,” Logaeir mocked, “shouldn’t you be glowing? Or are there not enough of you for a quorum?”
Oren started to stand with a fierce look in his bright eyes, intending to confront Logaeir, but he was held back by Ruach, who stretched out an arm to restrain him. It was their captain’s place to choose how to handle this affront and respond to the disrespect that Logaeir had directed towards them. Edryd’s response was calm and even.
“There are no longer any sigil knights, but Oren and Ruach are trained officers of the Sigil Corps. You have lied to them, and misused my name in persuading them to give you their service. Give any more provocation, and I will not prevent them from seeking retribution against your deceptions. They will not need the aid of spiritual powers to settle things with you.”
The room had gown tense, with everyone watching Logaeir’s reaction to the force of the condemnation so flatly expressed in Edryd’s threat. Everyone except Logaeir, who looked at Edryd approvingly, with no care at all for what anyone else thought of him. Logaeir had sought this reaction, making calculated taunts and verbal attacks, all in order to overcome the other man’s passive predisposition in the hope that it would provoke Edryd to action.