“You’ll do the right thing, Tas—uh, Elan. I believe in you.”
“I can’t think why… and that name belongs between the two of us, please. Honestly, I haven’t heard it in so long, I doubt I’d answer to it anymore anyway.”
“I understand,” Girik murmured as he lifted Tas’s wrist into the multicolored light and traced a thumb over the flames branded there. “What would your mark have been, if the Brotherhood hadn’t taken you?”
“A coil of rope. My family were mostly river folk—fisherman, dockhands, and the like.”
He said the words calmly enough, but the sight of his mark made something twist painfully inside him. The flames were branded into the skin, not inked, because the Brotherhood was forever. No one ever left… at least not alive.
“I can’t hide in here forever, though, can I?”
“Probably not,” Girik replied, his voice tinged with regret.
A thought occurred to him and Tas cringed. “I’m being selfish again. Forgive me. I won’t leave you and your village in danger, no matter what. If… if there’s some way to be sure your absence wasn’t discovered, you should be able to return to the village with no one the wiser of the part you played. You don’t have to stay here any longer. You’ve done more than your fair share. Whatever I decide, the Brotherhood never has to know of your involvement. You can still go back to your life and your mother.”
He had hoped to reassure Girik, but the look on the man’s face was anything but relieved. Girik drew away from him and climbed out of the bunk. He sat heavily on the bench beside the bed, and when Tas sat up, Girik wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“Girik? What’s wrong? What did I say?”
“Nothing. You’re right. We have to think practically about the future. We can’t mess about with stupid dreams and wishes.”
So much of Tas’s life was in confusion and tumult, he felt like a feather tossed about in a gale, but he hated the expression on Girik’s face and how defeated he sounded. Scooting to the end of the bed, he placed a hand on Girik’s shoulder. “If you were wishing and hoping, what would you hope for?”
Girik’s head dropped lower, and he shook his head.
“Please tell me.”
Without looking up Girik whispered, “I would follow you anywhere you wanted to go. All you have to do is ask.”
Tas’s mouth fell open as he stared at Girik’s hunched shoulders and bowed head. “You would?”
“Aye.”
“But why?”
Girik finally glanced up, but the look he gave Tas was anything but flattering.
“We hardly know each other,” Tas defended.
“We’ve had that discussion already,” Girik countered.
“But your home, your family….”
Sadness crept into Girik’s blue eyes as his expression softened. “I can build a new home. And my only family here is my mama. She’s—” His breath hitched. “She doesn’t have long.”
“You’d hardly want to leave her, then.”
Girik drew in a long, shuddering breath before blowing it out again. “She wants me to. She tried to make me promise the night I came to visit you at Elderman Servil’s.”
“Promise?”
“To not see her in her final days. To leave. To not watch her waste away any more than she already has.”
Girik turned his head away, and Tas squeezed the shoulder he still clasped, unsure how to comfort him.
“But you don’t want to leave her, and you shouldn’t have to. I’ll think of something. I’ll… I’ll take Tasnerek back to Blagos Keep, if that’s what it takes to keep everyone here safe, to keep you safe.”
“No.”
“Yes. I was willing to die out here for it. The keep will be worse, probably, but I’ll lie as much as I have to. I won’t let them believe you did anything wrong or know anything that happened between us. I can pretend long enough that no suspicions will fall on you or your village. I can do that. You keep your promise to say nothing, and I’ll talk to Tasnerek. I’ll make him play along as long as we need to.”
When Girik turned his gaze back to Tas, his blue eyes were fierce. “No. I want to go with you, Tas, somewhere else, somewhere far. You asked me what my dreams and hopes were, and I’m telling you. If we both just leave, they’ll never know what happened. You don’t have to die, and I don’t have to live alone with that guilt the rest of my life… unless you don’t want me to go with you.”
Tas sighed and slumped back against the side of the wagon. “I didn’t say that. I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water here. I don’t know what the best move to make is. I don’t know what the Brotherhood will do, not for sure. At this point, I would gladly give them Tasnerek and disappear, but I don’t think that would solve anything. And there was all that business with the wizard last night. I don’t even know what happened there.” He dropped his face in his hands and groaned. When he lifted his gaze again, Girik was watching him with only patience and understanding in his eyes. “You are the most generous, brave man I have ever met. I have no idea why you want to give so much to me when all I’ve brought you is trouble.”
Girik’s smile was sweet enough to make Tas’s chest hurt. “You’ve given me much more than that and you know it. And if you haven’t guessed by now, I like taking care of people. It gives me purpose. I don’t do so well on my own. I made the bargain for my mama because I couldn’t take care of her anymore, not because I didn’t want to. And if going with you means I am granting her final wish, then I can live with that. As long as the village is kept safe enough that they can continue to care for her until the end, that’s enough for me. I can make my home anywhere, and so can Bayor.”
Tas couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat. Beyond Tasnerek choosing him, no one had ever offered him such a precious gift. He wished he felt worthy of it.
Was this what love was like? If so, he could understand why the Brotherhood forbade it. How could anyone function when their heart was pulled in so many directions at once?
When Tas didn’t speak for several moments, Girik’s expression turned sad. “This is a lot for so early in the morning, especially after the last several days. We’re both still a bit tired and hungry. I wish I could tell you going out there will make things easier, but I have a bad feeling it won’t. But maybe the stone or the wizard will have something to say that will point both of us in the right direction.”
With a weary nod, Tas took the temporary reprieve from the conflict inside him and climbed out of the bunk. Their clothes were strewn across the wagon floor, and they were both chuckling by the time they managed to dance around each other enough to get dressed in the small space.
Tas shivered when he opened the door and stepped out into the cold morning. A cheerful fire burned in the ring of stones, pushing back the heavy mist that still clung to the ground, and the strangers sat huddled together on the far side of it. Tas smiled in greeting as Bayor bounded away from Yan’s side to meet his master at the wagon, but Tas’s first glimpse of the strangers’ faces wiped the smile off his face. A huge black crow cawed from its perch high in a tree, making him flinch.
Yan turned his head toward them at the sound, and darkly ringed, sad green eyes met Tas’s.
“Good morning, Brother Tasnerek, Girik,” Yan murmured somberly. “There’s porridge with honey and dried fruit in the pot. You both may eat as much as you like. We aren’t particularly hungry right now.”
The wizard still gazed pensively into the fire. He looked haggard and drawn, nothing like the formidable man Tas had faced off with the day before.
“Thank you,” Girik said, moving past Tas to the pot.
While Girik spooned porridge into wooden bowls with Bayor plastered to his side, Tas moved cautiously around the fire. The blankets from the previous night were still in place, so Tas slowly sank onto one, watching the two strangers the whole time.
After his initial greeting, Yan had turned his attention back to the wizard. The two men sat
very close together, with Yan holding one of Lyuc’s hands in both of his and gazing up at his companion with worried eyes.
Girik settled next to Tas after handing him a bowl, and the hound flopped behind them. Both were a warm, solid weight around him, and Tas longed to lean on them rather than allow his pride to keep his back ramrod straight.
“Perhaps it would be best for you to pick up your amulet, Brother. He should be included in this,” Lyuc said. “He can tell you if I speak truth.”
Tas had felt Tasnerek’s presence ever since he’d come outside, but he was reluctant to shoulder that weight again so soon.
“I would rather hear what you have to say without his interference. I will speak with him after, and he can tell me if you have lied.”
Lyuc lifted his head. “Can he hear us without your connection?”
The question caught Tas off-guard, and he cast a quick glance to where he’d thrown Tasnerek. There were so many things he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to admit it to a virtual stranger. “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”
Lyuc sighed and nodded. “Very well. I guess I should begin, then.”
A long silence followed in spite of that declaration, and Tas finally grew impatient enough to prod. “What happened last night? Why did learning of Tasnerek’s ability to speak to me affect you like that?”
The older man finally met Tas’s gaze, and Tas swore he could see an eternity of sorrow swimming in those blue eyes. “I assume you’re familiar with the story of the creation of the Rift and the Anchor Stones… at least in part,” Lyuc replied.
Despite the power of the man’s unsettling gaze, Tas lifted his chin and scowled. “I’m a member of the Brotherhood of Harot and of the Thirty-Six. I have carried part of one of the Anchor Stones around my neck for years. Of course I know it. All brothers are given intensive study from the moment we enter Blagos Keep.”
Instead of the snappy rejoinder Tas expected, Lyuc sighed and turned his gaze back to the fire. “I meant no insult, Brother. But stories have a way of changing over a thousand years, and I have no real way of knowing what alteration or embellishment the Brotherhood or Harot may have put on it. So I will ask you a simple question. Who made the Anchor Stones?”
Frowning, Tas shot Girik a quick glance, wondering if this was a trick question. “The gods, of course. They came together, cast the hateful Three into the Rift, and lifted the stones to stop the crack in the world from spreading.”
“And what of the Volosoi?” Lyuc asked.
Tas’s sneer was automatic. “The Singers? They’re fairy tales. I’ve heard that some proscribed ancient folk stories say they had something to do with the stones, but that’s heresy, an insult to the gift and salvation the gods bestowed on us.”
Lyuc regarded him with sober, unblinking blue eyes for a long time, until Tas shifted uncomfortably and looked away. “You’re saying the Singers are real. That they and not the gods created the stones,” Tas said with a weary sigh.
In another life, or a few weeks ago, Tas would have been shocked, scandalized, and livid to be having this conversation. He would have railed at the man and quoted scripture from the Books of Harot. But one man could only take so many surprises before numbness descended. Frankly he wouldn’t be shocked by anything anymore.
“I have no desire to cast doubts on the tenets of your religion, Brother.”
The crow cawed loudly above them, a sort of laughing sound, and Lyuc cast a censuring look over his shoulder, though his lip curled slightly. “Perhaps I should say I have no desire to upset you. You’ve obviously had more than a few surprises thrown at you lately, and I have a feeling Tasnerek speaking was not the first.”
“It wasn’t,” Tas agreed wearily.
Girik scooted a little closer and pressed against Tas’s side.
Holding Tas’s gaze, Lyuc nodded, and his expression showed sympathy and understanding. “I will tell you the story. It is up to you whether you believe me or not. The Volosoi are not fairy tales. They were a real people who lived here long before the coming of man. As man spread out across the kingdoms, the Volosoi pulled back. They were a peaceful people, and never a very, uh, prolific one. Over time, their numbers dwindled. In the time of the creation of the Rift, they occupied what is now the Great Northern Forest in Gorazhan and some of the mountains of the Barrier. When the Three created the Rift, it was the Volosoi who intervened. Their magic was always strong, and they had a connection to this world that mankind simply cannot understand. They came together, all of them, from babes in swaddling to crippled elders. They pulled the stones from deep within the earth. They sang and died by the hundreds, even thousands… or at least that is what I thought for a very long time.”
Yan shifted next to Lyuc and pulled their joined hands to his chest, and Lyuc’s gray visage brightened a little as he gave his companion a weak smile.
Tas hated to break in on their moment, but he was lost, or his mind didn’t want to follow the path Lyuc was trying to lead him down. “I don’t quite understand. What does that have to do with Tasnerek speaking to me?”
If anything, the wizard looked paler when he turned his gaze back to Tas. “Tasnerek called me Faelir, didn’t he? It was their name for me. It means betrayer.” A single tear slid down the man’s cheek, but he continued to hold Tas’s gaze. “Don’t you see? Tasnerek is speaking to you with a consciousness of his own, speaking a name I haven’t heard in a very, very long time…. They didn’t die. All this time, I thought they’d sacrificed themselves and gone on to the Beyond—and that was bad enough—but they hadn’t. They’re still sacrificing themselves, trapped in those damned stones for a thousand years!”
Lyuc broke eye contact and dropped his head into his hands.
“Lyuc,” Yan murmured as he gathered the man to his chest and held him while Tas looked on, frozen in shock.
Girik appeared equally at a loss as they both sat in silence watching the couple on the other side of the fire seek comfort in each other. In a flutter of great black wings, the crow descended from its perch. Before it hit the ground, it transformed into a black cat and trotted to the two men. It circled around them a couple of times, rubbing on them, before settling at their feet and turning angry red eyes toward Girik and Tas. Bayor shifted behind them and let out a growl, but Girik put a hand on the hound’s scruff and he settled again.
“It’s not their fault, Bryn. The fault lies with me, as it always has,” Lyuc murmured as he slowly pulled out of Yan’s embrace. “Please speak to your stone, Brother Tasnerek. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
The plea in the man’s eyes did more to get Tas moving than anything else. Frankly he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answers Tasnerek might give him, but he wouldn’t be a coward about it. His tantrum the night before notwithstanding, he was still bound by duty and honor to serve Rassa and its people as best he could, and the gods had allowed him an entire night of selfish indulgence with Girik. He couldn’t keep asking for more.
Cold descended on him the moment he moved away from Girik’s warmth. He was still tired and his body ached from head to toe, but he climbed to his feet and shuffled to Tasnerek despite the weight of reluctance dragging at his heels. He wasn’t a petulant child. He was a man who’d been chosen by the gods for a reason. He needed to remember that.
“Faelir speaks truth, human,” Tasnerek said the moment Tas grasped the stone.
Tas jolted, still not used to the voice inside his head. “You heard?”
“Now that I am awake, I can hear and interpret the song of my surroundings.”
“You’re fully charged.” Tas stared at the stone in shock, sensing the energy pulsing inside it.
“Now that I am awake, I can resonate with the world as long as I’m in contact with it.”
“You mean you can recharge just from being left on the ground?”
Tas’s gut twisted with all the implications spinning in his head, all the pain he’d caused. He felt as sick as he had the first time he’d realiz
ed the journals spoke truth.
“There will be time for reproach and all of your questions later,” the stone continued coldly. “For now, I have questions I need Faelir to answer. You will ask them for me.”
Pride wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and Tas’s kicked in past the haze of shock and guilt. He squared his shoulders and glared at the stone. “I don’t know who or what you are, but I will not be bullied and ordered around, particularly if, as you say, Lyuc was speaking the truth and you’re not a gift from the gods but some creature of legend. Keep it up and I’ll chuck you down the deepest well I can find.”
Surprise and irritation vibrated down the link they shared before what Tas could have sworn was a sigh. “I have been asleep for a very long time and slave to the whims of far too many of you. If the dreams I remember of my time with your Brotherhood are to be believed, I have been party to such foulness I feel my song will never be cleansed of it. Forgive me if I have not taken your needs into account.”
Acid dripped from the stone’s mental voice, but Tas lifted his chin stubbornly despite flinching a little. “I’m sorry for what you have suffered and for my part in it. I did what I believed was right at the time. But I suppose that doesn’t make any difference to you.” Tas rubbed his aching head with his free hand. “I have so much I need to think through and understand, but neither of us will get anything done if we’re fighting all the time, and I have duties and obligations I will not set aside.”
“If I answer some of your questions, will you ask mine?”
“Yes.”
“Then ask.”
“You said the wizard spoke truth. All of it?”
“Yes.”
“You were once one of these Volosoi?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me in your own words what happened?”
The stone remained silent for long enough that Tas wondered if something had happened to it.
“Tasnerek?”
“That is not my name,” he snapped.
“What should I call you, then?”
“It doesn’t matter. You do not possess the ability to sing my name, but I would prefer anything other than that one.”
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