by B J Hanlon
The Darkener Forest
When Edin woke his body felt sore and cold. He had the dream again, a flash and the all-enveloping flame around him. Jeers from the crowd. Everyone who ever knew him was there, watching him, cheering as he was lit up like a candle.
It took a moment to orientate himself. He was on the ground with something hard jabbing in his lower back.
His two companions spoke somewhere off to his left. Edin blinked open his eyes. Above him was the canopy. The trees must’ve been fifteen yards high with only a few branches that let in little daylight.
After seeing the fire and the Por Fen looking in their direction, they ran. Or more aptly, Grent dragged Edin.
Following the tree line, they dodged bushes, roots, leapt dead trees and rocks. They didn’t care about leaving a trail, they needed to get away. Edin’s ankle hurt from a stumble, his knee throbbed from the river assailant.
Two of them were completely exhausted by the time they stopped. Their sprint turned into a jog then slowly into a near crawl before they finally collapsed behind a rock wall.
Edin’s lips felt cracked and he tried to move his tongue but it seemed to be too large for his mouth. He pushed himself to his elbows and looked at Master Horston and Grent sitting a few yards from him. They leaned against their thick packs and Master Horston held a thin branch above some sort of etching in soil.
“Water?” he said barely getting the word out. Grent didn’t look up, he reached for a plump waterskin and tossed it. It dropped in front of him a few inches from his leg. Edin pulled off the top. He put it to his lips and drank. Cold water flowed down his throat. It wasn’t freezing like the river but refreshing like an ale. Better than an ale.
As he closed his eyes he pictured the manor aflame. The crumbling wood, burning thatch… and the screams. Kes’ mother rushing toward the house crying out while his father pulled her back. Edin’s chest thumped. He somehow knew what happened: Kes’ father threw her into the house… because of Edin.
He sat quietly as the men discussed what he assumed was their route. There was nothing to do besides sit and stare at the trees above.
“Do you think anyone escaped?” Edin asked after a while. Both men turned toward him with sullen faces.
Grent shook his head.
“I don’t know,” Master Horston said.
“Why did we just stand there… we could have—” Edin started. He heard an annoying fly buzzing his ear and whipped a hand in its direction.
“Joined them. There was nothing you, me, or this old nut could’ve done to save them.” Grent said. He grabbed the hilt of his sword and pushed it slightly down. “Your mother charged us with protecting you. If we would’ve attempted anything, we would’ve failed her. One thing to know about me is I do not fail.”
“Old nut…” Master Horston muttered while shaking his head. “We can’t dwell on this boy, we have a half day head start. Though I’m not sure there are pursuers at this point. Some may hope you died in the fire… we have to put as much distance between us and Yaultan as possible.”
Edin swallowed and looked toward Grent, “you don’t have to protect me, you should’ve protected her.” Edin spat. “I don’t need anyone else dying for what I am.” He stared at the hunting knife lying next to his pack. The thug couldn’t kill Edin, but his knife would do the trick. Edin touched the hilt.
A quick shuffling sound, then a stinging slap across his face. Edin’s head twisted fast and his neck tweaked.
“Whiny teenagers,” Grent muttered shaking his head.
Edin blinked, he was stunned by the strike and how Grent appeared from nearly ten feet away. Edin looked up into the man’s face, even beneath the black mustache and beard he could see a scowl. “Now get up and let’s go.” Grent grumbled. He grabbed his pack and started walking, his feet crunching on decaying leaves from last autumn.
“How did he…” Edin began.
Master Horston didn’t answer he just followed the warrior. Putting his blades back in their place, Edin quickly threw his pack over his shoulders. The fang bounced against his chest outside the tunic. He forgot it was there. Edin gripped it and stared ahead. He remembered his mother giving it to him… she wasn’t proud. It was as if it were her duty.
“Come on, it’s near dark.” Grent called back causing a few birds to shriek somewhere above them.
As they hiked through the dense forest, Grent’s head swiveled and Edin glared at his back for a while until he stumbled, somewhere around the eighth time, over forest debris because he wasn’t looking where he was going. Grent held him back, kept him from doing whatever he could’ve to save his mother… save Kes. Slowly, his eyes tired and he dropped his gaze to the ground.
After a few hours, it was difficult to tell time without the bells from the Vestion, Master Horston’s shoulders drooped and his tracks began looking like wheel ruts in the dirt.
Grent though, seemed to move without any strain. It seemed he could walk for days without stopping.
Despite his best attempts to keep up his anger at the men, his thoughts turned to the manor and the ghastly screams. He knew Master Horston and Grent were right. He was helpless to save them, unable to save anyone.
Edin wasn’t a hero. Some years back he’d seen a man, a father, race into his cottage when the roof caught fire. Smoke billowed from the hut but he dove in without hesitation calling the name his child. Neither left alive. Vistach found their bodies; the father holding his son huddled in the corner of a bedroom.
Tears began to flow down his face as his thoughts turned to the knife. Grent could call him whiney or a child, but it was the law. There was a reason for the decree that spanned the entirety of the former kingdom. In all of the states, even in the desert, the law was needed to keep order. Looking up he saw Master Horston struggling to follow Grent’s trail. The canopy began to grow thicker offering less light. They rose and dropped in hills and cols.
Horston stumbled and yelped. Edin jumped forward and grabbed him by the back of his robe holding him as a mother cat would her kitten.
Horston grunted and turned back to Edin with an appreciative nod.
To be the first to bring up the subject of ending the hike was weak. Even with Master Horston walking like a man who’d drank a barrel of ale wouldn’t stop. Maybe it was his need to get farther from the village, maybe it was the same pride that kept Edin from calling for a break. The old man taught him a lot, Edin cared about him as if he were a sadistic grandfather.
Through the canopy he could only see a dim glow.
They had to stop. His body was exhausted.
“We should rest,” Edin said, “I’m exhausted and it’s getting dark.”
Master Horston just halted in his tracks as Grent turned back to look at them for the first time in hours. After offering what Edin guessed was an appraising eye, he nodded. “I see a small clearing up here. We’ll set camp.”
“And a fire.” Horston said.
“Too dangerous.”
“I don’t want to see another crillio for the rest of my life,” Edin said as they continued a few more yards ahead into the open air. The clearing was barely larger than his bedroom.
The warrior sighed and set down his pack before tromping off into the darkening woods. Edin and Master Horston collapsed on the ground. Grent didn’t seem tired and moved with the same fluid grace he had when he was practicing with the swords. The man easily had a couple decades on Edin, probably more based on the crow’s feet reaching from his eyes. How’d he still have energy to keep going?
Master Horston laid, using his pack as a pillow, and closed his eyes. Edin followed the old man’s example.
“How is he still able to walk?” Edin said watching as Grent picked up brown pine needles and firewood.
“Endurance training is part of it I’m sure… but it could also be his gift.” Master Horston said not looking up. “Grent is a terrin.”
Edin glanced at him, “really?” As he said that, he knew he should’ve bee
n aware of it.
The terrin dropped the bundle of wood at their feet and pulled out a sparkstone. He set up the logs in a circle standing them on ends and leaning them together. He shoved the small pine needles into the openings below. With one strike of a small knife on the sparkstone, the needles caught.
Slowly he began adding smaller branches to the growing flame and said. “Since we can’t control the natural world, we aren’t hunted. Despite the small brains of the people who rule the lands, no noble wants to kill off their biggest asset. My kind has changed the course of battles so many times that we tend to be elevated to high positions in any lord’s army.”
“So you’re untouchable?”
Grent chuckled and shook his head, staring at the fire and carefully adding another small twig. “Not really, nobles play more games than children. We’ve been murdered and targeted like any one else. Sometimes more than others.”
“Murdered? Who’d murder a terrin?”
“Say a terrin was employed by a earl, and his rival wanted to harm his reputation, one thing the rival may try is to buy off the terrin, if that doesn’t work they try to kill them.”
“How?” Edin asked.
“Assassins usually, though we command extremely high-priced contracts.”
Edin turned back as the fire grew, the flames beginning to latch onto the larger logs. “So that’s how you can… you got to me from five yards away, Berka too. It was as if you just appeared.” Grent nodded. “So why aren’t you in the army or some prince or duke’s employ instead of my mother?”
Grent turned his head away from the fire as a large puff of smoke poured into his face. He coughed. Blinking he said. “I don’t like being talked down to by some prissy nobleman who thinks the world revolves around them wiping their massive backsides.”
Master Horston cleared his throat.
“Not you of course, nor your mother,” Grent said quickly. “Just others… especially the celebrity ones, waiving and smiling at the commoners then jeering at them behind their backs.” Grent paused, “tends to be most of them actually.”
They were quiet for a long time, Edin tried to keep from looking at the flames. It seemed however to draw his attention back every few moments.
A snore came from Master Horston, the man’s mouth was slightly open, his whiskers flailing in the exhale.
Edin chuckled and turned back to Grent. “Did you see a lot of battles?” Edin asked. Despite knowing Grent for much of his life, he didn’t know anything about the man.
“Sleep now, I’ll wake you when dinner is ready.”
Edin nodded as the drowsiness crept over him, he had more questions but it felt like he’d been up for a week straight. In a few moments he was asleep.
“You can’t, his mother forbade it. She didn’t want him joining the military like his father. He’s a mage not a warrior.” The words drew him from his sleep.
“His father was both, the man knew that magi powers ebb and flow like the tide. But they can also be shut off. If he met a hunter who possessed a wan stone.”
Edin tried to keep his breathing as even as he could not wanting them to know he was listening.
“His powers would be useless. If they’re useless and he can’t fight, then he’s dead. His mother made me promise to keep him safe,” Grent paused. “Fighting is my only skill, but if I’m not around… He will need to learn how to fight. He is agile and quick. I haven’t seen him fight but no one ever taught him the basics. It’ll just be strength and conditioning at first.”
The smell of meat roasting made his stomach growl.
“I don’t like him using the sword,” Master Horston said. His voice was quiet over the crackling fire.
“It’s what we have; if we can find a quarterstaff, I can train him on that. But unless it’s made of ironwood, it’ll be no match for a properly honed blade.”
Edin opened his eyes and looked at the two men. They were on the far side of the fire. A small spit sat over the flame with what looked like a pair of squirrels.
“I want to learn to fight,” Edin said hopefully. “I always have. My mother is dead, Kesona too. I couldn’t help them.” An empty… weak feeling rushed through him. He knew both had perished in that fire.
Edin sat up from looked into the eyes of his old tutor. The flames flickered in man’s gray eyes. Horston ran his hand through his hair and started to shake his head.
“I felt helpless against the crillio and again when… again with the fire. I watched… we all watched...” Edin clenched his teeth and glared at the old man. “There was nothing we could do… I know that.” Their logic was correct, but that didn’t mean he would’ve sat back and watched if he had another chance. “I’m still unsure of what a wan stone is… but if Grent is correct and I could be powerless, helpless.” Edin shook his head as the old man started to open his mouth. “I need to be able to handle myself. I won’t be a man who can’t fight.”
“You’re a mage, when you learn you will be able to fight.”
“Maybe, maybe not, who’s to say I learn and how long will that take? A baby bear isn’t fierce as a cub, only as it grows and learns does it develop that ferocity. You taught me that. My powers are the same but I don’t understand them. Until I reach this so-called Isle of Mists, who will teach me?”
“Well…” Master Horston started, “I’ve been reading the theory of wizardry… or magecraft its all one and the same.”
“Theory is not practical. It won’t help. There is someone who can train me to be a warrior right here… someone who won’t try and take my head off. I hope,” Edin said.
Grent just grinned.
Master Horston huffed, crossed his arms and glared into the fire. The intensity in his eyes began to fade.
“The food’s just about done, we’ll start after we eat,” Grent said.
Edin’s smile faded, he was too tired to start training.
“We really should save our strength for the road.” Horston said. “We have to get as far away as we can…”
“If I’m overwhelmed… it’d be nice to have some back up.” Grent asked.
“How much can you teach him in a night?”
“Not much, but it’ll be better than nothing… anyways, the stronger and faster he gets, the quicker we’ll hike.”
“Fine but I want to leave before daybreak.” Horston said.
They ate. Edin wolfed down the meat and sighed as he saw there was none left. It wasn’t great, but at least it was edible.
“Not as good as Mrs. Ali’s?” Grent said with a chuckle.
“Tastes like regurgitated tree root,” Master Horston spat. Clearly he was still sulking.
Grent glared at the old man. “You eat that a lot?”
Horston growled.
“Sorry I’m not a chef, but it has the protein you both need.” Grent took a large bite and chewed. His expression turned annoyed as he kept chomping for almost a minute.
“Isn’t your jaw getting tired?” Edin said.
Grent swallowed the meat and stared at him. “Not as tired as you’ll be. Now get up.”
Edin’s his legs begged for him to stay seated. Training was the only way he’d survive, to learn how to do defend himself. Edin pulled himself up and reached for the sword Grent had given him. The man clearly planned on beginning to train Edin before they fled.
“No need for that. We start with the basics, you can learn the sword later.” Grent hopped to his feet and walked over to Edin. He began to circle, staring down at him with the strong warrior’s eyes.
“We’ll begin with basic leg strengthening stances. The way I’ve learned is that all of the strength from your strikes should come from the ground and flow through your body.” Grent lowered himself to a stance. “Horse rider stance. Both legs spread, knees bent, butt was pushed out and back straight.” He pushed Edin down and corrected his posture with pressure to certain points until it felt like he was defecating while standing up.
Grent followed with another ca
lled the bow stance, followed by the dancer, the serpent, one leg, and a dragon that twisted his legs almost into Berka’s move.
“I thought dragons don’t exist,” Edin said.
“They don’t,” Master Horston said.
Edin glanced in the man’s direction, he was fiddling with a book, his fingers scanning down the pages as he read at an incredible speed.
“Now, I want you to feel the ground beneath you, breathe in and feel yourself stretch into the earth as if roots were taking hold of your body. Your power flows from the ground. Then when you strike, you use every part of your body, it needs to work in harmony but it is almost mechanical in nature like a clock or waterwheel.”
“I’ve seen you leap and twist in the air. You still seem to have a lot of power behind your strikes.”
“I do,” Grent said though he offered no more.
Edin was standing with the front knee bent parallel to the ground, and the back leg behind him nearly kneeling on the ground. Dragon stance. The burning in his thigh began to be too much and he stood.
Grent pushed him back down. “You feel the energy pulse. Every part of your body needs to act in tandem. Use your hips to twist and follow through with your strikes. But for now, just practice holding these.”
Edin tried holding the stances, but the length of time in them began to shorten as his muscles burned and ached. He stood to stretch his legs but Grent would just push him back into the stance.
Over the course of what he thought was an hour, Edin switched between stances. If he stood, Grent would either push him back into it or toss him to the ground.
The warrior would shake his head and walk back toward the other side of the fire. “We’ll have to work on your balance as well.”
He tried to think of other things to keep his mind off the pain. These were just as bad, the Por Fen after him, the manor, the screams. Edin clenched his jaw. They weren’t pleasant thoughts and he kept feeling that he should’ve done something more. He could’ve done something more.
His thighs were shaking and he stood from his horse rider stance and stretched. Suddenly, Grent appeared in front of him with two swords, Edin’s and his own.