by BJ Hanlon
“I do not want to sleep. Why does everyone keep telling me to go to sleep?” His voice was rising at a crescendo as he spoke.
Edin held out a hand. “Quiet, shh,” Edin said keeping his voice down. He guessed that the women were all asleep or that Vicker was pretty good at sneaking around. The latter was impressive, especially with Melian’s keen senses.
Vicker stopped and took a breath, his shoulders lifted and dropped like stones attached to a pair of strings. He looked back up at Edin and opened his mouth again. His jaw moved and it was like he was trying to search for the words that should be coming out. But for a few seconds they wouldn’t come out.
Edin stood and wandered forward to a rock that sat at the side of the entrance a bit away from them.
It was worn smooth from many butts he guessed and facing the forest. Edin sat and looked out into the darkness though it was futile. The firelight lit the ground for about five feet before it faded and disappeared. Everything outside of the fire was black. He laid the sword across his knees and patted the rock next to him.
Slowly, hesitantly the kid stepped forward and out into the night. Edin didn’t look at him but for his peripheral vision and didn’t say anything until he reached Edin.
“Have a seat,” Edin said.
Vicker did. He reached out without looking and felt for the rock and then slowly, turned and sat. The entire time, he did not take his eyes from Edin though.
They sat there in silence for some time before the kid said, “It’s too quiet.” Vicker shivered. “Shouldn’t there be animals or something? Outside our farm there are beasts all night.”
Edin nodded. “There should.”
“What happened to them? I mean I know there were crillios though I couldn’t see them.” He paused. “And there were others, right? Other animals earlier? Forests like these are filled with animals of all kinds. Hogs and rabbits and monkeys and snakes.”
Edin thought of the large snake that nearly drowned him in the swamp and suppressed his own shiver. He did not want to see another snake in his entire life. If he could eradicate them from the world, he’d do it. At the very least all of the ones that could kill men.
“But there isn’t anything around. Not even bugs, though I suppose it’s a little early in the season for those, don’t you think?” asked Vicker, and Edin nodded. “I mean, this place it gives me the creeps. It is an evil forest isn’t it.”
“I’m not certain it is of evil.”
“It is!” he nearly shouted. “It has to be. Those monsters who took my Nona from me, they’re evil. They killed her for trying to protect me. They wanted to kill me but I’m barely nine. I just turned nine a few months ago the day after the Wintertide Festival. My Nona was brave, like my grandad and my dad. They’re heading to war while we flee. I want to fight.”
“You’re not even ten,” Edin said “you’re too you—”
“Do not tell me that I am too young to fight. I’ve beaten up ten-year-olds when I was eight. And a twelve-year-old last year. He was trying to stick his wet finger in my ear so I stuck my fist in his face and then dragged him around by his nostrils.
Edin raised an eyebrow. There was a viciousness to the lad. One that apparently no one in his family saw.
Maybe his grandfather. A general, a decorated one especially, would know vicious people almost by sight. He’d see the traits in them unless he didn’t want to. That was possible, but Edin doubted it. General Albe seemed like a straight shooter.
And now he was a widower.
“Listen kid, twelve-year-olds are different then sixteen and certainly twenty—”
“I know that,” he spat. “You think I’m an idiot? Yes, we live on a farm but that was what Papa was given after his years of service. And it isn’t just a small family farm. We have servants and workers and I have teachers. Tutors that come from all over the state to teach me things. My parents want me to go to university in Carrow or Alestow. I don’t want to. I want to be a warrior like my Papa.”
Edin chuckled. He had to, at least a little bit because he was that kid not too long ago. Then Edin’s smile faded because he knew where that led. Or at least where it led for him.
“Kid, I understand that you think you know about war and battle. Maybe your Papa even told you a story or two, but I do not care how detailed the story, how many cries and moans of pain. How many people begging for their mother or for death there are; no words can describe it. No stories can tell the full tale.” Edin took a breath and tried closing his eyes. “And the smell, the infection, the rot, or the excrement.”
“What is excrement?” Vicker said and Edin looked.
He raised an eyebrow. “It is just another name for what comes out of the rear.”
“Solid or in gas form?”
“Solid.”
“Ahh,” Vicker said pausing and seeming to look up into the darkness beyond the firelight. “But you see, you tell me and I understand. But do you not understand being left behind? I’m left with the women for the gods sake. I’m a man not a child and they just treat me like I’m a baby. I want to be strong and learn to fight off evil. My Nona was just murdered and I did not help her… could not help her. I never want to feel that weak again. I never want to be that vulnerable.”
Edin fingered the hilt of his sword and then the inlay in it. He ran his index finger down the length of the blade and felt the slice and saw the blood, black in this light, flow down. He’d used that same argument with Horston. Oh how things come full circle, Edin thought. But at least he was seventeen when he used it and not nine.
But being able to train wasn’t like sending him to war. He and Berka played for years and kids of nobles usually started the sword at half this one’s age. If Edin had a proper teacher, he’d guess he’d be better than just pretty good by now. At least on par with Grent. Now, he used his speed and sometimes, the quarterstaff, of which he was currently without one.
Edin finally nodded.
“Great! I want to be a fire mage. The fire serpents you made were something…” His voice trailed off as he looked up and saw Edin slowly shaking his head.
“What? What is it?”
Edin was frowning now at him. “I thought you wanted to grow strong and learn the sword.”
“I mean, well sure I do, but I could use the fire too and roast those blasted dematians like they were stick meat.”
Stick meat? That did not sound super appetizing, but he guessed the kid knew what he was talking about.
“You cannot just learn to be a mage,” Edin said carefully and hoping that the kid would fully understand. “To be a mage you are born with what we call the talent. Usually if someone in your ancestry was a mage, you have a chance to become one but as far as I know, no one has ever become a mage simply by trying to train. It is an innate—”
“Abominable curse upon anyone who was touched by the evil,” cried Duria from the cave mouth. “You are an abomination and should’ve been slain in Valer. But no, you convinced us to follow you here and now Nona is dead and you’re corrupting my son! You’re a blotard and you deserve to be slain!”
Edin said nothing to this. Edin looked to the partially shadowed cave behind her at Arianne and Melian. Both looked horrified. As if they were the ones being screamed at, not Edin.
He had been certain they were all sleeping. Edin glanced back at Duria but kept his mouth shut.
“Mother,” Vicker said, his voice was quiet but there was a sort of resolve in just that word. “You will not talk to him like that.”
Then the woman turned on Vicker. She looked at him as if he were a rodent needing to be stepped on. “You do not talk like that to me! You sir will go to bed or your father—”
“My father will be dead next time I see him. And I’d be too if not for Nona and Edin here, you stupid daughter of a bag lady!”
There was a gasp from Duria at the insult but Edin didn’t know why. He was a bit confused and looked to Arianne for help. They locked eyes and she shrugged. Neit
her knew what he was talking about.
“Can you let me live my life, mother?” The kid shrieked sounding like a teen rather than sub-ten.
Duria stood there, mouth agape, looking like a scared scarecrow. Then her jaw began to move and she raised a hand, made a fist and then lowered it. Then she was clenching and unclenching her fist with the movement of her jaw and there were sounds coming out of her mouth.
Melian said, “Duria?” There was much hesitation in her voice; almost as if the huntress was afraid of the meek farmer’s wife. Melian took a step forward and reached out touching Duria’s arm.
Edin felt a tug in his own gut and suddenly there was a loud crack in the air. A snap like thunder and Edin smelt it.
Light appeared around them. A fulgurant light and then there was sparking. He felt the buzz in his body and the hair standing up all around him.
Edin reached out with his right hand and let the power flow. He didn’t give energy to it nor take energy away, he just let it continue. And it did. It swirled around and crackled in and around his head like a bunch of snapping birds— or snapping tiny thunderwyrms.
Then he felt it coming toward him. Silently he closed his eyes and let the energy pound into him like a mallet pounding out a dent from armor.
Suddenly, everything ceased and Duria was standing before him and panting. There was hate and anger in her stare and she held a hand out like she was about to claw his face and rip skin from bone.
“Mother?” Vicker asked hesitantly. His mom did not respond so he asked again.
“What?” shouted Duria, half angry, half confused. She was huffing in breath now and then her hand lowered but she did not stop looking, glaring really, at Edin.
He could then see the source of her anger, the source of her frustration. She was not in control of the world around her and that made her upset, furious really.
Edin suddenly realized that his first impression of her not being in control because she was not in her element was wrong. It had nothing to do with where she was. It had everything to do with what she was.
“You’re an instorios,” said Arianne. “I felt it.”
“You are a liar and a who—” a gust of wind hit Duria and she stumbled back.
“Do not continue that thought.”
Then he felt the electrical current again and he felt the wind flowing and beginning to gust and Edin couldn’t help it.
As a kid, sitting in the Dancing Crane, he was told by many men, ‘never, under any circumstances, get between two women who are dead set on fighting.’ The man he heard it from was old, graveyard old, though he seemed to have all of his wits about him. ‘and I mean never.’ He’d said enunciating every syllable of the last few words.
This was the point, and never meant now but he could not let them fight. Not here.
Edin felt their grips on the talent and the power in each of them rise up. He reached out with both hands and two culrian shields formed. One around each woman just as their attacks were unleashed. The power bounced and flew inside those bubbles for a split second before the attacks stopped and the girls were then glowering at Edin.
Glowering with a bit of murderous intent.
Edin let it go and then Vicker stepped forward between the women and faced his mother.
“You’re a mage?” he asked but his voice was more hopeful than fearful.
Duria looked down toward her son then back up at Arianne and then Edin. The contortion of her hateful face was something that he’d never forget. It was like looking into a demon’s eyes and seeing their soul that was somehow shaped like a human body. “I am no such—”
“You are,” Melian said. “Everyone knows it though we do not say it. Nona knew before Hotep and no one cared. No one cares.”
“Like an actual mage, not just a person who can do the spells?” asked Vickers seemingly unsure of his words but still extremely excited by them.
Duria licked her lips, she was now glaring at Melian like a beast looking at her next meal.
“Let’s get inside,” said Melian, “out here I feel too exposed.”
Duria summoned her son who came without any more fight. He walked quickly toward his mother and stood next to her like a soldier following his commander’s orders.
Arianne came up to Edin and took his hand. They looked at each other for a moment and then she smiled. “I want to show you something.”
After following them into the room, Edin turned back toward the entrance. He didn’t like leaving it unguarded. “Hold on.”
Edin turned around and felt the rocks and the dirt around him. He closed his eyes and let the talent flow through him. After a moment, large and small boulders began to roll toward the entrance. Granules of dirt and rock started to pile up and the entrance slowly began to close. He left a gap of about five feet at the top and then turned to Arianne who was smiling.
“You have become him,” said Arianne. “The legend.”
Edin pursed his lips for a moment then shook his head. “I’m missing something.”
Arianne thought for a moment then it dawned on her. “The Ballast Stone. The actual stone.”
Slowly, Edin nodded.
“A god,” Arianne said quietly. “You’ll be a god.”
6
Out of the Forest, into Resholt
Edin did not think he’d be a god. Was certain he did not want to be.
Sure, Vestor seemed alright, but he lived in that mountain with monks. Or had until recently.
There was nothing about him taking a wife, as a mortal or as a god. Being celibate forever, that was not something Edin wanted.
Arianne and he moved into the main cavern of the cave. Off to the left, the two women and Vicker sat in the corner. They all stared at Edin and Arianne as she pulled him over around the right side of the pyre.
The body of the highwayman was not in view anymore. Possibly deeper into the fire.
A fire that was no longer giving off smoke.
They walked toward the first of the four cabins, they were up on a small ledge like a stage in a music hall or a tavern that specializes in bands and dancing.
Edin pulled himself up and looked in. There was a small lantern on a desk and a bed off to the right. There were other things as well but nothing really of note. A tea kettle, a chamber pot, and books. There were writing utensils as well and parchment paper near the candle.
Arianne did not stop there, she moved past that one, past the second, which was also a small room with two beds and equally as mundane fair as the first. The third was the meat room and Edin’s stomach growled despite the rabbit from earlier.
They moved into the last one. The one that had been locked, but now the lock was on the ground along with one of the doors.
Inside the door was the thieves stash. A large stash of items that were clearly procured from many different travelers. There were saddles and ropes, tools like hammers and axes and chisels. He saw sparkstones and leather clothes.
Arianne went in further and said, “Mind offering a light?”
Edin opened his palm and a white, ethereal light lit up the room.
Toward the back were the good things. He saw gems and gold and silver. There were ingots of metal, shiny gray and deep black. There were weapons in there as well as so many other things. He found a quarterstaff and felt its weight. Tarix wood. There was a bow as well, a decent recurve. Edin handed it to Arianne who tested it.
“I’ll keep the other,” she shook her head. “The draw is too heavy. I’m not accurate with these.”
Edin found his way to the back and found bags of coin. Gold, silver, and copper. There were many of them. Too much for the amount of traffic that Edin had heard went through here.
Edin guessed there must’ve been many more than the small bands of merchants who were legally allowed to travel between the states in addition to the smugglers who snuck in.
He found rings with emeralds and ruby necklaces. There was a knife with a jeweled pommel, almost like Arianne�
�s old one. He picked it up and gave it to her.
She shrugged. “It is nice,” she said absently but put it aside.
Then he found a stone. A yellow stone that seemed to offer a small glow from it. Edin blinked. He’d seen this before. Barely, but he had.
He remembered it, what was the name?
Then it came, a Callto stone and as he remembered it, he thought of the name and how on the nose it was. Call to. Edin nearly chuckled as he grabbed it. He felt the power inside. But it wasn’t like anything he’d felt before.
It wasn’t like the wave which he knew was different.
This stone was a way to contact normal people.
“What is that?” Arianne asked, standing next to him and looking at the stone.
Edin looked up, and held it up in the light. “A Callto stone. Like the one Diophan used to summon me to him.”
“So, you can use it to summon people to you?”
Edin nodded. Though he wasn’t sure how it worked. He held it up and twisted it around in his hand. He closed his eyes and for a moment, didn’t know what to do. Maybe if he thought of someone. He pictured Dorset. Nothing happened. He then whispered his name but all he saw was the ethereal light beyond his eyelids.
“Rihkar,” he said. Nothing came to him. He didn’t fall through the mind tunnel or whatever he’d call it nor did Rihkar appear in front of him. Edin opened his eyes and met Arianne’s.
“Anything?” she asked and Edin shook his head.
After another search, they came out with a few more things. Throwing knives, a belt with small pouches to carry things. He put the Callto stone in there as well as a few sacks of gold and silver.
Edin took a step and then felt his equilibrium was off slightly. He was tired. Far too tired to continue, so he stopped. He looked to Arianne who was still picking her way through.
“I need sleep.” He left and laid on the ground in his and Arianne’s spot, his head covering the BL from the pillow.