Awakenings

by C. D. Espeseth

  It was then Wayran realised there had been an ulterior motive for the combat exercise. This had been an experiment, with almost all of the same pieces in place as last night.

  Did he trust them? Trust them enough to tell them his secret? They would think him mad, lock him up and throw away the key so he could live out his days in a dark cell, raving away.

  But the choice was taken from him.

  “Foresight,” Fellow Callahan said as he studied Wayran. “He saw it before it was about to happen. Amazing …” he trailed off, speaking now to himself, “it’s all happening again.”

  “What?” Captain Miller demanded. “What’s happening again, what are you talking about.”

  Fellow Callahan looked annoyed he had to explain. “The Tenets, do you not know your scripture, captain? This is not the first time extraordinary abilities have suddenly begun to manifest within a generation. Think of what the Elohim are described as being able to do in the Tenets, of what Meskaiwa could do.”

  Lady Buika was nodding at Fellow Callahan’s words. “Yes, that makes sense.”

  There were more than a few raised eyebrows from Captain Miller and several other initiates who thought any similarities to the Elohim sounded dubious if not sacrilegious.

  “At the initiation ceremony, we within the Faith said that we heard Halom’s Will very strongly last night, and just now, my Hafaza, you felt His Will strongly as you sang, yes?”

  All three nodded.

  “I felt it too, yet if last night was a storm of power directed by His Will, then today was simply a thunderclap heard from the distance.” Lady Buika explained.

  “I think I might have to give the lady my certificate,” Kevin whispered to Wayran. “She’s better than me.”

  Wayran stomped on Kevin’s foot in reply.

  “What did you see happening?” Fellow Callahan asked as he walked up to Wayran and looked him in the eye.

  There was no point in hiding it any longer. They already knew. “I saw …” he pointed to Adel, “… what Adel did, except she did it to Bastion’s shield and arm.”

  Bastion’s eyes went wide as he looked down at his arm.

  “I saw, Matoh standing up and calling the lightning again, he was angry and dazed, and then the waves that everyone described last night, I saw them smashing us all against the walls.”

  “Well, I’m glad you called a stop then, son.” Fellow Callahan clapped him on the shoulder. “I am getting too old to be thrown around like that.”

  Wayran tried to smile, but he was still shaken by what he had seen and how close it had come. He suddenly remembered part of his conversation with Chronicler Talbot last night, part of what he had foreseen in his dreams and what they had translated from the book. She will decide if they have reconnected with the Tiden Raika and the great planet they reside upon. Kali, Mannford’s great machine, was the ‘she’ Chronicler Talbot had been reading about. Kali will decide, he thought to himself. “Does the name Kali, or the Tiden Raika mean anything to you, Fellow Callahan?”

  Something in Fellow Callahan’s eyes told him those names had struck a chord. The fellow’s eyes narrowed as he spoke, “We need to have a talk, you and I. Tiden Raika is a very old word. I think we have much to discuss.”

  Wayran nodded. Maybe there was a way to get some answers, or maybe Fellow Callahan didn’t want to send him off to have leeches suck at the poisons in his mind in front of the entire initiate class.

  Captain Miller’s voice broke the thoughtful silence which had fallen over the training square, “All right, we’ve all got a lot to think about, and I am calling a halt to any more siphoning training today. Get some water, set up training dummies with leather covers and get yourself a training blade from the racks. Those of you with injuries will train with your off hand. Go through your combinations you learned this morning until I say otherwise. Off you go! On the double!”

  As Wayran jogged off to join the others, he heard Captain Miller ask, “Is Corbin all right to continue? Is she safe? I don’t want her detonating any of her classmates.”

  “I will continue her training for the next few days, I imagine we have had a bit of a setback. I assure you she will still be more than capable when she rejoins your class,” Fellow Callahan said.

  The rest of Wayran’s morning consisted of continuous and repetitive weapons training and left him with no mental capacity beyond lifting his left arm when he was told to and then attempting to execute a thrust or slash in exactly the right manner.

  All thoughts of Robert Mannford, Kali, the Tiden Raika, or what in the world was happening to him would have to wait.

  He had to make it to lunch first.

  9 - Band Practice

  The Demon Drum, the Demon Drum,

  We all dance to the Demon Drum,

  Lift your feet!

  Clap your hands!

  You can’t stop till Meska flops!

  The Demon Drum, the Demon Drum,

  We all dance to the Demon Drum!

  - Excerpt from The Demon Drum, A Children’s Fable, Chronicler Henrietta Martin in A Study of Salucian Mythology

  Kai

  The Oratorio, New Toeron, Bauffin

  Kai was in heaven.

  Drums of every size and shape imaginable lined long rows of shelves on either side of him. Large drums on the bottom with smaller drums above. Snare, bass, timbales, hand, conga, bongo, dhol, goblet, shiko were the few which Kai could name. Instruments from all of the Nine Nations and possibly beyond stood waiting for him to beat a rhythm on.

  No windows lit the dark rows within the storage room. “Sunlight can degrade the drum skins you see,” Maestro Percival, the Oratorio’s Percussion Master, had explained. So, Kai carried a small oil lamp with him and was terrified something catastrophic would happen. He kept imagining himself tripping, thus flinging the small oil lamp which then shattered and set the entire room alight ending with himself and the drums dying in the raging inferno.

  “Stop it!” he shout-whispered to himself. He dared not shout as he felt that would be akin to sacrilege somehow.

  He walked slowly between the towering shelves and watched in wonder as the dim light revealed one magnificent drum after another. The drums were in every size imaginable with intricately painted designs, twisting rope patterns, and decorations of all sorts crowding their sides. Skins of every different texture imaginable stretched across several drums which had seen extensive use.

  Kai moved towards the back and started to notice how some of the drum skins looked too thin, some were even cracked or even missing. These must be the older drums.

  Kai had been wandering for at least half an hour now, and he still had no idea which to choose.

  “Pick any of them, they should be fine to play. The ones at the front all see quite a bit of use in the practice sessions. Feel free to pick one up and play.” Maestro Percival had warmed to Kai almost immediately after Kai had explained why he loved drumming. “I just love the feeling of the beat in my arms, in my hands. How the rhythm fills me and a whole room of happy dancing people. I love how my hands dictate the steps they take. It’s magic really,” Kai had said. He hadn’t meant to waffle on, but it had just spilt out of him.

  “Yes, magic. It is a bit at that.” Maestro Percival had smiled.

  The first one needs to be special, Kai told himself, and now, after time itself had stopped caring, Kai found himself looking at very strange drum behind a glass door.

  He stood, mouth agape, eyes wide with wonder and awe. His body practically buzzed as a circular form stared back at him from behind the glass.

  It had startled him at first, because, well, because it had eyes.

  Giant painted white eyes, carved into the wood of the drum stared into his very soul from behind that glass.

  “You trying to scare me?” Kai raised an eyebrow and leaned in closer to the glass. His fingers began to tap a rhythm on his leg. He didn’t realise he was doing it and if he had thought about it then, he wouldn’t have recog
nised what piece of music the beat came from.

  The drum was nearly as tall as his hips, and the tanned leather head was longer than his forearm across. Maybe a war drum, he guessed, judging from the size and the set of straps on the hook inside the shelf. It had an enormous grinning demonic mouth filled with pointed white teeth. Smooth black lines wove around the drum, almost like tattoos. The eyes which had startled him were concentric ovals: black then white, then red. Two small pointed ears poked out of its sides to match two clawed hands at the bottom of the drum. The hands were drawn up under the chin as if the bulbous head were resting on them. Two tusks protruded upwards from the lower mandible almost to its eyes. The drum looked a bit like a mythical Xinnish Onai monster and was both the most wonderful and strangest drum he had ever seen.

  “A bit spooky, aren’t you?” Kai smiled at the drum. He put the lantern carefully on the floor and leaned in closer to see the magnificent drum in more detail. His finger reached up to tap the subconscious rhythm upon the glass.

  “Spooky, but wonderful.” He looked at the lock on the glass door and shrugged. “Too bad, though. Maybe some other day.” He flicked his finger once more on the glass and stepped back to pick up the lantern.

  The glass door swung open.

  Kai stopped in mid-crouch and stood back up.

  “All right, now I know you’re trying to scare me.” Kai squinted at the drum.

  And the drum stared back with its wicked grin.

  “I don’t think Maestro Percival meant you when he said to pick any.” Kai wondered why he was trying to rationalise his actions to a piece of wood and leather. “You were meant to be locked away.”

  His foot creaked on a floorboard, and the glass door swung out a tiny bit more.

  The drum’s grin somehow felt as if it grew larger.

  “No. Too creepy.” Kai picked up the lantern to move away.

  The floorboard creaked as he moved, the drum kept grinning, and the door swung all the way open.

  “That’s not funny.” Kai put his hands on his hips. “Fine. You’re practically falling off that shelf anyway. Come on, cheeky, let’s see what you sound like ...”

  Kai grabbed the large-headed drum sticks hanging just on the inside of the square compartment the drum sat inside and put them in his vest pocket. Carefully Kai pulled the drum out, sliding it slowly onto the purpose-built base. It was much lighter than its robust build hinted, and he knew it wouldn’t be hard just to pick it up and carry it. There were even shoulder straps hanging on a peg inside its wooden recess, but a drum like this needed to be wheeled out on the stage, like an emperor in a palanquin.

  Kai rolled the drum back through the long rows of shelved drums. He could almost imagine this drum sneering triumphantly at the other drums as it was picked over them. He opened the doors to the practice room and wheeled the drum in.

  Echinni and Jachem hadn’t arrived yet. He hoped Jachem wasn’t causing too much trouble. Not many people suffered his friend’s eccentricities very well or for very long.

  “He might be all right in the Dry, right?” Kai asked the drum. “I mean, it’s just laundry. Albeit, a lot of laundry, and in a very busy place. They probably have a system of doing things, methods and procedures. Jachem likes those sort of things.”

  The drum’s grin looked sympathetic this time. Silly Kai, he imagined it saying. We both know Jachem will last maybe a day or two. The Dry staff will tolerate him that long because the princess asked them to. Then it will get too much, just like every other job he’s tried.

  “What do you know? You’re just a drum,” Kai scoffed.

  He sighed to himself. The drum was probably right.

  “Why am I talking to a drum? Especially one that makes logical arguments?” Kai quirked an eyebrow but realised then that this giant practice room was most likely the quietest place he had ever been. There was no other sound, not even footsteps in the hallways or the fleeting echoes of distant conversations. Even the noise from the city couldn’t be heard inside this sanctum.

  It was both wonderful and disturbing at the same time.

  Kai sat there waiting for the others to arrive and listened to the velvety silence.

  “Nope.” Kai had to speak, he needed something to fill the silence. “I can’t wait any longer.” His hands found the drumsticks in his pocket. “This space was meant to be filled with sound, so let’s see what you can do.” The sticks twirled through his fingers, the weight of them perfect as if they had been waiting for his hands all this time. Kai cracked his neck from left to right, rotated his shoulders, and let the sticks fall.

  His life changed forever.

  No drum would ever be the same again.

  Each beat was pure, precise and utterly beautiful as it resonated through him in a wave of pure euphoria. Sound filled the room, not shattering the tranquil silence, but merging with it, like one side of a coin joining the other.

  Then, the entire room began to jump into life.

  Kai could feel each thump as it bounced from his fingers into the room around him, felt the sound reflect from every surface and wash over him again.

  He started soft and slow, a low rumble, like thunder off in the distance.

  Kai’s heart matched the resonating cadence. His breath quickened, and so did the beat.

  The drum was part of him, calling to him, releasing who he was truly meant to be into pure blissful sound.

  A song formed within that beat. It felt familiar, like a song he had fallen in love with as a child but was only now remembering. His hands laid down the beat to the ethereal song as if they had always known it.

  Kai closed his eyes and let himself feel only the beat.

  Quicker now, but still soft and quiet. It will build. Into what, he did not know, but he wasn’t worried. It was beautiful.

  Kai could feel the age of the drum like a vast cavern of history beneath his hands. It was ancient, and the years he felt within it dwarfed him as if he were the only person in the world afloat on an endless ocean.

  The beat steadied, slowed, but the sticks fell harder, sharper, and the rhythm in his hands felt strong and powerful.

  His heart kept time with his hands.

  Kai smiled as he lost himself in the depths of the sound.

  He let it course through him, felt his hands fall in a steady four-beat; one, two, three, FOUR, one, two, three, FOUR, thud, thud, thud, THUD. It seemed it was not just his heartbeat, but everything’s heartbeat; the heartbeat of the very earth, of the sky, and of life.

  Kai never wanted to hear another sound again.

  “How are you doing that?!” Jachem’s high-pitched squeal cut through Kai’s revelry like fingernails on flat slate. He had felt Jachem come in, felt his friend join in with the music.

  But then Jachem had to speak.

  He didn’t care though, and his hands kept the beat.

  “Doing what?”Kai continued the beat, keeping his eyes closed so he could hold on to the feeling coursing through his very core. He was annoyed at the interruption to his bliss.

  “Open your eyes, man! Look at the chairs! The curtains! Ha, look at everything!”

  The entire room was dancing to his beat. Objects as if possessed were leaping about and hopping up and down. Chairs, music stands, desks, the objects on the desks, the curtains, even the dust motes visible in the shaft of sunlight from the overhead windows bobbed up and down in time with the beat of Kai’s drum.

  “This is incredible!” Jachem exclaimed as his feet joined the rhythm and his arms spread wide like that of a rotund eagle.

  The look of pure joy on his friend’s face, a look Jachem rarely ever wore, made Kai’s heart sing. They laughed together as Jachem bounced onto a dancing chair, and instead of thumping to a stop on the ground, the chair kept dancing. Jachem held on with both hands and laughed uncontrollably as he was tossed into the air atop the chair.

  One, two, three, FOUR. Thud, thud, thud, THUD.

  Kai closed his eyes again. He wanted to drown w
ithin that moment, to join himself completely and utterly with the wonderful rhythm flowing through and around him.

  “STOP!!” The command slammed through the room with a force like a hurricane.

  Kai’s hands stopped. Objects dropped to the floor like marionettes suddenly being cut from their strings. Jachem gave a squeak as he and the chair lost balance and toppled over.

  Princess Echinni stood braced against the doorframe, Yuna stood behind her with an unsure hand slowly unclasping a buckle to let her giant sword swing free from her back. Both of their eyes were wide with terror.

  Silence once again flowed back into the room, reasserting its smooth presence. Yet even the lovely silence which owned this room between practice sessions waited for the princess’s response.

  Kai opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say.

  “How … what … were you doing?” Echinni shook her head in bewilderment, making the beads in her tightly braided hair jangle together. The look of panic on her usually calm and beautiful features bothered Kai. She should never have to look so worried.

  “I don’t know ...” Kai’s words came slowly. What had happened? “I was just practising ... it felt right. I ... I don’t know.” Kai truly had no idea what that was.

  He looked down, and the drum was grinning at him. It looked excited.

  “You were making things dance,” Echinni said more to herself than either of them.

  Yuna held the scabbard of her greatsword now, though the giant golden blade had not been drawn. Yuna eyed the chairs and desks suspiciously as if daring them to move again.

  “So, this doesn’t happen every time someone plays this drum?” Kai quirked an eyebrow pointing down to the drum. “Did I do it wrong or something?” Kai knew he hadn’t done wrong as soon as the words left his lips. Whatever he had done, it had been right.

  “Yes! No!” Echinni was exasperated. “Wrong? I don’t ....” She was breathing hard, trying to collect herself. Then the princess’s eyes finally saw the drum. “How did you get that drum?” Her tone was slightly accusatory but mostly confused.