Awakenings

by C. D. Espeseth

  “I ... well, the door, you see, it just … opened.” Kai cringed as he said the words. That sounded ridiculous, and he stopped himself from following it up with, the drum wanted me to. He sucked his teeth in anticipation of the explosion of blame and anger he was about to receive.

  Yuna had finally buckled the sword onto her back once more. She opened her hand and motioned for Kai to give her the drumsticks.

  He complied. Not that noncompliance was really an option, but he did appreciate Yuna asking instead of just ripping his arms off with the drumsticks attached.

  Kai waited for his punishment. He should have left that drum where it was.

  The damn thing was still smiling at him.

  Stop it! Kai thought to the drum. You are in just as much trouble as I am.

  “Opened? That’s not ... you didn’t smash the door?” Echinni looked bewildered.

  “What? No!? I would never!” Kai protested, somewhat shocked at even the thought of what, to him, was sacrilege.

  “It’s a self-locking door. I know. I’ve put the drum back myself. Only Maestro Percival has the key.” Echinni looked at him and at the same time seemed to be listening to something. “And you don’t have that key, do you?”

  “No,” Kai said. He wanted to explain, but he didn’t understand it himself. “I must have rattled the lock somehow. There was this floorboard. It squeaked, you see, and then the door opened. Please. I didn’t mean to make trouble. I should have left it there.”

  Echinni’s eyes seemed to be focused on something distant, almost like she was looking through him and straight to the truth. “I ... believe you.” She paused for a moment. “Do you know whose drum that was?”

  “Oh.” Kai cringed. Of course, Singers would have their own drums! How could he have been so stupid not to read the labels properly? Stupid! So stupid! He had now made an enemy of the person with the most amazing drum in the entire Oratorio. Why not just throw himself off a cliff and get it over with?! “Whose drum was it?” Kai closed his eyes and shied away from Echinni’s answer. “Was it the hierophant’s? Tell me it wasn’t the hierophant’s, or one of the seraphim’s. Oh, Lady, take me now.”

  “That is the Demon Drum,” Echinni said, and Kai felt his stomach drop. He’d heard that name before. Why was it so familiar?

  And then the answer hit him like a ton of bricks.

  No. It couldn’t be. His mouth hung open in shock.

  It was Jachem who recited what they were all thinking, “The Demon Drum belonged to The Raven, Meskaiwa, Halom’s holy servant and our saviour.”

  They stood in silence for a moment around the ancient instrument. Kai wasn’t quite sure what to say.

  “It plays well. For something so old, I mean,” Jachem said.

  Kai rolled his eyes at the coming explosion but jumped when Echinni snorted in laughter.

  “It does at that.” Echinni was smiling and shaking her head as she looked at Jachem, not in anger as Kai had expected, but with joy and humour.

  She understood his Jachem on some level, understood how he looked at the world through a very different lens than just about everyone else.

  Kai felt himself fall just a little further in love with this wonderful woman.

  He noticed then that the Demon Drum seemed to be laughing at him.

  Oh shut up, you crazy drum, I hope you’re satisfied, I’m bloody lucky I wasn’t thrown into chains for touching you!

  In Kai’s mind, the drum continued to laugh.

  “I should probably put this back,” Kai said with a clenched jaw and began to wheel the Demon Drum back up the ramp.

  “Yes, a good plan. We’ll begin to tidy up in here. Come on, Jachem.” Echinni put her hand out and led Jachem into the practice room and put him to work without a word of complaint.

  Kai breathed a sigh of relief as he put the drum back in its case, but as he walked away, he smiled because he knew it would not be the last time he played that drum, a drum which both terrified and excited him. The Demon Drum had been waiting a long time for him, and Kai could feel the painted teeth smiling behind him as he left.

  10 – Interview

  Onai:

  A demonic red-skinned creature which roams the mountains of Xin Ya. The creature is nearly half again as tall as a man, with large tusks protruding from both its upper and lower jaw. The white hair upon its back helps it hide in the mountain snows.

  Onai are said to wait along mountain passes for unwary travellers whom they capture and take back to cook in their pots. They are thought to be semi-intelligent beasts capable of using both tools and fire.

  The Onai are quite often used metaphorically to represent unbridled and sinful male lust in Xinnish folklore.

  - Chronicler Henrietta Martin in A Study of Salucian Mythology

  Naira

  The Academy, New Toeron, Bauffin

  “That looks like Thannis, doesn’t it?” Naira said to Adel as the young constable held up a charcoal sketch of a tall, handsome man. They had been taken out of parade drills to talk with the constable, which meant they were either in a lot of trouble or something serious was happening. The three of them sat in a small office which one of the fellows had volunteered for the interview. Adel looked just as puzzled as Naira as to why they were being asked about their ferry trip from Blossom Bay, but neither of them wanted to be anything but helpful to the constabulary which was the unofficial third branch of the United Salucian military.

  “Yes, that is close to what he looks like. Why are you looking for him?” Adel asked.

  The young constable, named Miranda Holvstad, ignored the question. She was writing furiously in her notebook. “You’re sure? You were both on the ferry, and you both remember seeing this man?” Constable Holvstad tapped the drawing once more.

  Naira wondered why on earth she would find it strange that they remembered seeing him.

  “Yeah, he was already on the ferry when we boarded at Blossom Bay. He seemed nice, not particularly chatty, but rather charming and polite. Very handsome, well-spoken. Wouldn’t you say?” Naira nudged Adel who had gone strangely distant again.

  “I … I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying him much attention.” Adel looked at Naira pointedly. “I was dealing with my own thing those last few days on board. I spent most of the time below deck.”

  Naira’s cheeks coloured. Of course, Adel had been trying to keep the runaway siphoning from burning her up. Naira hadn’t known what her oldest friend had been struggling with until they arrived at the Academy, not until Adel had nearly exploded with all the power she had been trying to keep bottled up inside her. “Yes, sorry, I forgot.”

  “Why were you down below? What do you mean ‘dealing with your own thing’?” the constable asked, looking at Adel now as if she were a suspect.

  “I, well …” Adel started.

  “Excuse me, constable,” Naira cut in, “we are trying to help you. We are being pulled out of class for this. What’s with the aggressive questioning?”

  The constable narrowed her eyes at Naira, judging and probing her face with those sharp eyes. “I’m not at liberty to talk about it. Let’s just say it would be strongly in your interest to cooperate and not try to hide anything that might hinder my investigation.”

  “Are you threatening us?” Naira asked, shocked slightly.

  “Yes,” Constable Holvstad said. “Glad you’re paying attention. Now. What do you mean ‘dealing with your own thing?’”

  Naira was about to protest, but Adel held up a hand.

  “Naira, it’s fine.” Adel sighed. “I don’t quite know how to explain it.”

  “Try,” the constable said with arms crossed.

  “I was having trouble controlling my siphoning,” Adel explained. “I thought I was going to burn myself out before we could reach the Academy, but it’s fine now. During the ferry trip, I had to focus for most of the day on pushing back against the energy trying to flow into me.”

  “Right.” The constable wrote down Adel
’s statement but looked as if she didn’t believe her.

  “It’s true,” Naira said, “there is still a ring of scorched earth in Sentinel Wood where Adel released all that pent-up energy.”

  “I’ll have a look,” the constable said. “Now back to this man. Did he say where he was going?”

  “No, now that I think of it, he didn’t say much about himself. Just that he had business here in the city. He saw us to the Academy gates and then went his own way. Do you remember him saying anything more, Adel?” Naira turned to Adel who seemed to be lost in melancholy thought, a habit she had been doing a lot more as of late.

  “Honestly, Naira, you’d remember better than me. At the time, all I thought was that he was a bit creepy.” Adel was shaking her head.

  “Creepy? Really? How could you think that? He was different, sure, but a good kind of different. Sophisticated and intelligent, a man who had seen the world.”

  “Have you seen him since you arrived? Where is he now?” There was an edge to the questions suddenly, a tension.

  “No, I haven’t seen him.” Naira shook her head.

  “Neither have I,” Adel added.

  Constable Holvstad didn’t look satisfied. “Thank you,” She said as she wrote down a bit more, and then the door to the small office clicked open, and a boulder of a man with a thick walrus moustache stepped through. He had the build and look of a soldier, a veteran. His old, hawk-like eyes immediately began to catalogue and dissect every detail within the room.

  “Senior Prefect,” The constable said as she stood while her superior entered.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” he said and flipped open his own notepad, took out a small portable inkwell from the inside of his jacket pocket, flipped open the lid and dipped a metal quill pen into the ink as smoothly as if he were dancing.

  “They remember him, sir.”

  “Do they now?” Those eyes latched onto Naira and Adel like he was hunting field-mice. The intricate metal quill was already scribbling across his page without the senior prefect even so much as glancing down. “What made these two special, then?”

  “Don’t know, perhaps because they can both siphon? Adel here says she was having trouble with her siphoning ability.”

  The senior prefect narrowed his eyes. “Miranda, can you go get Sister Payen. She’s waiting outside. Tell her we are going to need her full range of abilities.”

  Miranda nodded, and Naira heard the sound of her boots as the constable ran down the hall.

  * * *

  The interview with the senior prefect had taken less than an hour. The other constable had returned with Sister Payen after a short while, and the sister had turned out to be a Vinda witch. Not what, Naira or Adel had been expecting, as ‘sister’ was also used to describe those within the Singer Faith.

  Naira had been amazed by the dark and alien-looking women. She had never met anyone from the Blasted Isles before, and she wished she had had the time to ask her thousands of questions about what those exotic and mysterious islands were like.

  The senior prefect had invited Sister Payen to join them, and both Adel and Naira gawked at the exotic dress and face paint the elderly woman wore. One side of the woman’s face was covered in strange lines of white chalk which seemed to radiate against the dark skin typical of those who grew up on the Blasted Isles. Sister Payen also wore a flowing black dress with an amazing mixture of vibrant yellows, reds, purples and greens jumping out of the fabric. Naira couldn’t decide whether it was garish or one of the most beautiful dresses she had ever seen. The necklace and jewellery were also equally confusing as most of the witch’s adornments were made of bone carved into various shapes, yet beautiful stones were often delicately set within their macabre casings and, while somewhat shocking, it all somehow worked and looked somewhat regal.

  “Thank you again for assisting us, sister” Senior Prefect John Stonebridge said respectfully as the Sister began unpacking the contents of the large bag she had brought with her. Pouches of herbs, tinctures, jars filled with pickled animal parts, and small stones of all shapes and colours were arranged carefully on the desk before she began to work.

  The sister had mixed up a pot of dried herbs and plants before setting it alight and placing the pot on a little stand on the desk.

  “Breathe it in, my dears. I need to test your minds to see if a spell has been placed on you like the others.” Sister Payen’s voice was heavily accented with a bouncing lilt and sharp consonant sounds on every word. Naira loved it immediately.

  “I need you to think …” which sounded more like ‘tink’, “… back to da day you met this man, Thannis.”

  The sister had placed her hands on the sides of Naira’s head and began to chant very softly to herself. “Keep thinking, I want ya to remember his face.”

  The chanting was very relaxing, and Naira felt as if she wanted to have a quick nap in those warm, supportive hands.

  “Not this one, she is resistant, but Esmerak would have found her child’s play, Senior Prefect. Now you, dear.” The Vinda witch smiled as she let go of Naira and reached for Adel’s head.

  Naira’s eyes had snapped back open almost at the instant Sister Payen let go, and she found herself regretting it, the sleepy feeling had been lovely, comforting and warm.

  Then she realized just what someone could do with such an ability and found herself involuntarily moving away from the woman’s hands.

  “It’s all right, child.” Sister Payen smiled, looking at Adel. “It’s just a quick test to see how susceptible you are to having your memory altered.” She reached out to take Adel’s head in her hands just as she had Naira’s.

  Sister Payen’s hands were almost resting on Adel’s temples, but then the older woman let out a quick gasp and whipped her hands away. “Gods of the deep!” The Vinda witch shook her hands as if stung and looked at Adel as if looking at a ghost. “What are you, girl?”

  Adel was shocked. “I don’t–”

  “Your aura?” Sister Payen cut Adel off. “It is dark ... black.” The witch’s eyes scoured Adel for clues before her gaze came to rest on Adel’s hand which rested on the hilt of her father’s sword.

  “Sorry,” Adel said, jerking her hand away. “I meant no threat.”

  “Meant it or not,” Sister Payen hissed as she shook her head slowly, her eyes not leaving the sword, “that is what you are, girl. A threat. I see you now, and I know you, I know the legacy which darkens your aura.”

  The senior prefect put a hand on Sister Payen’s shoulder, and the Vinda witch recoiled at his touch before she realised who the hand belonged to. “Sister, you’re scaring the young girl.”

  “Good.” Sister Payen stood. She still had the look of someone who had just been stung by a hornet. “This one should be scared. Scared of what she carries inside her. Scared of what she is.”

  Tears began to streak down Adel’s cheeks, though she didn’t make a sound.

  “Stop it!” Naira stood up and took a step towards Sister Payen. The sister’s hand went into a pouch at the front of her belt.

  “Careful, girl, you not be the only one who can defend herself.”

  “Enough.” The senior prefect’s voice growled, and he stepped between them. “I did not bring you here to upset my witnesses.”

  “That be because you don’t know who you have, John Stonebridge.” Sister Payen glared up at the burly man. She pointed a long-nailed finger at Adel. “Dat be the Arbiter, sitting there. You lookin’ for a murderer, yeah? There sits one.”

  “I haven’t killed anyone,” Adel said, but there was a haunted look in her eyes.

  “Maybe not yet, but you have two demons about you, one on your hip and another deep within. We know, girl. The Sisterhood was there at the beginning. Our memory is long, and we remember when dat demon-sword first made its way north, and we remember the one who held it.” Sister Payen’s words seemed to be hammer blows driving Adel into her chair.

  “Adel has done nothing wrong!” Nair
a was furious. She pushed forward onto the senior prefect’s arm. “What are these lies?”

  “Everyone just calm down,” Miranda said. The other constable had been lounging against the wall a heartbeat earlier, but now she had a cudgel out and was pointing it at Naira, then at Sister Payen as the senior prefect held them away from each other with his meaty arms.

  “Stop,” Adel said almost in a whisper. “Naira, stop.”

  Naira looked down to see Adel’s hand on her arm. “Adel? What–”

  “She’s not lying,” Adel said as she looked at the floor. “I only found out a few weeks ago. Fellow Callahan told me about who my father used to be, about who I am. There was a reason he was training me so hard, Naira. I am meant to take up his mantle as Halom’s holy servant. This sword,” Adel tapped the blade at her hip, “it is the Arbiter’s weapon, and not only that, my mother–”

  “NOT another word!” The sharp command burst into the room, as did the door. Lady Buika, wearing a full set of Hafaza armour, stood with a double-bladed glaive in her hands. She swept into the room and was followed by a giant man in plate mail, santsi globes were already glowing upon his shoulders within their pauldron settings.

  “What is the meaning–” Miranda’s other hand went to the hilt of her sai, but one of Lady Buika’s blades lifted so fast Naira had barely been able to follow the movement.

  “I wouldn’t.” Lady Buika’s voice was as cold as ice. “Step back, constable.” She made the title sound like an insult. “And you, Senior Prefect, how dare you interrogate one of my initiates using the black arts of the Vinda. This is sacrilege. I’ll have you stripped of your rank.”

  Naira had no idea what in Halom’s name was going on, but she was going to find out. Adel had been acting strangely for a while, and now she was starting to see why. Old secrets of some sort were tearing her best friend apart. “Adel–” Naira began.

  “You would do well to keep your mouth shut as well, Naira O’Bannon,” Lady Buika commanded. “Both of you will come with me. Now.”

  “You understand you are interfering with an investigation sanctioned by the High King himself.” The senior prefect’s voice held no hint of anger or even surprise, the lady’s threat slid off him as if it had never been said. The only difference in John Stonebridge was a slight narrowing of his eyes while he calmly watched the proceedings. He looked like a man who had suddenly been given an interesting puzzle to solve.