Farmers & Mercenaries (4 page)

Rounding the bend, he was relieved to see the wagons still sat at the gate, and slowed to a jog. A light morn breeze fluttered past, mussing his sandy brown hair, and he drank in the cool air. It reminded him how much he loved the early springtime of the Northron Plains.

The air is always fresher here at the gate than deeper within the walls of the stead.

“I see you finally decided to drag yourself down here.” Siln, sitting in the back of a wagon next to their father, was grinning like a fool as Arderi ambled up.

Their father, Tanin Cor, leaned down and extended a hand to Arderi. “Well wishes, Son.”

“Well wishes, Papa.” Arderi took his father’s hand and hopped into the back of the wagon.

Tanin was a good-sized man. He kept his face clean-shaven, and the sandy brown hair on top of his head, now showing a sprinkling of gray, cut short. Not the tallest nor broadest man in the stead, he stood a bit over two paces. Wide shoulders and strong arms gave him a look many mistook for that of a guarder instead of a simple fielder. He did not even have the gut many fielders his age developed. Most agreed that Arderi, of all Tanin’s sons, favored his father in looks and build, and would soon be the tallest in their family.

“How do you feel this morn, Papa?” Arderi plopped himself onto the bench next to his friend, Riln Toln, who flashed him a sly look and that wait-till-you-hear-what-I-did grin of his.

I
must
figure out what he has been up to these past few morns.

“Fine, fine.” Arderi knew his father would not have admitted it, had the man been dying of pain. “The Shapers delivered a Crystal from Alant this morn. He is to leave Mocley to be schooled now in Hath’oolan.” Mir’am Cor raised a hand to forestall Arderi’s questions. “He did not say the reason for this, yet says he is well, and sends his love.”

“Hath’oolan!” Arderi blurted once he was sure his father had finished speaking. He could not believe his ears. Hath’oolan, the capital city of the fabled Isle of Elmorr’eth, was the birth home of the Elmorians, the most powerful Shapers on the entire Plane.

Some say it is the birth home for the Essence itself, with all its power flowing from there!

Arderi’s mind raced. “Alant must be more powerful than even the Grand Master Shaper suspected! Do you have the Crystal with you, Papa? Can I draw upon it now? Please?” Unable to hide the plea in his voice, he chastised himself for sounding like a babe in swaddling clothes.

Tanin chuckled, and a smile stretched above his strong chin. “Nix, Arderi, I would not bring a Crystal to the fields. It is safe at home. You may draw upon it this eve, and hear for yourself what Alant has to say, and see what he has imbued on it.” He patted Arderi on the shoulder. “Are you excited about being Tested?”

A lump formed in Arderi’s throat and he made a sound he hoped his father would take for an affirmative answer.

Leaning against the back wall of the wagon bed, Tanin smiled at his son. “Aye, I know you are scared, son. Yet, keep in mind, everyone your age must be Tested. And we all survived. Besides, think of how wonderful it will be to follow Alant to Mocley and be trained as a Shaper.”

“Move out!” The guarder captain, a grizzled looking man by the name of Flinnok Nime, shouted the command from his horse at the front of the small caravan.

One by one, the wagons lurched as the teamsters urged their horses forward. Arderi rocked back with the motion of the wagon as it started down the road toward the fields.

They did not have far to travel. The field they were going to work lay close to the stead, only one section past the animal pastures that surrounded the outer walls. Not wanting to think about the Test, Arderi gazed out over a herd of sheep grazing near the road, and to a group of herders who lounged beneath the shade of an old oak tree resting near the fence. He felt a pang of jealousy toward the men sitting around in a circle talking.

As if Riln had read his mind, he leaned over close to Arderi. “Do not envy those lazy herders.” His whisper had a conspiratorial edge to it. “They have a surprise in store for them.”

Arderi shot him a quizzical look, yet Riln held his tongue for once.

Letting his eyes linger on the group, Arderi wondered once more what Riln had been up to. Herders occupied public houses on the opposite side of the stead from the fielders. They tended the many animals that lived within the walls of the stead. Even though Arderi did not envy them for how long their day was—having the job of taking all the animals from the protection of the stead walls and leading them to pasture morn after morn, as well as bringing them back inside eve after eve—he still saw their aurns in between as ill spent. “I do not think they work as hard during the day as we fielders do.”

Arderi was speaking to no one in particular, although Riln chimed in. “Because they are lazy!”

“I would not be so fast to judge.” Shaking his head, Tanin gave Riln a disapproving look. “Remember the saying, first to rise, last inside, a herders day is long.”

“Mayhaps.” Arderi glanced over at his Papa. “Yet they sure do sit a lot during that long day of theirs.”

His father grinned back at him. “It is only what you see on the ride to and from the fields, my boy.” Waving a hand, the older man indicated the vast pastures that hugged the stead’s wall. “They also handle all of the slaughtering and skinning. I do believe you enjoy the meat they provide. And do not forget the wool and hides that you wear.” A guarder, one of many accompanying the work detail, trotted by on a horse, and Tanin nodded to him before turning his attention back to the boys. . “Aye, they may sit a lot during the day.” Tanin raised one eyebrow. “Alas, remember we fielders let our fields run fallow during the winter season. Herders are still out there, day after day, season after season, regardless of the weather.”

Arderi pulled his feet under him and sat up for more comfort on the hard, wooden bench. “It is not as if we fielders do not work during the winter moons.”

“Aye.” Tanin nodded sagely. “Alas, most of our day is spent on inside work, mending or making tools and the like. Not out in the cold, wet weather.”

“I never thought of it that way, Papa.” Glancing back down the road, Arderi stared at the small group of herders as they faded from view.

“Nix!” Riln’s whisper was sharp, and he directed it into Arderi’s ear so as not to be overheard. “I know it was some stinking herder who dumped the load of dung in my sleeping room. I still have to leave the window open for the smell. Yet, soon…” He sat back and smiled, bobbing his head like a fool in rhythm with the bounce of the wagon.

Leaning over toward his friend, Arderi kept his voice in the same conspiratorial whisper. “At halfmeal we shall steal away. You must tell what you have planned.”

Riln nodded, his eyes twinkling.

Flopping back to enjoy the warm spring sun, Arderi followed the one stray cloud drifting high in the clear blue sky.

What a perfect day. Not too hot, nice cooling breeze. A shame this day is not Holiday. At least the tenday is more than half-gone, and Holiday will be here soon.

R
eality appeared skewed—akin to peering through a kaleidoscope. A mish-mash of colored points of light floated in Alant Cor’s field of vision, swirling and bouncing all around him.

Like opening my eyes under water, yet instead of a wavy view, everything looks crisp and clear. I just cannot tell what anything is!

“Now, Alant, focus. Bend your mind and see me.” The voice of Sier Sarlimac, one of Alant’s teachers here at the Chandril’elian of Mocley, came from somewhere in front of him. “Tell me what I am holding.” Strain as he might, Alant could see no difference in the sparkle of colors spinning around him.

Focusing on the voice, Alant let his mind relax, allowing the floating swirls of colors to differentiate from one another on their own, as he had been taught. Within moments, his eyes adapted, adjusting to the foreign sight they beheld. Nothing changed in the dots themselves, yet his Sier’s face extracted itself from the surrounding background. It did not change colors, nor did it take on any real shape or form. Rather, Alant saw that the colored dots of Sarlimac’s face connected, interacting in a way he did not quite understand, distinguishing themselves from the dots surrounding his teacher’s face. Soon, patterns emerged and the contents of the room took shape before him in the eerie, multi-colored Sight of the Essence.

Finally, once Alant was certain he grasped what he saw, he was confident enough to answer. “You hold a book.” Then more details became clear. “And you are not even looking at me!”

“Impressive.” His instructor chuckled. “You outpace your classmates by at least two turns of the seasons.”

Alant realized that Sier Sarlimac no longer stood in front of him, although he had not noticed the old man moving away. “You have moved.”

“Yes, I now stand by the marble lab table.” The voice came from his right. “Can you see me?”

As Alant twisted his head toward where he assumed his instructor stood, the suddenness of his movement caused the dots that created reality as he now saw it, to shift violently. He could no longer separate the colored dots into the patterns that made up his surroundings. Everything once again became a maddened mingling of indistinguishable points of color. Out of reflex, he whipped out a hand to steady himself on the stool.

I am like a blind man. A dizzy blind man!

“Do not lose the Sight, Alant. Here, I will take your arm.”

A hand grasped Alant’s elbow and helped him rise from his stool. He let the Sier guide him the few steps to the table. As they walked forward, the colored dots spun out of focus and everything blurred in a way that made his stomach queasy. If not for Sier Sarlimac holding his arm, Alant feared he would fall.

“Easy. Easy now. There you are.”

They stopped walking and the dots snapped back into sharp focus. One moment they were like a swarm of buzzing bees whizzing around him in an angry mass, the next frozen in midair about him.

“Now, the marble table sits in front of you. I want you to focus on it if you can. You know what it looks like with your normal sight—now see it as it looks in the Sight of the Essence.”

Alant let his eyes adjust once more, his mind fighting to make sense of the chaotic image before him. “Aye, Sier, large and flat.” He studied what he saw. “Nothing is on it.”

“I will add something now. Tell me what you see.” A rustling sound permeated the room.

“A book.” Alant was quick with his answer.

“Look closely.”

“Aye, Sier, not a book, not enough there to be a book—” Alant paused. The pattern appeared the same as a book, yet also somehow different. “Some parchment, then?”

“Yes, good.” Sarlimac held the tone in his voice that made Alant feel like a happy puppy dog. “Now I will add a second piece to the right, do you see it?”

“Aye, Sier. At first, it too looks like a book. Then I see there is not enough interaction. It is like seeing water in a large puddle and thinking it is deep—only to realize later that it is shallow.”

“A perfect analogy.” Sarlimac chuckled. “Now, I will light one piece of parchment on fire.”

A lantern shutter squeaked. Alant was silent as the colored dots moved about and shifted hues. “The parchment on the right has changed, Sier.” He took another moment to better understand what he saw. “It does not seem any brighter, however, only altered.”

“Yes, the Essence shows everything at the same luminosity. It is for you to see how the Essence of the parchment is changed by the fire.”

“It is different, Sier, like the colored dots—”

“Spectals.” Sarlimac voice had an exasperated edge to his correction, and Alant chastised himself for the slip.

“Aye, Sier, the Spectals move slower now, and the parchment has more blue in it.”

“Very well done.” Off to Alant’s left he heard the leather of one of the plush chairs in the room groan under the weight of his instructor. “And now what does it look like?”

Alant studied the two collective piles of colored dots.

Not dots! Spectals.

“They both still have the look of parchment, Sier. The one you burned, however, seems smaller, somewhat constricted now. Oh, and very blue. Its Spectals move even slower now, hardly at all.”

“You may release the Sight now, Alant.”

The Essence slipped from Alant’s eyes like water passing over a sheet of glass. A grayish, shadowy chamber materialized around him. The strain of the shift forced him to rub his eyes. After a moment, the room became clear; in his normal vision, everything seemed dark compared to viewing it with the Sight of the Essence. He stood where he had assumed, a few paces from the large, black-gray marble table. The only light in the room spilled from the few lanterns that hung in its corners. The piece of parchment Sier Sarlimac had burnt still lay on the table, crumpled and black.

A useless pile of ash.

The small lab, where Alant had spent more sessions in private lessons than he cared to remember, was lined with bookshelves stuffed with bound books, rolled parchment, and anything else that would fit upon them—dried and bleached skulls, as varied in size as in style, pieces of colored glass or crystal, small carved statues, and more that Alant had never been able to identify, even up close. A set of four leather chairs, a half dozen stools, and the large granite table was the only other furniture in the room.

His instructor, Sier Sarlimac, was a plump old man with a shaggy, white-gray beard that did not quite cover his chin. He sat lounging in one chair, his dark blue robes stretched tight over his ample belly. Golden starbursts lined the cuffs and hem of the robe, marking Sarlimac as a Master Shaper. “You see, Alant.” The teacher motioned for Alant to sit in the leather chair opposite him. “As you have learned, the Essence resides in all things. We see it as Spectals, this you know. It is a fact that can never change. What we can change is the item’s potential here in the physical Plane.” He pointed back to the table. “Could I burn the burnt parchment again?”

“Nix, Sier.” Alant lowered himself into the plush chair. “It would not catch again.”

“Why?”

“You cannot burn it twice, Sier, everyone knows this.”

“Can you write on the burnt parchment?”

“Nix, Sier, it is now ash.”

“Is that so? Did it change to the pattern of ash while you watched it using the Sight of the Essence?” Sarlimac put his hands in the form of a steeple and placed the point under his chin on a spot that had no hair, as he often did when lecturing. Several coarse bristles of his beard stuck out at odd angles.

“Nix, Sier. When I looked upon it with the Sight, it seemed to remain parchment. The Spectals simply changed color, most turning blue… And they moved more slowly.”

Sarlimac nodded. “If you looked upon it with the Sight now, you would see the blue Spectals are motionless. This is because there is nothing left in the parchment that will burn. It has no stored energy—potential—left in it to create fire. As you learned from your studies, the color of the Spectals indicates their
potential
. Blue shows you an item having no more
potential
to burn.”

“Alas, Sier, there are no blue Spectals within the lab table.” Alant’s interruption came close to being considered rude, yet in his excitement, he forged on. “Granite cannot burn, so why would it not have blue Spectals in it as well.”

“Ah, except the granite has never
had
the potential to burn. The blue Spectals indicate that an item does not have the potential to burn
currently
. However, the material holding the blue Spectals has the potential to burn in one of its
other
forms. Like the ash that used to be parchment sitting on the table, two distinctly different states of the same material. Now, as a Shaper, you will be able to reach out and manipulate the Essence within an item, to change the hues of the blue back to the greens of un-burnt parchment, speeding up the Spectals once more, so to speak. I am simplifying the process, of course. Alas, it would take several aurns, at least, for even a Master Shaper to return a single sheet back from ash to parchment. Much easier to simply get a new piece from market.” He laughed to himself. “Remember, just because you can accomplish something by manipulating the Essence, does not mean it is the best way. Shaping the Essence is a painfully slow process, as you now know. Still, this is how a Shaper would manipulate the burnt and ruined parchment back into a crisp new piece.”

“Sier, does this mean a Shaper would use the same method to manipulate the parchment and cause it to catch fire?” Alant loved probing questions. “By changing the Spectals blue and slowing them down?”

This caused Sarlimac to laugh aloud, something Alant had never before heard him do. “I am afraid not. A Shaper could manipulate it into ash, or rather parchment that no longer has the ability to burn, yet the act of catching it on fire would be too fast. We Shapers do not have the ability to instantly change the Essence. As I have said, it would take me the better part of several aurns to change the ash on that table back into a clean piece of parchment. Even the Elmorr’Antiens do not possess the power to manipulate the Essence fast enough to make something burst into flames. Even though they are the strongest with the Essence, it is not as if they can look at a thing using the Sight and have it burst into flame.”

“How are they stronger in the Essence than us Humans?” Alant yearned to learn about the Elmorian people.

The most powerful Shapers on the Plane, and soon they will be teaching me!

The Sier smiled and shook his head gently. “That is unknown to us. We are divided into two main schools of thought when it comes to the Elmorr’Antien’s power over the Essence.” Sarlimac leaned back against his chair, the leather creaking as only old leather could. “Some believe the Essence itself created their race. Others think they have a different physiology, allowing them to interact with the Essence in a more natural way than other races. This would make them superior to us, whether it is by creation, or a chance of nature. Many Shapers, however, reject this. They cannot stomach to think they may be inferior.” He scoffed. “They believe that the Elmorr’Antiens are privy to some great secret. Something they hide from the rest of the Shapers on this Plane, and thereby keep themselves superior.”

“Which do you believe, Sier?”

“It does not matter what I believe.” Smiling, Sarlimac patted his student on one knee. Alant shot him a hurt look, generating a small grunt from his teacher. “I have no knowledge to prove whether either of these theories are correct. I know only what I can do, and that is all that concerns me. Now, come.” Standing, he made his way to the door. “You have packing to do, and I need you to run a few errands for me in town.” He stopped at the door and turned.

“Alant?”

“Aye, Sier.”

“I want you to know—the other Siers will not tell you this—you are the strongest student we have had here at the Chandril’elian in living memory. No one I know of has ever gained the ability to hold the Sight of the Essence and discern items, one from another, after only two turns of the seasons. Even gifted Initiates take four or five turns to advance that far.”

“My thanks to you, Sier, I—”

His instructor interrupted him with a wave of the hand. “You have a long career as a Shaper ahead of you, son. I do not want to see you forfeit it.” The plump old man bit his lower lip as if he was unsure of whether to continue. “I do not deny that it is a great honor to be invited to train in Hath’oolan by the Elmorr’Antiens. At best, only one Initiate every few turns of the seasons is invited. Yet be wary, a few who have gone before you have failed to return.” It seemed to Alant that the Sier wanted to say more, yet the old man turned and hurried from the room leaving Alant standing in stunned silence.

Some Initiates have failed to return?