Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (49 page)

             
Another miracle of the system was that it made use of those whose possessed the gifts to use simple magic, but whose mind could not encompass the ultimate truth of things. Those
barely gifted
used to lead terrible lives, attempting on their own to explore their talents, usually until they killed themselves or fell to the black mind.

             
“This is drawn on a Trenboni account,” he said to her offhandedly. “Are you a Trenboni Uman?”

             
She shook her head. That would be too obvious. Within her glamour, she opened her peasant-girl eyes up wide and put on the dumbest look she knew. “No, goodsir, I am from the city of Eldador and was paid by a woman to clean dumpsters.”

             
“Dumpsters?” the man looked skeptical, holding up the bag.

             
It would be like a male with a small job like this to use it for sexual favors. She pushed out her lower lip and let her eyes well.

             
He gave her the gold with a laugh. She put on a grateful look.

“You know,” he said, “I used to keep my gold in a jar, buried by a tree, and I used to check it every week.
Once someone saw me and they stole my gold—then I had nothing.”

             
“I kept mine in the ticking of my mattress,” Glynn said. “Thank you, goodsir.”

             
She left and returned to where she had left Jack waiting, at a tavern on a street corner not far from the bank. He sat at a round table, his back to a wall, a wooden mug of beer before him and the dog at his feet. She sat beside him, kissed his cheek as a girl familiar with him would.

             
He looked surprised. “What was that?”

             
She did the little-girl look. “But goodsir, would you not expect this of your Uman girl?”

             
Jack laughed. “Want a beer, then?”

             
She nodded, and batted her eyes. “If I may, goodsir,” she said.

             
He raised his hand for the waitress. Glynn leaned forward as she had seen commons do at bars.

             
“This entertains you?” she asked.

             
Jack nodded. “Better than watching the grass grow, I suppose.”

             
She frowned. “And you discuss your ideas, your philosophies?” she asked.

             
“I suppose,” he said. “Exchange ideas, opinions.”

             
“To what end?” Glynn asked. “You discuss issues you can barely change. You may share you views—”

             
Jack waved her question off, as rude as any other Man, and drank from his mug. Glynn tasted of her own bitter brew, wondering how the commons withstood it.

             
“You can talk and share opinions even when you can’t change things,” Jack said. “It makes you feel like you control your life. I don’t suppose you would understand.”

             
Glynn counted herself a rare enchantress, younger than her peers, learning a discipline whose methods had always been the province of males.

             
“I understand,” she admitted. “Perhaps better than you know.”

             
They sat quiet for an uncomfortable minute, and each drank.

             
Jack cleared his throat. It wasn’t in the race of Men to keep their own company.

             
“Should we check on Zarshar?” he asked.

             
Glynn shook her head. They had rented a loft above the stable where they kept Little Storm, and hidden Zarshar up there. “He has been fed, he sleeps now,” she said.

             
Another uncomfortable pause.

             
“They worship the god Power,” Jack said, matter-of-factly.

             
Glynn couldn’t help thinking how inane this seemed.

             
She sighed. “It was believed for a very long time they were the Cheyak,” she said, and sipped the bitter beer. “But they are creatures no different than the Slee, and they are of Power.”

             
“Were they around when the Cheyak ran things?” Jack asked.

             
Glynn looked him in the eye. “I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “What literature we have of the Cheyak does not mention them.”

             
Jack frowned, as Men will do when pensive. “But the Cheyak worshipped the same gods as you do,” he said.

             
She didn’t understand why he would even ask that. “The gods are the gods,” she said.

             
“But they don’t all have a chosen people,” Jack pressed her.

             
She shook her head. A child might ask such questions, but then isn’t the child a beginner in this world, much as Jack?

             
“There are some races that favor some gods, but more often there are types of people who look for a god’s favor in his or her everyday life,” she said. “So the thief looks to Eveave, the warrior to War, the farmer to Life and the fisherman to Water.”

             
“And up north, there are Dwarves,” Jack said.

             
She nodded. “They are Earth’s chosen.”

             
“And the Herd that Cannot be Tamed is sacred to Life,” Jack said.

             
She nodded. He had some knowledge, anyway. He had clearly been thinking of this.

             
“Where I’m from,” Jack said, “we had Druids a long time ago. They lived in a place called Europe, and they worshipped nature—natural things.”

             
Glynn considered that, taking a delicate sip from her mug, then putting it down and running her index finger along the moist rim. She’d seen commons do this, as well, especially females with males they liked. Oddly, it made her feel sexual somehow—Jack clearly noted it.

             
“Those here are no different,” she informed him. “They worship what they call ‘the Trinity,’ of Weather, Water and Earth—arguably the gods of nature.”

             
Jack frowned again. “When we refer to our one God,” he said, “we refer to a Trinity, but that is different manifestations of the same God.”

             
“So it seems there are parallels between your religious beliefs and theirs,” Glynn noted.

             
“That may be—and that’s disturbing,” Jack said. “Do you know what the odds are of two groups growing up independently like that, having similar beliefs?”

             
“The odds?” Glynn asked. “I don’t know this word.”

             
Jack sighed. He expected her to explain everything to him, yet when it came his turn, he became quickly exasperated.

             
He launched into a dissertation on what odds were, leaving her to think of gambling, which made more sense. In the end she had to agree the coincidence of these Druids seems somewhat incredible.

             
“That makes me wonder,” Jack admitted.

             
She smiled. “And what do you wonder?” she asked.

             
At that moment they were fed, and Jack tore into his meal as any child of Man could be expected to. He didn’t bring up the topic again and Glynn considered herself glad to be done with it.

Chapter Twenty-Seven:

              They Came and they Saw

              “You’re Henekh’s son,” the older man said. He had a decade on Jerod, hair shot with gray, weather beaten skin and a jaw rough with stubble. Squint lines framed his probing brown eyes as he scanned Jerod’s face. He had a look like he’d already been cheated.

             
Jerod counted fifteen warriors with him, all armed with belaying pins. Not most men’s weapon of choice, but maybe not so out of place in a wharf, Jerod thought. They’d be easy to hide, easy to use, and they didn’t leave a bloody mess.

             
Jerod knew of gangs that went out at night and way laid travelers, beating them unconscious and selling them to captains, mostly pirates, who needed to fill out their crews. Out to sea, you learned a job and did it, or you found yourself cut up for bait. Those men would prefer short wooden clubs like these to swords.

             
Jerod could draw his sword faster than the first of them could hit him, but he didn’t think he could take fifteen ready to fight.

             
“What of it?” he snarled. He turned to put three men behind him. They stood in clumps, not circling him; meaning he could run between some of them and avoid the fight if he had to.

             
The old man put the pin in his belt and held up his hands, palms toward Jerod. “No offense, no offense,” he said. “We are countrymen, although I am from Volka, not Teher. You and I have a common friend, I think.”

             
“Oh?” Jerod had no intention of letting his guard down. He listened intently for the soft steps behind him that would tell him that the rush was on.

             
“You knew him as Lupus the Conqueror,” the man said. “I called him, ‘Mordy.’ Never knew that it wasn’t his first name.”

             
Jerod looked the man up and down, then turned his head and spat. “You weren’t a Wolf Soldier,” he said, matter-of-factly.

             
Jerod could spot a Wolf Soldier a mile away, even a retired one, not that there were many. They stood straighter than regular men. They looked right into people’s eyes, as Lupus did. They never strayed far from a weapon; either a pike, a long sword or a short stabbing one, depending on the job they did.

             
And they walked with that timed step that Lupus drilled into them from the first day they signed on. These men moved like…

             
“We’re sailors,” the old man said. “I’m Forn, and I was captain of the
Sprite
until she went down just north of here. We walked in and ain’t had no luck since.”

             
“So how do you know the E—”, Jerod began, and caught himself. “How do you know Lupus?”

             
No sound behind him, the men from in back had started circling around to get a look at his face. If they’d planned an ambush, they might have changed their minds.

             
“We ported him from Volka to Trenbon,” Forn said. He shook his head and spat—a loose gob with more spray than anything else. The man had no teeth.

             
“Almost lost the
Sprite
right there, damn him,” Forn continued. “He was a traveling emer-sary, or some such thing, and he didn’t tell no one. That made carrying him—”

             
“Illegal, I know,” Jerod interrupted. Volkan sailors were notorious chatterboxes, and this one was no exception. Before the rise of Eldador and the Daff Kanaar, they had moved most of the commerce on Tren Bay.

Daff Kanaar shipping moved more, charged less and any nation that interfered with them risked the attention of Daff Kanaar.
That made them about the safest shipping anyone could choose. Volkhydran ships suddenly found new opportunities in the islands past the shores of Dorkan, and with them new calamities.

“So you have no ship,”
Jerod said, and spat. His was cleaner.

“No,” Forn said, “though if y
er lookin’ for some good men…”

Jerod
let the smile cross his face. It felt good.

* * *

Slurn had never been to the Salt Wood before. He found it dry, filled with unfamiliar smells and unfamiliar prey, some of which he could barely hunt, and some of which he ran down almost too easily.

In the swamp, he could just lay in the muck and know everything he needed about the world around him.
Here he had to use his eyes, his nose, his mind. Here things moved in straight lines along the ground, himself included, making his hunting style difficult.

The thing the others had called ‘rabbit’ still clung to the spaces between his teeth.
He’d had to remove its bones—they were brittle and thick and could not be easily digested. He waited here, unwilling to enter the city they called ‘Kor,’ rank with the stink of Men and Uman. The Salt Wood pressed almost to the city walls, branches scraping her towers, beasts and beings both finding means in and out of the city other than its battered gates.

The female had asked him to do this, in her way.
He found the race of Men horrifying to look at—all angles and hair, smelling foul and tasting worse. It was odd for him to see this one and have the mating desire, but he could not help what he felt, and he felt this one would, if she were a Slee, be his, if she would have him.

As it was, there was no possible way for that to be, yet he felt the contentment with her that one feels with a mate.
When she had been threatened, he had killed for her. She had rewarded him with a stroke of his snout that had sent his heart racing.

He’d crossed the Andaran plains, the Iron Mountains and the Eldadorian nation to find her, knowing her on site, and then followed her further until he’d seen her stand against a Swamp Devil and humble it.
Then he’d known, he’d felt it in the cold depths of his heart, his destiny had been crossed to hers, that together they would do something unique and important.

Now he waited in a dry, foul place, where he found water scarce and food vile, because she didn’t dare walk beside him into a city filled with Men and Uman.
Now he watched the sun set through slitted eyes, from beneath a pile of leaves and mud, and pined for that which, a year before, he might have eaten.

Contemplating the unreality of these thoughts, he felt on the scales of his belly the tell-tale tromp of creatures he had come to know all-too-well in the Slee Nation.
He turned his snout to the north and waited, barely breathing, then to the south, doing the same.

The south
—they came from the south, definitely. As stealthy as a whisper, he slithered southward to investigate.

He marveled at his own anger now
—his instinct to protect her. If, in the days it would take him to know for sure, he discovered what he expected, then she would need protecting.

* * *

The candle’s flicker in the dark could hypnotize—a red and yellow teardrop balanced on the point of a candle’s wick. It stood between the two women, one of the race of Men, and the other an Aschire.

“The flame is the vortex,” Nina told her.
“The flame is the gate. It doesn’t exist anywhere, and yet it produces light and heat in all of the places it doesn’t touch.”

Raven’s knowledge of what flame actually was tended to interfere when Nina went on like this.
Spiritually, maybe flame was a vortex and didn’t really exist. Scientifically it was the result of a very predictable chemical reaction that—”

The flame expanded and swallowed half the wax on the candle.
The flash had her seeing spots.

Nina looked exaspe
rated. “You really need to not do that,” she complained.

“I did that?” Raven
asked. Her vision blurred, then refocused.

“Of course you did it,” Nina said.
“I didn’t do it—you think it did that itself?”

They knelt alone in a hotel room that they both shared.
The cramping in her knees told Raven they’d been doing it a long time.

“How
—why?”

Nina sighed.
“You are focused,” she said.

“Yes.”

“When you focus, your energy is right there,” Nina said, indicating the flame. “It is a winged animal you have in the palm of your hand.”

Raven considered that, imagined it
—this flame bird that could sit in her hand.

The flame in the candle immediately took on the shape, exactly as she imagined it.
She watched it, both knowing she was creating it and surprised it existed at all.

Nina shook her head.
“Fine—yes, like that.”

“I didn’t mean to do that!” Raven protested.

“You did,” Nina countered. “But you aren’t controlling your thoughts and your emotions. You’re focused on the flame, and now the flame is of you. If you don’t want the flame any more, then release it.”

She thought about that.
The flaming bird was beautiful. It looked at her and tilted its head, flame dripping from the ends of its wings. It devoured the candle, and soon it would be scorching the table.

She forced her mind to release it, to let its energy dissipate.
She thought about the heat being gone, the light being gone, the popping like a soap bubble.

Wrong allegory
—the flame flew from the candle. Nina contained it with her own energy. The bubble that contained the energy she had released touched the tip of her nose.

“Not like that,” Nina told her.

“No,” Raven agreed. She shook her head, and the flame was gone. In a second they were in the dark.

“Like that.”

* * *

             
“Is that it?” Jack asked her, pointing to the horizon.

             
Glynn nodded. She looked to her left, where the Swamp Devil ran doggedly on, its tongue lolling, its body wet with sweat. This Little Storm proved to be a remarkable animal, its endurance flowing like a river from it, pounding out the miles one after the other with no need for a rest. He own horse lagged alongside of it.

             
As amazing was the Swamp Devil running beside them. Without complaint or query the Black Adept, Zarshar, ran the same miles as the horses at the same speed.

             
“Zarshar,” she said, gently. “You have triumphed, Sirrah. That is the Lone Wood, as I know it.”

             
Zarshar’s red eyes looked out to the horizon, then back down. He didn’t respond and she couldn’t fault him. Each kept his or her own company until they achieved their goal and stood before the dense line of trees that abruptly marked the haven of the Druids.

             
Jack dismounted and, as ever, reached his hands up to her, to lower her to the ground. With his exertions, the Swamp Devil put his hands on his knees, panting, and just watched them.

             
As for the dog, it ranged tirelessly behind and before them. As often as they had outdistanced it, it had found them when they rested. Only rarely had Jack thought to pull it up beside him on Little Storm’s back, and then she had whined until he had let her back down.

             
Little Storm didn’t seem bothered by the animal or its weight. Of course, Jack had lost so much himself the horse might not have noticed the addition of the dog.

“I
’ll rest before we enter,” Zarshar said simply. There was a haunch in a bag over his shoulder. He stood and pulled the strings open with his back to them before they could answer him.

             
“Is it safe to get wood from there?” Jack asked her, indicating the trees. “There looks like plenty of deadwood.”

             
Glynn shrugged. They needed to know how well the wood was protected. “Don’t touch anything living,” she said. “And don’t start your fire where the smoke will enter the forest.”

             
Jack nodded and walked directly into the wood. The dog stood at the forest’s edge, whining for the Man and wagging its tail. Glynn remained between her own mount’s and Little Storm’s head, her eyes pointed at Jack but her mind already focused on the wood, sniffing for anything that might be a welling of power.

             
She had been here before, decades ago, with her father. The Lone Wood existed as a place of raw energy, and so she had needed to see it as a part of her early training.

             
Jack’s only problem seemed to be the plentiful scrub, soon encumbering his arms in a load that reached to his beard. He exited quickly, raising his nose to the wind to feel its direction on its face.

             
“Wind’s blowing east,” he said. “I’m going to go back north twenty yards.”