The Sah'niir Read online

  Aria pirouetted, clumsily, though she was sure it was perfect, and jabbed her wooden sword at the air. Then she turned, jumped, slashed, and tumbled to her knee. She pretended that it was deliberate and rolled to complete the act.

  "Don't lock your elbow," Petra said from time to time, observing from nearby upon the largest of the rocks that studded the low, dry ridge. "Keep your knees soft."

  She corrected herself at every input, and for a while they came less frequently, but as the veiled sun set and the fire cast long, ghoulish shadows out from the surrounding trees, she started tripping more often. When she grew frustrated and tried to compensate for fatigue with force, sweeping her sword so hard she knocked herself off-balance and crumpled to the ground with a yelp, a hand came to rest gently upon her shoulder. She looked up as Petra crouched beside her, smiling softly, and ruffled her curls. "Very good."

  "No it wasn't," she huffed, ceasing her struggle to rise and slumping in defeat instead. She stabbed the wooden sword into the dirt beside her, but it toppled and landed with a pitiful thunk. She groaned and dropped her face into her hands.

  Petra smiled sadly and wrapped an affectionate arm around her. "Yes, it was. You have natural grace and a wonderful energy, Aria, you should be proud. You have surprising potential." She frowned and leaned closer as Aria mumbled something into her palms. "Yes, but everyone does. What counts is that you picked yourself back up every time. ...Yes, because you've worn yourself out. ...No, you didn't fail, you're tired. Aria," she lifted her chin and looked gravely into her huge, disappointed eyes, "listen to me: you did well. But you're not going to be perfect immediately. It took my father years to train me to this level, and I still have a long way to go before I could ever match up to him, so I practise all the time--"

  "Why?"

  Petra hesitated, startled by the question. "Because I want to serve his memory well."

  "No," Aria shook her head, a sudden solemnity pushing her frustration aside, "there's more. Revenge. That's why, isn't it? For your father?"

  She said nothing. Only smiled sadly. "That is part of it. And it's not an example you should seek nor follow. Aria, I know why you're doing this. But being protected isn't a weakness. Being able to protect yourself but not doing so out of fear is. No, hush. Having a sword on your hip, wood or steel, and being unable to wield it is as good as being unarmed. And it would have been foolish to try."

  Aria fell silent. She didn't move. She didn't look up from the ground or loosen her tightly pursed lips. She didn't even sigh. Petra considered her for a moment, then shuffled around to sit in front of her. She lifted the toy sword and turned it over in her hands, brushing the dirt from the blunt wooden edge. "This kind of skill isn't for vengeance," she announced. "It isn't for showing off and should never be taken lightly. Every time you lift a sword, you're handling a weapon - something intended to defend, to deter violence, and yet exquisitely designed for the physical purpose of causing harm. Do you understand that?"

  She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes in careful consideration. "I do."

  "Good. And do you understand that such a thing should only be used to defend and deter, and never for its physical purpose?"

  "Yes...but you fight, and not for defence or deturn - we saw you in the city."

  "Another example you're not to follow," she said quite sharply, "but I wasn't wielding it to cause pain. The purpose of a duel is to disarm or disable; I never aim to draw blood. I know my way around a blade, so I can afford to bend the rules, but only because I truly understand the intention beyond the physical function. Do you understand that?"

  "I do, I understand."

  "Good." She extended the toy sword, laid across both palms, and stifled a smile in favour of ceremony as Aria looked down at the hewn wood with new eyes. "Protect what's close to you. And practise. Expect to slip, anticipate it, and learn to recover from it. Work it to your advantage, and strengthen your balance against it. Don't try to be perfect. If you're perfect, you can't grow, you'll never be able to learn, and you'll fall against the first new tactic."

  Aria nodded and took the sword. Carefully. Reverently. She stared down at it for a long while. Petra watched her, and when she finally looked back up, her eyes were alight with a misty blue fire. But when she spun around to look eagerly towards her father, sitting beside the flames, her enthusiasm wilted. His back was half-turned and she could see the glint of the Zi'veyn in his hands. Of course. He wasn't watching. He hadn't seen any of it.

  Her shoulders rounded with a deflated sigh.

  Petra's brow furrowed sadly. "He has a lot on his mind."

  "He doesn't even realise I'm back. I hated being away from him, it was the very worst thing in the world! I didn't know what was going to happen, if I would even see him again...a-and I thought it would be the same for him..." She looked down at the sword through foggy eyes and all reverence vanished. She saw only a piece of wood. A toy. Her father's from when he was her age. Her bottom lip trembled. "He blames me for Ira's death."

  "No." Petra grasped her shoulder more fiercely than she'd intended, but she didn't loosen her grip as Aria let her curly locks slip and shadow her face. "Absolutely not. You know that isn't true. He missed you so much and he's over the moon that you're back, we all are, and no one blames you for anything. And neither should you. He has the weight of the world on his shoulders right now, and he's struggling with it, that's all this is."

  "He has Anthis's help," she mumbled, "how can he be struggling?"

  "...Because," she began, stifling her spite, "they're both struggling. Those two are the smartest among us and they're both working as hard as they can, but they're stuck. That's how complicated all this is. He is glad you're back, but this is also very important."

  "Yes. It is, isn't it?" Petra saw her lips twist into a lopsided pout. "I wish I could help. But I really don't know how."

  "Have you tried?"

  "What could I do?"

  "I think you'd be surprised. In any case, you should talk to him. Interrupt him. He could do with a distraction." Movement in the marsh beyond the ridge gripped Petra's gaze, but it was only Garon. She smiled sadly and looked back to the girl. "Grown ups have a habit of not knowing when to stop working. Then their brains either get frazzled and don't work properly, or they live for nothing else."

  "Really?"

  "Oh yes." She rose to her knees and pulled Aria up to her feet, then took her sword and slipped it through the belt she'd taken to wearing for such a purpose, catching the cross guard over the leather. Then she tidied her hair, held her at arm's length, cleaned a smear of dirt from her forehead, and grinned. "Now go. You have a job to do."

  Aria's enthusiasm waned. Slowing her approach, she peered around at him from the shadows instead. He didn't move, he didn't see her, and he had a peculiar look on his face as he stared through the elven artefact. She studied him for a while, debating whether or not it was a good idea to interrupt his thoughts after all, but one glance back towards Petra and her expectantly cocked eyebrow silenced her doubts.

  She stepped forwards and brazenly forced her way past the Zi'veyn, through his arms and down into his lap, where she leaned against him as though he was as comfortable as the armchair back home, making it quite impossible for him to miss her arrival.

  But thought was loath to release him; his eyes cleared as slowly as if she'd tapped him on the shoulder. But once they'd focused, the confusion in his questioning look fled. He sighed, set the Zi'veyn somewhat roughly on the ground and enveloped her tightly in his arms. "I've been ignoring you."

  "You have the weight of the world on your shoulders," she informed him, sinking contentedly into his embrace. "You and Anthis are the smartest among us and you're struggling. I understand. But you should expect to fail."

  "...Why thank you, little one."

  "That way," she continued obliviously, "you'll be able to grow and get better."

  "What are you talking about?"

  She wriggled out of his grip, and his
confused smile slackened at the maturity of her eyes as her gaze levelled gravely. "You're frightened by the Zi'veyn."

  "I am not!" He blurted.

  "I don't mean scared. I mean imitidated. And you're an elf, Daddy, you can't be imitidated by it."

  "Intimidated. And I'm not - and neither am I an elf."

  "You are," she informed him again, speaking far too surely. "But you can't let it push you around. It's like Oat: she trots around a lot, holding her beard high, but she's not as clever as she thinks she is. She's all bluster. But if you tell her what you want to do, she does it eventually, you just have to keep telling her and be really clear. Like sitting in her hay yourself, first. Or kneeling by the milking stool. Because she doesn't get it if you just sit on it and wait for her."

  "She does."

  "No, she thinks you're just sitting down. But she understands what you want her to do when you take the extra time to show her. It's just one extra step, but it makes all the difference, and makes her very un-intimitidating anymore."

  "You shouldn't keep playing to her whims."

  "I'm not - she's playing to mine. I get her to do what I want her to far quicker than she does for you."

  He grunted. "That's true. But even so, you let her push you around."

  "That's just what she thinks." Rathen laughed and ruffled her hair, and she smiled contentedly. She settled back against him. "I missed you. And also, the house was strange. My bedroom was upstairs. But there were lots of toys."

  "There were?"

  "Mhm. I liked the horse. Don't worry, I took good care of him."

  Another smile crept over Rathen's face as he recalled the stuffed canvas horse head stuck on the end of a polished walking stick and all the wildly unlikely adventures they'd had. "Artera."

  "His name was Beans, actually. And he had six feet. He made a lot of noise. Clippity-cloppity-clip, clippity-cloppity-clip."

  "That's seven feet."

  "Well...then seven feet! So he was even faster than I thought!" She grinned up at him, but his white face wasn't smiling. Hers slipped in disappointment. But just as a pout began to move into its place, she saw his eyes begin to widen and flick suddenly towards the Zi'veyn. Her jealousy was given no time to set in; something glittered within them, something that wasn't the flickering of the fire, and she jumped quickly aside as he lunged for it.

  "One extra step..." He muttered to himself, looking feverishly about and across the camp. "Magic," he said only a little louder, "I need...something..."

  Without a word, Aria scrambled away and hurried to the bags, returned in a heartbeat, and showed him the old stuffed doll she'd had for as long as she could remember. "Dance," she said as Anthis looked up from his scrolls at the commotion, and not a moment after she'd set it on the ground and Rathen had flexed his fingers, it moved. Its stumpy little arms pushed its stuffed little body to its stocky little legs, balancing well enough despite its oversized head and heavy, floppy woollen hair, and then, with surprising grace for such a rotund form, began dancing silently by the campfire. Thick shadows moved chaotically over the dirt and tufts of grass with every arabesque, sissone and cabriole, and Aria delighted in its weightless movements. Even Anthis peered closer in wonder.

  But then, all too soon, it ended. The doll fell limp and dropped lifelessly to the ground.

  Aria did not complain.

  She looked up and around to her father. Anthis followed her gaze.

  And Rathen stared, with eyes as wide as the moon, at the thorn-covered, onyx-gold, lotus crowned pyramid that hovered mutely between his hands.

  Chapter 14

  Moments after Petra's frenzied call, Garon appeared at the edge of the ridge, hauling himself swiftly up into the firelit camp, his blade at the ready. But his preparation crumbled to confusion when he discovered not a beast nor a stranger, but Rathen and Anthis each climbing onto their horses in the last brush of evening light, while Aria already sat keen in the front of the saddle.

  "What are you doing?" He demanded in a caged hiss while his eyes flicked about through the enshrouding darkness for whatever had provoked them. But the child, he quickly noticed, looked far too excited, and Anthis seemed to wear the same giddy expression if only slightly more restrained. Rathen bore nothing but urgency. Garon slowed and hesitated, his heart in his throat. "What's happened?"

  "He's done it."

  He stared, dumbfounded, as Petra grinned in disbelief. "What? How?"

  "He made Isabelle stop dancing!"

  "Who?" His frown creased deeper as Rathen tugged the reins and turned his horse about. "Where are you going?"

  "Back to the ruins."

  "Rathen, it's--"

  "With or without you, Inquisitor." Urging his horse into the closest thing to a gallop the treacherous ground would grant, the mage offered no other word nor chance as he sped past him to leap the three-foot ledge with Anthis close behind him.

  Garon cursed as they splashed into the marsh below and hurtled away into the night. He turned to fetch his own and race after their impulse with as much dignity and authority as he could, but found Petra already handing him the reins.

  "Go," she said, outwardly ignoring, as he did, the brushing of their fingers. "I'll stay here. Eyila's not far."

  He bolted straight off after them. It took only a moment to catch them up; their pace had been quickly hindered by the expansive puddles. "What happened?"

  "One more step," the mage replied, his eyes fixed ahead as hooves splashed through water and skeletal trees tried to snatch at them. "There was a missing link in the chain, the spell - I wasn't specifying where it was supposed to pull the magic from."

  "How could you overlook something like that?!"

  "I thought you said you'd tried that," Anthis said far more tactfully, but Rathen shook his head.

  "No. I'd tried telling it where to go, but I was too vague; I told the spell that the magic was there, but I hadn't specified where 'there' was. I'd assumed it would detect it since it was all around us, and why would I try to activate it if there was no magic around to use it on? But I tried the same thing on the doll while it was dancing and nothing happened - until I told it where the doll was. One extra step; kneel by the stool, lead it by the hand."

  Anthis and Garon exchanged a silent, quizzical look.

  They thundered on for twenty minutes before they reached the edge of the disembodied magic, and Rathen was quick to relocate its centre, refusing this time to be knocked back by its power. He dismounted before his horse had stopped, had the Zi'veyn in hand before his feet hit the ground, and as a look of concentration gripped his hard features, Anthis and Garon were behind him.

  Then he fell perfectly still. Their joint breath stalled in anticipation.

  No music wove through the dark forest, no pockets of light or strange activities. In the hours since they had last been there, nothing at all had changed. But still they searched while the mage remained a statue, hunting for anything that might hint at success, anything that might give them some means of measuring his progress. They heard sounds - the songs of nightlarks, the rhythmic movement of creatures in the water, the croaking of frogs - felt the brush of wind, saw shafts of ever-dominating starlight shift through the gathering clouds and thin canopy. Their hearts jumped whenever such phenomena ceased. But they were natural; they'd been there before the arrival of the magic, and announced themselves after their own.

  Truly, there was no way of knowing how far Rathen had come. The removal of so much magic surely wouldn't be quick, but they were left with not even a hint of how long they could expect to stand there, out in the open, in the dark of night, surrounded by shadows that could conceal any number of dangers, beast or human. Garon soon turned away and stared ardently through the blackness, hand resting readily on the hilt of his sword, and even Anthis put his acutely erudite eyes to use.

  It was only at the deepening of Rathen's breath that anyone returned him their attention, and found his eyes closed tightly beneath a fiercely knotted b
row. His knuckles, Anthis noted, were white, and the moon-bathed Zi'veyn was certainly not floating.

  The historian's shoulders slumped in disappointment, and Garon frowned between them. "What is it?" But neither replied; Rathen continued to strain against the relic, and Anthis merely shook his head.

  Garon grunted. So short and imperial, it was as though he'd expected the failure. Rathen bristled. The inquisitor turned and stepped back up into the saddle. "Let's go."

  "It should have worked."

  "Garon," Anthis stepped forwards, glancing carefully between them as the mage growled through his teeth, "it did work back in camp. Didn't it, Aria?"

  "It's true, Mister Inquis'tor, it did! It really did!"

  "But it hasn't worked now. When it counts." He met the black gaze Rathen turned over his shoulder. The danger didn't shake him. He held his stare with the same infernal authority. "Petra and Eyila are still at camp. We need to get back. Make no mistake, Rathen, I congratulate you on your victory. You've made progress. But it's clear that there are still kinks to work out and you're not going to succeed tonight. We will head back to camp, and you - both of you - will rest. You can continue work in the morning. But not here."

  Long black hair flicked in a whirlwind as Rathen snapped around. "How am I going to get anywhere if we keep leaving these places behind?!"

  "Need I remind you we are being hunted? We can't remain still. There are, unfortunately, plenty of places you can test your theories along the way, but we must keep moving. From one to the next. Otherwise, if Salus catches us, we're finished, and it won't matter any longer if you can stop dolls from dancing or not." He jerked on the reins and turned his horse away, brushing off the searing glare. "We're leaving."

  Puddles had turned to murky pools and the soft, squelching, spidering ground interlaced between them had become like the threads of a fish net, forcing them into single file. Wherever they broadened enough to ride two abreast, ghostly silver birch trees had taken root to ensure the way remained obstructed, while grey-skinned frogs and small, swift rodents disturbed the countless sky's reflections as they fled the hooves that slipped into the muck with every few steps.