Yerin struck the lowest circle easily, the second a little slow, and her third blow was knocked aside by a wooden hand.
All the previous eight dummies, which had remained lit until then, dimmed slowly as though the light leaked out of them.
She stood there panting, glaring at her wooden enemy, and Lindon thought the red rope around her waist had brightened from dark red to the pure crimson of fresh blood.
Finally, she screamed, her Goldsign striking forward and taking the dummy's head.
She didn't look at Lindon or excuse herself, dropping to the floor right there and beginning to cycle. Her cheeks and throat were flushed with anger, her scars standing out in stark contrast to her red skin.
Lindon was already walking to a box in the corner, which was filled with replacement heads. They'd picked up some extra wood on one of their landings, and every time Fisher Gesha said he needed practical experience, he hollowed one out and filled it with the simple scripts and basic constructs the dummies needed to function.
The outer scripts and core constructs of each dummy were all unique, but the heads were the same, which fortunately made them easy to replace.
He screwed it on—the original wood was lighter than the replacement, and he would need to carve a target circle onto it. He pulled out a short-bladed knife to start, but Eithan threw open the door.
“Twenty-one seconds is fairly good,” Eithan said with a broad smile. “Now, if you'd gotten below twenty seconds, then you'd have done something.”
Lindon bowed, accepting what little compliment there was. After weeks of working with Eithan, he'd started to realize exactly how high the Underlord's standards were. If he used a technique to blow a hole in the moon, Eithan would ask why he hadn't taken care of the sun, too.
“As for you, Yerin...” She didn't open her eyes at Eithan's words, apparently still cycling, but Lindon was sure she was listening. He'd gotten to know her better over the last few weeks too.
“...you're still trying to get your Remnant to guide you. You’re making things harder for yourself.”
“He’s talking to me,” Yerin said stubbornly, eyes still closed. “If I could hear him clear, I’d be two stages stronger by now.”
Eithan’s smile was filled with pity, as though he looked down on a dying old woman. “No will of your master remains in the Remnant. You’re hearing impressions that echo from his remaining memories.”
“It’s him, so I’m listening.”
“The easiest way to reach Highgold is to break down your Remnant for power. You are staring at a feast from afar while wondering why you’re so hungry. All other paths to Highgold are—”
She bounded to her feet, cutting him off. “I’m not going to bury his voice. You know how much of his teaching I’d be giving up? You think you can make up for that? Are you a Sage?”
“If only I were,” Eithan said calmly. “It would solve many of my problems.”
She stepped forward, glaring up at his chin. “A Sage’s Remnant can do things you can’t imagine. I’m telling you, he’s in there, and he’ll get me to Highgold in a snap.”
Eithan placed two fingers on her forehead and slowly pushed her back until she was standing an arm’s length away. “The path from Lowgold to Highgold is learning to use more than the excess energy your Remnant provides you. You normally break down the Remnant itself for power, digesting its skills and its madra. There are other ways past Lowgold, certainly, but this is the most direct path.”
Her face reddened even further, her Goldsign drew back as though to strike, but Eithan continued with his tone and smile still friendly. “We have time. Perhaps you’ll choose to feed on your master’s Remnant, or perhaps you’ll find another way. Or you could do neither, and Lindon and I will leave you behind.”
Lindon flinched. He had been perfectly happy to stay out of that conversation. For the past four weeks, Yerin had ranted about Eithan’s instruction and how he didn’t understand her master like she did.
Eithan clapped his hands together. “All right! Let's leave your failures and inadequacies aside for the moment. Even now, we are arriving at our destination. You should clean yourselves and join me in the sitting-room, because I suspect you'll want to see this.”
Eithan left Lindon and Yerin behind, which suspended them in silence as they toweled off and packed up.
“It's less than easy to keep a Remnant under control,” Yerin said after two minutes of quiet.
“I can't even imagine,” Lindon said honestly. Someday he would, though. He looked forward to it.
“I am trying. My master knows how to reach Highgold without cracking into his Remnant, I just need to hear what he’s telling me.”
Sometimes Yerin spoke like this when she needed to bounce ideas off Lindon, even when he had no clue what she was talking about. He usually nodded and let her work it out aloud.
But he could tell the difference between needing a sounding board and needing encouragement.
“You're pushing against Highgold, and you're complaining that it's too slow?” Lindon asked, exaggerating his surprise. “You're disappointed because you're not a Highgold by...sixteen summers? Seventeen?”
She shrugged. “Thereabouts. The count gets a little thrown off for a while.”
“And you’re not just a Gold! You were hand-selected by the Sword Sage himself! Compared to Eithan…” He hesitated, because he wasn’t sure how powerful the Sword Sage was. He’d never heard of the man until Suriel had mentioned him as Yerin’s master.
“He was much stronger than an Underlord,” she said quietly.
“Underlords and Sages are fighting over you. It wasn’t until this year that I could push an eight-year-old Copper off his feet, while you could carve your way through a mountain with a dull spoon.”
“I have more than one reason why I can’t just drift merrily along,” she said, but a smile had started to creep onto her face. “You don't have to polish me up, you know. I'm just venting smoke.”
Lindon tucked the parasite ring into his pack, making sure all the pockets were closed and fastened before he hoisted it onto his shoulder. “I'm not ‘polishing’ anything. The heavens opened up and showed me visions of all the greatest people on the planet, people who can wrestle dragons and strike down armies. Then they brought me to you. You’re all so far above me you might as well be stars.”
The words hung in the air for a moment before he heard them, and then some heat rose into his cheeks. He didn't look away, though.
Yerin gave him a lopsided smile, and this one sunk into his memory: her smile, the thin scars standing out against her skin, her black hair mussed from training so it didn’t look straight anymore.
“That has a sweet sound to it, now you've said it,” she said at last. The instant passed, and she turned to open the door onto the screaming wind. “Heavens never came down to show me anything, and that's the truth.”
Eithan stopped in his tracks even as the front windows filled with crags of black stone: Shiryu Mountain, the peak where the last of the dragons had gone to die. He'd intended to leave the children to their little moment—they would need to trust each other even more than they trusted him, and trust was always built on small, personal moments—but a phrase caught his ear, carried to him on threads of power.
The heavens opened up and showed me...
He tended to smile by default, but now his grin stretched his lips to the breaking point. He'd wondered. From the first glimpse of that little glass ball in Lindon's pocket, the one with the steady blue flame, he'd wondered. Some of the boy's comments, some of his actions, had made him more and more certain.