Not so Eresken’s father. This was a sign, clear as the eruption bringing the contrary death of burning to so many starving at the icy turn of the year. He had the vision to see a testament to Misaen’s will, that they had been proved by this bitterest trial. This was the signal that time had come to leave their barren fields, the few sheltered valleys where stunted trees clung to life, the pitiless reaches of gravel and broken rock that ran up into the snow fields and glaciers that cloaked the mysterious heights. Once he had knit the empty lands of those cursed by Maewelin into a power to rule the Elietimm, it would be time to reclaim the lands of western plenty. Why else had he been granted the powers over wind and sea so long lost?
No longer was Eresken an unregarded junior in the rigid hierarchy of the keep. Now he had all the attention he could have desired and fully understood the paradox of being careful what one wished for, lest it be granted. To be claimed as his father’s son was to be schooled hard and long in the arts of true magic, to be trained in tactics and strategy, to be sent against rival clans when any opportunity offered itself or pretext could be claimed to cross a border, attack a stronghold, shed competing blood. Finally he had been set in the place that was rightfully his by birth, to defend his father’s shield arm or die in the attempt.
“Strike my stones, but you’re a boring lot, aren’t you?” Memories were pulled out, examined, tossed aside, Eresken raging helpless and wretched as ’Gren went searching for something to interest him, his disdain loud in the silence of recollection.
“If we are to cross the ocean to fight for our rights there, we will leave none behind who might stab us in the back.” His father’s oft-repeated words rang in Eresken’s mind, judgment on a neighboring fiefdom destroying it down to the last infant.
“Sound enough reasoning,” ’Gren’s voice sounded approving, a fleeting instant when his crushing grip relaxed.
“Who are you?” demanded Eresken, trying to drag himself free of the treacherous mire of recall. “How are you doing this?”
“Who knows? Who cares?” The looming threat all around him returned, ever more ominous. “You’re the one came into my head uninvited and now you get to take the consequences. I’m not going down without a fight!”
“But who are you?” raged Eresken, treacherous fear gnawing at him.
“Someone who’s had a shitload more fun out of life than you have, pal.” Scarlet fire shot through the darkness, assailing Eresken on all sides with bright visions that both terrified and perplexed him. The traitor’s brother was holding out a hand, urging him on as the two children explored every last nook and cranny of some remote fess. Memory jumped outside the walls, a furtive foray into the woods, following older brothers, uncles and father on a trapping expedition, nearly fatally lost in a sudden blizzard, only returning half frozen in the dawn light to hysterical women and a day’s slow warming in an outhouse. That last bit had been no fun, the two had concluded. They had to learn how to beat the cold and the weather in order to go farther afield the next time.
Recollection sprang down a dark cavern. Mines weren’t so cold and weather couldn’t reach them underground. That foolhardy premise died beneath the discovery that exhaustion was as insidious a potential killer as the cold, while rain on the surface half a day away could leave a bold youth exploring a cave up to his neck in water inside a few breaths. Fear a hair’s breadth from madness rang through Eresken’s mind, recollection of a dive through flooded tunnels, lungs aflame in the midst of icy water, the insane urge to take that killing breath of drowning. In the next instant, all terror was submerged in the maniacal laughter of the exultation of survival.
The pace of memory increased, intensity deepening as experience built on experience. Growth, responsibilities and a gathering realization of alienation. The first death, an accident in a wrestling match, cause for mild regret, but an awesome revelation all the same that he had such power in his own two hands. Eresken grew sick with panic at the memory of the Sheltya attempting to discipline this mind and the way it had made this madman determined never to suffer such invasion again. This defiance was something entirely beyond Eresken’s experience.
He flinched from vivid images of warfare, bloody set battles with army cutting army to pieces, smaller vicious skirmishes at night or from ambush. Comrades came and went, either to their deaths or getting out while still alive to spend their coin. All losses were regretted and none. In the mercenary life there were no restrictions, only freedoms. Orders were followed if agreeable, evaded if not. One brother relied on persuasive reasoning to avert disaster where possible, the other on physical resilience to get them both out of ever more hazardous situations.
Every death was held up to Eresken’s appalled gaze, a chilling chuckle echoing around and around him. ’Gren was amused by his captive’s reaction and piled horror on horror. Rivals were stabbed or beheaded in unexpected assault. Any enemy identified was murdered as soon as possible before they could launch their own attack. Gratifying deaths, these. Men were disemboweled in battle and bled out their life with unavailing curses and pleas; such deaths were not directly pleasurable, but welcome insofar as they brought loot and payment to spend on the parallel pleasures of women and gambling. Those fallen foul of the crude discipline of the battlefield were hanged from the nearest sturdy tree, bodies jerking in the throes of slow strangulation, deaths of no consequence.
Eresken felt his defenses crumbling beneath the unrelenting onslaught, sanctuary shrunk to a cramped desperation, vainly struggling to hold out against the contempt crushing him. He couldn’t feel the floor beneath his feet, the stone beneath his fingers, no sensation of breath rasped in his throat, no pulse of terror rang its beat through his body.
There was nothing but this shattering ridicule breaking him apart.
“You’re a coward, aren’t you?” the hateful voice continued in a conversational tone. “There’s nothing for you in the hand-to-hand, the kill-or-be-killed, the ultimate gamble. You fix the odds by messing with people’s minds. You’ll send folk to their deaths with your trickery but you don’t like to do the killing yourself. Now you’ve made a mistake because you’ve gambled more than you’re willing to lose, pal. You shouldn’t ever do that. You’re not really a killer, not truly, but I am, and that means you’re the one who’s going to die.”
The Teyvarekin,
18th of Aft-Summer
“You can let go of me.” I twisted vainly against Sorgrad’s iron grip. My wrists would carry the mark of his fingers long after I’d washed off ’Gren’s handprints.
“Drop the knife,” he commanded. “If anyone kills him, it’ll be me.”
I complied with difficulty, bloodless fingers numb. The blade with its oily smear of tahn clattered to the floorboards.
We stood still as statues on a shrine, me and Sorgrad poised, the Elietimm frozen, eyes empty hollows into the blackness of his heart, ’Gren motionless beneath a mask of blood, face slack, gaze of sunlit blue glazed over.
“If his eyes go black, it means they have him,” I warned Sorgrad, trying to watch both unmoving figures and find some weapon within reach all at the same time.
’Gren blinked sapphire eyes and I jumped as if I had been stuck with a brooch pin. “Are you all right?” The Elietimm slid down the wall. “Is he dead?” I demanded hoarsely.