Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One (6 page)

The next morning, Sheft dragged the box of his woodcarvings out from under the angle of the eaves in his loft and examined the household items inside. They were serviceable enough, but too plain. He decided to add a leaf design on the spoon handles and on the matching bowl. There’d probably be lots of children at the fair, so he’d make a few toys—little animals with features painted on. They could be set on wheels and pulled along with a string.

He liked this last idea, so as the evenings grew longer, he carved several mice with round noses, ducks with open beaks, and then a smiling bee for Mariat. In the meantime, the path to Moro’s fieldhold became well-worn.

His world was much brighter now, but his mother seemed to be living in an increasingly dreary one. She didn’t search the skies anymore and hardly ever spoke. After chores one day he told her he was going to Moro’s house to take Mariat the bee he had finished. Riah sat at the kitchen table, her eyes distant.  

“Invite her for dinner,” she said, much to Sheft’s surprise. “I will make rabbit stew.”

Their family dinners were desultory affairs, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to subject Mariat to that, but he didn’t have the heart to discourage his mother’s effort to break her somber silence. “We’ll help you chop carrots,” he said, not too confident that the dinner would actually appear.

“No need.” She moved her hand into a spot of sun on the table and stared at it. “It’s a beautiful day.”

With Mariat’s bee in hand, he set out over the fields. A warm west wind tossed the hay, which was ripe and waiting to be cut. Perhaps tomorrow, if the weather cooperated. He scanned the sky and saw a few high, thin clouds coming over the Riftwood. Among them soared a falcon. One of truly enormous size, which he remembered having seen before.

#   #   #

It had been on a hot summer day when he was six. He’d gone down to where a little creek called the Wysher tumbled down from the southern hills and joined the Meera in its shallow, stately course. A thin boy about his own age—one he’d seen at the play-place by the mill—was splashing around a small sandbank that had formed where the creek met the river.

This was Sheft’s favorite spot because he could stand with one foot in the cold Wysher water and the other in the warmer Meera. Now someone else had found it. 

The intruder looked up and saw him. His eyes widened, and then he waved his arms in a curious way.

Puzzled, Sheft did nothing.

“Eel eyes!” the boy shouted.

“Cow eyes!” Sheft retaliated.

“Pee head!”

“Dung hair!”

Frowning, the boy pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. “Hey, wait a minute. You can see.”

“What? Of course I can see.”

“Well, don’t look right at me like that. Your eyes are creepy.”

“All right.” Sheft lowered his gaze.

“Gwin said eyes like yours can’t see, except maybe shadows. Just like babies can’t really see until their eyes turn brown.”

“That’s not true. I can see as good as anybody and maybe better.”

“Prove it.”

Sheft looked around, then in the sky above the Riftwood. “Do you see that bird way up there?”

The boy shaded his eyes and squinted. “You mean that little speck? It’s a sparrow.”

“No, it’s a giant falcon, and it’s higher than you think. Can’t you see the grey and white stripes under the tail?”

“You’re just making that up.”

“I am not! Once it flew over our barn, and I saw it up close. Its wings are big, way bigger than this.” He spread his arms wide.

The other thought a moment. “You know, that would be big enough to carry off my little sister. Then I wouldn’t have to watch her anymore.”

“Are you supposed to be watching her now?”

“I guess,” the boy said, looking around. “She was here a minute ago. Oh, there she is.”

A little girl, maybe three years old, had just launched a leaf into the water nearby. She straightened and stared at him.

Sheft tensed and averted his eyes. He didn’t want her to burst into tears or run away.

She did neither. After the first long, unblinking appraisal of him, she turned back to her play, as if he were a normal person.

“That’s Mariat,” the boy said, “and I’m Etane. Let’s sit in the water.”

They stripped down to their small-cloths and settled down in the shallows. Minnows soon appeared and began picking bubbles off their legs. Sheft tried and failed to catch one, then lowered an arm into the water to see if they’d come to it too. Etane searched among stones for water-bugs, occasionally calling to his sister to take something or other out of her mouth.

“Why,” Etane suddenly asked him, “are you so ugly?”

Sheft scooped up some pebbles and pretended to study them. “I don’t know.”

“Pro’ly because you’re a foreigner.” Etane thought for a moment. “Do demons really talk to you?”

“What’s a demon?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Something bad, from how Gwin talks.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t listen to him so much.”

Mariat came wading up, clutching a wet, silver-colored stone. “Lookit,” she said to Sheft, holding it up to her eye. “Pretty eye. Like you’s.”

Etane guffawed. “He’s got fish-eyes, Mariat. Ugly!”

The little girl didn’t know any better, Sheft thought, but still he was pleased. She wandered off, and he lay back on his elbows in the water. He looked past Etane and idly scanned the edge of the Riftwood across the river. He caught sight of something, and his heart lurched. From out of the brush, a face covered with dead leaves grinned at him. It was Wask, emerging from his nightmares and into broad daylight. He sat up with a splash.

“Hey!” Etane grinned and splashed back.

The face resolved into a tangle of leaves and shadows.

Relief washed over him and Sheft found himself in the middle of a water-fight. It ended only when Mariat, who had been splashing with gusto, stumbled up to her waist in a hole, panicked, and had to be rescued. After things settled down, he and Etane sat in the water again while Mariat brought handfuls of sand and dumped them over Sheft’s foot. Etane glanced at him with a dark I-have-a-secret look. “You want to hear something my dad told me?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anything scary—his dreams were scary enough—but he couldn’t help but ask, “What?”

“Something that happened last spring. You know, that time when the Groper came out?”

Across the river, dark tree branches stirred in the breeze, like the feelers of giant, blind insects trying to detect his blood. He knew. But he could never tell Etane about it.

The other boy continued his story. “Well, a few days after that, there must’ve been a rain up north, and something got washed down the Wind-gate.” That was a usually dry, boulder-filled gully that came out of the Riftwood just past the village. Etane leaned toward him, his eyes big.

“And that something was
bones
.”

“Bones!”

“That’s what Gwin and Voy found. Bones, my Dad said, of a ‘squat, man-like creature.’”

Could these creatures, Sheft wondered, have something to do with the far-off cries he heard? Maybe—the idea rasped over his spirikai—these creatures were hurting people. “Do you ever hear, uh, voices coming from there?” He nodded toward the Riftwood.

“
Human
voices?”  

“Well, yes.”

“Where’ve you been?” Etane asked incredulously. “Humans don’t live in the Riftwood.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess they wouldn’t.”

“You don’t really hear voices, do you?” Etane drew back from him and wrinkled his nose. “Are you crazy or something?”

“I’m not anything! I was just asking.” It was time to change the subject, so he said the first thing that came into his head: “I hate emptying the night-pot.”

“I do too. My mother always fusses when I spill any, even a little.”

They continued to discuss chores they particularly disliked until Etane suddenly jumped to his feet. “I’ve got to show you something. My dad likes to play Double-sides, and he won this most amazing horse. C’mon and see.” 

Their route to his house took them past a lone black boulder that stood between the river and the edge of the fields. It was called The Palm, but Tarn said it had another, older name—the K’meen Arûk. The rock was about as high as a man’s waist, one stride long, and relatively flat. Nothing grew around it, and not even snakes would sun themselves on it. There was a depression on top where rainwater collected. As the water dried up, it left behind a reddish, foul-smelling slime. The three of them gave it wide berth.

“My dad told me that rock is the palm of the Groper’s hand,” Etane said. “A long time ago, the priestess used to put eyes in there.”

“Eyes!” Sheft wondered if he had heard aright.

“People’s eyes,” Etane said with relish, “for the mist to eat. On certain nights the Groper still comes here, looking for eyes. Even though we have the Rites.”

An uneasy feeling coiled through his spirikai. “What are these Rites?”

“I’m not sure. We won’t find out ‘til we’re eighteen.” 

Mariat, who had been holding her brother’s hand as they walked, now took Sheft’s. In spite of the foreboding that had settled over him, her little hand in his gave him a warm feeling. Someone had come to him, in trust, for protection.

When they got to Etane’s house, a large man whose shirt bulged over his stomach was standing outside the barn, brushing down the biggest horse Sheft had ever seen. As they approached, the man turned to stare at him. Sheft tensed and lowered his eyes. 

“We made a new friend, Dad,” Etane announced, and Mariat pulled Sheft forward. “See hosie,” she explained.

Sheft glanced up to see the man’s grin. “Well, new friend. I’m Moro. This here ‘hosie’ is Surilla. Not the prettiest girl around, but a stronger plow-horse than any of the villagers own.” He ran his hand over the mare’s sleek brown neck. “This one’s actually going to earn us a few coppers. I’m going to rent her out for plowing. It’s time someone gives Delo’s ox a little competition.” He scratched his round chin and then told them a curious thing.

“This mare can be guided with three magic words. If you want her to go left, you say
eechareeva.
Right is
as
, and forward is
ista.
Now isn’t that a marvel!” He set both boys on Surilla’s back—Mariat was too little—and let them try it out.

Sheft was amazed. The mare was a wonderful beast and brought to his mind the mighty steeds pictured in the red book of tales. After Etane’s mother Ane made them lunch and had settled Mariat down for her nap, Sheft decided to show the book to Etane, even though he knew he shouldn’t. Books were valuable objects, so Riah kept it out of his reach on the mantle. It had a strange name: the
Tajemnika
. This meant, his mother said, “Regarding the Heart
.
”

Back at Sheft’s house, he dragged a chair over to the fireplace. First wiping his hands on his pants—fortunately so, for they left a grimy stain—he climbed up, retrieved the heavy book, and took it to the kitchen table. It was bound in thick, red leather, and contained not only stories, but also pictures. Etane’s mouth fell open in awe at the sight of them. 

One showed a man standing with his back to a field in which children played among lacy-leaved flowers. The man looked sad, and the scene behind him was drawn in faint lines, as if the man were remembering a happier time, long gone. Could this man be one of those people whose cries the wind brought?

The next page was covered by a complicated picture of many parts, done, amazingly, in colors. But it was a terrible picture. At the bottom a village was engulfed in red and yellow flames, and was surrounded by short, boar-men with bows and arrows. Above this were blue wavy lines meant to be a river, and then big wooden gates of a fortress built into a cliff. Dark green ivy climbed all over the walls, but on top of the cliff grew rows and rows of strange plants that bristled with prickly leaves and stems. Their flowers were evil-looking—purple and hairy and far too big—and spiders crouched among them. At the top of the page stood a crowned man, and people knelt before him. Sheft looked closely at the man’s face, and a chill ran down his arms.

He had no eyes.

A shadow fell over the book. Sheft looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway.

“Uh,” Etane said quickly, “
he
took the book down. I never touched it!”

“But first I wiped my hands!”

His mother sat down across from them and, to his relief, Sheft saw she was his real mother, and not angry. “Some of these stories are not for children to read,” she said. “They’re written in Widjar and tell about another place and a tragic time.”

Etane told her about the magic words that Surilla obeyed, and they turned out to be Widjar too. Seeing his mother’s good mood, Sheft asked her to read them a story, and she agreed.  Etane grinned, his eyes shining with expectancy, and the two boys gathered close around Riah.