Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (50 page)

“That was the first, do I have any
potential?” Elizabeth asked, knowing quite well her throw was
good.

“Potential!” Again she looked at Elizabeth
strangely, “Why don’t you try it again.”

“All right,” she answered and let fly with
another throw, again letting the memory of Poison’s throw flow
through her mind and reflexes. The knife flew true and
struck
the tree a foot from its
predecessor.

Poison walked to the tree and pulled the two
knives free, deep in thought.

“Any suggestions on how to improve my
throw?” Elizabeth asked.

“
You’re not
fool
’in with me, are you? You’ve really never thrown knives
before?”

“This is the first time,” Elizabeth replied
truthfully.

“Hetark hasn’t taught you te throw?” she
asked, still attempting to make sense of the puzzle.

“He was just about to begin teaching me,
when we hired you,” Elizabeth answered.

“I see,” Poison said, though she didn’t. Her
thoughts were troubled.
Something is strange here; I’m not
getting the whole story. One thing for sure, this woman is not just
a simple merchant’s wife looking for a little excitement in her
life. She’s highborn and looking to learn to fight for a reason.
Duels? A woman fighting duels? Not even noble women fight duels, do
they? None of this makes sense!

Elizabeth listened in on Poison’s troubled
surface thoughts, which reconfirmed her belief that uneducated
doesn’t always mean stupid. She decided Poison was one smart
girl.

“Turn around,” Poison instructed Elizabeth,
“all the
way
until yer back is
te
the tree. Good, now when I say
'go' turn and throw the knife at the tree, and don’t pause, make it
all in one motion.”

Elizabeth readied herself, she didn’t have a
clear memory of Poison doing this exact maneuver, but she tried
anyway.

“Go!” Poison yelled suddenly.

Elizabeth spun and let the knife fly; it
missed the tree trunk completely, landing a few yards away.

“That’s better!” Poison exclaimed
happily.

“What do you mean, I missed the tree
completely,” Elizabeth complained.

“Yes, but I was
beginn’in
te think I was
los’in
my mind. Yer first two throws were just lucky;
this one was much more realistic. It should take lots o’ practice
te achieve a high level of accuracy,” Poison explained.

“Let me see you do it,” Elizabeth asked.

Before she had quite finished asking, Poison
had spun, pulled a knife and thrown it into the tree, the point
nearly touching her first mark.”

“Very impressive, let me try again,”
Elizabeth placed herself in approximately the same position Poison
had started from and then duplicated the maneuver, her blade
landing a little over a hand’s span from Poison’s.

“
Yulkcrap
!”
Poison cussed, and stomped away to look out over the line of grass
covered hills. “No one can learn te do that with two practice
throws, not even me!” After a few
moments,
Poison said, “You claim that this is yer
first time
throw’in
knives? If that’s true, do you know why
ye’re
learn’in
so fast?”

“Yes, I do, but I’m not going to tell you,
yet. I’ll make you a deal, teach me as fast as I can learn and if
you haven’t figured out how I’m doing it before we reach Myrnvale
I’ll explain it to you then, deal?” Elizabeth asked, sticking out
her hand.

Poison frowned for a moment, but the honest
smile on Elizabeth’s face and her outstretched hand won her over.
She reached out and clasped Elizabeth at the wrist in a warrior’s
clasp and they shook weapon arms.

For the next
hour,
Poison demonstrated throws from every position, and
Elizabeth duplicated them almost perfectly.

After an
hour,
they took a short rest while sitting on the dry
grass.

“Yer ability te learn my throws is
noth’in
short of
amaz’in
, yet I’ve noticed you do them too slow
and yer accuracy is good, but not great. Is this
someth’in
te do with how
ye’re
learn’in
so fast?”
Poison asked, hoping to pump Elizabeth for some answers to the
mystery.

Elizabeth knew what she was doing, but
understood her curiosity. “Yes, I can instruct my body to imitate
what I’ve seen you do, but it’s new, so I have to walk through it
slowly. I know how to do it, but I can’t perform at the snap of
fingers like you can.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are different types of memory, and
we’re dealing with two here. A simple way to look at the two is
this, one type is when only your brain
knows
and gives detailed instructions to your muscles. In
the other
case,
your muscles know
and perform without more than a ‘go’ command from your brain.”

“Come on, everyone knows yer head is what
remembers things, not yer muscles. All memory is the same,” Poison
answered.

“You’re right about your muscles not having
a memory, precisely, but it’s easier to explain it that way than
saying your brain has more than one type of thinking in it, but it
does. Let me give you an example, sometime in the next few moments
I’m going to say go, when I do I want you to lean your right knee
inward, turn your head left, pull both your hands left and lean
back slightly. And make sure you do them all at once,” Elizabeth
instructed.

“That’s a
lot
te
remember,” Poison complained.

“Not only that, but you have to remember it
while we
talk
because you’re not
going to know when I want you to do the movements. Are you staying
ready?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes,” Poison said simply, a look of
concentration on her face.

“You’re concentrating on the list of things
you have to do, correct?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes, I’ll be ready
fer
you,” Poison answered.

“What if I told you not to keep repeating
the list of... GO!” Elizabeth suddenly exclaimed.

Poison’s right knee went left, her head
looked left, her hands went left, and then she leaned back. When
finished she looked at Elizabeth, smiling broadly because she had
managed to do everything Elizabeth had wanted.

“Notice, you didn’t do everything at once,
they were close, but you did them in order of the list I gave you.
The first thing that you did was move your knee and the last thing
was lean back.”

“They were close!” Poison exclaimed.

“But not simultaneous,” Elizabeth pointed
out.

“I can’t do that many things at once,”
Poison complained.

“
Of course
you can, but you have to teach your muscles the actions until the
other part of your brain can just trigger the entire sequence from
that other type of memory. Come over here,” Elizabeth said
gesturing toward a fallen log where Hetark had placed the
saddles.

He looked over at them from where he was
grooming the horses and gave Elizabeth a strange look when she had
Poison sit on a saddle, straddling the log.

Elizabeth said, “All right, Poison, close
your eye and take these reins in your hand,” and she placed the
thin leather straps into Poison’s hands. “Picture yourself riding
down the trail, on your left is an open grass field, can you
picture it?”

“Yes,” Poison answered with her eye
shut.

“Good, you’re riding your horse at a trot;
suddenly you see a slither in the path, turn left, NOW!”

Poison hauled her hands left to pull the
reins and turn the horse. She moved her right knee left, and leaned
back in the saddle to keep her balance, and turned her head left to
watch where she was going. Everything happened simultaneously.

“You see, it is possible,” Elizabeth said
quietly.

“What do you mean... oh, now I see, all
those movements were things you
do
te
turn a horse abruptly,” Poison reasoned.

“Yes, but here’s the point of this
discussion, I am learning fast, but it’s not in the reflex part of
my memory yet. Only repetitive practice will make it useful in most
real situations. My advantage lies in this, I can start the
repetitive practice immediately, and I know what I’m practicing is
correct."

“That’s the part I’m curious about, how are
you gett’in my moves down so perfect, it’s as if
ye’re
me at a moment when you throw,” she said,
frowning in thought.

Elizabeth gave her a small tilted smile.
“Exactly, I’m copying you, efficiently. Let’s practice some more,”
she said standing up and throwing a dagger from her crouched
position as she stood, it hit the tree and stuck.

Hetark walked up and observed the practice
briefly.

Elizabeth practiced each throw ten to twenty
times before moving to the next.

“Come te
learn
someth’in
, country
boy?” Poison asked with a grin.

“Hello to you, too, Slither,” Hetark
replied.

“The name is Poison, don’t
ferget
it, boy,” she replied.

“I’m older than you are, girl, besides, some
slithers are poisonous,” Hetark replied.

Poison turned on the knight with an
appraising look and said, “Older, by a couple years, possibly, but
that doesn’t matter, even if you had ten more years te practice
there are some things women are better at than men, like knife
throw’in
. It takes a grace and
speed you clumsy men can’t duplicate.”

Hetark stepped near Poison and picked up a
dagger as he got ready to take a throw at the implied
challenge.

“Don’t get so close
te
me, remember what I warned you about in the tavern,”
she said, misinterpreting his intentions.

“I remember the two things you said; now
I’ll ask two in return. First, what makes you think I would ever be
interested in touching you? Second, what makes you think you could
stop me if I tried?” Hetark walked toward the tree as he asked the
questions and once there he turned and faced Poison, the tree trunk
to his left.

Elizabeth stopped and watched. She knew
these two had to learn to respect one another or there would be no
peace the whole way to Myrnvale. She just hoped they didn’t kill
each other while learning.

“Take out one of your knives and I’ll bet
that you can’t stick it in this tree, if you are unsuccessful then
you owe me an apology and a kiss. If the knife hits the tree then I
will cook and care for the horses, by myself, for the rest of the
trip to Myrnvale,” the knight said simply.

With a smile of triumph, first because he
admitted he wanted to kiss her, which confirmed her belief in all
men’s motives, and second because he could not possibly win, Poison
flicked her wrist and a knife sprouted in her hand. She launched it
instantly at the tree next to Hetark.

As she moved the knight quickly stepped into
the path of the oncoming knife and with lightning reflexes he used
a move that Poison had never seen duplicated… and snatched the
streaking blade from the air.

Poison gasped and stared incredulously at
her knife held casually in his rough hand.

He walked forward calmly until he stood
before her and reached up as if to touch her face, but he stopped
just before his fingers reached her skin and he looked deeply into
her one good eye. She readied herself to give up the kiss she had
promised if she lost, but then Hetark said, “And what makes you
think I want to kiss you?”

He spun and threw her knife overhand at the
tree as hard as he could. The knife flashed across the clear space
and with an echoing ‘thwack’ it landed next to her original dagger
mark. The blade sunk into the
hardwood
trunk nearly to the hilt. “You win,” he said,
his voice dripping sweetness as he walked away.

Poison stood silently looking at the
embedded knife. Then suddenly she started pulling knives and
launching them at the tree, faster and faster, anger fueling her
speed. She drew
a nearly
perfect
circle of twenty knives around the one Hetark had thrown.
Eventually, she stopped.

Elizabeth wasn’t sure if she stopped because
she ran out of knives or volcanic anger, but she bet it was the
knives.

Poison stomped away toward a nearby hilltop.
Elizabeth waited a few moments to let her calm down and then
approached.

When she reached Poison Elizabeth asked,
“Are you angry because he beat you?”

“Yes, no… I’m not sure.”

“Would you have let him claim his kiss?”

“Yes, he won,” she exclaimed.

Elizabeth smiled, “But, in some
ways,
you would have
won
because you would have the knowledge that you were
right about his motives.”

Poison was silent.

“So what makes you angry now?” Elizabeth
prompted.

“He didn’t want me, he SCORNED me. He could
have taken his kiss and he didn’t want it,” she ranted, her voice
quivering with rage. Her hand went unconsciously to her scar, patch
and missing eye.

“So you’re mad because he is honorable and
wouldn’t want to kiss you against your will,” Elizabeth
said
as if trying to understand the logic of
Poison’s reaction.

“I said I wouldn’t have stopped him,” she
stated defiantly, and then added, “I guess I’m too ugly.”

“It isn’t because of your missing eye,
Poison. If he had kissed you wouldn’t you have felt superior? He
would have fit your version of a male animal, and he knew it. Now
you’re angry because you were wrong, and nobody likes to be proven
wrong, do they?” Elizabeth posed.

“No,” Poison said, her anger cooling as
Elizabeth’s thoughts began to roll around
in
her mind.