Into a Dark Realm (17 page)

“I know you came from Olasko, that colorful tale about the cara
van from the Vale of Dreams notwithstanding. I also know you didn’t come by ship.”

“From Olasko,” Jommy continued. “We were just told to get ready, come here, and learn whatever it was we were taught.”

The abbot was silent for a minute, drumming his fingers on the table in an absentminded gesture that set Jommy’s teeth on edge. Finally, Father Elias said, “We have a special relationship with your…mentors.” Again he studied their faces. “While we don’t entirely accept that all their aims are in concert with our own, we do accept that they are an agency for good, and as such are to be given the widest possible latitude in matters of trust.” He sat back and stopped drumming, for which Jommy was grateful. “I suspect if I were to mention a man named Pug, you boys would never have heard of him.”

Tad shook his head as did Zane, while Jommy said, “Can’t say I have, Father.”

The abbot smiled. “Very well. We’ll continue with the charade, but like so many things involving the man you’ve never heard of—whom I believe to be your adopted or foster grandfather if I have the story right—we’ll continue to let things remain shrouded in shadow.

“But here is what he should have told you, or at least Turhan Bey should have told you: this is the finest institution of its kind in the world, in many ways unique, and here we train the sons of Roldem, and the rest of the world, to be leaders. Most of our young men enter the navy—we are an island people—but some enter service in our army or in other capacities. We do not discriminate against boys who are not from Roldem. Some of the finest minds serving nations who at one time or another were our enemies have studied here. We teach them because people do not fear things they are familiar with. We are certain that over the years powerful men have been sympathetic to Roldem because of the time they spent here, and that has tipped the balance in our favor against war, or simply made them more prepared to listen to us.

“Toward this end, you will be given the same education as the other boys, and no matter how long you are here—a week, a month,
or a year—you will master the subjects before you each day. Moreover, you will cease this endless hostility with the other boys. So, I am making some changes. You will all be moved into senior boys’ quarters. Three to a room is the usual rule.”

The news surprised them. The senior boys were the ones who were expected to end their studies within the coming year, or promising younger lads, like Grandy, who were thought to benefit from spending time in the company of older students. They grinned at each other; but their joy was to be short-lived.

“You two,” Father Elias said to Tad and Zane, “will share quarters with Grandy.” Zane exchanged glances with Tad.

“And you, Jommy,” the abbot went on, “will be joining Servan and Godfrey in their quarters.”

Jommy could barely suppress a groan. “Father, why not just hang me?”

The abbot smiled slightly. “You’ll adjust. You all will, because as of today, if one of you earns punishment, all six of you will be punished. If one of you is to be given the cane, all of you will. Is that clear?”

Jommy couldn’t speak. He just nodded.

“Good, then be off and move your possessions. Your new assignments are in Brother Kynan’s hands, and he will not brook your being late.”

The three boys nodded, said, “Yes, Father,” and left the room. In the hall, Jommy took two large strides, stopped, put out his hands and looking upward made a sound of pure aggravation. “Argghhh!”

Jommy pushed open the door and saw three faces look up in surprise. Grandy grinned, Godfrey scowled, but Servan jumped up as if he’d sat on a blade and said, “What do you think you are doing?”

With an insolent grin, Jommy said, “Seeing if this is the right room.” He made a show of looking around and said, “Yes, it is.”

Grandy looked over his shoulder at the two older boys, seeing their distress at the intrusion, and his grin broadened. “Hello, Jommy. What are you doing?”

“Moving in,” Jommy said, turning and hauling in his own trunk. “You’re moving down the hall with Tad and Zane. Better get a shake on.”

Grandy said, “Really?”

“On whose authority?” shouted Servan.

Jommy pulled his trunk across the threshold. “Father Elias, I believe was the name. You met him? He’s in charge.”

Servan said, “Who?”

“Father Elias, abbot of this—”

“I know who he is!” shouted Servan, jaw jutting forward as he strode in Jommy’s direction.

“Now, now,” said Jommy, raising his right hand. “Remember the last time?”

Servan hesitated and stopped. “I’ll go see about this.”

“Have a good time,” said Jommy cheerfully as the young nobleman pushed past his new roommate.

“Better get going,” said Jommy to Grandy.

“Wait,” ordered Godfrey.

Grandy hesitated, and Jommy said, “Get along. It’s all right.”

Grandy started to get up to grab his trunk, when Godfrey said, “I told you to sit down!”

Jommy took one menacing step toward Godfrey and said, “And I told him it was all right!”

Godfrey sat down, his eyes widening.

Grandy dragged his trunk from the foot of his bed and out of the door, and Jommy pulled his into the now-vacant space. He looked at Godfrey and said, “So bed-sitting is all right in this room?”

Godfrey jumped up as if burned. “Only when the door is closed!”

Jommy grinned. A few minutes of silence was ended by Servan’s return. He pushed past Jommy and said to Godfrey, “We’re stuck with him.”

Jommy closed the door, walked over to what was now his bed, sat down, and said, “Fine, then. What do you want to talk about?”

Miranda walked purposefully down the hall, ignoring startled Tsurani magicians as she swept past them. Reaching the door leading into the room where the Talnoy was kept for study, she walked in to find four Great Ones of the Empire studying the device.

“You broke it?” she asked unceremoniously.

Alenca turned with a wry smile. “Miranda! How lovely you look.”

“You broke it?” she repeated.

He waved his hands slightly. “No, we didn’t break it. My message said it suddenly stopped working.”

Miranda moved past the old magician and his three companions to the bier upon which the Talnoy rested. She didn’t need to touch it to know that something about it had changed. It was a subtle change, imperceptible except to the keenest magical sensitivity, but it was…as if something weren’t there.

“It’s empty,” she said. “Whatever was inside before is now…gone.”

“That is our conclusion,” agreed Wyntakata. He gestured with one hand while holding his staff with the other. “We were trying a new set of wards—constructed by a group of the most gifted Lesser Path magicians in the Empire—and gave the creature a simple instruction so that we could see if the ward shielded it…and it didn’t move. Every test we can apply says that whatever the motive power was before, it’s now absent.”

“The soul is finally gone,” said Miranda softly.

Alenca looked doubtful. “If, indeed, a soul was the power within, then it is gone.”

Miranda said nothing of the other Talnoy still motionless in a cave in Novindus. She sighed, as if disappointed. “Well, one good thing; I suspect we can now stop worrying about rifts from the Dasati world to here.”

“Would that this were true,” said Alenca.

A magician Miranda knew only by sight—Lodar—said, “We had
a report this morning, after we had discovered the Talnoy was inert, and we sent two of our members to investigate, as we usually do.”

Alenca said, “They returned telling of a terrible sight; a portion of woodlands was…bare, every last living thing sucked into a newly established rift. We had to send Matemoso and Gilbaran to close it. They were tested to the utmost before they could shut it down.

“But the most perplexing thing was that it was a rift back to the Dasati world, and the energy being sucked through the rift—which was about the size of your body—was a wind fierce enough to topple a grown man.”

“No,” said Miranda slowly, “that’s not what’s perplexing. What’s perplexing is how a rift
from
here to the Dasati world could open. Because the original one usually comes from there to here, not the other way around. Which means it’s half of a pair…” She turned and gripped Alenca by the shoulder. “There’s another one that you haven’t found, and it’s out there somewhere. You must find it!”

V
alko struck hard.

His opponent staggered backward, off balance, and Valko lunged. He got both arms around his opponent’s waist, picked him up, took two quick steps and slammed him into the wall, driving his shoulder into the helpless man’s stomach. Air exploded out of the trainer’s lungs and Valko thought he heard ribs cracking.

He let go, stepped back, and as his opponent began to fall to his knees, Valko brought his right knee up hard and fast and struck him full in the face, shattering what was left of an already bloody nose.

“Enough!” shouted Hirea.

Valko halted, fighting down the urge to step on his opponent’s neck, crushing it and taking the young man’s
life. He looked at the remaining warriors, who were watching him in cool appraisal. He knew what each and every one was thinking, even his “brother,” Seeleth:
Watch closely; you may have to kill this Valko someday.
The fight had been taxing, though the outcome had been in no doubt from the start; Valko had known he was faster and stronger, and after the first minute, he had known he was smarter. For the briefest of instants, now, he felt a sudden fatigue, a fatigue beyond what was to be expected from this sort of exertion.

Hirea came to stand next to him. “This is training, not the arena. He may be a
vashta
at this moment, but he’s an experienced enough brawler to teach most of you a thing.” He glanced around at the other nine riders, each waiting his opportunity to grapple with the chosen opponent. “That will be enough for today. Retire to your quarters and contemplate your errors. Take no pleasure from your successes. You are still children.”

The remaining nine warriors rose from their kneeling positions around the combat grounds, and as Valko moved to join them, Hirea said, “Wait a moment, Valko.”

When they were alone he said, “When Faroon put his hand on your upper arm, you did something to break the hold. Show me.”

Valko nodded and waited. Hirea grabbed the young fighter’s left arm, and not gently, and without thought Valko reached up with his left hand, taking a very painful handful of skin on the back of Hirea’s right arm, pulling down forcefully. With his right hand, Valko formed a dagger of fingers and jammed them hard into the right side of Hirea’s neck, stepping behind Hirea’s left leg with his own, and suddenly the old instructor was on the sand, looking up at a cocked fist pointed at his face. “Hold!”

Valko stepped back. Hirea said, “No new warrior has ever come to us knowing fast-hand combat techniques, and even those whom I’ve trained for years in the Scourge cannot do what you have done so quickly and easily.” The old fighter got to his feet, and demanded, “Who taught you?”

“My mother,” said Valko. “She made it clear to me there could be
times during the Hiding when a warrior might come across me while I had nothing to defend myself with but my open hands.”

Without warning, Hirea drew his sword and made a looping over hand swing that would have taken Valko’s head from his shoulders, had the young fighter not stepped inside the blow. Had he stepped away or tried to duck, the strike would have crushed his shoulder or head. Valko hooked his left arm up under Hirea’s shoulder, stepped behind his right leg with his own, and slammed the palm of his hand into the older fighter’s throat as hard as he could, driving him to the ground. Valko knelt as Hirea went down and at the last instant, as his knee touched the sand, he stood up and put his left foot on Hirea’s sword hand. With his right, he raised it to crush the old man’s throat.

“Hold!” Hirea managed to choke out, holding up his left hand, palm up in a sign of supplication.

Valko hesitated, then forced himself to speak calmly as he nearly hissed his words. “Why? There is training, old man, and there is killing. Why should I not take your head now? Are you weak and begging for
mercy
?” He spat out the last word for the obscenity it was.

“No,” said the old man. “But if you wish to live, hear me out.”

Valko reached down and took the sword from Hirea’s hand. He put the point to the old man’s throat and, with his left hand, motioned him to rise.

“There are only a few in the world who could have done what you did. Name your mother.”

“Narueen. A Cisteen Effector.”

Hirea ignored the blade at his throat. “No, she was not.” He looked around to ensure no one could hear them. “What I tell you means both our lives are forfeit should any other hear us. Your mother, whatever her true name might have been, was Bloodwitch. Only a handful of people can teach what you’ve learned, and only one band of women in the Twelve Worlds are counted among those: the Orange Sisterhood.”

“They are a myth…” Valko studied the old man’s face, and added, “Like the White.”

“Many truths are hidden by myths, young warrior.” Hirea glanced around one more time. “Now, heed me closely. Speak of this to no one. Do not trust even your own father. There are secrets you may not even know you know, and there are those who would peel your skin from your body in tiny strips to get to those secrets.

“I will send you to your father, soon—you could have taken my head today; there is nothing more I can teach you—but we shall speak of this again before you go; there are things I must ask you and things I must tell you.” He turned away, ignoring the sword at his throat. “Should anyone, especially Seeleth, ask why I kept you behind, just tell him we were correcting a flaw in your footwork. Now, go to your quarters and clean up.” He pointed to the prone figure of his still unconscious training assistant and said, “Faroon may be as stupid as a vashta, but right now you smell like one.”

Valko reversed the sword and returned it to his teacher. “I’ll say nothing of any of this. But it was hard not to take your head, old man.”

Hirea laughed. “You may still get the chance. I have no living son, and someday, soon perhaps, I may seek you out to put me down: my bones begin to feel the cold and my vision isn’t as keen as when I was young. Now go!”

Valko obeyed. Hirea might have been his victim today, but he was still his teacher and as such must be obeyed. But what he had said troubled the young fighter, who walked slowly back to his quarters, wondering if the old man had been right about his mother. She was certainly unlike other women, and many of the things they had spoken of when alone were forbidden. Could she have been Bloodwitch? That fabled sisterhood had been banned by the TeKarana himself. Every member was to have been hunted down and executed without hesitation. They were declared blasphemers by His Darkness’s Highest Priests, and their teachers were declared an anathema.

Suddenly, very tired, Valko thought,
Mother, what have you done?

“Caleb, what have you got us into?” Tad said as they clung to the side of the cliff face.

“I don’t think he can hear us,” shouted Jommy over the wind.

Zane said nothing as his teeth were chattering and he hung on to Tad’s tunic to keep him from falling.

“Move up!” shouted Servan. “You’ve got to go up first, then down!”

Jommy nodded, and said just loud enough for only Tad and Zane to hear, “I hate that he’s right.”

“Well, stop worrying about that, and start worrying about getting Grandy down,” said Tad.

Jommy nodded then climbed over Tad’s position on the narrow ledge, and came down between him and Zane, who moved slightly to let him get settled.

Six boys were perched upon a mountain a half-day’s ride from the city of Roldem. The exercise had been designed to train them to work as a group in difficult circumstances, in this case climbing to the top of a rocky crag without the aid of ropes or tools. They were just a few yards shy of the peak when an unexpected squall blew out of the north, unleashing torrential rains and a brutal wind.

Five of the six boys were in reasonable situations, hunkered down against the rock face, in a good position to wait out the storm, which should pass within an hour or two, but Grandy was in trouble.

The smaller boy had been nearly blown off the face of the mountain by a sudden gust of wind as he traversed along a ledge in their attempt to get back down the mountain. He had slid down to a shelf of rock a few yards below the others, and now he clung to it with the tips of his fingers and terror-inspired determination.

Servan had quickly organized the others. “Jommy, lie flat against the rock face, then let Zane, Tad, and Godfrey lower you down to where Grandy can grip your hands!”

“Why are you the only one standing around?” shouted Jommy.

“Because of the four of us, I’m the weakest,” Servan replied: which was true. A very good swordsman, he lacked the physical strength of even Godfrey, who was a good deal weaker than the three robust young men from Sorcerer’s Isle.

Jommy was left with no reason to complain: Servan was being honest and putting his personal vanity aside in trying to get Grandy to safety.

A hundred feet below them, two monks were desperately trying to get up the face of the wet rocks to aid them, but they were having even less success than the six boys, since they were wearing sandals and long robes.

Jommy half slid, and was half lowered down the rock, water sheeting along the surface and granting him little to hold on to. “Hang on tight!” he shouted to Tad and Godfrey.

Godfrey and Tad each held a leg, while Zane, the stockiest and strongest of the three, lay back with his full weight while he hung on the backs of their tunics. Jommy reached down and got one hand on Grandy’s shirt, and shouted, “I’ll pull you up!”

“No!” shouted Servan. “Grab him, hang on tight, and we’ll pull
you
up!”

The odd chain of boys inched back up the mountainside, when Grandy was gripped by sudden panic and tried to climb up Jommy’s arm. Jommy felt his grip on the boy’s shirt loosen, and he tried to turn, not realizing he was only barely being held by Godfrey and Tad. Their grip on his legs began to slip, then failed; first Tad lost his hold, then Godfrey. Within an instant, Grandy was climbing up to a place of relative safety while Jommy twisted in place, his legs swinging past his head, and found himself suddenly sliding down the rocks, feetfirst, clawing for any handhold. Servan sat down hard and let himself slide after Jommy, then he rolled, ignoring cuts and bruises from the rocks, and turned himself headfirst, nearly diving down the side of the rocks. He managed to reach out and grab Jommy’s tunic collar.

Zane managed to grab Servan’s as he slid past. The boy shouted in pain as his hip was almost dislocated by Zane’s actions. Jommy reached up blindly and found his hand seized by Servan. “Don’t let go!” he shouted.

Servan said, “I won’t!”

Forcing himself to calmness, Jommy shouted to Servan, “What now?”

Grimacing in pain, the royal cousin’s eyes never left Jommy. “I can’t move. Use me like a rope and climb over me.”

Jommy used all the strength in his left arm to heave himself up. He reached with his right hand, grabbing the belt on Servan’s trousers. Feeling around with his right toe, he got a scant purchase in a crevice and hauled himself up. Then he let go with his left hand and reached high to get a strong grip on the fleshy part of Servan’s right thigh, pulled once more and felt Godfrey’s hands on his shoulders, helping him to the ledge.

As soon as he was safe, Jommy turned and helped Zane pull Servan back up to the ledge. The six boys sat panting with exertion, terror, and pain, freezing in the driving rain on the ledge. Jommy looked at Servan. “You’re mad, mate, you know that?”

Servan said, “I don’t like you, but that doesn’t mean I want to see you dead.”

“I don’t like you either,” said Jommy. Servan’s face was cut, his cheek swollen, and from the way he rubbed at his right shoulder, he might have dislocated it. With the rain pelting down Jommy couldn’t tell, but he thought Servan’s eyes swollen from tears, probably from the pain. “But I owe you my life.”

Servan managed a faint smile. “A bit of an awkward situation, isn’t it?”

Jommy said, “Doesn’t have to be. I don’t know why you felt the need to lord it over us when we first arrived, and right now I don’t care. You saved my life: I was sliding down this mountain and there was no way I was going to stop till I hit the bottom. So, if anyone asks, I’ll be the first to say you’re no coward. A madman, maybe, but no coward.”

Suddenly Servan smiled. “Well, I couldn’t let you fall after you almost killed yourself getting my cousin.”

“Cousin?” asked Tad. He looked at Grandy. “He’s your cousin?”

Grandy, teeth chattering with cold, said, “Yes. Didn’t I mention that?”

“That makes you another of the King’s nephews?” asked Tad.

“No,” said Servan. “That makes him the King’s son. Grandy’s older brother is Crown Prince Constantine of Roldem. Which means that someday he’s going to be the younger brother to the King.”

“Damn me!” said Jommy. “The people you meet.”

Suddenly, Servan started to laugh. The sound was so genuine—a release of tension and fear—that the other boys could not help themselves, and joined in.

Brother Thaddeus, the monk who was attempting to reach them, found a stop a dozen yards below them and shouted, “Wait there! Brother Malcolm is hurrying back to the university. He will bring Brother Micah back. Stay there and hang on!”

The boys huddled closer in the rain. Micah was not properly a monk of the Order, but a Lesser Path magician who resided on the grounds of the university. His many talents included control over the weather.

By the time Micah arrived, the boys were thoroughly miserable, shivering uncontrollably, and hardly able to move. Micah chanted a spell to lessen the severity of the storm, creating a large pocket of more clement weather around the boys. The sphere of the spell was nearly a hundred yards in all directions, so that within it the rain fell like a gentle spring fall, rather than this unexpected squall.

With the torrent abated for a few minutes, Brother Thaddeus clambered up the rock face so he could help the boys get down to the wider ledge below. From there it was a relatively easy trail down to the foot of the mountain, a mere three hours’ walk under normal conditions. As they made their way down the slippery trail, Jommy turned to Grandy and said, “Why did you never mention you’re the King’s younger son?”