Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (36 page)

He led her to the outskirts of town where he
had left his horse next to hers. They mounted and journeyed by
moonlight back to the cottage of the old man and the old woman.

Over the months the elderly couple had
developed a bit of a fondness for them, Lia believed. At first she
helped the old woman tend to the house, and once she convinced the
old man to let her outside she began to help with chores around the
property. The old woman still didn’t talk much, but Lia could tell
that she had come to appreciate the help.

Lia had worked with her hands until they
developed thick calluses, just like Khile had said. She had carried
buckets of water up and down hills until her legs and arms grew
stronger, and practiced running further and further every day to
build her stamina. The weeks and months had flown by as Lia wore
herself ragged every day learning to grow stronger, quicker, and
more flexible.

Lia awoke the next morning and bounced off
the floor, eager to start the day. She ran outside where she saw
Khile roping together a trio of logs. One of them, about five feet
tall and as thick as his torso, still crusted with bark, stood
upright, supported at the back by two others.

“What’s that for?” Lia asked.

Khile responded with a question. “How was
breakfast?”

“I didn’t eat any,” she said, and, now that
she thought about it, she didn’t recall even noticing if the old
woman had prepared anything, though she was certain she had.

“You’ll wish you did,” Khile said.

He stepped back and looked over his
creation. He picked up an old short sword that he had borrowed from
the old man and stood in front of the vertical log. With his right
hand he took three swipes at it, hitting it in precisely the same
spot each time and carving a small notch.

“Right hand,” he said.

He tossed the blade into his other hand,
switched up his footing, and repeated the three strikes, carving
out a chunk of wood on the other side of the log.

“Left hand.”

He handed the sword to her. “Do that until
you cut the log in half.”

Lia took the sword, stifling her
disappointment. She thought they were going to start sparring
today.

Khile motioned toward the wooden practice
doll. Lia lifted the sword in her hand, feeling its weight, and
took three clumsy strikes, hitting the post in three completely
different locations.

Before her discouragement could set in,
Khile said, “Again.”

She took three more swings, moving faster
the second time, but still failing with her aim.

“Again.”

Three more strikes, steel against
wood—clunk, clunk, clunk—and three more marks appeared in the bark,
but nowhere near close to each other.

“Other hand,” Khile said. “Three on the
right side. Three on the left.”

If her dominant hand was this bad, Lia
dreaded to see how she fared with her left. As expected the sword
felt heavier, her swings clumsier. Her strikes hit the wood with
less force and were wildly inaccurate.

“Keep going,” he said.

She sighed and tried her right hand again.
Clunk, clunk, clunk.

“The sword master who taught me how to use a
blade once said, ‘You have to think of the sword as an extension of
your arm. It’s a part of you. Use it like a part of you. If you
don’t—’”

The sword clanged against the wood and
kicked out of Lia’s grasp.

“‘—you’ll drop it.’”

Lia picked up her sword. “Make it a part of
me,” she muttered. “A part of my arm.” She attacked the wood again.
“Who was your sword master?” she asked.

“A man named Decorus Ferrum, and you’d be
hard pressed to find a soldier on Efferous who hasn’t heard his
name.”

“He lives here?”

“In Thalmia.”

“Does he still teach?”

“You’re stalling.”

“I am not.”

“Again.”

She let the tip of the sword fall into the
dirt. “I thought we were going to start fighting today.”

“Again.”

Pushing away the tempest brewing inside, she
took three more clumsy swings—clunk, clunk, clunk.

“Again.”

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

And so it went well into the morning. Three
strikes on the right side, followed by three strikes on the left.
By noon the log was covered in sword marks and Lia could barely
lift her arms. When the web of Lia’s right hand started bleeding
from the repetitive motion of the handle in her palm, she expected
Khile to let her stop, but he didn’t. He let her wrap it in a
bandage, but then said, “Again.”

The blue sky was darkening when the old
woman called them in for dinner.

Lia dropped the sword, her arms feeling like
strips of fabric. She looked down at her filthy, bleeding hands and
frowned. She hated herself for not doing better, hated that the log
wasn’t chopped in two. She ate dinner in silence, hating even
Khile, and said nothing to him the rest of the night. When she
stretched out on the floor to go to sleep, she did so fuming.

She awoke the next morning with far less
enthusiasm.

Khile was in the barn. He had taken three
blocks of wood that were about half her height and arranged them on
the ground. He demonstrated what he wanted her to do by placing his
hands on two of the wooden blocks and propping his feet up on the
third. Then he balanced there, horizontally across the floor, his
legs, torso, and shoulders as straight as a board.

He hopped down and picked up a short sword.
“Your turn. Up!”

It took some maneuvering, but Lia got
herself up onto the tall blocks and held herself stiff like Khile
had done. The position was harder to maintain than it looked, and
it required her to hold her stomach muscles tight.

“Decorus used to say that every motion comes
from the core,” Khile began, as he walked a circle around Lia.
“Every pivot, every twist, every step, every strike, everything you
do comes from here.” He tapped her stomach with the sword, which
made her abdomen clench and her hips rise. “Strong core. Strong
everything.”

Khile got down on the ground under her and
lay on his back He pointed the short sword toward her belly.

“Keep your back straight,” he said. “Don’t
sag.”

After a few moments Lia felt the poke of the
sword on her waist. She lifted her hips, her abdomen shaking.

“This is hard,” she said, feeling the muscle
in her arms starting to quiver.

“Be glad I’m not Decorus. He used to weight
my hips with buckets of water.”

The sword poked her again, harder this
time.

“He could do this all day, then get down and
kill a dozen men.”

“He was that good?” she said, straining.

“Let me put it this way, if the bravest
young warrior on Efferous found himself in a dual against Decorus
Ferrum, he would surrender his sword before the match even
began.”

Lia felt her muscles giving out. “I
can’t.”

“Don’t let go,” Khile said.

Lia’s muscles trembled from head to toe.
Khile moved the sword just as her body gave in, and he caught her
as she landed on top of him.

Lia scrambled to her feet. “This is
foolish,” she shouted. She started pacing, her hands on her hips,
her temper rising. “How is this teaching me anything? I want to
fight.”

Khile got to his feet, and shrugged. “Very
well. Let’s fight.” He lifted his fists.

“What?”

“Come on, little girl.”

His words fanned the fire inside of her and
made her lunge at him.

She didn’t even see his hand coming until it
slapped her across the face and pushed her aside. She stopped,
shaken, caught her breath and attacked him again. This time she
thought she was ready for the blow, but she didn’t see his foot
hooking around her ankle, yanking it forward, and sending her
sprawling backward onto her rump. She growled, jumped up, and
attacked him again. Her third attempt ended with her sprawled on
her chest, her mouth full of hay and dirt and… she didn’t want to
think about what else.

Four more times she tried to hit him, and
every time he threw her down.

“I’m not trying to humiliate you, Lia,”
Khile said. “I’m trying to make you understand something.”

She got to her feet, not bothering to brush
herself off. “And what is that?”

Lia tossed another punch at him. He swatted
it away.

“Take a guess,” he said.

“That you’re better than me?”

“That much is obvious, but no.”

She attacked him again, hating his smugness.
“Then what?”

“Guess.”

“Tell me!”

“If I were to take you to Aberdour tomorrow
and put you in front of Komor Raven, do you think you could beat
him?”

She hesitated, wanting so badly to believe
that her passion was enough.

“Do you?” Khile pressed.

It took her a moment, but finally she
admitted, “No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not strong enough,” she admitted.

To her surprise, Khile retorted with,
“Wrong.”

“Am I not fast enough?”

He shook his head. “Your physical
capabilities have got nothing to do with it. Physically you’re
capable. You proved that a couple days ago with that man in the
alleyway.”

“Then what?”

Khile sighed. “You need to learn to let
go.”

His ambiguous answer infuriated her almost
as much as his smugness.

“Your body can’t keep up with what your head
is thinking,” he continued. “And your head can’t detach itself from
what your heart wants. You are a beautiful mess of desire and
cunning and skill, but you don’t know how to make all that work
together.”

Lia shrugged, hoping the insecurity he’d
just exposed wasn’t as obvious as it felt.

Khile’s expression softened. “What are you
feeling right now?”

Her bottom lip quivered as her voice
squeaked out, “All I feel—all I ever feel—is hate. And I can’t—I
don’t know how to feel anything else.” She wiped her nose. Her
insides were burning.

“Let me teach you.”

After a deep breath, Lia wiped her eyes and
calmed. She nodded.

Khile walked up to her and reached for the
scarf she kept tied around her neck. Slowly his hands unwrapped the
scarf and pulled it off. As nervous as she felt about him exposing
the blemish on her collarbone, she felt powerless to stop him. When
he took the scarf away, she felt naked and embarrassed.

“That’s not a birthmark, is it?” he
asked.

Lia shrugged. “I don’t know what it is.”

“The man from the alleyway, he called you a
witch. Why would he say that?”

Again, she just shrugged. “Once a woman was
arrested in Aberdour who claimed to be a witch. She had a spot that
looked like this on her arm. She saw mine and told me I was marked,
but I never knew why.”

“Your parents never told you?”

Lia shook her head. “My mother said I’ve had
it since I was born.”

She reached for her scarf in Khile’s hands,
but he tossed it away. “You can hate all you want. Just don’t hate
yourself. Embrace who you are, flaws and all.”

Lia knew what he was trying to say, but she
still didn’t like the feeling of her birthmark being exposed. She
felt like she was not in control, vulnerable and unprotected.

“Come,” Khile said, waving an open hand
toward the wooden blocks. “Up you go.” He lay back down on the
ground with the sword.

Lia climbed back up onto the blocks and
suspended herself over the floor, tightening her core, and holding
her hips over the point of his sword.

“You like this, don’t you?” she said.

“Maybe a little.”

He poked her, and she chuckled.

“If you make me fall I’ll make sure I land
on your face with my fists.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Broderick worked his way down the rock ledge
to a small white flag. It’s ragged edges waved in the wind off the
tip of a stick wedged into a tight crevice. He reached for it,
unconcerned by the rocky shore hundreds of feet below. He yanked
the flag free and climbed back up to the grassy ledge where he took
off running through the forest.

He considered pacing himself for the eleven
furlongs he had to travel, but after doing the math he knew he
could cover the distance. The length of the city of Aberdour at its
longest point was eleven furlongs, or half a league, and Broderick
had once ran the entire distance at a full sprint with energy to
spare.

He raced through the sparse forest of tall
pines and cedars before emerging into an emerald glade deep in the
hills east of Halus Gis. The autumn air was refreshing and
cool.

Ty and Preston were already waiting for him,
both of them dressed down in old tunics and tight fitting slacks
made for running. They both looked tired, sweaty, and ready for
lunch.

“We’re running out of time,” Broderick said,
slowing to a stop. “Sun’s almost at its peak.”

Nash sprinted into the glade from the south,
sweat glistening off his muscled torso. He stopped in front of
Broderick and rested his hands on his knees.

“What are you having?” Ty asked, pointing to
the flag in Broderick’s hand.

He showed it to the three boys, a rather
unremarkable little brown stick with a tattered rag attached. “Does
this mean anything to any of you?”

Ty took it, grinning. “I’m thinking this
clue is being for me. This is being a piece of the broken sailboat
I found on the cliffs western of the monastery.”

Nash slapped him on the back. “Good job,
Tai… Ty-guh… Ty-guh… How do you say your full name again?”

Ty seemed irritated. Broderick didn’t blame
him. He had lost count of the number of times they had to question
him about the correct pronunciation of his Efferousian name.

“Taighfinn Torinfinn Deelyous,” he answered.
“Me father gives this name to me, and me middle name belongs to me
mother. I’s carries these names proudly.”