The Brightest Shadow, page 14
Instead, he took a lighter sword from one of the Coran corpses. Not an Oken blade, but it was well-crafted and had a better edge. The movements took him close to Eraes, who crouched on the ground with her head in one hand.
"This would have been a miserable place to die." She looked up, then slowly rose with a weary groan. "But I suppose we made it through. Did Tani get what she needed?"
Slaten glanced over his shoulder and saw that Tani had returned to pick up the Rhen box, which appeared intact. "I believe she did. I think the more important question is what exactly you brought Aryabaus."
"Does it matter? It's in his hands now." When Slaten refused to look away, Eraes sighed. Some of her braids had fallen into disarray and she began to fix them as she answered. "They're a weapon. Powerful, but as you've seen they're volatile. The average soldier would have no defense against them, and the blast might stun even a Catai."
"Do you know why Aryabaus wants them?"
"No idea. There must be some objective he believes he can't accomplish with conventional sein force, but I figure it's not my concern."
She looked exhausted and Slaten couldn't blame her, so he let her be. The guards from the keep had retreated with the wagons and there was unlikely to be any more violence. Most of the mansthein he knew were collecting their normal supplies and gathering them in a single wagon that they would presumably be taking back.
So that would be all. It felt too quick, after such a long journey, but Slaten realized that they had accomplished their goals.
Surprised that Tani hadn't joined them, Slaten looked back and discovered that she remained near the mound of dark boulders. He jogged out to her, his body suddenly heavy. As quickly as everything had come back to him, he was unaccustomed to fighting like this and now his sein channels reminded him with spirit-deep aches.
He found that Tani was standing and staring at the side of one of the stones, perhaps examining the crimson marbling. She held the box loosely in both hands and he couldn't see any damage up close, but her face was troubled. Slaten stood beside her quietly until she chose to speak.
"Before today, I'd only killed one person. It was a Deathspawn attack and I just reacted. It was over so quickly." She looked toward him numbly and pulled the box against her chest with both arms. "This time wasn't like that. I wanted to kill them. And I did."
"Do you regret it?"
"No. But I still think about their faces when they died. Does... does it get easier?"
"I don't know." Slaten felt the new sword belt chafing at his waist and set his hand on the hilt. "I tried to stop killing, but it didn't last. So I don't have anything to offer."
She nodded quietly, still staring at the stone. Slaten glanced to the wagon and saw that it wasn't moving yet, so he didn't disturb her. After a long silence, Tani spoke in a lighter tone.
"During the battle, didn't their blood spray across this stone? The one you cut at the neck."
"I'm not sure." There had been only the movements, the strategy. It seemed plausible and so Slaten looked carefully, spotting a blood stain in the dirt beneath the stone. "I see part of it here, and the blood would have spattered higher."
Yet the stone was completely clean, no trace of blood on its dark surface. Tani extended her hand and touched it, not needing to say the obvious.
Perhaps the blood had dripped down the side of the smooth stone and joined the rest of the stain. That was the most logical answer. Perhaps porous rock could absorb blood, but these dark stones showed no signs of that, no method by which they could have simply drunk in the blood. And compared to everything they had just been through, it didn't matter.
Eventually they turned away and went to join the others. Slaten did his best to forget.
Chapter 8
-
"It is difficult to speak about the relevant races of Deathspawn simply because they have so much variety. They are not, of course, separate species. Better to think of them as breeds of dog, much as how Corah possesses lean hunting hounds, Nolese breeds are short and squat, and dogs from Fareshel have thick coats of fur. The Deathspawn hordes are filled with mutts, while the most notable varieties such as Catai are inbred filth spawned only to fight, bereft of higher mental capabilities."
- excerpt from On the Deathspawn, written by Haneval, First Scholar to the King of South Corah
-
Her thoughts followed the clouds overhead as they flowed across the sky, slowly tearing apart as if the endless blue burned through them. Tani wasn't sure when she had stopped running, but realized that she was now seated on the back of the wagon. She stayed there and kept watching overhead, knowing that at some point she would run again.
Their journey back to Bundlin was only somewhat faster than the journey there, yet she would not have known if she hadn't overheard the others talk about it. She floated outside of events, scouting and eating and doing whatever else was expected of her, but always looking within.
She often found herself holding the case of Yevee texts, thinking about her response. Thinking about what had happened after, about the mixed terror and excitement of the battle, about the lives ended by her hand. There wasn't another choice and she was glad that she had the time to think.
Given the events to live again, she would change nothing. Fight better, perhaps. She felt no guilt for her emotions or for the mansthein she had killed, but she did feel something.
"Tani? Do you...?" Slaten was walking beside her. She'd started walking at some point. Realizing what he intended, Tani came down to earth and nodded.
"I do. Let's go."
While the others made camp for the night, she and Slaten moved away and began sparring. They weren't true practice fights, as they couldn't risk injury and their styles weren't a good match. Both of them moved slower than their true speed, focusing on every part of their bodies flowing correctly.
For these moments, Tani could focus again. Sparring with Slaten was enjoyable, and the flow of sein through her body kept her in the present. She enjoyed the chance to try to fight someone with a much longer reach using only her sickle knife, while he practiced deflecting her throwing knives.
The simple art of it was refreshing. No one would die like this. The purpose of it might be power, but she was having fun instead of fighting for her life. Though Slaten practiced with the same grim determination that he had fought, she didn't sense any of the lethal intent from before. Since he was at a similar level of development, they could move at the same speed and still get something out of the experience.
But when they were done, their sein exhausted, Tani drifted away again. She ate without realizing it until the aftertaste of the rations floated to the surface of her mind. It was just as well, given how little she enjoyed them, but Tani felt as though she might taste nothing even with the best food in the world.
Twice Eraes tried to talk to her, but she quickly sensed that Tani wasn't entirely present. The other woman seemed to have plenty on her mind, but Tani had no room for anything else. Occasionally she toyed with the box, fingers tracing over the silver without feeling much of it.
One day she realized that she had left the wagon far behind and so she walked back over the route until she found it. There was an overturned rock and aurochs moaning in pain and her focus was already drifting. Since there was nowhere to go Tani stood nearby, watching as Slaten helped push the loaded wagon's wheel out of a hole.
The mansthein seemed to treat him differently after that... no, she realized that they had been treating him differently since the battle. Perhaps they respected warriors more than healers... she couldn't bring herself to stay focused on it for long.
That night one of them challenged Slaten to some sort of contest, facing each other over the corner of the wagon with their hands locked. A test of strength, she thought, not so different from other challenges she had seen. Slaten seemed to be stronger than the workers but struggled against the warriors, which was about what she would have expected. Rhuvab did not participate, of course, merely viewing their struggles with contemptuous amusement.
Tani wondered if joining them would let her focus, but there was no point. She had more speed than strength, and this contest in particular seemed to judge only a particular type of strength. They were laughing, some of them slapping Slaten on the back, and though Tani felt a mild happiness that they were getting along, she soon drifted away again.
As she stared at a thick bank of clouds, Tani found herself in the forest in front of her master. One of the many lessons that she had not understood at the time, a tale of facing death. Now the meaning finally came to her, as if she had stumbled upon the door that matched a key she had been carrying for years.
Death was not an enemy, her master had told her. Death was not a friend. It was a wild beast encountered from across a stream, pausing for a moment as it met your gaze. One did not accept death, nor did one move to embrace it, nor did one flee from it. Everyone would meet the beast, for all needed to drink, and in that moment there might seem to be something more in its eyes. Those moments held truth, but they did not mean a beast was not a beast.
It had all seemed so meaningless and abstract to her at the time. Now, Tani found herself drawing a strange comfort from the lesson. Her path might make it necessary to kill again, and she would do so. But she would never grow comfortable with it.
That was an answer, of a sort. But as they returned to Bundlin, Tani still found herself watching the clouds.
~ ~ ~
Her hands brushed over the old hides, enjoying the soft warmth as she turned them. Despite their age, she could feel their durability as she carefully shifted the pile. Both the hides themselves and the techniques written upon them had been treated well over the years, and the respect of many generations seemed to creep up her fingertips.
As she looked through the Yevee texts, Tani settled back against the wall behind her. It creaked and gave slightly, just as a wooden wall should, even if the wooden board soon pressed against stone. Though not the same as home, Tani had quickly grown accustomed to the house of Dhunor and Yomeri.
She could smell spices from the other room and closed her eyes a moment to enjoy them, but then returned to examining the texts. If there was a meal, they would inform her. For now, she wanted to focus on the documents while she still possessed them.
Opening the box again had been a difficult decision. Technically, someone in her position should not be looking through an entire collection of tribal texts. But she had started by telling herself that they had already been disrupted, set about with a project of laying them in their proper order, and eventually just admitted to herself that she wanted to read them.
Tani had done her best to place them in the proper order, however. Many of the pages, though not the most ancient, were marked with Nelhae symbols on the side. Not numbers, which made the order unclear, but she thought she understood a little of the system. At a minimum, she had placed the simplest techniques for children and novices together and categorized the others. Arts of the body, arts of the spirit, the schools of combat that took inspiration from animals, and the most complex at the end.
In the stories, young orphans who obtained the texts of rare techniques absorbed them in a day or month or year and then became masters. Now that she had an entire set of arts before her, Tani gained a new appreciation for why masters introduced techniques slowly. The ones at the end were either so abstract as to be incomprehensible, or so demanding they might as well be asking her to jump over the sky.
Some used words she knew in ways that made no sense. Why did an entire page talk about measuring and carrying buckets of water? What was this "wall of wind" that stood in her way? Rebuilding the body might be possible, but what did it mean to move one's heart outside the body? Attempts to force meaning onto the words accomplished nothing.
But that was not to say that reading the texts was useless. Tani had grasped several new styles of meditation designed to break up her normal patterns and perhaps allow her to perceive sein more fully. There were also a few practical skills that took things she had observed and cast them in an understandable, if not yet achievable, light.
"Tani, do not stay in there all night!" Dhunor poked his head in and smiled at her cheerfully. "We have quite a feast for you!"
"A feast?" Tani began replacing all the pages reverentially. "Is it a special occasion?"
Dhunor pretended to draw back in horror. "Are you telling me you have forgotten the Dawn of Spirit?"
Though Tani smiled and got to her feet, in truth, she actually had forgotten. Without many Nelee around her, she felt entirely separated from the turning of the year. If tonight was the Dawn of Spirit, that meant it had been an entire year since she had left the tribe on her Farwalk. Most of that time had been spent crossing the Chorhan Expanse, but those days blurred together. The few months since she had arrived in Bundlin took up far more of her mind.
Setting such things aside and latching the case, Tani entered the main room. She discovered that the low table had been filled with dishes, unlike their usual fare. Multiple kinds of grilled fish, bowls of spiced berries, beans that smelled like home. There were also some dags and strips of aurochs meat, but those felt appropriate here.
"You have outdone yourself." Tani smiled at Yomeri, who for once smiled back.
"I expect you to eat your share, or this old man will get fat."
Dhunor laughed loudly at that, while Tani blinked uncertainly. "How many others are coming?"
"No one else," Dhunor answered, laughter fading quickly. "Not many are good company these days, and our only Nelee friend left Bundlin before you could meet him. A pity, but that is the way of things."
Tani eagerly sat down at her usual place and settled her hands on her knees. She wasn't sure how long she had been reading in the room, but the food awakened a deep hunger in her. All she could do was keep it in check while Dhunor slowly sat down, sighed, and patted his stomach.
"We may be only three, but we are Nelee. Today, we remember the year we leave behind us and leave our old selves behind. May our new spirits greet another year of dawns." As he spoke the words, Dhunor seemed somber, but immediately after he grinned and rubbed his hands together. "Now, let us eat!"
In the beginning they didn't speak, eagerly relishing the feast laid before them. Tani started with the fish, since they had seafood so rarely, but soon found herself nostalgic for beans and spiced fruit. Not that there was any real need to hurry. She was used to having to scrabble for the best dishes, but with only three of them sharing this many, she would be able to eat her fill of everything.
For a time, there was only the pure enjoyment of food. Eventually, however, Dhunor gave her a serious look over his fish. "It is good to see you eating well. We worried about you, in your room all the time. Are those papers really so interesting?"
"I need to learn what I can from them while I have a chance."
Yomeri sniffed. "Always in such a hurry."
"I prefer not to hurry, but I do not have a choice. I need to become strong enough to..." Tani trailed off as she saw their faces. They didn't understand the danger she faced, and hopefully they never would. If she tried to tell them about how close she'd come to death, how desperately she needed strength to defend herself... no, that was not an option. "Commander Kolanin needs me to work more to receive a better assignment."
Dhunor banged his fist on the table. "Again with the commander's name! I cannot say I like you being near Deathspawn, but it is a sign you are moving up in the world, Tani - maybe you will stay in Bundlin, eh? We would be happy to have you."
"That is very kind, but I do not think I will be here for too much longer. I wish to give the Yevee their texts and then I must complete my Farwalk."
They nodded at this bland ambition, though she did mean it. As much as she had recovered from the experience, she missed home in a way that was more than nostalgia. Though she did not have many people left behind there - her master and perhaps Janemi - she missed the Nelee. There was no point gaining insight if she could not bring it home in the end.
In the silence Dhunor chewed through another strip of meat. Despite herself, Tani felt a flicker of condemnation that she hadn't known still lurked within her. As shameful as gluttony was, it was never a value she had been wealthy enough to consider much. And truthfully, she was eating far more than Dhunor.
Her new training left her ravenously hungry whenever she wasn't too absorbed to think of food, and Tani tried to sate that hunger. According to her master, many young women ate too little for fear of being seen as gluttons, but a warrior needed food to grow strong. Some claimed that she was merely replacing smoking with an addiction to food, but Tani thought her master was correct in this. A strong body was built from many stones, including food.
"I hope you do not have any trouble with the Yevee. Strange times lately." Dhunor sat back and began picking something out of his teeth.
"Do not speak of business, today of all days." Yomeri frowned at him sharply, but Tani sat up.
"I am sorry, but is there news of the Yevee? Has something changed?"
"Hard to know for sure." Dhunor seemed unconcerned, still working at his teeth. "There are some who say they might call a Confederation of Tribes. Others seem to want to go to war alone. With the Corans or with the Deathspawn, who can say?"
Tani listened quietly. She kept eating, now less for pleasure than to prepare herself. Though she had heard none of these rumors, she was sure that Dhunor was correct. The fact that she had delayed this long was unforgivable, though she had excuses and had been waiting on Kolanin.
Waiting too long could endanger the plans for peace, or even bring new problems if the Yevee believed she was intentionally withholding their texts. In a simpler world, she would take as long as she needed to prepare, spend her time doing nothing except gaining strength. But she did not live in that world, and if she delayed any longer, events might leave her behind.
