By Ways Unseen Read online

  With an animal shout, the thing in the darkness leapt at him, bearing him to the ground. He couldn’t swing the blade; it felt like fighting inside a sack. His elbow found some freedom and the sickle swung erratically. He thought he caught flesh once or twice. Something like water splashed on him, though thicker, warm, and sticky. He cried out, his mind breaking.

  There was fire around him; he could feel the heat.

  Teeth snarled and snapped, catching a small piece of his neck. Frantically he pushed the furry head away, but it bore back down and gnawed into his chest. Haydren screamed, slashing more mightily with the sickle.

  He could smell sweat, and flies; he didn’t even know you could smell flies, but he smelled them.

  The creature finally collapsed on top of him. Still shaking and sobbing, he pushed it away and scrambled to his feet. He tried to run, but wooden slats stopped him. He had to get away; with heart exploding, he hacked at the wood. It scraped, it chipped, it scratched, and it thrust through a seam, sticking traitorously as Haydren struggled and finally yanked it free. With a weary scream Haydren flailed away at the door.

  Suddenly, the bolt was thrown back and daylight poured in. His arm still swinging wildly, Haydren rushed out of the shed. A man dressed as a guard of the Inner Towers stepped back quickly as Haydren finally halted, the sickle outstretched, his chest heaving.

  The guard looked inside the shed, then back. “Did you do this?” he asked incredulously.

  Haydren gazed at him; bile rose in his throat, and he doubled over and vomited. When he had finished, he pitched forward, unconscious.

  He awoke in a room, strange yet familiar; his adoptive parents – Mickel and Maerie Loren – were near the foot of the bed, speaking to the Sage whose name he had never learned. Haydren’s eyes fluttered; he had woken up here before, the first time, when all his previous memories were in a thick fog. His mind raced, trying to remember anything he might have forgotten.

  “What happened to him?” Maerie asked the Sage

  “He found him,” the Sage replied. “Said he had been locked in a shed; a dog inside didn’t have its head anymore.”

  I remember that…

  Mickel turned to the guard. “Where did you find him, Jeyetna?” he asked.

  “The shed was behind the school, at the base of the keep,” Jeyetna replied. “I think most of that blood belonged to the mastiff.”

  “He’s got a fair piece taken out of his chest, though; he’ll be fine,” the Sage added quickly as Maerie hiccuped. “Back on his feet in a few weeks; maybe sooner.”

  “How did he…you know,” Mickel asked, drawing a thumb across his throat.

  “He had a sickle in his hand when he ran out,” Jeyetna said.

  Mickel’s eyes went wide. “A sickle?” he repeated. Jeyetna nodded grimly.

  A sniffle from Haydren brought all their attention to him; Maerie ran over, grasping his hand and pressing it to her lips. “Are you okay?” she gasped.

  Haydren blinked at a few tears, but managed a nod. He knew the extent of her question, and answered it truly; the deeper question would hover until Guntsen ascended the throne.

  *

  Pladt awoke with the sun screaming in his eyes. He winced, groaned, pulled the blankets over his head, and sighed. A rare chance he finally had to sleep a little later than normal, shot as a hydra’s eye. But now he was awake, and he knew he would stay that way.

  He flopped the blankets off his head and sniffed. The scent of warm cakes pierced his mood. He listened, hearing his mother preparing breakfast downstairs. His father, then, would be sitting at the table going over whatever it was he looked at every morning before going to the warehouses.

  Pladt sat up, gazing out of his window. On the horizon, its thick roots washed in the surf of Burieng Ocean, Mount Thoret burned red as its spiked peak gleamed in the morning light. The lower slopes were an unremarkable dull black; but something in the rock at the top caused it to shine red when a low sun was upon it.

  Since coming back to Werine a year ago, Pladt awoke almost daily to the sight of Thoret burning, yet not once had he gone to the mountain to see it up close. His sole purpose, given him by his father, was to guard the city with his bow; to wish for anything else was heresy.

  Pladt sighed; fully awake now, he decided he might as well eat with his parents.

  His father and mother were exactly as he had imagined in the kitchen. Though nearby houses crowded the windows, sunlight found its way in and amplified against white walls; a soft breeze, scented by the sea, sent the edges of the pale curtains dancing and waving good morning. When Pladt entered, his mother Fiora twisted around and smiled.

  “Good morning, sleepy one,” she said cheerily.

  “Hmmm,” Pladt mumbled. He was not nearly as sleepy as he wanted to be.

  “I fried you some cakes,” Fiora said, turning back to the large wood-stove. “Molasses is on the shelf – you know where it is,” she added with a sly smile. He grinned briefly in return, and retrieved the jar.

  “So what do you want to do with your free day?” Fiora asked, pushing a plate loaded with cakes toward him.

  Pladt glanced at his father, Kerrik. “I thought I might go see Mount Thoret,” he said quietly.

  “Oh?” Fiora said, glancing too at her husband.

  Kerrik did not look up, or even appear to stop reading the manifest before him. “You can’t,” he said flatly.

  “The hydras have not attacked in over a week, father,” Pladt said. “I want to see what makes the mountain turn red, that’s all.”

  Kerrik looked up, now. “Do you think their prolonged absence makes the hydras less likely to attack now, or more?”

  “Do you know what makes it shine red?” Pladt asked, picking at a corner of a cake. The molasses still sat unopened before him.

  “Should I? Will it benefit me to know?” Kerrik returned. “I want no more discussion; this town needs you to protect it, and if the hydras are going to attack, today is a better day than yesterday.”

  Fiora had by now returned to the stove. Pladt looked at her, wishing she would say something but knowing she would not. Kerrik had returned to his manifest, content that the argument was over. And, Pladt realized, it was.

  “You’re right,” he said, gazing down at his breakfast. “If they attacked, I wouldn’t make it back in time to help the town. I’ll probably just go talk to Naek, for now.”

  His father and mother remained silent. After several moments, Pladt stood, leaving his plate untouched and the jar of molasses unopened.

  He left the house, turning away from the tavern where Naek worked and heading for the edge of town. Naek was not truly a friend, he was Kerrik’s friend; all of Pladt’s “friends” were his father’s friends. They humored him, occasionally; nothing more. Pladt shook his head as he tried to brush away such unpleasant thoughts on such a beautiful day, and glanced at the city around him as he walked. The streets were beginning to fill with travelers and traders; Werinin, to the north, was the best port to receive people and goods into Burieng from Andelen, and Werine was the only way further into country. As such, a large amount of merchants and freight moved through the town, lending to Kerrik’s comfortable living: he owned three of the largest warehouses in Werine, and sent and received a majority percentage of that freight.

  Werine sat deep in the Mydop peninsula, and the thick stone wall that protected most cities in Burieng was notably absent from the town: no human army could attack from the sea, and if Galessern made it that far north the city was doomed anyway, or so it was deemed. So as Pladt neared the edge of the town, instead of passing through a gate, the number of houses simply thinned until he stood on the edge of the broad grassy plain that extended to Hodp over a hundred miles away. A contingent of roaming guards passed by with curt nods; Pladt acknowledged them, and returned his gaze southward. One of the forest cuts that broke the landscape here extended to the edge of Werine. It was this cut to which Pladt enjoyed retiring after a long day; from here,
he could sit back against a tree and watch the sun set among the foothills of Ives’ Plateau.

  But now, with the sun on the opposite horizon, there was not much of interest to be seen to the west. Instead, as Pladt rested, he faced south down Shoreline Road. An early departing convoy made its way noisily down the road, a plume of dust rising behind it.

  The dust soon settled; the convoy was gone, and the land empty. But glimmering in the corner of Pladt’s eye, Thoret tried in vain to recapture his attention. It couldn’t know that no amount of his attention would ever matter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DEEDS

  “We don’t look at Burieng?”

  “The world is a big place.”

  “What is in Andelen?”

  “Revolution. And help.”

  27 Nuamon 1316 – Spring

  “Look out!”

  Haydren’s attention broke from a departing patrol as an object whizzed by his temple. He flinched, his eyes snapping to where Kitrel stood smiling.

  “Pay attention, would you?” Kitrel shouted, laughter riding the fringes of his voice.

  “What do you care?” Haydren said, rubbing the side of his head. “You would have won.”

  “Yeah, but I would have had to leave you here or drag you back to the school,” he said, tossing a clod of dirt lazily into the air. There was nothing lazy about the throw.

  Still, Haydren’s stick came up and deflected it easily, showering him only lightly with dirt as the clod exploded. He looked at his friend with a critical eye; the other boys in the class weren’t growing much anymore, but Kitrel showed no signs of stopping even though he was already a head taller than all of them. Some whispered he had native Werine in his blood – which also explained the bulk of muscles he grew without hardly an effort.

  “I think you could have managed it,” Haydren replied. He thrust his “sword” into the plowed earth and picked up two clods of broken soil. He sent them flying in rapid succession, but Kitrel didn’t dodge the way Haydren hoped, and the second sailed wide.

  “What was that?” Kitrel asked, laughing.

  “You were supposed to go the other way!” Haydren protested.

  “Oh, well you’ll have to let me know sooner next time,” came the response, along with two more balls of dirt. The first came low, and Haydren leapt over it nimbly; but the second came just above it, and pounded into his chest.

  “Victory!” cried Kitrel, holding his fists above his head.

  “I have armor on!” Haydren shot back. “You have to hit me twice!”

  “That’s not the rules,” Kitrel shouted, his fists coming down hard onto his hips.

  “I’m a swordsman in the Earl’s ranks; what do I care for your silly rules?”

  Haydren never would have supposed that so many clods could come flying from his friend’s hands so rapidly. He scurried right, laughing and shielding his head; he bent and grabbed another clod, when something in the ground caught his eye. Just as he stopped to look more closely, another blow rang in his ears.

  “Kitrel! Come on!” Haydren shouted, rubbing his head; he expected blood, but found none.

  “Well, pay attention!” Kitrel replied, trotting toward him. “That was the second time. What were you looking at?”

  “Some kind of strange – there it is!” He wrestled a root from the ground, almost like ginger but less gnarled. He sniffed it: definitely not ginger. It looked too plump to be wild.

  “What is that?” Kitrel asked, catching a glimpse as he walked up.

  “Some root, I don’t know. I wonder if I could make anything out of it?”

  “Steeping again? Haydren, I worry about how fascinated you are by that class – aha!” he shouted suddenly, jabbing a finger at Haydren.

  “What? What?” he said, taking a step backward.

  “You’re just kitten-eyed at Felise, aren’t you?”

  “Oh. No,” Haydren replied, looking at the root again; he could see thick purple mucus welling through a small cut.

  “’No’?”

  Haydren glanced up. “Kitrel, she’s twice our age.”

  “I’ve seen you looking. So what are you going to do with that?”

  “She’s the instructor! I have to look at her.”

  “What are you going to do with that…thing?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Haydren replied, swiping his thumb across the cut. It stung a little, and he quickly wiped his hand on his trousers.

  “Don’t eat it.”

  “No kidding, it just stung me a little bit there.”

  Kitrel folded his arms. “Maybe you should leave it here.”

  “Maybe,” Haydren replied, sticking it into his pocket as he turned back for the gates.

  Shaking his head, Kitrel followed as the sun lowered toward the horizon.

  *

  A few days later, Haydren entered Felise’s classroom. A few students looked up. Guntsen looked quickly away; the other glances flicked higher, looking at Haydren’s hair. Knowing it only validated their attention, but unable to help himself, Haydren scratched his scalp. When he first noticed the change, he had hoped there was something wrong with the polished steel; his classmates’ glances and ill-quieted whispers told him his hair was indeed brightening from a barely-tolerated commoner’s brown to an openly reviled Rinc Nain chestnut.

  But these thoughts bled away with the steam of a small kettle as Haydren waited for the water to boil. Others of the class were already stirring some contents into their kettles – probably safe concoctions they had already practiced a hundred times. But they would never get better by doing over again what they’d already done; Haydren tapped his teeth together, glancing sideways at the two bowls of his ingredients.

  “Good to see one of my students taking the time to do things right,” said a gentle voice behind him. “Most of them see it as a glorified tea-brewing class.”

  Haydren smiled at the Herbmistress, Felise. “So did I, at first,” he replied. His head ducked back to the kettle as Kitrel batted his eyes at him from a few tables over.

  “It’s certainly nothing that will get you into the Earl’s Mages,” she said with a laugh. Her smile faded as she glanced over his bowls. “Where did you get this?” she asked suddenly, picking up the sliced root. By now a puddle of its purple juices swirled at the bottom. Haydren glanced first at her, then the bowl, noticing suddenly an almost metallic sheen to the liquid. “I-I found it, in the south fields,” Haydren replied, backing away a step. “I didn’t know what it was.”

  “In the fields?” she demanded, stepping a little closer. Every eye in the room was on him, some boldly, some cast in sideways glances.

  “You can ask Kitrel, he was with me,” Haydren said, pointing. Kitrel nodded when she looked over. “I wasn’t going to drink it, or anything.”

  “Easy, Haydren; I believe you,” she replied. “Next time check strange ingredients you find with me, though. You wouldn’t have needed to drink this; the fumes alone would have killed you.” She gestured at the second bowl. “And this thistle would have made it impossible to extract, even for a Sage. Because you’re right: this isn’t tea-brewing.”

  “Probably couldn’t help it,” Guntsen muttered nearby. “Killing Cariste is in his blood.”

  “Your father’s edict came to all instructors, Guntsen,” Felise warned him sharply. “And a few years have not erased my memory of it.”

  As Guntsen glowered into his bubbling brown stew, Felise returned to the front of the classroom with Haydren’s bowl, which she covered securely. Haydren glanced at the thistle, at his boiling water, then at Kitrel, whose gaze was a playful I told you so. Everyone else’s said what an idiot.

  So, Haydren mused, thistle made things hard to extract? Could that make healing draughts that much more potent? Haydren perused the array of stoppered flasks lining the edge of the table. He could work with that.

  He knew Felise was keeping an eye on him as he continued to try different concoctions; he didn’t expect her to hold him b
ack after class. He mirrored Kitrel’s shrug as the rest of the students left the classroom.

  “It seems you won’t be stopped,” Felise said as the door closed. “I’m glad you recognized the properties of thistle and how it might apply to other mixtures, but I can’t let you run blindly ahead of the rest of the class: you just might end up killing someone. So here, take this,” she said, passing across her desk a small red-leather book with a green leaf in faded and frayed stitching on the front. Haydren picked it up; it smelled like a hundred different mixtures and two hundred years of attempts. He flipped it open, finding in swirling script instructions for a mixture titled: “To Calm A Ringing in the Ears.” He glanced up quizzically, meeting Felise’s calm smile.

  “Two conditions, Haydren, or I take it back: start from the beginning, doing each mixture in order and in class; and don’t let me see you working on something you haven’t gotten to yet.” She paused, shaking her head slowly. “I’ve seen students take to this class, but you’re something different,” she said with her continuing smile. “I can’t help but wonder why.”

  Haydren glanced at the book again, trying not to get excited about mixtures deeper within it. He shrugged his left shoulder; even he wasn’t entirely sure why. “I feel like it might be very useful, later on.”

  “Very well. Don’t let too many other students see that,” she said with a gesture. “You can keep it as long as you need it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” he said with a smile, tucking the book inside his shirt and returning quickly to his room.

  *

  Haydren stood before the wooden mannequin. Its clubs were poised in anticipation of ill-timing, daring him to feel fatigue, hoping the strength hidden in his wiry muscles was beginning to fail.