Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) Read online

  “Calder, you too. Wait outside the classroom, please.”

  Bayan tried to look repentant as he and Calder crossed the room and stepped outside into the cold air. As soon as Calder pulled the door shut, they both dissolved into quiet laughter.

  “Bayan!” Calder said, doing a passable imitation of Jurgen’s bass rumble. “More bulb planting for you!”

  “Calder!” The voice was Greer’s.

  Calder looked at Bayan, amazed. “I dinna know you could—”

  He caught sight of Greer, standing behind Bayan.

  “Oh,” Calder finished.

  Greer pursed his lips. “You two have not only failed to achieve the Void today, but you’ve dragged everyone else out of it as well. I understand if you might be having a difficult day. But you shouldn’t take your frustration or boredom out on the other trainees. Their safety, as well as your own, depends on their ability to achieve the Void once it comes time for magic training. Now, in order to impress upon you both the deep importance of the Void, I’m assigning you each to a solitary tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Bayan asked.

  “Solitary?” Calder asked. “Canna we just plant some more bulbs for Gerrolt?”

  “All night tonight. I’ll send further instructions to your barracks, so you know what to bring.”

  Bayan and Calder nodded, but neither looked at the other, or at Greer.

  “Try not to let this happen again, boys. You may think it’s funny now, but I assure you, most trainees come back from a night in a solitary either having found the Void and rested within it all night, or having been frozen and sleep-deprived. I’m afraid I know what you two will find, but I hold out hope you’ll prove me wrong. You’re excused from the remainder of class—we don’t need you disrupting things twice in the same day.”

  ~~~

  Greer handed Bayan a heavy blanket. “I’ll check on you during the night. Be assured that if you try to sneak back to the barracks for a warm night’s sleep, or if you’re anywhere other than this solitary when we come by, you will not enjoy the consequences.”

  Bayan wondered if the consequences could possibly be worse than staying awake all night in the freezing cold while kneeling on a stone floor in an open-sided shelter at the edge of a sheer cliff. He nodded and sat down with his thick wool blanket around his shoulders, as if preparing to meditate all night. Greer padded back down the gravel pathway through the sparse trees at the edge of the cliff, leaving Bayan alone.

  When he could no longer hear Greer’s soft steps, he looked around the small, open-air enclosure. Made of a stone base with a wooden top, the little gazebo had six sides. The Academy’s architects seemed incapable of constructing much that didn’t involve the number six. Each side had a glassless window framed by open shutters, giving Bayan a view of the nearly cloudless sky and some nearby mountain tops, drenched in moonlight.

  From here, he couldn’t see any other Academy buildings or any other buildings of any sort. Calder’s solitary was a mile or so to the west and just as isolated; Greer had installed Calder in his little gazebo before he’d shown Bayan to his own solitary.

  The night was nearly silent. The breeze rustled nearby pine boughs and occasionally whistled through the wooden beams of his solitary. Occasionally, a nocturnal bird hooted or squawked.

  Bayan got up, walked to a window and looked down. In the gray shades of moonlight, the distance to the valley floor seemed less intimidating. Like a dream. It looks real, but it isn’t.

  A thought came to him. They’re not going to come checking on us for a few hours. If I’m going to do anything other than sit here and freeze to death, it needs to be now.

  Before he could change his mind, Bayan shed his heavy blanket and bolted down the trail. His eyes had fully adjusted to the night’s shadows, and he loped along the path toward Calder as easily as if it were bathed in morning’s light. He hurried, wanting to spend as much time with his friend as he could before he felt he had to return. Despite the rugged path, he barely felt out of breath. I’m getting tougher just going to class. He grinned. I guess these bracelets aren’t completely useless.

  A few minutes later, he slowed to a walk as he approached Calder’s solitary. An iron pole stood high from the center point of the roof, gleaming in the moonlight, just like the one on his solitary. He heard a scrambling noise and saw Calder struggle to his feet in the dimness, drawing his blanket close around him as he turned from the low sill.

  “Calder,” he whispered. “It’s just me.”

  “Bayan? What are you doing over here?”

  “Ignoring Greer’s rules, obviously. They won’t want to come check on us for a long time, so I thought I’d come see you. Do you have as nice a view as I do?”

  “Depends. What could you see from yours?”

  “Half the world.” Bayan went to one of the windows and looked out. Calder had a much different view, with a small waterfall that glowed in the moonlight, and the glinting ribbon of its stream. He could see further west, too, over some of the lower promontories.

  “Not this much. This must be what it’s like to be a Skycaller back home. Living up above everything, separate from the people below. In exchange, they get this great view.”

  “From what you’ve told me, they probably need it to do their magic.”

  Bayan nodded. Stepping up onto the low sill, he slid one leg through the window, then the other, and sat in its frame.

  “Oi, no dying. Instructor Staasen said.”

  Bayan grinned. “Doesn’t it feel like a huge field stretching out before you? Like you could just step out and walk across the sky?”

  Calder leaned his elbows on the next window’s frame and gazed out into the cold night. “Aye, in a way. Though, in the true spirit of my barbaric ancestors, I’d rather to ride.”

  Bayan laughed. “Well, if we’re going to be that way about it, I’ll just fly on the breath of Bhattara.”

  “Your god that lives in the sky?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean he’s here, too?”

  “I like to think so.”

  “The sints around here don’t come with that scope. They’re more of what I call local gods.”

  “Local gods?”

  “Aye. You have your local butcher, your local grain merchant, your local god.”

  “Really? Are there that many of them?”

  “Nae, not so many. But the things they do for people are usually small, and unless you know what the sint likes, you’re probably not going to get any answer.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Sints like gifts. As I imagine any god does. Means us mortals are paying attention to them. With the sints, they each like something different. Some accept gifts of food or flowers or pretty stones. Others like stories of good deeds done, or a song or a dance. There are a few places I’ve heard of where the local sint is particular like, so the nearest towns or villages have people you can hire to perform for the sint on your behalf.”

  Bayan frowned. That sounded odd. Among the Balanganese, no one stood between a person and Bhattara. When you wanted to ask him for something, you just asked. When you wanted to thank him with a gift or an act of generosity, you did so. Bayan had to admit, though, he was curious to see one of these sints.

  “Is there one around here?”

  “Oh, aye. A few, in fact, or so I heard.”

  “Really? What do they look like?”

  “Whatever they fancy, I imagine. They don’t have bodies. Unless they want one, I suppose, but I’ve never heard of them wearing one. They live in caves or in old trees, that sort of thing, and they’re just… there. You bring your gift, say what you came to say, and then they either grant your request or they don’t.”

  “And anyone can ask them for help?”

  “Aye. Though I don’t know what the ones up here like to help with. Some only help with love matches or healing or bringing water into wells during drought. That sort of thing. You’ll want to find out what they
’re about before you go pestering them.”

  “Pestering the gods,” Bayan said with a laugh. “Not something I wanted to do here. Of course, I didn’t want to come here to do anything, really.”

  Calder was quiet. Bayan looked out across the moonlit landscape again, feeling the breeze chill his ankles.

  “Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, being a Skycaller.”

  “You miss home, aye?”

  “More than anything.”

  “Why don’t you write? I send my mum a letter every other mail day. A good little Dunfarroghan, me. And sints know she needs all the good news I can share. But I’ve never seen you write home. Did your leaving not go smoothly?”

  Bayan frowned; he hadn’t told Calder, or anyone, about the circumstances of his sudden departure from Pangusay. Staring out across the bicolored landscape, he shared the story of his accidental magic hole, Surveyor Philo’s generous offer, and Imee’s slap. He left out the part about his sudden response to her, but he did share the part about the leaves on his pronged baton and feeding the evidence to the pitcher plant, Gamay.

  “After that,” he concluded, “I couldn’t think about any of them without all the bad memories coming back. I put off writing home so often that avoidance turned into habit.”

  “You should at least tell them you dinna die on the way here.”

  Bayan shook his head. “I’ve gotten a few letters from my father. My little brother has started training to replace me. He writes that my lovemate… she’s been seen with a merchant’s son. I don’t even want to read his letters anymore—”

  Faint footsteps approached. Calder scrambled for his blanket and dropped to his knees. “Hide!” he hissed.

  But there was nowhere for Bayan to hide. The solitary was purposely built at the edge of a cliff. He looked down and saw a broken wall with a small ledge a stride or so below the base of the solitary.

  Bhattara, catch me if I fall, he prayed. He spun and dropped from the window ledge.

  Steelwielders

  His first kiss had been right here in the wine cellar, with Inglaak. Now, Savitu stood on the stone landing of her cellar stairs and watched Marco and Hahliq spar with sharp steel blades in the sunken arena his supporters had constructed in the floor. After being released from ten years of eunuch training, Savitu had learned that Inglaak’s family had vanished at war’s end, but in the state the Waarden had left him, he dared not look for her. In the meantime, his loyalists had found the abandoned property and claimed it.

  “Marco’s not bad, for an imperial,” Qisuk commented, watching the shirtless, sweaty combatants. “Picks up our style nicely.”

  Savitu observed the sparring men. They were silent in their intensity, making small, dusty shuffles with their shoes as they circled one another. Marco tossed his short sword from his right hand to his left and lunged during Hahliq’s momentary shift in attention. The Aklaa warrior dodged aside from Marco’s left-handed thrust, but barely. “I’d wager he could best you.”

  “Not so; I keep up my own training.”

  Qisuk did not expect Savitu’s backhanded slap; he went still, glaring with anger and surprise. “Do not strike me as if I am a wayward child, Savitu. You are only an uncrowned prince.”

  “You act only for yourself,” Savitu seethed. His high-voiced attempt at sounding authoritative brought tears of deep shame to his eyes. His Waarden captors had known what they were about when they forced a high voice upon a member of a culture that valued deep, manly tones. “If the commune overseers find you with so much as a bread knife in your hand…”

  “Savitu.” Qisuk shifted uncomfortably at the sight of tears. “Not in front of the Waarden.”

  Savitu jerked his head, saw that the sparring bout had ended. Marco and Hahliq stared up at him, towels in their hands.

  “Don’t look at me!” He flung a hand up to ward off their concern.

  “Savitu—” Hahliq raised a calming hand.

  But the deep baritone of the commander’s voice only wounded Savitu further. Without another word, he stumbled up the stairs and away from his shame, his fingers aching for the sacred soil of the second floor prayer room.

  ~~~

  Bayan clung to the rock below Calder’s solitary, the chill wind whipping at his tunic as he listened to Greer question Calder on his condition and meditation experience. He knew that as soon as Greer left this solitary, he’d walk to Bayan’s, a mile away. He eased to his left and peered around the edge of the cliff where it cut back toward the trail. Below, several pines swayed gently, their tops nearly as high as his feet. He clung to the rock and calmed his thudding heart.

  Rock and trees and a cold night wind. I could really use some magic right about now.

  His ledge ended at the corner of the cliff. Descending by hand- and foot-holds, Bayan heard Greer’s voice bid Calder good night.

  He looked around. On the valley side of the cliff’s face, the rock wall descended for another ten strides before scattering into a brief scree slope that poured down toward a sheer drop. Around the edge, toward his own solitary, the pines that clung to a narrow strip of soil along a stretch of stepped stone were within a courageous reach. The distance to his solitary was much shorter than a mile if he took a more direct and dangerous route.

  Trees are made of wood. Wood’s sacred motion is the arc. Let’s find out how much arc is in this wood.

  Bayan tensed and launched himself at the nearest pine tree, throwing his arms around its trunk. He found footholds on a pair of branches, then swayed the tree back and forth. Other trees’ branches slashed at him, and he hunched down, protecting his face.

  When the treetop’s swing reached a great, curving arc, Bayan chose his next target, leaping through sharp-needled branches to cling to another tree. In this fashion, he traveled slowly but directly toward his solitary.

  Something within him felt fulfilled, content. It wasn’t a feeling he’d experienced very often of late. After a moment’s introspection, he discovered with surprise that the contentment came from the dark thing within him. That which usually made him want to beat the guts out of someone was now enjoying Bayan’s night flight across a stand of pines.

  What are you?

  The trees ended near a rocky slope which led, eventually, up to Bayan’s solitary. He eyed the distance between his tree and the rocky slope, then, filled with the exhilaration of the immense blackness that rode within him, he flung himself into the air with the whip of the tree.

  Weightlessness engulfed him for a moment of sheer bliss, and his soul expanded, encompassing all that was. Then the rocks approached, and he thudded down amongst them, sliding back toward the edge of the short cliff. Yet no fragment of worry penetrated his calm. His hands found a solid ridge of rock beneath the tumbling gravel, and he stopped his fall and began climbing upward.

  So natural. So right. How can the darkness be all bad if it’s having so much fun?

  Huffing and puffing, Bayan scampered along a low ridge below the path Greer would use to approach the solitary. Grinning, he sidled up to one of the side windows of the solitary and eased inside, hearing Greer’s footsteps approaching in the distance.

  Greer entered the solitary through the open door. “Bayan?”

  “Yes, Instructor Greer?” Bayan, kneeling by the window he’d just hopped through, couldn’t keep the joy from his voice. The darkness still thrilled within him.

  “Aren’t you cold? You aren’t wearing your blanket.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  Greer, wearing an expression of open doubt, stepped closer and put a hand on Bayan’s shoulder. Finding it warm, he made a surprised sound and squatted down beside Bayan, studying his face.

  Bayan, in the thrall of his inner glee and oneness with the night, looked out the window at the sky and murmured, “Is this what controlling magic feels like?” His voice sounded distant in his own ears.

  “You’ve achieved the Void!” Greer exclaimed in a hushed tone.

  Bayan didn’t
know if that was true. Was the Void a semi-sentient force with a will of its own? He hadn’t heard anything like that in class. Considering how he felt, he would look into the matter, at least at some point when he wasn’t sleep-deprived and half demented with the darkness’ excitement.

  “I confess,” Greer continued, “I was wrong about you. I’m glad to see that a little hardship has forced you to focus deep within yourself, and achieve the balance of emotion that the Void brings to those who seek it. Considering you’ve achieved so much in so little time, you may return to the barracks for the remainder of the night.”

  “What about Calder?”

  Greer got to his feet. “He was a little nervous when I spoke to him. I take that to mean he hadn’t been meditating as he should have, and he was afraid of further punishment. I’ll recommend that he meditate with you from now on. Perhaps your success will rub off on him. Congratulations, Bayan. You’ve done very well, and I’m quite impressed. I look forward to continued good things from you as our class progresses.”

  Bayan picked up his blanket. “Would you mind if I returned alone, Instructor Greer? I know the way, and I’m still full of this feeling.”

  “Of course. Be mindful of the path. I’ll meet you back on campus to make sure you’ve returned safely.”

  Bayan nodded. As soon as Greer was out of sight, Bayan hurried back to Calder’s solitary.

  “Here, take this,” he whispered as he placed his blanket over Calder’s shoulders.

  “You again, like an unlucky ducat. Did you get caught? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain later. Sorry.”

  Bayan left Calder and his questions behind and descended the path until the barracks were in sight. Sure enough, Greer waited nearby. He raised a hand in acknowledgement and headed into the barracks before the teacher could realize Bayan didn’t have his blanket.