Master of furies, p.31
Master of Furies, page 31
The captured Azhante spoke again, his tone threatening as he tried to see through the gloom to make out who had captured him. Again, his demands were met by silence.
As he started to raise his voice even more, Hava stepped forward where he could see her and put her fingers to his lips, while holding up her right index finger before her own, making a shushing sound.
His eyes widened and he was on the verge of saying something else, when she put more pressure on his face, forcing his head backwards in a manner that was uncomfortable but not yet painful.
He fell silent.
In her own native version of the local dialect she said, ‘Azhante.’
In the Azhante dialect he said, ‘Let me go!’
She said nothing but smiled at him.
‘What do you want?’
Again, silence.
After a few moments of demanding to be released, his tone changed and he said, ‘Let me go and I will stay silent. No one needs to know you’ve assaulted an Azhante.’
Hava stayed silent but kept smiling.
He promised again to say silent, but his tone became slightly more frantic.
Hava realized at this point that whatever else was different between the Azhante schools and Coaltachin’s, this young man had no training in questioning a captive or resisting interrogation if captured. All students in Coaltachin were thus trained, as how well you performed was an important part of advancing to further training in the Quelli Nascosti. She had seen many students sent away from school to work as street criminals for crews because they had failed the early tests. She was now certain that the Pride Lords only wanted their most loyal servants to be more than disposable soldiers, what she heard characterized as ‘fodder for the wall’.
After more pleading and threatening, the prisoner fell silent. Hava let a few moments pass, then looked past the captive at Red Sweeney, and asked, ‘Local boy?’
Red Sweeney nodded. Hava had given strict instructions that she be the only one to speak. If this small adventure went askew, she wanted to be the only person the captive could identify. She had made sure they knew it was her first priority that no one else be identified, one way or another.
Softly she said, ‘Local boy, what is your name?’
He swallowed hard and licked his lips, then said, ‘Dahod.’
She turned and walked out of his field of view, paused a moment, then returned with a large cup of water.
‘Thirsty?’
He nodded, and Hava lifted the cup to his lips and let him drink.
When he had finished, she again returned to a table out of his line of sight and paused. One of her early lessons in interrogation had been to avoid patterns: routines become reassuring, predictable, and that was dangerous. She waited long enough that he might think she had left and then she returned.
She saw what she had hoped to see, a flicker of relief at her coming back into his field of view. As she had been taught, the unknown is far more frightening than possibilities of harm. A runaway imagination was far more effective than threats if there was enough time. Anticipation was more terrifying than a beating. She had let him learn that if they were talking, he was not being tortured.
‘Do you serve with joy?’ she asked softly. As she had expected, his expression revealed he had no idea as to the context of the question.
He said nothing, lost in confusion.
‘Do you serve the Pride Lords with joy in your heart?’ she said, expanding the context. ‘Would you die to serve them?’
His eyes widened and Hava suspected he was wondering if this was some sort of test. Without any conviction in his words, he said, ‘If I am to die …’ He looked to be on the verge of tears. He swallowed hard. ‘I die willingly.’
Hava paused, then again stepped beyond his vision. She let that answer hang in the air but came back into his sight far more quickly than before, to break the pattern.
Kneeling once more, she asked, ‘Do you serve with joy?’
The colour seemed to be draining from his face by the second, and she knew the answer without him speaking. Yet she understood this had to run its course.
‘Do you serve with joy?’
As she had hoped, his confusion grew and he glanced around as if trying again to see who was lurking in the dark. His expression had now gone from fearful confusion to terror.
Dahod’s eyes watered. ‘I serve! I … I’m sorry, I should not have gone to the inn. I will never do it again. Please, don’t hurt my family. I’ll serve with joy! I will do whatever—’ His voice broke and he began to sob.
Hava took a deep breath then nodded to Red Sweeney and the others to step outside with her. She looked from face to face and said, ‘I’d hardly call this boy a fanatic.’
Sweeney said, ‘He became an Azhante to save his family from slaughter.’ He looked genuinely disgusted. ‘I hated the Pride Lords before, but seeing that lad pissing himself and trying not to fall apart because he loves his parents, brothers, sisters … it’s poisonous.’
Hava took a deep breath. ‘I have no problem with killing a man who deserves it, and take no joy from that, but this?’ She pointed through the door to the warehouse. ‘If there’s anyone who deserves a slow, agonizing death, it’s the Pride Lords.’
She beckoned the others to follow her back inside, took a deep breath and then returned to where Dahod could see her.
She leaned close to the now-terrified Azhante. Looking into his face, she realized she was probably a bit younger than he was, yet she thought of him as still a boy. She gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze and said, ‘No one will harm you or your family.’
He looked at her face in the dim light as if fearing this was another trick.
She just stared at him for a long moment, then added, ‘We are coming to help you.’
‘Who?’ he asked, trying to regain some composure.
‘We are coming to free you.’
‘Who is?’ he asked.
‘We are.’
He again looked around the room in vain.
At last he caught his breath and in a calmer voice softly asked, ‘Who are you?’
‘We are Coaltachin,’ she replied quietly.
His eyes widened and an expression of doubt and wonder crossed his face, then he closed his eyes and suddenly began to cry like a baby, his body racked with sobs.
Hava nodded, and the men began slowly moving to where the horses waited outside. Red Sweeney stayed behind, while Hava let Dahod cry himself out, and when he regained his wits, she said, ‘We will now let you go. Speak to no one of this but know there are others like yourself who have been told of our coming. We mean to free our lost brothers and end the Pride Lords. I will send someone here in a week’s time. Will you serve us?’
Overwhelmed by emotions, he could barely speak. He nodded and whispered, ‘Yes, on my life.’
Red Sweeney came from behind and put a blindfold over his eyes and began untying the ropes that bound Dahod. Hava helped the young man to stand. He was no longer intoxicated, but he was still shaky.
She said, ‘Say nothing, but when I leave you, wait until you hear horses ride off, and then remove the blindfold. Can you return in a week?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
‘Then return to the inn, but do not go inside. Across from the inn is an alley. Someone will be waiting for you there. Say nothing more.’
She led him out of the warehouse and down the long avenue, then to the right up another, and doubled back, and then led him around the block. She patted his shoulder and slipped away.
Reaching the warehouse, she passed through a red door. There she found Red Sweeney and the others waiting with the horses.
Red Sweeney said, ‘That was a bit of work. I’d have just beaten it out of him.’
As she swung up into the saddle, Hava vividly recalled when she had first come to her school. ‘They take them from their mothers when they’re still children. Some grow up hard, unbreakable. Those are the tough ones. The rest? Some become men, and some stay children. A woman’s soft touch reminds them of their mothers.’
‘Are there others like him?’
Hava took a deep breath as she sat back in the saddle. ‘There will be. We have to start somewhere.’
‘If it didn’t work?’
‘I’d have cut his throat,’ said Hava calmly.
Red Sweeney said, ‘It worked.’
‘Throat-cutting or beatings are hard ways to make friends,’ she replied, turning her mount.
As they rode off in the direction that would lead them back to the smugglers’ village she said, ‘And before we’re through, we’re going to need a lot of friends.’
HATU WAS LEANING BACK IN a chair, half-dozing, when Bodai entered the library. He pulled out another chair and the scraping sound brought Hatu back from the edge of sleep.
‘Need a nap?’ asked Bodai with a jocular note. It was less than an hour after they had had their morning meal.
‘No, it was this book,’ Hatu replied, pointing to a volume bound in leather.
‘That boring?’
‘Quite the opposite.’ Hatu sat up and shook himself alert. He held up the book, and Bodai could see it was tall and wide, but slim. ‘It’s all handwritten by a scribe or perhaps some user of “magic” by the name of …’ He opened the cover to look at the thin vellum, and said, ‘Kondroc, whoever he may be. The language is Direl, and I have no idea where people who speak that tongue reside.’ He sat back and for a moment thought hard, then burst out, ‘I’m an idiot!’
‘No doubt,’ joked Bodai. ‘What?’
‘Where are we?’
‘The Sanctuary,’ replied Bodai. ‘You know, these questions you know the answers to get annoying.’
Hatu laughed. ‘And where do you think Hava and I and every other student learned that annoying trick?’
Bodai sat back, his expression slightly crestfallen, and quietly said, ‘Oh.’
Hatu swept his hand in a theatrical gesture. ‘And what massive piece of land lies over there?’
‘Nytanny,’ answered Bodai.
‘And how many nations …?’
‘Hundreds,’ said Bodai, now laughing. ‘Of course, before the relocation of the Flame Guard to Ithrace, we would have come across books and papers written by the scholars of Nytanny.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Hatu.
‘So, what is special about this one?’
‘As I read, at first nothing made sense. In fact, I thought this might be a book of codes, for most of the words here are nonsense in any language I have read and, as you know, at this point that is a lot of languages.’
‘True.’
‘At first I thought it was gibberish. And then I thought perhaps if I read it aloud, it might make sense. As soon as I started on this page … I felt something, a sensation I only experience when working with Nathan, when trying to understand how I interact with the furies.
‘So, I tried reading at the same time as letting my mind slip into the state I use when training and I saw …’ He closed the book and put it on the table. ‘I don’t know what I saw.’
Bodai said, ‘I wish I could understand, but I don’t.’
‘All those lines of energy I see, between opposing furies, from small creatures to aspects of nature, there are more!’ said Hatu, excitedly. ‘There are things out there that are … invisible! Things I can’t name, but I can sense them. When I caused the rockslide that saved Declan, I was using a massive hammer.’ He waved his hand. ‘That’s not what it was, but how it felt. When I sensed the presence of life force, Nathan warned me not to touch it, for I could cause harm by the slightest contact. That tickled like a tiny hair falling from a child’s head to land on your arm.’ He shook his head. ‘Less than that. But this …’ He paused and looked intently at Bodai. ‘This is so much finer. It is the tiniest grain of dust beside a mountain!’ Hatu took a deep breath. ‘But the number of them … they’re countless. They are everywhere.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Bodai. ‘I saw a little of what you saw when I joined you and Nathan. I don’t pretend to understand what you’re seeing, feeling, able to do, but just from what you said I am coming to believe that we understand very little of what there is to know.’
Hatu smiled. ‘That’s only part of it. There are lines of combined forces, like twisted fibres of a massive rope, and they are countless, entire collections, spanning distances I can’t imagine!’
‘And the book?’ asked Bodai.
‘As I read aloud, I could feel powers rise up and begin to cause the lines to … vibrate differently, to … hum?’
‘I wonder,’ said Bodai. ‘Could it be some missing part of discovering your powers?’
‘Maybe,’ said Hatu.
A voice from behind the long bookcase said, ‘It’s a book of magic spells.’
Both Hatu and Bodai turned in their chairs as Nathan returned to the library. He looked tired, and he sported what appeared to be several recent bruises on his face.
‘Nathan!’ Hatu exclaimed, standing up. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’ve been better. It’s a long walk getting back,’ Nathan replied, then sat heavily in the seat Hatu had just vacated. He looked bone-tired. ‘I could use a drink.’
‘What?’
‘Wine, ale, whisky if you have it.’
‘We have some, I’m sure,’ said Hatu, and he headed towards the kitchen.
Bodai looked at Nathan. ‘Do I even ask?’
With a wave of his hand, Nathan said, ‘There is much to discuss, but wait until Hatu gets back.’
Hatu returned, a large black bottle in one hand, three mugs held by the handles in the other. He set them down and said, ‘I found this whisky from I don’t know where.’
‘Thank you,’ said Nathan. He poured a tall measure, took a long swallow, then squinched his eyes tightly and shook his head. ‘Ohh, that’s a nasty batch.’
‘Something wrong?’ asked Hatushaly.
‘How that was made, yes. Otherwise, pour me another,’ said Nathan.
Hatu obliged, and Nathan took another drink, but didn’t quite empty the mug.
‘Where have you been?’ asked Bodai.
‘Travelling to meet with people who know a lot more than I do, seeking help with what you are facing.’
‘Facing?’ Hatu looked uncertain.
‘One thing at a time,’ suggested Nathan. He motioned for Hatu to hand him the book. Hatu complied and Nathan opened it, looked at a page, then flipped to another. ‘This page you were reading, it’s a simple spell, to start a fire.’
‘A spell to start a fire?’ echoed Hatushaly.
‘I went to visit some very old acquaintances who understand this “magic” business far better than I. To me, what you’ve discovered as a function of your nature is somehow tied together in intricate ways to everything else.’ He took a sip of whisky.
Hatu looked lost. ‘So, what I’m doing is magic? True magic?’
‘Powers, skills, whatever you want to call it. Manipulating the very stuff of the universe.’ Nathan leaned forward, and before Hatu could ask about the bruises, continued, ‘People have a way of looking at things, and they love putting names to everything, to organize and …’ He took a breath, then another sip. ‘How things are related, one to another, it’s very human to do that. How living things are related one to another, what is called a taxonomy. So how close are sheep to goats, oxen to cattle, big fish to tiny fish – there are people who spend their lives organizing that type of information.
‘Magic is what people have organized from observing things like you do, or at least they think it’s organized. This book’, he said, handing back the volume to Hatu, ‘shows a set of sounds, nonsense words, that trigger the ability of someone with power to start a fire. I suggest you try it outside, if you must. There are systems of magic that need constructions, devices, mixtures of various ingredients into potions, trinkets fashioned as charms.’
He exhaled slowly and seemed to relax a bit as the whisky took hold.
‘Remember what I told you about elemental magic, natural magic, blood magic, and the rest?’
Hatu nodded.
‘There’s a person I’ve known a long time who would call what’s in that spell book “Greater Magic”.’
‘Greater?’ echoed Bodai.
Nathan nodded. ‘You memorize that spell, as you might a recipe, and once you have it firmly in mind, at any time thereafter, you simple mutter those words, with perhaps a gesture or two to focus what you’re thinking, and poof, a flame appears where you want it.’
Hatu smiled. ‘That would prove handy when travelling and having to sleep outside for the night.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Nathan. ‘Though I suspect you do not need to memorize it.’
‘Really?’
‘After what I saw you do to save Declan? I’m almost certain.’ Nathan was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Put out your right hand, palm up.’
Hatu did as he was asked.
‘Close your eyes.’
Hatu closed his eyes.
‘Now, imagine there’s a thin covering of invisible armour coating your palm. And on that protected palm a little flame, the size of my thumb, comes into existence.’
Nathan sat back and finished off the whisky in his mug. He motioned for the bottle, and Bodai handed it to him. As Nathan poured another drink, they both saw Hatu’s body shift in position and suddenly a tiny flame began dancing on the palm of his hand.
Bodai opened his mouth, but a cautionary gesture from Nathan kept him from speaking.
Nathan said quietly, ‘Now, stay relaxed and open your eyes.’
Hatu did and his eyes widened, and suddenly the flame began to get larger, and Nathan said, ‘Close your hand and put the flame out.’
Hatu did and the flame was gone. Then his entire manner changed, and he laughed. ‘That was wonderful!’ he said.
Bodai could only silently nod.
‘So, some people use spells, or devices,’ began Hatu, ‘but if I just clear my mind, I can make things happen. What do the people who can do this call this type of magic?’
Nathan sat back, took another deep drink, and said, ‘I have no idea.’
‘Really?’ asked Hatu. ‘Why?’
