Compis: Five Tribes (23 page)

The ground rose sharply beneath him and once again he was having to scramble and half-climb over loose shale while again, the vixen nimbly stepped beside him, at an advantage with her four feet.

When they at last made their way through the narrow passage and to the other side, he had to stop, rest, and take in the view. And what a view it was! Hidden from the outside world by the mountain range, and seemingly accessible only by the way he'd come in, this area was sacred, truly a place of Terris.

All around him, as far as he could see, there were tall oak trees. Taller than any he'd ever seen, reaching as high as the mountains, it seemed; they were scattered around the small valley, holding a stillness that rested with them. Their long leafy branches were laden with dark wavy leaves and the biggest golden acorns he'd ever seen, as big as his clenched fist.

As he walked through the gathering of mighty trees, sunlight filtered down in little beams, lighting the place like one of the temples the Divinaris resided in. He'd only seen one once, at a tribal ceremony, but he remembered windows of light, and dozens of candles around the room, a reflection of Iam's holiness. This place was hallowed, too, and the further he walked into it, the more he was a trespasser, as though the trees themselves were urging him backward, to where he'd come from.

He could hardly bring himself to speak, but he did.

“Where is this place, fox?” he asked, voice above a whisper.

“This is Yondal, the place of the trees,” she said. “It is where the earth was born. This grove of oak trees is deep in the mountains where the Terris live and is looked after by caretakers.”

“Who don't exist in dreams, I take it,” Zyander said.

“Come, we have more to see,” said the vixen and she ran on ahead of him.

Even running seemed sacrilegious in this place, but he followed her, halting, when she did, in front of the largest of the giant trees. She stood looking up at it, craning her small neck, then turned to him.

“This is it,” she said, “And up you must go, to fetch an acorn from that branch.” She indicated a branch on the left side of the tree, filled with more fist sized acorns.

He would have argued, but he knew at this point that it was useless. Instead, he looked for a craggy handhold in the crusty bark, to pull himself up with.

It was hard going, and in a matter of minutes, his fingers ached with the effort of keeping himself against the trunk, but after about an hour of climbing, he made it up to the branch. Shimmying across, to the first pocket of leaves, he twisted a small stem until the acorn came off in his hand. He could barely hold it in his palm, its circumference was that huge, but he pushed it down his shirt and shimmying further out upon the branch, lowered himself till he was clinging to it with only his sore hands.

Moving hand by hand to the end of the branch, he let his weight drag him closer and closer to the ground, until finally, the branch was bowed about a foot from the moist earth. He dropped, landing on his feet in a crouch, then reached into his chest to retrieve the seed.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to the vixen.

“What am I to do with it, Fire Child?” she asked, with her bark of a laugh. “Plant it in the earth. Quickly, now.”

He knelt on the ground, thanking Iam that the soil
was
moist and dug at it with his fingers. When he had dug out about a foot of it, he rested the acorn, tip down, in the dirt, and filled in the opening he'd made.

While he worked, the vixen said, “Earth is where we are born. It grows our food, and gives our feet rest. We build upon it, we live upon it, we die, and sink into its depths.”

He stared at the mound before him, wondering how long it would take before the acorn grew as large as the seedlings around it. Not long, apparently, for before his eyes, he watched it sprout, popping out two little leaves.

“It is not the trees here that are sacred, Zyan, remember that.”

The rains had come, at last, wiping away the world with their plenitude, and still Nikka hadn't resolved her confusion over the dream and her short conversation with Agga. The latter was avoiding her, which was easy to do, now that Nikka wasn't able to escape her duties as an Initiate. Her common magic might be at a higher level than the others, but now they were starting to learn some of the Aquis magics. Not many spells could be Aquis, in accordance with the laws of the Five Tribes, but enough that Nikka could insist on learning more when she progressed past the first of the spells.

Nikka was uncertain, at first, that she would be taught, and she said as much to Jilli, during breakfast one morning.

“Don't be silly, my dear girl, you need to know these if you decide to stay here and you'll have less catching up to do if you start now,” she said, popping a spicy fish roll into her mouth. Once again they were at the dining room table

“What if I don't decide to stay here?” Nikka asked.

“Well, you will take a vow, as Compis, not to practice any tribe's magic except the tribe you join. It is a sacred vow. I'm not worried,” Jilli said, smiling at her.

And so, the lessons in Aquis magic began. To Nikka, it was similar to learning common magic. Once she learned the basic concepts, it came all too easily. The power of Aquis flowed right from its sacred element. When she had practiced with Agga in the kitchen she had pictured the silvery lines of power, falling all around her like the rain, waiting to be plucked and used. With the Aquis, she pictured instead the crashing waves, flowing and ebbing over the shore.

Aquis magic was like running along the beach. The tide flowed in, taking the energy in a beautiful and subtle way. Their obvious magic was water control, manipulating and refining its uses. On a deeper level, they were weather caretakers, dissipating the worst of the storms to be useful, but always keeping an eye on balance of the rains and the pressure systems that came with them.

Aquis was most often a subtle magic, but at times it was as violent as the crashing waves. She enjoyed learning its intricacies, and the admiring look in Jilli or one of the other Duor's eyes was pleasing to her ego, but not to some of the others. Once she had progressed past the most elementary of the Aquis magic, she preferred to practice in private, because then she could feel the blush of success without having to bear the contempt of her fellow Initiates.

“Try this, Nikka,” said Jilli, pointing to an old book on the table. Nikka put on her “eyes” and saw that it was covered in rippling blue lines.

“What is it?” she asked, reaching forward to touch it.

“Don't touch it! It's a binding spell. You'll get a nice shock, if you do,” warned Jilli.

“So, I should try and unbind it, then?” she asked, looking to Jilli for instruction.

“Oh, I doubt you can, dear. This is a particularly tricky one. Bindings protect secrets and are the best protection we have. This is one of my favorites, it sends off a signal to its maker if the spell is tampered with yet not disarmed completely. I must leave to attend one of my many meetings, but I leave you here with this puzzle. See what you can do with it.”

She swept from the room, gown swishing around her feet, while Nikka sat in the chair next to the work table, wondering how to crack the puzzle placed before her.

Leaning over it, she stared at the waving lines, which meshed together and formed a pattern so delicate it was a fine netting was wrapped around the thing. Even with her accelerated knowledge of the Aquis magic, it was obvious to her she wasn't going to be able to crack this spell in a day.

She sat looking at it for hours, before her lids grew heavy and she drifted off to sleep.

~~~~~

As with her dream before, Nikka was placed in the position of outside observer, watching from a distance as the scene unfolded in front of her.

She was in a small room. Agga, shivering and sobbing—looking quite different from her normal self—was on one side of the room, and on the other side was Jilli. Jilli was much the same, but the expression on her face was chilling. Cunning and malice played openly across her face.

The room was a shambles—clay pots, liquids, tools, were scattered over the counters and the floor. Books with pages ripped and wrinkled were toppled from their former shelves. A window pane was cracked and several cupboards were open, with one even hanging from its hinges. It was the setting of a major battle and from the looks of things, Jilli was the clear victor.

“
Please, please, give it back, give it back,” Agga cried, reaching for something.

What she wanted was a furry sort of pelt that Jilli held in clenched fingers.

“
You are never, never getting it back,” she said to the small creature. “Give up your fight with me; you won't win it. We need you and your kind and we will never let you go.”

“
We won't stop fighting!” said Agga.

“
You will, or you will suffer.”

To illustrate her point, Jilli held up the fur and taking a pair of scissors clipped a small section away from the pelt. Agga screamed in agony, clutching her side, as the blood poured from an invisible cut. The fur bled, as well, dripping like a leaky pipe from the triangle Jilli had made.

“
Don't ever defy me again. Don't ever try to enter my workshop.”

Jilli shoved Agga out the door while she still whimpered and closed it behind her, locking it. Then, with a few simple common magic spells, she cleaned up the mess in the room. After she was finished, she turned back to the table where the pelt was still resting and with a single finger, drew a complicated set of figures over it, muttering to herself the whole time.

When she was finished, Nikka could see the pattern that gleamed around it, and knew where she'd seen it before.

~~~~~

Nikka woke up face down on the table she'd been sitting in front of. Her skin stuck to the wooden surface, and she rubbed it, trying to bring the blood back into her face. She wondered where the dreams were coming from. Both of them seemed to be from the past, as though someone was showing her events in history.

She shuddered, remembering the content of her last dream and the horror that Jilli had put Agga through. No wonder Agga couldn't say anything. And what was the fur? Could it be that robe that she had seen wrapped around the Roaneu in her last dream?

Her stay with the Aquis was turning into more of a nightmare, with every day spent near them. How was it possible that she'd stumbled into such a hornet's nest? Only a few days ago, she'd cursed her fate, becoming a Compis. Now, she was hopelessly lost, trying to figure out how to pull herself out of the web of lies and deceit that she'd ended up in.

“What did she say? Did she believe you?” asked Joah, when they were at the bathhouse, where they had been dismissed to shortly before the noon hour.

“I think she did, but when we looked at the books and I couldn't see anything that had been in my dream... well, she was disappointed.”

“What
did
you see in your dream?” he asked and looked at Luka with sympathy.

“I saw great golden wings, sharp claws, even sharper beak... and maybe... uh... a tail?” said Luka, ducking under the water, so he wouldn't have to see his friend's face.

“But you didn't see the whole creature?” asked Joah. He scrubbed and rinsed his face, then applied soap to his damp hair.

“No, because I was the creature, does that make any sense? It's similar to looking at your own parts without benefit of a mirror. You can see hands, arms, and a belly, but you have no idea what color your eyes are.” He soaped up his own blond hair, plunged into the water, and came up clean and smelling of kitchen herbs from the soap.

“I don't know why I try,” Luka said. “Every time I care in this place, I get beaten down. I feel like the world, Iam is against me. If it weren't for Kanae, I don't think I'd even want to be here.” If it weren't for May, he added to himself.

“The others have been taking bets, you know,” said Joah, who leaned back into the steaming water to wash away the suds. He then swung his head forward to spray his friend.

“Hey!” said Luka, and splashed him back. This led to an all-out water war in the bathing room, until one of the older men complained.

“Sorry, sir,” said Joah, shooting him a guilty look, and the two boys moved from boys to Initiates again.

“Taking bets about what, Joah?” asked Luka.

“How long it will take you to leave us and move on to your friends, the tribeless,” said Joah.

Luka sighed.

“Well, everyone knows you're not happy here, Luka. We all know that you didn't want to be here, you wanted to be with your girlfriend. And Grem saw you talking to them.”

“I won't even bother denying it. I don't want to be here, and I think the Divinaris made a mistake. Why else haven't I found my Lumenta yet? It's obvious I don't have one, no one can help me find it.”

“So your dream was... what, then?”

Luka got out of the water and toweled off.

“My dream was just a dream,” he said.

~~~~~

He dreaded meeting with the Duor every day, but because they'd exhausted every other means of discovering his Lumenta, he was allowed to work on common magic. It was fun for him and he seemed to have a knack for it, unlike the Terris magic, which he was all thumbs at.

Today he was working with Duor Ethos again. He was her personal project, since she seemed to devote much more time to him than to the others. Maybe she pitied him, but he didn't mind. He was just happy to think about something else besides the guiding force of the Terris.

“Now, Luka, yesterday we worked on movement within the Terris element, earth. I brought in this tray of sand for us to experiment with and work on your common magic skills.”

She laid the tray out in front of him and moved his hands to rest on the sand. Then she set a bowl next to the tray.

“Today, we're going to start with a single grain of sand. Just move one of these into the bowl and I'll consider our work for the day accomplished.”