Nature's Servant (18 page)

“I have never felt so close to death as I did tonight,” the Dag-Mar began softly. Rimulth stared at the way the wrinkles in his face distorted the patterns of his many tattoos. Where he’d always seen a man of power, tonight he saw an old man staring at his mortality. It was deeply unsettling.

“If not for Balkrist, the demon would have taken me before we could kill it,” he said, acknowledging the injured warrior with a nod of his head. Balkrist smiled grimly. “And if not for young Rimulth here,” he said, gesturing in his direction, “we would perhaps not have gathered our wits about us in time at all.”

Rimulth flushed from the point of his chin to the crown of his head, looking at the ground in embarrassment. It was Balkrist who spoke next:

“Rimulth you acted bravely today, and as much like a warrior as any other member of this circle.” Several other men dropped their heads in shame, knowing it was Rimulth and not them that broke the demon’s fearful hold on them in the early stages of the battle. “You will be a great warrior one day,” he finished, his eyes shining with pride.

“No he will not,” the Dag-Mar said, and every head in the circle swung back to him in disbelief. Rimulth flushed again, but this time in shame. Had he done something so earn the shaman’s displeasure? The Dag-Mar looked him in the eye. “Rimulth is to be my apprentice,” he said.

“You what?” Rimulth squeaked, so taken aback he momentarily forgot to adopt the proper tone of respect.

The Dag-Mar’s face broke into a rare smile, transforming his tattooed visage into a mass of wrinkles and overlapping blue lines. “I sense the gift in you, but you are yet to know it,” he said. “My heart tells me you are my heir, and I am not foolish enough to start ignoring the Great Spirit’s promptings after a lifetime of obedience.” Rimulth didn’t know what to say. He was sure the Dag-Mar must be wrong, but didn’t want to dispute with him in front of the tribe.

“Don’t worry young warrior,” the old shaman said. “We will perform the testing soon enough and then you shall know.” Mercifully, that seemed to be all he had to say on the matter, and Rimulth was relieved when he moved on. “We must send news of our victory to the tribes, telling them that these demons can be defeated,” the shaman said.

“You are certain there is more than one?” Chief Hesketh asked.

“There can be no doubt,” the Dag-Mar responded. “The reports have come in from throughout the mountains, sometimes at the same time from two places very distant from each other. We face several of these demons.”

“So be it,” the chief said sombrely. “We will send out the news of our victory, and trust that our people will have men like Balkrist and Rimulth among them when they face their foes.”

Rimulth flushed again, staring fixedly at the ground as the men round the fire brought out flasks of fern-whisky and toasted both him and Balkrist in the same breath. Younger Talmo clapped him on the back and shoved a tumbler made from a hollowed-out horn in his hand. It was brim-full of the foul smelling liquid. “Drink,” he said, tapping his elbow.

Rimulth had never been allowed fern-whisky before, and lifted it to his lips tentatively. Close up it smelt even worse, but he didn’t want to look like a child in front of the men’s circle, so he tipped the contents into his mouth and tried to swallow. A fraction of a second later, it came spraying out again, the majority of the contents landing in the fire and going up in an explosive surge of flame. The men broke into gales of laughter, slapping their knees and whooping with mirth. He was mortified, but Younger Talmo just clapped him on the back and pushed at him playfully until he broke into a sheepish grin.

“Try again,” he said, filling Rimulth’s tumbler with more fern-whisky from a bulging skin.

“If you say so,” Rimulth said, and lifted the noxious liquid to his mouth.

Emea sat at the side of the quad, watching the football bounce around between the legs of a dozen enthusiastic boys. Everand streaked down the pitch, keeping the ball at his toes, and scored another goal, arousing cheers from his team and groans from the other. Seeing how uneven the game had become, Emea mused that she wasn’t the only one missing Gaspi. He’d really come to the fore as a key player in Owein’s team, and scored a lot of their goals. The once-even games were now heavily weighted in Everand’s favour, and as a result they were playing less and less frequently.

Both teams walked heavily off the pitch, discouraged by the widening difference in the score line. Apparently, it wasn’t even fun to win when it was that easy. Everand came loping over to her with easy strides, a relaxed grin on his face.

“Hey Emmy,” he called. She’d found it a bit uncomfortable when he first started using her nickname, but over time she’d got used to it. They were spending plenty of time together after all and she’d started to see him as a real friend.

“We’re thinking of playing koshta instead,” he said. “We’re all terrible at that so at least the score will be even. What do you think?”

“That’s a great idea,” she said, genuinely delighted. Whenever the boys used the enchanted device to cover the quad in ice, it reminded her of Gaspi. When he’d left to go a
nd study with the druid, she’d missed him so much she’d taken the drastic measure of forcing herself to stop thinking about him altogether. But now they were halfway through his long absence and it felt like he’d be back sooner rather than later. It made being apart much easier to handle and she allowed herself the occasional moment of longing for him. In the main, she’d kept herself busy with Everand and his crowd of friends, as Lydia was just too involved with Taurnil. The two of them seemed to be dragging out their crisis about sex, which was no fun to be around at all!

“Do you want to do it?” Everand asked solicitously, and after a moment Emmy realised he meant activate the device.

“Sure,” she said with a smile. Everand offered her his hand to help her up, but she felt uncomfortable with the implied intimacy. Laughing to cover the awkward moment, she stood up by herself. “You think we ladies need help to stand up?” she asked playfully. Everand’s look of disappointment was quickly covered by his usual veneer of genteel confidence.

He made a face and withdrew his hand. “Come on then,” he said with a cheeky grin. “Get a move on.”

“Okay! Give a girl a chance!” She picked up her bag and walked over to Gaspi’s enchanted device. It was a simple-looking object, made from the wood of the koshta tree that towered over it in the corner of the quad. The polished wood was so rich it almost glowed, and it was lovely to touch – smooth and somehow always warm. She ran her hand over it, feeling the grain of the wood slide against her skin, and allowing herself to dwell on the boy she missed so much. She revelled in her feelings for a moment, and then sighed deeply, rallying herself and returning to the present. She looked up to check that all the boys were off the quad, and seeing that they were, summoned a slender thread of power. The device took very little power and needed no kind of focus at all, as it was enchanted to do one thing and one thing only. The slender thread of power flowed into it until the whole thing began to glow, a soft golden light that shone steadily as it thrummed beneath her fingers.

Mist began to form, freezing in fragile layers that sank slowly to the ground one after the other until the quad was covered border to border in a thick coating of gleaming ice. The device stopped vibrating beneath her hand and the soft glow of enchantment winked out.

“Get your whackers,” Everand shouted, and all the boys ran off to their rooms. They returned within about ten minutes, whackers in hand, and threw themselves on the ground as they strapped their ice-boots on. In no time at all they were ready to play.

Emea laughed heartily as she watched them attempt to play koshta. The boys slipped and fell with comical frequency. They tripped over their sticks, fell on their faces, and generally made a right mess of it, but they were clearly having much more fun than they had when playing football. Emmy smiled to herself, wishing Gaspi could see what was happening. He would laugh his head off!

…

Everand
entered his room, closing the door behind him and summoning a small globe light. He sent it up floating up to the ceiling, where it lit the room with its gentle radiance as he got ready for bed. He changed into his nightclothes and climbed under the covers, his mind full of conflicting thoughts.

He’d spent the evening talking with Emmy, and as was increasingly the case, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
It wasn’t just that she was attractive; she was just so easy to talk to, and she clearly liked being with him. Everand paused, arrested by that last thought. She
did
like being around him. In fact, she often sought him out. Ever since Gaspi had gone to study with the druid they’d become really close.

Therein lay the problem: Gaspi!
If Emmy was single, Everand wouldn’t hesitate for a moment. She’d be his girlfriend – it was as simple as that! But she wasn’t single. Everand was used to getting what he wanted, and he wanted Emmy, but he liked and respected Gaspi, which made the whole situation really hard to figure out. In the past, Everand had treated Gaspi pretty badly, but Gaspi had been gracious enough to accept his apology when he’d offered it. That alone had given Everand a lot of respect for him! Since the summer, they’d even built a kind of friendship, and when Gaspi had gone away, Everand had not been planning on making a move on his girlfriend.

Everand sighed, trying to work
out what he should do. He couldn’t help how he felt, and if he wasn’t very much mistaken, Emmy was starting to feel the same way too. That was the crux of the matter; in the end, it came down to what Emmy wanted. If she’d be happier with him instead of Gaspi, then so be it. It would be a nightmare when Gaspi returned, but that was still a long time away. He had six more weeks to spend more time with Emmy, and see how things went. He knew how he felt about her, and if it became clear that she felt the same way, then he’d just have to pick his moment and lay all his cards on the table. Content that he at least knew the way forward, Everand closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

…

For the first few days of his search for Shirukai Sestin, Ferast travelled by night. He slept in barns and once under a hedge, taking care not to be seen in case his absence had been noticed by anyone at the college. He headed west, passing out of lands he knew and into unfamiliar terrain, pushing on towards the Bottomless Sands. After a week had passed with no sign of pursuit, he gave up sleeping rough, and began to take rooms in wayside inns, or beg hospitality from smallholders. It seemed that the city of magicians either hadn’t noticed, or didn’t care that he had left, and although their disinterest rankled, it also afforded him a burgeoning sense of liberty. No-one was following him, and no-one would be watching what he did.

One evening, just as he was wearying of a long day’s hike, he came across a cottage. The smallholder, a buxom, thick-bodied serf, was working her small plot of land when he walked past. She took pity on him and offered him a meal and a bed for the night in exchange for a day’s labour on the morrow. Ferast had no interest in doing any labour, but he put on his most ingratiating smile and accepted the offer.

The woman talked incessantly over dinner, a meagre offering of thin, tasteless stew, and was visibly disappointed when he made his excuses and went to bed early. She followed him around as he got ready, talking at him until the moment he closed the bedroom door in her face. Her need for company wasn’t his problem. Anyway, it wasn’t as if she was on her own! The witless woman seemed to have invited every small creature within several miles into her house and made them her pets. She’d given them all names, and actually talked to them as if they were her friends!

He lit an oil lamp from a candle, eyeing the tiny room he would be sleeping in with distaste. He peered with particular suspicion at the thin, straw-filled mattress that was to be his bed, anticipating the prickly and uncomfortable night he’d have trying to sleep on it. It rested on a rickety old frame and was probably the source of the sour odour that permeated the room. He supposed it was better than sleeping under a hedge, but not by much. He sat down on the bed and shot up again in alarm as a furry shape darted out from beneath it. Instinctively, he reached out with his power and captured it, muffling its frightened mewling with another deft touch. He gestured and the creature floated up into the air, suspended before him, utterly defenceless.

It was a small cat, ginger with white paws and about six months old. It twisted silently in feline panic. He didn’t want its heart to give out, so he sent out a suggestion of calm, manipulating its mind with a subtle twist of power. It ceased struggling immediately, looking at him with docile eyes, neither alarmed nor curious. An indulgent smile spread across Ferast’s face as he revelled in the power neuromancy gave him. Others might play with force strikes and other showy tricks, but they were like children’s toys in comparison to the control neuromancy offered.

He stared at the cat for a few moments, wondering what he would do with it, and then he remembered something Hephistole had said about Shirukai Sestin. The renegade had been in the habit of practicing neuromancy on animals, performing experiments on them while he manipulated their minds. Apparently this was one of the sure signs of his degenerate nature, but Ferast couldn’t see what was so wrong with what he’d been doing. He’d been pushing back the boundaries of magical learning, seeking to understand the mind, its strengths and weaknesses, and the point at which pain would cause it to snap. What were a few animals compared to the great learning to be gained from such experiments? Perhaps Sestin had gone a bit too far when he kidnapped and experimented on a human being, but who knew what that guard had done to him? Small-minded people leapt to small-minded judgements, and Sestin had fled, knowing he would never get a chance to explain. Ferast smiled, certain that, in him, Shirukai Sestin would find a like-minded soul, or perhaps even an equal.