The Call (9 page)

Katja pondered in silence as Serdra added tea leaves to the boiled water. Growing up she had never considered herself some
savior
, and since meeting Serdra she'd been too busy with training to contemplate the situation much.

But she hadn't been lying. The vision had cut her deeply and she had difficulty believing Serdra had meant for just that.

“So when are you going to teach me to see the future?” she asked when Serdra handed her a mug of hot tea and sat on the bed. Katja sipped the tea and felt herself relax a bit more as the warmth spread out from her stomach.

“That depends on you, as I've said,” was the answer. “In addition I don't think it will be as easy for you to learn.”

“Oh?”

“Most of us have a speciality. Some aspect of the power we are better in than the rest. It looks like we have found yours.”

“To see past events?”

Serdra drank tea.

“As a child you could sense an old, utterly normal murder without trying. And you sensed the history of this cabin on the first try. That's good, Katja. Very good.”

Katja sipped more of the tea. It felt good to be complimented for something other than not losing a fight too badly.

“What, you're not going to teach me humility?” she asked with a smirk.

“Humility? It's humility to admit inability in something, not arrogance to know what one is capable of. I am very good with knives, swords and bows and can handle animals, to name a few skills, but I cannot... say, sail, sing or sew.”

“
I
can sing,” Katja said with a joking grin. Or at least mostly joking.

“Oh?”

Serdra's tone and look were an invitation to prove her words, and Katja was a bit surprised. Tea drinking was the only thing she'd seen this woman do for pleasure.

She took a sip and cleared her throat, took a deep breath and sang.

She chose the song about Greypaw, the lost wolf trudging through a snowstorm in search for his mate. Her voice had always been pure and clear as spring water and was well suited to sad, emotional songs. The villagers usually preferred something more cheerful, so Katja had learned to appreciate any opportunity to sing to her full potential.

The song ended as Greypaw gave his final howl, which echoed down into civilization. The tea was starting to cool and Katja stirred it a bit with her eyes on the mug.

“Yes, you can sing,” Serdra admitted quietly. Katja had almost forgotten about her. She liked zoning out a bit in song. The woman still sat on the bed, as relaxed as Katja had ever seen her.

“Thank you,” Katja said with a smile.

“Do you know,
The Long Road
?”

“About the farmer who became a mercenary?”

Serdra nodded. Katja cleared her throat, briefly went over the lyrics in her mind and began. It wasn't too dissimilar to the song of Greypaw, but with a somewhat more lighter tone and a spark of hope in the last lines. It was also much longer and gave Katja a better opportunity to forget the time and place and float on the notes.

Serdra sat on the bed with her legs crossed, her chin in her palm and a distant look in her eyes, and the evening passed.

--------------------

Tovar Savaren stared into the air while he stirred the cup with his finger. Reason told him such a thing made no difference: The spell was rooted in the runes he'd painstakingly carved in each wooden disk rolling about in the cup and the chant he knew by heart. But with such great things at stake there was no room for error and he couldn't help but hope for a bit of luck.

Familiar footsteps approached the door to his private chamber and Tovar sneered a bit.

The door swung in without a knock and Vajan entered.

“Well, I heard we had news,” he said with that insolent casualness of his.

“Indeed, if this turns out to be true,” Tovar responded. “But we must have confirmation before we resort to anything drastic.

“Yup,” Vajan said and closed the door with his heel. “And so you are interrogating your blocks on the matter?” He inclined his head towards the cub.

“I am using a question spell,” Tovar said. “The tradition has followed our order since the beginning. You are to respect it and all the others if you are ever to earn our respect.”

“I earned respect in Fornos,” Vajan responded immediately. “
Earned
it, through deeds. But look on bright side!” he added with exaggerated cheer. “If the stories turn out to be true you can do the same to prove yourself.”

“I have nothing to
prove
,” answered Tovar. “My worth is in my blood and in what I have created here.” He knew the foreigner didn't have proper respect for the first issue. It probably wasn't to be expected, given his origin, but Tovar wasn't about to ignore facts in their conversations

“What you are
trying
to create here,” Vajan said. “And I suspect my blood is exactly the same colour as yours.”

Tovar stood up with the cup in his hand. The foreigner annoyed him in many different ways and he tried to calm himself by walking slowly around the room. There were plenty of expensive ornaments he could pretend to be admiring.

“Water is colourless, it's true,” he said. “One can add anything to it.”

The foreigner's expression didn't change, but he did change the subject.

“Are you afraid this news will foul your plans?”

“There is too much at stake to risk being taken by surprise. Far too much.”

“Others have tried what you are doing. It hasn't succeeded for more than a generation.”

“And yet your coven was eager to take part,” Tovar said. “Unless they considered you and your men and the sheets you brought to be an unworthy offering.”

“You need us, Savaren,” Vajan said and didn't let the words faze him. He tapped the sword which was ever at his hip. “These wooden soldiers of yours have never known combat. Not like we have. And the sheets are genuine. Are you making no progress with them?”

“My son is going over them.”

“Ah yes. I spoke to him a bit. A real charmer you have there,” Vajan said with sarcasm. “Is it true he was conceived in the middle of a ceremony?”

“Yes.”

“You pervert,” Vajan said with a dirty grin.

“Did that unfaithful father of yours teach you
anything
about our legacy?”

Vajan shrugged.

“He did teach me that question spells are unreliable, and not something to depend on when making big decisions.”

“True,” Tovar said and sat back at his table. “But it's better than guessing.”

He closed his eyes, put his palm over the cup and slowly moved it to and fro. The words sprang from his lips. These complex, unearthly words a human tongue could only handle with great practice. He felt the power inherent in them flow about him like invisible smoke and tried to direct it to the runes.

“Are Redcloaks in the country?” he asked out loud and let the seventeen disks fall on the table. Vajan stepped closer to get a look at them.

Thirteen of the positive runes faced up. Tovar squirmed on the inside. If he'd gotten a straight up yes he would have known how to react and feel. Instead he was still left with doubt.

“Close though,” Vajan muttered.

“Not close enough,” Tovar said. “Take a message to the city. It seems we will need to resort to more drastic measures.”

Chapter
5.

Weeks passed. The snow got a bit deeper and the air colder than Katja was used to, but not to a severe degree. She just enjoyed the warm tea all the more.

They practiced, went hunting, gathered firewood, practiced, patched up their clothes, maintained the cabin, practiced, tended the horse, smoked meat, climbed the slopes and practiced.

It was straining, but oh how she
enjoyed
the results. She liked feeling how much more toned the muscles became and how much easier it was to swing a sword or carry a dead goat. She threw farther, faster and with more precision, blows were stronger and she got better at predicting her mentor's attacks.

It was still far from enough to outdo her, but the woman had to put a bit effort into winning. That, at least, was a sign of progress.

In addition, Serdra began to teach her the stealth language. She wouldn't say much about it, other than it was a legacy of Jukiala and only the right people knew it.

It wasn't a language as such, but rather words and short phrases used to get a message across when others mustn't understand what was being said. Some words changed meaning depending on circumstances, or on how a question had been presented and Katja quickly started liking the idea of being able to say things others couldn't understand.

When the most important words had started taking root in her head, Serdra started training her in using them at any opportunity, even in the middle of a fight. When she'd mostly stopped fumbling over responses she started learning the signs.

According to Serdra they'd been developed near the same time as the stealth language and were used in a similar way; to mark a place or leave behind messages enemies wouldn't understand. Serdra wrote the signs in snow, ash and dust and taught the most common ones first before moving slowly into more complex messages.

A circle with two vertical bars through it meant supernatural danger.

A circle with two
horizontal
bars through it marked a site of supernatural events which might repeat.

A triangle with a half-circle to the left of it marked a safe haven for Redcloaks and their allies. Serdra pointed at one such which had been carved into the door, and Katja was rather embarrassed at not having noticed it sooner.

Two horizontal bars with a sloping bar through them marked a plea for aid. If there were two sloping bars it meant that aid was coming.

Two triangles side by side with a line through both of them meant enemy spies lived in the area. TWO lines through them meant they were on their way.

And so on. Katja had never thought of reading as terribly useful to anyone except merchants and officials, and had been intolerably bored with the mandatory studying imposed by the authorities in Amerstan. But as with the spoken language she was excited about understanding something few did. The feeling wasn't too dissimilar to doing something banned and fun.

During the seventh week Serdra started showing her how to roll to reduce the impact of a fall. At first Katja just had to make a running leap, but soon they were making use of increasingly large hills and even the cabin roof.

“Why in the world are we doing this?” Katja asked as she rubbed her back after a nasty landing.

“Well, one may have to get off of tall places in a hurry. Whether the point is to flee or surprise enemies.”

Serdra hadn't demanded another peek into the past, and Katja hadn't tried it on her own. The discomfort left by the vision took a long time to fade and she was always rather ill at ease in the cabin when she had nothing to occupy her mind. She was in fact rather pleased that Serdra had delayed that particular part of her mentoring for so long.

Instead she tried to look forward. She didn't have much free time to experiment, except at bedtime. By then she was usually exhausted enough to fall asleep as soon as she relaxed her mind, and her few attempts at predictions met with little success.

Nothing clearly indicated that Serdra knew of her attempts, but Katja felt she had to. Didn't the damn woman know everything?

As their time on Flat Top stretched on something did start happening however. At first she thought the after-effects of the vision were making a return, but over time she started to feel a difference. This wasn't a shadow of past misdeeds.

This was something distant, faint but menacing. Some strange tension hung in the air when she was relaxed enough to notice, as if a storm was brewing.

--------------------

She finally asked Serdra about the sensation after thirteen weeks in the cabin.

It was evening, she was dead tired from the day's efforts, had a stomach full of smoked ptarmigan meat and Serdra was torturing her. Or massaging. One of the two.

Getting so much stronger so quickly evidently came at a price and she had terrible muscle stiffness in her back. She lay on her stomach in the bed. Serdra straddled her and drove her elbow hard into the stiff spots and moved it around.

Katja suppressed a gasp and tensed up involuntarily.

“Relax,” Serdra said and kept on tormenting her. “I feel you're quite stiff enough as it is.”

“Oh, you think so? Don't you... mm!... want to push me a bit harder?”

She knew from experience that complaining would get her nowhere. Serdra's kindness was absolutely merciless.

“If you feel up to it. And now lie still.”

Katja did her best to lie still like a lump of dough as Serdra kneaded her. She tried to move her mind away somewhere quiet, but always wound up back to the eerie sensation. It was like poking her tongue into a mouth sore. She just couldn't refrain.

“Can you feel that?” she asked weakly and jerked as the woman moved her elbow to another knot.

“Yes,” Serdra answered after a slight hesitation, and didn't ask what she meant.

“What is that?”

“What do you feel, Katja?”

“I... don't know. Tension. It's not like when I've been in immediate peril, but still feels like bad news. It's as if something is brewing. What do you feel?”

“I sense danger. Small but growing, like a pebble which starts a rock slide.” Serdra hesitated again. “There is something wrong in this country. Something big is brewing.”

“So we're needed?” Katja asked and felt a gulf open in her stomach.

“Probably, yes. I expected we would have work to do here, but wasn't expecting a premonition like this. Only momentous events echo back in time like this.”

“Are we pressed for time?”

“We could be,” Serdra said.

“But you would still like to have more time to train me, I take it? Given your tone?”

“It's impossible to know exactly what will happen,” Serdra said and moved to the last knotted muscle. “I feel we aren't in an immediate hurry, but it would be best to get started. But if we get separated, or if I fall, I want you to be able to manage.”

“And how... MM! How am I to manage if I don't know anything about these enemies you keep scaring me with? Just tell me the story already.”

“Well, that story isn't a simple one, girl.”

Serdra finally dismounted and Katja sat up and stretched her back. This was the second time the woman kneaded her and no more comfortable when she'd known what to expect. But she immediately felt better.

Serdra sat in the chair. She watched Katja and stretched out the silence as she always did when about to say something important. Katja arranged herself in a comfortable position on the bed and waited.

“How much do you know about the past?” the woman then asked.

Katja hesitated.

“What past?”

“The world's past.”

“Wellll, that's quite a question,” Katja said slowly. But Serdra was clearly serious. “The Shattering laid everything to ruin,” Katja then said. “The Jukiala-union rose after that, fought wars against the Death Lords,” she threw up her hands, “and then broke apart after the Dusk War. What... do you mean something besides that? Do these things matter now?”

“Today is a result of yesterday, and to understand our situation you must understand how it came about.”

“Well then, how did it come about?”

Serdra was silent again.

“If I tell you the whole story you will have all the information you need to get started, and we will heed the Call and leave this place. And for that you need to be ready.

“And
when
will I be ready?

“I must test you.”

“
Test me
? You've been fighting me for more than two months. Don't you know everything you need to know?”

“I have been
teaching
you, Katja. There is a big difference. I need to know how you do in actual combat.”

Katja watched her. She knew her mentor had almost always held back in their fights, except for when she wanted to take out some of Katja's airs. And would she now go all out? Would Katja have to stand against her full strength?

“When?” Katja asked with a defiant look and a tingle of fear in her gut.

Serdra looked at her, and Katja wondered whether she was contemplating or playing some game with her.

“In two days,” the woman then said with severity. “At noon. Be ready.”

There was a certain amount of menace in the words and eyes. Just how seriously would Serdra take that fight?

“And what do we do until then?” Katja asked.

“Try to find out yourself,” Serdra said. “Try to see the future, and be prepared.”

With that the woman stood up and walked outside. She did that on occasions. Katja sometimes heard her in the distance practising her swordsmanship against imaginary foes, but other days heard nothing. She had followed stealthily a few times, but always either found nothing or simply Serdra practising.

Tonight Katja didn't feel up to much mischief.

So the hour is approaching
, she thought.
I finally get to answer the Call: Test myself as a Redcloak. If I pass, that is.

Various feelings battled for supremacy within her: Glee at having made so much progress, fear and tension at the prospect of all-out fighting, excitement at leaving this nest and travelling, fear of her mentor and the coming fight.

She stood up and walked around the cabin.

Am I ready? How dangerous are these enemies compared to Serdra? Am I being overconfident in wanting to rush off? Or wouldn't I be more confident if that were the case?

She sighed and leaned forward on the table. She tried to do as Serdra had said and sense the future. She hadn't gotten any further information on just how to do that so she again tried to empty her mind and feel forward. Tried to
see
and
feel
.

Just what had Serdra meant?

--------------------

Katja sprang from the bed before she was even really awake. The blow smacked into the bed where she'd lain.

Serdra was barely visible in the tiny light still coming from the fireplace. She attacked again with the practice sword and the reflexes she'd been beating into Katja for weeks saved her again. She snatched her own practice sword up as she retreated and held it up.

The third blow smacked into the sword with power and pushed Katja back. She regained her balance as the training had taught her and counterattacked. She had to rely more on her feelings than sight in the dark, and felt Serdra dodging the swing and making for her left.

Katja reacted with a wide swing but accidentally hit a beam. Serdra took advantage and thrust at her. Katja narrowly managed to react and took the hit in the arm rather than the gut.

It was around that time she even began understanding the situation.

Serdra came at her with hard attacks and the whooshes of her swings were almost a single ongoing noise as Katja sprang about the cabin interior to escape them. She leapt over the bed, circled the fireplace, kicked the table out of the way and hopped over a chair. There was no time to wake up or orient herself or think. She just had to react and let the training and sensitivity control her actions.

So she did.

Serdra drove her on mercilessly and tried to corner her, but Katja managed to stop one of the blows and push against it. It gave her a bit of space and time to swing at her mentor. The woman dodged, of course, and wound up by the pots.

Katja sensed what would happen next, and was able to bat aside the pot that flew at her like an arrow. Serdra was right behind it and struck with greater force than ever before. Katja parried and was rattled hard.

Her mentor wasn't playing any more.

It was like standing in a storm and trying to evade everything it blew at her. Strikes and kicks flashed out of the dark and Katja defended herself in desperation.

She got hit with swings and thrusts and knees and elbows but had no time to feel pain. It would come later. She kicked the pot Serdra had thrown. It flew at Serdra's shin, but the woman just sidestepped and kicked Katja in the chest before she could recover.