Dark clouds moved over the village of Maidenslock, causing a flurry in the dusty streets. Most of the townsfolk laughed and danced with joy, but the local merchants rushed to remove their wares from the street, for a wind was swiftly rising that threatened to coat their goods in dust.
Rain had not come for a very long time. From the bustle, the sound of a flute suddenly lifted up, bright and clear, and children rushed over to dance to the bubbling song. Only a few villagers cast furtive glances to the dark clouds sweeping over the sky.
Aryn was one of these. He watched the clouds, how they seemed to harbor something sinister in their depths. To his eyes it was great black shroud being laid across the heavens, stealing the sky and hiding it away to some secret place.
Through the milling crowd he could see the baker just lifting a last bundle of bread from the outdoor stall where he sold his pastries and loaves, taking it inside and bolting shut his door and shutters against the mounting winds. The baker had always been deathly afraid of storms.
Aryn frowned and hoisted his pack higher onto his shoulder. It was laden with provisions for the next passage -- cheese, a small block of salt, smoked venison, water from the village well, and a bottle of sweet, amber wine, concocted from the tiny yellow flowers which children used to paint their faces. A loaf of bread was the final thing he needed, and he silently debated on whether to impose upon the baker in his own home or to go without bread for the next seven days.
Bread. What would all those mornings be like without bread? With a sigh he started forward, intent upon the baker's door, but a brief cry caught his ear and he turned to see who had made it.
There. A fallen form, sprawled out among a scattering of cloth so brightly colored that it reminded him of the exotic fruits sometimes set out on the roads, piled atop juice-stained animal hides by the southern traders from Atalaya. He hadn't seen those nomads since the rains had ceased over two moons past.
It was old Leah, the village weaver, waving someone off as she picked herself up and began to gather up her blankets, sweaters, and wall-hangings.
Aryn made his way quickly toward her, weaving through the chaotic crowd. Maidenslock was usually such a calm, quiet place, but the coming storm was charging the people with activity. He nodded this way and that to familiar faces as he rushed forward.
Leah was already recovered and dusting herself off when he arrived, all but a few of the weavings retrieved from the ground. Her old body was bent with the weight of her burden, but Aryn knew there was no lack of spirit in her ailing form. Still, he bent down before she could risk her weakened back and carefully gathered the last of the weavings, shaking the dust off in the cool, strengthening winds.
"May the gods smile always upon you, Aryn," Leah said. Aryn smiled, warm and genuine, and found himself admiring the deeply etched lines of her face, each one speaking of the wisdom of countless years.
"Art fine as this has no place in the dirt of the street, weaver."
Gently as a mother with a child, Aryn placed the weavings into Leah's arms, the smile still warm across his face.
"There, Aryn. It's that girl of yours."
Aryn glanced over. Just down the road he could see her, skipping along and bending to pick up a hat that was tumbling down the road, carried by the wind. His eyes fell over her lithe belly, the shape of long legs under her skirts. A wealthy girl from the south, whose parents had come, for some incomprehensible reason, to live in tiny Maidenslock. How often had he exchanged glances with her this past year, ever since she had first moved into the village from Atalaya? And how often had Aryn vowed that he would speak to her the next time he had a chance? After all, she was not only beautiful, but could tell him of life in the south.
Then she saw him staring, and Aryn couldn't look away in time to hide the obviousness of his gaze. She flashed him a sideways glance and twirled the hat once on her finger. With feigned nonchalance she turned away, glancing over her shoulder once to see if he was still watching. He noted the smile play across her face as she saw that he was.
Then she faded into the crowd.
Beside him, the old woman gave him a knowing smile. "Pretty, isn't she?"
Aryn laughed. "Pretty, but perhaps not the kindest maid. She has strange manners, being from the southlands. And thinks herself a bit higher than the rest of us, I should think, just because her parents have gold."
"Oh come now, Aryn. 'Tis nothing but the way of all young girls trying to impress the men. Come in for tea, will you?"
He had always enjoyed their talks over steaming cups of the black, bitter tea which Leah favored so. But now he shook his head.
"If only I could, Leah. But the storm calls me home." He nodded skyward.
"Oh, but Aryn, we have not spoken for half a moon! I miss our chats. You're spurning me!"
"Oh, Leah. I miss our talks just as much. No one else but you seems to remember anything of Asaki, and they only think me half mad when I speak of traveling south."
"Well, you'll be staying through this winter, won't you?" Leah asked.
Aryn nodded. "Next spring, perhaps, I will have saved enough silver for another horse. But surely not before."
"Then when the snow comes, perhaps we could spend more time talking?"
"I promise, my friend." He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. "In fact, I'll promise you tea next passage when I come in for provisions. Well enough?"
"Well enough," she replied.
"Good. Soon then," he said. And with a smile, he turned back to the street.
Leah adjusted the bundle in her arms and watched him with a strange mix of feelings running through her. She watched his smooth, almost liquid gait, his long, dark hair -- that of a warrior, and the wiry muscles of his forearm and wrist where his simple woolen shirt-sleeves stopped. He seemed so at peace to her, so gentle. . . and yet she had known well his teacher, Asaki. As her gaze shifted slowly to the dark northern skies, her moist blue eyes took in the furiously swirling clouds. The sun was setting a deep scarlet to the west, and Leah could sense the impending storm which the night would bring. She turned and made her way inside.
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The winds grew more powerful as Aryn made his way to the fields, until they grew so fierce that they began to pick up dust and small stones from the bone-dry road, swirling them harshly around him so that the sharp fragments bit his flesh like tiny wasps. He closed his eyes into narrow slits, hardly able to see the road beneath his worn leather boots. His loose hair whipped painfully on his cheeks and forehead so that it began to annoy him, and he stopped in the road, set his provision-laden canvas pack to the roadway and fished in a side-pouch for a long, narrow strap of leather. Finding it, he pulled the tangled mass of his hair into a rough ponytail and bound it with quick, efficient movements.
It was then that he sensed the rider, a dark shape looming out of the chaotic swirl of wind-borne debris.
Aryn pulled his pack from the horseman's path and stood to the side as the rider came by. He wore a tattered, heavy woolen cloak pulled tightly around his massive frame, and his hood was pulled low against the wind. Aryn nodded up, and the stranger returned the gesture, but neither spoke, for parted lips would only bring a mouthful of dust. Aryn watched as the horseman continued on toward the village, doubtless to seek shelter.
And then Aryn saw something that had been obscured from his former angle of viewing; a massive sword, double-edged judging from the symmetry of the handle and hilt, sheathed in a black studded-leather scabbard and strapped across the man's back. He watched the rider move toward Maidenslock until the horse disappeared, engulfed by the swirling dust storm.
Aryn stood in the roadway for a moment, looking toward Maidenslock. The rider must have been a Northerner, he thought. And they were a dangerous kind. But he had been alone.
Aryn held there only a moment longer, then turned and continued his walk home against the wind.
The man's large, unwieldy blade was typical of those harsh people, the males of which, Aryn knew, as infants were plunged into the icy, spring-fed waters of the great Blacksand River in order to weed out the weak among their number. His clothing had indicated as well that he was far from home, being dirty and worn. It was odd to see one of these brutal people in these lands, for the Northern tribes were disliked and distrusted by almost all other peoples, their cruelty being well known. Often they were driven from towns with thrown sticks, rocks and even arrows in their wakes.
Aryn had also heard other, darker rumors spread of late. It was said that their Shamans were delving deep into ancient magics; crude, primal magics which they would someday use to hold sway over all the lands to the south of them.
&#Endolin, Maidenslock's sage, was quite insistent on this belief, and had driven the town council half mad with his insistence that the drought was some manifestation of the Shamans' magic.
Well, Aryn mused as he bent into the wind, there was one good thing about the coming storm; it would bring much-needed rain. But as he looked up at the churning clouds, which by now should have unleashed a torrent, he wondered why the downpour had not yet begun.
At last he veered from the road toward the tiny log cabin which had been his home for the last three moons. Why is it, he thought, that roadways always seem so long when you're eager to reach home?
Away from the road he could see much better, for although the vast fields around him were dry, the heavier soil was not lifted by the winds as easily as the roadway dust. To his left were last year's fields, unplanted and furrowed by deep ruts; the markings of the plow. Old, dried corn stalks, half plowed under, stood in mute testimony to last year's healthy crop.
This year's crop was not faring so well. Aryn slid his pack from his shoulder onto the rocky ground which divided the fields and stood for a moment outside his door, gazing out upon the endless rows of corn.
The cornfields always gave him an eerie feeling as he looked upon them, for what lay waiting beyond the first few rows one could only guess. It was like another world, walking through the rows, your vision limited to your immediate surroundings, the sound of your passage on the leaves so loud that you would not hear someone or something until it was almost upon you. He always imagined that dark, mysterious creatures lurked between the rows, waiting patiently for children or animals to come exploring.
The crop was almost lost this season, many of the leaves dry enough that Aryn could crumple them to dust in his hand. And yet the plants fought for life, pulling every last drop of water from the parched ground, drinking greedily of the precious beads of dew which tumbled from their leaves each morn.
Aryn turned his gaze upward, and the storm loomed like a monstrous beast overhead, the black clouds twisting in the evening sky, moaning with thunder so deep that one felt it more than heard it.
Lightning suddenly lit the depths, but it left no jagged marks in the sky, for it was deep in the recesses of the clouds that the lightning erupted into being, and a moment later ceased to be.
And then a roar ripped through the corn, and a powerful gust of wind came upon Aryn so quickly that he had to step back with one foot to maintain his balance. Dried leaves, long and narrow, ripped from the corn stalks and hurtled toward him, cracking dryly against the sturdy walls of his cabin and sailing past him wildly, intent on some far-off destination.
He picked up his bag by one strap and opened the heavy wooden door leading into the one-room hut. With a heave he closed it behind him.
Sighing, he set his bag to the floor and gazed about the room. It was a sight that at once comforted and depressed him. The room was adorned with only a cot, a set of shelves on which were perched his few clothes and an assortment of oddities he had collected over the years, and a large cedar chest in which he kept his food. In the center of the room was a stout pole, wrapped in leather and furs to form a striking surface upon which he practiced full-force hand and foot strikes. And hung above his cot was his tirja, a long, curved blade his teacher had brought with him from Teshio, far across the sea. The single-edged blade had been forged by a master craftsman, folded upon itself again and again to strengthen the steel. A blood-red lacquered scabbard, almost black, enclosed the deadly weapon.
It had been Asaki's last gift to him before his teacher had wandered off into the wilderness to die.
Aryn sat down heavily on the cot. The howling wind and corn leaves pelting on the outer wall seemed very far away. He remembered how, three moons ago, he had been hired by the village council to watch the fields for fires. He had needed the gold to buy a new horse; just before being hired for this job he had been planning a journey to the lands of Atalaya, far to the south. How he longed to explore the lands which he had only heard about from the wanderers and traders who came north from those exotic places!
Vividly he remembered the horse he had bought, spending nearly all his silver on the lean, powerfully muscled animal. She had been jet black, and as he sat on the cot he could almost feel her long mane through his fingers, the ripple of her muscles beneath her short fur. He had developed an instant liking to her.
She died a passage later, taken quickly by some rare disease which Endolin had described to him, but which Aryn, to this day, could not even pronounce.
He smiled sarcastically to himself. Somehow, now, the situation seemed almost funny.
So here I am, he thought, stuck watching these accursed fields until winter falls once again upon the land.
He sighed. At first he had thought it would be ideal for continuing his training, having so much time to himself with few, if any, distractions. And indeed, the first turning of the moon had been wonderful, and he had built well upon the powerful foundations of discipline and inner strength which his teacher had helped him to lay. But then the loneliness had set in, and the days seemed to drag endlessly onward, one following the other in tedious monotony, his only solace from the boredom being his infrequent visits to Maidenslock.
And, of course, the toko seeds.
He glanced, almost fearfully, over to the shelves of the far side of the room, and his eyes rested on the old wolf's skull in which the seeds were hidden. Immediately he felt a deep longing -- no, a need -- to use them. It was with a great act of will that he pulled his gaze away from them and rose from the cot, taking his pack with him across the room to the cedar chest.
He wondered briefly of the Northerner he had seen. Such men were dangerous; perhaps he should have followed the man into Maidenslock, to see what he wanted.
Then he shook his head. No, the Northerner had been alone.
He bent down before the cedar chest, but the toko seeds slipped, catlike, into his thoughts. He remembered the trader, only a moon ago, who had stopped to ask how far it was to Maidenslock. How innocent the man seemed, how he spoke with such honesty of the seed's benefits, of how good they made a person feel. Of how they would take the loneliness away.
Never had the man warned Aryn of how they imposed themselves on your will, until you needed them just to get through the day.
Aryn had purchased a half-stone of the tiny black seeds, and a small clay pipe with which to smoke them. Something to help with the monotony, the boredom.
Anger suddenly welled, and Aryn gritted his teeth against it. Had Asaki not taught him to cultivate his emotions, to control his anger? But the toko seeds -- they sapped his will, eroded the foundations of his training!
Silently he cursed the trader. Why had he not warned me? No. No, I can't blame him. It is I who am weak. Is all my training so easily undermined by a tiny seed? Am I truly so weak as that?
Roughly he packed the provisions into the chest and then knelt before it, trembling.
He cried out suddenly, springing backwards toward the pole in the center of the room. A powerful side-kick slammed into the padded pole, and then he fell upon it with knife-hand blows, all his rage poured into each of the swift, controlled strikes until he felt a sharp burning at the edges of his palms. And then he stopped just as abruptly, leaning up against the pole as cold sweat trickled unfelt down his face.
He turned automatically, his body carrying him to the shelves, his mind trying to justify his habit with each step. He lifted the skull and tilted it backward, until a small leather bundle tumbled onto the rough-hewn shelf. He stared at it for a moment, his mind whirling.
Fingers trembling, he untied the thin cord and parted the leather as tenderly as if it were the unbuttoned shirt of a lover. He let out a long breath at the sight of the gathering of tiny seeds. From the bundle he took the decorated clay pipe and scooped the bowl carefully into the small pile of fragrant seeds. He closed and tucked the precious bundle back into the skull of what had once been a powerful predator.
He moved to the cot and sat, staring down at the filled pipe-bowl, the tiny black seeds reminding him, as always, of the sectioned black ants sometimes added to bread to give a crunchy texture. A smile played across his lips as he imagined what would happen if some mischievous baker decided one day to substitute toko seeds for those crispy ants.
His smiled flittered away. He stared down into the seeds, concentrating until nothing seemed to exist except for them. His mind began to harness the energies around him, and he pulled energy from his belly, drawing it up his spine and into his head. Then he imagined fire, not just fire as one usually thinks of it, like that found dancing on the wick of a candle or feeding on the wood of a campfire, but the essence of the substance- the elemental, primal energy which makes fire what it is.
The heat welled within him as the energies strengthened inside and he closed his eyes, seeing the orange and red of flames flowing like some viscous liquid before his mind's eye.
Then his eyes snapped open wide, and he stared deeply into the seeds as sweat seeped from his pores. All of the built-up energy, finely focused, flowed from him into the seeds, and slowly a lazy string of white smoke curled up from the pipe-bowl. Quickly he broke his concentration and blew gently into the seeds, feeding the coal air until it grew to a size where he knew it would sustain itself.
One hand came up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. This was one of the disciplines of Shikiyo-- Teshian magic--which he had been taught. It dealt with the manipulation of the elements to one's will: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Once, he lamented, he had been quite adept at their use, but since his affair with the toko seeds, it had grown increasingly difficult to bring forth the ancient powers.
He lifted the pipe to his lips, and even that was enough to banish thought and regret. He licked his lips once and took the pipe-stem into his mouth, inhaling deeply of the pungent, sickly-sweet smoke.
It burned down his throat and almost immediately he felt the lightness in his head. For a long moment he held the smoke in his lungs, and then slowly let it drift from parted lips. He took one breath of untainted air and then once again he brought a deep draw of the smoke into him, feeling his senses heighten almost painfully, watching passively as his reason tumbled away into oblivion. The cot felt sharp on his buttocks and legs, and then suddenly dropped away, and only his feet remained on the ground as he sat, floating. The corn leaves crashed violently on the wall of the cabin facing the fields and Aryn's gaze darted around, wondering if they would knock the cabin over, leaving him unprotected against whatever horrors lurked in the cornfields this night. The wind spoke in the voices of his dead father, who had been taken in the plague when Aryn was eleven, and his mother, who had died only a few years later. He could feel his father beating him even as his mother sung him gentle lullabies. Then suddenly emotions roared forth, unbridled, stirred into a chaotic mix of ecstasy, depression, peacefulness, and intense excitement, fear and curiosity, all mingling until he was feeling emotions he had never before experienced, and could not begin to understand or define. Why did everyone not take of the toko seeds? Did they not understand how full and rich the world could be?
His body became nonexistent; he was only a jumbled ball of senses, experiencing everything around him. He watched in fascination as the walls shimmered and melted away, until he could not distinguish them from the howling winds. And time, too, fell away; it seemed darker, as if sunset had passed long ago.
It was thus that Aryn did not hear the heavy hoofbeats of warhorses as they reined in just outside his cabin. Or the creak of stiffened leather and clash of scabbards on armor as the riders dismounted. So separated was he from the reality around him that he did not even realize anything was amiss as the door came crashing in on shattered hinges and four hulking men, garbed in thick hides and mismatched pieces of armor, beards thick and dark, burst into the tiny hut with massive swords unsheathed.
They were simply another color in the swirling chaos which was Aryn's world.
And it was such that Karigg Dur, leader of a troop of sixteen fierce Northern Warriors, came upon Aryn, kneeling on the cabin floor, with a smoking pipe dangling from his lips, his arms reaching out to grasp objects the Northerners could not see.
In two powerful strides Karigg was over to the kneeling figure, and with a fierce backhand blow across the face, he sent Aryn tumbling onto his side, the pipe flying from his lips and shattering against the wall of the cabin.
Karigg glanced over at the scattered contents of the broken pipe-bowl, the tiny orange embers bright in the dark room. Then he gazed down at the prone figure below him, noting the lean, well-developed muscles.
"This one's slave meat," Karigg said harshly. "Drugged, but healthy." He looked up at one of his men, who met his eyes with a steady gaze. "Bind him and take him outside before this smoke poisons us as well."
Karigg turned to leave, but then his gaze caught the long curve of the tirja, almost invisible against the dark wooden wall. He glanced back at the young boy on the floor and studied him for a moment before turning to the sword again.
Karigg recognized the style of the blade. Teshian. Such swords were handed down from generation to generation in Teshio, the mark of the warrior caste. Such blades were not passed about as trade items. Odd that such a man should possess one.
Well, mystery or no, it would bring much gold. He moved toward the blade, looking once over at his men, who had turned the cedar chest on its side and were digging through the contents. With his gauntleted hand he reached forth and removed the blade from its position on the wall, admiring the craftsmanship of the handle and scabbard in the dim light.
This will bring a high price indeed, he thought, as he concealed it beneath his cloak. Karigg turned and strode toward the fresh night air, telling his men to hurry before he slipped out of the cabin.
He stood just outside the door, breathing deeply of the cool, charged air. Crickets cried out, competing with the wind to make heard their ancient language. His other men spoke in hushed tones atop their mounts, their weathered faces turned away from the cold winds. The wagon master, sitting on the seat of the double-horse drawn wagon, had his head bowed low, covered with his bear-skull helm. The wind howled as it wove its way through the empty eye sockets.
The clouds still loomed overhead, but no rain had yet fallen. Karigg looked across the fallow field, toward where the village lay. He shook his head, and his men would not have understood the look of sadness upon his face.
Maidenslock, he thought. Tonight indeed will you see a storm.